Seeing the Light

Stone Gods emerge from The Darkness I have failed you. I am sorry. You lent me the Dictaphone and everything, and I let you down. This is Cherwell, and so you want something post-modern and ironic, or at the very least scathing and cynical. But all my pretensions to critical greatness have been jeopardised by the fact that provincial little me has been charmed senseless. In my defence, Stone Gods are no ordinary band: they used to be The Darkness (before the lead singer left, and Toby MacFarlaine arrived). So their charisma has been honed on TV presenters and proper celebrities. Can you blame me for liking them? Backstage at the Carling Academy (evidently not refurbished when the rest was) they have a small fridge containing their rider: apples, hummus, “about 8 types of cheese”, Stella, and both colours of wine. According to Dan Hawkins, they ‘had some mangetout turn up too once’. This can’t be rock and roll – they’re too nice. This generosity of spirit apparently extends even to each other: they collaborate on songs, the four of them ‘sitting around with acoustic guitars’. MacFarlaine describes it as ‘like that game you play when you’re a kid: you draw the head of the monster, and fold it over and pass it on’. The analogy isn’t borne out by the music: the songs are tightly structured and tidy. They are also catchy. This is fortunate, because there are exactly 3 minutes of the new album available on MySpace, and they are headlining the show. Evidently, they’ve got a bit of a way with words – conversation moves from Pavlovian conditioning to raspberry pavlova. And then onto Kanye West (“nice sunglasses” according to Edwards), Joe’s Café on Cowley Road (‘brilliant’), and the relative merits of buying a pig or buying a pigskin hat from Reign. MacFarlaine and Hawkins are local boys: if you want to make a pilgrimage (more original than stalking Thom Yorke), MacFarlaine used to live at 526 Banbury Road. The band have been enjoying meeting their new fans – including a 52-year old lady-rocker, who assured them she’d still be head-banging at 101, and a small entourage which escorted the drummer to Boots the Chemists (I am assured he wanted to go). On stage they not only thank us for coming, but apologise for a song called “Magdalene Street”, because it’s named after a street in Norwich which is pronounced all wrong (Biblical rather than Oxonian pronunciation). Attempting to regain some journalistic objectivity, I took a discerning friend to the gig, planning to hijack his critical opinion and present it as my own. Unfortunately, he liked them too. He said they sounded original. And the downside of liking something (apart from embarrassing myself dancing like a muppet and witnessing my beautiful sarcasm wither under the onslaught of niceness) is that you want it to like you back. I don’t really have anything to offer them – when I ask what they would have liked as gifts MacFarlaine says he wants a Pembroke scarf. Oh, and Dan Hawkins would like a trophy wife. So here’s the pitch: he’s vegetarian, would have liked to have studied anthropology at uni, and if there’s any justice in this world, he’s going to be in a famous band.by Emma Butterfield