Relegating your debut single and solitary hit to the encore takes a certain amount of confidence, especially during Aqualung's very first gig. Yet Matt Hales, the life and troubled soul of the band, is pleading nerves: "I had the gig-goes-badly-wrong dream," he says, looking like Prince Harry on a night off from the lads as he swings around on his piano stool to explain. "Someone popped up and ran on stage. It was Ja Rule."
Dreaming about badass rap and bruising beats is the closest Hales comes to getting jiggy with it. His songs owe more to classical music than contemporary sounds. Strange and Beautiful, the yearning song that turned the VW Beetle into an object of longing in a TV advert, is more Carpenters than Cornelius. Aqualung's album offers more haunting fragments of fleeting passions, all wrapped up in a smooth pop package that would have sat nicely next to Don McLean back when Thursdays meant Top of the Pops.
As the clean drums and bass crash into Good Times Gonna Come, Hales's choirboy vocals echo against his crisp piano, the stage lights melting from moody blue to baby pink. His hands float gracefully across the piano keys in a way that only someone who has been classically trained can achieve, and he doesn't lift his head until it is time for the band to join in.
Kerry Frampton on bass guitar and double bass and Hales's brother Ben on guitar and keyboards provide gorgeous melodies that both lift and exaggerate the sadness of the lyrics. During Falling Out of Love, two spinning glitter balls add a tarnished glamour to the singer's pain, and the faltering high notes of Can't Get You Out of My Mind add to the emotional pull.
It's not the sincerity but the intensity of feeling that is the problem. Each song wallows in self-pity, and there is very little let-up from the gloom. Even the details - including a glockenspiel and a scary dental-drill noise - get lost in the deadening air of depression of an overlong set. Some light is shed in the darkness, thanks to a couple of new songs that feature booming drums and a faster rhythm, but it is too little too late. A cover of Simon and Garfunkel's The Only Living Boy in New York feels like someone has opened a window, as the claustrophobic intimacy finally evaporates. If only Aqualung had allowed us to breathe so easily before.
