Kasabian, Amorphous Androgynous - Forum, London - Wednesday 21st October 2009

Off to the "HMV" Forum for the second time in a week, for a Q Awards gig. Despite Q magazine being possibly THE most out of touch and "dad-rock" loving publication in the world, their interests do occasionally manage to happen upon decent bands. So, a chance to see Kasabian in a much smaller venue than they would ever normally play (at least in this country) was a gig I was quite excited about.

I got into the venue in time to see a decent amount of the support band, an act called Amorphous Androgynous. When I arrived, they were playing a strange cover of Oasis track Falling Down. I say a "strange" cover, because the band had 9 members, playing an eclectic mix of instruments - kind of a hippie band, and a new version of the Polyphonic Spree. I was utterly unsurprised to see that they are supporting Hawkwind later this year. A few of their songs actually sounded pretty good, but they were a weird, weird band to watch, especially to watch in support to Kasabian.

After what seemed like an unreasonably long changeover, with Kasabian's old roadie guy having some good banter with the crowd, the opening bars of Underdog kicked in, and provoked the obvious enthusiastic reaction from the crowd. When Tom came on stage to start singing, I thought two things. First, that he had had a much needed but very dubious haircut. And second, that the sound was screwed to the point that you couldn't really hear much of the vocals or guitar on Underdog. A shame, because its a great song, but luckily the sound improved hugely after that.

The set itself was a fairly standard one for this year, very similar to what they were playing when I saw them in July. One thing that is obvious when watching Kasabian is the number of excellent singles (or otherwise very strong songs) they now have. There are a good half dozen from their most recent album (like Underdog, Fast Fuse, Fire, Where Did All The Love Go, etc), and about the same again from the previous two albums combined. That means they have a good dozen huge tunes to play, which means you don't end up with too much album track filler. That probably goes some way to explain why their live sets are going down so well.

Of course, as well as having the dozen excellent songs, they also have the two or three truly massive songs, that are becoming amongst the songs that this decade will be remembered by. So, when they kick into Club Foot as the last song of their main set (a song that is all over the TV and at football grounds, despite being five years old now), you know you are watching a band who aren't just making music for now - they are writing songs that will still be being played in ten and twenty years time. That, as well as their ability to put on an excellent live set, makes Kasabian gigs a pleasure to attend - you get to watch a band writing themselves into guitar music history, and UK popular culture. Great gig.