Gig review: The New Blood tour

Published on Monday 14 September 2009 19:02

THE NEW BLOOD TOUR *** BONGO CLUB, EDINBURGH

"THE last time we played the Bongo Club," said Michael M, frontman of Glasgow's We Are The Physics, "there were even less people here. Personal triumph!" At this, his fists were raised aloft in ironic exultation. This Edinburgh leg of the branded and nationally-touring New Blood jaunt suffered through its placing on a quiet Sunday night in Edinburgh's post-Festival, pre-freshers' week lull. Many local faces were in attendance, but the turnout was still pretty flimsy.

With the Lion Club having pulled out before the show, WATP found themselves playing between Leeds' Televised Crimewave and Stockton-On-Tees' Chapman Family. The Yorkshire outfit won't constitute "new blood" to anyone who saw them play this same venue almost a year and a half ago, but their ragged indie-punk sound is suitably spiky and excited for a show whose purpose is to draw in a fresh-faced audience. "Never get a career, never get a job," says singer Daniel Wilson, strolling through the sparse crowd and geeing up a sense of provincial communality, "and never, ever, ever move to London".

Most pleasingly, this show proved a degree of life beyond the production line that is the NME Tour brand, although the noisy, emotional Chapmans are alumni of that school. Freed from the accompanying noise and hype, they're a band to root for – imagine Editors with the Coldplay dull edges removed. But not, however, the equal of WATP, whose flurry of power-nerd energy and breathless, endearing gimmickry (featuring synchronised high fives and extended mid-riff pauses) is even more admirable before such an undeservedly thin audience.