In one of Nick Hornby’s columns for The Believer, he took issue with a biographer who notes that “everyone” has seen a production of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. Such wilful ignorance to how culture is consumed is not unusual; it’s a product of the bubble of unreality that many critics live in, the mentality that saw Guided By Voices derided as sell-outs when one of their singles scraped into #198 on the pop charts, the insular, indie-ghetto outlook that sees writers discuss how Slint influenced “everybody”. I could jump straight into an explanation of how great The Brunettes were tonight, but that would be to overlook a basic reality about this gig: barely anybody gave a shit.

The glorious ‘Her Hairagami Set’, surely amongst the best songs of the year, was probably the bright spot, while ‘Mars Loves Venus’ ranked as the pick of the earlier stuff and ‘If You Were Alien’ was almost unbearably cute. They’re less polished live than on their slickly-produced new record, of course, but no worse for it. A tender version of ‘Credit Card Mail Order’ had an added poignancy given Jonathon’s introduction about how they were practicing it in a park earlier that afternoon when a pair of men came across them, one holding the other up. After listening to the song, one of them was moved to explain that his unsteady friend had just found out his wife had died.

But rather than any anecdotes from the set, it would be more representative to note that I was standing only a few people back from the stage and in the quiet bits they were all but drowned out by people talking. Not even the synchronised dance moves in ‘B.A.B.Y’ or the opportunity to “wun stuff” in a dancing competition attracted much response. I could tell you about the rough-as-guts version of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born To Run’ that ended the set, but to many, whether The Brunettes were good, bad or utterly charming (and trust me, they fell into the last category) was a complete irrelevance.

by Daniel Herborn