Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen is generally a good place to go a-gigging; the size and, well, darkness of its gig room seem to be conducive to a successful sojourn into the world of band-viewing. Unfortunately, this fertile environment didn’t work out too well for the first band, Blue On Blue. Their guitarist was a complete no-show, much to the obvious mortification of the remaining two members of the band. The audience were treated to a series of frantic mid-set phone calls by the drummer which went along the lines of “where the hell are you? We’re on stage!” and other such less polite phrases. To their credit, the set was rather enjoyable anyway. What tracks singer / bassist Dee and drummer Mark could salvage between them were pretty impressive, and were enough to make me want to seek them out again, especially when Dee confessed to this unfortunate encounter being only their second ever gig, a revelation which prompted much admiration and appreciative whooping from us revellers.
The real champions of the night were, though, both for me and my gigging companion, Veronica Falls. The blogosphere – and now the magazine-osphere (it’s fun to invent words, you should try it sometime) – have gone gaga for these guys, and I feel you need to see them live to really discover why. The atmosphere was electric, and with one moody, stylish, well-harmonised song after another, the crowd were obviously enjoying being serenaded by them. And, to be honest, this resulted in Vivian Girls seeming a tad drab by comparison. Now, this may be partly because I saw Vivian Girls a while ago and they were great, or it might be genuinely because seeing both bands side by side brought out the stark contrast between the variation and range of songs that Veronica Falls had to offer and the dulcet drones of the Vivian Girls’ songs blending into one another, resulting in one long mass. It’s no news to anyone that Vivian Girls songs tend to be quite similar; in fact, it’s one of the things that makes them such a reliably good band, but Veronica Falls seemed to just give the audience that little something extra. Granted, that ‘extra’ might well be that they weren’t knackered from incessant foreign touring. Unlike a lot of people, I prefer the first Vivian Girls album to the second, so perhaps I was just hankering for more of the older stuff.
If you were a reveller at this particular gig, and you happened to make a purchase from the record stall on your way past, you may have been treated to being served by one of the lovely Girls themselves. This was something which caught my attention because isn’t it great when you get to speak to a band whose music you admire and respect, and they make the effort to serve you themselves? Either that or they had no-one else to do it, but I’m going to go for the first option myself.
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