Heavenly Recordings 18th Birthday – Southbank Centre, London 12/09/08

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Heavenly Recordings have come of age, and to celebrate the occasion they took over the Southbank Centre for a weekend of events that brought together a host of their acts, past and present. On Friday, the buzz was all about Doves first live show in a while (well: not counting a warm up in Oxford last Thursday), preceded by a special set from The Manic Street Preachers - special in that it was advertised to consist solely of the nine songs recorded when they were with the label back in the day. But that was all happening upstairs controlled by tickets and requiring cold hard cash. Downstairs in the ballroom (no wonder they were so quick to mop up any spilt beer to avoid a warped floor) Heavenly had generously laid on a parallel free night of entertainment featuring new kids Beggars, the reformed 22-20s, and (my main interest) Ed Harcourt.

Beggars

But before all that, a brief mention for openers the Dulwich Ukulele Club. Actually I was quite in the mood for a burst of When I’m Cleaning Windows, but they had a much more contemporary take on life in sarf London over Latin and ska beats.

James Girdler from Beggars

Reading’s Beggars are completely new to me. They’ve got impeccable influences (see their MySpace page) and they sure are purdy, but they lacked that hint of menace that a rock band should cultivate and initial impressions were of a Cuban-heeled prep-school version of The View / The Coral. However, their Beatles Paperback Writer era beat combo rock was intelligently constructed with catchy melodies, nicely matched sibling harmonies, and performed with joyous passion to make it undeniably infectious live. It was a free night out after all, so I was ultimately won over. So, they’re good enough to make it big – they’ve just got to fight to get their head and shoulders above the rest of the jostle of young bands out there. They may be the new Libertines for the current crop of teenagers if they can just practice snarling in front of the mirror from time to time. They’ll be all over the UK in October, so you can make your own mind up.

Time was dragging between sets. It was understandable and well organised in that the downstairs entertainment was timed to coincide with the necessary stage breaks upstairs, and all the better for those punters and to ensure a good crowd for the acts in the ballroom; but had I known in advance it would have been debatable whether I would have turned up tonight. I had arrived at the advertised start time of 6pm expecting it to be all over before the main show started. Later troubles with a monitor and waiting for Doves to finish meant that Ed Harcourt didn’t start until at least 10:15 – though by then I had given up checking my watch.

22-20s Reformed

The 22-20s were the nearly men with their take on a more bluesy Britpop a few years back, admirably splitting rather than continuing to go through the motions of musical stagnation with leader Martin Trimble declaring he was “no longer comfortable with people’s perception of what we represent”. Reformed specially for the night, Trimble admitted to having been dying to play, so perhaps this was the start of a more permanent reunion. Who knows? They’ll be getting a few quid out of the new RockNRolla soundtrack anyway that features Such A Fool. Louder, and with that certain something to their stage presence that Beggars lacked, they played a throbbing set that kept a small coterie of long-time fans at the front very happy. But at the same time they appeared more world-weary than the exuberant youngsters, and the songs seemed strangely one dimensional for someone who had complained of not being allowed to move on musically. Or, that might have been exactly the point of the problem if this set was just a trip down memory lane. Only closer Devil in Me really got my pulse racing when they found top gear at last with the end of their long anticipated gig in sight and a bit more venom in the delivery. Perhaps it was just me – a long night at the end of a long tiring week.

I was feeling decidedly grumpy by the time Ed Harcourt and his band took to the stage. This was to be largely a canter through his best of release from last year – Until Tomorrow Then, and that was fine by me, since that was the late awakening of my interest in this great singer/songwriter. His performance steadily chipped away at my mood, and songs like the lovely lilting This Ones For You, Black Dress, and Fireflies Take Flight finally had me glad I had stuck it out, despite the fact that the stage changes and fixed lighting rig meant that Ed spent half his time in the dingy shadows at his keyboard practically facing away from the audience. Many a few rows back with too much beer were annoyingly chatty too. The band were harder rocking than I anticipated on tracks like Born In The Seventies, especially when Ed joined them on second guitar, and there were nice and necessary additions to the musical palette by part-time violin and trumpet players. A request for Watching The Sun Come Up from a gaggle of fan girls (but not in a creepy way) was acknowledged and later played as the sole encore – unexpectedly and most welcomely squeezed in as by now it was very late indeed.

Saint Etienne, Beth Orton, and Nada Surf were among those due on Saturday and Sunday. Something similar is happening in Manchester in mid October. It was a long drawn out affair, but gift horses and mouths and all that, so happy birthday Heavenly Recordings!

Ed Harcourt on MySpace
Ed Harcourt Official Site
Beggars on MySpace
Beggars Official Site