During their brief partnership seven years ago, singer David McAlmont and guitarist Bernard Butler were pop's oddest couple, and their differences swiftly led to a mud-slinging divorce. When Butler decided to patch things up a year ago, he didn't even have McAlmont's phone number. When he finally contacted the singer, who had never bettered his two Top 20 singles with Butler, McAlmont took little persuading that they were a stronger proposition together than apart.
Good news for those who remember the Phil Spector-pastiche hit Yes as a highlight of 1995 - but this was more than a nostalgia-fest for ageing Britpoppers. The pair have put unfinished business behind them to focus on the "great, intelligent" pop they always intended to make. The flouncy stuff apparently out of his system (or banished for the duration of the duo's Monday residency), the crop-haired, bespectacled McAlmont simply stood and sang. His silvery-pure vocals and Butler's unfussy playing created the elegant symmetry that defined the set. Next month's album, Bring It Back, yielded the impossibly pretty Where R U Now? and the airborne title song, both polished to a warm glow by McAlmont's deft strokes. There was also Different Strokes, in which McAlmont broke out his falsetto - carefully kept in check till this moment - and Butler a harmonica. You would have assumed guitarists born after the 1960s don't do harmonicas, but it must be something he picked up recently, working with venerable folkie Bert Jansch. At any rate, its Womad-like wheezing did absolutely nothing for the tune. If anything, it was mildly off-putting watching Butler laboriously puffing and strumming, upsetting the graceful balance.
He looked happy, though, when he slipped back into the supporting musician role he relishes. Hidden behind a flop of hair, he rarely looked up, didn't speak and whispered his backing vocals in an paroxysm of shyness. Back to normal, then, after those anomalous solo albums. The hits Yes and You Do unleashed McAlmont's falsetto to explosive effect, stopping drinkers mid-sip as he scaled an impossible wall of notes while Butler made a acoustic guitar sound like a whole band. It was conclusive evidence that this alchemy of opposites still works.
· At Cherry Jam, London W2 (020-7727 9950), July 22 and 29.
