Gig review: Mindless Self Indulgence, Edinburgh

PUNK’S not dead, according to the spectacle which unfolded here, it seems it just stopped taking itself so seriously. Formed in New York in 1997, Mindless Self Indulgence are fronted by 44-year-old Jimmy Urine (real name James Euringer), a man with a shock of spiked white-blonde hair and a pentagram on the front of his T-shirt. Such a look is old-fashioned schlock rock silliness, but the youthful crowd got off on his cartoonish persona, which was nine parts clowning to one dash of nasty.

Mindless Self Indulgence look great, but sounded like plenty of other punk-pop groups. Picture: Facebook

Mindless Self Indulgence - Liquid Room, Edinburgh

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The quartet are very hard to take seriously, but this is what gives them their strength. The bearded Steve, Righ? (aka Steve Montano) is your typical black-clad guitar-batterer, but there were eye-catching and distinctive turns from Lyn-Z (Lindsay Ann Way, nee Ballato – wife of My Chemical Romance singer Gerard Way, born in Dunoon and possessed of the singular ability to hold a backflip midway while still playing) and drummer Kitty (Jennifer Dunn), a riot of feathers, eyeshadow and sequins.

They looked great, but they sounded merely like plenty of other transatlantic punk-pop groups of a late-90s vintage, albeit with a meaty synth edge and some crunching guitar action from Steve and Lyn-Z, notably on the closing Bitches and the encore Straight to Video. “They f***in’ love opera here,” rambled Euringer after one particularly high-note in an overblown repertoire of many. “It’s us, Brahms, Rachmaninov, who’s the other one? Falco.” Perhaps more convincing was his mime to Vera Lynn’s We’ll Meet Again as he left the stage.