Tuesday 10/07/07 Athlete, Maps, Loney Dear @ Koko, London

KOKO is a great venue. It strikes you immediately when you enter the hall, but its refurbished state is just lovely to behold. Tonight’s line-up promises little, but still, you can’t help but enjoy the surroundings. Taking a place on the first tier, behind the superfan onlookers, we discuss the relative merits of Athlete, trade stories of exploring both Loney, Dear and Maps and then simply await the completion of Loney, Dear’s set.

The Swedish collective are quite different in person to their acetate selves. The Loney, Dear of this show is quite loud at times, never crunchingly Mogwai-loud, but certainly far more assertive than the quiet grace of their debut album. The set passes though without incident, Emil Svanangen’s austere, baroque acoustic pop never fails to at least slightly charm, if never quite managing to weedle its way into your brain. I can confess this review is being written immediately after returning from the gig and I remember not one moment from the set. As a whole, it is pretty unsatisfying, never alighting into anything beyond listenable while Svanangen is very cuddly and wholesome in appearance, leading to the description of the man that he is much akin to your childhood teddy bear’s band were that figment of your imagination very in to his Jeff Buckley.

Unlike Grace though, this fails to alight suitably despite the sweetness of the performance and we await the arrival of Maps. When Maps come to the stage, it is very hard for us to even tell it's no longer Loney, Dear, so utterly devoid of aesthetic personality are James Chapman and his cohorts, but in all fairness to the band’s bedroom bloody valentines, they sound great. It’s a theme the night begins to define, bands not really doing anything of sonic interest or challenging in the least, yet sound incredible doing it. The clear, crisp guitars and thumping drums are impossible not to be impressed by and even if you hate the bands on show tonight, the quality of sound is irrepressible. Maps’ finest moments come when the swirling textures ignite and send promises of future wonders only glimpsed tonight but this is one to watch.

Athlete, as one would imagine, a shockingly dull. Again, the sound is perfect, glistening guitars chime out but I just cannot understand the appeal of the band. They've made one lovely song, the title track of their debut record, and then turned into this generation’s Embrace. Loved with fervent devotion by their fans, but outside of that - utterly loathed. The issue is what makes the appeal? How can this group of deeply ordinary lads with their plodding, boring indie rock manage to maintain such a powerful fanbase. ‘Wires’ might well be a touching work but even then, the requisite stream of emotion doesn’t materialise and all you get are faux-Coldplay machinations of longing and regret. Having said that, Athlete certainly are nowhere near as offensive as Coldplay so apologies to anyone for whom that touched a nerve. They play a few tracks from their new record 'Beyond The Neighbourhood' and this adoring crowd of late-twenties city workers and their averagely pretty girlfriends go home happy. Maybe that is just the charm. No effort is required tonight, no mind bending solos or confrontational noise, just music to feel numb to. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose. Would’ve been nice if it had been a little interesting though. Perhaps a dancing dwarf akin to Spinal Tap or even men and women suspended in cages above the stage. Then again, they would all likely have nothing to dance to. I must resign myself to the fact that Athlete are huge, popular and dull and there is nothing I can do about it.