: : Gigs - Vic Godard / Subway Sect: :

"RETURN OF THE '70S PUNK ROCKERS" yelled the Borderline's ad in Time Out. This seems to be selling Subway Sect short slightly, conjuring up as it does images of some Godawful Sex Pistols-style reunion attended by cider-drinking blokes in tartan trousers with "God save the Queen" tattooed onto their faces in Biro.

In fact, Vic Godard only really emerged towards the very end of the '70s, and continued to release records intermittently and under various names throughout the following two decades. Influenced variously by the Velvet Underground, Northern soul, swing and easy listening, he neither looked nor sounded like an archetypal "'70s punk rocker".

Godard's most recent album, Sansend, came out in 2002, and was the first to use the Subway Sect tag for, ooh, ages. As we spent most of that year in a gin-induced miasma, this release passed us by somewhat, but reports hinted at a new "urban" direction characterised by "beats" and "sampling". Aaaargh! That's not right, either: if we don't want our ageing pop legends mutating into a self-parodic cabaret version of their former selves (c.f. Morrissey), neither do we want them fiddling with samplers like your dad trying to work the DVD and pretending to be Missy Elliot. And anyway, wasn't what made Subway Sect so great in the first place was that they stuck out from everything else that was going on?

Well, we needn't have worried. Godard has left his 303 at home tonight, and his band is augmented only by a violin and a synth. He knocks out a gloriously upbeat set comprising an assortment of the many highlights of his non-postal career: "Ambition", "Stop That Girl", "Keep Our Chains", "Won't Turn Back" and most recent single "Lazy Sod". In fact, Subway Sect's early contributions to the '70s punk canon "Nobody's Scared" and "We Oppose All Rock 'n' Roll" are conspicuous by their absence.

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