Patrick Wolf at NagNagNag (Ghetto)

Oh Patrick. OH Patrick. What can't this boy do? Show up on time apparently. Typically, he got on stage an hour late in true Wolf fashion, but the long wait was totally worth it to see him play an intense set in a tiny (pretty grimy) club.

First of all, he looked fantastic. We saw him earlier on wearing a remarkably normal white shirt and trousers with brown hair, during the actual set he wore a beautiful white suit. I'm hoping he carries on with this more sophisticated look - I loved glittery TMP Patrick , but this hints at a departure from the entire technicolour manicness of the last album, which was worrying close to becoming faded by the Grand Finale of the last tour.



On stage Patrick talked of mistakes he made ("I promised I'd never do another show drunk") and nostalgia for his surroundings ("I took my first ecstacy here when I was 18") and started the show with new song Vulture which seemed to have some altered lyric from the last time I heard it, notably, the charming "Do you want to taste my gonorrhoeae? Do you want to taste my syphilis?" which went into another, even newer song apparently called Treasure Trail that was followed by A Boy Like Me, Time Of My Life (a new, and wonderfully bitter song) Hounds Of Love and finished with The Magic Position.



Overall, it was a fantastic gig, which suggested wonderful new things are in store for Wolf fans on the next album, and on Sunday for his headlining slot on the small stage at Love Music, Hate Racism festival.

Mindless Self Indulgence at the Astoria

Where to begin? It's been a long time since I last saw them, and in that time they seem to have gained popularity which is well deserved. Shame the attention they were recieving seemed to be mainly from 13 year old girls, and, as Jimmy Urine himself pointed out, creepy old guys.

Aside from this, MSI performed a brilliant set with songs such as Shut Me Up and Stupid Motherfucker sounding as riotous and bizarre as they did upon the first hearing, and although Jimmy's between-song banter occasionally borders on tedious shock tactics, he often is amusing, and has outstanding stage presence, leaping around the stage like a small child on a sugar rush. The same cannot be said for Lyn-Z who acted more like she was on a photo shoot than doing a gig, and seemed to forget that she's the bassist, not the frontwoman at times. Steve Righ? and Kitty were good as usual but not too much can be said regarding their performances, apart from that Steve is remarkably good at playing dead as he did at the end of the gig. He stayed still spectacularily.




Jimmy recording his message to his future self, which mainly consists of "you're so beautiful"