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Let's all punch the air with delight that another venue has come on board the 'Reading On Fire' bus to help promote live music in the town. The Outlook, on the King's Road, has a sizeable downstairs gig space that tonight is filled with punters, as much eager for the fine real ales on tap as the three bands on tonight. I spend 20 minutes trying to find a parking space (the only down-side to The Outlook), so missed half of Audio Runways's set, but by the sound of things I haven't missed much. | "Sadly tonight, what should be an electrifying set ends up redolent of stale beer and fags." | |
Getting rid of their guitarist just before this gig means their sound has lots of gaping holes in what otherwise would be some cracking tunes. However they're raw, they rasp and flail, and they're a 'people's band' like The Arctic Monkeys, singing upbeat tales of youth behind jittery guitars as in End Of The World, about being dumped by your girlfriend and I Can't Dance ( no, not the Genesis song). It's with this song that the frontman reminds everyone he's a great entertainer, calling "I'm not gonna sing until everyone claps" behind a bassy riff. Sadly tonight, what should be an electrifying set ends up redolent of stale beer and fags. This wasn't the best gig for The Race either. It only takes something tiny for a band to be thrown off-kilter and tonight they're just not feeling it. Delays in their set, drunken idiots shouting 'come on' and diminuitive frontman Dan needing to stand on a case to reach the mic doesn't exactly stir up the magic. This of course doesn't harm the supreme quality of songs they belt out. Each song is an exclamation mark, alerting people, drawing attention. Each is slow-burning yet intense; it's white noise and white heat. Songs such as So Young So Beautiful, first single Raising Children, Research and current single Amersham Road all burst with barrages of stinging guitars and heroic wailing. Some tracks feature maniacal pummelling on the long-suffering keyboard, another means of venting the singer's evident frustration tonight, made clear by his overly-animated stomping and fist-clenching. For some reason the lights go out on stage when OffTheRadar play their headline set, which couldn't be more inappropriate as they're the sunniest band on tonight. Saying that, it's clear they've dimmed their beach campfire pop. Instead, the trio sound like they've come home from holiday, facing reality with more mature and gritty indie songs such as opener Hope It Makes You Happy. The OffTheRadar beam burns brighter though with their great Californian-sounding ready-for-radio track Infrared, a sunset cruise of a track that's so hot it sets off the fire alarm, literally. Traces of their harmonic melodic power pop is more evident in track So Cute, with it's Beatles-style intro, and their finale, Yeah Yeah, off their current album Seen From Space, is a blistering example of how this band can out-pop The Subways. This is a band who are progressing as they get older, as all bands should, though luckily for us they retain their youthful feel-good vibe. In all The Outlook is a welcome addition to the gig scene - let's have some more concerts here soon! | 
