Carina Community

The edition of OHM I have in my hand claims this gig was at The Wheatsheaf, but I'm pretty certain it was downstairs at The Zodiac. I'm also pretty certain none of you are going to check.

I'd like to see The Honeymoon Machine again, but only if they were supporting The Family Machine, before finishing the bill with Divorce Device, the only obstacle to making this plan a glorious reality is the fact that Divorce Device don't actually exist, and never have.

CARINA ROUND/ THE HONEYMOON MACHINE - The Zodiac, 26/1/04

The Honeymoon Machine plays rock music with its roots in the fuzzy flurry of the late 60s. Not that they sound like the punky garage attendants that populate the current New Wave Of New Wave Of New Wave Of Etc, they're far more straightforward than that: witness the devil sympathising "Woo Woo"s or the pounding non-nonsense drums. Full marks, incidentally, to the excitable bassist who is NOTHING but limbs. The tunes themselves could do with a few more ideas, all things considered; the third track, "Angie", is a slow rock trudge, enlivened by the sound of a cat playing with a ball of string tied to a theremin, but mostly there's a stolid late Oasis clunk underpinning the set, which tends to bog them down somewhat.

That's the objective review. My subjective opinion is that it was fucking boring, a turgid dollop of mindless unsubtle plodrock dirge. Secretly I don't like rock music, you see. At least 50% of the greatest music I've ever heard has been rock music, but I still don't like it. Wierd, huh? Anyway, no time to discuss it now...

If the words "P. J. Harvey" were ever floated on the stock market, I'd avise Carina Round to invest heavily in shares, as she'd clean up on review references alone. Not as much as P. J. Harvey herself, but still. For Carina, Polly Harvey is less a reference point than an anchor, a lodestone. Which is a tad unfair, as Carina has a character all of her own, with a little gothic sass underpinning her well-worked rock vaudeville epics. She's got the vocal ambidexterity to leap around in pitch and style, too, which helps the theatrical effect no end. But it all still sounds a lot like P. J. Harvey.

Ultimately, she isn't as good as Harvey. Polly Jean's show is a gloriously taut athletic distillation of the sounds (and sexual politics) of the entire history of rock music - which I don't like...err, never mind that for now - whilst Carina's still has a little excess flab here and there. However, there's an awful lot to like in Carina, not to mention her tight and elegant backing band. And she does an eight minute long Pixies cover! I've personally never been to a bad gig that featured the line "Losing my penis to a whore with disease," and tonight hasn't bucked that trend.