Wednesday night saw Australian band, Eskimo Joe take to the stage at Camden’s Koko. I love the venue having been here multiple times but I didn’t even know about the other floors that tower high above. We ended up in the JD lounge on the top most floor where you need to pass through a menacing leather bound door that make it looks like some sort of private members club. On the way back from the toilets, I passed a couple who looked cautious about entering and was about to turn around when I told them that it was fine and open to everyone. Unlike other venues with multiple floors, you still got a great view of all the action down on stage.
I can barely remember the name of the support act. It was a bloke from Leicester who had a decent voice but played some fairly average tunes. He played about five or so songs before handing the stage over to Eskimo Joe who came on at quarter past nine. Having seen them several times back home, what always impressed me about them is that they made some decent effort to connect with the audience and chat such as giving a bit of a brief background to some songs without turning it into some sort of soppy lecture. They always joke between themselves and seem pretty down to earth. As an example, their lead singer, Kavyen apologised to the entire audience when he realised his fly wasn’t done up somewhere through the set. None of this dashing off stage or anything like that.
Eskimo Joe played a great selection of plenty of songs mainly from their last two albums, and a handful of newer ones that will be coming out for their new album in a couple of months. What struck me about their newer songs is that they sounded very retro, very 80s-like and you can see that they’ve been experimenting with their sounds. Even their third album compared to the previous two was a lot moodier and sombre than the upbeat tunes you’d find on the first two.
It was a nice mid-week break to go and watch some live music. Particularly listening to some live music from a band that I enjoyed listening to when I was back home. It seemed like the very heavily anti-podean crowd enjoyed them just as much.
TheKua.com Rating: 8 out of 10
The supports name was Jersey Budd x
Nice review, they play well live don’t they. and Koko is a great venue (plus there’s a decent Vietnamese around the corner, looks shabby but great food!). I don’t know much of their new stuff, but I def like the upbeat numbers! Wes and I sure miss the gigs in London town.