Stellastarr* / The Twenty-Twos / The Hourly Radio / Alamos

It’s criminally unjust that whilst the Killers tour the world as a huge arena filling pop act, a band as overlooked as Stellastarr* are confined to the 350 capacity Dundee Reading Rooms. Despite having a great album in 2003, Stellastarr* just haven’t seemed to capture the nations hearts and iPods like the aforementioned Killers. Not that it’s anything to do with the music, their art-rock is as epic as it is melodic and catchy.

The Reading Rooms are filled with a good mix of full-on Stellastarr* fans, and indie scenesters (with the uniform of black t-shirts with a logo of a band you’ve never heard before, straightened hair and a look of “I’ve seen Franz Ferdinand when they only sold seven records” across their faces), and by the end of the night, the venue is pretty full.

The first band on are Alamos, and what a coup they are for the management of the Reading Rooms – bar sales must have tripled during the half hour they were playing.

To be perfectly truthful, their passion-free, bore-rock is quite truthfully the worst performance I can remember seeing in a long time. Pointless noodling from the disinterested looking bassist between every song doesn’t help, the lack of any energy during songs, and the lack of any sort of knowledge of writing a killer song kills this dead. Guys, the only reason that the Red Hot Chili Peppers get away with the whole moody/don’t care attitude is because they have millions of fans and some good songs.

Money saving tip: don’t waste hard-earned cash going to see Alamos now, give it six months and catch them behind the delicatessen counter at your local Tesco store.

Things finally started to pick up with The Hourly Radio from Texas, and at least they have the decency to come with some good songs. They aren’t anything that we haven’t seen many times before, but their indie-rock with a little hint of Placebo goes down well enough to pick up the atmosphere again. It’s doubtful they’ll rise above the status of “good support band”, but they were perfectly acceptable for the night.

This is the only four-band bill of this tour, and the penultimate band of the night are The Twenty-Twos, three very pretty women and a drummer with a fantastic moustache from New York City. Playing material from their new self-titled EP, they tear through several songs with the spirit of Souxsie Soux, The Ramones, and The Cure, and sound very good. “Feel Alive” is a fantastic angsty swirling mix of keyboard and guitar, “Touch And Go” sounds very, very big indeed, and “She Does” is as catchy as anything you’ll find out there. Very impressive indeed.

By the time Stellastarr* spill onto the stage and tear through “In The Walls”, the venue is jam-packed (hardcore Stellastarr* fans jumping and dancing away at the front half of the crowd, indie scenesters standing nodding their heads at the back).

The band are in top form, disposing of “A Million Reasons” early in the set, followed shortly after by fantastic new single “Sweet Troubled Soul” (an indie-disco foot stamper with a chorus that will refuse to leave your head for days).

Plenty of new material from upcoming album “Harmonies For The Haunted” is played, and it sounds very good tonight, a more mature reflective sound and certainly undeserving of the awful mark awarded to it by the NME (who incidentally managed to mention the Arctic Monkeys several times more than they mentioned Stellastarr* in the review).

The short hour long set is finished off with debut single “Somewhere Across Forever”, “Jenny” and an encore of “She’s Gone”, “My Coco” (the big sing-a-long of the night that even got the indie-kids dancing at the back) and “Pulp Song”.

Stellastarr* are clearly a very fun band to go and see live, they certainly managed to get everybody dancing. Here’s hoping that the new album sells.

FUTURE GIGS

sorry, we currently have no gigs listed for this act.