Gig Reviews: The Pogues AfterParty @ The Jamm, Brixton, 18th December 2009

by Gary Smith

Every year, The Pogues play an awesome Christmas gig at The Brixton Academy, before (allegedly) heading down the road to their after show party at The Jamm.  This is a great night for the club, as they get a whole bunch of bands in to play from 10pm until roughly 2am before Shane McGowan is due to make an appearance and then they have DJ sets to play out until 6!  Shane, and The Pogues, however, are notorious for never actually turning up as they have passed out shortly after playing (and getting pissed up) at The Academy!

We were quite lucky to get on one of the bands coaches to take us there and leave in the early hours.  As we arrived, there was a small local band playing, which unfortunately we didn't really catch as we headed through to the main room whilst The Logues were playing their fantastic Irish folk music which was great fun to watch and be a part of.  They were a 5 piece band and were expertly keeping the whole audience entertained.  They performed a couple of familiar numbers, but generally played all their own music.

Kenelis were the real reason behind us attending this gig (much thanks to them for everything by the way), and were on next with a standing out set of pure anger, aggression and rage... which went down suprisingly well overall considering the audience were mostly after the Irish styles and awaiting Shane's never appearing appearance!

Mel, the gorgeous lead singer of Kenelis, was fantastic - and never letting the fact that she feels her voice is going will actually stop her from going louder and louder by the song!  Their songs are very well written, with different moods being incorportad, superb melodies and pure emotions (NOT EMO may I add...) to bring everything to frontline and performed so well to make this one of the best gigs I've seen in a while, especially when making the crowd scream for their video blog!

As the night progressed on, there were more variations on styles of bands, with some 'Travis' / 'ColdPlay' stylings, a few Reggae and swing feels throughout.  In the room where we first entered, the band had been packed up and there was a club theme running through this - with everyone dancing with eachother and a great atmosphere with the large number of strangers becoming good friends (if only for the evening!).  It was a superb night in general.

The last band on were another Irish Folk..with an underlying punk rock background to it..even though these guys (and girls) were from England! The Roughneck Riot are a crazy 6 peice band with truly rock and roll banjo and accordian skills supplied by the two girls of the group and the skills supplied by the guitarist, bassist, drummer and mondolin are truly awesome.

The mentalism of the show is also a great pleasure to watch and to be a part of that atmosphere.  The night played out with DJ sets after this spectacular headlining act.  Check out what you either witnessed or missed out on by looking at more photos of the night, thanks to DPG Photography!