You can tell a lot about a band from their intro music. While the majority usually plump for anonymous indie or hip-hop collections, the best - and most ambitious - bands prefer to be introduced by something a little bit different. Joy Division, for instance, dared to play Wagner; The Bunnymen employed Frank Sinatra's dulcet tonsils on occasion and tonight I AM KLOOT step onstage as John Barry's "Midnight Cowboy" theme fades. This had peviously segued beautifully from Roy Budd's magnificently evocative "Get Carter" main theme.
Unimpeachably brilliant composers to follow, you'd think, but this gritty Mancunian trio are anything but eclipsed in such exalted company. Their recent, eponymous second album recently won your reviewer's Album of 2003 Award against stiff competition, and the last time they played Cork (as ridiculouly lowly-billed support to over-rated berk David Kitt) they were very much the evening's star attraction.
The fact that most of Kitt's crowd took them to heart is apparent tonight as The Half Moon is packed. There's twice the crowd that turned out for the likes of Julian Cope and Mark Lanegan at this same venue, and the band themselves are pleasantly surprised at the turn out.
It's a golden opportunity for a hard-working band to turn conquering heroes, then, and not a gift horse Johnny Bramwell, Pete Jobson and Andy Hargreaves are going to look in the mouth. Over an hour and a half later (and the longest set the band have played live to date), they depart in a blaze of applause and glory and you can only laugh uproariously at those who'd previously written them off as anything other than real, dark horse contenders.
Let's not beat around the bush here. Kloot are arguably the best band in the UK at present; they interlock with serious precision live and in the elfin Johnny Bramwell they have one of the very best singer/ songwriters lurking anywhere on the map. Tonight all these elements intertwine gloriously and the band turn in what can only be described as a blinder.
Indeed, only a band playing with such reserves of confidence can wheel out their entire debut album (well, barring the atmospheric instrumental "Loch") to remind us of its' under-rated genius, but then "Natural History"s been hiding its' light under a bushel for far too long. Besides, there's few bands out there who can write dark, twisted marvels like "Twist" (tonight's opener) with a chorus as good as "There's blood on your legs - I love you!" and immediately draw you into their lovelorn and literate pop spider's web.
The album provides numerous other peaks, not least edgy vignettes like "Morning Rain" and "86 TV's" (introduced by Johnny with real relish as being "about dead television executives"), not to mention the strangely anthemic "Storm Warning" and "Dark Star" (no, it's not the Grateful Dead one, don't panic), with those wonderfully wistful "la la la" harmonies and Hargreaves' disco hi-hat textures propelling it along majestically. If anything, though, it's "Natural History"s closing track "Because" that's its' tour de force in a live setting too. One of Bramwell's major trump cards as a lyricist is the way he sets a scene so brilliantly with a simple couplet and this song's opening lines ("The turns the blue sky black/ she puts me on my back") is just perfect. The fact the song turns violent with a taut, dreamlike, almost Velvets-style aura about it is no bad thing either.
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But despite the undoubted quality of these songs, it's still surely the newer songs that truly stake the band's indispensable claim. Only a trio buzzing with faith in their ability could dispatch songs as great as "A Strange Arrangement Of Colour" and the chromatic shiver of "From Your Favourite Sky" so early on, safe in the knowledge there's so much more to draw upon. These songs really stretch the band and they're more than up to the challenge. Indeed, for a trio who don't really do that much on stage, they're eminently watchable. Johnny's mostly the focus of attention, making dry quips and witty asides and switching between his trusty semi-acoustics and a mean green Burns electric for killer noir B-side "This House Is Haunted" and the Stooges heaviosity voodoo vibes of the closing "Life In A Day".
Pete Jobson remains seated throughout, giving it the Jah Wobble bit, but with floppy fringe, head hung low and virtually ever-present cigarette lit for concentration. He switches briefly to piano for the widescreen, Bond Theme grace of "Here For The World", while drummer Andy Hargreaves is both power and subtlety personified as each tune requires. Obviously the power play of "Life In A Day" allows him star billing, but he's equally effective when shaping songs like the lovely "Proof" and the almost-rockabilly shuffle of "Bigger Wheels."
The hard'n'heavy frenzy of "Life In A Day" seals the deal and seems the perfect way to sign off, but after lengthy cheering they troop back up. "We're not 'ere that often, so fuck it let's have a laugh!" declares John and they proceed to make mincemeat of those silly Manc "indie-groove" descriptions with "Stop"- a song with a violent whirlpool of an ending that's closer to The Gun Club than Badly Drawn Boy - and then rein the tenderness back in with the show-stopping "The Same Deep Water As Me", which (even sans French horn) sounds little short of timeless.
I Am Kloot have been around the block a few times and you instinctively know they've lived through at least a portion of the scanarios Johhny Bramwell reports on so vividly in song after song. Unlike most of the chancers who interchangeably grace magazine covers week in and out, they are a band with a fierce intelligence and real substance and they are in this for the long haul, so start listening up.
"We have to do this song, because frankly it's delightful," says Johnny with a sly grin before they slink into the deceptively jazzy "Sunlight Hits The Snow." It is delightful, but he could easily have been introducing virtually every song tonight. Gig of the Year as early as the middle of January? On this form you'd be foolish to bet against it.
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