If you had to be at a gig on the hottest day of the year so far, it might as well have been Morcheeba at Somerset House, a night out made in inertia heaven. With its riverside setting and airy courtyard, there can't be a venue in London that better complements the trio's music "that makes people fall asleep and crash their cars," as their own bassist put it on the sleeve of the recent best-of, Parts of the Process.
The chilled-out beats that soothed boggle-eyed clubbers in 1995 now have the same effect on the mortgage-and-marijuana crowd that has become their constituency.
Many of the latter were reeled in by a Ford Mondeo ad featuring the dreamy World Looking In, which secured the group's place, alongside Moby and Air, among the coffee-table dance elite. And, Mondeo drivers or no, the audience offered robust support here, nodding emphatically to an epic The Sea and frugging to the most overtly poppy moment, Blindfold.
Downright weird, this show of Cheebmania that had swoony couples high-kicking and one man crying, "Who's the greatest songwriters ever?" (Hmm - would it just happen to be guitarists Ross and Paul Godfrey, who brooded at either side of the stage like trip-hop Grant Mitchells?). For some of us, the hazy mood - the result of stirring together one drowsy-voiced singer, a swamp-blues rhythm section and some midnight-blue lighting effects - just made us want to curl up on the cobblestones and nod off.
But anyone who did was abruptly awakened at the end of each song by the group's spiritual heart, Skye Edwards. She sang with a kitten's vocal chords, but spoke with a Cockney sparrow's squawk, jollying the crowd into clapping and Mexican-waving.
Imagine the shock, having been lulled into a pleasant daydream by Howling's swooshing beats, being yanked out of it by "Laahndaahn! Let's see those hands in the air!" London didn't need encouragement, punching the air to the 1998 dinner-party essential Big Calm and a reggae-blues handful from the Charango album. The disparity between the lulling music and raucous atmosphere did at least keep you awake when "lulling" spilled over into "boring". But overall, on a sultry night, Morcheeba-on-Thames wasn't a bad place to be.
