Considering they've recently headlined a prestige London show to 1700 people, arriving in Ireland to a hardcore 100 or so on a dismal Wednesday or so might be seen as a disappointment for a lesser band, but Manchester's magnificent I AM KLOOT have never been shrinking violets and know damn well the smart people in town are all in attendance tonight.
Arriving early proves fortuitous, too, for touring companions and long-term Mancunian well-kept secret INDIGO JONES prove a fascinating and diverting support act. This trio - who feature an Australian (Scott Alexander - guitar/ vocals), an Irishman (Tony Gilfallon - guitar/ vocals) and a Spaniard (drummer Miguel Navarro) - I think also once packed a bassist, although there's none in attendance tonight. The lack of bottom end matters little though, for while the two guitarists sit down throughout, their music has legs in itself and veers from stoned and amiable to brooding and rhythmic at the drop of a cloth cap.
Unfamiliarity with their material prevents further in-depth observations at this stage, but they engage with one number that sounds like "Tender Prey"-era Nick Cave jamming with the Fall and when they conclude with a rattling rockabilly ode to whiskey and glorious oblivion (sample lyric: "Don't think about tomorrow/ 'coz we're never getting there/ Don't think about tomorrow, 'coz we're going out in style"), they've earmarked a chapter in your reviewer's "to return to" file. Lovely.
Meanwhile, if you're a regular round these parts you'll probably be bored rigid by this writer's ceaseless championing of I AM KLOOT, but I'm hardly liable to change my tune, especially when they continue to deliver performanes as potent as the one they treat us to tonight.
Five years solid touring has ensured Kloot are a drilled and intuitive trio, but they never cease to surprise, and it's typically remarkable they choose to open with brilliant new album "Gods & Monsters"' starkest track, "Coincidence", which kicks in with a brooding rumble and Johnny Bramwell singing the ominous lyric "Love may just have come to bury me" in the calmest of voices. It's an eerie juxtaposition and sets the scene magnificently for what turns out to be a vintage set played by a band brimming with confidence.
Ostensibly, Kloot are here to promote "Gods & Monsters" and certainly early on we get hungry renditions of some of its' best moments in the taut'n'strident "No Direction Home" and the weird'n'stuttery "An Ordinary Girl", where the heroine turns to witchcraft to escape. It's full of Bramwell's typically wry and visceral observations of life and love (sample lyric: "she's mugging her lovers, she's bleeding the buggers") and is followed by the nagging single "Over My Shoulder", which recently brought the band some long-overdue chart success.
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But really there's nary a duffer within earshot. Naturally, Bramwell's lyrical ability and his yearningly coarse'n'tender Mancunian twang immediately mark him out from the pack, but Kloot's almost supernatural understanding of each other's strengths and the way to maximise on the simplest of riffs and musical motifs is equally special. Bassist Peter Jobson is a crucial melodic foil and his playing is first rate throughout. He sits down to play, occasionally giving it some John Paul Jones by alternating between driving runs and touches of keyboard (on "No Direction Home") or eschewing the bass altogether for the gorgeous, cinematic sweep of second album highlight "Here For The World." Drummer Andy Hargreaves, too, is something of an alchemical marvel, bringing subtlety and sympathy to tunes like the delicious "Proof" and a jazzy drive to "Strange Without You" and the rapturously received "A Strange Arrangement Of Colour."
They pull it all together on two of debut album "Natural History"s showstoppers. "Because" has an expansive, lysergic quality and hangs suspended in mystery, while the warped and dark "Stop" (sample lyric: "God made me ugly, so don't string me along") never fails to send a chill down this spine and its' crescendo is heavy as fuck tonight. It's not half as psychotic as the closing "Life In A Day", though, where Jobson and Hargreaves lever up deafening voodoo vibes and Bramwell stalks the stage, temporarily possessed by Iggy Pop, kicking crates around, giving the crowd the finger and wrapping himself in his guitar lead. It's a breathtaking finale and makes a mockery of the need for an encore which - rightly - isn't forthcoming.
So you'll have found little to contradict any of your reviewer's pro-Kloot invective from reading this review, but while he may well be praising this wonderfully out of step trio until he's blue in the face, it's also true that sometimes you really can't get too much of a good thing. For the time being, at least, I Am Kloot remain the living proof of that theory. It's good to know that the public at large seem to be finally thinking along those lines too.
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