Live Review

New To Q – Relentless Garage, London

• 20th May 2010

Tonight’s New To Q show throws up two examples of just what a precarious balancing act being a bands frontperson is.

For Tiffany Page, it’s difficult to recall a female rock artist that haven’t elicited a Courtney, PJ or Chrissie Hynde comparison in recent times. With a backing band who may be eager, but essentially window dressing and differentiated thanks to their haircuts, even more emphasis is then placed on Page’s ability to hold a crowd – and she doesn’t disappoint.

Strutting onstage in LBD (with exposed bra strap for added measure) and mussed-up hair, Page looks every inch the UK Alison Mosshart. Although she spends most of the set disappointly behind a guitar, we begin and end with Page brandishing no more than a mic stand and the results are electric. Luckily, the tunes are that perfect halfway house between rock credibility – she has opened for Hole – and radio friendliness, with acoustic-led new single ‘On Your Head’ currently making waves despite being one of the weaker songs tonight. With a debut album on the way and festival season round the corner – and if she hires another guitarist – Tiffany Page could well see her profile shooting beyond the confines of London’s Relentless Garage fairly soon.

Headliners Detroit Social Club also have a definite focal point. Vocalist David Burn makes all the right shapes, channeling Richard Ashcroft with his constant reaching and swooning. Yet there’s something not quite there in the bands performance. Perhaps its the way that the bassist is shunted so far off into the corner he may as well be offstage. Perhaps its the music, an unchallenging set of trad-indie songs that may be reaching for Velvet Underground-levels of epic, drugged-out drone-rock but in actuality are all fairly forgettable, nothing particularly standing out. And then there’s Burn himself. Yes he’s pulling shapes, but it’s at the expense of the rest of his band, and seems to be more for his own benefit than for the audience’s.

Interviews with the singer have seen him give himself the Jez-from-Peep Show-esque label of ‘Vibe Creator’ rather than songwriter, and although you wish he was joking, the evidence tonight is that he couldn’t have been more serious. Perhaps on record they’re a better proposition – like Razorlight when Borrell can be heard but not seen – but on the basis of tonight’s show Detroit Social Club are too busy playing at being rock stars to focus on being a band.