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.

Fat White Family, Claw Marks, Atomic Suplex at Electrowerks - 25 February 2014

Fat White Family (pic via http://lousmithmedia.com/)

Upon hitting Electrowerkz I discover what appears to be a riot going on atop the stage. Guitarists are leaping around and there's an almighty garage rock din. Once my eyes acclimatise to the apparent chaos, the individual components of Atomic Suplex start to become clearer.

The focal point is Suplex 98, his face obscured by a pilot's helmet emblazoned with the words 'Rock & Roll'. He wrestles with a guitar as though his life depends upon it (the guitar seems to be winning) and beneath his open leather jacket a black rug of chest hair is visible. It's fair to say that he would stand out even if he wasn't shrieking into a microphone set into the side of his helmet.

To his left, a tall guy lurches back and forth as he shouts and snarls at his own mike. It should all be a mess but the sheer rock and roll energy carries them through. I like Atomic Suplex a lot.

I'm very pleased with Claw Marks too. This is another band where apparent mayhem and anarchy are used in the service of a blistering performance.

Claw Marks feature a wildly bearded front man who dances daintily despite his size and who is within minutes stringing his microphone from the ceiling so that he can hang from it while declaiming like a demented boxing announcer. He looks fairly familiar and I suspect this is the same magnificent creature who sings with Human Hair, a similarly frenetic and uncompromisingly loopy bunch. (Indeed it is!)

This is what live music is all about and how it differs fundamentally from the recorded experience. It fills you with a warm glow- the energy from the stage infuses your very being. You could say this is just racket and noise and wilful stupidity – but you would be utterly wrong. This is rock and roll at its most exciting.

So – I’m a fan then.

Much has been made of Fat White Family. They are an underground band who have garnered mainstream attention in the inkies through the age old combination of outrage and actually having a whiff of danger about them.

They don’t disappoint this evening. They spend much of their performance topless and diving in and out of the enthusiastic crowd. This is nominally in support of new single Touch the Leather.

There’s very much a ‘gang’ vibe here and purely in terms of media attention they remind me of a previous generation of arty hooligans called the Lo-Fidelity Allstars -although the Fat Whites have a lot more about them than that bunch. That said, I don’t quite get the same buzz of excitement from them that I did from the supports. I think it might be that although they look the part, the music itself is relatively straightforward.

That’s a minor caveat though – this band, like the others tonight, are all about the live experience.

It all ends with Claw Marks invading the stage with the Fat Whites for a canter through The Monks ‘I Hate You’. Not a lot better than this.

It’s been a terrific night’s fun. All three acts have been worth a watch and restore my somewhat flagging energy levels.

Dressmaker, Skinny Girl Diet and Abjects at Barfly - 03 January 2014

Dressmaker letting rip. Pic by Keira Anee

And a Happy New Year to you too.

I start 2014 in the dark black box that is the Barfly, a room that has never seen daylight, or this evening, a drinkable lager.

Things get off to a good start with a set from Abjects. They are a trio of diverse origins (Italian, Spanish, Japanese) and diverse appearance (bassist Yuki in a 60's go-go number, drummer Alice in refined 70's evening garb and singer/guitarist Noemi in an 80's creation).  These disparate elements come together to make a very acceptable whole.

Abjects are affiliated to the Haus of Pins collective, and share a love of surfy, garage rock. I don't think that they are tearing up any trees just yet, but they are fun to be with and there is much to enjoy.

Skinny Girl Diet need no introduction to regular readers. Tonight they are utterly in command and on top of their game.

I continue to love Delilah's snarling vocals. She sneers and rolls her lyrics around her mouth until they are all but incomprehensible, but it works because hers is a rasp of pure rock attitude.

I'm particularly struck this evening by drummer Ursula. In the roughly two years that I have been aware of the band she has matured from an apparently quiet and dreamy presence in the background to a fully fledged rock drummer, tonight clearly relishing the chance to play on the larger kit that the band are sharing with the headliners.

Bassist Amelia has also changed. When I first saw her she seemed so tiny that she appeared dwarfed by her instrument. Now she is a confident leather-clad figure who occasionally screams so loud that your teeth rattle.

The set is powerful and punchy and blows away any remaining post-New Year cobwebs.

Looking at the stage set up for Dressmaker, who are the last band of the evening, a colleague remarks that it is becoming increasingly rare to see a group that employ a lead vocalist who doesn't play an instrument but performs purely as a front man.

Dressmaker hit the stage in a welter of noise and flashing lights. They are loud, uncompromising and at least to start with, a bit of a mess. The singer careens around, his vocals phased and distorted to a buzzing echo. It's certainly arresting, but rather a blur of formless noise.

Things come more into focus as the set progresses and the band gradually assert themselves as purveyors of a pretty decent industrial rock sound. By the final number, the strobe lights are pulsing as the singer screams on his knees with the rest of the band disappearing into the darkness one by one. We are eventually left with a bare stage and a feeling that, in the end, we rather enjoyed that.

So, 2014 is off to a bang. Onwards, onwards. 

Call of the Wyld - Review of the Year 2013

Julia Holter

When I say that it has been a poor year I am only referring to the feeble showing that I have put up this last twelve months. My gig attendance has been way down on previous years.

A lot of this has been down to the general encroachment of age. It has been ever harder to get a quorum of pals together to go to concerts, particularly if an event is on in the middle of the week. We're of an age where we are not as resilient as we were in the past and we don't bounce back into shape as quickly as we used to. Frankly, if I'm out more than once a week, things start to drop off and roll away.

That said, there's been plenty of good stuff that I have seen this year.

2013 started off in the fur-lined bowels of Mother, to fulfil a lifetime's ambition and see Punishment of Luxury. They were better than I dared hope they could possibly be and set me off on a year long rendezvous with acts and performers who are still gamely plugging away and showing that there is plenty of life in the oldest of dogs.

This year I've enjoyed sets from Adam Ant, the B-52's and Sparks. The pick of all of these returning heroes was Siouxsie at the Festival Hall. She was just magnificent and arguably the best that I have ever seen her - stalking the stage like the goddess that an enraptured audience insisted she was.

Other veteran acts doing good were Yo La Tengo playing in a shrubbery at the Barbican and Wire finally getting round to the business of performing the songs that had been earmarked for their fourth studio album at Heaven.  

I also enjoyed the music and hospitality of Shonen Knife, serving up fast food and fast tunes on a Saturday afternoon at the Brixton Windmill.

There were return appearances from more recent favourites. I enjoyed Savages at the Electric Ballroom in the days before they took off into the stratosphere of critical adulation, and The Virgins returned after a long absence to showcase their new direction - which seems awfully close to Dire Straits' old one.

This was the year in which my most favoured band of the last few years, Drop Out Venus started out with a new glamorous and glitzy sound, gained a new member and then split up. Iva G Moscovitch is still out there somewhere and I'll be there when she returns. Skinny Girl Diet were great all year, but particularly at the last DOV gig.

It's been a grand year for psych rock. I was whirled away by the windswept whoosh of Gnod and danced myself daft to the tribal rhythms of Goat. Their Electric Ballroom gig was just fantastic and the band have now released the entire set as a live album. It's a record that transcends the usual 'souvenir' nature of most live recordings.

I enjoyed Suuns ticking away at XOYO and Cold Cave's gangling assault at Electrowerkz. I saw Purity Ring nurdle to themselves in an East End church.

It's been an um… interesting year for Sky Ferreira. I caught her early on at Madam JoJo's when she seemed caught between America's Got Talent balladry and something much darker. Catching her later in the year in an Oxford Streetdepartment store, she was definitely embracing her inner rock chick, something borne out by her excellent album. She finished the year being involved in a drug bust, so she may have to rein herself in a bit.

In March I saw Divorce and Her Parents turn the Macbeth into a seething cackling nexus of noise and distortion. Divorce in particular were pretty much the same as watching the bowels of hell crack open and demonic beings croak and writhe within. They didn't look or sound even human. Magnificent stuff.

And at the opposite end of the spectrum came a wonderful performance from Julia Holter, who wowed the Village Underground with a beautiful show that was somehow pop, jazz and classical all in one package.

So, it's been another great year. 2014 will bring Neutral Milk Hotel and Miley Cyrus, (for whom tickets have already been purchased) and who know what else?. 

Sparks at Union Chapel - 02 December 2013

Sparks

It's a near run thing. We squeak into a packed Union Chapel a handy three minutes before Sparks come onstage.

This is the third and final of a trilogy of dates at this venue wherein Ron and Russell Mael take a wander through their vast back catalogue of songs. As when I last saw them, this is a performance that is pared down to bare essentials.

Ron Mael, as imperturbable and inscrutable as ever, sits behind a keyboard as rigid as an automaton. He looks exactly the same as he did when Sparks emerged in the 70's.

Brother Russell is dressed for comfort in a black polo neck, cut off pants and training shoes. His hair is a black mass that sits precariously on his head, looking as though it may gradually slide down the side of his face. He's armed with a microphone. This is all that we need.

Russ starts off with "You Call is Very Important to Us", looping his voice back and forth to create a cacophony of interrupting accents. It's actually the only vocal trickery deployed this evening. All subsequent songs are delivered uniquely via his still-startling falsetto and occasional faux-French accent.

Tonight's show is primarily aimed at the hardcore Sparks fan. I'm familiar with the band's hits and have their last three or four albums too, but even so much of what is played tonight is relatively new to me, comprising in the main album cuts from their early career.

This is both a blessing and a pity. The lyrical inventiveness and humour of early Sparks is extraordinary, but the verses are so intricate that songs require multiple listening to fully unpack and appreciate. Listening to a track like 'Big Boy', ‘Popularity’ or ‘Nicotina’ is akin to the patter of a Gilbert and Sullivan comic operetta; you admire the sheer dexterity and cleverness as much as the music.

The brothers also perform works from their current (ish) venture, 'The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman'. This is a long-gestating film project which they are pleased to announce has now attracted sufficient funding to finally get made.

The highlight -among many- for me tonight is 'No 1 Song in Heaven', a joyous clap-along that seems entirely fitting in this spectacular setting. Russ' voice soars to all corners of the chapel and it is a wonderful and emotional sound.

At the end of the evening Ron and Russell are so overcome that they cannot bring themselves to leave the stage, standing dazed as parts of the audience start to file out. Russell gets Ron to take his picture against the backdrop of a sea of beaming faces in the pews.

It's a lovely, intimate moment for two of the nicest guys in show business.  

Manflu, Skinny Girl Diet at Lexington - 15 November 2013

 

 

  

Manflu

 

 

It's a traditional Friday at the Lexington. Our enthusiastic determination not to miss anything sees us upstairs and into the venue as soon as the doors open. 

There's the usual three men and a dog in here. We're the three men and the dog has got the night off. 

It's only slightly busier when the first act takes the stage. 72% Morrissey is as bad a name as has ever been adopted by a band and it rather sells them short. 

The modus operandi is very straightforward. This instrumental three-piece play nothing other than a succession of gargantuan bluesy riffs which all sound fantastic. Unfortunately, as none of these lasts longer than a couple of minutes they never develop into anything as substantial as a song. 

The band have worked out a special bit of stage business to accompany each riff. Josh Ryan will throw his guitar about, or Joe Brown will fall to his knees to ring the neck of his own instrument. Or one of them will do a duck walk, or yell "Yeah Muithafucka!' off mike.

It's entertaining for about ten minutes, but the law of diminishing returns sets in surprisingly quickly.

Most acts tend to spend the evening holed up in their dressing room before being summoned to the stage. Not so Skinny Girl Diet. They've been parked on a seat behind me and come through the audience to clamber up into view.

Since I last saw them they have supported Primal Scream at the Roundhouse. This experience seems to have rubbed off on them. It's also no coincidence that Amelia is wearing a 'Death to The Pixies' T-shirt. The sound that the band produces now is ferocious and the new songs are rooted in the heavy fuzz of 1990's grunge.

Delilah's vocals are an incomprehensible 40-fag-a-day rasp. She snarls and sneers through the set and simultaneously looks both happy and utterly murderous.

It's an impressive performance, but at this rate the band will be wowing them at Download rather than at Glastonbury.  And quite right too.

Manflu have been on the scene for a number of years. I've long wanted to see them, but tonight is the first time that the stars have been favourably aligned.

 

Tonight the band are launching an album, and all stops have been pulled out. The guys in the band are in full grip of Movember, with much luxurious face-furniture on display. Singer Aza is spectacularly attired in a golden body suit.

 

The band plays and the crowd goes ape - Aza striding from side to side, her Nico monotone chanting the words.

And I don't like it. It's just one of those things. They leave me completely flat. I had been looking forward to Manflu for ages, and they just don't connect with me at all.
 

If I had to put my finger on it I think it's because I feel that all the dressing up is an end in its self and that without it they'd be very ordinary. I get no spark from them, too much art and not enough rock.

Manflu remind me a lot of of the Do Me Bad Things, another band who looked great but felt pedestrian.

 

I'm more disappointed with myself than anything - most people here are having a great time. But you can't win 'em all.