Mac Lack

Here's an interesting one: I am pretty sure most of the crowd thought this a much better gig than I did. A lot of friends and peers were there, and whilst they've all been too polite to bring it up, I am certain they raised their individual eyebrows whilst reading. In fairness the gig wasn't bad, or even disappointing, it was just frustrating: I recall a story about Derek Bailey accidentally whacking his guitar against the wall behind the stage making a right old racket, and instead of worrying he looked interested, then did it again a few times - that's what this gig needed, less apology and flustered worry when things went  wrong, and more leaning into the experience. Also, who gives a fuck if your synth is out of tune when you're arsing about, just carry on, because stopping to retune is really uninteresting.

LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER/ MEANS OF PRODUCTION, Heavy Pop, The Jericho, 11/10/24 

When Means Of Production first unveiled their stark industrial mantras in Oxford seven years ago, they immediately became one of the city’s best live acts. A swerve towards acid house a couple of years ago only pushed them up the rankings, and any chance to witness their cold mélange of found texts, mundane yet inexplicably unnerving projections, and ruthlessly honed electronics should be grabbed. Perhaps the first track or two don’t quite gel tonight, but doubts evaporate by the time they get to ‘Resuscitation Status’, a squelching cousin of Bam Bam’s ‘Where Is Your Child?’ which creates mortality-paranoia just by listing fragments of a hospital discharge letter: it’s the sound of time’s wingèd chariot drawing near with Hardfloor blasting from its tape deck. 

Two things are impossible to miss about Look Mum No Computer. One is Sam Battle’s charming exuberance – he's a wide-eyed, motormouth suburban urchin like you’d ordered Damon Albarn off Wish – and the other is his stage set-up, dominated by a vast modular synth which barely fits on the Jericho’s stage, and looks like Optimus Prime sneezed LEDs onto a Welsh dresser. His first piece is a swirling buzzing blizzard which sounds like two Tangerine Dream albums playing at once whilst being pulled into a black hole, and his next is a digipunk banger with howled vocals. This is excellent. But the rest of the set feels like scientific research into the best way to kill momentum. Songs stop with an apology halfway through because something doesn’t sound right. He repeatedly asks for cover suggestions from the audience, that he ultimately can’t play (a lengthy attempt at ‘Tainted Love’ is eventually abandoned in favour of a brief burst of Adamski’s ‘Killer’). It’s interesting to watch someone work in real time with complex equipment, but it’s much more satisfying when something cohesive is created - and this rare cohesion sounds fantastic, with banging rhythms and some Sakamoto-influenced lead lines. We respect the risk-taking – if your improvising doesn’t come with the fear of disaster, you’re not improvising at all – but Battle could lean into the unexpected more instead of grinding to an awkward halt. Back in the 80s people got called “synth wizards”. On this flustered evidence, Look Mum No Computer would be Mickey Mouse in Fantasia. Actually, Dukas’s ‘Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ would sound awesome on this rig...unless it ended up as Adamski’s ‘Killer’.

Apollo, Gee!

Two LFTWY retrospective reviews in quick succession. I think this one lands much better than the last.

THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS - APPOLLO 18 (Elektra) 

Wackiness is a terrible curse. It took me a couple of exposures to Oxford's superlative dreamy folk-pop band Stornoway to realise how special they were, because the Grumbleweeds goof-off that is 'The Good Fish Guide' made me shy away instinctively. Whilst not taking yourself seriously is usually a good idea for band, if you look like you're in some benighted rag week you've gone too far. They Might Be Giants (hereinafter “TMBG”) have certainly skirted the precipice of "I'm mad, me" many times, but pull back at the last second. On Apollo 13 probably the closest to cringe  is 'Spider' a bit of throwaway stop-start mambo with samples from 70s TV staple Monkey, but even this is actually fun, and lasts less than a minute anyway. Elsewhere 'She's Actual Size' pastiches 40s gumshoe talk over a Harle-flavoured sophisticated sax duet, 'The Statue Got Me High' is 60s bop with lead-booted drums and some accordion, and 'Hypnotist of Ladies' is a great scuffed indie half-inch of the Bo Diddley beat.  

And then there's 'The Guitar' an odd detournement of 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ made famous by Tight Fit (though it was a cover of The Tokens (though this was based on ‘Wimoweh’ by Karl Denver (though this was a translation of Solomon Linda's 'Mbube' from 1939))). This is, apparently, in some way about space exploration, and this album was part of TMBG's deal as "musical ambassadors" for NASA in International Space Year: you have to assume that NASA was stiffed on the deal, because apart from a few randomly dropped terms like "constellation" and "space suit" this collection of new wave bounces and adult nursery rhymes won't be convincing anyone that their tax dollars are best spent on the final frontier.    

Although Apollo 18 didn't tell me anything about space, 'Mammal' is educational, and I certainly didn't know the words "monotreme" or "echidna" until I heard it. References often run quite deep in TMBG's little referential world - it was about 30 years after buying this album that I understood that the ocean creatures fighting in space on the front cover were a reference to a famous tableau in the American Museum of Natural History in New York (I learnt this from the film The Squid & The Whale, which is a miserable sketch of a miserable family arguing a lot and is best avoided - no wonder producer Wes Anderson now only makes films of expressionless ciphers interacting in airless beige and pastel anterooms). 

Amongst all this is 'Narrow Your Eyes' a deceptively serious and wonderful love and break-up song (cf "They'll Need A Crane' a few years earlier), which says a lot more about the complexities of relationships than the charmless divorce porn of The Squid & The Whale.  Seriously, it's a shit film, don't watch it.  Where were we?  Oh yes, Apollo 18. Musically there are plenty of TMBG tricks and techniques, with lots of chirpy pre-Beatles references to early rock, Tin Pan Alley and cheap musicals all squished together with the drums turned up so it sounds like a non-menacing Clinic, and typically very long multi-clause sentences spread over whole verses. Apollo 18 is the last the 'Rhythm Section Want Ad' albums, where the TMBG cobble tracks together with elementary drum machines and any muso pals who are kicking around, and interestingly their next album, John Henry, is a proper grown-up rock record with a permanent band.  It's good too, though it might be the last TMBG album you actually need to own.  

I probably have to mention 'Fingertips' here, an exhausting parade of micro-songs, pop jingles and single lines that sounds like an ADHD spin through a whole week of Radio 2 shows, but it’s worth it for the (possible) piss-take of Morrissey at the end. Oh yeah, I forgot the song 'Turn Around'. That one is a bit annoyingly wacky, sadly. Still, 17 out of 18 is a pretty great hit rate, and as ‘I Palindrome I’ begins with the words “Someday mother will die and I’ll get the money”, we can leave the album certain that there’s more on offer than zany games and carnival winks. 

Baby's Got The Blends

Another little summary for my friend Russ's Lunchtime For The Wild Youth zine, this time focussed on albums from 1991. I don't think I do a great job on this one, but it's true that the record is far better than it has any business being.

KRAFTWERK – THE MIX (EMI) 

There are many prodding poles used to nudge an artist over a contractual finish line: best-ofs, B-side collections, live sets, remix anthologies. But the least common is the rerecording of old material, often in a stripped back format, employed because brings the listener closer to the heart of the music [did you mean to type “costs very little to produce”?].  Kraftwerk are famous for many things, but producing one of the few artistically satisfying examples of the “new jog round old paddocks” genre is one of their least celebrated achievements. 

The band hadn’t released an album for 6 years when The Mix hit the shelves, an album of 11 classics – well, 10 if you admit that 'Dentaku' and 'Pocket Calculator' are the same song in different languages, and 8 if you’re prepared to note that 'Abzug' and 'Metal on Metal' are just bonus bits of 'Trans Europe Express' - given a shiny digital makeover. The tracks sound fantastic, all muscular and sleek, with a new techno heft not overpowering the crackly transistor bubblegum charm found in the originals. Some of the tracks cleave very closely to the original arrangements, with opener and lead single 'The Robots' being the familiar song wearing its big bot pants. The next track, 'Computerlove' is also pretty much in line with the old version in arrangement terms, but it’s encased in a burnished techno carapace owing a fair bit to Model 500 (which seems like a fair bout of influence exchange). One might argue that The Mix fills any sonic gaps in the original songs with electro-Polyfilla killing off the human heart that used to beat within, but if any band can make a virtue of soullessness, it’s Kraftwerk. 

The record is most fun when it throws in some new, and surprisingly playful, innovations. 'Pocket Calculator' hasn’t been playing long before it throws in some odd jazzy clusters of percussive buzzing synth notes, as if mecha-Cecil Taylor had dropped into the studio, and 'Homecomputer' opens up clean dubby chasms beneath that famous rising motif. Perhaps most noteworthy is the absurd drop into a three-register vocal break six and a half minutes into 'Autobahn' with cyborg trills that sound like an Italian opera troupe have all swallowed Stylophones. 

Astonishingly, not only is The Mix satisfying as an album in its own right, but it marked the point at which Kraftwerk essentially stopped writing new music and returned to their back catalogue in an inward-looking spiral that continues to this day, marking out an improbable space between heritage act and conceptual art: as the final track title has it, this is Music Non Stop, but also music with no new starts. 

 

This is the Title of the Review

 Below is a review. This is the introduction to the review.

MARY LATTIMORE/ WALT McCLEMENTS/ AFTER THE THOUGHT, Divine Schism, Common Ground, 15/9/24 

Matt from After The Thought’s strumming hand is attacking his guitar strings on ultra-Gedge setting, but the sounds in our ears don’t match the image. Instead of thrashed jangling chords, we get soft snowdrifts of glistening sound, an undulating, endless vista in which to get thoroughly lost for thirty minutes. Like a lot of the best longform drone music, nothing seems to be happening, but take your bearings every five minutes and you’ll find that the sonic landscape has utterly changed: sometimes there are thick low tones like a bank of shruti boxes playing at once, at other times the tones are brighter and more layered, and at one moment it sounds like a barbershop quartet surrounded by bees being pulled into a black hole. The set ends with a melancholic sample of World War I song ‘We’re Here Because We’re Here’, with a tune stolen from ‘Auld Lang Syne’, and the misty effect is pure Gavin Bryars. 

Walt McClements’s accordion produces similarly billowing waves, but the sound is more intense and dynamic, an array of peals highlighting overtones from all those free reeds. He also tends to cycle through stately funereal chords in a clearer way to Matt, as if Yann Tiersen had decided to try to become a one-man Silver Mt Zion. It’s a quite wonderful set, and the highlight comes when the LA-based musician picks up a trumpet to unfurl bold lines over the rich swell of his accordion buttons, which is simultaneously mournful, euphoric, and eerie, like a Badalamenti-Morricone showdown. 

He’s the perfect person to join harpist Mary Latimore on tour, as they both pit elegant delicacy against enveloping textures in their playing. Lattimore takes frequent momentary breaks from her technically impressive string plucking to toy with an effects box in her lap, and garnish the music with 57 varieties of pitch delay. It’s almost as if she’s seeing whether she can derail the beauty of her pieces with unexpected tweaks, and it’s surprisingly how often the music resembles 90s electronica, from the well-dressed arpeggios of New London School Of Electronics, to the wonky wobbles of Cylob. There is a danger that the lavishly applied FX might reduce everything to a small parade of tricks, but each time the set threatens to become samey, there's a new gem displayed, from the limpid loveliness of ‘For Scott Kelly, Returned To Earth’ to a final duet with McClements. Plus she was on Neil Halstead from Slowdive’s virtual pub quiz team, so she’s definitely cooler than anyone reading this. 

Supernormal 2024 Part 3

 Shocking material gets a far more original airing in Fish El Fish’s set in The Vortex, a blacked out, and sometimes unbearable stuffy stage hosting many multimedia shows. Accompanied by visceral collages of images from medical textbooks, and over rubbery squelches and thick gloopy effects, a pitched-down voice recites a barely comprehensible monologue dealing with corporeal disgust, sexual shame, and a shocking new interpretation of the children's TV show title Johnny Ball Reveals All [Can we check with Ginny Lemon’s lawyers before publication?]. Far from a harrowing experience, the set is hilarious, especially when the speaker sounds like Mark Radcliffe’s Fat Harry White persona stuck near an equine orgy in a traffic jam. Appealingly appalling. Other acts who harness the power of the Vortex’s large projection screen are Wojciech Rusin, whose digital animations of mutating classical architecture are joined by harp, contrabassoon and a mezzo singing parts that wouldn’t be out of place in a Handel opera, all of which are inevitably electronically fucked with, and Susannah Stark, capturing Sheila Chandra’s folk-drone vocal style alongside single accordion notes and hushed percussion beneath a huge abstraction monochrome drawing. But La Brea Pulpit work the venue the best in compete darkness except for two thin blue spotlights, making their oppressively complex, restless electronic noise all the more intense. If Space Invaders were filmed with the merciless detail of Saving Private Ryan’s opening scene, then cowering under one of those crumbling bombed bridges might sound exactly like this. 

Punk of course finds its place on the line-up, picks being Bristol’s Gimic, who bring a surprisingly groovy shimmy to artcore bludgeons, Fashion Tips’ Chicks On Speed energy, and the barely processable skree-treble wall of Cuntroaches, who destroy grindcore beats and Motörhead riffs with digital noise and whose version of ‘Happy Birthday’ makes Hendrix’s ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ sound like James Last. Some acts are punk in outlook rather than sound, notably Slagheap, a joyous quartet who can hardly play, but whose inept, barely formed songs have a weirdly cohesive pop centre, and whose lyrics about eating too much pie are worryingly relatable. Some very young children also bash out a clunky stumbling creche and burn clatter after the GLARC workshop, and they are already making improv jams twice as well as Al Karpenter, a band whose vacuous jumble of charmless noises and cool posturing quickly irritates.  

However, although a couple of acts gesture towards topics without expanding the discourse – sure, equality good, capitalism bad, but how about a tune? - there are very few missteps on the bill, and some towering highlights. Sister Punch is an indescribable piece of Commedia dell’Arse theatre in which a gone-to-seed Mario wrestles a slutty dogperson and bursts balloons, and Zohastre are drums, electronics, tape hiss through a wah-wah pedal, and an unnerving plastic owl – the part where it sounds like a hurdy-gurdy playing Underworld’s ‘Rez’ made us grin like fools. Also up there are Tristwych Y Fenywod, with misty and airy Welsh vocals, a tiny plucked dulcimer through delay, muddy dub bass and ‘Metal on Metal’ digital drums. Imagine Broadcast doing Clannad. Smote’s set builds from the machine-tooled repetition of Einstellung, through Can-tight grooves, to Pelican post-metal flourishes, and is bloody great. But perhaps the act we enjoy most is CHEWY SHE, who leap from a Hawkwind synth intro to ultra-tight Sparks-flavoured electro-disco, with impeccable choreography and even costume changes. Who’d have thought a pinnacle of Supernormal would be rehearsed, professional pop music? Even hardened alt-culture types can back look at their prior expectation at the end of this glorious weekend and say “Sorry, I haven’t a clue what this is”. 

Supernormal 2024 Part 2

 Acts stretching the definition of musical sonics are YOL, who simply rubs items against the floor to make squeaky gate/hiccupping chicken sounds whilst ranting about a “national bucket hat shortage” for 12 minutes (which is about 20 times better than you imagine), and Mosquito Farm, much of whose set involves bouncing balls into close-miked vessels on a jumble of retort stands - or more accurately, mostly missing – over clanky loops. It looks like a carney rube failing to win at an alchemist’s sideshow, and sounds like Tom Waits’s relaxation tape. The Thicket stage mostly hosts rituals and magical lectures this year, and whilst Janis & The Sonic Travellers’ performance – a kimchi recipe disguised as a seance, enlivened by La Monte Young violin spirals – is diverting, the area feels under utilised. Having said that, nipping over in the early evening on the dubious advice of a punter who claims that Dr Jerry Thackray (FKA journalist Everett True) was going to cover Fall songs there, we discover a deserted glade and the enchanting ambience of Matthew Olden’s sonic installation ‘The Irrepressible Force’, a computer-controlled mélange of drones and creaks; at Supernormal even a prank turns out to be an epiphany. 

Our time in Ipsden would not be complete without some free improv in the barn, the pick of which features Rachel Musson (sax), Mark Sanders (drums), and Matt Davis (trumpet), whose technique is less extended than elongated, playing through the spit valve and using a tambourine as a mute. 

Techno is well represented this year. Nkisi closes Friday’s live roster with what sounds like an 80s Doctor Who tension cue stretched out for an hour. We get turn of the millennium glitchy loops from Dangsha, squishing Mille Plateaux style clicks into thick, compacted, fuzzy minimal techno: Underfelt Resistance, anyone? Two consecutive sets are more danceable, the classic late-90s crusty style of Portugal’s excellently gurning Zancudo Berraco reminding us of Meat Beat Manifesto and the more urbane of Megadog’s regulars, whilst Rrose’s hypnotic rhythms are more sleek and inhuman. Rrose presumably took their name from Marcel Duchamp’s female alter-ego, proving that drag and high art have been connected for a long time, and there’s a strong queer cabaret element to this year’s line-up; if the frankly filthy Midgitte Bardot has the best name, Ginny Lemon reduces us to childish giggles, drawing us into the tent with a riff on Verka Serduchka’s Eurovision classic ‘Dancing Lasha Tumbai’, and keeping us in there dicking about like a hungover avant-Chuckle Brother. Their improbably funny rewriting of ‘Toxic’ about RuPaul has a “few legal edits”, and therefore is entirely composed of wordless mumbles. Lydia Lunch is less guarded in conversation, baldly calling Nick Cave a cunt, whilst dropping such nuggets as, “A nice clean set of balls goes a long way”. She’s an amusing X-rated raconteur, but her schtick is ultimately the rehearsed platitudes and self-caricature of more mainstream after-dinner speakers. 

You Know My Ipsden Lie

Supernormal is always fantastic, but this was one of the best. I very much hope it returns in 2025.

SUPERNORMAL, Braziers Park, 2-4/8/24 

The opening act at Supernormal is Spiritual Advisor & Nice Strangers, about which the programme states, “Sorry, I haven’t a clue what this is”. We can’t tell whether this is the compiler giving up, an obscure conceptual joke, or a hint that Graeme Garden will be doing some bucolic festival puns - “Bring me the hedge of Alfredo Garcia!” - but the fact that we considered all of these options and more proves the extent to which Supernormal sits outside the standard festival experience. If the average music weekender consists of acts trotting out their biggest hits, punters killing time until the headliners arrive, epic queues and agonising bar prices, then Supernormal is a communal experience in which performers and audiences mingle together without a sniff of a VIP area, and in which every change of act offers a surprise...not always a welcome one, mind, but that’s part of the fun. Connections can be drawn between acts all over the bill, so in true Supernormal spirit, this review will entirely ignore the running order. 

Shake Chain are a band we’ve seen many times in Oxford. In most environments the clear split between the band on stage playing excellently wiry post-punk and performance artist Kate Mahony doing some maggotty crawling around (or outside) the venue is shocking, but such is the semipermeable membrane between audience and performer at Supernormal, her brattish toddler presence in the crowd barely raises an eyebrow, though her mewling and puking vocals still sound great. Other acts who spurn the stage’s boundaries are Robyn Rocket, who strolls slowly round the field delivering soothing little delayed trumpet lines over ambient washes and susurrations and is probably what they play when the ECM office is hungover, and Maria Uzor, who spends a good percentage of her set dancing or kneeling in front of the stage. Her intriguing, bouncy songs have a pop heart, an experimental mind, and a raver’s sweaty trainers, as she co-opts a vintage Hoover synth sound and a digital tom rhythm resembling Raze’s ‘Break 4 Love’. Slimelord also make some classic genre nods, but not the ones we expect from the name: yes, they can churn out sludge passages, but underneath that they’re barely disguised death metallers, all cantering riffs, barked vocals, and a bassist whose windmilling hair gets caught on the Shed stage’s splintery roof. 

Connections to deeper traditions occur throughout the weekend, especially in those sets happening in or around Braziers House itself. Paul Dunmall’s solo sax set drops in the odd free improv sputter and squawk, but his fluent smiling lines sound more like Paul Desmond with the odd sheet of Coltrane sound, and his piece on soprano gestures towards Parkerish runs and eddies. Paddi Benson & Grace Lemon’s uilleann pipes duos, with a little rhythm guitar underpinning, were inspired by ballroom dances held in Bedlam Hospital, but are not wild or careening, instead inhabiting a lovely space between folk forms and cellular minimalism. We don’t have the expertise to state whether Jali Fily Cissokho’s Senegalese songs exist within any tradition, but we know that his kora playing is wonderful, spicing delicate cascades of notes with slashing chords. Yakka Doon plays pure 60s coffeehouse folk in the sitting room, and we imagine John Renbourn or Bert Jansch chiming in at any moment. An acapella number is especially beautiful, particularly as our position behind a piece of antique furniture means we can’t see anything, and it sounds like a tuneful ghost - “Show the spectre some affection”, as Leo Robinson notes in his modern day take on Harlem Rennaissance/beat jazz poetry. Isiah Hull delivers his writings alongside the band GG, who often sound like a stuttering Slint who can’t quite get started, and we christen the marriage of emotional verses and laissez-faire sonics “slachrymose”.  Wormhook also features spoken word and austere monastic singing, though phrases like “toad pulpit boil nexus” make for more dense texts, accompanied by a pseudo double bass made from a big branch and a length of rough hawser, which creates a powerful guttural rumble, but isn’t big on variation. Infinite Livez’ lyrics are poetic in spirit, but his delivery is soulful and looped, like an understated lofi Jamie Lidell, and his occasional flute invokes Rahsaan Roland Kirk. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Underdogma?

I go to Supernormal, the UK's best festival, in a few days, which is exciting.  Watch out for a review in a month or so. 

THE SUBTHEORY – SHARK TANK (self-release) 

Sometimes we reviewers get paranoid about only making comparisons with old music, but as this new album by The Subtheory makes lyrical references to both vintage Cypress Hill and DJ Shadow, we feel justified in looking to the 90s for touchstones. From the smoky Loop Guru tabla groove of ‘All Other Things Can Wait’ at one end, to the prowling Mezzanine bass of ‘The Wolf In The Fairytale’ at the other, this album masterfully nods towards trip-hop and downtempo classics from the dying days of the twentieth century. We can also pick out the cultured cool of Lamb on ‘Footprints’, a laconic rap on ‘Blessings and Lessons’ which embodies the unhurried mentor spirit of Faithless’s Maxi Jazz, and the after-hours-hip-hop-DJ-discovers-forgotten-spy-theme flavour of Portishead is captured immaculately on ‘Crown of Thorns’. 

But Shark Tank’s real victory is that it sounds like more than a list of impeccably curated reference points, and exhibits real character. A lot of this is down to the vocals of Cate Debu, a thistledown diva whose airy melancholia gives the songs depths that a thousand other chill-out acts wafting through chrome-and-velvet bars can only dream of. Guest vocalists lift the record to even greater heights, Pet Twin adding his introspective burr to the insidious snaky bass of ‘Song of the Damascene’ (which despite its title sounds less like a thunderbolt conversion and more like a lingering sense of dreadful doubt), whilst Emma Hunter’s unmistakable voice lends authority to the chorus of ‘The Sicilian Defence’. The Subtheory have licensed a lot of music to soundtracks, and perhaps there are one or two pieces here that are tastefully unobtrusive enough for a Netflix drama, but too smoothly polite for a proper listen, but this is a minor gripe: whether you lived through the 90s or have only spun the playlists, Shark Tank is both authentic and original, which is a tricky – or even Tricky – target to hit 

Who Knows what Fievel Lurks in the Hearts of Men?

Common Ground is swiftly becoming Oxford's best small venue, totally up for any sort of performance, friendly, and inviting.  Go there if you've not been.  Go there again if you have been.  

FIEVEL IS GLAUQUE/ BERNICE, Divine Schism, Common Ground, 9/6/24 

Fievel Is Glauque is a strange name. We looked it up, and we’re still not entirely sure what it means. But that’s a fitting for an idiosyncratic act bursting with character. Ostensibly they’re a jazz band, and there are plenty of eloquently fiddly Pat Metheny guitar parts or Joe Zawinul synth lines to bear this out. But those keyboard runs are played on some garishly corny sounds, direct from the FM synthesis era, as if the gig were secretly an opportunity to check all the presets on a Yamaha DX7. For every muso noodle – and the band is nothing if not incredibly accomplished – there’s a big pop melody, with one foot in the baroque eloquence of vintage French beat-chanson, and the other foot on a dry ice swaddled amp in some 1987 stadium gig, and vocalist and founder member Ma Clément’s style is half Cleo Laine, half Jane Wiedlin. They do The Clash’s ‘Somebody Got Murdered’ like Peter Gabriel melded with Tapir!, but their own songs are odder, part no wave bossa nova, part abstract torch song.  By the end of the set half the audience is sat down, studiously following the music’s twisty paths, and the other half is jiggling about like loons. They’re both right. 

But even this is eclipsed, both in terms of quality and headfuckery, by support act Bernice. The Toronto trio play as if they’re trying to trip themselves up, with crystal pure, stately vocal lines clashing against fractal synth tones and restless, intricate – and sometimes bloody silly – rhythms from a Roland HandSonic (a digital percussion device). Occasionally they remind us of the hand-made quirk of Homelife, but they’re more like Suzanne Vega drowned out by someone playing Alex Kidd In Miracle World, or a Cardigans demo lost in a hall or mirrors. Fievel Is Glauque play a track sounding like From Langley Park To Memphis era Prefab Sprout having a crack at the theme tune to Sorry!, but Bernice manage to top that in the style of Burial and Sade rewriting the theme tune to Taxi. Bernice is not a strange name, but they are a band who will fox you, intrigue you, and make you laugh out loud as a digital cuica divebombs a drum n bass ballad, which is far stranger and far more wonderful. 

Diametric Straits

 Sorry, totally forgot to post this last month.  

THE EXACT OPPOSITE/ SECRET RIVALS/ LIFE UNDERGROUND, Jericho, 10/5/24 

In an entertaining set, Life Underground pull us in lots of directions, but all of them turn out to be separate paths up the big glowing mountain named Melodic Rock. So, signature track ‘Sunshine’ is a mixture between Roy Orbison and Steve Harley, two very different acts, but both of which are big on tunes.  Elsewhere we pick up on some 70s Dylan pronouncements, an early Kinks jangle, an airy glide past Fleetwood Mac, and a very small pinch of Bowie pizzazz. Sometimes the sound is clumpy Sunday pub-session rocking, but there’s enough attention to hook and songcraft here to make Life Underground well worth revisiting. 

Their best weapon might be drummer Mike Gore, who plays with a light carefree innocence which owes more to the early days of rock ‘n’ roll, or even skiffle, than it does to anything after 1966. When Gore joins Secret Rivals for their final song, it’s an unexpected joy as he brings a strange country lope to the tune. Prior to this some charmless programmed drums had marred an otherwise strong set, airless and graceless tom fills from an emo karaoke disc undercutting songs that want to fizz and bubble. Secret Rivals Mk II might not have the fight-pop ‘tude of the early incarnation, but Ash Hennessey’s vocal alternates nicely between Lush-style softness and cheeky rants, with Jay Corcoran busting in almost randomly with Scrappy Doo yelps. The Cure-chorus guitar sounds great, as do the rolling basslines from erstwhile Masochist, Vincent Lynch. Next gig, will they be a fourtpiece? 

As soon as Nigel Powell sits behind the drums, the Rivals’ lovable sloppiness is exorcised by clinical precision. Not that The Exact Opposite - Nigel with his old Dive Dive bandmate Jamie Stuart - can’t be fun or lovable, but their streamlined, stripped back mecha-indie is meticulously thought out, and their performance is flawless (one hilarious high-sped lap of the venue in search of a capo notwithstanding). The vocals are agile and striking, the guitar is just on the well-behaved side of angular, and the drums are impeccably controlled, whilst also packing a kick in the ribs when Powell wants to drive a point home. These songs are playful, intense, and yearning, and ae testament to the duo’s long history writing and playing together. Were they as good as we expected? The exact same. 

Tun(e)s

Another record review for Nutshaft, and a pretty damn strong record it is to.  I'm looking forward to getting back to gig reviewing soon, though, I think I prefer that.

BARRELHAUS – AZIMUTH (self-release) 

If the riff is the basic building block of rock music, then Azimuth is a Legoland day pass. For their second album no-nonsense duo BarrelHaus have retained the rugged simplicity of their debut but branched out, so although this album is still built from big riffs on a foundation of bigger riffs held together with ostinato putty, there are a number of variations on display. So, whilst ‘GAD’ is a slouching Sabbath beast, it’s immediately followed by the high-octane punkabilly of ‘How Did You Die Today, My Dear?’. ‘Red Rag’ has a lazy mariachi lope which is balanced by ‘Ballad Of The Former Mariner’ and its playful QOTSA blues-suet stickiness. ‘Diet Cheese’ waddles like an overfed ZZ Top whereas the bright, trebly chords of the excellently named ‘Your Friends Don’t Have To Like Each Other’ take us on a sprightly dance – at least until the heady grunge chorus, which makes you want to don a greasy old TAD T-shirt. 

At a sliver over thirty minutes, Azimuth packs a lot into a small space, and is the sort of album you want to play again as soon as it’s finished (perhaps all those ruffs are coated in MSG). If there’s a downside it’s the lyrics, which are definitely not bad, but co-opt some pretty shopworn material - “It’s a game of give and take”, “Red rag to a bull”, “She doesn’t suffer fools” - but really the songs are just riff delivery systems, and it doesn’t matter what a track like ‘Down With His Ship’ is about, so long as the righteous bludgeoning anger is communicated. And did we mention the riffs?  

Young, Gifted, & Plaque

Another piece for my pal Russ's Lunchtime For The Wild Youth zine, this time focussing on records released in 1986.  You can buy the hard copy and read all the reviews at Merch | Lunchtime For The Wild Youth (bandcamp.com)

DR CALCULUS – DESIGNER BEATNIK (10 Records) 

Stephen Duffy is one of Britain’s most underrated songwriters. He may have found a late-career payday writing for Barenaked Ladies and Robbie Williams, but most of his work is unknown to the general public: a founder member of Duran Duran, he left a year before they signed to EMI, making him the yacht-rock Pete Best; as Tin Tin he had a couple of glossy pop hits with albums to follow, which are treasured by the popnoscenti but mostly forgotten; he’s made 12 albums with The Lilac Time, who in their late-80s heyday were a literate folk-pop outfit, a sort of Fairport Convention for polo-necked Lloyd Cole fans; he made a beautiful album of French cinema-influenced chamber-pop nostalgia which even a co-credit for Nigel Kennedy couldn’t convince punters to splash out on; and he was in Me Me Me, with Alex James and the drummer out of Elastica, although that’s an exception because it’s shite. 

But of all the obscurities in the Duffy back catalogue, none is less known and more deserving of love than Designer Beatnik, the sole album by Dr Calculus, a shockingly prescient chunk of ambient house funk pop collage surrealism which sounds so far ahead of its time, I had to double check it was actually released in 1986 (at which point I discovered some of it was recorded in 1984, and had to have a little sit down). This knowingly arty ecstasy-influenced soundscape – the back cover cheekily places “m.d.m.a.” after the titular doctor’s name – predates almost any piece of club music detournement you can think of, coming a year before The JAMs, and two years before any of Akin Fernandez’s Irdial Records acts, and a few years before The Orb hit their stride. Only the Situationist Synclavier* of The Art Of Noise is a true pop-angled experimental predecessor here, and the debt is clear from the style of the sleeve, which was designed by Stephen and his brother Nick (who is also in The Lilac Time, do try to keep up at the back). 

The 11 tracks generally fall into two camps, the strangely danceable and the proto-chillout. The former throws magpie lyrics or vocal samples over rectilinear electro drum machines and meaty horn parts, courtesy of members of Pigbag’s brass section, with a few psychedelic flourishes; the latter layers field recordings, woozy pitched percussion, and the sort of post-Miles doleful horn lines that would have made a 1993-vintage Wire reader drool, and they still sound contemporary today. ‘Moments of Being (Reprisal)’ lies somewhere between Penguin Cafe Orchestra and Global Communication and captures an extract from a chat with a bikini model talking about boredom and Special Brew, and the title track boasts a gorgeously striated trumpet with full-on phaser and what might be a couple of backpackers catching up in North Africa.  

But the album still finds time for oddities like ‘Man’, a loving parody of acid jazz before the genre really existed, and ‘Perfume from Spain’, a sleng teng rhythm in so many inverted commas it can barely stand up straight, with the poshest white girl rap imaginable - although it also features a verse by Junior Gee, one of the UK’s first rappers, whose 1983 track ‘Caveman Rock’ is a nice Newcleus-esque footnote in British hip-hop history. Oh, and the album’s lyrics, if that’s the right word, steal from Hamlet, invoke a yuppie eroticism with lines like “You are my neon love in the hot baths”, and revel in pop-art Burroughs non-sequiturs like “Sacred heartbeat outlaw.  I wanted to be a painter. Hello honey, I’m home”.  

If you want to hear an album that sounds as though it might have been made by some uber-trendy producer last month, whilst also capturing the open-eyed optimism of mainstream songwriters discovering cheap music technology in the 80s, seek out Designed Beatnik.  And remember, as ‘Dream Machine’ puts it, “the film begins when you leave the cinema” - which might be profound or a piss-take, you won’t be entirely sure. 

 

*AoN used a Fairlight, rather than a Synclavier, so far as I know, but why waste a nice snappy bit of alliteration? 

Double Single

Here's a review of an old band very definitely returning to form from the latest Nightshift. In the copy I said that this was a single and B-side, whereas it transpires it's 2 different singles released at once, which just seems stupid. The whole concept of a single is meaningless now, isn't it, so I've just left it as it was. Sue me.

SELF HELP – SPACEMAN (Self-released) 

When Self Help’s rhythm section left, we thought it was all over. Lizzie Couves (bass) and Silke Blansjaar (drums) brought such an enticing mixture of laidback swagger and insistent precision you weren’t sure whether the songs were slumping down in a pub booth like a tipsy friend or screaming at you like a square-bashing sergeant major. Perhaps it took a brief period for the band to settle in as a quintet, but this single is a joy, and as strong as anything they released with the old line-up.  

The title track is about the slow asphyxiation of childhood dreams in the vacuum of adult life, but its huge glam guitar and reverby 50s sci-fi effects still make you want to jump up and shake life by the lapels. Sean Cousins’s vocal is impassioned, but with a slightly dazed off-mic sound reminiscent of Prolapse, and the whole song sounds like it was recorded in the greasy kitchen of a dirty diner. 

The lyrics to ‘Enrage Engage’ ponder conspiracies and the future of tech in a pretty generic way, but the music is excellent, with sticky-burr synth tones teetering on the edge of atonal ugliness whilst the drums are crisp, and bright guitar chords slice like a sashimi chef’s knife. A flourish of indie-psych guitar and some snide vocal wah-wah lines have a hint of later Blur, but the track has a stoned wildness that’s more like Mudhoney. Whether your youthful aspirations are flourishing or mere desiccated memories, these tracks will make your life briefly brighter. 

Scotty's Fantasy

I do love an indoor festival.  And an indoor festival where you wander between venues, best of all worlds.

BEAM ME UP, Academy & Bully, 10/2/24 

After our seventh full-body pat-down at the doors of The Academy, we rechristen this all-dayer Feel Me Up. But, although we never tried to smuggle anything illicit past the (consistently polite and respectful) security, we often brazenly walked out with a sense of pride at the local talent on display, mostly in the tiny Academy 3, a  corner of the downstairs room hastily screened off as if there had been a horrific incident (well, there had been a Stereophonics tribute the week before). My Crooked Teeth play a lovely set alternating between Don McLean lyricism and straight-up country lamenting, even though an intense light just under Jack’s chin makes it look like he’s going to launch into a ghost story at a scout camp. Eva Gadd looks less demonic, but her versatile jazzy voice sounds just as sweet, and The Bobo takes sees this bet and raises it, unleashing her inner Julee Cruise with a wispy, sultry set accompanied by James Maund from Flights of Helios on guitar; we’d say her voice was smoky, but smoking is bad for you, and this music is balm for any ailment. Johnny Payne unveils a new unnamed trio in the larger upstairs venue, sounding like Joy Division if they enjoyed wholesome roadtrips across the midwest instead of nights drying Manchester drizzle by a two-bar fire. Conversely, Tiger Mendoza plays the small room as if it’s the biggest imaginable, with striking projections and some of their block-rockingest beats. Plus, university band Girl Like That do a sterling job of opening the day at the Bully, playing 90s altrock that’s somewhere between Stone Temple Pilots and The Breeders as if they’d been together twenty years. 

But other acts have travelled from further afield, such as Chroma, who are almost distracted from performing by a certain rugby match because they are “very Welsh” (pity, we hoped they were pun-lovers from the Norfolk coast). Thankfully they manage to focus enough to deliver corking glam-punk fun with greasy riffs, chunky drums, and infectiously cheeky vocals. They pair well with Shelf Lives, whose mix of sassy, insouciant rapping/singing, gnarly guitar and distorted electronics isn’t quite Beyoncé Teenage Riot but comes close to being Gwen Stefani possessed by Peaches. 

Some bands just work despite all the signs being initially bad. Make Friends sound as though they’re shooting for Foals, but hitting Curiosity Killed The Cat, yet their rubbery bass, soft chorus guitar and urbane vocals manage to remind us of Climie Fisher and entertain us enormously, which is surely a victory. Conversely, Blue Bayou look like the full prescription, with soul revue vibes, folky fiddle, crazy Scooby-Doo villain vocals, and brass, but they stall at every hurdle and never manage to lift off, ending up as Dexy’s Tired School-Runners.  

The de-facto headliners today at the Academy are The Rills, who make a perfectly passable fist of being a new rock revolution band from 2001, and more excitingly Deadletter, whose broadly drawn psych rock is something like Spiritualized if the only drug they’d taken was speed, or The Brian Jonestown Massacre, if they’d not taken any drugs at all and had just put more effort in. But the real stars are both at The Bully. Snayx look like Max and Paddy, and sound like a monstrous melange of Soft Play, Idles, and Silver Bullet. They’re delivery is Black Flag brutal, but they charmingly take time out to ensure everyone in the pit is doing OK between numbers. Whilst their drummer is honed and stripped back, like John Bonham playing Run DMC patterns, the bass descends into the filthiest bit-crushed noise we’ve heard in a while. Even better are Home Counties, whose council-estate take on Talking Heads disco and Chicago house we christen GLC Soundsystem, although at one point they groove around a classic rock riff like The Streets doing Thin Lizzy. There’s even a touch of The Blockheads about their most ornery, awkwardly bouncy tracks, but as with Ian Dury, beneath all the winks and sneers there is an undercurrent of melancholy. Turns out, despite all the fun, we go home having felt something...a bit like the Academy bouncers. 

All the Best Last Puns Have Already Been used for Actual James Last Albums, so...

Another strange wee review for my pal Russ's zine. People had to write about their favourite albums of 1985, but when the ones I wanted to do were already taken I got in a huff and did something stupid instead! To be honest, it's not a great piece, I'm trying to justify the whole of my interest in easy listening and review an album in a few hundred words and I don't think I manage to chew everything I've bitten off there. But, it's probably the best James Last review you'll read today.

Oh, and in breaking news, Discogs lists this as released in '86, so it doesn't even fit the brief!  But the sleeve makes it look like it was released in '85.

And in doubly breaking news, this full Last discography says '85, so I think it's OK.  Phew.  www.grandorchestras.com/jlast/albums/jlast-discography-reference.html

JAMES LAST - SWING MIT JAMES LAST (Polydor) 

In the mid-90s, some friends and I would buy old uncool vinyl for pennies, and spin it whilst drinking cheap wine. The decision to listen to music we thought tawdry was conscious and ironic (the decision to drink cheap wine was, however, purely economic). But after a while  doing something you don’t like for the sake of supercilious wryness paled, so we stopped...at which point I realised that I had not been disliking all the music at which I performatively sneered, and started to go back to some – though, dear God, not all – of those cheesy platters. Of all the easy and exotica acts to whom I came back - Kaempfaert, Denny, Alpert – James Last towers over them all, like the Colossus of Rhodes in a spangly jacket. 

In one way I still listen to easy listening ironically, in that I am conscious of the distance from the context and culture in which it was made – this is just as true as when I listen to Renaissance motets or roots reggae. And easy listening can sound odd. It’s perhaps down to the intense primacy melody has, and when arrangements and performance decisions are based wholly on supporting a tune-delivery system, some unusual choices can be made. Sometimes I find this sort of music quite psychedelic, even though it wasn’t the intention of the creators (then again, Victorian children’s illustrators didn’t intend for their work to look trippy to 60s Haight Ashbury stoners, either).  

Swing Mit... is ostensibly a tribute to the big-band sound, as the name implies, although the material comes from a range of sources, from Ellington mainstay Juan Tizol to Romantic composer Offenbach, from jukebox jazz saxophonist Earl Bostic, to no fewer than 3 tracks written by or associated with Huey Lewis & The News for some inexplicable reason.  The album opens with 'Study In Brown', a bona-fide swing classic written by bandleader Larry Clinton, which Last strips down till it's functional and smooth to the point of being undetectable by radar. This could have been the underscore in a round in The Generation Game.  'Perdido' is also a piece of utilitarian swing with some breathy female vocals doubling the horn lines, and buried so deep in the mix you might miss them – this was a common trick of Last’s, possibly because he didn’t want to foreground too many English lyrics for his pan-European consumers – and 'All By Myself' (no, not that one) is a bouncy confection that could have accompanied illusionists at the Palladium. 

But it’s the more unusual selections that stand out. 'Nutcracker' is credited to Peter Hesslein and Frank Jarnach, but this is a blag because it’s a march written by Tchaikovsky, and the arrangement owes a lot to B Bumble & The Stingers’ novelty rock ‘n’ roll version, 'Nut Rocker', but this has a meatier kick drum and some yummy Vangelis synths. 'Who Cares' is a track from Huey Lewis’s debut album (again, don’t ask me why), and whilst it’s one of his better power-pop tracks, this version punches far harder, with sharp horns stabbing ever more wildly above the insistent earthy bass ostinato, with the breathy backing babes intoning the title occasionally. This is tight and infectious, and has at least as much energy as a hundred rediscovered disco cuts now selling for funny money.  The album ends with what may be the best track, 'The Heart Of Rock And Roll' by Huey Lewis (I repeat, what the fuck?), which removes his smug demeanour, burnishes the music to an almost krautrock sleekness, and has the backing ladies deliver fragmentary words and phrases with a strange dub logic. 

This is not the best album of 1985 – that's Steve McQueen, Fables Of The Reconstruction, or Rum, Sodomy And The Lash - and it’s a fair way from being James Last’s best album, which are all from the 70s - but there is music here of a near post-human tightness and directness you’d be hard pressed to find elsewhere in the era. Take a listen...but pick up some half-decent wine. 

The Final Chow Down

This is an unusual review for two reasons.  Firstly, I've reviewed something incredibly buzzy which is getting yards of column inches, and secondly I think it's pretty damned great. So, here you go, yet another review telling you that this album is ace and the band are awesome...I bet it's the only one to refer to Pauline epistles, mind.

THE LAST DINNER PARTY – PRELUDE TO ECSTASY (Island) 

The Last Dinner Party have not been known, over the past year or so, for reticence. And now, to join their well-stocked wardrobe, bulging book of press cuttings and fast-filling trophy cabinet, they’ve made an album which sounds huge, with an ornate flamboyance decorating pop hooks from the top drawer (of the dressing up box). How many other debut albums open with a full-on overture? This one starts with a lavish orchestral confection, equal parts Gershwin and Shostakovich, with a little hint of golden-age Hollywood glamour. The album’s title is probably not a reference to Steely Dan’s 1973 classic Countdown To Ecstasy, but in some ways The Last Dinner Party resemble Becker and Fagen’s sophistirock outfit, adding curlicues and complexities to popular song forms – although on evidence to date it's clear the former would be more fun to hang out with in the studio. 

Sonically, this album is varied but invariably bold, gesturing camply towards a raft of classic pop styles. 'Burn Alive' is blousy panto goth, 'The Feminine Urge' is pitched on the sturdiest of Spector drum patterns, and 'Caesar On The TV Screen' is blasted epic glam a la Marc Almond and its late 60s soul-pop shuffle could have served Amy Winehouse well (not to mention some gratuitous but delicious timpani rolls). 'Sinner' starts with an insistent piano which Aurora Nishevsky should really perform with a stick-on Ron Mael ‘tache, so readily does it evoke vintage Sparks, but blossoms into a controlled fruitiness with the flavour of Roxy Music’s late – and under-rated – albums. There’s a light Cardigans slinkiness to 'My Lady of Mercy', which suddenly bursts into a Broadway stoner metal chorus – quite fittingly, as the Cardigans were always unabashed Sabbath heads.  

In a blizzard of reference points, the band always sound cohesive, not just a list of educated nods, the music impeccably arranged and with true depth to the writing. Take 'On Our Side', with a tinkling piano, slow stately chords, and a high, yearning vocal line that isn’t far from the Coldplay of 'Fix You', but there are definite differences. Firstly, Coldplay don’t tend to end an epic ballad with an 80-second ambient hug sounding like a windchime being sucked down a cloud tunnel, but also, whereas Chris Martin’s lyrics are almost pathologically generic, where every stone is accompanied by a bone, and anything cold is simultaneously old, this album is incredibly well read, and wears its learning as lightly as the lace frill around a flouncy cuff. Literary and classical allusions are tossed in without smug fanfare. When a song claims of the titular 'Beautiful Boy' that “he launches ships”, we think of Marlowe’s Helen of Troy; when 'The Feminine Urge' proclaims “I am dark red liver stretched out on a rock” the image of Prometheus is raised; and 'Caesar On A TV Screen'’s “When I was a child, I never felt like a child, I felt like an emperor” must have been copped from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthian Girl Bosses.  

The lyrics are consistently port-rich in allusion and emotional drama. Grab words from across the album and you’ll find lust, envy, pray, sin, altar, lust (again) - it’s basically The Best Catholic Guilt Album In The World...Ever! But there is great humour in the writing too, the offhand wit of the playfully bookish. When 'Burn Alive' assures us “there is candlewax melting in my veins” it’s a bohemian thirst trap for sixth-formers existing on a diet of snakebite and Brontë, whereas the wryly bleak yet urbane statement “I'm falling like the leaves in Leningrad” is part Kate Bush, part Mark Corrigan. 

Admittedly, 'Portrait Of A Dead Girl' might have been better served by a rawer recording more in line with the band’s celebrated live shows than the frilly pomp of this version, and one too many slightly blustery guitar solos might have been shoehorned in, but widescreen ambitions should never be criticised, and as Prelude To Ecstasy ends with 'Mirror', a Cheryl Cole torch song with Nick Cave intensity and Bond-theme bombast, you have to conclude that this album is big, and it is clever. 

 

Play This Tape 'Ere

Two reviews in a week at MusicOMH, because of a mix-up with dates.  Even we critical bellwethers have to abide by the calendar, like the drones do.

TAPIR! - THE PILGRIM, THEIR GOD AND THE KING OF MY DECREPIT MOUNTAIN (Heavenly) 

Billy Connolly once observed, “My definition of an intellectual is someone who can listen to the William Tell` Overture without thinking of The Lone Ranger”. Listening to 'On A Grassy Knoll (We’ll Bow Together)', the second track on London sextet Tapir!’s debut album, they may be so fey and otherworldly that they are the first people in fifty years to use the phrase “grassy knoll” without thinking of JFK. The album is a collection of three EPs of bucolic, understated indie folk which tell a somewhat inscrutable epic story, and the first of these, 'Act 1 (The Pilgrim)', sets the tone, but lowers the expectations. It opens with some slightly cheesy Americana picking and whistling, before said non-assassination tune adds a hissing drum machine to some wistful folky arrangements to come off part charming, part infuriating – imagine a Canterbury scene band formed by Four Tet, Arab Strap, and Rod, Jane & Freddy. There’s an early Genesis mingling of whimsy and preciousness which doesn’t convince, and the third track, 'Swallow', is what The Simpsons’ Martin Prince and his “Shall I serenade you with my lute?” schtick might become if he spent twenty years hanging out in hipster record shops. Doggerel like “On my way home I caught a swallow/ With broken wings and a face that’s narrow” is half Bright Eyes, half Tom Bombadil, and all pretty naff. 

But thankfully, after these disappointing opening tracks the album improves immensely. Following 'The Nether (Face To Face)', a sweet little lullaby with a strange un-rap chant of “It’s cold, it’s dark/ Throw your bones in the ancient water” as if we’ve stepped into the cosiest little Dagon-worshipping cult in existence, Act 2 begins, delivering some delightful tunes. 'Broken Ark' has a tinny “pok pok” drum machine rhythm as heard on Damon Albarn’s more recent work, nice fuzzy guitar and simple keys. The vocal is quite lovely, more natural and less self-conscious than the cracking high register  of Act 1. A swooning cello gives a delicious Nick Drake flavour. No surprises that a motif is nicked from Erik Satie on 'Gymnopédie', but it’s appended to a sweet, elegant vocal melody, and sounds like a cousin of Mercury Rev’s 'Holes' held together by lolly sticks and Blu Tack. “Jesus had headlice” is an unusual line, though probably historically accurate, and heralds a move away from the fifth-form Arthuriana of the earlier lyrics, until we have the strange collage of slogans on 'My God' (all to a vocal line which is basically 'Young Hearts Run Free', inexplicably). 

'Untitled' is a country-flecked lope, a shy retiring version of The Band, bringing in female vocals to excellent effect, and nodding towards Radiohead with “For a second there I lost my head”. 'Mountain Song' ends the album, claiming “I built myself a mountain made of things I wished I own” like the exact opposite of Björk’s 'Hyperballad', before an extended outro which builds up a single phrase Morricone-style, with trumpet and massed voices. It’s a pleasing end to a rather uneven collection. People often say that the first episode of a sit-com is disappointing, and you should skip to the second, which is exactly the approach we propose for this album. 

 

 

 

 

 

Box for a Pen

There wasn't a January Nightshift, so it seems like forever since I saw this gig.  Luckily, I wrote down what I thought in case I forgot.

PUNCHING SWANS/ SINEWS/ EB, Divine Schism, Library, 7/12/23 

Tonight’s line-up has changed, in more than one way. Having lost two acts from the planned bill, local artist EB has stepped in, but also, EB has metamorphosed something rotten. Gone are the wide-eyed, smiling, pastel beats of a track like ‘La Criox’, and in their place we have excoriating digi-goth noise and lyrics like “Even in death I will not rest”. Between bursts of sonic violence a recording informs us that we’re part of some huge consumer feedback survey which morphs into an evil experiment as the vocal descends from urbane corporate avatar to glitchy screaming imp, which is perturbing, but not as much as EB within spittle-spraying distance of the crowd, howling “you made me hate that song I wrote” repeatedly, like an out of control playground chant over backing that sounds like the devil’s fax playing up. By the time we get to the simulated breakdown and song exploring strangulation revenge fantasies, our memories are gloriously scarred by the experience. 

In other company, Sinews might seem oppressive, but after that psychodrama their neo-hardcore rumble seems positively welcoming even as our ears are left equally battered: imagine a heartfelt hug from someone with an abrasively scratchy sweater and you might capture the balance between friendly warmth and spiky intensity. Fugazi are the reference point that seems most apposite, not because Sinews sound like them, necessarily, but because their music is heavily roiling but with a true sense of beauty within the wasteland, and big, bold lines proving that music doesn’t have to sound like ‘Chelsea Dagger’ to be called anthemic. Tonight they’re launching new single ‘Pony Cure’ which has the thick, scuffed texture of bitumen and old underlay, over which the vocals rasp deliciously, whereas another new tune is a blasted disco trudge, with an excellently rubbery, resilient bass holding it all together. 

Kent’s Punching Swans round off the night with the most approachable set, which is not to say that they aren’t also excellent. Their obscenely tight lopsided rock recalls Mclusky...or perhaps, as the humour is less mordant and more winkingly satirical, we mean Future Of The Left – a line like “A lifetime’s supply of oxygen” leaps from the razor-chopped riffs like the absurd punchline to a gag you didn’t catch, and math-snark sideswipes at third-rate populist culture like ‘Family Misfortunes’, hit the bullseye squarely. The approach is one of cynical weariness, but the playing is supercharged and passionate. 

Waterwings' Greatest Hits

In case anyone was waiting for the next update, the Fall Cup has moved to the knockout stage, and now uses 100% of our comments, so I won't post any more stuff here.  Seek it out at https://thefallcup.blogspot.com/

BARRY CAN’T SWIM – WHEN WILL WE LAND? (Ninja Tune) 

On the evidence of this debut album, Scottish producer Barry Can’t Swim inhabits a land where it’s always summer (in the “long blissful evenings soundtracked by chilled anthems” sense, rather than the "hideous climate change wasteland” sense). The unhurried grooves on When Will We Land? exude warmth, and whilst they’re not designed to incite dancefloor euphoria, there is certainly a good clutch of serotonin triggers sprinkled across the tracks. The title track typifies the album’s strengths, coming in with forceful cheeriness as chintzy piano weaves round breathy pads like a Philip Glass reimagining of the Windows 95 start-up, whilst the voice asking “What is the mind of God?” carries shades of Orbital’s 'Are We Here?' The whole experience is cardigan-cosy, with some reverby “diva stuck in a culvert” vocals hiding behind unfussily funky drums. 

'Always Get Through To You' has a rough-hewn gospel-soul vibe, tracing a direct line back to earthy, ochre deep house classics like Joe Smooth’s 'Promised Land', and 'I Won’t Let You Down' proffers strings that teeter on the edge of cheesiness, but which are nailed down by some steady, chunky drums, until it begins to sound like a Bizarro World version of Springsteen’s 'Streets Of Philadelphia', where the melancholy has been replaced by fuzzy optimism. The naively bouncy 'Sonder' might have been constructed using Fisher Price’s My First Garage Rhythm – a good thing, in case that’s not obvious – and makes use of some non-Anglophone samples which may remind aging ravers of chill-outs and come-downs in the company of Enigma, and similarly a slightly wobbly vocal stumbles above a smiley skipping noughties beat, coming off like a genial, avuncular version of Burial: less 'Night Bus', more 'Chatting To Old Ladies In The Number 47 Queue'. Speaking of public transport, 'Deadbeat Gospel' is the album’s most intriguingly leftfield track, with what sounds like a field recording of a chirpy half-cut chap dropping a boho spiritual rap to his peers in the late-night taxi rank queue, whilst some strafed vocals are reminiscent of Age Of Love’s eponymous trance monster. 

All of this is pretty joyous, and the only real criticism of When Will We Land? is that certain sounds and techniques pop up repeatedly. It’s often useful for artists to limit their palette, but one might begin to feel déjà vu from the descending piano lines, fragmented aahs and oohs, and artfully placed world music samples. Barry Can’t Swim, but just occasionally, he's been known to coast.