Magic Numbers, The Concretes, Shout Out Louds, Morning Runner - Brixton Academy, London - Thursday 16th February 2006

This week is a crazy one in London, with the Brits last night, the NME Awards next week, London Fashion Week next week too, and the BAFTA Film Awards at the weekend. Alone amongst all these events, the NME Awards at least have the decency to come accompanied by a series of top notch gigs, of which this was one.

The Magic Numbers headline, after failing to win the Brit Award that they were nominated for last night - for Best British Newcomer. Never mind. They were joined by more support bands than you can shake a stick at, truly the mark of a gig put together by somebody like NME or XFM, rather than just a normal tour.
Morning Runner were the first band on, having seen them last month and been impressed, I arrived early to catch them. Less impressive second time round, although the large and almost completely empty venue probably didn't help much. What also didn't help was that they didn't play what I think is their best song, Be All You Want Me To Be. They seemed a bit out of synch with the other bands on the bill, and the fact that so few people showed up early to see them probably reflects that. A shame, but I'd give them another chance - I don't think this showing was them at their best.

The Shout Out Louds were up next, and were a different story entirely. They were OK when I saw them from the third floor of Shepherds Bush a few weeks ago, but they were really rather good tonight. They tore through their set with the minimum of pause, fuss, or delay, and their gave an excellent account of their clearly strong material. One complaint was that the sound wasn't the best, so the band sounded quite muffled - but that wasn't enough to take away from how good they were. Second best band of the night, after the headliners, by some way.

After the Shout Out Louds came The Concretes. I can tell why they were supporting the Magic Numbers, because the one word to describe their sound is "nice", much like the headliners. Another phrase would be "boring and utterly forgettable". There were 8 people on stage throughout their set, when surely no self-respecting rock band needs more than 6 people under any circumstances. They all dressed in white, looking like a poor man's Polyphonic Spree. And their songs were mostly very dreary and boring, with just a few moments of happy, poppyness mixed in. There was very little energy at all throughout, and how they got above the Shout Out Louds on this bill I'll never know. Anyway, lets put that one down to experience.

Having not seen a decent band for over an hour by this stage, the Magic Numbers were very hotly anticipated. And with good reason - I saw them so many times last year that it was all getting quite boring. This time, I remembered why I started going to see them in the first place. They seem to have stopped playing gigs in the role of loveable underdogs, and are on stage now as the real deal, a significant band with significant commercial success behind them. And they don't look out of place in that world at all. Playing all the highlights from the debut album, plus 2 new songs, a cover of Beyonce's Crazy In Love, and the now classic set closer known as The Beard, this was possibly the best I've seen from the Magic Numbers since the early buzz and novelty of their songs back in the Spring of last year. A return to form, and good to see that they are living up to the slowly growing expectations of them.