Review: All Tvvins fail to impress the crowd in Dubai

Meet All Tvvins, a band who manage to integrate a high level of musical invention alongside big hearted hooks you can nod and dance to.

All Tvvins playing at Lock, Stock & Barrel, Grand Millennium Hotel for Fred Perry ‘Sub-Sonic Live’. Courtesy Fred Perry

Ah, musicianship – so long overlooked and lacking in indie music. Fans and critics alike take the greatest glee in the simple and the direct, the poise and the artifice – complexity is frequently viewed with a sense of ­suspicion.

Enter All Tvvins, a band who deliver big-hearted, head-nodding hooks and clever twiddly bits alike.

The conceptual core of the outfit are two veteran alumni of far wackier outfits – and onstage for Subsonic in Dubai on Thursday night, their roots showed.

Conor Adams, ex-frontman of alt/maths-rock act The Cast of Cheers, is a guitarist by trade. Here, he played a short-necked bass, carving lower-register melody lines and counter-hooks where most bassists would plod and ground.

Guitarist Lar Kaye, formerly of experimental instrumentalists Adebisi Shank, bounced around in a geeky trucker cap to his left. He is a six-string wizard, who layered the music with a mix of virtuosic runs and dramatic percussive stabs.

Taking to the stage close to midnight, however, such intricacies failed to thrill the post-work throng assembled at Lock Stock & Barrel.

“We don’t do covers,” warned Adams, a couple of frenetic songs into the set. Later, he apologised – sarcastically – for “interrupting” the rowdy crowd’s chat.

By the end of the trio’s short set – with steady session man Lewis Hedigan on drums – just a few enthusiasts remained stage-front – plus an overenthusiastic gang of youngsters who peppered laddish “heys” on every bar of the penultimate song.

Taking what little encouragement he could from the evening, Kaye promised to use the idea on the recorded track, which is provisionally set to close All Tvvins’s upcoming debut album.

Was he joking? We wait with bated breath.