21/10/2016 | The Lounge Kittens – The Sunflower Lounge, Birmingham

In early 2015, some of my friends went to a Steel Panther concert. Afterwards, the name that seemed to be on everyone’s lips was not that of the headliners, but of the support act for the night; The Lounge Kittens. Eighteen months later, and the idea of heavy rock fans being won over by a lounge act doing covers still seems a strange one; however, the Southampton based trio certainly seem to have earned their stripes. A whirlwind few years has seen the ladies being invited to support artists such as Status Quo on tour and also play sets at several major music festivals. Tonight they played at The Sunflower Lounge in Birmingham as a part of their own Sequins and C-Bombs tour.

Comedy act Jay Foreman entertained the audience before the The Lounge Kittens’ set with a selection of his own weird, wonderful and amusing songs. Weaving his way through a variety of subjects such as a Grandmother’s strange food choices, infidelity in Japan, John Lennon, Sooty and running a car on caterpillar sick; Jay kept the audience laughing out loud throughout. There was a touch of the surreal to his performance, both in the content of songs and also in his presentation. I would best describe it as being bizarrely like a children’s book meeting Monty Python; offering darkly hilarious comedy.

By the time that The Lounge Kittens took to the stage in their sparkly blue dresses, the room was packed out for their set and already clearly thrilled by what was about to go down. Opening with an expertly arranged cover of Andrew WK’s Party Hard, the Kittens soon had the room in the perfect mood for their party of a show. Their imaginative re-works continued throughout the set as they covered tracks such as Sad But True, Bounce, Bodies, Africa and Gloryhole, along with a few medleys.

I’m sure that most who have listened to The Lounge Kittens’ recent offering Sequins and C-Bombs will be familiar with their Rammstein and The Prodigy inspired medleys, but tonight there was also a brilliant pop punk medley covering acts such as Blink 182, Fall Out Boy and Wheatus. Also, over the course of their appearances at summer festivals, they have been compiling medleys of songs by the bands playing at those; which they have been re-visiting on this tour. Tonight they revisited the Isle Of Wight festival, and it was fun to try and count just how many acts were in there.

Perhaps one of the most impressive moments during their show came during Jump Around, where they demonstrated their expert looping skills by recording a vocal loop live on stage to serve as a backing track before they even began. It is rather difficult to get people to be silent at any gig; but they somehow managed to command total silence from the audience while they recorded the loop, which was very impressive too.

The Lounge Kittens live are charming, funny and also a little bit rude. One of the best things about them is that they don’t seem to take themselves too seriously and quite often poke fun at each other with tongue in cheek chatter during the show; for example, referring to Timia as the ‘Grumpy Kitten’. There was also a particularly amusing moment where Zan introduced the audience to the craziness of the ‘T-Rexican wave’, which is a bit like a Mexican wave, but with little T-Rex arms. Overall; a dazzling show which left everyone with a huge smile upon their face by the end.