Art Brut

I can’t pretend I wasn’t, well, a little concerned.

Naffing off to America to try and crack ‘em clean in half hardly keeps you deeply branded into the side of the (indie) public consciousness now, does it? Plus with Art Brut returning there’s added worry; the hot, sickening, cheated feeling in the back of the throat that maybe it was just one big joke after all, and I was too desperate/naïve/plain stupid at the time to not take it completely seriously.

Having missed Untitled Musical Project, the only review you poor unfortunate readers are going to get in terms of pre-headliner feedback is of my navigation of seaside towns, for which I get two out of ten and a sarcastic remark about trying harder. But what about the Brut? Well, a year is a long time in pop music. Last time we saw them, only a select few knew about MySp*ce, the media radar was still at least registering in New Cross and that weekly teatime TV chart show still existed. We’ve moved on. Have they?

Frankly, no. But should it matter? Well, it’s a tricky one. Yes, these songs are still exciting – the ramshackle ferocity in ‘1800 Lira’; the jovial, sweaty celebration in ‘Modern Art’; the embarrassment and regret in ‘Rusted Guns Of Milan’; the desperation and melancholy in ‘These Animal Menswe@r’; and so on. They all still have an effect, and Eddie Argos’ demented faithless street preacher act still provokes a decent few chuckles. But you do wonder whether, like in Argos’ recently revised version of ‘Emily Kane’ where he feels he misses being 15 and getting drunk rather than the girl he was doing it with, maybe we just long for the time when this all felt much more urgent. You’d think that, for a group that wielded such rhetoric about going out and forming new bands and progressing, they’d at least try and come across like they’ve developed since they’ve been away.

Of the very few new songs in the set, only ‘Blame It On The Trains’ has the sort of spark and ingenuity that made Bang Bang Rock And Roll so attractive; new single ‘Nag Nag Nag Nag’, whilst accomplished, spews the same old story about mixtapes and running away from home. Surely if you have to run away from home more than once then, somewhere along the line, you must have admitted it was a mistake and returned.

“This is the fifth time we’ve been to Brighton”, Eddie barks, “don’t say we’ve not warned you!” Which is probably where the problem lies: too much ‘warning’ has presumably produced little surprise. Aside from a different member, a different record label and Jasper Future’s pointing and gurning at the audience (maybe there was a wasp in the crowd?), there’s little to distinguish them from the same Art Brut that had such promise three years ago. Freddy gives the occasional wry smile, Ian flails about in the corner, Eddie tells the same anecdote about Super Furry Animals at Glastonbury, yet all with an exposure of the planning behind the spontaneity that once lay at their heart. If it was a joke, we already knew the punchline.

They’re still enjoyable, they’re still energetic and it’s not like they’ve suddenly ran short on stage presence. But it comes back to the old adage about the meteorite – no-one’s expecting it to jump out of its crater and make as big a dent the second time around. For now, Art Brut are still a band we need on our side. But unless they get enough decent new material in their repertoire pretty soon, that crater’s going to seem too comfy for their own good.