Live Review: Cash Savage & The Last Drinks, Spike Fuck, Kate Alexander

As the final notes of Venus In Furs fade from the speakers, Kate Alexander arrives on stage amid a clamshell of spotlit smoke. Immediately we are rapt with her big-throated, soulful altissimo, her vocals providing the top notes to some bottom-heavy guitar chords. She displays a dramatic mastery of dynamics during one song where her voice weaves in and around a fluctuating, repeated four-note guitar lick. Apparently she has no merch to plug tonight, which is a bummer because we already have our wallets out.

Spike Fuck's MacBook sits stage left, looking nondescript as it churns out some atmospheric beats and chords. Spike Fuck herself is anything but nondescript, stalking around the stage, busting out corny interpretive dance moves and hamming up her faux New Romantic vocal. The self-dubbed "smackwave" songster assimilates her myriad of influences so efficiently that one moment we're thinking of Salt-N-Pepa, the next Spandau Ballet, the next Lou Reed. "Live and let live, and all that," she declares.

As Cash Savage & The Last Drinks hit the stage, Kat Mears' rock'n'roll fiddle instantly sets the room ablaze to the beat of blistering new single Run With The Dogs. They cool things down with the wintry, countrified dirge Let Go, Cash Savage's weather-worn voice at once mournful and fierce, before letting loose again with the hard rock of Rat-A-Tat-Tat — the band joining in with gusto on the call and response vocals. Things never stay upbeat for long at a Savage show though, and sure enough the mournful violin and even more mournful vocals of One Of Us draw us into the depths of despondency. Thankfully the ferocious double-time stomp of Port comes along to lead us back to the light — all of a sudden this feels like an acid-infused hoedown.

The band appear silhouetted against green light as the opening chords of Falling, Landing wash across the room. The progression builds to a frenzy in the chorus, as the room explodes with strobing white light; it's definitely a highlight. Then, "I'm gonna bare my soul," promises the opening line of I'm In Love, and Savage obliges, her voice forlorn, her face lit a ghostly yellow amid her blue-lit bandmates. Empty Page follows and it is devastating, Savage's anguished howls are battered by drums and draped with elegiac filaments of guitar. Twangy arpeggiated banjo and the opening lament "Sunday morning and I'm coming down" launch the soulful Sunday Morning, while Savage's voice is huge on the epic Hypnotiser as the set careens toward the finish line.