All this meant that their first ever London gig was always going to be a bit of an event. With obvious influences ranging from The Smiths and Oasis (with the guitars, lyrics and general Manchester-ness), through The Libertines (with some of their more frantic sounding demos), to the Arctic Monkeys (with the lyrics about going out and getting messed up), their tunes basically sound like the best of the last 25 years' indie music, all rolled into one.
This gig was part of the excellent (and extremely cool) Another Music = Another Kitchen, the weekly club at Proud Galleries, run by Danny McNamara from Embrace - this week also featuring the live return of Boy Kill Boy. So, a big night all round, despite the un-idealness of watching bands at Proud, as experienced previously - it is a really bad venue for watching bands, which makes it all the more annoying that they put such great nights on. The layout of the venue makes it a bad place to put gigs on, and the room where the bands play has non-existent stage lighting, and not everybody can get in there. What a waste, they could take those great artists, and put them on in a decent music venue instead.A guy called Jim Gipson was the opening act - a northern-sounding guy who is now based in London. He was on stage, just him and his guitar, playing half an hour of heartfelt solo acoustic songs. He reminded me of Jeff Buckley and slightly of Bob Dylan, rather than the more rubbish male singer songwriters of which there are too many at the moment (James Blunt is just the most obvious example, but there are many more). It isn't really my cup of tea, as I usually prefer the guitars to be turned up a bit, but he really wasn't bad at all.
Half an hour later, the gig room at Proud started getting busier and noisier, as The Courteeners' set approached. This was in no small part due to the fact that they had a 40-strong crowd of rowdy Mancunians down in London to (loudly) support them. When the band came on, the room erupted, and instantly the band seemed to know that they would be preaching to the converted. The charismatic singer said "Hello London, this had to happen some time", referring to this being their first gig in the capital. Then they started playing one amazing indie pop song after another.Particular highlights of this set were the single Cavorting, which was released this week; as well as manic set closer Acrylic - which is reminiscent of early Libertines material, except that this is much more exciting. They also had a great anthem, which seemed to be called What Took So Long, that sent the Mancs wild. But in reality, the set never dipped below the level of being very exciting throughout, there was literally one great tune after another.
At many points during the set, there was a real feeling that we were watching a band that will be huge in the next few months. They seemed to have 7 or 8 ready-made indie anthems in their set - every song was a potential classic. Their frontman seemed to have the swagger of another very famous singer from Manchester, the songs were great, and the support they had reminded me of early Arctic Monkeys shows. It is easy to say "new Oasis", or "new Arctic Monkeys", or even "Manc Libertines" - in truth, The Courteeners take some of the ingredients that made each of those three bands successful, and blend it into a very exciting mix, with some excellent tunes, and an incendiary live show. I can't wait for London gig number two!
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