Not that any right-thinking musician finds my misshapen face in front of them an aid to performance, but normally, as close to the stage as possible is the place to be. Tonight though, as disco lights splay across a deserted dancefloor, hanging back a tad fits the barren atmosphere created by Laura Nunez, shorn of her She’s Got Spies band members, and her bleakly funny little songs. Barren in a good way: apart from some sparingly added one-finger keyboard, Nunez sings over laptop backing tracks, her flat and repetitive delivery over simple guitar and beats creating weirdly affecting songs, slices of kitchen sink that resonate sadly, even in tales of drunken clubbing. Strangely great, almost approaching Cate Le Bon without the magic realism, and in a cracking dress too.
Ever wandered into some weirdo’s houseparty by mistake? Where a rambling Northern woman plays accordion next to a forlorn bubble spewing machine, and a lady in Far Side glasses trips out on the brown punch and dances madly to herself? This is the circus Little Eris has gathered around her, and together they form a nicely wonky model of unprofessionalism, and enjoyable shambles with only occasional watch-through-fingers moments. Essentially a vehicle for Bronwen Davies to pull out shonky beats from her laptop before overlaying guitar or vocals, Little Eris songs run the pop gamut from mighty Luscious Jackson swoon to threadbare meandering in roughly equal measure. But give me ragtag amateurs with a crowd-facing Bez over slick guitar solos every time.
No escaping the mum element here: even Viv Albertine‘s between song rambles resemble well meaning advice from an experienced mother. Any inveterate ageist prejudice gets bashed flat pretty quickly though: hard to ignore the fact that the ex-Slits guitarist is basically really fucking cool, from slinky leather jacket to weird staccato ‘ack!ack!’ noises studded through the surreal listings of opener ‘I Don’t Believe In Love’. Albertine’s songs inhabit a completely great meeting place of wide-eyed, childlike primitivism and creepy, slightly world weary rock moves, where the brained-up alien observations of ‘He Won’t Come’ get banged against many false starts and giggling. Viv is even cool enough to have Dan Donovan from Big Audio Dynamite in her band AND finish on a tune called ‘Confessions Of A MILF’ and still not suck in any way at all. The old punks who make up most of the crowd, and who bray for an encore before talking over it, are ridiculously lucky.
