Giglog
Words: Fiona Fletcher

January 22, 2002
It's Tuesday, so this must be Camden, and we're drinking in the Dublin Castle, the seamiest, nastiest armpit dive in the seamy nasty armpit borough of Camden, but those lovely folks at Fierce Panda records have a mind to put an end to this awful reputation by staging their weekly indie apocalypse, Club Fandango in this seamiest and stinkiest of dives.
Tonight is an Odd Band Name theme night: we squeeze inside and find When Trams Were Kings playing their little hearts out onstage. Bless. They're kicking up an endearing racket, what with their guitarist's staggering four distortion pedals, and their singer earnest and gangling like a young Ian McKaye. There's a fair amount of Idlewild and Mogwai worship, but at least they've done their homework, matching the usual Slint-style quiet/loud dynamics with the melodic sense of forgotten yank hardcore heroes, Squirrel Bait.
Next are NPB (someone tells me this stands for National Prayer Breakfast). Their singer looks like a cross between Vincent Gallo and the tramp that sleeps up on Holloway Rd in his scraggly hair and slept-in suit. However, thankfully, there's no art with a capital A involved, owing more to Bob and Doug McKenzie than the White Stripes, and we're in for some fantastically stupid garage rock. It's very big and it's not clever at all, just happy-happy Tonka Truck stomping music, with songs written from the point of view of squashed bugs and lyrics about "I'm a big black Cadillac on the highway of love and I'm coming to getcha, I'm coming to getcha" and it's so dumb, it's brilliant. I love them and bounce along happy. And then it's British Sea Power, as I promised my mate Emma who loves 'em that I'd give them a second chance, slightly more sober this time. They take forever setting up and there's lots of dodgy installation art going on, and the crowd is going buzz, buzz, buzz and we're surrounded by 12 music journalists a-scribbling and 11 photographers a-snapping and 10 bootleggers a-taping, etc.
Finally they stroll onstage in matching white military uniforms ("winter plumage", Emma claims) that makes them blend in perfectly with their stage-set and though I generally approve of matching outfits, I remain suspicious.
The music starts, finally - and they are too awkward to be charming, but they've definitely got something. "Remember Me" is a nice little slice of post-punk confectionery, all fuzzy bass and blitzing guitars. But a few songs in, when the singer breaks into a extemporised yelp of "Louie, Louie" it suddenly hits me what exactly they've got and where I've seen it all before. The bugging pop-eyed stares: the military uniforms: the camouflage stage sets: the sub-Joy Division rock posturing: the half-breathy half-whooping vocal style… even the strangled guitar arabesques and the martial drum-rolls.
My god. It's Echo. And. The. Fucking. Bunnymen.
Their entire set hovers somewhere between Villiers Terrace and The Chameleons, but the kidz are all too young to notice. And the grand finale is pretentious as fuck with feedback and soloing and jamming, yes, jamming like punk rock was supposed to have put a stop to in 1979. Yes, I said pretentious, and me a Spacemen 3 fan and all.
Outside, opinion is split down the middle with half dismissing them as pretentious twaddle and half proclaiming them the New Cult Thing, and me still not entirely sure what to think, but we run into friends who offer to take us with them to go see Cooper Temple Clause for free, and why not, because once you're in Camden, you have scrapped all sense of shame, and you might as well sink as low as you go, so off we trot.
So, Cooper Temple Clause come on well after midnight amid a sea of dry ice and my god, they might dress like the Manic Street Preachers but they come on like the scary bastard offspring of Nine Inch Nails and Motley fucking Crue. There has yet to be a single decent band with the word Temple in their name, and they're no exception. There are rock god moves and posing and bad mullets, and my god, is their guitarist wearing a leather jacket with no shirt? Make it stop, please. Did I really just say that British Sea Power were pretentious and had learned their rock god moves by rote from watching Joy Division videos? Oh, I didn't mean it. I take it all back.
Please come back, British Sea Power, all is forgiven.

January 29, 2002
Back at Fandango, and I've already reneged on my promise to review every band I see, but hey, I'd spend all my time writing and no time ligging. Auralux? The less said, the better.
But Fandango! How do Fierce Panda do this, week after week of such amazing shows?
Major Major are the Minipops Sonic Youth. Bless. Finlay are wonderful and odd and spiky and off-kilter. They have bits that are all discordant and weird and shuffle along like a Home Counties Pavement, and then suddenly they'll break into a chorus so big and catchy that the entire front row of the audience starts doing that rubberneck nodding dog thing. Their secret weapon is a fierce rhythm section that pounds everything together while the guitarist blast off into their power-drill riffs. But the best bit about Finlay remains the incredibly bored looking girl who sits on the side of the stage, plays keyboards and occasionally singing.
And after an entire evening of British bands trying to sound American, finally an American band who sound British. Hooray for Death Cab For Cutie! They may look, and even dance a bit like the gang of nerds who abscond with Molly Ringworm's knickers in "Sixteen Candles", but don't let that fool you. Death Cab For Cutie play perfect pop. Now, perfect pop is a phrase that has been much maligned too long by its misuse to describe twee B(&)S. This is what perfect pop should be. It's not just about the cute, sunshine jangly moments when your crush smiles at you and all is happy and wonderful, but it's also about the heart-rending moment that your crush walks on by and all your nerves cry out in agony and the bottom drops out of your stomach and the guitars twist and writhe like your fingernails digging into the palms of your hands.
We're not just talking clichéd loud/quiet dynamics. We're talking utterly bipolar heights and depths, all while maintaining melodies that stick in your head like, well, the floor in the Dublin Castle sticks to your shoes. And this is all sung in a voice so sweet and fragile it seems almost like a tragic and beautiful waste, the angel face of the cutie surrounded by shards of twisted metal and broken glass. Death Cab For Cutie is fucking right.