Saturday 21/09/07 Turin Brakes @ St Barnabas-In-Soho, London

There’s always been something otherworldly about the Turin Brakes at their best – so it’s fitting that they should kick off this new 13 date UK tour with a secret gig at the gorgeous rococo-style Church of St Barnabas-in-Soho.

The first thing that you notice, peering between colourfully lit fluted pillars as the band take unobtrusively to the dais, is the huge crucifix hanging above their heads. A gig in a church? Sacrilegious? But as they launch straight into ‘Last Chance’, the pacey, melodic opener to buffed-up new album Dark on Fire, you realise that Olly and Gale, even with their new beards, are unlikely to offend anyone – even the most capricious deities.

But then ‘Dark on Fire’, with its fuller electric sound, might be blasphemy to their more hardcore unplugged fans – but no “Judas” roasting a la Dylan for these nice lads from Balham, please. Tonight, by splicing new album tracks with Optimist LP favourites like ‘Mind Over Money’ and the wonderful ‘Feeling Oblivion’ – two that typify the melodiously pitched tension between joy and melancholy that has become their calling card – the Brakes show their range.

An energetic rendition of classic ‘Underdog’ well and truly wins the crowd, and the duo relax into the gig, new tracks ‘Ghost and Real Life’ have a confident Stonesy funk and swagger which really works – and has the integrated feel of a track performed and recorded by a five piece. Perhaps less successful is sinisterly-titled single ‘Stalker’, which isn’t sinister, being more Springsteen or U2 than Nick Cave; and 'Something in my Eye', which despite melodic moments, feels a bit like a reedy acoustic number ordered into the gym to bulk up, against its will…

So – more muscle, but this was a confident, layered performance, an attempt to evolve. Where now are Starsailor and David Gray, two other leading lights of the so-called ‘New Acoustic movement’? It’s no evolution – new track ‘The Other Side’, more tenderly performed stripped down acoustic yearning, shows no easy line can be drawn between Turin Brakes then, and now. But if you’ve ever liked any of their stuff, make sure you see them live, you won’t be disappointed.