Ah, I'm too tired to write much now, I've just done a review of the latest LP by The Relationships, that I'd been meaning to do for ages, and then typed this up. It's well good. The record, not the review, which is slightly too long, but what the hell, I'm not feeling well, and I'm off to the doctor tomorrow. Is this the sort of rivetting autobiographical tat people want on 'blogs? Does the very fact I've put an apostrophe before "'blogs" and "'cellist" reveal that I have no rela place in the digital age? Answers on a post-rock, please...
THE HELLSET ORCHESTRA/ BIG JOAN, The Cellar, 11/05
A four piece band, two of whom are drummers? Call me unsubtle, but I like those percussive odds, and when one of them is playing an old metal bin we know we're in for some clattery goodness. Opening instrumental aside, Big joan trade in the sort of brutal yet insidious simplicity McLusky used to deliver, with the vocals smweared greasily over the top in the beguiling style of a pitch-perfect Kim Gordon. A superb racket, by any other name. It would have been slightly better if they'd more of the quieter sections, and much better if and angry little New York monster had popped out of the bin shouting, "Hey lady! Tryin' to get some sleep over here!", but you can't have everything.
Ever noticed the similarity between an old Hammond and a child's coffin? Or between a black clad 'cellist and a melodramatic mourner? Watching The Hellset Orchestra's catalogue of camp horror tropes starts bringing these odd images to mind, as they crank out their organ-led tales of malevolent science, mayhem and, erm, ornithology. Like a Hammer Horror film performed by metalheads on a Victorian pier end, the effect is patently ridiculous, but like our very own Suitable Case For Treatment they take farcical elements and weld them into imposing and somehow logical forms.
There's a certain intelligent economy in the way the grotesque ingredients are melded that stops the show falling into the flabby novelty camp - "Temporary Stronghold Of The Weather Thieves" has got to be the best song title of the year, surely - and if the string section were ever in tune we'd be nearing pop music territory. Well, alright, you'd have to excise the vocal growls and the free jazz sax solo too, but who'd want to? Anyone noticed the similarity between The Hellset Orchestra and a bloody great band? A Celarfull, roughly.
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