Live Review: Kitty Daisy & Lewis, Big Smoke

It all starts with support band Big Smoke. It's interesting. They reek similarities to this evening's headliners in their leaning towards country music and a little bit of blues, but the way they deliver it is contrary indeed. It's harmonic and twee; a set featuring crooning love songs, simple and effective, with a preference for the acoustic guitar. A sense of simple blues sentiment runs through these heavily lyrical tracks that explore love and dancing — two very tired topics. Words roll gracefully off singer Adrian Slattery's tongue and have a calming effect.

Calm before the storm. Calm before the audience is locked tightly in the grasp of three swingin' siblings from London. They, of course, are Kitty, Daisy & Lewis Durham. Daisy belts out their opening number. Kitty, meanwhile, is on guitar, Lewis is on drums and they have a bassist and a guitar player with them, too (their parents). This initial set-up will all change, though.

Shortly after the first song they perform tracks from their new album The Third like Baby Bye Bye and No Action, with all three siblings taking turns on drums, piano, vocals, tambourine and, in Kitty and Lewis' case, guitar too. They seamlessly execute blues, funk, ska, country, and a whole heap of 12-bar blues. There's a stench of whisky house ramblings within their songs, but also that of squeaky-clean funk. Eddie 'Tan Tan' Thornton joins them on trumpet for some of it, which of course adds to a sense of genuineness to their music. They're not just playing all of this stuff because they can, but because they understand it. This band's backbone is absolute musical competence.

Kitty and Daisy wear skin-tight jumpsuits that are nothing short of electric: Kitty's is covered in diamantes, Daisy's is silver. Their brother conjures a wonderful inconsistency. He wears a suit — the type of suit that Hank Williams wore. And, funnily enough, he also sings and plays guitar like Williams. They finish the set with the infectiously repetitive Going Up The Country, with Daisy howling vocals while leaning over her snare drum, hammering both at once. Kitty goes between vocals and frenzied harmonica. They return for an encore that includes stretching solos on both the harmonica and guitar. It's just further affirmation to the audience — or to this reviewer, at least — that we've perhaps just witnessed the grooviest thing we'll see all year.