Candy Says leave a packed church awe-struck with a luscious 'coming out party'

It is seven years since Juju Sophie Heslop unleashed her imagination on stage as part of the hard-rocking Little Fish. Not that you’d know it.

Her show among the baroque surroundings of St Barnabas Church, Jericho, felt like a debut. And, in many ways, it was.

While the band have been around — with a slot at The Punt and support for Gaz Coombes at the O2 Academy, this was their first hometown headline show. “This is our ‘coming out’ party!” she told an audience consisting of fans and a healthy number of musicians, artists, scenesters and faces. As if to underline the band’s new softer image, her cheerful dad Tony is on the door selling tickets.

Though Candy Says is born out of Little Fish, and still features keys man Ben Walker, their music is a world apart from their forerunner’s raucous rock. The different ethos is obvious from the start, with the stage framed by an enormous partially-daubed canvas onto which an artist, back to the audience, continued to dab paint.

Clearly this was not going to be a normal gig. That was confirmed when support act Huck Astley took to the stage to perform a few acts of his self-styled “queer runaway myth” folk-operatta “of two young friends and their fall from grace in Texas and Louisiana”.

Unaccompanied, and armed with just a guitar, Huck filled the chancel with a schizophrenic show of tender harmonies, wild strumming, growls and multiple voices, charting the adventures of his protagonists and their gay Huckleberry fiinn-style adventures in Dixie. I would wager St Barnabas had heard nothing like it.

While Huck dispenses tough musical toffee to chew over, Candy Says are pure sherbet dip. They look fabulous — JuJu and singer/percussionist Elisa Zoot centre stage, each in headbands, starring beatifically, Ben stage right, beside a disembodied dummy’s head, and drummer Mike Monaghan, opposite, next to Candy herself - a debonair shop mannequin, tonight sporting a leather brim hat and a tie. Each are lit by suitably ecclesiastical shafts of light.

They began with their dreamy Candy Says Intro, before sliding into Dead on Arrival and their new single Favourite Flavour - a rousing, heartwarming tune, punctuated with hand claps, lovely warm harmonies and a ridiculously catchy chorus.

It’s not all candy-coated pop, though. Juju still has rock in her veins, and the sophisticated dreaminess powers into Velvet Underground-style psychedelia; licks of fuzzy guitars and chic-electro grooves propelled by Mike’s breakneck drumming. There’s a deliberately retro feel to it all, which makes it immediately engaging but also surprising.

Juju describes Hummingbird as her homage to the Velvet Underground song which inspired the band’s name - and the similarity is deliciously obvious. For Ce’est Pas Comme Ca, meanwhile, Juju and Elisa switch to French, coming up, in the process, with a dead cert Eurovision winner.

The performance is clearly as important as the music and it’s a visual treat - with Elisa clashing cymbals, Mike leaving the drums to pick up a trumpet, and Juju, at one point, yelling down a megaphone while marching on the spot. And all the time the backdrop is slowly transformed into a landscape - a bridge over a river, beneath a mysteriously blank square.

The mystery is solved when Candy leaves the stage to make way for a guest singer with a voice like buttered muffins, for a reprise of their Candy Says anthem. What happens next has everyone gasping. A shaft of light focuses on the high unpainted panel, which opens up to reveal Juju - arm outstretched to the congregation.

The religious symbolism is obvious; Little Fish may be dead, but Candy Says has risen triumphantly. The resurrection is complete.