Bombay Bicycle Club

BBC is not just a chain of curry houses, it is also a band that have been going a few years, but have just completed their biggest tour to date. And last night I saw the last date at the Alexandra Palace.

Now I should say that I must be certifiably mad. I am nearly 50 (I guess average age of audience c20), this is not a band I know particularly well, and it was absolutely tipping it down. Of course it was. It has been ever since this drought started. Officially we must be must be enduring the wettest drought in human history.

And the night started with a suitably drippy first support, Rae Morries. Pretty girl, not a bad voice, but just her and her keyboards. And the songs were dull. Maybe she is the best thing to have come out of Blackpool since the discovery of shale gas deposits, but just about as much fun too. And a hairdo that in volume I thought had gone out in the eighties.

I was about to make similar comments about the next act, Leanne Le Havas, as she came on with just a guitar. But then she hauled in her band and actually I rather warmed to her. Better voice, more interesting songs. More personality too.

As for Bombay Bicycle Club themselves, well good in parts. At their best in the sort of jaunty guitar indie that has become the fashion recently it seems to me (see the Vaccines, Two Door Cinema Club etc), but varying into ballads, (yuk) some folky bits which could be Mumford & Sons or Fleet Foxes, with little passages where they seem to be pretending to be a heavy metal band. But they are semi-local (from Crouch End) and this is my local venue, so it seemed a good idea for a night out. And I do quite like a Different Kind of Fix (their latest album) although not quite enough to make me search out their previous two cds.

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And then came the trudge home in the pouring rain. Cold, wet, I had to put my clothes, and shoes, on radiators to dry off. God I hate droughts.

Tomorrow night its Foster the People at Brixton. Weather forecast dry and I am meeting up with a friend for it, so hopefully a jollier night. And to be fair Brixton Academy is a better venue than the cavernous shell that is the Ally Pally.