Monday 01/10/07 Foals, Metronomy, Maths Class @ Komedia, Brighton

In the fine spirit of a wet coastal town on a cold Monday night, Brighton greeted us with particularly bleak weather on the night with the best line up I have seen in years. Once inside the venue and faced with the genius Maths Class noise kinks things lighted up massively.

The boys start the all-star Brighton line-up in an intense and powerful way with their dancing as frantic and their jeans as tight as their sound. With new single ‘Emporio Laser’ the Maths boys try too hard to climb post-hardcore heights ending up slightly too screechy for my liking, whilst its b-side ‘Cushion Glamour’ hits all the right notes with Piers on singing duties, giving the track a more subtle and sombrely intriguing tone than the brash a-side. Doing what they do best Maths Class go absolutely berserk on ‘Replays of Relays’, which is a firm favourite with the crowd. It’s all heads hanging under keyboards, hysterical dancing and violating the guitar on Andy’s part, but it’s also fantastically silly, ingenious melodies and brazen, forceful shouting. Maths Class are in it with their hearts and if they pay a bit more attention to detail and less to their hair, they have a bright future ahead.

Next on is Brighton’s very own tunesmith Joseph Mount with his band Metronomy. However bleak it may be outside the venue, Metronomy have the gift to make anything better and cheer up even the grimmest of folks. They are so positively abstract and entertainingly otherworldly that you feel like losing yourself in the song structures. These guys were the highlight and literally when they walked on stage every single face in the crowd lit up just like the lights on the stage. No wonder, as ‘Heartbreaker’ is the bleepy bliss that Air never managed to create and makes me feel like a kid in a cancy store overdosing on candy floss, and that, you have to know, is my idea of perfect enjoyment. New single ‘Radio Ladio’ is the closer for tonight and with its entrancing vocals and choreography of jazzhands, swimming moves and more jazzhands, Metronomy manage to make you happy and that is the biggest compliment.

Foals then enter the stage and start performing in their characteristic circular position. Apparently that is supposed to make them sound tighter and more like a union but tonight there’s something missing. It feels like the band have become too complacent and sadly it shows. There is no denying that the crowd loves them, as Foals literally send them into a frenzy with every new note, especially with bounce-tastic old single ‘Hummer’, but for me every new note is more like showing off and trying to be Bloc Party. Foals will be massive and they probably deserve it, but tonight their sound was uncontrolled and disappointing. Maths Class and most of all Metronomy totally out staged the main act.