The D4

First lets get this out of the way. British Sea Power were incredible. At first the presence of a stuffed heron on the drum rise and what looks like soldier uniforms on the band is a little perturbing, but then it all comes together in a joyous chaotic mess of sound and lost percussionists and you realise that actually you’ve had an incredible time, and then you remember that BSP aren’t headlining. *D4* are.

To be fair to *D4* ‘Garage Rock’ was probably the wrong genre for them to be pigeonholed with. ‘Dumb Rock’ would probably have been more appropriate. Jimmy Christmas’ (you see?) sideburns for example have got to be a joke. And this is by far the least of it. There is something very faintly embarrassing about *D4*, from the inter-song banter (sample quote “_You guys may have heard about the rock and roll revolution. Well what that revolution is all about is you guys, and all about having fun, and all about dancing_”. There was a very similar line in the movie Footloose I recall), and surely it can’t be a coincidence that possibly their biggest song is called ‘Party’ (Hello Andrew WK).

There are however a couple of great moments tonight. When Dion leaps into the crowd and somehow ends up head down with his feet in the air and somehow manages to keep singing for example. Equally there are some dreadful moments. Like when Dion got naked. If you like US-style college rock and have the soundtrack to American Pie 2 on your Christmas wish list, then you will love D4. The rest of us are left with the feeling that we’ve heard *D4* somewhere before, and we never liked Blink 182 that much in the first place.