The Kills / The Futureheads - London 100 Club - 11/3/03
4/5
By: Toby L
The Kills Set-List: 'Superstition', 'Pull A U', 'Cat Claw', 'F**k The People', 'Monkey 23', 'Kissy Kissy', 'Hitched', 'Fried My Little Brains', 'Black Rooster', ENCORE, 'Dropout Boogie'.
'Disconcerting' is the word for The Futureheads. Stumbling onstage with all the assurance of Sunderland-based librarians - hardly the radio-soundtracking, hotly-tipped, art-punk quartet we've heard so much about - alarmingly, it's such peevishness and vulnerability that ensures them to be quite so endearing in the first place.
Musically, it's similarly a treat - in the space of 25 minutes, we get a succession of football bellows, almost monastic chanting, and two-minute pop-rock nuggets that lodge in head, and prompt geeky head-nodding. They swap vocalists mid-way through songs. Clap hands for a capella moments. And blister through matter inclusive of the frantic 'Robot', whilst shuffling on the spot in the vein of such a chosen subject-matter, only proving more dynamic as a live-force when it comes to a Television Personalities cover ('... Dorian Gray'), or their own - 'Ticket', 'Cabaret' and 'Carnival Kids', all lifted extravagantly from current must-buy, limited-edition EP, '1-2-3 Nul!'. You thought music as daftly intriguing and forthright such as this didn't exist. Lucky for us it does.
One half of The Kills may eventually profess to having been somewhat nervous at following their own support-act later on into the evening, but you wouldn't know it. Hotel and VV have come far in the last twelve months. A bedroom experiment goes global, Alison Flockheart and Jamie Hince's nu-blues explosion has been the centre of attention for enquiring media-minds and curious scenesters alike of late, their shockingly proficient 'Black Rooster EP' of 2002 kicking down the door through which the twosome made an unmistakable, welcome entrance.
Up to present day, and the duo's first record - the critically-adored 'Keep On Your Mean Side' - is out this week, and the few hundreds gathered this evening are relishing such a small space to observe their inspiration. Well, it better be savoured - if this evening's set is anything to go by, i.e. sexy, salacious, exuberant, frivolous, daring, intense - then the venue-sizes are gonna keep on increasing.
Opening as ever with the machine-like stomp of 'Superstition', anyone apprehensive that the party ain't started fast enough is palpably shocked when it's time for the scintillating three-burst racket of 'Pull A U', club-night anthem 'Cat Claw' and an incendiary 'F**k The People', by which time, the once obtrusive house-lights are cut, and the colour onstage becomes - aptly - dark and brooding.
The soulful slumber of 'Monkey 23' is slipped into, but the grip on guitar-rousers continues with upcoming 45-release, the rabid 'Fried My Little Brains', a track which ignites a miniature, if rather noticeable, pit of arm-flailers towards the front. With a, literally, 20-second encore-break following, the heat - both in the room and performance - designates a finale-blast of Captain Beefheart's 'Dropout Boogie'; the results are messy - loops of drums rolling in the PA, VV and Hotel eyeing each other up with excited merit, and applause ringing around the darkest reaches of the 100 Club.
Two acts uniquely of their own, tonight may not have been a conventional one, but when individuality proves as alluringly striking as such performers - who the hell needs convention?
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