85. Django Django

Rough Trade East

5 May 2015

Nearly a month on from that forgettable Sheffield garage-rock misadventure, I found myself back in the fluorescent glow of Rough Trade East, wedged once more between the free jazz compilations and a suspiciously large number of tote bags.

This time, though, it was art-rockers Django Django on deck, peddling their second album, the follow-up to a debut so promising it bagged a Mercury Prize nod and the curse that often comes with it, instant indie darling status. Applause from the critics, a shrug from the general public. That being said, their first album was genuinely good. The kind of record that sounded like Beta Band demos had been spliced with krautrock in some freak laboratory accident.

On stage, their set was solid. They even brought a saxophonist along, which felt extravagant for a band not getting paid to be there. The crowd, made up mostly of the kind of people who refer to their plants by name, was politely enthusiastic. The new material was competent, rhythmic, melodic, faintly psychedelic. But that elusive spark, that sense of something special about to combust, just wasn’t there.

It felt, strangely, like a band doing a very respectable impression of themselves. All the right ingredients were present, but the recipe had gone a little tepid. A bit of seasoning short of a banger.

And here's the kicker: since that night, they've released three more albums, each greeted with diminishing returns and rapidly evaporating fanfare. The last one limped into the charts at number 91 before vanishing. The reality is that some bands only have one great album in them, and while Django Django’s debut will always hold up, the rest feels a bit like photocopies: slightly blurrier with each pass. Still, they tried. They brought a sax.