Givers, The Shivers at XOYO - 08 November 2011

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.