Sorry this is so late, but well… oh fuck it, never mind.  If you want a timely and professional service you can wait three weeks for the next issue of Q magazine to come out.

I was warned that this gig would be ‘quite an experience’ and various other non-specific things beforehand, but in actual fact it was nothing of the sort: it was simply a straightforward pop gig.  And a very good one.  Front man Cammy leaps around like a loon, to the point that you can actually find yourself wondering whether or not he might be putting it on.  It really doesn’t seem that way though, although the manic grins do take a little getting used to for those of us used to standing at the back of gigs and gently nodding our heads along to the music.

In terms of the music, there is a much more orthodox aura to the band when on stage.  Listening to their music I found them to be genuinely interesting, and at times downright bizarre – thumping spastic mentalism is, I think, the term I used.  Watching them on stage they have a pretty straightforward indie-pop setup: drums, bass, guitar and keys, and this makes the music slightly less eccentric in this setting.  It also lets me understand a little better how songs like their recent single, Warning Bells, fit in with the rest of their repertoire, something I had struggled with a little before this show.

It really was nothing like I was expecting, but in a different way that I had imagined.  I had somehow, particularly with the raised eyebrow warnings of others, led myself to believe that this would be some kind of weird experience that would blow my mind, whereas actually it was the opposite.  A band who I had sort of assumed to be quite left-field showed that they were a little more straightforward than I had realised, by giving an energetic, riff-laden performance which slightly wrong-footed me.  After a couple of songs I adjusted and once I had, I really enjoyed the gig.

It was weird though.  They were really good, but because everyone had told me they would be nothing like what I was expecting, they ended up being nothing like what I expected, because in fact they were pretty much like I might have expected had everyone not told me that… well, you get the picture.  Basically, I’m really looking forward to seeing them again.

Mitchell Museum – Arthur Loves the Shadows

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Mitchell Museum on MySpace