Stateside

It’s a Tuesday night and London has been ground to a halt by a tube strike. The Borderline however is still busy with music fans from all over London, fans willing to travel in and make that extra effort to see the type of music they love. This venue has seen a lot of big names over the years, bands coming over from the US to make their UK debuts and tonight, it’s Stateside’s turn.

It seems no one can seem to talk about Stateside without mentioning Ryan Adam’s. It wasn’t long ago that John Paul Keith and his band was helping the new media darling make a big name for himself by backing him and putting in some no holds barred live performances. Now with a fresh line up and an extra guitar, they’ve left him in their wake and are doing it for themselves. Their sound is bigger and better than ever before, with excellent song writing and good solid music behind it, it isn’t hard to see why this band is one of the best up-and-comers around.

They kick off tonight with After Dark the first track on their debut album. The noisy intro soon comes together to deliver a type of power and presence that the Borderline hasn’t seen in a good while. Tonight is a flat out rock affair and as they play classics from their album like Twice As Gone, Every Inch Of You and Gone For Good the audience are left stunned at the edgy guitar driven Stone’s type show they’re witnessing. Such is their confidence in their ability that tonight they play no less than five new songs, all of which fit perfectly into their set. This is a band who are jet lagged and have been up for two days straight, they’re tired and hungry and yet still produce one of the best live performances I’ve ever seen. They rip through songs like Little Black Dress and Salt In The Wound with an unbelievable energy. Their first album Twice As Gone is excellent and the new line up has made them even better, they’re constantly comvti_encoding:SR|utf8-nl Reviewed by:Danny Smith