The signs were not auspicious. Just before The Double Sixers took to the stage, the crowd was violated by Reef-influenced The Black Hand, whose vocalist sung with his legs positioned so far apart he surely needed surgery after the gig.

As they left the stage, this nasty cock-rock posturing left my friend with the unfortunate feeling she had just had sex with the lead singer.

Luckily The Double Sixers were an entirely different entity. Led by the stomping, high-heeled Nic Maher - think Karen O, but more restrained and slightly less scary - the four-piece played a short set of bluesy garage rock that mesmerised those who had made the journey to Kilburn. A self-contained outfit that played for themselves as much as they did for the crowd, The Double Sixers perfectly suited the compact performance space of The Good Ship’s sunken stage.

Kicking off with the manic ‘Jerry Lee Lewis’, the band clearly meant business, the drummer - looking like he had just finished lifting weights at the prison gym - propelling each song forward at a furious pace, matching Maher’s staccato chants about dirty boys and red shoes. Best of all was the thumping ‘New York City’, which steals and twists the riff from the White Stripes’ ‘Seven Nation Army’, before segueing in to a glorious guitar breakdown reminiscent of Hendrix’s ‘Crosstown Traffic’.

Before closing with the breakneck ‘Magnolia’, the band endured a drunken stage invasion and then someone flashing them from the crowd (the same person incidentally). They dealt admirably with these incidents, though, and I suspect The Double Sixers will soon be playing venues where bouncers and barriers will protect them from their growing audience.

Ian Sinclair
pic: shot2bits.net