Herman Dune - XOYO, London, 6/6/2011
by Helen Tipping
published: 26 / 6 / 2011

intro
Helen Tipping finds French alt. country duo Herman Dune to be funny and witty, but loses out to the heat at a gig in the oppressive atmosphere of the XOYO in London
I agreed to review Herman Dune on a Monday night in London at XOYO. I had been trying to get to see them for a while, and I had forgotten how awful XOYO is as a venue. It is more like a sauna with beer and a very low stage really than a venue. They taunt you with air conditioning piping that clearly has no function, other than to look industrial. So were Herman Dune worth putting myself through the torture? Maybe if I wasn’t going to see them in a month’s time in the more convivial surroundings of the Indie Tracks festival. I guess you would call them alt.country if you wanted to stick a label on them. Erudite and witty, they give a good show complete with comedy moving cactus. I hope it was just a toy and not a real person in a cactus suit. That would just be mean given the heat. Sadly I left before the end, before I passed out, along with quite a few others who had had enough of the discomfort or needed to get their last tube home. I look forward to catching and enjoying them at the end of July.
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