We Are Scientists + Hot Club De Paris

Hot Club de Paris warm up the crowd nicely enough with their bass-heavy, indie rock. In any other venue they'd be a bright light on the leftfield but against the Californian insanity to come, they just look like another identikit band of dour northerners filling the time until the main event.

Call We Are Scientists a novelty act and you might not be wrong, but there's a lot more to them than amusing facial hair, lab coats and silly glasses. If you haven't already signed up to their fan club it may be because most of this comes over much more strongly in their live act than it does on record - from the chutzpah of coming onstage by segueing into the PA system's Against All Odds (yes, the Phil Collins one) to the unrelenting banter between frontman Keith Murray and bassist Chris Cain, WAS can put on a stage show to rival Kylie. Not bad for three blokes who look like the kind of nerds most indie kids who are too cool to be bullies have spent their lives desperately trying to ignore.

Whether you like their music or not, WAS are great fun live. They bicker like schoolboys, make rude jokes to the audience, argue about the merits of glittery silver hats and plough through a storming set consisting of their album With Love And Squalor in its entirety, sprinkled with a smattering of what you'll get on their DVD, B-sides and rarities collection Crap Attack. There's also a new song, Tonight Tonight, and the so-far-unreleased Best Behaviour.

Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt is as great a sing-along moshpit favourite as ever and The Great Escape is given a boost (not that it needs one) by help from Editors guitarist Chris Urbanowicz.

For a band that's at such an early stage of its career, this is a fantastically accomplished set. Its only downside, you may think, is that playing everything they have leaves no room for an encore. You'd be wrong, because if you've got the tongue-in-cheek genius of We Are Scientists behind you, when you've exhausted everything you have, you'll just dig into the Oxfam bargain bin and pull out the first embarrassing decade-old school disco tune you can find and reinvent it to round off the evening.

And so WAS are back, handing lead vocals over to drummer Michael Tapper as they once again croon over the backing tapes, this time to the Boyz II Men hit End Of The Road for a triumphant farewell. Urbanowicz and Hot Club de Paris join them for the final bow as the audience sways its arms in unison and sings along enthusiastically to a song the Brixton faithful would never dare admit to liking outside of the confines of this inner sanctum. It's fun and it's fresh. Even if you don't think you're a fan, catch them live once, just for the hell of it.

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