Panic Room, Swansea and Kingston

If Abahachi wonders if he'd have been better off seeing Panic Room on Saturday, I started my live music for 2009 by seeing them twice, in two completely different cities.

While Friday night's gig in Swansea was really a warm-up for the high-profile London show the next day, it also featured a one-off guest appearance from violinist Liz Prendegast, who'd played on several songs on the album "Visionary Position".

The Garage is quite a nice little venue; capacity of perhaps 200, although it was nowhere near full. Unfortunately the gig did suffer from a disappointingly high level of background chatter which was noticeable during the quiet bits. And everyone hung at the back of the room despite Anne-Marie Helder trying to persuade people to move forward.

Panic Room's set suffered badly from technical glitches, the worst of which was Anne-Marie's microphone not being switched on at the very beginning, resulting in a false start to 'Electra City'. But the band managed to rise above the gremlins, and played an entertaining and varied set lasting not far short of two hours. While they played some favourites from their debut album, such as the atmospheric epic 'Endgame' and the arabesque 'Apocalypstick', those amounted to something like a third of the set.

Some of the newer material they'd been playing at the end of last year have already become live favourites, such as the spiky guitar-driven rocker 'Go' and the industrial-sounding 'Black Noise', and they added another couple of brand new songs for their first live airing; of those '5th Amendment' was the most impressive. Anne-Marie did her customary mid-set acoustic solo spot, of which the a cappella 'Hadditfeel' was the highlight. They ended with their groove-orientated cover of Led Zeppelin's 'No Quarter', including a few bars of 'Kashmir' for good measure. When she joined them on stage, Liz's electric violin added an extra dimension to the sound, especially on the 'Apocalypstick' and 'No Quarter'. I'd love to see her accompany the band for a whole tour.

Saturday's gig at The Peel was the replacement for the show in April cancelled due to power failure, and this rescheduled gig attracted the largest crowd I've seen at a Panic Room gig to date, while I don't think they quite sold out, the place was pretty much full. Support was prog veterans Jump, who delivered a highly entertaining set; a band I'm getting to like more and more every time I see them. John Dexter Jones is a great frontman; while he looks a bit like Morrissey, he sounds more like Fish; you can certainly hear the influence of both Marillion and Fish's solo material in their sound.

Panic Room then delivered the best performance I've seen them play to date. Playing a shorter set than the previous night, they went pretty much full tilt all the way through, high energy levels, fantastically tight, and hugely appreciated by the crowd.

What I love about this band is that while they're all clearly virtuoso musicians, they always play exactly what the songs need and no more; they never descend into the sort of self-indulgent noodling that 'prog' is all-too frequently accused of. And I think the fact that I've got several of their new songs stuck in my head means they're capable of writing memorable songs that ought to appeal to mainstream audiences. And after many years as a backing singer to Rachel Jones in Karnataka and more recently to Heather Findlay in Mostly Autumn, Anne-Marie Helder more than proves she's now in the same league as either of them when it comes to fronting a band herself.

Their next gig is in Stocksbridge near Sheffield in March.