Angelica

Chat's Palace is not a pretty place. Situated in Clapton, a place that makes it's neighbour Hackney look posh, amongst the piss stinking streets and derelict shop fronts the venue is an old skool community centre. Once through the bar you're into a modestly sized room with fanzine stalls lining one side and a low stage at the back.

Angelica are headlining a night that's seen Baba Yaga, Gertrude, and a poet who's not quite as bad as Vis The Spoon (sorry, in-joke for Snakebite City fans only) take the stage before them. The prevelence of fanzines, other xeroxed literature, and woman with crew cuts suggest this is an event not a gig. Indeed, as the big banner at the back announces this is Frockoff - a women empowering women project that doesn't involve giving your best mate five thousand quid. This is no bad thing, of course, and the atmosphere is warm and friendly, without the idea I might be lynched for being an oppressor ever crossing my mind...

So it's 10:50pm and Angelica have finally arrived on stage. Almost the entire set is material from their new album, The 7 Year Itch, and consequently it's fast, furious, and catchy as the common cold. Forthcoming single, Liberation Is Wasted On Me, has the wit and spark to encourage at least a few members of the audience to go beyond head nodding. Old favourite, Bring Back Her Head, is welcomed with loud cheers and in a classic stadium stylee singer Holly holds out the mic to the faithful for them to sing the tag line to the bridge. Unfortunately, either through a need to get the last train or an aversive reaction to girls in their early twenties making the floor shudder the crowd has thinned out about halfway through the set. A fat drunk middle aged man has dragged a chair to the side of the stage and sits there bad mouthing the girls. After a few glares and words pass from the stage he rises to take them on, only to be so beyond his limit his swaying looks almost poetic to Rosemary Call The Goddess. Then he sits down again and passes out.

Aware that they're running way over time the last few songs are played back to back and the band disperse as soon as the last chord fades. A good crowd and a good atmosphere but there seems something wrong that a band such as Angelica should be playing tiny backwaters of London the week before their new album is released. Here's hoping for a return to support slots with big bands at The Astoria in the near future.

"our heavier direction has been influenced by our continuing obsession with Nickleback..." - Angelica speak out, interview on DiS as soon as I type it up.