A Night Out - Pluto @ Arc

A short one, one and a half hours of goodness, but still a night out. I arrived to find one of my secret girlfriends, one who is normally hovering around in corners looking morose, on the door, chattering away to all-comers.

On stage, The Alpha State (a strange amalgalm of Alpha Cast, Evolver and Operation Rolling Thunder) was just finishing up, two songs to go. A bit of a shame, really, as their songs were very tasty, in the alt.country swing of things. I'll have to make sure I catch their full set - unusual for Arc to get going by 10:30, but then there were a hell of a lot of people there - the dance floor was fully occupied with a sit down audience, pushing the standing crowd out the door.

The big event was, of course, Pluto. I don't know how many times I have seen them, maybe half a dozen, and I've been listening to their CD's for yonks but I never expected what has happened to their live sound. They've come a long way since their Beatles cover on A1 A2. I don't mean that they've ever been as polite as, say, Goodshirt but it was is if Perfectly Evil was no longer just one of their songs and has become their whole ethos. Milan's vocals were so much more edgy and erotic, had a lot more snarl in them than I've ever heard. He looked a lot like a young Iggy as he performed. He's said that the long interlude between records meant that they had time to get fully formed as a cohesive band: this ssound seems to be the result. There is a third album on the horizon - no doubt a further evolution from Pipeline Under the Ocean.

The funny thing is, I have no idea which songs they played: they started with an angry buzz of guitar which may or may not have been Radio Crimes. After that, I was fully into the dancing and not keeping track of what was happening - I do know that they finished on a high, and I was still bopping like a teenager. When it was finally over, the chick who had been dancing next to me throughout the gig, someone who looked vaguely familiar, was looking at me with a broad smile on her face, as if to congratulate me on staying alive.

Pluto is back in April: I'm pretty sure I'll be there.