Dressy Bessy / Kicker Upstairs At The Garage, 12th January 2002

It's a Strange Fruit night featuring Track and Field bands, and there are lots of familiar faces here from Dressy Bessy's Track and Field outing earlier in the week. My, how incestuous London's tiny shmindie scene is. Not that Kitten cares, she just wants to shimmy her tail to some top toe-tapping beats.

First up we get the breezy Paris at Eastertime pop of Kicker. They make me think of those days when you can smell the freshness of Spring in the air and you suddenly feel optimistic about everything. The line-up includes sundry ex-Comet Gain/Velocette kids, with petite singer Jill adding a certain Gauloise cool. The drummer sings the odd song, bass and guitar get swapped around. A violin appears at one point. It's a joyful mod-ish sound with whirly groovy keys and brass for added sparkle. Kids! Lets all run along the Left Bank gleefully swinging our handbags as the wind streams through our hair. This stuff is infectious.

The ever-smiling Tammy resembles a happier Enid from Ghost World, especially as she wanders around pre-gig wearing black-rimmed glasses. When spirit-soaring stomper 'Lookaround' tumbles out, I imagine Enid grown-up and cheered-up, triumphantly blamming out this song, particularly as it starts 'Look around and you'll find that I've wasted my time.'

They play a good twenty songs. Even though each is short and sweet, three minute bursts of exuberance, it all becomes a little relentless. 'We're not just ordinary. We're extra ordinary' they sing and I have to prop myself against a wall with a refreshing vodka and orange.
At the end I buy a copy of the last lp 'Pink Hearts Yellow Moons'. A few weeks later, my cd player jams shut and refuses to give up 'Pink Hearts…' I now have to play Dressy Bessy exclusively. I live in a big sticky pink bubble of fizzing sonic confectionery. It doesn't bother me that much, but what happens when I go and buy the new record, 'Sound Go Round'?