Live music listings: August 2006

Doors 7.00
£8 - day ticket

"A wonderful London-based label with a truly faultless roster, featuring some of the greatest bands around today." [Cherryade]

The small dictatorship of Fortuna POP! has existed since winning its independence in the Brit-pop wars of the late 1990s. Its major export is the 7" single and the CD album, the sole produce of the country's various tribes, from the unfeasibly tall Butterflies of Love people of the east coast to the small pygmies of the Midlands known as The Chemistry Experiment.
Often unfairly grouped in the league of twee nations, the peoples of this small country are actually an incredibly diverse bunch, manufacturing everything from sixties pop psychedelia (The Loves) to stop-start riot grrrl shouty pop (Bearsuit), love songs for punk rockers (Milky Wimpshake) to sassy hip-hop sampling girl group pop (Cannonball Jane), mini-pop symphonies (Fanfarlo) to orchestral country (Airport Girl), sophisticated and elegant european art-pop (The Would-Be-Goods) to warm and literate indie (The Lucksmiths), lo-fi american rock (Finlay) to folk-prog-disco (The Chemistry Experiment), from punk-soul (Comet Gain) to classic americana (The Butterflies Of Love).

The Butterflies of Love hail from New Haven, Connecticut, and have made two albums (1999's 'How to Know' and 2002's 'The New Patient') of soul-searing melancholy and heart-stopping beauty. They rock too. They've had Single of the Week in the NME and glowing reviews in Mojo, Uncut, The Times, The Guardian and many more, been compared to the likes of Galaxie 500, Pavement, the Velvets, REM and The Go-Betweens, and inspired John Peel to applaud on air. Their shows are wonderful, shimmering, intimate affairs and are not to be missed. Their third album “Famous Problems” is slated for release in October this year, to be preceeded by a single 'Orbit Around You'.
"Yearning melodies and softly-softly harmonies (think the Go-Betweens), a back-porch swing (Lambchop, maybe), tentative yet high-tensile guitar work (Velvet Underground, Pavement)...whatever sorry state you may be in at the time, you must haul your arse to one of these shows." [Time Out]
Formed in London, England, in 1993, and influenced as much by the riot-grrrl movement as by the music of the girl-group era, Comet Gain mix punk-pop aesthetics with a more abstract northern soul sensibility. Originally signed to Wiiija Records, the original line-up split in 1997, songwriter David Feck assembling an all-new roster for the band's subsequent albums Tigertown Pictures, Réalistes and their latest, ‘City Fallen Leaves’, released on Kill Rock Stars in the US and Track & Field in Europe. Magical, passionate and emotional, inspired in equal parts by The Go-Betweens, Godard, Irma Thomas, dance parties, Dexy's Midnight Runners, falling in love, mod and hootenannies, Comet Gain are one of the finest British bands of our time.
“Raw and vital records steeped in leader David Christian's actual, angry, and true poetry and the group's raw and alive sound.” [All Music Guide]
With two albums to their name, The Chemistry Experiment's music encompasses genres as diverse as prog-rock, folktronica and disco against a backdrop of lush, orchestral pop and a pinch of Pulp’s northern glamour.
'Strange, gargantuan rhythms, weird instrumentation and a singer who sounds like Kurt Wagner trapped beneath two feet of snow... as beautiful and crazy as The Arcade Fire." [NME]
East End noiseniks Finlay, inspired by Eric's Trip, Silver Jews, Sonic Youth, Pavement and Pixies, mixing skewed alt.rock with achingly melodic lo-fi meanderings. Their debut album 'I Dreams and Visions' (2003) was followed earlier this year by a second album 'The Fall of Mary', recorded at Soup Studios with Simon Trought (Jim Reid, Television Personalities, Comet Gain, The Clientele).
“The best, most hypnotic, moving, engaging, skewed, lo-fi, glittering, colourful, concise, inventive guitar record of 2006... like other experimental pop bands' greatest hits collections” (Robots and Experimental Brains)