White Heat is unusually quiet tonight. Even for quarter past ten, 45 minutes before the venue is filled - as a matter of tradition - every Tuesday night, the presence of space is noticeable, if not wholly unwelcome.

"Yo dudes, the Madame Jo Jo's gig was fucking hot shit, shame about all the Scensters jabbering throughout. Cunts."

[Sic...]

This, I believe, is pandering of a remarkably high order; stripped from the comments section of tonight's band's MySpace page. Firstly, the sound is far too large here to give way to "jabbering", overflowing from the tiny stage at Madame Jojo's ‘til it forms like a heavy cloud at the foremost ridge of your temple. Secondly, there are five people within spitting distance of said stage. Like I said: spacious.

Such pandering is incongruous given that, like the 'edgy' young cousin bringing Funeral to granddad’s wake, The Strange Death Of Liberal England are here to take sincerity to whole new levels; buoying it up from under like thermal drafts to a paper bag. Granted it's something that has been conspicuous by its absence in a city taken by the balls by new-wave/rave/Ed Banger recently, but when it's forced down your throats to such an extent... some doth protest too much, methinks.

Yet I can see why some people are drawn to this band. Their sound, though haunted by one, obvious Montréal spectre, is giant - it's hard to believe that this racket was made by the same number of people playing on the new Tiny Dancers record, for example. The band swaps instruments like football stickers and are obviously adept. They're closer to Montréal than many other English bands get and their shtick - sombre, po-faced, preachy - is cohesive and focused. It's just not one that I like very much.

Eyes aloof, banners aloft - "Repent! Repent!" - the quintet have the sober, priggish air of missionaries - Hollywood's claw-fingered man with a warning of random foreboding for lost travellers; a weathered ambassador. Uncut have gone so far as to bestow upon TSDOLE the title of "God's own orchestra" - I don't know where they're getting their authority from, but it's the preachy nature of preachers that helped turn the West away from religion. I, I fear, am closer to being a Westerner than TSDOLE are to being divine troubadours.

The true measure of a guitar band is not in its restricted hips - watch the way the mouths move, gasping for air, eyes scrunched. Slow it down play it frame by frame; lips stretched wide by plaintive yowling, eyes get smaller and are surrounded by heavier wrinkles, the air in front of the stage gets warmer; light is refracting off the glitterball. A knackered Converse hovers over a pedal switch. It stays there for about 20 seconds before moving down slowly and on into the inevitable 'heavy bit'. Then it's over and the glitterball speeds back up.

You have to catch your eyes before they start gazing off into space. It won't be there for long, after all - give it half an hour and it will fill with "Scensters", jabbering away in peace.

Photography by Helen Honey, Short Sharp Shot