July 24, 2003

First of all, Chikinki need to get a new singer, and fast. The music was actually quite good if you ignored the mong having a hissy fit, desperately trying to dry hump the unfortunate slow-running girls up front - the keyboards and high-hat in particular were very good indeed. Get rid of him and the pirate booty shall follow, I promise.

Carina Round needed no help whatsoever to become the highlight of the evening. The best solo female singer I've seen since PJ Harvey (well, I've never actually seen her, but you know what I mean!), she had strength in songwriting, strength of voice, and strength of character, all of which are destined to bring her into the mainstream, narrowly avoiding the Dido Route into our collective bosom.

Johnny Boy strutted out as the essence of cool - completely black, right down to their matching hair dyes, no spotlights but instead choosing the proijections to prove there was in fact only two people making that much noise. Unfortunately, though, the initial attention factor soon faded when it was obvious they had only one droning song in their (albeit short) repetoire, and a sub-BRMC one at that. I enjoyed a few recorded songs of theirs previously, but in live they just fell flat.

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