EN ATTENDANT ANA

CHAPTER TWENTY: EN ATTENDANT ANA/MARCEL WAVE AT PINUPS, ISLINGTON – 15/2/20

It’s a stormy night. Storm Dennis, they’re calling it. Mother doesn’t like the way they’re naming storms nowadays. She thinks it’s childish. It doesn’t really bother me, I have to say. If people want to name storms I don’t really have a problem with it.

I’ve been feeling really tired recently. Last night I fell asleep sitting on a chair and when I woke up I felt like I was drowning in air. It was a strange unfamiliar feeling and I wondered if that’s what death feels like. Like drowning in air.

The man at the door takes a while finding my name on the list of names of people who are allowed to come in, but he does eventually find it. Once inside I bump into the old friend that I bumped into at the Patience gig all those months ago (see Chapter Two). I do have other old friends, I just keep bumping into this one. I hadn’t really been expecting to have to talk to anyone, and I’m socially awkward at the best of times. I ask her how she is twice. Both times she’s fine. 

  “I’m playing tonight,” she says. 

  “Oh,” I say, “which band are you in?” 

  “MARCEL WAVE,” she says. “I’m the singer.” 

It’s a funny experience watching someone you know playing in a band when you hadn’t been expecting to watch someone you know playing in a band. Somehow it’s hard to separate the watching the band from the knowing the person. On the whole, I think, maybe I prefer not knowing the people I watch playing in bands. 

  It’s hard to be objective, but I suppose I would describe them as post-punk, which is probably how I would describe most bands nowadays. Post-punk certainly does seem to be all the rage, and they’re clearly a fashionable bunch. The keyboard player wears a rather fetching red beret, and none of their trousers quite reach their shoes. 

  Most of their songs seem to be about shopping centres, or shopping and shops in general. There’s a song called Discount Centre, something about a mall in Bradford, and a song about the parlous state of the British high street with a bit about eating at Wimpy’s. The singer, Old Friend, likes to dedicate songs to specific groups of people. “This one’s for anyone that likes to go digging around on the banks of the Thames,” she says, and, “This one’s for all the Coronation Street fans out there.” There’s another song about getting a “second-rate drama degree from a London university,” which features the lyric, “What have you done?” repeated over and over. 

Falling Asleep At William Tyler’s here. At the front as usual. I am surprised to hear him speaking another language, which sounds like Spanish. I don’t know why I'm surprised. I guess I had imagined that he wouldn’t be able to speak Spanish. I really should talk to him one of these days. That would blow things wide open. There’s another guy here that I recognise from the last time I was at PINUPS. In fact, I think that we were both standing in almost exactly the same positions. He is smartly dressed and neatly coiffured. He looks like he could be a Tory M.P. I notice that he’s browsing the business section of the Guardian on his phone while we wait for EN ATTENDANT ANA to start. And I am standing here writing about him browsing the business section of the Guardian on his phone while he does so. On the other side of me a grey haired man is rubbing some sort of ointment or cream on the back of his neck.

You wouldn’t call En Attendant Ana post-punk. Theirs is more the jingly-jangly type of guitar music. The singer has a nice voice, which is like sitting on a low branch of a tree swinging your legs slowly, or opening the window as you drive through some countryside in July. It tastes a bit like an apple. I like the way she holds her hand in front of her face as she sings. She doesn’t talk much beyond thanking everyone for coming and telling us that this is their first U.K. tour. Then she says something in French and laughs, but I can’t understand what she is saying. 

  

It’s really hot in PinUps and by the end of the gig I’m sweating. Actually sweating, even though it’s February, and Storm Dennis is mucking about outside.