Darren Hayman Live: In Which We Get Over-Excited and Bounce Until Our Ankles Hurt Before Feeling Guilty About Our Obsession Wth Image

If artslondon gave the impression here that we were anything other than in complete love with the live act that is Darren Hayman and the Secondary Modern then we wholeheartedly apologise. It could be that we're spoilt from the sheer quantity of gigs he plays in London. It might be that making lazy-journalist style jokes aout his appearance is an easy cop out. Or even that the over-use of banjo and ukelele in some of the past gigs has rather grated on us.

But last night's gig at the Luminaire was an absolute treat. And he's not actually that odd looking really. And as a speccy, odd looking skinny type, artslondon shouldn't really criticise other speccy, odd looking skinny types. In fact, dressed in a blazer as he is tonight, he has a certain kind of rough charm.

But there we go again, talking about the look and forgetting to mention the music. Since Darren swapped the lovely Amos and co. for the rockier Secondary Modern bunch, his live performances have improved dramatically. He finally has a band that can do justice to the rockier Hefner songs and breathe new life into French songs like Porn Shoes and Gabriel in the Airport.

"I know how to judge an audience and that look you just gave me was saying "Please stop playing the Hefner songs and play one of the ones off the new album"". Darren does like to toy with his audience and made quite an effort to stir up an atmosphere by orchestrating a guitar-violin duel between two members of the band. Meanwhile the new songs sound great and artslondon has fallen in love with Art and Design, a song about forbidden love between two teachers, one of whom may just be Mr. Hayman himself.

The only fault was that it was all just too short.
The only bonus being that its lateness meant that artslondon ended up seeing both the support acts. The Wave Pictures were excellent and seemed to have a large fan contingent in attendance. It was the second time we've seen My Sad Captains (see opposite) and although in terms of appearance they resemble a sort of lo-fi Mcfly (a band member to suit every taste) they play perfect indie pop that just doesn't sound all that great on record yet. Check out first single Bad Decisions here if you don't believe us. There's a great song there fighting to get out.

In fact, the whole evening was suffocatingly Indie Pop. Which is fine every once in a while. Let's just say we had fun. And that we won't be so blasé next time Darren announces a London gig in a small-mid sized London venue.