There are 6 members of Francis Pugh and the Whisky
Singers. None of them is called Francis
Pugh, but they have been in various Oxfordshire bands of quite surprisingly
varied styles over the years – you’ll quite probably have heard of some of
them, but we won’t waste any time on the past, because the Whisky Singers don’t
belong in the past...they belong in an eternal present where rousing folk tunes
are sung in warm snugs, effortlessly emotional melodies are projected into the
darkness outside, in defiance of bad times, misery and, you know, not being in
an inn singing at the top of your lungs.
I’ve seen them play The Jericho Tavern, starting up
acoustically in the downstairs bar, and leading listeners up the stairs. In similarly inventive fashion, they’ve
arranged folk pub crawls, where trundles down the roads of East Oxford are
interspersed with waystations promising shots and shanties, pints and
ballads. There are some hints of early
70s Dylan about the band’s music, although they shy away from his more esoteric
lyrical tangles, but any number of reference points can be drawn up...drawn up,
and tossed away again, because any band that takes the best of train whistlin’
American song and melds it with unpretentious British folk traditions will
always only be important in the moment, the precise second that the smoky
tendrils of song drift out and surround you, the second your voice rises to
sing along with songs you never heard before, yet somehow know.
Plus, they’ve got a cornet, that’s pretty cool.
YELLOW FEVER/ BIG TROPICS/ BE GOOD, Daisy Rodgers,
Wheatsheaf 12/9/14
In a world that’s increasingly market-tested one of the
great pleasures of small gigs is not knowing what to expect. When Be Good take to the Daisy Rodgers stage,
most often frequented by well-kempt indie poppers, we hadn’t predicted reverby late
‘50s balladry that sounds as if it should be about milkshake and eroticised
motorbike crashes. They deliver this
post-doo wop very well, throwing in a little surf tremolo, some brash 80s colours
and even a droplet of grunge slackness, and if it sometimes feels as though
Marty McFly put the band together by nipping into his high school prom at ten
year intervals, the effect is surprisingly cohesive: a few more gigs to settle
the nerves, and another couple of tunes as strong as “I’d Have Told You Anything”
and we could have a real contender.
A few years ago Big Tropics’ sound would have been an
eyebrow-raiser too, but inexplicably in recent years the default setting for
young bands in this town seems to have become sterilised, wipe-clean soul-pop
in the vein of 5 Star and New Edition.
Whilst this isn’t necessarily a bad thing – we’ll take Debbie Gibson
over Stevie Ray Vaughan any day – matters aren’t helped by bands like this who
churn through up-beat tunes with dead-eyed resignation in place of gay
abandon. Whilst the gratuitous synth
parts, straight from the 12” disco mix of the theme from CHiPs, go some way towards excusing the limply anonymous vocals,
Big Tropics seem to have forgotten the golden rule of pop performance: always get high off your own
supply. We see a punter at the bar
wearing white socks with trousers that are too short, which just about sums
them up: it’s fun, it’s retro, but it doesn’t really fit together.
There are no shocks in Yellow Fever’s set. They’ve become just as excellent a band as we
knew they would be when we first saw them a few years ago, finding their
teenage feet. Again their sound, melding
chiming hi-life guitar parts to A Certain Ratio style introspective indie-funk,
has become more prevalent in the intervening years, but they manage to make the
mixture smoother than many, by building it around a core of well-written tunes
(indeed, a one-off cover of “Rip It Up And Start Again” fits snugly amongst
their best tracks). The sound has got
heavier and denser in recent times, every jam block break counterbalanced by a
crushing crescendo, but it’s an unforced charm, a sort of polite insouciance
emanating from the stage that really proves how this band has grown in
stature. Like we say, character: it
could be the most important thing your band will ever have.
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