It is hard to believe that a couple of years ago Dark Captain Light Captain were a mere two-piece; recent additional limb growth has enabled them to become a big-kicking twelve-shoed behemoth.  This seemed to have been prompted by  their realisation that what they had been lacking all along was an ex-Quickspace drummer and a flugelhorn player.  Tell me any band that wouldn’t benefit from the addition of those.

In the cupboard-under-the-stairs-but-with-a-marginally-bigger-selection-of-beer surroundings of the Social, this new beefed-up sextet tore through tracks from their excellent new Circles EP – I’ll restrict myself to concurring with the Milkman on that one – as well as their forthcoming album (the working title of which has changed, much to my disappointment, from With Opposable Thumbs and Hearts of Gold to the punchier if more prosaic Miracle Kicker).  I’ve previously called Tunng “a poor man’s Dark Captain Light Captain”, but any form of comparison between these two bands are being rendered increasingly irrelevant by the muscularity of DCLC’s live sets, with kraut-y beats and swathes of electronic noise being as important to the overall sound as the delicate folk guitar and the flugelhorn and the lyrics about x-ray eyes and robot command centres. 

Speaking of command centres, head to DCLCHQ to hear more.