Charli XCX, Icona Pop, Mz Bratt at Lexington - 8 February 2012

Charli XCX (Photo Al de Perez)

There’s a strong bill tonight, but the message doesn’t seem to have got through.

Maybe everyone else is being cool in the bar downstairs, but when the first act comes on there is no one in the venue but a clutch of old guys and a few photographers.

Mz Bratt and her crew are nothing if not professional. They are full throttle right from the off and are not going to worry that their audience is largely missing.

Bratt’s rapping is machine gun quick and contains elements of dance hall and grime. I understand about one word in ten and it doesn’t matter a bit. We are encouraged to jump about. We’re so ancient that we can barely move.

There’s a relentlessly upbeat children’s entertainment vibe to the whole set. ‘Rocket Launcher’ is immense, the beats and vocal delivery explosive. ‘Selecta’ brings everything to a happy smiling conclusion.

Bratt smiles ruefully. The only thing harder than a tough crowd is no crowd at all.

Things get busier for the next act, who are Swedish electro-divas Icona Pop.

The eye is drawn to the incredibly tall and frankly awesome Caroline Hjelt and Aino Jawo. The third member of the band, a Howard Jones lookalike in a fetching polka dot smock hunched over a plethora of laptops and keyboards, barely gets a look-in.

The band plays a short set of anthemic euro pop and the girls give it their all, heads thrown back, eyes closed. Many of the songs are accompanied by elaborate routines incorporating synchronised arm movements.

We get ‘Top Rated’, we get ‘Sun Goes Down’, We get ‘Manners’. These are all perfectly serviceable songs that would go down well under the glitter ball. That said, and despite the obvious charms of the singers, I think that Icona Pop are probably not quite in the very top echelon of Stockholm bands.

Theirs is a popular set. As they try to leave the venue everyone wants to have their photos taken with them. It’s like watching a succession of little guys being snapped next to a giant fish.

Tonight’s headliner is Charli XCX, who I last saw here just before Christmas in her capacity as a DJ.

There is an elaborate light show that bathes the black clad singer in meshes of laser light. Even in a venue as small as this, Charli is out to make an impression.

The set starts with ‘Stay Away’, here much more forceful than the recorded version. This is followed by ‘Nuclear Seasons’, the first in a selection of more up tempo numbers which see Charli grimacing, punching and kicking the air as though she is Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

Her band consists of a keyboard player and a guy conjuring sound from an electronic drum kit. They studiously avoid drawing attention from the star centre stage.

Charli’s microphone stand has been garlanded with armfuls of scrunched up videotape and she persistently plays with this, draping the stuff across her arms and shoulders.

There’s rather an air of ‘Gothic Britney’ about Charli XCX – she’s scary, but only in a Scooby Doo kind of way and she certainly whips up a storm amongst the gay contingent of her fans.

The latter part of the set is slightly marred for us by the attentions of a hopelessly drunk young man, who, possibly inspired by the punches thrown on stage, wants someone to hit him. We decline and he falls over anyway. He’s a waste of space.

It’s certainly been an unusual evening. I’ve enjoyed all three acts even though they don’t hang together particularly coherently as a bill and I suspect that none of them are playing to their target audience. I’d happily see them all again.

Queer (as Queen) at The Pipeline - 4 February 2012

Queer

There’s a weird atmosphere in London. The weather forecasters have promised an icy apocalypse for later in the night. From the tone of the warnings it is not clear whether we will get one inch of snow and some minor disruption, or whether this is indeed the end of the world and any poor souls caught outside will have to devour each other like members of the Donner Party.

I decide to risk it.

This venue is new to me. The Pipeline is a lavishly designed spacious and fun spot just off Bishopsgate. I like everything about the place, from the row of vintage pinball machines to a pool area which doubles as a shrine to Lemmy from Motorhead.

It seems quite empty in here – until you head downstairs to the space where the bands will play. It is heaving and hot and happening. My colleagues and I simultaneously double the average age of the clientele and halve the trendiness of the place just by walking through the door.

Tonight’s show is being presented by the good folks at Japan Underground. What a world this is that has such people in it. There are fashionistas and cosplayers (respect to the dude in full Kick-Ass regalia). The place is full of the vibrant and the beautiful and us.

The advertised support act is unable to make it, so their place is amply filled by a solo set from Haruna of No Cars.

Her performance takes post modernism to multiple levels. She is a Japanese girl aware of, and deliberately playing up to, the Western image of Japanese cuteness. The songs are faux-simple but razor sharp.

‘Tuna Tuna Tuna’ references both the Japanese love of delicious fish and the guilt that the rest of the world tries to lay on them for eating it. ‘Funny Farm’ (dedicated to Adam Ant) is about mental illness and would probably be offensive if it were not couched in such jokey, comic fashion.

In a nod to the headliners, Haruna gives us a snatch of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ on a recorder. It’s a great set, particularly as she was called upon to fill in at the last minute.

There’s a huge cheer as Queer, aka Japan’s top Queen tribute act take to the stage. They kick off with ‘We Are The Champions’, here speeded up to an almost punk velocity.

By the very nature of the beast, a tribute act is able to play hits all the way. It is amazing how much Queen we all know word for word.

The singer is soon stripped to the waist and employing some of Freddie Mercury’s call and response routines to interact with the crowd, who are well up for it and prepared to join in with anything.

We bawl along to ‘Under Pressure’. We join in with ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, only to be thrown when the band unexpectedly deliver the whole of ‘Killer Queen’ midway through the song.

And so the evening progresses. It’s as hot and sweaty and we’re having a whale of a time.

The encore features a classical arrangement of the middle part of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ on tape. This is accompanied by a male dancer who flits around the stage in a kimono. He gradually disrobes as he goes until he is down to his underwear.

The band then come crashing in on the final part of the song and dancer and singer, both semi-naked, hug and kiss.

The best song of the night is a euphoric rip through ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’. It’s a crowded tumult of flying limbs, inflatable guitars and snogging.

Leaving the venue I find London whited out. I head off as impromptu snowball fights break out. Don’t stop me now cos I’m having a good time…

Wild Flag and Peggy Sue at Electric Ballroom - 1 February 2012

Wild Flag (photo: Jay L. Clendenin / L.A. Times)

It’s freezing.

My desire to stay in the warm rather than risk losing body parts in a cold, cold queue means that I arrive in the Ballroom a good twenty five minutes after tonight’s support are due on.

Fortune favours the coward. Whether Peggy Sue have been huddled round an electric fire or are just a bit tardy doesn’t matter. I’m able to take my place before they arrive on stage.

Although I am familiar with the band by name, I’ve never actually seen them before. They are not quite what I was expecting.

Peggy Sue are fronted by Rosa Rex and Katy Klaw who, far from any obvious rock ‘n’ roll influence instead sing songs that borrow from rural American folk roots.

They’re very god at it too. The instrumentation and drumming is so minimal, so primitive and spare that my first impression is that the band cannot play at all. I soon realise that this view is utterly incorrect – Peggy Sue do not embellish or play a wasted note. Every strum, every beat, is no more than is required to service the wonderful harmonies.

I may not quite be in the mood for them tonight, but I recognise Peggy Sue as a very smart outfit indeed. I shall investigate them further.

Wild Flag come trailing clouds of glory from previous bands. They are billed in some quarters as a ‘super group’ because members have done time in seminal bands like Sleater-Kinney, Helium, The Jicks and The Minders. I’m not interested in their past, just what occurs in front of me tonight.

What is clear from the off is how confident and slick they are.

If this wasn’t an all girl band, I’d almost call this cock-rock. Carrie Brownstein and Mary Timony on guitar and bass respectively not only take shares of the vocal duties but often punctuate proceedings with competitive solos, instruments thrust phallically upward as they face each other. Jimi Hendrix would have loved it.

The songs are impressive and varied. If anything testifies to the fact that these women have histories in other bands it is this feeling that the music has been written by separate songwriters and then fine-tuned into something for the whole group during the playing and rehearsal stage.

There is still room for improvisation alongside the professionalism. ‘Glass Tambourine’ and ‘Racehorse’ both turn into lengthily extended jam sessions.

For an encore, Wild Flag perform a rousing version of Television’s ‘See No Evil’ – plenty of scope for guitar work in that one.

I find Wild Flag much easier to admire than to wholeheartedly embrace, which is kind of how I’d felt about Peggy Sue earlier. So not a total rave then, but certainly an impressive evening.

I head out into the night. It’s colder than a witch’s suckling equipment out here…

FOE and Fever Fever at Camden Barfly - 30 January 2012

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

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

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.



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FOE at Bull and Gate - 3 January 2012

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.