Dirty Pretty Things, The Rifles, Pigeon Detectives - Astoria, London - Sunday 14th May 2006

Carl Barat's new band - that is how Dirty Pretty Things are destined to be known. Assured fame and success before they even recorded anything, just on the strength of Carl's previous job in The Libertines - when they walked on stage at the Astoria, the crowd was already eating out of Mr Barat's hands.

Opening band the Pigeon Detectives had started promisingly, the singer an energetic person, who was jumping around all over the stage from the off. Some of the songs sounded good as well, I have certainly seen far worse support (and in fact headline!) bands. Main support band were The Rifles, who sounded better, and less Jam-like than my previous experiences of them. They seem to be getting tighter as a band, and their songs sound more polished and, well, better, than ever before. It helped that a surprising number of the crowd obviously knew the band and their songs, because their support slot wasn't far off being mistaken for a good headline performance.

DPT arrived in a low key way, and went straight into playing their just-released album, starting with opening track Deadwood. The crowd went mad, which suddenly made me suspect that they could have been standing there playing anything, and the crowd would have gone just as mad. The music was good, but it definitely seemed to me that the crowd reaction was more based on Carl Barat (and would always have been 100% positive no matter what the music had sounded like).

The band played for an hour or so, and all 4 musicians were excellent to watch playing live, they were all really animated, and going utterly mad as they were playing! Very high energy, very trashy rock, rather like the Liberines in fact, minus the heroin addict.
There were 4 standout tracks in the DPT set, the single Bang Bang You're Dead opening album track Deadwood, and 2 Libertines songs, Death on the Stairs, and I Get Along. The fact that half of the best songs were Libertines songs is perhaps not encouraging for DPT's hopes of moving out of the shadow.

DPT are a good band, and play a great live set that really rocks. However, they are not as good as the crowd reaction tonight suggested. Because of the Libertine connection, they don't have to try as hard as they should in order to win over crowds, and to rock a venue's roof off. That is a good way to start a band off, with a good support base that worships your every move. By their third album, and trying to establish the DPT sound into music history, it might become a bigger problem.