"This is Menswe@r," says Johnny Dean, looking around at the eight unfamiliar faces in the familiar red-shirt-and-black-tie uniform behind him. "Let's not have an argument."
No, let's. Arriving characteristically late to the Britpop nostalgia bandwagon, this is a "reunion" only in that the original drummer is watching it. With most of his 1990s bandmates happily ensconced in management and media, Dean alone – resembling, these days, a vampire's uncle – has recruited a rag-bag of suitably slant-haired types for the first Menswe@r show in 16 years. The if-there's-no-Kim-Deal-it's-not-the-Pixies lobby would have paroxyms, but nobody wants the authentic Menswe@r experience. They were the clothes-horse chancers cobbled together from Camden hangabouts in 1994 to cash in on Britpop with one solitary Elastica rip-off, Daydreamer, to their name. They grew into the pastiche band that rotted the scene hollow. Any variation on the original must surely improve it.
Not so. Their first half hour is a woeful trawl through the stodgy post-Oasis Britpop hinterland, battered by the blustery blues of Kula Shaker and Hurricane #1. More rinky-dink confections such as the intentionally "most ridiculous Britpop song ever" Little Miss Pinpoint Eyes remain cheesier than Alex James's fingernails and only the new single, a reworking of 1996 b-side Crash, has any psychedelic meat to it.
Things get particularly awkward when, scenting stitch-up, Johnny asks this writer to identify himself and requests an indication of how this review's going. When he doesn't get one, his revived confidence and ambition visibly crumble – "I've blown it now," he sighs. But a sense of having to fight for it, or nothing left to lose, seems to spur the band to a powerful, gig-saving final 20 minutes. Daydreamer is still a nails-down-blackboard take on Elastica's Line Up but Being Brave is pleasingly stirring, the Stones-y Stardust prompts a minor stage invasion and lone new song The Boy Who Stays Inside – a Putin-baiting list of "exceptional" homosexuals including Jodie Foster, Almodóvar and "tennis players, lots of them" – builds to a chorus big and brass-clad enough to suggest that this band might have a future. Once they drop this "Menswe@r" nonsense.
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