Plastiscines, Eight Legs at Camden Barfly, 17 November 2009

Plastiscines

Tonight we’re off to cherchez les femmes. Dans Le Barfly in Camden.

However before we get to see the hotly-tipped Gallic gals who are headlining, we are invited to shake ourselves to Eight Legs.

This four piece have a great deal going for them. They have a succession of decent, catchy songs and a lively stage presence. They have a preening guitarist who tosses his hair and makes the girls squeal. They have a singer who cannot sing.

If front man Sam Jolly has the best set of pipes in the band, I’d surely hate to hear the others. Almost every song is robbed of about half its greatness by being barked out in a stone flat Billy Bragg honk. That this doesn’t stop Eight Legs being a damn fine band is testament to the talent that they possess, but sheesh, talk about fog horns.

And now here come the girls. Not as a drunken hen party accessorised with cheap cosmetics but as the proficient garage rock of the deliciously French Plastiscines.

The crowd go ape. In fact a small section of the audience are so rowdy and pain in the arse that it is hard to concentrate on the band, because of the possibility of having to wade in and settle their hash. However, eventually they calm down to within tolerable levels and equilibrium is reached.

The band rattles their way through a set that leans heavily on their new album ‘About Love’. Like many all-girl bands of a mock-combative nature they have a song about a ‘Bitch’. All their material is of a good standard, but none of it completely stands out. To be honest, if they weren’t drop dead gorgeous (singer Katty Besnard is going to be on the front cover of every magazine that writes about them), I doubt that they would garner more than minimal interest.

But they are fun and they make the right kind of noise and I’m not going to be churlish about them. Particularly after an encore in which they drag every girl in the place onstage for one final tumultuous pile-up of ‘Bitch’.

Vive le France. Vive le Difference!