This Aint Vegas

It’s fireworks night and some north-easterners are playing in town courtesy of local alt-promoters Meshuggy. First on is* School of Language*, the new solo project of Field Music man David Brewis. The highly-rated Sunderland act is currently on hiatus to allow its members to pursue new visions, and this is the first fruit of their attempts to move beyond indie orthodoxy.

Unlike on School of Language’s recordings, where computers and production clearly play a part, this is strictly one man and a guitar territory. Brewis sits central and alone on the small stage and from the beginning the performance is led by his voice. He sings in wide, husky tones, shifting at intervals when he drags up some higher registers from deep inside his throat. There’s a touch of Jeff Buckley passion to his vocal, ‘til this cracks and he returns to the low.

His guitar playing is loose, fragmented; the notes echo and crackle like disintegrating wires. We're not sure if that's technique or just, as he admits, that he's still shaky on these new songs live. The strumming fits well to his voice though, and it all comes together to create some moving, quirky ballads. Brewis is going down a promising path.

*This Aint Vegas *(pictured) are a blur of plaid shirts. A little too much _I wish I was an American college boy and not from Northern England _for these ears, but we'll let it pass.

In the beginning, their sound is arresting. The slight, grinding rhythms get you quick and the scraping, shrapnel-creating guitar is genuinely heightening at some points – sounding something like scratching a piece of water-scuffed glass from a broken 20p return Irn-Bru bottle you’d found in a polluted brook. The Mackam vocal tones, meanwhile, fit well over the sound, especially with their rapid, double-barrelled attack on the likes of ‘Carry You On My Shoulders’.

As their set moves on, though, they seem to slip out of that solid, body-twitching rhythm. Their sound loses most of its power without it, and with individual songs not really standing out, it’s something of a comedown from those first few shots of fine punk. Though The Futureheads and Maximo Park are often mentioned in the same breath, to these ears This Aint Vegas sound a lot more like fellow north-easterners Dartz!, though more low-slung and with less pop flair. Admittedly This Aint Vegas have been around longer, but that is perhaps a bad sign: they’ve been touting this sound for a while and, despite its high points, they seem to be taking it nowhere.

From understated north-easterners to overwhelming Liverpudlians.* Elle s'appelle* tap into the local knack, nay obsession, with pop.

Theirs is a dramatic and emotional sound that spins and swings. It’s all about the keyboards of Lucy Blakeley that ring on ‘til every last drop of pop nuance has been squeezed out and fed to the audience. Tweeness is in the room, but the springy bass of Andy Donovan and solid drumming from Owen Cox creates a dynamism that hooks the fuck into you and stops sentimentality dead.

With sweet and equally dramatic male/female vocals from Andy and Lucy, Mates of State must be mentioned, and Saint Etienne also spring to mind. But Elle s’appelle just have more, well, oomph. The crowd are easily skewered on this whirligig, moving on the waves of keys, and feeling a little lost for a few seconds every time the rhythm stops. This is fairground music with soul. It's a short set, finishing with best tune and new single ‘Little Flame’. This very new band need time to develop more songs, and it's unclear how they will further their sound. But for now all you need to know is they're good. Damn good.

Photo: Lucy Johnston