White Room playing This Feeling’s 10th anniversary in London (Alberto Pezzali for Live4ever)
Not long after midnight, Carl Barât casually appears on stage and takes control of the DJ decks as the Style Council’s Shout To The Top! plays; for the next couple of loud hours, he hurls out what feels like almost every worthwhile indie to punk to rock and mod song the planet has hitherto coughed up.
Tonight is the 10th anniversary of This Feeling, the indie club night that has a guitar-shaped heart and has been labelled as “vital” for the future of rock and roll music by Noel Gallagher. The shindig is at 229 The Venue in London, where Kings Of Leon played an impromptu gig just ten days previous and tight security and a grumpy ticket girl now greet you before heading downstairs to one large disco-balled room yet to entertain any bands. A short passageway at the back leads off to a smaller room that has Bang Bang Romeo on stage playing their brand of dramatic rock to an absorbent gather of leather jackets, drainpipes, hair and a man in bandana and shades.
Up next is Judas, a four-piece who look as if they’ve been slingshoted straight from a 1970s rock stadium concert, smooth chests on show and all. Singer John Clancy revs up the room with a seemingly natural ease through the anthemic Call Me whilst Peter Crouch (his brother-in-law) watches on. Talking of ones that have already made it on to the fame board, Kasabian‘s Serge Pizzorno is here, obliging for photos with excitable lookalikes.
Paul Weller is also at the party as one of White Room‘s abiding advocates (an apostle every group who’s ever played these clubs nights would surely gurgle blades for). The Brighton band, who are playing on the much bigger stage in the main room, sound like a lost, great Britpop band — Think Too Much being a luring example — and have the body language of the baggy scene in the way frontman Jake Smallwood apes Ian Brown‘s simian moves. A brief a cappella of Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life between band and audience sums up the whole positive communion here as Smallwood lobs his tambourine off the boards with the surety of someone who’s been around forever.
A guy, probably the only combined mod and magician you’ll ever hear of, called The Magic Mod is walking around doing some pretty impressive card tricks. And by the bar, two other guys are grabbing anyone within grasping distance to sit down for an equally impressive five-minute caricature sketch, which inevitably makes it the giggliest patch of the entire building.
The final live act is Broken Hands. Trippy synths, fat guitar fuzz and early Verve tones in Dales Norton‘s Ashcroftian vocals come at you in intense swells. Meteor is a tour de force of an indie song that stings as much as Oasis‘ Bring It On Down. Norton is a man possessed, running around the stage. Whatever level he’s on, the crowd follow him to it.
And so to DJ Barât. Clad in his favoured braces, he shakes the outstretched hands of the people that are reaching up from the floor the way an old friend would. A friend with a lot of outstanding music up his sleeveless t-shirt that he wants to shower you with.
If the success of tonight is anything to go by, we’ll be seeing you in 2026.