MUSIC IN MANCHESTER

Alex has seen Echoboy before, sometime during the lifetime of Planet K, but then Alex (38 next Sunday) has seem most bands at least 3 trillion times.  Probably because they have been around for such a long time they have been able to hone their sound, smooth out the jagged edges in order to produce, insidious, hooky type pop tunes that lodge inside you brain.

No matter how they start, each song is going to build and build, as if Echoboy abhor a vacuum, and need to fill every nook or cranny with a deft bass line here, a swirl of the organ there, or just to allow the intense drumming to build until you're not sure if the speaker, his drum kit or your ears are going to give in first. The latest (5th or 6th?) album is given a full outing here, and seem split into tow distinctive parts.

The first is a richly layered carpet of sound that swarms out from the speakers, each track picking up pace to an intense climax.  As befitting of someone who has remixed the Doves, front man Richard Warren takes a similar, yet distinctive road from them, stamping the tunes with Echoboys own identity, especially when coming up with piss take titles such as "It's never gonna happen to me/coz I don't look good on TV"

Throughout the affair, the atmosphere is building up with a mixture of those who have previous experience of Echoboy, and others who are being exposed to it for the first time, the decent crowd sweating in the sauna box conditions

For the encore, they play for another 20 minutes, but it more of a low key, delicate affair after the richness of the main course earlier, allow Warrens' lyrics to be more distinctive and emphasized.

"Giraffe "is out in Feb, or in Vinyl exchange if you wish to purchase a promo copy

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