Vic Twenty

It is 9pm in North London, and tucked away from the chilly metropolis are a steady trickle of electro-pop enthusiasts, come to dance to undanceable tracks from the Ladytron and Pulp albums. Both apt, since Riviera are offering up a mixture of pingy keyboards, muttering and crunchy guitar. The venue’s sound is dreadful, and so all that can really be said is that singer Alexa intones snappy titles like “International Lover” with all the panache of someone waiting that bit too long for the bus, and that the aforementioned Ladytron’s “604” is clearly an in-house primer. It’s easy to see the posture Riviera are attempting: it’s rare we get eye contact, let alone movement - save one perfectly timed minimalist dance routine - and half the time singing is eschewed for deadpan recitation. Unfortunately, to a first-time watcher in a half-full club, the effect is less studied cool than intense boredom with having to perform. As a live experience, Riviera are colder than ice... which would be all right, except that the (inaudible) songs as yet don’t speak for themselves.

Breather, a wall of sound wedged unwisely between two button-prodding pop groups, don’t seem to be having fun either. Some animation is mustered for a Stooges cover placed ominously early in the set, but soon we’re lapsing into ten-minute guitar epics which serve only to reinforce their sparklessness. Here, the problem is not so much expecting the audience to do the work as forgetting it’s there; the unmistakable fog of music that’s good to play, but dull to hear settles over the venue. The enthusiasm they muster for other bands with their tributary T-shirts seems utterly lacking for their own.

Any suspicion that the bands all received downers for a rider is immediately dispelled by headliners Vic 20. Named after obsolete hardware, kitted out with miniature synths and matching microphones, they’re cuter than a kitten stalking down the piano and much more harmonious to listen to. One boy, note-perfect, and one girl, earnest grin plastered to her face, who appear to dance in synchrony by pure dancefloor-learned instinct rather than the more self-conscious Riviera’s choreography. Their first number is called “Return to Synthpop”, the last “Eight Bit Hit”... we stray as far as the Nineties for a zeitgeisty song about breaking up by text message (“I’m sorry / I faked it / I’m sorry / I faked it”) but mostly this is brazen nostalgia wrapped up as futurism. And all the better for it, really. The unapologetic manner in which Vic 20 present music and lyrics which stray close to novelty, and their pixellised version of “The Joker” complete with theremin, may not fit the bill of 21st Century Cool... but they do make for half an hour or so of uncensored fun. And this, after all, is what we came out to find: entertainment that’s about more than just the entertainer. Sulkers take note.