Glamming it up

Late on the Friday afternoon of The Great Escape — the annual three-day event for which the London music industry decamps to Brighton to spend three days drinking and trying to get into tiny venues to see new bands — two very young men stood outside a pub, making quite the impression. One, with bleached blond hair, yellow tinted sunglasses and livid red lipstick, wearing a black string vest, clutched a bottle of Mexican lager. The other, made up with huge rouge smears on his cheeks and heavy eyeshadow, wore a beret, a green faux-military tunic, and — naturally — an Elizabethan-styled ruff. You knew they were in a band; you could tell from their armbands, which bore the legend HMLTD.

Three hours later, HMLTD — changed last year from Happy Meal Ltd as it became apparent that McDonald’s lawyers might take an unusually close interest in their career — took to the stage at The Haunt, and for 40 minutes or so offered a thrilling, immersive performance, as if David Bowie had cloned himself in 1972 and sent five duplicates (and a keyboard player who looked like Will from The Inbetweeners) forward in time.