The Black Velvets

Okay so there wasn’t an exact day when the music died but rock music at one point must have been so alive when it was new. Mop tops, bisexuals on Top of the Pops and massacres of the national anthem all freaked out ‘the Man’ (or something.) While many new bands may claim to be the latest in line to be this generation’s working class heroes, are kids on council estates really listening to this shit anymore? Rock music somewhere along the line got dull and overblown with too much hairspray and angel dust, disappearing up its own self-congratulatory arsehole. Welcome then, to tonight’s gig.

First up are The Dead Stars who are as depressing a band as you’ll ever hear. Not in the typical ‘Radiohead are so depressing’ sense but because everything they do tonight is so clichéd and dull, you feel like you’re getting stupider for being there (if only because it dawns on you that the six pounds you paid will be lost forever.) The singer struts around like we’ve forgotten how dull The Datsuns were, leaping into their grave before the Kiwis have even gone cold. They are actually bearable for twenty seconds during an unnecessary saxophone solo but rest is soulless hot air.

Echo Beat probably think they are way ahead of the openers by adding an inaudible keyboardist and slightly more bouffant hair. One of their tracks called ‘Hit the Groove’ is as inappropriate a song title as Pete Doherty putting out ‘Just Say No’. The backwards nature of their set only makes you think that if ever there was evidence that secret time machines exist, this is it. Although The Black Velvets share a similar lust for ‘70s rawk (sorry) - they walk on in darkness to Led Zeppelin naturally, darling - they are at least as tight as their constricting jeans. New single ‘3345’ is paint-by-numbers rock but melodically catchy none the less. Likewise ‘Get on Your Life’ is suitably massive in its sing-along nature and room filling big beats.

However when they dedicate one song to Jamie Redknapp it seems to perfectly sum up a band who are widely known but rarely deliver when the push comes to shove. Of course you should know what to expect with bands like this, but it just seems as achingly old hat as a Badly Drawn Boy tea-cosy. Bands like The Subways have shown that you can wig out without necessarily using too much grey matter. This set however is less primal and more Jurassic.

Like their support acts tonight, The Black Velvets manage to make Jet sound like Sigur Ros by chipping in the same archaic riffs, Jagger lips and chauvinist subject matter (“Baaaybeee”). You could write the ingredients for all three bands on one side of a beer mat although Nathan Barley types would no doubt find the retro nature of the gig “well Jackson.” Rise of the idiots indeed.

Advertised as a night of rock, the originators of 1930s New Orleans blues must be spinning in their graves. Or at least tutting disapprovingly, at the monster they’ve created.