David Devant

Old Spice

David Devant / Ciccone @ Camden HQs, 18/11/2000

How the (never particularly) mighty have fallen. Famous for grating carrots over manikins during almost-top-40 "hit", 'Ginger', and appearing on The Ozone once, four years on David Devant find themselves almost back where they started. Not that it's immediately obvious. The near capacity crowd is dedicated if nothing else, singing along to the other near chart misses, 'I Think About You' and, well, I'm sure there were some others… On stage the band clearly detach themselves from reality for forty minutes and play like they really almost did on Top Of The Pops. Their quirky indiepop being good, though not totally convincing. Failure as a result of wrong sound, wrong time, but that's showbiz, next.

Ciccone are supporting tonight, a motley crew of eighties renegades playing swift kick to the crotch punkpop. Lead singer 'Mickey boy' is intoxicated with punk rock spirit, incoherently letting words fall out his mouth between battered songs. It takes the guiding hand of guitarist Rebekah, resembling school uniform era Britney if she'd attended Grange Hill and smoked in the toilets, to keep the gang on track. All songs are three and half minutes, all have great big choruses, Ciccone could well be destined for more than toilet circuit hell. Sexy, sporadic, and subversive, more bite than Bis and less diluted than the Dum Dums an ashamedly kitsch and kinky assault on the current teeny bop agenda.

Andrew Thomas