Herman Dune @ King Tut's

If we were basing this entirely on appearances, you'd expect Herman Dune to be anything but boring. Hats and facial hair aplenty, random assortments of percussion held aloft - you're not really expecting Travis here. Yet while the tunes walk a bizarre tightrope between folk and calypso, the lyrics are surreal ("My girlfriend's afraid of sharks. I said 'That's just a dolphin.") and the banter, while rare, is pretty oblique, Herman Dune's sound doesn't seem to breathe as it might. You Don't Know Where I've Been and When The Later Gets Cold And Freezes On The Lake are delivered with passion, and most of the crowd are enraptured, but the Dune only seem to have one musical idea (FYI, it's quirky, sunny pop), and this overlong set feels like it's dragging from about 20 minutes in. A diverting band on CD, then, but sadly nothing too special in the flesh tonight. [Heather Crumley]