In what is fast becoming an institution another packed audience cram into the Flowerpot on Kentish Town Road for a headlining act squeezed onto the smallest of stages. Tonight is the big warm-up for The Golden Silvers, a local crowd waving them off on the eve of the annual NME Radar Tour which they are headlining, the annual leg-up for next year’s breakthrough acts. In a matter of weeks it’s the rather larger Koko down the road that will provide the setting, but for tonight its back to basics; crowd noise and beer taps and the whites of the eyes. It’s turn-back-the-clock time for the soon-to-be-starbound, but tonight is as much about shaking things up as adding the finishing touches.
Gwilym Gold is an unassuming frontman, keeping the between song entertainment to a scratch of the head and a fiddle on the keyboard, so it’s a bloody good thing that his band have hooks in droves. A stirring ‘Magic Touch’ kicks things into gear, the buses thundering past the window while the head nodding starts in earnest – incidentally this is about the extent of the crowd reaction: free gig apparently doesn’t equate to over excitement tonight. ‘Another Universe’ runs into top gear, a closed unit of multiple harmony with the self-assuredness of a band who know they now only have to play such a small venue out of choice. New song ‘Bone Breaking Blues’ fits snugly alongside the favourites, a laid-back groove and trademark breakdown which threatens to outshine the extended outro on ‘Queen of the 21st Century’ which perhaps needs a bigger space to really soar...see, these are the questions The Golden Silvers now get to ask themselves, rather than who has to stand closest to the toilet door. Throw in ‘True Romance’, ‘Please Venus’ and ‘Arrows of Eros’ and it’s glaringly obvious why the NME have teddy picked these as future stars – get them some charisma and you’ve got yourself world beaters.
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