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.