Thursday 22/05/03 Former Miss America @ The View, Liverpool

The View gallery is the perfect venue for tonight's performance by lo-fi merchants of cool, Liverpool-based Former Miss America, signed to Robot Records an offshoot of the Tritone family. Armchairs and settees straight out of the Partridge Family's lounge are lined up to face the beautiful, show-enhancing visuals projected across the back wall and the melancholic miscreants themselves, strengthened in number by a new addition to the group Norwegian Fredrik Martol on keyboards who produced their forthcoming album with Tord Nikolaisen and Tim Way.

The band provide an electronic backdrop to frontman Tony Carter's dark and evocative vocal, that twists and curls under and through the bleeps and washes of electronic interference conjured in the background. Carter's stance and tone reminiscent of Coldplay's Chris Martin, only with Kojak's haircut. These guys don't play keyboards like your usual synth-maestros of yore, pushing black and white keys to liberate otherworldy noise, nope that's for pussies. FMA's masters of melody control hi-tech theramin-like pads by the wave of the hand or the flick of the wrist, like some kind of starmen at the helm of an interstellar music ship.

For all that there's been written pedalling the scally music machine in Liverpool, FMA are a massive breath of fresh air in their approach to tune making and at the same time harbingers of future classics with their bleak synthetic soundscapes. What with their 'Acid Folk EP' set for release in mid July Former Miss America are definite ones to watch.

Photos by Thomas Toti :: thomas@gigwise.com