The Czars

It was billed as a "fanzine friendly" night and the lineup didn't disappoint. The Wave room (tonight at least consisting of Hamish Mackintosh, main man at the Czars' Bella Union label, an acoustic guitar and a CD player) kicked the evening off with a brief warm-up set. Some dreamy acoustic and ever-so-slightly slushy songs followed, occasionaly augmented by the more complex electronic arrangements of his absent backing band.

Tram built on this with a brilliant set of their trademark hypnotic lo-fi grooves... Seeing them live, hypnotic seemed the best word to describe their steady rhythmic soundscapes with dreamy vocals, layers of guitar and keyboard. A sleepy sound at its best, which sometimes built up into intense but carefully controlled periods of noise.

The Czars were the focus of a lot of attention on the night - after supporting the clearly inferior David Gray on his UK tour, they finally had a show of their own to headline. The choice of such a small venue, while intimate, was perhaps a little restrictive - their set was cut short at 40 minutes long despite both the band and the audience calling for more. They made the most of it though, with a brilliant collection of their smoky intense country-tinged lo-fi songs. The didn't play much from their recent album, Before but longer, but the songs they did play, "Val" and "Any younger" had an extra edge to them live, covering John Grant's powerful clear sounding voice with swathes of intense lo-fi rock, cutting basslines and melodic inflections. Their sound lives on a knife edge between beautifully simple songwriting and a heavy, darkly ambient post-rock guitar sound. Their appeal seems hard to ignore - dedicated lo-fi followers, indie fans looking for something a little different, and devotees of some of the older country artists who's influences are hiding behind their intensely original lo-fi sound should all find something interesting in the Czars.