iliketrains/Stuffy And The Fuses/Battle, 100 Club
A quick review. As always Battle played a good set, despite looking knackered (this is the last night of the UK tour). We managed to pick up a copy of their new single, Demons, which is on a 3 inch CD single - something I haven’t seen for about 10 years. Anyway it’s one of our favorites from the live set so I’m glad it’s got a release, but I’m a little concerned that there doesn’t appear to have been any promotion around the single – I had no idea that it was available, and has been available for a couple of weeks. It sounds like the sweet spot between Bloc Party and Babyshambles and sounds like a Lightning Seeds single (I can’t remember the name at the moment).

Support is from iliketrains (sic) and Stuffy And The Fuses. iliketrains are interesting, a little different from most of the other bands around at the moment. The most obvious comparison is Mogwai or maybe Godspeed You Black Emperor!, lots of layered guitars, building crescendos and slide shows of trains. Oh, and they all wear old BR blazers. We're going to keep an eye out for them and hopefully will get a chance to see them again soon.

Stuffy And The Fuses are a completely different proposition and not a good one. Lets look at the evidence:
First of all -10 points because Stuffy is a singing drummer
-10 points because Stuffy can’t sing
-10 points because the band wear T-shirts to tell us “I’m Stuffy” and “I’m in the fuses”
-100 points because SATF blatantly steal from the Blur back catalogue (in the same way that Sleeper stole from Blur)
-1 million points because Stuffy is fucking annoying

So that’s a pretty big points deficit and one that SATF don’t overcome with their songs. Part way through their set, just after another unconvincing Blur pastiche, I look around to see Graham Coxon inspecting the fret work of Jen Fuse (the guitarist), probably wondering how she got her hands on his cast offs. He seemed to be impressed with the band, politely applauding each song, which either means he is pining for Parklife era Blur again or that SATF are signed to his Transcopic record label. I suspect it’s the latter as he disappears before Battle take to the stage.
- posted by Nigella @ 6:32 PM