When The Master Chaynjis start in the back room of the Croft, I am too glued to my seat to move. In the side room at the front of the pub an entertainment phenomenon is at work.
Dr Joel is singing a song about how he hates his boss and his job, but is really very happy thank you very much. He plays a Yamaha keyboard with an electric piano sound, has bells on his ankles and is excellent at the South Indian art of vocal percussion, or Konnakol - where drum rhythms are vocalized at lightning speed. It is bizarre indian/country club cabaret, certainly original and before long everyone is clapping along and practising the vocalizations for themselves.
Dr Joel plays two short sets, sandwiching Mor Karbasi who has a lovely voice and sings traditional sounding spanish folk tunes. We catch her briefly after S.J. Esau has blown our ears off with an inspiring set of wrongtronic loopings and lighthearted chaos. We all sing Happy Birthday to him and make him blush.
You & The Atom Bomb are one of the recent crop of guitar bands that have a dance-music influenced sound - the housey drums, a bit of synth and twangy sometimes rock guitars in straightforward indie pop songs. The second track has a good almost African style guitar part to it, but this lot are too similar to everything else of this ilk to get me that excited.
Of course, this does mean that they have a very bright future ahead of them. Not because some anonymous internet review-whore doesn't like them, but because they do fulfill all the criteria for all that is cool for the current NME generation.
I survive two songs before having to run away and enjoy Dr Joel's second set of the evening instead.
The main attraction for the evening is no stranger to Skip The Budgie and Rose Kemp once again blows the doors off everything else for a short time. Her band sounds fantastic, they are very tight and that voice is still amazing and beautiful. The stand out tracks of the evening are 'The Unholy' - a heavy guitar epic and 'Flawless' which just makes me want to cry.
I buy the Rose Kemp single because it's pink - I'll probably never really play it but talent like this needs supporting.
