Broken Records – Hoxton Bar & Kitchen, London 28/09/2010

-

It’s a Tuesday night in the fashionable side of east London, and The Hoxton Bar and Kitchen is buzzing with the young and stylish. Venture further though, past the packed tables into the dark back-room where Edinburgh’s Broken Records are soon to play, and the atmosphere is very different. When we enter – not particularly early – the room is noticeably quiet, filled only with a few people, the vast majority of which seem to have consumed far too much alcohol for the time of night, and are considerably older than those at the bar.

The support act - Daniel Lefkowitz – shakily takes to the stage to introduce himself and order the crowd to ‘stop sweating – I’m not a pedophile’, but his impassioned and simple man + guitar folk grabs interest and gets the night off to good start.

Broken Records themselves enter to a much fuller room, comfortably slipping into their powerful opener. The band have streamlined from seven to six for tonight, but it’s hard to imagine how another member would fit on the small stage anyway, and the indie-folk-rock feels no less full. If the mysterious, melancholy parts of the set can feel a little starved, we know they are meant to be so when the driving, frantic and unashamedly Scottish crescendos kick in. Instruments are constantly swapped through out the long and varied set, and all seem equally accomplished on everything, but somehow it feels that this is just a little bit for show.

Nevertheless, an encore is wholeheartedly demanded by the more enthusiastic members of the crowd and for the first song Jamie Sutherland plays pretty much solo. ‘I’ve never played this one live before’ he admits before starting, but his dark, slow vocals make it feel very personal and the song comes off close to perfect – maybe a highlight of the set. Soon after, the band is gone, and the audience is left to stumble out into the night, not overwhelmed, but certainly well satisfied.