The Les Clöchards: The Boys are Back in Town

The travelling hobos of Kerouac and Steinbeck probably form the best visual reference points for The Les Clöchards, all dressed in threadbare blazers and worn-out hats. But they're certainly not singing the romanticised travelling songs of Woody Guthrie – oh no. The Boys are Back in Town is something of a cross-eyed look at music of the last thirty years, songs all mismatched with their respective genres. What does that really mean? ‘Sex Bomb’ with an eastern-European gypsy twist. A soulful ballad version of ‘Like a Virgin’ that segues into a disco coda. Even a slow-funk rendition of ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun'.

And while a part of the genius here is the five-piece's musical reinvention of the familiar, the group's vague, pan-European, wannabe rockstar act is the most memorable thing about this show. The collective persona is as if the band saw a single video on MTV in the 80s and have dedicated every hour since to doing a bad impression of it. The dancing is ridiculously funny in a zealous, hip-thrusting kind of way, the comedy pidgin English the best since Sacha Baron-Cohen’s Borat, and their impression of a record stylus stuck in a groove one of the most seamlessly impressive bits of musical comedy of the entire Fringe. Hell, they even manage to ressurect the stylophone.

The Les Clöchards’ show is frantically energetic and effortlessly funny. Like a vaguely eastern-European gaggle of musicians inadvertently poking fun at western-European mainstream culture whilst attempting to replicate it, the band are equal parts endearing and uplifting.