I present to you my social life, reviewed:

The Wannadies, The Underworld, Camden, Thursday 5th June

Stop me if I’ve mentioned this before, but I love The Wannadies – they’re just so happy for a start. Seeing them live is like watching summer standing on stage for an hour playing chirpy three-minute power guitar pop. I’d seen them before, twice, but both those times they were promoting what I consider to be their worst album (their final offering for BMG, Yeah). This time, however, the majority of the set came from their new (in this country at least) album, Before & After. I’ve been listening to this for a couple of weeks now and it is just fantastic. They also played some of my favourite stuff from 1996’s unfairly underrated Bagsy Me.

Suport was from a band called Siamese. Good, in an instantly-forgot-what-they-sounded-like-as-soon-as-they-stopped-playing kind of way. The lead singer looks a bit like an English Bjork, the guitarist looks like one of the guys out of Soulwax, and the other guitarist looked like Julian Cassablancas’ less successful younger brother.

The Underworld’s a great venue as well, principally due to its (lack of) size. Unbearably hot though; I was sweating like a crazy man after only two songs.

(An Evening With) The Counting Crows, Royal Albert Hall, Friday 6th June

Seeing a gig at the RAH is an altogether different experience. I’d never been in there before, and have to say that it is a fantastic building. Shame you can’t take your drinks in with you (although slightly more understandable, given the surroundings, than the implementation of that same rule at the oversized shed that is the Wembley Arena), as I was gagging for a beer from about halfway through the acoustic set. I wasn’t the only one, judging by the unholy scrum at the bar during the interval (note to organisers: perhaps it might be an idea to employ more than 2 bar staff during the 30 minute interval when 500 or so people from the gen. admission part of the venue are going to descend on the bar). And the Counting Crows were alright, in a vaguely MOR LA country rock kind of way. They even covered Madonna’s Borderline (straight out of the Travis/Baby One More Time book of rock/pop crossovers). They did two sets – one acoustic and one electric. Things started to lag a bit during the acoustic one (I mean you just can’t look cool playing an accordian, no matter how many times you climb on the monitor and gurn like the rock-god guitar soloist you clearly wish you were). Everything got a bit more lively after the break though, and 3 hours worth of music has to be good value for money.

The Earth From The Air (outside the Natural History Museum)

Wandered back to South Kensington on Saturday afternoon to see the fascinating exhibition of aerial photography outside the Natural History Museum: “The Earth From The Air“. Nothing I can say here can really do it justice. If you’re in London anytime soon, go and see for yourself.

The Road To Perdition

Polished off the weekend by finally getting round to watching Sam Mendes’ The Road To Perdition. I didn’t really enjoy it that much (it’s certainly not a patch on American Beauty) and I was also slightly disappointed to discover that the title was from the Good Will Hunting school of works-on-two-levels literalism (Perdition is the name of the place they are driving to).