venta

Some time last year, the lovely BBC 6Music played me a track called Coin Operated Boy, by a band called the Dresden Dolls. I liked it, I downloaded tracks from their website, I bought their album, and I ultimately bought tickets for a gig. Owing to them maliciously playing in London when I couldn't go, I bought tickets for a Manchester show.

So, Saturday afternoon saw ChrisC and I whizzing up a variety of motorways to land ourselves at the Manchester Student Union. We arrived just in time to see the support-support act, Bang On!. They were, apparently, joining on the tour unpaid (hence their mate wandering round the crowd with a big orange bucket), but were utterly spell-binding. Two people drumming on a drum kit made out of water butts, bowls, bits of kitchen equipment, old guitars... both really top notch drummers, and with great comedy timing. If you get the chance, you should really go and see them.

I declined to buy a CD, since I fear they'd be quite ordinary recorded, but live they're spectacular. A fact that their website does its very best to conceal.

The proper meant-to-be-support were a band whom I'd never heard of called Devotchka. They are a singer who plays guitar and mandolin, a violinst who plays the accordion, a double-bass player who plays the sousaphone (the sousaphone!) and a drummer. (When I say that the violinist played the accordion, you do understand that I don' t mean simultaneously, don't you ? Good.)

Devotchka fit in well with the Dresden Dolls' seedy, barking mad acoustic cabaret feel. Their sound veers between a central European Divine Comedy-plays-Muse and the Wurlitzer in the most macabre fairground on earth. But let's face it, I was going to like them whatever they did, because they had a sousaphone. With fairy lights round the bell.

If you go to Devotchka's website it will play audio at you, or they have downloadables on their MySpace site.

Having spent about three days in a bar queue, because Manchester SU have the least competent bar staff on the planet, I arrived back in the main hall just in time to see an arialist finishing her act. At least, I think she was called an arialist - one of those people who wrap themselves up in long strips of cloth suspended from the ceiling, then tumble out into an acrobatic pose. She suffered from the curse of all British gymnasts - got the technical skills, but with all the grace of a brick - and I suspect was actually not brilliant at what she did. She was, however, putting on a pretty good show for something I didn't expect to see. How often do you get a "turn" between bands ? I approve.

It also helped having a hugely enthusiastic audience. I don't know whether it was being further north, being in a student venue, being away from London or whether the Dresden Dolls just have particularly psychotic fans, but people seemed enthusiastic about everything. Bang On! had the audience in the palms of their hands, and both Devotchka and Wrappy-Cloth-Girl got an exceptionally warm reception for support acts. Mind you, fans seem to have a habit of copying the Dresden Dolls' dress sense - you could barely move for bowler hats and stripey clothes.

For those of you who haven't followed my repeated advice to download Dresden Dolls tracks[*], they are two people who play piano and drums extremely violently, and describe themselves as neo-Brechtian Punk Cabaret. I think their eponymous first album is amazing.

Live, I don't think they were quite as stunning as I was expecting, though they were still damn fine. They may be current front runners for greatest single number at a gig so far this year - playing Coin Operated Boy they played merry hell with the timing, managing to do a convincing impression of a stuck record at one point, then, after an extended piano wank-out segued straight into a blistering cover of War Pigs. They chalked up further comedy cover points by sliding in a(n admittedly slightly limp) version of I Know It's Over to thank people for coming to see them instead of Morrissey (who was playing down the road), and a Jacques Brel song accompanied only by a guitar.

The rest of the time it was all crashing percussion, performance posing from the drummer when he had the time, dusty vocals and piercing piano. There are some quite, tender moments in their songs but they are interspersed with periods of wondering how they can make that much noise with just the two of them.

The red-and-black decor of the Academy 2 in Manchester SU suited their monochrome outfits and the elderly red velvet curtains of their backdrop. There is something about them which just oozes seedy, pre-war, cabaret glamour and whisks you into their world. I can't help feeling that the ideal venue for them would be a tatty, disused theatre where their audience could sit at small tables, sipping absinthe and cheap red wine among the tea lights.

[*] Why haven't you listened to them ? Hmm ? Go and download Girl Anachronism. Go on. No excuses.

On Sunday, in Manchester, it rained a lot. Apparently this is usual. However,

snow_leopard had thoughtfully provided good company, cardgames and a fine pub to make the rain go away, which was all rather nice. If you ever encounter a beer called Ginger Marble, made by the Marble Brewery from Manchester, buy two pints and post one to me.