The Blue Teeth, Simple Certainty, Kicking Kays, Amy Lee.

Lev 2 Esquires Bedford. 30th June 2007.

Reviewed by Martin Stapleton / Pictures by Martin Ward.

After impressing all and sundry a few short weeks ago with her debut acoustic performance, AMY LEE once again took my breath away with an impeccable set this evening. Such was her fan base support and strength of material, she could have easily headlined. Considering her young age, she seems confidently assured as if she tackles each differing song with poise and purpose. It’s interesting to note the way Amy draws from a varying number of influences. The tender and slower songs, ‘Check Engine’ and ‘Leaving Home’ are acutely Carole King Tapestry era, while the gutsy ‘I Couldn’t Get A Job’ is pure 1980s Michelle Shocked. However, the Allen/Nash humour of ‘Chav of 2023’ brings us bang up to date. With full and total crowd participation in evidence, the sight of an acoustic performer exacting the mosh pit to clapping and singing is a mite unusual. Even the normally reticent bar staff are dancing along.

Amphill based KICKING KAYS rather trod water after the opening act. They had plenty of power, especially with ‘Dreamer’. Although at times I found it rather difficult to describe what genre of music they were best suited to. The end result could rather be construed as ‘indie-hardcore’.

The much vaunted name change for our next visitors SIMPLE CERTAINTY will, according to the band, take place on July 14th. It’s a big relaunch apparently, with t-shirts and the like being mentioned. In their present guise, they took an absolute age to get on stage. Hopefully there was a good reason and they were not taking the proverbial! Once they appeared however, Simple Certainty scored top marks for 'Can’t Stop Her', it had a loose fluidity running through, although the MySpace hit ‘Little Jenny’ and ‘Nothing Really’ also really impressed.

Although the hour was quite late and most of the lightweights had gone to their beds, the appearance of Luton’s THE BLUE TEETH was a minor gem. They could loosely be described as ‘Keane-ites’ or very much of that ilk. However, with vocalist James they posess a face and a voice with 100% charisma. He makes every single one of Blue Teeth’s songs come alive, as he tells a neat little story about them all. Such as ‘Johnny No Stars’, named after a lad in Luton’s McDonalds, who hasn’t quite got the hang of the job. ‘Lose Your Head’ is about the painful process of apologising to your girlfriend while the jingly jangly happy song that is Sunny Summer will hopefully chase the rain away.
Although there are obvious comparisons and the said vocalist rather gives the game away with his Coldplay t-shirt, I admit, I liked them, even when they apologise that ‘Suitcase In The Hallway’ was very ropey. Yeah…. It was….