Pastels/Tenniscoats @ The Bush Hall

I arrived at the Bush Hall just after eight hoping to catch support act Veronica Falls whose single track on their MySpace page convinced me to make the effort. In the olden days you'd arrive and hand over your ticket or a fiver and you'd be in but in this new ticketless age each person has to convince the door staff who they are, which makes entry a slower process. A queue had formed outside the venue and when I finally made my way in Veronica Falls were already half-way through a very enjoyable set of noisy and loose guitar pop. I saw enough to want to hear more but as far as I can tell I'll have to make do with that one track on MySpace.

I positioned myself at the front of the stage - possibly a little too far forward for the best sound but by the time I realised this, the crowd behind made it difficult to move back. At least I got a good view if not the best sound.

The Pastels had the two members of lovely Japanese pop act Tenniscoats playing with them (as well as Gerry Love from Teenage Fanclub on bass). The two bands have a released a very beautiful album, Two Sunsets, and the set was made up predominantly of tracks from that album.

Main set closer was The Pastels own Baby Honey which was great to hear and rocked beautifully hard. The encore started with Tenniscoats doing a track on their own before The Pastels returned for a couple more... and it was over.

All together a stunning evening and well worth dragging my tired, old bones along to.

More photos on Flickr.