Queen Adreena

A woman with two bandaged feet - one of them in a plaster cast *- eases herself onto the stage, helped by two men. Once onstage she is handed her crutches and she hops carefully across to a chair placed in front of the central microphone. As the other band members take their places, she starts to sing slowly, unaccompanied but for a little xylophone, with an unearthly, yearning voice that is best described as the human equivalent of *whalesong. While she sings, she begins to stab at the floor with one of her crutches, swaying on her encased foot regardless. Then her companions take up their instruments, an apocalyptic bassline kicks in, and *Katie-Jane Garside *proves once and for all that she is in fact unhinged.

Several months ago, across the pond, poor Fred Durst decided that he couldn't play a massive, sold-out show in Milton Keynes because he'd hurt his poor ickle back. Cut to present in a dingy upstairs room in Camden, and Katie-Jane is standing on the now-wobbly chair attempting to straddle the crowd; fragile in a strategically pinned wisp of sheer pink fabric and her plaster cast. The bandage on her other ankle has nearly slipped off, her crutches have knocked over half the drumkit (several times) and she is being prevented from doing herself irreparable damage by several people at the front of the crowd, who hold her upright for the duration of the gig. In short, she makes fellow mentalist Courtney Love look like a refined, restrained sophisticate. The soundtrack to this remarkable display of utter oblivion is a brutal, thundering cocktail of mercilessly pneumatic riffs and Katie-Jane's soaring psychotic-songbird vocal range. The effect is that it makes you hurl yourself at the nearest speakers. It's a tense experience watching Queen Adreena - one is torn between losing oneself in the charybdic, blinding noise and checking, with a mixture of admiration and incredulity, that Katie-Jane hasn't killed herself yet. In a world of fakers, this is a woman who will bleed for her music. Whether this is advisable or not (so probably not then...) watching it is an utterly compelling, moving experience.