Suuns and Valleys at XOYO - 14 May 2013

Suuns

As I come trotting down the stairs and into the black subterranean pit that is XOYO, I initially wonder if I've got the right night.

The room is very sparsely populated. Just a few stragglers sat forlornly around the edges. When the music starts up, I move in front of the stage to give the band a target to aim at.

Valleys come from Montreal and consist of Marc St Louis on guitar and Tilly Perks, who fiddles with the buttons and knobs on her Korg.  They are a well matched pair, two identical heads of long hair cascading across their faces.

Valleys play a summery, hazy sort of music. They float rather than rock, but they always maintain their grip on an actual tune rather than drifting off into unstructured atmospherics.

Tilly spends much of the set crouched under her equipment, the only thing visible an arm reaching upwards to adjust a dial or flick a switch. Marc ambles in and out of the spotlight.

I like Valleys and am pleased that by the time they conclude their set that the venue has filled up and that they get a good reception.

With all the lights extinguished the venue resonates to the sound of a muezzin calling the faithful to prayer. Dark figures appear in the murk and the sound gradually resolves itself into the opening bars of 'Music Won't Save You'.

This is Suuns and from this powerful opening until they leave the stage over an hour later, they barely put a foot or a note wrong.

I loved the bands' first album 'Zeroes QC' but have had difficulty in getting into their latest 'Images du Futur'. In the live setting, there is no distinction between the two - it's all majestic.

Vocals are generally performed by guitarist Ben Shemie, a curly haired figure twisting and contorting stage left. He is quiet but insistent and slightly sinister, his voice snaking in and out of the sound.

In the centre, the pulsing heart of the band is Joe Yarmush, making his bass a lead instrument, laying down a groove that shifts from machine precision to the loosest funk. He is so lost in his world of noise that he rarely raises his head to look at us.

Ignoring for a moment the excellent drummer Liam O' Neill (and such is the fate of drummers) the band is completed by the wiry Max Henry, wrestling with his keyboards as though trying to pin them to the stage, soon stripped to a T shirt as the energy pours from him.

Suuns' songs are expansive things, often starting deceptively simply but then gradually building in complexity and volume.  This is the perfect blend of krauty rhythms and dance. The audience doesn't know whether to stroke its chin or party its ass off.

If there is one minor flaw in the show it that some of the songs end too abruptly, leaving the crowd wrong footed. It's almost as if sometimes the band forgets the effect that its music is having on others.

Suuns deliver a terrific set this evening, and Valleys were none too shabby either. The show ends with a packed room full of sweaty, happy people. Good times.

The video below contains flashing images and stuff.

Adam Ant and the Good, the Mad and the Lovely Posse - Roundhouse - 11 May 2013

Adam Ant

Twenty four hours after We Are the In Crowd have left this stage, I'm back at the Roundhouse again. The kids had their fun last night. Now it's time for mum and dad to kick loose.

The dress standard is high. There are feathers, ruffles, white face stripes and at one point a fully dressed Regency dandy swaggering about the venue.

Adam Ant has had his ups and downs since he first blazed his unique trail across the pop charts. I've always found him fascinating - his blend of rock, tribal drumming, fashion and self mythology was unlike anything else at the time and has remained so.  He'd have been extraordinary and original if he'd only been a cult concern. To become as wildly popular as he was without compromising his act at all remains an incredible feat.

Adam Ant has created a succession of flamboyant stage personae. Currently he inhabits the role of the Blueblack Hussar, a rakishly dishevelled officer from the Crimean wars. Now bespectacled, Ant beams out from beneath a battered Napoleon-style hat. He's raring to go.

The backing band are The Good The Mad and the Lovely Posse and have been chosen as much for appearance as for musical ability. Ant has always created a 'gang' to play with and his current entourage are certainly idiosyncratic.

There are two drummers providing that trademark Burundi beat. One of them is the spectacular Jola Rodowicz, modelling a gigantic Sixties inspired tower of hair that makes her look like something sexy off the Flintstones. Really! Andy Woodward on the other set of skins barely draws an eye.

The set is impeccably balanced between material from the latest album (catchily titled 'Adam Ant is the Blueblack Hussar in Marrying the Gunner's Daughter') and oldies from throughout his career.

It has to be said that the sound in the venue is very indistinct and this causes quite a lot of discontent in some sections of the auditorium. Things improve before the end, but there are walkouts.

Ant can't quite hit the high notes as easily as he could in the past and has drafted in the frankly astonishing Georgina Baillie to augment his performance. She does a fair job of even upstaging the man himself, dressed in a skin tight shiny black dress and vamping it up to levels that are beyond parody. She's like Jessica Rabbit, but made flesh.

All the hits are played - we do the 'Prince Charming' dance, we thump along to 'Dog Eat Dog', we 'Stand and Deliver'. Forgotten gems like 'Press Darlings' and 'Whip in My Valise' are unearthed.

The only blot on what I find an exhilarating evening is some cunt throwing their beer all over me, destroying the mobile phone in my pocket in the process. It seems to have been some altercation going on some way away, but that’s no consolation.  'Hard Men, Tough Blokes' indeed. Twats more like.

I'm delighted with the show and delighted that Stuart Godard, aka Adam Ant aka The Blueblack Hussar is back on his game and performing to crowds who love him.

We Are the In Crowd and NeverShoutNever at Roundhouse - 10 May 2013

NeverShoutNever

This is a night for the kids. Female kids.  The whole evening I am able to walk to the bar unimpeded or wander into the gents without let or hindrance. I'll return to this venue tomorrow and things will be very different.

First onstage are Fort Hope. They're young, professional and covered in tattoos. Real ones, and not the 'Hello Kitty' kind.

Fort Hope are actually OK. They play training wheels metal and hit the important cusp of being a bit bad boy but not actually evil that teenage girls love. To my ears they don't have a single distinctive song, but they get their young audience to wave their arms from side to side, so job done.

Having checked Twitter before the gig, it is abundantly clear which of tonight's bands is generating the most excited internet traffic.  NeverShoutNever have drawn declarations of love, pictures and smiley faces from all quarters. When the band comes on stage there is such a high pitched shriek that bats chasing insects in the evening air outside the venue plug their ears and fall from the sky.

'Band' is a relative term. NeverShoutNever is a vehicle for the rather weird but undeniable charisma of Cristofer Drew. He is dressed as some kind of Victorian street urchin but addresses the screaming crowd with the formal courtesy of a Missouri gentleman.

Drew's youthful charm is his major selling point. He alternates between a green guitar and a ukulele and appears to have only a rudimentary grasp of either, but it really doesn't matter.

If a lot of teen acts flirt with metal, rap or dance, Drew is unique. The majority of his performance is a kind of shuffling skiffle blues. It's Justin Bieber playing Lonnie Donegan. It's certainly an original take.

The young girls scream themselves silly. Drew's actual music seems to be the least important part of his performance. He teases them, advises them that they are all special and not alone and plays the perfect non-sexually threatening teen boyfriend.

When NeverShoutNever depart, the composition of the crowd down the front alters subtly. The younger girls move to the back, allowing the slightly older ones and, gasp, boys, to move forward.

We Are the In Crowd bound onto the stage and immediately deliver a fine old pop rock racket.

Vocals are shared between Tay Jardine and Jordan Eckes and soon everyone is bouncing up and down, waving their arms (again) and generally loving it.

My own party is here because they happened across the band at a tiny gig at the Borderline a couple of years ago. Since then, WAtIC's popularity has clearly soared.

What I like about the band is that they haven't smoothed off their rough edges. They're very competent but they are not slick - they still feel like a proper young and hungrily enthusiastic rock band.

There is one moment that makes me blanch. Tay describes how when she put up some band photos on Twitter she got bombarded with messages along the lines that she had gotten fat but that this was OK because Twitter followers are family and families can say horrible things to each other.

To me this just seems horrifying, and not just because she is clearly a regularly shaped young woman. I'm more disturbed by the apparent validation of cyber bullying and that it seems almost unremarkable to the people involved.  To paraphrase William Gibson in Neuromancer, I've just been generation-gapped.

The set roars on and for the encore all the bands appear onstage and celebrate the end of the tour with a big group hug.

We Are the In Crowd look all set to progress further and maybe horn in on some of Paramore's fanbase.

Cristofer Drew may go on to rule the world.

 

OMD and John Foxx and The Maths at Roundhouse - 3 May 2013

OMD

Tonight it is a gathering of not just the old guard, but the original guard. These acts weren’t just the first out of the blocks, they were the guys that built the race track.

The Roundhouse is filled with folk of a certain age (my age) and the fact that the warm up DJ gets everyone bawling along with Phil Oakey’s ‘Together in Electric Dreams’ gives a pretty good flavour of the mood.

First up we have John Foxx and The Maths. The Foxx-led Ultravox! (exclamation mark important) were one of the first bands that I ever truly loved and I am glad to see that his current line-up retains the keyboard/violin dynamic that made his original band so great.

Foxx is in good humour and fine form, his massive chin thrust forward and his arms often aloft. His sound has barely altered from his early solo ventures – this is electronic music that is declamatory rather than danceable.

I enjoy his set a lot and in particular the final string of songs ‘Catwalk’, ‘Burning Car’ and ‘Underpass’. When I was at school, we always used to snigger and sing ‘Underpants!’ to this. In tribute to lost youth, I still do.

I will ‘fess up right now that I always found OMD (as they now style themselves) problematical.

They were pioneers of electronic music. I bought ‘Electricity’ because I liked the song rather than because it was on Factory Records – there wasn’t even much buzz about Factory back at this time.

But for me, there was always a niggle with Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. They were awkward. They weren’t cool. And not in the sense of not being the latest, greatest version of the cat’s pyjamas in pop magazines, but because they looked like your embarrassing dad having a jig at Christmas.

The current OMD album is called ‘English Electric’ and it is an apt description of them. When electronic music went on to provide the beats that powered disco and led to DFA, EDM and any other futuristic acronym you can think of, OMD meditated on serious themes.  They smuggled songs about Joan of Arc and the bombing of Hiroshima into the charts and put Vorticist paintings on their album covers. Which is of course, brilliant.

It’s just not much fun.

OMD continue this approach on the new album. There are songs about Edward Hopper’s ‘Night Cafe’ and Dresden.

Some bands are different live than on record. OMD are not one of those bands. They are thudding, anachronistic, awkward and just as great/naff as they ever were.

The hardcore fans around me absolutely love it. I’m a bit underwhelmed.

Frontman Andy McCluskey comperes the gig like a favourite uncle at a wedding, chatting and joking with the crowd about the dilemma of whether it is an affront if your single doesn’t make the Radio 2 playlist.  

The band plays the hits, the crowd sings along and everyone is content and yes, together in electric dreams.

I tip my hat to them and leave them to it.

White Hills, Gum Takes Tooth at Cargo - 17 April 2013

Ego Sensation of White Hills

It’s the first sign of spring.  There are more people sat in the garden at the back of Cargo than there are in the venue itself.  It’s a lovely evening and the company is pleasant.

Cocking an ear, I can keep tabs on the bands inside. Or so I think.

By the time I enter the room itself, my old friends Gum Takes Tooth are in full swing.

This is the second time in less than a week that I have seen them, and I find it interesting how the sound mix (and a certain familiarity with their material) changes my perception of the band.

At the Dalston Victoria Jussi vocals had been much louder and Thomas’ drums much more obviously electronically treated. Tonight it’s a much more low key performance and a more organic sound.  And I do enjoy the way that Jussi kind of slides across the floor while he’s playing with his various knobs and dials, like a modern parody of the Egyptian sand dance. I like them more than last week and I wasn’t really averse to them then.

I had seen Dave W from White Hills wandering about the venue earlier. This is a man who has the number of Alice Cooper’s stylist – heavy black make-up around the eyes and long straggly shoulder length hair surrounding a craggy face. Lots of leather and jewellery and he’s good to go.

Dave is accompanied on stage by the wonderfully named Ego Sensation, her dyed blonde hair flying in all directions as she pummels her bass guitar. She is a rock goddess in red and black.

The trio are completed by Nick Name, who is out of synch sartorially with the other two, looking as though he has just wandered in from the garden outside, but who makes his mark by being an absolutely shit hot drummer.

White Hills specialise in loud groove-led psychedelic space jams that take you on a wild ride to the outer reaches of your ever expanding consciousness. By which I mean that there lots of extended guitar solos and effects pedals.

There are more vocals than I had expected, W and Sensation attacking their mikes in unison, their voices echoing above the sonic onslaught.

The set races by. When the three musicians locate the sweet spot of a towering and protracted riff they are very good indeed. I find myself jiggling from foot to foot, which is pretty much as close as I can get to dancing.

The evening finishes with me deaf and happy and I gleefully buy a tour CD from the divine Ms Sensation.  Great stuff.

Gnod at Dalston Victoria - 11 April 2013

Gnod

The Dalston Victoria is a shabby and rather battered looking pub on the outside. There is a bouncer on the door. It’s not particularly inviting.  Inside, there is a pervading and rather noisome odour that I eventually track down to the Thai curries that are on offer. These don’t seem that inviting either.

There is a sign on the door that gives the running times for tonight’s bands. It is quite clear that these are wildly optimistic.

Tonight is an Upset the Rhythm promotion. This means that you can be sure of two things. That there will be great music and that the evening will run in a chaotic fashion.

We are eventually ushered into the back room to be confronted with drum and noise duo Gum Takes Tooth. 

Things start promisingly. There is a lot of electronic equipment onstage and this is used to good effect to distort the sound and rhythm of the drum kit and assist the vocalist, who spends much of his time shouting down what appears to be a small handheld megaphone with the end taped up.

There is nothing wrong with the band that couldn’t be solved with an ‘edit’ button. Drummer Thomas is impressive and vocalist Jussi looks like a scuzzy janitor from a Scooby Doo cartoon. I’m happy with them both, although they do rather outstay their welcome.

After a brief hiatus the room is set for Gnod. And Gnod are a revelation.

From their recorded work I had mistakenly formed a mental image of a band with long hair blasting out spacey and psychedelic rock music. What I actually get is a dark room piled high with electronics and strobe lights and lots of musicians slaving away over their equipment like an infernal sweatshop.

Gnod have eschewed the stage and have set up their banks of gear on the floor. This allows the crowd to press right up to them.  Not that this is possible, as the way is barred by a howling vocalist, screaming his lungs out through a microphone that distorts his voice and adds it to the thunderous cacophony.

This is wild music that feels like standing in a gale at the top of a cliff. It’s all around you, lifting you up and buffeting you about. The darkness adds to the experience, the strobes like flashes of lightning that momentarily illuminate a musician pounding away at a bench of wires and dials.

It’s disorienting and wonderful. This electronic music sounds organic and dirty rather than calculated and clean. It’s the anti-Kraftwerk and more akin to Rough Trade era Cabaret Voltaire (if the Cabs had been strapped to a Saturn rocket).

Time and space mean nothing and such is the volume and power unleashed that it continues to whoosh around your head even when the band have finished and left the room.

Gnod is good. Gnod is great. Thanks be to Gnod.

Bibelots, Council Tax Band, By Starlight, Type Two Error at Sebright Arms - 5 April 2013

By Starlight

(Of course I was gonna use this photo)

I’m out tonight because I need to see some people. About some stuff. Once our plotting is completed we head down to the tiny basement that lies beneath the pub.

First band on are Type Two Error. There are three of them and they have a lean and hungry look about them. The singer/guitarist gives us a no nonsense stare. He is one of the generation of English vocalists who were lost to the influence of Liam Gallagher. Although he mixes things up a bit, the predominant noise is a sneering, very nasal whine. And, as is the case with Mr Gallagher, it works a lot better than it ought to.

The band rock along nicely and it’s a solid start to the evening. I learn later that two of them used to be in The Cooper Temple Clause, which explains their competence and dynamics.

We become aware of a bit of a kerfuffle down the front. The supporters of the next band, By Starlight, have grabbed chairs from upstairs and plonked them down facing the stage. It’s either a very enterprising or arrogant move depending upon your viewpoint.

By Starlight are another trio, two girls and a boy. Their name seems to reference Smashing Pumpkins and in their publicity they cite influences such as Hole and Pixies. However, although those bands are certainly in the mix, the real inspiration is the biggest band of that era, Nirvana, specifically in the ‘In Utero’ period.

So we get a terrific combination of hard rock married to actual tunes and proper vocals over the top. If I had a seat, I’d be standing on it. Really enjoyable stuff.

The next band hail from my own original neck of the woods and have saddled themselves with the appalling and largely ungoogle-able name of Council Tax Band. And they are enormous fun.

Taking their cues from the likes of Art Brut or The Chalets, this is serious pop with a smile on its face. The singer is chatty and funny while the keyboard player slides and crawls over her instrument and is obviously thoroughly enjoying herself.

Council Tax Band really warm your heart and cheer you up. I’ll hopefully see them again.

One of my guilty secrets is that I quite like Kasabian, who I think make interesting and inventive music for the masses, but who rather let themselves down by acting like complete arseholes whenever they come within range of an interviewers microphone.

The last band of the evening are Bibelots and they are the answer to my self-imposed dilemma. They sound so much like Leicester’s finest, that  Kasabian could take time off and allow them to record an album and tour in their stead. And they seem like nice chaps into the bargain.

It’s catchy rock music with an electronic sheen. There are big choruses and major tunes. I’m well chuffed with them and only the lateness of the hour prevents me from staying for the entirety of their set.

Tonight I’ve seen four bands on spec and there’s nary a duff one in the bunch. I’m especially taken with Council Tax Band and am very happy with the others. Well done all round.