The Courteeners, Vincent Vincent & The Villains, The New York Fund - Luminaire, London - Friday 9th November 2007

Having been to, and really enjoyed the first ever London gig by The Courteeners; then missed the second gig through being on a work trip to the US, there was no way I was going to miss out on their third London show. This was a special gig, being filmed for Channel 4 and put on as part of the JD Set series of gigs, with support from Vincent Vincent & The Villains, and The New York Fund.

The venue was The Luminaire, a really good little venue in Kilburn, where you can get really close to the stage, and where they really take the music seriously. The toilet walls are plastered with band stickers and graffiti, and there are signs everywhere warning you to piss off elsewhere if you want to talk to your mates whilst the bands are on. Because of the Jack Daniels sponsorship, everybody was given a voucher for a free JD on entry, which was a very nice surprise, and certainly one way to get everybody into the mood!

First band on were The New York Fund, who describe themselves as a country and indie band. This turned out to be a pretty good description, they sounded very American at times, but definitely also had a lot in common with many British indie bands at the same time - Primal Scream, The Thrills, and 1990s in particular. Their singer is Scottish, and it was slightly surreal to hear him singing country songs with an American accent, then speaking to the audience in a thick Glaswegian dialect. I really, really enjoyed their set though, from start to finish, and will definitely be looking forward to seeing them again - they had some excellent songs, and their set sounded like a great soundtrack to a night out.

The other support band were Vincent Vincent & The Villains, who played a very short set at around 20 minutes or so. I had heard much about them before, but never seen or heard them, so I was interested to see what they were like. To be honest, I was quite disappointed though, although the set wasn't all that long, I was getting bored. They had a good number of fans there, but I didn't really see the attraction - they seemed to resemble the Rumble Strips, but were not quite as good. Keen to give them another chance, but I wasn't desperately impressed.

Seeing members of The Courteeners around the venue before their set, they seemed to be on excellent form, and their set was suitably incredible. Kicking off with Aftershow, they started fairly slowly, until Not Nineteen Forever, Bide Your Time, and Cavorting finally woke the audience up, and started things going a bit mental towards the front. There was no real barrier at the front of the audience in the venue, so Courteeners roadies were faced with the tricky task of keeping the audience off the stage.

This task got more and more difficult as the set wore on, with new song Please Don't, and future classic What Took You So Long getting people more exited, and Acrylic sending a group at the front absolutely crazy. The set only lasted for around half an hour, but did more than enough to reinforce the view that they will be winning large numbers of music fans over in the next few months. Singer Liam Fray has all the makings of a legendary indie rock frontman; the songs are all there to have people going mad in indie discos for some time to come; and people, although only relatively few at the moment, are starting to believe. I am one of them, this band have all it takes to be huge - the songs sound like instant classics from the first listen, and all in all, The Courteeners deserve to be massive.