I went to three gigs last week. I will tell you about them one by one.

Josh T. Pearson / The Archie Bronson Outfit (The Charlotte, Monday)

Josh T. Pearson’s (I'm insisting on keeping that T in there!) performance was weird - he's a very different guy when not backed by a thunderous rock n' roll band. It was a bit like a Cat Power show - he was poleaxed through the first few songs by typical Charlotte muddy sound and feedback, and he spent ages goofing around and seemed really nervous and humble, and really self-sabotaging. Back when he was in Lift To Experience he seemed like a really kinda intimidating and driven guy, now he seems to have a crippling inferiority complex going on - he kept asking the audience how he was doing, and we in the front row had to say “yes, you're doing fine” cos otherwise he might've gotten upset. He acts like something really, really bad has happened to him and he hasn’t got over it yet. But when he finally got going, he ran through three or four songs which were absolutely STUNNING.... real ragged, soulful apocalyptic stuff like LTE used to do - amazing. Unfortunately most of the audience had buggered off by this point, and word on the street will probably be that he was off his nut and rubbish, but I thought he was the man. I mean, sure you could go see other boring people run through their songs perfectly and put on a good show, but JTP's got, i dunno, SPIRIT - he really connects with something. He’s an amazing guy and he needs to get it together and record those songs, so that we can hear them without the shit sound and ambivalent audience.

And a quick word on the supports; Archie Bronson Outfit managed somehow to get a great overdriven guitar sound going on, and their drummer has a good way of hitting drums, but aside from that they’re a surly, monotonous mediocrity – grim, one-dimensional hunks of ‘song’ that suggest the tale of a man thinking he’s being really macho by not shaving and drinking whisky and then getting bored and wandering home when nobody wants to fight him. Dragon or Emperor put in one of the tightest and rockingest sets I’ve seen them play. It seems like they play at every gig I go to, so I must have written about them a couple of times here in the past, right? They’re good, basically. I’ve always assumed that the Dirty Backbeats - another local act - would be shit. I was wrong, it turns out. They’re totally great. (In my eyes anyway.) They have a singer who really wants to be Tom Waits and a cool girl drummer and a crazy hippie organ player laying down some classic Fender Rhodes moves and some surly rock dude player guitar… a recipe for success? Leicester’s gig-going cognoscenti don’t seem very impressed – maybe it's all a bit too affected and ‘60s (as in, pre-punk) influenced for this crowd, but they do it for me.