Snake Hips and Rock 'n' Roll

Well, the 'New Rock Revolution' may not have brought us as many classic albums as we might have hoped for, but there hasn't been a better time to catch some hot live gigs since the peak of Britpop. As I mentioned briefly on Saturday, last week I popped out to Wolverhampton again to see two of the highly-tipped US imports on the scene, The Sights and The Hiss, and all for a fiver. Almost too good to be true, right?

Got into the venue just in time to catch The Hiss and to give you an idea of how highly rated this band is, a Polydor exec was right behind me. He won't have been disappointed by the group (who are the first signings to James Oldham's Loog Records, a Polydor imprint) whose uncompromisingly commercial take on good-time rock 'n' roll gives them plenty of scope to become massive on a global scale, possibly the biggest band of this type since Oasis. They were only on for half an hour but that was plenty of time to impress with both their tunes and their attitude. Definitely try to catch these live soon because they won't be doing support slots in tiny venues like this for long.

The Sights are from Detroit and are apparently big chums with The White Stripes. But their second album Got What We Want is currently winning them friends all over. In truth, what they do isn't really my thing, being in the main tuneful pastiches of late 60s/early 70s pop/rock but to be fair they put on a good show and maintained the good vibes laid down from the fine support act. And as their set went on, a few more modern influences became discernible which expanded their appeal.

(Or maybe my mood was improved by funky girl bassist Mahjula Bah-Kamara from The Hiss sidling up to me in order to enjoy the second half of the headline act. I was tempted to say something to her along the lines of 'hey baby! what's it like to be on the cusp of greatness?' but I was still relatively sober and thought better of it.)

Anyway, I liked The Sights' logo enough that I bought the T-shirt (red, medium, seeing as you ask) from freelance journo and chubby organist Nate Cavalieri himself. They'd got enough decent tunes that I'll probably be following it up with the album too. Incidentally, the debut single from The Hiss a three-tracker entitled 'Triumph' was out in the shops last week, and stormed into the Top 60 in its first week of release.