"Dean Manning and Abby Dobson are the friends you haven't seen in 20 years, and you just want to hear their stories you remember."
For the million bands after the secret of success, it's pretty simple really. There's a million things that have to go right, and a million things that can go wrong. But, for at least three-and-a-bit minutes, the Tetris pieces fell into place for Leonardo's Bride, and Even When I'm Sleeping ended up on various of those Top Songs Of All Time lists. That things sort of petered away after that magic moment through the usual mix of personal and career problems means the memory never really spoiled — and there's a full house here on a drenched Sunday night to witness their revival.
David Lane had some of those often absurd million things mess him up too. Including having to clarify that he wasn't the guitarist from You Am I. Accompanied by a couple luminaries in their own right — Mental As Anything/Dog Trumpet's Peter O'Doherty and still indie-girl-incarnate Amanda Brown — he runs through a short set of his own witty tunes and oddities like Jack Frost's Providence to further make you remember the time.
A lucky dip of songs is handed around the audience, and the Bride's Dean Manning and Abby Dobson are the friends you haven't seen in 20 years, and you just want to hear all those stories you remember. Now a bearded grey eminence, Manning still shrinks from the spotlight, leaving Dobson and that beautiful keening voice that always cracked at just the right moment to provoke sighs from the room. By turn, Buddha Baby, Problematic Art Of Conversation, Kissing Bedrock and other memories are pulled from the bag. Then, of course, a final bittersweet story of notes of affection left around the house they once shared, and how love abided even before waking. We clap and cheer, then file out into the rain, possibly wiping that something out of our collective eye.