Crumbs! Another Review!

Here's my latest.  I don wonder whether The Library will win the coveted Most Visited Venue Award at the end of 2018; the 'Sheaf being shut for a month might topple it from its perch.

Oh, and speaking of such things, go pledge some money in the Save The Cellar campaign, I sure as hell have: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/cellar-forever

TABLE SCRAPS/ GHOST OF THE AVALANCHE/ GRUB, Paladin Promotions, Library, 11/10/18

Jazz, according to the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, is “delicious hot, disgusting cold”. There’s some truth in this gastronomusical equivalency, but some foods – a cheese-laden pizza, say – are delicious hot and disgusting, yet impossibly, guiltily alluring, cold.  And, a set by Grub is like gorging on a congealed quattro formaggio, licking the greasy cardboard box, and scratching your backside with the tiny white tripod out of the middle: dirty and satisfying, all at once.  Their music is basic, stodgy, Stoogey rocking, with just enough grunge-punk sneer in the vocals to stop it getting too serious (though,  band who cover the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme will never be Leonard Cohen, we guess).  At its best their music is galvanised molasses, thick and electrifying, and at its worst it’s just dumb, loud riffs.  Which is a pretty good, as worsts go, you have to admit.

Brevity is the arse’ole of punk wit, but sometimes the nasty, brutish and short approach to songwriting can wear over the course of a gig.  Bath’s bass and drums duo Ghost of the Avalanche are a dab hand at constructing heavy punk munitions that fly hell for leather (with extra leather) in a way that resembles a cross between Motorhead and our own lamented thrashferrets Winnebago Deal, but, after a clutch of micro-songs we just want one of those pummelling basslines and yelps to go somewhere unexpected, fun though they are. About two-thirds into the set a slower stop-start piece, like the work of a wonky sozzled Stranglers, is a boon, and sets off the following return to headlong rock scampers all the more pleasing.

Scuzz-psych warriors Table Scraps don’t have any issues with songs being too short, and tonight the longer those grooves get unspooled, the better.  Their blueprint is a straightforward amalgam of garage grease and psychedelic repetition, something like Wooden Shjips with bonus vocal delay and distortion. One track sums it up by sounding rather like “I Wanna Be You Dog”...but only if the dog was on a badass mescaline trip, thought it was its own stick and tried to fetch itself.  Another tune reveals a Cobain-like mix of wholesomeness and depravity, with the refrain “Now you clean your teeth” (possibly – we mentioned the distortion and delay, right?).   It’s all great, until the last track, which is great squared, an unstoppable juggernaut that drops the cool contemporary clothes and dives straight into being Hawkwind.  For about ten minutes.   “For sale: silver machine.  One careful owner.  Runs like a dream.  Only drawback, may never stop”.