Head Space Daily Words...

After filling our stomachs with a meat, clam and potato concoction at a Portuguese restaurant on Stockwell Road, me and my gig buddy, made our way to Brixton Academy, to watch Alt-J. You may already know this but by pressing the alt and J keys simultaneously on your computer keyboard, a perfectly formed triangle is created - hence the band's symbol. As the line in Tesselate goes, "Triangles are my favourite shape, three points where two lines meet." The Alt-J boys love a good triangle. Their music is a downbeat mix of abstract layered vocals, with intricate, often delicate, musical arrangements. When you listen to it, the music can envelope you, it feels quite personal. Brixton Academy is a big old venue, holding around five thousand people and it was just way too big to carry Alt-J's sound. They didn't do anything wrong, they played well and sung nicely but it felt like having five thousand people in my front room and switching on the CD. We were up in the balcony which can leave you feeling slightly detached and I did wonder if I was missing something, because people around me were caught in the moment, making triangle shapes with their thumbs and forefingers - something I struggle to accomplish, as I have bendy thumbs - and making that old heavy metal sign with index finger and little finger pointing forward, with the thumb to the side. Perhaps I'm getting too old for this sort of malarkey  but the reaction seemed way out of proportion to the music. There were singalong moments, to words that I can barely decipher, due to the singer's unique delivery - and that's the way I like it, I want to hear him sing, not the audience. We weren't at a Killers gig. As my mate said, he was "waiting for the lighters to come out and for it to go all Cliff Richard." I think that to pull it off at Brixton Academy, you need to perform, you need something extra. When I think of past gigs I've seen at Brixton, Friendly Fires on their Pala tour springs to mind. A strong light show, interesting back drops, a South American dancing troupe, and Ed Macfarlane, the lead singer, moving, jerking, running, dancing, captivating. These Alt-J boys last night were rooted to the spot, I guess it is not that sort of music but it did feel as if, having won the Mercury Music Prize last year for best album, that they are milking the money cow. It could all be too much too soon in my view. Heaven, a venue close to Charing Cross Station, would have been the perfect size to host the band, giving them chance to cut their teeth a bit more and get an act together. Back to the drawing board please lads and get some presence. Top album though; who's coming round for a listen...