Chambers of the Heart, eh? Could go two ways, I thought. It’s either Grey’s Anatomy, and we should expect a cold, clinical, ultra-rationalist German miserablism, or it’s Catherine Cookson and we should be primed for excruciating power ballads, probably sung by Alexandra Burke. In the event, COTH turned out to be four earnest progsters jamming away for thirty minutes without a break, blissfully unaware of any obligations towards a paying audience-they barely acknowledged our existence. To be fair, they covered a fair bit of stylistic ground: classic rock riffing, a Madchester nostalgia trip, relentless disco pounding and avant-gard noise were all mixed up in there, punctuated by the odd more lyrical moment (though that may just have been them taking a breather). The concept felt rather Seventies, as if I’d wandered into ‘The Rotter’s Club’. Indeed, I half expected some bearded apostle of the band to grab me by the arm and tell me not to leave because, “in ten minutes it starts to get more accessible”. The band is pretty accomplished, as you might expect from a group containing members of International Jetsetters and Spiral 25, but it’s ultimately a bunch of musos jamming on the same chord for an age. If I need that I’ll dig out my copy of Das Rheingold.
Another band which failed to connect was Vultures, playing for only twenty minutes and looking scared out of their wits. They are a supposedly spiky three-piece, making unremarkable youth club pop-rock. Lead singer and guitarist Cameron Grote will be familiar to fans of the long defunct Warhen: he was the drummer back then, and a very brilliant one too. Why drummers feel the need to don guitars is an interesting psychological question- don’t they feel loved back there?- but Grote did not reveal any great untapped talent: his voice is small, yelpy, not very tuneful and lacks any presence or emotional depth. The band itself was tight but sounded too often like a cut-price Kinks or Supergrass’s me-too kid brother. And again, perhaps because of nerves, there was no connection with the still-healthy audience. I mean, cripes, even Jedward puts on a show.
Ah yes, that audience. There were, in Bugs Bunny’s immortal words, quite a lot of homely dames in it, and all was revealed when headliners Barbare11a took to the stage. Imagine Eddie Izzard fronting The Velvet Underground, with the front row of the audience camping it up as much as the band, and one can explain the vast over-representation of transvestites in the room. Still, at least Barbarella made an impact, after the studious neglect of COTH and the rabbit-in-the-headlights terror of Vultures.
Musically, the set started poorly, with a piece of plodding widdly-guitar classic rock, but they hit their stride on the second number-a slice of savvy Depeche-Mode electro-rock and continuing with what could only be called Weimar cabaret funeral music. The band has a weary, ramshackle feel, as if it thinks it is soundtracking the end of a chapter in civilisation. (What with the widespread collapse of trust in political institutions, endless war and ever-more-apocalyptic warnings about The Warming, maybe it is). They rather ran out of steam on the second half of the set, revived by a version of Cab Calloway’s ‘Minnie the Moocher’, and the suspicion lurks that they need a few more good tunes before making the next step up. A thought: if I were their manager I would be cultivating Joe Swarbrick and co. at the moment, because a Borderville UK tour backed by these guys would be quite an event. And no doubt the touring van, as it swung around the circle, would be constantly pursued by a rapacious pack of Avon Ladies.