Live Review

Hot Hot Heat – Academy 2, Manchester

• 21st Nov 2007

The accepted gig dynamic is as follows; support act comes on, does its thing and then is royally blown off the stage by the strutting headliners and their tour-de-force set of anthemic crowd-pleasers and rabble-rousing tunes that send the assembled throng into fits of loud, raucous praise. Well not tonight…

On this cold November evening Hot Hot Heat come racing out of the blocks with all the frenetic enthusiasm of a lame donkey and continue to stutter and misfire their way through a set more memorable for its camp theatrics and excessively tight jeans than its musicianship. Its only when the Heat roll out the heavy artillery and play Bandages in all its rusty, “this-song-was-pretty-good-four-years-ago” glory, that the crowd actually get moving. There probably worried they might strain something, after all it is about minus 20 in here and the ironically titled Hot Hot Heat are offering little by the way of warmth.

The Thirst, on the other hand, play with the vigour of the band who are not resting on the dubious laurels of once having a hit single. The sibling tag-team of brothers Mensah and Kwame Cofi-Agyeman prowl the stage like feral wolves as childhood friends Marcus and Mark complete the formidable lineup with considerable aplomb. A young band with bags of confidence and the chops to match, The Thirst make the stage their own and set about staking their claim on the great things that are sure to come their way.

Expect them to do the same when their support slot with The Sex Pistols takes them to even bigger stages and venues over the coming weeks. Watch this space, the Thirst is far from quenched.