Damon & Naomi @ The Luminaire, 1st May 2010

“Many thanks for braving the awful weather and transport difficulties,” says the ever softly spoken Damon Krukowski, as if rationalising to himself and us the notable lack of numbers at The Luminaire. True, too much rain and not enough trains did make the journey to Kilburn a weary slog. And then there’s the irritation of de-quiffed hair and the constant damp-dog smell to put up with too. At this point it’s customary to say in passing ‘hey but they were worth it’ and, in actual fact, they were.

As Anglophiles (ex)New York’s Damon Krukowski & Naomi Yang have a good understanding of British aesthetics, sensibilities and embrace them accordingly. Damon waxes lyrical about the Luminaire and like-minded souls who keep London’s tiny indie-firmament going. The Midnight Bell always likes the fact that D&N choose to play rather off-kilter venues – BoHo cafes in Dalston, King’s Head pub in Crouch End – that helps furnish their gigs, whatever the numbers, with a sense of occasion and atmosphere.

Tonight, it really is just Damon & Naomi and their parred down set up – ringing acoustic guitar and Roland keyboard – only amplifies their warm, caressing melancholy. The duo are in fine vocal form, too, with Naomi’s arched high-notes illuminating the entire venue effortlessly. A handful of new songs sound surprisingly sparky while older one are still magnetically sad and sullen. As always the couple are chatty, funny and engaging. Damon’s become fascinated by Magic FM – "London traffic jams are less painful with that on" – and wishes one or two of their songs would be rotated regularly on there. After all, reasons Damon, don’t they play soft rock love songs as well? “All love songs, all of the time would be a great slogan for the station,” says Damon cheerfully.

The Guardian’s Guide mistakenly suggests that this tour was to promote Domino Record’s reissuing of Galaxie 500's three studio albums. It would be unfair to suggest they’re still bitter about Dean Wareham’s decision to split Galaxie 500 up nearly twenty years ago, but there is a faint aura of scorned lover brittleness about the pair in relation to Wareham. What perhaps compounds their sense of injustice is Wareham’s prickly judgements about them in his strikingly honest memoir, Black Postcards. Wareham complained about their ‘bloc vote’ position in Galaxie 500 – ‘the curse of being in a band with a couple’ – and complained that they complained all the time, characteristics he put down to New York psychobabble and attitude (Wareham is from New Zealand).

Nevertheless, Wareham also states how much he admires Damon’s poetry and Naomi’s miniature paintings and praises them as ‘brilliant and artistic and likeable’ with just a little hint of envy. Indeed, it could be said that while Damon & Naomi have maintained a refined aesthetic quality since their 1992 debut, More Sad Hits, Wareham’s Luna quickly became Just Another Band releasing live albums and doing arched Guns’n’Roses covers. Damon & Naomi are clearly not Rick and Bruce in relation to Dean’s Paul Weller.

As it happens, though, Damon does mention Domino’s reissues and thanks them for “keeping the memory of our old band alive”. For many of us who were poleaxed by their implausible cool beauty twenty years ago, they’re pretty much impossible to forget anyway. With the help of The Clientele’s Alasdair MacLean and James Hornsey, they play a respectful cover of Galaxie 500’s ‘Blue Thunder’ with MacLean’s solo pin-sharp enough to clear away the storm clouds. There’s an encore of the deliciously mournful ‘Turn of the Century’ from D&N’s Playback Singers before we’re heading back into Kilburn’s cold rainy streets. Definitely worth the soaked over-coat and ruined hair for.