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Lucky Soul, Hoxton Bar & Kitchen

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What's great pop? Easy question: it's Lucky Soul.

10th August 2010, Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen / By Dave Rowlinson
Lucky Soul What's great pop? Ooh, tough question. Great pop is encapsulated in moments, the here and now, the never to be repeated. We're, what, four songs in? A question from the stage that's not been heard since traumatic childhood supermarket outings: "Is there a Dave Rowlinson here?" Don't know which is more powerful, the geeky shame or geeky glee but one of them shoves a hand up, up and into public view. "Dave tweeted us [yes, I know] and asked us to play this, we haven't played it for ages, so if it goes wrong then blame him." And they fling themselves into 'One Kiss Don't Make A Summer'; A) finally, the Internet proves useful. B) Oh, what a song. What's great pop? It's time and place music, people music.

This song reverberates around my head with overwhelming, almost suffocating force; the times it's soundtracked, the specific people who, when I hear it I seem to feel instantly closer to. They play it, well, my lexicon of superlatives is pitifully inadequate, but it's everything I need it to be, and the whole show is astonishing, powerful, hypnotically, erm, hypnotising. What's great pop? It's everything isn't it? It's the big stuff: Life, love, hate, hurt, joy, heartbreak, faith in yourself, faith in everyone else, a need to belong, a need to escape, every experience, every high and low that defines us. We all know this stuff right? We have to because it is us. Lucky Soul take all this, dress it in towering crescendos, wrap it in that voice which this room has no chance of containing, and make it personal, inclusive and yet exclusively ours.

Good God they're special tonight; Icarus-like abandon in their quest for the dizzying heights, a fervent belief they're bigger, warmer, brighter stars than the feeble sun could ever hope to be. And they should be stars; radio, TV and the charts should be theirs to do what they want with. But while great pop might be great singles (and oh-my-days 'Up In Flames' is a gggggreat single) great pop doesn't need to be number one. It just needs to exist and breathe and dance and sing, it needs to be there for us. What's great pop? Easy question: it's Lucky Soul. Rating: 9/10
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