After four years of scuffling around on the indie-folk, we’ll-even-come-and-play-in-your-living-room circuit, Nizlopi achieved a sudden, monumental breakthrough thanks to their Christmas hit, JCB Song. Such has been the impact on the fortunes of the duo from Leamington Spa that their debut album, Half These Songs Are About You, which was first released in 2002, has shot into the independent chart, while gigs have had to be switched to bigger venues to cope with the increased demand for tickets. Their Empire show on Sunday had originally been booked for the Scala, and when singer Luke Concannon asked who among the crowd was there to see the duo for the first time, a sea of hands went up. It is the moment that every artist dreams of. But such a sudden influx of new fans on the back of one song can be a mixed blessing.
For Nizlopi, the endearing narrative about a five-year-old boy driving along with his dad in a JCB digger was just one item in a long and varied setlist that has served them well over many years. And they duly slotted it in with little fuss or fanfare about halfway through the show. However, the crowd, having got what they came for, was thinning out noticeably by the end.
It wasn’t that Nizlopi were lacking in spirit or musical inventiveness. While Concannon sang and played acoustic guitar, his partner John Parker manhandled a double bass with unusual dexterity while using his voice to produce extraordinary “human beatbox” percussive effects. Songs such as Fine Story and Long Distance were at the hip end of the acoustic easy-listening spectrum.
With a battered old hat plonked on top of the bass’s headstock, they looked like a pair of buskers. Concannon certainly had the air of a huckster as he organised different sections of the crowd to sing three-part harmonies or engaged them with earnest raps about the fate of the human race and the empowering effect of true love.
But there was something of the Friday night social club about the gig, and after a couple of girls from the audience had been invited on stage to warble tunelessly into a microphone and jiggle around, you half expected someone to start calling the bingo numbers.