It's always a bad sign when a headline act start their set before it's even dark outside. It usually means the band in question are angling for extra time, planning some Grateful Dead style seven-hour atrocity, cramming in every last poorly conceived b-side they've ever recorded.
So it's with due sense of trepidation that the Dandy Warhols shamble onto the Brixton Academy stage at just before half eight this evening. The truth is the Warhols of all bands should know the power of a short, sharp, incendiary set. They are - as their recent mobile phone aided renaissance has proved - a singles band of the old school: cool, smart peddlers of fine pop trash, surely a world away from the incessant dirge of the average journeyman rock gig?
Or so you'd have thought. Sadly early evidence suggests to the contrary. The Warhol's choose as their opener an entirely underwhelming 12-minute slow burning rock epic. Drenched in nauseating half-light they pull out every cliché in the book. It looks like it could be a long night. Matters aren't helped by the fact that half of the upstairs crowd appear to still be at work when the band first materialise, leaving a steady stream of bemused punters to wander into the venue throughout the opening songs.
Thankfully, when we're all finally assembled and the band have been churning away for a good half hour, things start to look up. And predictably it takes a single - the classic 'Not If You Were the Last Junkie on Earth' - to ignite the evening. Suddenly, it all becomes clear what the Warhol's are here for: the three-minute pop epic, a glorious surge of teen hormone in musical form.
And when they stick to the trash pop gems, the Dandy Warhols can't fail. Current single 'We Used To Be Friends' sounds like classic pop already, and 'Bohemian Like You' is predictably effective. Unfortunately, the band never quite capitalise on these genuinely exciting moments - there's always a moment of rock self indulgence just around the corner to take the sting out of their tail.
Unfortunately, the band are also beset with technical problems: there is a mini sound check half way through to locate a glitch, and by the end Courtney's voice is apparently cut to ribbons, to such an extent that tonight's encore comes courtesy of a sweet, unaccompanied, and endearingly off-key, nursery rhyme style ballad from keyboardist Zia McCabe. Despite this however, the Dandy Warhols never quite make good on their fine pop pedigree. They sparkle occasionally, but in trying to be proper rock stars, instead of trash pop stars, all too often they just end up sounding like everyone else, which was surely never the plan.
