No Bull

Yes, yes, the title is atrocious.

CAT MATADOR/ DALLAS DON’T/ PUMP SHARK/ ROBOTS WITH SOULS, Port Mahon, 20/4/12

Sometimes it doesn’t take much to be new.  Live looping stopped being surprising some time ago, and bass and drums duos litter hipster house parties like half smoked Camels, yet we’ve never seen anyone put them together.  Robots With Souls’ Steve Wilson balances a two string bass on a sparse drum kit, and samples up some big, dense rhythms over which he delivers fragmented lyrics with melodic intensity.  Somewhere in this marriage of indie crooning and dumbass mall sludge, a truly excellent new act has been created.  It’s a fantastic show, that in the sweaty crucible of the Port Mahon feels more a shared ritual than a gig.

Wycombe’s Pump Shark offer a twitchier take on rock intensity, jerky rhythms continually pulling the rug beneath soul-baring vocal howls.  There’s a little of the sensitive brutality of Fugazi in their mixture of choppy guitars and lopsided sincerity, but somehow the set never quite gets off the leash.  If Pump Shark could get over a certain studied restraint they could be powerful, but as it is the initial buzz dwindles before their half hour is up.

There’s something we adore about Dallas Don’t, but let’s be frank, it ain’t their playing.  The rhythms are sloppy and they’re rarely entirely in tune, but it doesn’t matter because their music tells stories, and each slurred vocal line conjures up images that massed ranks of well-drilled musos could never achieve.  The sound is a fascinating battle between erudite, melancholic indie and scruffy US rock – The Delgados morphing into Mudhoney, perhaps – and you get the feeling that if one side ever won the fight, the magic would dissipate, but for now this tuneful whirlwind of rage and romanticism is one of the best things in Oxford music.

A Cat Matador is a funny idea.  Wave a cape at your average moggy and you’ll get bemused disdain, not an enraged stampede.  And we feel roughly the same: Cat Matador play well enough, doing all the right things with violin-flecked indie, putting intricate snare patterns behind introspective Tindersticks laments, but we just can’t dredge up any excitement.  There are some mournful fiddle lines and clattering bursts of energy to snag our ears, but generally the feeling is that whilst Cat Matador and Pump Shark are decent enough bands, real character will always win out.

Walters, Duly

I typed "numbly undercut" instead of "nimbly" when I submitted this.  Actually kind of makes sense.  Decided to leave it at MIO, but have corrected here.  One for the future doctorates, I'd say.

RICHARD WALTERS – YOUNG TREES (self-released download)

As the 1980s collapsed into the 1990s in a fluorescent, floppy ball of smiling inanity, there was an intriguing trend amongst a certain breed of “inky” journalist (don’t forget, NME, Melody Maker and Sounds were all smudgy doorsteps of respectable opinion in those days).  As if in reaction to the laddish euphoria of the nascent baggy scene, or the crusty simplicity of post-acid dance music, a select coterie of writers retreated into a safe cocoon of poetic intensity.  In their reviews every keyboard was “ethereal”, every voice “lusciously evanescent”, and every guitar touched by man, child or beast turned out “coruscating”.  By the time Brit pop turned up, these guys must have either retreated sadly to their 4AD bowers or shrugged and joined The Wire, deciding that Derek Bailey was where it was at all along.  But we bring it up because we’ve been sitting on this record for weeks, wondering what critical vocabulary we have left to describe Richard Walters after years of lavish praise for his, ahem, lusciously evanescent voice.

Do people get bored of hearing Walters’ voice described as beautiful and delicate?  Hell, does he?  And, like a man who’s bored with paradise, like Oscar Lomax throwing his precious Snappy toy into the sea, can it be possible that we can get bored with music as wonderful as this?  Well, perhaps.  Two of the songs on this EP, whilst being jaw-droppingly lovely, are also a little par for the course.  “Infinity Street” does a nice line in breathy confessional – and probably no singer in the history of Oxford city can deliver a line as intimately as Walters – but never quite finds that Stina Nordenstam zone of disquieting secrecy; and “Dandelions” moves from pizzicato melancholy to mini-epic perfectly...almost too perfectly.

But, just as we’re getting jaded, this record hits us with some elegantly emotional songs to remind us why Walters is such a local treasure.  “Regretless” is a washed out ghost of a gospel celebration, a sort of teary-eyed opposite to blur’s “Tender”, and is beautiful, but the title track eclipses it, allowing a mournful cello and some typewriter percussion to embrace Walters, whose voice flutters round the notes as if it’s trying to keep from floating away, an Aspirin desperately trying not to dissolve.  Some backing vocals, like Disney bluebirds, step in, only to be nimbly undercut by lines like “I talk in platitudes”, that would give Walt the shivers.

And yet the closing number, “Bring On The Dancing Horses” stands above even this.  It’s a wan, spectral valediction, glistening guitars and bodiless backing vocals keeping the song balanced between bottomless despair and rough victory.  Yes, it’s a mystery that this record isn’t making waves at grown-up magazines like Uncut, but more importantly, Walters at his best makes us want to tumble into a weeping huddle one second, and leap into air, fists aloft the next. 

You can’t get much less bloody ethereal than that, eh?

The Joker In The Decade

Funny thing: when The Jukes sent an email to the Nightshift editor about my review, one of their points was that this website wasn't very popular. Since then, the review in question has comfortably become the most viewed page on here in recent memory, and most people seem to have been linked ffrom Facebook. The Jukes' Facebook? Or just a coincidence? I've no idea, but it's sort of intriguing.

Oh, and yes, I am unpopular. That's how you can tell I'm good.


SMILEX/ THE CELLAR FAMILY/ DEER CHICAGO, Coo Coo Club, Jericho, 2/3/12


We saw Deer Chicago a few years ago, and were impressed. Since then they’ve delivered on their potential, and got very slightly worse. Their sound has improved enormously, and is now a huge cascade of emotive noise that fair tumbles out of them. They’re capable of glistering crescendos, but sometimes we wish they’d vary the dynamics, and step away from the screaming stadium in their minds, to regain some of the subtlety of old. All this epic swooning is like super-strong Bavarian lager they sell in your local dodgy cornerstore: doubtless intoxicating, but not big on delicate flavours. A very good band, then, but perhaps not the one we expected them to become, which is out fault, not theirs.

The Cellar Family are less a band, more an annoying muscular twitch in sonic form. Tonight, they play beautifully, lancing their music’s scabrous boils with razor punk incisions, and flooding The Jericho with horrific, visceral imagery delivered with scientific coldness. It’s like a cross between Weird Tales and The Lancet, all buoyed aloft by wittily slurred guitar and snidely forceful rhythms. Humdrum punks take note: everyone can sneer, but only a band like this can actually communicate disgust.

Smilex are celebrating a decade of nefarious activity, balancing on a latex tightrope strung between twin poles of grubby punk sleaze and dumb cock rock preening. Whilst it’s tempting to dismiss Smilex as an eager panting puppy amongst rock beasts – gags like Motley Cruecut and Judas Verger would be almost too easy – tonight’s gig reminds you of just how good they are. Lee Christian, of course, embodies his stage school punk persona, dressed as Kenny Everett in the Blue Oyster Club, but his vocal yelps and drawls really do carry the songs well. The band spends a lot of time throwing rock shapes that probably moved from parody to habit nine years ago, but by Christ they can kick out a squall. As with Deer Chicago, it’s always best to take Smilex on their own terms. The way to have a bad time at their gigs would be to imagine what a band of this much ability and stage presence could achieve if they had any taste. The way to have a good time is to neck a crème de menthe spritzer and dive into the nearest wall of flesh. Who could complain about ten years of that?

Supple Be The Dye

Two reviews in this month's Nightshift, here's the first. In other news, I ordered a new turntable today, looking forward to some crisp vinyl sounds for the first time in a while.



COLOUREDS – ELASTIC EP (Download)


Diversity is a wonderful thing, of course, but we’re pretty sick of bands trying to cover a vast range of stylistic bases, as if they were investors diversifying their portfolios. It’s doubtless fun to be a polymath, but to be honest we’d prefer most musicians to stick to what they’re good at, and stop chasing public acceptance at every turn. After all, John Lee Hooker only needed three chords and an amplified boot to make some of the great twentieth century music. Over and over again.

No surprise, therefore, to find that we respect Coloureds. They have found a sound they are great at making, and are doggedly sticking with it, tonal development be damned. This EP consists of three separate tracks, but frankly they all sound like tiny variations on the single pulsating mutant anthem at the heart of all Coloureds tunes. As on previous releases, Elastic is a neat balance between the hulking and the intricate, chunky Duplo blocks of bass and gambolling percussion topped with jittering treble flecks and tiny vocal blips. It’s like an old Bitmap Brothers computer game remixed by a French house act with a taste for chubby disco grooves.

There are three additional remixes, that are decent enough, but in essence this EP should be filed under More Of The Same, with a cross-reference to Spazz Bounce Electro Euphoria. It’s a gorgeous record, and we hope Coloureds don’t go trying to catch the latest dancefloor fashion. A chameleon is wonderful beasts, but a blank-eyed alligator would crush its tricksy little body in unevolved saurian jaws in a micro-second. All hail the crocodile rock.