Tonight’s noisily chatty office-party crowd are certainly excited about something, but it may or may not be Life After Modelling. They should be, though: the Lifers’ short set is a compact bang-zap of straight-as-a-die Noughties post-punk, leavened by dreamlike, hand-holdey boy-girl harmonies. Conversely, The Shades are at this stage slightly more exciting on paper (double bass! Brass section! Laptop!) than in reality – even though Ray Scannell’s dolorous tones do lend their nightscapey loneliness-hop a lovely, Dovesy mournfulness.
And at least they’re making an effort. John Henderson, one of tonight’s two comperes, exhibits less charisma, and interest in being here, than the stagehands who scramble behind him. The other compere, thankfully, is the deeply bananas Jason Byrne, who is at least 458% Into It (man) and whose hair, styled this evening into a modified Krusty, is worth 25 yoyos on its own. We also get good value for (the Red Cross’s) money from Sack, whose lacerating Joy Division guitars, overlaid with Martin McCann’s strident vibrato, possess the latent violence of shark-infested waters.
With his letter-opener nose, skinnymalink physique and (it appears) 5 or 6 extra elbows, Dermot Carmody looks like a draughtsman’s angle collection – and his music (surreal observations set to crap blues guitar) is equally, er, strangely pointy. Less marvellously, Juliet Turner’s deliciously weird accent (surely there’s a 33rd county, from which she and only she hails?) is the only thing that enlivens her wordy sub-Mary Black complaint folk. Boredom then swiftly turns to terror when Reuben, a mime artist (wait, come back!), takes the stage – but lo, the man has the plasticity of face and invention of brain of Rowan Atkinson circa The Secret Policeman’s Ball. No, seriously.
In the absence of Turn (Ollie’s off sick), Mundy rounds off the evening: with only his fuzzbox and sample pedal for company, he overcomes an (uncharacteristic!) case of nerves and plays to the half-interested chatterati as if they’re a slavering full house. A cover of Townes Van Zandt’s ‘Waitin’ Around to Die’ is vivid and bitter, and a twanging ‘Love And Confusion’s eccentric pop perfection shines through its dusting of sawdust. So: a lot of dosh raised, and some great stuff for those who cared to listen for it.