NEAT NEAT NEAT
I turned it off and turned it on again. I booted and rebooted and trawled the internet on my lethargic laptop looking for solutions, but still the damned Blue Screen wouldn't go away.
No amount of pleading and threatening and hitting it with a tree branch à la Basil Fawlty worked either. Mulrenan The Computer (named after my old English teacher, who I suspect Microsoft modelled their grammar checker on) was dead. It was an ex-PC.
So that was Sunday morning. Still gingerly recovering from Man Cold. And now a nervous tech wreck. Disconsolately I picked up a pile of demos from the floor, found The Neat's CD (see last post) and in the last act of a desperate man slung it into the player, prepared for yet more misery.
And yet! Hell! On! Earth! The Neat - at the very point where I was about to throw in the towel - come to save the day! Did the Gods of Blue Screen plan this?
To recap: a member of The Neat produced a copy of their demo CD from down the front of his trousers at last week's Favours For Sailors gig. It then haunted the pocket of my coat for a couple of days, dressed in its rubbish Xerox and biro sleeve, and finally ended up in the demo mountain by my desk.
And all the time it was hiding three tracks (well, two and a half really, because one is a remix of track two) which conjure up comparisons with a latter-day Fall jousting with the XX Teens. The drums pound along mercilessly, while the sinewy guitar sounds like it's been exhumed from 1979 and the dry staccato vocals stab mantras through the flailing body. Track one Carmex is good, but track two Counteract is even better (with its Mr Beaseley remix to follow).
And if that wasn't enough, come Tuesday, still Cold and Blue, I fall hopelessly head over heels for Goldheart Assembly. This is even more disturbing. Four of the five of them have beards.
First on at your standard Tuesday night pub gig in Camden, GHA - like The Neat - have a retro engine, but - like The Neat - they're not simply content to recreate someone else's blueprint. They take a joyous acoustic beardy bunch of ideas and mess around with them like a cat playing with a ball of string.
Already you could easily put them out on tour supporting Fleet Foxes or The Low Anthem (now there's an idea). And they smile at each other on stage - which is so out of character for new bands these days (unless it's a nervous tick) that it's actually quite infectious. A Friend I Trust, who's standing next to me, points out that, although they've mastered the loud-quiet axis of their set, they don't have the fast-slow dynamic quite right yet (which is true, but really we're just looking for holes to pick in them to stop ourselves getting carried away and proposing to them at the bar later).
They really are very good. Which makes it doubly annoying the following morning when I log on to their website to listen to their demos, which simply - as yet - don't convey the exuberance and sorrow of the songs. They're still worth a listen though - maybe start with Going Down Well, which gets them close.
But better still they tour in March. I'm imagining in a camper van. So that's both Neat and tidy.
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