The Leisure Society, Norwich Arts Centre

The thing is, it's really my own fault.  He who smelt it, dealt it, as I'm sure someone off of the Inbetweeners once said.  So I only have myself to blame.  I chose this gig.  And, what hurts more than anything, is that I quite like(d) The Leisure Society.  Acting on a tip, I bought their album of last year and enjoyed its gently folky rattle and hum and radio (2, without a shadow of a doubt, 2) friendly melodic bursts.  I was into this whole folk-pop thing at the time, Stornoway were a fixture in the kitchen, and I was almost beginning to think that dangling a toe in musical middle age was not necessarily a bad thing.  I mean, I love a bit of noise as much as the next man, but sometimes, it's all just a bit, well, noisy.

I went to see Stornoway too, and loved them, coming away hugely impressed with a band who were thoroughly enjoying their spell in the limelight and who gave their audience a genuine show, treating the songs with respect and displaying a humility and humour that carried the audience along with them throughout.

So I was allowed to have high hopes, right?  Despite the fact that they were a bit meh at last year's Green Man (it didn't matter, it was Saturday afternoon, I'd had a drink) The Leisure Society still had the songs to pull this off, didn't they?  And if I still had doubts (I saw two of them supporting Laura Marling last year, and it was all a bit, y'know, average), then the fact that they were in a band with Shane Meadows and Paddy Considine in a previous life had to work in their favour, right?  Is that not too cool?  Didn't I hear that one of them wrote the soundtrack to "Dead Man's Shoes", or something?  Have you seen "Dead Man's Shoes"!!? Is it not, like, the best British film of the past twenty years?  They had to be good! Come on, The Leisure Society!

Oh but it was shit.  Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.  On toast.  Maybe I expected too much (as a fellow Owl remarked with a shrug afterwards, "they played the songs as they sound on the record"),but this phoned-in performance, light on anything even remotely approaching passion, energy, fun, was enough to make me want to scream. And as I looked around, desperate for something to distract me from the bland, twee, ever-so-slightly-smug nonsense unfolding in front of me, I was hit with a stark realisation.  If this is what musical middle age looks like, then it is time to run away.  Run, and keep on running, because, a quarter of a century or so ago, as I dropped the needle on "This Charming Man" for the 5,000th time, I realised that pop music was the single most exciting art form there is, and if there is no longer any more to it than the fucking Leisure Society, then I am letting my 13 year old self down.
So no more. From now on, it is all about the search for the new, the visceral, the raw.  For a gang who make music because they have to, and not because the mortgage payments are due.  And if I fail in that search, then at least I fail safe in the knowledge that I tried.  And to my fellow Owls:  put something bland on the table in the months ahead, and they're gonna get it.  We're not playing games anymore.

Chris