Coves strive to prove that three is the magic number at Birthdays in London

It must be hard being a two-piece. Sure, you’ll only ever have to fight one other for the premium strength lager on the rider, but it just leaves you with so much to do. Particularly for a band like Coves, who make the sort of racket that seems dense enough to require a battalion of musicians to recreate outside of the studio. But they don’t. They just need one other. So their normal boy-girl formation is only augmented by a single extra pair of hands on percussion, delivered in Mo Tucker upright style.

Although for the first few numbers, you do wonder if they would have benefitted from some additional assistance. During the opening Coves lose the battle against the members of the crowd who are apparently desperate to complete their conversations. Rebekah Wood’s voice is lost, muffled and buried, the drums beat hollow, and John Rigards squalling guitar seems more of a light drizzle.

Things do pick up. About mid-way through, marked by their languid cover of Chris Isaak’s ‘Wicked Game’, which does remains a slow-motion deconstruction of the highest quality, either through an increase of volume or sheer will (or both) they begin to swell. Then it gets closer to capturing that which they displayed on record, that giddiness inducing skuzzily dreamy blend of noise and poise.

It’s a bit of momentum, which gets carried through an ace closing trio of ‘Last Desire’ (throbs like The Velvet Underground), ‘Fall Out Of Love’ (drenched in static like My Bloody Valentine) and ‘No Ladder’ (chimes gloomily like Echo and The Bunnymen). When they run each of those influences through the dispassionate yet desperate yearn of Wood’s vocal, the effect is rather glorious.