Alphabeat at Heaven

Last night I accompanied Chris to see his latest heroes of pop, Alphabeat at Heaven. We saw them last year at Shepherd's Bush where there was a definite whiff of teeny-bopper in the air, but Heaven attracts an older audience, but not much older.

We got there in time to see the support act who could've been straight off X-Factor, Ou Est Le Swimming Pool (what a daft name). They were sort of, well, sort of, um, '80s dance electro? One of the singers even had '80s dyed hair. When you have the same bass beat reverberating through your feet and your stomach you either leave swiftly or start wondering whether you like 'em. I'm not sure. They proudly told us they had one song on iTunes so I might take a listen - 'Dance The Way I Feel' (with the last word pronounced with two vowels).

Anyway, it was Alphabeat's night so the crowd got tenser as the clock ticked towards start time, people started crowding towards the front (loads of people did the 'excuse me/sorry' thing to get past me and closer to the front - how they all fit in I'll never know). And then ... Alphabeat were late. That gave more people an opportunity to say 'excuse me'...

And then there they were, the little poptastic Scandinavians all bright and shiny and launched into some serious pop tunes. The first half was mainly made of new songs from the album due to be released next year and the second half was favourites from the previous album. I liked the sound of the new songs which sounded less calculatingly poptastic than the first album. As purveyors of shiny, well-produced electro-pop they are excellent and have the advantage of being fronted by two people - Anders (who looks too skinny to me and should eat more) and Stine, all slinky in a blue sequined cocktail dress and beret (and occasionally sounded like Belinda Carlisle, which is a good thing).

The biggest applause was for the favourites from the first album, '1000 Nights', 'Boyfriend', 'Touch me Touching You' and the latest single, 'The Spell'. They also did an odd version of Chaka Khan's 'Ain't Nobody' which didn't really do it for me - none of then have the voice of Ms Khan. But the encore of 'Fascination' more than made up for it with the great build up of 'The word is on your lips, what's the word...?' which then exploded into the song proper. That's a great encore song, leaving everyone on a high.

Stine is clearly a star in the making and needs to come to the front of the stage a bit more, but they all put on a fun show. It'll be interesting to hear the new album when it's released.