Search enough charity shops and record fairs and sooner
or later you’ll come across one of the LPs that John Betjeman made setting his
music to lightly funky session jams.
They’re a lot of fun, and you certainly can’t imagine any poet laureate
since following suit (although we’d be prepared to hand over good money for a
soundclash between Carol Ann Duffy and Stephen “Tintin” Duffy), but in Oxford
we don’t really need them, because we have The Relationships. This quartet, that has just released their 4th
album, Phase, is centred round the
clipped, poetic lyrics of East Oxford bard Richard Ramage, who could easily
give Sir John a run for his (pre-decimal) money.
The words are not only masterfully controlled, they’re
also fascinated by a Betjemanian period in Britain’s history; whilst most
rockers see the mid-50s as the birth of cultural validity, Ramage sees it
differently, wishing to retire to the decade in question if “Mullioned Sunshine
Windows” is to believed. If you want to
understand contemporary culture, the band seem to say, you have to appreciate
that complex moment where Victorian constructs met the post-war social
contract, where domestic art struggled to find a character in that lacuna
between Vorticism and The Beatles’ first LP.
Find me a lyricist who can drop references to antimacassars and Brian
Jones with such elegance, and I’ll buy you a season pass for the Clapham
omnibus.
But the band isn’t just about the librettist, the airy,
summery indie music is played by some of the most technically adept, yet
tastefully restrained players in the whole shire, and will please anyone with a
penchant for Postcard Records, the Canterbury scene and early R.E.M. The Relationships: cheaper than a time
machine, rockinger than a History BA.
NIGHTWORKERS/ THE GRACEFUL
SLICKS, The Cellar, 12/4/14
The only bad thing about
The Graceful Slicks' first number is that it has to finish. Because, you see, not only does their work
have an ahistorical simplicity and atavistic two chord punch that is less a collection
of music, more a glimpse into the universal anima mundi, but they tend to fluff the endings up. To some ears tonight’s set will be a generic
string of psychedelic grooves and garage buzz that never seems to quite get as
far as an actual song, whereas to others it will be a whirlwind of wordless
howls and mysterious murmurs, a primitive Lascaux painting in sonic form, an
ochre mammoth sketched in sludgy blues changes. We fall in the latter camp, and especially
love “Bulbul Tarang”, not so much a composition as a peaty aroma of sound, cut
through with sheet aluminium slashes from the bowed guitar. It’s timeless, transcendent and
hypnotic. But, you know, they could
still do with fluffing up the endings a bit less.
A tune or two into their
set, the headliners announce, “We’re not wankers from Brighton”. Yes, we can see how you’d wish to clarify
that, seeing as it can appear as like Nathan-Barley-On-Sea. A few bars later, the tired mind decodes the
stage drawl: “We’re Nightworkers, from
Brighton”. And work they do, throwing
themselves wildly into a set composed primarily of sweat and wildly waggled outdated
haircuts. The music leans towards
classic rock with a laddish swagger and a lightly narcotic haze – think Black
Rebel Motorcycle Club meets Cast – and is highly entertaining, even if it never
reaches the ignition point the songs crave.
The vocals are strong, yet malleable enough to offer some variation, and
the keys are excellent, finding unexpected space in the songs to fill with
cheeky synth lines or vintage thriller Rhodes.
In fact, the whole band are very good, but we still find our attention
wandering before the gig is over.
Nightworkers: they’re not wankers, not by any means, but they’re not our
new favourite band, either.
