CSS
Justice
Metronomy
Brixton Academy, London
Tuesday December 3 2007

It's a curious thought that this is only the third time CSS have played London, and yet their trajectory couldn't be more resolutely upward if you strapped jet packs to every member of the band. Anyone who's familiar with London live music venues will readily note the way CSS just keep on getting booked into bigger places. First time round, they played Dingwalls; second time round they played the Astoria. Now here they are in the Brixton Academy, last stop before the enormodomes. What's going on? Is superstardom beckoning?

Well, maybe. CSS find themselves, by accident or design, in head-on collision with the zeitgeist. At a time when current pop scene is heavily in thrall to angular, weirdo, new-wavey music, in which a certain insistent danceable drive is married to the strange shapes and odd noises of post-punk left-fiedism, CSS are making exactly the right kind of racket. A few years ago, they would've been hard pressed to escape the confines of minor league John Peel show notoriety. Now, they're on course to be pop stars. That zeitgeist is a funny old thing.

Tonight, the zeitgeist is warmed up by some nice, but ultimately undistinguished, indie-dance grooves laid down by Metronomy, who range themselves in line abreast across the front of the stage and trundle amiably through some vaguely rhythmic workouts that never quite grab the attention. A squad of dancers comes on to throw some Egyptian-frieze shapes by way of a finale, but it's as if the band belatedly realised they need to flam up their stage presence a bit, rather than a real idea at work. So, we'll file Metronomy in the 'ho hum' zone, and get ready to get on a rave tip with...

...Justice. Yep, I did say 'get on a rave tip', for Justice deliver a curiously dated batch of hands-in-the-air anthemic instrumentals, of the sort that I thought had died of exposure in a field off the M25 round about 1992. In the traditional Chemical Brothers manner, the bangin' chunes are controlled by a couple of anonymous figures hunched over technology, and dwarfed by a stage set which incorporates spoof technology (lots of black boxes with flashing lights) and spoof backline (piles of empty Marshall cabinets), none of which can conceal the fact that there's no actual show.

OK, OK, I know what you're going to say. It's not about the visuals, it's the music that matters, right? Well, sure, and if the music had the essential 'Kapow!' factor, the fact that we're basically witnessing a DJ set with knobs on wouldn't really matter. But every tune sticks to the same formula - the build-it-up, break-it-down, bring-it-all-crashing-back-in structure which, while effective enough if you're on one, matey, is downright tedious on two pints of Grolsch. Still, at least it enables us to witness the closest thing to visual stimulation that Justice can muster. Every time the music does that 'bring it all crashing back in' thing, a giant cross lights up on stage, which prompts frenzied cheering from the fans. Is this all you have to do to get the kidz excited these days? Switch a bloody light on?

Fortunately, CSS arrive shortly afterwards to show us all how it should be done. Scattered almost randomly around the huge stage, the band perhaps reveal their unfamiliarity with the big venue big league. But they have boundess confidence and a set of squawking, clangourous, oddly-shaped tunes, most of which contrive to sound like Kleenex filtered through Delta Five. Not for the first time, I find myself marvelling at how a band so gloriously post-punkzoid and weird can get within scrabbling distance of genuine stardom these days. Certainly, the crowd, packed tightly all the way to the back, seethes as one as the CSS crew clatter out their fractured weirdpop, and yet I bet if you asked, none of 'em would have ever have heard of Kleenex or Delta Five.

Clad in a fetching array of novelty leotards, lead singer Lovefoxxx (and how, I ask you, can you dislike a band with a lead singer called Lovefoxxx?) bounds around like a Red Bull tester, while the guitars clang and rattle like bundles of tinfoil falling downstairs, and the rhythms heave and jerk. 'Artbitch' is almost a terrace chant, an exercise in yobbo Devo, and there's something undeniably exhilarating about hearing an entire Brixton Academy's worth of fresh-faced alternopop fans shouting along to such lines as 'Suck, suck suck my art hole!' Ah, there's nothing like a jaunty singalong number.

Curiously, because at a first listen you wouldn't think it had any partcularly rabble-rousing qualities, it's 'Let's Make Love And Listen To Death From Above' that really gets the crowd surging and moshing, a sea of movement that threatens to rock the dear old Academy off its foundations. Somehow, CSS have hit the hot button marked 'pogo frenzy' in everyone's heads, and the fact that they've done it while still displaying all the unselfconscious gaucherie of a youth club project, not to mention the unfettered enthusiasm for The Weird that usually only comes after a lengthy musical apprenticeship at the feet of John Peel, makes their achievement all the more remarkable. Grab that zeitgeist, kids, and make it dance.

Essential Links:

CSS: Website | MySpace
Justice: Website | MySpace
Metronomy: MySpace