Sunday 17/07/05 Tin Pan Alley Festival, London

It’s a bit frightening wandering down towards Denmark Street on sunny Sunday morning. Gigwise is on its way to watch a line-up that is a veritable roll-call of what’s cool in London, and having just been told to piss off by a passed out hairstyle lying in Tottenham Court Road’s gutter, we’re not feeling very cool at all. Uncomfortably hot in fact. Tin Pan Alley studio has played host to just about every name that has clout in the music industry. From The Beatles to Antony and the Johnsons, they’ve all recorded here, and such is its influence that last year it decided to hold a festival to show off the crème of London’s music scene while raising money and awareness for the housing charity Shelter at the same time.

With more and more live event succumbing to the cash cow, the fact that Tin Pan Alley is free marks it out even more than its status as the leading purveyor of up-and-coming talent. Everyone had a nice time so they’re back again in the carnival atmosphere of Soho to do it all again, come rain or shine: “I had my leg bitten up by mosquitoes last week,” shares a motormouthed Eddie Argos from Art Brut. “I’m spinning out from all the antihistamines. I’m wrecked. It’s terrible,” he adds, quite unconvincingly.

Competition winners Intervert open the stage with everyone breathing a sigh of relief that they weren’t shit. They were bloody great in fact, stabbing electronica into everyone’s ears like reprobate muggers before Rank Deluxe came on and did some “Cor blimey guv’nor” indie ska-punk. What do you call that anyway - skunk? Ink? How confusing. This didn’t matter as Brinkman charmed the socks off people by being funny while playing the sort of Teenage Fanclub stuff that everyone secretly likes. Any tendency to go “aaaah” was rudely interrupted by Ludes, who blasted everyone’s ears off with the sort of lewd, Stones-driven rock ‘n’ roll that nice girls aren’t supposed to like but dance around like maniacs to anyway. Any prissy attempts at feminism were trampled underfoot by the riffs these boys were turning out: fast, ska-tinged and sexy as hell.

 

The screeching teenage harpies in the crowd came close to fainting when the Metro Riots amped up the sex factor still further; guitarist Danny limboing around with the hair and flair of a not-rubbish Nigel Tufnell while singer Damo smirked at the crowd in calm amusement. Quite ridiculously fashionable, this is what the ‘edgy’ crowd with iPods will start jawing about and spoil for the rest of us until the band have a nervous breakdown and start writing ballads for nosewhistles. Then Thee Unstrung came on and spoiled it all. Whoever wrote the programme blurb must have been listening to the wrong record, as the ‘mod-influenced hipsters’ we were expecting bore scant resemblance to the mediocre punk-rock band that actually played. Give them two years and they might do something, but if you’re that ineffectual that you have to be patronised by a crotchety writer with sunburn, you’re not really doing it right.

 

Gigwise does admit to erring on the sceptical side of large bands, as anything more than five people that isn’t an orchestra smacks of covering up. Do Me Bad Things however have honed democracy to a tee, three frontmen singing soul, rock and Brandon Flowers with the aid of backing singers and a heavy dose of fun. Once the crowd got over the fact they weren’t wearing braces or eyeliner they rather enjoyed themselves and so they should. Guitarist Louis enthused about the day afterwards: “It’s such a great atmosphere – electric, all in one little road,” he said. “They do street gigs all the time in Holland but there’s not nearly enough stuff like this in London."

Another instance of how Tin Pan Alley can really get the goods in terms of festival artists, this Brit-Norwegian art-rock gang the Cherubs have risen over the last three years to quiet command of their game: new-wave redone with better lyrics. It’s more earnest than fun, but it’s done very, very well and everyone stares at them like they’re the Second Coming. At this point we should really say something about ex-Buzzcock Steve Diggle’s performance, but it was so relentlessly mediocre it would probably be better not to.

 

So we’ll move on to Electric-Six-does-Parklife quintet Art Brut, who were greeted like superstars and performed as such, albeit superstars relating tales of impotence and other catastrophes. Whipping through 'Formed a Band’ with understandable relish – "Look at us! We formed a band!" Indeed. ‘My Little Brother’ and crowd favourite 'Emily Kane’ are performed with plenty of zest, while the loopy delight of the set was cemented in singer Eddie Argos briskly saying “Ready, Art Brut?” before each song, in the manner of a school mistress rounding up a display team. For once there’s a band whose music deserves the hype, not their hairstylist.

However, whoever dressed Mary-Charlotte of The Subways deserves a medal. Bizarrely, it was like daydreaming what would happen if you gave Carrie Bradshaw a guitar. Impeccably coiffed and wearing a dress so short that boys sucked in their breath every time she jumped in the air, she was a perfect slice of clean rockdom, singing along to the likes ‘Oh Yeah’ and ‘Rock n Roll Queen’ with all the demure squeakiness of a helium-filled Debbie Harry. Singer Billy Lunn hurled out his vocals with rasping exactitude, but other than their Glastonbury status it was mystifying as to why they were headlining. Their singles have the quality of instant classics, but the rest of their set erred on the side of fluff with Mary-Charlotte making everyone cringe by lavishing praise on the crowd in that way people do when confronted with something to do with charity.

 

Still, from what was witnessed here today, Tin Pan Alley will have some new star names to add to its walls in years to come. London’s musical future is safe for the present.

Photos By Linda Chasteau