Tonight at Madame Jojo's however it's early doors in every sense of the word: for the former Your Twenties bass slinger it's the first time he's taken to the stage following the full announcement of his eagerly anticipated debut long-player, the vaguely eponymous Nazca Lines, and it's only eight bloody thirty. Puzzlement ensues therefore as the sparse assembly sprawled sparingly across Jojo's lower abdomen seem to be locked in ceaseless battle with the niggling urge to yawn and the open upkeep of recalcitrant eyelids, as if having mistakenly stumbled down the stairs from any of Soho's multitudinous salacious neighbouring establishments.
If Lovett too is seemingly in a somewhat reticent and retiring state, musically, it's pretty uproarious for a Tuesday: for instance with Okinawa Channels, irrespective of its playful lyrics harnessing the mundanity of figuring out when to leave the office, if the job in question isn't ever to go anywhere the forthcoming single, conversely, whizzes along like a vintage Ford smeared into a stream of bedazzling colour, reminiscent of Metronomy's daftly undervalued Pip Paine (Pay the £5000 You Owe) as it hurtles off towards a polychromatic, CS-60-strewn sunset. Inordinately more Mustang than Fiesta, there's an immensely glistening sheen to that which we're tonight afforded, a sound that's pristine, precise, almost perfect in pitch and clarity. If scrabbling for criticism upon which to construct, Lovett's conjured sound is perhaps a little too spanking, consequently eradicating most dissonance, rendering the sound devoid of roughage to add bump to the adrenaline-boosted ride.
Indeed however in plain white tees spasmodically plastered in rudimentary projections, the parallel between clans Lovett and Mount grows increasingly, exponentially, perhaps dangerously: the metronomic skronk of Moonlit Car Chase drives all too close to The Look, while the fidgety bass octaves employed throughout emulate those that jolt Heartbreaker into arresting action. Similarly (if inspiritingly) it's the compulsively engaging combination of enticing, inviting bass thrum and thuds of snare enwrapped in hoodie along with John Stanier-styled cymbal that propulses the show and the energy of. Inevitably perhaps, the endearing personification of inanimate object that swizzles throughout Compass Points provides the moment, the melody that sticks tonight as Lovett's cupid-esque guide leads him factually/fictitiously towards inescapable attraction, to an anonymous individual, and it in turn draws we ever closer to he.
