Friday 14/07/06 Captain Black @ Shot By Both Sides, Basement Bar, London

In a dark and dusty corner of a dingy pub, an old man sits alone, breathing the thick and heavy air.  Sentiments as twisted and gnarled as his dirty hands, thoughts as bitter as the stale whisky on his breath.  He looks down, despondent, supping on a familiar pint of Guinness.  Then suddenly, the frail man’s eyes light up.  His gappy teeth break once more, but this time into a smile.  The young girls he hadn’t even acknowledged being to move their feet and sparkle.  His stagnantly shod feet tap despite himself.  This old man hasn’t heard about The Libertines, to him they’re just vacant faces staring from grubby tabloids.  He has no idea of the lazy comparisons the band before him gets showered with, their startlingly refreshing, different sounds shrouded by flimsy chancers.  The Kooks, Razorlight: they mean nothing to him.  All he knows is that he hears them now, like all the other ears in the room, some as tarnished his, others young and hopeful (and not as hairy): they all like what they hear.

The Basement's sparsely Moroccan space is suddenly fuelled by the sound of something truly special.  As Captain Black arrive, the old man looks up. The grubby fingernails his vision focuses on, the roll-up’s he carefully fashions are forgotten. He hears ‘The Drunks of O’Reilly’s’.  There are true tales, they are gritty, real, yet somehow enchanting with their skiffle edges and folky tinge. We too forget all else.  With this band, you just have to listen, watch, and most of all, dance.

From the rampaging Mexican hacienda stomp of ‘Rapidemente’, to ‘The Sorrowful Swine’s tales of futile porcine dreams, each song is a charismatic gem.  Their dark narratives embrace London’s seedy underbelly, bringing it’s sordid and forgotten characters alive, and somehow make them glimmer.  Influences are worn proudly on their smartly shirt buttoned sleeves, but never seem disposable or derivative.  Echoes of The Pogues, The Doors and Johnny Cash are all there, but carried with a wide-eyed honesty beyond their years.  Though their tales are often ugly, always sinister and cloaked in mystique, they carry an infectious energy and charm, and swiftly sweep out allegedly golden-paved streets.  With songs like this, music this stunning, presence this profound, those streets may well be