The People!!! The People!!! The Music@The Junction 26/06/08

Term-time may be over in Cambridge, but that doesn’t mean the music scene grinds to a halt, and whilst not playing to a packed-out Junction, there was, as the night progressed, a healthy turn-up for The Music. First up though were support act Exit Calm. Heavy on guitar delay and reverb effects, they proved functional, but ultimately felt detached from the audience, never achieving the big, atmospheric sound they were clearly striving for. Lacking any kind of stage presence, the singer uncomfortably mumbled “this is a brilliant song that nobody knows about”, only for the subsequent song to be largely indistinguishable from those preceding it. Sure enough after three or four songs, I was thinking less Exit Calm, and more Exit Stage Left.

Thankfully, the main act were very soon to follow. Although entering the stage in trousers baggy enough to make Madness look twice, with his now shaven head, Robert Harvey from The Music looked less like the Madchester castaway of old, but in many ways, in spite of their Leeds roots, that’s what The Music's sound still resembles: crunching riffs from Second Coming-era Stone Roses, with the shuffling beats and dance influences of the Happy Mondays. Live, however, there’s no denying that their songs, the singles in particular, pack a real clout. They wasted no time, opening with Take The Long Road And Walk It, much to the delight of an enthusiastic crowd, and whilst Exit Calm were devoid of stage presence, Rob had it in bucketloads, deftly dancing with precision timing to the music.

Showcasing material from their new album Strength In Numbers, it was clear that whilst The Music haven’t digressed very far from their initial trajectory, they’ve added a couple of strings to their bow. The fluid bass work of both Drugs and Idle both hinted at a more new-wave direction, the former reminiscent of Blondie’s Heart Of Glass, the latter, along with Human off their first album, showing a subtler but slinkier side of the band which sorely needs to be fleshed out. Other more muscular songs from Strength In Numbers, such as the title track and The Spike were business as usual.

Still, if The Music become stuck in a rut musically, it will all have been worthwhile to have written a song as good as Getaway, saved as the penultimate song of the set, and sending the crowd into a frenzy (one diminutively-sized guy next to us making a particular idiot of himself). Finishing off the night with a wondrous version of Bleed From Within, complemented with an array of additional percussion, the band left the stage in triumph, whilst we were left to trudge into the night rain, smelling, thanks to an over-zealous crowd of Strongbow cider.