November 1, 2000

New York Wesbeth Theatre

The volume is painful, frankly, but we crawl to the edge of stage, all the better to smell the charred wood of 20 floor pedals being kicked to pieces.

Legging it through Greenwich Village, getting lost in ever decreasing circles can do strange things to a man's mind - especially if that mind was in a strange state to begin with. We want to see Bardo Pond, because the only thing to make sense at the end of another day of chasing across town is an all-out barrage of no sense, and the only people capable of spiking the psychic juices right now are Philly's masters of lysergic boogie.

And here they go, as the Gibbons brothers, Michael and John, set their phasers to 'nothing short of total war'. The volume is painful, frankly, but we crawl to the edge of stage, all the better to smell the charred wood of 20 floor pedals being kicked to pieces. Isobel Sollenberger might well be singing, it's hard to tell, while everyone else onstage - the ubiquitous Mogwai obviously - grins like Satan's own pooch posse licking St Peter to death at the gates of paradise.

Alternatively, they rocked. Forever. Heads, we win again.

Keith Cameron

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