Wednesday 27/07/05 Your Vegas @ Water Rats, Kings Cross

Playing on a miserable London night to a half-empty room of curious onlookers, each unsympathetically sporting an ‘entertain me’ glare, must be a fairly demoralising task. Unfortunately for Your Vegas, the dark, chandelier clad backroom of The Water Rats Theatre possesses plenty of these types. But lead singer Coyle Girelli is determined not to let this affect his performance. And this is HIS performance.

Hailing from Leeds (as every new band seemingly must do these days), Your Vegas really do not sound like a band on the verge of releasing their very first single. Their sound is so polished, carefully constructed and grand, almost to the extent that you could be mistaken for thinking it was U2 up on the tiny stage. No, really.

 

Girelli goes through the melodramatic front man-by-numbers routine whilst his four band mates do an admirable job at creating something that marketing men would fall over themselves for. Set opener and self-titled debut single 'Your Vegas' kicks things off nicely, and it is immediately apparent that the band have honed their craft down to the smallest detail since forming. The U2 comparison is constantly hard to avoid, not only for Girelli’s more-Bono-than-Bono esque vocal delivery, but also for lyrics such as “love will give you answers / love will set you free” found on 'Bonnie & Clyde', the romantic ode to a loved one. Four songs in, 'Red Room' sees the band finally showing a little bit of what could be described as their own sound.

 

Effective use of the keyboard can be found on 'Salvador', and they started to get into their slipstream with set closer 'Fly Buzz', finally getting some feet tapping and heads bopping in the process. There is no doubting that Your Vegas will appeal to a lot of people, even if not many of them were in the room tonight. Professionalism? Top marks. Originality? Unfortunately, they still haven’t found what they’ve been looking for.