The Blood Arm at The Lexington - 19 November 2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.