Tuesday 3rd March 2009 @ Louisiana, Bristol

Hailing from Bangor in Northern Ireland, Two Door Cinema Club are representative of a new breed of band that effortlessly assimilate respectable musical influences into a bright, enlightened pop package. Channelling several decades of innovative guitar music with en vogue contemporary flourishes, they make post-modern guitar music that has dual appeal in its comfortableness and the intelligence it hints at.

Tonight, at the Louisiana, Two Door Cinema Club play to only a handful of people. They deserve a wider audience given the mass appeal of their music. Sam Halliday’s guitar work sets them apart from other new-wave bands; tight and accomplished, it injects tension and depth into their sound. However, the absence of a live drummer, replaced tonight by an Apple Mac, limits the band’s spontaneity, confining each track to its pre-prescribed duration.

New track, What You Know showcases Two Door Cinema Club’s ability to pull off complex, intense and danceable three minute pop songs. It builds, collapses to aid lyrical pathos and then explodes again with an impressive dynamism. The small crowd jerk along to the mid-song instrumental breakdowns which conjure up the mathsy, white-funk of Foals. It is these moments that hint at the potential for the band if they were to push into more experimental territory.

Lyrically, the band delivers more texture and narrative than the inane staccato poetry that currently dominates. The catchy single Something Good Can Work recalls The Born Ruffians with its abundance of yelps and rhythmic shifts whereas the luscious Nineteen evokes fellow countrymen Ash, with its ability to summon up that heady mix of summer haze and confused teenage love.

Two Door Cinema Club are caught in a strange dichotomy: on the one hand much of their charm lies in their ability to distil difficult lyrical and musical ideas into frenetic pop songs, yet with the addition of a live drummer and a more expansive approach, they could really stretch the pop mould they operate so effectively within, if not break it all together.

www.myspace.com/twodoorcinemaclub

Tom Spooner