Love/hate relationships. We’ve all had them – partners, friends, family, all-you-can-eat Chinese buffets. But this is a first for me – a love/hate relationship with a backing vocalist/synth player in a Welsh rock band.

While singer and bassist Rob Hawkins provides the totty, Alex Pennie is the dominant presence on stage – his shrieking backing vocals, frantic synth stabbing and bad animated dancing is the real eye-catcher. Without him tonight, a band with a reputation for high energy would be as flat as the Vodka and Shark mixer at the bar. The problem is that he’s just so annoying. He’s kind of like that mate of yours who’s hysterically funny in small doses but starts to grate after an hour, none more so in the cover of Kanye West’s ‘Goldigger’, which acts as the un-fitting encore. It might sound like a good idea in the cramp confines of a tour bus, but on stage it’s hands-over-eyes terrible – mostly down to Pennie’s vocals – and what makes it worse is that the band perform it as if they realise this.

The rest of the set is tight, but only ‘Monster’, ‘Rats’, ‘Raul’ and ‘Recover’ inject frenzy into a surprisingly lacklustre performance. The songs are all a little too similarly-paced to sustain an hour-long set – it would only really work if the band was sweating energy and enthusiasm on stage. Tonight they probably didn’t even need to get changed afterwards. They’re in the middle of a very long UK tour that is tipped to break them into the Kaiser Chiefs and Razorlight ranks, but too many more off nights like this and covering Kanye West songs may be all they’ll be doing in a year’s time.
(2½/5)

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