The King Blues – Concorde 2, Brighton 28/03/2011

A confession: we’re late to The King Blues’ party, having somehow missed the original wave of guerrilla gigging, righteous shoutery and eventual Radio 1 playlist residency that showed up on less attention-deficient pop-cultural radars a couple of years back. So tonight comes as something of a shock, for a few reasons.

First, the punks! The sort of mohawked, keychained, tattooed old-skool headbangers not seen since that postcard of London your gran sent you in 1983. There are loads of ‘em here, and they’re intriguingly, gratifyingly young. There are a lot of pushing-50s present too, presumably attracted by TKB singer Jonny ‘Itch’ Fox’s easy way with a vaguely insurrectionary soundbite, perhaps calling to mind cider-fuzzed memories of Rotten and Pursey in their phlegm-drenched prime.

Second, the passion! We’re about the only people out of the 600-odd in the room who don’t know every word to every song – old, new and from as-yet unreleased new album Punk & Poetry. So opener ‘We Are Fucking Angry’ – also seen writ large on countless “Frankie Say”-style tees tonight – becomes a hymn for the pissed off, a communal unlove-in, and an undeniably glorious holler-along indeed. The unaffected bellowing agreement at key points during a bravely a capella ‘Five Bottles of Shampoo’ gives the cynics pause for thought as well.

Third, the ska! Do not be afraid, dear reader. It’s gone three decades since ska was “rescued” from Jamaica and put in its rightful place by a bunch of skankers from Camden and Coventry, and – given the requisite kick up the jacksy by US punks in the mid-‘90s – it’s in fine fettle in Brighton today. There’s a man literally hanging from the literal rafters. You don’t see that at a Beach House show.

Lead ukulele isn’t an easy look to pull off, especially when your shtick sits somewhere between Billie-Joe Armstrong and Mike Skinner, but Itch wrests the instrument from the tweecore and reinvents it as a teeny-tiny extension of Woody Guthrie’s Fascist-killing guitar. The polemic continues with the intro to the proper class-of-’78 ska of ‘The Streets Are Ours’, in reference to the recent March for the Alternative in London: “We’re told that this generation don’t give a fuck, don’t care about nothing, only care about Facebook – and then we saw thousands of kids on the street on Saturday!” Cue ecstatic roars of approval.

“Granddad didn’t vote for Fascists – he shot ‘em!” goes the chorus of funny, shouty new clap-along, er, ‘Shooting Fascists’, and we find ourselves feeling simultaneously proud that a gauche but earnest new generation (“the last of the dreamers”, as Itch self-identifies) seems to be picking up where the last wave of politicised grebo idealists – PWEI, The Levellers, Chumbawamba et al – left off, and sad that it’s apparently once again necessary to take up instruments to fight the right.

It’s doubly saddening to know that the last bunch actually didn’t achieve much, on paper at least. But they did help create a climate where young people talked politics and prejudice at gigs and beyond, and it’s some consolation that even those who didn’t care for the crusty likes of Back to the Planet, Credit to the Nation and Senser (whose bouncy ire could be detected in tonight’s main support, Sonic Boom Six) in the early ‘90s were still generally pleased to have someone around, kicking up a stink. The same should be true today.

Mainstream fame will likely continue to elude The King Blues, but the underground suits them. Will a band who sound to all intents and purposes like a deft backstreet splicing of Blink 182 and Carter USM – indeed, the chorus of ‘My Boulder’ is a flagrant lift from the latter’s ‘Do Re Mi So Far So Good’ – ever find themselves performing in front of a former Prime Minister on The Andrew Marr Show, as Polly Harvey did recently? Doubtful. But using time-honoured rebel folk tactics of attaching socio-political lyrics to well-worn melodies is a smart move (‘I Got Love’ steals liberally from Tracy Chapman’s ‘Talkin’ ‘Bout A Revolution’, even).

Laudably, they’ve dodged the bullet of dubious under-achieving “cred” by writing rabble-rousing, catchy pop-punk songs from the get-go, so don’t be too shocked if The King Blues turn out to be 2011’s surprise festival hits. It’s amazing what an “absolutely pathetic” government does to inspire the youth into independent thought – not to mention a monster circle moshpit. All The King Blues need is a well-placed Plan B guest rap and they’ve got a whole new audience of minds to crack open.

We live in vain hope that a huge UK act like Dizzee Rascal, whose ‘Bonkers’ TKB are known to play live, or Tinie Tempah or even Mumford & Sons might one day deign to address the public mood in song – despite the suspicion that they’re closet Cameroons to a man. But whether or not that ever happens, The King Blues (and The Agitator, The Indelicates, Frank Turner etc) will do much to fill the gap – and TKB are hella fun.