Live music listings: July 2008

Doors 8.00
£6 via WeGotTickets soon
£7 door

After leaving his native Dartmoor for Bristol in 2003, Toby Keane formed and fronted The Dead Lovers. For two years the band gigged across the South West and in London, supporting the likes of Snowpatrol and Bristol's darlings, Gravenhurst.

With Toby's vocals and songwriting being compared to the likes of Coldplay's Chris Martin and the Doves: 'sounds like Coldplay and Doves at a time when their visions were undiluted and were making music that would melt the heart of millions' [Logo Magazine 2005], The Dead Lovers recorded their first EP, 'Judas the Gun'. But as interest in the band and in Toby's songwriting was gathering pace, the band split acrimoniously at the end of 2004, just as the EP was about to be released.

In 2005, Toby settled in Londonwhere he has continued to write, to gig and to collaborate. In 2007 he self-released his first solo EP, the touching 'For Jo & Bill'.
'In a world where singer-songwriters are packaged, marketed and sold in supermarkets, Toby Keane is really quite refreshing...there is a great deal to like about Toby Keane's music and his multiple musical talents are fused together superbly to create this collection of tracks.' [The-Mag, March 2007]

Toby's vocals have been said to echo those of Talk Talk's Mark Hollis. Think lyrics reminiscent of Robert Smith circa 1986. Think stark acoustic guitar played with both tenderness and venom; sometimes reminiscent of the folk artists of his native Dartmoor, always brooding and melancholic, giving a nod to two of Toby's key influences: Neil Young and Depeche Mode.

Toby's latest offerings, produced with guitarist and producer, Jamie Maher, have the introduction of strings, which are both haunting and evocative, and production which has the dark and breathtaking quality of The Smashing Pumpkins. Toby's singles are available to download free from his website and Myspace.

Main support are The Blisters. Expect cinematic, home-brewed, acid-tinged indie from the Heathrow 6-piece who take their cue from Radiohead, Love, The Kinks and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan to produce epic psychedelic intros complete with laptop drones, autharp, harmonium and eastern-style wailing, which in turn make way for epic basslines, sycopated beats, ukelele and french horn, and singer Tom sounding like a deranged Ray Davies.

Tom Craine is an award winning stand-up comic, MC and writer. He can regularly be heard on the BBC inhis adopted home of Wales. After winning 'Best Comedy & Drama' at the BBC National Student Awards 2006 (hosted by BBC Radio 1)he's gone on to pen laughs for BBC 3 and work as a warm-up act. But he's most proud of being named Wales' 33rd sexiest man by a newspaper.

Since leaving university in 2006 (Tom has a Degree in Child Psychology & a Post Graduate Diploma in Multimedia Journalism), Tom has performed extensively throughout the UK and clocked up an impressive list of radio & television credits.

'Great gags and really engaged with the audience' Cheeky Monkey, Birmingham
'Tom is one of the UK's fastest-rising comedians...' BBC radio

And the night'll be sewn together by DJ Joe Biddle - a dynamo. He has produced, promoted, performed & DJ'd from an early age, and recorded live gigs for artists including Shaun Ryder, Billy Bragg, Hard-Fi, Ms. Dynamite and Babyshambles.

RSS