MONEY, The Waiting Room, London

It begins with a shout from the back of the dark room. Then Jamie Lee jumps down from the bar and proceeds to walk through the crowd, serenading each member of the audience with the words to ‘Paradise is Hell’. He kisses a young man on the face, twirls another girl around and jumps up onto the bench at the side to sing a cappella. As it ends he collapses on to the floor and delivers the final verse.

Galileo and Columbus are changing their clothes 
On Lafayette they are amused
With the airs of the stars and the vagrant night
He’s the man in the corner who talks through his knife
It’s a desperate case of a mistaken place
A service, collection of blood
Drawn and delivered on the Boulevards
Of Paradise

It’s immediately clear already that this is going to be a special gig. There’s a feeling in the air tonight at the intimate Waiting Room that something is happening, that we’re witnessing a band who could really mean something. MONEY have been a band long tipped to breakthrough and now, signed to Bella Union and with their debut album ‘The Shadow of Heaven’ ready, it seems their time could well be here.

Jamie Lee is a genuine one off – a Gallagher-like confidence, a disheveled Pete Doherty charisma and a knack for a poetic phrase or two. Within two songs he is shirtless, staring out at the crowd, winking at some. You get the feeling he could control a room ten times this size – you can’t take your eyes off him for a minute.

But all that would count for nothing if the songs weren’t up to scratch. And MONEY have them in abundance. You can see the lineage of the Stone Roses, The Libertines, Echo And The Bunnymen and even Coldplay, so many others. Yet they are almost certainly their own band.

Latest single ‘Bluebell Fields’ shimmers and shines with its chiming guitars and its extended psychedelic, krautrock outro brings it to life even more. Lee sings over the top, what sounds like gibberish but could just as easily be him singing in tongues.

‘Who’s Going to Love you Now’ is equally mesmerising, while the album’s title track sees him grab an acoustic guitar and deliver a reflective and skyscraping hymn. And the show ends with Lee jumping into the audience, messing around with the mic stand until it’s high above him or low on the ground.

As the set comes to a glowing climax he ducks through the crowd and is gone. As he disappears you’re left to reflect on the fact that something has happened tonight. It seems MONEY’s time is now. This will be a gig that people say: ‘I was there’.