Playlouder - Music is the Network

Good old White Heat! White Heat’s residency (or whatever it is) at Madame JoJo’s is turning into that rarest of things, in my book: a guaranteed decent night out.

It’s a night where the horrendously expensive drinks prices are actually worth it, where turning up for the support band does not mean being subjected to the dregs of the fuckwit jug, or the last scrapings from the bottom of the ass barrel.

In fact, The XX – who I arrived in the middle of, truth be told – are really quite an interesting and assured little bunch, with a touch-pad drum machine, a little toy keyboard, a couple of guitars and an air of melancholy that makes you want to donate them cardigans and cola bottles and give them big hugs. (Note: usually support bands with fake drums and an air of melancholy leave me wanting to throw bottles and strangle them with woolen garments, so this is quite a turn up.)

It’s a dismal but engaging sound, somewhere inbetween trip hop, soul and indie, and while initially not being bowled over, it seeps in, leaving quite a curious feeling by the end, and when the huge reverberations from the tough-pad bass drum finally dissipate, The XX have made sure they won’t be forgotten.

I’ve made no secret of my admiration for One More Grain’s crazy folk jazz drones in the past, and tonight’s performance does nothing to dilute that. Highlights include

a) an instrumental freak-out in the shape of a Kenyan folk song (apparently) from their (hopefully) forthcoming single, ‘A Town is What You Make It’.

b) the inimitable groove of ‘Jon Hassellhoff’ – introduced as “The ‘Hoff”, complete with insanely-tight rhythm section.

c) a number I’d not heard before called ‘Roman Road’, (presumably off ‘Pigeon English’): a brooding piece whose sound collage is the perfect offset to the more raucous numbers like ‘Having a Ball’.

And finally – as they say, ‘last but not least’ – it’s a delight to learn that hotly-tipped northerners Wild Beasts are a truly unique and talented bunch, machine-gunning life back into the corpse of the British indie scene, and making it dance again.

Their expert harmonies and obscure and engaging lyrical vignettes are so thoroughly, quintessentially English as to bypass the decades of music (from both here and there) that must have inspired them and lull you into a false sense of early twentieth century naïvety.

Hayden Thorpe’s lurching falsetto howls seemed an unlikely focal vocal when first heard, but now I’m utterly convinced, and urge you to be also: come, witness Wild Beasts – here is a band worth your good opinion.