大象传媒

Calling your album 'Disastro' makes life very easy for lazy journos and sub-editors. The headlines and reviews can practically write themselves. 听It's a ballsy statement of intent, leading with a jutted jaw daring people to knock you down. And you can't really complain about the album. It's a great little mix of danceable electro-soul with a bit of humour about it. The new challenge is converting this to a live band based show.

However, first thing first, and so to Cashier No 9, local purveyors of twisted country influenced rock and roll, like the Rumble Strips or Sons and Daughters with a hint of modern Primal Scream for good measure. 'To The Death Of Fun' is the lazy rolling funk of the Happy Mondays with a stompy country beat underneath it all, a kind of urban country with the traditional roots embellished with a more metropolitan beat. Closing with the aptly named 'Goodbye Friend', this is a Kinksy return to the prairie, after the mid-set detour to the 1990s North-West, with a subtle taste of the madness of the loneliness of the range as it ends in a spiral of disturbing chanting and wailing guitars. Next customer please.

A relatively sparsely populated and unresponsive crowd awaits the arrival of Sonny J who are attempting to the 'live dance music' thing done by others such as The Rapture, !!!, Hot Chip, and most relevantly The Go! Team. Like The Go! Team, Sonny J come across as an outfit put together off the back of an album, rather than an organic collection of people. The difference is that The Go! Team have had time to grow into this and have become an electrifying live act, and have a second album made on this basis, and can 'grow' the material in a more natural way when performing it live. Perhaps it's too soon for Sonny J, but great material such as the fantastically cheeky 'Enfant Terrible', even with the addition of driving guitar and pounding drums, doesn't feel daring enough for a live band. 'Can't Stop Moving' and 'Handsfree (Hold My Hand)' are funky soulful beats beasts, but they feel like what they are, a DJ's remix of an old soul track, as the band seems like it's merely covering what has been done in the studio. They're all good musicians and the place belatedly shakes about to the good time party tunes when they go into a dance music interlude, after criminally ignoring the promising 'Doing The Tango', built around a hypnotic Spanish guitar hook, but it's a feeling of a work in progress, and the need to take the time to build on these solid basics as their earlier mentioned peers have done. 'Feel So Strange' has the same problem but hints that they know this as they expand it and jam it out.

Not a disaster, not a triumph, just potential that they could be very good in a few months.

William Johnston