Gig review: Fun Lovin' Criminals

Published on Tuesday 9 March 2010 18:08

FUN LOVIN' CRIMINALS *** ABC, GLASGOW

TONIGHT we're going to party like its 1999, because the Fun Lovin' Criminals are back, and it's like… well, it's like they've been remembered for songs they wrote more than a decade ago, to be honest. Yet the girls all remain in love with Huey Morgan and the boys still wish they were half as cool, because this lively show was pretty much a sell-out.

Of course, it helps that the ever-suave Morgan has remained in the spotlight through appearances on BBC Radio 2 and 6 Music, yet it might also be the case that FLC were one of the most unassumingly definitive bands of the 1990s. For those sniggering at the thought, bear in mind that they latched on to the Tarantino-led gangster flick zeitgeist with Scooby Snacks, The Fun Lovin' Criminal and King of New York (the former even sampling Reservoir Dogs), and appropriated the nu-soul style for Love Unlimited and their cover of We Have All the Time in the World. Then again, maybe they're just a fun band offering their fans a nostalgia trip. All of the above were played to wild reactions, while new tracks such as Classic Fantastic and She Stares at the Sun skated over the audience's head, bar the odd amusing set-piece like Leicester-born drummer Frank Benbinis rapping during We, The Three.

An odd telephone skit where the trio conversed with their supposedly cocaine-addled lawyer hinted at what they might have been busy with for the past five years (legal affairs, not drugs), although Morgan's promise that they'll return to festival action this summer suggested a desire to make up for lost time.