Comp' Index

No.4: SLAVE MARKET.

Players: eight or more.

Equipment: counters, or coins, for bidding.

Either 'ALL the women' or 'ALL the men' are herded into a corner of the room and put up for auction. Whichever way round it is, the bidders are given counters or coins to allow them to bid, while the host acts as auctioneer. He/she tries to get as good a price as possible, while the players encourage each other to bid at the best price and to retain as many counters as possible. At the end of the auction, the bidder who has the greatest number of slaves wins. If two bidders have an equal number of slaves, then the winner is the one with the greatest number of counters is declared the winner.

Strangelove's forte maybe the theatrical epic, and every song they play tonight is a typically curdled, intense personal view of life, but there's nothing remotely turgid about them. They swoop dramatically from the darkest shadow to brilliant white light, they stretch out a roughly 5 minutes a piece, but basically they're still popsongs. And they show up the huge difference between gothic and goth, about which the least said the better.

The elegant gloom of the Walker Bros, the jauntries of classic Orange Juice, a whiff of The Smiths' darkest moments - it's all here in Strangelove's brand new songs, but the grandeur is now streamlined.

Duff seems worryingly young to be banging on about death as often as he does, but the emptiness he expresses isn't utterly desolate, rather a poetic acknowledgement of the fact that even if we're plainly not all in the same boat, our different ships can pass quite agreeably in the night.

Well, that's what I think for most of tonight's stylishly brooding set, until at the end, when Strangelove hit the extraordinary 'Is There A Place' and Duff suddenly flips out. Big time. Suddenly, he's deep inside the cavenous space of the song howling with increasing desperation. Now he's throwing down the microphone, growling "I got to find somewhere" like a feral animal and tearing out clumps of his hair, while guitars roll all around and the drums slow to a death rattle. It's a 5 star climax, in anyone's books.

SHARON O'CONNEL - MELODY MAKER, 27 May 1995.