La Femme at Barfly - 8 November 2012

La Femme by Hugo Guyader

We’re told that it’s only their second gig. It doesn’t feel like it.

Qtier are minimalist, but tuneful in the same way that the XX or Radiohead are. They pulse, they tick. There’s a thin falsetto vocal. This band exists in the spaces between the notes.

And they are very brief. They do three songs and they’re gone. It’s a pleasant little cameo. I’ll keep an eye on them.

Fantasy Rainbow are deliberately misleading.

Centre stage the handsome guitarist, his quiff tall and proud, stands up to the microphone. He turns out to be a Maguffin. In truth, he barely sings at all.

The main singer and progenitor of the band is Oliver Catt, here acting as second guitarist lurking stage right in tracksuit bottoms and an enveloping black jumper.  He has a drawling delivery that works very well in the context of this music which marries fuzzy thrash with heartfelt angst.

They are a very interesting outfit – the songs are complex and varied, yet form a coherent and dynamic set. There’s some real bite here.  It’s a measure of how much I like them that I am disappointed not to be able to find them afterwards to buy their album.

I last saw La Femme at this year’s 1234 Shoreditch and liked them enough to come back for a second helping here tonight.

And from the moment they start until the end of their set they do not put a foot wrong. They are absolutely terrific.

There are five keyboards strung across the stage, although in practice there are rarely more than three employed at a time. From behind this wall there’s a chic riot going on.

It’s just so JOYOUS. Every song is a surf pop delight, and if you can’t dance to this you are probably dead.

Vocals are traded between Marlon Magnee, nattily attired, his hair sticking out at right angles, and the lovely Clemence, grooving furiously and also dressed to kill. Each song is propulsive, a breakneck helter skelter ride of beats.

Although there is a definite surf rock, Sixties feel, this is also allied to a real modern dance sensibility. Tunes build and build before the inevitable break down that sends everyone into paroxysms.

I’m smiling so much that my face hurts.

I could watch this band all night and when they finish, the venue is just packed with happy, dazed looking people.

A really good night out. La Femme have now become one of my current darlings. Magnifique!

Taffy and Blindness at Wilmington Arms - 3 November 2012

Taffy

It’s been a number of years since I was last at the Wilmington Arms. They’ve now completely separated the downstairs venue from the rest of the pub. It is small and dark and intimate.

It’s also not too busy initially. Haiku Salut play to the proverbial one man and a dog. And me and my friends constitute the dog.

The girls perform a set in which a wide variety of keyboards, accordions, trumpets, melodicas, kick drums and some iPad-weird-Bjorky thing come into play. The problem that arises is that once you’ve acknowledged the range and diversity of the instrumentation on offer, there’s not really much else here.

It’s all very pleasant, but each song is basically an interlude, rather than something to listen to in its own right. They might as well perform behind a poster of the test card.

The next band represent something that I didn’t think actually existed.

In my mind there have always been pub bands (who are perfectly respectable but relatively mundane and content to ply their trade at a lower level, usually for the love of playing rather than any expectation of greater things) and bands that have some spark of originality about them and who are giving the music business a real shake.

 It’s a reductive way of thinking, but it has generally steered me right.

My initial impression of Blindness turns out to be totally wrong. They’ve clearly been around the block a bit and they are dressed rather like a cheesy night club act. But I am wrong to dismiss them this easily.

After an uncertain start the band settle into a slow and heavy and all-conquering electronic groove which is shot through with lashings of distorted guitar feedback. Right up my alley, in other words.

Singer Beth Rettig arches her back and emotes in a low, urgent voice. I’m reminded of acts like Curve, or even the later iterations of the Jesus and Mary Chain. I like them a lot.

I’m attracted to Japanese bands on tour in the same way that a wasp is drawn to a plate of strawberry jam sandwiches. Tonight I’ve alighted on Taffy.

This band continue the retro theme of the previous act and actually hark even further back into music’s past.

In 1986 I used to go to the Bull and Gate about three times a week to see bands like The Wedding Present, The Mighty Lemon Drops and The Soup Dragons. At this time My Bloody Valentine were a power pop combo.

Taffy would have fitted right in to this scene. We might now call this music star-gaze or the like, but back in the day it was disparagingly called ‘shambling’ and mostly sneered at. But really it was great pop music made with guitars.

Taffy play pure jangly C-86 power pop. It’s impossible not to tap your feet and jiggle about.

Singer Iris is dressed in pink. Guitarist Asano introduces the band by phonetically reading from a notepad and thanks us for coming. The pleasure is all ours. Drummer Ken is a joy- a happy bespectacled and slightly plump figure who beams from ear to ear. It’s impossible not to smile back at him.

The set rattles along at a great pace, with the more bubblegum numbers gradually replaced by longer pieces that fall more squarely in the shoegaze genre of extended guitar noodling. What’s not to like?

It’s been a fine evening’s fun. I’ll try to get back here more quickly next time.

Katzenjammer at Islington Academy - 31 October 2012

Katzenjammer

It’s Halloween. A night of horrible fun and light hearted nastiness.

I’ve already seen an impressive Jason/ Pinhead hybrid on the tube. He’s tall and menacing and carries a sword. He gets to have any train seat that he wants.

As we enter the venue, the first act is already onstage. You’d think that he was in costume. But he’s not.

Ben Caplan hides a very basic act behind a riot of grey facial hair. When Edward Lear wrote of a man with a beard, Caplan took notes. Every meal the man ever ate must be in there somewhere.

Caplan’s act is simplicity itself. There is a certain amount of folksy charm and a whole lot of all-join-in-the-chorus call and response stuff. If there is a rhyme all night that is more subtle than moon-June-spoon I don’t hear it.

Ben Caplan is likeable enough. Indeed, being likeable IS his act. But it is so lowest common denominator undemanding stuff that he could probably do this with his eyes shut.

A confession. Last time I saw Katzenjammer, I couldn’t warm to them. They were clearly good, but I just couldn’t feel it. I’m here to give myself a second chance.

In the spirit of the season, the band come onstage sporting a variety of false moustaches. It looks really weird. But then Katzenjammer are rather a weird beast.

Theirs is a musical chimera of Scandinavian folk, American country music and Weimar cabaret. It’s rather a queasy mix and some of it works and some of it doesn’t.

That’s actually a lie. There is nothing that Katzenjammer do that is not well executed and completely spot on. I genuinely like them...

...but not here, not tonight.

This is a soulless rectangular box full of people. This band should be enjoyed in a dark, comfortable bar, preferably with me zonked out on expensive brandy.  In the harsh confines of the Islington Academy, I’m too uncomfortable to relax into the band. Everything seems strained and forced. After half an hour I leave.

I've tried twice with Katzenjammer and both times have failed to enjoy it for reasons that I can't really fathom. It really is a case of 'it's not them, it's me.'

As I pass through Angel tube station, a young girl is being attended to by paramedics. A young man is having hysterics and is being physically restrained from throwing himself upon them as they try to revive her. It is one of the most upsettingly horrible things I’ve ever seen.

Happy Halloween.

Mindless Self Indulgence at Forum - 28 October 2012

Mindless Self Indulgence

It’s been a tempestuous day. It’s raining cats and dogs and I’ve just come from the ill-tempered Armageddon that was the Chelsea v Man Utd match. I’m damp and seething.

I find comfort in the dark shroud of a half full Forum. Arriving in time to catch about two minutes of the Dead Betas, it’s hard to form an impression. However, their Bandcamp is here.

Taking Haley are up next and are pretty much the dream support act. Everything they do seems designed to warm up an audience for someone else.

The crowd are encouraged to wave, clap and sing along, which they are happy to do. The band are enthusiastic, glad to be here and come across a bit like a lightweight version of Ash, but without any immediately killer tunes. They know their audience and they do a respectable job.

And then...arriving full pelt and not letting up for so much as a second, Mindless Self Indulgence are among us.

The crowd effectively implodes into a mass of moshing guys and screaming girls. It’s a tsunami of hormones and testosterone which suddenly occupies about the half space as previously as the kids pile forward. There is then a great wash of humanity as lighter and more sensitive souls are expelled from the seething mass.

A band like this is only as good as their front man and James Euringer, aka Jimmy Urine is the best of the bunch. This man never rests for even the merest second, a non-stop blur of flailing limbs, spiky hair and obscene gestures.

He is joined by Steve Righ? sporting a bandana and beard, and clearly enjoying himself by rather camping it up, even though he looks like a grizzled biker. Bassist Lyn-Z is relatively restrained in comparison, only occasionally getting the limelight when Urine passes her the microphone to scream into. Drums are thumped by Kitty, tonight dolled up like a member of Sigue Sigue Sputnik.

But it’s all about Jimmy Urine. He dashes around the stage, teetering on a series of podiums hidden between the other musicians. He keeps up a non-stop monologue of insult, off colour humour and audience-baiting. The ruder he is about them, the more they love it. Which is part of the joke.

Songs pass by in a blur and I must admit that the actual musical content rather passes me by – I’m too busy watching the singer’s antics to care about what he’s actually singing.  

An indication of the highbrow nature of tonight’s proceedings can be appreciated when, after announcing that the band will be playing in Paris the following evening, Urine gets the crowd to chant along “Fuck The French!”. At another point, he balances awkwardly on a podium the better to repeatedly moon us with his skinny white ass.

After an hour or so, the law of diminishing returns starts to set in. The band are as full on and outrageous as previously, but the crowd seem exhausted by it all.

The second encore is rather bizarre. The band leaves the stage apart from Steve, who invites various members of the crowd up on stage to play his guitar. They can’t. Steve starts to sing “Born Free”. There is some confusion and it becomes clear that this is indeed the end, and the others aren’t coming back.

Mindless Self Indulgence live up to their name in a good way. It’s great to let off steam, be a little silly and just make some noise.

And I’m sure that somewhere that Urine and co are getting some French kids to chant “Fuck L’Anglais!”

Sparks at Barbican - 26 October 2012

Sparks

The stage is bare save for a keyboard to one side. To a wave of applause, a gaunt and stooped Ron Mael trudges on, his head and shoulders bowed.

He proceeds to play a medley of Sparks hits, running them together in such a manner that it is impossible to pick them all out. I do however catch a snatch of ‘Looks, Looks, Looks’, my favourite track from the early era of the band.

From stage right, Russell Mael makes his entrance. He is attired in the tweed jacket, khaki trousers and gaiters of a 1930’s country gentleman. His dark hair is combed into a floppy black forelock. You could almost say that it is Russell and not Ron Mael who most looks like Hitler.

This is Sparks on their ‘Two Hands, One Mouth’ tour and that is exactly what you get. Everything has been pared away to Russell’s remarkable falsetto vocal and Ron’s accompaniment.

They start with ‘Hospitality On Parade’, Russell skipping in circles around the large stage, Ron necessarily as static as ever. This is the pattern for the rest of the show. ‘Metaphor’ and ‘At Home, At Work, At Play’ follow.

This format neatly illustrates the elaborate word play of their early material. There is a flavour of Broadway about the songs and you wonder about the path not followed and what a Sparks musical might have looked like.

The more recent Sparks songs are almost the complete antithesis of this approach. Songs such as ‘Rhythm Thief’ and ‘Dick Around’ rely on repetition to the extent that they could be sung as rounds by primary school kids (ok, maybe not that last one). ‘My Baby’s Taking Me Home’ consists of no more than those five words.

Further to my earlier thoughts about the viability of a Sparks stage show, the brothers perform a small excerpt from their long gestating ‘Seduction of Ingmar Bergman’ project, for which Ron dons a beret. It’s interesting rather than arresting.

And that is the slight niggle with a lot of this show. Aside from being bashed out on a single keyboard, there has been no attempt to alter these songs from their usual full band format. This ‘acoustic’ approach doesn’t really make you see the songs in any kind of new light. There are no hidden interpretations that you were not aware of before.  This means that tracks like ‘This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us’ and ‘Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth’ sound underpowered rather than intimate.

It is only during the encores that the new dynamic seems to bring something fresh to the material. ‘No 1 Son in Heaven’ and ‘Beat the Clock’ sound particularly terrific tonight.

During the latter, the brother’s gradually change places. This allows Ron to perform a stately audience invasion, walking through the aisles to applause and handshakes.

The Maels are genuinely and deeply moved by the reception that they receive tonight. It is in the UK and Europe where they are held in the highest esteem – I suspect that Sparks have always been way too clever-clever to be embraced by the American mainstream.

It’s been a really enjoyable, if rather brief show, from a pair of true originals. If the two of them have had half as much fun as we have, then they are happy men indeed.

Savages at Electrowerkz - 11 October 2012

Savages

Here I am back in the claustrophobic metal tin that is Electrowerkz. I wouldn’t say that we are packed nose to tail, but I saw a couple of sardines outside gasping for air.

The lights are down and Savages are onstage. They are deliberately androgynous and business-like. They let their music do the talking.

As I watch may be the best headlining set that I have come across this year, I’m struck by two things...

...I had noticed that the audience is generally older than I would have expected for what is essentially a new, up and coming band. Ok, Savages are fronted by Jehnny Beth who was previously part of well regarded duo John and Jehn, but that is not it.

What is intriguing is the band’s overall sound. I’ve heard them compared to Siouxsie and the Banshees, but I find that this description is too broad and not helpful. To my ears, Savages are originating from the absolute focal point that is Echo and The Bunnymen’s second album, Heaven Up Here. That’s incredible enough. What’s even more incredible is that Savages take this sound and improve upon it.

Jehnny Beth employs all the vocal tricks of Ian McCulloch while the rest of the band are tight and fast and streamlined. Everything is finely honed and spare, nothing wasted...

...which brings me to my second great Savages epiphany. What makes this band stand out from the herd is their brevity. The very vast majority of Savages songs clock in at three minutes or less. That seems incredibly unusual these days.

The songs aren’t played at breakneck speed. They are perfect, precise and short. In an age when many bands have a tendency to maunder on and rely on band and audience finding a mutually satisfactory groove, Savages’ conciseness and discipline seems all the more impressive.

This set is barely over the half an hour mark, but is concentrated and nourishing. Both sides of their single, ‘Flying To Berlin’ and ‘Husbands’ get an airing. There is a buzz about the band that is growing and is clearly merited. No filler here, all muscle.

Consider me Savaged.

Osaka Ramones (Shonen Knife) at Cargo - 01 October 2012

Shonen Knife as Osaka Ramones

Some things you can predict, some things you can’t…

I wouldn’t have predicted that Wussy, the first band on tonight and who hail from Cincinnati, are normally a five piece ensemble.

Tonight Wussy are stripped down to the vital core of Chuck Cleaver and Lisa Walker. He, massive and full of beard. She, wiry and bright eyed. Both heavily covered in tattoos across all exposed areas of flesh.

The pair broadly alternate vocal chores between them, and surprisingly, Chuck’s voice is often higher than Lisa’s, a beautiful sound that seems unusual coming from a guy who looks like he leads a Hells Angel Chapter.

Wussy are set square at that junction of Americana where folk and country collide. Individual songs are firmly in one camp or the other. Occasionally you could close your eyes and see the rhinestones.

For the second half of their set the pair are joined by the drummer from one of the other acts, American Werewolf Academy. As my colleague points out, this guy looks pissed in both the British and American senses of the word.  He seems surly and over-tired, but does a fine job backing Wussy, adding a necessary dynamism to propel them to a satisfactory conclusion.

I wouldn’t have predicted that American Werewolf Academy would be so shonky. The three of them crash about artlessly and hoarsely shout at us. There is lots of guitar posing and leg kicking but they just seem like louts bawling about.

I’ve always found that bands from abroad have a certain level of confidence and stage craft – after all, it is a big step to play your music in another country and bands don’t tend to attempt this until they have reached a particular level of tightness and competence. American Werewolf Academy blow that theory out the water. They are possibly alcohol-impaired, but tonight they are galumphing, slipshod and annoying.

After that unpleasant surprise there is nothing more predictably satisfying than Shonen Knife.

This Osaka three piece have played for many years and while they never really vary, they never disappoint. It is an older crowd tonight, many still wearing the same plaid shirts they wore when Kurt Cobain first championed the band to a wider audience.

Tonight Shonen Knife are performing as their alter-egos, Osaka Ramones.

Their set is Ronseal – thirty five minutes of nonstop Ramones classics that barely last two minutes each and which are separated one from the next by a high-pitched scream of “1,2,3,4”.

Starting with ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’, ‘Psychotherapy’ and ‘Rockaway Beach’ da sistas go on to bam-a-lam their way through ‘Sheena Is A Punk Rocker’, ‘I Wanna Be Sedated’ and ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll High School’. The stage is drenched in dry ice amongst which we see manes of black hair whipped about, beaming smiles and ‘\m/’ finger salutes.

They pause for breath, and encore with two songs of their own, including ‘Pop Tune’ from their new album of the same name.

Shonen Knife are a pure fun delivery system. A good time guaranteed each and every time.  That’s not even a prediction. That’s a stone cold fact.