Glastonbury review NME 26 June 93 (p28) ADORABLE BIRMINGHAM EDWARD'S "WHEN I fail, I want to fail completely, " sang Piotr Fijalkowski, East Midlands indie icon, would-be pop furher and the most arrogant man in Britain. Unfortunately, it was only about 40 per cent failure (NME figures, 27.2.93) where the debut album, 'Against Perfection' was concerned. 'Patchy', said the majority of onlookers and, strangely reluctant to fulfil the above claim and go full pelt for the '0 out of 10' rating, Adorable were left to tour a severely untaken-by storm nation once again, only this time to more sceptical audiences. Piotr still looks gorgeous tonight, like Little Lord Fauntleroy with a BHS glue-on fringe, a soiled whitejacket from the Aardvark Defence League shop and a head full of very strange thoughts. He's a compulsively funny lad, but his main failing is a tendency to over stylise. He and his band are full of self-consciously epic pop gestures and motifs, style and phraseology -and it's getting a bit stale. The same, of course, could be said of the music. Slow bass and drums start; four-chord crashing guitar version of same; slow bit again ; crashing bit again; climatic, shouting, crashing version to fade. They get an unfeasible amount of mileage from such apparently limited fare 'Sunshine Smile', 'I'II Be Your Saint','Sistine Chapel Ceiling' and 'Glorious' all revert to type but succeed brilliantly - but then 'Homeboy' and 'Cut-2' sound dull and formularised. Tonight they try to spice up the more anonymous songs from the album with Piotr's aloof ultra-cool presence and edgy, ragged adrenalin, but they're most original and promising when they break their own mould - with the slow, introspective 'A To Fade In' and 'Still Life', or the full tilt aggressive arrogance of 'Favourite Fallen Idol'. Adorable have admirably wound up bores everywhere and thus built themselves up to be mercilessly knocked down. To survive, they'll need to experiment, let go of their over-calculated, narrow perception of their art and inject some (re)invention into their sound. Then they may show their detractors that they're pioneers and not just poseurs. Johnny Cigarettes NME 10 April 1993 (p34)

ADORABLE LONDON HIGHBURY GARAGE PIOTR ABORABLE clambers through the wreckage of his career and peers at us through the pink and green dry ice smothering the stage. His white leatherjacket, once immaculate, is ripped at the shoulder, his sockets (let's leave 'eyes' out of this, shall we?) firmly fixed on a war of the senses. The battle commences. Piotr, ably supported by pinball-eyed bass player Will, thrashes the sleep from the eyes of his back catalogue and attempts to convince us his failure first time round was an accident; girls with sex-coloured eyes stand and gape in wonder as the speakers erupt their eardrums at every chorus. New 45 'Kangaroo Court', a carbon copy of Adorable's finest moments to date, lurches from a crunching sub-Bunnymen verse to thundering post-Bunnymen chorus, but it's the 'old ones' that inflict maximum damage. 'Sunshine Smile' zooms by,'Sistine Chapel Ceiling' is the sort of thing some might describe as bursting a hole in the middle of rage and dripping desperation through the middle. Quite good, in other words. Piotr, sensing a momentous victory, launches himself onto the monitors and attempts a crucifixion pose. Before he can achieve it, however, he's mobbed, his jacket ripped from his shoulders like shredded skin. So delighted is he, Piotr forgets his air of unapproachability and bellyflops into the amazed crowd's open arms. There is nothing to do but applaud very loudly. Cancel all bets. Adorable's day may still be on the way. Paul Moody NME 4 June 1994 Other Live Reviews: Inspiral Carpets, Ride, Gene, Radiohead