My Life Story: Dingwall's, London

JAKE SHILLINGFORD, My Life Story's implausibly wonderfully-named singer and songwriter, must live beneath an attic full of broken mirrors, must use a black cat as a doormat, must have been born in the shadow of a ladder under a bad moon. For unless one ascribes an awesome degree of dimwittedness to the capital's major label A&R brigade — and perish the thought — only truly unbelievably bad luck can be the reason for My Life Story's failure, to date, to have become slightly more popular than spring. That Shillingford is a rare talent as a writer, every bit the lovechild of Ray Davies and Nancy Sinatra he looks, is as gloriously obvious as his luxuriant choruses. That My Life Story are champions of a league of one as a live act is doubted by nobody who has witnessed one of their reliably triumphant performances.