Music

Whether you’re mining for diamonds or buying electrical equipment in a pub, authenticity is a tough thing to find these days. As anyone in the audience for one of their legendarily riotous live shows will tell you, Vincent Vincent And The Villains are the real thing. They look like the real thing, they sound like the real thing, and they feel like the real thing.

When other London bands, Dirty Pretty Things for example, appropriate the trappings of rock ’n’ roll (from their clothes, to their lyrics to those godawful gurns), there’s a distinct impression that they’ve got Bo Diddley squat to back it up with. They strut like peacocks, but they’re clearly just chickens with pretentious tails. The Villains are an altogether different proposition. Imagine that the frontmen of these two bands were made to audition for Marlon Brando’s part in ‘The Wild One’. They’re asked ‘What are you rebelling against Johnny?’ and on cue they both reply ‘What’ve you got?’. Vincent makes it sound like Brando. Carl Barât makes it sound like he’s asking for suggestions. What hope have you got if you just don’t know? Feature continues

The Villains appear more of a gang than a band – like if they came as a set of dolls, they’d have interchangeable limbs, heads and torsos – you’d need to collect them all before they’re of any use. They’re sharp but not styled. Even their classic rock ’n’ roll pallor is co-ordinated to just the right shade of pale.

Like any great gang (the McFly-baiting mob from ‘Back To The Future’, for instance), they have in Vincent Vincent a natural leader, their very own Biff Tannen (along with Tom, guitar, Alex, drums, and Will, bass). On stage he’s a serial killer, a snarling and mesmerically intimidating cross between Elvis, Sid Vicious and, in lip-curling capacity alone, Rik Mayall in ‘The Young Ones’. A recent gig at Goldsmiths College saw him dodge a flying bottle with the shoulder drop of a prizefighter before insisting that should the culprit be brave enough to make himself known he’d ‘rip his head off and shit down his neck’ right there and then. Something, the vein strangling his temple perhaps , makes you believe him.

Musically they’re just as provocative. Songs like the life-affirming ‘I’m Alive’ leave you with the same buzz you’d have escaping a brawl to find you’ve barely a bruise. It’s no surprise that it regularly evokes impromptu stage invasions by the band’s fans, the ‘Villainettes’, as it did at 93 Feet East in October. One Villainette who, says Vincent, is identifiable by her homemade Vincent Vincent blouse, ‘threw a bottle into the crowd that just brushed our radio plugger’s head and smashed straight into the face of the bloke behind him. That’s good though. Adds a bit of danger to proceedings.’ It is proof that a crowd will still respond to a band they recognise as having their own identity, attitude and soul. It is heartening that an act with all three can prevail in a business awash with the milky-eyed, timid and directionless no-marks that shift so many records. The Villains don’t look like an act full of men that wanted to join a band. They look like they thought they were signing up to join a dangerous gang of rebels, pirates or highwaymen.

Later on and Vincent is on stage addressing the crowd with the kind of expression befitting your lover’s face after an argument in bed. He stares them out, spitting barbs as he goes, and they’re compelled to watch him do it. The atmosphere becomes supercharged. It is brilliant. When other bands would have been loosening themselves up for a lynching, The Villains break into another tune, the single ‘Johnny Two Bands’, and a whole new rash of dancing breaks out. It’s again apparent that their quality translates.

Meanwhile, the vogue for having fans interact with a band on ever closer levels continues apace. What seemingly started with the odd impromptu gig in the living rooms of Pete Doherty and his droogs and sounded like quite an exciting innovation in a tired live music scene has, like any innovation in music, has quickly become embraced by big business. Now, mobile phone companies offer customers the opportunity to have massive bands like Razorlight and Keane play a gig in their toilet. This is the era of MySpace, where buying records and going to gigs isn’t enough; now bands have to pretend to be our friends as well. It reeks of cynicism and feels about as real, natural and healthy as it is – ie, not at all.

Interaction with The Villains, on the other hand, doesn’t feel manufactured. That’s because they understand what people want from a band – an amped-up and amplified version of the voices in their heads and hearts. They’re not afraid of presenting themselves as who they are. It’s not the clothes or the hair or even the music that makes them vital, it’s the fact they don’t give a fuck what you think of their clothes, or hair, or even music. It’s this that sets them apart from London’s transient and incestuous indie scenes.

‘We’re quite glad to avoid them really,’ says Vincent, who professes to not liking any band enough to name them here. ‘We like to stand alone. We’re different to them. We’ll just do our own thing.’

Which is why Vincent Vincent And The Villains are great: a proper, honest, exciting rock ’n’ roll band for our times without an ounce of cynicism, posturing or pretence about being something they’re not. When asked what his favourite thing about being a Villain is, Will replies: ‘No one in their right mind would – if I was really sweaty in a normal situation – wipe their hands all over my face and chest and then wipe my sweat all over themselves. But that happened to me at a gig we played the other day. Some fucking crazy bitch took all the sweat off of my body and wiped it all over herself.’

That’s a reaction it’s hard not to like.