...playing favourites...

Nisennenmondai, Male Bonding, Fighting Kites
Dalston Barden’s Boudoir. 05aug08

Fighting Kites looked utterly beside themselves to be here. “Thanks for letting us play with our favourite band. Oh, and Male Bonding. Our two favourite bands” says the guitarist, spotting a member of the other support act halfway through his sentence. That sums up Fighting Kites’ music really as, despite being in the realm of post-rock and drone, their repetitive calm has chirpiness to it, through their guitar lines and the live-looped hand-claps that pop like fingers inside cheeks.

As for the Kites’ apparent second favourite band, well, Male Bonding seem on good form also, albeit working to a much greater intensity. Kevin Hendrix and John Webb are the dual-vocalists locked in a titularly appropriate Kills-esque face-off; their music high-energy, careering artrockn’rumble. At one point a melodica is parped roughly to create the kind of sound usually employed by overnight petrol garages to ward off large groups of teenagers. They operate on a short sharp shock basis, their set lasting all of fifteen minutes before they down tools and sod off, but all the better for not having their potency sapped by banging on in this muscular fashion for too long.



Nisennenmondai appear to be fairly modest, polite types as they prepare their stage, all three seemingly dressed for work in a convent school laundry. They space themselves out on the stage but focus in on each other, or at least bassist Zaikawa Yuri and guitarist Takada Masako do, Himeno Sayaka seeming to be entirely at one with her drum set. Once the three kick in, any attempt to intrude on the stage would be beaten back solely by the intensity of their concentration.

Sayaka’s crashes away like a dervish, her hair whirring like a wig riding solo in a washing machine, the drum sound often scampering like a small boy after a playful pigeon. The most relaxed looking player is Yuri, her bass warping like a lava lamp, while Masako’s guitar cycles, cuts and echoes.

It is powerful music, but without need for racking up the distortion or applying any extraneous vocalisation (their set being entirely instrumental). Nisennenmondai’s strength comes from danceable car-chase hypnotics, jutting out but rolling fluidly.

...here comes a wig-fish...

The B-52s.
Camden Roundhouse. 24jul08.

I’ve checked two sources on this and apparently shiny happy Kate Pierson is 60 years old. Despite the B-52s longevity, this seems scarcely credible, that is if you were to ignore her sprightly nan-on-petrol-fumes-and-too-many-snifters-of-Bombay-Sapphire style dancing, as well as the look of grumpy determination slapped across her face when she’s off vocal duty.

I guess that’s what happens when a band gets locked in an MTV time capsule, in this case their Love Shack video. Nineteen years have passed since the Cosmic Thing album, that gave us that iconic single, which not only heralded a return to form, but a return to normality following the death of guitarist Ricky Wilson from an AIDS-related illness in 1985. After a hiatus that almost became permanent, drummer Keith Strickland moved over to play guitar, and remains part of the core grouping, his playing here making the merit of his equal billing with the six-legged vocal machine of Pierson, Cindy Wilson and Fred Schneider all too apparent.



Mind you, given a combined age of 168 for the three vocalists, their stage performances certainly retain a youthful vigour (despite some of the dance steps). Wilson and Pierson’s harmonising wraps up 60’s girl groups, Hair and a kind of space-beach party schtick, and works in call-and-response to Fred’s passive-aggressive mince, barked out in perfect order as he surveys those dancing down the front with authoritarian suspicion. There are many great non-regulation voices who bring something distinctive and beguiling to the rock n’ roll canon: Jaz Coleman, a primeval roar; Mark E. Smith; a captivating drawl and Tom Waits, his gutter growl. Over in the corner, asking theatrically where the ice-box might be, is Fred, pouring his gert fuck-off jug of waspish camp into the punch bowl.

Since Cosmic Thing, only two further studio LPs have appeared: 1992’s Good Stuff and Funplex, released earlier this year. Having returned recently to regular live performance, the latter was written to give the band some new stuff to play but despite the fact that such a scenario, wedded to the main players wide geographic spread, might lead to some half-arsed filler, Funplex stands up alongside their very best material. Indeed, the absence of the new Eyes Wide Open tonight is a disappointment even in a set balanced fairly between songs old and new.



Still, its not like their isn’t plenty of t’riffic stuff to cover that absence, Party Out Of Bounds (featuring Fred sprinting from behind the curtain to deliver the first line with perfect wild-eyed gatecrasher’s glee – “Suh-PRIIIII-IIIZE”), Rock Lobster, Mesopotamia and Private Idaho all sounding magnificent, and their showmanship brings the best out of tunes such as Funplex’s title track, which makes much greater sense as part of a concert performance.

The new record makes use of modern electronic programming on songs such as Love In The Year 3000 (presented here as a love double-bill with the shack that you’ll know) but certainly not in a faddish way, more as a natural progression within and around their psychobilly pop to where a dance band needs to be in the 21st century. The B-52s might have kitsch quality, and have presented themselves as a relentless rabble of party-to-party troubadours, but they have a value over and above that of ephemeral novelty mainly thanks to having written some of the liveliest, wittiest and most innovative pop music of the post-punk/new-wave era.

The B-52s @ MySpace

Blown a wish mind

MY BLOODY VALENTINE / GRAHAM COXON, 23RD JUNE 2008, CAMDEN ROUNDHOUSE

Yes, a mere two weeks after the event. Yesterday Betty claimed hers would be the last blogger's review - as if! I'd like to say what follows is better late than never as a tribute to the legendary tardiness of the band in question, but that would be to disguise my own slackness. Hmm, 'Better Late Than Never' - that'd make a good song title for their new record...

Anyway...

* * * * *

You have to wonder if Graham Coxon realises he's not beslippered and dicking about in his bedroom at home but a little way down the road on the Roundhouse stage being watched by several hundred people (albeit several hundred people with precious little interest in anything other than the main attraction).

His half-hour set contains nothing I recognise from any of his solo albums and is instead the only semi-listenable ramblings of someone who's just discovered the possibilities of a self-sampling pedal. Hard to believe this is a man who once chased Page 3 girls around Benny Hill style. Perhaps this is a very public act of self-flagellation? Or perhaps he just knows no one's bothered and has set out to be deliberately obtuse?

Confession time: I came to My Bloody Valentine late. Even when, in my undergraduate days, I belatedly discovered that Britain had spawned rock bands every bit as iconic and fiendishly noisy as my American heroes, it was The Jesus & Mary Chain who made the most instant impression. Isn't Anything was good enough, and magnum opus Loveless a blissful haze of distorted guitar you could completely lose yourself in, but neither had the immediate punch-to-the-gut impact of Psychocandy.

So why was it, then, that news of MBV's reunion gigs had me scrambling for a ticket regardless of the date and venue when the Mary Chain's last year didn't? I can't explain it. But here I am. And it's absolutely fucking marvellous.

What occasionally seems a bit jangly-jangly on record is sludgey and gooey live; listening to it feels like drowning in jam. The drums are surprisingly prominent, especially on the older tracks. By contrast, the vocals - barely discernible at the best of times, particularly on Loveless (hence the reason lyrics sites rarely agree on what's being sung) - are smothered in guitar and can't be made out at all except as extra layers of sound; Kevin Shields and Bilinda Butcher stand making goldfish faces at the mic in the eye of the hurricane. The only time Shields's voice can be made out is the mumbled apology for cocking up one of the early songs - the fact that Colm O'Ciosoig's timing is out even on the fourth night of a five night stand being just about the only thing that proves they're mortal all night.

As to whether they played anything new, your guess is as good as mine. I'm more than happy just to hear 'Only Shallow' and 'Soon' - the latter being post-baggy indie-dance-of-sorts fed through a thousand effects pedals that singlehandedly obliterates all evil thoughts of The Stone Roses.

Nothing - nothing I've read about the past, nothing I've heard from those who witnessed it on previous nights, not even the complimentary earplugs handed out on arrival with a "You're going to need these" nod of the head from the steward - can prepare me for the final onslaught.

The barrage of noise - the "holocaust" section - dropped about two thirds of the way through 'You Made Me Realise' may not have the element of surprise but then it hardly needs it in order to make an impression; it's so loud its impact on my head is like a golf club on an overripe melon.

Five minutes in, my jeans are flapping like washing on a line, and my hair is ruffled as though by an overaggressive aunt.

Ten minutes in, we start communicating by text - this, we agree, is the chord of death.

15 minutes in, people are starting to wilt and surrender, while others surreptitiously finger their ears to prod their molten brains back in. I contemplate whether this is the point to finally admit defeat and, for the first time ever, put in the earplugs I'm rolling around in my clammy palm.

20 minutes in, and we're suddenly back to the song - though the only way you can tell is that Shields comes back to mouth into the mic and O'Ciosoig can be seen (if not heard) to be playing a regular beat, effectively muted by the deafening looped distortion.

And then it comes to an end. The earth has moved.

When I wake I'm still in a dream.

Other reviews: Delrico Bandito, Betty's Utility Room

Teach to their own

THE SCHOOL / FLICKLISTEN / THE PUNCTURE REPAIR KIT, 19TH JUNE 2008, OXFORD BULLINGDON ARMS

Sod's law that the night a friend's visiting and I'm keen to show off how vibrant and thriving gig culture in the latest place SWSL has laid its hat is by paying my first visit to one of the city's most cultish venues, the place is practically deserted.

According to The Beautiful South's Paul Heaton, The Puncture Repair Kit are "the best thing to come out of Cambridge since homosexuality" - but then he's responsible for 'Perfect 10', so don't let that sway you. Others have apparently been nice enough to compare them to the likes of The Delgados, thus proving there is such a thing as being too nice. Xylophone, violin, fey vocals about books, military uniform worn by someone who looks as though he couldn't fight his way out of a damp paper bag, even if armed with a bayonet and hand grenade - and all thrown together to sound rather less like a glorious mess (see: Campesinos!, Los) and rather more like the sort of mess you might be disgruntled to find on the sole of your shoe.

Better is the second act of this Swiss Concrete hosted night, Flicklisten aka Jim Nicherelt, an American who's come to call Oxford home. Even then, though, it takes some time - and accompaniment on a curious scissor-shaped violin (the indie-folk equivalent of a flying V guitar, perhaps?) - for his songs to start to make sense, what initially seems muddy and mumbled coming to sound subtle and measured. There's not much in the way of visual stimulation, either, though he does at least have a nice line in between-song patter.

Both could learn an awful lot from recent Elefant signatories The School. (Note Stern word to self: that's the last pun you're allowed...) Yes, OK, so they're friends of friends from Cardiff and, stood here next to their biggest fan in my Spillers T-shirt, I'm here in some kind of cheerleading capacity. But it's really not so long ago that the very thought of them would have had me spluttering on my pint. Vintage dresses? Pastel pink 7" singles? Stomach-churningly cutesy pop? Here be twee! Pass the Uzi!

So it's to the considerable credit of ex Loves member and Loose promoter Liz and her apparently ever-changing band (including a guitarist whose T-shirt proclaims "I listen to bands that don't even exist yet") that I don't spend the duration of their set chewing on my fists in the hope that Napalm Death and Fuck Buttons might be going to put in a surprise joint headline appearance. That's thanks largely to their homing in on my Achilles heel and raising the Spector of 60s girl groups that haunts the likes of The Jesus & Mary Chain. Live it doesn't all come off (beats are missed and embarrassed glances are smilingly exchanged throughout), but there's still an awful lot to admire and in 'Let It Slip' they've got an absolute gem of a single.

Just a shame, then, that the only people dancing are The Puncture Repair Kit and assorted girlfriends and friends. Talk about teaching to the converted. Ah...

Ken's review on Parallax View

...the drummer is on valium...

Faust.
New Cross Amersham Arms. 18jun08.

The ‘Faust’ of German folk legend is characterised as a charlatan alchemist. Given the amount of base metals used in the percussive cage/fort which contains heavy-set drummer, and founding Faust member Werner ‘Zappi’ Diermaier, one might be tempted to make that instant connection between that original fiction and this musical fact and suggest that if gold is made here, it is but fools gold.

That would be a touch excessive, and neither can any connection be made with Goethe’s Faust either; there have been no pacts entered into with the devil or anything here. Not overtly anyway, this isn’t Scandinavian death metal after all, although neither is it exactly close to the mainstream. As if to prove that they are not entirely removed from popular music though, tonight’s grouping under the banner of Faust (Zappi and fellow founder member Jean-Hervé Péron are joined by a variety of guests including vocalists Rachael Tyrell and Geraldine Swayne) begin by moving from a wake-up cacophony into a mangled take on The Beatles’ ‘She Loves You’.



Faust tonight operate from a subtle underlying of waspish psyche-folk to which they add a blunt industrial thwack. Not industrial in the conventional sense, but more a band in tune with a soot-blackened labour force and whilst far from resistant to the electronic age, the clank on pipes and the rivet gunning, which causes sparks to fly off the large circular saw tied steadfastly to the back of Zappi’s cage, is distinctly evocative of a time when the future was a Brunelian future.

Large sheets of metal also swing from the top of the cage and at times Jean-Hervé just throws the microphone at them, almost coshing Zappi in the process, whilst intoning “The drummer is on valium, give him a kick. Kick him.” They’ve been performing together since 1971 so Zappi will no doubt be wise to the need for duck and cover over the course of an average ninety minute set.

They paint semi-improvised urban landscapes, but with plenty of green amongst the grease (understandable, given their formation in the rural town of Wűmme), adding trumpet, an additional drum set, an accordion or even a chainsaw when they see fit. When the chainsaw revs it even begins to smell like a factory, and as Jean-Hervé attacks a load of plywood with it with some zeal amongst the front row, the chippings swirl and coat the audience like dust on foreign coins forgotten for years at the bottom of a vase [see pic].

Although ‘krautrock’ as a genre term invented by British journalists hasn’t always exactly gone down well with the actual protagonists, Jean-Hervé shouting “YOU did it. YOU gave it its name…we’re gonna play some KRAUTROCK” suggests that Faust have taken it in their stride. It is this final number, a fifteen-minute pulsating rotation, that sees Faust really come into their own.

Trying to hook them into the Faustus diaspora on the basis of their name almost certainly misses the point anyhow. They are not the result of the mystical or the creation of the precious. They are immersed in experimentation certainly, but in a distinctly utilitarian sense. Their collaborations espouse the benefits of working union, whilst their music is about strength and solidarity. ‘Faust’, after all, is also the German for ‘fist’.

Champagne Socialism

BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE / THE BRUNETTES, 22ND MAY 2008, OXFORD ZODIAC

When it comes to extending personal invitations to quality support acts, Broken Social Scene have previous, having helped to propel Los Campesinos! into the big time on the last occasion they found themselves on these shores. This time the beneficiaries of their patronage are Aucklanders The Brunettes - essentially Jonathan Bree and Heather Mansfield and four accomplices possessing hair of a similar hue.

In truth, the Toronto-based collective are by no means the first North American band to have wanted to promote The Brunettes outside of their native New Zealand - none-more-indie brethren like The Shins, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and Rilo Kiley have also taken them on tour. They've also had the more dubious honour of having one of their songs selected by Channel 4 for use in a long trailer for the acting-free zone that is 'Hollyoaks'.

The song in question, 'Brunettes Against Bubblegum Youth', is, it has to be said, the undoubted jewel in their crown - sweet, infectious and handclappily exuberant, like one of Jason Pierce's garage numbers smothered in honey by The Polyphonic Spree. All the same, the rest of the set, which draws heavily on last year's Sub Pop-released album Structure & Cosmetics, shows how positive the results can be when a band has been able to grow and evolve in their own splendid isolation, insulated by distance from the caprices of fashion.

Apparently, Broken Social Scene's sound man once met a girl in Oxford, and that's the reason they've been persuaded to play here. All I can say is: whoever you are, mystery girl, thank you. It doesn't quite match up to the first time I saw them - how could it, frankly? - but it still ultimately ranks as probably the best gig I've been to this year so far.

Not that the signs are too good at first, mind. We're in the Academy, of course - an atmosphere-free corporate dungeon a million miles from the deconsecrated church they played in Cardiff. Nominal band leader Kevin Drew seems reserved and a little quiet, and there's no sloshing glass of red wine in need of continuous refill, while charismatic guitarist/showman Andrew Whiteman is one of those missing. A stilted take of 'Churches Under The Stairs', from bassist Brendan Canning's forthcoming BSS Present... album Something For All Of Us, is played with the assistance of sheets of paper and derails during the third verse.

But the audience is only too happy to indulge the band when Drew apologetically offers to set things straight by playing it again, and gradually there's a slackening, a loosening, a thawing, and everything begins to flow smoothly. '7/4 Shoreline' and 'Superconnected' certainly help, as does 'Anthems For A Seventeen-Year-Old Girl', performed on this occasion by Amy Millan of Stars, whose fellow band member Evan Cranley also plays a supporting role. Before long, Canning - looking somewhere between an eccentric geography teacher and a tramp - is entertaining us with his Peter Gabriel impression and the band are light-heartedly squabbling about where exactly it was that they had the misfortune to watch 'Snakes On A Plane'. Now in full Barry Norman mode, Drew advises us not to bother watching 'Atonement' - punting, it seems, was infinitely more enjoyable.

If it's difficult to lay a finger on precisely why Broken Social Scene's live performances are so superior to the recordings, then it's almost as difficult to explain their charms in the first place (in terms that don't just refer to the weight of numbers). One suspects that perhaps it's the contribution of Do Make Say Thinkers Charles Spearin (guitar/trumpet) and Justin Peroff (drummer/actor/aspiring novelist) that gives the songs a languid groove.

You could pretty much guarantee that the sweeping airraid siren guitar of 'Ibi Dreams Of Pavement' would bring the set of any other band to a close - but not Broken Social Scene, because they've still got 'It's All Gonna Break' in reserve. 'I'm Still Your Fag' lights up the encore, and Drew eventually leaves the stage exhorting us to "be kind" and indicating he practices what he preaches by gratefully returning a plectrum he borrowed mid-set. There's certainly nothing broken about the social scene they leave behind calling for more.

Ocean deep, forest dry

High Places.
Dalston Café OTO. 31may08.

Behind their trestle table console, Rob Barber can relatively calmly jep and bwat at his electro-drum box, and Mary Pearson, stood close by singing softly, is also caught within a tranquil twitch.

High Places’ percussive bent is certainly the first impression they emboss upon an audience, the polyrhythms created by Barber’s beats and the gentle rattle of the backing tracks intertwining like competing vines adopting different spirals to ascend the same drainpipe.

Pearson adds to the shake and shickle with a bracelet of bells and while her contributions, including a yielding but deadpan vocal that merges seamlessly with the general ethereality, are festive and fairytale, the combination with beats of tribal repetition as well as of Soca-like steel-drum abandon make their set like the early stages of some enchanted freakout.

High Places’ sound is both of land and sea. When watery, they are like a depth-diluted Coral Reef Cantina Band, the vocals often largely hidden in the mix due to the rippling belly-splash of the drum-work. At other times, it has a sprightly seclusion, like an isolated forest, but one that has not been naturally created; a kind of woodland mechanics where dandelion seeds tickle like toddlers yet also scrape the skin like bright new pins.

High Places @ MySpace

Post-punk folk-funk

New Bloods.
Dalston Barden’s Boudoir. 24may08.

It is with a juvenescent coyness that New Bloods assume their positions, circling around one mic to the left of the stage, like a young, feminine Travelling Wilburys given to hanging around the kids playground after dark for exclusive use of the swings.

They begin with a short acapella number that barely acknowledges its audience, butyet instantly captures their attention. Perhaps it is the frailty and the honesty of the human voice working alone, or in delicate harmony, that makes it so much harder to ignore than instruments amplified to inner-ear troubling levels. To open with this suggests New Bloods know how to pace a set.

Falling into their more usual role as players, they still use their three voices to good effect, working with and against each other as each situation sees fit. However it is bassist Cassia Gammill who is the regular lead immersing a robust vocal anchor to the click and flip rhythms that smooth the serrations of post-punk and dub-soul and slides them alongside the unpolluted, endeavour-driven folk-funk.

They are a school assembly !!!; a Gil Scot Heron if he was to become sonneteer-in-residence at K Records; an Electrelane for a relatively sedate venture scout campfire freakout. While the non-linear escapades of Adee Robertson’s drumming and the keen sweep of Osa Atoe’s violin might occasionally start to blur songs together, they have a sound which can fuse the responses of the head, heart and feet, which is by no means an easy combination to get right.

New Bloods @ MySpace

The Ex factor

EX MODELS / ELAPSE-O / LOAD. CLICK. SHOOT. / ICE, SEA, DEAD PEOPLE, 15TH MAY 2008, OXFORD CELLAR

Another day, another night spent underground in the company of men with scant regard for my long-term hearing...

And there was me assuming I wouldn't be the only person who decided the opening band on the bill had earned my attention on the strength of their name alone. As it is, Bedford's Ice, Sea, Dead People play to a sparse crowd, and in the yawning silences between songs, their patter not being up to much (the odd awkward muttering about "phallic endings" aside) during the excessive tuning-up time, you can the proverbial pin drop.

Those silences are only magnified by their juxtaposition with slashing, lacerating bursts of art-school post-punk, for which guitars are banged with fists and snapped strings stripped off with relish. This is music that Future Of The Left bassist Kelson Matthias has said makes him cry "just like the big black guy in the end of Prince's video for 'Purple Rain'". I think that's a compliment, and while I would suggest the mop-haired drummer could work on his timing, the likes of 'Justin Klein' mean I'm inclined to be broadly complimentary too.

The same can't be said for the more garrulous Load. Click. Shoot., fresh from performing at The Great Escape in Brighton. It would be nice to be able to agree with The Fly's assessment that they're "arguably the most exciting group to spring out of Devon in recent years", but everything about them - from the forgettable punk-funk splurge of songs like 'Le Disco Avec Moi', through the dance moves and yelping gang vocals, down to the deliberate punctuation of their name - screams "We're so now!" that it actually makes them seem strangely out-of-date, too late to the party. And not fashionably late, either. How could they be, boasting that they've just recorded 'The Boy Who' (amongst other tracks) with ex-Test Icicles guitarist Rory Attwell?

We're in a city whose ass currently belongs to Foals, and so it's not surprising that local label Vacuous Pop have taken enough of an interest to release their debut EP - but, for me, their set-closer 'Young Pretenders' says it all.

When I moved from Abingdon to Oxford itself in early November, and was at last able to get back into the gigging groove, I set about investigating what the city had to offer - and soon stumbled across a burgeoning noise scene. If I had to pick one song of those I came across that got me most excited, it was 'Sonny Liston' by Swans, Suicide and no wave afficionados Elapse-O, an out-there and deliciously ear-damaging cocktail of submarine bleeps, militaristic drumbeats, echoey vocals and dense feedback. 'Golden Ships' isn't too shoddy either.

Sure enough, 'Sonny Liston' is the song with which their set comes to a conclusion - but in the live environment the shifting tones and movements are sadly less easy to discern, the bleeps, drumbeats and vocals submerged not so much just beneath the surface as twenty thousand leagues under the sea. It's also fair to say, I think, that there are more gripping spectacles than two men swaying and occasionally hopping onstage with a laptop in the background. Perhaps, though, they're best enjoyed with your eyes shut and your ears more accustomed to picking things out of the depths? If that means seeing them again some time soon, then that's fine with me.

This is their first UK tour for two years, but Brooklynites Ex Models - like everyone else on tonight's bill - seem to be the victims of a Punt hangover which has meant a disappointing turnout. Not everything goes smoothly from a technical point of view either, with Zach Lehrhoff complaining with a smile that his amp is "humming in G", adding: "Do you have a different kind of power over here?" But these niggles set aside, they're quite a band to behold.

Not being at all familiar with their back catalogue - in fact, having never even heard them before tonight - I have no idea how much of the set is drawn from forthcoming album White Psychosis / White Dementia and how much from its three predecessors, but the majority of the material accords with their own description of themselves as a "fundustrial noise" outfit: fast, raw, clattering punk songs beaten, fractured and stretched out on the rack by gleeful math-rock and no wave loving torturers.

The most remarkable thing is the performance of Kid Millions, on long-term loan from psych freakos Oneida. Having cut a bookish figure at the bar when cashing in his beer tokens earlier, when showtime arrives he removes his glasses, places them on top of an amp and then proceeds to give a drumming masterclass. It really is like watching Clark Kent morph into Superman. Each seven minute long song Lehrhoff and guitarist Shahin Motia start up seems designed purely to try and break Millions, who appears to be under strict instructions never to play anything remotely approximating a regular beat, instead crashing his way from roll to fill to roll until trying to make a distinction between the two becomes impossible. It's exhausting just watching him at work, and by the time the trio retire I'm more than ready for bed. It's just a question of whether tinnitus will keep me awake...

Punt and menace

CLANKY ROBO GOB JOBS / 50FT PANDA / DAVID K FRAMPTON / EDUARD SOUNDINGBLOCK, 14TH MAY 2008, OXFORD CELLAR

Glastonbury may be suffering from some well-publicised problems in terms of appeal (largely thanks to the actions of cretins deterred by the mere thought of one act out of hundreds over the course of the weekend), but micro-festivals continue to spring up everywhere, each one instantly seeming to find sufficient sustenance to survive. They don't come much more micro than the Oxford Punt, a kind of miniature Dot To Dot taking place across five of city's most central venues and with a very local focus. In truth, though, the shindig, organised by local listings mag Nightshift (for which some of this 'ere review was written), is no Johnny-come-lately, having taken place annually for the past decade.

Foiled in my attempts to get down to Borders (yes, the bookshop was one of the five venues) in time to grab a pass - oh ye authors and copy-editors, why do you mock me thus? - I have to settle for a ticket for the venue whose bill started latest. Turns out rather well, as it happens - though not really thanks to Eduard Soundingblock, whose impression of Cardiacs gone death metal is a taste too acquired for my palate.

One sprawling opus which may be called 'You're Going Home In A Fucking Ambulance' is roughly ten songs badly sellotaped together, complete with occasional epic sections that I guess may be a nod to System Of A Down but that actually sound more preposterous than the manic majority. (That said, it's each to their own, and my companion is far more enthusiastic, mentioning Mr Bungle approvingly.)

David K Frampton bears an uncanny resemblance to one of my former housemates. More relevantly, though, he makes dance music, albeit dance music for people who like their ears put in a blender and then fed to them through a straw. Fuck Buttons fucking dubstep with an angle grinder, basically.

Frampton's decision to begin 2008 by releasing three albums in three months on his own Eyeless imprint - A Gravitation Towards The Head, The Orange Room and Red Out - might have you questioning his quality control, but the way he barrels aggressively about the stage tonight is enough to put any thoughts of questioning anything he does (certainly to his face, at least) right out of your head. Clutching three mics in his hands at once like a fat kid returning from an ice cream van with his bounty, he screams into one "We’re gonna rock ‘n’ roll tonight!" It’s not an empty promise.

Barely thirty seconds into their set it’s evident that 50ft Panda worship at the altar of The Riff. In fact, they probably pray five times a day, genuflecting in the direction of Tommy Iommi’s house.

In the sense that they’re an instrumental duo, there’s a hint of the leftfield about them (they themselves cite Lightning Bolt as an influence, as well as more conventional riffmasters like Melvins and Kyuss), but all the same there’s no sense of there being any greater objective than to bludgeon us into rapture, something they achieve with ease – tonight they’re preaching to the converted. If there's any puzzlement on our faces, it's because we're wondering how exactly two people can make so much noise.

I’ve been to a lot of gigs, but I can honestly say I’ve never seen an audience member insert their little finger deep into a performer’s belly button mid-song – until tonight. The witching hour is upon us by the time Clanky Robo Gob Jobs takes to the stage, and there’s no doubt that his gabba spazz-electro, going off like a nailbomb in a Nintendo factory, has an equally strange effect on people. Try as I might, I can't think of a better description of what I'm witnessing than that penned by Nightshift's own Dale Kattack: "a one-man mash-up of Napalm Death, Atari Teenage Riot and Harry Enfield's Kevin the teenager"...

Stood sweating in a blue hooded top with yellow plates in a crest down the back, the zip broken and his ample gut consequently protruding forth unrestrained, he complains about looking less like a stegosaurus (the intended effect) and more like "a fucking Mexican wrestler" before informing us: "I have some merchandise for sale: my ass, and what comes out of it". Nice - much like the closer, "a nice song about my penis". But is there a message in all this madness, a thought for us to take home and cherish? Why yes there is: "Fuck you lolcats, fuck you"...

Check mates

JONQUIL / HREDA / THEO / GOSSAMER ALBATROSS, 9TH APRIL 2008, OXFORD CELLAR

"We will drink the night away", sings Lewis Gordon on 'Held Hands', but even if he had photo ID you'd be hard-pressed to believe he is actually 18. Which makes the music he and his equally youthful band Gossamer Albatross play all the more remarkable - though the origins of their name does give a clue to the scale of their ambitions.

From the opener, a dark tale of stalking and paranoia, to the romantic and big-hearted 'Whispered Thoughts', their songs - complex compositions wrought of guitar, double bass and duelling violins - are a quiet revelation. Gordon comes across like Conor Oberst (were he even more fresh-faced than he already is) wedging a rocket up the backside of twee English folk.

The ignorant gobshites who seem to comprise the majority of the crowd aren't interested, but Jonquil's Hugo Manuel is - it's on his invitation that Gossamer Albatross have travelled over from Hereford. If the fruits of their recording sessions together turn out well, then they could really be in business - as it is, someone should get 'em signed up for a slot in the bandstand tent at this year's Green Man pronto.

(Incidentally, it was no surprise to discover that in enthusing about them, Simon's already beaten me to the punch on Sweeping The Nation.)

Chances are that if you’re in Oxford and come across a solo songwriter who goes by the name of Theo, he’s going to be a simply spiffing scarf-wearing chap, yah, who’s hit upon the novel idea of strumming a guitar sensitively as a way of attracting the fillies. Not Sam Knight, though. If I didn’t know that Worcester had a one-man math-rock answer to Ill Ease (and let’s face it, I didn’t – and neither did you), then I certainly do now.

But while Theo’s half-hour-long set passes without pause or break, it’s not all as good as the likes of ‘Invested In Defence’. The sense of wonderment and awe at the self-sampling technology and the uses to which he puts it gradually dissipates when you realise that every song consists of the same essential components: a guitar line by way of foundation, a more tricksy guitar line laid on top, and then a thrash about on the drums, his guitar slung around his back. Formulaic is the last thing you expect this type of music to be, but that’s what it comes to seem like.

The acid test is closing your eyes and asking yourself if it’s anywhere near as impressive – and the answer is, unfortunately, not really.

Opening my eyes, it’s at this point that I realise that Knight, like the male three-quarters of Gossamer Albatross, is wearing a check shirt - as are all three core members of next band to take to the stage, his current tourmates Hreda. Have I unwittingly stumbled upon some kind of bizarre kind of rock branch of the Freemasons where secret handshakes are replaced by a strict dress code, and am I about to get lynched as an outsider? Well, hopefully not - at least their part-time cellist Thom has opted for a sober grey jumper.

This is the second night of the tour, and after the disappointment of the previous evening's gig at The Windmill in Brixton - where they claim to have played to just three people - a hometown gig in front of a partisan crowd is exactly what Hreda need. In truth, it's far from perfect - too much imprecision (certainly in comparison with when I first sighted them) and too many shoulders shrugged in sheepish apology - but I can't help being a sucker for anyone who takes Explosions In The Sky as a blueprint. 'KHTC' again stands out, but this time 'New Pastures' is a close rival, drifting disarmingly along before pulverising and obliterating us with distortion at the end.

For a band whose founder member Hugo Manuel was previously in a post-rock outfit called The Modern, highly regarded local headliners Jonquil are slightly surprising in that they're neither post-rock nor modern. What isn't surprising is that several of them, including Manuel, are wearing check shirts...

The vast majority of the crowd might be here for them, but when Hugo decides to open with a quiet song they're shown exactly the same courtesy as Gossamer Albatross before them i.e. none whatsoever. It's only when stirring shout-along shanty 'Lions', the title track of their second album, starts up that all attention is suddenly drawn stagewards.

With their curious combination of experimental folk and feel-good bucolic anthemry, and their weight of numbers on stage, Jonquil exist at the place where Beirut, My Latest Novel and Broken Social Scene meet. (And what with various members moonlighting away from their day jobs in other bands, the latter comparison is particularly apt.) Factor in the facts that three of them run electronica / hip-hop label Crossword and that they effectively rewrite songs in learning how to play them, and you've got a pretty intriguing prospect.

Tonight the mix doesn't do them too many favours - though in the sound man's defence, there's so much going on that it must be a fiendishly hard job to keep track of it all - but even still the likes of the re-recorded 'Whistle Low' make it glaringly obvious why some people are tipping them to be the next band to graduate from Oxford onto the national stage. If they do, they'll be following in the footsteps of Foals, whose seal of approval was recently bestowed upon them in the pages of NME - and, as a second even more rousing rendition of 'Lions' is barked at the ceiling by nearly everyone in the venue to bring the evening to a close, you wouldn't bet against it.

In like Flynn

Johnny Flynn/Slow Club/The Black Report, Leicester Sumo, 4th May 2008

Unless the cameraman taking millions of flash photos from all conceivable angles at the front of the stage who doesn't reappear for any of the other acts is some sort of additional performance art aspect, The Black Report is one man, Callum Price, more commonly found fronting local Drowned In Sound and Annie Mac-approved, Shellac-inspired angular types Herra Hidro. Curious, then, that his own songs bear more resemblance to the sort of thing a skinny jeaned corporate indie band would turn out if their singer was required to perform a solo acoustic version of one of their songs, unenthralling melodic structures and lyrics that eventually blend into one inessential mess, cover of Richard Hawley's Just Like The Rain included. Still, he's brought plenty to see him, and consequently most of them bugger off to the bank holiday party happening upstairs straight away.

Which means they miss the unusual sight of a three-piece drum kit being set up centre front of stage. Slow Club are a duo on equal terms in which Charles (college yearbook hair) bashfully takes up often furiously strummed guitar and vocals while Rebecca (frilly pink skirt) hammers the kit standing up and harmonises or responds to the former's calls. The effect falls somewhere close to a northern English answer to the Moldy Peaches' minimalist New York minuets, or perhaps closer to a scaled down Tilly And The Wall. Like that band's tap dancer they're not afraid of finding new methods of percussion, Rebecca using the back of a wooden chair as percussion throughout recent single Me And You. There's also noticeable harks back to rockabilly and skiffle, with that basic rattle, and a little Everly Brothers in the harmony construction. There's a darker undercurrent to many of the lyrical themes, but isn't there always, and there's as much outright sugar-sweetness about such themes as youthful allegiance and adolescence, and whatever it's barely noticeable as the pair share jokes mid-song and clearly enjoy the privilege of being on stage. It's infectious too, as within two songs they've tempted most away from talking at the bar at a volume which suggests they see that thing in the corner as competition, and by the end they've managed to formulate a dance-off among the front row. Some would call it twee or nu-folk, anti-folk might be closer, but whatever it is it's party music for the indie kids who think that little bit bigger.

Cherubic he may look, but Johnny Flynn very much is nu-folk, this specious genre recently coined by the music press to envelope the likes of Laura Marling, Noah & The Whale, Emmy The Great, Florence And The Machine and basically anyone else young with a strong voice and acoustic guitar, except on a wider scale where it's generally the Fence Collective artists, Devendra Banhart, Adem and basically anyone else of advancing age and experience with a strong voice and acoustic guitar. Where Flynn has a better claim to most is that his style links the two disprite groups, pointing towards Richard Thompson and Bert Jansch as much as Iron & Wine and anti-folk pioneer Diane Cluck, as well as the American folk traditions and a healthy nod towards blues and country. His band the Sussex Wit are no musical slouches, pulling out and switching instruments at a decent rate. Flynn himself has a go on guitar, banjo, mandolin, violin and trumpet, while for one song the cellist makes for the drum seat, replacing the keyboard-bound usual incumbent. What this makes for is a varied set of trad folk brought up to date through a countrified prism, topped by Flynn's warmly efficient, if occasionally strained, vocal. Lyrically it speaks of a storytelling air, setting songs among the downtrodden and those blighted by life with a fine sense of wordplay and a sting, surely influenced by his other career as a Shakespearian touring actor. It finds its niche in the likes of Hong Kong Cemetery, a queasily emotional lament with trumpet fanfare, and recent single Eyeless In Holloway, which has evolved into a bluegrass hoedown. While the set flirts with sameness, there's an attachment and a pure folk-rock stomp to Flynn's songs that sets him aside from more tastemaker-friendly fare towards something more singularly interesting.

...and the word is...

Evangelista.
Shoreditch Old Blue Last. 27apr08.

There’s a man goin’ round taking names. Carla Bozulich has offered hers, and her bands, as Evangelista. This is not a superficial conceit, but the most appropriate encapsulation of what Carla and her shape-shifting team of art-rock troubadours actually achieve together.

The 2006 album for Constellation Records was titled Evangelista and, as the tour progressed, this became the umbrella term for the project, taking away the focus on one particular personality within the group. However there is no escaping the force of Carla’s voice, and her will, even though she is now surrounded by more musicians; guitarist Jeremy Drake in particular is ‘conducted’ by Carla through the pace of Steal Away like he’s being coaxed down from a sugar rush.



Last year, as reviewed here, the band was just a three piece, now there are six on stage but while there is increased muscle in pieces from this year’s follow-up LP Hello, Voyager, such as Truth Is Dark Like Outer Space these don’t resonate half as much as the desolate, minimal pieces, and this was perhaps better captured with a smaller set-up.

That said, a good half of tonight’s set is taken from that defining 2006 LP, the highlight again being the grinding creak and karmic majesty of Evangelista I, but the closing song of the night, Hello, Voyager itself, runs it close. The secret of Evangelista as a unit, and Carla as the only front-woman who could do justice to the name, is contained in these songs. It’s where the voice comes up from the gut, and as it catches on a glottis whittled by the melancholic openness of country music, unleashes a gospel fury, a haunted scream-und-drone that, atmospherically, teeters close to rapturous spasm.

“When there’s no hope left, there is only one word, one word, one word, that hasn’t dried on your parched lips. Can you say it with me? Can you say it with me? Can you say it with me? The word is love. LOVE!”, with the latter word screamed like its been set alight on its way up from the diaphragm, gives an indication as to the apocalyptic character of this body of work, whilst also revealing the vulnerability at its core.

Carla Bozulich website
Evangelista MySpace

Seeing red

BLOOD RED SHOES / THESE NEW PURITANS / PEGGY SUE & THE PIRATES, 3RD APRIL 2008, OXFORD ZODIAC

Ever felt like you're the anomaly responsible for raising the average age of a gig crowd above 18? Well, I don't tonight. The dads chaperoning their daughters are doing that...

Fact number one: Peggy Sue & The Pirates have nothing to do with Pete & The Pirates. Fact number two: judging by the absence of peg-legs, pieces of eight and shoulder-perched parrots, neither are they particularly piratical.

The Brighton-based duo - yes, there are only two of them - have supported Kate Nash and so it's no great surprise that they come across as being in a similar vein, albeit possessed by the maverick spirit of someone like Natasha Khan of Bat For Lashes. Instruments come and instruments go, but always centre stage are their voices - strong, dovetailing, busily improvising additional sound effects (standout song, the single 'Television', ends with them imitating static), but for these ears too often irritatingly accented. Blood Red Shoes drummer Steven Ansell appears for an acoustic cover of his band's 'Take The Weight', but that's about the only time the chattering classes of sixth formers actually pay them much attention.

Slightly less straightforwardly cast in the role of prelude to the main act are These New Puritans. The Southenders played here as recently as January and have actually cancelled a headlining show of their own later in the month to appear in this support slot.

At times, there's something promising about the violent disco created by the two nerdy-looking mop-heads on stage, as thin as anorexic streaks of piss. Take single 'Elvis', for example: an indiefied Fall set to a thwacking great synthetic beat. But at others - the jackbooted Missy Elliott stomp of 'Swords Of Truth' (over which I guarantee you'll find yourself singing "Get your freak on"...) - it's distinctly underwhelming. And then there's 'Numbers AKA Numerology', on which they think they can get away with singing embarrassingly idiotic piffle like "What's your favourite number? / What does it mean?" by virtue of the fact that they're referencing mathematics, just like all good young angular NME-favoured bands should.

And so to the headliners.

As a wise man once opined, anger is an energy. That same wise man may have gone on to appear on ‘I’m A Celebrity ... Get Me Out Of Here!’, but his point remains valid – and that’s why the room is soon positively crackling with energy.

There’s no denying the fact that Blood Red Shoes are mightily miffed. Halfway through the set, Laura-Mary Carter furiously flings her guitar to the floor and storms off stage right, her partner Ansell following sharply after.

This is no inexcusably arrogant diva-ish strop or childish temper tantrum, though. With long-awaited and unfortunately delayed debut LP Box Of Secrets finally about to hit the shelves, the duo have been bedevilled by malevolent technical gremlins from the off (the set delayed for the best part of ten minutes, the intro tape left to loop over and over again), so it's hardly surprising they've become increasingly frustrated in their attempts to showcase a bunch of songs in which they passionately believe. "It's hard not to get worked up sometimes", Laura-Mary admits to me afterwards.

When they reappear, apologetically, the anger hasn’t dissipated and - further riled by The Man’s joyless limiting of the stage invasion encouraged by Ansell to just Peggy Sue & The Pirates and one lone fan - they set about those same songs with a ferocity that the recording process just can’t capture, mainlining their furious art-punk assault straight into our earholes. An explosive live act at the best of times, tonight their abrasive reimagining of Nirvana if they’d been on Kill Rock Stars rather than Sub Pop is in a different league altogether.

In truth, Box Of Secrets is ingenuously titled, a whole clutch of the songs – ‘It’s Getting Boring By The Sea’, ‘I Wish I Was Someone Better’, ‘You Bring Me Down’ and most recently ‘Say Something Say Anything’ – having already seen the light of day as singles and on the band’s numerous jaunts the length and breadth of the country.

But there’s the rub. It’s fitting that such serious contenders for the title of the hardest gigging band in Britain should take their name from a story about Ginger Rogers having to rehearse a dancing sequence so many times her white shoes turned red. After all, it’s precisely that kind of dogged tunnel-vision determination and dedication, even at risk of exhaustion and personal injury, that defines them.

Safe to say that suffering sabotage at the hands of the fucking Academy and its goons is unlikely to stop them.

Monsters of rock

Inevitably it's impossible to watch Metallica documentary (or rockumentary, if you will) 'Some Kind Of Monster', as I did recently, without immediately thinking of 'This Is Spinal Tap'.

After all, the behind-the-scenes access-all-areas film made during the tortuously protracted recording sessions for their 2003 album St Anger features ridiculously petulant feuds and childish tantrums on the part of James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich while a wearied Kirk Hammett, forever shaking his head, tries to keep the peace with a futile whine of "Hey guys, can't we all just get along?" And that's not to mention the psychologist / relationship counsellor they're paying $40,000 dollars a week to be call day and night...

But the other film that sprang to mind was 'DiG!', because both made for equally entertaining viewing despite my not caring much for the bands they focus on (in the case of 'DiG!', The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre).

And with 'Some Kind Of Monster' it isn't all laughs at the expense of the protagonists. It's actually a grippingly revealing insight into a world that music fans rarely see - one in which egotistical multi-million-selling musicians can suffer from envy and a crisis of confidence just by seeing their former bassist performing with his new band, and in which a band who have founded their career on being loud and angry but who now find themselves in comfortable middle-aged affluence feel the pressure to come up with something that stands up to their back catalogue.

And that's not to mention the way the film unpicks and exposes the creative process itself, showing the trio noodling away in the studio with little clue of how things might take shape - or, rather, be moulded into shape by ever-present producer Bob Rock.

Perhaps most curious is the feeling, unspoken but evidently shared by all involved, that no matter how bad the tensions and arguments get, they should persevere because ultimately they have something special together that should be preserved - misplaced though that feeling might be, when their collaborative brainstorming session for lyrical ideas throws up the line "My lifestyle determines my deathstyle" and they all decide it should make it onto the finished album...

This be the verso

FUTURE OF THE LEFT / DEGUELLO / BITCHES, 2ND APRIL 2008, OXFORD JERICHO TAVERN

What, me, at a gig at the Jericho Tavern, with not a Glaswegian artist in sight, with my reputation?

Anyway, what can I tell you about the evening's openers BITCHES? Next to nothing, as it happens - my usual crutch the internet has proven useless, and in any case the foursome aren't exactly ideally named for the inquisitive googler. So, with nothing to go on but their three song performance, I can only say that Bitches' brew is unfortunately akin to a dog's dinner, thanks in no small part to the over-enthusiastic synth assault. Perhaps it's a sign of age, but watching the percussionist hunched over smashing out a beat on a mic'd-up metal dustbin, I can't help but fear for his back - maybe their set is so short on doctor's orders? (An aside: they should team up with locals Witches for a split single, if only for comic effect.)

By contrast, I'm already familiar with Deguello, having encountered them two years ago when they came to Cardiff under the wing of Winnebago Deal. On that occasion, bassist Rusty Needles lambasted the crowd for being "lame", but tonight the shoe's on the other foot, the trio seeming to have lost their way somewhat since then.

Stretching to straddle a musical divide, though often admirable and occasionally inspired, can often be perilous, and that's the problem here. Two-thirds of the band seem to want to be in Melvins, and the other member - guitarist The Earwig, preoccupied with playing a miniature bell and then some tape-recorded vocals into her pick-ups - pulls in the direction of the trippier, freeform material of Sonic Youth's early career. The result is an uneasy and not very convincing amalgam - a neither/nor, rather than a best of both worlds.

Two-thirds of headliners Future Of The Left - whom I've repeatedly missed seeing in their native Cardiff - WERE actually in a different band. All you need to know about Mclusky is encapsulated in the fact that they once released a one-minute-long blast of head-drilling noise called 'Joy' as a single and then included it on an album called My Pain And Sadness Is More Sad And Painful Than Yours. Fond of the same eardrum-scouring guitar sound and caustically black wit as Steve Albini's Shellac (one of their final B-sides was christened 'Dave, Stop Killing Prostitutes'), they were very much the anti-Stereophonics.

If Andy Falkous and Jack Egglestone's new outfit Future Of The Left - completed by former Jarcrew man Kelson Mathias - don't quite match up to their former incarnation, then it's not for want of trying. Aggression and bleak humour still skip along merrily hand-in-hand in Falco's world; debut album Curses kicks off with a track called 'The Lord Hates A Coward', and also features the single 'adeadenemyalwayssmellsgood' and diplomatic fence-sitter 'Fuck The Countryside Alliance'.

What's new are the keyboards, which means that some songs are - shock horror! - guitar-free zones. It's bemusing to think that the odd long-time Mclusky fan has been decidedly less than gruntled by this new development, given that Mathias's bass remains reassuringly bone-rattlingly heavy. If the pitbull that is their music occasionally gets close to licking your cheek, it's never far from clamping its slavering jaws around your head and puncturing it like a cheap balloon.

For a band no doubt used to crowds going bezerk, they do a good job of hiding any disappointment at the by-now familiarly reserved Oxford reception with which they're confronted, pondering why the restaurant over the road undersells itself as the Standard Tandoori when the fayre merits the description "fine" ("Is the It's OK Chinese just down the road?"), and urging us to visit the merchandise stall to keep Egglestone's "beard trimmed and eyes hopeful" and roadie/tech Mitch in snazzy blue trousers. When the tempestuous and lengthy set-closer is brought to an end by Falkous and Mathias gradually dismantling Egglestone's kit while he plays, it's clear that most people don't need much persuading to part with their cash.

Leaving the Jericho Tavern after Malcolm Middleton's gig last month, I noted how it somehow felt appropriate that it had been pissing it down before the gig but had stopped afterwards. This time I've barely got ten yards down the road before I have to sidestep an enormous pile of beige and orange vomit. Somehow appropriate, again.

Sweeping the nation

A quick round-up of some recent small-scale gigging action around the country, recorded as much for posterity so I can track my movements as much as anything else...

STRANGETIME, 14TH MARCH 2008, BIRMINGHAM RAINBOW

Locating The Rainbow makes me feel like an intrepid voyager into uncharted waters - walk as you must into Digbeth past the newly razed coach station, past Sanctuary and the Barfly, past the Irish Centre, past the Custard Factory - but when we arrive it's not just with a sense of relief: this is obviously a very welcome addition to the list of music venues in the heart of the second city. A spacious old Victorian pub that's been refitted with more of a yoof edge, it has a permanent stage set up in a roofed courtyard at the back.

It's one of The Rainbow's regular 444 Club gigs (a commendably simple philosophy: four bands for £4 until 4am), and we've been drawn here tonight by the presence of StRANGEtIME, first on the bill. It's been some time since I last saw the trio (over two years, to be precise), during which time they've changed bassists (Chris Maher's the new man), released a single which got airplay on Kerrang! Unsigned, and had a Mercury-nominated act claim enthusiastically that lead singer Kate Finch "sounds like an angry dog" (Fyfe Dangerfield of Guillemots).

Of the material aired tonight that's new to these ears, aforementioned single 'Personality Disorder' and the title track of their first EP 'Oneitis' impress the most, but 'Ex-Boyfriend' still packs the biggest punch, its ferocity and directness leaving a bloodied nose, a contrast to some slightly soggy moments or over-complicated drumming elsewhere. That 'Dressing Up' appears to have been dropped from the set is inevitably a source of disappointment, personally speaking, but everyone has to move on at some point.

As do we - just as the smell of sizzling burgers begins to get me salivating, we head off in search of a karaoke party at a Chinese restaurant in the Jewelry Quarter. The name of the restaurant? Wok 'N' Roll. I believe I may at some point have provided wine-fuelled backing vocals for Cyndi Lauper's 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun', but hopefully it's all just a bad dream...

(You can read my West Midlands gig-going companion Kenny's take on the night here.)

ORCOP / LONE PINE, 20TH MARCH 2008, CARDIFF 10 FEET TALL

Buffalo may be a decent enough (if pricey) watering hole, but as a venue its upstairs room could hardly be worse - long and narrow, with the stage at one end and around a corner which means that half of the audience funnelled in to watch has got a partial view, at best, of the performers. So it makes sense that the owners might decide to branch out and open a new establishment.

10 Feet Tall, on Church Street, is an ambitious attempt to bring together a street-level delicatessen and cafe-bar, a mezzanine restaurant "individually styled with high ceilings and an array of period lamps and chandeliers to create a truly modern twist on a gentleman's library" and a gig venue all under one roof. Time will tell if it works out, but the upstairs room has already played host to Son Of Dave and Johnny Foreigner, amongst others.

Tonight, though, it's the first Mish Mash, an eclectic night of music set to become a regular feature on Thursdays. A great meal from Canteen under our belts (more about that some other time), we arrive to discover we've just missed a band playing what's described to us as "Arabian funk". The Gentle Good - aka Gareth Bonello, who played last year's Green Man and whose sweet finger-picked folk has charmed the ear of 'Whispering' Bob Harris amongst others - was also on the bill, but he too has been and gone.

In the event, then, our first live action of the evening comes courtesy of Mish Mash organisers Lone Pine. I've seen them once before, almost two years ago to the day, and I'm automatically predisposed to be unkind, simply because of the way that, on that occasion, their idle, inconsiderate chatter intruded upon the quieter moments of the headline act My Latest Novel's set. In the wake of that support slot, they played three dates with Radar Bros, and that certainly figures - authenticity be damned, they desperately want to be My Morning Jacket. But they're kept grounded by leaden-footed songs, and, lacking the experimental ambitions of the likes of Wilco, they're unable to alchemise what is essentially solid and staid Americana into something much more interesting.

The evening's nominal headliner is Orcop aka Gwydion ap Hywel (yes, he may well be a Welsh native, fact fans). A purveyor of ambient laptronica, Orcop was recently asked by Lily Green to monkey around with her sweetest song to date, 'Mr Ladybird' - the result sees the dreamy quality of the original retained but set to a sharp and ever-so-slightly sinister beat that sounds like balloons being pricked. While his songs aren't totally obtuse, however, they are a radical departure from what's gone before - that's the point, of course, but, with many of the taps behind the bar having been drunk dry by a thirsty crowd determined to mark the beginning of the long Easter weekend in style, the fractured beats aren't exactly conducive to dancing, not matter how hard a handful of spectacularly arrhythmic punters try.

AUTONS, 29TH MARCH 2008, CHICHESTER LA HAVANA

Saturday night, and all’s quiet. Seriously, Chichester town centre is deserted. It’s like we’re in the middle of the opening scene from ’28 Days Later’, only it's the low-budget version set in a sleepy and frightfully middle-class market town.

Thankfully, though, there are signs of life if you look hard enough - in La Havana, to be precise, an underground bunker of a bar / club which is tonight playing host to Autons. (That's the Portsmouth electro-rockers recently expanded to a foursome by the addition of a bassist, not the Australian band with a song called 'Pooing A Brick' or the Texan metallers who released Big Girls Look Better In Sweater Weather, in case you were wondering.)

The gig is in effect something of a warm-up for an imminent mini-tour, organised to promote their second single 'Election Singer'. In truth, twitchy debut release 'Snakes', which benefited from airplay courtesy of both Steve Lamacq and Rob da Bank, is much stronger than a follow-up that overdoses on stodgy, reheated pub punk guitar. Set highlights include 'Maybe' (though the new concluding mantra perhaps lays on the environmental message a little too thick), the glam-stomping reworking of the 'Dr Who' theme tune 'Recondition', and 'Snakes' B-side 'Ice Major', propelled by a fast and furious fist-in-the-air beat.

I'd probably recall more if I hadn't cracked my head off the curved low ceiling so many times...

Now who art worthy, thousands cried holy

Billy Childish & the Musicians of the British Empire.
Dalston Barden’s Boudoir. 29mar08.

I have some history in the garage sphere. I used to do a record and merch stall at gigs for Portsmouth’s The Green Hornets. There I was behind me table loaded with mono LPs, with the quiff and crushed velvet knee-length jacket to go with it. It’s not a genre I’m an expert about though - I know what Toe Rag Studios is and what it represents, but that’s about it – but it’s a music that gets my knees a-movin’, whether tickled by crushed velvet or not.

I like the energy of garage; I like the fact that it’s coarse and rugged, but more often than not performed by musicians who espouse a distinct sartorial élan. All the garage rock n’ rollers I’ve ever known have always been pretty well turned out. However waistcoats, flamboyant silk shirts and shiny shoes will always be trumped by military uniforms, braces and the kind of handlebar moustache a family of six could hang their washing from.

So, with me, Billy Childish and the Musicians of the British Empire hit the ground running (most likely with imitation bayonets). Billy, of course, is a bit of an everyman: part of the Medway scene; a poet; a painter; a founder member of the Stuckism art movement; and an author of several volumes of poetry and autobiography. On top of this, he has recorded more than a hundred LPs in a variety of guises; Thee Milkshakes, Thee Headcoats and Wild Billy Childish & The Friends of the Buff Medways Fanciers Association (aka The Buff Medways) being, arguably, the most well known.

More salaciously his name appeared prominently in Tracey Emin’s tent. Furthermore, in recent years, he has been lauded by, and fallen out with, the White Stripes, while he also turned down an offer to appear in the 2006 Celebrity Big Brother house. All this info is a bit gossip rag though and Childish is more representative of a Fugazi-esque work ethic – getting down to business without all the exploitative add ons. His website states firmly “I do not like fashion culture.”

“Welcome to our Stoke Newington re’ersal” he says by way of greeting tonight, later adding, “What other bands would let you come to their re’ersal…and charge you ten quid for the privilege?” As it goes, it’s only seven sheets yer in, representing particularly good value, what with the Flaming Stars providing sturdy, and suave, support.

Buff Medways tune Dawn Said, recent BC&TMOTBE LP title track Christmas 1979 and the grizzled gospel of an a capella John the Revelator are the stand-outs in a vivid, stout and sweaty set, but it appears not everyone is satisfied, one heckle requesting that the guitars be turned up; “What? That’s like asking Beethoven to turn up his Moog” is Billy’s swift riposte.

While you might not get unexpected tangents or substantial changes of pace from Billy’s guitar, Nurse Julie’s bass or Wolf Howard’s drums, they stir in all the ingredients you need for an absorbing and distinguished garage set. As Billy himself said early in the evening, “nothing wrong wiv a bit of drums an’ racket.”

If you go down to the woods today...

Dead Meadow - Old Growth

A telling title, Old Growth. Referring to what we Brits call "ancient woodland", the term suggests at once both the primeval and the evolutionary - and as such it's perfect for Dead Meadow's latest full-length offering.

On the one hand, it's largely familiar territory to Meadow afficionados, an album hewn out of 70s hard rock and stoner metal played by three men who seem to have been raised to the sound and on the philosophy of Black Sabbath's 'Sweet Leaf'. On the other, it's a natural progression from its predecessor Feathers, a development of sorts if one which actually involves the Bostonians pruning back their trademark rambling jams to a more conventionally manageable length.

A huge fan of being borne off on the backs of the unfettered beasts of Shivering King And Others, though, and having once witnessed them play precisely four songs in supporting Mogwai, I'm uncomfortable with what is, relatively speaking at least, a new-found sense of focus. Only opener 'Ain't Got Nothing (To Go Wrong)' is allowed to drift beyond the six minute mark (drab final track 'Either Way' only lasts for nearly eight minutes because of the electronics tacked onto the end), and it's the clear stand-out. Tellingly, its closest rivals for that status, 'Till Kingdom Come' and 'What Needs Must Be', would both rank as lesser lights on previous albums.

Elsewhere, the self-restraint seems artificial - paradoxically, the "growth" turns out to be a self-imposed inhibition - and the consequence on tracks like 'I'm Gone' is a disappointing conservatism. That it's followed by 'Seven Seers' and 'The Great Deceiver', tabla-heavy psychedelia and lumpy Led Zep blues-by-numbers respectively, doesn't help.

Dead Meadow have always been sonic somnambulists, but at times on this record they do just sound tired.

How does it sound, gang!

Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, a.P.A.t.T., Harry Merry.
Kilburn Luminaire. 19mar08.

Compared to what has gone before, Casiotone for the Painfully Alone a.k.a. the bear-like, be-jumpered Owen Ashworth, represents a comedown whichever way you look at it. These are the slow songs at the end of the night for you to grip on tight, whether to a memory of something that’s hit a dead-end or to an exciting new friend. For this tour Owen has a friend, Jenny Herbinson, so he’s not so lonesome he could cry, at least not tonight.

Before her appearance, he stands solo behind a cube of keys and consoles and he whispers and hairy-jowels his way through considered bedroom scuzz beats, the lo-fi buzz of the synths and a gentle twinkle through tunes like Ice Cream Truck. His vocal hints at heart-a-cracking, while the lyrics average out at gender neutral; “Frank Sinatra on the radio/but it might as well have been Li’l Kim/cos every single song still reminds you of him.”

When Jenny hops on, loose and refreshed, happily meeting a request for a tap-dance, matters take a turn for the upbeat, approaching Helen Love and Belle & Seb ‘Electronic Renaissance’ territory, albeit like a child poking a tramp with a stick.

Their performance is pretty twee and ginger, particularly in comparison to Liverpool six-piece a.P.A.t.T. who could only be more in your face if they happened to be using your left eyelid as a tent. A kind of unholy mangling of army discipline and screamin’ freenoise, they bring hot-desking to the stage, being as cavalier with their instruments as people might be with their partners at a suburban clusterfuck.

a.P.A.t.T. are a pop-prism of nightmare cycles, oscillating rust, cartoon croon, dronefunk, soulpoppinjazz, electroscat, drunkFrenchpop, gypsy mariachi-surf hoedown, nursery rhymlicks, bursts of Welsh mining community singing, clapsn’taps and operametal fairground warpola. “How does it sound, gang?” says one member half-way through, in a chirrup-come-growl, like a holiday camp activity leader that seems as likely to eat off your face as paint it.

It’s a good job Harry Merry doesn’t ask the same question as the honest answer would be a collective, “well, come to think of it, we’re really not sure” – not that you’re likely to get that in both spontaneity and harmony. Harry, from Rotterdam, appears through the curtain at the back-of-stage, as sure of foot as the Lurpak man on a hot pavement. With his Name Of The Rose/Emo Phillips/puffball hairdo and the circus-sailor smock, and his crashing into the brash avant-parlour pop of Appetite Satisfied Each Bite and the haphazard berk-prog of Jailbird, Keep Your Hands Off Miss Hilton, eyebrows raise all around, perplexed but agog.

For ‘Sharky Supermachine’, the synth-lines cycle, bubble and float, merging its time and action(s) into ever-decreasing random(esque) pockets, as the line “I’d rather be a monk”, a drum bwattertat-tat and a little camp swivel-and-point occur with mounting regularity. The general vocal pattern is set at ‘warped vinyl dufus’ and skirts ever closer to a child-like attention-seeking bellow through a Bell’s Palsied-like diagonal oral tilt.

It’s like watching the first communications of a Dutch boy price. Not a Stephen Poliakoff, crisp-golden-summers/tragedy-of-manners boy price, but simply the shoved-in-a-damp-shed, no-sleep-til-puberty kind. Harry Merry dares you not to peer at him incredulously; like a drill, his hooks lock in and twist.

Previously, in Vanity Project:
*a.P.A.t.T. interview. vp interviews
*a.P.A.t.T. – LP (Lowsley Sound/aPehAt). issue 15
*a.P.A.t.T. Liverpool Hev’n & Hell. 01apr05. issue 14
*a.P.A.t.T. Liverpool Barfly Loft. 25apr05. issue 14

Links
Casiotone For The Painfully Alone @ MySpace
a.P.A.t.T. @ MySpace
Harry Merry @ MySpace