June 23, 2000

London E1 Spitz

Astonishing.

No-one could have predicted the post-Creation fallout would be so... quiet. First, ex-Creation boss Alan McGee's virtual venture, Poptones, dodges the task of finding the new Oasis and signs up margin-dwellers The Montgolfier Brothers instead. And tonight, McGee's old Creation comrades Dick Green and Mark Bowen set out their new label's low-key stall. They've called it Wichita, after Jimmy Webb's 'Wichita Lineman'. And they've gone West for their first signings, too: Omaha, Nebraska's Bright Eyes and Her Space Holiday of San Francisco, neither of whom are the new Oasis, either. They're far lovelier than that.

Her Space Holiday are two: bespectacled bedroom-jockey Marc Bianchi on one huge keyboard, and his gamine other half, Keely, on another. Together they make like a rinky-dink Spiritualized, all syrupy synth whirrs and heavy-lidded melodies - less obviously opiated than the genuine article, but compelling all the same. It's not exactly riveting, watching the bookish Bianchi adjust dials and breathe, but despite the non-ideal conditions (outside the pod, an audience, stingy volume) HSH knit the sublime ('The Doctor And The DJ''s honeyed misery) to the disturbing (their forthcoming LP is called 'Home Is Where You Hang Yourself'). Out there, then.

Bright Eyes, meanwhile, more obviously encapsulate Wichita's exchange of champagne supernova for rot-gut rye. Eye-in-chief Conor Oberst sings like he's got a medieval penitent's belt of thorns under his clothes: his consumed, fevered exhortations (well, they're hardly just songs) start out all Palace-quiet, but rise to spittle-flecked seizures. "I believe that lovers should be TIED TOGETHER", he rails on the fantastic 'A Perfect Sonnet', as his accompanying xylophone, mandolin and guitar vie with each other to implode first. There's Leonard Cohen's lyricism here, hitched to the vicious alt-country of the Violent Femmes, and fuelled by all the passion and bitterness one 20-year-old psyche can muster. Astonishing.