Little Matador fit right in to the dark and dank Our Black Heart venue of Camden Town. Beards, beer, good music and free whisky makes for a great night.
There are no support bands tonight evident as Little Matador wonder onto the stage fashionably late, around 8:15. Nothing is said as the band launches into opener ‘Stitch Yourself Up’, their latest single and a sleazy stomp of track at that. Shouts of “I can’t take it, I can’t take it!” lead into the chorus of surprisingly high vocals for a man of Nathan Connolly’s appearance. The room is comfortably full but the crowd shy away from the front of stage, maybe to help protect themselves from the barrage of loud distorted guitars and the bass that you feel as well as hear.
Connolly heads up the band, singing with his eyes shut tight, as the guys around him try to lose it in such a small space. Watching the five piece crammed onto the tiny stage brings the comparison of a caged animal, hungry to have room to roam. ‘Boom Boom’ is the third track we’re treated to before anything such as a hello. Finally Connolly introduces the band and makes a quick comment about how the video for ‘Stitch Yourself Up’ was filmed “in this very room, right there”. Dave Magee fights back “she was your mum too, and she fucking loved it”, a joke that is lost on half the crowd for not having seen the video.
The next few tracks morph from mysterious and slow burning too something that gives off a vibe of a badass cowboy, topped off with “our first ever single, Liar Liar”. A balls to the wall track that they clearly enjoy playing, complete with a feedback drenched middle eight.
“This is our little sea shanty” announces Connolly as he’s handed one of the smallest acoustic guitars I’ve ever seen, “after this we’ll be doing a shot of whisky, we’ll past the bottle round” and surprisingly they do! The bottle’s taken by a fan brave enough to cross the dead space between the stage and the crowd, she takes a swig then passes it on. By the end of the riff and solo laden ‘Long Black Road’ the nearly dead bottle appears front of stage, Connolly and the bassist finish it off.
Little Matador end on ‘Gimme All You’ve Got’ a scuzzy stomp of a finisher with a hauntingly simple guitar line through out until the final “1,2,3!” where the whole band tries to go nuts but all quickly realise there is no space at all to do so.
Tonight’s gig was a showcase but more importantly used as a warm up for the “big gig tomorrow night”, where Little Matador will be playing The Shepherds Bush Empire in support of Band Of Skulls. Talking to Magee afterwards the band are clearly excited “right now I’m about a 8 but tomorrow I’ll be a 14 or more. They’re one of the bands that made us think, hang on we can do that!”
Little Matador are a hardworking, dedicated band that deserve to go far, and with the top notch tunes their churning out, their success is inevitable.