Tonight's small venue and crowd full of people tentative in ordering their drinks from the bar without an NME guide do no justice to the wiry talents of the Life Without Buildings singer Sue Tompkins, but maybe are their destiny. Tompkins bounces on stage at approximately ten o'clock following two dramatic sets from the warm-up bands - Cardiff's riot grrl punks Sammo Hung and Scotland's guitar sculptors Aereogramme, and sets the place alight.
It's not just her stage presence that is mesmeric: this is indubitably down to the finely tuned music. LWB also consist of a heroically rhythmic trio of post-rock guitar heroes, furrowing the musical path with enough hooks to catch the contents of the Carribean Ocean on. Tonight they hammer through most of the more upbeat songs from their raucously artful album Any Other City, and are simply, artfully, tremendous.
The illuminating Tompkins though, naturally takes the limelight, habitually checking her stream of consciousness lyrics on what looks like a spread out roll of kitchen paper as she dances around the stage as if plugged into an electrical socket, being watered like a pot plant. For some reason the majority of this audience is quite amused at the spectacle in an appalled sort of way, but the rest take defiant delight in a band that not only has the look and the style to transcend modern day MTV2 heroes, but crucially, the substance as well.
LWB are a rare jewel on the circuit of indie complacency. Utterly thrilling.
