Two Door Cinema Club at the Dome Tufnell Park

This was a peculiar little gig. 

To start with it was in the Dome Tufnell Park. No idea why its called the Dome as it was decidedly un-dome like. It also has a capacity of only 600. As my mate said, it felt like being at the school disco, in a random hall.

And the band, Two Door Cinema Club could fill a venue ten times the size. I felt I did very well to get tickets at all. Very young crowd, I guess barring one or two folk I was 25 years plus older than anyone else. That wasn't surprising. That it was 30C in September was a surprise. And boy it felt it in that place. Sweatiest gig I have ever been to.

Next oddity - no support act. So having turned up at 7:30 with doors still not open despite tickets saying 7pm, we had a good hour to wait before anything happened. Which, apart from the rising humidity was no great hardship as was nice to get to chat with my mate without outside distractions. And then came along the distraction. On the front of the stage was a big screen and it suddenly flashed into life with possibly the world's most pretentious, and tedious, art house short film. Black & White, French text (of course) no moving pictures, just monochrome stills with a dull sort of apocalyptic/sci-fi story line but frankly had long lost the will to listen after about 10 minutes.

 This was followed by a short film about the band making the new album in LA. This did them no favours either . Somewhat vacuous. Now in a swish venue the screen would at the touch of a button have been withdrawn. But this is not a swish venue. A couple of blokes tried to pull it backwards and then sideways, only for it to get snagged in the curtains. As I observed to Dan, quite a comedown from the technical wizardry of the Chemical Brothers a week ago to a place with the technical wizardry of a spare bedroom.



After that there was more fussing with mikes while an incredibly tedious "song" played - more a monologue over a single repeated guitar chord. This was beginning to feel like a test.Could we survive this bombardment of arty pretentiousness?



Well we could and it was worth the wait. Despite pretty ropy sound quality and a heat and humidity level that would have Finnish sauna freaks begging for the exit, in the end one was won over by the sheer quality, and quantity, of banging tunes that Two Door have at their disposal. Most surprising feature of the gig for us was the number of tracks they played from their new album. By our reckoning, only three. I had assumed this tiny gig to a hardcore of fans was to get us used to the new stuff, and them used to playing it. But far from it, this was a greatest hits show. And went down a storm with the glistening audience. If you think I am overplaying the sweaty nature of the gig, well you should have been there. Much mopping of brows. But that didn't dampen the enthusiasm (as opposed to the T-shirts) of the audience who jumped around joyously. And a very nice crowd it was too - boisterous but never aggressive.

  

  

One final comment. If you haven't come cross Two Door (and come on, you really ought to have done) they have two excellent albums behind them and hopefully another good one to add to it - the new single "Bad Decisions" stands up with their older stuff. They used to be an Irish band, well were the last time I saw them. Now lead singer Alex Trimble sounds decidedly American. If you said he was from California I wouldn't doubt you, both from accent and attitude. Amazing what LA can do for you.