Thursday 06/10/05 Envelopes @ Metro, London

“How many people here tried to get tickets to the Arctic Monkeys tonight?” asks a sweetly self-depreciating Henrik of a sold-out Metro. It’s a line that sums up the charm of Envelopes: on the strength of tonight, the un-assuming, quietly brilliant pop band of 2005.

An inter-continental five-piece of wonky mavericks (a little talk with the band earlier reveals that they love the word 'wonky'), Envelopes only got around to recording their debut album ‘Demon’, an over-looked gem bursting with invention, around February, cementing three years of broken communication across Paris, Malmo and Stockholm. Now based in York, the Envelopes were once described by a Swedish radio DJ as “like a trip on a twisted bicycle”.

Which is better than Gigwise can manage at the moment, our head still spinning from their off-kilter, hard-to-categorise live show that sounds at times like Talking Heads on happy pills or Clor covering Pixies at a children’s party. A three guitar, two keyboard cute-pop assault that thankfully never falls down a novelty or cringingly twee hole, but instead slots neatly next to the likes of Weezer, Elastica and The Chalets. Halfway through guitarist Fredrick says “There is some music playing on the monitors that isn’t ours. But it’s okay because it sounds good”, and we find it hard to stop smiling. Sunny dispositions rule.

Later tonight sole female member Audrey approaches Gigwise, anxious as to how the new songs came across, how the band played and whether her vocals were okay. We tell her to relax, because everything sounded great. They’d look fantastic on the dancefloor.

Photos by: Simon Leak