Witness/Ben & Jason The Social, London **
So convivial is the Heavenly record label's latest location for West End hi-living that any act willing to take on its Wednesday night acoustic challenge risks being consumed by the all-pervasive hedonistic hum.
"This is pretty much our last song," says Ben Parker, poutily regarding the chattering classes. "I feel waves of oppression hitting me." Maybe he meant "depression". The problem with Ben & Jason is that it's hard to care too much either way.
On record, this London duo proudly boast string arrangements by Robert Kirby, the man who once arranged strings for Nick Drake. But there's no room for strings at the Social's downstairs bunker.
This is a venue so spatially challenged that in order to get to the toilet one has to walk across the stage. So, praying for stout bladders all round and augmented by a lone keyboard player, B&J trust to their guitar and double-bass core, and unleash a set of fey inconsequence.
Foolish song titles abound, such as This Is Our Song. In fact, it's most probably a song Everything But The Girl rejected in 1984 for being too wet, and not even Parker's game attempt to impersonate simultaneously the cavalier vocal cadences of Thom Yorke and Jeff Buckley can provide redemption.
The hitherto promised "last song" turns out to be no such thing, as Ben whips up embarrassed enthusiasm for one final strum-a-long that spookily enough happens to be their next single. "It's called Air Guitar." If only.
The Social is the meeting place of the moment for the London music industry, so it's no surprise that most punters talk incessantly during the songs yet applaud uproariously afterwards.
This conundrum makes life difficult for Witness, halved to a duo for this evening's purposes and not possessed of the most outgoing demeanour in the first place. For Gerard Starkie and Ray Chan to sit down hardly commands attention, either.
But after what's preceded, their intensity is welcome. Indeed, Robert Kirby might more fruitfully work with Starkie, for this is a voice with clear echoes not just of Drake but those other British folk legends John Martyn and Richard Thompson, a querulous moan that dumps from a height on the notion that the best cure for a broken heart is to bloody well cheer up.
In Starkie's world, far from never happening, "it" happens all the time and this is the only way to make things bearable. While full Witness performances have thus far drawn invidious comparisons with fellow Wigan soul soldiers the Verve, Starkie's songs convey far more conviction in this unadorned context. Alas, it also exposes the material's monotony and his vocal limitations.
Cajoled into a reluctant encore, the pair offer Hijacker, possibly Witness's most affirmative song, yet by this point Starkie can't carry the leaps in register. The throng cheer re flexively, and miss the point. Though valiant in defeat, Witness are defeated nonetheless.
