The Bed­room Hour. It was the promis­ing­ly sul­try name that ini­tial­ly enticed me to check this band out when they popped up on Twit­ter. First hear­ing and they’ve got me hooked. There’s an inten­si­ty to this five-piece West Lon­don band, an immer­sive qual­i­ty, a mood­i­ness which draws you in. Their songs have that abil­i­ty to trans­port you – if they were to write a sound­track, it would be for a David Lynch film, some­thing with an air of long­ing, a vague feel­ing of ten­sion and men­ace bub­bling under the sur­face. It’s down to the soar­ing gui­tar from Rob Payne and emo­tion-drenched vocals of Stu­art Drum­mond – and some seri­ous­ly good song­writ­ing skills.

The Fins­bury pub, Lon­don, 5th July. It’s a swel­ter­ing­ly hot evening and the poten­tial audi­ence are chill­ing en masse at tables out­side the pub, not oblig­ing­ly clus­tered around the stage. Can The Bed­room Hour lure every­one into the gloom of the back of the pub? Right now there’s a punk band on stage, and there’s a smoke machine puff­ing out tox­ic clouds at inap­pro­pri­ate moments.

The Bed­room Hour take to the stage, and prove they can deliv­er a pow­er­ful live set. Much of the mate­r­i­al is from recent EP Themes. Stu­art Drum­mond is an intense vocal­ist, giv­ing the band a dis­tinc­tive sound which com­mands you to lis­ten to him. There’s a touch of Sim­ple Minds, or Elbow perhaps.

X Marks the Spot per­fect­ly encap­su­lates the band’s style: the dreamy vocals over­laden with sweet rip­pling gui­tar work from Rob Payne, a per­fect sym­bi­ot­ic rela­tion­ship. Heart will Haunt starts slow­ly with a drummed heart­beat, grad­u­al­ly build­ing, very much built around Stu’s soar­ing vocals with the vers­es flow­ing into the chorus.

Sub­ma­rine is per­haps my favourite num­ber: a beau­ti­ful­ly-struc­tured bal­lad with a gut-wrench­ing­ly beau­ti­ful intro which reminds me of Chris Isaak, and a pefect­ly-bal­anced inter­play between vocals and gui­tar, with key­board skil­ful­ly deployed by Mark Dudley.

A size­able crowd gath­er round the stage as the set gath­ers pace. Hope­ful­ly The Bed­room Hour have suc­ceed­ed in mak­ing a fair few more fans. This is one band who def­i­nite­ly deserve it.

The Bed­room Hour played at The Fins­bury, 336 Green Lanes, Lon­don N4. www.thefinsbury.co.uk

EP Themes, avail­able on down­load: Ama­zon, iTunes

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