This show was part of the band's own Some Weird Sin club night and as such was the perfect place for them to play their first live show since JONNY COLA'S Kidney transplant. The fact that his Kidney donor and other half Heidi Heelz was on the wheels of steel helped to make sure this was a really cool night.
We arrived about 10 minutes before they went on having missed the support act entirely I'm afraid. Still we found a rammed Buffalo Bar: perhaps that hard, but it was still good to see it jam packed. Soon enough the band were ready for the re-launch to be complete. They opened with a nicely anthemic In the Woods that once they sorted out getting the vocals and guitars loud enough sounded really cool.
They then went straight into the B-side of the new single Marlborough Road which is of course up the other end of the Holloway Road from the Buffalo Bar. This featured a pretty tasty little guitar duel between Jez and Mauro and reminded me of something off of David Kubinec's Some Things Never Change album which features Chris Spedding and Ollie Halsall on guitars.
Blow Up! Was as Suede-like as they got all night, but it is very much early Suede with a small dose of Jake Shillingford thrown in, even if - thankfully - Jonny isn't that affected live. The new single Straight To Video was next and was every bit as wild and histrionic as it is on the DVD. Damn, those guitars sounded great and of course Simon Drowner's bass was underpinning things nicely throughout even if they may have played a slightly shorter version to the single.
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Rain Stopped Play, from the Halo EP, is still a cracking slice of Junk shop glam that had some great skittering guitars and a little bit of keyboards from Jonny before they played us a little taster for the new soon to be recorded) album Going Over that throws a bit of Manics-meets-Bunnymen style angst into the glammed up mix. They then got most of the crowd singing along to last year's single Halo. It's the sound of them taming Babylon Zoo's mock Ziggy but with more flourishes of Bowie. Sort of more like Arnold Corns than the Spiders From Mars.
What better song to end a set with than The Party's Over even if they are singing about the sort of all-nighter that goes on for days and leaves a trail of debris in its wake. It does of course leave a heap of semi-comatose zombies behind to clap and cheer to bring the A-Grades back for a well-deserved encore. Ripples is one of those songs that brings me a memory of a song whose name I don't know but it's the one quiet, slow song The Crocketts used to play live opening for the likes of Rachel Stamp. A really good end to a great set.
After the band the club was also great fun. I really like the glam sleaze punk they play and they present a very cool night all round.
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