Review: The Winery Dogs, O2 Academy

“We really love Toto!” You’re never going to become critical darlings by making such public confessions, but young Brits Inglorious are presumably well aware that their brand of classic rock doesn’t stand the slightest chance of securing attention from the fad-fixated mainstream media anyway. The only way of reaching their potentially enormous audience is by bagging a support slot on a big tour like this. The Academy is already comfortably full for their first appearance in Bristol, and the sextet certainly don’t disappoint. While most ’70s-worshipping new bands tend to take the likes of AC/DC, Led Zep and Sabbath as their template, Inglorious are rooted more strongly in even less fashionable heavy, keyboard-embellished melodic rock.

Their cover of Rainbow’s I Surrender is sturdy if a little obvious, but anyone minded to sneer at the aforementioned Toto ought to try playing some of the ace anonymous sessioners’ more complex songs. Inglorious opt for the relatively obscure Girl Goodbye from the band’s 1978 debut, pulling off both Steve Lukather’s guitar solo and David Paich’s jazzy piano underpinning with impressive ease. Their own songs are promising too, ranging from the full-tilt Warning to the stately Holy Water. In truth, they’re not fully-formed yet and need to work on their stagecraft, but benefit from quite a trump card in the form of powerful vocalist Nathan James, who’s performed with the Trans-Siberian Orchestra and is best known to reality TV enthusiasts as an unsuccessful contestant on ITV’s Superstar. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s loss is our gain.

Power trio supergroup The Winery Dogs opt for a bare, undecorated stage, with Mike Portnoy’s drum kit concealed beneath a shroud until the last possible moment – presumably to forestall a mass collective premature ejaculation from the sizeable muso contingent present. They launch into Oblivion from new album Hot Streak, which serves as a neat summation of the band’s approach. Rather like early Asia in a different musical context, each piece is engorged with exceptional musicianship and threatens to break down into a showcase of pure technique at any moment. But they walk the tightrope so skilfully that the catchy, melodic song at its core always wins out, often with a topping of gorgeous three-part harmonies. Sure, Billy Sheehan gets a lengthy solo, coaxing sounds that you never thought it was possible to extract from a bass guitar, but that’s the only real self-indulgence here. And even though this is something of a side-project for all concerned, they clearly enjoy playing off each other. When Portnoy drops a beat during Time Machine, they just smirk at one another and pick it up again without breaking sweat. He’s also one of the few drummers in rock who becomes a band focal point, bouncing his sticks off the cymbals (and catching them) and emerging from behind his kit to beat out a rhythm on the stage, Sheehan’s bass and even a punter’s outstretched mobile phone. During Empire, he urges us to “make Will Ferrell proud” by clapping along with the cowbell.

Hot Streak itself shows off the band’s funky side, while guitarist Richie Kotzen slows the frantic pace with a solo acoustic rendition of Fire and switches to keyboards for the classy Steely Dan meets Steve Winwood-esque heavy soul of Think It Over – proving that he’s not only the finest musician ever to have played in Poison, by a very wide margin, but also the best singer they never had. An extended encore of Regret and Desire wraps things up splendidly. Hell, we’ll even forgive them for omitting the cover of Bowie’s Moonage Daydream that the London audience got the previous night.