London,

Different kind of crawl

Rick Pearson, Evening Standard 16.05.08

Musical crawls around London’s trendy postcodes seem the hip thing this year. Last night, Shoreditch followed in Camden’s fashionable footprint by hosting its own mini festival, Stag and Dagger, around 15 of its trendy venues.

The Bar Music Hall was surprisingly empty for rising reggae star Natty. The dreadlocked troubadour may be tipped for big things this year but has a lot to learn about self-promotion. “Thanks for turning up; we actually advertised that we were playing somewhere else,” he remarked to a half-full dancefloor, who had obviously checked the flyer rather than Natty’s misleading MySpace site.

His soul-tinged songs were well received. Coloured Souls was a poignant political ballad, while July was much more than background music for summer barbecues.

Natty may have pretensions to being Bob Marley — he takes his name from the great man’s album Natty Dread — but the crowd, almost entirely white middle-class trendies, meant the dancefloor looked more like Kingston, Surrey, than Kingston, Jamaica.

Up the road at The Macbeth, it was a minor tragedy that Operator Please’s infectious indie music was played out to a cramped bar ill-equipped for crowds of this size. Get What You Want — a ferocious track on the Aussie group’s debut Yes Yes Vindictive — was all but lost in the noisy surroundings.

The Metros fared better at 93 Feet East. The festival’s special guests played a raucous set of witty, gritty songs, characterised by vocalist Saul Adamczewski’s laddish lyrics and insistence on singing with a beer in his hand. It wasn’t all boyish bravado, however. In the charming quirkiness of Missing In Action, the five-piece owed more to the rhythm sticks of Ian Dury than the glow sticks of The Klaxons.

A reason to be cheerful on a strangely charming evening.

Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.

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