It might not strictly be a traditional music venue, but if you were going to see a band as fun as Puppy then a brewery feels like a fairly decent fit. The London trio are pretty unassuming on record, where their lush, geek rock melodies and glammy metal riffs dreamily massage your ears, but live, Puppy are a riot. As they wander onto the stage decked out in plastic skulls and full of smoke it’s immediately obvious that their humour is as dry as the ice they are using to create such a dramatic entrance. For the next 40 minutes Puppy are fantastic company to be around. Drummer Billy Price is very much from the Dave Grohl/Animal from The Muppets school of drum abuse, frontman Jock Norton is full of self-deprecating humour when he isn’t living out his Rivers Cuomo or Randy Rhodes fantasies (sometimes simultaneously) and songs like Arabella and Entombed are both gorgeous, fizzy, power-pop bangers. The mood is summed up when the band decide to do an impromptu cover of Slipknot’s Duality, which pretty much consists of the riff and Billy then chucking his sticks at the beer kegs behind him to create the songs famous ‘DONK’ before everyone collapses laughing and it all falls apart. Simple but effective fun.
STEPHEN HILL