Ludes

Hiss! Who are these scraggy-haired chancers before my eyes? Singer thinkin' he's God's gift, prancin' about strikin' rock poses. Woo woo. This is The Vaults, who appear to be Bury St. Edmonds’ answer to The Datsuns with a few AC/DC-cum-Winnebago Deal style riffs here 'n' there. The stand-offish band let Beaz Harper do his frontman thang and after a slow start it appears The Vaults have a degree of mightiness in some of those songs. Yeah, some nice guitar work. Oooh, nice bassline there, mister. And so on.

DiS does some chin-stroking back in the fluorescent-lit side of Metro - central London's current-favourite stinkydive - and decides that The Vaults are rather good indeed.

But then, when the last band of the night come on, DiS remembers which unsigned band is currently pissing on the rest from a great height at the moment round the capital's toilet circuit. Welcome Ludes; excuse me for using over-used words like "charismatic" and "flamboyant", as Ludes have this in spades. The good-looking south London 20-somethings can seemingly, on the most part, do no wrong. "All style and no content," however, is one crit which made DiS scowl in disagreement and place a banana skin under the feet of the non-believer, with hilarious results. Ho ho. With Ludes, you have the band Bobby Gilespie thought he was in during Primal Scream's slightly-dodgy 'Give Out But Don't Give Up' phase of aping Stones grooves and Jagger movements.

Despite a couple of minor guitar-tuning/string-breaking problems and singer David Ashby finding the summer heat getting to him a bit, their brand of rhythm'n'blooooze with odd sea shanty moments and reggae grooves will swing them over to be Your New Favourite Band. Either that, or you'll really, really, fucking hate them. With this being your humble scribe's fourth Ludes Live Experience, words to songs are being remembered and sung-along with. Yeah, I love this band, me. Ludes' anticipated signing of a big, fat record deal is surely drawing closer. The Libertines should be shitting themselves.