Mogwai - Live at the Variety Playhouse

Here is the concert hall, here are the Marshall stacks, open the doors and here's all the feedback. I am a smoldering shell of impotent longing, a one-man show with no audience in a crowd of tattooed strangers, all of us brought together in the name of rock 'n' roll. Music binds us, strobes blind us, all of us together. I showed up here tonight in hopes of experiencing something profound, like a beggar wandering into a church to get out of the rain, in danger of being converted.

Shuffling through the front doors of the Variety Playhouse, the crowd parts for me, a dyed sea of red hair. Girls wearing horn-rimmed glasses and ornate halter tops and fish-nets. Boys wearing thrift store t-shirts, canvas messenger bags cluttered with minature pins, shaggy unkempt hair masking carefully wrought expressions. I feel self-conscious and alien: for looking showered and sober, white v-neck undershirt and jeans - my uniform. There's no smoking allowed inside so everyone's jittery, sucking on imported green bottles of probably Heineken.

The opening band, London-based Part Chimp, is well into their set when I arrive, sounding like they are trying to deafen a response out of the crowd. Singer/guitarist Tim Cedar, obligatory mesh trucker hat pulled down over his face, forces strained syllables into the mic and your guess is as good as mine. His life must've felt out of tune when he wrote these songs and he's singing them with as much ragged realism as he can muster.

When a band's music isn't really doing it for you, the trick is to find the most interesting performer on stage and content yourself with studying his or her movements. In the case of Part Chimp, the scrawny drummer (John Hamilton) is the obvious choice, arms flailing wildly, head banging rapid-fire in a Dave-Grohl-like frenzy, a third drumstick almost. This guy means what he's playing, he's exited his body momentarily for that ethereal plain reserved for musicians caught up in the act of creating. Not so much a glory to behold, in this case, just fun to watch.