For badgers, it’s setts. For rabbits, burrows. And for C-list celebrities, the 'Big Brother' house. Everything, it seems, has a natural habitat. For Manchester’s I Am Kloot, it’s the bar. Singer-songwriter and guitarist Johnny Bramwell, bass player Pete Jobson and drummer Andy Hargreaves are perfectly capable of filling far larger venues, but have decided to play a short run of dates in tiny London pubs to showcase material from their forthcoming (third) album, "Gods & Monsters", due out in April.
Not only do they feel entirely comfortable being so up close and personal that Jobson risks poking a front-row eye out every time he bends his elbow, but they also understand that the downbeat, casually confessional nature of their tunes is quite devastatingly direct in a shoebox-sized space such as this upstairs room.
Despite ceaseless, pints-ferrying traffic on the stairs, nothing can break the spell of I Am Kloot’s intimacy. Well, nothing apart from Bramwell’s own barbed badinage, that is. The singer may be a tugger of heartstrings par excellence – and there are several lump-in-throat moments during this evening’s set – but he’s also a merciless taker of the piss. It’s this knockabout charm that amplifies I Am Kloot’s emotional power and makes them such a winning live proposition.
It’s also presumably what stands between them and Keane-like, chart-conquering success. Bramwell can knock out a killer, pop melody with the very best of them (imagine John Lennon fronting The La's, with a dash of mid-80s, gloomy bed-sit troubadour Patrik Fitzgerald), but he favours the lyrically opaque over the obvious and it’s empathy his band offers, not escapism.
Even the most barnacle-encrusted of hearts couldn’t fail to be melted by the scuffed beauty of early singles “Titanic”, the falsetto-edged “To You” and “Twist”, whose striking lyrical honesty (“there’s blood on your legs - I love you”) has as good as made it their theme tune. Of the new songs, first single “No Direction Home” reveals itself as a darkly driving, irresistibly insistent rocker, “Over My Shoulder” as the perky, spring-in-its-step follow-up.
To these ears, however, it’s the deceptively sweet ‘n’ slow temper of “Storm Warning”, the almost Beat-like lyrical pacing of “Morning Rain”, the glorious sense of romantic danger that quickens “Cuckoo” and the unbearably lovelorn sweep of set closer “Favourite Sky” that provide the highlights.
They may not be storming stadia, but I Am Kloot are in the emotionally expressive big league. They make music for thinkers and drinkers, certainly, but essentially for feelers. Really, it’s just a matter of time.
