28 Costumes

The Social tonight is exactly what the name suggests – a place to socialise, to catch up with old friends and/or make new ones. People crowd around the tables which line one side of the venue, half of them with their backs to the tiny stage, and anyone wishing to visit the toilet will have to pass within a foot of the drummer on their way.

In a way, it’s almost as if the bands are part of the furniture; as if it's the conversation which is the event and the bands are just there to fill in the pauses for breath. For a while it seems like 28 Costumes don’t know quite how to deal with this. Playing to people’s backs in an underground bar with dried flowers arranged around the place, vocalist Chris McIntosh almost looks as if he could apologise for intruding on people’s conversations with upbeat indie-rock.

But he doesn’t. Instead, once they hit their stride, the Liverpool quartet spend the final fifteen minutes of their set kicking out the kind of musical exuberance that Samurai Seven used to - there are harmonies, there are yelps and woops, and there’d probably be a lot of jumping around were they not practically stood shoulder to shoulder. Their finest moment arrives in the form of ‘Walking At Pace Up Hills’, three minutes of super-simple pop-rock, which stomps gleefully and increasingly loudly despite only having four lines repeated over and over. By the end of the set, the crowd are making barnyard noises instead of clapping. Someone makes a sound like a monkey, clearly not having been in many barns lately. 28 Costumes’ work is done.

By the time Blah Blah Blah take to the stage, the place is heaving with Saturday night punters out on the lash, conversing loudly. This isn’t necessarily great news for one of London’s hardest-working trios (currently sporting a daunting London-centric gig list and regularly playing twice a night), whose jazz-funk-indie-what? sound and often humourous, observational lyrical style depends largely on people shutting up and listening rather than being bowled over with energy.

Lyrically, they could be easily dismissed as shallow fun and little else – the opening line of their opening song, ‘Caravan Christmas’, does indeed rhyme “Jesus” with “penis” – but don't mistake this for immaturity. The lyrics are witty rather than dumb, and the songwriting styles are varied, occasionally changing time signatures and alternating between styles come the middle eight. The self-effacing ‘You’ve Got No Reason’ is probably the best example, as its funk foundations give way to a skiffle interlude midway through, whilst the band point out their various downfalls to some love interest or other.

The delivery is not unlike The Young Knives in places, geeky and proud with an Art Brut edge, and their constant quest to mock themselves in song is charming, but Blah Blah Blah are still a band that will divide opinion. Some will dismiss them as pap just for the style of music they play, others won’t be able to see past the fact that two of them are wearing flat caps, whilst others will love them for those very same reasons. Tonight though, The Social really just wants a bit of a chat, which is a shame.