MUSIC

Louisiana (Mon 23 Jan)

Support act Man Made arrives on stage wearing the kind of gold sequin jacket that wouldn’t look amiss on a Butlins bingo caller, itself a perfect contradictory statement to the sombre 45-minute set which follows. One man and an electric guitar is a bold move and it works for the most part. Gorgeous, aching riffs combined with some wonderful, if morose, lyricism channelling R.E.M and Placebo in one fell swoop. The nagging, if obvious, feeling though is that it would work so much better with a full band.

Anyway, here they are then. The new saviours of rock and roll (see also The Drums, The Vaccines etc etc). Howler come with a lot of hyped-up luggage – signed to the seminal Rough Trade label, endlessly compared to the Strokes – but by the way they unceremoniously saunter onto stage and steam into the opening track, the weight of expectation is a help rather than a hindrance. And the music is beautifully unadulterated rock. Sometime’s scuzzy, sometimes surfy but always sublime: the noise limiter in the Louis twitches nervously on red as they maraud their way through the majority of new album ‘America Give Up’. The album is good, the live show spectacular, they may just be worthy of the hype. Are they the most important band around at the moment? Maybe, maybe not. But they come as close as is possible to reinvigorate the stolid rock scene. If this is the first step on the ladder, it must be a small ladder; they’re more or less at the top already. (Stuart Roberts)

Copyright Stuart Roberts 2012