Daft Punt

Here is my thorough review of this year's Punt festival.  I thought it was a strong night out, I saw nothing bad, and nothing phenomenal.  Mutagenocide were unoriginal and a wee bit sloppy (by the incredibly high standards of classic metal, anyway, where you have to be spotlessly good in a crowded field), but they were still worth a listen, and Manacles Of Acid were my favourite act.  It didn't feel as though there were enough surprises for me to call it a top rank Punt, but I guess that skipping last year  contributed to that somewhat.  It's a wonderful insitution, anyway, I'm looking forward to 2013 already!  


Elements of this review are to be found in Nightshift's Punt mega-article.

THE PUNT, Purple Turtle/ Cellar/ Duke’s Cut/ Junction/ Wheatsheaf, 16/5/12

Ostensibly, The Punt is a showcase for Oxford music, but secretly might not be.  Sounds like an idiotic observation, but in fact the annual night-long, multi-venue event isn’t a glossy advert for local sounds, or an aural taster menu to invite putative new listeners, it’s more like an initiation test for potential recruits to the scene.  In its duration and complexity The Punt is a challenge, not a night out – the musical equivalent of Atomic Burger’s Godzilla meal, the sonic sister to an episode of Takeshi’s Castle.  And if proof were needed curator,  Nightshift’s Ronan Munroe is a puckish trickster as much as a promotional ambassador, we need look no further the presence of Tamara Parsons-Baker as the opening act.  She is a performer of some talent, with a powerful voice, but her dark vignettes of wispy intensity are a deliberately perverse introduction to the night, barbed lines left hanging portentously in the room, wintry guitars providing the lovelorn backdrop .  It’s a strong set, but she’s at her best when she comes over as a more animated Leonard Cohen, and at her worst when she just sounds like someone bitterly sniping at their ex-partner.

Secret Rivals are a perfect foil to this opening gambit, with their melodic, 6 Music friendly pop nuggets.  On record we just keep on finding more to love in their scrappy indie pop flurries, but live they’re still a smidgen sloppy.  In a way that doesn’t matter, the joy of the band is that they toss the Mentos of pop into the Diet Coke of indie with gay abandon, and let the sugary mess explode across the venue.

Undersmile are a geologically-paced sludge metal band fronted by two atonally chanting ladies who look as if the creepy twins from The Shining have grown up listening to Babes In Toyland.  It all sounds horrifyingly like half-orc mating calls played at quarter speed, and is absolutely brilliant.  And also pretty rubbish.  But mostly brilliant.

The Duke’s Cut is a new Punt venue, and one where the fact that the performers are completely invisible to all but about ten of the audience is balanced by the decent ale and the cosy camaraderie.  Toliesel sound at first like The Band with some pub rock elements, and are perfectly pleasant, though they seem to be pushing too hard, turning sweet vocals into rough hollers.  But, we decide to stay for their whole set, and soon the music makes perfect sense, revealing winning melodies under the murk.  Even the crackles from a slightly overstretched PA add to the natural warmth of the music.  In a reversal of Punt logic, Toliesel win us over with slow increments of quality songwriting, rather than flashy bandstanding, making us glad we stayed the distance.  Although it was mostly because it was too much effort to push our way back out of the crowd.  We sincerely hope there was one random person sitting at one of the pub tables in the early evening, who was hemmed in and forced to listen for the entire night.

Simple probability dictates that there’s always one Punt act that gets an underservedly small audience, and this year it’s Band Of Hope.  Mind you, the fact that they’re playing in the cavernous Junction club compounds the problem.  Incidentally, the venue turns out to be a pretty good addition to the night, although we’re not sure a pile of rocks and road signs is a great decor choice, it makes the room look like a student’s back garden.  The band is a lush ensemble playing relaxing country and folk, with excellent flourishes from fiddle and pedal steel. At times they have a lackadaisical Sunday jam session air that erases some of the character form the songs, but “Baby You’re A Mess” is a solid gold winner.

We catch the end of Deer Chicago, and their sound, which can often seem unnecessarily bombastic and forcedly epic, works far better in a cramped sweaty Duke’s Cut.  Sadly, as things are running late we only catch a fragment of The Old grinding Young.  They sound a little like parent band Ute, but with Radiohead twitches replaced by expansive rootsiness.  Too early to tell whether this will prove a good move.

In contrast to the sludge avalanche of Undersmile, and the doomy prog of Caravan Of Whores, Mutagenocide proffer a far more traditional brand of metal.  There are elements of the post-Pantera stylings of previous Punt stars Desert Storm, but most of the set consists of resolutely old school chugging rhythms, twiddly guitar solos and growled vocals that are probably all about large-breasted elf duchesses in the Hades branch of Games Workshop. There’s very little to set Mutagenocide apart from a vast roster of metal acts up and down the count(r)y, but they’re enjoyable enough, the penultimate track pulling off some good aural pummelling.

When you see LeftOuterJoin expending vast amounts of energy playing live syn drums along with some pounding trance, you have to ask what the point of it is.  It would sound just the same (and fractionally more in time) if the rhythms were programmed.  But, artists don’t have to dwell in a world of cold logic, and in many ways the victory of this act is its very redundancy.  The set veers from excellent techno to cruddy Euro cheese pretty haphazardly, but the sheer spectacle is a euphoric joy.  The fact that he’s also brought trippy projections and two lasers into the Wheatsheaf, Oxford’s least rave-friendly venue, is worth as many extra points as you can tally. Plus there are some over-sized smoke machines, that trip the pub’s fire alarm, and cause the venue’s windows to be opened for the first time this millennium.  A set to remember.

Into the home straight at The Junction with rapper Half Decent.  His delivery is truly excellent, and the backing tracks are chunky but he does share a fault with nearly all live hip hop: paradoxically, what should be a match of visceral rhythms and intimate poetry, generally drifts into empty gesturing.  Half Decent spends a lot of his set asking us to dance and sing along, when he would do better concentrating on delivering some very wry, insightful fast-paced lyrics (and dumb fun lines like “Making girls wetter than a washing machine”, for good measure).  He puts on a good show to a gaggle of exhausted music fans, but we’re sure the rapturous stadium gig happening in his head was even better.

Manacles Of Acid is watched by the hardcore, the shell-shocked and those unbeatable party people who may live to regret it.  We started the night with a harrowingly bleak preacher disguised as a nice acoustic singer, and we end it with unforgivably niche electronica dressed up as a bright clubber’s party.  Using only vintage hardware (including a TR606 worn round the neck) the man named Highscores produces a seemingly endless string of classic acid house and Detroit techno which thrill s the faithful, but is clearly a closed book to half the room.  We fall into the former camp, loving the beautifully crafted layers of mutated basslines and crisp drum patterns.  There are confetti cannons and some sort of cross between a fly and a character from Starlight Express running round the room, who may or may not officially be part of the show, and it’s an uncompromising conclusion to the night.

And so we leave The Junction, dazed and deafened, feeling as though we’ve split the past five and a half hours equally between enjoying, working and speed drinking.  The Punt feels even more like a twisted musical hazing ritual as we wait woozily for the late bus home.  Thank you, Sir, may we have another?

Cats Would Be Republicans, Of This I Am Certain

-Doctor, doctor, I think I'm a pair of curtains!

-Well, you managed to make this appointment, and express yourself quite concisely, so I suspect the delusion isn't too deep-seated.  I think you'll be fine.

KING OF CATS – AMERICA (Bandcamp download)

We always feel that a musician must be doing something right if they violently split opinion – by which we mean the opinions of dedicated listeners, not the predictable, shallow spats between reviewers and some teenage band’s friends and family.  We have seen King Of Cats provoke more anger and distress in audiences than is anywhere near common, and we have witnessed seasoned promoters, engineers and gig-goers in rapt attention, throwing around terms like “genius” with gay abandon.  We dare say it’s nice to be universally lauded as an artistic messiah, but when disinterested parties are prepared to spend time arguing about your worth, you know you’ve made a good start. 

Brighton (via Oxford) denizen King Of Cats has raised these post-gig debates by creating an onstage avant-troubadour persona that’s half wryly confessional anti-folk Woody Allen, and half punk noise ointment fly, a japing Loki creating harsh electronic bleeps and screeching atonally in the middle of quiet ballads.  And perhaps this download, billed as the debut LP, demonstrates a maturing of the Cats sound: the record might be wilfully lo-fi and amateurishly oblique, but it’s built around real songs, songs that the King seems to be intent on respectfully delivering, rather than puckishly destroying.  Perhaps, to be brutal, a man who can’t sing in any conventionally recognised manner has found a way to use his voice to serve his fascinating little songs.  So, only “Recorded at the gathering of the tribes galley, New York City” (like Brooklyn Beckham, all tracks are simply named after the US location in which they were created, and all apparent typos and random capitalisations are the artist’s own) is an ugly King Of Caterwauls screech, whereas “Recorded at Maggie’s house, San Francisico” is a grunge Dylan buzz, and “Recorded on a cherry picker in seattle” uses a querulous spider-strand of a vocal line to sketch out a lyric of melancholic resignation.  It’s as if King Of Cats has given up trying to use his flawed voice to sing, and has worked out how to use it to act. If it’s good enough for Lou Reed...

Most tracks start and end with the nostalgic click of a tape recorder, and musically the LP follows suit, being primarily a collection of sparse, rickety acoustic skeletons on the verge of collapsing into dust, but this awkward delicacy serves the fragmented intimacy of the lyrics perfectly.  There are some subtly lovely touches too, “Recorded on a plane, in the high desert and seattle” pitching an almost melodic croon against some thin, stately keys, like The Folk Implosion channelling Federico Mompou, and our favourite, “Recorded in the damp in New Orleans” coming off like some spectral, netherworld Paul Simon duetting with a chirruping digital canary.  The unexpected tinny electronic drums on the closing track also offer a pleasing palette change.

Lyrically, like most Cats tracks, America’s songs are emotional, diaristic outbursts refracted and atomised until they read like emo haikus, but at their best they can be surprising, funny and moving.  “Recorded Next to the traintracks inFlagstaff Arizona” is our pick, opening with the typically opaque, “I bet you six pounds you’ll get what you want to, by the end of October”.  There’s a defeated bohemian air to lines like this, like a beat poet who has thrown out the asocial boasting and outsider celebrations (we always felt that Ginsberg at least partly saw “Howl” part one as a checklist), and replaced them with distanced self-disgust.  “Let’s prove we’re men by lighting fires and pissing them out again”, as a repeated refrain sardonically advises.

We’re not going to claim this album is great – at times it’s not even any good – but it does feel like a worthwhile work of art, at once heartfelt and deliberately confounding.  A local reviewer can spend a lot of time listening to music designed to rock a chum’s VI form ball, or calculated to attract a Radio 2 playlister, and that’s fine, but it’s always wonderful to hear idiosyncratic music made solely for the tiny fraction of the world who will understand it, even if we don’t always feel ourselves to be part of that miniscule fraternity.  One glorious moment in “Recorded in golden gate park, San Francisco,at the end of a show” sums up King Of Cats’s relaxed artistry, as we hear his keening voice in the background, and some audience members jockishly high-fiving next to the recording mike: If you find something to love in King Of Cats, you’ll be welcomed with open arms, but if you don’t, there’s no pressure.  You might even find yourself on his next LP.

No Bull

Yes, yes, the title is atrocious.

CAT MATADOR/ DALLAS DON’T/ PUMP SHARK/ ROBOTS WITH SOULS, Port Mahon, 20/4/12

Sometimes it doesn’t take much to be new.  Live looping stopped being surprising some time ago, and bass and drums duos litter hipster house parties like half smoked Camels, yet we’ve never seen anyone put them together.  Robots With Souls’ Steve Wilson balances a two string bass on a sparse drum kit, and samples up some big, dense rhythms over which he delivers fragmented lyrics with melodic intensity.  Somewhere in this marriage of indie crooning and dumbass mall sludge, a truly excellent new act has been created.  It’s a fantastic show, that in the sweaty crucible of the Port Mahon feels more a shared ritual than a gig.

Wycombe’s Pump Shark offer a twitchier take on rock intensity, jerky rhythms continually pulling the rug beneath soul-baring vocal howls.  There’s a little of the sensitive brutality of Fugazi in their mixture of choppy guitars and lopsided sincerity, but somehow the set never quite gets off the leash.  If Pump Shark could get over a certain studied restraint they could be powerful, but as it is the initial buzz dwindles before their half hour is up.

There’s something we adore about Dallas Don’t, but let’s be frank, it ain’t their playing.  The rhythms are sloppy and they’re rarely entirely in tune, but it doesn’t matter because their music tells stories, and each slurred vocal line conjures up images that massed ranks of well-drilled musos could never achieve.  The sound is a fascinating battle between erudite, melancholic indie and scruffy US rock – The Delgados morphing into Mudhoney, perhaps – and you get the feeling that if one side ever won the fight, the magic would dissipate, but for now this tuneful whirlwind of rage and romanticism is one of the best things in Oxford music.

A Cat Matador is a funny idea.  Wave a cape at your average moggy and you’ll get bemused disdain, not an enraged stampede.  And we feel roughly the same: Cat Matador play well enough, doing all the right things with violin-flecked indie, putting intricate snare patterns behind introspective Tindersticks laments, but we just can’t dredge up any excitement.  There are some mournful fiddle lines and clattering bursts of energy to snag our ears, but generally the feeling is that whilst Cat Matador and Pump Shark are decent enough bands, real character will always win out.

Walters, Duly

I typed "numbly undercut" instead of "nimbly" when I submitted this.  Actually kind of makes sense.  Decided to leave it at MIO, but have corrected here.  One for the future doctorates, I'd say.

RICHARD WALTERS – YOUNG TREES (self-released download)

As the 1980s collapsed into the 1990s in a fluorescent, floppy ball of smiling inanity, there was an intriguing trend amongst a certain breed of “inky” journalist (don’t forget, NME, Melody Maker and Sounds were all smudgy doorsteps of respectable opinion in those days).  As if in reaction to the laddish euphoria of the nascent baggy scene, or the crusty simplicity of post-acid dance music, a select coterie of writers retreated into a safe cocoon of poetic intensity.  In their reviews every keyboard was “ethereal”, every voice “lusciously evanescent”, and every guitar touched by man, child or beast turned out “coruscating”.  By the time Brit pop turned up, these guys must have either retreated sadly to their 4AD bowers or shrugged and joined The Wire, deciding that Derek Bailey was where it was at all along.  But we bring it up because we’ve been sitting on this record for weeks, wondering what critical vocabulary we have left to describe Richard Walters after years of lavish praise for his, ahem, lusciously evanescent voice.

Do people get bored of hearing Walters’ voice described as beautiful and delicate?  Hell, does he?  And, like a man who’s bored with paradise, like Oscar Lomax throwing his precious Snappy toy into the sea, can it be possible that we can get bored with music as wonderful as this?  Well, perhaps.  Two of the songs on this EP, whilst being jaw-droppingly lovely, are also a little par for the course.  “Infinity Street” does a nice line in breathy confessional – and probably no singer in the history of Oxford city can deliver a line as intimately as Walters – but never quite finds that Stina Nordenstam zone of disquieting secrecy; and “Dandelions” moves from pizzicato melancholy to mini-epic perfectly...almost too perfectly.

But, just as we’re getting jaded, this record hits us with some elegantly emotional songs to remind us why Walters is such a local treasure.  “Regretless” is a washed out ghost of a gospel celebration, a sort of teary-eyed opposite to blur’s “Tender”, and is beautiful, but the title track eclipses it, allowing a mournful cello and some typewriter percussion to embrace Walters, whose voice flutters round the notes as if it’s trying to keep from floating away, an Aspirin desperately trying not to dissolve.  Some backing vocals, like Disney bluebirds, step in, only to be nimbly undercut by lines like “I talk in platitudes”, that would give Walt the shivers.

And yet the closing number, “Bring On The Dancing Horses” stands above even this.  It’s a wan, spectral valediction, glistening guitars and bodiless backing vocals keeping the song balanced between bottomless despair and rough victory.  Yes, it’s a mystery that this record isn’t making waves at grown-up magazines like Uncut, but more importantly, Walters at his best makes us want to tumble into a weeping huddle one second, and leap into air, fists aloft the next. 

You can’t get much less bloody ethereal than that, eh?

The Joker In The Decade

Funny thing: when The Jukes sent an email to the Nightshift editor about my review, one of their points was that this website wasn't very popular. Since then, the review in question has comfortably become the most viewed page on here in recent memory, and most people seem to have been linked ffrom Facebook. The Jukes' Facebook? Or just a coincidence? I've no idea, but it's sort of intriguing.

Oh, and yes, I am unpopular. That's how you can tell I'm good.


SMILEX/ THE CELLAR FAMILY/ DEER CHICAGO, Coo Coo Club, Jericho, 2/3/12


We saw Deer Chicago a few years ago, and were impressed. Since then they’ve delivered on their potential, and got very slightly worse. Their sound has improved enormously, and is now a huge cascade of emotive noise that fair tumbles out of them. They’re capable of glistering crescendos, but sometimes we wish they’d vary the dynamics, and step away from the screaming stadium in their minds, to regain some of the subtlety of old. All this epic swooning is like super-strong Bavarian lager they sell in your local dodgy cornerstore: doubtless intoxicating, but not big on delicate flavours. A very good band, then, but perhaps not the one we expected them to become, which is out fault, not theirs.

The Cellar Family are less a band, more an annoying muscular twitch in sonic form. Tonight, they play beautifully, lancing their music’s scabrous boils with razor punk incisions, and flooding The Jericho with horrific, visceral imagery delivered with scientific coldness. It’s like a cross between Weird Tales and The Lancet, all buoyed aloft by wittily slurred guitar and snidely forceful rhythms. Humdrum punks take note: everyone can sneer, but only a band like this can actually communicate disgust.

Smilex are celebrating a decade of nefarious activity, balancing on a latex tightrope strung between twin poles of grubby punk sleaze and dumb cock rock preening. Whilst it’s tempting to dismiss Smilex as an eager panting puppy amongst rock beasts – gags like Motley Cruecut and Judas Verger would be almost too easy – tonight’s gig reminds you of just how good they are. Lee Christian, of course, embodies his stage school punk persona, dressed as Kenny Everett in the Blue Oyster Club, but his vocal yelps and drawls really do carry the songs well. The band spends a lot of time throwing rock shapes that probably moved from parody to habit nine years ago, but by Christ they can kick out a squall. As with Deer Chicago, it’s always best to take Smilex on their own terms. The way to have a bad time at their gigs would be to imagine what a band of this much ability and stage presence could achieve if they had any taste. The way to have a good time is to neck a crème de menthe spritzer and dive into the nearest wall of flesh. Who could complain about ten years of that?

Supple Be The Dye

Two reviews in this month's Nightshift, here's the first. In other news, I ordered a new turntable today, looking forward to some crisp vinyl sounds for the first time in a while.



COLOUREDS – ELASTIC EP (Download)


Diversity is a wonderful thing, of course, but we’re pretty sick of bands trying to cover a vast range of stylistic bases, as if they were investors diversifying their portfolios. It’s doubtless fun to be a polymath, but to be honest we’d prefer most musicians to stick to what they’re good at, and stop chasing public acceptance at every turn. After all, John Lee Hooker only needed three chords and an amplified boot to make some of the great twentieth century music. Over and over again.

No surprise, therefore, to find that we respect Coloureds. They have found a sound they are great at making, and are doggedly sticking with it, tonal development be damned. This EP consists of three separate tracks, but frankly they all sound like tiny variations on the single pulsating mutant anthem at the heart of all Coloureds tunes. As on previous releases, Elastic is a neat balance between the hulking and the intricate, chunky Duplo blocks of bass and gambolling percussion topped with jittering treble flecks and tiny vocal blips. It’s like an old Bitmap Brothers computer game remixed by a French house act with a taste for chubby disco grooves.

There are three additional remixes, that are decent enough, but in essence this EP should be filed under More Of The Same, with a cross-reference to Spazz Bounce Electro Euphoria. It’s a gorgeous record, and we hope Coloureds don’t go trying to catch the latest dancefloor fashion. A chameleon is wonderful beasts, but a blank-eyed alligator would crush its tricksy little body in unevolved saurian jaws in a micro-second. All hail the crocodile rock.

That Juke Isn't Funky Any More

This review appears in the current issue of Nightshift. The editor forwarded me an email that one of the musicians sent him, making their feeling clear about this review. I was tempted to post it here, but then I though, let's not. After all, I'm not here to argue with anyone, and if someone doesn't like my tastes and my writing style, good on them. So, some truly mystifying punctuation aside, I'm happy enough with the email.

There are two issues that are interesting, though. Fristly, our chum (who shall remain anonymous), wrote, "Slating every band is quite easy to do, so i will look forward to reading a hyped review. But first, a bigger, better magazine must approve of the act. Then he can make a u-turn and try and keep up as much as his acute and narrow mind will allow. Enthusiastically claiming to have supported said act from the very beggining. I could be wrong, but this tends to be the case with small time talentless writers", and followed it up with, "Writing in magazines such as Nightshift isn't i imagine at the top of his ambitions, but he has punched well above his weight to even get that far".

The intriguing truth si that, irrespective of whether inability woudl preclude it, I have literally no desire to write for a "proper" magazine. Writing for Nightshift is the perfect job, precisely because I never have to worry about the kind of editorial or self-imposed volte faces alluded to in the first point. Unfortunately, no matter whether they were the most lauded act in the country, three of the acts in this review would be poor (although they range from lovably not quite there to hilariously atrocious), and it's great to be able to write for people who let you writer about no-mark Oxon acts and huge touring beasts and judge them in the same fashion.

Course, the thing that annoyed me about the review was that the editor got Artclasssink's name wrong. Typical.

There you go, a rather serious intro today - normal service shall resume. In fact, I'm just listening a K-Tel disco comp from a stack of vuinyl I have been gifted: "Naughty Naughty Naughty" by Joy sarney has a part for Mr Punch. Classy.




NUCLEAR SKYLINE/ VERY NICE HARRY/ ARTCLASSSINK/ THE JUKES, It’s All About The Music, Bully, 9/2/12


It’s All About The Music, as the promoter’s name would have it. Watching a band like The Jukes, you wish it were about something else, for once. Lightshow; dancing gimps; contentious race politics. Anything to distract from their atonal chugging guff, that’s like the Portsmouth Sinfonia playing Franz Ferdinand. A trumpet adds a little James-esque flourish, but the gig is unsalvageable.

“It’s a very very very nice song”, announce Artclasssink, before launching into something. They’re confident and audacious, we like that. They’re also wrong, of course. Like a desperate pool player, smacking the white up the table in blind hope, they shoot at various styles – Psych? Funk? Skank? Shoegaze? – but tend to end up muddled after a minute or so, looking to the incomprehensible vocal yelps to drag the song home. Yet there’s something lovable about this band, not least their evident self-belief. We feel musicians should grow up in public, so good on you, Artclasssink. Now get better.

Very Nice Harry shine in this company, with a highly polished melodic set of energetic, atmospheric pop. They’re at their least convincing when trying to be Foals (as is everyone except Foals, let’s be honest), but when they create more space in the music, with some neat delay pedal use, and drizzle it with Blake’s 7 synths, they boast some really quite impressive, dynamic songs, allowing Sam McNeill’s lithe, clear vocal lines a chance to unfurl. Very promising. Do you know what I mean, Harry?

Nuclear Skyline look excitingly like a greasy rockabilly bassist has gatecrashed a teenage grunge act, but they sound like any other clod-hopping, inexperienced punk band. Good spirited fun, of course, but lacking in anything memorable to balance the lack of musical prowess. Currently it’s brash and ballsy but not very interesting. They’ve got a Black Flag T-shirt and a shiny double bass, though. We’re sure they’ll come up with something, given time.