: : Gigs - Art Brut : :

The Barfly plays host to a funny mix of styles tonight, from semi-instrumental rock-hop to spiky new wave to chaotic art-punk. Tremendous.

For reasons impossible to fathom, the Barfly is crammed to bursting point, for the only point of the evening, during the set of openers The Go! Team. Their curious mix of fey indie-pop with dated rap-rock, augmented with the twee presence of a recorder during one of the tracks, is reasonably well executed but ultimately tiresome. Imagine a female fronted hip-hop Belle and Sebastian and you'll probably lose interest as quickly as I did.

The Five O'Clock Heroes are a bunch of lookalikes. Two of them look like members of the Strokes, one of them looks like that whinger from the Vines, and the drummer looks a little like a young tough Morrissey. Nonetheless, they are very good. I recently, and rather unjustly, made a comparison between their Head Games EP and Britpop calamities Dodgy. As a live act the band erase any doubts. Songs such as "Anybody Home" or "Run To Her" have a hunger and a bite that the recorded versions lacked. An excellent mix brings to light the razor sharp guitars and the exceptional vocals of frontman Anthony, whose spiky yelps cut through the entire room. The whole outfit are tight as anything, and the new tracks, "White Girls" especially, sound extremely promising.

Art Brut look like a PhD class gone to pot. They look like they've slept on the streets in their dinner dress for the last week. Their drummer plays standing up. Their art-punk rock deconstruction initially seems abysmal, until you realise that they are in fact utterly brilliant. They shudder and jerk and sweat. Their dapper singer can't hit a note, but that's all part of the appeal. He's not even trying to hit a note. One of their songs has a chorus that goes "Art Brut! Top of The Pops!" and another...

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