Live

Royal Treatment Plan

Lee Puddefoot 09/07/2008

Hidden up a side street past Chalk Farm tube station, Monkey Chews band room upstairs is a sweaty little place. With photos of various Jazz musicians adorning the walls as well as pictures bands leading the way up the stairs like a trail of bread crumbs.

Here to launch their debut album 'Hope Is Not Enough', Royal Treatment Plan play to a congregation of perspiring onlookers squashed next to each other. Royal Treatment Plant launch into a blistering set of alt rock and captivating frontwoman PP is hard to take your eyes off as she throws herself into songs and gesticulates into a mad frenzy as her voice ricochets through the room. To her left is DJ, plucking funky notes from his 5-string bass, throwing his head up and down as the crowd sway, dance and whoop along.

People climb onto tables and chairs in order to catch sight of the band in full flow. The epic keyboards provide an added dimension lifting them above the tag of just another guitar band. Songs such as previous single 'Undercurrent' show that RTP can not onlywrite pop songs, but songs with balls. The tender 'Crackwhore' shows that when needed they can calm down, but when they're at their best is when the five of them throwing themselves around in a mangle of sweaty riffs, cascading keyboards, dirty bass lines, banshee vocals and the thundering precision of rhythm. Half the songs on the night weren't even off of the album. Judging by tonight, that confidence is wholly justified.