Shallow Phil.

Something something something something pop music.

SUBMOTION ORCHESTRA/ CORNELIA, The Academy, 14/10/12

“I write songs and in turn they rewrite me”.  So claims London-based Swede Cornelia on her Facebook.  It’s a nice sentiment but through the course of her solo show we are diverted, even lightly intrigued, but sadly untransformed.  Her voice is strong, low breathy intimacies turning to bright, harsh aluminium tones at the high end, and her synthesised backing errs on the side of approachable chunky simplicity.  She’s at her best when she rides simple keyboard hums or Omnichord buzzes, bold enunciation and sudden changes in vocal register adding drama (although the kooky, spooky hand jives are too much – Hot Gossip disbanded years ago, you know).  But we’ve seen a lot of theatrical, artfully coiffured women channel their cyber-Kate Bush over electronic beats and, likable though the set is, by the end we’re just a bit Bjored.

Seven people are not an orchestra: fact.  No surprise that Submotion Orchestra has hit on the term, though, as their whole show is about justifying electronic comedown music through the supposed authentication of live musicianship, climbing out of the chillout room and into the salon.  And that’s all well and good, but the trouble is that crass, clumsy downtempo pop sounds equally facile when played by a Leeds (ahem) orchestra as it does bashed together in FruityLoops, and aside from the odd dubstep-inspired chunk of bassweight, Submotion’s thin ditties mostly resemble offcuts from the catalogues of Curiosity and Morcheeba remixed by Alex Reece.  The playing is technically strong, especially the percussion and flugelhorn, but unlike the best dance productions the music has no poise, no sense of space or balance, it’s just an endless smug celebration of proper musoship for its own dubious sake: look, Ma, both hands.   Ironically, the band’s best weapon is its singer, who has a sweet voice slightly reminiscent of Lamb’s Lou Rhodes, and her parts are smothered in clumsy digital delay.  It’s like they’re doing things arsefacewards solely to annoy us. 

The harsh truth about Submotion is that they sound like Sting’s backing band cutting loose and jamming at soundcheck, when he’s not looking (probably out back, doing the Downward Dog on a mound of quinoa and lutes).  We don’t know whether we’re writing this review or whether this review is writing us, but we know we’re bored with this vapid, self-conscious stodge.

Sungs Frum An Urt Gullery

This is quite a wordy review.  Lots of sophomoric chat about the nature of live performance.  Don't read it if you're hoping I'm going to be describing Grace Exley's bared midriff in great detail, and if you don't like old men moaning about the price of beer.

I listened to Pieces In A Moden Style by William 0rbit (sic) today,. having bought it in a charity shop.  Jesus, it's worse than I expected: how can you make Barber, Cage, Satie and Vivaldi all sound the same?  And so horrible?  If you see it in the charity shop I shall return it to, I advise you leave it on the shelf.  

THE GOGGENHEIM/ THE LAMPOST GULLIVERS/ VIENNA DITTO/ FRANCIS PUGH & THE WHISKY SINGERS, Stone Free, The Jericho, 6/10/12

We’re just buying our first overpriced beer at the Jericho’s main bar, when suddenly a lilting little country ditty, in a sort of cleaned up jugband style, wafts pleasingly past our ears.  It’s Francis Pugh & The Whisky Singers, a quartet that has elected to start its set in the downstairs bar, perhaps hoping to lead the drinkers, Pied Piper style, into the upstairs venue.  Predictably, we are the entirety of their entourage as they take to the stairs.  In the venue, they continue to play unplugged, in the middle of the room, which creates a delightful intimacy, even if they could do with learning how to project the vocals.  The material is enjoyable, high quality country tunes with a small hint of self-effacing wit, as if they know that four young chaps from Oxfordshire can never really play in this downhome style without a sly wink.  The trumpet parts are the secret ingredient, not least because they carry so clearly without amplification; and did we hear an unexpected Handel influence at one point?  It’s a good set, and a friendly introduction to the evening, although part of us thinks that, far from being a mildly diverting novelty, people singing unamplified narrative folk songs belong in a provincial pub far more than squid nibbles and Peroni at four pounds forty a fucking pint.

Vienna Ditto may have a sound based on synthesised beats and fuzzy electric guitar, but they retain the unhurried ramshackle air of the Whisky Singers.  Many of their songs marry chunky electro-disco to rockabilly, in a space somewhere between Goldfrapp’s steely sensuality and Imelda May’s glossy gutsiness, with the merest whiff of turn of the century pop sophisticates Shivaree.  This is all well and good, but what truly makes them special - aside from Hatty Taylor’s rich, chanson-style voice – is their relaxed, handmade approach.  Whilst many bands with gorgeous, arcing pop songs like this would have rehearsed them to the hilt and found some session rhythm section types to fill up the sound, Vienna Ditto spend most of the set huddled together over a keyboard and electronics set up, pushing buttons and giggling, like a drunk couple trying to knock up a post-pub dinner on a camping stove.  Writing epic pop songs is a skill; performing them so they feel like wonderful secrets whispered into the audience’s ear is sheer talent.

Speaking of talent, at the beginning of The Lampost Gullivers’ set, we begin to worry that former Suitable Case and Mephisto Grande vocalist Liam Ings-Reeves wasn’t the excellent musician we had him down as, but a cabaret blues growler whose music had been getting slowly less interesting over the years.  Bash bash bash went the bass and drums, snarly-warl went Liam, in his best zombie Tom Waits voice, and it was all perfectly diverting, but not vastly exciting.  About a third of the way into the set, however, we quickly moderated our opinion.  Suddenly, the music took on a lithe, tensile quality, replacing the cartoon bluster of the opening numbers with hypnotic, rubbery rhythms, turning the preacher-rock hollers into sticky, deep-fried krautrock.  By the end of the set, our faith is firmly restored, and we can hear the deft muscularity underpinning even the dirtiest blues clatter.

Pop music, ladies and gentlemen, is and always has been, at least partly, about dressing up funny.  So, fair play to The Goggenheim, who are all garbed as Alex James (possibly), with nice clean flat caps, and are fronted by Grace Exley, in glittery silver affair with vast head-dress, looking like a dancer from a Busby Berkeley musical about Ra the sun god in New York.  Sonically they’re equally theatrical, laying Gong wooziness and affected vocal declamations over thumping drums and disjointed guitar.  At their poppiest, on “Moth”, they sound rather a lot like 80s oddballs Stump, but at their most outlandish they’re simply mystifying: “Ah Samina” consists of an unfathomable chant with false vibrato created by manually wobbling the throat, like a 70s schoolchild pretending to be a Silurian.  It’s not all arsing about, though, and the music would be infuriatingly wacky if it weren’t played so well, with some outstanding metronomic drumming.  You also get the feeling that Grace is continually embodying different characters, rather than just putting on silly voices.  In one song she seems to be subtly detourning blues chauvanism with the words “Gonna see my woman, but she’s a cow”, and in “Housten” she might be cocking a snook at lachrymose country tunes about misfortune and loss by singing of salvaging nick-nacks from a crumbled life.  But, equally, she might not.

The Goggenheim are a fascinating, exciting mix of performance art, punk pop and psychedelia who have tailored their performance to the artificiality of the concert environment: their music thrives on the distancing effect of the boundary between stage and audience as much as The Whisky Singers’ feeds from its removal.  This gig, curated by local music photographer Johnny Moto, seemed designed to explore different ways performers relate to a crowd.  Whether the musicians joined us, engaged us in conversation, gave us antagonistic stares or foxed us with surreal spectacle, we were constantly reminded just what a gig in a small venue can do that no volume of free MP3s and YouTube videos can.

The Spillage People

Got to be quick, the bath's running.   Since my last post I filled my iPod.  It's a full-fat maximum size one, too.  I'm all the way up to compilations in hard cases beginning with Q, in my loading.  I guess I'd need about 14 iPods to hold all my records.  I have a lot of records.  It doesn't make me a getter person, sadly.

THE GRACEFUL SLICKS/ THE HAWKHURST/ CHARMS AGAINST THE EVIL EYE, Klub Kakofanney, The Wheatsheaf, 7/9/12

There’s a sense of wonder about Charms Against The Evil Eye.  Not only are they named after a creepy exhibit in the Pitt Rivers – there must have already been a band called Shrunken Heads Are Bare Cool – but their lyrics, concerning topics such as interstellar dark matter and autumnal ambience, could have been swiped from The Boys’ Big Book Of Science and I-Spy The Undergrowth.  Spread a little wide-eyed, mild psychedelia over friendly three chord jaunts in the manner of Robyn Hitchcock – or even their chum Anton Barbeau – and the effect is winning in the extreme.  It’s great to see Matt Sewell, a strong writer who’s never quite delivered live, finally find a rhythm section that can make these songs breathe. Charming stuff, if you’ll forgive the pun.

The Hawkshurst aren’t charming.  They’re angry.  Angry, political and into danceable folk, in a mid-80s antagonistic hoedown style, unsure whether to neck some cider or start a riot.  They’re definitely at their best channelling their rage, Fleur Fatale’s warm yet strident vocals trading haranguing licks with John West’s pipes, somewhere between The Oysterband and Chumbawamba.  When they ease off the throttle, and start indulging in fraught, wordy ballads that sound like Counting Crows, we lose interest drastically.  Come on, guys, stay irate: why not tape a picture of the MP for Witney to the backs of your instruments?

The Graceful Slicks aren’t a band who look as though they notice politics. Or anything since 1968.  Their early gigs were good, but prone to slip into tired Brit-pop grooves or Black Rebel self-consciousness, but now they’ve uncovered the true elixir of sloppy psych garage in the spirit of Sky Saxon, The Velvet Underground, or The Morlocks, and are wonderful.  All their songs are identical, thrashing a multi-guitar groove relentlessly whilst vocals mutate from murmur to howl: they change instruments and mike duties after each track, but it always sounds the same.  It will always sound the same.  Life is a myth, space is an illusion, and time one livid final flame.  Until it’s time to get the bus home, anyway.