Vic Twenty

Elsewhere, scarcely a queen of the night is to be seen - one sulks and skulks with her broomstick off the interchange at King's Cross, but otherwise decadence hangs no heavier over Zone One than on any other day of the year. Fortunately, an improvised glower and some cheap plastic fangs away is the Arts Cafe and the truly blood-curdling sound of schoolgirls with recorders. Except, hang on, isn't that Angie Vic Twenty in the middle, and aren't those uniforms marked age 18-30? And, come to think of it, aren't they playing Just Can't Get Enough with a synthesiser?
Zoltan Kodaly School For Girls clearly need to be touring schools, spreading the evil seeds of rock and roll amongst the battalions of mouldy Yamaha descants, not onstage at Toynbee Hall. But that'll do too.

Ed Baxter (who mutters) and Richard Sanderson (who croons and, um, accords) should have epitomised the mission statement of the evening - an eclectic Carpenters tribute, it sez here - but in practice they get a leg stuck down that gap between the curious mixed bag of avant garde performance and the fickle attention span of drunk people in fluorescent masks. Also, I can't hear them - save a few worrying snippets: Richard as a disciple, Karen in a swivel chair cracking an impossibly huge grin...

That bare-chested man whose sprightly red wings have been battering my face all night suddenly gets access to what the Cafe likes to call its 'Performance Space', dragging a handful of Beatings and (again) Vic Twenties after him, and launches into first Polyphonic Man number, "The Power Of Love". It's a bit ROCK. So far, so Vic Reeves with stomach-staplingly loud drumkit. By the next number, "The Power Of Love", they're the Shirehorses and all those circling dark forces have been distilled once and forever into the Mark Radcliffest Manc accent likely to alight in E1 for a good while: "I luv yer and yer mine, I luv yer and yer mine", he'll have you know. But like all jokes, it only bears a certain amount of repetition and after half an hour even a cover of inspirational 80s ditty "The Power Of Love" can't bring it back to life. What a great name for a band, though, eh?

Mindlobster** are the conceptual act of the evening, visible largely as a huge pair of headborne metallic pincers with miner's lights, but making up for it by accompanying their cut-and-paste act with a swirling fractal projection composed - of course - of Carpenters publicity stills. The effect is something like falling into an endless and extremely reverberent vortex papered with the sleeve to "Close To You". Ultra-modern as their brand of laptop recycling is, the sonic material is sourced from ageing rockers - either a clever postmodernism or the recipe for a really good migraine, depending on your tastes. It wasn't to mine, but then I'd come to see "retro modernists" Vic Twenty: lighter, more congenial entertainment on a compact mini-synth scale that rather more easily fits inside your ear. Tonight they're in costume as... Richard and Karen Carpenter, and sure enough, the resemblance is uncanny. Pushing first single _"Sweet Child Of Mine" (...yes, and yes, and not bad, actually) by NOT playing it, they're still effortless and cheering on a cold, rainy avant-garde bastard of a night. It's the closest anything has come to really admitting the Carpenters into the room, indulging in melody and harmony in their purest forms. And modernist as the execution may be, that kind of generosity to your audience is most definitely retro. Vic Twenty are an effervescent popfest. And, of course, it's ace as aces. Go and see them soon in case they think better of it.