Dolly TV are splendid. They look and sound a bit like Placebo and a bit
like King Adora, but with far, far, far more poise, attitude and outright
class than we have any right to expect from either band, or indeed any band
ever. They wear pristine white leatherette suits, they have names like
Jay-TV and Nick Le Citrus, and their guitarist (Nikki Trash)
takes androgyny to new and faintly disturbing extremes. They play seven
songs in 20 minutes. They scream, they yelp, they sneer, they jump around,
they stand very, very, VERY still (whilst pouting), and they do not at any
point look or sound like brickies.
Two of them are linked in the venerable Sheffield Rock Family Tree to the
tremendous (and dead) Venini. It figures: here is another band that
spectacularly defies the ungroovy smalltime indie-band orthodoxy that tells
us exactly how we're not allowed to behave whilst on stage with instruments.
In one sense, they're completely ridiculous, but the sheer flagrancy with
which they do it means that in its own mad way, it's completely perfect.
Ignoring them is not an option. Stand there in horrified, open-mouthed
disbelief if you must (that's your problem), but you cannot go to the bar
while Dolly TV are playing.
"Is there anyone here who likes us a little bit?" queries the singer at one
point. Affirmative cheering from the crowd. "And is there anyone here who
really hates us?" Further affirmative cheering. Hopefully both camps will
grow beyond the confines of the little club in the National Centre for
Popular Music where we saw them tonight. There is no shortage of people out
there who deserve to be thoroughly annoyed by DTV. And a whole load more of
us who just deserve them.
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