There Were Bears/Rob The Rich/Wild Dogs In Winter 
Buffalo Bar, London
06/04/2010

It’s been a while since anybody’s put the fun in funereal, but the slowcore revival turns out to be just one of a number of surprises in the finest Club Fandango line-up in quite some time. Wild Dogs In Winter are this evening’s slothful sensations, and, while there’s a degree of concentrated preciousness to them, there’s also a very real delight to the intricacy of their effects-infused maelstroms and a compelling quiveriness of anticipation that recalls Low in their spartan prime. Moreover, while vocalist Rhys might spoil the spell slightly by asking for the football results, he’s otherwise a forceful totem for proceedings, and finale ‘The Butcher’s Wife’ even showers us in splashes of gallows humour…

…which leads very nicely indeed to the more genuinely life-affirming thrills of Rob The Rich, whose forthcoming single ‘Better’ suggests they’re going to be a marvel of marginally throaty loucheness, dislocated guitar and, oh yes, steel drum carnivality. And, while these factors often apply here (apart from the steel drums, though, as Hot Chip‘ll also attest, that’s a card you need only play once), we’re unprepared for the constant joie de vivre on show and the regular detours into Wild Beastly syncopation, not to mention a very real pop starriness personified by whirry keyboardist Bambi’s grabbing of the Pennie Automatic baton and frontman Adam’s status as a Damon-in-training.

And, in an impressive display of continuity, not only is another of them called Bear, but they’re also followed by headliners There Were Bears, who, in keeping with the moniker, are indeed a hotbed of hairy hotness. They’re several musical left-turns rolled into one, however, sometimes teetering on the beatific bliss peddled by, say, Goldheart Assembly, but never too far from the resonant ruminations of sadcore sultans the Red House Painters either, all perplexingly welded to a spiralling post-rock sense of scale that leaves them permanently perplexing but heroically huggable regardless.

Iain Moffat