Bombay Bicycle Club Kicks Off at Kings College

To someone whose 18th (and 19th and 20th…) year passed in a confused blur, the concept of Bombay Bicycle Club is something of a miracle. How is it possible to be both an awkward 18-year-old and  a creator of music touted by NME as ‘so precociously intelligent and artful that it seems to have been beamed down from another planet’?

Whilst the gig at Kings College Student Union, which marks the beginning of a national tour, did nothing to relieve my philosophical disquiet, it did demonstrate that the foursome from Crouch End know how to stir up a crowd.

Just in case you didn’t get it the first time around these guys are EIGHTEEN.  Although they have been playing together for four years their album, due for release in June, has had to wait until now so they could finish school – y’know the rock ‘n’ roll norm.

They basically sound like Interpol if the stylish New Yorkers were to occasionally mix half a happy pill into the unrelenting darkness. Bombay Bicycle Club takes you down but then, instead of plumbing further depths a la the aforementioned, springs up into guitar-heavy melodic surges, the combined effect creates the bittersweet soundtrack to a long, party-bound drive in a car full of friends.

The lead singer, Jack Stead, has got a whole lifetime of action ahead of him. The floppy-haired, baby rock god whose skinny adolescent frame houses a mature and nuanced voice that could have been stolen from someone 20 years his senior, appeared to be living the dream on stage, not so much dancing as careening and grinning artlessly both to himself and out to the crowd.

Oh what a crowd. With the venue being a student union, it was of course mandatory for the occasional pint of beer to come arching out of the ether, then there were the regular (mainly male!) cries of ‘I love you’ and at the end, at least five determined fans managed to leap on stage and have a victorious booty shake – this resulted in security grimly positioning themselves in a SWAT formation ready to pounce on the following  forms that came hurtling out of the audience.

If there are any criticisms to level at the BBC it is that there is not too much variety to their songs but with technique in place and a loving fan base at their feet  these bright young things have every chance of hitting the big time.

The single Always Like This is out now

Bombay Bicycle Club played at:

KCLSU Student Centre
Macadam Building
Surrey Street
The Strand
Westminster
WC2R 2NS

Bombay Bicycle Club will be back in London to perform at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire on Wednesday 27 May

For the rest of the tour dates visit bombaybicyclemusic.com