Live Music News & Reviews

San Fransisco’s Girls brought their Father, Son and Holy Ghost album to London last week as they played Camden’s Electirc Ballroom.

Taking to a flower-filled stage, the two permanent members of Girls appeared with a keyboardists, drummer and three female backing singers. This made the more layered songs from Father…work brilliantly.

I am a big fan of Girl’s simple strong structures - they rarely stretch beyond three chords - and the combination of singer Christopher Owens excellent voice and Chet White’s excellent guitarwork make them seem more than the sum of their parts. The lyrics are all woe is me heartbreak stuff, but words like that definitely have their place.

Highlights of the gig were the superb Laura, from their debut album Album, a brilliant Alex - which amply illustrated how White writes simple but very effective licks, and the fantastic Love Like a River, which was faultless despite having plenty of precise stop-starts. Throughout White was getting some superb sounds from his Stratocaster whilst Owens was note perfect. My only complain would be that there is not much variance in pace with Girls, and live this can make their gigs seem longer than they are as ballad follows ballad. The exception was “Die” which I usually skip when listening to the album. Live it made sense, a screaming wail of guitars which sounded more like Led Zepellin than the Beach Boys or Elvis Costello, their usual reference points.

The band wrapped up the gig with Vomit, the best song on their new album. Here it sounded superb, with backing singers, organ, guitars, this song has about five choruses and a superb outro that reminds me a little of Rod Stewart’s Tonight’s the Night. A brief encore followed - Owens appeared to play a solo version of Jamie Marie which was comically interrupted by someone in the crowd shouting “I’m going to fucking kill myself” before they played the mammoth Hellhole Ratrace. A great gig, just felt perhaps a little too long if they are not going to vary their sound massively.

Noel Gallagher has criticised the London Roundhouse, saying “Lord knows why anyone would play there. I’ve been to plenty of gigs there - can’t recall ever seeing a good one yet. Dunno what it is. Maybe ’cause it’s round and not an actual house? Dunno.”

The High Flying Birds man played the Roundhouse days ago. On a small tour of London venues he described his gig at the HMV Forum as “just like the old days of Oasis”, whilst his gig at the Hammersmith Apollo was “easy, maybe a little too easy.”

We have seen a number of excellent gigs at the Roundhouse, so not sure we agree with Noel on this one. What are your thoughts on the Roundhouse?