When The Beta Band called time on their up-and-down but never less than interesting career, I was just as intrigued to see what John Maclean (decks, keys) and Robin Jones (drums) would do next as I was to see what Steve Mason could come up with when left to his own devices. As we all know now, Mason grew disinterested with music pretty much as soon as he cut his King Biscuit Time debut, but John and Robin decided to pal up with another maverick frontman, Gordon Anderson aka Lone Pigeon.
Tonight's gig leads me to think that they shouldn't have bothered. John, the electronics master and Robin, the funky drummer are left pandering to Anderson's every flower-power whim, which leads to most of tonight's gig being a mess of muddied sonics and overly histrionic fret-wankery, with the odd bleep, glitch and break thrown in at the sake of eclecticism.
Erratic doesn't begin to cover it and Anderson does not help matters, wittering away between songs, telling bad jokes and generally stilting any momentum they might achieve. On record, the musical magpie effect is often pleasing and at the very least charming, but live it's just frustrating. Doubly so, when you realise that The Aliens do have quite a few really good songs. 'Only Waiting' is buried under wig-out excess and 'Ionas (Look For Space)' could do with being stripped of about five minutes of directionless noodling.
Things pick up at the end with a chunky 'Robot Man', a rowdy 'The Happy Song' and an edifying 'Rox', but it's too little, too late. Maclean and Jones need to ditch the Pigeon and make with the beats. Then things might start to get really out-of-this-world.
http://www.highvoltage.org.uk/displaydemoreview.asp?num=2725&band=1642
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