Nov 08 2007 12:18 pm,
Levi’s® Ones To Watch 4 Night Revue kicked off on Tuesday with storming sets from retro-poppers Joe Lean And The Jing Jang Jong, supported by some fine sea shanty hollering from Pete & The Pirates and sultry-voiced shape-throwing from Ida Maria.
With a crowd including Franz Ferdinand and Smack The Pony star Sally Phillips packed into London’s Borderline, Ida Maria begin proceedings with a straight-arrowed indie-surge, her prurient wails crashing round the venue in a manner that says ‘WATCHMEORDIE’. So people watch. Set closer ‘Oh My God’ is the highlight, a 3-minute psyche-pop stomp with an indelible, ramraiding chorus that’s scratched its wee mitts into our brain.
Reading’s Pete & The Pirates are up next, pushing the ‘IT nerds who can play guitar’ look and then diving into a set of whimsical, buccaneering indie-pop. ‘Knots’ and ‘Come On Feet’ are where their jangle-guitar mini-anthems really click into place, happy-go-lucky jauntfests on the earholes.
Then skinny jeans brigade Joe Lean & The Jing Jang Jong arrive, frontman Joe displaying the sort poise and poses to match an all-conquering ambition becoming ever apparent in his interviews. He saunters onstage, part Jarvis, part J-Bo, midway through their opening song, an instrumental that sounds like a fairground Horrors, although it’s soon made clear that the Jong have more than enough chart-shagging, hip-shaking hits to back up the big egos. ‘Lucio Starts Fires’ is the clearest indication that they can fulfil the gig-goers prophecy that they’re Gonna Do A Razorlight, a cocky swagger of a song that sounds like The Strokes if they’d grown up obsessing to The Faces rather than Television.
A great start to LOTW 4 Night Revue, we’ll keep you posted on the rest of the week’s gigs as they come...
