Live Review: Alex Cameron, Spike Fuck

Spike Fuck is somebody who personifies the phrase 'living your truth'. In a Fred Perry polo and denim skirt, she paces around the stage, not so much dancing as sporadically holding poses. She sings her beautifully overblown ballads about methadone, past lovers and being a transwoman in a collection of histrionic vocal tics: grunts, squeals, howls. It's like watching someone really kill it at karaoke, even before she does a rendition of Bette Davis Eyes that's more dramatic reinterpretation than cover. Compelling.

Alex Cameron and his six-piece band take the stage and dive straight into Studmuffin96. As he performs, Cameron fully inhabits his sleazy persona, selling every sordid lyric about his lover who's "almost 17". Cameron straps on an acoustic guitar and says, "I thought this was a love song until I played it for the woman I wrote it for, at which point I realised it was a break-up song." He then leads the band into Candy May, a beautiful song about a toxic, abusive relationship. His confusion is understandable.

In the live setting Cameron's music has such vibrancy, anchored by the solid foundation of his strong pop melodies. On songs like Happy Ending and Runnin' Outta Luck, the band's sound has the kind of fullness that's only possible with two percussionists and a couple of people singing back-up. Keyboardist and backing vocalist Holiday Sidewinder really proves her worth as she crushes Angel Olsen's part in the delightful duet Stranger's Kiss.

Still, aside from Cameron himself, the star of the show is undoubtedly the one-man horn section that is his dear friend and business partner, Mr Roy Molloy. Between solos, Molloy sits somewhat awkwardly on a stool and then each time he stands to deliver, the crowd roars its approval. Molloy is perhaps the most beloved sax-playing sidekick since Clarence Clemons' untimely exit from Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band (and the world). With Jack Ladder on guitar it's kind of an all-star line-up, but these songs deserve nothing less.

The set climaxes with the rousing Politics Of Love - a song that should have been adopted by the Yes campaign in the same way that Kendrick Lamar's Alright was appropriated by the Black Lives Matter movement. Cameron declares last year's excellent Forced Witness to be their "contribution to the investigation of the condition of the straight, white male" before leading the band into a triumphant rendition of Marlon Brando. Although the perspective of the straight, white male may be the most overexposed and least essential right now, if anyone has a new angle to contribute, it might just be Alex Cameron.