Allo sweet whispers

Another weekend just flew past. I don't know what happened to time, but it seems to pass alot faster these days. Anyway, Friday night was incredible. At first, there was the usual fear/paranoia that goes with putting on shows. What if nobody shows up? What if the sound guy doesn't show up? What if the wrong type of crowd shows up? What if nobody likes the bands? What if I don't like them? So, I spent the first couple of hours running around thinking about stupid things, like where the chairs should be and where the table for taking door money should be. Should I do both the door and merch? How many pages should I use in the notepad? Seriously, I think about these things....and many many more. Phone call from the headliner, who's running late. Panic, panic, panic, even if he even told us before that he didn't really need to soundcheck. Anyway, two out of three bands were there, so soundcheck could start. Let's Whisper and Allo, Darlin' did their thing. Greg (from The Lofty Heights) was on sound duty and it all sounded fine. Glass of wine, a beer, sweets. After a while, quite a few strangers had already been up to ask about stage times, so I could finally relax a bit. Sweet Baboo showed up eventually, along with his brother and the biggest keyboard known to man. They soundchecked in about six minutes, so in the end we had plenty of time.

Doors and the place started filling up quickly. First up : Let's Whisper.

Let's Whisper used to really feel like a side-project. Whenever I've seen them in the past I've been left feeling like The Smittens are the real band and LW was there for songs that didn't really fit anywhere or for those times when the other Smittens weren't available. But on Friday, things really felt different. Colin and Dana were on top form and all the songs sounded great. The new songs are as good as anything by The Smittens and I'm now really looking forward to their upcoming album. They were joined on stage by members of One Happy Island and the full-band thing really worked as well. So, Let's Whisper are most definitely a sugar sweet indiepop force to be reckoned with. They were running out of time and still hadn't played When You Were Eating Ice Cream, so I let them run over a bit. It's always heartbreaking to ask bands to stop playing when everyone is having such a great time, but I don't make up the rules.

Let's Whisper has a myspace and you should pop over and say hello. They're also playing on the steam train at Indietracks at the weekend.

Next up was Allo Darlin, hot from supporting the Lucksmiths at the Scala the week before and also from a glowing review in The Guardian, with Jude Rogers calling Henry Rollins Don't Dance "the best indiepop song for years". Woo zaa. They went down a storm as usual.


Woot. Look at that! Again, they ran over and I started to feel increasingly worried about the headliner, Sweet Baboo. Luckily, I know from soundcheck that they were super quick to set up and indeed, they were up and ready to go in ten minutes.

I'm new to Sweet Baboo. I know the guys in Little My recommended him when we were up in Cardiff earlier in the year, but I hadn't really listened much to him before the show. His website is well worth visiting though, since it features a simple video for each song on his absolutely incredible, new album, Hello Wave. Go on. Watch them all - http://www.sweetbaboo.co.uk/

They played an incredible set and despite the music was rather different from the first two acts, he had the crowd's full attention. Their brotherly bickering made for great in-between songs banter. SB is not really music for dancing and parts of the audience sat down on the floor, just enjoying the songs.

His set flew past and before I knew it, I had to tell them to wrap it up :(

But, but...that's how it goes. It felt a bit short, but I don't think people were too disappointed. After all, it was only a fiver and he's back in London in a couple of weeks.

So, another successful Records Make Great Pets night. Thanks to everyone who came down to Betsey. We have some exciting plans for the future. I hope they work out.