Credit: Found On Internet

You've got to hand it to T-Mobile - when it comes to staging impromptu, invitation-only gigs in unusual locations, they really go for the weirdest places they can Bluetooth themselves into. Which is why Music Towers have blagged their way into a tarted-up Kebab Shop in Dalston to watch skinny indie eye-rollers, The Rakes, play to some lucky competition winners.

Okay, so it's not your regular Kebab House – there isn’t a fat hairy man in grease-splattered white vest asking "Chili sauce, boss?" anywhere in sight. Instead there’s a lot of plastic molding intended to make The Stone Cave looks like its namesake (although the fiberglass stalactites more resemble a gaggle of slippery fiberglass penises than mineral deposits) and even a bloody waterfall (if waterfalls were installed by Groundforce). But with the tables cleared away, there are surprisingly good acoustics for a venue more used to kofta than rock.

Looking like drunk Woody from Toy Story, frontman Alan Donohoe stamps the band in to “Terror”. If David “Dr Who” Tennant ever took up body-popping, I can’t help but cringe that this would be the result. With a slick bass line that has the audience bobbing up and down from the off, “Terror” is a perfect opening song for a band who’s only support band was the free kebab the audience were handed on their way in.

It’s got nods to Pulp, it winks at Billy Bragg, and it’s doffed it’s hat to Franz Ferdinand a couple of times, but somehow even with it’s knowing lyrics of urban stress and the cycle of boredom-broken-by-weekend-boozing, it just falls short of the sum of its parts. With bandstanding a little like Maximo Park's Paul Smith, backed with the manic-but steely glare of Bruce Campbell in Evil Dead, Donohoe steps just over the line from charisma to embarrassment. “Is everyone enjoying their free drinks?”, he shouts. It’s clear by this stage that Donohoe himself as more than made use of the freebies, grinning and shouting randomly at whatever catches his eye.

The price for taking the Devil’s Shekel is a heavy secret, although Donohoe mumbles something about it “paying half my mortgage off”. Although he later tries to fob it off, slurring “who is this for again? Is it T-Mobile or sommit?”, the large T shape slapped on his thigh with masking tape suggests he knows exactly who’s behind the cameras being waved in his face as he tries to dance to the pointed guitars of “Work, Work, Work (Pub. Club. Sleep)”.
 
The set threatens to flag in the middle, but sweeping chants and finger-clicking goodness of “Open Book” and Specials-tinged “Violent” keep the crowd piped. "22 Grand Job" is a like Art Brut in it’s brevity, but less jangley and, like the rest of the set, has a punchier, more laconic and more rough’n’tumble than it is on record.