Ginger & Black

It seems like the word is already out on Ginger & Black. Thanks perhaps to recent appearances on E4 and BBC3, as well as supporting Simon Amstell on tour, Pleasance’s tiny Joker Dome is packed to the rafters with a young, well-dressed audience whose average age can’t be more than nineteen.

Ginger & Black are Eri, who has ginger hair, and Daniel, who is—you guessed it—black. Eri plays the guitar and the piano and sings in a deadpan style. Daniel raps, sings and tells stories, also in a deadpan style. They pull off this low-key act with remarkable conviction, neither even coming close to cracking a smile during their one-hour set.

There are plenty of smiles in the audience, though, as Ginger & Black fly through a repertoire of short and at times uproariously funny numbers that cover such everyday subjects as GM food and their day-jobs at a south-coast tank museum. Eri’s delivery in particular is Sahara-dry, and both share a remarkable flair for timing that would be the envy of many performers twice their age.

Recurring problems with the venue’s sound system do their best to put a dampener on proceedings, but even a barely-audible guitar can’t stop the audience lapping up every moment of this show.

Ginger & Black come across like Cerys Matthews and Kele Okereke on a collective comedown, only much funnier, and the deadpan duo look destined for big things in the near future.