Applicants, Untitled Musical Project and Elle Milano @ The Fly, London
Up until now I didn’t even know this venue existed. Looks like the evil Barfly people are expanding left, right and centre. The venue is okay, if a little small and the sound is abysmal. Mind you, never trust a sound engineer with dreadlocks.
This was the first time I’d seen Applicants, so I can’t be sure what they sound like in a decent venue. They were covered in fake blood and had a girl in some kind of leotard and what appeared to be tennis shorts. Marvellous. Soundwise, think carcrash. In fact they had a song about a carcrash which sounded just like the real thing. They also had a rather catchy tune involving a pizza, which I spent the next day humming. Argh. Weirdly, the set ended with said girl offering sausages from a jar to random people (nice German bockwurst, now that was tempting!). I liked Applicants a lot.
Untitled Musical Project I’d seen countless times before. They are one of those bands that are always fairly good. And they’re starting to sound less like McClusky now. But, the sound in this place … ouchie. Most of what I could hear were the backing vocals (okay, backing shouts, actually!). Pleasant as they were, it would have been helpful to be able to hear the actual singer. Judging from his purple, contorted face, he really did try to overcome the inaudible microphone issue, but, to no avail. Still, Untitled can’t really go wrong.
Elle Milano I hadn’t seen before, but I was informed they are from Brighton and have been around for quite some time. They had interesting hair. Think Tim Burgess in the very early nineties. Or, if you’re familiar with a band named Meg, think Matt Pimm ca 2000. They also featured a weird, Ladytronesque-looking girl. She did have marvellous hair, but I am still puzzled what her purpose in the band actually was. She appeared to me mouthing into a microphone every now and then, but spent the rest of the time posing with her lipgloss as if she was in a bizarre seated, guitarless version of THAT Rober Palmer video. Hmm. The whole thing didn’t sound particularly original. The singer’s vocals reminded me of Brian Molko in places (not sure if that’s a god thing …), there were some disco-y bits, but the whole venbture suffered because the songs didn’t seem to end. If you’re going for this kinda artcollege/indie/slightly glammy thing, please make sure your tracks don’t overstep the minute-and-a-half mark. My opinion, anyway.