Common People

I bought an early Simple Minds album today in the charity shop.  We will find out whether they were not shit before I'd heard of them, as some people claim - NB, it turned out not to be true for Genesis.

OH! COMMUNITY, DIVINE SCHISM, Common Ground, 7/5/23

Divine Schism’s Oh! Community all-dayers have been a regular highlight of Oxford’s post-lockdown music palette. By holding them in community-run spaces like the Common Ground coffee shop and art space they seem to attract people who might not explore classic dingy beer-dungeon venues, and today we see intrigued passers-by decide to step in, as well as some under-18s who can’t access most gigs. But, crucially, the bills have not been tempered or diluted to comfort the casual listener, and today’s line-up spans the delicate and the discordant, above a valley of the absurd.

Sensibly, the day starts with the approachable. Young singer Beth Pirrie has a lovely, unshowy voice and gives an excellent reading of a song by Corinne Bailey Rae (even though she can’t pronounce Corinne Bailey Rae). Green Hands are a pleasingly relaxed threepiece, recalling Wilco or Silver Jews at their least threatening, but The Bobo – with regular collaborator Kid Kin – are more memorable, their ethereal synthpop icily austere whilst being attractively melodic – imagine if the 3 ghosts who visited Scrooge had been the members of A-Ha.  

Suep deliver the sort of scrappy organ-led pep that has been played loud and tipsy in garages since 1963, and often remind us of old-school Truck favourites Fonda 500. They have a synth line that nicks to tune from ‘Love Will Tear us Apart’ which they put above a countryish lope, and some Bow Wow Wow buoyancy with a keyboard that sounds like a disappointed kitten. They merge into Garden Centre, sharing members, but with Max “King of Cats” Levy at the helm, giving them a more foscussed Monkees flavour (plus the best parasite shanty you’ll ever hear). Sinews, although having a hardcore underpinning and a taste for Bleach-era Nirvana, are fitting bedfellows with a surprising ear for a tune despite vocals delivered with the angry belch of a killer whale with a hangover.

The day really belongs to a pair of bands who are part high-concept performance art, part farcical prank...which is what all great pop is, ultimately. Dream Phone toss nasally pitch-shifted Auto-Tune vocals above infectious electro-punk à la Blectum From Blechdom, at times sounding like nightmare pier-end entertainers, Daniel Bedingfield & Orville. Shake Chain are more intense, and as the band begins Kate Mahoney is crawling agonisingly from the middle of the street outside, before delivering the second number from under a rug. When The Fall’s final line-up morphed into Imperial Wax, they had a vocalist conundrum: an MES impersonator would have been crass, but a standard rock singer leached some of the magic. Shake Chain sound like an alternate reality version of the group, where lean wiry post-punk is paired with a Diamanda Goulash of visceral howls and startling sobs.

The only way to follow that is with good tight bands. Ex-Void play sweet-minded college rock with a nod to Throwing Muses, or even Juliana Hatfield. They do a nice sprightly Arthur Russell cover, though they aren’t experts at mid-song gear changes. Holiday Ghosts splice in some classic rock ‘n’ roll chug driven forward by Gedgey hyperstrums, and are frankly excellent. Oh, and those kids we mentioned earlier? They got into the day, and went bananas for Shake Chain; there may be a future for mankind after all.

Cooler Shakey

I'm sort of amazed that this record isn't terrible.  Like everyone sane of my age, Shakey was my first musical love, so I was glad to give him some props.

SHAKIN’ STEVENS – RE-SET (BMG)

It would be hard to explain to a Gen-Z pop fan just how big Shakin’ Stevens was for the first half of the ‘80s, winning the hearts of the nation with his twin weapons of smooth rock ‘n’ roll vocalising and signature dance moves, which looked like someone had just cut half the strings on an Elvis marionette. But best not to waste too much time trying to get our putative zoomer up to speed, though, as Re-Set, Shaky’s third album this millennium, is as different from most of his career as the name suggests (and the fact that the cover shows him standing, windswept and scarf-wrapped in a disused slate quarry like he’s a lost post-McGann Dr Who regeneration does nothing to dispel this new-beginning notion).

Firstly, the lyrical concerns are rather more weighty than the classic Stevens songbook themes of boy meets girl/ boy tries to gatecrash next door’s party/ boy conducts disappointing structural survey. There’s a clear ecological message running through the album, and 'Greed Is All You Need' is an unequivocal swipe at any dastard who puts profit above people or planet. Sometimes the message doesn’t get much beyond “like, the government, man”, and we probably didn’t need both references to 1984 within the first verse of 'Hard Learned Lesson' to make the point, but throughout the sentiments are clearly heartfelt and sincere. The best of the political songs is 'Beyond The Illusion', a paean to the men like Shaky’s ancestors who worked the Cornish copper mines, which sounds like something Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger would have included in a Radio Ballad, delivered with the brawny warmth of Show Of Hands. 

Re-Set is also far more musically mature than the pop rocking that constituted most of Shaky’s career. Not only is his voice beautifully raw and burnished, but the songs, whilst not structurally complex, are elegantly persuasive, from the self-assured Tom Petty chug of 'Not In Real Life' to the Dylanesque shimmy of 'Hard Learned Lesson'. 'Dirty Water' even cuts a ZZ Top strut across dusty hardtop towards a roadhouse boogie session, where some atmospheric backing singers can be heard through the window. Only 'It All Comes Round' feels featherlight, a timid Levellers song that needs another few pints of scrumpy to build its courage. The last Shaky album to crack the UK Top 40 was the slightly anaemic Lipstick, Powder & Paint in 1985; Re-Set is more Politics, Gunpowder & Pain, and if it doesn’t score him his best sales for many a long year, then the world is an even worse than we thought.

Bueller Shaker

 There are a few extra lines in this review than appeared in the magazine.  Editors gon' edit.

BIG DAY OUT, BIG SCARY MONSTERS, Florence Park Community Centre, 15/4/23

As the delightfully bonkers, chaotic scurf rockers DITZ point out during today’s final set, the Florence Park Community Centre is not unlike a scout hut. One can’t be too precious in a somewhat over-lit suburban room lined with stacks of chairs and darts trophies, and performers and punters leave their egos at the door for this excellent all-dayer, to create a welcoming atmosphere with a pleasingly high musical bar. Things start tunefully, with Cheerbleederz’ cheeky jangle punk, while SUDS are the sort of band who bring their own tape hiss and seven-inch crackle, coming off like Madder Rose without the Velvety drug outlook and Yo La Tengo at their sweetest. Soot Sprite don’t quite hit the same melodic high, but still give us some Mazzy Star fuzziness and soothe our Cocteau twinge.

A few solo acts play in a tiny side room (if this is a scout hut, the second stage is where they store the old tents and Akela’s secret medicinal brandy) the best of which is Oxford’s EB, whose magic realist pseudo-rap is like an alternate reality inversion of The Streets, with a statistical love song coming off like an electro Jeffrey Lewis. “I put some feedback into this intro to annoy sound engineers” she grins, which tells you all you need to know. The incredible liquid steel of Pet Sematary’s voice is also a joy, and when Gaby starts singing a small shrubbery of recording phones spring up round the room.

Neo-emo might be a strange concept – it’s certainly a silly looking word – but Spank Hair wear the badge proudly, turning in a strong sinewy set, whilst also considering which is better, a horse or a donkey: as a pacifist Harry Hill might observe, there’s only one way to find out...pontificate at length whilst tuning. Jack Goldstein is as impressively maximalist as ever, cramming an improbable number of songs into a single segued ultra-minstrel set. As Jack crawls round the floor with water dripping from his clothes we don’t know whether he’s a hyperpop prophet or Margate’s most abstract floor polisher, but we approve.

As the evening darkens and the bar runs dry, the more raucous bands bring us home. Playful punks Lambrini Girls prove that, if you’ve got something important to say, say it incredibly loud, but temper it with a bit of humour (and if you can offer your listeners a wee drink whilst you rant, that helps too). Heroes of the day, however, are Other Half. One definition of a great new band is one that reminds you of lots of excellent acts, whilst not really sounding like any of them. Comparing notes with audience members post-set The Jesus Lizard, At The Drive In, Fugazi, Part Chimp, and Mcluskey are bandied about, but none of these capture the cheery insouciance of the twin vocals nor the 70s rock maelstrom behind the drums. Seek them out. If today’s event was an avant-scout jamboree, excuse us, as we’re off to sew on our new badges for Beer Tasting, Feminist Discourse and Incipient Tinnitus.