The last of three nights entitled the 'Track & Field Winter Sprinter', providing London's indie children with an excuse to escape their bedsits and investigate some of the genre's best-hidden secrets. At least that's the theory.
Nottingham's Airport Girl are in a bit of a pickle, what with their guitarist laid up with flu and a replacement having to be taught the set in the van on the way down to London. Apart from a few overlong gaps between songs it doesn't show, though. Musically, Airport Girl are a schizophrenic bunch - they start off like Belle & Sebastian, then gradually mutate into a bit of a snarling rock animal, complete with a Richard Hell cover. Odd.
Headliners January have a direction and they're sticking to it. They've been pretty quiet since last year's acclaimed single 'All Time' and judging by their short set they haven't been burning the midnight oil writing songs. Sartorially, they look like they've just been zapped in from Woodstock (the original one) but their music has more in common with the likes of Low and Ben & Jason and their ilk.
It's all nice stuff, acoustic ballads with a harder edge, competently played but ultimately unmemorable. And that seems to be a problem afflicting the sort of hushed reverential music currently peddled around these parts. Stop staring at the floor and put some lead in your songwriting pencil.
