The Gossip - 100 Club, London 14th June 2006
June 18th, 2006
Bounding onto the stage looking like a car crash involving Rikki Lake and Divine with the booty (a considerable one at that) shaking moves of Tina Turner, Beth Ditto the belching lead singer with this Arkansas three piece commences preceedings by dedicating "this one to all the faggits", the faggits and everybody else is then delighted with the brilliantly shambolic and highly sexed gritty funky punk set. Drawing mainly on their latest album ‘Standing in the way of control’, Ditto belts out the songs with fantastic white soul power like Patti Smith, Polly Harvey or Mama Cass. Torch style song ‘Yr mangled heart’ tugs at the heartstrings, when Brace Paine swaps his guitar for a bass, the music becomes much funkier, particularly impressive is ‘Listen up’ which sounds like the finest of ESG tracks. ‘Listen up’ is rolled out with the punk attitude of a petulant child, it’s brilliant as is the obvious highlight title track from the aformentioned latest album which literally raises the roof and has Beth signing in the mosh pit in her underwear - she spends over half the set in her basque as she has ‘wet lip’, so rips off her dress as she’s " too fucking hot", that is somewhat less enjoyable. An intoxicating and electrifying live experience. 8/10 Chris Todd
