Some more gigs

Which I am a bit behind on talking about, apart from the Hard-Fi one.

• Elbow at the Koko, which I hadn't been to before and was very pretty for a venue, and not as stupidly hot as the similarly pretty Bush Hall. They didn't have a support band for some reason, which made the wait a little long after getting to the venue an hour before doors opened, but it was worth it. The 6 times that I've seen them previously have been more incredible each time and while that wasn't continued it was probably as much down to not knowing the new songs as anything. Great Expectations complete with xylophone solos and Puncture Repair was already breathtaking, Station Approach is a fantastic opener and I don't think that I will ever tire of Newborn live (though Red may be another matter), plus they played Any Day Now and oh so lovely Scattered Blacks And Whites to finish. Guy's posing and gesturing to cheer at the end of each verse of Switching Off continued to grate (save it for a less fragile song!) but was probably the only negative.

• Stars in front of a not huge crowd at the Highbury Garage, supported by average seeming Futureheads-alikes Roland Shanks. Stars released my favourite album of last year, Set Yourself On Fire, which sounds like The Delgados at their most grand with a few extra electro-pop bits. They played almost the entire album and only one other song, and for at least half the gig it was absolutely magnificent, extra force being given to the songs by the number of musicians on stage (eight or so I think) plus some trumpet playing by singer Torquil, who was also charming and funny between songs, not least in his interactions with other singer Amy. She didn't really manage to pull off sexy for Sleep Tonight very well at all but made up for it elsewhere, especially with the vulnerability for One More Night. That contains one chilling stop-you-dead moment stronger than almost any other song I can think of (if you've heard it you probably know the one), and live it made my insides leap all the more. Everything went slightly wrong towards the end of the gig however, starting from when they played single My Bloody Valentine-esque Ageless Beauty, my least favourite song on the album, and a minority of the crowd started pushing to the front and going absolutely crazy, before remaining there to be idiots and shout "we love you!" at Amy throughout the rest of the gig. It wasn't just them that were the problem however, as a couple of songs seemed to get lost to aimless noisy jamming, especially He Lied About Death. I was still impressed enough to definitely want to see them if they come back to London as promised though.

• Finally JJ72, at Islington Academy, supported by the hilariously terrible, or possibly terribly hilarious, Red Organ Serpent Sound. JJ72 have had more than their fair share of problems recently (as documented here) and it was almost a relief to get to see them at all having never had the chance 5 years ago when I loved them a lot more. It was a slight shame that they concentrated so much on their first album when playing older stuff rather than the underrated second album I To Sky, but when they have so many utterly perfect depictions of teenage angst like Snow and Undercover Angel to choose from it's hardly surprising, and we did at least get a beautiful version of Brother Sleep. So the old stuff was an fantastic as could be hoped for, but what about the album we've been waiting so long for? New songs were wryly introduced as being 'from our next album, due out 2007' and 'from the album after next, due out 2015', but to be honest it was slightly more difficult to feel sorry for their plight when the new songs were almost all terribly disappointing, stodgy rock with lyrics which were often embarrassingly obvious rather than the joyfully absurd poetry of old, recent single Coming Home the only decent one of the lot. That is, until they unleashed Radio in the encore, as immediate as anything from their debut but with an added depth and gorgeous chorus. Maybe there is still hope after all.