Toulouse didn’t sell itself well. From the moment I arrived to about four hours before doors the rain poured solidly, almost mockingly. Also the venue, Le Bikini, doesn’t appear to live up to its glamorous title, being situated in the middle of a largely deserted industrial estate full of nothing but warehouses and a very conspicuous Mexican Grill. Also, this gig is cursed.

   No really, it is. The first time Kasabian were due to play here the gig was cancelled a week before the event for no publicised reason. The second time the gig was cancelled an hour before the event due to three members of the band suffering from seafood-induced food poisoning in Marseilles.

   So third time lucky then?

   Queuing was a solemn and short affair. Two hours before doors I was worrying whether the four people there would turn out to be the extent of the crowd; such was the conviction of the French that this gig was destined to never take place. But after the very shakiest of starts Toulouse produced the most wild, jovial, enthusiastically-singing crowd of the European tour. Where they all came from, I don’t know. Maybe they were all hiding in the warehouses?

   The band matched the crowd’s stellar form, despite Tommy’s…shirt. Also despite a set list that was cut annoyingly short compared to other dates, they still managed to fit in the expected (Empire, Underdog, Club Foot, Fire, and a stomping version of Vlad The Impaler that saw Serge on his back, writhing on the floor of the stage playing the outro) and the unexpected (the return of the mighty Reason “K-I-L-L!!!” Is Treason).

   Serge, usually inclined to stand away from his microphone with his head down and his customary “Don’t look at me. No, really, do not look at me” expression, spent most of the gig dancing, stamping, pouting, and on the floor. I suspect alcohol may have played a part but I am not complaining because, due to his burst of hyperactivity, he handed me his set list.

   Tommy was quieter than usual, but then most things would look subdued next to his…shirt. I jest. He was also on good terms with the front rows, grabbing people’s hands, winking and executing some very Roger Daltrey-esque whirls of his microphone.

   One suspects this is the last leg of the West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum tour, and this instantly begs the question, where now? “African groove”, “sexual groove” and “middle east” are the phrases that have appeared in the Press so far. But whether they come from Serge or from uninformed speculation has been unclear.

   For a fan it means the excruciating division of opinion: on the one hand too much success will spell the end of all this, the chats at stage door, the small venues, the barrier within touching distance of the stage, the winks, the smiles, the elements aside from the music that made us fall in love from the front row. With success come stadiums, high stages, miles of barrier, and a distance between the band and the fans that can hardly ever be reversed. On the other hand, to wish for a sub-standard album would be unthinkable.

   Whatever happens, at least we have the gigs like Toulouse. That’s enough for now.  

Let’s get this straight. I am vehemently against new bands and prone to reading NME articles in WH Smith with a look of superior disgust on my face before walking home to a soundtrack of Oasis and David Bowie.

   However, once in a while, I stumble across someone who genuinely excites me, who can induce a strange Tourettes-like state whereby I recount the artist/band’s name plus a rambling stream of trivia at people I barely know.

   “Don’t you think Tom Clarke from The Enemy sounds like the love-child of Johnny Lydon and a young Paul Weller?”

   “That’s very nice, miss, but the newspaper is a pound…”

   You get the idea.

   So, Delphic. My first impression of them wasn’t the best, as the second support act before Kasabian at Myspace’s celebratory gig in Heaven, London. Their roadies took a monstrous hour and a half to set up their equipment, pushing Kasabian towards a 23:00 start that would cause me to miss my train. It wasn’t the band’s fault, but I was determined not to enjoy them. They could have come onstage dressed as Cuban revolutionaries on the shoulders of Joe Strummer and I still would have glared at them, silently, arms crossed across the barrier, and muttering about Kasabian all set. In much the same way that I wilfully ignore any band hyped by NME, I chose not to hear them.

   Fast-forward three months and a friend offered me a ticket to a gig of theirs not twenty minutes down the road. Pressured by her enthusiasm and the reasonable price I agreed and, with somewhat less enthusiasm, bought the album, Acolyte.

   It starts with Clarion Call. This opener, like the album itself, starts deceptively quiet before building into something so preposterously epic for a debut that it will have you jamming your head into the speakers, screaming, “More! Moooooore, I say!”

   There are echoes of New Order but no imitation, just pure electro-pop brilliance. Disregard the fact that one of the keyboard players looks like Gary Neville finding his true calling and focus on songs like This Momentary, that are almost hypnotic in their quality. Their vocalist and guitarist has a voice of appealing fragility, but capable of unexpected power, especially in Doubt and Submission.

   Doubt also demonstrates the simple intelligence of the lyrics. Without any of the clichés or laddish posturing that a lot of new bands succumb to, Doubt is a sincere and gentle attack of electro-beats and guitar.

   The real gem of the album however is the single, Halcyon. Halcyon is the sort of song with a chorus so catchy, so flawless, so painfully gorgeous, that I could be tempted to withdraw from society completely and sit, alone, ipod plugged into the wall with it on repeat for the rest of my life, rocking backwards and forwards with my hands over the earphones, salivating like a modern-day Gollum. When I heard Halcyon for the first time I forgot that other music existed for about three days, and it was only due to a technical fault and an accidental switch to Alabama 3 that I remembered, for the sake of my sanity and social appearance, that I would have to listen to other songs once in a while.

   Acolyte has managed to temporarily drag my cynical heart out of the 70s and, were it not for the narrow-minded attitude of Western civilisation, I would elope with one of its tracks and fulfil its every sexual need.

   I haven’t been to their gig yet, but I’m sure I’ll dance like a lunatic.

   Buy it. For the love of God, buy it.

Seeing Kasabian’s name in lights outside the venue seemed wonderfully 1950s, but the French attitude towards queueing for gigs is very modern in comparison. Running appears to be actively encouraged, even in the case of stairs (or later in the tour a courtyard layered with a sheet of ice). I agree with this method of entry; it’s like natural selection. Those tough enough to withstand the front will get there, leaving a trail of sprawled bodies dressed as half-arsed imitations of Liam Gallagher behind them.

Speaking of bodies, before I move onto the irrefutable greatness of Kasabian, the impromtu support act, Parisian three-piece The Control Band, warrant a mention. Part funk-rock and part lap dance, the devastatingly sexual semi-clad singer had the venue and Kasabian’s crew beside themselves with excitement. How there wasn’t a major delay, with most of the crew and guitar techies (hell, even the driver had a reason to be onstage…) crowded around the lighting desk half-heartedly trying to appear as if they were working, I don’t know. They don’t have support bands like that in Britain…

Then “Aah, Julie Julie!” and the gig began in earnest. It became apparent very quickly, with the quick-fire delivery of Underdog, Where Did All The Love Go? and Swarfiga, that European crowds take a far more laid-back stance. I don’t think I was even touched by the second row all gig, let alone pushed. There was much jumping, helped by a childishly fun bouncy floor, but it was a self-contained, rather than aggressive, lairiness.

Tommy Meighan was on typical antagonistic form, swaggering about the stage like a world leader addressing his nation on cocaine. Guitarist Serge Pizzorno adopted his ‘head down and don’t look at me’ pose, broken only by a spate of uncharacteristically enthusiastic dancing during album track Take Aim and new single Vlad The Impaler. This stage of opposing personas, with Tommy and Serge flanked by the painfully cool impassiveness of Jay Mehler and the nervous head-bobbing of bassist Chris Edwards, cumulated with Tommy returning to the stage wearing the new World Cup 2010 England strip to a chorus of boos in their encore.

While the set meandered through more diverse songs of the past and present, from ID to Processed Beats, from Empire to Thick As Thieves, the encore was an unashamed singalong. Fire, with an extra chorus for good measure, followed by Vlad The Impaler, a song so laden with stomping attitude that it seems likely to explode away from the band as a seperate entity at any second, followed by the effortlessly catchy “la la la’s” of LSF.

The madness is spreading. “Paris you’re a fucking empire!” Tommy sneered, hands aloft. Paris was their empire. With such intelligent songs backed-up with such self-assured delivery, I imagine anywhere could be Kasabian’s empire.