Peter, Björn and John are sweet and peculiar

Aside from last year’s divine Seaside Rock, the Stockholm trio’s albums have never captured the immensely likeable and keenly questing live shows.

With singing guitarist Morén beginning the evening in a cravat, bassist Yttling sporting a porn star moustache and drummer Eriksson resembling a Victorian child chimney sweep, they looked the impishly camp part and, displaying the often unheralded Swedish sense of humour, their backdrop was splattered with the word "backdrop". Perhaps you had to be there...

Musically, they hurtled from base to base with winning charm and rather more testosterone than those familiar only with the hit might have bargained for, but when Lay It Down unfurled its sweary chorus, it was still jarring.

The sparse, percussive but funky Living Thing stole the "it’s a terrible thing to lose" line from Livin’ Thing, Electric Light Orchestra’s song of almost the same title, and was all the more silly for being delivered straight-faced.
Just The Past swirled like a karaoke Kraftwerk and the crowd were more than happy to wait until the encore for Young Folks, where Hackney’s thecocknbullkid guested on female vocals.

It was delivered with such life-affirming joy that you hardly noticed the whistling was as taped as the kids’ choir on Nothing To Worry About.

Equal parts sweet and peculiar.

Peter Bjorn And John, Air Castles
The Scala
275 Pentonville Road, N1 9NL