I turned up reasonably early to this gig to find out it had sold out in advance, but that if I wanted to wait till 9.30 they would be selling any returns then. OK. I got myself a beer and a seat with a view of the box office to see if anyone was selling spares and in the hour an a quarter I sat there only one spare ticket was sold to another guy near me who the box office girls had sent the ticket holder to sell it too. That was in comparison to about 100 people who were turned away!
I made sure I was by the box office when I needed to be as when they said they had another 10 tickets to sell I got the first one and went upstairs to try to squeeze myself into a jam packed club where UNDERGROUND RAILROAD, the French band, were already well into what seemed like a great set. I caught the last two songs, the first of which, Orchids Curse, was a slow building epic noise workout that had elements of Pylon mixed with Band of Susans and Ut all trying to rework Telephone's Ploum Ploum. They were good and sound like the sort of band you'd expect to be signed to One Little Indian. As they are. They closed with Picture Ghost or something like that. I thought it was Picto Goth from the introduction but listening to the lyrics it was ghost, and this was another epic blow out tune that seemed to tip its hat at Live Skull and Band of Susans and made me want to see them play a full set sometime soon.
After the break it's time for the very welcome return of Gallon Drunk who I first saw live some 21 years ago at the Falcon in Camden. They are every bit as visceral a pleasure today as they were back then, only these days we are in a far nicer and less smelly venue than back then. They open with a monstrously good version of Arlington Road with James Johnston spitting the lyrics at us while wringing some great dissonant distorted noise from his guitar while Ian White drives it along on the drums with help from the bands new un-named bass player.
I thnk the second song of the set was the new single You Made Me that had some great sax from Terry Edwards while James split his time between the guitar, keyboards and harmonica while singing and often playing two of those together. Terry was split between sax and Keyboards. The new songs off the soon-to-be-released album The Road Gets Darker From Here sound like that title: all dark imagery and typical Gallon Drunk music that sounds like it is both really tight and totally dissonant at the same time. It's a great trick they have down pat after all these years.
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Two Wings Mambo still sounds great and these days seems to be more controlled than it used to be with almost mambo dancing going on from James and Terry as they really get the song swinging away and send most of the crowd wild. Push The Boat out was menacing, making you feel afraid of what will happen next. In this case it will be a trip to Bedlam: a place it seems that was made for music like this.
Not sure what the new songs they then played are called but damn do I want to hear the album they come from as the lyrics seem to be as dark as the times we live in and the music ain't far behind. Still it got us ready for a trip to the heart of old school Soho with Jake on The Make which still sounds fantastic even if the world it's about has almost disappeared now.
I guess the next new song was The Big Breakdown. It seemed to be about the state of the world and had some real nasty keyboards played with James'# guitar squalling on his back before they gave us Two Clear Eyes and, well, it is one of there songs that should have been a hit. Just You (?) that followed seemed to be a love song to a lost partner with the normal disturbed twists in the lyrics.
They closed with what may have been the title track from the new lp, but I'm not certain of that. Either way it was another great slab of dissonant nastiness wrapped in Terry Edwards honking sax and James' harmonica playing and were gone.
They got teased back for an encore and gave us a great angry slice of Some Fools Mess complete with James missing his vocals at the start as he'd not picked his microphone back up from where it was thrown at the end of the set. Regardless, most of the audience were singing along anyway even if they were thankful that the mess wasn't running down their legs. It provided a great finale to an inspired comeback gig and I look forward to hearing The Road Gets Darker From Here when it comes out on www.clouds-hill.com on May 7th.
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