Neon Neon: in harsh light

Gryff Rhys sure is a busy bee. Following last year's solo brilliance Candylion and the hugely catchy Super Furry Animals effort Hey Venus, the Haverfordwestian is now focused on an electro-pop sideproject. Neon Neon (http://www.myspace.com/neonx2) is a fantastic mixture of syth pop and Vitalic-esque demented electro with a drop of hip hop, all loosely wrapped around the life story of 80s automobile icon John Delorean.

Melding of the minds of Gryff and US techn-oddity producer Boom Bip, (previously heard on SFA's Phantom Phorce remix of Father Father), Neon Neon has spawned Stainless Style, heralded by many as early contender for album of the year.

Slight disappointment prevailed, then, when they played their debut gig for Adventures in the Beetroot Field at Fabric. What should have been a celebration of a fantastic album seemed awkward, at times even strained. As a live act, Neon Neon showed little sign of the buzz that has surrounded them, appearing a little lost in their surroundings.

There was so much right with the gig: the opening with soaring synths of Neon Theme, which appears to have floated straight from Garth Marenghi's Dark Place into your ears; the early album highs of I Told Her On Alderaan and cloop-clopping glochen'roll Raquel; sun-kissed mid-indie riffs on Steel Your Girlfriend; the trackied-up peroxide Welshman Akira the Don who arrived to MC over the gargling acceleration of Sweat Shop; the crazy off-key whirling dementedness and lyrical precision of Belfast; the chomping low-fi sleaze of Michael Douglas.

But mixed into this and not sitting too pretty, we had Gryff singing to his own pre-recorded backing vocals on the call and response style verses of Dream Cars, which was the first track to fall foul of the expectation gap. Despite a promising start, current single I Lust U was left to peeter out, with vocalist and bassist Cate Le Bon seeming to be torn between nervousness and nonchalance.

This was nothing, however, compared to the last song of the night, which utterly died on its arse. In contrast to the end of most SFA gigs, with the huge extended version of The Man Don't Give a Fuck, the yeti suits and the triumphant conclusions, here we had the sickly sweet, semi-incestuous presence of the Magic Numbers singing harmony and clinking Stella bottles together as makeshift percussion instruments.

Maybe it was too much to ask for a mini Delorean to drop from above for the band to dance around (man or machine, choose your own imagery); safe to say it needed more. Gryff carried the performance, but the milk had soured as the cats meowed.

With such good material and the power of Gryff & Mr Bip to hand, you have to feel that once this is got right, Neon Neon will be a force to reckon, and perhaps even unravel the very fabric of the space time continuum. Until then... dyfal donc a dyr y garreg.

[This Week, Al is making Charlie Brooker-esque asides: "Daft Punk, Alive 2007: Amazing, amazing, amazing; still the best live dance album ever. Possibly the best live album. Ch ch ch eck out."]