Tweens, Desperate Journalist and Relics at Madame Jo Jo's - 09 September 2014

Tweens

When I bounce into Madame Jo Jo’s I’m initially surprised. There is literally no one here who isn’t working at the venue. I’m unfashionably early.

There are four acts tonight, so I don’t have to wait long for entertainment. And as soon as Relics hit their first note I’m glad to be in the mosh pit in front of the stage. I try to be cool and elusive but I’m fairly easy to spot. I can’t hide behind myself.

Relics are a band that would vulgarly be described as ‘shoegaze’. It’s a misnomer because these guys motor so fast that they shoes they gaze at are affixed to Usain Bolt.

I’m not even joking. Relics take every song like the last five minutes of a Ride set. Tumultuous waves of crashing guitar and much general thrashing about.  They have no speed lower than absolutely full tilt.

This velocity sometimes works against the band, in the sense that sometimes I wish they would take the time to expand or explore a particular riff or sound. But Relics have their own style and they stick to it at 100mph.

The guitar sound is frankly ridiculous and Theo Alexander’s vocals are lost behind them. It’s always the same with such bands- My Bloody Valentine’s vocals always sounded like a wet fart in a hurricane.

I enjoy Relics a lot – there’s no sleeping on their watch.

I had previously seen Desperate Journalist at this year’s ill-fated Camden Crawl. At that time, you could tell the band had something about them, but the sound on the night was so poor that they couldn't really do themselves justice.

This is not the case this evening. First off, I really like the band even when they take a little while to get into their stride.

My initial difficulty is with their guitar sound. It’s a sludge. Deliberately so. On the positive side, singer Jo Bevan is just terrific. She’s as powerful as a Saturn V and as steely strong.

The Guardian warns me that I am not allowed to use the term ‘fierce’, but Bevan is the rock and the focal point of this band. I could out the band’s music as being Goth, but there are just as many musical similarities to acts like The Smiths. But such descriptors are misleading. Desperate Journalist are very much their own beast and they improve with each successive song.

They have brought their own coterie of fans along with them. These folks are so familiar with the band that they don’t have to do anything so uncouth as actually stand and watch them. Instead, there is a lot of fairly irritating horseplay.  

A minor inconvenience and I'm pleased that my instincts are correct – Desperate Journalist are the real deal.

I’m particularly keen to see Cincinnati’s Tweens. I had heard good things and they don’t disappoint.

Tweens are a blistering three piece ‘trash pop’ (their description) band featuring the talents of Bridget Battle, Jerri Queen and Peyton Copes.

Battle immediately impresses. For almost the entire set her head is a blur, a screaming explosion of blonde hair. She shreds a mean guitar too, wringing out solos and laughing with Jerri and Peyton.

Tweens are an almost literal blast of a band, a dynamic fusion of sass and pure raucous rock and roll energy. This band are so far up my street that they are practically in my living room. Their self-titled album has now taken residence there.

A wonderful night of guitar rock. Well done all. I am allowed to say that.

.

Deafheaven and Chelsea Wolfe at The Garage - 15 August 2014

Deafheaven by Robert Loerzel

Tonight’s gig is terrific. But it wouldn’t have happened at all if the Jabberwocky Festival hadn’t gone belly up at the last minute in a welter of unpaid debts and ill-will.

The fallout from this debacle is that many of the acts that had been due to play are scrambling around London to find somewhere to play. I’m lucky to score a ticket to one of these hastily arranged events.

The Garage stage goes dark and a severe looking figure emerges from the shadows. This is Chelsea Wolfe and the laughter stops here.

Accompanied by a violinist, drummer and bassist, Wolfe commences a set of great intensity and an all-enveloping sense of desolation.

With her black lined eyes, straight dark hair and cloak like garb, Wolfe resembles a seer or witch from a fantasy like Game of Thrones. She’s hypnotic. She radiates power.

Her set is at its most compelling when she grabs a guitar herself. The music then shifts from dirge to something jauntier. Still funereal, but you would have to walk quite fast to keep up with the hearse.

I find Chelsea Wolfe far more engaging as a live proposition than on record. Not only do some very good songs emerge - “We Hit a Wall” and “Feral Love” stand out, but she is a charismatic presence.

Wolfe leaves the stage and her drummer suddenly bursts out with a five minute solo. It’s almost as if all his pent up emotion has to be exorcised before he departs.

Deafheaven cemented their place in fan boy hearts with last year’s ‘Sunbather’ album, a beguiling mix of black metal and post rock that came complete with a lurid pink sleeve. I note from their merchandise table that all their T shirts are regulation metal-black with approved, almostunreadable logos.

The band look very unprepossessing, trudging on in jeans and T shirts, one of which, celebrating Morrissey’s “Your Arsenal” may be a reference to the football team that holds sway in this area of London.

Singer George Clarke is cut from a different cloth completely. With his slicked back short hair and nattily cut shirt he resembles some fifties matinee idol. Until the band start playing and all hell cuts loose.

On record, Deafheaven’s songs tend towards the lengthy, with different passages of piano, or acoustic delicacy breaking up the full sonic onslaught and screaming that characterises the band at full throttle.

Once Clarke starts singing, all impressions change. Within seconds he is bent double, and spitting lyrics in a machine gun rapid-fire guttural roar. By the second song, Clarke is crowd surfing around the venue, hollering like a demon.

In the live setting it becomes apparent that the quieter parts serve very little purpose other than to give Clarke a momentary breather, as he uses these moments to get the crowd clapping, or to repeatedly exhort the crowd towards him.. Everyone piles forward, arms are waved and devil horn hand gestures are everywhere.

For the next hour the energy that the band generates is something to behold, with tracks like “Dream House”, “Sunbather” and From the Kettle Onto the Coil” really striking home. The crowd is bathed in sweat and the walls fairly pulse with the pleasure of the occasion.

It’s been a splendid night’s entertainment. Small consolation if you had booked for Jabberwocky, but an excellent opportunity to see two fine bands for the rest of us.

Julia Holter at St John-at-Hackney - 21 July 2014

Julia Holter

It’s a warm summer’s night. There are plenty of people lounging around the church yard of St John at Hackney and a few souls are already inside bagging decent positions amongst the rows of chairs.

Eventually a woman wanders onto stage and starts generating electronic noises that echo the sounds of a mighty church organ, the tones drifting and droning and rising and falling and ringing and turning back on themselves. It’s hypnotic.

It goes on far too long. This is Karen Gwyer and in this case a good idea goes rather a long way. Her sounds and drones are entirely appropriate to this setting but drawn out over an extended period it is like listening to a comedy routine with an endlessly repeated punchline. OK, we get it.

Gwyer eventually gives way to Ocitrop, a trio of young men who nurdle away contently for an hour while a dancer ‘interprets’ their sound through the medium of moving slowly across the stage and teetering a bit.

The sounds are part sampled, part played and once more they evoke an atmosphere of hush and reverence. There are clicks and bangs, as if of the seats of folding chairs flying up and these harsh clacks eventually transform into something not unlike a rural soundscape.

I like them quite a bit, although I find myself looking at my watch after they continue for a good fifteen minutes after they had appeared to reach a natural and satisfying conclusion.

By now it is becoming clear that we are in for a late finish and that the headliner is going to be squeezed for time. This is just poor planning – there’s been one too many supports.

Eventually, finally, Julia Holter and her band take the floor. Holter quickly advises us that this is the last night of a long tour and the last time this particular group will play together. What follows is both spectacularly wonderful, yet almost rushed and perfunctory. The set list is so cobbled together that Holter and the band can barely keep track of it. It doesn't matter.

Julia Holter occupies a sonic space unlike any other performer. Her music is elusive and hard to describe. It’s genuinely timeless, her crystal pure voice offset by the atonal scrapes of violin or wailing honks of saxophone.

Is it jazz? Kinda. Is it the woozy swirl of a thirties orchestra doing the soundtrack for a melodrama about white slavery and opiates? Quite possibly. But probably not.

Holter enthuses about the church and certainly the acoustics suit her down to the ground, her voice ringing round the walls until it totally surrounds you.

My personal highlight is ‘Maxims 1’ which sounds like Rhapsody in Blue played underwater, being both beautiful and strange and distant.

In a scant hour, she is gone, leaving a room stunned into appreciative silence. There is then an eruption of furious applause and a dash for the trains.

Julia Holter made the evening special. The organisers may wish to check their watches when working out stage timings.

  

BabyMetal at The Forum 07 July 2014

BabyMetal

I'm having fun in the longest queue that I've ever encountered at the Forum. It snakes round so long that those at the back are out of eyesight of the venue and are just trusting to luck that it's a gig and not late night opening at the big carpet warehouse nearby.

I'm joshing with a group of Japanese lads who are jumping around and getting very excited. One of them says that he has written songs for the band. Before we can get to the bottom of this he is whisked away into a special queue and that's the last we see of him. Maybe it was true…

Once we get inside, we find the place rammed with fans of every stripe. Virtually everyone is wearing a BabyMetal T-shirt, virtually every T-shirt is different from the one next to it. Merchandising is massive. Every fan is super duper excited.

I take my place in the throng in front of the stage. Around me a gang of lads are building a human pyramid (not successfully) and waving a Japanese flag. By now everyone is so excited that steam is coming out their ears.

The lights go down and Star Wars-y credits scroll across a curtain. A tale is told of a distant heavy metal galaxy long ago where… something something… heavy metal had got a bit crap …something something… therefore the Fox God had charged three girls to save it…

The curtain falls, the lights dazzle and for the next hour it is just as that other fox, the one in Von Trier's 'Antichrist', had prophesied -"Chaos reigns!"

Told you!

There are thunderous machine gun drums and two shredding guitarists dressed as Japanese ghosts, all long white robes, ghoulish make up and long black hair. A bassist stands among them as an evil, decaying monk. You barely notice them.

Along with the tumult and onslaught you can hear high pitched squeaking. I then have to adjust my sight lines for BabyMetal as the three girls in pig tails and metal anime warrior costumes are absolutely tiny and are momentarily invisible amongst the forest of outstretched arms and banners of the joyful crowd.

The girls dance and 'sing', popping up and down like hand puppets and whirling around the stage as though on wires. The crowd has gone from excited to utterly incoherently delirious. We all chant along to 'BabyMetal Death'.

Of the three girls, only Suzuka Nakamoto aka Su-Metal is even pretending to sing. Moa Kikuchi and Yui Mizuno  (Moametal and Yuimetal) are so young and swept up in proceedings that even their dancing is somewhat approximate. It doesn't matter a jot.

If you want authenticity, go and watch three hours of Bruce Springsteen lumbering about. This is a sweat drenched celebration of the absurdist fantasy side of metal, sixty minutes of rummaging in the dressing up box and a whole heap of consensual carnage.

The crowd surges and moshes, slamming into each other and laughing as the weakest amongst them are ploughed underfoot. A guy comes by me forlornly looking for his glasses. He's not going to find them.

I am soaked in beer and sweat and exhilaration. The band play 'Catch Me if You Can', '4no Uta' and 'Megitsune'. There is bedlam onstage and off.

For an encore the band play 'Headbangers!!!" By now the scene around me is one of devastation, with people wandering blindly through the fog as if through a battlefield.

When the show finally explodes in an all smothering air cannon salute of silver foil and bright red streamers, the survivors turn to each other in their sodden clothing and wipe the matted hair from their eyes.

Heavy metal has been comprehensively saved.

Mixtape - April to June 2014

Once a quarter I inflict a mixtape on my friends and acquaintances. These are some of the goodies that reflect the state of Call of the Wyld in April to June 2014

Tacocat – Crimson Wave

Ravioli Me Away – Cat Call

Strand of Oaks – Goshen ‘97

Eliza Rickman – Pretty Little Head

Charli XCX – Boom Clap

Timber Timbre – Run From Me

Lana Del Rey – Ultraviolence

Echo and The Bunnymen – Lovers on the Run

tUnE-yArDs – Water Fountain

Autobahn, Jeffrey Lewis and the Jrams, Bad Wolf - Camden Crawl 2014 - Day Two - 21 June 2014

Autobahn at Lock Tavern :pic by Keith Knight (after JJ Abrams)

Day two of the Camden Crawl starts in fire. It’s blisteringly hot outside the Camden Brewery and a small crowd is sweating in front of a tiny stage awaiting Jeffrey Lewis and The Jrams.

Jeff is in festival mood. After an extended workout through ‘Water’ he praises Letitia Sadier and leads the band through a Stereolab number. Later on, he’ll smash through an enthusiastically haphazard version of The Fall’s ‘Cruiser’s Creek’, with bassist Caitlin Gray doing the Brix Smith yelps.

A highlight is an impassioned version of old favourite ‘Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror’. It’s a great start to the day.   

Rather strange scenes follow at the Roundhouse Studio, whereThe Magic Lantern (musician Jamie Doe) is trying to entertain a crowd with his sweet voice and affable folksiness. For reasons known to themselves, the venue is now set up with rows of seating. People come through the door, can’t find anywhere to sit, stand around awkwardly, get moved on by ushers and generally disrupt the mood in their confusion.

I head to the Monarch for Kinnie the Explorer. They are the first band of the day, but are so late coming onstage that I only get a chance to nod past them as I press on to the Enterprise for Primetime.

To say these four women are shambolic would be to do them a service. This is real old school crash bang wallop with two drummers and frequent collapses into fits of giggles, missed intros and good natured confusion. They are shouty and silly/serious and I like them a lot. This is also the only gig I’ve seen temporarily stopped while a drummer decides to fix her hair.

From here I pile into the Lock Tavern for my secondencounter with Autobahn. In this confined space it’s like sharing a room with a Saturn V rocket.

Craig Johnson is a natural front man, expansive gestures, full-on howling. The stage is so cramped and hot that the drummer has his tongue out panting like a puppy and at least one of the guitarist looks set to pass out. The band roar through tracks like ‘Ulcer’ and ‘Seizure’ and there is nothing better in the world than being right here, right now.

After a quick break for food in Camden Market (I had the “chicken”) it’s down to Beatrice for Farao and her band. This is a gentle Norwegian singer and right from the off it becomes clear that this is not the best venue to catch her. It’s all very well being wistful and sensitive in the corner, but this is a busy pub that is full of people shouting their heads off. She’s all but inaudible and doesn’t have the stage presence to make herself the centre of attention.

So I head to Koko for the last half of Steve Mason’s set. He’s bold and confident and has a real swagger. His band look as though they may have played at Methuselah’s wedding, but with age comes experience and this is as professional and well done as you could possibly want.

This show illustrates what may be a financial problem for this year’s Crawl. It should be one of the biggest draws of the night, but I doubt this big venue is even a quarter full. Whether it’s the World Cup, ticket prices or the death of indie music, but there are very few people about. It was even less busy on Friday.

I finish off the night in the sweltering hell hole that is Belushi’s to catch rock trio Bad Wolf. They are very loud, very heavy and are playing to a small, very drunk bunch of family and friends. The band aren’t subtle, but it would be hard to find a room where people are having as much fun.

Singer/guitarist Simon Harris has a cheerful desperation about him. He knows that everything could collapse in chaos at any second but will hold everything together through sheer enthusiasm. Where the band score is that through their bombast, they have some proper tunes not least of which the big finale ‘Bull Jazzed Up’, which sees Harris off the stage, instrument and all, his microphone wrangled by members of the audience.

Today started in fire and ends in sweat and a puddle of alcohol. It’s been a great Crawl. Roll on next year.

Pins, Girls Names, Desperate Journalist - Camden Crawl 2014 Day One - 20 June 2014

Girls Names

It’s back! After a year away, the Camden Crawl has returned. It’s smaller than it has been in more recent times, and judging by the numbers of people that I see through the evening, not hugely well supported. But I love the Crawl and enjoy the way that it tosses you from venue to venue like a drunken sailor trying to find his way home.

I start off with Arrows of Love at the Electric Ballroom. They have clearly spent a long time in front of the mirror, perfecting just the right Mad Max post-apocalypse, dragged through a hedge backwards trash aesthetic. The problem is their music.

They can play instruments with their teeth, they can leap from the stage and wrestle around on the Ballroom floor, they can go through every rock cliché in the book – they are really dire in a true and deep sense. They are not having a bad day, their rottenness goes right to their core. They wouldn’t know a decent song if it bit them. To suck so heroically badly as Arrows of Love takes dedication.

I reel across the road to the Underworld to catch GirlsNames. This band hail from Belfast and within seconds I am in love. This is black as night guitar rock, propelled along by a bass line that moves your internal organs about.

Singer Cathal Cully mutters gloomily, wringing the neck of his guitar like he’s fondly killing it.  Claire Miskimmin pounds on her bass, producing a sound so deep and heavy that you can practically SEE it.

The crowd is extremely small, but absolutely loving this. The band play again later in the evening, and I’m tempted to follow them.

Instead I go across the road for Desperate Journalist at the Black Cap. The band are already well into their set and suffer slightly because my ears are still ringing from Girls Names and the Black Cap sound system isn’t up to much.

That said, there’s a lot to love here. Singer Jo Bevan packs a lot of anger and emotion into her twisted pop songs and gangly bassist Rob Hardy looms over her, his mascara smudged across his face. They virtually define the term ‘indie rock’ so I clasp them to my grubby heart.

Off down the road then to see Yuck at Koko. This is the first time that I’ve encountered the band since Dan Blumberg left.

In many ways, nothing has changed. Yuck are still fine purveyors of tunefully shoegazey dream pop. When they hit a decent groove they can lift you right off your feet. The tracks of the most recent album sound well up to scratch. You feel that all is well in Yuck-world.

Back then to catch Pins at the Underworld. They are in terrific form. They are powerful, feisty and fun. They know the value of rock bands in black leather jackets and that a sneer and a snarl can be just as sweet as a kiss. Much head nodding and leaping about ensues.

I bow out at this point, leaving my pals to head off to the Purple Turtle. Glad to be back on the Crawl. Let’s see what tomorrow brings.