Location:Glasgow Star rating: ****
With Birmingham's The Twang out on the road again (they play Strathclyde University tonight) and the high-profile line-up of Mongrel ensuring automatic interest on their UK rap/rock collision, the time is surely ripe for the world to take notice of Motherwell's The Lafontaines. As broadcaster Tom Morton has wittily observed, they make Glasvegas sound like they come from Bearsden, which is to say that these young people would surely call every bleeding heart liberal an onanist and swiftly move on to the party.
Frontman Kerr Okan's rhymes are as crisp as his hair-do and there is a real classy structure to their music, for all its undeniable upfront energy, underpinned by precision bass-playing. Catch their debut EP launch show at the ABC on the last day of the month.
Mongrel boasts an ex-Arctic Monkey (bassist Andy, for whom fame famously briefly became too much), a chap from Babyshambles (guitarist Drew) and Jon and Joe from Reverend and the Makers. Like the Last Shadow Puppets, however, this seems much more than a side project, with rapper Lowkey (of the Poisonous Poets) a very large presence on stage.
Single Hit From the Morning Sun is another tune which is more complex than the group's pose seems to suggest and forthcoming album Better Than Heavy is similarly varied.
There has been a lot of stop/start in the journey of Mongrel to the stage as the various members juggle other commitments, but there was nothing under-prepared about the live show - which was just as well, given the quality of a support act working in a very similar vein. This may well be the year when hip hop and rock reach a fine new accommodation.
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