tUnE-yArDs and Sylvan Esso at Village Underground - 12 May 2014

tUnE-yArDs

Wayhoo! WAYHOO!! Yip! Yip! Yip!

Merrill Garbus aka Tune-Yards aka tUnE-yArDs has taken the stage. The crowd is ecstatic to the point of delirium. This will lead to problems later on…

About an hour earlier we have been royally entertained by Amelia Randall Meath and Nicholas Sandborn, a duo who operate under the title of Sylvan Esso.

Amelia is a compact figure in black. She tenses her body as though preparing to lift a heavy weight. She is in fact gathering her energies to let rip with a powerful voice.

Beside her, Nicholas is the complete physical opposite. Tall and skinny, he's all hands and elbows a he fiddles with the knobs on an electronic console. He unleashes a succession of thunderous beats, which heave underneath Amelia's vocal.

There's a general Portishead style vibe here, and the rhythms are hard to resist. The crowd nods its collective head along with the bouncing duo and all is well.

When Tune-Yards appear there is an up swell of emotion that starts off hysterical and kind of builds from there. Merrill Garbus is not so much welcomed as worshipped.

Dressed in a green costume and smeared with green and white peace paint, Garbus looks like the commanding officer of an Eighties interstellar space cruiser. And command she does.

There are plenty of songs from new album 'Nikki Nack'. Garbus has a wonderfully expressive face, all rolling eyes and strained gurning as she ranges from sweetly cooing nursery rhyme to Appalachian hog calling - usually within the same song. Time signatures are complex and variable, with some tunes incorporating long silences or ending so abruptly that it is hard to tell if they have finished or not.

It's a breathtaking performance.

Unfortunately, Tune-Yards are not the only sound. Large sections of the crowd, gripped in the throes of devotion, cannot resist the impulse to attempt to sing along with everything.  It is a marvel that Merrill Garbus can produce the noise that she does and a few dozen enthusiastic but (let's face it) drunk and awful amateurs can't match her. Instead, every song is drowned out by random yips and 'wayhoo's and much of the magic is lost in the cacophony.

It's hugely frustrating for the majority who just want to watch and enjoy the band that they have come to see.

Garbus is ably backed by a pair of like-minded backing singers, the three of them enthusing the newer songs with the kind of New York African vibe last heard in this form on Talking Heads' 'Remain in Light'.

I leave the venue mightily annoyed. Tune-Yards were terrific tonight, but much of their work was undone by the uncoordinated participation of those who love them most.

The Pack AD and Nico Vega Upstairs at the Garage - 07 May 2014

The Pack AD

Yesterday was the O2, today is the altogether more compact surroundings of Upstairs at the Garage. Yesterday was all about twerking and tongues and giant laser dogs, today there is a merch table with some free badges.

It's a more mature audience too. There are very few, if any, people in hot pants.

Nico Vega hail from California and have not toured the UK for around five years. They are very apologetic and keen to make up for lost time.

Singer Aja Volkman is wildly enthusiastic and by the end of the first number has clambered on top of the drum kit and is bashing on a snare.

Aja is sporting an outfit that seems mainly made up of floaty scarves and this Fleetwood Maccery also extends to the guitarist who, unable to decide between sporting a bandana or a hat has plumped for wearing both at the same time.

The music is fast, exciting and the hard core fans down the front are soon bouncing around. I'm tapping a toe myself.

Aja finishes an excellent set with a foray off the stage and into the appreciative throng.

Afterwards the band hang around to chat with fans and come across as genuinely nice folk. A pleasure.

I'm also very pleased to catch up once more with The PackAD, who I have not seen in far too long.

Their set up is simplicity itself. Maya drums and sings, Beck plays a phenomenally rock guitar and also sings. Nothing more than that, just damn fine rock and roll.

It's heads down, no nonsense stuff. Aside from a selection of very nifty songs, it is this lack of artifice that is the main selling point with The Pack A.D. The new album gets a solid airing, and like, the two before it, delivers the goods.

As a band, The Pack AD are hard to describe – they simply need to be listened to.

A very enjoyable evening in the company of a lot of happy people. I'll take that for a dollar.

  

Miley Cyrus at O2 Arena - 06 May 2014

Miley Cyrus in typically restrained mode

Last year I saw an image that got my attention.

At the MTV Music Awards, Miley Cyrus was shaking her ass and lolling her tongue. She was clearly being silly and having fun.  The camera then panned to the front row ofthe audience to reveal the great and the good of the music industry stony-facedand as miserable as sin, for all the world like a gaggle of puritan women in a Salem courtroom.

And I thought to myself "That Miley Cyrus is alright in my book."

Which is a long winded explanation for why I'm perched in the O2 as Miley brings her Bangerz tour to London.

It starts mad and gets madder. From the opening moment when Cyrus slides down an enormous prosthetic tongue to gyrate with a cast of Technicolor furries in front of a giant screen showing a typically off kilter and disturbing John Kricfalusi cartoon of the same thing, I just start laughing and smiling. I don't stop for the next hour and three quarters.

During the opening number Miley appears to be naked aside for a pair of strategically placed red lips clamped to her boobs and butt. There is twerking. She bounces about to the electro hoedown of '4 x 4' and dances with a pink gingham pantomime horse.

By song three Miley has changed into a tiny leotard made of dollar bills and simulating sex on the roof of a golden Humvee that trundles out amongst the audience whilst firing wads of 'Miley Money' over their heads.

She follows this with the bravura 'FU', a waltz timed belter that sees her work the crowd whilst ignoring the twelve foot tall orange day-glo muppet that is apparently stalking her.

It’s a show that gets your attention.

Cyrus has a huge voice. When she sings a relatively straight forward power ballad she commands the whole arena, acknowledging the lights of a million raised cell phones and deftly fielding the shower of trinkets that the crowd are hurling at her.  She gets the cameras to home in on audience members snogging each other. They all oblige and the Daily Mail shits itself..

She gathers her breath, spits her bottle of water over the lucky/unlucky few nearest the stage and prances off to a giant bed atop which she writhes about with an ever growing phalanx of muscular male dancers.

This is Miley's first gig since being hospitalised for an allergic reaction to an antibiotic and she lets rip with an expletive filled rant about the internet rumourmongers who had thought she was on drugs. This is a theme that she returns to throughout the show, her voice a polite Texan drawl, her words those that would make a docker wince.

The most astonishing visual coup of a seriously bonkers show is that unannounced arrival of a forty foot inflatable of her late lamented dog Floyd. He towers over the stage, malevolently shooting lasers from his eyes. The set changes into a kind of Egyptian ritual, with dancers wildly twirling at the feet of this dark Anubis.

Miley then decamps to a separate, intimate stage at the other end of the arena. She is now dressed in a spangly shirt but has lost her trousers. Here she really lets rip with some top notch cover versions, including Arctic Monkeys ('You Only Call Me When You're High'), Bob Dylan ('You're Gonna Make Me Lonely When You Go'), Lana Del Rey ('Summertime Sadness') and Dolly Parton ('Jolene'). Here you get a glimpse of the artist she will become once she's calmed down a bit.

Then it’s back to the action, with much crunking, bogling and twerking from her dancers and Miley flying round the arena on a giant hot dog.

For all Miley's obsession with tweaking the nose of decency, there's something slightly misjudged about the 'naughty' stuff tonight. Bluntly, Miley is a game little minx, but she's far too showbiz to be properly sexy and no amount of titillation can address this. So her show falls into an uncanny valley of oddness.

After a duet with a giant 3D kitten, Miley eschews the obvious temptation and performs the mighty 'Wrecking Ball' in a relatively straightforward manner.

By the second encore 'Party in the USA' the whole gang are jiving about, dressed as American landmarks such as Mount Rushmore or the Liberty Bell. Miley wears a ten gallon hat and a Union Jack leotard. The evening ends with glitter and fireworks.

Miley Cyrus is currently weird and wonderful, crazy and colourful and probably the best arena sized act out there at the moment. You realise that the reason that those titans of the pop industry looked so pissed off was the realisation that they had just gone the way of the dinosaur.

  

Ravioli Me Away, Witching Waves, AS Ondas, Firestations, Ampline at Brixton Windmill - 18 April 2014

Witching Waves

Another Bank holiday, another opportunity to get some bands under my belt. Today, and indeed any day, the Brixton Windmill is my friend.

Today’s line-up has been put together under the name ‘Bad Friday’. It turns out to be a misleading description. There’s not much that’s subpar today.

The band who draw the short straw of being first on are ASOndas. It must be really intimidating to play in what is initially an empty space, but the sound of guitars soon draws the punters from the bar and garden.

The band are a bit nervous to start with, the guitarist unable to bring herself to make eye contact with us. 

However, it doesn’t take them long for them to settle into what is a short and spiky set. Vocals are alternated between the three band members, possibly to best effect when the tiny drummer takes over. We’re off to a promising beginning.

Firestations are a band who have refined their sound into something that approximates to a folk take on Krautrock. The music ticks along to a simple repetitive beat while the voices of Michael Cranny and Laura Copsey harmonise and complement each other.

The band starts off very arrestingly, but I find my attention starts to wander as they go on. This is mostly because I’m hungry and smell of the BBQ in the garden is beginning to waft into the room.

Ampline are probably the biggest names playing today. They’re a veteran US noise band fronted by Mike Montgomery, also known for his work with Kelley Deal in R Ring. This is a rare UK show.

The band are grey of hair and grizzled in appearance. When they blast off, they sound like Armageddon.

Theirs is a thunderous din, the guitarists crouched almost face to face as they exert their instruments to ever louder extremes. Occasionally, Montgomery lends his voice to the thrash. You can’t really hear him, but it doesn’t really matter. Ears bleed, teeth rattle.

Witching Waves are a complete contrast. The intense pop of Mark Jasper and Emma Wigham relies on great songs and a slightly peevish attitude, which adds an edge to proceedings. I like them a lot. They even manage to pull off a Kanye West cover and make it their own. I’m impressed.

It is often said that you can’t go wrong with a three piece no-wave jazz pop punk outfit that consists of three gals dressed up as US rockers KISS. It’s often said because its true. Tonight Ravioli Me Away are terrific.

Sian, Rosie and Alice pull off the very difficult trick of being serious and fun at the same time. They’re cut from the same cloth as the Slits – one foot in dub reggae and the other in contemporary issues. It doesn't feel like a lecture. It feels like a damn good night out. I dance like a dervish. An overweight dervish.

I have to bow out at this point and miss what were no doubt excellent performances from The Graphite Set, Shopping and Skinny Girl Diet.

‘Bad Friday’? Good gravy!

Warning! The audience in this features a girl in costume as Russell Brand. It is quite the most disturbing image ever committed to film.

A Witness and The Cravats at The Buffalo Bar - 12 April 2014

A Witness 

Evolution is a harsh and arbitrary process. For every small furry mammal that prospered in the shadow of a dinosaur’s demise, there were thousands of trilobites that never made it out of the ocean at all.

Tonight is very much a trilobite night.

The Buffalo Bar is a notoriously cramped and claustrophobic venue, but even the prospect of resurrected mid-Eighties indie demi-legends cannot fill the place.

We start off with MacDonalds, the pick-up band helmed by Paul Guided Missile and featuring the great and the good of the indie parish. Members of Art Brut and the Applicants have passed through their ranks. 

Unfortunately I miss the start of their set and so am unaware of the current line- up. This doesn’t really matter as this is less of a set than a reminiscence and a discussion. There are occasional songs, but these are almost beside the point.

It’s all very convivial.

Next up are The Cravats, a band much beloved of the late John Peel. They were much too ornery and unusual to stir the greater gig going world at large.

They are led now, as then, by the sizeable and intimidating Shend, a front man who, rather like David Thomas of Pere Ubu, debunks the popular misconception that big men are necessarily jolly.

Shend mutters, blusters and howls his way through what is essentially The Cravats’ singles compilation.

What made the band unusual at the time, and still defiantly uplifting now is Svor Naan’s blaring saxophone, utilised as a lead instrument. It’s a literal blast.

Age may have caught up with The Cravats (tell me about it!) but they are still as grumpy and loud and wonderful as fuck and songs like “You’re Driving Me” and “Off the Beach” still sound great.

Headliners A Witness are an even rarer sight. They’ve not played since 1989 when original guitarist Rick Aitkin was tragically killed in a rock climbing accident. This gig marks the 25^th anniversary of his death.

I last saw the band back in the day at the Bull and Gate, a legendary venue synonymous with this era. It was shut down a couple of years ago for ‘refurbishments’ and currently sits disgracefully boarded up and abandoned by the brewery chain that bought it.

A Witness only ever released one album and a clutch of twelve inch singles. I still love them dearly.

This is pop music at its most brutalist. Singer Crayola’s voice is an astringent bark, song titles a surrealistic collage.

We get everything tonight; ‘Helicopter Tealeaf’, ‘McManus Octaphone’, ‘Nodding Dog Moustache’ and of course ‘I Love You Mr Disposable Razors’ with its references to “You watch carved from an Italian mountain…”, a reference to a then popular advert for Mont Blanc wristwatches.

The evening ends with the band’s first single ‘The Loudhailer Song’.

A Witness didn’t sound like anything else in 1986/7 and they don’t sound like anything else since.

This has been a shameless wallow in nostalgia. But also a fine reminder of a weird interregnum in British music when the last of the obviously post punk bands had died off or gone on to better things and before the more nakedly commercial acts of the late Eighties and Nineties rose to prominence.

History remembers the mid-Eighties as all synths and shoulder pads, but there were small guitar bands out there on the margins – and they were utterly unique.

The Men, Baby Strange and Lola Colt at Village Underground - 27 March 2014

Some Men

The merciless sun beats on the parched yellow plain. Brittle tumbleweed roll slowly down the main street of a deserted cow town. NancySinatra drags the black-clad corpse of Lee Hazelwood into a gulch…

…we're at Village Underground and Lola Colt are performing. They are a pitch perfect slice of classic western gothic, by turns dark and menacing, desolate and yearning.

The band coalesces around the brooding figure of Gun Overbye. She has a powerful and commanding voice that rises and strengthens as she howls out in anger or torment.

Stage left, a striking keyboard/percussionist pulls focus. She's clad in black, stamps her feet, tosses her long mane of black hair and sporadically bangs the hell out of an enormous drum. I think every male eye in the room is watching her.

Lola Colt create a hugely atmospheric sound and in tracks like recent single 'Jackson' they have the tunes too. They're very impressive.

There are no frills to Baby Strange. This is a stripped down three piece of guitar, drum and bass. And they're a blast.

Guitarist Jonny is a gangly rebel with a teen star sneer. He's got the same mall rat cool of a young Di Caprio. Not orthodox, but magnetic.

Like all good bands, this lot are young loud and snotty, with good tunes and tonnes of attitude. There are regular obituaries for British guitar rock. Judging by these Scottish whippersnappers, the form looks to be in rude health.

Headliners The Men string four guitarists across the stage. It’s a statement of intent.

These guys are mid-tour and couldn't look more frazzled and dishevelled if they were sleeping on top of each other in a pile in the back of a transit van.

The Men are absolutely deafening. It's an ear-ripping head churning rush of sound. Vocals are swapped between up to four vocalists, guitars and keyboards thrashed and pounded as if their lives depended upon it.

Their music is evolving. The new album 'Tomorrow's Hits' moves away from the pure ears-pinned back blast of their earlier material into a much more classical American 70's rock sound. With the driving guitars and electric piano, Time Out New York referred to them as "Thurston Moore and the E Street Band" which is far better than anything I could have come up with.

This all means that 'Bataille', the ferocious song which first drew the band to the wider world's attention, is dispensed with only three numbers into tonight's set. It sounds like a jet taking off.

It's a wonderful, uplifting set. One of the band is wearing a Neil Young T shirt of fairly recent vintage and the towering yet tuneful rock they play is certainly on nodding terms with the wilder excesses of Crazy Horse.

The sheer noise generated is just painfully brutal. I'm aware as I watch them that I'm doing real damage to my hearing. But I'm not going to leave this…

…Sometime later, I'm walking down the road reflecting on the best three-act show of the year so far. All the bands were great, and I recommend them all.

My head is buzzing and full of voices and static. So much so that for a while I think that the passing cars are driving on newly-laid gravel. My ears are totally shot, and remain so for much of the following day.

Frankly, it was worth it.

Cults and Famy at Village Underground - 17 March 2014

Cults on The Late Show with David Letterman

The Venus De Milo is onstage. Sure, she's wearing a tee shirt and a pair of baggy jeans, but it's definitely her.

The famous statue stands at the back of the stage behind Famy, a band with lofty ambitions.

They start with a roaring off-mike harmony of voices, gearing themselves up until the guitars come crashing in.

I'm a big fan of Village Underground and its towering brick vault of a stage.  The venue always shows bands off to their best advantage, and it’s the same again tonight.

However, while Famy look the part of a confident bunch of musicians, there is something about their sound mix that is stifling them. They seem stuck behind a glass wall, with any energy or emotion dissipating in the void a few rows from the front of the audience.

At one point the drummer straps a camera to his head and dives into the crowd. This should be more exciting than it is. (However, the footage is now on their Facebook page, so judge for yourself).

Musically, there's some interesting stuff going on. There are lots of harmonies, big choruses and elegant song structure. The overlapping voices put me in mind of Panda Bear or Grizzly Bear. Any band with 'Bear' in the name.

Even though I don't think that Famy quite deliver a knockout punch this evening, there's enough here for me to want to investigate their recorded work.

The Venus De Milo makes an ignominious exit, tilted head down and carted off by roadies.

I first saw Cults a few years ago at Bush Hall. Since then they have quietly gone about their business, wracking up a string of catchy tracks that burst out at you unexpectedly from radio stations and TV commercials.

Tonight Madeline Follin and the suspiciously-named Brian Oblivion perform in front of a bank of video screens set high above the stage. In keeping with the title of their most recent album the screens are buzzing with 'Static'.

They are garbed in black, with Follin's white face and red lipstick shrouded in a lush sweep of long black hair. She tosses and fiddles with her luxuriant mane throughout the show.

Oblivion busies himself behind a keyboard and occasionally joins in with Follin's high-pitched vocals. He is barely audible.

Cults' music is ultra modern but harks back to the simpler era of girl groups like The Shangri-Las or even the early Supremes. The ghosts of bygone days flit through the darkness.

The band are enhanced by a terrific and clever use of projected images, which are not confined to the screens but play across the vast brick walls of the venue. At times I lose interest in what the band are doing and just enjoy the son et lumiere of doves fluttering upwards or buffalo charging around the room.

The set borrows heavily from the new album but also finds space for their break out hit 'Go Outside' which is just as dreamy as it ever was. They also unveil a version of 'Total Control' by The Motels, another band that faced the future by referencing the past.

It’s a solid, enjoyable performance that perhaps doesn't quite hit the absolute heights. But it has been a good evening and Cults are agreeable company. I make like the song and go outside.