Tonight the café has a certain atmosphere about it. The majority of the crowd are Plantation regulars, and those who aren’t are friends of the bands. However, the special atmosphere tonight is due to the fact that the regulars seem to mostly know the bands, and indeed the friends of the band who aren’t regulars, know the regulars! To put it simply, tonight’s atmosphere is friendly, even comradely, and above all great fun!

I don’t think Plantation Café has ever seen anything quite like BEN & AMY. From the moment they opened their set tonight, the reaction from the crowd was either hysterical laughter, terrified laughter, awkward laughter, or just confused laughter. The general consensus, though, remains that whatever the hell it was that just occupied the stage, it was extremely funny. From a punk song about the antics of an insane man called Union Jack, to a song about Bending Metal (or the vocalist’s inability to do so), right down to the frankly quite scary experience that was Triangle Rhinoceros (which Amy introduced as ‘a chorus song’, before screaming incoherently at the top of her lungs and bashing a triangle for 30 seconds, while Ben frantically strummed random chords), Ben & Amy are insane, hilarious and well worth a listen!

Second up were KILL CLAUDIO. I play in this band, and so in order to avoid any kind of bias, lets move on…

Playing their first ever headlining slot, tonight’s closers are the NEON LIGHTS . They have played Plantation once before, and as a result of an incident after their set, some may perhaps remember them as ‘the band with the drummer who drank too much and threw up all over the corridor’. However, tonight they well and truly throw off this stigma, because they are absolutely blinding. From the moment they step onstage, its all business, onstage banter cut to a minimum, and a 45 minute long set. Combining rocking but melodic guitar playing and creative solos with imaginative bass lines, a hefty portion of double-kick from the drum, and a unique vocal which ranges from a gritty attitude-packed voice to a melodic wail, Neon Lights own the headlining slot tonight, getting a reaction from every person in the room, be it singing along, dancing, moshing or simply nodding along with a smile. All of this, plus a wry but honest apology from vocalist Trim, along the lines of ‘sorry our drummer was sick last time… he wont do it again’ (accompanied by a bashful wave from behind the kit), means that I am proud to write a review that is in every way possible the opposite of that written the last time the Neon boys played here. As the final refrain of Omar Road fade away, and they tear into huge 6-minute closer Lightning Strikes Twice, you can’t help but feel that Neon Lights have won over some serious support tonight. Good luck to them, and I sincerely hope to see them here more.

Unfortunately, for mixed reasons, including college commitments and the Christmas holidays, I won’t be able to review the remaining 4 gigs of 2006, but I wish you all an early Merry Christmas and a premature Happy New Year. See you in 2007!

Take care,

Jamie Webster