The Boxer Rebellion

Like a fountain of flame, pain and paraffin, The Boxer Rebellion are so post-everything they may as well be courier delivered straight into your soul. Love is the opening song, sounding like Coldplay’s ‘Politik’ butchered by The Music’s ‘The Dance’, sending sweet shivers of seratonin through your brain. Love is a singer with a voice even prettier than his face, and sexy jeans even tighter than his rhythm section. For all their rocket-fuelled guitar wizardry and pulsing basslines there’s no self-indulgent posing or vacant pouting from this lot, it’s all for real.

That’s not to say that it’s dead-centre pop; not by a long way. It’s just that each mini-opus of a track is a law unto itself, contained inside four minutes with its own identity. ‘The New Heavy’ is the raw Primals vs Muse mix the Coopers have yet to find whereas ‘You And I’ is sultry and wistful; sweeping, but never overly-majestical. Underneath the bursting layers of sound lie truly moving songs – often mournful and dark; blissed out by the singer’s romantic, and confrontational falsetto. He might play keyboards and an acoustic guitar we can’t here, but make no mistake, The Boxer Rebellion are very much a rock band in the truest sense of the phrase. And if tonight’s performance and the whispers circulating round the bar afterwards are anything to go by, they really are the rock band.

When they finish with their forthcoming Poptones single, ‘Watermelon’ – a faster, harder, edgier BRMC/Suede composite, even dear old Alan McGee is rocking in his socks. Love then, is obviously finding Oasis for the second time in your career.