Club Kerrang live review

Club Kerrang @ Camden Barfly, London. Sunday, December 20

SPECTACLES. NEVER the easiest ocular option when attending London's leading sweatbox on an evening of brass monkey-castrating frigidity. You tend to view the nights peoceedings through a vision-encumbering layer of steam. But still, tonight's entertainment offers a far more efficacious pair of spectacles, and no mistake. First up are Stony Sleep, a trim triad of no-fixed-hairstyle youths who cram thier angst ridden anthems of perky power-pop with lashings of diverse dynamism and edgy ensemble riffing. Occasional sparklesof stylish glam combined with concise and catchy choruses find the band operating within the same arena as Supergrass, but all too often they simply over-stretch themselves. A fragile Home Counties whine laced with the merest hint of doomed subterranian glamour is all very well when you're in comfortable and reflective mode, but use such a voice to vent you're boiling spleen against a wall of six-string belligerence and you'll end up sounding like a frightened rabbit in a wind tunnel. Stony Sleep need to either respect thier limitations or learn to surpass them. Cable present a united satorial front in scalpel-sharp mohair suits, have thier name spelt out behind them in illuminated lettering, and eminate an aura of barely restrained ultra-violence. All psycho-sonics, stropped-up smouldering and mind-mashing moodiness, they take rock traditionalism into a discreet back alley and give them a good thrashing. The resultant amalgam of explosive amphetamine swagger and biting, raw-riffing realism is so far in your face that it's virtually behind you. The hammering coda of the magnificent "Oubliette" is preceded by a set of purest adrenaline, so get hooked up to Cable at your earliest possible opportunity.