Sunn Tzu)))

Happy everything.

TEN FE/ THE AUREATE ACT/ JOHNNY PAYNE, Tigmus/United Talent, Jericho, 4/12/15

Johnny Payne is strumming a hollow-bodied guitar whilst wearing one of those country shirts with breast pockets that look like smiley mouths. The melancholic rocking tunes are good, and Johnny’s voice is excellent (as anyone who remembers Deer Chicago will attest), but he is perhaps rather too in awe of all things American.  It’s fine to write songs about travelling the States or walking the Brooklyn bridge, but slipping in US terms when there are decent English ones lying around (tail-lights, gas stations, diner checks) just seems like trying too hard.  This is a minor anglophile niggle, though, and we look forward to catching Johnny soon with his backing band...hopefully they’ll play “Cilantro Faucet Recess Thumbtacks”.

The Aureate Act’s opening number mixes the proggy poise of vintage Genesis, the bucolic coolness of Talk Talk, and snatches of King Crimson’s abstract blow-outs.  It is, frankly, a vast mess, as is the rest of the set, with tempo changes grinding gears, random guitar notes bubbling up unpredictably like swamp gas, and rippling piano jarring against hyperactive basslines: perhaps they’ve taken the advice of some gig-hardened Sun Tzu who counsels “if you enemy can’t work out what you’re supposed to be playing, and they can’t tell when you’ve done it wrong”.   Despite being a huge indigestible curate’s omelette, the set leaves us fascinated, and intrigued to revisit a band with more ideas and references than they seem to be able to marshal.  Perhaps they will win this war, after all.

After a fifth column in the audience has closed the curtains that bisect the Jericho, thus forcing us all into a dark space before the stage, and London’s Ten Fe start their grinning bouncy pop, the night suddenly has the feeling of an event.  Or possibly a cult recruitment exercise.  Like a never-ending strip-lit airport travelator, their bright songs just chug on relentlessly, repeating tiny catchy motifs above elementary basslines. At their best, they are like a krautrock cross between The Stone Roses and Boney M, at their worst they’re like a squeaky clean mixture of Flowered Up and Climie Fisher.  We honestly aren’t sure whether a closer shoving the melody from “I’m A Believer” over bits of “Where The Streets Have No Name” is wonderful or imbecilic, but the trio has such presence and self-belief it’s hard to argue.  Perhaps Sun Tzu told them, “play every venue like it’s a sold-out stadium”.  Sun Tzu, by the way, was nicking the takings whilst those curtains were closed and changing his phone number.

Cuppa Class

"Nicaragua."
"Talk us through your asnwer."
"Nicaragua is what it is."
"OK."

THE BREW, Haven Club, Bully, 2/11/15

Led Zeppelin were one of the greatest groups that rock music has ever seen, exhibiting levels of intuitive ensemble playing generally only found in the very best classical and jazz outfits, whilst retaining an air of unhurried looseness and still sounding like Satan’s convoy delivering juggernaut-loads of haunted pig iron direct to your eardrums.  Trouble is, they were also not that bright, and so many classic rock acts get the good mixed up with the bad, proffering chunky riffs and elegant licks alongside all that shit about hobbits and big willies and sex with schoolgirls.

Grimsby trio The Brew are clearly heavily influenced by vintage Zep and Cream, and for the most part are outstanding, but they do come with a side salad of cliché.  There are little things like the drummer’s obsession with holding one stick in the air, like he’s acting out the poster for Star Wars IV, or the singer and guitarist’s loose neckerchief, which is probably supposed to conjure Jimi or Jimmy but mostly resembles Fred from Scooby-Doo, and some more serious niggles, like a singing  voice that is too thin to last 90 minutes of chest-beating rock action.  Amusingly, the vocals are in such a “cummawn airboddih!” panto drawl, than when asked to sing along to one tune nobody can make out the words (we alternated between “I’ve seen your face” and “1, Semen Place”).

But, that’s the bad side, and as we say, this comes with the territory to a certain extent, like greed in hip hop, homophobia in reggae, and horrible bloody hairclips in indie.  The fact is that The Brew is a hugely enjoyable band, with gallons of talent and a fair few ideas bubbling through.  And energy.  Blimey, you don’t see a band, grown-up classic rock or otherwise, having this much fun onstage too often, leaping about like loons and infectiously buoying up the quiet Monday crowd: we wouldn’t be surprised if there was a reverse phantom power set-up, and the band were actually powering the venue.  Plus there are addictive grooves, from double-ply Deep Purple stomps to elastic mid-era Floyd landscapes, in which you can easily lose ten minutes.  The Brew might be too frivolous for some dessicated old Mojo readers, and too traditional for cutting edge kids, but if you relish old-fashioned rock music, volume and fun, then you could hardly do better.

Indoctrinating In Sects

This is a great record, go out and buy it.

BUG PRENTICE – THE WAY IT CRUMBLES (Self-released)

“I wish that we could live in a library”, dream Bug Prentice on the woozy, melancholic “Spoons”, summing up an album that likes to sneak up on life from the far side, from a point of thoughtful academia or fanboy geekery.  Over 38 minutes, we pick up lyrical references to a drunk Orson Welles, Nicholas Ray’s films, Cole Porter and Kurt Vonnegut.  “Angular Spirals” doesn’t seem to be riffing on anything specific, but sounds more like a Vorticist lonely hearts column than your average pop song: the narrators of these songs seem more comfortable away from the action, immersed in scholarly footnotes, DVD extras and bottomless YouTube rabbit holes.

So it’s astonishing how emotionally direct this record is.  Ally Craig might be delivering lyrics consisting of compact, absurd vignettes (“Ceilidh Dancer”) or just dicking about (hipster grunge parody “Moustache”), but his gorgeous, dry, delicate voice, like the smoked out ghost of Jeff Buckley, makes it seem like he’s whispering soul-drenched secrets.  The music also gives the songs visceral immediacy: the guitar plays elastic mandelbrot blues that’s somewhere between John Renbourne, Thurston Moore and James Blood Ulmer, whilst the rhythm section hide subtly in the background for long periods, before erupting into hefty Slint-shaped blasts.  If one song sums the record up, it’s “Nebraska Admiral”, a beautiful brooding lament that teeters on the edge of atonality but which has the cornballiest, music-halliest opening couplet you’ll hear all year, sounding like mid-90s Kristin Hersh with lyrics by Ian Dury.   If you’ve seen Ally live, you’ll know he can wrench the sentimental core from an Ivor Cutler piece and reveal the unsuspected profundity in a song from The Muppets, so this mixture of cabaret schmaltz and surreal sincerity should come as no surprise.  This is one of the best Oxford albums in recent times, but be prepared to put some work in, The Way It Crumbles is one tough cookie. 

You Let One Off?

Quick review of an all-dayer a little while ago, featuring a previously unseen paragraph, cut from Nightshift because there wasn't room/ it was about a band from outside Oxon/ it was undbearably knowing.

ROYAL PARDON, MD, Bully, 19/9/15

It’s quite refreshing to find an all-dayer with no trappings.  The mysteriously named Royal Pardon (“Run that past one again, footman”) from newcomer MD Promotions is not tied to charity, advertising, label promotion or the dressing up box, it’s a just a 7 hour selection of local music in a big beer-fuelled room, which is more than enough justification for a day out.  Opener Kid Kin’s laptop is broken, so we get a truncated, on the hoof mini-set of his texturally savvy library music melodies.  As ever, the tenor of his De Wolfe electro is a delight, but this swiftly salvaged set is perhaps indicative of a bill of often great music and great ideas that don’t necessarily always make for great sets. 

31hours are a band for whom stylistic cohesion is probably not a major concern, though that’s not to say their eclectic prog pop isn’t immensely pleasing.  If there is a thematic anchor to their music it’s that high fret-twiddling jam block-thwacking Afroals sound, which is probably the least interesting element, outweighed by freeze-dried Glass Animals balladry and lush Pompeii era Floyd soundscapes.

Pipeline’s funky contemporary indie is a far simpler proposition, along the lines of The Wedding Present without the poetry and Senseless Things without the tequila.  The vocals are winningly effortless, and if the set of snappy tunes runs out of steam slightly before the finish line, this is a band that is maturing steadily.

We Have A Dutch Friend, by contrast, have a long way to go.  Their blueprint of sweet Sundays lilts punctuated by strident Chumabawamba folk harangues is viable enough, but the playing is messily fragmented and joylessly stilted, probably because they appear petrified almost to the point of collapsing; perhaps that lowlands connection could suggest something to settle the nerves. 

We’re used to Tiger Mendoza’s hip-hop airs and post-EDM power pop, but tonight perhaps the best moments are when angle-ground guitar thrashes are laid over asbestos beats in a manner recalling light industrial acts like Ministry and Nitzer Ebb.  Some of the transitions between tracks are not as fluid as they might be, and sometimes different compositional elements seems to jostle each other to get to the front of the mix, but overall this set shows that ian De Quadros is an inventive and varied producer.

A small break is presumably there to let the engineer grab some dinner and go and find more Cliff Richard records to play us, but we return after 40 minutes to find the atmosphere changed for the better.  Not only is the room thankfully a little busier, but the later sets have a more coherent flavour, none more so than Cosmosis whose affable acoustic roots rock (think Stone Temple Pilots busking Cure songs) is presented with such unforced bonhomie even those of us who have an anaphylactic reaction to wackiness get swept up in the japes.  The lead vocalist keeps looking shiftily from side to side, as if to check that they’re getting away with it, but the set proves that music doesn’t have to be serious to be worthwhile.

Duchess announce that this is their last gig, which is a pity as their playing is tighter than ever.  It’s low-key as valedictory sets go, but not short on energy, especially a bouncy “South Parade”.  As well as inheriting Paul Simon’s trick of slipping filched global drum patterns underneath eloquent pop (Rhythm Of The Saints is in evidence as much as the obvious Gracelands), we catch snatches of motif and melody that remind us of “Walk On The Wild Side”, “Down Under” and “I Started A Joke” - but mostly we pick up pure character and musical fluency.  They will be missed.

Word count limited.  Bel Esprit: Longpigs.  Gene.  Gomez.  Las.  Mansun.  Stone Roses.  Sum of parts?  Nope.  “Creep” cover?  Best not, eh.

The Scholars were an epic alt stadium act who may as well have been called The Copy Editors, and whom we didn’t care for.  Strangely, Zurich, the trio that evolved from them are rather excellent despite ostensibly dealing in the same sound.  A lot of the bombast and bluster has been excised  leaving elemental, muscular glory pop with flightpath vocal lines and dark disco rhythms, along the lines of a Cinemascope Half Rabbits.  Their music might not be complex or mysterious, but it snags the spirit and skewers the emotions, an unexpectedly direct and affecting conclusion to a highly enjoyable but not always entirely convincing event.

Contra(ce)ption

"Homercles cares not for beans"

THE FAMILY MACHINE – HOUSES THAT YOU LIVED IN (Beard Museum)

There’s a moment listening to the gorgeous “Quiet As A Mouse” when we realise that it sounds like something from a vintage Oliver Postgate TV show.  Listen to that wiltingly simple vocal melody and those urbanely bucolic drizzles of guitar, and couldn’t this be what Gabriel the Toad might sing if he had to explain something intangibly complex like regret or absence, instead of hot air balloons and sharing?  What makes this album beautiful is not just the lovely sound – although the sound is lovely, from the 60s soundtrack horns and Bacharach bass of “Long Way From Home” to the Golden Syrup Abbey Road warmth of “Morning Song” – but the way that the deftly constructed miniature songs seem to say a lot about huge topics in very few words, like indie folk as written by Saki.  Or Yoda.

The key concept that resurfaces throughout the records is home, whether as welcoming shelter after a hard journey or as mute witness to painful absence: the title track could easily be a rewriting of Philip Larkin’s “Home Is So Sad”, over a melancholic melody that somewhat recalls early 90s R.E.M. It’s not always easy to hone in on what specifically these allusive little songs mean, especially “We Ain’t Going Home” which simply repeats its title in reverberant harmony like the world’s most elegant footie chant, but perhaps they are not supposed to be tied down.  Most great pop music is brash and cocksure, but The Family Machine’s intimate intricacies are more haiku than high kick, and should be cherished as amongst the county’s very best.