The Varsity is a pub where all of the students from Wolverhampton University hang around, and has a very small live room upstairs where the current indie sensations usually play very loud indeed to a captive audience. The very fact that it has a live room means that it is also the place for all the local musicians meet up and check out whoever is playing - and often to try and hustle a support slot!The support band tonight was the promisingly named "Scott 4" - unfortunately they were nothing like the ScottWalker album they are named after, and are just a bad noise. The students loved them, the musos all retired to the bar where "Abbey Road" was playing. The High Llamas hit the specially-extended stage late due to the difficulties with setting up the vast amount of equipment that they use. A sample loop played for about five minutes, with O'Hagan playing a vamp on his Wurlitzer joined by the new vibes player. All very well, but... in fact they were filling time while the road crew finished reparing various pieces of equipment. When the gear was all working, Sean apologised and the band launched into "Dressing Up the Old Dakota", which sounded heavenly despite the lack of a string section. This was rapidl followed with "The Sun Beats Down" from the new album, and "Ill Fitting Suits". It soon became apparent that the students in the audience were bored and the musicians (now out of the bar) loved it! The High Llamas live are a unique event - they seem to be anti-rock. Nobody plays any notes out of place, there are none of the usual solos which most bands fall back on to fill a space. Where most bands would play a solo, the space was filled with strange synth noises and sample loops triggered by O'Hagan, who would often be playing guitar simultaneously! Often he would almost absent-mindedly reach for his Wurlitzer and pick out a few notes, of course it was completely deliberate and was all a part of making the live band sound as much like the record as possible. It really is all about creating the perfect arrangement of a song on record and recreating it on stage as far as the limitations of a live performance will allow... ... and there were plenty of limitations. The venue was just not right, the local sound crew had obviously never really worked with this sort of band before. The Llamas rely heavily on almost antique equipment, and most of it seems to break down. Also O'Hagan tries to do too much on stage and as a result obviously doesn't enjoy it much all the switching between instruments must be very demanding, as well as conducting the rest of the band at the same time. An amusing moment came when guitarist John Bennet attempted to play three notes on a banjo at the same time as holding an electric guitar. There are so many sounds to be made by so few people! Despite this, the performance was inspired, the instrumentals "HiBall Nova Scotia" and "Up in the Hills" were powerful and at times emotionally charged. A sensible-length version of "Track Goes By" proved their Steely Dan credentials, and nearly everything else showed their Brian Wilson fixation (epecially the new song "Tilting Windmills"). Not to mention an undercurrent of Krafwerk. The students in the audience talked all of the way through the gig, not comprehending, whilst the local musos were learning as much as they could from one of very few true individuals in the music business today.