It's a university battle of the bands. Which - even, or perhaps especially, in the compact cobbledy centre of Oxford - invokes three inevitabilities; nepotism, dreadful sound and at least one acoustic guitarist who looks vaguely confused by the bright lights.
Owing to transport issues, the reviewing entourage appears just as the Endless City Lights are foisting a little musical education on their public. Cay McDermott, ECL's clarinettist and Shouting Woman, is frothing indignantly at some unfortunate who has called her instrument an oboe. Half the band aren't actually on the stage. Singer (and Drowned in Sound web impresario) Matt is meanwhile resolutely tuning his guitar rather than face interacting with the arrayed slumping adolescents. It is their second gig and, between songs, it shows.
Luckily, and through the predictably shoddy onstage mix, ECL are something. True, there's the odd moment of uncertainty, but it's far outweighed by the surprising and pleasing intricacy of the songs themselves; loud guitars and melody-spinning girls has been done many, many times before but it falls together promisingly. I expect to see them in a few months' time and be converted.
Next come Our Man In Havana, who (bless them) are trying but suffer palpitations in the face of unresponsive microphones and bored scenesters. Once you take out the confused second guitarist and the drowned-out cello, they boil down to one boy with a damn lovely voice. This is their saving grace; live, they have no songs. Even in a sheltered studio environment they'd sound as though a strong gust of wind might blow the entire harmony away, leaving only that sweet tenor, and indeed this is pretty much what happens on the stage. Pity, but then the whole event is geared more to bands like...
Autochtone. Yeeesss. This is where the aforementioned nepotism kicks in. Having missed their first set, I am told their lap-of-honour style repeat performance will sound like the Cure, and am mildly intrigued when three very un-Cure-like boys materialise with a large keyboard and a really, really bad drum machine beat. This we like, somewhat. Having gotten the girly bit over and done with, however, they strap on guitars (no bass) and the synth-prodder recedes behind a drumkit and, ooh!, loud bar chords. They win. Their friends are pleased. They go home reassured that this qualifies as creativity.
We the dispassionate observers, on the other hand, go home determined to start our own bands just to prove how it can be done. This is the other inevitability of these strange gatherings. I just hope for the bands' sakes that this time next year they're playing in the real world rather than suffering under the auspices of the BOTB: the murky bottom of the live food-chain.
