A user's report from the UK music scene. Up and coming bands who are too good to ignore. Lives, album reviews and anything else that seems appropriate.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. YoLa 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.
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.
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.
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.
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