Gig review: Kitty, Daisy & Lewis

FAMILY group Kitty, Daisy & Lewis are an experienced bunch of players with half a lifetime's dedication to the music of the 1930s, 40s and 50s. They are aged 18, 20 and 22 respectively.

Encouraged by their parents from an early age to pick up instruments and play together, the trio gravitated to the nascent sounds of rock'n'roll and the musical genres which informed this rabid young mongrel. So complete is their immersion that the group looked like they had just dropped in from a tiki jazz club in the 50s.

Dad Graeme and mum Ingrid stuck to rhythm guitar and double bass but their precocious spawn are all talented multi-instrumentalists who swapped about during their set, stalling any momentum they built up on individual numbers.

While this was not the slickest operation, it was infectious. Any old-school genre was fair game as their set encompassed rhythm'n'blues, jazz, ska, country, swing – even country swing. The common thread, it emerged, was danceability. K,D&L are all about the groove, which would explain why their one foray into the post-1960 musical landscape – the cool, assured jazz funk track Messing With My Life – hinged on a tight-but-loose Nile Rodgers-style rhythmic guitar riff.

So lovingly accurate is their pastiche that it was a hard job to spot the difference between their original songs, such as ska tunes I'm So Sorry and Tomorrow – for which they were joined by veteran Jamaican trumpeter Eddie "Tan Tan" Thornton – and the occasional cover. Recent single I'm Going Back shared much DNA with their version of Canned Heat's Going Up The Country, featuring Daisy and Kitty hunched over a snare drum, sharing the microphone in primitive family harmony.