Here we are at The Garage a dive that certainly lives up to its name and could easily double as a scout hut.

First up are Mystery Jets, they have two drum kits one of which is made up of kitchen utensils and is manned by their bushy haired vocalist Blaine, he’s a lively little fellow and bangs those pans like he’s three years old starved of attention.

It’s always a fidgety affair with Mystery Jets, lots of fiddling and twiddling, bleeping and weeping and banging and clanging, impressively tight and gloriously ambitious the music is intense to say the absolute least. It may in fact be a little too intense, for although Blaine’s obviously having a whale of time, the guitarist who is his father (nightly if he’s a day) and the rest of band seem as bored as I. To illustrate the drudgery of it all, they take it in turns to nip off the stage for a Kit Kat or something. Rather rude I thought. Towards the end Blaine briefly pauses to plug the bands website, mentioning that its not very good at the moment but will get better, to me it seemed to sum up more than just the website.

The Pipettes on the other hand are completely spellbinding, an all girl threesome from Brighton who dress like Lucille Ball and sway like The Supremes. They dish out their rack of electro pop snackettes with more bubbly enthusiasm than you could shake a Cat Deeley at. Backed by the chronically ignored The Cassettes, the girl’s deliver a mix of ditzy keyboard tunes with intriguing lyrical content ‘I like a boy in Uniform, school uniform’ being my personal favourite.

Before we allow British Sea Power to take the stage, let me first state that BSP are the most important band in Briton who don’t share their corn flakes with Pete Doherty. They are single handily fighting the war against blazers, Band Aid and everything Keane.

The stage is covered in a wide range of foliage and theirs an owl propped one of the amplifiers. It’s all to be expected at a BSP gig; why, the Owl can remember the first time these lads played here. Entering, as always, to the haunting yawns of album opener 'Men Together Today'. Keyboardist Eamon is in full military attire and banging incessantly on a bass drum, vocalist Yan is wearing his infamous Village Green Cricket Game, the Bowie voiced singer doesn’t smile, he doesn’t talk he barely blinks. In fact his Hi-tech trainers are the only things that give him away as human.

Spouting musical invention as if it were tea, BSP parade psychedelic rifts and indie rocking beats hand in hand through the valley of weirdness. Yan’s lyrics are equally strange and chaotic, ‘Apologies To Insect Life’ appears to be an ode to Fyodor Dostoevsky.

By the end of it all bassist Hamilton, microphone in mouth, was squawking like an agitated Heron and Guitarist Noble had jumped drum kit first into the crowd. Business as usual in BSP land.

Review by Daniel Taylor

www.mysteryjets.com
http://www.geocities.com/thepipettes
www.britishseapower.co.uk