Terpsichore Continuum

A gig on a Sunday night with far too many acts that went on far too late. Lucky they managed to find one decent act, otherwise I may have killed them.

Breaking news: Youthmovies whom I wrote about in the last post have anounced today that they abbreviated their name again. To Youm. Yes, Youm, that's not a typo. Their music's not bad, but what a bunch of cocks. Youm, I ask you...

PRINZHORN DANCE SCHOOL/ ME & THE NECK/ THE CHELTENHAM AVERAGE/ LOUISE HANSON/ SIAN ROBINS-GRACE/ SOME FUCKING DICK DOING COMEDY/ SUB FUNC – The Cellar, March07

Sub Func? Sub- fucking something. Standard? Musical? Human? Our mission to rehabilitate funk as a respectable genre crumbles in the face of this stolid, flabby and gutless stillborn jam session. And this is just the first of seven acts! Jesus, don’t you people have to go to work tomorrow morning? After a feeble stand up, whose name the organisers don’t even tell us (embarrassment, we surmise), Sian Robins-Grace provides blessed relief with some abrasive poetry, centred on repressed rugger boys and menstrual liberation: strident and amusing, she’s a one woman Hammer & Tongue.

DJ Louise Hanson has hit on the novel idea of playing records and makes sure we have 40 minutes to marvel at her audacity. The Cheltenham Average live up to the latter part of their name, with some clumpy foursquare indie that only comes close to working when it approaches a Strokes shuffle, and we begin to despair. Deeply. The bar doesn’t serve arsenic so we settle down to endure Me & The Neck, who revel in their slipshod inadequacy. In fairness, it’s occasionally charming, but if ever there were a cover version to make you go home and melt your hallowed copy of “The Queen Is Dead”, these amateurs can supply it.

Frankly, by this time anything would sound revelatory, and the fact that Prinzhorn Dance School are one of the best bands we’ve seen in years means we almost explode. They have more authority in one brutal snare crack than the other bands will manage in their lives. PDS have taken bluesy punk and pared it to the bone. Then they’ve sharpened the bone. Then they’ve driven the bone with a ruthless efficiency into your defenceless ears. Seriously, this trio is sparse and commanding enough to make The Archie Bronson Outfit look like Emerson, Lake & Palmer. There’s a deft economy in the lyrics too, one tale of a “twelve piece soul band” in a leisure centre recalling McClusky at their most mordantly humorous; the last song, with it’s repeated yelps of “Crackerjack docker” remind us of Dragnet era Fall, which is high praise indeed. Relentless, mysterious and individual, Prinzhorn are painfully good. Whereas most of the night was just painful.