Life goes on, y’know, and to be honest, you hadn’t thought of them for ages. And then the name popped up unexpectedly, and you startled yourself at the rush of nostalgia and curiosity. Oh yes, thirtysomething indie kids: for pretty much everyone here, it’s a buzzing, excited and distinctly hopeful 'Friends Reunited' kinda night.
Not least for a blond, ever-elfin Guy Chadwick and his beatifically-smiling pony-tailed mucker Terry Bickers. When last the singer and guitarist were sharing a hazy, backlit House Of Love stage, Thatcher still had Britain in her claws and the Pentagon was still hatching the internet. And exactly half of tonight’s set-list – eight slices of a gratifyingly strong House Of Love-reunited album, “Days Run Away” - was sixteen long years in the future.
And from the first big-hollow-drum moments of “Never” to the teeth-gritted menace and gothy chorused guitars of “Christine” all the way through a woozily tense “Love In A Car” and “Shine On”’s rattling, buzzsaw-riffing set-closer, the telescope of hindsight is determinedly whacking you around the head.
From this 21st century standpoint, it’s a note-perfect scrapbook of days run away and back again: Velvets-y unease, powdery Hollies-ish vocals, Mary Chain jumper-cable jolts, La's-ish busker jangles, solid pop structures the shoegazers quite never shuffled into, and swathes of incandescent, Steve Kilbey-esque chords. Hey listen, you want to ask the once-and-future indie kid next to you, did Bickers always do John Squire’s best Stone Roses moments one better? Guess he must’ve; unlike Squire, however, a happy and boldly harmonising Terry still knows how to get there.
Sometimes, it seems, it’s worth that first tentative email. Sometimes the ghosts of half-remembered youthful cool aren’t balding, podgy and living near Swindon with a high-end hi-fi and a Katie Melua habit. And sometimes tonight – a bold, commanding “Love You Too Much”, a snog-and-make-up “Maybe You Know”, a windswept “Kinda Love”, a harder-and-wiser “Money And Time” and a cheery “Days Run Away” – it seems like the best is, if not yet to come, then not over just yet.
Guy and Terry don’t say much, of course, standing there. At flood-of-relief moments like this, you don’t.
