Welcome Bakkie

Christmas is like sport.  I understand why people like it, but not why they like it THAT MUCH.

UTE/ LUCY LEAVE/ SLATE HEARTS, Idiot King, Cellar, 16/12/16

Sometimes, a band and a venue just click together.  We’ve seen Slate Hearts a number of times in 2016, but the two most immersive experiences are here at the Cellar, their dense slabs of grunge just seem to fit the low, oppressive room (and the engineer – we can’t see but imagine that Jimmy Evil, the resident Lord Fader, is nodding approvingly throughout).  With lackadaisical inter-song mumbling, the band gives the impression of being slapdash stoners, and two-thirds of them dress as if they spend their downtime wrastlin’ swine for nickels, but there’s proper pop nous evident in the songwriting.  Slate Hearts are a sonic Richard Serra sculpture: huge, monumental and weighty, but rather less rough-hewn than they at first appear.

Lucy Leave gigs are always exciting.  The band builds songs from snatches of vintage pop styles (psychedelia, garage, even reggae) and melodic micro-mantras, leaving plenty of room for improvisation, but without slipping into the clunky slide carousel of solos that the majority of jazz and psych falls back on.  It’s as if the band is waiting to see what will lift each song to ecstatic heights – a sudden clattering drum fill, a tickly “Eight Miles High” guitar scribble, an ultra-rubato vocal stretch.  This means that some tracks, and occasionally whole gigs, can go by without catching fire, but also means that moments of glory surprise every time.  Tonight it’s “40 Years”, kicking us down a Teardrop Explodes mudslide towards a krautrock skinny dip.

Ignoring a little acoustic session, Ute haven’t played a gig in Oxford for five years, and they still sound like Radiohead’s less bombastic songs dusted with hi-life and calypso guitar, whilst the drums stutter out an inventive dessicated funk and a proper fat rock bass knocks on the back door.  If the vocals perhaps sound over-squeezed, like they’re the last smear of toothpaste in the tube, Ute knock us sideways like never before.  Perhaps it’s the crammed room, the boozy Bakhtinian carnival atmosphere and the hilarious raffle that precedes the set that reduces us to grinning putty, but when the band run offstage during “An Innocent Tailor” and the crowd howls like pissed-up police sirens and a man in a medieval bascinet takes their place with a glitter cannon, we don’t know what’s going on any more, except that it’s good.  It’s very good.

Big Cat Sensuality

I'm getting old, my attitudes to sex are changing.  Last birthday party, someone brought in a curvacious woman in a bikini...a flap on her stomach opened up and out poppped a cake.  Best birthday ever.

This gig took place the day of the US election results, in case you can't guess.

THREE TRAPPED TIGERS/ THE PHYSICS HOUSE BAND/ KID KIN, Club.The.Mammoth, O2, 9/11/16

Received opinion states that prog and math rock are introspective, self-justifying genres, with no relevance beyond their complex musical conventions.  Maybe so, but on a day in which the US electorate has made a decision with vast international ramifications, the inward gaze is a tempting option.  Kid Kin provides a warm, amniotic space for reflection, with stately keys and meditative fuzzy guitar.  Sometimes it’s feels a bit too pretty, but then he brings in a bass synth that sounds like the Matterhorn clearing its throat, and we are swept up again.  He’s adept at live looping too: make a mistake with that and you have to live with it for a fair while - a bit like voting in a president.

Received opinion states that contemporary prog is a rollercoaster music, that can only retain interest through continually switching direction.  Whilst The Physics House Band’s set might have so many time signatures that it could be some sort of muso version of bingo calling, they are also fantastic at setting the controls for full steam ahead.  They’ve got the intricate synths and the twiddly guitar phrases, but they aren’t afraid of chugging out a chunky groove that could almost be Rainbow.  Despite their nerdy name, it’s great to see that tricksiness can be wonderfully augmented by sweat, passion and Whistle Test hair.  They sell T-shirts after gig; given the comprehensive demo workout we’d just witnessed, they might have done better selling drumkits.

Received opinion states that prog is a backward facing genre, but Three Trapped Tigers show us what can be done when math rock is influenced by the sounds and structures of electronica.  They are a little like prog jesters Focus signed to Warp, and their music is very silly, although in a world containing the phrase President Trump, “silly” may need recalibrating.  Regardless, their maximalist monkey seizure music is firy, fun and surprisingly funky.  Received opinion says that technical performers like this can’t be joyous and exciting, but then again, received opinion had fifty quid on Clinton to win.