Call Of The Wyld

FOE and Fever Fever at Camden Barfly - 30 January 2012

2012-01-31T19:00:00.003Z

Fever Fever

Having forgone a gig last week due to indisposition, I’m delighted to almost immediately have the chance to catch up with one of the bands that I missed.

I’m primarily here this evening to catch Fever Fever, about whom I have heard great things. They are bottom of the bill. On tonight’s evidence, this is not a position that they are going to have to put up with for very much longer.

I’ve long loved bands from Norwich. There’s something in the water out there that produces a steady stream of spiky, shouty, fascinating and fun performers. Kaito, Bearsuit, Hyper Kinako, The Kabeedies, Violet Violet…and now Fever Fever.

This three piece take you right back to the punk scene of the late Seventies. Rosie and Ellie generate a loud, thrashy, primitive and compelling guitar noise, ably supported by Smit’s crashing drums.

And they are angry. The two girls sing/shout back and forth, their eyes blazing with intensity. There are echoes of bands like The Slits or Delta 5, bands who sang about REAL STUFF and not just feelings.

They produce so much passion when they play that it is quite a contrast when they speak between songs and are gentle and relaxed and happy to see a busy venue.

I fall instantly in love with Fever Fever, buy armfuls of merchandise and put them in my diary for further appearances.

Calling yourself Yehan Jehan & Antimatter People is a statement of intent right from the off. There are no half measures about this band, particularly in regard to appearance.

Yehan Jehan and co are hell bent on recreating the very English psychedelica of the early Pink Floyd. I’ve no problem with that. They do it very well. They also lean occasionally towards the epic guitar sound and “in maa maaand” platitudes of the Verve, for which of course they should be drowned in a bag. Or mildly reprimanded at any rate.

The attention to detail is best exemplified by Jehan’s hair, which is a vast circular globe of curls that eclipses his face and is frankly worth the price of admission on its own.

Songs are complicated, often broken into distinct movements packed with organ swirls or backward tape loops. Jehan thrusts his guitar around energetically and it is just a pity that somehow the whole is less than the sum of these parts.

It may be because the voice is not particularly strong or that the songs don’t seem quite there just yet. The paradox is that it is only because the band are so close to being great that these shortfalls are apparent. There are flashes of genius here, but the band only really take off when they do some extended wigging out on their final number.

However, it’s early days yet. Yehan Jehan & Antimatter People are worth keeping a (third) eye on.

I hadn’t intended to review FOE again. After all, I saw them only three weeks ago at the beginning of this tour, which ends tonight.

But this performance is extraordinary. What was at the beginning of the month a small kitten playing with a ball of wool has evolved into a gigantic sabre-toothed turbo-tiger that just rips your head off.

The transformation wrought by a month of solid gigging is total.

At the Bull & Gate, Hannah Clark and her band were good, but very insular – the sound barely left the stage and they seemed far more wrapt in each other than in the audience.

In contrast tonight we are subjected to a wall of guitars and enough raw power to light every home in Camden. Although these are the same songs as before, they have grown from sparse tunes picked out on a keyboard to eardrum rattling anthems. An incredible transformation.

Clark is centre stage and engaged throughout. Her voice is a wonderful bratty, slurry rasp that reminds me of the accent that old women employ when talking with their cats. In the rock and roll context, this is totally a Good Thing.

A quiet night out on a Monday to ease myself into gigs again? Not likely!

Vuvuvultures, Severin & The Caulfield Beats at Hoxton Bar & Kitchen - 11 January 2012

2012-01-12T18:43:00.003Z

Vuvuvultures pic by Neil Anderson

The photographers are in. At this stage of the evening there are more people packing large and expensive-looking cameras than there are members of those bands that have arrived to set up.

Stage left is Lawrence Northall, who performs under the moniker of The Caulfield Beats. He stands behind a bench of electronic equipment. Stage right is Molly, a young VJ (do we still call them that?) manipulating assorted images projected on a screen behind the pair.

The photographers mill around the foot of the stage, snapping away. Although I am sure that they are assembling a balanced portfolio of record, one suspects that the ratio of pictures of Lawrence to those of Molly is approximately 1:20.

I’m not normally much of a fan of one-man, largely instrumental rhythm merchants, The Caulfied Beats are toe-tappingly uplifting.

Northall lays down a series of crushing beats, punctuated by the odd yelp or cry of “Caulfield!” down one of his two microphones. Meanwhile, behind him flashes a montage featuring amongst other things, vintage shots of Twiggy dancing and a Japanese callisthenic class. I don’t know what it means, but it’s all very pretty.

A good opener to the evening, and I also enjoy the next act, Severin.

With a name like that, this dup were never going to be all sunshine and daisies and indeed they are not.

Instead, Elizabeth plays keys and sings inexpressively while Dan smashes at a bass guitar and plays with a variety of electronic boxes to produce a sound that we used to call ‘Goth’ but which is now more likely to be referred to a ‘witch house’ or some such.

Severin are aware that downbeat music does not have to be drab or lacking in showmanship. The pair quickly generate quite a bit of head nodding and shuffling amongst those sections of the audience that aren’t staring at them through a lens.

I’m as happy as anyone, and am particularly taken with a bit of kit that Dan plays like a games console, but which appears to have something to do with percussion.

Let’s not beat about the bush. The snappers are here for Vuvuvultures, a band that are complex to say the least.

Singer Harmony Boucher is as lean and spare and taut as the skin stretched across a drum. She has the finely delineated androgynous facial structure of the fashion model that she is. She is beautiful in the way that classical statues are beautiful.

And she performs bare from the waist up.

Sex and sexuality play a large part in Vuvuvultures’ show and it is fascinating how it works over the course of their set.

At the start, the watcher is very aware of a sleek and handsome semi-naked woman. The instinct is to look at everything except her body. Boucher eyes the crowd and stretches herself in mocking, flirting fashion, the awkwardness that arises a deliberate part of the performance.

And yet, because the music is entirely serious and because the stage presence is so powerful, the ‘nudity’ disappears. The watcher becomes engrossed in the performance and not the mere physical appearance. This dawning realisation is also very much part of the band’s plan.

The songs themselves are grandly emotive and melodramatic, but never stray into camp or kitsch. There is not a hint of bawdiness in the actual music. The greatest trick that Vuvuvulture’s pull off is that for all their acts of provocation, if they were playing behind a thick curtain you would still know that you were listening to a very fine band.

Despite all these various subtexts, this is also a good natured and fun performance. At one point a member of the crowd presents Boucher with a bondage harness, which she has no initial inkling of how to wear.

During the final number, Boucher and the bassist, the splendidly named Nicole Marie Bettencourt Coelho leap into the crowd, becoming entangled and screaming and writhing on the floor. The photographers close over them like onlookers bunched around a body in the street.

This has been great, but timings mean that I have to forgo Manflu (a real pity) and I head off home. It’s been an eye opening evening and a credit to all concerned.

The Night Jars and Oh! Gunquit at Old Blue Last - 7 January 2012

2012-01-09T19:25:00.003Z

The Night Jars (photo: Ciaran Beale)

This is my first visit to the Old Blue Last in a while and I’m pleased to see that it has been refurbished and is heaving with a happy Saturday night crowd. This place used to be so er… basic in its facilities in days of yore that you needed a tetanus shot or a Hazmat suit before approaching the toilets. Now, it is very acceptable indeed.

Tonight’s gig is being promoted by the Hackney Working Girls Club and they have put on two fun bands for our delectation.

First up I’m delighted to renew my acquaintance with Oh! Gunquit, who are always fabulously entertaining with their twanging old time garage sound.

This four piece are die hard rock and rollers and have appropriately cool names. Dr Zoom blows up a storm on saxophone, and Sam Bam Leadfoot pounds on the drums. Vocals are shared between ace guitarist and general hep cat Manchine and Wanda Smacksome, who is tonight a vision in yellow and orange.

The infectious rhythms soon get the whole joint jumping like teenagers at a sock hop.

In truth, the sound tonight is not particularly good, and this hampers the vocals a bit, but such is the nature of the music that your ears fill in the gaps and you hear everything as you want it.

This set puts a huge smile on your face and it culminates with Wanda displaying her prowess with the hoola-hoop. This is an incredible feat as the physical effort required to hoola and sing at the same time is clearly tremendous.

I love Oh! Gunquit and would recommend them to fans of old style rock and fun times generally.

You can tell that The Night Jars are rock stars as soon as they climb onstage. The singer is going for the full Roger Daltrey, with tight curls, tight white T-shirt (tonight advertising the Sound of Music), braces and a pair of sprayed-on jeans that just need a rolled up sock down the front to complete the illusion.

Where The Night Jars differ from other bands is that they also wear black masks complete with long pointy black beaks, looking for all the world like medieval doctors during the time of the Black Death or revellers at a Venetian masked ball.

For a split second it appears as if we are going to get an attempt at the record held in this venue for the time it takes for a singer to leap off the stage and wave their private parts out the window. The current holders are another bird-related band An Albatross, who accomplished the feat in twenty seconds.

The Night Jars don’t quite manage this, but within one number the singer is off the stage and dancing within the crowd, rarely to be seen again for the rest of the evening.

At first, it seems that all is chaos, but the band soon coalesce into a fearsome garage punk outfit that are not as different from the preceding band as might have first been thought.

It’s a riotous, raucous set. You can’t really tell what the singer is bellowing, but it is hard not to get caught up in the primitive energy that he and his band mates are blasting out.

This has been a rollicking, roaring Saturday night. It’ll do for me. Well done Working Girls, well done Gunquit, well done Night Jars.

Find more videos like this on The GaragePunk Hideout

FOE at Bull and Gate - 3 January 2012

2012-01-04T19:38:00.004Z

FOE

Thank god for Twitter.

A chance search reveals that my intended gig for tonight (returning veterans Artery and feisty young pups Cold In Berlin plus others) has been postponed because the ageing headliners are 111. Sorry, they are ill. Thanks to Les Dawson for that joke.

I divert across town to the Bull & Gate for the first night of a Fortuna Pop records residency. Even this event is not running entirely to plan. One of the bands (Whales in Cubicles) have pulled out and as a result, timings are all over the place.

The first remaining band are Wild Swim, who hail from Oxford. I don’t particularly care for them, but they do spark some debate amongst my party.

My view is that they are painfully aware that the singer Richard Sansom has an almost classically good baritone voice and that the desire to showcase this utterly stifles them. There are moments when the rest of the band threatens to break out into some kind of wild fidgety jazz, but these flashes are mostly damped down as soon as they begin in favour of a safer option.

My friends point out that the overall sound of Wild Swim is very commercial, and that in particular, fans of Wild Beasts may care to lend an ear. I’m not convinced and think that the band needs some proper tunes. They are not irredeemable, but they require work.

In contrast, headliners FOE show what rock and roll energy is all about.

Hannah Clark and her band just sound FILTHY. The guitars and keyboards crackle with a dirty, buzzing electricity that sounds positively dangerous, as though someone could get a nasty shock at any minute.

Clark squints through long red tresses and is wearing a rather shapeless heavy cloak-like dress. This is understandable, because it is bloody freezing in this room. Less understandably, she has topped off this ensemble with a natty tiara.

The rest of the band keeps warm in the old fashioned way, thrashing their guitars and bobbing and weaving around the stage. I do like to see guys enjoying themselves and I do like to see instruments physically abused. Good work.

Hannah Clark has a rapid fire yet monotone vocal style. It adds speed and a sense of urgency to the songs, so that they fairly motor along. This intensity means that songs such as ‘A Handsome Stranger called Death’ burn much more fiercely than their rather more measured recorded versions.

I find FOE a fine way to greet the New Year. If I have a minor quibble it is that Clark never quite engages with her audience, her eyes being either closed or gazing off into space. However, I accept that it is hard to have empathy with a half-empty room in which the crowd are bunched closer to the door than the stage.

A sharp evening’s entertainment. I’m a friend of FOE.

Call Of The Wyld- Review of 2011

2011-12-27T18:25:00.004Z

The Good Natured - C.O.T.W. Band of the Year

So that’s 2011 then. Another year packed with excellent performances.

Back in January I first made contact with Insect Guide, a marvellous bunch who made a tiny room above a Camden pub into a very privileged place to be.

In February I negotiated my way to a very run down part of East London to see P J Harvey perform her ‘Let England Shake’ songs. I caught her again later in the year at the Albert Hall. I have to admit that I find this whole current project a lot easier to admire than to love. My wish for Peej going forward is that she allows herself to loosen up and enjoy herself once more.

Also at this time I saw Yuck on the brink of a wider breakthrough during a performance at Bush Hall. They’ve done really well this year and their album is creeping into a few end of year ‘Best of...’ lists.

March was the only time in 2011 that I managed to catch long time favourites Cold In Berlin. Magnificent as always and my spies tell me that their new material is tremendous. Watch out for an early catch up on this blog in 2012.

In the Spring I saw the impressively histrionic Anna Calvi, who I really like on record but who displays perhaps a little too much artifice on stage. Another artist who could stand to relax a bit more.

No gripes on that front from Telescopes and The Coathangers, both of whom were having such a good time that resistance was futile.

I also checked on the progress of Homesick Hustlers, who are pretty much my favourite of those kids who are just getting started. It’s all potential at the moment, but I genuinely believe that they have greatness in them.

Judging by the widget at the side of this blog that helpfully indicates who has visited the site, it seems that my trip to see Asteroids Galaxy Tour was the most popular report of the year. Quite right too – the band are terrific live and are guaranteed to always cheer you up. I reckon that they would do well in front of most audiences.

I had a wonderful evening with Niki & The Dove, who turned the whole venue into some kind of weird neon rave complete with hula hooping dancing girls. The band has been picked up by the BBC as one of the Sounds of 2012. They deserve to do well.

Fun was had with Florrie and Paradise Point at the Borderline and a much more gruelling experience with Atari Teenage Riot. ATR are deliberately disorienting, but this is certainly the first time that their incessant strobe lights have made me feel nauseous.

June was more genteel, with safe and enjoyable sets from The Sonics, The Fugs and Yo La Tengo at various venues on London’s South Bank.

As summer wore on I enjoyed The Good Natured at Hoxton. This, together with a brilliant set at the Lexington a few weeks ago cements them as Band of the Year and one that I will try to catch each time they play. An album is due shortly and should be a cracker.

I found the 1234 Shoreditch slightly disappointing compared to 2010, a blinding Lydia Lunch performance notwithstanding. No Offset Festival this year either – I hope that this event can be revived.

I saw CSS turn XOYO into a bubble-filled aquarium and then had a quite astonishing evening back at the Lexington with Screaming Females & Human Hair. The sheer power and ferocity of the former and the tight-shorted strangeness of the latter will live with me for a very long time. The runner-up to Gig of the Year.

I enjoyed Shonen Knife’s 30th Anniversary celebrations and then couldn’t quite figure EMA out.

One of my favourite performances of the whole year was that of Paris Suit Yourself at Madame JoJos. They had ludicrous sound problems, but turned adversity to advantage, eventually abandoning microphones altogether and simply hollering from the front of the stage.

I had another memorable night with Japanese gender bending rock outfit Versailles. Not only do my friends and I still amuse ourselves by copying the uniquely fey guitar pose that we first saw that evening, but I also got so lost going home that I spent nearly two hours wandering forlornly around some pretty rough estates down the back of Kings Cross.

A night to be remembered for all the right reasons was the all Scandinavian bash at Hoxton Bar & Grill featuring Razika (whom I’d not seen before), LCMDF (whom I’ve never seen better) and Sykur (who were too drunk to see- and were brilliant).

I satisfied my metal urges with Kvelertak & co at the Underworld and was completely blown away by a resurgent Wire at 2011’s Venue of the Year XOYO. Great support that night from Talk Normal as well.

XOYO also provided a lovely evening with Givers- a band who in an ideal world really ought to be poised for world domination in 2012.

I had a thoroughly entertaining time spending Halloween with Britney Spears. Not a guilty pleasure, a pleasure full stop.

December ends with what has turned out to be the Call of the Wyld Gig of the Year. Duchess Says, o F F Love and WE are all worthy of mention, but came together in a manner that was both magic and mayhem. It was art. It was a Happening. It was a gig. It was an assault. I can’t stop smiling when I think about it and I’ve still got a very painful crick in my neck from when Annie-Claude forced my head into the floor.

Unforgettable events that bring to a close an unforgettable year.

2012 - .Top that!

Duchess Says: Gig of the Year

Your Army and Panda Cubs at Bull & Gate - 19 December 2011

2011-12-23T17:03:00.002Z

Your Army: Photo Soulcatcher

I’m standing in front of the stage at the Bull & Gate. It’s cold, and there are not many people here.

This is rock at the bottom rung of the ladder. For many bands who play here, the only way is up. Actually, scratch that – from here most bands call it a day.

So I’m delighted to report that tonight I get to enjoy two acts who both deserve wider audiences.

First up are Panda Cubs. They’ve come all the way down from York on the Megabus. They reckon that they’ve had three hours sleep. It doesn’t show.

This four piece are dressed in black. The singer is striving for cool behind dark glasses (possibly the lack of sleep is having an effect after all). He lets his hip side down a bit by being extremely polite and solicitous about our health and general well being.

Panda Cubs have more than a touch of Editors or She Wants Revenge. It’s slow, melodramatic and punctuated with bursts of guitar fury. I lap this kind of stuff up and really like them. When they say that this is only their seventh ever gig, I warm to them even more.

All this lot need are gigs under their belt to be come a nice tight little outfit. Ones to watch.

Headliners tonight are Your Army, about whom I know very little except that they come from Brighton and have signed to a German record label.

So I derive great pleasure from finding that they rock like demons and have, in singer Lucy, a pint sized dynamo, who can wail with the best of them.

Your Army aren’t doing anything that is particularly new or avant garde, but they fill a space in my musical soul. If asked I would cite Two Day Rule and the Sam I Am/Boudica as amongst the greatest lost bands of the last decade. And Your Army remind me rather a lot of those bands.

Sometimes all you need is a powerful voice and some crunching guitar. The energy that comes off the stage causes the audience to start bobbing about, myself among them.

They don’t stay long, but I’m happily sated.

Two new bands to keep track of. A highly satisfactory evening.

Duchess Says, o F F Love and WE at CAMP Basement - 12 December 2011

2011-12-13T20:05:00.003Z

Duchess Says photo by Tim Griffin

I’m lying flat on my back on the floor of CAMP Basement. A wild-eyed girl, her hair whipping wildly, straddles my chest and pushes my head down into the concrete.
How did it come to this…my mind drifts off…

…it’s a desolate wet and windy night outside. The streets are largely deserted. Down here in the venue a very few intrepid souls are about to be taken on a wild ride. Nothing is straightforward, even from the beginning.

WE are four in number.
WE wear Perspex blocks to mask identity.
WE stand shoulder to shoulder, not on stage but in front of it.
WE are interchangeable, in appearance and in sex.
WE are un-Google-able.
WE prod keyboards and hit drum pads.
WE intone vocals in unison.WE play songs that all start “We…”
“WE can help you.”
“WE want to hold your hand.”
WE just played a robotic Beatles cover.
“WE will always love you.”
WE finish with another brilliant cover version.
“WE kissed a girl and WE liked it.
-WE liked it.”

We like it.

WE are poorly focussed

After WE have gone, things start to get stranger still.

A video projection shows slowed down and silent images of dancers. An audience cheers noiselessly. You can’t tell whether they approve or are angry. A minimal beat starts up.

A figure shambles forward, his face swathed in cloth, like Rorschach from Watchmen. This is o F F Love and he yearns for us.

He sways and sings, his voice eerily and utterly distorted and non-human. It is slow and high and mournful. It is somehow ineffably sad and beautiful.

He moves among the crowd, approaching girls and imploring “Would You Dance If I Asked You To Dance?” They don’t.

Crestfallen, he drifts away, the projection now showing an image of himself, alone and still pleading.

He comes forward again, offering roses. Rejected once more, he moves off, solitary and inconsolable.

It’s like watching a species go extinct in front of you.

Headliners Duchess Says take to the stage and the world goes crazy.

…keyboards and bass pound remorselessly in a whirling ‘Space Ritual’ jam...the room spins…this is the gospel of the Church of Budgerigars, the cult whose acolytes are solely found within the members of this band…

…Out to convert us is saucer-eyed mistress of misrule Annie-Claude Deschênes. She rarely speaks except in a series of staccato yelps and screams. She gesticulates both intricately and weirdly, her eyes often staring into space or rolled back in their sockets completely…

…she fights with the audience, dragging people to the floor. She rips the clothing off anyone who is wearing anything that is still buttoned up. She makes us all sit on the ground and create a human arch of arms and legs through which she crawls…

…a nervous punter offers her one of o F F Love’s roses. Annie-Claude eats it.

The music is as tumultuous and out of control as the performance. Ismael Trembley pressing down on his keyboards as though trying to prevent them from leaving gravity behind. You can’t tell where the band ends and the crowd begins.

Spying the unattended bar at the back of the venue, Annie-Claude runs behind it. The band strike up new anthem ‘Time To Reiterate’, with their singer using the bar as a impromptu pulpit, with her on one side and her disciples on the other. She snaffles a bottle of rum and pours shots for everyone. The barman stands bemused.

We are then led Pied Piper style back across the room for a triumphant and riotous version of ‘Black Flag’.

We’re battered, bruised, amazed, delighted and exulted. WE were great, o F F Love was moving and Duchess Says like Armageddon. What a night!

The Good Natured, Get People, Zen Arcade at Lexington - 06 December 2011

2011-12-07T19:31:00.004Z

The Good Natured

I’m intrigued to see that the first band on tonight are called Zen Arcade. This leads to assumptions that they are influenced by the mighty Hüsker Dü. Hardcore guitar pop ahoy! Or not, as it turns out.

When Zen Arcade start their short set, I detect no traces of Minniapolis’ finest, but am pleasantly surprised to find a band who take their cues from recent British successes such as Franz Ferdinand and the Arctic Monkeys.

The band have an ear for guitar pop and a damn fine tune and do not disgrace themselves. They’re still a little stiff and prim at this stage, but they’ll loosen up with experience. A very good start to the evening.

Get People have a plethora of musical appliances to assist them through their set. There may only be three members of the band, but there’s enough gadgetry on display to fill a branch of Maplins.

The band play euphoric dance pop of the sort that got many young people proclaiming a third Summer of Love a few years back. It’s the music of the rave, the chemically-enhanced happy clappy bliss of the sun rising above the rocks on an Ibiza morning.

It’s a vivid and uplifting groove and Get People er… get people moving.

I have a feeling that despite the reception that they receive, that the band are not completely happy. There is a lot of muttering about sound and equipment problems, none of which are apparent to anyone who is not on the stage.

Get People are very good tonight and if I can’t entirely enjoy them it is because I have never really connected with this particular sound. I never cared for fellow travellers Klaxons or Friendly Fires either. However, if you still like glo-sticks and tie-dyed T shirts, this is the band for you.

There is a lot of gear to move off the stage, and we are entertained by a DJ set from Charli XCX (whom I am due to see in her own right at this venue in February). I like the music that she plays and admire her enthusiasm and wine consumption.

Sarah MacIntosh, the resplendently dressed singer with headliners The Good Natured starts their set by mentioning that she has just knocked coffee all over herself and burned her legs. Every male in the place runs his eye over her long pins up to the point where they disappear into a tight pair of spangly shorts. They look fine to us.

This band grow in stature and confidence every time I see them. They play ebullient disco pop with huge choruses and are an instant party and a guaranteed good time.

MacIntosh is soon off the stage and dancing and writhing amongst the throng. We get songs such as ‘Wolves’, ‘Dead on the Dancefloor’ and (appropriately enough in light of the coffee incident) ‘Red Skin’.

It’s a marvellous show, and the stage is used very effectively. The band have decorated their environs with standard lamps, and these create the illusion of the musicians bopping around their living room. All back to theirs!

They finish with a stomping version of ‘Skeletons’ and everyone is grinning like fools.

A fine evening, with three excellent bands in evidence.

Kvelertak and Toxic Holocaust at Underworld - 26 November 2011

2011-11-29T18:57:00.003Z

Kvelertak

It’s an early start at the Underworld. The place may be filled with black-clad hulks adorned with fearsome tattoos and facial piercings, but the management want these hordes of Satan out of the door by ten fifteen.

We start off with Wolves Like Us, who stand in a line across the stage and blast out a fine fast metal which gets the heads of the audience whipping back and forth.

The band sport impressive facial hair. You could imagine that in a very cramped dressing room that their beards could become entangled like so much Velcro. I like the band, they have a Motorhead no-nonsense simplicity about them.

Next act The Secret have taken the place of the rather more interesting Trap Them and I find it hard to warm to them. The singer is slightly too intense and gives the impression that this gig is a somewhat unpleasant ordeal that he will be glad to get through.

The band don’t really engage and I take the opportunity to look at the merchandising stalls. There is very little in the way of music to buy, but each band have a plethora of lurid T shirts on offer –this is clearly where the money is.

Toxic Holocaust are heaps of fun, and take me back nearly three decades to when I was sixteen or seventeen. This band are old school metal, certainly in attitude if not in actuality.

They are fast and furiously heavy and dedicate songs to the devil, songs to whiskey drinkers and they swear so incessantly that stage pronouncements become faintly ludicrous. You could imagine them announcing that someone in the muthafuckin’ audience had better move the muthafuckin’ Golf in the muthafuckin’ car park because they are muthafuckin.blocking some muthafucka in.

I enjoy them a great deal, but wonder if I am doing so ironically, as even though I love their noise there is a part of me that finds them funny. And of course the more serious they are, the funnier it gets.

I’ve been looking forward to the headliners ever since I was introduced to their album late last year. Kvelertak are a band from Norway and in this smallish venue they are like a bomb going off.

The stage is filled with sweaty men smashing at guitars and screaming. The crowd simply erupts and tries to storm forwards, often being fiercely repelled by a mean looking stage hand with a Zapata moustache.

Fists are pumped in the air; we are exhorted to “Fight! Fight! Fight!” and the drumming and flailing limbs are just tremendous. It’s big dumb fun.

However, as with all such bands, there’s not a great deal of light and shade in what they do and after some while fatigue sets in.

I do the management a favour by leaving well before the curfew, my ears ringing like a muthafuckin’ bell.

Wire and Talk Normal at XOYO - 23 November 2011

2011-11-26T11:35:00.004Z

Wire

They’ve overdone the dry ice.

Heading down into XOYO there is such a chalky fug in the air that if you had a canary in a cage about you, the poor little fella would be turning his toes up.

The atmosphere does not appear to have anything particularly to do with the first band, Talk Normal. I take to them right from the off.

It’s a deceptively simple set up. Andrya Ambro stands behind a drum kit and sings, Sarah Register does unspeakable things to a guitar whilst also occasionally chipping in with vocal contributions of her own.

The percussion is particularly notable, a fast, skittering constant ticking sound that conjures images of insects and unease. Vocals are as often yips or barks as anything that might be called ‘normal’ singing. However, just because you can’t make out what is happening doesn’t mean that it is not exciting and enthralling.

At one point Register starts playing her guitar with a screwdriver. Harsh, metallic shards of sound result.

Talk Normal are very much in the tradition of classic New York ‘No-Wave’ bands. Their songs are punchy, urgent, intense and delivered with steely conviction. I’m extremely pleased to have seen them.

This is the third time that I have seen Wire in under a year and they have become better each time. Tonight they are on positively incandescent form, and clearly enjoying themselves.

Wire have almost progressed from being a band to something more akin to a cult for their devoted followers. Their audience tonight is almost entirely men in their late forties or beyond who have an almost encyclopaedic obsession with the minutiae of the group. It’s about collecting statistics as much as it is about the music.

The set covers the band’s lengthy career from the most recent ‘Red Barked Tree’ album to stuff off ‘Pink Flag’ like “Two People in a Room”. There’s even a version of mid-period favourite “Boiling Boy”.

The fan boy scuttlebutt is that Wire’s next project will be a re-visiting of the songs that were to form their unreleased fourth album, and which only appeared on the disappointing and confused live album ‘Document and Eyewitness’. Some of these tracks may have been played tonight – there are certainly things going on that sound both new yet somehow familiar. This is of course a very Wire-y thing to do, looking forward and backward at the same time.

Tonight’s set ends with a version of “Pink Flag”, which clocks in at around six or seven minutes. It’s certainly shorter than the ten minute version that they played in Paris in May this year. (If you can’t beat the stattos, join them!)

Another Wire gig for the collection. And a very fine specimen indeed.

The Besnard Lakes, Suuns at Scala 22 November 2011

2011-11-24T20:02:00.002Z

The Besnard Lakes (photo: Patrick Kelly)

There’s a sparse crowd in the Scala as Suuns take to the stage.

Whilst this would obviously be a disappointment to the band, it feels eerily appropriate to their music. Suuns are all about the space between notes, the crackle of electricity that buzzes through the ether after an instrument is sounded.

They start off with an upbeat, keyboard heavy number that pounds its way down the autobahn. The crowd, finding the grove, nod their heads in unison.

Vocals are often indistinct and electronically distorted, just another component in a maelstrom of sound. ‘Songs’ are nebulous concepts – a beat starts here, a guitar is struck there, loud and quiet, fast and slow.

If I have any criticism of the band at all, it is that on occasion it can seem as though they have got a little too caught up in an interesting sound effect rather than a coherent tune, but mostly this is majestic, epic stuff.

After watching the first couple of numbers from headliners the Besnard Lakes, I realise that I am here under a misapprehension. I had somehow got it into my head that they were a different act entirely (as it turns out, David Vandervelde). I’m glad to be wrong.

Besnard Lakes play a slow, woozy, fuzzed up version of classic US rock. It’s the Mamas and Papas on half speed, or Urge Overkill on opiates. Although of course Urge Overkill WERE on opiates at the time.

Centre stage is Jace Lacek, dressed up to the nines in leather jacket, huge sunglasses and mullet hair cut. Looking at him, I get flashbacks to Ian Hunter of Mott the Hoople.

Lacek has an unexpectedly powerful falsetto voice, a pure keening sound that slices through the often monstrously heavy sludgy sound.

Equally impressive is singer and bassist Olga Goreas, effortlessly one of the coolest women in rock. She’s a powerful presence and clearly the subject of much fan boy love – which she accepts with good humour.

It may be a small crowd, but it is a warm and welcoming one and there is a great rapport between stage and audience, with banter back and forth. We are invited to “heckle the fuck” out of the band, but what follows is basically conversation rather than confrontation.

I really enjoy the band and would be happy to see them again. Ironically, the band have an album called “The Besnard Lakes are The Dark Horse” and for me, tonight, they were.

Besnard Lakes - Albatross (Live) from Big Ass Lens on Vimeo.

Givers, The Shivers at XOYO - 08 November 2011

2011-11-10T20:32:00.002Z

Givers

I walk down the stairs of a chilly XOYO to be confronted by the fascinating and aptly-named-in-the-circumstances New York duo The Shivers.

Although confining themselves to guitar and keyboards, the band conjure an impressively wide range of music.

Keith Zarriello is pugnacious and direct and looks as though he might be useful in a fight, yet posses a voice that is sometimes a growl, sometimes a throaty roar and sometimes a near operatic trill. His colleague Jo Schornikow is one of the best keyboard players that I’ve seen, clearly properly trained rather than relying on the traditional two fingered ‘what does this button do?’ hopeful prodding.

On one track the pair sound as much like Sly Stone as it is possible for two people to get, on another there are traces of the Eighties Noo Yoik sound of Billy Joel. This is of course a good thing.

The Shivers are a bit jazzy, a bit muso, but are pleased to be here and have a good rapport with what is still at this stage a rather thin crowd. In fact, such is the sensitivity of their sound that a bit of space and quiet around the stage does them no harm at all.

Next up come local band Zulu Winter. This lot have back projection, stylish hair and are clearly under the impression that they are going places. I’d be amazed if this were the case.

The band lack spark. It would be lovely if they could parlay their swirling, windswept sound into something vital, but the truth is that they don’t have a single song that doesn’t fall short of its intent.

Musically, they sound fine in a populist Coldplay kind of way, but their tunes have no bite, no crunch, no soul. The word that I initially wrote in my notebook was ‘invertebrate’- they have no central spine, but are rather an amorphous pudding-y blob of a band.

Givers are a five piece band from Louisiana. I’m glad to finally see them, as their last scheduled London show was cancelled due to the summer riots.

It’s a small stage at XOYO, but Givers make it smaller still by crowding right to the very front, their equipment teetering on the edge. How Tiffany Lamson’s drum kit (one of two in the band) doesn’t end up in the crowd is a thing of wonder.

Lamson shares vocal duties with Taylor Guarisco, who clutches his guitar to his chest as though it were a loved one. The reports of Givers as being a ludicrously exciting and joyful band are about to be borne out.

Lamson smashes her drums with more power than seems possible. Watching her jump up and down, hair flying everywhere, her arms a blur is to immediately think back (or forward) to Animal of the Muppets.

A typical Givers song is an intricate beast, comprising several movements, a pounding Afrobeat and dual vocals that are part Merrill Garbus, part Yeasayer and partly something completely other. They aren’t songs that you can whistle, but your soul will be uplifted anyway.

The band is very chatty and engaging, which helps to distract from the unfortunate problem that they are rather disorganised and that they take way too long between songs. Even allowing for a bona fide five minute technical hiatus at one point, the band runs slow and late.

It is impossible to be cross with them though. They are as happy as a whole bed of clams and I am too. I climb the stairs of the venue with Givers’ mighty encore of ‘Up, Up, Up’ ringing in my ears. It seems appropriate.

Jeffrey Lewis at Heaven - 2 November 2011

2011-11-03T19:06:00.002Z

Jeffrey Lewis

I arrive at the venue and am immediately taken aback. The place is absolutely rammed solid, a heaving mass of checked shirts and unfortunate facial hair.

The opening act , Seth Faergolzia (ex of Dufus) is just doing his final two songs. Judging by these I’m eternally grateful that we didn’t get here earlier and saddened that I didn’t arrive fifteen minutes later.

We edge nearer the front. An extremely nervous and uncertain girl with an acoustic guitar shuffles onstage. This is Alessi Laurent-Marke (aka ‘Alessi’s Ark’) and I have rarely seen anyone so unprepared and out of their comfort zone.

It doesn’t help that this venue in a converted railway arch tends to suck sound into the void above our heads, and this, coupled with her weak voice and lack of presence means that not only does Alessi fail to engage, but she has to keep stopping and apologising. It’s a pretty excruciating sight.

It is sad to say that her entire act depends upon the expectation that an audience will be tolerant of a simpering girl listlessly strumming a guitar and bringing very little to the party. Such environments may exist, but this isn’t one of them. If she wasn’t so lacking in any kind of spark, you’d feel sorry for her.

Jeffrey Lewis has become a pretty big act these days, which I’m sure surprises him as much as anyone. When he and his current band appear, they are welcomed with whoops and squeals of delight more appropriate to Justin Bieber.

Frankly, Jeff doesn’t look at his best this evening. He seems frazzled and exhausted and he is going to have to address the issue of his receding hairline sometime soon – a lank and greasy comb-forward is not a cool style and doesn’t even cover the gaps. Embrace the razor, Jeff, and you’ll be liberated!

He is joined tonight by his brother Jack and also by the lovely Nan Turner, moonlighting from her regular band Schwervon.

Jeff’s new album “A Turn in the Dream-Songs” is given a hefty push this evening. The songs fit seamlessly alongside his earlier work and his talent for witty, clever and self-deprecating lyrics that focus on his own predicaments (“Cult Boyfriend”) or which tell bizarre stories (“Krongu Green Slime”), is well to the fore.

The band are energetic and tight, but as with the support act, they don’t seem to quite cope with the cavernous acoustics in here.

Jeff also treats to several of his trademark illustrated story songs. Tonight, we get a tale of an alien inventor and a history of the life of Marco Polo, Jeff crouched on the floor, beaming images onto a sheet at the back of the stage.

The old material is not entirely forgotten and Jeff plays a bravura rendition of (shall we call it a classic?) “Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror”.

The crowd lap it up and you get the impression that if it wasn’t for pressure from the venue’s management, who want us out so that they can get a club night started, that Jeff and co would play all night.

So we get an encore of the silly “Mosquito Rap” and one last illustrated story detailing the adventures of “The Creeping Brain”.

This has been Jeffrey Lewis’ biggest ever London show and I don’t think that it has been entirely comfortable. His charm and ingenuity are ideally suited to intimate spaces and I don’t think that he has quite adapted to a more amplified, less forgiving sphere of operations.

However, Jeff is amongst friends here tonight. And every time that he plays, he makes more.

Britney Spears at Wembley Arena - 31 October 2011

2011-11-01T19:59:00.002Z

It's Britney, bitch

It’s Halloween and I’m surrounded by zombie schoolgirls.

I’m here at Wembley Arena for Britney Spears on her ‘Femme Fatale’ tour.

I had expected spectacle, but what follows over the next ninety minutes is just astonishing, both in terms of excess and quality. The tickets weren’t cheap, but you can see where the money went.

There is a theme that runs through the show, something about surveillance and persecution and the role of the Femme Fatale in history. It doesn’t make a jot of sense, and I almost feel that someone designed a brilliant stage set based around the industrial bleakness and spikiness of the ‘Saw’ franchise and that the supposed story that runs through the song list was a bit of an afterthought.

Once the wheels are set in motion, there is no let up. Indeed, unlike many mainstream performers, Britney pretty well eschews ballads and anything else that might slow down this juggernaut for a second. Instead, Brit and her dancers and acrobats gyrate and pound their way through a series of ever more lavish set pieces.

At the beginning our heroine and the female dancers are imprisoned in a series of cages, menaced by the guys in police uniforms. They soon escape and a short time later are dancing on top of a pink mini convertible that has appeared on stage. In the back of the vehicle support act Joe Jonas is manacled to a seat and lap danced to within an inch of his life.

The dance routines are punctuated by video footage of an apparently menacing evil mastermind who somewhat laboriously introduces the theme of each new extravaganza.

At one point Britney appears on a gigantic Egyptian barge to a backdrop of towering neon pyramids; later, she’s dancing her way through an endless procession of picture frames, or singing the only slow song of the evening in a swing high above the auditorium, with an acrobat dangling beneath her.

The volume is deafening and is produced by two guys playing on banks of equipment up in a gantry. They are never introduced or thanked. It is unclear how much of the vocal track is actually live – certainly all the guest raps on particular tracks are performed via film on the giant video screens.

However, the strength or authenticity of Britney’s voice is not really an issue. On all her recent albums, her voice has been distorted and digitally mashed about and just becomes one component of the overall song. A typical Britney track could be performed by the ‘robots’ of Daft Punk – and no one worries if they are miming.

What Britney has is the tunes and the unswerving love of the crowd – even before the concert has started it is noticeable that everyone you see milling about the Wembley concourses is just ecstatically happy to be here.

The great show stopper is ‘Piece of Me’, Brit’s thumping riposte to the then tabloid scandal surrounding the break up of her marriage, her weight, her shaved head. Tonight, the song is played out to a backdrop of golden Armalite rifles and exploding hand grenades. It’s a Bond film credit sequence come to life. It’s fabulous.

The show never slackens its pace and just gets ever more way out. ‘Toxic’ sees Britney in a kimono, with various ninjas propelling themselves around her ears.

By the time of the encore, the baddie has been defeated and the entire cast are clinging to two life size electricity pylons while nuclear bombs detonate behind them. By this stage this seems entirely logical and appropriate.

Some critics have been a bit sniffy about this show, but I think that they miss the point. This is a grand spectacle designed to ensure that everyone has a great, inclusive time, and to make your jaw drop, even as you dance your ass off. Britney may be playing to her core audience, but there are very few acts that don’t.

The previous evening, I had seen P J Harvey at the Royal Albert Hall. It was another superb show (but not one that was sufficiently different from the last time that I saw her to justify a separate review). It was meticulously staged and orchestrated and perfectly presented to a fan base that hung on every note and loved every moment of it. I see no distinction between this and Britney Spears playing to an arena full of zombie school girls.

The show ends and we pour off into the night. Everyone is happy, even the undead.

Tribes, Dog Is Dead, The Supernovas at Electric Ballroom - 28 October 2011

2011-10-30T10:27:00.003Z

Tribes (Photo from Alfie)

When we arrive at the Electric Ballroom, the first band are already well into their set. It’s clear that the promoters want to get the whole evening done and dusted early, so that they can run a club night afterwards.

The Supernovas are young, cocky and as smart as a pistol. Literally- they spend quite a lot of time with their guitars to their shoulders like machine guns pretending to mow us down. They’re big of mouth and massively self-confident.

Rightly so, because they sound like a non-sensitive version of Ash, the songs being crisp and punchy and with big choruses. None more so than set closer ‘Dusty Air’, which I initially mishear as a tribute to the legendary Leicester and England rugby player.

If Connor McNicholas was still running the NME, The Supernovas would be all over it. Make of that what you will.

Dog Is Dead are this week’s contender for the band with the worst name in pop music. However, their silly nomenclature should not detract from their music, which is excellent.

The signature style of this five piece band is that they often sing in harmony, a rich Beach Boys effect that is enough to win over the hardest heart.

The young crowd love them and sigh and sway along with the music. The band are as sensitive as the Supernovas were brash. Both approaches are finding favour here tonight.

Tribes are local lads and this big hometown gig is a statement of intent. The crowd may be predisposed to like them, but on this showing, the band are going to draw big crowds up and down the country.

Flanked by flashing strobes, the band are adept at hitting the balance between sensitivity and bombast. Lots of arms are raised in the audience, and everyone seems to know the words. It’s an undeniably impressive spectacle.

The recent single ‘Sappho’ is dispensed with early, and may be the catchiest song about lesbian love triangles on record. Majestic stuff.

The set progresses and they even safely negotiate the dreaded acoustic guitar interlude that many rock bands have foundered upon in the past.

Tribes are aptly named, many of their songs are about banding together, about belonging. It’s a trick that Suede often used, and it breeds loyalty amongst the fan base. So we get ‘Coming of Age’ and ‘We Were Children’, the latter featuring a rallying call to kids “born in the mid-90’s”.

I sing along too. I know no shame.

The gig ends nice and early and everyone has had a grand time. All three bands have been good to excellent and make me feel that UK guitar pop is in a pretty healthy state.

The club night afterwards is called “I Love the 90’s”. Sounds that tonight’s bands must have heard in the cradle. Blimey.

The Blood Arm, Paris Suit Yourself, Great White Shark at Madame JoJo's - 18 October 2011

2011-10-20T19:45:00.004+01:00

Paris Suit Yourself by Sebastien Dehesdin

I’m not sure that I like surprises.

What has caught me off guard is a previously unforeseen third band on tonight’s bill. This throws the timings out and will have implications later on in the evening.

The unexpected pleasure is Great White Shark, who hail from Berlin, but are originally from the UK. They illustrate how times and fashions change.

Fifteen years ago you couldn’t move for bands that sound a little bit like Oasis, a little bit Verve, a little bit Stone Roses. We used to sneer at these chancers and run them out of town on a rail.

Yet tonight, Great White Shark exhibit all of these tropes and sound fresh and (whisper it) pretty good. There is nothing here that hasn’t been heard before, but their skinny frontman knows what he’s doing (and throws a good rock star pose), while the band certainly understand the value of a catchy chorus.

There is nothing familiar about Paris Suit Yourself. A set that could have easily come unstuck because of massive, repeated and ridiculous technical problems becomes an unalloyed triumph, a performance that will live long in the memory.

The band come in all shapes and sizes, a foxy bassist, a cool keyboard player/guitarist, a semi naked tattooed drummer and the massively muscled and dreadlocked singer Luvinsky Atche, the sweat shining on his torso.

This is a primal performance that speaks to basic, animalistic emotions. It‘s all about drumming and rhythm and ritual. What is really impressive is that even though the microphones don’t work for much of the time, this is incorporated into the show, Atche filching mikes where he can from the other musicians and even at one point standing at the front of the stage and singing unamplified altogether, howling at the audience. He pants, yips and snorts as though expelling demons.

The percussion is relentless, including some proper honest to goodness drum solos. The bass line is immense and the combination recalls Doug Wimbish, Skip MacDonald and Keith LeBlanc and the heyday of Tackhead.

Towards the end of the set, Atche descends into the crowd, his body dripping with perspiration. He leads them in a frenzied dance that is wild and wonderful and completely unlike anything I’ve seen.

Paris Suit Yourself are unique and are heavily recommended.

This is all dandy and fine, but it does mean that headliners The Blood Arm come onstage horribly late.

Although perfectly clear, the sound mix seems wrong, with singer Nate Freguso almost inaudible behind the guitars and keyboards.

There is nothing wrong with tonight’s show, but I’ve been so spoiled by the Blood Arm over the years, with them always being exceptional, that when they are merely very good it seems a disappointment. This is of course a ludicrous state of affairs.

Time is against me and I have to leave half way through their set. I am told that I miss Freguso being mauled by a member of the crowd and Eddie Argos and chums getting up onstage for a drunken sing-along. Apparently things finally wind down at about 11.40. It’s very frustrating, and unusual for promoters White Heat, who generally run a slick operation.

However, I’d have been even more annoyed to have missed Paris Suit Yourself and I consider it an excellent evening.

Versailles at Islington Academy - 02 October 2011

2011-10-03T16:41:00.003+01:00

Hizaki of Versialles

The queue has formed two hours before the venue opens its doors. The heady mix of extravagantly dressed Goths, metal heads and cosplay aficionados are drawing stares from the muggles passing by.

We are here to see Versailles (aka Versailles Philharmonic Quintet in some territories) who are one of Japan’s foremost exponents of visual kei metal and are over for a European jaunt.

This form of music values appearance almost more than the songs themselves, and the more elaborate, androgynous and rococo a band looks, the better it goes for them.

There is a strict moratorium on all types of photography, video recording and images recorded by mobile phone. Although you might argue that this is the equivalent of KISS going “Don’t look at us!”, the ban is impeccably observed throughout the show.

The venue is about three quarters full and there is an incessant chorus of girly voices chanting “We Want Versailles!” They keep this up for twenty minutes solid.

After a minor delay, the lights go down and the show begins. Each member introduces themselves in isolation, slowly rotating to show off their finery, flashing devil horns and whipping the crowd into frenzy. It’s kind of like the music box opening from an episode of Camberwick Green, but in better costumes.

And then they start with thunderous kick drums and squealing guitar solos. This is good old fashioned thrash – with a twist.

A typical Versailles song lasts around ten minutes and consists of crescendo after crescendo. Everything they do sounds like the very final encore of a Metallica gig. It’s almost unrelenting.

The band look amazing. Singer Kamijo is dressed in a red frock coat that drips with gold brocade and incorporates a gossamer cloak that he can sweep in front of him.

The twin guitarists are Teru, who has silver sculpted hair like an anime hero and the other is the quite astonishing Hizaki, who is dressed as a lady of Louis XIV’s court. And is male.

Hizaki’s guitar work is extremely impressive, as is his dedication to his character. He maintains an impassive poker face throughout. Whilst most metal guitarists screw up their faces and stick their tongues out, Hizaki’s face remains as expressionless as a porcelain doll- even with one foot on the monitor, which is not something you often see from someone dressed in a crinoline.

Bassist Masashi is dressed in black and mostly stays at the rear of the stage, occasionally hulking over the others and drawing appreciative screams from the audience whenever he does so.

The band are tightly choreographed, always moving in synchrony with each other. They have perfected a graceful wave at the end of each guitar flourish – a courtly, feminine gesture a world away from the windmilling of the likes of Pete Townsend.

Versailles also often spin around, as though they are dancers in an elegant waltz rather than purveyors of metal mayhem .

At the halfway point, the rest of the band scoot off for a quick rest, leaving Kamijo to sing a slow, hugely lachrymose ballad. Most of the audience have purchased glowing fluorescent roses, which are waved in unison amongst a sea of hands.

The rest of the band return and it is back to the bombast.

At one point Kamijo and Hizaki dive off the stage into the audience, who were clearly not expecting them. No one is hurt.

Versailles are (obviously) an unusual proposition. In some respects they could be deemed to be very limited in what they do – any twenty minute passage is much the same as any other. Yet they are hugely entertaining and their ninety plus minute set passes in a blur.

Versailles have completely achieved their goal. They are a beautiful, intricate clockwork toy that is completely artificial and could almost be put under a glass display case. And they rock too.

I forego the opportunity to meet the band afterwards and spin off into the night, waving gracefully.

Razika, LCMDF, Sykur at Hoxton Bar & KItchen - 29 September 2011

2011-10-01T10:50:00.003+01:00

Razika

It’s the end of September and quite unexpectedly, the weather in London has turned as hot as hell. No one expected this, certainly not the bands playing here tonight.

Tonight’s entertainment is bought to us courtesy of Ja Ja Ja Music, purveyors of top Nordic pop fun.

We start off with Sykur, who hail from Iceland. They are three young guys called Halldór, Stefán and Kristján, who hunch over keyboards and produce a minimalist, stripped down Knife-like funk.

However, the undoubted star of the show is their guest singer Rakel Mjöll, who has prepared for the performance by getting cataclysmically, heroically, gloriously drunk. She crashes onto the stage dressed in a white manga school girl outfit and just lets rip.

Sometimes she raps, sometimes she sings, often she just wails off microphone, producing a sound not unlike the Clare Torry vocal solo in Pink Floyd’s ‘Great Gig In The Sky’. She also jumps up and down a lot and bashes the rest of the band about.

She is hilarious but utterly brilliant at the same time. Occasionally slurping from a pint of lager secured with both hands, she has a magnificently expressive face, across which every thought and emotion can be read as though it were on a ten foot billboard. Confusion, determination and terror being the feelings most prominently featured.

Despite, or perhaps because of this apparent chaos, Sykur are absolutely fantastic. The music is catchy and the sheer lack of inhibition and open vulnerability on display completely disarming.

You can tell that the band are a bit disappointed with the static, gobsmacked crowd. This is a shame because this is one of the most memorable performances of the year.

I have seen LCMDF several times over the years and had pegged them as kind of ‘ok’ but not much more than that. Tonight, my preconceptions are not so much blown away as completely vaporised.

The two Finnish sisters Emma and Mia Kemppainen are accompanied by Christian, an unflustered and cool drummer. It is quite clear that the addition of a live percussionist has completely rejuvenated the band and allows the two girls free rein to bombard us with their full on bouncy pop.

Blonde singer Emma struts, preens and dances in a pair of denim shorts and works herself up into a breathless frenzy. Mia plays guitar and gradually sheds clothing in the heat, each laughing at the other deteriorating into a sweaty, sticky (sexy) mess.

The set starts with crowd favourite ‘Gandhi’ and proceeds from there, each track more energetic and joyous than the last. LCMDF are on terrific form tonight and have not just raised their game, they’re playing a whole different sport. They have a track called ‘Cool and Bored’ – it’s pretty much the least appropriate title imaginable.

Headliners Razika thus have two very tough acts to follow, and that they don’t manage it is hardly their fault. This is their first show in London and they are clearly extremely nervous.

Razika are an all-girl quartet from Norway, who dress in black and white and play ska music – although not in the usual sense of the term.

In some respects the Razika approach to ska is the same as Vampire Weekend’s appropriation of Afrobeat- measured, deliberate and more of a mathematical exercise than an explosion of energy and fun.

The girls stand stiff and awkward and you rather feel for them. They come across as sweet and earnest, but very daunted by the experience and hopelessly outgunned by the acts that have preceded them.

It has been a sweltering, rowdy, booze-fuelled belter of an evening. There’s talk of an Indian summer – but it looks like a brilliant Nordic night to me.

Miracle Fortress at Madame JoJo's - 13 September 2011

2011-09-19T19:55:00.004+01:00

Miracle Fortress by Cindy Lopez

There are strange things happening in the venue.

One of the in-house security guys has got it into his head that on no account must any object, be it a bag or a coat, touch the floor. So for most of the time while the first band are onstage, I am watching this petty martinet harassing punters, only for them to break his cockamamie rule as soon as his back is turned. It’s ludicrous and it is insulting. And of course, once the venue fills up, he is unable to do it.

The three guys who comprise I Ching are rather a sideshow to this kerfuffle. They stand in a line and are a bit synth-y, but are generally so wishy washy that they can’t hold your attention even when you are looking directly at them. The kindest thing to say about them is that they are not offensive and they don’t hang around for long.

Brasstronaut start off very well. This six piece outfit from Vancouver include a trumpet and an electric clarinet, which they put to good use.

On the whole, I would say that they are a jazz band with some indie leanings rather the other way round. They are prone to lengthy semi-improvised excursions that detract from the rather Randy Newman piano/vocal style of Edo Van Breemen.

Their very first song is terrific, a heartfelt piano ballad that gradually builds into something epic, as all the other musicians come in and do their stuff. The problem that they run into is that all their material is very similar and, despite the number of people on stage, they are not particularly dynamic. I’d be interested in their recorded works, however.

Miracle Fortress is essentially a solo project of talented musician Graham Van Pelt, although he is joined here this evening by a live drummer. The album ‘Five Roses’ was big favourite around certain parts and it has been a number of years since there has been a sighting of this iteration – possibly because Van Pelt has been touring with his other outfit Think About Life.

At first, things seem a little off. The sound of the vocal is extremely muddy, and the tunes seem rather naff. I rather cruelly compare him to Coldplay and receive a chastening boot on the shin from a companion.

And then things get very unexpected. Making use of an impressive set of lasers and day-glo lights, much of the rest of the set is devoted to full on 80’s disco-flavoured stompers that are very fine, even if the ghost of Daft Punk’s ‘Discovery’ album looms rather obviously over proceedings.

We boogie about and don’t care where on the floor we put our bags. Everything is rattling along very nicely.

Unfortunately, good things cannot last, and the last number is another solo ‘Coldplay’ tune. Not unpleasant, in fact exactly the opposite. Too damn nice.

An interesting if not wholly successful evening.

And seriously, Madame JoJo’s – sort your staff out.

EMA, Waters at Cargo - 14 September 2011

2011-09-18T20:30:00.002+01:00

EMA

I’m beginning to wonder if fists in the air college rock is making a comeback. We’ve recently had Butch Walker and the Black Widows’ “Summer of 89” and tonight in Cargo we get Waters.

Of course much of the best blue collar apparently American rock was actually Canadian in origin. And it is the influence of Neil Young and Bryan Adams that is very much apparent.

So this is rousing stuff, with much thrashing of guitar and tossing of hair. There is an urge to drink pissy American beer. An urge not indulged while Cargo thinks that £4.50 is an acceptable price for a small bottle – but I digress.

Van Pierszalowski is a handsome front man, fashionably dishevelled and breathless. He is extremely happy to be here tonight, as he repeatedly tells the rather aloof audience. I enjoy this set – it harks back to a time when bands didn’t care about being cool, but just wanted to have a good time. Waters warm things up nicely.

I have been looking forward to seeing EMA aka Erika M Anderson ever since she was one half of the brilliant but dangerously self-damaging combo Gowns.

Tonight, she is joined by a drummer, violinist and bassist. It turns out to be quite a ride.
Musically, the band are all over the place. In the sense that they head off in all sorts of different directions. What follows is less like a coherent set, but more an audition piece, designed to show range.

Abuse and victimhood are recurring themes, with first track “Marked” featuring the repeated line ‘ I wish that every time he touched me left a mark’. It’s all a bit gothy and witchy and ‘look at me, you don’t understand me’. She later sings her song ‘Butterfly Knife’ which is even more explicit about personal violence.

Songs veer from a whisper to a scream, often accompanied by sheets of distorting guitar and violin drone. It’s great, but a bit wearing.

EMA changes personae throughout. Sometimes brittle and vulnerable, sometimes a Courtney Love style rock chick and sometimes a sassy rap rock. It all reminds me of Pink – safe rebellion for tweenagers. It’s very impressive, but it also feels manipulative and fake.

We get a cover of a Violent Femmes song, and a blistering version of ‘California’, a free association letter of hate to the Sunshine State that throws out lyrical quotes from Bo Diddley and even ‘Camptown Races’.

I’m really glad to have finally caught up with EMA, and I’m a big fan of the album ‘Past Life Martyred Saints’ – it’s just that things don’t quite coalesce for me tonight. I can’t believe in this angst, because I suspect, the artist doesn’t either.

Live on Radio K: EMA - "Marked" from Radio K on Vimeo.

Shonen Knife 30th Anniversary Party at Scala - 11 September 2011

2011-09-12T09:26:00.004+01:00

Shonen Knife

It’s a Sunday. It’s ten years since the twin towers came down. It’s the 30th Anniversary tour of Shonen Knife. There’s only going to be one winner.

I get into the venue just in time to see Slowgun wrap up their last two songs. I rather like this band, and have seen them previously, always low on someone else’s bill, always deserving of more attention than they actually get.

It’s the same tonight – they sound as though they should be headlining somewhere else.

I’ve seen the next band before as well – the last time that I saw Shonen Knife. I originally thought that Smallgang have some kind of symbiotic relationship with the Japanese combo, rather like mistletoe grows on an oak tree. It’s actually because they share a record label.

The four piece all wear glasses, not as a fashion statement, but because they can’t see very well. They make the most of this, and fans can buy a t-shirt featuring four pairs of glasses upon it. It’s an image, of sorts.

Musically, they are very mixed. Never less than proficient, they mostly rather drift by without noticing in a gentle alt-rock shimmer. That said, they have a big wig-out guitar frenzy that concludes their set and one quite excellent song ‘Cockpit’ (about a crashing airplane) in the middle. This track alone justifies my time with the band.

Cockpit by smallgang

Shonen Knife are celebrating thirty years of existence, even though line up changes in that period have left with them with only one founder member, Naoko Yamano. It’s a bit Trigger’s Broom, but we love them anyway.

The current line sees Naoko joined by the ever-beaming Ritsuko Taneda on bass and Emi Morimoto on drums.

Shonen Knife are as much a fundamental part of the fabric of rock and roll as the Rolling Stones. Nature abhors a vacuum and there must always be a place for heads down, minimalist happy punk bashed out by three perma-smiling Japanese women. It’s what guitars were invented for.

It’s a simple recipe and a successful one, three chord rama-lama fun that has the crowd bouncing like lunatics.

The set draws from their entire career, with the latest album represented by a paean to the Capybara. This ska-inflected song may, unless I’m mistaken, rhyme ‘Capybara’ with ‘Happy-bara’ – which is some kind of genius.

For an encore, Shonen Knife assume their alter ego as Osaka Ramones and rattle through ‘Sheena Is A Punk Rocker’, ‘The KKK Took My Baby Away’ and ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’. We all go mad, of course, and I realise that many here tonight are too young to have seen the Ramones in any form.

Shonen Knife are a great institution. Here’s to their next anniversary.

Screaming Females, Real Numbers, Human Hair at The Lexington - 9 September 2011

2011-09-10T12:39:00.002+01:00

Screaming Females by Carl Fong

I’m enjoying the bands. My face is covered in fluorescent green make-up. The two are not unconnected.

The first act on tonight are Human Hair. Things start off extraordinary and progress from there.
It would be easy to lose sight of how good this lot are, because the rest of the band have to stand in relative anonymity because of the appearance and antics of vocalist Jack Lantern.

The beard is full, but acceptable. The crotch tight khaki shorts and bare feet are less expected. Lantern capers and hops around like a lascivious bare legged homunculus, thrusting his pelvis and using his microphone as a phallus as he roars and bellows.

It’s all very primeval and shamanic, rock front man as Lord of Misrule. He worries me because as he jumps and climbs around the venue, vaulting down amongst the crowd and writhing on the floor, there seems a real danger that he will stomp on something metal and pointy and injure himself. But disaster is averted.

The rest of the band stand on stage and bash out gargantuan riffs. It is wonderful, one of the performances of the year. Even so, it is clear that the band are having misgivings about some of their equipment. During a brief breakdown we are treated to a strange and disturbing poem from Lantern, who seems to be channelling some rural demon.

Human Hair have to be seen to be believed.

SUN GODS by HUMAN HAIR

Real Numbers hail from Minneapolis and have distilled power pop to its most basic form. This three piece are as rigid in their template as the Ramones were in theirs, although they are far sunnier in disposition than Da Bruddas.

No song lasts longer than two and a half minutes, no song consists of much more than its title sung over and over as a chorus.

They are light, airy and completely insubstantial. Fun while they last, but not really nourishing.

While being entertained by Real Numbers, I am approached by a group of kids and have my face painted. They are fans of headliners Screaming Females. But mainly, they are fans of face paint.

Melissa Paternoster of Screaming Females is an extraordinary character. She is tiny, barely five feet tall and clothed in a long black dress that makes her look like a member of a particularly strict Puritan sect...

...until she hits her guitar and the back of the venue gets blown out.

Screaming Females are not so much a band as a detonation, a monstrously heavy and thundering rock band that are part Hendrix, part Sabbath, part White Stripes and wholly phenomenal.

The audience goes bughouse crazy, heads banging and even some surreptitious air guitar.

Melissa pounds her axe as though she wants to destroy it, occasionally stomping on a battery of FX pedals to shred a squealing solo. Her voice is almost mechanical, precise and clear- except when she screams so loudly that even the guitars are drowned out.

This band are a force of nature and would go down a storm with any audience. It’s like standing in front of a herd of charging elephants, you admire the power even as they mow you down.

When the set finally ends, and silence reigns, I feel bereft.

I wash my face as well as I can and stagger off into the night, glowing greenly.

CSS and Alpines at XOYO - 23 August 2011

2011-08-24T20:52:00.002+01:00

CSS

It’s been a month since my last gig and I’ve been suffering from withdrawal. I couldn’t find a venue in Stockholm and I had an evening rioted off in Shoreditch. It’s been very frustrating.

But tonight, I’m back, baby.

It’s a rather inauspicious return. I desperately want to like gloom pop trio Alpines but I find them very hard work.

Singer Catherine Pockson is a sight to behold. Strong of voice but teetering very much on the cusp between thin and emaciated, her fingers genuinely give me the creeps – the last time I saw bones like that they were being carbon dated in a lab.

Alpines are not bad, just rather over familiar. There’s nothing here that really stands out, except for the occasions towards the back end of their set when the keening, emotive delivery suggests that the first Portishead album may not have been too far from their thoughts. You feel that Alpines will be more interesting on record, and there is certainly material here that might come alive in the remix.

It’s been a while since Cansei De Ser Sexy were last on these shores. In fact I haven’t seen them since they played to a cold and indifferent Wembley Arena as support act to Gwen Stefani.

In many ways, Lovefoxxx and co have followed the classic trajectory of fashionable pop bands. A first album that everyone loved, sell out tours, media chasing them all over the place and then a second album that failed to excite much interest at all. Now, some four or five years later, they are back with a new collection of songs under the heading of ‘La Liberación’.

CSS are a brilliant party band, so they ought to be great in a small underground venue like this. However, it doesn’t quite work out that way…

As the band appears onstage the venue is suddenly filled with soap bubbles. It is magical and unexpected, as though we are suddenly little plastic divers affixed to the bottom of a fish tank.

Singer Lovefoxxx starts the evening in a heavily studded leather jacket and neon finger rings. She’s up for a good time and so are we. By the second song she’s crowd surfing around the venue and all seems well.

However, there is no getting away from the fact that the sound tonight is just awful. It’s both quiet and muddy and despite the frenzied efforts of the band it’s very difficult to get more than a rough outline of the songs they are playing. Admittedly I’m not helped in this regard by a disinterested, loud mouthed wanker yapping in my ear throughout.

It also doesn’t help that the band are beset throughout with technical problems that bring them to a halt between songs and break ups any momentum that the set might have been gathering.

The performance is split fairly evenly between their first two albums and the new one. Naturally enough, it is the material from their debut that gets the best response. ‘Alala’ and ‘Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death From Above) are still stone classics. New songs ‘Hits Me like a Rock’ and ‘Fuck Everything’ suggest all is well in the song writing department.

For me, a rather mixed return to live action. I enjoy the bubbles and can’t fault the effort of the bands. I just wish I’d been able to hear them clearly enough to get more into them.

What I Did On My Holidays...

2011-08-07T10:24:00.004+01:00

My recent attempt to catch some live music whilst on holiday in Venice and Stockholm was a bust. Not from want of trying though.

As it was, I had to run to the hills from the prospect of Sting and his Symphonicity tour stinking up St Marks Square. (Warning: The video contains images of extreme smugness). The Biennale was good though.

Stockholm on the other hand was teeming with good music – if only I could have found it. I spent well over an hour searching under a motorway for fabled rock club Debaser, before the needs of others took priority.

However, as a treat, here is a link to Swedish label Labrador and their free compilation ‘Stockholm Belongs To Us’ . It’s really good.

Normal service is now resumed . Plenty of stuff coming up...

The Good Natured, Josh Osho, Lovelle at Hoxton Bar & Kitchen - 20 July 2011

2011-07-21T11:08:00.003+01:00

The Good Natured

There are those who feel that they haven’t had value for money unless a band has played for three hours. Not me. I like a bit of brevity.

I’m in the Hoxton Bar and Kitchen for a Gold Dust night and the emphasis is on sets that are short, sharp and sweet. No-one gets more than half a dozen tracks, if they’re lucky.

That said, it’s a slightly odd bill, with such a disparity between the first three acts and the headliners that there is a complete cultural apartheid. The composition of the crowd changes almost one hundred per cent.

First off this evening we have Lovelle, a highly personable and extremely talented R & B/Soul singer. She says that she’s nervous but it doesn’t show in her performance, which is absolutely note and move perfect, I suspect even down to the ‘ad-libs’. She’s accompanied throughout by a scary Catweazle-looking dude on an acoustic guitar.

Lovelle is very impressive, but in a Brit School world, she faces a lot of competition. In two years time she’ll either be massive or out of the business.

AlunaGeorge are also on a soul kick and remind me of school discos back at the end of the Seventies, when I’d just hate everything and try to sneak ‘Another Girl, Another Planet’ on when the DJ wasn’t looking. When punk broke, the main opposition wasn’t metal or prog, it was The Commodores.

Aluna is long and thin, with a nasal, high pitched and rather whiny voice. George bobs behind a keyboard and ticks things along with a series of glitch-y bleeps and bloops. There are two other guys on stage, but they aren’t considered important enough to be included in the band name.

And then, amidst the dross, a miracle. They announce their next single ‘You Know You Like It’ and it sounds awesome, an absolute monster of a track. Terrific stuff, but sadly unrepresentative.

{DISCLAIMER: When preparing this piece I listened to said track in the cold light of day. It’s nothing special. But last night, in the live setting, it was great}

There’s a lot of buzz about the place for Josh Osho. And you can see why – he’s got all bases covered.

His set ranges from plaintive ballads, to hands-in-the-air party tunes to urban soul. When Josh sings, he reveals a fantastic crooning voice. He’s easy on stage, he’s pleased to see us and is generally as charming as hell. Another potential star in the making.

The tracks ‘Birthday’ and ‘Redemption Days’ are massive crowd pleasers, the latter featuring a Ghostface Killah sample approved by the man himself. Osho’s forthcoming album is 'executively produced' by RZA (whatever that term means in reality), but it shows the level of support and expectation that surrounds this very talented young man.

After Josh Osho, we have the changing of the guard, as the R & B posse leave and the indie kids press down the front. It’s the place to be.

Singer Sarah McIntosh adheres to a simple rule. As long as you start and finish a song actually standing on the stage, you can mess about on the floor of the venue all you like for the rest of the time.

This is The Good Natured’s first gig since McIntosh’s recovery from a broken leg, and she’s keen to make up for lost crowd invasion opportunities. For most of the time she can be tracked around the venue by the huddle of people surrounding her, cameras and phones recording her every move.

The band use the occasion to unveil a new toy. This is billed as a ‘laser harp’ and allows McIntosh to ‘play’ beams of light in the manner of Jean-Michel Jarre. Or at least pretend to, because it doesn’t appear to make any noise. Looks good, though.

The songs sound excellent this evening, which is ostensibly a showcase to launch the band’s new Skeletons ep. I’ve only seen The Good Natured once before and already everything sounds like greatest hits – a good measure of how catchy these grandiose electropop tunes are.

It’s been a really enjoyable evening. In addition to the headliners I’ve seen a couple of excellent performers in a genre that I’m not often exposed to. Well done to all involved.

The 1234 Shoreditch - 9 July 2011

2011-07-12T19:04:00.003+01:00

Throwing Up

I’m here once again at 1234 Shoreditch, the boutique music festival in the heartlands of hipster heaven.

Things are a bit shaky at first, with all the bands appearing to have technical problems at the same time. I wander from stage to stage watching musicians huddled around their equipment and looking a bit baffled. There’s not a lot of music being played.

After a long delay Argentinean Big Beaters Polen get things off to a lively start. They look like a cheap 80’s sci-fi flick and even have a heavily synthesised vocal that sounds like a guttural Dalek. They’re good cheesy fun, and props to their two pals dancing like loons at the front of the stage.

I find Rainbow Arabia a tad disappointing on the main stage. I’m a fan of their Los Angeles take on eastern rhythms, but in the flesh they seem rather lethargic. I had hoped that they would be more uplifting.

The four girls from Novella have drawn a large crowd in a sweltering tent. And…they’re alright. Decent and straightforward songs are mostly well put over. However, they do have two singers and one is markedly better than the other. This band is worth keeping an eye on.

I soon tire of the elaborate facial hair and proggy tendencies of Love Video and head off to get me some Sex Beet.

These lads jangle along at a jaunty lick. For promoters eyeing up an act to attract followers from the likes of The Drums, they could be just the ticket. It’s nice to hear a pop band play fast. One of the happier bands of the day.

Nitewreckage are just bizarre. This band includes such diverse talents as a visibly over relaxed Dave Ball (ex Soft Cell) prodding a piece of hand-held kit the size of an ash tray, a dancer who is so thin that she looks as though she would have to run around under a shower in order to get wet and a fierce (and funny) Boadicea of a front woman who may be filling in until Pat Evans leaves Eastenders. I like this band, because they are largely mad, but the tent does get emptier the longer they go on.

Stage timings are all over the shop, so I catch less of Throwing Up than I had intended. Two thirds of this band used to be in Headless and this band has a lot of what I liked about them, namely thrashy, heavy guitars and shouty female vocals. I wish that I had seen more of them.

Echo Lake are doing good business crowd-wise. Unfortunately I can’t quite share the general enthusiasm. Linda Jarvis is not so much a singer as a sound effect, cooing and aahing over a wash of guitars. It all sounds very relaxing, but there is no dynamism or much to distinguish one song from another.

Over on the main stage, consummate live performers The Chapman Family are delivering a fine, if largely familiar set that draws an appreciative crowd. Some uber fans have even kitted out their baby with blue ear defenders so that it can join mum and dad in sticking its head in the speakers. All seem to be having a good time, so calls to the Child Protection services are put on hold.

One of the themes of the day is to try to arrive at a tally of bands that incorporate one or more members of Bo Ningen. Patent Saints certainly do.. They nurdle along playing a flamboyant organ-driven space rock. It’s ok for a bit, but like much of this type of new psychedelia, it’s clearly more fun for the musicians involved than it is for their audience.

Lydia Lunch on the main stage is a revelation. She’s dark and malign, obscene and a lot of fun. Her voice is a low and lascivious croaking rasp, her band a perfect accompaniment, slow and sludgy and monstrously heavy. Her profanity strewn version of ‘Your Love Don’t Pay My Rent’ is my personal highlight of the day.

From here on, I find that things kind of peter out. While some of my gang enjoy the free form musings of Damo Suzuki (more Ningen here), I discover Toy. They look like Spinal Tap, but play mostly instrumental Krauty, motorik music that always seems to be building up to the start of some mighty anthem without ever delivering one.

I eschew The Raveonettes on the main stage, not because they are not good, but because I can’t face picking my way through the throng to get close enough to see and hear them properly. I make do with Warm Brains, who are pleasant enough but don’t leave any kind of impression.

By now it is getting late and there is no one else due on that I would particularly care to see.

It’s been a thoroughly decent day out, let down only because I didn’t find any acts that completely blew my socks off. Glad I caught Lydia though.

The Sonics and Wire at Royal Festival Hall - 18 June 2011

2011-06-19T09:58:00.003+01:00

The Sonics

Here I am, back at Ray Davies’ Meltdown.

First onstage tonight are Wire. Newman, Lewis and Grey are dressed in black, with current live guitarist Matt Simms in a white shirt and kept to the side of the stage. There is a clear hierarchy – you know who is in charge.

Wire’s set this evening is eclectic to say the least. They start with three tracks from their latest ‘Red Barked Tree’ period. There is no chat or even an acknowledgement of the audience. This is all business.

I’m sat about four rows from the front, in direct line with the speakers. Every time that Grey touches his drums, my internal organs move. You remember that sequence in Jurassic Park where the water in the glass ripples to the approaching footfall of the Tyrannosaurus? That’s my bladder.

Just as I’m crossing my legs, the band obligingly breaks into ‘Kidney Bingos’. Very funny.

Wire continue with new song ‘Please Take’, which already feels as though it has joined the pantheon of their all time greats. Newman, caresses the words “Fuck off out of my face, you take up far too much space” as though he is crooning a lullaby.

We also get yet another new version of ‘Drill’, this time around with the emphasis on the words rather than the riffs – it ends up almost acapella.

They are in more forthcoming mood during their encore. They announce that they will play a song that is “so old that we are not sure if we have ever played it live before”. It’s ‘Outdoor Miner’. Remarkable.

They conclude with five minutes of feedback, just in case anyone has got too comfortable.

Ray Davies himself appears to introduce The Sonics. He says “These guys were in the garage before The Kinks even had a car!”

They remain a formidable bunch. The hair may be white now, but they still have an almost military bearing about them.

They are a revelation. They sound like every rough and raw rock and roll record you ever heard.
Vocals are alternated between the dignified keyboard player Gerry Roslie and the wonderfully Benny-The Ball shaped guitarist Larry Parypa, who belies his small stature with a screaming rasp of a voice.

The set ranges from covers of standards such as ‘Lucille’ and ‘Money’ to songs from their recent e.p. such as the excellent ‘Vampire Kids’.

The audience has been sat in their seats throughout, but once the band unleash ‘Strychnine’ the dam breaks and there is a mass charge down the front.

For the remainder of the evening folk are dancing in the aisles, in the balconies, down the front. Every guy grabs a gal, everywhere around the world. It’s great.

The band and the dancers bawl along to ‘Psycho’ and for a split second we are back in the Sixties.

The Sonics were always a bit of a secret back in their heyday. Ray Davies intimated that “they scared the hell out of us”. It’s good to see gigs like this giving these guys their due.

Yo La Tengo at Royal Festival Hall - 12 June 2011

2011-06-13T10:29:00.002+01:00

Yo La Tengo

I’m not really sure why I am here.

I don’t know anything about Yo La Tengo. It’s a Sunday night. This is not my usual habit at all.

This is my second successive evening at the Ray Davies Meltdown. Tonight the great man himself introduces the band. Davies has known them for years and he’s a genuine fan.

Yo La Tengo have been going for nearly a quarter of a century. In that time they have amassed a vast body of work. They are extremely adaptable and have always amused themselves by imposing their own rules and constraints to make the music making process fresh and exciting. They have always relied on their fans to come along for whatever adventure they are currently on. It is a wonderful place for a group of musicians to be in.

On the current tour Yo la Tengo play two sets each evening. The nature of the first of these is determined by a spin of a wheel that is labelled with nine different possible outcomes. These range from a commitment to play a bunch of songs that begin with the letter ‘S’ or songs starting with vowels, to performing a film soundtrack. There is even a possibility that the band will act out an episode of a classic American sitcom in its entirety.

Tonight the wheel is spun and we get... a set by Yo La Tengo’s garage rock alter egos Condo Fucks.

For the next half an hour or so we get a non-stop freewheeling explosion of squalling feedback and guitar mangling. In what will become a theme of the whole night, Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley and James McNew swap instruments and vocal duties throughout.

Condo Fucks are a covers band, but there is little that I recognise. The one track that is instantly familiar to UK audiences is a version of The Troggs’ ‘With A Girl Like You’. It is considerably faster and more scuffed up than the original. I suspect that there may have been a Richard Hell cover in there too.

Kaplan in particular gets into the mood, swinging a guitar around his head and using it to generate swathes of white noise and static. It’s a terrific show.

After a short interval Yo La Tengo re-emerge as themselves. They start with an immensely long, apparently semi improvised piece in which various band members take turns to solo against the backdrop of a metronomic bass riff from McNew. It is very indulgent, but crucially, very impressive.

I don’t know any of this stuff, so I’m rather hampered when it comes to describing the events of the rest of the night. Yo La Tengo’s songs seem to broadly fall within three categories – the long, almost Krautrocky wig-out involving lots of guitar distortion; gentle, sweetly sung almost folky ditties, often with beautiful harmonies; and more straight-forward rock numbers.

Instruments are freely exchanged and there is effectively a fourth member of the band, a roadie who constantly supplies them with guitars.

And whichever type of song is being played I absolutely lap it up. I’m in hog heaven. There is nothing that I like more than listening to something that I have not heard before and then having my socks blown off. Yo La Tengo are simply awesome this evening, and I sit mesmerised.

They end with a delightful little piece called ‘My Little Corner of the World’ which features a fine whistling solo. Marvellous stuff.

I am really, really glad that I saw tonight’s show. I’ve now got around a quarter century of music to catch up on.

The Fugs at Queen Elizabeth Hall - 11 June 2011

2011-06-12T09:48:00.003+01:00

The Fugs

Tonight I’m here in a by no means fully occupied Queen Elizabeth Hall to see the Fugs. It’s their first appearance in the UK since 1968. I have only a dim idea of what to expect. And the expectation is largely confounded.

There’s some unfortunate business to get out of the way first. The support act is Lewis Floyd Henry, a guy with a hair like an explosion and a really dreadful line in shouty, incomprehensible blues.

Henry sits with his guitar and a small foot operated drum and growls and hollers tunelessly. At one stage he says that two years ago he was busking outside this building and that he has come a long way since then. He really hasn’t.

The most excruciating moment comes when he drags his two extremely young children onstage to help him out. They quite clearly have no idea at all what is expected of them and you just feel embarrassed for all concerned. The venue wasn’t that full to start with, but there is a marked exodus to the bar.

My pre-knowledge of The Fugs is based almost entirely on their nihilist anthem ‘Nothing’ and the nod they are accorded in Jeffrey Lewis’ epic song “The History of Punk on the Lower East Side.” (An excellent dissection of which can be read here).

What we get tonight is much more interesting.

The main singer and songwriter of the Fugs was Tuli Kupferberg who sadly died last year. Tonight’s show is very much a heartfelt tribute to him by the rest of the band.

The current line up of the Fugs has been together for over twenty five years – which still of course means that they date from a reincarnated band that formed in 1984. The link to 1968 is their leader Ed Sanders.

Sanders is every inch the academic, who clutches his song sheets and delivers the set almost as a lecture. This is entirely appropriate to the material – The Fugs may have been long hairs who railed against the Vietnam War and civil rights abuses in the Sixties, but they were also poets and classicists.

The songwriter who gets more mentions tonight than even Tuli Kupferberg is William Blake. The band perform ‘Auguries of Innocence’ and it is enchanting, the band’s voices mingling in beautiful harmonies. And you thought Fleet Foxes invented this stuff!

Other songs tonight come from the pen of Heraclitus of Ephesus (‘You Can’t Walk In That Same River’ introduced by Sanders in Ancient Greek) and “that dour cat” Matthew Arnold (‘Dover Beach’.)

It’s an elegiac, wistful evening. It yearns for a simpler, purer world and nobler values. It’s very touching and I am touched.

To see a world in a grain of sand,

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And eternity in an hour.

Ladytron and Marina Gasolina at The Forum - 08 June 2011

2011-06-09T20:42:00.003+01:00

Ladytron

I’m standing in The Forum being entertained by Figo. Not the mesmeric Portuguese footballer, but a DJ who is onstage and laying down a selection of beats.

It’s kind of alright, but it is a waste of stage. Figo would be just as effective if he was packed away in a booth somewhere. Watching a guy in a hoody tweaking a button occasionally does not constitute a live show.

Lack of charisma is not a charge that could be levelled at Marina Gasolina.

She’s about five feet tall, bunched in a black dress and is a tiny wailing ball of fury. Her band is an unpretentious outfit, happy to bang out a decent line in bluesy, guitar-led rock and roll. There are plenty of axe-hero poses and charging around the stage behind her.

Marina is more widely known as a vocalist with the Diplo–produced Bondo De Role. Left to her own devices, the electronic beats have entirely gone, to be replaced by a fierce and primal sound that doesn’t lack for intensity. She sings and shouts and screws her face up. At one stage she unpins her hair and her head disappears behind a curtain of tresses, the only thing visible her open, screaming mouth.

This stage is too big for her, the venue too empty. But this band would be terrific in a smaller setting and I’d be glad to see them there.

Marina Gasolina - Leone by Sainted PR

Ladytron are a bit betwixt and between this evening. They’ve just released a Greatest Hits compilation and also have a new album ‘Gravity the Seducer’ coming out in September.

The stage is stripped down to the basic equipment that the Liverpool five piece use, the spectacle tonight provided by a pair of green lasers that beam across the heads of the crowd.

Ladytron’s set starts off with favourites all the way – ‘Runaway’, ‘High Rise’, ‘Ghost In Me’, ‘International Date Line’, ‘Soft Power’ …it’s all good, but it’s also just a little bit staid and expected.

The bar is raised with an airing of recent single 'Ace of Hz’. I realise that it has the exact beat and tune of Boney M’s ‘Daddy Cool’, if that track were slowed down to half speed. (Check it out – I’m right). I’m not knocking either track.

And so they go on. ‘Seventeen’ has been retooled and uncluttered and sounds almost like a new song. This highlights the (admittedly minor) problem tonight – the new songs are more enjoyable than the old ones. This is nothing to do with quality, but all to do with my thirst for new material.

I always prefer the challenge of the new as opposed to the comfort of the old. Ladytron provide a bit of both tonight and deliver a solid seven or eight out of ten kind of show. That will do me for now.

Ladytron - Little Black Angel by nettwerkmusicgroup

The Asteroids Galaxy Tour and Abi Wade at ULU - 26 May 2011

2011-05-28T13:29:00.004+01:00

The Asteroids Galaxy Tour (pic: Thomas Arnbo)

I’m mighty impressed with Abi Wade.

She’s sat at the front of the stage nesting a behind a cello. The audience that has wandered into the venue so far is mostly sat on the floor and talking amongst themselves.

It’s a tough gig.

However, Abi is a fascinating performer and a real multi-tasker. She sings. She plucks at the strings of her cello with the fingers of either one or both hands. She mostly eschews the use of the more conventional bow. Simultaneously, employing either a free hand or by wedging the object between her knuckles, she uses a succession of sticks and flails to act as percussion – bashing or stroking them against the frame of her instrument or across the strings as required. Meanwhile, her right foot is operating a small bass drum. Her left foot does not seem to be doing anything at all – it’s clearly not pulling its weight.

I must admit that I am more interested in Wade’s technique than I am her actual songs. These are keening, desolate affairs that conjure images of urchins sat on porches somewhere in the Appalachians. To be honest, such is the hubbub, it is difficult to hear her – I’ll try to trace some of her recorded work, if any exists.

Hope by Abi Wade

The Asteroids Galaxy Tour hail from Denmark and are a motley looking bunch. The guys in the band are mostly dressed in vests and casual sports gear. They are either stripped for action or else they have run out of clean clothing at the end of a foreign tour.

The band is tight and impressive, but they play very much second banana to singer Mette Lindberg, a woman who has evolved beyond having Big Hair to having Huge Hair. Great thick blonde ropes fall around her face. She looks like a mouse poking its head out of a haystack.

Mette knows how to work an audience – chatting throughout, loose of limb, always loping or jogging around the stage.

The band’s set still relies heavily on their first album ‘Fruit’. This is no bad thing because that record contains more bone fide pop hits and I-know-this-one-but-weren’t-sure-where-I-heard-it moments than you can shake a stick at.

The trumpet of Miloud Carl Sabri lends everything a swinging, almost New Orleans vibe. You can’t dance to this in the traditional sense, but you can certainly nod your head up and down and lurch wildly from foot to foot. Which I do.

Tracks such as ‘The Sun Ain’t Shining No More’ and ‘Around The Bend’ are frankly as good as you are likely to get anywhere. I had been feeling a little preoccupied and glum coming into this gig, but Asteroids Galaxy Tour soon chase the blues away.

For no apparent reason the band suddenly pull out a storming version of Men Without Hats ‘Safety Dance’. I leap around non-ironically.

The band finishes off with ‘The Golden Age’, a monster of a song which has been appropriated for the new Heineken ad, in which Mette and co also appear.

There is a side to Asteroids Galaxy Tour that is a little awkward and kind of un-cool. This is most unfair. They don’t get the kudos that they deserve for being a good time band that are guaranteed to put a smile on your face, a spring in your step and a catchy tune in your head.

This week I have seen a great band from Sweden and now a great band from Denmark. If this blog gets any more Scandinavian I’ll have to call it Kalla om Wyld or Hidkalde i den Wyld.

It’s got a nice ring to it...

Niki And The Dove, Seams at Electrowerkz - 24 May 2011

2011-05-25T20:12:00.002+01:00

Niki & The Dove (pic by John Dahlroth)

I love this venue. It’s a big black metallic box of mystery. It’s all dark and sharp and unforgiving. And the way in is never in the same place twice. Electrowerkz is as much a puzzling enigma as it is London’s home of industrial bleeps and bloops.

The place is largely empty when I Am Camera kick the evening off. I know nothing about them at all and subsequent internet searches draw a blank. What I will say is that the singer is so long-legged and striking that you’d know if she was in the room even if she wasn’t standing onstage with a microphone.

The band lay down a pulsing Euro-beat and the singer sways on her high heels and emotes in a fairly regulation fashion. Truth be told, the band are proficient rather than exciting, but there is a certain hypnotic quality to them and they are perfectly enjoyable.

When I first see Seams, my heart initially sinks. It’s one bloke balancing a pile of electronics on a flight case – generally a recipe for tedium.

But happily my preconceptions are misplaced. Seams is not only a personable performer, but crucially, he brings the beats.

Instead of the usual self-indulgent knob twiddling, Seams (real name James Welch) can build a tune and turn the by now thronging crowd into a happy pulsing mass.

The first track sounds like a distorted musical box. A later track appears to be based upon a slight scrap of piano music, looped and multi tracked. I like.

I know that I am in good hands with the headliners right from the off. The three members of Niki and the Dove stand in a row and blow through wooden bird callers. These are fed through various bits of equipment until the whole venue sounds like an aviary.

The first thing to remember about this Swedish band is that there is no Niki in the band. And no Dove either. Instead, we are mesmerised by the marvellous Malin Dahlström, who is a vision in face paint and big hair.

Her voice is astonishing in range and, waving her arms and grinning all over her face, she comes across as a Bjork who would rather free your mind (and your ass will follow) than Free Tibet.

Her two cohorts stand behind her, either laying down a wall of clanking percussion or funky slabs of dark electric disco.

For much of the set the band are joined by two masked go-go dancers who writhe and gyrate very s-l-o-w-l-y, as though they are running at half speed. It is silly and sensual and exuberant all at once.

An early highlight is the epic ‘Under The Bridges’ an anthemic dance track that mutates into a scrabble of random electronic noise. The dancers are now whirling hoola-hoops around their necks. Slowly.

There is a warm, organic feel to much of Niki & The Dove’s music. At one stage palm leaves are distributed to the crowd. The leaves are waved happily and turn this metal box of a room into a lush and tropical hothouse.

The band conclude with a thunderously drum-driven ‘DJ, Ease My Mind’. Malin smiles and dances. So do we.

So, to recap – No Niki, No Dove- but one hell of a show.

Download free track ‘The Fox’ here.

Florrie and Paradise Point at The Borderline - 14 May 2011

2011-05-16T22:17:00.002+01:00

Paradise Point

This is the night of the Eurovision Song Contest Final. I thought as a result that this place would be as empty as a Lib Dem promise.

But no – As I walk into The Borderline I find the support act just starting up and a noisy and anticipatory crowd.

Paradise Point are a 2011 take on classic boy bands such as Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet and even ABC. They surely must have been made in some manager’s laboratory – the last time such favourable DNA came together was about the time that a pair of prehistoric slime moulds thought it would be cool to cozy up and form a fish’s backbone.

What is amazing is how good this band is. Singer Cameron is a macho hunk in a pair of trousers that leave no doubt that he is very happy to be here. Is he excited? Well, when he turns sideways he could knock your pint out of your hand.

Next to him is Adam, a blond wisp of a guitarist in a stripy top and to the right a young bassist who looks magnificently cool and strangely familiar. My notes of the evening described him as a ‘Spandau Clone’ but further research marks him as even more special. Young Roman Kemp is the son of Martin and is the spitting image of his Dad. Hurrah for genetics! The family business is in good hands.

Basically, this lot are sex on legs and even if they weren’t actually any good they would still find it hard to walk on stage without being shrieked at.

Fortunately their music is excellent too. These are real pop gems – certainly 80’s inflected, but delivered with a whomp and panache that would put a lot of other acts to shame. ‘The Only One’ is a track that is going to get them a lot of attention.

I’m glad to see them here. If they play their cards right their next stop is the O2 Arena dodging volleys of young girls’ underwear.

The bald description of the headline act is discouraging. Florrie is the sometime house drummer for Xenomania acts such as Girls Aloud. Tonight is her chance to step out of the shadows.

She is certainly striking to behold – a sexy version of a prim, buttoned-up nurse from a Sixties Brit flick, a rail thin Julie Andrews with a touch of school mistress. The epitome of nice but secretly naughty.

Her voice is not the strongest, but she makes up for this with a set of percussively based songs with infectious rhythms that really get the crowd going. I am delighted that the second song of the evening is entitled ‘Call Of The Wild’ and is a bouncy drum ‘n’ bass flavoured thing.

Florrie occasionally flirts with a guitar, but acquits herself really impressively on a stand-up drum kit. She bops around it, bashing various bits of percussion and having a high old time.

Her set gets better as it progresses (‘Left Too Late’ is a cracker) and to my ears the act that she most closely resembles is Scandinavian DJ/popstress Annie – and none the worse for it.

Tonight has been an educational reminder that there is a genuine difference between pop-inflected rock acts and the pure uncut mother lode itself. This is Pop with a capital ‘P’.

Atari Teenage Riot, Kap Bambino, FOE at Islington Academy - 12 May 2011

2011-05-14T10:10:00.004+01:00

Atari Teenage Riot

I’m in the venue early to catch the only act that are tonight whom I have not experienced before. I’ve been promised great things.

FOE is the nom de pop of Hannah Clark, joined here this evening by two heads-down thrash guitarists and a drummer. The resulting sound is very far removed from her recorded work, which is mostly keyboard-driven.

The major appeal of FOE, to my ears at least, is her wonderful snotty and bratty voice. She doesn’t sing as such, but rather talks/raps in measured fashion over the wall of guitar noise. It works very well.

I had been prepared for songs such as ‘A Handsome Stranger Called Death’ and ‘Tyrant Song’ but it was only checking again later that I satisfy myself that she played them, so unexpected is this performance.

Clark hunches and slouches in a big black leather jacket emblazoned with her band’s name. You wouldn’t forget FOE even if it wasn’t spelled out.

Kap Bambino are a simple concept that is marvellously executed. Blonde haired singer Caroline Martial capers and screams, while Orion Bouvier stands behind a desk of electronic knick knacks and lays down an onslaught of rapid deafening trance beats.

They are the best band in the world at getting an audience going. Martial engages with the crowd at all times, waving her arms, bouncing up and down and ceaselessly skipping from side to side of the stage. Your eyes follow her and it’s like watching a tennis rally.

The energy that they whip up would power a Dreadnought. When a rare slower interlude occurs Martial merely spins round and round on the spot like a dervish before collapsing gracefully on the floor. Seconds later she is up and bouncing again, flinging herself into the crowd to be carried aloft through the throng. She never rests, she never misses a beat. It’s exhausting and magnificent.

If Kap Bambino are uplifting, headliners Atari Teenage Riot are as uncompromising and gruelling as ever. You’d expect nothing less.

ATR’s entire ninety minute set is played out under blinding strobe lights. Every song is essentially a three word anti-establishment slogan shouted over and over. Whenever there is a momentary lull, the words ‘Atari Teenage Riot’ are screamed out and a microphone extended to the crowd.

Subtle it ain’t, but they have always been like this – a punishing ordeal that would bring international outrage if perpetrated on the inmates at Guantanamo but which the audience here tonight class as entertainment. We’ve paid our money, we know what we’re getting.

Band leader Alec Empire looks a little less chiselled than in the past. In his black vest he stands centre stage and continually urges the crowd, forward, forward.

The enigmatic Nic Endo is much more evident than previously, leaving her music console to take lead vocals on roughly half the songs. Her face is a white mask of makeup, a bolt of lightning transecting her eye.

The third member of the team is CX Kidtronik, who tonight sports a giant pair of welder’s goggles with a red light strapped to the side. He is aiming for a futuristic Cylon effect but actually looks rather silly. He performs the MC role vacated by the death of Carl Crack, who sadly never came across a drug that he didn’t like.

Atari Teenage Riot are unrelenting. By the end of their set I’m feeling really disoriented and ill and I’m not the only one – there is a medic in attendance and he seems to be doing good business.

I stagger out at the end, deaf and dumbfounded. Atari Teenage Riot still bring the pain, but it has been Kap Bambino who were the real pleasure.

Camden Crawl - 30 April 2011

2011-05-02T11:12:00.005+01:00

This is the 10th Camden Crawl. The idea is well over a decade old, (it began in 1995), but it discontinued due to apathy for a few years. It was re-launched with much fanfare, big bands playing in tiny venues and what felt like a massive overselling of tickets. It was not a particularly enjoyable experience.

Not so this year. The organisers have learned their lesson and, broadly, no band is playing in a venue that is too small for them. There is virtually no queuing. The problem is this – in the year that the Crawl is run right, the numbers of people attending are dramatically reduced.

I hope that this is due to a sensible ticketing policy and not due to the recession, but it is very noticeable that the Crawl is substantially less busy this year. If this was not anticipated, the future does not look too rosy.

Those that are not here are seriously missing out. Not least on some of the tiny fringe shows during the daytime.

The Camden Arms has an exhibition of silk screened rock posters (which are ace) and is also playing host to two tremendous bands.

First up we get Great Ancestors, a spiky yet tuneful hardcore outfit who tear through their set as though their livelihoods depend upon it. Maybe they do – the singer is here prior to working an eight hour stint at a Camden bar. He’s not happy about it.

The second helping of afternoon delight is the wild and untamed Sauna Youth, who are less a band than a cartoon explosion with arms, legs and microphones sticking out of a cloud of dust. Somewhere within the flailing limbs, wrestling with mates and general mayhem is a red hot punk band. ‘Bone Lawn’ is one hell of a tune.

I take about a hundred photos of the singer and I think that he actually appears in about two of them. The other pictures are of the gap where he was standing a split second ago.

I trot off to the Electric Ballroom to catch the Japanese Voyeurs. While they have undoubtedly toughened up and improved since I last saw them, their dull grunge doesn’t do much for me and I head up the road.

Divorce are three Scottish girls who look as though they’d be handy in a scrap and a drummer who may pass his time moonlighting in 1970’s Scandinavian ‘Special Interest’ movies. They are a phenomenal band, with huge metallic Sabbaff riffs, frantic drumming and a singer who is on and off the stage bent double in apparent agony. They are everything that I love in a band and I recommend them very highly indeed.

Unlike Visions Of Trees, who I catch at the Black Cap. This duo plays an unremarkable brand of euphoric trance music. They may well sound good on record and when remixed, but they do nothing for me live.

However, I then see The Good Natured at The Monarch and my spirits are restored. What a voice Sarah Macintosh has! Looking like they have just tipped out of the Blitz club in 1981, the band has hair that looks like it has been assembled by Frank Lloyd Wright rather than a hairdresser.

Macintosh has a unique take on the whole ‘singer invading the audience’ thing. Instead of leaping about, she parades slowly and elegantly throughout the venue, her arm raised as though beckoning a party of tourists to follow her.

The songs are epic Eighties flavoured pop songs and are instantly catchy and memorable. I’m certainly seeing this lot again.

I poke my head round the door of the Barfly to see Cate Le Bon. Her brand of very Welsh psychedelic folk is an acquired taste that I thought that I had acquired. I was wrong – she’s certainly interesting, but there is rather a strangled cat element to her voice tonight and in deference to the frantic pleadings of the people I am with, I let her get on with it.

I pitch up at Dingwalls for the last knockings of the execrable Kong and prepare to treat myself to the guilty pleasure of the reformed and re-invigorated Ultrasound.

Age has not only not dimmed them, they sound better than ever. Or else everything else has diminished in their absence. It is so good to hear the combination of great crashing guitars and beautifully sung epic songs. They are still preposterously overblown but absolutely great. I throw my head back and bawl along with ‘Stay Young’, ‘Same Band’ and ‘Floodlit World’. They are so powerful they almost blow you out the back of the venue. Magnificent!

That’s me done for the Crawl this year. I had hoped to come both days, but the bastards who run First Capital Connect have decided that a Bank Holiday Sunday is not a day on which they wish to run trains into London.

I’ve enjoyed myself more on the Camden Crawl this year than for quite some time. Long may it continue!

Anna Calvi at Bush Hall - 26 April 2011

2011-04-27T19:33:00.003+01:00

Not Anna Calvi (photo Dakotassong)

There’s thin and there’s Anna Calvi thin. Her hair slicked back, her twig-like arms sticking down from the sleeves of her red Spanish styled top. She’s a striking figure but she looks artificial, a flamenco Barbie.

Calvi is joined tonight by two band members. Daniel Maiden-Wood is a sleek haired drummer and Mally Harpaz a wonderful and wild percussionist who plays a range of cymbals, drums and a wooden box of tricks that I what not of. (Ok, it’s a harmonium).

Calvi has an arch take on Latin inflected Fifties rock and roll. If you picture Jane Russell heaving beneath a bodice in a cantina down Mexico way, then Anna Calvi is providing the soundtrack.

Despite flirting with this fiery music, Calvi is not an abandoned performer. She is studied and precise, a figurine. The sound this evening is crystal clear and when she thrums her guitar the resultant note could cut glass.

There is very little direct interaction with the audience. This show is all about the sound, the vision, the effect. It is impressive, but necessarily cold – Calvi is not a cuddly presence.

Her voice is an operatic roar that seems too big for her body. During ‘Suzanne and I’ she is shaking with the passion of her delivery, her mouth open wide as if almost to dispel the demon within her.

The aptly named track ‘The Devil’ is another highlight, Calvi’s guitar clutched tightly to her chest as though she fears that it might flee from her.

The encore is a version of the old standard ‘Jezebel’ and it is only at this point that Calvi’s carefully crafted façade starts to slip just a small fraction. It is a swirling, histrionic epic of a song and as she ends with a flourish you can just spot the singer relaxing and smiling in triumph at bringing it off.

It has been a really impressive performance, if not quite a joyous one. The whole Anna Calvi persona is a projection, a finely wrought simulacrum of passion and fury rather than the real thing. It is fascinating and it will be interesting to see what she does next – I suspect that it could be something very different.

The Telescopes and Insect Guide at Zigfrid Von Underbelly - 22 April 2011

2011-04-25T15:09:00.003+01:00

The Telescopes

It’s something that they can’t have planned. But it works out just right.

The stage at Zigfrid von Underbelly’s is backed with red curtains. There is a patterned carpet to absorb the noise. There is a huge mirror on the wall at a slight angle to the audience.

Insect Guide have synchronised their performance with a lap top powered series of films to accompany them whilst they are on stage. Their projection is reflected in the mirror. It creates double the impact. This, together with the carpet and drapes place the band firmly in a David Lynch tableau. We are all in the Red Lodge.

Insect Guide are terrific tonight. Singer Su stands to the left, blamming on a snare drum next to her. Guitarist Stan paces front to back of the stage.

There are choice cuts from their album, notably ‘Wasted’ and ‘Dark Days and Nights’, which batter past in an urgent fuzzed up wall of sound. There is a hoarse and husky ferocity in Su’s voice, much deeper than that of most female vocalists. It works.

I first saw this band at the turn of the year and liked their fizzing poppiness. Tonight they are even better – a truly excellent band.

Headliners The Telescopes have been around for years and have a fairly fluid line up. They are one of those wonderful bands that only really exist in the live arena – their recorded work is rather unremarkable. In contrast, their live show is like an alcohol-fuelled apocalypse.

Singer Stephen Lawrie is so pissed up that at best he walks like a sailor. For a lot of the time he is prostrate face down on the floor. In between songs you can hear him groaning. The rest of the band play around and in spite of him.

The Telescopes’ intergalactic space rock is anchored by a bass and drum motorik, which the three guitarists use as a springing off point for a massed assault on their instruments. Feedback, noise and distortion is the order of the day.

There is relatively little actual ‘playing’ going on. Instead, guitars are hit, dangled and thrust up against speakers for maximum ear bleeding effect.

It is perhaps fortunate that The Telescopes are geared for instrumental mayhem. Lawrie flails about on his knees and at one point bashes the monitors offstage, flopping weakly after them on his face, only to be retrieved by the intervention of a solicitous fan.

The other members of the band are by no means static. For a good proportion of the time one of them is stood behind me, wrestling with his guitar and smashing it against the floor.

This should all be by rights an incoherent mess, but it is clear that this behaviour neither unexpected nor in any way detrimental to the show.

During the course of the final song the band leave the stage one by one, although not without each ensuring that their gear is left feedbacking and looping back upon itself. Lawrie lurches off, possibly to throw up.

It is of course a tremendous performance – simultaneously great to listen to and be a part of, and laugh out loud comic.

Good Friday. Great fun.

Homesick Hustlers, Hella Better Dancer at Bull & Gate - 15 April 2011

2011-04-18T19:17:00.003+01:00

Homesick Hustlers

The pub is busy tonight. Not, it turns out, with folk who are here for bands that are playing in this venue, but who are off to the Forum next door for DJ Shadow. I’m sure that they will have a good time, but frankly they are missing the boat – the real excitement in Kentish Town tonight is right here.

First up and playing their first ever gig (at least under this name) are A Sinking Ship. For fans of largely instrumental quiet, quiet, LOUD THRASHING guitar post-rock, these guys are pretty good. I have difficulty giving them my full attention because unfortunately they have their mates along to support them and they do this by shouting to each other loudly through all the quiet, quiet bits.

Next on we have The Complete Short Stories. This six piece band are a vehicle for singer Kerry Adamson who does indeed have a terrific voice.

While I would be lying if I said that I didn’t find them perfectly watchable and entertaining, I do find it rather hard to fathom their intended audience. It’s very mainstream sort of Stage Schooly stuff which is well performed but not for one minute likely to really quicken the pulse.

Hella Better Dancer are much more interesting. They may be very stiff and awkward, chatter nervously between songs and occasionally seem to be on the verge of breaking down completely, but they do have the ‘stuff’.

There is definitely something happening here. Singer Tilly sings/speaks through a succession of tunes (and it good to hear a regional accent) and has that rare knack of being sympathetic and likeable without doing the ‘poor little me’ routine of certain other similarly apparently gauche acts. For some reason I keep thinking of The Cure circa ‘Three Imaginary Boys’. A good thing.

The key point here is that the band is very focussed and sure of what they are doing, and just because they are a little rigid does not detract from this. I like them a lot and will keep tabs on their progress.

I have seen the Homesick Hustlers before and since then they have moved on – they are no longer just a highly promising band of young musicians who are feeling their way, but now a fully fledged act that doesn’t need any allowances to be made for them. They are far better than I suspect they are aware.

Not that they aren’t cocky.

Whip thin singer Ben Walker sports a Bieber-esque fringe and the kind of Napoleonic dress coat that has been associated in the past with such rock luminaries as Jimi Hendrix and Adam Ant. And, er… Kasabian. So, this is a statement of intent.

The ‘Hustlers are so youthful that if you stacked them on top of each other they still wouldn’t be old enough to buy a drink. And yet they are the best and possibly only proponents of bouncy castle fizzy pop Mississipi swamp blues around today. When the cast of Glee get around to covering the Birthday Party, they’ll find that a better bunch has got there before them.

And that’s the wonderful thing about this bunch – they growl like tiger cubs who haven’t yet opened their eyes but who know that they will be rulers of the jungle. Particularly if you substitute the words ‘tiger cubs’ with ‘Tom Waits’. Possibly.

What I love about this lot is that they have one foot in the past and two feet in the future. It’s not natural, it shouldn’t work, but it does. Gloriously.

The rapport between Ben and Ewa is the real key here – he’s rasping and gabbling, twirling and whirling, she’s laughing like a drain at his antics and matching him with a throaty vocal of her own. Their enjoyment is infectious.

The Homesick Hustlers have made a very decent album available for free download on their Facebook page and its completion marks the end of their beginning. Now they need to decide on what to do next.

I think that they could do very well indeed.

The Thermals and The Coathangers at XOYO- 1 April 2011

2011-04-04T19:22:00.005+01:00

The Coathangers pic by Jason Reed

Despite it being early, I find myself haring down the stairs of XOYO to discover that The Coathangers have already started. A rare example of an act hitting the stage before they are actually due to do so.

This band are the principal reason that I’m here and I’m narked at missing even a millisecond. Howwever, there is still plenty left to enjoy.

And if you don’t enjoy The Coathangers, then a vital element of popular music has passed you by.

They are a textbook example of the kind of act that polarises audiences. They are rock and roll reduced to its most basic form of shrieking and banging. The “they don’t know how to play their instruments” brigade had better look away now, because these gals are all about fun and anarchy and attitood (definitely the right spelling for this).

Like with many all girl groups, instruments and vocal chores are shared with abandon. Songs are so loosely constructed that sometimes it is hard to tell if they have started or finished. This is not at all amateurish, it’s simply a celebration of the joy of making music and being on stage.

A snapshot: One Coathanger smashes at a keyboard and ooOOoos a Theremin, all the time screaming through a mane of hair. She leans across the ass of guitarist Coathanger, whose face is a screwed up snarl of spitting vocal, her guitar being thrashed at as if it is an attacking animal that is hanging from her neck. Diminutive bassist Coathanger bounces like a ball, sometimes singing, sometimes flinging herself at the guitarist with kicks and fists. Drummer Coathanger is the most striking of the lot. Tall, an asymmetric haircut and two full sleeves of tattoos, she sings and screams hoarsely and is the most dominant of all. Literally so when she is on guitar duties later on, towering over the bassist and yelling “I’m bigger than you, I’m bigger than you.”

This set is a sheer joy. It’s like a five year old in a sandpit bashing a tin bucket with a spade – primal fun of the type that virtually all other bands shy away from.

Your Coathangers tonight have been Julia, Stephanie, Candice and Meredith and this is the best performance of the year so far.

The headliners are Portland band The Thermals, about whom I sadly know very little. This ignorance puts me very much in the minority, because as soon as this three piece get started the venue erupts into one giant moshpit.

To me they sound like America’s answer to Buzzcocks, playing as they do a stripped down basic pop punk that is much heavier on melody than other more hardcore-leaning bands.

I find them ever so slightly anaemic and overly hectoring, but there is no doubt that they are going down a perfect storm.

One of my mates compares them to Bruce Springsteen. He means to be disparaging, but I don’t think that that is true in The Thermals case. This may be rabble rousing, but there is also an undeniable sense of community and shared excitement.

Judging by the excitement in the crowd, this is pretty much greatest hits all the way and I feel excluded – which is a pity and of course entirely my own fault.

I enjoy The Thermals, but can only do so up to a certain point. In my mind they remain a pint that can never become a quart.

However, this is minor carping. It’s been a great evening, especially for the young, loud and snotty punk of The Coathangers. They rool. And that’s also the correct spelling.

The Kills and S.C.U.M. at Heaven - 31 March 2011

2011-04-03T12:00:00.002+01:00

Kills pic by Cathrinesylvester

Some bands can really exasperate you. I‘m in Heaven tonight and am delighted to see that the support band are S.C.U.M. I’ve followed this mob for the past few years, but for every kudo I can give them for being a genuinely excellent live band, they lose one for being wilful, deliberately obscure and mysterious. S.C.U.M. have remained true to their early ideals in that they have barely released any material and rarely sully themselves with the business of playing live. So tonight they are in the relatively unfamiliar position of playing to someone else’s audience, in a more or less conventional venue. This means that we don’t get the full on theatrics such as mock crucifixions or bee keeping veils but instead an epic sweeping flourish of a performance that is just right for this crowd. They are, as ever, magnificently kitted out. Not since Spandau Ballet (who are partially being channelled here) has a band paid so much attention to the cloth that they are cut from. Singer Thomas Cohen is resplendent in a loose white suit, tightly fitting waistcoat and black boater. He is as thin and sharp as a whip, draping himself louchely around the stage as though he were the Great Gatsby. This New Romantic glamour is reflected in their music, a heady 80’s amalgam of Bunnymen grandeur, Mary Chain fuzz and Duran Duran fashion pop. All these influences are here, Moulinexed into a dreamy, blurry wash of sound. S.C.U.M. are seriously great tonight. We are lucky this evening to find the headliners at such a small venue. The Kills have already booked the Roundhouse to promote their new album ‘Blood Pressures’ and at the time of writing it is by no means clear whether one night there will be sufficient. Small venue, new album, renewed vigour. Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince are absolutely terrific tonight – as hard as nails, as sharp as a razor and clearly loving every moment of it. The Kills play for well over an hour and barely put a foot wrong. They patrol the stage like a pair of all conquering warriors. Nothing is left to chance, not a jolt of energy is wasted. It is interesting how their songs have become lighter and faster since their first album. As a rule of thumb, the older tracks like ‘Kissy Kissy’ are slower and thuddingly powerful whereas the newer material is wirier and leaner. Both sound great, but the distinction can be drawn. Strangely, the only really false note of the evening is the dreadful leaden skank of new track ‘Satellite’ which sounds like something that Mosshart brought back with her from her stint in Jack White’s rather underwhelming and flat Dead weather. Fortunately, this is a passing aberration. Everything else tonight is exemplary and shows the band to be at the top of their game. They finish with a triumphant ‘Fried My Little Brains’. Not half they haven't.

Oh! Gunquit and The World Service at The Wheelbarrow - 26 March 2011

2011-03-28T20:17:00.002+01:00

Oh! Gunquit (pic by David Michael Defries)

It’s a night of surprises. Not all of them pleasant.

I’m trying to find a pub called The Wheelbarrow that is billed as being right by Mornington Crescent tube station. It isn’t.

It’s the pub formerly known as Tommy Flynn’s which is midway up Camden High Street. The venue has had a redesign, which is presumably what inspired the name change.

The new layout is an absolute fucking disaster.

The area where the bands perform is now perfectly blocking both access to the toilets and a large chill out /foosball area. It is not so much a stage as a space in the middle of a busy corridor.

In the early part of the evening this just about works. Until a band comes on.

The first band on are The World Service, who are resolutely mainstream, but solidly good and very watchable.

The singer has a strong voice and a decent stage presence. They won’t rock your world, but they deliver a good time. I’d give you more information, but they appear to be unGoogleable.

I’m ostensibly here to see Oh! Gunquit, whom I had previously caught at Offset last year.

And tonight the band are terrific, a dynamic blending of fifties/sixties rock(abilly) done with a modern twist. There’s no slavish devotion to ‘authenticity’ just a saxophone driven goodtime canter.

They are great. ‘Cindy’s Got a Tiger’ is great. ‘Flip The Top’ is great. The hula hooping is probably great, if I could see it.

What is not great is being squeezed into a gap less than ten feet wide, being buffeted back and forth by people either going to or coming back from the loo or just pushing past to play foosball or looking for their mates or going to the toilet again or seeing what the band looks like or coming back for a drink or having a dance or avoiding the scary pissed looking guy or seeing what’s happening or having a good chat or getting wedged or taking photos or going to the toilet yet a bloody gain or for Chrissakes make it stop!!!!

For part of the time I’m crushed against a bench. I can’t move. I’m trampled nonetheless and as I write this I have a lovely black bruise up my entire left leg.

The bands tonight are good to excellent. I urge you to see them. I also suggest that unless an act plays there that you really can’t see anywhere else, that you avoid The Wheelbarrow like the plague. It’s a total joke of a venue. You can do better.

The Primitives, Tender Trap, Evans The Death at The Garage - 23 March 2011

2011-03-26T14:36:00.002Z

Tender Trap

Tonight I want a gig. Any gig.

In the end, due to timings I find that I have snubbed two free events (Japanese Voyeurs at Hoxton Bar & Grill, oOoOO at Old Blue Last) and am instead here at the Garage to see The Primitives. Again.

It’s a happy choice. I’ve not been in this venue since its refurbishment more than a year ago.

It’s deceptively similar. The cement floor has been replaced by wood and the lighting rig is much more megatronic-die-you-bastards than was previously the case.

First on stage are Evans The Death, whom I have seen before, and who still rather struggle to make an impression.

The band are personable, relaxed, and unfortunately, just not that exciting. Singer Katherine Whitaker struggles gamely with a tickly cough, but this is not an excuse. I like everything about them except the music they make. Pity.

The next band on are Tender Trap and they are so good that I am soon spitting feathers at perceived injustice on their behalf. (They are also so good that I forget to take a photo of them).

There is a market for airy, catchy, faux-Beach Boys sunny Californian sounding girly pop and bands such as Vivian Girls, Summer Camp, Best Coast etc have it all sown up in terms of UK adulation.

Tender Trap inhabit exactly the same territory and metaphorically cock their leg over each of their rivals. And yet, like Rodney Dangerfield, they get no respect.

Their set tonight is a total joy, the three girls in the band singing in harmony, the two boys keeping well out of the way and lurking at the edges of the stage. Genuinely, I can’t praise this band enough – you’ve heard this before, but you haven’t heard it better.

The Primitives are gradually turning themselves from a band from the past on the nostalgia circuit to an outfit with new material who have picked up right where they left off.

New tracks “Rattle My Cage” and “Never Kill A Secret” mix seamlessly with their earlier songs and it all sounds sweet.

Elfin singer Tracy Tracy is bedecked in bling, sequinned from head to torso, her right ear hung with a gold heart almost as big as the rest of her head.

The Primitives are still smart, still cool, and still relevant. Good on them.

The Volitains, Cold In Berlin, The Unkindness of Ravens at The Workshop - 12 March 2011

2011-03-14T20:04:00.002Z

The Volitains

Another Saturday, another tiny venue in Shoreditch. It is so cramped down here that the audience has to part each time staff from upstairs have to fetch a case of beer or a bag of ice from the storeroom. This lends a certain illicit thrill to the evening. We feel like we are in the way, like we shouldn’t be here.

First band on are Mutant Vinyl, who hail from Bournemouth and are young and urgent and have a fine line in the kind of punky white boy reggae that the Clash pioneered. This is a connection made explicit over the course of their set, which includes a cover of ‘Guns of Brixton’.

The focal point and head honcho of the band is Edwin Pope, who plays both guitar and saxophone and also clutches his microphone with both hands (when he can get them free). He has his hoody pulled up and declaims and emotes and it’s all very good.

Mutant Vinyl have a lot of supporters here and you can see what has got them excited. This band has a real popular appeal. Keep an eye out.

The Unkindness of Ravens are markedly different. There are two of them, guitarist Ben Raine and the fascinatingly unusual singer Nina Wagner. The pair produces a dark and twisted blues pop to the backing of a thunderous drum machine.

You can’t tear your eyes off Wagner. She perpetually wriggles and writhes, her arms often at stiff right angles. It’s not a dance style that I have seen before but it certainly gets your attention. Imagine a robot dancing the credits to ‘Tales of the Unexpected’ and you are kind of there. Her voice is low and husky and completely appropriate.

The Unkindness of Ravens put on quite a show and I’m glad to add them to my list of bands that I’ll be happy to catch again.

Cold In Berlin need no introduction around these parts and tonight’s show does not disappoint.

Singer Maya apologies for having a bit of a cold, but you’d never have thought that she was below par as she screams, roars and rages in front of the stage. Guitarists wander among us, heads bowed and hooded. The band are, as ever, apocalyptically sublime.

This leaves headliners The Volitains with a bit of an uphill task. The make up of the band (girl singer, two guitars, drummer) exactly mirrors the act that precedes them and this makes it very difficult not to draw comparisons.

Singer Candice Ayrey certainly gives her all, standing alone in front of her pals, often bent double with the ferocity of her delivery.

In these circumstances I find it impossible to judge them on their own merits. So on this occasion, I won’t. But I recommend that you go and make your own mind up.

Another Saturday. Another venue. Another great night out.

Japanese Earthquake Appeal

2011-03-13T20:33:00.004Z

The last time I visited Japan was in October 2008. As always, I was made welcome and had a wonderful time. One of the gigs I went to was in Sendai, the town that has borne the brunt of the terrible earthquake and tsunami that has struck the country in the past few days.

The gig was terrific, both in terms of the music and the great hospitality that I received afterwards. All I can do is hope that everyone I met and their loved ones are ok and doing the best they can in these terrible circumstances.

There are various charities that are doing what they can to help those affected.

You may wish to help, and if so, these are some links to organisations that would welcome your assistance.

The Red Cross

Save The Children

P J Harvey at Troxy - 27 February 2011

2011-02-28T14:03:00.001Z

P J Harvey

It’s a cold and damp February night in the East End of London. However, the venue is packed and hot and buzzing with anticipation. Performances by P J Harvey are as rare as a solar eclipse and tend to be just as dark and mysterious.

When the pitch black stage is suddenly bathed in light there is a collective intake of breath at the bizarre creature in front of us.

Polly Harvey is a tiny shape swathed in a dress that might best be described as a contemporary take on Victorian widow’s weeds. Her head is crowned with a magnificent tower of black plumes. She’s dressed for the Ascot Ladies’ Day of Death.

Her band, Mick Harvey, Jean-Marc Butty and the ever loyal John Parish are nattily turned out as 19th century card sharps. It’s a good start before they even start playing.

The first song is the title track from the new ‘Let England Shake’ album, which is played pretty much in its entirety this evening. Harvey coos in her newly powerful falsetto, twisting from foot to foot and thrumming a tightly clasped auto-harp.

As the song stops, all the lights are extinguished and the stage goes dark until the next song begins. This is repeated throughout and means that each tune is performed in isolation from that which precedes it and the set unfolds in a series of tableaux.

The band next assay ‘The Words That Maketh Murder’ and there is a gradual, urgent build up of tension until the final lines that quote ‘Summertime Blues’ “I’m gonna take my problem to the United Nations”. This reclaims the lyric from a petulant teenager’s whine to something much more deadly earnest.

The album, and this set, is an emotional rather than a political response to English and Australian involvement in foreign wars, both historical and current. The weight of this theme makes for a slightly heavy evening. It’s all brilliantly done, and much of the music is genuinely jaunty, but you do feel slightly guilty for hollering and whooping after each number.

Harvey lays down her harp and grabs a guitar and the set progresses to encompass songs from her back catalogue. There is a magnificently sinister reading of ‘Down by the Water’. It is clear that although there is serious business at hand, that Polly is enjoying herself.

Returning to the new album there is a stirring rendition of ‘The Glorious Land’ replete with a trumpet sample playing ‘taps’. ‘All and Everyone’ is equally strong, from its opening line of “death was everywhere” onwards. Impressive yes, jolly no.

The abiding genius of Polly Harvey is that she can make songs that are as emotionally searing as this into crowd pleasing anthems. Despite the funeral home demeanour, this is definitely an upbeat evening.

Even so, it is with some relief that when the band come back for an encore it is with ‘Meet Ze Monsta’. At this stage, Harvey even unwinds enough to finally speak to the crowd, generously thanking her fellow musicians.

P J Harvey don’t play often, and when they do, it is an event. Tonight’s gig is all about the commemoration of those that have gone before. Polly Harvey is something of a national treasure herself.

Yuck, Cults and Guards at Bush Hall - 18 February 2011

2011-02-21T19:16:00.001Z

Guards

The first thing that you notice is the hair. Really.

Guards and their sister band Cults could front for L’Oreal and provide the music for the adverts while they are at it. We’re talking tresses way below the shoulder and over the chest. This is Rapunzel rock.

Guards are the vehicle for Richie Follin, a guy who knows the value of a wrung out guitar solo and whose voice ranges from the normal register to a wild keening falsetto. This last does not seem natural for him, as it involves a lot of painful-looking scrunching up of the face. It sounds good though.

For reasons known only to the band, Guards’ equipment is adorned by a variety of stuffed crows. These birds are never reverenced in an explicit British Sea Power kind of way. It’s just that Richie and the guys thought that they look cool.

The music itself is an eerie amalgam of Dinosaur Jr rock and 50’s pop. Noisy as hell, but somehow pure at the same time. I like what I hear.

The next act Cults are a kind of remixed version of the previous band. They have some of the same personnel in common, mostly playing different instruments. The key difference is singer Madeline Follin (relation), whose voice fades in and out of the mix and who is so uncomfortable that she spends almost the entire set with her hand clenched tight on the hem of her white mini dress.

For Cults, the sound of the 50’s and 60’s girl groups is even more pronounced, and, despite the vocals being fashionably distorted and indistinct, the mental image that the band conjures is of teen couples at the Prom, clinging to each other as they sway slowly together beneath a glitter ball.

I like them a lot, possibly because they sound so familiar even when I’ve never seen them before. The familiarity may stem in part because their great track ‘Come Outside’ is being used extensively by Sky as part of their Cricket World Cup coverage.

Headliners Yuck are going places. They’ve been picked for the BBC’s Sound of 2011 list and their album has been streaming on the Guardian’s website all through the week. Short of appearing on a TV show spawned from the demonic loins of Simon Cowell, these guys have had all the media breaks that a band could want.

And they have got to this position because of the simple, old fashioned fact that they are bloody good.

Sure, this music will be familiar to aficionados of the likes of Sonic Youth, Pavement and Teenage Fanclub, but it doesn’t matter. The influences may be old, but the songs are great, as tonight, Yuck absolutely OWN Bush Hall.

Their new self-titled album gets a good work out and it’s all wonderful, with ‘Suicide Policeman’, ‘Georgia’ and the epic set closer ‘Rubber’ each bang on the money.

Yuck have got to the stage where they have now honed their material to such perfection that they should only be judged on their own merits rather than damned because of similarities to the past. I suspect that they are going to go down a storm on the summer festival circuit.

Excellent support from Guards and Cults too. A top night out and all the bands are worth it.

(Did you really think that I was going to mention L’Oreal at the top of the page and NOT do the painfully laboured and obvious pay off?)

Sleigh Bells, Teeth!!! and MEN at Heaven - 14 February 2011

2011-02-15T19:16:00.000Z

Sleigh Bells pic by Joe McCabe

It’s Valentine’s Day, so naturally I’m spending time with my loved ones. In this case, three electro/noise bands playing under the arches at Charing Cross.

This venue is more famous in its other guise as a gay club. So it is somewhat fitting that the first act of the night is MEN.

This three piece play militant electro disco and showcase the wiry feisty JD Samson, who is probably better known for her role in the much missed Le Tigre, a band who were pretty well untouchable in this genre.

The spectre of Samson’s previous band hangs heavy this evening and it makes me wonder if it might have been a smarter move to strike out for completely different pastures.

Songs such as ‘Off Our Backs’ and ‘Credit Card Babies’ are good booty-shaking stuff but I find myself distracted by what is not here rather than what is. I miss Kathleen Hanna’s stridency – which is not fair on MEN, who deserve to succeed on their own terms and are an energetic and welcome start to the evening.

The last time I saw Teeth!!!, singer Veronica So was being paraded at shoulder height around a tent at the Offset Festival.

Tonight, in the dark confines of this venue, with its incessant strobe lighting and industrial décor, the vibe is more like the vampire night club scenes in the first Blade movie. It suits Teeth!!! down to the ground.

Teeth!!! make a cacophonous racket, with So screaming over a drummer and a succession of programmed beats that sound as if they have been sampled from some vast machine that is malfunctioning and chewing itself to bits.

So jumps up and down and throws herself about and it’s all good rowdy fun. However, there is a sense of conflict within the band as they are clearly torn between going full out on the noise front and aspiring to something more melodic and (dare I say it) mainstream.

This is best exemplified by the bands’ last song, which they describe as a ‘remix’ and which is a lengthy, rather dreary house number that is out of keeping with their fiercer ( and to my ears at least - better) stuff.

Sleigh Bells headline tonight and bring the noise big style, starting with the apocalyptic double-punch of ‘Infinity Guitars’ and ‘A/B Machines’.

It’s a ridiculously reductive concept – Derek Miller slashes at a guitar that has been amped up way past eleven, whilst Alexis Kraus jumps up and down and works the crowd into a frenzy. The songs are propelled by pre-recorded beats that detonate like grenades.

It’s an impressive performance, but necessarily limited in scope. However, to criticise Sleigh Bells for being repetitive is like being surprised that a goldfish only swims one way around its bowl – it doesn’t have any choice in the matter.

The only real change of tempo in the set comes with the track ‘Rill Rill’, where the punishing percussion is turned off to allow Krauss to cajole the crowd to accompany her. This is but a brief respite before ‘Tell ‘em’ thunders out like a twenty one gun salute.

This is a short set that finishes with ‘Crown on the Ground’ and sees Krauss flinging herself off the stage into the throng below. The silence after they stop is almost louder than what has gone before.

It’s been an enjoyable evening, even if I have slight reservations about each of the bands. Some people are spending Valentine’s Day with a box of chocolates and a single red rose – I prefer a heaving throng and a pair of ringing ears.

Dirty Revolution and Colour Me Wednesday at Bull & Gate - 21 January 2011

2011-01-24T20:35:00.002Z

Colour Me Wednesday by Massimiliano Petrossi

Ska-punk is the ginger step child of UK music. It is often ignored, often derided by the mainstream. And this despite there being a vibrant scene of young bands playing to happy crowds that are bigger than you might imagine.

I’m at the Bull and Gate/Club Fandango to see three like-minded bands.

When I arrive, the good news is that I haven’t missed anything, the bad that one of the acts has had to pull out.

This leaves Colour Me Wednesday to kick off. They are very young, awkward and self conscious, but actually very good.

The main singer/rapper is Jennifer Doveton, who has great delivery and a strong voice and I love the way that she spits her lyrics at speed.

The songs are enjoyable and well put together and I wait for the band to really let rip. But tonight, they never quite do. They have one song called, rather commendably, “Purge Your Inner Tory”, but they seem unwilling to do anything as violent as that.

It’s a textbook example of a band starting out and not yet being completely comfortable on stage. They look at the floor a lot, they look at each other and they seem to exclusively seek reassurance from a small posse of family and friends down the front.

This is slightly frustrating, but nothing that getting more shows under their belt will not fix. In six months time, when they’ve loosened up and got the confidence that their songs justify, Colour Me Wednesday are going to be a fine act.

I hope to catch them again at that point.

Actually, the support would do well to look to headliners Dirty Revolution for inspiration.

This lot have stage presence to burn and spend their set in such perpetual motion that my rubbish amateur photography can’t capture them at all. I just get a succession of colourful blurs – which actual describes them pretty well.

They are led by the hyper-confident Reb who dances sings and occasionally produces a bright red melodica to add to the mix.

Dirty Revolution will not win awards for originality, but they know how to play a room and ensure that everyone is having a good time. And the ability to do that is pretty much priceless.

A decent night’s entertainment, all told.

Insect Guide and Alphastate at The Enterprise, 8 January 2011

2011-01-11T19:45:00.000Z

Insect Guide

It’s cold outside, but this tiny room atop The Enterprise is like a sauna. The DJ downstairs is so loud that we’ll have to make a fair bit of noise to drown him out. Fortunately, help is at hand.

First on stage, and my first band of the New Year are Alphastate, a one vocalist, two guitar trio who are not prepared to let these cramped surroundings thwart their ambitious approach.

The band inhabits the vast swirling soundscapes that bands such as Cocteau Twins pioneered. The kind of music that had writers of the time reaching for descriptive clichés such as ‘sonic cathedrals’. Alphastate aren’t quite at that level just yet, but they do produce a very tidy sonic bungalow.

In the first half of their set, singer Ani is rather swamped by the FX pedals of her colleagues. Indeed, the first completely audible words that we hear are a perfectly sung “…if you can sort that [guitar] out we can play the next song…”

As things progress, Ani comes more into her own. She’s actually got a strong voice and it’s all very enjoyable. Songs such as ‘A Prayer For Something Better’ and ‘Units’ show promise and I think that all they really lack at the moment is that one single, absolutely killer tune that will make them stand out.

Alphastate are certainly in the right (sonic) ballpark though.

Headliners Insect Guide came to my attention last year with their rather good new album. I’m glad to catch up with them in the flesh, and in such intimate surroundings too.

There are three of them, drummer Chris, guitarist Stan, and singer Su, who hangs onto her microphone stand for dear life and bashes a large drum as the need arises.

Insect Guide create a wonderfully full guitar-heavy wall of noise which acts as the background to a set of rattling pure pop songs. Indeed, the whole mood is much lighter and upbeat than the album had led me to imagine. I really enjoy them.

Tracks like ‘Wasted’ ‘Down From Here’ and album title track ‘Dark Days & Nights’ are mighty things indeed. It’s already like a furnace in here and I’m lurching around way too much. But Insect Guide are far too hot for me to be cool.

Such is the quality of the band’s own material that when they unexpectedly pull out an admittedly great fuzzed-up version of Lady Gaga’s ‘Paparazzi’, it feels like an unnecessary move.
So that’s 2011 up and very satisfactorily running. It’s going to be a good year.

Album Review: Cold In Berlin - Give Me Walls

2011-01-07T20:39:00.001Z

So we’re just into the New Year and you’ve still got some iTunes vouchers that you got for Christmas. What to do?

HMV and other high street record retailers are gradually going the way of the dodo and you feel like one last nostalgic mooch round the shelves before the doors shut for good. What to do?

You feel that your daily commute to work will be enhanced by an iPod earful of full-on top quality rampaging rock music. What to do?

The answers, ladies and gentlemen lies in the purchase of Cold in Berlin’s debut album “Give Me Walls”.

I have loved this band for ages and am delighted that they have survived long enough to set down this batch of songs for posterity. Everything you need to know about the band is present here, and the only thing that you are missing is the live experience of having singer Maya dancing on your furniture and tangling you up in yards of microphone cable.

Cold In Berlin do not really deal in subtlety, so there are no lulls on this record. It’s purely a manic and exhilarating breathless gallop for 30 odd minutes. If this was the soundtrack to your morning run, you’d beat your personal best time and then drop down dead.

It starts with ‘God I Love You’ which sees Maya singing of obsession, half afraid, half excited. “Please don’t leave me by myself…” she pleads, as the guitars smash around her.

Old favourites ‘Inertia’ and ‘Destruction’ follow. These are songs that rely on the mounting hysteria within the singer before they explode in fireworks all around you. It’s the sheer urgency of Cold in Berlin that makes them so intoxicating.

‘What Went Wrong’ is a previous single and it is still one of the highlights of their live set. As is the awesome ‘Total Fear’, with its final screams of “There’s no hope left!” which just get me every time.

And so it goes, culminating in ‘Powerful Woman’, which is as apt a statement of intent as it is possible to imagine.

This album has already upset the delicate sensibilities of the BBC with its uncompromising attitude and language. Good.

‘Give Me Walls’ is a perfectly honed shard of velocity and venom. It makes you feel alive.

Call Of The Wyld Review Of 2010

2010-12-27T15:31:00.001Z

(Gratuitous but obviously necessary picture of Oral Oral bassist's bum from this year's Offset Festival. She didn't turn to face the crowd at any point.)

It is traditional at this time of year to mull over the past twelve months and revisit high times, low lights and possibly put together a blooper reel. Or something.

The year started properly with an evening of wild Japanese mayhem at the Bull and Gate as Molice and Moja rocked like demons to a crowd of ooh, several.

In February I did my biggest gig of the year, when Rammstein bought their brand of naughty but nice, cruel but surprisingly camp metal to Wembley arena. I’m a sucker for a good show, and the Germans always deliver. It’s a shame that smaller venues such as the Enterprise and the Lexington are not conducive to the use of flamethrowers.

February also saw an extraordinary evening at Cargo in the company of Merrill Garbus, aka tUnE-yArDs. A real talent, raw and wild as hell.

In the Spring I saw The Primitives at the Scala, the first in a conceptual series of gigs from 80’s twee pop exponents who have reformed in the wake of significant deaths. The second was the Darling Buds who played at the 100 Club.

By complete co-incidence it was just twenty four hours later that the 100 Club was revealed to be in danger of closure and the great and the good made appropriate noises about the need to keep it open. I’m somewhat ambivalent – the nature of music in London (and other cities) is that music may move from place to place, but it keeps going. This year has seen the closure of places such as The Luminaire but I’ve also been to new places like CAMP Basement. As I’ve ruminated here before, there is a real feeling that the centre of music in London is shifting from North to East.

To my mind the 100 Club is only worth saving if it is a thriving venue for new and current acts. If they just want to be a museum dedicated to the past then they might as well open a Hard Rock Café on the premises. To be honest, I’m much more disheartened that the Café De Paris has stopped showcasing young bands in favour of more lucrative, but aesthetically pointless tribute acts.

There was a rather underwhelming Camden Crawl this year, but May also saw one of the gigs of 2010 – the exuberant Canadian double header at The Lexington, when first Rich Aucoin took audience participation to unprecedented levels by acting as cheerleader while we did all the work, and then The Pack AD blew our socks clean off and somewhere way down the road.

The Lexington is Call Of The Wyld’s venue of the year. I don’t think that I’ve ever had a bad evening there and have seen some top bands. The range of beers downstairs is almost unparalleled in a music venue and the place is run with real love by some great people.

May will also live in the memory as the month when I saw Japanese pop idols Hangry + Angry at the Underworld. The only time I’ve seen a gig end with a question and answer session with the audience.

June was the time when dinosaurs walked the earth. Joan Jett was terrific at the 100 Club and Patti Smith surprisingly good humoured and relaxed in Hyde Park.

In July I spent a blisteringly hot day at the Shoreditch 1234 festival and caught a delightful set from Von Haze. I admired tent divers tombstoning into the crowd during a Rolo Tomassi performance and stood in the dark for an hour as These New Puritans vainly tried to plug an oboe into an electric socket. Or some other such technical difficulty.

August saw what I suspect I’m going to call my gig of the year – the first time I saw Warpaint; in this instance at CAMP Basement. That I had gone into the gig suspecting that it would all be a bit ‘meh’ made it all the better when we got a bogglingly marvellous and enjoyable show that completely confounded all expectations.

The way in which the Warpaint album is being marketed as an accompaniment to dinner parties / recreational cannabis use reminds me to give the Call of the Wyld Award for Ubiquity at Gigs to The xx. This year I couldn’t move at a gig without knocking into members of the band that won the Mercury Prize.

In September I spent a brilliant weekend at the Offset Festival. This event goes from strength to strength and I really didn’t have a duff experience among nearly fifty bands that I saw over the two days. If they could resolve the jinx of the Sunday night headliners, it would be utter heaven.

This was also the month that I finally saw Yuck for the first time. I really like them and am glad to see that they are getting some love in other quarters and are being tipped as ones to watch in 2011. It will be interesting to see how they do – there are two very distinct strands to their music and while I can see a mass market for their gentle, acousticy numbers, I wonder if a wider audience will appreciate their guitar-scree Sonic Youthy side.

I saw a compelling, but bizarre performance from Soap & Skin at the Union Chapel. I don’t mind tortured artists, but Anja Plaschg did genuinely appear to be in some distress for most of this gig.

Disappointment of the year was probably Zola Jesus at CAMP Basement. I can just about put up with her on record, although I find the fulsome praise that she attracts somewhat baffling. Her live show was dreary in the extreme, a one trick pony honking out a succession of tuneless dirges. The xx seemed to like it, though.

Another BBC tip for 2011 is Esben & The Witch who seem to have been regarded as Next Big Things for a couple of years, and unless I am wrong, are or were managed by one of the guys who contributes to the BBC’s music content. Coincidence? For legal reasons, let’s say “Yes”. I saw E & TW twice, once at Offset when they were terrific and once at Electrowerkz, when their limitations became starkly clear. I suspect that I’ll only be able to fully judge when the album comes out early next year.

And it was great to see The Blood Arm again for the first time in a couple of years. If you could bottle the Blood Arm experience, you’d make millions.

On the recorded music front, there were fine albums from the likes of O Children, The Pack AD, Cold In Berlin (who will get a full review on here as soon as I can find time to squeeze them in), The Indelicates, Teddybears, The Fall and Warpaint.

I’m so damned new fangled / confused that my album of the year is not an album at all but rather a pair of files that can be downloaded for free from the website of Computer Magic. These are a pair of ‘EPs’ called Hiding From Our Time/Hiding From More Of Our Time and to say that they are a complete knockout does them a serious disservice.

They are the work of a solo artist called Danz (or Danielle) and she has produced these demos over the past year. The songs are delicate, achingly poignant affairs which are also cracking tunes. The quality here is staggering. Watch her go in 2011…

Individual tracks of the year are very hard to assess, as they differ depending on mood. There’s a good selection on the music player at the top of the page at the moment. I am inordinately fond of Pepper Rabbit’s “Older Brother” though.

That’s it for now – back in the New Year. I’ve got a few things lined up…

Frankie Rose and The Outs, Hawnay Troof at The Luminaire - December 14 2010

2010-12-15T20:08:00.000Z

Frankie Rose and The Outs by Tim Griffin

The Luminaire shuts at the end of the year, so this is my last chance to savour the place. I’ve not been uncritical of the venue in the past, as I’ve always associated it with a frustratingly lax approach to band timings. However, I’m still sad to see it go. As a breathless and sweating Hawnay Troof exclaims later in the evening “Venue shuts, venue opens, it’s the circle of life!”

We start proceedings with Amelia Rivas and Christian Pinchbeck, who perform as Elephant. Amelia dabs at a keyboard, while Christian wrestles and frets away at a guitar. Theirs is a rather plaintive and melancholy sound, as desolate as an empty ballroom, but also somehow ineffably lost and sad.

Not a party band then.

We follow with the latest live incarnation of Alessio Natalizia, who works under the name of Banjo or Freakout. Tonight he is joined by two other musicians to form a fuzzy low-fi three piece unit who experiment with lengthy drum and guitar work outs. These jamming sessions are leavened by Natalizia’s quiet voice as he imposes structure and song craft over the din. I think that it works very well.

I’m particularly intrigued by the drummer, who watches his band leader like a wide-eyed hawk, apparently terrified of landing a beat out of place.

Vice Cooler aka Hawnay Troof is a man of the people. In fact tonight he is a man among the people, an army of one with a mission to get the party started and to get London to make some noise!!!

His is an exhausting non-stop power ball of a performance, leaping on and off the stage, executing full tilt forward rolls and getting the audience down on their knees. He does a fantastic job, as initially the crowd is too self conscious to do anything but look nervously at each other. By the end everyone is yelling and whooping on command and well warmed up for the main act.

I’m a big fan of Hawnay Troof and am delighted to see him in such surroundings. Last time our paths crossed, he was stuck on a big stage and unable to properly interact. But boy, does he work hard. If he keeps this up he’s going to end up very fit or very dead.

I’m also glad to see him, because it gives me an excuse to post this marvellously stupid video footage of him being humped by a bulldog while performing earlier this year.

Hawnay is wearing the same costume tonight. Sadly, the dog could not make it.

Frankie Rose has spent time drumming in bands such as Vivian Girls, Crystal Stilts and Dum Dum Girls and it is not altogether surprising that she and her current band The Outs tread in similar territory.

It’s the final night of the tour and I can’t help but feel that the band are a bit frazzled, tired and just glad to bash out one last show so that they can get back home.

Not that Frankie and the rest of the gang aren’t having fun. They play a simple, stripped down take on classic Sixties girl groups, without as much of the amplified reverb employed by Frankie’s previous bands.

Frankie Rose herself is very nervous and anxious to please. She tells of how she was originally scared to come to the UK because she thought that we were fierce and unfriendly. However, on this tour she has been introduced to strange concepts such as the savoury pie and football and as a consequence feels a lot happier. I wonder if her unease is because in her own band she plays guitar and leads proceedings, whereas in the past she has been by necessity, stuck in the background.

Included in the set is a version of the Vivian Girls' “Where Do You Run To” and it rather unfortunately sounds better than the bands’ own material. That could be down to my own familiarity, of course.

The band finishes and I wave goodbye them. As I prepare to do the same to the venue, I’m slightly confounded that the evening has run like clockwork and has actually finished slightly ahead of time. Incredible! Well done, and good luck, Luminaire.

Ty Segall and Dignan Porch at CAMP Basement - 11 December 2010

2010-12-13T19:41:00.000Z

Ty Segall (Photo by Eric Rex)

When you imagine going to CAMP Basement for a Christmas gig, you get an image in your mind’s eye of an outrageously over-the-top grotto, staffed by flamboyant characters dressed in Santa and elf costumes.

The reality is much more mundane. It is indeed a basement and the décor (pipes, ducting and an unevenly tiled floor) would be more in keeping with an episode in the Saw franchise.

For the second gig in a row, I arrive just as the first support act is finishing. I’m getting very poor at judging when events start when it is known that there will be an early conclusion – in this case because they want to turf us out to make way for a club night.

So I see relatively little of Weird Dreams. I’ll leave it at that.

Dignan Porch are much more my can of Red Stripe. They play a perfectly acceptable guitar and keyboard brand of indie pop and have actually written some decent songs, which is always a bonus.

It is extremely warm down here in the basement, and I admire the fortitude of the band’s bass player, who is not only wearing a heavy coat, but is also swaddled in an enormous scarf. It is only at the end of the set that he can take it no more and rips his layers off. You can practically see him steaming.

Ty Segall and his band hail from San Francisco and are in thrall to classic guitar rock. They certainly blow the cobwebs away with their blend of hard riffing and yelped vocals.

The DJ has been warming us up with Firehose, Grant Hart, Jay Reatard etc and Ty Segall and co sound right at home in this company. The crowd get excited and mosh about at the front. The band take a truncated rush through Black Sabbath’s ‘Paranoid’ and the moshing erupts into stage diving and crowd surfing.

A grand time is had by all. Segall is clearly very moved by the love that he is getting from the crowd and is effusive in his thanks.

For an encore we get a massed bawl-along version of The Vibrators’ “Baby Baby Baby (Won’t You Be My Girl)”.

Then it’s all over and we are encouraged to head off into the wilds of Shoreditch.

Not perhaps a vintage night, but a fine example of a small scene enjoying itself. And I can’t get that damn Vibrators song out of my head now…

Homesick Hustlers / The Puppet Masters at Camden Barfly 09 December 2010

2010-12-10T21:28:00.000Z

The Puppet Masters

I leave the office as the protesters attempt to break in…

I arrive at the Barfly just in time to catch the last thirty seconds of Phoebo. The resulting snap judgement is that I’m sorry to have missed her. I’ll do better next time.

This evening is the culmination of a sterling project run by The Roundhouse, who over the past ten weeks have “selected four emerging young bands and teamed them up with industry professionals and inspiring session players to improve their sound”. This all sounds very worthy, but the proof is going to be in the performance.

The bands tonight are all very young and very raw, and that is in no way a bad thing – if an act has any spark at all, you should be able to detect it even at this early stage.

The first band that I can give my full attention to is The Puppet Masters and they turn out to be rather wonderful.

Very much at the hard rock end of the musical spectrum, the immediate focal point is the arresting singer Maya Talwatte. Not content with modelling a skirt that appears to have been made out of Christmas wrapping paper, (and not very much of it), she writhes like an eel and, when at a loss for anything else to do, wiggles her bum at the crowd. I’ve seen whole careers built on a lot less.

Her wild-eyed nature child routine plays like a happy amalgam of Kat(i)es Bush and Jane Garside and her roaring vocals work well against the heavy grunge rock of the band. When they start off I initially think that they have a good sound, but not necessarily any songs to go with it. However, after a couple of tracks, everything suddenly starts to click and from then on it is fun all the way. The moment when the singer’s flailing arm whacks a guitarist in the face draws a huge laugh.

The Puppet Masters have real potential and all they need to do now is get more gigs under their belt.

All the acts tonight are well supported; none more so than the next bunch.

Homesick Hustlers have such a wild and devoted following that there are screams every time their name is announced from the stage. Real, Beatles, knicker-wetting screams. Bloody hell!

The MC for the evening introduces the band (squeals) and says that they are uncategorisable. He suggests “swamp blues” and the audience hoot in derision.

Once Homesick Hustlers actually kick off, I’m equally baffled. Most acts can be lazily described as “sounding like band A meets band B” (see my comments on the last act), but with this lot there are so many points of reference that I’m spinning round like a compass at the North Pole.

The band has two singers. Ewa Leszczynska can belt like a bluesy night club trooper and acts as foil to the quite extraordinary loose limbed antics of Ben Walker, who even at this embryonic stage is one of the most effortless charismatic front men I have seen in years.

He half shouts, half sings, half raps. That number of halves doesn’t add up, but this band are way stranger than mathematics. There are elements of hardcore rock, blues, pop and hip hop. To do the analogy thing, the band that they most remind me of, although they sound nothing at all like them, is Rolo Tomassi. There is the same wild sense of anything goes, different styles in bizarre collision, sounds jammed together because it is too much fun not to do so. One track is a kind of bluesy hip hop and another may be a pop rock number. It all works and there are some great tunes here.

The tightly packed crowd are going bat poop crazy and at times the screaming almost drowns out the band. Bloody hell! Again!

At the end, the audience is invited up on stage to sing along with crowd favourite ‘Dr C’s Diagnosis’ (“too much sugar in the morning” apparently). A bevy of young girls surround guitarist Tom Owen and, stroking his hair, squeal at him. He looks both sheepish and delighted. The drummer and bassist, who have been superb tonight, are rather left out – such is the fate of drummers and bassists.

The final act of the evening has to follow that, and that they can’t is no disgrace. The Stowaways are much more traditional indie than either of the previous bands and, although hampered by sound problems, show that they have a singer with a fine falsetto voice. However, to go back to that ‘spark’ that I alluded to earlier, I’m not sure that they have got it.

It’s been an evening of terrific fun. Congratulations to The Roundhouse and all the acts. Tonight the Barfly, tomorrow the world?

The Blood Arm at The Lexington - 19 November 2010

2010-11-21T21:15:00.000Z

The Blood Arm

I’m not good at counting.

I’m watching the entirely sensibly proportioned Keith Top of the Pops And His Minor UK Indie Celebrity Allstar Backing Band and I’m not sure whether there are sixteen or seventeen people on stage.

The conceit here is to have as many musicians as can be rounded up play the most basically straightforward garage pop. It works too, in the same way that Fucked Up work – extra numbers do not have to add complexity; they can also be used to create depth and warmth.

So, while this exercise can easily be dismissed as self-indulgence (and it is self indulgent), it also works as an illustration of love, good humour and camaraderie. Silliness aside, the songs stand up and a variety of vocalists, including almost inevitably serial band collaborator Eddie Argos, take turns to lead the ramshackle troop.

A band of this magnitude automatically comprise a sizeable chunk of the audience once they climb off stage. Tonight they are not just here as musicians – they stay because they are fans.

Next we have the stripped down dance pop of Le Corps Mince De Francoise, who are now a duo featuring sisters Emma and Mia Kemppainen from Helsinki. Mia plays guitars and operates a simple keyboard while Emma, distinguished by a bone-thru-hair accessory as sported by Sideshow Mel, talks and raps her way through a succession of catchy tunes.

LCMDF don’t entirely tear up any trees, but the vaguely bhangra beats of single ‘Gandhi’ and ‘Something Golden’ and the fact that they are clearly enjoying themselves, soon get your toes tapping. I like them.

I have been awaiting the return of The Blood Arm to these shores for ages. They have always been the most reliable of live bands and I am amongst a large party who are here to see the show.

What follows is a demonstration of how good a band can be. Nathaniel Freguso, Dyan Valdes and the rest blast out a classic set of euphoric punk and soul.

As ever, the focus is on frontman Nate, here channeling his inner James Brown from his great mop of hair and tight suit right down to sudden emotional moments when he falls to his knees.

The set is split fairly evenly between old favourites and new material that shows no dropping off in terms of quality or catchiness.

Nate never relaxes for a second and remains the consummate showman. He ventures from the stage to walk through a happily kneeling audience during the track ‘Angela’ stopping only to chat up members of the crowd, remembering their names in an ever lengthening chain that passes from the impressive to the prodigious as the evening progresses.

At one point, the audience is divided so that he can strut along his own ‘Project Runway’. Meanwhile Dyan and the band are rocking like lunatics, a frantic pop soul whirlwind. There are just no weaknesses here.

It’s very hard to refer to particular highlights – this is ALL highlight. However I do recall a storming tear through The Temptations’ ‘Get Ready’ and a stomping ‘Accidental Soul’.

The set ends with Freguso standing on the bar at the back of the venue, waving and swigging from a bottle of vodka that he has ‘liberated’ straight from its optic.

I love The Blood Arm unconditionally. Compared to them, no one else seems to be...trying.

Esben & The Witch at Electrowerkz - 10 November 2010

2010-11-11T20:05:00.000Z

Esben and The Witch

They’ve changed things around in this venue since I was last here. Walls aren’t where they used to be. Electrowerkz is an atmospheric and fascinating place, all dark corridors and suspicious-looking outcrops of metal ducting. It’s like walking through a video game.

It is also a royal pain in the arse to navigate around, with every facility a five minute traipse away from everything else, on a different level or out of order. The gents are so far away they are in a different postcode.

I don’t normally write about bands that I don’t care for, because I generally feel that saying “Here’s a band called [insert name] that you’ve never heard of and they’re rubbish” is a waste of my time and yours. However, this evening it can’t be helped - both supports are extremely tiresome and to some extent they affect the light in which I see the headliners.

I’ll be brief.

worriedaboutsatan are two guys indulging themselves with the most pedestrian electronica imaginable. They drag on and on, boring the life out of the room. In their minds they are fusing the dance sensibilities of Underworld with the edginess of an act like 65daysofstatic, but in reality they are just one long wet fart. God, they are tedious! I try to pay as little mind to them as possible as they wibble, bobble and faaaaaaaaart away onstage.

After that, next act Gallops just make me feel old. They are certainly very good at what they do, and do expend a lot of energy, but, on a day when a few cracked windows in Westminster are called “a riot”, I hark back fondly to the days when prog rock King Crimson codswallop like this would have been met with a hail of bottles. Nowadays the youth actually seem to like this stuff.

So, after such disappointing supports, I’m not in the most benign of moods for headliners Esben and The Witch.

I had previously seen these guys at Offset, where they seemed really impressive. Tonight, things don’t seem to quite gel.

The band’s live dynamic is pretty good. Singer Rachel emotes and batters her drum; a guitarist flops his hair and occasionally joins in to leather the hell out whatever equipment he can lay his hands on. It’s all very proficient.

Individually, the songs are interesting. ‘Lucia At The Precipice’ is a good tune, ‘The Marching Song’ is even better - it’s just that all E&TW’s songs when laid end to end, are very funereal, very samey and very, let’s face it, Goth. So, as the set progresses, I can feel my spirits ebbing away to be replaced with a bad case of the glums.

Things spark into life (relatively) at the end, when Rachel clutches her microphone and rocks back and forth towards the audience intoning something like “Be Quiet, Be Quiet”. It’s too little, too late.

It’s been a frustrating evening, to say the least. Bah, humbug!

Wire and Factory Floor at The Lexington - 08 November 2010

2010-11-09T19:10:00.002Z

There’s a mixed crowd in the Lexington tonight.

On one hand there is the usual mob who are settled in for the weekly Rough Trade Shops pop quiz and on the other is a long queue of black-clad blokes of a certain age snaking around the inside of the pub, blocking the toilets and generally getting in the way.

The reason for the grey-haired invasion is that Wire are playing a couple of nights to road test some fresh material and break in a new guitarist.

It is with some relief then, when the doors to the upstairs venue finally open and the resulting stampede for favourable positions down the front clears some space. My own group time our entrance for some fifteen minutes later, to allow the old boys some time to settle in and stop pestering the barman.

A bonus this evening is that Factory Floor are supporting. I have seen this band several times before, but only in context of the Offset Festival. On those occasions, the chief impression has been of skull-crushing volume and strobes that assault the senses like being dropped in a war zone.

So it is interesting to see them in a more intimate setting. Centre stage is occupied by the drum kit of Gabe Gurnsey, and on the left is Dom Butler, twiddling with piles of the sort of electronic equipment that looks as though it was pulled out the back of a 1970’s TV set. And on the right is Nik Colk, who plays guitar with a variety of bows and drumsticks, when she doesn’t simply dispense with anything other than the feedback generated when she places her instrument near the speakers.

Factory Floor play three tracks, all excellent and all largely indistinguishable from each other. One of them is ‘A Wooden Box’, although at the time I am unable to identify it.

The signature sound is a Georgio Moroder style electronic throb that threatens to break into Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’ but never quite does. Gabe is an absolutely killer drummer, really hammering away in wonderful fashion. Nik provides occasional distorted and unintelligible vocals.

It works really well and the crowd are transported along, nodding their heads gently. Our DJ for the evening, who has been generating noise from behind a ‘Slayer’ laptop, is REALLY getting into it, his head and hair bouncing up and down as though he is down the front at AC/DC.

This is by far the best that I have seen the ‘Floor and on this showing they look set to go from strength to strength. Live performance suits them well.

Wire wander onstage and the audience visibly relaxes in the company of old friends.

The first part of the evening sees an airing of some new songs. Wire have always shifted shape and sound and on first listen it seems as if they are heading back to a more melodic and poppy direction after the raw brutality of the ‘Read and Burn’ and ‘Send’ years.

So for example, we get newbies ‘Clay’ and ‘Please Take’, both of which evoke the mid-Eighties Wire and both of which sound really good.

The Wire back catalogue is formidable and tonight they plunder from the full span of their career, including tracks like ‘Kidney Bingos’ ‘Two People in a Room’ and ‘Advantage In Height’. We even get yet another reading of ‘Drill’ which is always welcome, this being a track that they have reworked so many times that at one stage they put out an entire album’s worth of different versions.

The band are as relaxed as their crowd and are all smiles, even Graham Lewis, who tonight exhibits the air of a benevolent East End gangster – you’re happy that HE’S happy because you wouldn’t want him mad.

Stick thin drummer Robert Grey is in his own little reverie, serenely sitting with his eyes shut, ticking along like a heartbeat…like a heartbeat.

In contrast, Colin Newman seems like an accountant who has wandered onstage, until he starts to sing, when all his old vigour and menacing snap are still apparent.

The previously heralded new live guitarist is clearly under instruction to keep out of the way, but seems to be really getting into the swing of things from beneath a mop of more hair than can be boasted by the rest of the band put together.

The set ends with two slightly protracted encores and a culminating rampage through ‘Pink Flag’ a track that dates from their first album, but which now closes their set in drastically expanded and altered form.

Wire are still relevant, still inventive, still the benchmark of art-punk that others merely aspire to. Salutations!

Warpaint, Fiction and 2:54 at Scala - 28 October 2010

2010-10-29T18:17:00.001+01:00

Warpaint by Chromwaves

There’s a three line whip out.

I last saw Warpaint about six weeks ago at CAMP Basement and was totally blown away. So I’ve helped to dragoon a large posse of mates to witness the splendour.

First we negotiate the support acts. 2:54 stand in a line across the stage and look the business. Singer Colette Thurlow has cheek bones up here somewhere and sister Hannah looks cool and dangerous on her left. There are two guys in the band, but suffer the fate of all guys in all femme-fronted bands. Theirs is a lot of thankless anonymity.

What 2:54 serve up I really enjoy, even if I can’t say that they are anything other than a band that sounds like any number of others that are currently mining that seam marked ‘California Desert with a bit of spooky reverb’. Or chill wave or something.

So what we get is breathy, dispassionate pop that references the Phil Spector Wall of Sound in much the same way that the Jesus and Mary Chain do. While JAMC bought distortion and noise, 2:54 and their ilk strip everything down to a glacial ghost, devoid of feeling.

I sound like I’m damning them with faint praise, but I’m impressed with 2:54. I just wish I could engage with them at some emotional level beyond simply acknowledging a job well done.

They are followed by Fiction, a hotly tipped new band from London. And if they played any of their current repertoire before the world at large had embraced Vampire Weekend and Yeasayer, then I’m a monkey’s uncle.

This is not to say that Fiction are not pretty damn impressive. They are accomplished, jolly and get the party started. It’s just that everything they play reminds you of something else, often quite specifically.

It’s urban afro-beats all the way, and falsetto vocals from singer James Howard. The band completely divides the group that I am with, half are very disgruntled and half are happy to go with the flow. I’m in the latter camp. I think Fiction are good and I’d be happy to see them again. Fact.

Warpaint can do no wrong at present. The live shows are getting great word of mouth and everyone seems to love new album ‘The Fool’ too.

You are not going to get a contrary view here.

Tonight, Warpaint are absolutely bang on the money and the only regret is that it is unlikely that I’ll get to see them in a venue of this relatively intimate size anytime soon. And that they play a good twenty minutes past curfew, which explains the number of people clumping me on the shoulder and yelling “They’re great, but I gotta go!”

The band are as tight as a drum and utterly focussed. Many tracks are structured to run into each other, which causes difficulty for the crowd, who want to whoop, holler and stomp their appreciation, but cannot find a suitable entry point.

It’s a pretty much flawless show, which encompasses not only material from the current album and previous EPs, but also new material.

The last time I saw this band, I thought that they might be the best thing that I’ve seen this year. Now I’m sure of it.

Hallogallo 2010: Michael Rother and Friends Present the Music of Neu! at Barbican Hall - 21 October 2010

2010-10-22T14:13:00.003+01:00

You’ll be familiar with the sound of ‘motorik’ even if you don’t know what it is.

It’s that metronomic, fast ticking beat that powers along and forms an essential part of the repertoire of any act that proclaims itself to have Krautrock influences.

The pioneers were Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger, who collaborated as the band Neu!. In the mid Seventies they released three groundbreaking albums with the less than groundbreaking titles of Neu!, Neu! 2 and Neu! ’75. It was a fraught partnership and the duo had long since stopped performing together at the time of Dinger’s death in 2008.

Michael Rother has now come back around to that insistent, driving rhythm and tonight, with the assistance of Steve Shelley on drums and bassist Aaron Mullan he is performing under the umbrella title of Hallogallo 2010. The name of the ensemble is a reference to the landmark track on that original Neu! album.

However, this is an exercise in looking forward, not back, as the tunes that they play either unique to this group of musicians or are so heavily reworked as to barely nod to the originals.
For an hour or so the black-clad and largely er...let’s say ‘mature’ crowd sit in their seats and imperceptively tic and shudder as they absorb Steve Shelley’s furious yet extremely disciplined onslaught.

Songs are distinguished by swooshes of electronic noise or heavily distorted found sounds, such as at one point the slow metallic grind of a heavy iron gate.

Rother plays guitars and twiddles with miscellaneous pieces of equipment piled across a table. Mullan experiences some technical difficulty early on, but is soon in the groove, nodding along with the others in perfect synchrony.

In many respects, and perhaps rightly, it is Shelley who dominates, here working far harder than he would ever have to do with his other group Sonic Youth, his arms a blur.

This is a night about a beat, an urgent pulse of music that quickens the beating of your own heart. Imperious and mesmeric, Rother and company have tapped into the rhythm of life itself.

Soap & Skin at Union Chapel 18 October 2010

2010-10-19T19:01:00.000+01:00

The Union Chapel is the perfect setting for this gig. The rows of pews, the light streaming in through the giant stained glass window above the stage are all elements that add to the atmosphere.

We are here to see Anja Plaschg, aka Soap & Skin, tonight assisted by an ensemble of various stringed instruments, a cornet and a backing singer who stands at the rear of the stage.

The lights dim and the musicians take their places. Plaschg pootles stiffly onto the stage, her hair wild, her movements apparently hampered by her tight costume.

She starts dead centre, her voice a desolate wail. The backing singer tracks her voice and everything seems fine.

Plaschg spends much of the concert seated at a grand piano, atop which stands a laptop computer. This marriage of traditional instrumentation with modern technology causes some difficulties with the sound mix, as the amplified voices tend to distort with reverb and are at odds the dark wooden saw of the cellos.

Anja Plaschg seems very on edge almost from the beginning, refusing to look at or acknowledge the audience and fidgeting in her seat.

As the evening progresses, it becomes clear that Plaschg is barely holding herself together and is struggling to control her emotions. In a cracked voice she dedicates a song to her father, and she appears to be in tears as she sings it.

The highlights tonight are for me (unusually) two instrumentals. During the first, the stage and audience are gradually enveloped in a creeping pall of dry ice. The second sees the stage bathed in blood red light as Plaschg hammers at the lower register of her piano, the notes rumbling like thunder, her arms stiff as sticks as she chops down on the keys ever, ever faster until she resembles a clockwork automaton.

Towards the end of the set Plaschg’s temperament gets the better of her again. During the song ‘Spiracle’, with its “When I was a child...” motif, she breaks down completely and has to stop, at one stage abandoning her piano to solicit a hug from her fellow singer.

She gathers herself for a final number delivered from centre stage, her eyes black fissures in a pale lit face. Her arms, flail, flap and mimic flying. It’s incredibly powerful.

After she leaves, the crowd stomp and holler for more until she returns to perform one last number unaccompanied. She clearly does not want to do this, but gig etiquette demands an encore.

It has been an extraordinary performance, which is obviously emotionally devastating for the performer. I’ve not seen an act wrestle with their demons quite so painfully since Soko. I hope that Anja Plaschg can conquer them.

The Darling Buds, The Drains, Disco at 100 Club, 22 September 2010

2010-09-23T18:39:00.001+01:00

The Darling Buds

The chain of events leading to me being here tonight are Byzantine and strange.

So I’ll pass over the cinema and the mysterious disappearance of the movie I was due to see and the pub which appears to be operating as a pawn shop, with guitars exchanged for framed football shirts.

I end up at the 100 Club for a gig-come-celebration of the life of John Sicolo.

Sicolo ran the legendary ‘TJ’s’ in Newport, the venue that gave early opportunities to a plethora of bands in the 80’s, from Catatonia to Anhrefn, 60 Ft Dolls to The Senseless Things. TJ’s was described as the ‘only venue in Wales that London journalists had ever heard of’ and bands loved to play there, and they loved Big John Sicolo.

Tonight’s bill has largely come about because several acts reformed for a Sicolo tribute earlier in the year and decided that they would carry on.

First up come feisty five piece Disco, who are fronted by two female singers, Emily and Sam, who display markedly contrasting body language.

One is having a ball, screaming her head off, dancing and bopping and bouncing around. The other is a picture of self consciousness who looks and acts as if she wants the stage to open up and swallow her.

The songs are simple and enthusiastically belted out a la Shampoo or (more recently) Pens or Hotpants Romance.

I think that they are great fun, but even as they finish the awkward lass is only semi-joking when she says “Never again!”

The Drains remember when punk was young. The singer may now look like a bank manager, but he knows how to put a song across. And when that song is called something like “Motherfuckin’ Motherfucker”, that is quite something to see.

He tells tales of Sid Vicious and Nick Kent and even remembers the name of the original bar staff from the 100 Club back in the day.

Watching The Drains, I am struck how this kind of performance has gone out of fashion. This is song as an angry shout, with genuine outrage and venom in the vocals. It hails from a time when bands were pissed off on a personal and a political level. It ain’t subtle, but it’s sure effective.

Headliners are The Darling Buds, playing their first London gig since 1992. It is so long since they have been around that a modern band has taken the name, unaware or unheeding of the fact that somebody else had the same idea over twenty years previously.

The Darling Buds were always slightly the runt of the litter amongst late 80’s power-pop bands. They got played by Peel and they may have had one of those ‘for one week only’ slots on Top Of The Pops, but they never quite took off. As their set progresses, it becomes clear why.

All the elements are present. The guitars chime and chop, the drums snap and singer Andrea Lewis, in her black dress and snazzy red shoes, is all these years later, a strikingly good looking focal point.

Ultimately, it comes down to the strength of their material. With a few notable exceptions, many of the Darling Buds’ songs sort of tool along at the same level – pleasant in isolation, but subject to the law of diminishing returns.

But tonight is a celebration and not a critique. Lewis is showered with home made confetti from the small band of loyal fans, some of whom have dug out surprisingly pristine ‘Buds Burst Out ‘88’ tour T shirts.

It’s a fun evening, more party than gig. The bands and the punters are enjoying themselves and everyone goes home happy.

John Sicolo wouldn’t have wanted anything less.

Yuck, A Grave With No Name, Slowgun - Madam Jo Jo's 14 September 2010

2010-09-15T19:17:00.003+01:00

Yuck by Valerio Berdini

Is it a smile? Is it a grimace? It’s hard to tell, but the grin on the face of Valentina, the drummer of openers Slowgun is fascinating.

I think that it is an expression of excitement. Of sheer joie de vivre at being onstage in a band. Let’s hope that the novelty of playing to audiences doesn’t wear off.

Slowgun are four kids who know the value of noise and of pop music and are working towards the best combination of the two. They are still very rough around the edges, but all the elements of a damn fine band are already in place.

Singer/guitarist Toni stands centre stage and guides her troops through their paces (amidst occasional gales of laughter). Slowgun are ones to watch.

I last saw A Grave With No Name a few months ago supporting Dum Dum Girls. On that occasion they did not make much of an impression. Tonight they sound like an altogether different proposition.

Guitarist and singer Alex Shields is so stick thin and sickly looking that you wonder if he could get through the set without a blood transfusion. When he walks behind the microphone stand, he disappears.

His vocals are fed through a barrage of sound effects to produce an otherworldly falsetto whisper that conjures up the wind blowing through telephone wires.

He and the other guys in the band generate a succession of wonderful guitar riffs. They build the sound, get a groove going, set the controls for the centre of the sun and then…stop.

This is band as coitus interruptus. It’s as if they have an internal mechanism that regulates each track to 120 seconds and then the power dies. I’m all for brevity rather than indulgence, but this is ridiculous.

A good, but frustrating performance.

I missed the second day of this year’s Camden Crawl but was subsequently regaled with tales of the all round marvellousness of Yuck, who played a blinder at one o’clock in the morning when everyone was pissed and merry. It’s why I’m here tonight.

The four piece are certainly striking in appearance, looking for all the world like the live-action counterparts of Jamie Hewlett original designs for Damon Albarn’s Gorillaz project.

Centre stage, but apparently disinterested is bassist Mariko, long hair hanging across her face. Behind her sits a hulking drummer with an afro like a nuclear cloud. On either side sway two skinny guys with guitars. It’s quite the image.

They plug in, kick off, and I’m in love. This is a sound that I’ve not heard since Ride’s first twelve inchers, an elaborately structured amalgam of guitar fuzz and feedback utilised in the service of songs that you can actually sing along with.

As if this wasn’t impressive enough, Yuck have the confidence to show a sensitive side. So amidst the bombast we get quieter, more soulful songs like ‘Suicide Policeman’.

The fans lap them up, although they are now so comfy with the band that they feel the need to talk all over the quiet bits.

Silly name aside, Yuck is almost the perfect modern indie band. They look cool, they reference the past and yet they sound as hot and fresh as newly baked bread. They are loud, proud, complicated and you still feel that they wouldn’t run off with your girlfriend. But that she would want them to.

So, not yuck at all. Yum!

Bookhouse Boys at Camden Barfly -09 September 2010

2010-09-11T09:38:00.001+01:00

The Bookhouse Boys by Tim Broddin

Camden seems to have fallen on hard times. It was always scuzzy and a bit lairy, but it used to be culturally vibrant. Now that the more cutting edge elements of the music scene have decamped en masse to Shoreditch, Camden is left tawdry and neglected, a feeling of desolation and desperation about the place.

The Barfly is a case in point. Its walls used to be covered with details of hot and exciting bands that were down to play the venue. Nowadays it’s like an old dog waiting to be put down. This evening everything is plastered with flyers for the new Runaways movie, and a claim is made that there are ‘three girl-fronted bands’ on as a tribute. I know who’s on, and to tie them into this rather strains credulity.

Leading off are Evans The Death, a four piece who are merely the first of the acts tonight who are severely hampered by an atrocious sound mix in which only bass guitar and drums are clearly audible. Under these circumstances it is perhaps politic to just say that the band does their best.

Two-girl-one-boy trio Bleech play a very surreal set in front of a wall of more than half a dozen photographers, who stand happily snapping for the whole of the band’s time on stage. It’s a bloody camera club outing.

With this barrier between them and their audience, and coupled with the bass-heavy sound it feels like they are playing behind a Perspex wall.

Even at the best of times Bleech are a band who are frustratingly close to being really good, but fall somehow short because their songs just don’t stick with you. Tonight, they are on a hiding to nothing.

Headliners The Bookhouse Boys have been off the touring circuit for quite a while, taking time out to prepare a new batch of songs. Tonight we get a first glimpse of the fruits of their labour.

This performance is so dedicated to the new material, that they only play a couple of tracks that I recognise, these being the great ‘I Just Can’t Help Myself’ and ‘Dead’

The unheard songs all sound like potential winners – aching, yearning, Tex-Mex twangers that give plenty of opportunity for Paul van Oestren’s growl and Catherine Turner’s atmospheric, heartfelt wail. The Tijuana trumpets are still well to the fore and cut through the muddy murk from the mixing desk.

In many ways it has been a disappointing evening – none of the bands have been done any favours, all will have better nights.

But, I’m always an optimist and am glad to find that The Bookhouse Boys seem to be going from strength to strength.

As the night draws to a close, I take a last look at the venue and, in keeping with tonight’s er…’theme’, I runaway.

Offset Festival Day Two - 05 September 2010

2010-09-07T18:34:00.003+01:00

Monotonix (photo Wyldman)

On day two of the Offset Festival, Wild Palms get things off to a good start with their dark and brooding surf music. It sounds just dandy this Sunday lunchtime.

I am also taken with the gentle beauty of The Rifle Volunteer, who are kindly and beardy and feature the plaintive falsetto of Adam Symonds.

The Rifle Volunteer (photo Wyldman)

Skating past Electricity In Our Homes and Bitches, who were both excellent, we come to Monotonix, who take audience participation to even greater lengths than yesterday’s bands.

These three very hairy, very nearly naked men do not play onstage at all, but set up in the crowd in front of the Main Stage. All that can be seen are sprays of water and beer, the occasional piece of drum kit or guitar accompanied by the anguished cries of punters who have had their drinks snatched from them and stuffed down the Y-fronts of a wild eyed hairy arsed mountain man. It’s mayhem.

At one point I find one of the singers from Athens Polytechnic sailing past me at head height.

Ducking into a nearby tent, I am much entertained by Sauna Youth, who are screaming their heads off, abducting photographers and chasing each other around the tent pole until they collapse exhausted. Another band that I shall see again.

Sauna Youth (photo Wyldman)

I am under instruction to report back on Proxy Music, but would have done so in any event. This is a band of like minded musicians who are devoted to early Roxy and are happy to share the fun with others.

They are terrific. Their ‘Bryan Ferry’ is a marvel, debonair and louche in tight leopard skin pants and leather jacket. He has the voice and he has the moves. The rest of the band are more generically glammed up and bash their way through standards like ‘Editions of You’ and ‘Do the Strand’.

It’s rough and vital and probably a lot like the real Roxy sounded like when they were just starting out. I doubt that the real Brian Eno was screaming “Fucking keyboards!” quite as often.

Proxy Music (photo Wyldman)

I also enjoy Oral Oral, who are dressed like Visage, sound like the Flying Lizards and end with a deafening deconstruction of The Normal’s ‘Warm Leatherette’ which sees the band members gradually sneak out of the tent one by one and hide, leaving their machines to fight each other.

Oral Oral (photo Wyldman)

Chrome Hoof also bring the glam, as only an eleven piece outfit dressed in spangly robes and fronted by a Notting Hill Carnival queen can do. They still sound like a hardcore screamo band colliding with a jazz orchestra, but today the penny drops for me and I love them to bits.

Chrome Hoof (photo Wyldman)

I then happen across an excellent show from Parisian noise pop merchants Team Ghost, who delight a small gathering with their ability to marry decent tunes with bursts of guitar abuse.

Having watched them fail to beat technical difficulties at 1234 Shoreditch I am glad to finally catch up with These New Puritans, who are ploughing a wilful furrow with their current heavy percussion meets bassoon line-up. Rather like their recent album it is easier to admire their ambition than to warm to the music itself.

I regret missing all but the last three songs from The Rayographs, but a man has got to eat sometime. This band have evolved into something rather special, as closing track ‘Yellow Hair’ proves. I’ll see them again.

Walking around the site, I see Flats tearing up the stage in front of a packed crowd and then move round to catch one of the ‘buzz’ bands at the festival.

Esben and The Witch are a fascinating combination of strong female vocals and wild interludes of manic guitar and frenzied percussion. At one stage the whole band circle a drum and leather the hell out of it. Their guitarist has enough FX pedals for a small army, triggering a phenomenon known as ‘pedal envy’ in one of my colleagues. Even at an event such as this, Esben and the Witch stand out as ones to watch in the future.

The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster are having a riot on the Main Stage, with their ferocious speed rock and obligatory stage diving cheering up a big crowd. They are oldies, but goodies.

It is now mid evening and it is clear that there is going to be a problem finishing the event on time. The Main Stage is running at least half an hour late and Caribou experience a protracted loss of power as they are setting up.

When the Canadians eventually start, there are horrible problems with the vocals which sound like a local taxi firm has infiltrated the mix. However, once things are sorted, Caribou are easy and likeable company, their light, dancey electronics spreading a soothing vibe. For me, it’s a lovely way to finish.

Caribou (photo Wyldman)

Time constraints mean that I have to miss headliners Atari Teenage Riot, but I am well satisfied with this weekend. This is my third Offset and it is the best one yet. Big thanks to the organisers and all the bands.

Offset Festival Day One - 04 September 2010

2010-09-06T13:23:00.008+01:00

Teeth!!! (photo Wyldman)

This is not going to be a definitive report on the 2010 Offset Festival. For starters, over the two days I saw over fifty acts that I LIKED to varying degrees. And I couldn’t be everywhere, despite trying my best.

Things get off to a rollicking start on Saturday with Hull’s The Neat on the Main Stage. Much angular guitar and the first instance of one of the Themes of The Weekend (TotW). The front man who leaps from the stage and chases his audience across a field.

Into a tent next for the blindingly wonderful Athens Polytechnic, who are a Roadrunner cartoon come to life. Twin vocalists scream their lungs out, wrestle with each other, improvise dance routines and chase the audience around the tent. Amidst the carnage is a thrash version of Kraftwerk’s ‘The Model’. Second TotW – the inspired and non-obvious cover version. They are also the only band today with a chorus that goes “We want you for the Cameron youth!”

Athens Polytechnic are bloody marvellous and put a smile on my face for the rest of the day.

Next up, and also ace, are Oh! Gunquit, who are a bit rockabilly, a lot twangy and powered by saxophone and a phenomenal pair of black lederhosen.

Oh! Gunquit (photo Wyldman)

Back on Main Stage, Cold In Berlin have evolved into a full on festival monster. They are slick and powerful as a steel panther. They go down a bomb, and rightly so.

Cold In Berlin (photo Wyldman)

TotW the third – If you are an artist who basically just twiddles knobs on a small podule, you need a gimmick. So House of Schtinter hides in a tiny model house and Death In Plains wears a mask. It’s the musical equivalent of telling a joke. Once you’ve seen it, the novelty wears off very quickly. Neither act detains me.

The Bo Ningen mothership decends on Main, and their space rock is well suited to the festival atmosphere. They manage to top last year’s antics by finishing the set with a member scaling the stage until he is perched right above us and about fifty feet from certain death. Larks!

I miss Paper Crows because they are taking an age waiting for them to jack Scart Lead A into Socket B. This is the problem with electronic acts – they have much greater difficulty than bands that just need to plug in their guitars or adjust the height on their drum kit. I later regret not waiting, because subsequent reports are that they were really good and did a fine cover of Kate Bush’s ‘Cloudbusting’.

Instead, I am happily entertained by The Receeders, who are a very shouty and punky band that features Kate Nash amongst others. Great fun.

The Receeders (photo Wyldman)

Teeth!!! are a revelation. A three piece electronic dance outfit who send the tent mental. Tiny singer Veronica So is paraded around over the crowd’s heads and I find yet another new band to love.

Kap Bambino are doing something similar on a grander scale on the Main Stage. Singer Caroline works the crowd into a frenzy and spends much of the set being tossed among them like a beach ball.

Most ambitious cover version of the weekend is probably La La Vasquez and their version of New Order’s ‘Blue Monday’ played as a piece for halting girlie guitar. It works, just.

I enjoy the suave rock of The Bridport Dagger, admiring the clothes and quiffs as much as their elegant music. I’m really impressed with this band too.

The Bridport Dagger (photo Wyldman)

Art Brut and Eddie Argos are in their element on the Main Stage, bantering with the audience and playing essentially a greatest hits set. We get updates on ‘Emily Kane’ and a report on Eddie's Rusty Gun of Milan.

I find a correlation between the uncompromising hard electronic repetitions of Factory Floor and the organic percussion of Liquid Liquid, the venerable New York no wavers who play a polarising set on Main. Both acts require tolerance from their audience, a willingness to go along with what the band are doing.

Saturday ends with an impressive set from O Children, who have all the makings of a very big act indeed, if they could just get the elements right. Tonight they sweep all before them, but the set is oddly structured and they seem to have all their really big tunes and crowd pleasing rarities like ‘Ace Breasts’ in the first half and they send us off into the night with one of the lesser songs from their very fine debut album.

That’s quite enough for Day One. Back with more shortly.

Zola Jesus and The Haxan Cloak - CAMP Basement 01 September 2010

2010-09-02T18:54:00.000+01:00

Zola Jesus

I’m back at CAMP Basement for the second time in a week. It’s less busy than for Warpaint, but in a space as cramped as this it does not take many folk at the front of the stage to constitute a throng.

A young man wanders onto the stage and ducks down out of view. Then the droning starts…

…this is Bobby Krilic, aka The Haxan Cloak. For the next twenty five minutes or so he produces a single slab of electronic buzzing, punctuated by some metronomic ticking to provide a bit of beat and variety.

Music like this depends almost entirely on the willingness of the audience to immerse itself in the experience. By concentrating on the subtle modulations in the deafening hum and thrum, an almost meditative state can be reached, and all other stimuli blocked out.

Or alternatively, you could regard it as a lot of old rope and head to the bar.

It’s fair to say that the Haxan Cloak provide plenty of evidence for both reactions. I actually get right into it and rather enjoy nodding out to the monotonous sound. Some colleagues are prodding me in the back and looking meaningfully at their empty beer glasses.

The noise stops, Krilic pops back into view, waves and departs. I head further down the front.

Zola Jesus is gathering a lot of interest at the moment. She is one of the more visible exponents of the current trend towards gloomy, often distorted electronica. I’m loathe to call it chill-wave or dark-wave because these terms have become so tribal that to put an act in one category or another is to invite storms of protest akin to the endless debates as to which heavy rock band is death/hair/thrash/black metal. I’m just here to see what the fuss is about.

Nika Rosa Danilova, to give her family name, is joined tonight by a couple of guys who play keyboards and add backing vocals. But it is Zola Jesus herself who is the focal point.

She is a tiny figure with white hair. She makes herself even smaller by hunching almost double, either rocking back and forth with the rhythm or beetling to and fro across the stage like a little old lady fleeing through a dark forest.

She’s small in stature, but big in voice. Her biography indicates that there may be some opera training in her past, and she can certainly project herself with a deep throaty roar.

However, to my ears there is a fundamental problem. Zola Jesus treads so closely in the footsteps of Siouxsie Sioux and Diamanda Galás that she is always going to draw comparisons with them. And she is going to come up short.

There are few songs here that really stand out. The track ‘Night’ from the new ‘Stridulum II’ album is an exception, but most of the set is samey and lacklustre. Things get a bit more animated towards the end, but generally most of this material is nondescript. I find my thoughts drifting towards Greek duo Mary And The Boy, who operate in a similar field but to much greater effect. (Give ‘Bobby Peru’ a listen).

Zola Jesus is an enthusiastic collaborator with other artists and it could be that via this route she will produce something more original and interesting. Tonight’s show is that of a performer who hasn’t stepped out of the shadow of her influences yet.

She’s got a voice. But has she got a voice of her own?

Warpaint, Pull In Emergency at CAMP Basement - 26 August 2010

2010-08-28T08:27:00.003+01:00

Warpaint

The queue has been forming since seven o’clock. It is seriously chucking it down with rain. I do the sensible thing and adjourn to a nearby establishment with a good view of proceedings. I’m not the only one admiring the fortitude of the sodden masses outside.

Things don’t get really moving until nearly nine o’clock. I squeeze down the narrow stairs into the rammed sweatbox that is CAMP Basement and find that a support band is already on.

This is Pull In Emergency, a winning five piece fronted by Faith Barker, all smiles in a Breton top. They don’t stray too far from a twee pop Belle and Sebastian template and it is perhaps fitting that they have a song called “Everything Is The Same.” However, they are a welcome sight as the crowd gently steams and fidgets with umbrellas. After finishing with “The Problem” they rightfully take their applause.

I feel lucky to get to see Warpaint at such close quarters. These four girls from Los Angeles are on umpteen ‘ones to watch’ lists and in October are due to headline the Scala, a far bigger venue than this.

It’s one thing being on a list, and quite another to decide what heading to file them under. Tonight Warpaint are the most complex, astonishing and uncategorisable band that I have seen this year.

At various points during a jaw dropping eighty minutes they display elements of progressive rock, dub reggae, Fleet Foxes style harmonising, booty shaking funk and searing sheets of guitar noise. All this often within a single song - but with the changes of direction seeming to be a natural and organic flow rather than a forced or precious desire to show off their influences.

The biggest compliment that I can give to them is that they kept me wrong footed throughout. Every song is different from the one proceeding it, and none develop as you might expect. Warpaint have an early e.p. called “Exquisite Corpse”, named after the game similar to ‘Consequences’ played by members of the Surrealist Movement, where each artist would draw part of an artwork without knowledge of what had come before. Warpaint have a similar approach to their music.

Emily Kokal, Theresa Wayman, Jenny Lee Lindberg and Stella Mozgawa all take the lead at different times, sometimes alone, sometimes in combination with the others. It’s impossible to choose which configuration to prefer, I’m just stunned by their ambition and ability to make all this experimentation danceable and fun, rather than a sterile noodling exercise.

Tonight they are showcasing tracks from forthcoming album ‘The Fool’ and goodness knows how they are going to do justice to songs like “Set Your Arms Down” or “Undertow” in the studio. Loud, long and complicated, a transport of delight.

They end with an extended and extemporary version of ‘Billie Holiday’ which goes from gentle, aching lovelorn harmonies to a mighty wig out with Jenny Lee and Stella battering the life out of a drum kit. When they stop, there is a momentary silence as the whole crowd takes a big lungful of air, then a deafening roar of approbation.

Before this evening, I thought I knew about Warpaint. I was not remotely close. My tiny little mind is comprehensively blown.

Get your Scala tickets now.

The Pretty Reckless at Islington Academy 19 August 2010

2010-08-20T18:52:00.000+01:00

The Pretty Reckless

There’s a queue right the way through the shopping centre and down the road. It is mainly composed of young women who seem oddly determined and grim rather than simply excited at the prospect of the gig in front of them. I get the feeling that this is serious business and everyone is eyeing everybody else for pointers on how to behave. No-one wants to look uncool…

Happily there are no such concerns once we are snugly ensconced in the dark heart of the venue. The place is packed and there is a buzz of expectation.

On occasions such as these it is the role of the support act to get things going, to soften up the audience in order to prepare them for the headliner. This is a function that Francesqa provide with alacrity.

These five lads deliver a set of upbeat anthemic rock music which drives the crowd into a frenzy. They spend most of their set jumping on their monitors, popping up and down like one of those fairground Whack-A-Mole machines.

They are very likeable, proficient and entertaining. Their various singles are dutifully plugged and judging by the screams that accompany their every utterance, tonight is a job well done.

This is the part where I run the risk of sounding like one of those decrepit High Court judges that suddenly wakes up and asks “What are The Beatles?”.

I am aware that there is a teen soap opera called ‘Gossip Girl’. I am aware that the lead singer of tonight’s headliners is in it. I have no idea how big a role she plays or the name of her character. I do know that Taylor Momsen is apparently deadly serious about her Pretty Reckless project.

The band come on first. They look to be standard issue session players, poodle-haired and probably in their thirties. This would put them at roughly double the age of the artist they are supporting.

Taylor Momsen is certainly striking in appearance. She has vast cascades of waist length blonde hair and kohl black eyes. She looks like a ghost from a Chinese horror picture, or possibly a photo negative of Lily Munster.

Her voice is a real surprise. Very powerful, it is a genuine rock snarl rather than a stage school ‘songs from the shows’ affair. Wildly shaking her head so that she is entirely wrapped in blonde tresses, Momsen is seventeen-going-on-Steven Tyler.

The songs are variants on a theme of tough girl bravura and they don’t understand me angst. As it was once said on The Simpsons a band “making teenagers depressed is like shooting fish in a barrel” and this certainly the case tonight, as waves of adulation flood towards the stage.

At least two songs genuinely stand out. “Zombie” and “Make Me Wanna Die” are rousing Hole-lite sing-a-longs. Momsen’s clear role model is Courtney Love and together with her voice has youth and looks on her side too.

What Momsen lacks at present is any real stage presence beyond her surface appearance. She stands rooted to the same spot throughout and even though for one number great play is made of her strapping on an electric guitar, she barely strikes the instrument twice. This may be nerves, but is more likely because she feels no affinity with the musicians around her and is just …performing.

Tonight’s show is a very creditable showcase for Taylor Momsen’s talents. She’s seventeen now and by the time she hits the big Two Zero she’ll be, like, ANCIENT in TV terms. ‘Gossip Woman’ just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

She has a decent voice, a couple of decent songs and a lot of good will going for her. She’ll be just fine as a rock and roll singer.

Or she could just go and do a sitcom or something.

1-2-3-4 Festival, Shoreditch Park 24 July 2010

2010-07-26T19:53:00.003+01:00

Von Haze by Drew Cox

I’m standing in the dry grass dustbowl that is Shoreditch Park. I’m watching three drummers and a phalanx of guitarists bash and thrash their way through a series of tunes. This is Action Beat, the self-styled ‘Noise Band from Bletchley”. We are here for the 1-2-3-4 Shoreditch Festival and sights such as this are eyed with idle contentment by the early crowds lolling in the scrub in front of the main stage.

It turns out to be a long and eventful day during which I catch sets by nearly twenty acts. I can’t detail them all, but there were memorable and noteworthy performances and incidents including:-

Trailer Trash Tracys’ wistful sighs on the main stage in mid afternoon. A band much more suited to the wee small hours in the morning but somehow pleasingly gentle and soporific here.

They were followed by Vic Godard and the Subway Sect, a band much concerned with developments in the affairs of the Royal Mail and the first of a number of bands here today who seem aimed at the more ‘mature’ festival goer. I park the more senior members of our team here and wander off to catch complete sets of great quality from Mazes and Sharks. On my return, Vic and co are still happily rambling on.

Soon after, I catch what turns out to be my favourite band of the day, the deceptively languid Von Haze. Travis Caine and Katherine Kin gradually draw a rapt crowd for their incredibly glacial take on shimmer-pop. The duo’s swathes of guitar, synth and barely audible vocals seemingly never go faster than 15RPM the whole while. And yet they are mesmerising, their very minimal sound focussing concentration until there is nothing else in the world except us and Von Haze. It’s an impressive trick.

Later, I enjoy the excessively rowdy Comanechi, with drummer/singer Akiko battering and screaming her way through a rambunctious set from beneath an enormous hair bow/hat that almost obscures her. In what proves to be a foretaste of things to come they have difficulties with their sound and refer to a ‘row’ with stage hands.

I join the hordes in front of the main stage for Peter Hook and his extended family playing Joy Division’s ‘Unknown Pleasures’ in its entirety. This starts off a bit ramshackle, but gradually becomes absurdly affecting. Hooky takes over most of the vocal chores himself, although this means that others have to take on bass guitar duties as he is unable to play and sing at the same time.

His enthusiasm occasionally carries him away, and there is a lot of arm windmilling and “make some noise Shoreditch”. But it works very well, mainly because the songs themselves are so strong. When Hook can’t cope with ‘Insight’ and ‘New Dawn fades’, Rowetta (Black Grape etc) takes over and her powerful voice really lends itself to this material. They end with ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’, which Hook dedicates to a young couple who are getting married. Barely a dry eye in the field.

Barely a waste bin either, and by the early evening the crowd is wandering across an apocalyptic landscape of scorched earth and metal cans. The entire area resembles the opening scenes of Wall-E.

Leaving an underpowered Wavves to flounder on the main stage, I sneak off to see Rolo Tomassi in the smallest tent on site. It is packed solid and so hot that you can barely see for sweat in your eyes. And not your own sweat either.

Rolo Tomassi are an unclassifiable beast that shouldn’t work at all, but just gloriously and riotously do. A combination of thrash metal screaming and grunting, prog rock keyboards and musical fannying about they are for once upstaged by their own audience. Goaded from the stage, various youngsters shin up the main tent stanchion and tombstone down upon their mates below - who mostly catch them. It is reckless, stupid and totally exhilarating.

Exhausted, I take in the final moments of Vivian Girls and do my best to ignore the indulgent karaoke bawlings of The Silver Machine, which is a Bobby Gillespie vanity project and yet another excuse for him to rub up against his icons (in this case Glen Matlock and Zak Starkey) in the anticipation that some of their cache will transfer to him.

I am looking forward to seeing how These New Puritans can transfer their ambitious brass and drum based album ‘Hidden’ to a concert stage. The lights go down, the band comes on and…phut! All sound disappears, along with most of the power in the tent. There is a further fifteen minutes of prodding around in the dark and a second attempt. This goes phut even quicker than their first try. It’s a cataclysmic breakdown and not one that can be resolved.

Apart from this setback, it’s been a terrific day and the organisers can generally be well satisfied with themselves. I join the throngs heading out into Hoxton and beyond.