millionreasons | The Great Indie Pop Swindle

After a horrible Thursday of weather, work and tube and an almost-as-bad Friday when the front door lock finally crumbles my key, leaving me homeless, the stress adrenaline seems to rouse the latent energy within and I go out to the Dalston-based alt. Coffee- table books publisher Headpress’s launch party for two new titles, complete with limitless free beer and wine, cheesecakes with Too Salty, Too Sweet and Just Right cocoa-ed onto them, some 60s garage dancing, a man who thinks the cheesecakes are laced with speed, a film about a small northern city which features the “Brandfield” Camcorder club with shorts made by fat home-porn stars, a Ripperologist, an abattoir, Mike’s Carpets, a cage fighter, a tattooist-cum-pet shop owner who sells dead rats by size, a D&D organiser and an army recruitment centre. It’s all acted (by “James Spader” and “Maggie Gyllenhaal”, amongst others) and rivals the League of Gentleman for weird northern eccentrics which the Londoners can laugh at in an arty environment.

And then, proving that every bad time has a bit of silver glitter in it, or that London is serendipitous, or that the capital is a very small place, the second band come on and are fronted by the small Ferry-esque boy we last saw in silver high heels playing the heck out of a piano in the Strange Fruit fave and Fosca-supporters, My Private Life. The new band is a bit more glam rock but the posing and the voice and the keyboard are still there, so you know, everything’s OK.