To the Scala venue in King’s Cross, guest of Ms Charley Stone, to see the bands Congregation and Electrelane.

Shall I say something interesting about the Scala? It’s a 1920s cinema. And it continued to be a cinema for sporadic periods all the way up to the early 1990s. Iggy & The Stooges played their only London gig there in 1972, and it’s the setting for the cover photo for their album Raw Power.

It’s also directly responsible for the classic Neil Jordan film The Crying Game. The film’s producer Stephen Woolley was also the Scala’s manager during its 80s life as a popular art-house cinema. To help finance the film he borrowed directly from the Scala’s box office takings. No Scala, no Crying Game.

Citing the fable of the scorpion and the frog crossing the river, The Crying Game is about the nature of things and the nature of people, versus situations that play on such natures. Its principal theme is that very Neil Jordan concern (whether it’s lonely vampires, werewolves, transvestites, prostitutes or IRA soldiers) – individuals caught up in situations that suppress individuality. His heroes are not so much rebels as gentle souls trying to do the decent thing. Accidental rebels.

So, as I think about this 1920s cinema which gave birth to The Crying Game, I think about how these connections neatly fit with the band headlining tonight, Electrelane.

Like The Crying Game, they tilt at a level of gender issues and androgyny which isn’t what they’re actually about, but is undeniably a part of their appeal. On paper they are four ladies on drums, bass, guitars and keyboards – the usual rock set-up – but their music is very removed from the identity of its players. They are as unlike personality-driven girl bands such as The Bangles or The Go-Gos as one could imagine, playing a brand of shifting art-rock; mainly instrumental with vocals as instruments more than carriers of lyrics.

Sometimes there’s elegant flourishes of intricate melody, sometimes there’s all-out noise. A lot of very studious, serious noise. Some pieces – as opposed to ‘songs’ – start and stop, slow down and speed up, become suddenly quiet or suddenly loud. And back again. They have a classical music approach to the rock band.

I am told they are more ‘Kraut Rock’ than ‘Prog Rock’, but I’m not the kind of boy to argue over musical pigeonholes. If you think I’m going to comment more on their appearance than their music, you’ve come to the right flaneur. Though their music has an androgynous ‘don’t look at me’ approach, they are better dressed than most all-male groups of a similar musical style. Their haircuts are elegant, and whether intentionally or not, Eletrelane’s hair is compatible with the flapper bobs, thick wavy partings and boy-cuts of those 1920s screen stars the Scala was built to worship in the first place. Same haircuts in the same space, eighty years apart. A temple to the 1920s ladies’ haircut, worshipped then as now.

Their thin, boyish-haired and boyish-dressed drummer has a distaff Crying Game appearance – an exquisite androgyny that steals hearts of all persuasions, that soldiers would die for. One imagines her journeying to the Trenches in male dress, writing letters home to her Violet Trefusis-like sweetheart.

Stage right, their guitarist is dressed in the kind of timelessly elegant dress that suggests she is about to launch into the ditties of Noel Coward, rather than wrestling ear-splitting feedback from her Gibson SG guitar. She handles the instrument in the manner of a Wodehouse character playing a game of whist, yet the sounds she produces are as muscular as the labours of the most swaggering and sweaty rock god.

One more fact about the Scala: Hawkwind played here in their 70s prime. And indeed, Electralane have their moments that recall Silver Machine, that chugging guitar hit beloved of regional indie discos from my youth. Admittedly, these are the moments where I decide to go to the toilet. When a band face each other on stage and grind away noisily at their guitars for extended periods, I can only salute so far. But that’s just me.

The Scala is packed to capacity, and it’s hard to find anywhere to stand without being jostled by strangers. A man keeps bumping into me as he dances, so I move to another part of the crowd. Then the new man in front of me also starts bumping into me as he dances. So I move right to the back. Then a woman treads squarely and painfully on my foot as she passes. I take the Universe’s hint and spend the rest of the gig in the bar.

Electralane are just too big for the Scala. Good for them, but they really should play larger venues next time. It’s hard to enjoy a band fully when one’s attentions are drawn by sweaty strangers constantly shoving themselves at you.

Also present at the gig are people I’ve known on and off since the mid 90s: Emma Jackson and Adrian L, and Rory M the Romo club doorman of old. They all look exactly the same as they did in 1996. Emma J was once in the teen band Kenickie writing unkind songs about the ugliness of Sunderland school dinner ladies. These days, she subscribes to the London Review Of Books and is a full-time academic and lecturer. But she’s still funny with it. Electralane do attract a certain chin-stroking type of intellectual (Emma J calls them Wire Magazine Types), but they also attract perfectly fun-loving people who enjoy music because it delights their heart, not because it lends itself to analytical essays. Brightly-dressed young and not-so-young girls and boys, dancing along even to the most seriously arty bits.

I did want to describe the Electrelane fans as either:

1) Gentlemen who intensely collect records.
2) Ladies who intensely collect other ladies.

But that’s unfair. Though both tribes are in evidence tonight – lots of men in glasses and half-beards, lots of women with boyish haircuts – there’s also plenty of, dare I say it? I think I will dare. Normal people. Blokes who are real blokes. Ladies who like real blokes. Straight couples. There’s even a few beefy lager lads, who stand to my right at the bar in football tops, all convict haircuts and ruddy cheeks, arguing over which of their many pints is Grolsch and which is Carling, as one of their number orders a seemingly endless amount of lager for his friends.

Before the gig, Ms Charley and I have dinner in a cheap but lovely cafe across the road. On the laminated menu are different fillings for jacket potatoes. One description in particular makes Charley laugh:

“Tuna – all styles.”