Remember when going to a gig left you feeling dirty afterwards? The sweat dripping off of you, your glasses knocked from your face, beer thrown around, and stinking like a cigarette factory? Well, tonight featured a return to those times (minus the cigarette smell) when Londonist went to see Idlewild at ULU in London.

Choosing to save us the (occasional) torture of a support band, they decided to support themselves, playing two sets, first of all an acoustic set, before coming back to play a full electric set after “a little break in the room back there”, in lead singer Roddy Woomble’s words.

Their first acoustic set featured such crowd pleasers as “American English”, “No Emotion” and “El Capitan” as Roddy and the rest of the band warmed up, however quickly we realised that they were on top of their game, and we were in for a classic main Idlewild set. 15 minutes later the Scotsmen ambled back on stage for a set which was heavily B-sides and rarities based, which was great for the hardcore fans and not so great for the casual fan that had come out for a greatest hits set.

However, we did get some classics such as “Little Discourage”, “Love Steals Us From Loneliness”, “Out of Routine” and “Century after Century” along with one of the highlights by far of the evening, “Roseability”. The chorus call and response, “Gertrude Stein said ‘that’s enough’ / I know that that’s not enough now,” featured all 800-odd of the crowd yelling along, and the first of many crowd surfers, as the band returned to their harder sound of the first few records, before the folkier tinges of recent works.

Leaving a lot sweatier, and feeling like we’d just been trampled by a herd of elephants, Idlewild managed to show us that, even though they’re approaching middle age, they really are one of Scotland’s greatest bands.

After the jump: setlist and more photos

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Massive “event” gigs currently seem to be in favour at the moment, with Live8, Live Earth, Princess Diana’s concert, and last night saw one of the biggest to date, and most worthy: 46664, to celebrate Nelson Mandela’s 90th Birthday and also to raise awareness of his AIDS charity’s work.

You’ve probably heard about it in the press - the whole Amy Winehouse will she turn up / won’t she turn up situation, the issue over whether Nelson Mandela was even going to go himself. Then there was the impressively long list of stars attending: Gordon Brown (seen chatting to Nelson Mandela through Simple Minds’ frankly tedious performance - we would have done too, if we could have without shouting at each other), Will Smith, Quincy Jones and Lewis Hamilton actually turned up, whilst others could only be bothered to send a video (including Victoria Beckham, who got one of the most savage boo-ings known to man-kind).

In amongst the notable guests was some of today’s (and yesterday’s) best (and worst) performers, culminating in a show-stopping five song set from Queen that showed they still have what it takes to wow a huge audience. We also saw amazing performances from Amy Winehouse (who still has the power to wow with her voice after all she’s been through recently), Will Smith and Zucchero. A lot of artists were ones that we weren’t familiar with, however certainly opened our eyes up and featured a lot more variety musically than the rather biased Live8 and Live Earth events.

After the jump: a blow by blow account of the evening

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“We’re only two songs in and already Paul’s broken the drums!” smirks Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos as drummer Paul Thomson attempts to re-assemble his broken kit. This turned out to be a recurring theme of the evening, as later on Nick’s guitar amp and strings gave up the ghost. However, regardless of all of that it was nice to see a stadium-filling band play a tiny boat in Bristol’s harbour and deal with the problems of playing a tiny stage and going back to their roots.

Kicking off the evening was Chilean five piece Panico. At first I was sceptical - South American party band supporting British indie kings? Really? But somehow, it worked. Starting off carefully, they quickly began to woo the crowd with their CSS / Gogol Bordello / Ladytron / The Music mixture of sounds, and energy laden front-man in the shape of the (ingeniously named) Memo.

Initially I was going to compare them solely to CSS, the Brazilian party stars of 2007, but realised pretty soon that that would be doing Panico an injustice. They’re much more talented, and their songs have more depth, and a sense of urgency that would put others to the test. The gorgeous Carolina held it all together more than capably on bass, providing some calm next to Memo’s crazy shapes. Whilst Carolina held it together, each member clearly is quite talented, and collectively they’re definitely ones to watch in coming months and years.

Lyrically they switch between Spanish and English, which certainly makes for interesting listening, and a more exotic feel than a typical British evening in inner city Bristol. By the end of the set they had everyone bouncing, and were the perfect warm up for Franz Ferdinand - everyone was ready to party.

9:45 rolled around and Franz marched on stage, self assuredly and immediately plunged into a new song, “New Thrill”, which went down a storm, and got them off to a good start, before peppering the rest of their set with newer tracks.

“Tonight, we’re going to play you some new songs, some old songs, and…” “some songs!” yelled a heckler as Alex was introducing themselves, to much laughter around the venue, and smirks from the band. “Yes, yes, we’ll play you some songs, if you want, they’ll be good ones!” smiled Alex, clearly in his element and enjoying the intimate surroundings of the Thekla.

Many of the older tracks sound just as good now as they did when they first arrived on our airwaves back in 2004. Take Me Out has renewed vigour, and surprisingly didn’t have the crowd bouncing the most. That award went to the set closer, This Fire, which saw the Thekla start to sway quite scarily as the boat rocked in the water with 350 people bouncing to the encore closer.

Keeping the set short left us all wanting more from the headliners, though Panico surprised me and could be ones to watch for the future.

After the jump: setlist and pics

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It’s always tricky when a band starts to grow up. Some bands away and come back weaker, weedier, lacking versions of their former selves (Weezer, Placebo, Travis etc) and others come back stronger than ever (Green Day’s American Idiot? The Flaming Lips’ Yoshimi?). However, Death Cab for Cutie has balanced the thin line between the two with their latest offering, Narrow Stairs. Neither weedier, nor stronger than their predecessors, it’s simply, well, bland. Not lacking anything in particular, it’s good, but fails to have any of the grab-you-by-the-ears stuff that Transatlanticism or Plans had.

With many of the band now into their 30’s, “Narrow Stairs” treads a narrow pathway to well-constructed popularity: nothing on the collection will offend old listeners, and it will probably appeal to new listeners too, but nothing that will have the effect of “Soul Meets Body” or “The Sound of Settling”, and the mass OC-style appeal they have earn. Their sixth album, we get a feeling that Chris Walla and Ben Gibbard and their friends have carefully constructed the collection to “tick” the A&R boxes: 8 minute experimental “rock out”? Check –‘I will possess your heart’. Happy, summery upbeat song? Check – ‘No Sunlight’. Rousing, motivation building song? Check – ‘You Can Do Better than Me’. Sensitive end-of the-relationship song? Check – The Ice Is Getting Thinner.

Relying throughout on their well-refined “safe” sound, Death Cab rely on Chris’ jangly guitars and Nick’s driving bass lines to get them through the album, with none of the tracks sounding particularly “out there” like they did on some of the suburban angsty anthems of earlier albums “We Have The Anthems And We’re Voting Yes” and “You Can Play These Songs With Chords”. Both of these featured an innovative mixture of moany angst and, well, just plain strange tracks (remember “Flustered / Hey Tomcat!”’s cut up hip-hop beats?). We understand that bands have to grow up and move on, but Narrow Stairs just looks too much like a “safe” bet that wouldn’t alienate, will sell well, and keep the A&R people happy at Atlantic’s money counting department.

Many of the tracks sound like they could provide the soundtrack to many a moderately successful indie flick – you can imagine many of the tracks sound tracking this year’s new Juno or Garden State. It’s the inoffensive stuff you could put on a car stereo with a group of friends with wildly differing senses of humour – nobody will complain, but likewise nobody will go “wow, who is THIS band?”.

One saving grace for the collection is Ben Gibbard’s lyrics. Whilst his story-telling skills will never reach the level of the Morrisseys of this world, he sure knows how to tell a tale, be it regrouping at the start of the album, dealing with rejection in the middle and the final blow to the relationship at the end of the album. Lyrics such as “The Ice Is Getting Thinner’s” “We bury our love in the windsory grave / Along came the snow, was all that remained” hawks back to the Gibbard of old, obvious yet familiar and friendly.

Don’t get me wrong though – Death Cab can sure make an album that would put many of their pretenders to the thrown quiver in their boots (yes, The Fray, I’m looking at you). Just we’ve grown accustomed to more aurally pleasing albums from them, more challenging works. It just would have been nice if they’d had the balls to take a few risks that got them to where they are now, and took the plunge that would alienate some, but draw more new fans in.

“These shows are always far too short” moaned Tom McRae as he brought down the curtains on almost 3 hours of non-stop music that, frankly, would put most lesser artists to shame. In those 3 hours, we’d seen beard shaving, mass-singalongs, surprise special guests and more off-the-cuff jokes than most comedians manage in a year. All for a mere £15 too.

This was the second time that the Essex-based singer/songwriter had bought over his motley crew of artists from the US to play the Hotel Cafe tour, named after the famous venue in LA which plays host to a range of a wide range of artists for a cabaret-like performance where anything can happen. As they showed, anything really can happen when they decided to shave the beard of lead organiser Jason, live on stage towards the end.

Each playing one or two songs, Tom introduced each one with amusing tales, and before 9:30 had even swung round we’d already hurtled through three Tom McRae songs as well as songs from Catherine Feeny, Brian Wright, Jim Bianco, Cary Brothers, and Greg Laswell. Poor Greg hobbled around after spraining his ankle in Brighton whilst drunkenly chasing a fox, much to the amusement of the audience.

Part of the tradition of the Hotel Cafe shows are special guests - two years ago we got Aqualung, this time round Turin Brakes played previous single “Dark on Fire” and old favourite “Pain Killer”.

Tom then came back, joined by the rest of the performers for a rousing version of “Dose me Up”, which was quite amazing to hear everyone looping round the haunting chorus of “So dose me up / Once is not enough / I can still see the ground / And from this high rise view looking down on you / Im not the one wasting my time”. Personally, that was my highlight, but with time getting on the performers got back into the swing of things with renewed passion - Jim Bianco’s “striptease” routine provided a moment of amusement as his “smoky backroom” voice fitted the setting perfectly. Greg told us stories of his family, with tales of his Mum and Dad’s worries about him, and Catherine just played amazing songs whilst adding a sexy element to the male-dominated proceedings. Brian, well, what more can I say. The man can play. And has facial hair that would make lesser men weap, it’s so thick. Cary Brothers was the musical genius that needs more credit - amazing songs, he should be able to tour the UK more.

All too soon 11:30 had rolled around, and with one more sing along to “Silent Boulevard”, they were gone - too quickly for my liking, but still - £15 for 3 hours of brilliant entertainment - amazing.

After the jump: A video of Cary Brother’s “Ride” and pictures. If you want large versions of any of the pictures, just yell and I can sort that out for you

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It’s always nice when a band play a venue a lot smaller to those they’ve grown accustomed too, which was exactly what happened this afternoon when Southampton foursome Delays graced the miniscule stage of Camden’s Lock Tavern for Clash magazine.

Spending the best part of an hour wowing the assembled fans, media and curious regulars they ripped through a selection of B-sides, covers and old favourites. Everything was stripped back to the core, and whilst the electric bass and guitars were kept, Aaron’s synths were kept well away, leaving him to look a bit lost with a tambourine.

Thrown in halfway through the set was a brilliant cover of James’ ‘Laid’, however as lead-singer Greg commented “hopefully you all know it well enough to cover up the bits we don’t know”. Quickly followed by some birthday wishes for some lucky fans, “…and the lucky bingo numbers!” joked Greg, clearly enjoying doing a more stripped down, laid back set.

A quick jog down memory lane with ‘Nearer than Heaven’ and time is rapidly running out, so Panic Attacks from their recent ‘Love Made Visible’ EP is given a complete makeover, becoming a sensational crowd sing-along, raising the roof of the tiny pub, even getting a few of the smokers outside on the patio looking in. Closing out was a cover of Neil Diamond’s ‘Cherry Cherry’, which they recently played on Dermot O’Leary’s Radio 2 show.

All too soon their set was over, leaving the Long Blondes to DJ out the night at the Lock Tavern. However, for those of us lucky enough to be there will testify: if they can bring down the Lock Tavern in such style we’d hate to think what they can do to Koko in May.

After the jump: More photos

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