The Anson Rooms is a bleak and depressing venue, a large oblong made of sweat and old paint. Look up and there’s a cardboard box taped to a speaker stack. Look left and right, and make eye contact with the strange mixture of rich students and parent rockers at this sold out gig. Marvel that whichever postage stamp of floor you can find to stand on, there will always be at least three posh voices intermingling loudly, angreeing up your blood, and drowning out a fine solo turn from Howe Gelb. Who pays £22 to talk over a live set? I’m going to call them Clarabell, Talulah and Marina. Gelb is funny, dry and his stark, playful bluesing deserves better. Although, aha, he turns up again in the headliner’s backing band, to a slightly different reception.

This student union box has its tongue so firmly up Polly Harvey‘s bumhole she could play a three hour Skrewdriver medley and you’d still hear the applause on Titan. John Parish blends in well with the suited and immaculately hatted band, only flexing musical muscle for half of the set, happy to leave PJ dancing and spinning yarns. Their material takes a few songs to achieve tonight’s necessary escape velocity, initially coasting on tunes mixing the bland and the tasteful. Once settled into their chosen style though, that of mildly dark, David Lynch-flavour bar band, they hit a stride that carries them nicely to the end, bar the odd queasy moment: why is one song a bizarre ranting Nick Cave rip off? When exactly did PJ Harvey’s speaking voice get so posh (though not as madly upper register as the young woman who couldn’t help herself mid set: “Eaugh my Gorrd, you’re rilly amazing!”)? And why are there no fucking fans or ventilation here? She dances, we leave. Now let us never speak of this night again.