Call Of The Wyld

Yearner Babies, Narration, Kaputt, Sketches - Upstairs at Garage, 5 November 2009

2009-11-07T16:24:00.005Z

This is a guest review from Clive, one of the Call Of the Wyld regulars. The views expressed are his own, but ones that I am happy to endorse.

"I’m off to see Kaputt, as apart from them being one of my favourite bands over the last few years I bumped into lead singer Silke at the weekend and promised to see her at their next gig. This is the third time at other gigs this has happened so I imagine that in her mind she is thinking, in German of course, “Yeah right, sure you will”. ("Yeah nach rechts, selbstverständlich werden Sie"- helpful Wyldman)

But this time there are no other clashes and I’m as good as my word. I’m expecting to clear off early tonight as Kaputt are on early and from what I know about the other bands that are on, Kaputt are the only likely candidates for producing sparks this bonfire night.

I pitch up at what is now known as the Relentless Upstairs Garage, I think Relentless relates to some sort of energy drink. Everybody is selling naming rights these days. Sketches are in full flow, they have a good little crowd of fans and for me they are ok as the opening band to warm things up and the guys are affable enough but this is not really my thing.

The Sketches fan club departs rapidly as they finish their set and we are left with about 25 people sparsely scattered across the room. This is as crowded as it gets for the rest of the night. I think everybody is out at pyrotechnic displays. Kaputt arrive on stage and after a slow start we are into some stomping old faves and I love Kaputt all over again. At the end, there is what I think is a new song, which is a special treat as I close my eyes and hear a sound so similar to the very much missed mighty KaitO. I chat with Silke after and share my latest gig list, she agrees to come along to some and I once again promise to see more of Kaputt, and I will.

Narration are up next and for me another ok proficient band, but not too my taste.

So it has just gone 10pm and I give the final band a chance, which means they have to hook me within the first three songs. Members of Yearner Babies have been in the crowd all night, some resplendent in military style jackets. I’m not expecting any fireworks from this lot and first song meets my low expectations and it looks like it will be an early finish, but bang whoosh scream in an instant that all changes, the tempo goes through the ceiling I’m listening to the Bookhouse Boys spliced with the Melys, fronted by a gorgeous Hilary Swank look-a-like, who goes by the name of Gee, who is throwing shapes and engaging gloriously with both crowd and band.

I want a bigger crowd and then we would all be dancing and singing along with complete uninhibited abandon. Works of art are scattered across the front of the stage and each piece relates to songs such as Pablo, Neville, Icarus and Mary. Also, there is a guy on stage dressed as a seagull. Obviously.

We are encouraged to sign up to their mailing list mid performance and I panic because the pen doesn’t work. They finish, its late, I run round them like a puppy begging for a CD and wanting to tell them in my slightly inebriated condition how great they are. They are saved from my further attentions by the insistence of staff that it is time to leave. My new favourite band next play in London on 16 December at Bar Music Hall."

The Phantom Band / Sir Yes Sir at The Borderline - 4th November 2009

2009-11-05T18:58:00.005Z

Phantom Band

New York socialite Dorothy Parker once said of Katharine Hepburn that “She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B”. Miaow! I feel the same watching jovial guitar janglers Sir Yes Sir.

Somewhere I have a recording of the Wedding Present playing ‘Box Elder’ by Pavement. So, I would wager, have SYS. Not that there is anything wrong with that, to quote Jerry Seinfeld.

	The Wedding Present - Box Elder Mo

	Found at bee mp3 search engine

Sir Yes Sir ape their heroes right down to the check plaid shirts and yelped vocals. The guitars rattle along in a hundred mile an hour chime. There’s nothing deep, nothing difficult, just good clean fun.

The Phantom Band are a strange beast. Taking the stage, two of the band are shrouded in Chromehoof-style golden monk’s cowls. The rest look like they’ve just stepped off a fishing smack.

The single most impressive thing about them is how musically developed and confident they are. As far as I am aware they only have one (very good) album ‘Checkmate Savage’ behind them, yet their set is varied and strong, as though they have culled the finest bits from years of material. It already sounds like an oft-played Greatest Hits.

There is a strong Krautrock thread running through the best of their songs, powered by the cowled keyboard player and a battery of guitars. This driving groove is kept under tight rein, and never allowed to degenerate into any kind of freeform wig-out. Discipline is the key.

The variety of their sound is reflected in the use of unorthodox percussive instruments, many of which seem to have been hand fashioned from odd bits of metal or wood. At one stage, two of the band are playing melodicas, which when the tube disappears beneath a cowl makes the musician in question look like one of Doctor Who’s Ood.

Presiding over everything as master of ceremonies is singer Rick Anthony, flushed of face and squinty of eye, a jocular dead spit of Captain Haddock. Some of his gurning and mugging is a little ripe for my tastes, but he can certainly sing, often in a beautiful falsetto.

Everything is going swimmingly until we reach ‘Island’. This is a slow, long lachrymose dirge of a ballad that sucks all the momentum out of the gig. It is immaculately performed and the crowd go absolutely nuts for it, - it is clearly the Phantom Band’s signature tune, their ‘Stairway To Heaven’. And I just hate it. Which is a problem, because it is infuriatingly memorable.

It kills the rest of the set for me. I just can’t get back into them, even though it is followed by ‘The Howling’, which for me is the highpoint of their album.

So I finish the evening somewhat torn. That The Phantom Band are a formidable outfit is not in question. I like/love a good eighty percent of what they do. But that other twenty percent causes me big problems. I think that in future I’ll stick with their records.

The Molotovs, Koko Von Napoo, Pop Martyr, ARCs at The Fly, 23 October 2009

2009-10-31T09:13:00.003Z

Koko Von Napoo by Marco

I’m here at The Fly, which is always a confusing venue. The downstairs area where the bands play is bigger than the upstairs bit which is on open view to passers by at street level. This means that on evenings when the place is operating at less than full capacity that a casual observer would be forgiven for thinking that the whole place is completely empty and socially lifeless, when in fact there is vibrant activity down below. They can’t get much casual custom on such occasions.

Down below ARCS are in full cry. They play a loud, dynamic, fairly tuneful brand of rock and their fans are lapping it up. They look to be experienced musicians and are pretty enjoyable. I find them rather hit and miss, but several of my friends really like them and make noises about wanting to see them again.

Next up come Pop Martyr, who are rather akin to a jolly mariachi band. Trumpets are much to the fore. I respect their musicianship, but they do nothing at all for me and I temporarily retreat upstairs.

Following on come the band we are here to see, the exotically named Koko Von Napoo from France (via Brighton). The focus is the delightfully deadpan singer Toupie, who sings and scowls, having fun but careful not to appear too uncool.

The band plays a catchy brand of electro pop which goes down well with the crowd without ever quite reaching “hands in the air like you just don’t care” levels of excitement. There is some banter amongst the band when Toupie accidentally introduces the third song of the evening as being their last, with the drummer jokingly wondering if they are about to split up.

Koko Von Napoo are very endearing but don’t quite have that je ne sais quois, as they almost certainly don’t say in France.

The venue is pretty full now for The Molotovs, who have spent the year gathering fans like a snowball rolling down hill. They are starting to have the air of real contenders for mainstream recognition.

It helps that they sound like a jumble of any number of successful acts while incorporating their own unique elements. So while singer Will’s voice evokes bands such as Starsailor or Keane, the furious violin and trumpet work of Ed Jenkins propel things along at a much faster pace than those balladeers. Indeed, it is this surging confidence and attack which is the main difference between The Molotovs of a year ago and the new improved model.

I’ve had a long day, and I’m feeling a bit ropey, so I have to cut the band short to head off home.

If The Molotovs continue on their current trajectory, they’ll be on the radio when I get there.

Phantogram / Quad Throw Salchow / Grasscut at The Fly -25 October 2009

2009-10-27T19:51:00.004Z

I have been looking forward to tonight for around three years.

It was back in late 2006, early 2007 (I think) that I first came across a band called Charlie Everywhere. I think that it may have been the result of a random add request on Myspace. It was an awful band name. But I fell in love with Joshua Carter and Sarah Barthel and I fell hard.

Since then I have kept tabs on the duo from Saratoga Springs, New York, downloading their tracks as they became available, buying their T shirt and keeping the flame alive in my heart. When they changed their name to the only marginally less awful ‘Phantogram’, I was relieved, bought the merchandise again and wondered if they would ever tour over here…

So I am here on a Sunday night in an under-populated venue called The Fly located in New Oxford Street. I have cajoled a number of my more forbearing friends to come along too. I have fingers crossed and hope for the best.

There are three acts tonight and we start with the fascinating if rather unfocussed retro-futurism of Grasscut. These are two guys (Andrew and Marcus) who wear matching suits and glasses and who entertain us with electronic glitches and skronks, samples of church bells and a rocking electric double bass. There are occasional Hot Chip –y moments, and perhaps an affinity with similar English electronic eccentrics Flotation Toy Warning or Hallmark. It’s the sound of the future engineered to mimic post war austerity. It’s an ambitious aim, and the duo can’t quite carry it off – they don’t have the songs as yet and there are moments when the technology seems to be playing the band rather than the other way around. Interesting stuff nonetheless.

Next up we have the trancey motorik beats of Quad Throw Salchow. A mysterious three piece, they create room for themselves to perform, with JG hunched behind a workbench laden with electronic gear to one side, bassist K pounding out rhythms in prime Peter Hook mode on the other. Centre stage is singer O, who croons in parallel with the music rather than following the tunes. Her eyes are closed and she twists from side to side, her arms outstretched in a pose of crucifixion.

These songs are persistent, nagging washes of sound, propelled by the bass and the electric tics of the machinery. They work through repetition and epic span. This band know a good groove when they hit one and extend themselves to heroic length – the final track must last at least fifteen to twenty minutes. As with all such music, whether they succeed or fail depends upon whether they can entice the audience to come along for the ride. I enjoy them a lot, but a quick poll amongst my mates afterwards indicates no more than a fifty percent hit rate.

And finally I am in a room watching Phantogram. And they are more wonderful than I had dared to hope.

Sarah is standing behind a selection of electronic equipment that appears to be half state of the art and half something cobbled together out of an old VCR. Joshua is feeding his guitar through a vast array of effects pedals. They start with “As Far As I Can See” with its sampled brass section and they don’t look back.

They are much more hard edged and dynamic than their recorded works would indicate, Sarah jolting as though shot through with an electric current, her eyes closed and her head thrown back in a delightful smile that highlights the wonders of American dentistry. Josh appears frozen by a frantic white strobe light, occasionally whirling his instrument in stabs of sonic violence.

The buzzing hum of ‘Running From The Cops’, with its peculiar effect that makes Josh’s voice sound as though he is drowning makes way for long time favourite ‘Mouthful Of Diamonds’ which is as sweet as a summer evening . This music is just fantastic. I could say that this is the sound that School Of Seven Bells promised, and ultimately failed to deliver, but such comparisons sell Phantogram short.

The set draws heavily from debut album/compilation Eyelid Movies, which I commend to you all.

This is the first night of a whistle-stop European tour and they are going to make friends wherever they go. Hurry back guys.

Doll and The Kicks - Camden Barfly 9 October 2009

2009-10-13T20:07:00.002+01:00

Doll & The Kicks by Indigo Burns

It’s a routine trip out to the Barfly. However, as usual, there are unexpected treats to be found if you look about.

The first band onstage are the difficult-to-Google ‘Ray’. They have a laconic and cheery front man (let’s call him ‘Jack Kansas’) and they play basic, guitar-heavy rock. They aren’t revolutionary, but they ain’t bad either and I’m happy to spend time in their company. Jack is wearing a ‘Damn Vandals’ T-shirt and I’m pretty sure that he and they may be related.

The next band on are already playing stadiums in their heads and whether they get to do this for real will depend on the British public’s hunger for yet another bunch of lads who have taken Kasabian/Oasis epic pomp pop as a rigid template. Sound Of Guns are big and brash and spend a lot of time blinding us with white lights. They are very good at what they do, which does not make them in any way likeable.

It is a huge, empty sound, devoid of anything other than fake emotion and shouty sincerity. They are dispiriting, and will probably be massive. It’s the equivalent of a television the size of a house that is just used to screen the Jeremy Kyle Show.

Headliners are Doll & The Kicks and their name says it all. This is an act that is all about singer er...Doll, batting her huge black eyelashes and bouncing around under a big pink bow in her hair. The rest of the band is utterly anonymous, both in terms of appearance and music.

As a showcase for their singer, tonight’s show is exemplary. We get snarly naughty-but-nice rock, the occasional lapse into reggae rhythms, and cheesy mainstream pop. Doll’s eyes are hypnotic (she has GREAT eyes) and you can’t tear yourself away from her. This is both the blessing and curse – I’m glad to have seen her in action, but can’t remember a single song or riff that the band played. It’s all very enjoyable and pleasant, but I expect more from the bands that I see. ‘Doll’ would be a charming performer whatever she was doing, but I get the feeling that she doesn’t need to be in this band to achieve this.

In many respects Doll & The Kicks remind me of past Call Of The Wyld faves Battlekat (who I think may have split up, but would be delighted if they haven’t) -a charismatic front person with a penchant for performance, but no real sense of direction or purpose. You might watch the DVD, but you wouldn’t play the MP3.

Dressing up is fun, but never quite as much fun for other people as it is for you.

Monkeyrush, The Farrs, Waiting For A Superhero at Camden Rock 02 October 2009

2009-10-03T21:54:00.002+01:00

Farrs by Fragiled Photography

The Stones were shit at Altamont.

Sure, they had thousands of fans and drugs and free love and Hells Angels knifing some poor sod to death. Gimme shelter? Gimme a break.

You want ‘memorable’? You want Henry V? –“If you ain’t here you can hold your manhood cheap, motherfuckers.”[i] We got ‘memorable’ here tonight. I’ve just seen The Farrs play a set of such steaming greatness that I will tell my hypothetical son that his life is OVER, he can’t compete, Dad wins, sorry Bub, but it’s down to the hypothetical grandkids now.

It’s been an odd night. Even finding the venue is a battle because the Internet only belatedly identifies ‘Camden Rock’ as the building formerly known as ‘The Mint Cafe’ or ‘WKD’ or ‘that shithole across the road from the Underworld.’

When we finally get here, the Farrs are sound checking. This involves shouting at the sound guy, checking how far the mike lead will stretch and helping drummer Helen nailing a skittish kit down. They sound terrific, but once they leave the stage another band takes over.

Their sound check is a bit rubbish because the heavily, impressively tattooed drummer keeps knocking his kit off the stage. It is only when they carry on regardless that we realise that Waiting For A Superhero are not practicing, but actually playing.

Everyone has to start somewhere and they are in the early stages of their career here tonight. They are incredibly raw, but there is a germ of goodness in there. I wish them luck.

The Farrs (often known as “Fucking hell, did you see The Farrs?”) not only blow the bloody doors off but detonate every single one of your senses. Bang! Your eyes are gone as singer Harley bounces onto and then along the bar, playing with the light fittings. Bang! Your ears pack up with the sheer sonic overload of the extended noise box thrashout of ‘Pest Go Easy’, Harley hugging passing bar staff, rapping with the crowd (such as it is) and engaging your correspondent in a knees-up joust across the room.

Other senses? The Farrs taste as salty and fresh as a tsunami round the chops – or more accurately the taste of the fountains of beer that the singer throws over himself and the photographers present. Touch – there isn’t a person in the room that has not been mauled, cajoled, boogied with or mock-molested by the time this is over. Smells good to me.

This is an epochal performance, and certainly the three men and a dog who are the actual paying audience appreciate it.

It is to the immense credit of the next band, Monkeyrush, that they can follow that. Led by bubbly Fil Planet, this Bromley contingent lay down some infectious ska/skank grooves that we can all get behind. She has a great voice and because she and her band are seasoned performers it is no wonder that they are pretty damn good at what they do. We jump up and down as much as is reasonable.

I leave with my mind blown.

Go and see The Farrs

Go and see The Farrs

Go and see The Farrs

You won’t be sorry.

Postscript: This piece was bashed out in less time than it has taken you to read it. It was fuelled by adrenaline, Stella Artois and an empty table on the Thameslink. I could have taken the time to tidy it up, but that wouldn’t be in the spirit of the evening.

[i] And gentlemen in England, now a-bedShall think themselves accursed they were not here,And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaksThat fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

teenagersintokyo / Still Corners at Water Rats 30 September 2009

2009-10-01T20:07:00.002+01:00

teenagersintokyo

It may have been the usual mild/wet/disappointing summer, but on the Gray’s Inn Road conditions have obviously been more tropical. Tonight I’m in the Water Rats and it is as hot as the jungles of Borneo in here.

This leads to a bizarre beginning to the evening in which the slightly cooler bar of the venue is full of people while the doors to the performance area are wide open and there is not a living soul inside. Eventually a band comes on stage and finds themselves confronted with a completely empty room. However, once they start playing, the audience files in.

The band in question is Still Corners and they are rather wonderful. They are fronted by the striking Olivia, who stares straight ahead, gently swaying to the slow syncopation of the rest of the band. Her wispy, echoing vocals sigh like a summer breeze, almost indistinct but enough to raise the hairs on your neck.

The obvious comparison would be with the off-kilter and creepy nightclub music of David Lynch collaborator Julee Cruise. There is a sense of theatre, of mystery, of lush decadence.

The other band members are mostly undemonstrative, but work themselves into a quiet storm on the closing numbers. The hot-house atmosphere works in their favour, as they seem icily cool even as everything around them melts.

As Still Corners finish the room empties again, with the crowd dispersing in search of oxygen. I take the opportunity to purchase the band’s mini-album ‘Forget Pepper’.

The main act of the night is Teenagersintokyo, an Australian outfit last seen by me a just over a year ago. They are now temporarily resident in London, recording and touring.

Since last time I saw them the band have evolved and smoothed out many of the rough edges from their early performances. In particular, singer Samantha Lim is glamoured up in an off the shoulder sheath and eyelashes that are several inches long. She looks sultry and stunning, and knows it.

The rest of the band have taken the opportunity to dress up too, in a variety of Eighties-style themes that range from Olivia Newton John ‘Let’s Get Physical’ gym wear to Sheena Easton geometric haircuts. The lone guy in the band, drummer Rudy, wears a head band but is otherwise content to leave the girls to draw the eye.

It takes a long time for the band to make much of an impression. Many of their songs are routine dance/club numbers which you can tell are going to be much better on record once they have been tweaked and remixed. As it is they are good but fall short of being great. That said, new single 'Isabella' is just peachy.

It doesn’t help that there are a sizeable number of wankers in the crowd who seem to be only here to jabber and shout to each other all the way through the band. From the accents you get the impression that they are hangers on who don’t actually give a damn about the performance.

It is said that men sweat but women glow. Before the end Lim is glowing like a 100 Watt light bulb. She grabs a drumstick for the final number and leads the whole band in a percussive work out. Guitars and keyboards are abandoned as everyone grabs a stick and beats on bells and bottles. This is when teenagersintokyo come into their own and properly loosen up. It’s a great finish but I could have done with more of this spontaneity and a little less of the rather anodyne disco tracks that preceded it.

However, this is a relatively minor quibble. A band with an approval rating of say, seven out of ten, is well worth going to see. Kudos too for Still Corners, who I shall certainly endeavour to seek out again.

Music Go Music at Institute of Contemporary Arts, 22 September 2009

2009-09-23T20:03:00.002+01:00

Music Go Music (Image with kind permission of The Music Fix)

When you think of Saturday night television back in the Seventies, it is usual to reminisce about Morecombe and Wise, The Two Ronnies, Mike Yarwood and the rest. You remember the sketches with nostalgia. But there was another facet of these shows – that moment when the hosts went for a lie down or a bottle of whisky and the special guests came on. These tended to be ‘middle of the road’ acts such as Clodagh Rodgers or The New Seekers and they often played the same slot every week. It was an innocent time of big hair, brilliant smiles and songs about kittens.

...Meanwhile, in 2009, Meredith and David Metcalf from ace Californian outfit Bodies of Water have had an idea…

…There is a wash of dry ice across the ICA stage. There is a backdrop of twinkling stars. There are indeterminate shapes on the stage that are revealed to be an enormous harlequin mask and a giant hourglass with ‘Time’ written upon it.

The band come onto the stage and it is as though we are back watching a soft-focus video of that golden age of light entertainment. The guys all have hair that is so long and bouffant that they are practically treading on it, the girls are all blonde and feather-cut like Farrah Fawcett-Majors. This is Music Go Music and this is an evening of retro-magic.

They are fronted by the beaming, nervous figure of ‘Gala Bell’, who has one of the strongest and clearest voices in all pop music. The power that she generates is quite something, particularly as it seems to be mostly effortless, the notes never wavering no matter how loud she sings. From certain angles she looks a bit like Meredith Metcalf...

The set closely matches the running order of the new album ‘Expressions’ and starts with the Pink Floyd ‘Great Gig In The Sky’ wails of “I Stand Alone”. The sound in the venue is initially all over the place, probably because the engineer is flummoxed by a seven piece band, most of whom seem to be singing at full belt like this was the closing number of a West End musical.

However, things soon get properly on track with ‘Light Of Love’, merely the first of a number of songs that don’t just reference ABBA but which are so good that somewhere Meryl Streep is climbing into her dungarees in order to sing them in a musical.

The usual ICA audience is as fashion conscious and circumspect as hell, but faced with this onslaught (and MGM genuinely ROCK) they wave, clap and stamp along. These songs are utterly preposterous, so over the top that there can be no resistance. The sheer gleeful euphoria is overwhelming. ‘Gala’ is enjoying herself so much that most of the time between songs is spent in fits of giggles.

There isn’t a weak song in the set, nor any moment when the illusion slips. During the chorus of ‘Explorers of the Heart’ I find that tears of joy are misting my glasses up.

It’s not all ABBA though. The epic ten-minute single ‘Warm In The Shadows’ is a pure Studio 54 disco stomper that is built upon the bass line throb of Blondie’s ‘Atomic’. The only thing missing is a glitterball.

The show ends with The Carpenters-esque ballad “Goodbye Everybody”. Like everything else tonight, it is perfectly judged.

I absolutely loved this show. This makes the Seventies look so good, that you wonder why we got rid of them.

The Farrs, Hindley, Death Cigarettes at Mother 333 12th September 2009

2009-09-15T08:27:00.000+01:00

The Farrs

Do you believe in love at first sight?

It was promising to be a pleasant but routine gig at Mother/333 (what IS this venue called?) on Saturday, and as is my habit, I got there in good time for the support acts.

First up were The Farrs, who had travelled down from Leeds for the evening. And in a small room in front of no more than a couple of handfuls of people, I witnessed one of the most devastatingly powerful sets of the year.

At first glance, they seem a regulation band – guitar, bass, drums and a singer – and when they start off at full pelt it augers good things.

Half an hour later I am deaf as a post and in tatters. The Farrs start explosively and just keep motoring, faster and denser throughout the set. They do not let up for a second. It’s like being run over.

Singer Harley is a revelation, never static for a second as he charges about the venue like a mad man, tearing at his clothing, grabbing at girls in the crowd to dance with, spinning them around until they are left dizzy and bewildered, as he moves from one to the next.

Each song is more breakneck than the last, and the band (Ross, Ads and drummer Helen) do well to hold themselves together as Harley bashes into them, his T shirt by now hanging in rags from his body. The energy that the band puts out is astonishing.

In a great piece of theatre, the microphone is tossed to an acquaintance in the crowd, who delivers a tremendously shouty speed-rap into the mix. Harley finishes rolling over and over across the floor of the room.

When The Farrs finally come to a screeching halt we all whoop and applaud. Compared to what we have just seen, it seems an inadequate response. The Farrs describe themselves as “an average band from Leeds”. This is disingenuous – on this evidence, they are one of the best bands in the country.

It speaks volumes for the next act that they can even follow that. But they more than acquit themselves admirably.

Hindley (and there’s a name that will attract headlines should stardom ever beckon) consist of singer/guitarist Red, Gemma and Nixie resplendent in silver lame on guitar and bass and drummer Matt.

The band plays an intelligent, shoegazey pop that builds into an atmospheric performance. Red has a distinctive vocal that suits this sound and the guitars interact agreeably with each other. Nixie and Gemma seem in a world of their own, nodding and bouncing, without ever really acknowledging their front man at all. They have a song called ‘The Violent Hour’, it seems rather appropriate.

I like these guys a lot and will see them again.

The headliners are Death Cigarettes about whom I have written sufficiently to say only that a) they were great as always but b) there were signs of tension - not least when singer Maya introduced them as “the band formerly known as Death Cigarettes”. Whether this presages a name change or something more dramatic will be revealed in the coming weeks.

A terrific night’s entertainment. I saw some favourites do their stuff (and their show at Offset seemed to have swelled the Death Cigarettes audience), but the story of the evening is the discovery of The Farrs, who may be unknown now, but they’ll scorch the wallpaper off any room they find themselves in.

I’m in love – yet again.

Amanda Palmer - Union Chapel 11th September 2009

2009-09-14T18:57:00.003+01:00

Amanda Palmer by Martyn Foster

It’s sometimes hard to time your entrance into a venue, particularly if you have not been there for a while.

I have not been to the Union Chapel for probably more than a decade, so when I arrive at around 7.45 and am ushered upstairs I do not think anything of it. As it turns out I am among what at this point are only a handful of folk who have the entire run of the balcony and am able to sit more or less over directly over the stage and get a great view of events below.

The pews below are filled to capacity. In fact some of them appear to be over-filled, with more than one person occupying the same space. A closer look reveals that quite a few of the early audience have brought puppets with them and that some of these are very large and elaborate. A fair number of the audience appear to be in fancy dress too. Such is the nature of fandom.

We are here tonight to see a performance by Amanda Palmer, punk pianist extraordinaire, who is playing a few London shows apparently just for the hell of it, as her solo album came out last year and her other band The Dresden Dolls (hence the puppets) are between projects at the moment.

However, before Miss Palmer, we have Miss Polly Scattergood to entertain us.

Teetering around the stage in bright pink boots and with an enormous plume of feathers sprouting from her shoulder, it would be easy to dismiss Polly as one of those delicate and eccentric young women who have taken Kate Bush to their hearts to an almost unhealthy degree (see also Natasha Khan or Alison Goldfrapp ).

It is also tempting to say that her surname is a firm signifier of her talent, because the standard of her singing and material varies quite drastically between one song and the next. She is never less than interesting, but her breathy voice is so weak that it can barely sustain a note. The acoustics in this venue does her no favours, as much of what she sings is lost somewhere in the void over the audience.

She is received warmly though, and when she is joined by her band, she seems happier and less exposed.

Amanda Palmer is what used to be called a Damned Good Act, in that there seems very little that she cannot turn her hand to. This evening she starts with a couple of tunes played on the chapel organ, invisible to most of the crowd, but not from my lofty, lucky position.

Running centre stage, she sits down at her keyboard and starts banging out a set of mixed Dresden Dolls and solo material. She admits to being out of practice because she is not in the middle of a tour, and that she has had to familiarise herself with her back catalogue by listening to the CDs beforehand.

Indeed, almost her first act is to rip up her provisional set list and just proceed as the mood takes her. Nerves are soon put behind her, as she takes requests from the audience - if you want your song sung it helps to have a puppet.

This flying-by-the-seat-of-her pants approach is really charming, and it is to her credit that she can pull it off. She talks of her boyfriend, the author Neil Gaiman, and even sings a song that he has written, called “I Googled You” – it is the only time of the evening when the ick-factor gets ramped up.

Having stopped to announce that she is going to play two long ballads, Amanda is struck by the realisation that she is playing in a church on September 11th, and instead plays a quiet tune about New York City.

Later, she tests out a piece of classical music that she has learned, for no other reason than to prove to herself that she can play ‘proper’ music.

Polly Scattergood makes a guest appearance up on a balcony, singing a husky, torch song version of ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’ which brings out the full despair and horror of the song that has traumatised children for years.

Somehow, Palmer gets through her set and has played all her hits – ‘Ampersand’ ‘Runs in the Family’ and ‘Backstabber’ are particularly good.

For an encore it is Amanda’s turn on the balcony, her leg swinging precariously over the edge as she strums a ukulele and croons a languid version of ‘Makin’ Whoopee’, before charging back down and blasting through ‘Oasis’ with the assistance of Polly Scattergood and her band.

It has been an enchanting evening, with the ever charming Amanda Palmer an excellent hostess. In her hands, tonight we are all puppets.

Offset Festival - Sunday 6 September 2009

2009-09-08T19:31:00.007+01:00

Bo Ningen

Panico

Arriving full of vim and vigour for day two of Offset, we first happen across Jessica Larrabee aka She Keeps Bees. Judging by the persistent effing and blinding, she is not a happy camper. This may be something to do with her equipment, but she is too angry to make this clear. What she does play seems ok in a sub-PJ Harvey kind of way and we look on with happy bemusement.

Stepping into the next tent we find that proceedings are running at least half an hour late. This enables us to enjoy the majority of a set from Brontosaurus Chorus, who are a kind of mini-Earlies, incorporating trumpet, cello and string section. And they are really good, being absolutely spot on for a sunny Sunday afternoon. I have seen them before and rather dismissed them, but today they are perfect for the time and place.

Meanwhile, on the main stage, S.C.U.M. are performing at the hottest and sunniest time of the day. Contrary to expectations, they do not wither or burst into flames when exposed to sunlight, but instead put in a fine performance that is part Sisters of Mercy, part Echo and the Bunnymen and wholly about looking so damn cool that lesser mortals should just go away and kill themselves. Much the best that I have seen them, and it shows that they do have something going for them other than distortion and dry ice.

Stage timings in the tents have gone awry (something to do with the generator that powers the site), so I happily stumble across Artefacts For Space Travel some time after I would have expected to have missed them. Main man Joe Walsh and chums wow a packed tent with a blistering punk set. They annoy the organisers by overstaying their welcome, milking the crowd for support, but they are the only band over the two days who I see doing this.

Next up come Death Cigarettes, whom even casual readers of this blog will realise I have more than a soft spot for. As a fan, I really want them to do well and they do not disappoint. Once they get going, the tent is soon filled and enjoying itself. Singer Maya is a bit apprehensive and unusually restrained, staying on the stage throughout. However, to compensate, she screams herself breathless, finishing the set with a face as purple as a plum. New song ‘Horses’ sounds excellent and final number ‘What Went Wrong?’ is an absolute stormer. I feel as proud as a parent.

The next act is so completely off the hook that for the rest of the day you can hear people around the site discussing it- it is the “Were you there?” moment of the day. I have seen Bo Ningen before in a show that was relatively sedate (audience nudity, guitars passed through the crowd) but today they are like the Apocalypse. To a heaving tent they start with the all-vanquishing whoosh of a space shuttle taking off, seemingly screaming off in all directions. Their set is simply astonishing, because it is so perfect – each member of the band is the coolest guy you ever saw, the space-Jap-metal rock din they make indescribable. The sheer momentum and violence- both sonic and physical - is astounding. Settling on a humungous dirty riff that would make Black Sabbath soil themselves, the band end with a guitarist kicked face first through the crash barrier (the security guard in front of me actually cringed and covered his mouth) and drummer Mon-Chan hanging upside down from the main pole holding the tent up. I am wet with terror and glee at the same time. Genuinely one of the most amazing performances I have ever seen.

An impossible act to follow, but in the next tent I am consoled by the twin drummer assault of Methodist Centre, who are a meat and two veg Oi Oi Saveloy very basic punk act of the type that you don’t see much these days. They are as two-dimensional as a cartoon, but they are fun and a bit of an antidote to some of the more precious acts around.

I’m glad to catch Bearsuit, who are dressed in feathers and beaks and who play a delightful set that showcases their position as if not quite the godfathers, but certainly the older siblings of the twee-core movement. You don’t underestimate the power of a punch from a foxy boxer, as their song has it.

The XX have become the darlings of the age, and their tent is so packed that I can only loiter under the flaps, listening to their quiet intensity. I have problems with their album and I have problems with them live – they have an interesting sound, but they have no actual songs that you can cling to- getting a grasp of them is like nailing jelly to a wall.

I have a similar lack of empathy with Dananananaykroyd on the main stage. They have a fanatical support who worship them, but to me they just seem to be as silly and superficial as a shouty Goldie Looking Chain. One for the kids, I guess.

Wild Beasts are much more ‘adult’ in their appeal and initially at least they are seductive, with a blend of guitar and keyboard that is kind of dance-y but also a perfect backdrop for their falsetto vocals. However as they go on, I find them less appealing and more annoying – not because they are bad but because they are utterly one dimensional – you get the same feeling from one song as you do from the next. Rather like The XX, I get the impression that they make the type of music that is played in the background to a dinner party, where you only notice it when it stops.

Wandering around the site, I hear a promising sound and chance across the Santiago based band Panico, who absolutely rock our socks off. Singer Edu is a brawny, sweaty, macho guy who lasciviously pays court to every woman in the audience. The band twitch and judder in a febrile, synth based groove that is propelled by two percussionists. More dancing ensues, and we are lost in the rhythm. A tremendous performance that culminates in the singer licking the front of a T-shirt before swirling it into the crowd. I love them to bits. Like the Berlin Brides of the day before, it is left to the bands from overseas to provide sex rather than style.

We finish the festival stood behind members of Panico as we watch The Horrors on the main stage. They have their moments but the sound, which is never good, doesn’t allow those on the fringes of the crowd to engage. During the ‘final’ song Sea Within A Sea the keyboards break down completely, and what starts as an instrumental passage becomes first a desperate exercise in filling in and eventually a complete collapse. The band storm tersely off stage and Offset (for me) is over.

It’s been a terrific couple of days and plaudits go to all involved. Sure, the security could have been a little less heavy handed and the site would have benefited from some litter collectors (by the end it was like a rubbish heap from District 9) but I’m sure that the crowd and the bands by and large had a whale of a time. I saw some stand out performances and also ticked off a number of acts that I had not previously seen. All at a reasonable price in an accessible location. Top marks all round.

Offset Festival- Saturday 5 September 2009

2009-09-08T18:47:00.002+01:00

Berlin Brides

After the great success of last year’s event, I am delighted to attend this year’s Offset Festival, two days in Hainault showcasing the best new (and old) bands around. It’s a complete antidote to normal festival fare in that experimentation and boundary-pushing are positively encouraged.

Over the course of the weekend I saw around forty acts, so I can’t mention them all here. Let’s just go for the highlights…

In a strange piece of synchronicity, the first act I see on my arrival is the first that I saw last year. An Experiment On A Bird In The Air Pump are on the main stage, and in fine fettle, taking it in turns to sing, bang the hell out of a simple drum kit and blast along on a bass guitar. Having previously only seen them in gloomy churches or darkened rooms, it is surprising how well they go over on a big stage in broad daylight. A good start.

A swift detour into a tent finds LR Rockets enjoying themselves, bounding over the barrier that separates them from the crowd. The singer nearly trips over a small child who is sat directly in front of him. He smiles and waves at her and she smiles and waves back. It’s all very good natured.

Outside, various lads from Cementemental are titting about with effects pedals, screaming into loudhailers and generally being boisterous. At an event like this, such scenes are treated with the benign feeling that you might experience passing a ‘Guess The Weight of the Cake’ stall at a village fete.

KASMs are on the main stage, looking a bit lost and desperate. This becomes a theme over the weekend – I think that only relatively few of the acts who are playing in the open air quite have the chops to really put themselves across.

Inside again we are treated to a superb performance from Berlin Brides, who actually hail from Athens, Greece. This predominantly female band specialise in an upbeat electronic punk-funk that has everyone dancing along in no time. These women are genuinely earthy and sexy, in a way that the prim gals from say, Ipso Facto, are not. The songs are often concerned with bedroom matters too, notably signature tune ‘Failure To Wank’ and the tale of the bi-sexual ‘Scooter Boy’. Tremendous, smutty fun.

http://vimeo.com/6460446 from Sitcom Serf on Vimeo.

On the main stage The Chapman Family are deconstructing their songs to such a degree that they are almost unrecognisable. There is much guitar mangling and tying themselves up with microphone leads. At one point front man Kingsley slings a bottle of beer into the crowd, who throw it back at him.

Inside once more, The Duloks are entertaining a packed tent and getting everybody to pretend to be octopuses. The Duloks barely really play at all, instead they just have everyone crying with laughter as singer Mira discusses the need to have proper roadies who are old and grizzled as opposed to the catalogue model waifs who are performing these chores at Offset. There is also a prolonged riff on the ethnic make up of the audience, culminating with the observation that “This tent is fully integrated – We’ve got a black and a cripple!”

Later, I stand in a largely deserted tent, watching the very odd Tulipomania, who make a sound that is not unlike the music that bands played before punk came along and blew all that ‘serious’ nonsense out of the water. In a weekend where many bands are out to shock or offend, it is interesting that a sure way to make folk walk away is to have a thirty-plus year old man play guitar solos at them.

Future Of The Left are on the main stage and seem to be going through the motions. Ok, you’re angry, we get it. What else do you do?

The Slits will be headlining later, but until then, Wet Dog make a very acceptable substitute, being women of a certain age playing a mildly enjoyable post- funk. Being an oldster myself I can remember when Wet Dog were still so raw that the drummer had to stop a set because her arms were sore – it’s good to see them still going and having fun.

A real highlight is the performance of Drum Eyes, the occasional band led by DJ Scotch Egg and pals from Trencher and The Boredoms. Today they have two drummers and play a long, loping drawn out dubby space rock. This kind of stuff only really works in the live setting and it is great this evening. Even better, Damo Suzuki wanders on and starts intoning, eyes screwed up, in a world of his own. Wonderful stuff.

At this point our group separates, with one member opting to stay for Suzuki’s own set, while the rest head off to catch a show from R O M A N C E. And yes, the capitals and spacing are apparently important. This group are allies of fellow Shoreditch denizens S.C.U.M. (capitals, spacing etc) and like them, are as keen on presentation as music. A certain suspension of disbelief is required as while they have the foxiest bassist of the weekend, and a guitarist who has cheek bones that could slice you open, they are fronted by a singer who is as camp in looks and appearance as Matt Lucas from Little Britain and who sings in a foghorn shout that falls some way short of Kirk Brandon of Theatre of Hate/Spear of Destiny. So they teeter on the edge of absurdity, but like tightrope walkers, they are safe provided that they don’t let their guard down. On these terms they are greatly enjoyable, and I haven’t seen such a fine Flock of Seagulls haircut in a long while.

On the main stage I am unexpectedly stirred by The Futureheads, a band that I had sort of written off some while ago. Tonight they look to be in their element and actually get some decent interaction with the crowd. They finish off with Kate Bush’s ‘Hounds Of Love’ and everyone has a good time.

Inside once more for Factory Floor, I meet up with my friend who stayed for Damo Suzuki. His mind is so blown by the majesty of what he has just seen that it is impossible to get him to focus or get anything coherent from him. He liked it, a lot.

Factory Floor are now a three piece, the newest member being the mighty Nikki Colk, the ex-leader of Kaito, who are still my all time favourite band. So it is good to see her in action again. Factory Floor are absolutely brutal tonight, a deafening, repetitive machine noise accompanied by relentless strobe lighting effects. They start to a packed tent which gradually empties as folk run for cover. They are impressively bloody-minded in what they do, but the experience is much like banging your head against a wall, in that it feels better when they stop.

Senses reeling, we relax with a cup of coffee and The Slits, who are capering around on the main stage, pursued by various members of the crowd and security personnel. They are ropey, ragged, silly and fun.

I’m exhausted, and this is only the end of the first day…

Haunts, Sharks and Me My Head at Upstairs at the Garage -18 August 2009

2009-08-31T12:52:00.003+01:00

Haunts

There’s a last minute change of plan as we realise that although we would quite like to see Neon Kicks at the Hope and Anchor, the two support bands look to be so irredeemably awful that the prospect is too grim to bear.

So instead we do a quick swerve down the road to the newly re-opened Upstairs at the Garage to check out what’s on there.

There is a cracking result right away, as the first band on are the always wonderful Me My Head, possibly still the best band in the country who are distressingly not mega huge. Seriously people, MMH should be entertaining the arm-waving masses at Glasto or Reading rather than tearing up this tiny venue.

If crowd-pleasing good tunes and engaging stage presence are not your bag, then look away now. They are a bit Blur, a bit Killers, a bit Kaiser Chiefs (stop looking down your nose) and a guaranteed good time. Check out their self-released album.

Next up are the black-clad ranks of retro punks Sharks, who channel the likes of Joe Strummer and are mean, moody and reasonably magnificent. They put in a strong, determined performance, undercut only slightly by the antics of their guitarist, who should perhaps just restrain himself from showing off to quite such a degree. Sharks are well worth your gig-dollar. They are young and hungry and totally self-aware. Watch them go.

Headliners are Haunts, a band that I have not previously happened across, and which is rather to my shame. Wiry, brutal rock with all the anger and structure of Future of the Left, but without all the pantomime crowd-baiting nonsense that accompanies that band.

Haunts are louder than bombs, tighter than an owl and happy to make your teeth rattle. The crowd is too cool for school, but they are LOVING this.

Grand stuff for around a fiver. All these bands are excellent in their different ways. Treat yourself.

Cafe Rocks at Cafe De Paris 7 August 2009

2009-08-11T20:51:00.002+01:00

The Elody by Bryn Bache

So I find myself reclining on a red velvet bed in the dressing room of a Brazilian pop star. We are in the VIP area deep beneath the sumptuous Café de Paris in London’s bustling West End. Ok, there are about another 100 people squeezed in here as well, but it’s the thought that counts.

Let’s recap…

The Café de Paris is one of London’s great secret venues. Most of the time it operates as a swanky nightclub or as the setting for the Press launch of weighty tomes such as a footballer’s autobiography. It’s glitzy and tacky and as camp as a row of tents. And on Fridays there are free(ish) gigs showcasing up and coming new acts. And the great thing about these events is that they don’t just serve the needs of the indie community. On a usual Friday you will get such a wide variety of music that it becomes less of a gig and more like a recording of old school Top Of The Pops. Eddie Argos would love it down here.

We start off with Red Nova, who actually make my jaw drop in laughing disbelief. Imagine The Fall fronted by Liam Gallagher and you have them in a nut shell. It’s basic but serviceable rattling rock music fronted by a singer so utterly in awe of the younger of the Gallagher brothers that he not only drawls his vocals in the same manner, but even affects a beetling stooped walk around the stage with his hands behind his back. And yet, in the same way that for all Oasis’ faults, their sheer chutzpah and self belief propels them along like a juggernaut, the same effect happens here. There are soaring choruses, there are decent songs. The package works. I give them a clap and a whoop and feel the thrill of guilty pleasure.

The next act incorporates a double bass, two backing singers and an old jazzer slapping a music case. This is the soul stylings of Mo Molokwu. My musical tastes are such that I am rather unsighted as to whether the personable young singer is any good or not, but she sounds fine to me. Pleasant, easy going laid back grooves, with a last-song-of-the-night vibe. She finishes with an excellent track called “Guilty”. The small crowd sway and approve.

There is a minor altercation as to who will go on next. The promoter has asked for the running order to be changed, either because of ease of getting things moving along, or because not all the members of the designated act have actually got here in time. Unfortunately, the band that have now been moved forward are unprepared and have to be collected from various different locations.

This is Monocle Rose, and is the band that I have nominally come to see. And here I have to tread carefully. For starters, they have been enjoying the bar facilities for most of the evening, and are very, let’s say, refreshed. Like Red Nova before them, they consist of a band that is dominated by their singer. Rosa is a wild and wonderful, full on performer, who is completely manic and off her head in absolutely the best possible way. She screams, she flails, she knocks her water glass flying, she then accidentally sits in the resulting puddle and looks surprised. It’s a genuine old school punk performance and her voice reminds me a lot of Pauline Murray in her Penetration days. It’s not complicated, or particularly cool, but it’s a real jolt of stomping energy. Hugely enjoyable.

Next up we are in TOTP mode with a vengeance. The Elody are appallingly named, but they certainly grab your attention. These five girls are aiming to compete with Girls Aloud, The Saturdays and any other troupe of hot foxtresses that have ever strutted for the public on a reality talent show. Are they good? Well, they certainly look the part, dance superbly and have some pretty catchy tunes too. Not a bad start then. However, they are so obviously an artificial construct that it is hard to see them as a single act, and more of a group of performers who can be moulded by some Svengali. So watching them is rather like inspecting goods at a cattle fair, and they are judged in ways that you wouldn’t dream of even considering if dealing with a ‘proper’ band. In my best witheringly condescending Simon Cowell tones I’ll say that there is one band member who I would take for my own girl group in a heartbeat and a couple of others who would do anyone a turn as strong backing singers. I genuinely wish them all the luck in the world, because, talented as they are, I’d say it is almost impossible for them to succeed without television patronage and that is going to take an astonishingly lucky break. They are not the sort of act that’s going to knock around rock venues.

We end up with a set from Rakell Sa, a Brazilian singer who has been based in Jamaica of late and who is making her UK debut. As with The Elody, this is well crafted up tempo dance music, here infused with a heady Caribbean/ Latin groove. Her set does not last long, but her material is very strong – I suspect this is a ‘greatest hits’ package. Rakell is certainly impressive, if not entirely distinctive.

And she invites us down to her dressing room, in the aforementioned red velvetine bowels of the venue. What can you do? It would be churlish to refuse.

This night of fun and debauchery was brought to you by Café Rocks. It’s free before seven and a fiver before eight. Go and surprise yourself.

Soko / The Agitator/ Lulu And The Lampshades - Dingwalls, 23 July 2009

2009-07-25T11:37:00.005+01:00

There is quirky, there is eccentric and there is completely full-on psychotic. Tonight we get a gradual progression through all three states and it isn’t a particularly comfortable journey.

Things start amiably enough with Lulu And The Lampshades, who tonight are two girls and a guy.There is an effigy of their fourth member, absent in Uganda, and lovingly fashioned out of a mop, a Hawaiian shirt and what appears to be a photograph of a sheep wearing sunglasses. Even more unusually, the missing member has picked the set list and phoned in her contributions via a series of recorded messages.

The band that are actually present pluck their way through a series of pleasant if undistinguished songs via the medium of drums, guitar and ukulele and their cheerful attitude goes a long way to cover up any deficiencies.

The next act is startling, although they completely polarise the audience. My companions hate this lot with a vengeance, but I am impressed. The Agitator is a young man whooping and hollering (Derek Meins) accompanied only by a drummer (Robert Dylan Thomas) laying down a few sparse beats. Meins channels Gospel and revivalist music to batter out a primitive and hugely emotive soul racket.

He also seems to be as deadly serious about his message, which is essentially the traditional entreaty to folk to get up off their arses, shake themselves out of complacency and actually DO something with their lives. He takes great umbrage with a member of the audience who is a bit sceptical at this.

Whatever the personal politics behind it all, it is a terrific technical performance. I have rarely seen such rage and emotion in a singer since the heyday of Cathal Coughlan declaiming for Microdisney and Fatima Mansions. The Agitator are well worth experiencing, if only because if he carries on like this Meins is going to blow a gasket.

Headliner Soko declared herself to be ‘dead’ at Christmas, so it was a surprise when this gig was suddenly announced a few weeks ago.

Soko is a French singer/songwriter who is pretty and cutesy on the surface but quite clearly a very troubled performer, who over the course of her set unravels to an unsettling degree.

What is at first amusing – constantly interrupting herself, abandoning songs, changing instruments, rambling anecdotes, saying “Fuck” a lot in a French accent, - gradually becomes a lot less so when it becomes clear that the incessant fiddling with the equipment and digressions are more than nervous tics and more akin to Attention Deficit Disorder.

When she actually plays, Soko and her hapless violinist Juliet (sadly underused and a bewildered spectator for most of the time) produce delicate, deeply personal songs, many of which have been written, at least according to their creator, within the past few days.

As the evening progresses, Soko becomes gradually darker in mood, rightfully complaining about people talking through her set, but also bursting into tears at one point. Watching her fight her demons in public is not entertainment, but uncomfortably close to a trip round Bedlam to gawp at the inmates. At this point I leave.

A very strange and upsetting end to an exceptionally weird evening.

The Birthday Massacre at Dingwalls, 16 July 2009

2009-07-20T19:38:00.002+01:00

It can take just the smallest incident to spark a gig into life and make it memorable.

Picture, if you will, Toronto’s Birthday Massacre, performing in a hot and sweaty Dingwalls.

The band is here to promote their new live album ‘Show and Tell’. It is the last night of their European tour and things are going well. Tiny singer Chibi is dressed in school girl uniform and is enjoying herself bustling back and forth on a cramped stage. She is slightly disturbing – the uniform doesn’t really make her look sexy, it just makes her look very young.

The rest of the band are heavily made up in the white face “evil marionette” style that is much favoured in those parts of the rock world that dig Joel Gray in Cabaret. It’s a sort of visual shorthand for “We’re so decadent”, and can be easily washed off at the end of the evening, as opposed to trying to get the same effect through a predilection for underage whores and dirty syringes.

It’s a good solid professional show, but not really taking off. Songs such as ‘Red Stars’ and ‘Blue’ are fine, but everything is a little too neat.

And then one of the audience hands Chibi a pair of bunny ears. I’d seen the guy earlier, dressed in almost random fashion, two thirds military/ leather chic to one third dragged through a hedge backwards. And incongruously topped off with a set of pink bunny ears. He bequeaths his headgear to the singer from within the tightly packed throng at the front of the stage.

Chibi absolutely loves them. Stuffing them on her head she spends the next three songs waggling them or plumping them on the head of whichever band cohort she is standing near. And this mild anarchy causes the band to visibly relax and really let loose, to actually enjoy themselves and let the sheen of sleek professionalism drop a little.

The band jump and bounce through their final numbers. One of these is the Tommy James and the Shondells track “I Think We’re Alone Now”, as popularised by 80’s popstress Tiffany. All merry hell erupts, with the crowd of Goths, punks, crusties and other disparate tribes bawling along to a song from their youth. For a few moments it’s not about looking cool or outrageous, but just being happily daft together.

Chibi and co are back for their encore almost before they have left the stage in the first place. They thank us all and smash into their signature anthem “Happy Birthday”. By the time they crash to a close, the atmosphere is so hot that steam rises from the front.

We head to the back, open the venue doors and find ourselves in the middle of a torrential thunderstorm. Lightning flashes, thunder rolls and water floods past. It is epic and biblical and perfectly in keeping with what we have just seen. Elaborate hair constructions are plastered to faces, black eyeliner makeup runs, T shirts become transparent. It’s like the end of the world. It’s a funny end to a funnily enjoyable evening.

Shonen Knife / Smallgang / Baguette Bardot at Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes 29 June 2009

2009-06-30T19:47:00.002+01:00

I’ve never seen Shonen Knife. I appreciate that is akin to someone who goes to the movies saying that they have never seen Star Wars or the Sound of Music. Shonen Knife is part of our history, and it is just to be assumed that I would have come across them at some time or another. But until tonight, I hadn’t.

The band is in London for a few days, playing a string of dates in tiny venues. Unsurprisingly, these swiftly sold out and a last-minute extra show is being performed here in the unique surroundings of the Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes. For the uninitiated, this is a 50’s retro-style ten pin bowling alley in the basement of the Tavistock Hotel. Tonight no-one seems brave enough to bowl, preferring to sit outside in the summer heat.

We have been promised surprises, and they don’t come any more wonderful and surreal than the first act, the quite impressively bizarre Baguette Bardot. The name is an exact description of what happens next – a strikingly tall and beautiful Japanese girl with a blonde Sixties hairdo dances and sings to vintage J-Pop numbers. Oh, and her arms end in baguettes rather than hands. It’s a spectacle that is both erotic and deeply strange and one that I will not forget in a hurry.

The crowd that she gathers in front of her go nuts, and some of the Japanese girls sing along to what are obviously standards. After her performance BB stays in character for quite some time, having her photo taken and enjoying a drink, despite her bready appendages.

The next act couldn’t be more different or more unwelcome. Crumbling Ghost play loud, lumpen sludge rock and kill the party mood stone dead. During their set there are so many people outside that we are rammed like sardines in the tiny garden.

Next up come smallgang, a band in which every member wears glasses, clearly through necessity rather than affectation. I rather like them, although this is not a view shared by all my colleagues. They alternate singers and what start out as deceptively deadpan songs often mutate into noisy but controlled thrashing. “I’m in the cockpit” (?) is a particularly fine tune.

The crowd surge forward for the headliners. Shonen Knife are two sisters, Naoko and Ritsuko and one newly recruited girl drummer (Etsuko) who have been playing joyful pop-punk for more years than it would be polite to mention. Let’s put it this way, their most famous fan was Kurt Cobain.

Shonen Knife are perfect illustrations of the subjective nature of music. Objectively, it could be pointed out that they can only play in a rudimentary fashion, that their songs are ludicrously simple and that they are not doing anything new. Objectivity can fuck right off, because Shonen Knife are brilliant this evening.

The basic Shonen Knife song is a rumbling ram-a-lama bass heavy garage stomp with nursery rhyme lyrics. The crowd jumps about and join the girls in flashing devil’s horns at each other. The girls acknowledge their debt to those other famous purveyors of deceptively stupid two minute rock songs with a track called “Ramones Forever”. It would do da brudders proud.

Possibly the highlight of a riotous set is the ludicrous ‘Barnacle’, which the audience is invited to holler along with, and which we do, with great gusto. It’s a song that goes, almost in its entirety - “Barnacle! (Hey!), Barnacle! (Hey!), This is a song about a barnacle! (Hey!)”. Compared to the dizzy silliness of Shonen Knife, the Ting Tings are as complicated as Stockhausen.

This is the perfect soundtrack to summer and as I leave I kick myself for not having seen them before this point. A fabulous evening. Rock chicks rule!

Dead Weather and Smoke Fairies at HMV Forum 24 June 2009

2009-06-25T19:00:00.003+01:00

Some Dead Weather, yesterday. (Photo Jane Wiggins)

Jack White is a musician who has joined the pantheon of rock gods in a remarkably short period of time. The White Stripes were little known outside of the Detroit music scene until as recently as 2002, when their White Blood Cells album propelled them into the wider public consciousness. In the intervening years Jack has parlayed his phenomenal guitar playing and slightly weird Johnny-Depp-in-a-Tim Burton film appearance into a seat at the top table, feted by the likes of Bob Dylan as an equal, with plenty of others in the industry keen to touch the hem of his garment.

He’s always been a collaborator, playing a variety of instruments in a number of different outfits, just happy to be playing. However, when you are rock royalty, even the slightest of side projects can become amplified into something large and ungainly.

Tonight we are here to see the latest collection of musicians with whom White is amusing himself. Calling themselves The Dead Weather, the selling point here is that White has mostly reverted to playing drums, as he often used to in the pre-White Stripes days, and enlisted Allison Mosshart of The Kills to be the vocal and visual focus. Also along for the ride are Dean Fertita who usually plays with Queens Of The Stone Age and bassist Jack Lawrence who looks like an accountant in a hippie wig and is an old White pal from The Raconteurs.

Before the main event, the warm up. Jack White comes onstage to personally introduce Smoke Fairies, who have risen in the rankings since I last saw them when they were supporting Battlekat and The Fighting Cocks at Nambucca a few years ago. Since then, the core duo of Jessica Davies and Katherine Blamire has been augmented by a stick-thin fiddle player and a drummer.

The girls’ glorious Appalachian folk harmonies are the same as ever they were and now we are living in a post-Fleet Foxes world, the band are getting the attention that they deserve. However, although the crowd are initially hushed, the lack of any real stand-out songs causes concentration to wander and the end of the Smoke Fairies’ set is largely drowned out by the hubbub of anticipation for the headliners.

Performing in front of an enormous coat of arms, The Dead Weather are preposterous. This is bombastic, bullying blues rock of elephantine proportions. Your tolerance for this kind of thing is probably determined by your reaction to what I regard as a touchstone record – ‘All Right Now” by Free. If you like that, then The Dead Weather will be right up your street, if you don’t, then you are in for a long evening.

Allison Mosshart is all hair and twitches, shaking and nodding her head at approval of every note, every guitar lick or drum break. She growls and wails. Every gesture is magnified for people at the back of the hall, every stamp of the feet a proclamation that THIS IS REAL ROCK, GODDAMMIT. It’s every cliché in the book.

It’s a brutish set, loud and dumb. The band are enjoying themselves enormously and the crowd do too, even if by dint of being battered into submission. It’s an impressive, unapologetically thick-ear spectacle.

Relief is at hand on the occasions when Jack White does more than thump the drums. Still seated, he sings “You Just Can’t Win”, which I think may be a Van Morrison song. His falsetto vocal is a welcome contrast from Mosshart’s ‘whoah’s’ and ‘yeahs’.

The high point of the evening comes at the end of the main set, when White finally straps on his guitar and shows us what we have been missing. His duet with Mosshart on “Will There Be Enough Water?” is electrifying, the two of them fighting to share the same microphone.

The Dead Weather are not clever, but they sure are big and brash and will do well on this summer’s festival circuit. Jack White’s golden touch remains for now, even though this band feels like an indulgence rather than a long term project.

But hell, even Bob Dylan played with the Travelling Wilburys.

Steven Wells - A Small Tribute

2009-06-25T18:50:00.003+01:00

It was with great sadness that I read today of the death of Steven Wells. If John Peel was the soundtrack to my musical education, then Swells was the written equivalent.

What poor style I have today is an anaemic, mewling, cat-weakly-vomming-up-a-hair-ball copy of Swells’ purple prose. He was nearly always right about what he wrote and even when he was wrong, he was funny. Laugh out loud funny.

His long term feuds were legendary, especially his lifelong hatred of Sonic Youth and Belle and Sebastian. Whichever magazine he was writing for, whatever the topic, he would always work in a gratuitous insult for no other reason than to piss any passing fans off.

In his last column for the Philadelphia Weekly, written from his sick bed, he still manages to get in one last pop at The Smiths.

I’ll miss him a lot.

Kap Bambino / Advert at Cargo 16 June 2009

2009-06-19T10:28:00.001+01:00

Kap Bambino

It’s a lovely summer’s evening and the venue seems almost entirely deserted. This is because everybody is sat outside and generally chilling. The time slot allocated for the first band passes without sign of interest from anyone except for a large guy pacing in front of the stage. He occasionally looks at his watch and has words with the DJ’s, who are either ignorant of events or the bearers of bad news.

Finally, languidly, the support band drag themselves up on stage. This is Advert and they soon dispel any easy summer vibe with a wall of feedback from three guitars. So apparently unstructured is their sound that it is a good few minutes before I can definitely tell that they have started their set and are not just having difficulty in getting their instruments as they would like them.

It isn’t particularly enthralling. Occasionally one of them will stoop over a microphone and mumble, and there is a sporadic drumbeat mixed in amongst the general sonic scree, but this seems lazy, derivative stuff. They don’t play for long either. It seems a token performance at best. [Reading that back, it sounds like the old Woody Allen joke – First old woman: “The food here is disgusting!” Second old woman: “Yes! And such small portions!”]

The stage is now bare apart from a small table with electronic equipment on it. A reasonable crowd is now milling in front. And then the bombs start going off.

Not literally, but certainly the sonic equivalent. Kap Bambino may only consist of a guy (Bouvier Orion) cranking up the beats and a tiny girl (Martial Caroline) singing and stomping, but my word, what a performance! The noise levels are terrific.

Martial is a constant blur of motion, often literally so as she whips her head from side to side under the strobed lighting until her facial features melt like the hallucinations in ‘Jacob’s Ladder’. She is never still.

The set relies heavily on the band’s ace new album ‘Blacklist’. Individual tracks are hard to distinguish because of the hundred-mile-an- hour pounding of the backing and the swooshing, buzzing ,electric static that will render me stone deaf for the rest of the night and most of the following day.

Those of you familiar with the set up at Cargo will be aware that the two main speakers hang overhead on chains on either side of the stage. Martial rushes from one to the other, hanging from them and swinging them alarmingly over the audience.

She repeatedly dives into the crowd of enthusiastic bodies and is either borne aloft or lost amongst their legs. She never stops shouting and singing for a second. At one stage she dares the crowd to join her on stage and they do, at which point she jumps to the floor and carries on, the roles reversed. Bouncers come onstage and clear everyone off, but they look bemused rather than angry.

At one point Martial emerges from the throng perched on the shoulders of the large guy from earlier in the evening. He supports her for around thirty seconds until his legs give out and he slowly sinks to the floor like a trusty steed whose heart has given out after a long gallop. She dismounts, gives him a hug and climbs back on stage, stopping only to mock head-butt the security guy, which is funny because she only reaches up to his belt buckle.

It’s an exhilarating, exhausting and disorientating show. There is a momentary respite as the band bounce off for water and a rest, but soon Martial is back, cavorting with a towel, which she repeatedly thrashes into the floor.

I stagger off into the night with my ears whistling like a kettle and a cut above my eye.

It’s still a lovely summer evening.

Songkick - A User's report

2009-06-13T12:03:00.005+01:00

Let’s have a look at Songkick

This is a new website/application that aims to do for live gigs what IMDB does for films and Last fm does for music. It's been running a beta version, but is now properly up in all its glory.

The premise is simple, if daunting. Users create a shared database of gigs that they have been to in the past and the site collates these to issue alerts of when a user’s favourite band is touring (including the opportunity to buy tickets).

Does it work? It’s early days yet, but the signs are promising. It does help if a user is already operating a Last FM account, as information about preferences can be easily transferred from one to the other. For the rest of us, there is an initial, rather laborious stage of loading information into an account. Actually, it’s only onerous if you want to load in details of past events that you have been to and you live in clubs as much as I do.

The task that Songkick has set itself is to be an index of live performance. This is always going to be tough as, unlike records and singles, gigs are fleeting in nature and once they have occurred they are gone forever. Recollection of past events can be hazy, even for the performers involved, let alone any punters who happened to be in the vicinity.

As an experiment I tried to update my account with details of those gigs that I have attended this year and last. As perhaps was to be expected, given the somewhat specialist nature of these shows and the relative obscurity of a lot of the acts, in most cases the Songkick database had no record of either the concert or the participants.

To rectify this I had to put the gig on their database and then indicate that “I was there”. This rapidly became a bit of a pain.

It was also the case that the coverage of some ‘bigger’ acts was patchy. The Magazine gigs at the Forum earlier in the year were present and correct, Buzzcocks high profile Shepherds Bush Empire show was absent, although other Buzzcocks dates were listed as options. Even stranger was The Fall’s 1st April show at Koko which appeared to be missing, and the computer message that came up saying “You cannot add a date for The Fall.”

I appreciate that the database can only reflect the information that is added to it, and that it will gradually become more populated, but at the moment it is frustratingly arbitrary. It’s a Catch-22, the site will become better the more people use it, but until more people sign up, it is slightly limited at the moment.

There are nice interactive touches. Users can approve a particular concert via a five-star rating, or post their own reviews. There is the inevitable social networking element that will enable fans of a particular band to flock together. I suspect that in time it will more fully integrate with Last FM.

The ‘Tracker’ feature is hugely impressive. As the site scrobbles the contents of your iPod (other music players are available), it matches the acts with its own database of forthcoming gigs and lets you know who is coming to your area. This feature will get ever better as bands and promoters notify Song Kick of their activities as a matter of course.

If you know of a gig that is not on the database, you can add it yourself ( I have just added Suzerain’s forthcoming headline slot at Brixton Fridge on 19 June).

A feature that I would like to see (unless it is already on there and I haven’t worked it out yet) is a ‘newly added’ feature that notifies you of freshly announced gigs from acts that you may be interested in, in addition to the current calendar. In an age where attendance at a gig can depend upon being speedy with an internet booking, this would be very useful. [UPDATE: Such a feature does exist. You can arrange for an email to be sent to you notifying you of changes. I now know that Pere Ubu are playing the ICA in September]

However, as I say above, it’s early days. At the moment, I’m very impressed with this site and would commend it to you. Incidentally, it is international, so it’s not just UK users who may benefit.

Applicants / Wojtek Godzisz / A Genuine Freakshow at 229, 04 June 2009

2009-06-06T15:28:00.000+01:00

Applicants

Going down the steps into 229 is slightly odd, as it sometimes feels like going down into a public convenience. You feel that there ought to be a 20p turnstile at the bottom, but actually there are a couple of personable young people with a cash box and a hand stamp.

Upon entering, we find the first band already on stage. We creep by, as there are more of them than there are of us. Seven of them to be precise. A Genuine Freakshow are one of those multi-instrumental groups of all the talents that make you think that they are less a band and more an evening class that enjoyed jamming together and wanted to share the fun. In addition to the usual guitars and drums, they also find use for a cellist and trumpeter. The former adds depth to their sound, but tonight at least the latter is mostly inaudible.

The focus of the band is Tim Sutcliffe, who plays guitar and sings in a piercingly pure falsetto that is impressive, but hard to warm to. The songs vary between Sigur Ros style orchestral workouts to full on thrashing of the type that dullards like Mogwai and Spiritualised use to generate the illusion of excitement. A Genuine Freakshow seem pretty good at what they do, even though their brand of music is not really for me.

At this juncture I pop into the other venue within 229 to see if there is anything interesting on. Tonight’s entertainment is a fencing class. And that’s with epees rather than creosote. As I’m a bit wary of intruding amongst people who are actually armed, I stick to the room where the bands are playing.

A quick history lesson. Symposium were a much-touted band who operated in the late Nineties and were at one point poised to be a Next Big Thing. However, for some reason they rather stalled on the launch pad and never quite took off. They were Apollo One rather than Apollo Eleven. The band split into various components, the most important of which, Wojtek Godzisz, is here tonight with his current outfit.

Godzisz stands splay-legged centre stage and blasts out a succession of huge sounding sing-a-long power pop anthems. He’s big and ginger and hairy and having a good time. It ain’t subtle, and would be better suited to the main stage at a rock festival, but it certainly makes for an entertaining, if not overly demanding half hour. The songs are still here, the stage presence is fine, and it’s just the venues that have got smaller.

My ears are still feeling battered as the next band set up. I first saw Applicants at the turn of the year and was much taken with their combination of quirky pop songs and over the top stage antics. Tonight I’m just slightly less convinced.

Part of the problem tonight seems to be the sound mix, which renders most of the vocals inaudible. Many of the samples upon which the band relies fail to trigger properly. It’s all rather chaotic, and not in a controlled way. As if sensing that things are falling apart, singer/dancer/cheerleader Jeffrey overcompensates wildly.

Beaming like a Cheshire cat she bounces around the venue like a rubber ball, grabbing audience members and whirling them around. She is singing all the while, but it’s hard to hear her. Back on stage she pouts and crawls around, reathing and writhing and fainting in coils, as Louis Carroll had it. Suave front man Fidel Villeneuve plays his guitar with his teeth and makes occasional sorties off the stage, apparently forgetting that he can’t take his microphone stand with him.

However, even a misfiring Applicants are great fun, and things start to fall into place in the second half of their set. New song ‘When Porn Took Over The world’ sounds great, ‘History Has Been Kind To Spike Milligan’ remains a wonderful song and band and audience combine for a rousing bawl through the traditional set-closer ‘Evelyn Waugh’.

There is a fourth band tonight, but as a) they are called Megadudes, b) look like a bog standard rock act and c) are called Megadudes, sheesh. It seems a good time to bail out.

A varied evening that came good at the end.

Duchess Says / Bang Bang Eche / DiD at Madame Jo Jo's - 26 May 2009

2009-05-27T19:49:00.002+01:00

Duchess Says

At first glance, there doesn’t appear to be much happening at Madam Jo Jo’s tonight. The pit in front of the stage is empty, and the DJ is playing a selection of prog rock classics, particularly The Nice’s version of ‘America’. Not the most apt of choices, because none of the bands tonight hail from the States, or even the UK.

First port of call is Christchurch, New Zealand and the maniac punk funk of Bang Bang Eche. They hit the ground running and never let up for a second. Frontman T'Nealle Worsley’s face is obscured by his long hair, and he is a non-stop blur of motion, leaping and prancing, or simply jumping on the spot. The rest of the band comprises keyboards, bass and guitar, all of whom switch instruments on a regular basis. The drummer looks to be about twelve.

Bang Bang Eche, don’t do ballads or slowies. Each track is a ridiculously enjoyable full-on explosion of dance. As their track has it, it's '4 to the Floor'. The band may have five pairs of feet between them, but no more than three are on the ground at any one time. The audience is drawn from the four corners of the club like ants around sugar, and soon everybody is bouncing and bopping like loons. It’s not the most original of sounds – mid Eighties bands such as EMF and Collapsed Lung have been here before- but it has such seldom been performed with such enthusiasm and brio.

The set ends with the final guitarist off the stage and in the pit. He leans against a monitor and is playfully strangled by his singer. The music stops and I can hardly tell, my ears are ringing so hard.

Long term readers of this blog will know that the album ‘Anthologie des 3 Perchoirs’ by French-Canadian band Duchess Says was my record of last year. I’ve never had the opportunity to see them live before, so I’m ridiculously excited about rectifying that tonight.

The band is dressed in black and start pounding out an ear shredding motorik of driving drums and white noise. The microphone at centre stage is unclaimed. Gradually, inch by inch, singer Annie-Claude edges into view, determined not to turn her back or disengage with the audience for a second. Her eyes are wide. She looks like a slow loris.

There follows a performance the like that I have not seen since huddled around a TV set in my youth, lusting after Kate Bush from afar. Annie-Claude ‘interprets’ every word, every beat, every keyboard skronk with a hand gesture. Her fingers clasp, stab, point and wave in a constant flurry. Her face contorts, grimaces, breaks into beaming smiles or scowls in an endless procession of emotions. At least one of my companions finds this too much, too ‘silly’, but I am transfixed.

All the songs that I raved about here are performed. The noise is astonishing. The crowd are dancing, but are also bludgeoned by the onslaught. Annie-Claude screams or rolls her eyes into her head until they are completely white. At one point, in mid song, she jumps off the stage, wanders through the back of the crowd to wish some friends ‘happy birthday’ and give them presents.

The rest of the band is having fun too. When a song requires hand claps, they beat their hands together in a gesture signifying wings, possibly a reference to the band’s own peculiar ‘Church of Budgerigar’ mythology. The bassist is playing his instrument at the head rather than the bridge. Annie-Claude meanwhile occasionally jabs at a keyboard, bent over a separate microphone that distorts her vocals even further.

After a rousing version of ‘Black Flag’ Annie-Claude pulls an unhappy face and says she is sad to say goodbye. Her eyes are streaming with tears and she rubs them to smudge her mascara down her cheeks. I had hoped that Duchess Says were going to be good, and they have delivered in spades.

The crowd dissipates before the appearance of the final band of the night, which is rather a shame. Hailing from Italy, the band too puts visual showmanship at the centre of their performance. DiD are dressed in matching yellow hoodies and alternate between dance punk riffs from guitars held level with their heads or beating wildly at various drum kits. It’s another terrific show, and puts a fine end to the best three-act bill that I have seen this year.

Going home, I am in such a happy daze that I barely mind the complete collapse of the train system (First Capital Connect, the shits), nor the ridiculously late hour I finally get home. Nor even that I awake the next day almost completely deaf. I’ve seen and enjoyed three bands that have come from far and wide to entertain me for the price of a fiver. Well worth it.

We Are The World + Moonspoon Saloon 'White Crane' at Victoria Miro Gallery - 20 May 2009

2009-05-21T19:09:00.005+01:00

We Are The World

To a frantic beating of drums, the band appears. They appear to be wearing doublet and hose, they have red, sombrero–like hats and their faces are masked behind long red veils that hang to their knees. Their hands are gloved in black, the fingers bizarrely elongated until they turn on themselves like talons…

…Flashback.

A few weeks ago, I happened across the Los Angeles-based avant-garde band We Are The World. I had a listen to them and was very struck with what I heard. A check of their itinerary showed that they were playing a single UK date as part of a European tour, but that this appearance was to be as part of an exhibition and fashion show held at the Victoria Miro Gallery in London.

A few emails later and here I am, as a guest of the Moonspoon Saloon collective, admiring the strange yet appealing art works of co-founder and painter Tal R. This is an exhibit entitled Arms de Chine, which takes as its genesis a Chinese manual about ancient weaponry. The objects portrayed in the book are now so archaic that you can no longer tell what they were used for, and the artist has used them as inspiration for his own interpretations of their original purpose. To quote the Press Release there are “owls, sad penises, eggs, elegant guard women with buns, lost scouts, wrong fruits, melted minimal ice cream, sad fruits, junk and bottles, tombstones, embarrassed old uncles.” And very nice they are too.

The We Are The World performance accompanies ‘White Crane’, the latest fashion collection of Sara Sachs and the rest of the Moonspoon Collective. Talking to the band afterwards, it seems that they were rather surprised at this element of the evening, and it must be about the only time that they have not been the most outlandishly attired people in the room…

…Flash Forward.

Identically attired, the band features a percussionist pounding the living tar out of a series of electronic drums and tinkering with other items of equipment. There is a female vocalist, writhing and arching her back as she progresses down the runway accompanied by a pair of dancers/acolytes.

The ‘White Crane’ collection features bright colours, geometric shapes and allusions to ancient empires. There is an almost militaristic undercurrent, heightened by the thunderous percussion and the wearing of intricately designed medals as accessories. The costumes are extravagant, but not necessarily beyond the bounds of propriety, this is on-the-limit club wear and only the brave and the beautiful can carry it off. Sometimes the band mingles with the models, who are struggling to keep their composure amidst the tumult.

The band performs all the songs I want to hear – ‘Fight Song’, which is a potent call to arms, ‘Clay Stones’, which uses beseeching repetition to startling effect. And the mighty track ‘Goya Monster’. Halfway through the set, the veils and hats are dashed aside, to reveal bejewelled, face-covering balaclavas. It’s kind of camp terrorist chic. It’s disturbing but powerful imagery.

The audience are here for the fashion and the art, but are mightily impressed with the music. Each song seems faster and more disorientating than the last, culminating with all four members of the band hurtling and leaping into the onlookers. Sara Sachs and her collection are roundly and rightly applauded.

The differing elements of the evening’s entertainment have meshed excitingly together, the fashion, art and music fused into a complementary whole. Decadent, sure, but playful and funny too. We Are The World are phantoms, here one moment, gone the next. Watch out for them.

School of Seven Bells / Telepathe at ULU - 14 May 2009

2009-05-18T19:47:00.004+01:00

SVIIB by Ena Yanai

When I first saw Telepathe at Catch before Christmas, the venue was so small and crowded that in attempting to see the band properly I injured my foot so severely that my doctors cheerfully tell me that I may never be entirely free from pain. However, on that night the band put on a great show.

Tonight is very different. Six months on, and the zeitgeist appears to have moved on where Telepathe are concerned. The venue is barely a quarter full. Melissa and Busy, who previously danced and interacted with their audience, have retreated behind a wall of equipment. They seem to be going through the motions.

The band is not helped by the sound mix, which is atrocious, and will remain so for much of the rest of the evening. The beats are muddy and indistinct, the vocals all but inaudible. It’s like watching a school disco in an empty sports hall.

The overall impression is of a band for whom this is not fun anymore. What started out as a series of vibrant performances for friends at parties in New York has become a six month slog around Europe. They seem as though they don’t want to be here. They need to go home and recharge their batteries.

Headliners School of Seven Bells are also on an extended sojourn to this side of the Atlantic. So far, they are standing up to the spotlight a lot better.

I have been following the fortunes of SVIIB (as they style themselves) for around eighteen months now and am very pleased to finally see them in the flesh. I am also very pleased to see how their live set-up differs from their recent recorded sound.

When the band first released demo versions of their songs, two things were immediately apparent. The first was the wonderful harmonies of twin sisters Alejandra and Claudia Deheza, and the second was the gently brooding, yet powerful menace of Ben Curtis’ guitar work, the two elements combining to make a unique and mesmeric whole.

However, when the band recorded their debut album ‘Alpinisms’, they made a decision that the music should all be electronic. It is not a bad record by any means, in fact it’s a damned fine one – it just lacks the edge of the earlier versions of these songs.

So it is great to see that in the flesh that School of Seven Bells have their guitars in evidence. They start off with ‘iamundernodisguise’ and the sisters’ voices are as one. The sound mix remains severely duff, but the spark is there. The room is much fuller now, and there is quiet attention.

Ben stands between Alejandra and Claudia, strutting his stuff. It’s standard rock hero posing, but relatively restrained for all that. The sound is more restful than that of his previous outfit, Secret Machines, and the company easier on the eye. The sisters are on opposite sides of the stage from each other, and I have to mentally stop looking at one and then the other to see which is the more identical, as though my eyes were following a rally in a tennis match.

The album gets a good work out. It’s all very pleasant, without being fantastic. Everyone, onstage and off, appears to be enjoying themselves. The evening passes serenely and there’s a relatively early finish.

Two bands, two different attitudes. Telepathe appear jaded, SVIIB still bright-eyed and bushy tailed.

But seriously, ULU, sort the sound out.