22-20s, Nine Black Alps

After a brief mishap at the Box Office (I have a reference number, goddammit!) I'm allowed in, wondering if I should stop buying tickets and just turn up to gigs raving about my reference number from now on. Nine Black Alps are a nice warm-amp preamble to the main act but I can't say I'm taking them all too seriously just yet. In fact, that is the prevailing mood tonight. With both bands I feel slightly awkward, like I've caught them as teenagers in the bathroom, practising the songs that are going to make them famous in the mirror.

No one could be more disposed to like the 22-20s than me. Dirty blues rock 'n roll gets me more excited than any boy ever could. So, they're from Lincolnshire, but I'm prepared to overlook anything - blues is the lingua franca of the unsettled soul after all. And with riffs like the one that tears through Devil In Me, I'm longing to believe they've staggered somewhere near that crossroad. But they come out and I'm not feeling it, they play and I'm not feeling it, they pose and I'm not feeling it, and they rush Devil In Me and I'm not feeling it. In fact, it's only as we all leave that I taste a bit of that electricity we should have been getting our fix of for the last hour. And it's about where we're all going next.

It seems fitting somehow that Vauxhall Astra all but owns the best work of this band that got everyone into such a tizz. Come on boys. Get dirty. You picked the blues and if you want to pull this off, my feeling is you're gonna have to live them a little.

When: 22/01/04
Who: 22-20s, Nine Black Alps
Where: London Astoria
Review by: Jane Rich
Pitchfork reviews: 22-20s