A tidal wave of blood figures on the backdrop painting, and pretty much every one of The Distillers' songs are full of gore, gory metaphors for love, or at least the tang of something visceral. But as Brody Dalle and her three interchangeable punker bandmates blast their way through 50 rapturously received minutes, it's strange how unemotional it all feels. How gutless, how perfunctory.
The Distillers, it should be noted, are looking good right now to be the next big thing out of California's still-flourishing punk scene. They have it all, really, or at least a clutch of musically punchy, emotionally complex songs and an imposing frontwoman to deliver them. Dalle is currently more renowned for the glamorous entanglements of her private life, having recently ditched her husband, Rancid's Tim Armstrong, in favour of Queens Of The Stone Age's Josh Homme.
Armstrong has responded by writing a bunch of mediocre songs for Pink. Homme has responded by playfully stonewalling journalists in his usual 'My private life is private' way, in spite of being photographed mid-snog with Dalle in Rolling Stone. Dalle, meanwhile, is being portrayed as a next-generation Courtney Love, not least since her studded-throat holler and faintly gothic lyrical sensibilities betray her as an obvious student of early Hole. The comparison is healthily lost on most of her teenage fans, one suspects, who treat Dalle with the sort of ecstatic awe that The Distillers' fine third album, 'Coral Fang', and her surly no-bullshit persona probably merits.
The problem is, that same surly no-bullshit persona mitigates against this headline show being ever quite as exciting and involving as you'd hope. While Love's relentless egomania and showboating can often be an irritant at live gigs, Dalle could do with showing a bit more personality - or at least engagement - as she dashes through the likes of 'Die On A Rope', 'Sing Sing Deathhouse' and 'Drain The Blood'.
Sure, her businesslike approach avoids self-indulgence and longueurs - even 'Deathsex', the ten-minute skronk-out that closes 'Coral Fang', is economically dispatched in a third of that time. And certainly, the constant velocity of the show is true to a time-honoured punk aesthetic.
But Dalle has the potential to be a truly compelling rock star, not least because her combination of surgically-extracted angst and hurtling anthems mark her out as a female correlative to Kurt Cobain. As it is, her disdain for rock star posturing onstage, while usually commendable, means that she's also hiding the character which makes her records so gripping. And while we're at it, though this is far from ornate music, Dalle's songs deserve a bit more care being taken with them than that shown by the three blokey artisans who currently make up the numbers in The Distillers.
If you want a new punk hero, then Brody Dalle will do fine, but you get the impression that she can be so much more - and wants to be so much more - than that. Once she's purged herself of punk rock guilt, maybe then The Distillers will be the sensation they so obviously promise to be.
