“Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine.” The opening line to Patti Smith’s seminal long player Horses is probably a sentiment shared by Detestival given the unorthodox, yet inspired roster of artists it attracts and the fact that the organisers choose to host their annual event over the Easter weekend. Unfortunately, given the paucity of numbers in the Queen’s Road Social Club’s main concert room for the opening night of this year’s festival and in marked contrast to last year’s sold-out success, very few other people would seem to agree.
This probably makes no never mind to Lola Colt for their apocalyptic, widescreen sound would strongly suggest 
that their collective spirit had once travelled up the Nung River with Captain Benjamin J. Willard on a mission to locate the very heart of darkness. That journey will surely have prepared the London six-piece for the absence of any real atmosphere in their immediate surroundings tonight.
With a couple of pistol-packing singles already loaded in their twin holsters – the thunderous, expansive road-movie soundtrack that is ‘I Get High If You Get High’ and the equally cinematic, arid landscape of ‘Jackson’ – and with Bad Seed drummer Jim Sclavunos having now jumped on board the Lola Colt express for production duties, hands are suddenly getting very damp with expectancy for their soon-to-be-released début album .
Spectral, desert guitar; thunderous drums that seem to anticipate an invasion of Masai warriors; and the stridency of Gun’s voice – crossing an amorphous line that somehow connects Nico, Grace Slick and Patti Smith – dominate Lola Colt’s musical horizon. It is a huge, mightily impressive vista, one where Link Wray rides shotgun with Ennio Morricone’s spaghetti western scores and one upon which a regrettably few of us were able to drop our jaws tonight. Good Friday may never again be quite the same.
