Sleepy, Hollow

I recently became the World Handjob Champion. I had to beat off stiff competition.

Sorry.


THE EMPTY VESSELS/ SAMUEL ZASADA/ NUMBERNINE – Moshka, Bully, 9/4/10


Numbernine have been away for a few years, but they still peddle a perky, carbonated britpop that is immensely enjoyable, if slightly hackneyed. In their time away from the stage, they’ve had a slight shuffle and Alex Horwill now plays drums (although it may be him on the somewhat superfluous samples and backing tracks), and he has a natural bounce that suits the songs even if a couple of golden clunkers tell of a lack of rehearsal. The bass is still the best thing about the band, supple and springy yet capable of building some pretty solid rock edifices on occasion. It s only the lead vocals that are mild let down: plenty of pep, but they do tend to shove falsetto in place of melodic invention.

The songs are of a high calibre, even if most of them sound as though they’re being beamed in from 1994. “My New Mantra” tries to stretch the envelope with a proggy Eastern flavour, but ends up feeling dyspeptically like Gene playing Zepellin, and the band are happiest with tracks like “London”, reeking of Camden market and redolent of NME inky fingers gripping pints in The Good Mixer. All in all, it’s good to have Numbernine back, they make a great unpretentious pop noise, and have a couple of cracking tunes, not least “Talk”, a melodic barnstormer that still reminds us happily of The Longpigs at their best, five years since we first heard it.

Samuel Zasada’s first number has fantastic folky intricacy and rectilinear motorik groove mashed together like Pentangle through the square window. Later, gorgeous three-part harmonies wash over a scuzzy tale of saying “’Fuck you’ to The Man”, as if Lou Barlow had started writing for Peter, Paul & Mary. Last time we saw Samuel, his voice knocked us back, but that was pretty much all there was to like; since then he has placed himself in the middle of an excellent trio and thought very intelligently about arrangements, concocting a dense sonic fug that truly suits his rich, gothic voice, but that doesn’t obscure some sprightly melodies. Samuel hasn’t been content to strum a few chords in flyblown open mics, letting his impressive voice do all the work, he’s clearly been honing his music into something a little bit special. The work is paying off.

Speaking of good singers, get an earful of Matt Greenham from The Empty Vessels, who has a cracking pair of lungs and a love of wide-straddling rawk howling that’s only a set of leather kecks and a three figure a day drug habit away from the glory days of MTV. The band is well-drilled, and unrepentantly retrospective, happy in the warm, yet shallow, pools of classic rock. This is refreshingly honest, and feels like coming back to homegrown veg after too long with the polished, perfectly shaped carrots in Tesco’s: you know, tasty and caked in mud and, quite possibly, shaped like a willy.

And that’s all great of course, but only for about fifteen minutes. By twenty not even a kickass flailing limb-o-matic drummer can stop the attention wandering (we realised, from staring vacuously at the guitarist’s T shirt, that the Os in The Doors’ logo look a lot like coffee beans, for example). An interesting noise like a rat gnawing a modem turned out to be a faulty pedal, and we began to realise, as another identical song started chugging along, that old school was rapidly becoming old hat. All of which feels pretty hard on The Empty Vessels, who are clearly having a blast and probably don’t want to change the musical world any, but this didn’t alter the fact that we weren’t really young enough, drunk enough, or from Wantage enough to fully enjoy these threadbare rock archaisms. This is a very good band, but one that doesn’t stand up to criticism very well; if you’re enjoying the music, it’s probably not because you’re thinking about it in any great detail, or thinking about anything whatsoever except the advisability of a ninth pint or whether you’ve got a chance with the one over there with the black jeans.

As their forebears Reef might have asked mid-song, “Alright now?”. Yes, we are alright, thanks. Alright, but not, you know, ecstatic.