Dirty Pretty Things/Plan B/Captain/GoodBooks/Fields/New Rhodes at Camden Crawl (20/04/06)

So in the end I managed to see 3 of the bands that I recommended in my previous feature - the queue for The Pipettes was too long and Guillemots were scheduled at an inconvenient time at Koko, way too far away from most of the places I was going. And for secret (where secret means 'announced clearly on the programme') headliner I chose Dirty Pretty Things, a good move I think after reading about the queues for The Futureheads and no-one being able to see Supergrass unless they got there hours earlier.

Started off with New Rhodes at Colour, which was too small to actually provide a stage, and a decent start it was - they're a good if unspectacular live band and it turns out they do have a few more songs which match You've Given Me Something That I Can't Give Back for brisk pop goodness, The History Of Britain probably being the pick of them.



The next three all fall into the category of bands who I really liked the sounds of from a few tracks on their Myspace, and nicely demonstrate the variable success rate of such an approach. Fields, playing the rather larger Lock17, were the disappointment of the night - some impressively gigantic noisy climaxes to build up to but not enough songs to go with it and the icy electronic element of their sound on record almost completely drowned. Their two singers (one male, one female) singing everything in unison just seemed to give an impression of neither of them being confident enough in their own right too, and the two songs that I'd already heard (Song For The Fields and If You Fail, We All Fail) were both great but easily the highlights and played first and last as if they knew it full well themselves.



GoodBooks, on the other hand, were magnificent beyond a degree which could reasonably be expected - superficially probably most similar to The Futureheads but adding a scale and scope more reminiscent of Hope Of The States or British Sea Power at their best to a base of jerky post-punk and electronic beats. With almost every song instantly awe-inspiring, it will be a surprise if they are playing anywhere as small as the out-of-the-way Bullet Bar this time next year, World War One monster Paschendale (including a brief diversion into Billie Jean) probably the finest of a very fine bunch.



Captain, also playing the Bullet Bar, fell somewhere between the two. There was a certain similarity to Fields, not least in the male-female vocals, but aside from the occasionally icky and offputting loving look to each other that wasn't a problem as they had much more confidence. They had a lot more stronger songs too, with their glistening pop showing more than a hint of pleasing darkness live, although a 45-minute set still seemed slightly too long at this stage.



Plan B had to be admired simply for not totally losing a crowd largely waiting for Dirty Pretty Things, with a captivating mad-eyed intensity which lasted for the whole of his set. Not so sure on the music though, and his raps started to get a bit repetitive even in the space of under half an hour - I lost count of the number of 'and then I was 14!'s.



Dirty Pretty Things, finally, played much exactly the same set as last time that I saw them, to slightly diminishing effect, although that might have been something to do with the fact that my feet were killing me by this time.


Thanks to Ada for photos.