At the end of a North London street lined with shops and restaurants, just outside a tube station, there is a door with stairs inside, and at the bottom, a small room with a low stage washed in dim red light. On the night I went, the Buffalo Bar was packed with young people drinking bottled beer and wearing T-shirts and tights and beards and mascara and shaggy hair, and moody English indie music filled the place.
I missed the first two bands, Clip Stamp Fold and Insect Guide, but I had a nice conversation with Insect Guide singer Su Sutton in front of the club, during which she told me of an out-of-control tour on the east coast of America and we were accosted by a grubby, smiling, long-haired man with the last name of Washington, dressed in a Mac Dre t-shirt and tracksuit. I’m listening to Insect Guide’s Myspace page right now, and it’s really nice, floaty music with reverb, tremolo and soft vocals. Su said their live drummer was in the Pale Saints, which is cool.
Inside, a quartet of very serious-looking guys called Wild Dogs in Winter was playing rather somber, post-rock-ish music under the red lights.
Rhys, singer and guitarist for Wild Dogs in Winter.
I only caught the end of their set, but what I did hear alternated between hypnotic and pretty and emotionally wracked; especially impressive was a song during which singer Rhys cried out about butcher’s knives and butcher’s wives. They have apparently secured a distribution deal with a Chicago label, which is good for me, because I look forward to finding them in Amoeba.
The headliners were called Cats and Cats and Cats.
John (left) and Ben of Cats and Cats and Cats.
They’re a London-area five-piece (with a trumpet added sometimes) who play mostly upbeat rock filled with tempo and time changes. Reminds me of math rock, only more fun than much of the math rock bands I’m familiar with — they had spirit and they smiled a lot, singer Ben joked with the crowd, and they all seemed greatly pleased to be there. They were tight and well-rehearsed, and the incongruities — the occasional wavering in Ben’s voice, for example — lent personality to the music rather than making it less enjoyable. When the middle-aged spectator with eyeglasses and red wine shouted merrily in a Scottish accent that the preceding song was the greatest he’d ever heard, and then that the next was very nearly its equal, I laughed, but if we put hyperbole aside, he was on to something — see them if they’re in your area.
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