I Am Kloot: The Ritz, Manchester, 24 April 2005

There are two women on stage in ball-gowns who may or may not be French - one of them is plinking and plonking upon a piano, the other is warbling classic French ditties in the style of Edith Piaf. A bemused audience watch on with that endearing expression often adopted in the face of the disarmingly offbeat. The Frenchies are followed by a sort of Mancunian Hammell on Trial, a guy who bellows mildly aggressive poetry to (what I believe the kids still occasionally call) phat beats. Not for I Am Kloot the up and coming indie band as support. Oh no. This whole thing - from the word go - is an exercise in difference.

John Harold Arnold Bramwell, estwhile frontman with vrr 'Kloot and formerly known about these parts in his previous incarnation as Johnny Dangerous, takes the stage looking - well, looking as if he's made an appearance on the show ‘Ten Years Younger’ - he's found some miracle elixir of eternal youth because, on tonight's performance, young Johnny is - uhm - getting younger. Drummer Andy Hargeaves (who either looks like a bearded Polish giant, a merchant seaman or Kris Novoselic) assumes the position (of giant) behind his exceedingly low drum rise; guitarist Pete Jobson (a chain-smoking Bernard Butler) sits in the dark at the far left of the stage and away they go.

They kick off with 'Coincidence', a brooding slow burner, and 'No Direction Home', a blazing bit of feel good pop, from ‘Gods and Monsters’, the recently released third album. Johnny is smiling, swigging from his Guinness, “glad to be home”. The crowd is equally pleased. The gig has the feel of a happening, a triumphant return to home ground. Kloot hopscotch across each of their records - one minute it's ferociously dark paeons to terrible love (with, say, 'Twist' which features the killer line – “There's blood on your legs . . . I love you”), the next exultant jump up and down and shake your head tunes (like 'Proof', Kloot's most instant lalalalalalalalala singalong non-hit) - and we know them all, and we sing and we dance and we carry on. At one point, Elbow's Guy Garvey takes to the stage to share vocal duties on Kloot's debut single 'To You' (and, I swear, Garvey looked about twenty-eight feet high, a bearded Sesame Street monster alongside the suddenly diminutive Johnny Bramwell), and once more the crowd roar - I Am Kloot look as pleased as punch, and so do we.

I Am Kloot remain the curate's egg, out of step with the empty flashback posturing of bands like Razorlight, happy to respectfully nod their head to songs past ('Storm Warning', for example, lifts a line from - fellow Mancs - The Chameleons' 'Swamp Thing') and plough their distinctive, individual furrow. Impossible to quite pin down (during a song called 'Sand and Glue' I am struck by how much Bramwell resembles Lee Mavers, and then the light changes and it's Noel Gallagher, and then he strikes a rock shape and I think New York punk, and then he spits out a line and it's a young Elvis Costello), Kloot are that essential (and essentially British) thing: the maverick under-achievers.

You see them live, you'll want to bless their maverick under-achieving hearts too (even though they split the stage without doing an encore!).

words: Pete Wild

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