Christmas day today. I mean, obviously nobody's reading it today, but I'm posting it. I always get a lot done over the Christmas holidays, it's an advantage of not haviong children. Anyway, enjoy yourselves, and all that.
GREAT MEDICAL DISASTER – DIE, YOU BITCH, CRIED ARCHITECT (Pronoia Records)
Instrumental rock certainly splits opinion, so whilst some might not fancy Die, You Bitch, Cried Architect, we’re all for its widescreen, menacing music that we feel increasingly uncomfortable calling post-rock with every passing year in which rock itself fails to dematerialise (we suppose we’re stuck with it, at least until Hannah Barbera rebrands The All New Popeye Hour as Some Increasingly Outmoded Sub-Standard Animation).
“Lambs” may be a delightfully greasy rock track minus the hairy vocalist, but Great Medical Disaster’s best moments come when tracks are stretched and textural effects are liberally slathered: “Man United Killed Rod Hull” is Mogwai with sickly synth washes, taking us to a cluttered office in which an 80s detective fingers blinds to watch a steamy neon night (warning: individual hallucinations may differ). “The Beatification Of Cardinal Newman” reminds us of Oxford favourites Flies Are Spies From Hell with its tumbling piano climax, and it’s only when the tunes don’t seem to earn their dynamic flurries that things are unsatisfying – “Jesus Loved The Nun-Chucks” has lovely glistening guitars, but the bursts of noise are safe and unthreatening. Think log flume, not rollercoaster. Sometimes Great Medical Disaster are too happy within the confines of their genre, then, but when a Badalamenti eeriness is injected, and the evocative atmospheres come together, this is a great little record. Hell, the track titles have more imagination than some whole bands’ careers.
Sunday, 25 December 2011
Wednesday, 30 November 2011
Bob's Yer Ungulate
I recently edited footage of myself naked with film of two ladies. It was my first montage a trois.
HOT HOOVES – AVOID BEING FILMED (Rivet Gun LP)
Indulge in cults, embrace hegemonies:
Amuse your friends! Enrage your enemies!
Sounds a bit like a Hot Hooves lyric. Not equal to the sterling opening couplet to “Help Shape The Future” (“Your overactive thyroid gland/ Is pumping like a silver band”), but close enough. And it’s fitting, when you consider how many young, excitable or simply paranoid people believe some shadowy clique controls Oxford music. With a band like Hot Hooves, bringing together veterans from cult local bands like ATL and Talulah Gosh, you almost want to see a bad review to dispel any fears of back room favouritism.
Well, tough luck, chum, because this is a cracking little album (and little it is, ten tracks that never reach the heady prog heights of three minutes). Any gin-soaked old hack who has heard of YouTube and got a deadline looming will tell you that our culture is an embodiment of Warhol’s prediction that “in the future everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes”; Avoid Being Filmed seems to ask what happens for the rest of their lives. This brief spasm of an LP could be read as the memories and opinions of someone who was briefly feted by the music scene some unspecified time ago, an unstable mixture of bile, supercilious amusement and nostalgic fondness for an awkward, illogical industry. A sort of cross between John Osborne’s Archie Rice, and Creme Brulee’s Les McQueen, perhaps. Indeed, the LP draws a line from the clarion call of “This Is It, This Is The Scene” to tales of fights, breakdowns and post-gig boozing on “The Plot”, euphoria to “artistic differences” in ten short tracks.
But, whilst we aren’t sure if Hot Hooves are saddened, tickled or frustrated by rock music, we know they have a bloody good crack at making it. Each tiny nugget of a tune is a tough alloy of dirt simple rock rhythms and cheekily catchy melodies that is immediately accessible but sculpted with enough pop nouse to remain memorable. “This Is It, This Is The Scene” is a bit like “Something Else” swimming at half speed through a vat of custard, and our favourite “The Sparks Up Agenda” barrels along like a schoolyard winger hurtling towards an open goal, unaware that the bell has rung. Occasionally the feel is new wave in inverted commas, and can seem somewhat third hand – “The Plot” veers rather close to Elastica, and the album’s only real misstep “Hot Hooves” sounds like a mildewed old Family Cat record that has been gathering dust under the bed for twenty years – but in general it’s impressive how visceral and sweatily enjoyable this album is. The tunes Pete Momtchiloff sings are perhaps the best examples of Hot Hooves’ space between the nihilistic romanticism of Guided By Voices and Half Man Half Biscuit’s pub carpet cabaret.
To say that this record sounds like the vibrant work of musicians half Hot Hooves’ age would be patronising. To say you’d be hard pressed to find rock music in Oxford that packs a good old fashioned punch whilst peppering the lyrics with archly acidic little witticisms seems redundantly self-evident. Let’s just say this is a lovely little collection of high quality, scuffed tunes that anyone with an interest in Oxford pop should listen to...fuck’s sake, it only takes about twenty minutes, what have you got to lose?
HOT HOOVES – AVOID BEING FILMED (Rivet Gun LP)
Indulge in cults, embrace hegemonies:
Amuse your friends! Enrage your enemies!
Sounds a bit like a Hot Hooves lyric. Not equal to the sterling opening couplet to “Help Shape The Future” (“Your overactive thyroid gland/ Is pumping like a silver band”), but close enough. And it’s fitting, when you consider how many young, excitable or simply paranoid people believe some shadowy clique controls Oxford music. With a band like Hot Hooves, bringing together veterans from cult local bands like ATL and Talulah Gosh, you almost want to see a bad review to dispel any fears of back room favouritism.
Well, tough luck, chum, because this is a cracking little album (and little it is, ten tracks that never reach the heady prog heights of three minutes). Any gin-soaked old hack who has heard of YouTube and got a deadline looming will tell you that our culture is an embodiment of Warhol’s prediction that “in the future everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes”; Avoid Being Filmed seems to ask what happens for the rest of their lives. This brief spasm of an LP could be read as the memories and opinions of someone who was briefly feted by the music scene some unspecified time ago, an unstable mixture of bile, supercilious amusement and nostalgic fondness for an awkward, illogical industry. A sort of cross between John Osborne’s Archie Rice, and Creme Brulee’s Les McQueen, perhaps. Indeed, the LP draws a line from the clarion call of “This Is It, This Is The Scene” to tales of fights, breakdowns and post-gig boozing on “The Plot”, euphoria to “artistic differences” in ten short tracks.
But, whilst we aren’t sure if Hot Hooves are saddened, tickled or frustrated by rock music, we know they have a bloody good crack at making it. Each tiny nugget of a tune is a tough alloy of dirt simple rock rhythms and cheekily catchy melodies that is immediately accessible but sculpted with enough pop nouse to remain memorable. “This Is It, This Is The Scene” is a bit like “Something Else” swimming at half speed through a vat of custard, and our favourite “The Sparks Up Agenda” barrels along like a schoolyard winger hurtling towards an open goal, unaware that the bell has rung. Occasionally the feel is new wave in inverted commas, and can seem somewhat third hand – “The Plot” veers rather close to Elastica, and the album’s only real misstep “Hot Hooves” sounds like a mildewed old Family Cat record that has been gathering dust under the bed for twenty years – but in general it’s impressive how visceral and sweatily enjoyable this album is. The tunes Pete Momtchiloff sings are perhaps the best examples of Hot Hooves’ space between the nihilistic romanticism of Guided By Voices and Half Man Half Biscuit’s pub carpet cabaret.
To say that this record sounds like the vibrant work of musicians half Hot Hooves’ age would be patronising. To say you’d be hard pressed to find rock music in Oxford that packs a good old fashioned punch whilst peppering the lyrics with archly acidic little witticisms seems redundantly self-evident. Let’s just say this is a lovely little collection of high quality, scuffed tunes that anyone with an interest in Oxford pop should listen to...fuck’s sake, it only takes about twenty minutes, what have you got to lose?
Sunday, 27 November 2011
Nothing Gonna Stop The Floe
I have to write a "best of 2011" for one person and a "ones to watch for 2012" for another. I hate that kind of stuff.
I also hate it when adverts say "Terms & Conditions apply". Of course they do, otherwise there would be chaos; there's no way I could make you an offer without delineating it in some fashion. "Buy one bottle of Head & Shoulders and get...whatever your mind can conceive of absolutely free - the accepted parameters of scientific governance notwithstanding". Idiotic.
TERJE ISUNGSET, OCM, The Northwall, 5/11/11
We don’t normally care about a musician’s equipment - start talking like that and before you know it you think Stevie Vai is better than John Lee Hooker – but we watched Terje Isungset’s Ice Music desperate to know what gear they had backstage. What sort of refrigeration rig is required to bring instruments carved from Norwegian glaciers around the UK?
The instruments not only look gorgeous in subdued theatre lighting, but they sound phenomenal: an ice marimba is somewhere between a balafon and a tabla, and a pair of glistening ice horns sound like Jan Garbarek mournfully morphing into an elephant seal. But, once you’ve marvelled at the logistics and the concept and the beauty of ice instruments, you’re unfortunately left with something aimlessly pretty. Take Lena Nymark’s breathy vocals: she may be adept enough with her effects pedals to build a wash of Cocteau Twins ambience, but her voice is rather thin when what the show needs is a steely soprano or a gutsy folk chorus to raise it from the morass of politeness.
To be honest, we far preferred the first half of the concert. Tribute To Nature is a piece for drumkit augmented by elemental wood and granite percussion, but the rough-hewn instruments offer more than earthy novelty. The click of stone on stone is a Neanderthal telex, and a Jew’s harp passage sounds like a Tuvan version of Aphex Twin’s “Didgeridoo”; at times the windswept stillness is Biosphere unplugged, at others the frenetic crackling rhythms are bebop played by a huge insect. A Max Roach, maybe? No, no, you’re right, we’re sorry.
Tribute To Nature may be too long, and the shamanistic groove is too Howard Moon (“Coming at you like a jazz narwhal!”), but the piece is hypnotic and evocative, and Isungset is modest enough to break the sonic spell and make people giggle by creaking his drum stool: ice is nice, but sometimes a musician finds their best material in jokes and accidents.
I also hate it when adverts say "Terms & Conditions apply". Of course they do, otherwise there would be chaos; there's no way I could make you an offer without delineating it in some fashion. "Buy one bottle of Head & Shoulders and get...whatever your mind can conceive of absolutely free - the accepted parameters of scientific governance notwithstanding". Idiotic.
TERJE ISUNGSET, OCM, The Northwall, 5/11/11
We don’t normally care about a musician’s equipment - start talking like that and before you know it you think Stevie Vai is better than John Lee Hooker – but we watched Terje Isungset’s Ice Music desperate to know what gear they had backstage. What sort of refrigeration rig is required to bring instruments carved from Norwegian glaciers around the UK?
The instruments not only look gorgeous in subdued theatre lighting, but they sound phenomenal: an ice marimba is somewhere between a balafon and a tabla, and a pair of glistening ice horns sound like Jan Garbarek mournfully morphing into an elephant seal. But, once you’ve marvelled at the logistics and the concept and the beauty of ice instruments, you’re unfortunately left with something aimlessly pretty. Take Lena Nymark’s breathy vocals: she may be adept enough with her effects pedals to build a wash of Cocteau Twins ambience, but her voice is rather thin when what the show needs is a steely soprano or a gutsy folk chorus to raise it from the morass of politeness.
To be honest, we far preferred the first half of the concert. Tribute To Nature is a piece for drumkit augmented by elemental wood and granite percussion, but the rough-hewn instruments offer more than earthy novelty. The click of stone on stone is a Neanderthal telex, and a Jew’s harp passage sounds like a Tuvan version of Aphex Twin’s “Didgeridoo”; at times the windswept stillness is Biosphere unplugged, at others the frenetic crackling rhythms are bebop played by a huge insect. A Max Roach, maybe? No, no, you’re right, we’re sorry.
Tribute To Nature may be too long, and the shamanistic groove is too Howard Moon (“Coming at you like a jazz narwhal!”), but the piece is hypnotic and evocative, and Isungset is modest enough to break the sonic spell and make people giggle by creaking his drum stool: ice is nice, but sometimes a musician finds their best material in jokes and accidents.
Friday, 4 November 2011
Alter Boys
One of the few times I've ever written a review at 20.00 on deadline day...and I think it shows. Not bad, as such, but disjointed. I wanted to put bits in about the keyboard playing, the relationship between The Marshall Suite and The Mayor Of Casterbridge ("It just goes down and down, that book" - MES) and why Hollywood never latched on to The Metamorphosis ("Right, so you got this cool giant bug and all he does is moan about the office?!")
BORDERVILLE – METAMORPHOSIS (Own release)
Sadly, we don’t get sent records any more, just links to downloads and audio streams. That’s OK, we understand the advantages in terms of ecology, energy and economics. Borderville, however, eagerly sent a hard copy of their latest, perhaps indicating their love of a holistic artwork, and their pride in a deeply considered package, rather than a string of ditties. Of course, anyone with cash can create lavish CD artwork to detract attention from drab music, but the mandibular folds of Borderville’s CD box fit the insect theme perfectly, and the flea image echoes Joe Swarbrick’s assertion that the German “ungeziefer” doesn’t necessarily imply the giant roach most publishing illustrators leap on for editions of The Metamorphosis.
Because, yes, this album is a musical retelling of Kafka’s novella. If you think that sounds pretentious, do yourself a favour and turn the page now. Go on, there’s plenty for you later: there might be some big pictures, or ads for gigs by tribute bands like Saxon & On, or Junior Doctor Feelgood. Anyone who isn’t put off by theatre or erudition will happily discover how approachable Metamorphosis is. In fact, you don’t need to know anything about the book, because what’s great is that the album has the shape of a story, the taut arc of ineluctable tragedy, the encroaching claustrophobia of macabre fiction. It’s fantastic that Metamorphosis sounds like a tale being told, rather than a band noting how clever they all are.
It’s perhaps inevitable that Metamorphosis shall be labelled as Prog. That’s fine, but inaccurate. Most of the music is built on material from the birth of rock ‘n’ roll, be it the Rocky Horror cod-jiving of “Open The Door”, or “Anchor”, where a soda hop ballad is suspended in - sonic zeitgeist alert! - cold reverb. Rather than ELP trickery, Borderville take scraps of everyman rock, like Richie Valens or Queen, and cover them with black dramatics and queasy dissonance – from the infected cicada swoon of the opening moments, the record is held together by synthetic hums and electroacoustic dizziness. Perhaps, because of this, “Capitalypso” doesn’t quite fit. Sure, it’s got a portmanteau title, funky guitar and a clever link between insectile chitin and workplace relationships in the line “toughen up my skin, sir”, but it almost derails the record by being too good a rock song: we need soliloquies not melodies, Greek chorus not pop chorus. Forget tunes, it’s the rhythm section’s album anyway: check out the Rolling-Stones-play-Aphrodite’s-Child stomp of “I Am The Winter”.
Add some balletic keys and a thespian vocal that can convince in both the dark bombast of “The Human Way” and the resigned resolution of the closing track, and you have an album of the year. If some will turn away in the opening minutes, everyone else will adore it till the final curtain.
BORDERVILLE – METAMORPHOSIS (Own release)
Sadly, we don’t get sent records any more, just links to downloads and audio streams. That’s OK, we understand the advantages in terms of ecology, energy and economics. Borderville, however, eagerly sent a hard copy of their latest, perhaps indicating their love of a holistic artwork, and their pride in a deeply considered package, rather than a string of ditties. Of course, anyone with cash can create lavish CD artwork to detract attention from drab music, but the mandibular folds of Borderville’s CD box fit the insect theme perfectly, and the flea image echoes Joe Swarbrick’s assertion that the German “ungeziefer” doesn’t necessarily imply the giant roach most publishing illustrators leap on for editions of The Metamorphosis.
Because, yes, this album is a musical retelling of Kafka’s novella. If you think that sounds pretentious, do yourself a favour and turn the page now. Go on, there’s plenty for you later: there might be some big pictures, or ads for gigs by tribute bands like Saxon & On, or Junior Doctor Feelgood. Anyone who isn’t put off by theatre or erudition will happily discover how approachable Metamorphosis is. In fact, you don’t need to know anything about the book, because what’s great is that the album has the shape of a story, the taut arc of ineluctable tragedy, the encroaching claustrophobia of macabre fiction. It’s fantastic that Metamorphosis sounds like a tale being told, rather than a band noting how clever they all are.
It’s perhaps inevitable that Metamorphosis shall be labelled as Prog. That’s fine, but inaccurate. Most of the music is built on material from the birth of rock ‘n’ roll, be it the Rocky Horror cod-jiving of “Open The Door”, or “Anchor”, where a soda hop ballad is suspended in - sonic zeitgeist alert! - cold reverb. Rather than ELP trickery, Borderville take scraps of everyman rock, like Richie Valens or Queen, and cover them with black dramatics and queasy dissonance – from the infected cicada swoon of the opening moments, the record is held together by synthetic hums and electroacoustic dizziness. Perhaps, because of this, “Capitalypso” doesn’t quite fit. Sure, it’s got a portmanteau title, funky guitar and a clever link between insectile chitin and workplace relationships in the line “toughen up my skin, sir”, but it almost derails the record by being too good a rock song: we need soliloquies not melodies, Greek chorus not pop chorus. Forget tunes, it’s the rhythm section’s album anyway: check out the Rolling-Stones-play-Aphrodite’s-Child stomp of “I Am The Winter”.
Add some balletic keys and a thespian vocal that can convince in both the dark bombast of “The Human Way” and the resigned resolution of the closing track, and you have an album of the year. If some will turn away in the opening minutes, everyone else will adore it till the final curtain.
Friday, 30 September 2011
The Hemp Brothers
When I was younger I used to get angry about people discussing the weather. Now I disagree, all I can think today is "Fuck me, it's hot for September". You can scoff, but you're thinking it too (unless you're one of the people from other continents who visits this blog: hello, foreigners! Youre not real, of course, are you? Just web-bot type things I suspect).
DUOTONE – ROPES (ECC Records)
There’s a sense of retreating into safety about Duotone. Not only are the band named after an old printing technique, but their promotional material is steeped in sepia Edwardiana, and despite copious use of loop pedals their music nods towards well-behaved salon folk. Add a few lyrics about the hermetic safety of an old-fashioned middle class childhood, all bedtime stories and warm nurseries, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that Duotone are a soppy panacea for delicate wallflowers who think the world is moving too fast and who wish they were back at prep school.
But you’d be wrong. Comforting and hushed the music might be, all deep in the womb of Barney Morse-Brown’s impeccable cello, but this is far more than insipid ambience. Not only are there moments of chilling eeriness throughout the album, but the music is restlessly inventive. When it might have been easy for Duotone to stick with some whispered melodies and a few pretty James Garrett guitar parts, they slip some eclectic elements into the album: “Walking To The Shore” starts with a stately promenade that owes something to British minimalism, before introducing a spikily elegant vocal line that reminds us of The High Llamas. Later, “Alphabet” leaps halfway through from bucolic lullaby to something that isn’t far from a Knight Rider chase theme. “Broken Earth” is a high point, a “Hansel & Gretel” referencing chunk of goth folk that reminds us of an urbane take on 60s experimental folk, a clean-shaven Comus if you will.
There are a couple of mis-steps on Ropes, from the fluffy Disney refrain of “’Till It’s Over” to the directionless doodle of “Powder House”, wordless female vocals flitting politely about like “The Great Gig In The Sky” repackaged for Habitat, but these are minor blemishes. Ropes is a gorgeous record that is immaculately performed and recorded, but which still retains an enticing air of melancholic mystery: for all their abilities, this is the important element most Sunday supplement boutique folk acts seem to be missing.
DUOTONE – ROPES (ECC Records)
There’s a sense of retreating into safety about Duotone. Not only are the band named after an old printing technique, but their promotional material is steeped in sepia Edwardiana, and despite copious use of loop pedals their music nods towards well-behaved salon folk. Add a few lyrics about the hermetic safety of an old-fashioned middle class childhood, all bedtime stories and warm nurseries, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that Duotone are a soppy panacea for delicate wallflowers who think the world is moving too fast and who wish they were back at prep school.
But you’d be wrong. Comforting and hushed the music might be, all deep in the womb of Barney Morse-Brown’s impeccable cello, but this is far more than insipid ambience. Not only are there moments of chilling eeriness throughout the album, but the music is restlessly inventive. When it might have been easy for Duotone to stick with some whispered melodies and a few pretty James Garrett guitar parts, they slip some eclectic elements into the album: “Walking To The Shore” starts with a stately promenade that owes something to British minimalism, before introducing a spikily elegant vocal line that reminds us of The High Llamas. Later, “Alphabet” leaps halfway through from bucolic lullaby to something that isn’t far from a Knight Rider chase theme. “Broken Earth” is a high point, a “Hansel & Gretel” referencing chunk of goth folk that reminds us of an urbane take on 60s experimental folk, a clean-shaven Comus if you will.
There are a couple of mis-steps on Ropes, from the fluffy Disney refrain of “’Till It’s Over” to the directionless doodle of “Powder House”, wordless female vocals flitting politely about like “The Great Gig In The Sky” repackaged for Habitat, but these are minor blemishes. Ropes is a gorgeous record that is immaculately performed and recorded, but which still retains an enticing air of melancholic mystery: for all their abilities, this is the important element most Sunday supplement boutique folk acts seem to be missing.
Monday, 19 September 2011
Enemy Brats
I enjoyed writing this review, because Secret Rivals, two scant years ago, were an awful, clunky band who spent most of their time being idiots online - and now they're really good. Nice work.
SECRET RIVALS – MAKE DO & MEND (Has Legs)
Roger Scruton and Brian Sewell probably disagree, but pop music can explore pretty much any concept or sonic vista, and attracts composers as original and adventurous as, say, opera. Having said that, as much as we like to lock ourselves away for a weekend to wrestle with Scott Walker’s Tilt whilst making notes in the margins of Dylan’s Tarantula, there’s something to be said for pop that simply offers bags of barely controlled energy and a bloody big tune. That’s where Secret Rivals come in, having knocked up a collection of bubbling pop mini-riots that should charm anyone with even a fractional propensity towards having a good time.
“Ghosting” ushers us in with a light, summery indie-funk beat and some ramshackle, chirruping Byker Grove vocals. This is pretty much the blueprint for the record: bouncy rhythms rushing hell for leather towards the end of the song, with occasional stately keyboard lines watching over them like an indulgent parent, topped off with a battle between Clouds’ smilingly tuneful female vocals and atonal Dickensian scamp interjections from Jay. If there is a fault with the record, it’s that Jay’s yelping can become wearing. On “Tonight Matthew...” the contrast between an affable melody on one side and a punky little anti-rap on the other works well, reminding us of the interplay between Bjork and Einar on The Sugarcubes’ “Hit”, but on “Blisters” you just want the squawking little urchin to shut up and leave the song alone. He’s like the annoying chumps waving signs saying “Hi Mum!” behind news reporters on location. But then he sings the mournful closing title track, and reveals an unexpected delicacy and all is forgiven.
Anyway, for the most part the unpolished exuberance of the music whisks the listener along in its wake so powerfully, that there’s simply no time to consider stylistic infelicities: it’s like asking a child to critique the label on their supermarket brand Sunny Delight rip off, when they’re too busy having a tartrazine meltdown. “These Are Only Obstacles” is the one that really grasps us, a scrappily charming little snatch of melodic positivity that makes us teary eyed for the loss of John Peel – it’s enormous fun, but has a quiet, emotional undertow, and there are also some effective touches of melancholy on “Me Vs Melodrama” and “Make Do And Mend”.
We do wonder whether Secret Rivals, who seem to be garnering some impressive attention recently, have got quite enough about them to forge a whole career, but for now this album comes highly recommended, especially for anyone who can’t bear to admit that the summer is over...and, perhaps, looking to the future and worrying about artistic longevity is for people who don’t fully understand the joyous fizz of Secret Rivals’ music. If you’re looking for sensible, grown up stuff, we hear Roger Scruton has a website.
SECRET RIVALS – MAKE DO & MEND (Has Legs)
Roger Scruton and Brian Sewell probably disagree, but pop music can explore pretty much any concept or sonic vista, and attracts composers as original and adventurous as, say, opera. Having said that, as much as we like to lock ourselves away for a weekend to wrestle with Scott Walker’s Tilt whilst making notes in the margins of Dylan’s Tarantula, there’s something to be said for pop that simply offers bags of barely controlled energy and a bloody big tune. That’s where Secret Rivals come in, having knocked up a collection of bubbling pop mini-riots that should charm anyone with even a fractional propensity towards having a good time.
“Ghosting” ushers us in with a light, summery indie-funk beat and some ramshackle, chirruping Byker Grove vocals. This is pretty much the blueprint for the record: bouncy rhythms rushing hell for leather towards the end of the song, with occasional stately keyboard lines watching over them like an indulgent parent, topped off with a battle between Clouds’ smilingly tuneful female vocals and atonal Dickensian scamp interjections from Jay. If there is a fault with the record, it’s that Jay’s yelping can become wearing. On “Tonight Matthew...” the contrast between an affable melody on one side and a punky little anti-rap on the other works well, reminding us of the interplay between Bjork and Einar on The Sugarcubes’ “Hit”, but on “Blisters” you just want the squawking little urchin to shut up and leave the song alone. He’s like the annoying chumps waving signs saying “Hi Mum!” behind news reporters on location. But then he sings the mournful closing title track, and reveals an unexpected delicacy and all is forgiven.
Anyway, for the most part the unpolished exuberance of the music whisks the listener along in its wake so powerfully, that there’s simply no time to consider stylistic infelicities: it’s like asking a child to critique the label on their supermarket brand Sunny Delight rip off, when they’re too busy having a tartrazine meltdown. “These Are Only Obstacles” is the one that really grasps us, a scrappily charming little snatch of melodic positivity that makes us teary eyed for the loss of John Peel – it’s enormous fun, but has a quiet, emotional undertow, and there are also some effective touches of melancholy on “Me Vs Melodrama” and “Make Do And Mend”.
We do wonder whether Secret Rivals, who seem to be garnering some impressive attention recently, have got quite enough about them to forge a whole career, but for now this album comes highly recommended, especially for anyone who can’t bear to admit that the summer is over...and, perhaps, looking to the future and worrying about artistic longevity is for people who don’t fully understand the joyous fizz of Secret Rivals’ music. If you’re looking for sensible, grown up stuff, we hear Roger Scruton has a website.
Sunday, 4 September 2011
Truck 2011 Sunday Pt 2
The Go! Team’s performance, on the other hand, would be invigorating at any time, but after the staid afternoon we’ve had, it’s like the second bloody coming, a vast ball of energy rolling from the main stage. Ninja may not be the greatest vocalist nor gymnast in the country, but she can put them together better than anyone we’ve seen in many a year, and the band leap into the music as if it were a swimming pool of chilled champagne. Aside from a moment or two like “Security Song”, which is like Stereolab without the Marxism or the krautrock collection, their tunes all have an old school hip hop joie de vivre performed with irrepressible positivity: Sugar Hill played by Grange Hill, if you will. We are also reminded of The Cookie Crew, Polysics and Rip, Rig & Panic at various points, but primarily the Go! Team are idiosyncratic and original, and we salute them for it.
This year we decide to take up the offer of a lift before the annual snooze through The Dreaming Spires’ set, and it seems wise to leave the festival on a high. The conclusion is that this larger, longer Truck has been a resounding success. There are inevitable criticisms. Firstly there’s still too much toothless country for our liking – some of this strumming could have been swapped for just one or two metal bands, surely – but we suppose that’s part of the deal. Secondly, as this is now a three day concern, there could have been more musical options on Saturday and Sunday afternoon; plenty of local acts would have been happy to fill the empty space on that lovely Wood stage free of charge, we’re sure. But, in effect, Truck has made itself bigger to keep itself small. This year was the biggest turnout ever, and yet for the first time in a long while we found that there were rarely queues for anything, and one could nearly always get close enough to a stage to enjoy it. Naturally, there were some Truck veterans who had a moan – it’s kind of a hobby for music fans of a certain age – but conversely we met many Truck virgins who couldn’t believe how great it was. In an era when most music festivals are horrible drinks advertising gulags or thinly disguised food fairs, it’s easy to see what makes Truck special, and no matter what small mistakes they might have made, we still believe they provide a uniquely excellent service.
Just don’t mention Groupon.
This year we decide to take up the offer of a lift before the annual snooze through The Dreaming Spires’ set, and it seems wise to leave the festival on a high. The conclusion is that this larger, longer Truck has been a resounding success. There are inevitable criticisms. Firstly there’s still too much toothless country for our liking – some of this strumming could have been swapped for just one or two metal bands, surely – but we suppose that’s part of the deal. Secondly, as this is now a three day concern, there could have been more musical options on Saturday and Sunday afternoon; plenty of local acts would have been happy to fill the empty space on that lovely Wood stage free of charge, we’re sure. But, in effect, Truck has made itself bigger to keep itself small. This year was the biggest turnout ever, and yet for the first time in a long while we found that there were rarely queues for anything, and one could nearly always get close enough to a stage to enjoy it. Naturally, there were some Truck veterans who had a moan – it’s kind of a hobby for music fans of a certain age – but conversely we met many Truck virgins who couldn’t believe how great it was. In an era when most music festivals are horrible drinks advertising gulags or thinly disguised food fairs, it’s easy to see what makes Truck special, and no matter what small mistakes they might have made, we still believe they provide a uniquely excellent service.
Just don’t mention Groupon.
Truck 2011 Sunday
Tate's Vorticism show today - just snuck in on the last day of the exhibition. Wonderful to see some of the stuff, but the show was a little thin for £12.70 - not their fault lots of it has been lost, but there was a lot of archival material amongst the actual artwork. Perhaps a little bit of Epstein & Lewis post-Vorticism would have filled things out.
Blasts & Blesses still one of the greatest pieces of writing/page design in the English language, and beuatiful to see wall-sized.
The bonuses were Nike Nelson's amazing The Coral Reef and a pleasant surprise in walking past Selfridge's on the way to the Oxford tuvge and discovering a new show from the fantastic Museum Of Everything. No, I don't have links. You heard of Google?
We’d be lying if we told you that Mat Gibson was an amazing, ground-breaking artist, but laying on our back, listening to his plangent, pedal steel drenched songs, watching the white clouds form and disperse as if we were submersed in a giant, freshly poured Guinness is a pretty great way to start Sunday. Cashier No 9 play comfy rootsy pop on the Clash stage, like a Northern Irish La’s, and they’re followed by Lanterns On The Lake, who make grown up indie folk with Sigur Ros crescendos, which isn’t seismic, but is actually better than Mew’s set at last year’s festival. And that’s the gist of Sunday: lots of good stuff, very little bad, but very little great.
Take Maybeshewill, for example. They have a dense, muscular sound, and we enjoy their set a lot, but there are only so many times one can get truly excited about this Mogwai tumescent guitar trick. Alessi’s Ark are also listenable, but help us to work out what Americana actually means. It means “leftovers”. It’s not folk, blues, country, rock, bluegrass or anything else that’s actually good, it’s just the offcuts you get when you’re making any of those. Ho hum.
As the music isn’t sparking any synapses, we drop in on the Free Beers Show’s comedy stage, who are quick to announce they can’t give out free beer because of licensing restrictions. Lucky it’s a well behaved crowd at Truck, they could have been lynched in other festivals. As a sort of object lesson in the value of delivery, we see Alex Clissold Jones, a man who strikes us as being potentially very funny, die on his arse, before being followed by Chris Turner, a comedian with inferior material, who is connecting with the crowd. In actual fact, the bays should go to compere Matt Richardson, who manages to keep coming back with funny, mostly improvised stand-up between every set.
Much as we respect it as an addition to Cowley Road, we have to say that the Truck Store’s selection for the Last.FM stage is noticeably the weakest of the three days. Tribes, for example, play a sort of CITV grunge, big-boned, melodic punky tunes lobbed skywards, as if to see where they land. It’s all pretty good, but doesn’t quicken any pulses. Islet should be the ones to turn things upsidedown, but they can’t capture the magic of their Barn set last year. The show is still a beguiling mixture of howls, whoops and keyboard washes, all held together by occasional dub basslines and percussion that sounds like an autistic class day out in a cowbell factory, but it is fun rather than mystifying. Last year we felt as though we were caught in a harrowing Branch Davidian ritual, this year it’s more like being in a training camp for a Chuckle Brothers franchise.
The main stage has been a bit of a parade of worthy solo and duo sets all day, so Tunng liven the soundscape somewhat, with Casio African rhythms, and well placed layers of sound a la vintage Four Tet. If we’re honest, we found the songs to be a bit less interesting than the soundscpaes underneath them, but it’s still a very strong performance.
Phil Selway also puts in a strong performance, but it leaves us entirely ambivalent. His voice is decent, which is a nice surprise, and he plays some well-structured, but slightly twee semi-acoustic numbers, one of which reminds us strongly of “Little Drummer Boy”. As befits a member of Radiohead, there are some subtly evocative touches in the arrangements, such as the “O Superman” backing vocals on the second number, but overall the conclusion is that this is music that would work better on midnight headphones, not in a tent on a sunny afternoon.
Blasts & Blesses still one of the greatest pieces of writing/page design in the English language, and beuatiful to see wall-sized.
The bonuses were Nike Nelson's amazing The Coral Reef and a pleasant surprise in walking past Selfridge's on the way to the Oxford tuvge and discovering a new show from the fantastic Museum Of Everything. No, I don't have links. You heard of Google?
We’d be lying if we told you that Mat Gibson was an amazing, ground-breaking artist, but laying on our back, listening to his plangent, pedal steel drenched songs, watching the white clouds form and disperse as if we were submersed in a giant, freshly poured Guinness is a pretty great way to start Sunday. Cashier No 9 play comfy rootsy pop on the Clash stage, like a Northern Irish La’s, and they’re followed by Lanterns On The Lake, who make grown up indie folk with Sigur Ros crescendos, which isn’t seismic, but is actually better than Mew’s set at last year’s festival. And that’s the gist of Sunday: lots of good stuff, very little bad, but very little great.
Take Maybeshewill, for example. They have a dense, muscular sound, and we enjoy their set a lot, but there are only so many times one can get truly excited about this Mogwai tumescent guitar trick. Alessi’s Ark are also listenable, but help us to work out what Americana actually means. It means “leftovers”. It’s not folk, blues, country, rock, bluegrass or anything else that’s actually good, it’s just the offcuts you get when you’re making any of those. Ho hum.
As the music isn’t sparking any synapses, we drop in on the Free Beers Show’s comedy stage, who are quick to announce they can’t give out free beer because of licensing restrictions. Lucky it’s a well behaved crowd at Truck, they could have been lynched in other festivals. As a sort of object lesson in the value of delivery, we see Alex Clissold Jones, a man who strikes us as being potentially very funny, die on his arse, before being followed by Chris Turner, a comedian with inferior material, who is connecting with the crowd. In actual fact, the bays should go to compere Matt Richardson, who manages to keep coming back with funny, mostly improvised stand-up between every set.
Much as we respect it as an addition to Cowley Road, we have to say that the Truck Store’s selection for the Last.FM stage is noticeably the weakest of the three days. Tribes, for example, play a sort of CITV grunge, big-boned, melodic punky tunes lobbed skywards, as if to see where they land. It’s all pretty good, but doesn’t quicken any pulses. Islet should be the ones to turn things upsidedown, but they can’t capture the magic of their Barn set last year. The show is still a beguiling mixture of howls, whoops and keyboard washes, all held together by occasional dub basslines and percussion that sounds like an autistic class day out in a cowbell factory, but it is fun rather than mystifying. Last year we felt as though we were caught in a harrowing Branch Davidian ritual, this year it’s more like being in a training camp for a Chuckle Brothers franchise.
The main stage has been a bit of a parade of worthy solo and duo sets all day, so Tunng liven the soundscape somewhat, with Casio African rhythms, and well placed layers of sound a la vintage Four Tet. If we’re honest, we found the songs to be a bit less interesting than the soundscpaes underneath them, but it’s still a very strong performance.
Phil Selway also puts in a strong performance, but it leaves us entirely ambivalent. His voice is decent, which is a nice surprise, and he plays some well-structured, but slightly twee semi-acoustic numbers, one of which reminds us strongly of “Little Drummer Boy”. As befits a member of Radiohead, there are some subtly evocative touches in the arrangements, such as the “O Superman” backing vocals on the second number, but overall the conclusion is that this is music that would work better on midnight headphones, not in a tent on a sunny afternoon.
Friday, 2 September 2011
Truck 2011 Saturday Pt 3
Back at the Blessing Force love-in, Chad Valley is showing us round the dessicated remains of a freeze dried Ibiza night from 1989. By putting sweaty, nightclub music of the past into an amniotic reverb womb, Chad Valley’s set is a little like what the staff of Ghost Box records might play if they were cruising for a shag. It’s actually remarkably good music, although we often worry that Hugo Manuel’s voice isn’t strong enough to carry the material, but as with all the Blessing Force endeavours, we feel as though we’d need to be Mahakali to make air quotes sufficient to capture the levels of reference and irony. Which is why the collaboration between ODC Drumline and Coloureds is a pleasant surprise. Far from being a smug game for BF buddies, as feared, the drumline is actually four very well drilled players, who have rehearsed some decent arrangements to complement Coloureds’ jittering techno. It’s highly enjoyable, although in a twist of inverse logic, a collection of crisp, clattering martial snares actually detracts from the rhythmic power of Coloureds’ material, and we can’t help feeling that, despite the evident skill and effort involved, it would be more satisfying to just hear Coloureds. Oh, and twice as loud, too, thank you.
Plus, no matter how hard they tried, they could never actually be more of a noisy party conclusion to the night than The Rabbit’s Foot Spasm Band, who turn the cabaret tent into a jazz apocalypse. Limbs stick at random from the beyond capacity tent, mikes are used and discarded to the confusion of the engineer, dancers leap onstage and are summarily booted off, and all to the sound of solid gold brutal jump jazz. Everyone who doesn’t like jazz should be made to watch the Rabbit’s Foot...and many people who do like jazz should too, because they like the wrong bit. Sheer carnage, there’s no better sound to turn in to bed to.
Plus, no matter how hard they tried, they could never actually be more of a noisy party conclusion to the night than The Rabbit’s Foot Spasm Band, who turn the cabaret tent into a jazz apocalypse. Limbs stick at random from the beyond capacity tent, mikes are used and discarded to the confusion of the engineer, dancers leap onstage and are summarily booted off, and all to the sound of solid gold brutal jump jazz. Everyone who doesn’t like jazz should be made to watch the Rabbit’s Foot...and many people who do like jazz should too, because they like the wrong bit. Sheer carnage, there’s no better sound to turn in to bed to.
Truck 2011 Saturday Pt 2
The Rockingbirds, over on the Clash Stage, prove you don’t need to have a spurious movement and ugly stage sets to be exciting, they simply bash out vintage rock with country flourishes with self-effacing charm and leave everyone happy. See, sometimes that’s all you need, kids: some good music.
Anyone missing the surprising absence of Luke Smith from the lineup this year could have done worse than dropping in on wry pianist Matt Winkworth. Like Smith he has a relaxed sense of humour and a deft way with the ivories, but there is a glitzy, cabaret heart at the centre of Winkworth’s music, every tune leaving a waft of greasepaint and mildewed curtain velvet. Standout is “Elixir Of Youth”, a song about wanting to die that is made impossibly tragic by the jaunty old Joanna underneath it.
Wild Swim open their set with a proto-drum ‘n’ bass rhythm topped with a light operatic tenor. It could be the lost theme for Italia 90. Later they sound like Spandau Ballet might have, if they’d discovered a copy of Amnesiac in a time portal. All of which sounds slightly demeaning, but we are impressed with this young band, who may have grasped more than they can quite deal with as yet, but who look as though they have the potential to develop along exciting lines.
We choose to listen to Trevor Moss & Hannah-Lou from outside the Clash tent. We’re quite partial to their winsome folk music, but can’t stand the sight of them gazing longingly into each other’s eyes, like a mixture between A Mighty Wind’s Mitch & Mickey and an 80’s Love Is... cartoon. Something tells us that if this act breaks up, it won’t be because of “artistic differences”...
We return to the Blessing Force hootenanny to hear a keyboard line that sounds like a medieval recorder part, putting us immediately in mind of Danish genius/madman Goodiepal. It turns out that this is the pinnacle of Jonquil’s set, but it’s all still good, taking ersatz 80 pop soul and creating new shapes form it in a way that must make Solid Gold Dragons weep with envy.
The fugu fish is apparently delicious, but in all but the most skilled hands it is a deadly poison. Sounds like the bagpipes and the djembe to us. We only hear small amount of The Geees’ pedestrian world-fusion jamming, but it’s a hideously painful experience.
There are only two ways to experience Thomas Truax’ home made instruments. Either watch him after a full 90 minute soundcheck in a high-end venue, where the subtleties of his Tom Waits songwriting can win out, or see him after no soundcheck, in a sweaty flurry of feedback and confusion that seems to capture part of his wired triple espresso New York charm. Today we have unexpected noises, guitar coming in at random levels, and songs lost in an Eno-ish dub. Wonderful.
You know that horrible Innocent Smoothies type trend, where packaging for allegedly healthy foods says “Look at me, I’m 100% natural, aren’t I lovely?”, so that now products can be as smug and enraging as their consumers? Well, Fixers should carry a label stating “this band is made entirely artificial components, and is bloody great”. Their set is mixture of fake Beach Boys keyboards, Ronettes vocals and Meatloaf tom flams, all tied to together with a catering sized delivery of delay. The effect is some of the most euphoric music we’ve ever witnessed, a whirlwind of sugary melody and psychedelic treatments, all of which is as inauthentic as Jack Goldstein’s California-Eynsham accent. Outstanding - and we’ve not even mentioned Jack’s vast tentacular beard, making him look like a Captain Birdseye from the Cthulhu mythos, or the endearingly over-excited exclamations between songs. A set for the annals, and vindication for a band some see as trendy Animal Collective copyists.
Slightly more refined local heroes, next, in the shape of Young Knives. And it’s a warm welcome back, as the set is far more enticing than last time we saw them live. They may not have got the wired maniacal electricity of their early sets, but they’ve moved through the safe, foursquare indie sound that typified gigs at the height of their fame. In fact, we swiftly remember all the things that we loved about them – although the sight of a middle aged mother, carrying her weeping toddler away from the stage, whilst singing along to “The Decision” says a lot about how time can cruelly catch up with you in this game. The House Of Lords, however, seems to be trying to cheat time, with a horrendous grebo haircut: is he living his life backwards, from chartered surveyor to petulant teenager? Any Carter USM covers likely on the next album?
Having missed Kris Drever earlier, it was pleasant to see him accompany Kildare singer, Heidi Talbot. Like delta blues, early minimalism and acid house, you don’t have to do much with Irish folk song to make us feel warm and fuzzy, but Heidi has a gorgeous papery whisper of a voice, that sounds as though it’s offering each song to you as personal indulgence, and when we open our eyes, thirty minutes has gone blissfully by.
The Long Insiders have turned the cabaret tent into a 50s burlesque show for the evening, which we mostly steer clear of, primarily because we don’t think we have the critical vocabulary to adequately review boobies, but we do catch some of the hosts’ opening set. Very good they are too, knocking out a fizzy rockabilly with stridently melodic female vocals...but you do suspect they go home every night and stick pins into an Imelda May voodoo doll.
Anyone missing the surprising absence of Luke Smith from the lineup this year could have done worse than dropping in on wry pianist Matt Winkworth. Like Smith he has a relaxed sense of humour and a deft way with the ivories, but there is a glitzy, cabaret heart at the centre of Winkworth’s music, every tune leaving a waft of greasepaint and mildewed curtain velvet. Standout is “Elixir Of Youth”, a song about wanting to die that is made impossibly tragic by the jaunty old Joanna underneath it.
Wild Swim open their set with a proto-drum ‘n’ bass rhythm topped with a light operatic tenor. It could be the lost theme for Italia 90. Later they sound like Spandau Ballet might have, if they’d discovered a copy of Amnesiac in a time portal. All of which sounds slightly demeaning, but we are impressed with this young band, who may have grasped more than they can quite deal with as yet, but who look as though they have the potential to develop along exciting lines.
We choose to listen to Trevor Moss & Hannah-Lou from outside the Clash tent. We’re quite partial to their winsome folk music, but can’t stand the sight of them gazing longingly into each other’s eyes, like a mixture between A Mighty Wind’s Mitch & Mickey and an 80’s Love Is... cartoon. Something tells us that if this act breaks up, it won’t be because of “artistic differences”...
We return to the Blessing Force hootenanny to hear a keyboard line that sounds like a medieval recorder part, putting us immediately in mind of Danish genius/madman Goodiepal. It turns out that this is the pinnacle of Jonquil’s set, but it’s all still good, taking ersatz 80 pop soul and creating new shapes form it in a way that must make Solid Gold Dragons weep with envy.
The fugu fish is apparently delicious, but in all but the most skilled hands it is a deadly poison. Sounds like the bagpipes and the djembe to us. We only hear small amount of The Geees’ pedestrian world-fusion jamming, but it’s a hideously painful experience.
There are only two ways to experience Thomas Truax’ home made instruments. Either watch him after a full 90 minute soundcheck in a high-end venue, where the subtleties of his Tom Waits songwriting can win out, or see him after no soundcheck, in a sweaty flurry of feedback and confusion that seems to capture part of his wired triple espresso New York charm. Today we have unexpected noises, guitar coming in at random levels, and songs lost in an Eno-ish dub. Wonderful.
You know that horrible Innocent Smoothies type trend, where packaging for allegedly healthy foods says “Look at me, I’m 100% natural, aren’t I lovely?”, so that now products can be as smug and enraging as their consumers? Well, Fixers should carry a label stating “this band is made entirely artificial components, and is bloody great”. Their set is mixture of fake Beach Boys keyboards, Ronettes vocals and Meatloaf tom flams, all tied to together with a catering sized delivery of delay. The effect is some of the most euphoric music we’ve ever witnessed, a whirlwind of sugary melody and psychedelic treatments, all of which is as inauthentic as Jack Goldstein’s California-Eynsham accent. Outstanding - and we’ve not even mentioned Jack’s vast tentacular beard, making him look like a Captain Birdseye from the Cthulhu mythos, or the endearingly over-excited exclamations between songs. A set for the annals, and vindication for a band some see as trendy Animal Collective copyists.
Slightly more refined local heroes, next, in the shape of Young Knives. And it’s a warm welcome back, as the set is far more enticing than last time we saw them live. They may not have got the wired maniacal electricity of their early sets, but they’ve moved through the safe, foursquare indie sound that typified gigs at the height of their fame. In fact, we swiftly remember all the things that we loved about them – although the sight of a middle aged mother, carrying her weeping toddler away from the stage, whilst singing along to “The Decision” says a lot about how time can cruelly catch up with you in this game. The House Of Lords, however, seems to be trying to cheat time, with a horrendous grebo haircut: is he living his life backwards, from chartered surveyor to petulant teenager? Any Carter USM covers likely on the next album?
Having missed Kris Drever earlier, it was pleasant to see him accompany Kildare singer, Heidi Talbot. Like delta blues, early minimalism and acid house, you don’t have to do much with Irish folk song to make us feel warm and fuzzy, but Heidi has a gorgeous papery whisper of a voice, that sounds as though it’s offering each song to you as personal indulgence, and when we open our eyes, thirty minutes has gone blissfully by.
The Long Insiders have turned the cabaret tent into a 50s burlesque show for the evening, which we mostly steer clear of, primarily because we don’t think we have the critical vocabulary to adequately review boobies, but we do catch some of the hosts’ opening set. Very good they are too, knocking out a fizzy rockabilly with stridently melodic female vocals...but you do suspect they go home every night and stick pins into an Imelda May voodoo doll.
Truck 2011 Saturday
Here we go, part 2. Saturday at Truck. I'm going to eat a pizza soon, and I'm going to have it with spinach leaves and hummus, and just maybe a pint of beer. Then tomorrow I'm going to see the glorious Stornoway (it does mean I'll have to see the rubbish Dreaming Spires, whom I avoided at Truck), and Sunday I'm going to see the Vorticist show at the tate befopre it closes. I can't see why you'd want to knwo this, but I've told been told this site isn't strictly a blog, so I thought I'd add some meaningless eprsonal info. I'm currently wearing dark blue briefs.
Were we slightly critical of the gentrification of Truck’s catering earlier? Opinions change on Saturday morning when we find we can get a proper coffee and some orange juice a few feet from the tent, which balances out the burger we had for dinner. Chav for supper and middle class for breakfast, that’s our motto! What’s that? Lunch? No time for it, we’d rather visit the Butts ale stall, still the non-musical highlight of Truck. Great service, great beer and it costs £2.80 a pint. Two pounds bastard eighty! It’s akin to a miracle. We’re also told by parents that it would be worth our while to borrow a child just to experience Roustabout Theatre’s My Secret Garden, a weird mixture of improvised theatre and archaeology. Well, maybe not, but we do drop in on Nick Cope, who is entertaining some pre-schoolers with his chirpy activity songs. “Stand on one leg”, “Let’s pretend we’re moles”. Not so much later we find ourselves in the presence of Alphabet Backwards, whose music is really the same thing, for those slightly older. “Imagine you’ve just passed your driving test”, “Pretend you just got off with another sixth former”. Unashamedly perky pop, delivered with unashamed chops, it’s pity you don’t see this mix more often. A 21st century Squeeze.
The more spacious Truck layout has enticed us to spend more time away from the main stages, and we are very impressed with some of the Cabaret Clandestino bookings. Ex-Oxonian Face0meter delivers his wordy alt folk with some charm. The obvious reference point is Jeffrey Lewis, though we prefer to think of him as a cross between Richard Stillgoe and Jasper Carrott. Musically it’s beyond sloppy, but as entertainment it’s gold. Hyper-folk performer James Bell doesn’t have the gig of his life, but has energy enough to get away with it. Storyteller Paul Askew also stumbles a few times, but has material to hide the cracks, a long piece about taking a gaggle of words to the botanical gardens before kidnapping a pronoun reminding us of a punk Richard Brautigan; poet George Chopping eclipses him, though, with a perfectly balanced mixture of sweet natured observation and steel-melting bile. And yes, just so the cosmic balance is restored, there’s some absolute rubbish too: The Oxford Imps do fourth rate Whose Line Is It Anyway? guff whilst acting like a punchably upbeat genetically engineered Partridge Family. The festival programme has a typo of “improve” for “improv” – we couldn’t think of better advice for them. Oh, and Mark Niel is just skin-crawlingly awful. He laments the fact that his hometown of Milton Keynes is a bad comic’s punchline – funny, without that comment we’d have no idea he had any notion of what a punchline was.
The main stage bookings are strangely underwhelming in the afternoon, but Two Fingers Of Firewater add some spice to proceedings, their widescreen country rock and well-groomed boogie harking back to Truck history. They make the transition from Charlbury to Truck without losing any punch.
Blessing Force is brilliant: not only is a lot of the music very good, but what is not good is hilarious. In the Last.FM tent on Saturday, we enjoyed being alternately entertained by the music and entertained by the sheer hideous hipster spectacle of things. Sealings fell into the former category. In the past, we’ve been unconvinced by this noisy drum machine backed duo: they weren’t doing much wrong, but it was more a souvenir of good music, than good music in its own right. This time, however, everything fell into place, as the intensity rose from a Jesus & Mary Chain drone to a Swans-inspired squall. Solid Gold Dragons, on the other hand, were possibly the worst thing to happen to us over the weekend – and that includes getting nearly vomited on by a toddler. Their plastic, stadium pop with light reggae inflections might be just about acceptable if the vocals weren’t so clod-hoppingly oafish, even whilst they tried to plumb cosmic realms of imagery. Imagine Big Audio Dynamite on an off night fronted by Bernard Matthews. No, wait, sometimes the trumpet made it more like a tired James lead by Derek Nimmo taking the piss out of Morrissey. No, wait, can we please stop thinking about this, forever?
Were we slightly critical of the gentrification of Truck’s catering earlier? Opinions change on Saturday morning when we find we can get a proper coffee and some orange juice a few feet from the tent, which balances out the burger we had for dinner. Chav for supper and middle class for breakfast, that’s our motto! What’s that? Lunch? No time for it, we’d rather visit the Butts ale stall, still the non-musical highlight of Truck. Great service, great beer and it costs £2.80 a pint. Two pounds bastard eighty! It’s akin to a miracle. We’re also told by parents that it would be worth our while to borrow a child just to experience Roustabout Theatre’s My Secret Garden, a weird mixture of improvised theatre and archaeology. Well, maybe not, but we do drop in on Nick Cope, who is entertaining some pre-schoolers with his chirpy activity songs. “Stand on one leg”, “Let’s pretend we’re moles”. Not so much later we find ourselves in the presence of Alphabet Backwards, whose music is really the same thing, for those slightly older. “Imagine you’ve just passed your driving test”, “Pretend you just got off with another sixth former”. Unashamedly perky pop, delivered with unashamed chops, it’s pity you don’t see this mix more often. A 21st century Squeeze.
The more spacious Truck layout has enticed us to spend more time away from the main stages, and we are very impressed with some of the Cabaret Clandestino bookings. Ex-Oxonian Face0meter delivers his wordy alt folk with some charm. The obvious reference point is Jeffrey Lewis, though we prefer to think of him as a cross between Richard Stillgoe and Jasper Carrott. Musically it’s beyond sloppy, but as entertainment it’s gold. Hyper-folk performer James Bell doesn’t have the gig of his life, but has energy enough to get away with it. Storyteller Paul Askew also stumbles a few times, but has material to hide the cracks, a long piece about taking a gaggle of words to the botanical gardens before kidnapping a pronoun reminding us of a punk Richard Brautigan; poet George Chopping eclipses him, though, with a perfectly balanced mixture of sweet natured observation and steel-melting bile. And yes, just so the cosmic balance is restored, there’s some absolute rubbish too: The Oxford Imps do fourth rate Whose Line Is It Anyway? guff whilst acting like a punchably upbeat genetically engineered Partridge Family. The festival programme has a typo of “improve” for “improv” – we couldn’t think of better advice for them. Oh, and Mark Niel is just skin-crawlingly awful. He laments the fact that his hometown of Milton Keynes is a bad comic’s punchline – funny, without that comment we’d have no idea he had any notion of what a punchline was.
The main stage bookings are strangely underwhelming in the afternoon, but Two Fingers Of Firewater add some spice to proceedings, their widescreen country rock and well-groomed boogie harking back to Truck history. They make the transition from Charlbury to Truck without losing any punch.
Blessing Force is brilliant: not only is a lot of the music very good, but what is not good is hilarious. In the Last.FM tent on Saturday, we enjoyed being alternately entertained by the music and entertained by the sheer hideous hipster spectacle of things. Sealings fell into the former category. In the past, we’ve been unconvinced by this noisy drum machine backed duo: they weren’t doing much wrong, but it was more a souvenir of good music, than good music in its own right. This time, however, everything fell into place, as the intensity rose from a Jesus & Mary Chain drone to a Swans-inspired squall. Solid Gold Dragons, on the other hand, were possibly the worst thing to happen to us over the weekend – and that includes getting nearly vomited on by a toddler. Their plastic, stadium pop with light reggae inflections might be just about acceptable if the vocals weren’t so clod-hoppingly oafish, even whilst they tried to plumb cosmic realms of imagery. Imagine Big Audio Dynamite on an off night fronted by Bernard Matthews. No, wait, sometimes the trumpet made it more like a tired James lead by Derek Nimmo taking the piss out of Morrissey. No, wait, can we please stop thinking about this, forever?
Wednesday, 31 August 2011
Holy Truck
Of course, since I wrote this review Truck festrival (or rather, Steventon Events, who run it) has gone bust. I decided to leave the review as it was writtena day or two after the event, rather than go into hysterical eulogies. I'll miss it, though, for all its faults.
Sat & Sun copming very soon.
Yes, there are a lot of words here. Don't read them if you don't weant to, I don't mind. There are plenty of blogs out there that average 10 words a post, go and find them, if you don't like reading. You deserve each other.
TRUCK FESITVAL, Hill Farm, Steventon, 22-4/7/11
FRIDAY
Oh, there’ll be letters. Pints will be mumbled into. The internet may be utilised. Truck has done the unthinkable, and redesigned the festival site. Not only is the main stage in a different place, it’s in a different damned field. And the barn is gone. Everyone loved the barn. Everyone loved the atrocious acoustics, awkward bottleneck entrance and lingering smell of cow faeces. Who wants this new Clash stage, with its high-quality PA and easy access?
Well, we do. We feel that, for the most part, Truck’s new, more spacious layout is a success, and if they have co-opted some of the trappings of the well-heeled boutique festivals they helped to create – posh sit-down dining, stalls selling over-priced nick-nacks made from old Penguin paperbacks – the old, unpretentious, home-made atmosphere still survives. And, yes, you can still buy doughnuts from the vicar and grub from the Round Tablers (quote of the weekend: “I got a lovely burger, but it was weird to buy it from the masons”).
Our weekend starts in the new Clash tent, with Gaggle, a large bunch of vibrantly bedecked young ladies doing a line in big tribal pop chants. It’s something like a school nativity play version of Bow Wow Wow, and is good honest fun. There are about 35 of them, which we suppose might look impressive if we hadn’t just spent 20 minutes as part of a large and twitchy crowd at the Steventon level crossing, as some sort of ovine emergency meltdown caused by sheep on the line a few miles away meant that the barriers had to be kept inexplicably closed.
The Wood stage is a cosy, intimate tent that is sadly a little underused over the weekend, but it’s a the perfect place to watch Water Pageant, a likable folk-pop trio, whose delicate sound might get lost in larger spaces. At another corner of the site, the Last.FM stage is curated on the Friday night by BBC Oxford Introducing, and we’re tempted to say this was the lineup of the weekend. The Braindead Collective swap their free improv racket for an exploration of open-ended pop, and it works beautifully, Chris Beard’s lucid, careening voice sailing high above a mixture of dub touches and Fripp-like effects.
Mr Shaodow follows them admirably, with a crowd pleasingly boisterous set that may have hidden some of his clever lyrics, but highlights his way with an eager audience. Shadow is one of an odd breed of Oxford-connected artists who always get a rave reception at Truck, but who generally play to small, indifferent audiences in the city (cf testpilot, nervous), and with this in mind we can hardly blame Shaodow for keeping things accessible. One question though: are we missing something or is DJ Watchcase the worst hip hop moniker in a fifty mile radius?
You Are Wolf aren’t mentioned in the programme, but we stumble across her making complex loops of vocals and keyboard, to deliver a lilting traditional folk song over the top. She then announces it was actually a Dolly Parton cover! Did we imagine this?
Back at the Wood stage, London’s Non-Classical club have taken over for the evening, and we have the pleasure of being amongst the small attendance for one of the sets of the weekend, from Consortium 5, a recorder quintet. In previous years a recorder only ensemble at Truck might have meant Piney Gir and chums arsing about and playing smugly dire Steely Dan covers, but Consortium 5 is a highly drilled, professional group of musicians, offering us a little Purcell and a lot of contemporary composition. The sonic range is astounding, from the sound of a baroque traffic jam through a Ligeti-like cloud of chirrups to the final number, a mass of breathy percussive bursts and gasping trills, like Thomas the Tank Engine and friends playing Takemitsu. It’s random discoveries like this that make Truck special.
There are lot of people on the Truck bill this year who Used To Be In Bands, which is fine, but there are also a lot Whose Dads Used To Be In Bands: Truck wants to watch that it doesn’t become some sort of indie Cornbury. An example for the prosecution would be Liam Finn, offspring of him out of Crowded House, who is decent enough but pretty dull, going for a wall of sound pop effect, but losing us swiftly.
Perhaps feeling guilty for giving up on Finn so quickly, we decide to give Africa Junction more of a chance, and are amply rewarded for doing so. At first, they sound too studied to make anything from their polite African percussion – Jesus, we left East Oxford for the weekend to get away from this stuff – but as the tempo drops, and the balafon starts to lead the music, it wafts out of the Cabaret tent like a warm sirocco.
Johnny Flynn reminds us happily of childhood TV, and Rolf Harris painting vast wall-sized pictures with house paints. Flynn’s band similarly takes simple, bold strokes and throws them together to create something impressive. There’s nothing here we’ve not heard before, just chunky folky choruses, lively trumpet lines, bluesy guitar licks, and a bit of ‘cello to underpin things, but the whole is rather lovely.
James Surowiecki wrote a book called The Wisdom Of Crowds, claiming that large groups of people are effectively cleverer than individuals. Our problem with this theory has always been that vast crowds of people are generally seen assembled to watch adequate but unexciting things like Coldplay or Michael McIntyre – just how fucking clever can they be? Still, we get a little buzz of pleasure in seeing hundreds of Truckers swaying along to Bellowhead’s outstanding version of “Amsterdam”, squeezing every drop of tawdry voyeurism and tragic celebration from Brel’s composition. In truth, this is the outstanding moment of set that is very good, but doesn’t reach the heights of their 2010 performance. Uncharacteristically, it’s the slower tracks that are more successful this time round, although the wah-wah mandolin does lend a funky edge to the more upbeat songs (images of Starsky & Hutch driving through Cecil Sharp House in a flurry of madrigal manuscripts). Not up to their own high standards, perhaps, but still probably the best festival band on the circuit.
Nipping out to catch some of Spring Offensive’s set turns out to be an excellent decision. We’ve always admired their music, but tonight the Introducing stage witnesses a band coming of age. Not only do they perform with an acidic intensity we’ve never seen before, but new track “52 Miles” takes the melancholic triumphalism of their best songs, but replaces the Youth Movies guitar twiddles with a slow-burning haze that eventually erupts into a bloom of furry beauty. A very good band just got better.
And we follow that be revisiting a good local band whom we had somewhat forgotten. Dive Dive remind us that they can produce bitter little nuggets of pop excellence, and send us off happily into the night, or at least towards the beer tent.
Sat & Sun copming very soon.
Yes, there are a lot of words here. Don't read them if you don't weant to, I don't mind. There are plenty of blogs out there that average 10 words a post, go and find them, if you don't like reading. You deserve each other.
TRUCK FESITVAL, Hill Farm, Steventon, 22-4/7/11
FRIDAY
Oh, there’ll be letters. Pints will be mumbled into. The internet may be utilised. Truck has done the unthinkable, and redesigned the festival site. Not only is the main stage in a different place, it’s in a different damned field. And the barn is gone. Everyone loved the barn. Everyone loved the atrocious acoustics, awkward bottleneck entrance and lingering smell of cow faeces. Who wants this new Clash stage, with its high-quality PA and easy access?
Well, we do. We feel that, for the most part, Truck’s new, more spacious layout is a success, and if they have co-opted some of the trappings of the well-heeled boutique festivals they helped to create – posh sit-down dining, stalls selling over-priced nick-nacks made from old Penguin paperbacks – the old, unpretentious, home-made atmosphere still survives. And, yes, you can still buy doughnuts from the vicar and grub from the Round Tablers (quote of the weekend: “I got a lovely burger, but it was weird to buy it from the masons”).
Our weekend starts in the new Clash tent, with Gaggle, a large bunch of vibrantly bedecked young ladies doing a line in big tribal pop chants. It’s something like a school nativity play version of Bow Wow Wow, and is good honest fun. There are about 35 of them, which we suppose might look impressive if we hadn’t just spent 20 minutes as part of a large and twitchy crowd at the Steventon level crossing, as some sort of ovine emergency meltdown caused by sheep on the line a few miles away meant that the barriers had to be kept inexplicably closed.
The Wood stage is a cosy, intimate tent that is sadly a little underused over the weekend, but it’s a the perfect place to watch Water Pageant, a likable folk-pop trio, whose delicate sound might get lost in larger spaces. At another corner of the site, the Last.FM stage is curated on the Friday night by BBC Oxford Introducing, and we’re tempted to say this was the lineup of the weekend. The Braindead Collective swap their free improv racket for an exploration of open-ended pop, and it works beautifully, Chris Beard’s lucid, careening voice sailing high above a mixture of dub touches and Fripp-like effects.
Mr Shaodow follows them admirably, with a crowd pleasingly boisterous set that may have hidden some of his clever lyrics, but highlights his way with an eager audience. Shadow is one of an odd breed of Oxford-connected artists who always get a rave reception at Truck, but who generally play to small, indifferent audiences in the city (cf testpilot, nervous), and with this in mind we can hardly blame Shaodow for keeping things accessible. One question though: are we missing something or is DJ Watchcase the worst hip hop moniker in a fifty mile radius?
You Are Wolf aren’t mentioned in the programme, but we stumble across her making complex loops of vocals and keyboard, to deliver a lilting traditional folk song over the top. She then announces it was actually a Dolly Parton cover! Did we imagine this?
Back at the Wood stage, London’s Non-Classical club have taken over for the evening, and we have the pleasure of being amongst the small attendance for one of the sets of the weekend, from Consortium 5, a recorder quintet. In previous years a recorder only ensemble at Truck might have meant Piney Gir and chums arsing about and playing smugly dire Steely Dan covers, but Consortium 5 is a highly drilled, professional group of musicians, offering us a little Purcell and a lot of contemporary composition. The sonic range is astounding, from the sound of a baroque traffic jam through a Ligeti-like cloud of chirrups to the final number, a mass of breathy percussive bursts and gasping trills, like Thomas the Tank Engine and friends playing Takemitsu. It’s random discoveries like this that make Truck special.
There are lot of people on the Truck bill this year who Used To Be In Bands, which is fine, but there are also a lot Whose Dads Used To Be In Bands: Truck wants to watch that it doesn’t become some sort of indie Cornbury. An example for the prosecution would be Liam Finn, offspring of him out of Crowded House, who is decent enough but pretty dull, going for a wall of sound pop effect, but losing us swiftly.
Perhaps feeling guilty for giving up on Finn so quickly, we decide to give Africa Junction more of a chance, and are amply rewarded for doing so. At first, they sound too studied to make anything from their polite African percussion – Jesus, we left East Oxford for the weekend to get away from this stuff – but as the tempo drops, and the balafon starts to lead the music, it wafts out of the Cabaret tent like a warm sirocco.
Johnny Flynn reminds us happily of childhood TV, and Rolf Harris painting vast wall-sized pictures with house paints. Flynn’s band similarly takes simple, bold strokes and throws them together to create something impressive. There’s nothing here we’ve not heard before, just chunky folky choruses, lively trumpet lines, bluesy guitar licks, and a bit of ‘cello to underpin things, but the whole is rather lovely.
James Surowiecki wrote a book called The Wisdom Of Crowds, claiming that large groups of people are effectively cleverer than individuals. Our problem with this theory has always been that vast crowds of people are generally seen assembled to watch adequate but unexciting things like Coldplay or Michael McIntyre – just how fucking clever can they be? Still, we get a little buzz of pleasure in seeing hundreds of Truckers swaying along to Bellowhead’s outstanding version of “Amsterdam”, squeezing every drop of tawdry voyeurism and tragic celebration from Brel’s composition. In truth, this is the outstanding moment of set that is very good, but doesn’t reach the heights of their 2010 performance. Uncharacteristically, it’s the slower tracks that are more successful this time round, although the wah-wah mandolin does lend a funky edge to the more upbeat songs (images of Starsky & Hutch driving through Cecil Sharp House in a flurry of madrigal manuscripts). Not up to their own high standards, perhaps, but still probably the best festival band on the circuit.
Nipping out to catch some of Spring Offensive’s set turns out to be an excellent decision. We’ve always admired their music, but tonight the Introducing stage witnesses a band coming of age. Not only do they perform with an acidic intensity we’ve never seen before, but new track “52 Miles” takes the melancholic triumphalism of their best songs, but replaces the Youth Movies guitar twiddles with a slow-burning haze that eventually erupts into a bloom of furry beauty. A very good band just got better.
And we follow that be revisiting a good local band whom we had somewhat forgotten. Dive Dive remind us that they can produce bitter little nuggets of pop excellence, and send us off happily into the night, or at least towards the beer tent.
Monday, 8 August 2011
Trevor Trove
"Blackbird singing in the dark/ Falling like a star/ But singing like a lark"
I allude to these lines later in the review, but thoughtthey were worth quoting here. C'mon, Trev, don't you know that a simile is supposed to find unexpected relationships between two things for poetic effect, not to liken something to something pretty similar in such a way as to emphasise their differences?
"The dog was barking as loud as another dog - quite a loud one", is not a great simile.
If Robbie Burns had been Trev he'd not have written "My love is like a red, red rose," but "My love is like fondness. You know, an emotion that expresses amorous feelings. Yeah, that's about right".
I personally think Trev wanted to write about blackbirds because he likes Paul McCartney...
TREV WILLIAMS – KEEP SINGING EP (Self release)
Trev Williams is one of the good guys. One of Oxford music’s nice blokes, he always has a smile and a positive lyric for any passer by. Except when he gets a bit angry and moans about everything, but even the he tends to apologise afterwards. Top man. But still, we’ve never really got a grasp on his music, which we’ve always found pleasant, harmless and – let’s be frank – trite. His trio The Follys, despite an infuriating approach to pluralisation, made a tight enough noise we’ll admit, but we still couldn’t find much in the songwriting to get excited about.
Then, about 18 months ago, we were watching Trev play at the arse end of some bill somewhere, and suddenly realised that we were enjoying it. The new songs wormed their way into our consciousness in a way the older ones never had, and a Labi Siffre cover proved that Trev had polished his singing voice. This new EP proves conclusively that the best thing a musician can have is not perfect pitch, posh equipment or a Dad who works for EMI, but determination and dedication. It’s a great little listen, and welcomes Trev into the upper echelons of Oxford’s singer-songwriters.
“Happy Song” might be the sort of platitudinous pop that Trev is wont to indulge in, but it does sound pretty great, with a delayed toy piano complementing an approachable vocal melody. Its optimistic bonhomie can be a little wearing, like having some Phil Daniels impersonator slap you on the back gurning “Cheer up, might never ‘appen” every 8 bars, but it’s undeniably well put together. “In The Dark” is similar fare. The song doesn’t set us alight – in fact, the only memorable bit is snaffled from “My Girl” – but it’s probably the best vocal performance Trev has ever put onto wax, and the crisp production is built around a supply dark keyboard part that puts us in mind of Red Snapper.
This pair are all very well and good, but it’s the other two tracks that really show how Williams has developed. Nightshift Demo Of The Month winner “You Cut, We Bleed” still sounds wonderful, a burst of rage and reverb that blossoms into a life-affirming piano jaunt when the pressure threatens to break the song apart. It was composed in response to recent public spending cuts, but frankly the lyrics are so opaque that it could easily have been about sloppy management at Trev’s favourite football club, or the time his housemate drank all the milk. No problems there, the simplicity and directness of the lyrics makes the song feel universal, and suggests it may have a shelf life beyond the current administration.
It’s a great tune, but it’s eclipsed by the title track. We’ll skim over the opening couplet, which has one of the clumsier similes we’ve ever heard, and jump straight into the meat of the song, a gorgeous cyclical, floating melody that wafts over the top of delicately plucked guitar. Live versions have often drifted away into loop pedal heaven, and our only real criticism of the piece is that we could have done with more of it. Anyone who thinks this review sounds a bit patronising or distant might like to know that the last time we found ourselves inadvertently humming an Oxford tune this much, it was “Zorbing”, which is high praise indeed. Keep singing? If there’s one thing we can conclude about this release, it’s that we hope Trev takes his own advice, and that there’s lots more like this to come.
I allude to these lines later in the review, but thoughtthey were worth quoting here. C'mon, Trev, don't you know that a simile is supposed to find unexpected relationships between two things for poetic effect, not to liken something to something pretty similar in such a way as to emphasise their differences?
"The dog was barking as loud as another dog - quite a loud one", is not a great simile.
If Robbie Burns had been Trev he'd not have written "My love is like a red, red rose," but "My love is like fondness. You know, an emotion that expresses amorous feelings. Yeah, that's about right".
I personally think Trev wanted to write about blackbirds because he likes Paul McCartney...
TREV WILLIAMS – KEEP SINGING EP (Self release)
Trev Williams is one of the good guys. One of Oxford music’s nice blokes, he always has a smile and a positive lyric for any passer by. Except when he gets a bit angry and moans about everything, but even the he tends to apologise afterwards. Top man. But still, we’ve never really got a grasp on his music, which we’ve always found pleasant, harmless and – let’s be frank – trite. His trio The Follys, despite an infuriating approach to pluralisation, made a tight enough noise we’ll admit, but we still couldn’t find much in the songwriting to get excited about.
Then, about 18 months ago, we were watching Trev play at the arse end of some bill somewhere, and suddenly realised that we were enjoying it. The new songs wormed their way into our consciousness in a way the older ones never had, and a Labi Siffre cover proved that Trev had polished his singing voice. This new EP proves conclusively that the best thing a musician can have is not perfect pitch, posh equipment or a Dad who works for EMI, but determination and dedication. It’s a great little listen, and welcomes Trev into the upper echelons of Oxford’s singer-songwriters.
“Happy Song” might be the sort of platitudinous pop that Trev is wont to indulge in, but it does sound pretty great, with a delayed toy piano complementing an approachable vocal melody. Its optimistic bonhomie can be a little wearing, like having some Phil Daniels impersonator slap you on the back gurning “Cheer up, might never ‘appen” every 8 bars, but it’s undeniably well put together. “In The Dark” is similar fare. The song doesn’t set us alight – in fact, the only memorable bit is snaffled from “My Girl” – but it’s probably the best vocal performance Trev has ever put onto wax, and the crisp production is built around a supply dark keyboard part that puts us in mind of Red Snapper.
This pair are all very well and good, but it’s the other two tracks that really show how Williams has developed. Nightshift Demo Of The Month winner “You Cut, We Bleed” still sounds wonderful, a burst of rage and reverb that blossoms into a life-affirming piano jaunt when the pressure threatens to break the song apart. It was composed in response to recent public spending cuts, but frankly the lyrics are so opaque that it could easily have been about sloppy management at Trev’s favourite football club, or the time his housemate drank all the milk. No problems there, the simplicity and directness of the lyrics makes the song feel universal, and suggests it may have a shelf life beyond the current administration.
It’s a great tune, but it’s eclipsed by the title track. We’ll skim over the opening couplet, which has one of the clumsier similes we’ve ever heard, and jump straight into the meat of the song, a gorgeous cyclical, floating melody that wafts over the top of delicately plucked guitar. Live versions have often drifted away into loop pedal heaven, and our only real criticism of the piece is that we could have done with more of it. Anyone who thinks this review sounds a bit patronising or distant might like to know that the last time we found ourselves inadvertently humming an Oxford tune this much, it was “Zorbing”, which is high praise indeed. Keep singing? If there’s one thing we can conclude about this release, it’s that we hope Trev takes his own advice, and that there’s lots more like this to come.
Tuesday, 2 August 2011
Automatic For The Pupil
Been ages, hasn't it? Fear not, there shall be a mammoth Truck review coming next time we meet. In fact, it'll be so long you won't actually read it. Even if you mean to, you'll get bored or sidetracked. I don't mind, I'm relatively phlegmatic about it all.
THE SCHOLARS/ DEAD JERICHOS/ PEERS/ VON BRAUN/ MANACLES OF ACID, Upstairs/BBC Introducing, Academy, 16/7/11
“Not from round here, are you, boy?”. Some of you may be cynical about this statement, but the worst band by far at the latest in the Academy's showcases are the one from outside Oxford. Reading’s Peers make a clumpy sort of epic indie, that’s a bit like Echo & The Bunnymen meets Simple Minds, but is more like a Runrig tribute made by flustered heifers whilst nearby a maudlin drunk honks out indecipherable paeans to a shop dummy that his addled brain thinks is his Mum. Dead Jerichos have an easy job reinvigorating us after that, their music still a flurry of skittering hi-hats and beery bonhomie, like The Jam on a weekend long stag do with Suggs. We could do with a more restrained use of the delay pedal, but otherwise familiarity has not spoilt this young band.
Much earlier The Manacles Of Acid reprised their Charlbury set by playing to almost nobody – in fact, even one of the band wasn’t there this time. Like the coelacanth in 1938, many have just discovered that acid house is far from extinct, and that it laughs in the face of evolution. The Manacles have a great sound, half-inching bits from Bam Bam and Model 500 to make a sleek yet squelchy ride. One noodling Sven Vath wrong turn is swiftly forgiven.
Sadly “Black Saxon” isn’t a NWOBHM retelling of Shaft, but in it and other tracks, Von Braun present a honed rock sound that balances light Sonic Youth guitar chug with Allman Brothers vocal harmonies. The set starts shakily, but builds to great head, complete with wired Frank Black declamations. The Scholars, conversely, play a balanced set of evocative pop, honed and studied (as the name suggests), all forlorn, dewy eyed vocal lines bolstered by keyboard washes and well placed crescendos. We consider The Scholars to be an impressive band with full control over their material, and the ability and focus to present it convincingly, even whilst our heart is screaming “Stop making these boring noises at us, and do something worthwhile”. Call it a draw?
THE SCHOLARS/ DEAD JERICHOS/ PEERS/ VON BRAUN/ MANACLES OF ACID, Upstairs/BBC Introducing, Academy, 16/7/11
“Not from round here, are you, boy?”. Some of you may be cynical about this statement, but the worst band by far at the latest in the Academy's showcases are the one from outside Oxford. Reading’s Peers make a clumpy sort of epic indie, that’s a bit like Echo & The Bunnymen meets Simple Minds, but is more like a Runrig tribute made by flustered heifers whilst nearby a maudlin drunk honks out indecipherable paeans to a shop dummy that his addled brain thinks is his Mum. Dead Jerichos have an easy job reinvigorating us after that, their music still a flurry of skittering hi-hats and beery bonhomie, like The Jam on a weekend long stag do with Suggs. We could do with a more restrained use of the delay pedal, but otherwise familiarity has not spoilt this young band.
Much earlier The Manacles Of Acid reprised their Charlbury set by playing to almost nobody – in fact, even one of the band wasn’t there this time. Like the coelacanth in 1938, many have just discovered that acid house is far from extinct, and that it laughs in the face of evolution. The Manacles have a great sound, half-inching bits from Bam Bam and Model 500 to make a sleek yet squelchy ride. One noodling Sven Vath wrong turn is swiftly forgiven.
Sadly “Black Saxon” isn’t a NWOBHM retelling of Shaft, but in it and other tracks, Von Braun present a honed rock sound that balances light Sonic Youth guitar chug with Allman Brothers vocal harmonies. The set starts shakily, but builds to great head, complete with wired Frank Black declamations. The Scholars, conversely, play a balanced set of evocative pop, honed and studied (as the name suggests), all forlorn, dewy eyed vocal lines bolstered by keyboard washes and well placed crescendos. We consider The Scholars to be an impressive band with full control over their material, and the ability and focus to present it convincingly, even whilst our heart is screaming “Stop making these boring noises at us, and do something worthwhile”. Call it a draw?
Thursday, 7 July 2011
Raving Private Cyan
Thank you for reading this. I don't say that as often as I should, but I mean it. Ooh, my downloads have just boiled, best be off.
COLOUREDS – TOM HANKS EP (Download)
“Don’t it always seem to go,” mused Joni Mitchell, “that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?”. Quite possibly, you querulous folk activist, you, but to balance this we find that sometimes we have no idea we needed something until it turns up. For example, a year or so ago we were all living our lives quite oblivious to the fact that what Oxford music really required was a masked duo that sound like a cross between Felix Da Housecat and Autechre. But then we discovered Coloureds.
This record follows on from where their last left off, taking shiny, flexy club music and folding it in on itself like intricate dancefloor origami. The title track sounds like it could once have been a perky, approachable piece of contemporary house, replete with a near pornographic video of cheerleaders working out and getting caught in a thunderstorm, that Coloureds have stuck through a shredder and stuck back together in any old order. There’s a fascinating balance in the title track between an enticingly simple bounce in the drums, and a jittering, fractal collection of keyboard snatches and vocal fragments that is just too swift for the ear to comfortably accommodate.
“Monocle” is really more of the same, although it has a slightly more coherent lead keyboard line, bringing it closer to the more abrasive strains of funky. “Do You Want To Come Back To My Room And Listen To SebastiAn?” uses the same recipe, but stirs in some distorted and sliced guitar from This Town Needs Guns’ Tom Collis, and has a clumsy euphoria that’s refreshing: like the best of Coloured’s music, it’s neither the all-consuming Nuremberg glitter thump of High Street club music, nor the academic prissiness of the current micro-generation of IDM, but manages to find a space where the feet want to dance even as the mind gets lost in a hall of sonic mirrors. Oh, and it sounds like that little Pixar anglepoise all growed up, and out of its tiny bulb on its first E.
To be brutally frank, listening to all five tracks of this EP consecutively becomes a trifle wearing, especially as two are remixes of "Tom Hanks" (although one is mixed by SHHH! THE DEAF HAVE AIDS, which may or may not be the greatest arrangement of five words in the English language), and brilliant as Coloureds’ skitterstep tricks are, after a while you just yearn for a simple melody, or a vocal that can stay in one place for two beats together. But, whilst it’s possible to sit and marvel at the ingenious construction of the EP, it’s not made to be digested at leisure, and as a live act, or as creators of music to be heard punishingly loud in a damp cellar, Coloureds are far and away the best in Oxford. If life is just a box of chocolates, on the Tom Hanks EP Coloureds have smooshed them all up into one giant confectionary ball. And filled it with tequila. Dig in.
COLOUREDS – TOM HANKS EP (Download)
“Don’t it always seem to go,” mused Joni Mitchell, “that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?”. Quite possibly, you querulous folk activist, you, but to balance this we find that sometimes we have no idea we needed something until it turns up. For example, a year or so ago we were all living our lives quite oblivious to the fact that what Oxford music really required was a masked duo that sound like a cross between Felix Da Housecat and Autechre. But then we discovered Coloureds.
This record follows on from where their last left off, taking shiny, flexy club music and folding it in on itself like intricate dancefloor origami. The title track sounds like it could once have been a perky, approachable piece of contemporary house, replete with a near pornographic video of cheerleaders working out and getting caught in a thunderstorm, that Coloureds have stuck through a shredder and stuck back together in any old order. There’s a fascinating balance in the title track between an enticingly simple bounce in the drums, and a jittering, fractal collection of keyboard snatches and vocal fragments that is just too swift for the ear to comfortably accommodate.
“Monocle” is really more of the same, although it has a slightly more coherent lead keyboard line, bringing it closer to the more abrasive strains of funky. “Do You Want To Come Back To My Room And Listen To SebastiAn?” uses the same recipe, but stirs in some distorted and sliced guitar from This Town Needs Guns’ Tom Collis, and has a clumsy euphoria that’s refreshing: like the best of Coloured’s music, it’s neither the all-consuming Nuremberg glitter thump of High Street club music, nor the academic prissiness of the current micro-generation of IDM, but manages to find a space where the feet want to dance even as the mind gets lost in a hall of sonic mirrors. Oh, and it sounds like that little Pixar anglepoise all growed up, and out of its tiny bulb on its first E.
To be brutally frank, listening to all five tracks of this EP consecutively becomes a trifle wearing, especially as two are remixes of "Tom Hanks" (although one is mixed by SHHH! THE DEAF HAVE AIDS, which may or may not be the greatest arrangement of five words in the English language), and brilliant as Coloureds’ skitterstep tricks are, after a while you just yearn for a simple melody, or a vocal that can stay in one place for two beats together. But, whilst it’s possible to sit and marvel at the ingenious construction of the EP, it’s not made to be digested at leisure, and as a live act, or as creators of music to be heard punishingly loud in a damp cellar, Coloureds are far and away the best in Oxford. If life is just a box of chocolates, on the Tom Hanks EP Coloureds have smooshed them all up into one giant confectionary ball. And filled it with tequila. Dig in.
Monday, 27 June 2011
Playing Flat
This one was cut very slightly for this month's Nightshift. Firstly a couple of words were trimmed to squeeze it into the page, and secondly the rape image was toned down. Can't argue with that, really, but I must say that Harpo raping a swan, like some sort of inverse carnival Zeus, tickles me enormously.
That's all.
APARTMENT HOUSE, PLAYHOUSE, OCM/Sound & Music, 15/6/11
“The trouble with state arts funding,” runs the common argument, “is that it only supports things most people don’t like”. Funny that. It’s like asking why Baron Sugar doesn’t get any housing benefit. Tonight’s show, four pieces performed by the excellent Apartment House, selected and introduced by composer Jennifer Walshe, is exactly what Arts Council funding is for: niche interest music that simply wouldn’t work in The Wheatsheaf. The Playhouse is inhabited by a sparse knot of listeners, but the performers make full use of the excellent onstage facilities.
Amnon Wolman’s “Dead End” pits a clarinettist against four noisy toy vehicles that bumble around his feet, as if he were an unfeeling deity surrounded by excitable mortals. At first their constant buzz is annoying, but as the ear calibrates itself the noise makes sense with the clarinet lines. We start thinking about tape hiss, vinyl crackle and all extraneous noises we unconsciously experience alongside music.
Zachary Seldess attempts to evoke the sound of a cranky old New York shower in “124 Milton Street Extract”, using marimba, drums, radio static and rubbed wine glasses (played by five solemn middle aged performers at a table, like a glum seance convened by Jilly Goolden). The two drummers are superb, teetering on the edge of a cohesive rhythm, and the music is more like a photofit of the sound of plumbing, than a snapshot. It’s fascinating and immersive, if a touch too long.
In Peter Capaldi’s film Franz Kafka’s It’s A Wonderful Life, the Czech writer is trying to stay miserable enough to finish Metamorphosis, but has trouble as parties rage around him. “Plateaux Pour Deux” by Pelle Gudmondsen-Holmgreen is pretty similar: a cellist plays parodically dour notes, trying hard to ignore the fact he’s on a small motorised platform nipping across the stage, and that someone is smacking cowbells and honking vintage car horns making noises like Harpo Marx raping a swan. The solo cello coda is pointless, but for sheer spectacle, this is truly unique.
Finally, Jonathon Marmou’s “Dog Star” is composed from randomly selected snippets of melody, but this is unimportant because it sounds like Parisian salon music created by Brian Wilson. At another time it might seem too prissily pretty, but it concludes the night gorgeously, with a fragmented chamber elegance that might just entice fans of The Penguin Cafe Orchestra.
The next in OCM and Sound & Music’s Listen To This series is at the same venue on 8th September. Should minority interest arts be funded by the tax-paying majority? Take the odd risk on new experiences, and they wouldn’t have to be.
That's all.
APARTMENT HOUSE, PLAYHOUSE, OCM/Sound & Music, 15/6/11
“The trouble with state arts funding,” runs the common argument, “is that it only supports things most people don’t like”. Funny that. It’s like asking why Baron Sugar doesn’t get any housing benefit. Tonight’s show, four pieces performed by the excellent Apartment House, selected and introduced by composer Jennifer Walshe, is exactly what Arts Council funding is for: niche interest music that simply wouldn’t work in The Wheatsheaf. The Playhouse is inhabited by a sparse knot of listeners, but the performers make full use of the excellent onstage facilities.
Amnon Wolman’s “Dead End” pits a clarinettist against four noisy toy vehicles that bumble around his feet, as if he were an unfeeling deity surrounded by excitable mortals. At first their constant buzz is annoying, but as the ear calibrates itself the noise makes sense with the clarinet lines. We start thinking about tape hiss, vinyl crackle and all extraneous noises we unconsciously experience alongside music.
Zachary Seldess attempts to evoke the sound of a cranky old New York shower in “124 Milton Street Extract”, using marimba, drums, radio static and rubbed wine glasses (played by five solemn middle aged performers at a table, like a glum seance convened by Jilly Goolden). The two drummers are superb, teetering on the edge of a cohesive rhythm, and the music is more like a photofit of the sound of plumbing, than a snapshot. It’s fascinating and immersive, if a touch too long.
In Peter Capaldi’s film Franz Kafka’s It’s A Wonderful Life, the Czech writer is trying to stay miserable enough to finish Metamorphosis, but has trouble as parties rage around him. “Plateaux Pour Deux” by Pelle Gudmondsen-Holmgreen is pretty similar: a cellist plays parodically dour notes, trying hard to ignore the fact he’s on a small motorised platform nipping across the stage, and that someone is smacking cowbells and honking vintage car horns making noises like Harpo Marx raping a swan. The solo cello coda is pointless, but for sheer spectacle, this is truly unique.
Finally, Jonathon Marmou’s “Dog Star” is composed from randomly selected snippets of melody, but this is unimportant because it sounds like Parisian salon music created by Brian Wilson. At another time it might seem too prissily pretty, but it concludes the night gorgeously, with a fragmented chamber elegance that might just entice fans of The Penguin Cafe Orchestra.
The next in OCM and Sound & Music’s Listen To This series is at the same venue on 8th September. Should minority interest arts be funded by the tax-paying majority? Take the odd risk on new experiences, and they wouldn’t have to be.
Thursday, 23 June 2011
Charlbury 2011 Sunday Pt 2
Our love of louche Gallic troubadours Les Clochards is well documented, so we shan’t dwell on it here. One thing that leaps out at us is the quality of the lyrics in their set (thankfully for this shamefaced monoglot, pretty much all in English today). “Some things were never made clear/ Behind the surface, another veneer” is a lovely couplet in “Lavinia”, and the line “I stood on the fire escape and watched the sunrise” still raises the hairs on the back of the neck in “Tango Borracho”. Songwriting: some of you bands reading this really should try it one day.
Remember Banjo Boy from a few years back? Well, he’s here today, playing with The Headington Hillbillies, and we forget to watch. Very poor. We do see some of The Fenns, a family affair featuring different generations of Charlbury locals who get the best response of the weekend. Proficient covers isn’t really our bag – and having to listen to “Magic Carpet Ride” twice in one day is really testing us – but The Fenns boast plenty of charm, and there’s evident pleasure being had on and off stage, so we just sneak away quietly.
So, congratulations are in order to the Riverside organisors once again for another wonderful festival. A lovely weekend, and entirely for free: an obvious point, perhaps, but one worth repeating. If you doubt the effort that goes into running Riverside, take a look at the film of the site being set up on their website, embedded from Twitney, which we suppose is a Witney version of Twitter (of course, they’ve had social networking in West Oxfordshire for millennia, it’s called in-breeding). Riverside should be supported, cherished and celebrated by anyone who appreciates live music, especially today, when so many festivals have all the character and charm of a gulag in a Welcome Break motorway services. Same time next year, then?
Remember Banjo Boy from a few years back? Well, he’s here today, playing with The Headington Hillbillies, and we forget to watch. Very poor. We do see some of The Fenns, a family affair featuring different generations of Charlbury locals who get the best response of the weekend. Proficient covers isn’t really our bag – and having to listen to “Magic Carpet Ride” twice in one day is really testing us – but The Fenns boast plenty of charm, and there’s evident pleasure being had on and off stage, so we just sneak away quietly.
So, congratulations are in order to the Riverside organisors once again for another wonderful festival. A lovely weekend, and entirely for free: an obvious point, perhaps, but one worth repeating. If you doubt the effort that goes into running Riverside, take a look at the film of the site being set up on their website, embedded from Twitney, which we suppose is a Witney version of Twitter (of course, they’ve had social networking in West Oxfordshire for millennia, it’s called in-breeding). Riverside should be supported, cherished and celebrated by anyone who appreciates live music, especially today, when so many festivals have all the character and charm of a gulag in a Welcome Break motorway services. Same time next year, then?
Charlbury 2011 Sunday
Hello, good people of the internet. And wankers; a big "hi" to the evil wankers. To be honest, you're relative moral merits are irrelevant to me, just read the reviews and enjoy them. If it turns out you steal nuts from squirrels immediately afterwards, it's no concern of mine.
RIVERSIDE FESTIVAL, CHARLBURY, 19/6/11
As much fun as Saturday was, Sunday packed in a few more surprises for us, not least with Grey Children, the new project for Dave Griffiths, once of Eeebleee and Witches. As befits a first live performance of songs played by a scratch band, there are hesitant, uncertain moments in the set, but the material is very strong, with a muscular poeticism that’s something like a cross between Tindersticks and Sugar, with some excellent baroque curlicues from Benek Chylinski’s trumpet and Chris Fulton’s violin. Not a project we expect to see gracing the stage with great regularity, so it’s a real treat for those who turn up early.
After discovering him last year, we have to hang around to catch a bit of Sonny Black’s performance. You see so much hollow showboating in blues, it’s just great to see a relaxed, unhurried musician who lets his technique serve the music, and not the other way round. Hints of Davey Graham and John Renbourn abound, as well as the greats like Doc Watson. Sonny also plays some nice bottleneck national guitar, a gorgeous instrument which is only spoilt by the fact that just looking at the thing reminds us of Brothers In Arms.
A complete change of style at the other end of the festival, with thumping drum machines and squelching 303 basslines. We have an admission: we have no critical faculties in the face of acid house. None whatsoever. Honestly, just the sound of it immerses us in a wash of serotonin-drenched euphoria, taking us direct to cloud 909. So, for us to observe that Manacles Of Acid are very good indeed is probably meaningless, but they do a bang up job of reliving that wonderful space between Phuture and early Orbital. There’s a lovably ramshackle edge to the show, as lines come in at different volumes, and jack leads are swapped on the fly, but really if you do this music well, it always sounds good, you don’t have to rewrite the rulebook. So, not that dissimilar from Sonny Black after all.
Main stage engineer Jimmy Evil disappears at about this time, so we follow him over to the second stage to witness his progcore outfit Komrad. Since we last saw them, the tracks have been rearranged a little, and the music is less the unforgiving technical metal of old, and has a lighter, post-Zappa bounce: it’s not the all-out jape of Mike Patton’s more leftfield projects, but there is definite humour on display, not least in the genius song title “Parking Restrictions In Seaside Towns (Strongly Worded Letter To The Council)”. At moments the set is a little approximate – with intricate arrangements like these there’s nowhere to hide the odd fluff – but this is a band well worth watching.
People might look at Steamroller and call them dinosaurs. That would be forgetting, of course, that dinosaurs are COOL. An unreconstructed power blues trio will send some people into frothing excitement (especially those who remember the younger Steamroller from their Corn Dolly days), just as it will bore others to silent tears, but even the most vehement critic would have to admit that Steamroller have more than earned their place in Oxford music history, and that drummer Larry Reddington’s lyrics have a knowing humour: he could probably pen a witty lyric like “Back In Ten Minutes” whilst most of his peers were still trying to find a rhyme for “Cadillac”.
We’ve never quite managed to warm to Gunning For Tamar, for some reason. Their music is equidistant between Hretha and Spring Offensive, but for us they don’t have the rigorous elasticity of the former nor the emotive beauty of the latter. Solid, twitchy Oxford artpop, played very well, but not much else to our ears.
The Prohibition Smokers Club have developed in the past year from a random jam session to smooth, stadium soul party. Sort of a mixed blessing, as some of the set is too polite, but the highlights are excellent: “Graveyard Shift” is a smoky sketch of urban night owls, like a collaboration between Tom Waits and the Love Unlimited Orchestra, and the final track is a spicy open-ended funk workout. Really they’re the sort of groove revue that can only be judged after two 90 minute sets and a gallon of Long Island Iced Tea, it seems as though they’re just getting warmed up when the gig finishes.
One great thing about Riverside is all the children in attendance who seem to actually love the music. We saw a lad of about four moshing away to Gunning For Tamar, and by the time Alphabet Backwards come on, he’s rounded up a whole bunch of chums, all right in front of the stage. “Oh God,” observes an audience member to us, “they’re flocking. It’s like The Birds”. But then, Alphabet Backwards are a band for the unabashed child inside us all, an improbably joyous froth of pop melodies and chirpy keyboards. The closing track, new to us, sounds like a mixture of The Streets and Supertramp. Brilliant.
We thought Every Hippie’s Dream was world peace, with perhaps the chance to smoke a joint and look at a lady’s boobs taking a close second, but apparently what they like is 60s and 70s rock covers. So, look, when the sun’s out and someone’s playing “Foxy Lady” and they’re not completely rubbish the world can never seem an entirely awful place, but someone’s clearly been bogarting the originality round at EHD’s commune, as there isn’t much character to speak of on stage. They also seem to run out of steam a couple of numbers before the end of the set: if getting from one end to the other of “Sunshine Of Your Love” is a terrible chore, perhaps the covers circuit isn’t for you, lads.
Death Of Hifi give us instrumental hip hop next, which is a tribute to Riverside’s diversity. There are some nice mid-90s beats and some cheeky samples, plus decent scratching and guitar playing, but none of the tracks go anywhere. A rapper hops up to freestyle over one of the tracks, and whilst he’s not quite got the flow of Half Decent, who guested with Prohibition Smokers Club, his presence lifts the music from a moraine of unconnected ideas. A blueprint for future developments, perhaps.
RIVERSIDE FESTIVAL, CHARLBURY, 19/6/11
As much fun as Saturday was, Sunday packed in a few more surprises for us, not least with Grey Children, the new project for Dave Griffiths, once of Eeebleee and Witches. As befits a first live performance of songs played by a scratch band, there are hesitant, uncertain moments in the set, but the material is very strong, with a muscular poeticism that’s something like a cross between Tindersticks and Sugar, with some excellent baroque curlicues from Benek Chylinski’s trumpet and Chris Fulton’s violin. Not a project we expect to see gracing the stage with great regularity, so it’s a real treat for those who turn up early.
After discovering him last year, we have to hang around to catch a bit of Sonny Black’s performance. You see so much hollow showboating in blues, it’s just great to see a relaxed, unhurried musician who lets his technique serve the music, and not the other way round. Hints of Davey Graham and John Renbourn abound, as well as the greats like Doc Watson. Sonny also plays some nice bottleneck national guitar, a gorgeous instrument which is only spoilt by the fact that just looking at the thing reminds us of Brothers In Arms.
A complete change of style at the other end of the festival, with thumping drum machines and squelching 303 basslines. We have an admission: we have no critical faculties in the face of acid house. None whatsoever. Honestly, just the sound of it immerses us in a wash of serotonin-drenched euphoria, taking us direct to cloud 909. So, for us to observe that Manacles Of Acid are very good indeed is probably meaningless, but they do a bang up job of reliving that wonderful space between Phuture and early Orbital. There’s a lovably ramshackle edge to the show, as lines come in at different volumes, and jack leads are swapped on the fly, but really if you do this music well, it always sounds good, you don’t have to rewrite the rulebook. So, not that dissimilar from Sonny Black after all.
Main stage engineer Jimmy Evil disappears at about this time, so we follow him over to the second stage to witness his progcore outfit Komrad. Since we last saw them, the tracks have been rearranged a little, and the music is less the unforgiving technical metal of old, and has a lighter, post-Zappa bounce: it’s not the all-out jape of Mike Patton’s more leftfield projects, but there is definite humour on display, not least in the genius song title “Parking Restrictions In Seaside Towns (Strongly Worded Letter To The Council)”. At moments the set is a little approximate – with intricate arrangements like these there’s nowhere to hide the odd fluff – but this is a band well worth watching.
People might look at Steamroller and call them dinosaurs. That would be forgetting, of course, that dinosaurs are COOL. An unreconstructed power blues trio will send some people into frothing excitement (especially those who remember the younger Steamroller from their Corn Dolly days), just as it will bore others to silent tears, but even the most vehement critic would have to admit that Steamroller have more than earned their place in Oxford music history, and that drummer Larry Reddington’s lyrics have a knowing humour: he could probably pen a witty lyric like “Back In Ten Minutes” whilst most of his peers were still trying to find a rhyme for “Cadillac”.
We’ve never quite managed to warm to Gunning For Tamar, for some reason. Their music is equidistant between Hretha and Spring Offensive, but for us they don’t have the rigorous elasticity of the former nor the emotive beauty of the latter. Solid, twitchy Oxford artpop, played very well, but not much else to our ears.
The Prohibition Smokers Club have developed in the past year from a random jam session to smooth, stadium soul party. Sort of a mixed blessing, as some of the set is too polite, but the highlights are excellent: “Graveyard Shift” is a smoky sketch of urban night owls, like a collaboration between Tom Waits and the Love Unlimited Orchestra, and the final track is a spicy open-ended funk workout. Really they’re the sort of groove revue that can only be judged after two 90 minute sets and a gallon of Long Island Iced Tea, it seems as though they’re just getting warmed up when the gig finishes.
One great thing about Riverside is all the children in attendance who seem to actually love the music. We saw a lad of about four moshing away to Gunning For Tamar, and by the time Alphabet Backwards come on, he’s rounded up a whole bunch of chums, all right in front of the stage. “Oh God,” observes an audience member to us, “they’re flocking. It’s like The Birds”. But then, Alphabet Backwards are a band for the unabashed child inside us all, an improbably joyous froth of pop melodies and chirpy keyboards. The closing track, new to us, sounds like a mixture of The Streets and Supertramp. Brilliant.
We thought Every Hippie’s Dream was world peace, with perhaps the chance to smoke a joint and look at a lady’s boobs taking a close second, but apparently what they like is 60s and 70s rock covers. So, look, when the sun’s out and someone’s playing “Foxy Lady” and they’re not completely rubbish the world can never seem an entirely awful place, but someone’s clearly been bogarting the originality round at EHD’s commune, as there isn’t much character to speak of on stage. They also seem to run out of steam a couple of numbers before the end of the set: if getting from one end to the other of “Sunshine Of Your Love” is a terrible chore, perhaps the covers circuit isn’t for you, lads.
Death Of Hifi give us instrumental hip hop next, which is a tribute to Riverside’s diversity. There are some nice mid-90s beats and some cheeky samples, plus decent scratching and guitar playing, but none of the tracks go anywhere. A rapper hops up to freestyle over one of the tracks, and whilst he’s not quite got the flow of Half Decent, who guested with Prohibition Smokers Club, his presence lifts the music from a moraine of unconnected ideas. A blueprint for future developments, perhaps.
Tuesday, 21 June 2011
Bank Data
The review of this year's Riverside is up at MIO. No arguments yet, but it's early days. Course, I like people moaning about my reviews, because it proves they're being read...yes, even idiots who don't understand what a review is are welcome to join the fun.
I did want to post the first paragraph and put the rest up 24 hours later, but the editor wasn't up for me fighting my petty battles on the front of his website. Pah.
I'll stick Sunday up in a day or two.
RIVERSIDE FESTIVAL, CHARLBURY, 18-9/6/11
Riverside was brilliant because it was free and everyone had a good time and all the musicians were great and it was brilliant.
Right, is the coast clear, have they gone? You know, those people who can’t tell the difference between a review and a press release? That lot who don’t quite grasp that the best compliment you can pay a musician is actually to listen to them? The gaggle who do one of the absolute highlights of Oxfordshire’s music calendar a disservice by getting upset if someone dares admit that one of the performers was, perhaps, not that great?
Good, then we level headed people can get on with talking about the Charlbury Riverside festival 2011, always a beautifully run, welcoming event, and one that we organise our summer around because we’d hate to ever miss it. In some ways, it doesn’t spoil the event if the music is duff at Riverside but we must admit, this year the lineup was, pound for pound, the strongest it’s been for quite some years. And starting with Peerless Pirates certainly couldn’t dampen anybody’s spirits, even as the first of many showers blew across the festival. They play classic indie welded onto rugged, shanty-style basslines that justify the band’s name: think The Wedding Present with arrangements by Guybrush Threepwood. Not always painfully original – you don’t have to be Scott Bakula to make the quantum leap from their opening tune to “This Charming Man” – but they offer friendly, jolly music that inaugurates the festival almost as well as the near visible battle in compere Lee Christian not to say naughty words on the mike.
This year’s lineup on the second stage is definitely the strongest and most intriguing since the Beard Museum left the helm, and our first visit rewards us with one of the sets of the weekend. Last time we saw STEM, it was all acoustic guitars and bongos and it couldn’t have been more worthily earthy if the PA were powered by a tofu wind turbine. Now they’ve returned to their Neustar roots to give us fat, brooding trip hop in the vein of Portishead and Lamb. Emma Higgins has a richly soulful but mysteriously intimate voice, like Grace Jones whispering secrets in your ear over port and cigars, and John West’s electronics envelop her with dark wings of autumnal sound, that's often only a breakbeat away from early Moving Shadow material. Perhaps a tad too in thrall to their mid-90s influences, this is still a band that is worth investigating as soon as possible.
We cock a quick ear in the direction of Mundane Sands, whose expansive folk rock is played with relish and personality, before visiting the charmingly odd man selling the coffees. You want a tasty Americano and a string of confounding non-sequiturs, you won’t get a better option anywhere in England. Last year we began to wonder whether he was some sort of live theatre installation, so unexpected were his utterances. You wouldn’t get that at your corporate energy drink sponsored mega-fests, eh?
They ought to show videos of Samuel Zasada before every acoustic night and open mike session in the county, with a subtitle reading “This is what you’re aiming for; if all you’ve got are miserable sub-Blunt moans, go home and try again. Thank you”. There have been alterations and expansions to the Zasada lineup since our last meeting, but they can still imbue their tunes with a gravitas and texture that’s sadly lacking from nearly all of their peers.
The Black Hats have only really got one song. It’s a goodie, though, a slick new wave canter with an anthemic culture-yob chorus and the hint of some amphetamine ska lurking just below the surface. They play it a bunch of times today. We like it every time. Job done.
Like Samuel Zasada, Tamara Parsons-Baker has been showing up the paucity of talent in most acoustic performers with a powerful, dramatic voice and some bleakly imposing lyrics. The Martyrs is her new rhythm section, featuring colleagues form the recently disbanded Huck & The Handsome Fee (not to mention much-missed sludgehogs Sextodecimo). We like the fact that there is pain and bitterness evident in the songs, but the delivery is always melodically accessible; they sugar the pill like Oxford’s answer to The Beautiful South.
What’s that? No, we quite like The Beautiful South. No, honestly. Anyway, Tamara & The Martyrs don’t actually sound like them, they play a sort of gothic blues, it was just an analogy. Look, let’s make this easier, and move on to The Dirty Royals. No room for confusion here because they sound – and to a certain extent, look – like first album Blur. Not a band that has “develop sonically” at the top of the To Do list stuck to their fridge, maybe, but to dislike their mixture of upbeat indie and airy West coast psychedelia you’d need a cold, black heart and a suspicion of music in general. And we have both those, and we still enjoyed it.
We wander over the see Welcome To Peepworld, and are simply astonished by the first two songs we hear. Their semi-acoustic sound is cohesive and balanced, but like mid-period Dylan the songs are allusive and intriguing to keep you hooked as the music floats by. We’re just wondering how amazing it is that two vocalists as different yet as impressive as Tamara Parsons-Baker and Fi McFall could share a stage at a free provincial festival, and pulling out the thesaurus to look up “astounding”, when Welcome To Peepworld toss it all away. Why, why, why did they have to start the affected cod-Brazilian vocal trilling? What possessed them to do all the horrible, Morrisette trash with the lazy repetitive lyrics about bad relationships and the criminally uninteresting use of two good guitarists? We thought we’d found one of the best bands in Oxfordshire, but Peepworld broke out heart and we had to leave. No, no, it’s nothing, there’s just something in our eye...
Things are more reliable over on the main stage, with The Anydays. As the name suggests, they’re a band for all seasons. So long as that season is early summer. In North London. In 1964 or 1994. Again, this is a good band, but not one who are interested in pushing the envelope. In fact, they probably wouldn’t even open the envelope unless they knew it contained loads of lager and Chelsea boots and old Pye seven inches. But if ever there’s a place for well-made moddish rocking, that place has got to be a big field at a free festival. Even as we’re nodding along, we imagine somehow merging The Anydays, The Dirty Royals and The Black Hats, to turn three solid local bands into one world-beating Friday night behemoth.
Smilex are playing on the second stage, uncredited in the programme. If you don’t like Smilex, you should get a bit tired and a little damp, and walk over to find them playing a set just when you weren’t expecting it, and we reckon you’ll come out loving them. Days like this is what Smilex are for - well, this and Your Song - rousing flagging crowds with their irrepressible energy and remarkably well-made sleaze-punk. Each of their songs is like the quick, sharp tingle of pulling gaffer tape from your chest; can’t think where we got that image from, Lee.
Borderville are sort of the opposite of Smilex. They are a truly excellent band, but one whose music, for all the bow ties and bombast, works better on record, where the sensitive playing is evident and where it’s possible to relish the subtle melancholy beneath every epic composition. An evening in a field just doesn’t do them justice, the environment seems to demand more immediate gratification than they offer. It’s like putting P G Wodehouse on Mock The Week. A favourite act of ours, but not a set that we really got much out of.
And then it was home, because that’s what the transport dictated - the countryside’s all very well, but it’s nowhere near our bed. There was still Charly Coombes, The Rock Of Travolta and Leburn to go, all of whom we know to be highly reliable options. A very strong day of music, in a delightful setting, it’s pretty hard to find fault with that.
I did want to post the first paragraph and put the rest up 24 hours later, but the editor wasn't up for me fighting my petty battles on the front of his website. Pah.
I'll stick Sunday up in a day or two.
RIVERSIDE FESTIVAL, CHARLBURY, 18-9/6/11
Riverside was brilliant because it was free and everyone had a good time and all the musicians were great and it was brilliant.
Right, is the coast clear, have they gone? You know, those people who can’t tell the difference between a review and a press release? That lot who don’t quite grasp that the best compliment you can pay a musician is actually to listen to them? The gaggle who do one of the absolute highlights of Oxfordshire’s music calendar a disservice by getting upset if someone dares admit that one of the performers was, perhaps, not that great?
Good, then we level headed people can get on with talking about the Charlbury Riverside festival 2011, always a beautifully run, welcoming event, and one that we organise our summer around because we’d hate to ever miss it. In some ways, it doesn’t spoil the event if the music is duff at Riverside but we must admit, this year the lineup was, pound for pound, the strongest it’s been for quite some years. And starting with Peerless Pirates certainly couldn’t dampen anybody’s spirits, even as the first of many showers blew across the festival. They play classic indie welded onto rugged, shanty-style basslines that justify the band’s name: think The Wedding Present with arrangements by Guybrush Threepwood. Not always painfully original – you don’t have to be Scott Bakula to make the quantum leap from their opening tune to “This Charming Man” – but they offer friendly, jolly music that inaugurates the festival almost as well as the near visible battle in compere Lee Christian not to say naughty words on the mike.
This year’s lineup on the second stage is definitely the strongest and most intriguing since the Beard Museum left the helm, and our first visit rewards us with one of the sets of the weekend. Last time we saw STEM, it was all acoustic guitars and bongos and it couldn’t have been more worthily earthy if the PA were powered by a tofu wind turbine. Now they’ve returned to their Neustar roots to give us fat, brooding trip hop in the vein of Portishead and Lamb. Emma Higgins has a richly soulful but mysteriously intimate voice, like Grace Jones whispering secrets in your ear over port and cigars, and John West’s electronics envelop her with dark wings of autumnal sound, that's often only a breakbeat away from early Moving Shadow material. Perhaps a tad too in thrall to their mid-90s influences, this is still a band that is worth investigating as soon as possible.
We cock a quick ear in the direction of Mundane Sands, whose expansive folk rock is played with relish and personality, before visiting the charmingly odd man selling the coffees. You want a tasty Americano and a string of confounding non-sequiturs, you won’t get a better option anywhere in England. Last year we began to wonder whether he was some sort of live theatre installation, so unexpected were his utterances. You wouldn’t get that at your corporate energy drink sponsored mega-fests, eh?
They ought to show videos of Samuel Zasada before every acoustic night and open mike session in the county, with a subtitle reading “This is what you’re aiming for; if all you’ve got are miserable sub-Blunt moans, go home and try again. Thank you”. There have been alterations and expansions to the Zasada lineup since our last meeting, but they can still imbue their tunes with a gravitas and texture that’s sadly lacking from nearly all of their peers.
The Black Hats have only really got one song. It’s a goodie, though, a slick new wave canter with an anthemic culture-yob chorus and the hint of some amphetamine ska lurking just below the surface. They play it a bunch of times today. We like it every time. Job done.
Like Samuel Zasada, Tamara Parsons-Baker has been showing up the paucity of talent in most acoustic performers with a powerful, dramatic voice and some bleakly imposing lyrics. The Martyrs is her new rhythm section, featuring colleagues form the recently disbanded Huck & The Handsome Fee (not to mention much-missed sludgehogs Sextodecimo). We like the fact that there is pain and bitterness evident in the songs, but the delivery is always melodically accessible; they sugar the pill like Oxford’s answer to The Beautiful South.
What’s that? No, we quite like The Beautiful South. No, honestly. Anyway, Tamara & The Martyrs don’t actually sound like them, they play a sort of gothic blues, it was just an analogy. Look, let’s make this easier, and move on to The Dirty Royals. No room for confusion here because they sound – and to a certain extent, look – like first album Blur. Not a band that has “develop sonically” at the top of the To Do list stuck to their fridge, maybe, but to dislike their mixture of upbeat indie and airy West coast psychedelia you’d need a cold, black heart and a suspicion of music in general. And we have both those, and we still enjoyed it.
We wander over the see Welcome To Peepworld, and are simply astonished by the first two songs we hear. Their semi-acoustic sound is cohesive and balanced, but like mid-period Dylan the songs are allusive and intriguing to keep you hooked as the music floats by. We’re just wondering how amazing it is that two vocalists as different yet as impressive as Tamara Parsons-Baker and Fi McFall could share a stage at a free provincial festival, and pulling out the thesaurus to look up “astounding”, when Welcome To Peepworld toss it all away. Why, why, why did they have to start the affected cod-Brazilian vocal trilling? What possessed them to do all the horrible, Morrisette trash with the lazy repetitive lyrics about bad relationships and the criminally uninteresting use of two good guitarists? We thought we’d found one of the best bands in Oxfordshire, but Peepworld broke out heart and we had to leave. No, no, it’s nothing, there’s just something in our eye...
Things are more reliable over on the main stage, with The Anydays. As the name suggests, they’re a band for all seasons. So long as that season is early summer. In North London. In 1964 or 1994. Again, this is a good band, but not one who are interested in pushing the envelope. In fact, they probably wouldn’t even open the envelope unless they knew it contained loads of lager and Chelsea boots and old Pye seven inches. But if ever there’s a place for well-made moddish rocking, that place has got to be a big field at a free festival. Even as we’re nodding along, we imagine somehow merging The Anydays, The Dirty Royals and The Black Hats, to turn three solid local bands into one world-beating Friday night behemoth.
Smilex are playing on the second stage, uncredited in the programme. If you don’t like Smilex, you should get a bit tired and a little damp, and walk over to find them playing a set just when you weren’t expecting it, and we reckon you’ll come out loving them. Days like this is what Smilex are for - well, this and Your Song - rousing flagging crowds with their irrepressible energy and remarkably well-made sleaze-punk. Each of their songs is like the quick, sharp tingle of pulling gaffer tape from your chest; can’t think where we got that image from, Lee.
Borderville are sort of the opposite of Smilex. They are a truly excellent band, but one whose music, for all the bow ties and bombast, works better on record, where the sensitive playing is evident and where it’s possible to relish the subtle melancholy beneath every epic composition. An evening in a field just doesn’t do them justice, the environment seems to demand more immediate gratification than they offer. It’s like putting P G Wodehouse on Mock The Week. A favourite act of ours, but not a set that we really got much out of.
And then it was home, because that’s what the transport dictated - the countryside’s all very well, but it’s nowhere near our bed. There was still Charly Coombes, The Rock Of Travolta and Leburn to go, all of whom we know to be highly reliable options. A very strong day of music, in a delightful setting, it’s pretty hard to find fault with that.
Sunday, 29 May 2011
The War On Pteradactyl
Do you know what I'm not doing tonight? Going to The Wheatsheaf. Great place, of course, but if I did it three nights in a row it wouldn't do me the world of good, I suspect. You can't live on a diet of Oxford Gold and tinitus, can you?
V/A – WE DO NOT HAVE A DINOSAUR (download)
People doing things for charity, we like that. People doing bleepy things, we like that. So, let’s be honest, we’re well disposed towards this Japan tsunami fundraising LP from promoters The Psychotechnic League and The Modernist Disco, featuring various flavours of Oxfordshire electronica. As is the way with this sort of thing, the record feels more like a grab bag than a carefully cohered entity, but anybody with a passing interest in digital dance music should find something to make the fiver tag acceptable, not least the efforts from the curators of the project: We Are Ugly (But We Have The Music) offers a simple little chugger that sounds like it could have been made by a schoolchild on their Amga (not necessarily a bad thing), and Space Heroes Of The People’s “Kosmoceratops”, an insistent spiral of buzzing synths that’s like being harangued by Jean-Michel Jarre at a political rally.
There’s a fair variety of styles on offer, from Left Outer Join’s crusty trance that brings back king Rizla memories of Astralasia, to icy Biosphere tones from The Keyboard Choir, and Sikorski’s chest-thumping synth rock (which we don’t really like, because it sounds like Big Country doing Eurovision, but it makes a change). “Winter Sounds 4” by King Of Beggars isn’t the arctic techno we were expecting, but rather a portentous grid of synthesised harp with a bleak vocal direct from early OMD, and it’s rather great. Meanwhile, The Manacles Of Acid live up to their name by producing straightforward acid house with samples about, err, acid house; it’s almost criminally unoriginal, but if like us, you find any vestige of critical opinion evaporating in the face of a 303, you’ll agree it’s bloody brilliant. Tiger Mendoza and Cez can also hold their heads high.
But we end with the best. Coloureds have made a track called “Tennis”, which is logical, because listening to its relentless chopped vocal fragments feels like spending four minutes as the ball in a game of Pong. It also sounds like it’s going to break into Orbital’s “Chime”, which is obviously fantastic. Perhaps not a perfect LP, but one well worth getting hold of...unless you’re one of those people who thinks that electronic isn’t real music, in which case just go stick your head in a bucket of elephant dung. I bet even the bucket is plastic. Can’t even get a proper tin bucket nowadays. Poor you. Yes, yes, we know: hell in a handcart.
V/A – WE DO NOT HAVE A DINOSAUR (download)
People doing things for charity, we like that. People doing bleepy things, we like that. So, let’s be honest, we’re well disposed towards this Japan tsunami fundraising LP from promoters The Psychotechnic League and The Modernist Disco, featuring various flavours of Oxfordshire electronica. As is the way with this sort of thing, the record feels more like a grab bag than a carefully cohered entity, but anybody with a passing interest in digital dance music should find something to make the fiver tag acceptable, not least the efforts from the curators of the project: We Are Ugly (But We Have The Music) offers a simple little chugger that sounds like it could have been made by a schoolchild on their Amga (not necessarily a bad thing), and Space Heroes Of The People’s “Kosmoceratops”, an insistent spiral of buzzing synths that’s like being harangued by Jean-Michel Jarre at a political rally.
There’s a fair variety of styles on offer, from Left Outer Join’s crusty trance that brings back king Rizla memories of Astralasia, to icy Biosphere tones from The Keyboard Choir, and Sikorski’s chest-thumping synth rock (which we don’t really like, because it sounds like Big Country doing Eurovision, but it makes a change). “Winter Sounds 4” by King Of Beggars isn’t the arctic techno we were expecting, but rather a portentous grid of synthesised harp with a bleak vocal direct from early OMD, and it’s rather great. Meanwhile, The Manacles Of Acid live up to their name by producing straightforward acid house with samples about, err, acid house; it’s almost criminally unoriginal, but if like us, you find any vestige of critical opinion evaporating in the face of a 303, you’ll agree it’s bloody brilliant. Tiger Mendoza and Cez can also hold their heads high.
But we end with the best. Coloureds have made a track called “Tennis”, which is logical, because listening to its relentless chopped vocal fragments feels like spending four minutes as the ball in a game of Pong. It also sounds like it’s going to break into Orbital’s “Chime”, which is obviously fantastic. Perhaps not a perfect LP, but one well worth getting hold of...unless you’re one of those people who thinks that electronic isn’t real music, in which case just go stick your head in a bucket of elephant dung. I bet even the bucket is plastic. Can’t even get a proper tin bucket nowadays. Poor you. Yes, yes, we know: hell in a handcart.
Monday, 23 May 2011
THE SHAODOW KNWS
I'm listening to Public Enemy at the moment, they popped up on a compilation I have on. I always forget just how great they are. Fittingly, here's a hip hop review, albeit one that doesn't sound like "Don't Believe The Hype".
See you later, silly rabbits.
MR SHAODOW FEAT. GHETTS – GET STRONGER (Download single)
He may not be the most prolific of Oxford-connected musicians, but Mr ShaoDow has got to be up there with the hardest working. On any given weekend you’ll most likely find him playing a gig in some small provincial town, or traversing the length and breadth of the nation to sell his CDs on the streets. Perhaps our image of the dedicated performer in the 21st century isn’t of somebody practising six hours a day, or playing three hour marathon sets, but of someone spending huge chunks of their day online, updating statuses and emailing the frighteningly diasporic contemporary music media. Depressing? Maybe, but then again ShaoDow is getting his work heard all over the show, and what’s more, it’s being done 100% on his own terms.
Fittingly, this new single is a paean to positivity and effort: “Knock me down, I get stronger”, warns ShaoDow, painting himself as a sort of hip hop cross between Obi Wan Kenobi and a weeble. Can’t argue with that philosophy. Musically “Get Stronger” is a satisfyingly heavy, juddering whirr of a track, a dubstep version of an aging VW trying to start on a cold morning, and ShaoDow’s delivery is his most rugged yet to appear on record, which is fitting as his style has been slowly morphing from the cabaret one liners of old to a fast, intense, head down chaingun delivery that’s something akin to Twista raised on British club music (ShaoDow may have criticised the culture in the past, but the B side here, “Stay Away” owes a fair bit to grime) . We might miss the incisive humour of “Watch Out” or “R U Stoopid?!”, or the joyous madness of “Cockney Thug” in this record, but these are definitely ShaoDow’s most mature and well-honed bars, there’s not an ounce of spare flesh on the lyrics, and we’re suitably impressed by a sequence that rhymes “calibre”, “Africa”, “mafia” and the excellently ballsy “I grab fear by the trachea”. Ghetts offers a little respite with a more relaxed, thoughtful style that recalls previous ShaoDow collaborator LeeN, albeit with a slightly straighter face.
This is an excellent release, and one that may well propel ShaoDow on to the next step in his career. What we hope to see next is some recordings that marry this sleek professionalism with his irrepressible character and originality, but until then this single comes highly recommended. We must admit, however, that we don’t care for “Stay Away”, which not only has an annoyingly nasal sub-Albarn refrain, but also appears to boast some unreconstructed “my Dad’s bigger than your Dad” lyrics, which is the sort of thing ShaoDow normally avoids.
What’s that? We shouldn’t end the review on a negative point? That’s OK, ShaoDow doesn’t mind: whatever doesn’t kill him makes him stronger.
See you later, silly rabbits.
MR SHAODOW FEAT. GHETTS – GET STRONGER (Download single)
He may not be the most prolific of Oxford-connected musicians, but Mr ShaoDow has got to be up there with the hardest working. On any given weekend you’ll most likely find him playing a gig in some small provincial town, or traversing the length and breadth of the nation to sell his CDs on the streets. Perhaps our image of the dedicated performer in the 21st century isn’t of somebody practising six hours a day, or playing three hour marathon sets, but of someone spending huge chunks of their day online, updating statuses and emailing the frighteningly diasporic contemporary music media. Depressing? Maybe, but then again ShaoDow is getting his work heard all over the show, and what’s more, it’s being done 100% on his own terms.
Fittingly, this new single is a paean to positivity and effort: “Knock me down, I get stronger”, warns ShaoDow, painting himself as a sort of hip hop cross between Obi Wan Kenobi and a weeble. Can’t argue with that philosophy. Musically “Get Stronger” is a satisfyingly heavy, juddering whirr of a track, a dubstep version of an aging VW trying to start on a cold morning, and ShaoDow’s delivery is his most rugged yet to appear on record, which is fitting as his style has been slowly morphing from the cabaret one liners of old to a fast, intense, head down chaingun delivery that’s something akin to Twista raised on British club music (ShaoDow may have criticised the culture in the past, but the B side here, “Stay Away” owes a fair bit to grime) . We might miss the incisive humour of “Watch Out” or “R U Stoopid?!”, or the joyous madness of “Cockney Thug” in this record, but these are definitely ShaoDow’s most mature and well-honed bars, there’s not an ounce of spare flesh on the lyrics, and we’re suitably impressed by a sequence that rhymes “calibre”, “Africa”, “mafia” and the excellently ballsy “I grab fear by the trachea”. Ghetts offers a little respite with a more relaxed, thoughtful style that recalls previous ShaoDow collaborator LeeN, albeit with a slightly straighter face.
This is an excellent release, and one that may well propel ShaoDow on to the next step in his career. What we hope to see next is some recordings that marry this sleek professionalism with his irrepressible character and originality, but until then this single comes highly recommended. We must admit, however, that we don’t care for “Stay Away”, which not only has an annoyingly nasal sub-Albarn refrain, but also appears to boast some unreconstructed “my Dad’s bigger than your Dad” lyrics, which is the sort of thing ShaoDow normally avoids.
What’s that? We shouldn’t end the review on a negative point? That’s OK, ShaoDow doesn’t mind: whatever doesn’t kill him makes him stronger.
Monday, 9 May 2011
Daisy Bones (Of Dead Saints, Presumably)
I was looking over the posts yesterday, and the number of times I introduce a piece by noting how ill I feel is concerning. Today, just so you know, I feel fine. This gig did its best to alter that, of course...
RELIK/ COWBOY RACER/ BREATHING LIGHT/ BROWNIAN MOTION, Daisy Rodgers, Jericho, 7/5/11
“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it”.
Groucho’s words ring true as we leave the Jericho after as much of Relik as we can handle. Daisy Rodgers promotions have been an excellent addition to the Oxford scene for the past couple of years, running well thought out, friendly nights, with lots of character (consider the dubiously named Rodd Of Hotness game, which allows advance ticket buyers to vote for a cover version to be performed on the night). The nights are also incredible successes – whilst many promoters of unsigned bands are found hoping for a turnout in double figures, the only trouble Daisy Rodgers’ door staff has is working out whether they have time to nip to the loo at some point in the steady stream of customers. But, whilst we have only support for the Daisy experience, this particular gig was something of a damp squib.
The depressing thing for us about the last election was not necessarily that the result wasn’t what we had hoped for, but the fact that so many people didn’t bother to vote (let’s not even start discussions on the referendum). Staffordshire duo Brownian Motion evoke a similar feeling: their dramatic, rootsy flurries, pitched somewhere between Counting Crows and Sheryl Crow aren’t really for us, but they truly deserve a better reception than 95% of the Jericho gives them, not so much talking through their set, as howling and whooping like chimps on a rollercoaster. The odd, wistful Cowboy Junkies moment in Brownian Motion’s set are immediately lost in the sea of babble, which is a pity as this is their strongest element.
Breathing Light’s first number has a turn of the 90s, polished goth feel to it, the unhurried, melodic female vocals and lightly scuffed guitar and keyboards instantly bringing to mind Curve, Lush, or even the first Cranberries LP. They’re pretty good at it, but the second number reveals a stronger influence: Portishead. “I Remember” is pretty much “Sour Times” without the chorus, and their Hotness vote-winning cover is “Roads”. They do a decent enough job of aping the introspective Bristolians, and it certainly suits the pellucid vocals, but they don’t really have the gravitas in the rhythm section to pull it off, and the set works best when they bring in a brighter, neo-shoegaze sound that reminds us a little of Tsunami (the US ethereal pop band, not Mark Cobb’s local rockers). It’s a highly promising set from a band who could do with working out what their own voice sounds like.
Cowboy Racer is the new project of Salad’s Marijne Van Der Vlugt. There are some other, session muso types onstage, but it’s Marijne most people have come to see, and it is she whom we find endlessly infuriating. Why does she drop into husky whispers and kooky chirrups mid-song, whilst gesticulating oddly, is it supposed to be sexily kittenish? Why does she suddenly leap on the spot, wild-eyed like TV-AM’s Mad Lizzie, are we supposed to feel swept up in euphoria?
Van Der Vlugt has a pleasant voice, but it’s a bit too thin to keep the interest alive in songs that sound like a toned down Transvision Vamp with electronics from the Byker Grove incidental music library. “R U Receiving Me?” is the best track, with unabashed Tomorrow’s World keyboards and some robotic disco-Kraftrwerk vocals, but even this melding of Yello and Goldfrapp isn’t as convincing as it should be: like the rest of the set, it feels undercooked and presented with a whiff of desperation. It takes them three tries to get through set-closer “Yellow Horse”, even though it sounds like a seven year old improvising over a Megadrive game – again, how can that end up sounding boring? Of course, there are middle-aged men around the stage staring intently throughout and filming the gig for their archives – one guy even has a smart phone in either hand. The technology has changed since they used to watch Salad, but sadly the music is equally slight and unsatisfying.
Relik don’t do much for us, but they are at least generic, not enraging. Their big-boned songs seem designed for fists in the air rock solidarity, taking a blueprint from The Foo Fighters and adding a little bit of Placebo, and we suppose they manage it well enough, keeping the sizable crowd entertained. If you like blocky, unsubtle clomps that sound like The Stereophonics strained through a giant tissue, then Relik will probably do the trick. Also a good choice if you like the idea of gigs (you know, drinking lots of expensive beer, talking through the supports and then standing in a big huddle feeling the same uncomplex pleasure of togetherness), but tend to find concerts in Oxford a bit frightening or confusing. Actually, Relik are good band for people who find the Daily Star crossword frightening and confusing. As Groucho nearly said: A child of five could understand Relik; send someone to fetch a child of five.
RELIK/ COWBOY RACER/ BREATHING LIGHT/ BROWNIAN MOTION, Daisy Rodgers, Jericho, 7/5/11
“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it”.
Groucho’s words ring true as we leave the Jericho after as much of Relik as we can handle. Daisy Rodgers promotions have been an excellent addition to the Oxford scene for the past couple of years, running well thought out, friendly nights, with lots of character (consider the dubiously named Rodd Of Hotness game, which allows advance ticket buyers to vote for a cover version to be performed on the night). The nights are also incredible successes – whilst many promoters of unsigned bands are found hoping for a turnout in double figures, the only trouble Daisy Rodgers’ door staff has is working out whether they have time to nip to the loo at some point in the steady stream of customers. But, whilst we have only support for the Daisy experience, this particular gig was something of a damp squib.
The depressing thing for us about the last election was not necessarily that the result wasn’t what we had hoped for, but the fact that so many people didn’t bother to vote (let’s not even start discussions on the referendum). Staffordshire duo Brownian Motion evoke a similar feeling: their dramatic, rootsy flurries, pitched somewhere between Counting Crows and Sheryl Crow aren’t really for us, but they truly deserve a better reception than 95% of the Jericho gives them, not so much talking through their set, as howling and whooping like chimps on a rollercoaster. The odd, wistful Cowboy Junkies moment in Brownian Motion’s set are immediately lost in the sea of babble, which is a pity as this is their strongest element.
Breathing Light’s first number has a turn of the 90s, polished goth feel to it, the unhurried, melodic female vocals and lightly scuffed guitar and keyboards instantly bringing to mind Curve, Lush, or even the first Cranberries LP. They’re pretty good at it, but the second number reveals a stronger influence: Portishead. “I Remember” is pretty much “Sour Times” without the chorus, and their Hotness vote-winning cover is “Roads”. They do a decent enough job of aping the introspective Bristolians, and it certainly suits the pellucid vocals, but they don’t really have the gravitas in the rhythm section to pull it off, and the set works best when they bring in a brighter, neo-shoegaze sound that reminds us a little of Tsunami (the US ethereal pop band, not Mark Cobb’s local rockers). It’s a highly promising set from a band who could do with working out what their own voice sounds like.
Cowboy Racer is the new project of Salad’s Marijne Van Der Vlugt. There are some other, session muso types onstage, but it’s Marijne most people have come to see, and it is she whom we find endlessly infuriating. Why does she drop into husky whispers and kooky chirrups mid-song, whilst gesticulating oddly, is it supposed to be sexily kittenish? Why does she suddenly leap on the spot, wild-eyed like TV-AM’s Mad Lizzie, are we supposed to feel swept up in euphoria?
Van Der Vlugt has a pleasant voice, but it’s a bit too thin to keep the interest alive in songs that sound like a toned down Transvision Vamp with electronics from the Byker Grove incidental music library. “R U Receiving Me?” is the best track, with unabashed Tomorrow’s World keyboards and some robotic disco-Kraftrwerk vocals, but even this melding of Yello and Goldfrapp isn’t as convincing as it should be: like the rest of the set, it feels undercooked and presented with a whiff of desperation. It takes them three tries to get through set-closer “Yellow Horse”, even though it sounds like a seven year old improvising over a Megadrive game – again, how can that end up sounding boring? Of course, there are middle-aged men around the stage staring intently throughout and filming the gig for their archives – one guy even has a smart phone in either hand. The technology has changed since they used to watch Salad, but sadly the music is equally slight and unsatisfying.
Relik don’t do much for us, but they are at least generic, not enraging. Their big-boned songs seem designed for fists in the air rock solidarity, taking a blueprint from The Foo Fighters and adding a little bit of Placebo, and we suppose they manage it well enough, keeping the sizable crowd entertained. If you like blocky, unsubtle clomps that sound like The Stereophonics strained through a giant tissue, then Relik will probably do the trick. Also a good choice if you like the idea of gigs (you know, drinking lots of expensive beer, talking through the supports and then standing in a big huddle feeling the same uncomplex pleasure of togetherness), but tend to find concerts in Oxford a bit frightening or confusing. Actually, Relik are good band for people who find the Daily Star crossword frightening and confusing. As Groucho nearly said: A child of five could understand Relik; send someone to fetch a child of five.
Sunday, 1 May 2011
Beatific International
I'm listening to a full length CD of radio jingles from Coldseal Windows. I should stay out of charity shops.
THE KILL CITY SAINTS/ HOT HOOVES/ ZEM/ RAISING HARLEY, It’s All About The Music, The Bully, 14/4/11
The difference between most US sit coms and their British counterparts is the writers. In this country we have shows penned by a single author, probably in a four week blast in some provincial town, fuelled by tinned soup and Cash In The Attic, whereas American shows are thrashed out by huge rosters of writers, sat round a big glass table somewhere vastly important. It’s why an episode of Friends may have rafts of clever lines, but can feel distant, disconnected and arid. We’re reminded of this by Raising Harley, not only because he plays the theme to Scrubs (turns out after those eight bars it gets quite dull, and you really miss the theremin), but because his amiable busking is promising, but needs a little more character to snag our attention.
Similarly, new trio Zem have a lovely chunky rhythm section – despite injuries – but the chap strumming and moaning at the front is drabness personified. Seriously, it’s like someone won a competition. The arrangement of Paul Simon’s “Richard Cory” is a strong start, but again anonymity is their worst crime. Still, it all pales compared to crass Southern fried rockers Kill City Saints, a band so generically dire it looks like they’ve been created by committee to supply “Blues Rock Solutions”. The truly hideous renegade skull backdrop, lyrics about midnight trains, and adept but charmless guitar solos indicate a band with a huge taste deficit; the fact the singer is swigging vodka and Dr Pepper only confirms suspicions.
And somewhere in this sea of Not Quite Finished and Hideously Ill Conceived fall Hot Hooves, a band featuring members of Oxford favourites ATL and Talulah Gosh, bursting with approachable character and short on self-consciousness or pretension. Their melodic new wave thrives on taut concise structures, but if that suggests Wire they’re as much Eddie & The Hot Rods. The music’s thumping economy comes balanced by an wry airiness (Sample lyric: “My telekinesis/ Is falling to pieces”) whether it’s delivered in Pete Momtchiloff’s spasmodic mumble or with Bash Street cheekiness by Mac. At points Hot Hooves remind us of bands as disparate as The Auteurs and Ten Benson, but they doubtless have better, more obscure bands influencing them. Hell, they were probably in them.
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