Ever since Bingo Hand Job arrived on the Borderline stage in 1991 and turned out to be REM, and a band called Venison advertised a 2010 Dingwalls gig with a logo font suspiciously similar to that of The Strokes, industry ears have pricked up at any mention of a totally unknown band charging full whack for a club show a step or two out of their league.
Whispers abounded, then, about the debut gig by a group called Crushed Kid at Hackney’s 300-capacity Moth Club. Googling them is inadvisable – trust me – but results for the band turns up one online track preview and some blurred Instagram photos of five sultry, yet naggingly familiar, figures.
When they hit the Moth Club stage before a rammed and rapturous crowd of insiders, though, it was clear they wouldn’t stay secret for long. “A lovely greeting for our debut gig,” grinned their lithe, feral hellcat of a singer between bursts of seductive and seditious glam rock, soaring indie bombast and babbled autobiographical poetry. Suede – for it was they – recorded their new album Autofiction as a back-to-basics punk record and to launch it they’ve brought the “new band” conceit onstage, playing their (wink) only album in full in imitation of a bunch of ragged rock louts out to get arrested on the nearest ferry to Amsterdam.
Suede’s sheer live ferocity has always thrived in club environments where they can bulge the walls a little and, although only the pounding Personality Disorder, Shadow Self and Turn Off Your Brain And Yell really captured the post-punk clatter they were aiming for, even this set of relatively unknown tracks was hammered home like more of a demolition project than a gig. Regular Suede matters emerged: Black Ice was pure lowlife glam in the mould of We Are The Pigs, Drive Myself Home the cavernous piano ballad and It’s Always The Quiet Ones the glowering number sounding fresh from the Notting Hill opium den.
Given the album’s autobiographical leaning on memoir rock tracks like 15 Again, things became a little meta when singer Brett Anderson detailed his inherent need for audience affection to the elegantly wasted drama pop of What Am I Without You?, or pawed the air while singing of his own performance anxieties on the cabaret punk That Boy On The Stage.
Perhaps Crushed Kid provided the veil he needed to indulge such raw exposure, and he certainly kept it up to the end. “It’s a long way to the top of the ladder but we’re going to climb it,” he declared as they left the stage, no encore of hits. Like all the best new bands, Crushed Kid left us wanting more.
