live review: grouplove / summer camp / los campesinos! shepherd’s bush empire. 2 february 2011.

i like shepherd’s bush empire. i’m not sure what it is about it. anybody who knows me will know my hatred of brixton academy, and the empire is of course from the same stable. and it hasn’t even got brixton’s only good feature; the sloping floor. plus, it is so far west that sometimes i feel like i’m actually travelling to see los campesinos! in their home town of cardiff. what it does well is what brixton’s main failure is. you can get served at the bar. that’s what makes a good venue for me. whether you’re in the tiny basement of a pub in stoke newington or among 80,000 people at a farm in reading, if you can’t get a pint within two minutes don’t bother.

that and i quite like the stage setting.

anyway, we weren’t there to rate the beer. we were there for part of nme’s increasingly good awards tour. whatever you think about the magazine, you can’t fault the quality of new music they bring to us over a month or two early each year. grouplove kicked things off for the evening, but i’ll have to skirt over them quite quickly because we only made it for the closing song. luckily that was the fantastic ‘colours’, which if you haven’t heard you can get as a free legal download with a quick google search (other search engine are available).

next up were the always brilliant summer camp. looking around at the now pretty close to capacity empire, i couldn’t help but reflect back to when i first saw them in the little room upstairs at the lexington for the launch of single ‘ghost train’. they’ve come a long way and deserve it. jeremy warmsley exudes musical talent from every bone in his body. as for miss sankey, her voice is so suited to the sound that jeremy produces that it is as if they were made to make music together. maybe they were?

i was especially excited to see los campesinos! headline. i hadn’t seen them live for three or four years, and never since i’d made the move to london. i know of nobody that dislikes los campesinos! and what they have in droves are very enthusiastic fans. they are one of my favourite bands, and i would guess that the same went for many others there. nobody was just there to see some music. they were there to see a hugely talented collection, led by the genius of gareth (who, if twitter is anything to go by, also seems very normal and nice) perform. having the entire crowd sing “you could never kiss a tory boy without cutting off your tongue again” back at you must be quite a decent pay off for the work they put in.

i loved the night, and loved the bands. okay so it took us several hours to get back to the haven of n16 thanks to some bad decisions when it came to ‘can we fit a pint in before the last tube?’ (answer: no), but it was worth it. and you know what? i’d still go for that last pint if i was to do it again. that last pint is the best time to discuss the gig you’ve just seen, and there was plenty to discuss and rave about.

this review originally appeared on freedom spark