ALONE IN LONDON
London Cargo, 11 April 2001

Alone in London? Somebody call the Trade Descriptions people - this showcase night for Source Records, the label that brought you the excellent Mark B and Blade, may well be in the capital, but solitude is not an option. Even if you want it. So what is it that's brought the beautiful east London hordes out in force on this unseasonal Wednesday night? Is it spaniel-haired Gallic key-tinkler Rob, who starts out by being tantalisingly polite and descends into a retro-rock blur that frightens your correspondent considerably by reminding him of Rainbow (that's the Deep Purple spin-off band, mind, not the TV programme)? Or could it perhaps be the increasingly-well-spoken-of Gemma Hayes, whose post-Orton doodles are forever threatening to take shape and may yet become unassumingly gorgeous when they do?

More likely it's the Kings Of Convenience, whose 'Quiet Is The New Loud' is shaping up on repeated listens to being one of the best debut albums of the year. Sad to report, then, that Eirik (that's the one who looks like little Sean Manic, not the Missing Proclaimer Brother one) is not a well man, and so it is that Erlend has to sing a short cover of Tom Petty's 'Free Fallin'' unaccompanied and, despite endearingly sterling efforts, the pair must leave after five songs. Still, they do at least manage to treat us to a heartwarming take on current single 'Toxic Girl', clearly the best effort ever to set a tale of trollopy to the Camberwick Green theme tune, and even this brief performance suggests that they've got few peers in the Simon-and-Garfunkel-esque-lusciousness stakes.

However, those peers do, on a good night, include Turin Brakes and, if the natives hadn't become so disastrously restless, this would probably have been a good night. After all, they're not exactly short on shimmeringly mountainous songs that come across like the Doves in a cracking cocoon - see, if you will, 'The Boss' (unusually solid-sounding this evening) or the anthemic forthcoming 'Underdog (Save Me)" - and, having overcome the sweet nervousness that used to characterise their performances, they're a substantial attraction live, even in a more stripped-down form tonight than on their recent tour with Phoenix. Pity it's still all a touch too restrained to entirely distract us from the hideous Shoreditch look-at-me-isms all around, but that's hardly the Brakesters' fault. Maybe they really are best listened to alone, in London or otherwise, after all...


WORDS: Iain Moffat