Thursday 12/04/07 Sugababes, Dragonette, Laura Critchley @ Brighton Centre

If you happen to be unfortunate enough to find yourself going to a pop concert at The Brighton Centre prepare to be confronted with a large resembling a carpeted bingo hall, £4 drinks and seas of teenage girls with their oversized mothers wearing pink cowboy hats and flashing bunny ears with a smattering of gay men dispersed around the venue. Tonight is no exception to this; Laura Critchley is first up with the job of getting the x-factor brigade going. The blonde bombshell sings us songs about being the girl next door, break-ups and fancying pretty boys, asking the audience at regular intervals if they had ever been in those situations. It is hard to decipher if Laura Critchley is laughable or vomit inducing, or a strange combination of both - odd considering this is the most inoffensive music known to mankind.  

Next up is American popsters Dragonette who thankfully brought some balls to an evening which at that moment was on par with an M People concert. Singer Martina is dressed in tights with pants and a yellow bomber jacket with her hair in a large quiff; she resembles a brunette Gwen Stefani in chicken fancy dress. Although Dragonette deliver a slightly static performance their glossy sleaze-pop seems to please most audience members and forthcoming single ‘I Get Around’ is a definite high point, which celebrates being a bit of a slut-bag.

Finally, on come pop’s edgiest ensemble, the Sugababes. They open with ‘Red Dress’ on a stage drenched in red light, all wearing diamante sunglasses, silver cropped jackets and black leggings. New recruit Amelle grabs the mic and says; “Tonight we will be playing is all our ‘Greatest Hits’ for you which consist of new songs and bad songs. . . I mean old songs.” Fortunately this was not a Freudian slip, as the set goes on it becomes apparent that Sugababes have got a lot of decent numbers under their belts. The light show and the costume changes are pretty impressive but what lets the concert down is three big screens which seem to have either tacky windows screen savers playing on them throughout or, strangely, pictures of starving in children in Africa (on comic relief cover ‘Walk This Way’) – valid Bono/Geldof debates aside, this is completely out of tone with the rest of the evening and seems a bizarre inclusion.

Highpoints are that Gary Numan sampling favourite ‘Freak Like Me’ and encore choice ‘Push The Button’ in which the Sugababes are all cladded out in rave neon t-shirts which say ‘Feel My Hits’ as the stage explodes with shiny bits of paper which showers over the venue. Although at times it’s frustrating that certain songs aren’t given a bit more ‘oomph’ sound-wise and the fact that that it becomes very clear the Sugababes dancing ability is severely limited, this is pretty painless for a concert which is made for people who don’t expect too much from their music.