The Betty Ford Salon

Blimey, I should be on some sort of retainer from Klub Kak, I've reviewed them so often. I never realised until I started this blog how regularly I'd ended up there. I guess it's just the furry freaky friendly hippy atmosphere they nurture. Evan last night, I was reviewing a night at The Jericho, and snuck into KK afterwards to catch the last act. An Oxford institution, indupitably.

JUNKIE BRUSH/SACRED DISORDER/ REVEREND MOONSHINE - Klub Kakofanney, Wheatsheaf, 4/3/05

I promuise it's not just the antipodean accent, but Reverend Moonshine remind me a lot of Nick Cave. Must be the knowingly dark theatrical monologues and the slurred songspiel. Their twin acoustic guitar lineup is elementary but effective, and their songs of booze and frustration are beautifully augmented by a delicate jazz trumpet that I'm duty bound to describe as "smoky" (Reviewer statute 124/B/11). In all honesty, some of the tracks are somewhat wonkily delivered, and perhaps the second guitar should stick to bass frequencies, but they do have bags of character, which goes an awful long way.

Sacred Disorder are an odd proposition as they all sound like they're playing in wildly disparate bands. I guess you'd call it stoner rock, but the vocals (rhyming "pariah" with "messiah") and guitar (shredding and arpeggiating away) are pure metal, whilst the drummer plays neanderthally simply, as if he were auditioning for Finnish uber-minimalists Circle, and the bassist whacks out a sticky root note sludge with a definite goth flavour. A strange brew. I'm not saying they can't play - they're actually a pretty solid little unit - but the effect is so schizophrenic I don't know what to think. Like a disturbed child's Cray-Pas illustrations, they have a wierdly compelling fascination, but at the moment the jury's out on whether they're actually any good.

Junkie Brush are often billed as punk, but I'm not sure: punk was always at least 50% cabaret, and there's nothing cartoonish about this band. Their dense, excitable missives remind me far more of U.S. hardcore: more straight edge than The U-Bends, let's say. So there are no solos, no math rock breaks (though there is an unexpected blues interlude) and definitely no sensitive ballads. Just supercharged howls of righteous ire.

And Junkie Brush do it exceptionally well. The third number (which isn't called "Drunken Cunt", despite what a drunken...person in the audience would have us believe) is especially searing and vitriolic, but over 45 minutes they never flag. To be fair, I find this music something like a tartazine rush: all very manic and exhilirating, but the effect runs out slightly before the set does. Still, if you like your meat raw and clinically served, book a table Chez Brosse and you'll go hoe very happy indeed.