GIG REPORT: Slow Club @ the Union Chapel

A couple of months ago I read the following message on Twitter:

Everyone. Listen to ‘When I Go’ by Slow Club. Right now.

Like you, I do everything the internet tells me to. So I fired up Spotify and played the song. It was good. I listened to it again. And again. Then I bought the album. And the other album. And then a gig ticket.

Which is how I came to be sitting in a church pew at quarter to nine on a Monday night, wiggling my freezing toes and coveting my neighbour’s hot chocolate.

Shivering aside, the Union Chapel seemed like the perfect venue for this band. I hadn’t looked forward to a gig this much since I saw Pulp in Hyde Park, and my devotion to Pulp borders on the religious. When we were thirteen my friends and I listened to Different Class so much we literally knew it backwards, and when I moved to London and found out Bar Italia was a real place, well, you should have seen me.

I wondered what Slow Club would play first. Fast one? Sad one? New one? Old one?

Nine o’clock came. They took the stage. They stepped right up to the mics and slung their guitars. The room fell quiet. And two voices in perfect harmony floated out and up into the chapel:

Oh we were born within an hour of each other
Our mothers said we could be sister and brother…

THEY ONLY WENT AND DID AN A CAPELLA VERSION OF ‘DISCO 2000’.

It was an impossibly perfect beginning. Of course, it got better.

Here’s the thing about Slow Club: more than any band I’ve ever seen, they look like they’re enjoying themselves. Rebecca grins and shimmys and pumps the kick drum like there is nowhere on earth she would rather be. She takes the piss out of Charles tuning his guitar, and he takes the piss out of her jokes, and they both mock the drummer mercilessly when he sets off the wrong button on the sampler.

I spent a good half the night staring at the man on bass and saxophone. Five or six years ago I was watching Jeffrey Lewis in a little club in Cardiff.  On first was an act called Sweet Baboo, and to this day they’re the only support band I’ve seen who were so good I bought the EP on the spot.

That bassist looked awfully familiar. 

 

Ahem. Coincidence is a funny thing.

So they played ‘If We’re Still Alive’ and the stamping feet became a threat to the floorboards. They played ‘Hackney Marsh’ and it was just as bittersweet and fragile as I hoped it’d be. They played ’Beginners’ and I want to say I loved it but I suspect it’s just that the opening reminds me of Peter Cooke & Dudley Moore doing Alan A’Dale. (This is not necessarily a complaint.)

There was a funny sort of segue between ‘Where I’m Waking’ and ‘You, Earth Or Ash’. Rebecca tried to explain it.
“So there’s this…actually I don’t think I can tell that joke.”
“You told it the other night.”
“Yeah, but our parents are in the audience”  

In the end we took to our feet for ‘Giving Up On Love’ (I defy you not to do the same) and stayed standing for an encore of festive tunes. I never thought I could enjoy ‘All Alone on Christmas’ so much. And where’s the campaign to make this number one on December 25?

 

 

It’s not the first time Slow Club have played the Chapel at this time of year. “We’ll probably keep doing it until the place is half full,” said Rebecca, “and they’re only asking us back because they feel sorry for us,”

Never was there a band less in need of divine assistance.

You can find out more about Slow Club over here. This blog post is the fault of @machecazzodici, as was my attendance at the gig. Follow her with your internets.

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