Gang of Four
Carling Acadamy, Bristol
American Music Club
Fiddlers Bristol

Two reunions on successive nights - and no one could accuse either band of reforming for the money. After all, they made precious little first time around, and that's not likely to change.

Others have done well out of Gang of Four's template of jagged punk-funk, particularly Franz Ferdinand and Interpol. But the brutality of the original comes as a pleasant shock. There's a fine tension here, with bass and drums locked into formidable grooves and Jon King searching for space to sing, declaim or whisper. Andy Gill's much imitated guitar provides no release. His blocked chords and flurries of notes are the sound of frustration and anger. When he throws his guitar down to get just the right feedback, he looks at it with contempt. These songs, emblems of an individual's struggle to cope with the external world still, sadly, ring true. 'He'd Send in the Army' and 'To Hell With Poverty' retain a disciplined rage. And it's instructive to find that King's tones and the band's general air of menace are such a core part of Bristol's own Massive Attack.

The songs of American Music Club, one night later, are about struggles of a different kind. Mark Eitzel is one of the rawest of songwriters, unflinching in describing his own fallibility. The San Francisco band, back together after 10 years, play off and around his words, using jazz, soul, country and drunken waltz times. These twisting songs, taken mainly from 1995's Mercury and last year's belligerent Love Songs for Patriots, are hard for the newcomer to assimilate. But this audience was well-versed in Eitzel's world of bleak humour and unfiltered passion.