Bromheads Jacket - Buffalo Bar, London - Tuesday 17th January 2006

This gig was part of a series promoted by Artrocker magazine, all happening at the Buffalo Bar, a tiny venue just down the road from me by Highbury & Islington tube station. When I say tiny, I mean really small - the place cannot hold more than 150 people, and with pillars in the way everywhere, it makes for a really tight gig experience.

Bromheads Jacket were the headline act, a band from Sheffield that seem to be part of the same music scene up there that Arctic Monkeys have graduated from. Their single, What If's and Maybes has been one of the early highlights of the year, and the tunes available to download from their website seem to reveal a band with punky music, but intelligent, real-life, quickfire lyrics, in between Arctic Monkeys and The Streets. Strange that, because I'm 99% sure I saw Mike Skinner there watching.

After some fairly ropey, experimental artrock support acts, Bromheads Jacket came on stage just before 11pm. After a few opening songs that sounded promising enough, punctuated with lengthy chats with the crowd, they changed guitars and stepped it all up a gear, with one frenzied song after another, delivered like punk rock. The single was an obvious highlight, but there were many other highlights, such were the number of good songs that they seem to have. The singer, despite being from Sheffield, is a nice Southern boy, and seemed to have lots of his semi-posh schoolmates there.
The set overall lasted probably half an hour at most, definitely leaving all wanting more. We had a mini stage invasion, the band in the crowd, and the gig ended with the singer jumping into the crowd to chat with some of the people down at the front. Punk rock meets hip hop, and one to watch.