Hot Club de Paris / Tellison

The venue is billed as North Wales premier venue for live music, I believe this place fits the bill nicely. It has had a whole range of up and coming bands as well as more established performers here. Not too big but not too small the place is a bit dark, with wooden floors, good sound, that'll do nicely.

A cold rainy October evening in Wrexham with nothing on the telly, offered a perfect excuse to go out to a gig.

The Band, namely Hot Club de Paris who boast two CD releases, 'Drop Till It Pops' released in 2006 and their latest, 'Live at Dead Lake' released this year. They have provided the music to numerous radio/TV plays and had a recent guest spot on Mark Riley's 6 Music show.

So we had everything in place for a great night of live music, except the crowd, and this was where the problem lay. Wrexham's finest citizens appeared not to have heeded the bill boards around the town and instead were content to being doing 'laps' around the town in their souped up cars.

Nevertheless, I was at the venue, and able to catch one of the support bands, namely Tellison, and I liked them a lot. A high energy indie band, they made a noise like heavy Wombats (I mean the pop group Wombats not a sort of Anne Summers device.) Songs such as 'Raise The Heart Now' and 'Lets Go To New York' , put the gust into gusto and managed to put a smile on those hardy folk who came out tonight.

Then it was time for Hot Club de Paris to strum their stuff. Fair do's, they did their very best. The crowd was now 38 people. Only one of whom wore a hat. The Liverpudlian trio attempted to get the locals to raise a smile (if not their numbers). With bass, drums and plinky-plonky guitar, the sound is a bit like a grungy version of Paul Simon's dabbles in Africano, with a feel of Half Man Half Biscuit thrown in.

So little by little the natives danced, well, four of them did. One highlight of the evening being when one couple fell over and looked as though a stage invasion was about to take place. The guitarist also showed off his ear plugs to the gathering as well as offering a ongoing amount of repartee that was very good. In fact, that's where the joy of this gig lay. After a while I was just waiting for a lull in the songs as to be ready for the next 'chat' and little anecdote to be told.

Rather that be totally bemused by the little gathering Hot Club did their very best with songs about the M56. The band also asked the tiny throng to move towards the stage for a song about human frailties, entitled 'sometimesitsbetternottostickbitsofeachotherineachotherforeachother'. It was a song about love.

So to sum up my evening in sunny North Wales was it a rock and roll evening. Did ‘Hot Club de Paris’ have diamonds on the sole of their shoes? Hmm maybe not. But in truth they really tried their best with the crowd they were offered. They gave me a giggle and what more to you want from an evening? As I exited the venue I was pleased that it had finally stopped raining but I'm afraid to say that the boy racers were still doing their bit to increase their carbon footprint on the world.

FUTURE GIGS

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