Yet another great night out round the corner at The Luminaire. This time I walked in just after Mary Epworth & The Jubilee band had started playing what was a set of fairly quiet and
langourous country songs, seemingly wracked in heartache and sadness.
Mary herself strummed an electric harp for most of the set while she sang and looked pretty fantastic while the Jubilee Band provided restrained backing and the only two songs that stood out were the ones that Mary switched to guitar for. They only stood out by being louder and therefore shutting up some of the louder members of the audience.
After a short break it was time for the devil, no no I mean it was time for John and Jehn, two of the coolest French people on the planet. I know I say it every time I see them, but they
are just sooo cool and if anything John is actually managing to look slimmer than he did at the album launch show for "Time For The Devil" ( www.naive.fr) at the Lexington earlier in the
year where they debuted the new 4 piece line up.
This show was apparently to be Raf the drummer's last show but his replacement was in the audience somewhere hopefully marvelling at how great they sound. Well they now have a slightly dubby edge to their vintage sounds and Jehn is playing two old keyboards that look like they are from the 70's rather than the old 60's one she used to play.
This makes them sound like a cross between Pylon and Arson Garden and at times Jehns singing sounds a lot like Robert Smith from The Cure, which is a little odd for sure, but this was
Prime Time and as soon as they played songs like Oh My Love and Vampire they had the Luminaire eating out of their hands. They sounded great and even if a few of the songs like Shades and
Love Is Not Enough sounded like the girl on the Fender Stratocaster should have been playing John's Vox for the sort of shoegazer/dub effects, she was paying it really worked well.
London Town was played as an anthem for our lovely hometown and both John and Jehn took every opportunity to thank Andy Inglis and the Luminaire for being the first venue to put them on. Towards the end of the set they did their normal instrument switching trick and Jehn suddenly looked like she was in an Robert Plamer video as she played guitar and danced on Time
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for The Devil. They introduced the final song as Thank You Andee a fitting tribute to Andy and his little empire that was almost as good as Les Rita Mitsouko's incredible classic Andy!!
Eventually it was time for The Brute Chorus whose album launch show this was and they were very proudly mainly playing selections from the new How The Caged Bird Sings album on
www.taperec.com wherein they find the solution to how do you follow an cd like Vandal that came in a wooden box with autographed photos and a pop out badge. Well this time the cd is packaged like a 7" single with liner notes that fold out into a poster of a "caged Bird" a thing of beauty for sure and yet again here are bands who are making records as works of art to collect rather than download as invisible and disposable mp3's.
As with the last time I saw them they sound a lot like early Bad Seeds. Lazarus was mighty indeed and the singer lurched all over the place like a man demented as he twitched on about red
Blood before they got properly deranged on Whipping Boy that had a touch of the Gallon Drunks about it. As they said, most of the songs were from the new album and it was only late in the set that we got Chka Chkaa or whatever it's really called: a great tune either way and on the encore they suffered slightly from the noisy crowd talking over the first song that I think was Lyre Bird Humming Bird.
They shut everyone up by finishing with a mighty mighty version of Hercules that was the song that sold them to me last time when we saw them open for Big Sexy Noise. I have to say it was still the best song of their set even if Whipping Boy came a
close second. Either way they need to be seen live and the new album is well worth finding for the packaging alone!!
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