The Rumble Strips / Pull Tiger Tail / The Little Ones / Blood Red Shoes

NME tours, you’ve got to love them, a bunch of bands chosen by the powers that be to be hyped to the max for about a year and then nearly always forgotten about or at best disowned come the time of their sophomore album. They used to happen once a year with a selection of new bands chosen to tour the country around February time but recently they have introduced the new bands tour to their repertoire, showcasing even newer bands than those on the main tour, and that’s where this gig comes into things.

	"Judging by previous form the first band on at these shindigs often ends up being the largest commercial success"

Apparently, fifty pence from each ticket sold went to charity, so that’s nice, and as an even bigger bonus it seems music and charity is able to coexist without that insufferable git Bono rearing his ugly head, excellent. The night was sponsored by Topman so it was to my surprise that the tickets looked relatively normal and not frayed around the edges and featuring awful fading for that in vogue vintage look like every bit of clothing they seem to stock these days, but anyway, onto the bands.

Judging by previous form the first band on at these shindigs often ends up being the largest commercial success, for example Franz Ferdinand opening the 2004 tour for headliners Funeral For a Friend and perhaps most notably of all Coldplay opening for Shack on the 2000 tour. However tonight’s openers Blood Red Shoes will not follow in these bands footsteps in my opinion, mainly because they are too good and too interesting to seriously challenge the seemingly favoured bland music the majority of the record buying public of 2007 seem to love. Blood Red Shoes quite literally set the stage alight, with a ring of fire circling Steven Ansell’s cymbal as they arrived onstage. His partner in crime in the duo, Laura-Mary Carter, moved around the stage seductively and is well on her way to becoming the biggest rock pinup for teenage boys since Karen O.

As for the music well think part Sonic Youth, part The Kills and a whole lot of goodness, with Ansell smashing his drums like his life depends on it and Carter producing some fantastic crunching riffs to get everyone jumping about down the front. The venue was a big step up from the tiny pub venue I had seen them play earlier in the year and they lived up to the challenge just brilliantly. Having recently signed to a major label after years in bands escaping major interest such as Cat on Form and Oedipus I just hope the Brighton pair stick to their ethics and continue making thoughtful challenging rock. Judging by the new material they showcased at this gig it is so far so good, a superb start to the night.

Another band I had seen playing a much smaller venue earlier in the year were up next, The Little Ones. Previously I had enjoyed these very much with their fun filled indie pop touching on the likes of The Shins so was in an expectant mood as they took to the stage but boy was I in for a let down. Whereas Blood Red Shoes earlier made the step up from pub venue to club venue look easy, The Little Ones showed they were simply not up to the challenge. The previously decent sounding songs just weren’t up to the big stage setting and ended up sounding like Snow Patrol’s songs do when they aren’t being too depressed or soppy, ‘Spitting Games’ for example, so therefore not any good. A samey set came to a close with members of Pull Tiger Tail joining them for their most famous song so far, ‘Lovers Who Uncover’ an end that couldn’t come too soon to be honest, ah well.

Pull Tiger Tail are responsible for one of the most annoying songs I’ve heard since that ghastly monster song by The Automatic, in ‘Animator’ so it came as a bit of a shock to me when it ended up being the most enjoyable song from their set by far and was other than Blood Red Shoes, the highlight of the evening. The rest of their set was dull and lacking in any real quality song writing and it’s hard to see quite why they were picked out from all the other hundreds of thousands of bands out there as being one of the figureheads of the Myspace revolution, surely there’s better out there? In fact I know there is, never mind.

Headliners The Rumble Strips seemed an interesting proposition with their brass section coexisting with more traditional rock instruments but ended up sounding like The Kaiser Chiefs with trumpets and sax, and trust me that is not a favourable comparison. Whilst I’m sure there will be a rush of people to defend them, The Rumble Strips just didn’t do it for me at all. There’s no doubting frontman Charlie Waller can sing a song slightly better than his namesake Rik, but that was about the best thing they had going for them. Most songs wanted badly to sit side by side with ska greats such as The Specials but ended up sounding like sub Zutons drivel. That’s not to criticise the whole set however, a couple of moments sounded promising but enough to headline a tour of supposedly the best new bands in the world? I don’t think so.

Finishing with a spectacularly cheesy version of ‘The Boys Are Back in Town’ as an encore during which the rest of the bands joined them onstage for some drum bashing and general prancing about, it left me harking back for the night’s promising beginning of the aggressive assault of Blood Red Shoes.

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