Wednesday 24/05/06 Boy Kill Boy, The Automatic, iForward Russia! @ The Electric Ballroom, London

Another day, another will-they-wont-they crop of bands testing the choppy indie waters. Tonight’s tempest presents three bands riding precariously on a wave of hype and escalated by unprecedented build up.  Stormy times indeed- there’s certainly a lot to prove tonight.

First to judder and squall their worthiness is iForward Russia!. Blisteringly frantic ‘Thirteen’ is first to pummel the crowd with its razor-edged knife stabs and it sounds discordantly fabulous.  Tom Woodhead’s awkward contortions are mesmerising at best, painful at times, but gorgeously unhinged and relentless.  ‘Nine’ is a further bullet-rattling crowd pleaser, but somehow for all their electrifying efforts the one-dynamic jolt of a set loses itself in the space.  The drama wanes: exclamation marks grow flaccid, and the set droops into a bubble-bursting flat-line.
 
Brighter skies then, for The Automatic.  Strolling on to the sunshine chimes of the Baywatch theme, they instantly deliver a relentless onslaught of high energy, riff fuelled pop yelps and intense rhythm. This is the stuff corporate candy shops are filled with: danceable, raucous, fairly predictable but unashamedly enjoyable.  The stutter-gun of ‘Recover’ threatens “You’ll never dance again.”  With songs this infectious, this would seem highly unlikely.  From the showcasing of new song ‘Time=Money’ to the pandemically catchy ‘Raoul’, stuttering lazerquest synths and frantic handclaps underline an exuberantly joyful set.  Clearly unafraid of their own expectations, confidence brims with every caustic delivery and their adolescently glorious unawareness of understatement.  Playing to a crowd that sings every word, this is by no means a bad thing.  They pull off the soaring guitar riffs and menacing drums on closer ‘Monster’ with rock posturing, amp-clambering fame basking, and are all the better for it.

As the final indie thunder rolls, Boy Kill Boy step in and instantly go down better than a-symmetrical fringes and cleverly angled poses on myspace.  In fact, the record-perfect ‘Last of The Great’ and latest single ‘Suzie’ prompts shoe-throwing and crowd surfing on levels rivalling a riot in the Clarks warehouse.  Their unashamed Duran-Britpop blend is all well and good, but whether there’s room, or indeed, enough sins in the world deserving of another Bravery or Killers is highly debatable.  Sadly, Boy Kill Boy are the lightning bolt that makes it all glaringly obvious.  The revelation is sad but simple: this apparent crop of new band finery is more muddy puddle than dramatic hurricane.  Their music-by-numbers approach is all too symptomatic of the bloated, short sighted feel lamentably lurking in the mists of the Electric Ballroom tonight.  It’s very, very hard to imagine these bands making any sort of legacy when dimensions seem so flat and attitudes so fuelled by instant sugar rush gratification.   Never fear though, bandwagon jumpers.  With the stench of festival burgers already wafting, it’s out with the synths and in with…hmm……summer of ska take two anyone?!