The View, Towers Of London - Forum, London - Saturday 21st April 2007

The View seem to have been continuing their unstoppable march to superstardom lately, and this was one of the final gigs on a sellout nationwide tour. They took part in the (excellent) trend for bands to hit London and play a number of dates in 2000-ish capacity venues, rather than one big Brixton date - great for those that get in, because small venues (apart from Shepherds Bush Empire) obviously kick arse. So, this was part of a Forum and Shepherds Bush double header, and I went for the decent venue.

Support band (apart from the excellent Underground Heroes, who I missed because it all started too early) were the Towers Of London. Their singer is famous because he went on Celebrity Big Brother, and pranced about for a couple of days, before deciding it wasn't "rock and roll" enough, and leaving. He is basically a very polite and posh boy called Patrick, who adopts the stage name "Donny Tourette", then flicks v-signs at people. The Sex Pistols should be ashamed at being responsible for such a disgracefully awful tribute band in their image.

The Towers Of London set can best be described thus - the band played a song, the singer baited the crowd, the crowd booed and threw stuff, and this was repeated for half an hour or so. The band actually didn't sound all that bad (although they were playing pretty simple 3-chord punk songs), but their whole way of working seemed to be solely to try to create some friction and controversy that didn't really exist - very sad really. The set reminded me of a pantomime, with the Towers Of London as the comedy pantomime villains - a joke band.

The View came on to a significantly better reception than their support band had received or deserved, it was a heroes welcome in fact. They launched straight into Comin' Down, and the whole venue erupted. They played their set with the minimum of fuss, and the shortest of breaks in between one great song after another. I think it helped that this gig was on a very sunny Saturday - most of the audience had clearly been drinking in the sun for most of the afternoon. This meant that everybody was battered by the time The View came on, and their set was therefore very riotous indeed!

This time, and better than the NME Tour last time I saw them, the band had enough time to play all that they wanted to play. This meant almost all of the album, some b-sides, and their cover of Up The Junction. They finished up with Same Jeans and Superstar Tradesman towards the end, walked triumphantly off stage, and did not come back for the encore that the crowd were demanding.

This was probably the most accomplished performance I have seen from The View - having been watching them half a dozen times over the last six months or so, they get better every time. Their fame and success is growing by the month (even The Sun reviewed this gig, proving that they are attracting lots of attention!), but they seem up to the challenge of anything that extra fame throws at them. They carried this London show off with ease - The View are becoming one of the big guns of the UK music scene, and they seem to be doing it quite effortlessly.