Orson - Birmingham Carling Academy - 9 October 2006 | | Orson's front man shows off that voice |
Spurned back home in the States, embraced wholeheartedly by the British music-buying public, the Californian band Orson are lapping up every second of their sell-out UK tour. At Birmingham's Carling Academy they unleashed seventy-five minutes of unadulterated exuberance, some of it to great effect. And therein lies the problem with Orson. Their hit singles punch their weight in live performance, but the other songs purloined from debut album Bright Idea drown in the band's own gusto, exposing the vocal limitations of their otherwise perfect frontman Jason Pebworth. The show opened on a high with a bristling, shout-along version of title track Bright Idea - Pebworth cast as the tongue-tied admirer of an unattainable love, frustrated at not being able to find the words. Alongside him the pogoing of Kevin Roentgen on guitar and the apparent ska-refugee bassist Johnny Lonely left a heaving Academy breathless and anticipating more of the same.  | | Orson frontman Jason Pebworth |
And sporadically it was delivered, the funkily wistful Last Night showed they are capable of some subtlety, as did their cover of Walk On By, while the catchy Downtown, co-written by lead guitarist George Astasio, is a surefire winner and another potential single. But other tracks from the album were altogether more poorly executed - the cleverly layered So Ahead Of Me saw its melody swamped, Save The World pushed Pebworth's voice beyond it's comfort zone, and his decision to sit at the piano to perform Look Around almost boy band style is at best ill-advised. That said, when Orson are good they are very good indeed, and they saved their best for a three-song encore. The sheer joie de vivre of Happiness sums up all that the band seems to stand for, their cover version of the Hall & Oates classic I Can't Dance To That absolutely rocked, and the number one single No Tomorrow is a rabble-rousing farewell with the best riffs of the debut album. Ultimately they had fun, we had fun, and with a bit of a polish here and there Orson will be a top live turn. They're already a very good one. | 
