Digs Your Own Whole

 This review went over the word count, but the editor kindly kept it all in. 

HOUSE OF ALL/ THE PLAN/ TOP SHORTAGE, Divine Schism, Florence Park Community Centre, 15/3/25 

When we first saw Top Shortage we tentatively labelled them “avant-grunge”, and although the set was spirited, we were equally tentative about calling them “any good”. A lot can happen in just over a year, however, and tonight they are excellently gnarled and weighty, the opening number dark, oppressive and grimy like an abandoned underground carpark, through which the ululating punk-yodel vocals drift like a suspicious wraith: think Metal Box with the dub extracted. At other times they resemble a twisted Francophone Television, and a new song sounds as though someone tried to reconstruct a fragmented Devo tune without looking at the pieces in a round on The Krypton Factor. The band is still sometimes scrappy, but this merely highlights the mocking sneers as they take aim at suburban bigotry. 

Southend’s The Plan have a warmer disposition. Their sprightly twin vocals and twangy little guitar parts make them a stick-man sketch of The B-52s, whilst a cute dinkiness in the keys gives them an air of Pram at their most ramshackle. A tendency towards 2/4 country rhythms is intriguing, but not as much as the lead vocalist’s rectangular Diddley-style guitar, which looks as though it was hewn from some ancient cellar door. Perhaps some of the songs are over too quickly, and the set never quite achieves full momentum, but it is nonetheless chirpy and likable. 

There are two reliable ways to make your post-punk band sound great. Firstly, have two drummers (some practical drawbacks here), and secondly, have Steve Hanley on bass (best of luck with that one). House Of All, a band formed entirely of ex-Fall musicians – plus a stand-in for guitarist Pete Greenway who cannot currently tour – actually have three drummers trading places on two stools, and there are a few old faces beaming happily at the sight of Paul Hanley and Karl Burns bashing away together for the first time since 1984, but even those not versed in Fall history will concede that the band sounds like a twitchy thunder god hot-wiring a juggernaut.  

Unless you’re one of Mark E Smith’s sisters, everyone agrees that the one person justified in making Fall-style music is Martin Bramah, founder member of the group and teenage friend of MES. Although there has been a Stalinist rewriting of history to claim that every element of The Fall was under Smith’s control, it is likely that Bramah was responsible for bringing many of the influences squashed together to birth the Fall sound. We hear a lot of those tonight, from the scuffed garage psych evident in opener ‘Aim Higher’ to the Lovecraftian grotesqueries in the lyrics to ‘Harlequin Duke’. Bramah’s declamatory vocals somewhat resemble those of Smith, but there’s a liturgical air to his gnomic utterances, and by the end the gig feels like one long fractal sermon. In a late-career inspiration burst, House Of All have released 3 albums, plus 2 full-length collections of live tracks and reworkings, in a mere two years. Tonight’s honed set has a strong sonic blueprint, but enough ideas and variations to make each track exciting and unique. Always the same, always different, might we say? No, actually, that sounds stupid... 

I'm sure it's not the intention, but this headline band's name just made me think of peanut butter

I felt more at home with this small gig - I even got to sit on an old sofa for a lot of it, which is certainly nicer than being crushed in the O2.

THE LAST WHOLE EARTH CATALOG/ SUNGLASZ VENDOR/ BIGHANDSANDALLGRISTLY, Divine Schism, Common Ground, 6/2/25 

You know a band will be ungainly with an awkward name like bighandsandallgristly, but at the outset their hesitant tinkly confections with timid violin and quavery vocals barely cohere at all. As the set progresses they shape up like a cross between Dirty Three and Penguin Cafe Orchestra, whilst still resembling very shy baby otters who have found some instruments (all except the drummer who is unusually busy and who brings a Broadcast bounce which is lovely but does tend to drown out the rest of the band). Their best track is like bossa nova in the shape of a lumpily crocheted cardigan, and we find the set ultimately unconvincing whilst being oddly fascinated to see them play again. 

Perhaps bighands... were invited onto the bill by The Last Whole Earth Catalog who were fed up with having the stupidest name within a three-mile radius. They share a low-key eclecticism although TLWEC’s music is far more cogent, often bringing Vanishing Twin vibes with 60s soundtrack keys, sugary boogaloo vocals and crisp, tidy rhythms. Despite it being a grimly cold evening, they warm the room with summery lilo pop that has enough intimacy to feel direct and honest, and enough textural savvy to hold the attention. Occasionally it feels like there are one too many people with one too many ideas on stage, and maybe a jazzoid instrumental sounding like a Kia-Ora-fueled Matt Bianco is a bad call, but overall this is a strong set. 

Bristol’s Sunglasz Vendor have a name that is only mildly infuriating and so let the side down, but are definitely the pick of the night sonically. Again, they bring different styles together, from the most spartan of slowcore minimalism to rasping Sonic Youth noise rock via some gnarly wired Pixies pop but it’s all so much more organic, partly due to the excellent bassist anchoring everything with unflashy lines whilst barely blinking, let alone rocking out. ‘Ice Cream Tubs’ switches gears again at the end of the set, with Cassels-like rant-rock disenchantment, but even this reduces to a strangely arid desert of tiny tones and tics half-way through. We might have had very little idea what was coming next for most of tonight, but with Sunglasz Vendor it was invariably a pleasant  discovery. 

I Like Big Mutts!

One of two reviews in the latest Nightshift, this is the review of the famous band (or famous enough to fill Oxford's largest venue, anyway...my mum's not heard of them).

FAT DOG/ ZIPLOCK, O2, 16/2/25 

With two sets of bright ravey keyboards, sprightly drums, and inscrutable, deadpan vocals Ziplock probably shouldn’t be funky, but they deliver a slice of Happy Meal electro bounce-pop which is part ESG, part EMF, and part whatever sounds good on an E. Halfway through the set they swap the Hoover synth lines for a thicker buzzing bass clomp and couple it with some surprisingly intricate and tricksy drum patterns until they sound rather wonderfully like Add N To (X) doused in cherry cola.  

They share members with Fat Dog, but in the thirty minutes between sets any desire for concepts like delicacy and elegance are presumably scoured out of them in some  backstage ritual, possibly involving dogs' heads and Tennent’s Extra. Their dance-punk attack is far more intense on stage than on record, Joe Love’s vocals rarely dropping below a nasal bellow, and the pounding gabber-adjacent electronic pulses often drowning out the live drums. The sound is elementary and elemental, not so much broad strokes as hard slaps. And it certainly galvanises the crowd to frenzied moshing within four bars flat. On the downside, the fiddle and sax are almost entirely inaudible for the whole gig, and a tendency to smother the vocals in unchanging delay turns the gig into a giant enveloping thump-hum, like being harangued by a totalitarian DustBuster. As non-stop pummelling goes, though, it’s all good clean (dirty) fun, and a larger stage than their last Oxford visit has not leeched the infectious energy from the band. 

There’s a clear line to be drawn back to the sleaze rock of Fat White Family – or more accurately, their chunkier sick-sequin spin-off Moonlandingz – but in some ways Fat Dog are more like a diseased glam version of Laibach, all joke jackboots and coked-up EBM, spiced with the controlled chaos antics of Gogol Bordello. What they lose in depth tonight they gain in potency, and if we long for some of the Ziplock quirkiness to vary the tone a little, the majority of a teeming Academy clearly couldn’t disagree more, howling along with every word, leaping like loons and hollering appreciation at every possible juncture: fair play, nothing wrong with a night of hedonistic noise (but do stop doing that woof-woof chant, you sound like the audience on The Word, and that runny dollop of lad culture is best left in the 90s).   

Outstanding In Afield

Here's my second review for this month's Nightshift. The editor reviewed the In A Different Place all-dayer, but as he was one of the organisers and had shifts on the door and so on, I wrote some copy. You'll find the text below interpolated into the review at feb.pdf.

IN A DIFFERENT PLACE, 1512/24 

Whilst one might expect the front bar to host acoustic acts, there’s a surprising array of styles and genres on display throughout the afternoon. However, opening act Aphra Taylor is a textbook example of a guitar-wielding singer-songwriter. This is definitely not to say that her set is generic, though, her voice full of smoke and sweetness, and her delivery enlivened by tiny trills and ornaments that make the performance unique. 

The merch table is surprisingly sparsely utilised during the day, but Sinews are selling a  “horseface T-shirt". Considering their set is like having your face trampled by rabid stampeding stallions, this seems fitting. Their post-hardcore flagellation draws obvious comparisons to Fugazi or Drive Like Jehu, but there’s a sensitive heart beating somewhere within the maelstrom. 

Baby Maker’s songs are like the flayed and brittle skeletons of new wave pop, with bouncy tunes reduced to chugging drum machines, cheeky guitar twangs, and wry vocals, offering hints of Arab Strap’s laconic lofi story-telling. The set is sometimes more intriguing than successful, but the character shines through. 

The most intense set of the day is possibly delivered by Pet Twin, whose music has morphed over the last year from sparse confessional pop to huge theatrical workouts, which seem to be cathartic rituals for Gallagher as much they are spectacles for the audience. A typical track merges thick treacly bass, heart-wrenching vocals, and euphoric keys, so that you’re not sure whether to dance, weep, or collapse in the corner. One or two tracks have slightly messy endings, but really who cares about the landing once you’ve soared in flight? And, just at the point we think things couldn’t get any better, The Bobo comes onstage for the subaquatic ghost rave that is ‘No To Dread’. 

Like Baby Maker, Lord Bug’s songs are sparse and idiosyncratic, more like half-remembered dreams than pop tunes, and like Aphra Taylor, Libby Peet’s vocals lift them to spellbinding new places, her voice warm and jazzy yet introspective and mysterious, and her delivery full of wonderful slurs and rubati, so that she comes off like a strange melding of Amy Winehouse and Lou Barlow. For an act with a track called ‘Dog’s Dinner’ this is a beautiful and balanced set. 

The sound levels for GIGSY are perhaps a little low, but Khloë’s explosive stage energy would be enough for a gig to sound epic if the PA were rolled up newspaper attached to a dictaphone. Her music is a crunchy electronica take on dark-minded 80s synth – EDM meets EBM? - but the melodically aggressive vocal lines are built from club pop fun and burning rage, in equal measure  

Two of the themes running through today’s event are vocalists with wired stage presence, and music with a stoned psych groove. Both of these come together for local favourites Flights Of Helios, whose set is an eclectic melange of post-punk wiriness and expansive folky textures. Chris Beard is an imposing frontman, swaying at the front of the stage, screaming, crooning, cajoling and entreating by turns like a cross between a fundamentalist preacher, a Dickensian villain, and a praying mantis. There are touches of adventurous acts such as Spiritualized or Ultrasound in their set, but as a nod to Christmas, they turn ‘Good King Wenceslas’ into a psych-punk mantra, perfect for anyone whose Christmas dinner is composed solely of brandy butter and brown acid. 

The Subtheory bring back the classic trip hop sound, with low-slung beats, slinky bass,  and hazy late-night vocals (plus, unexpectedly, some excellent restrained guitar solos). Whilst it might be fair to accuse them of cosy 90s revivalism, they do it so incredibly well, and this set has the greatest spaciousness and poise of any on the bill. Cate Debu’s vocals are cool and clear, sitting unhurried at the centre of the chunky grooves, and with James from Pet Twin joining in the singers supply a softly spoken personality to the songs, so that they’re as much Portisheart and they are Portishead (sorry). 

As with Mandrake Handshake at last year’s festival, In A Different Place is headlined by a band who have moved from Oxford to London and found great success. Pecq might play their biggest gigs as part of touring bands for Barry Can’t Swim and Arlo Parks, but they more than own the stage as a trio, coming on to near darkness and launching into some understated tech-pop tunes that might convince you that “crepuscular bangers” is a genre. They take us on a slick, sleek ride through well tooled dreamy electro, but actually it i  the subtlest moments that they truly bewitch, and a hushed bleepy cover of ‘Wichita Linesman’ morphs into one of their own songs in a bubbling pool of squelchy synthtones. 

To Say Nothing Of The Newt

One of two reviews in the latest Nightshift. This one is a pretty typical record of a not hugely exciting release.

MONTMORENCY – LIVE AT NEWT STUDIOS (self-release) 

Young children always like to be told stories they already know, and certain roots music fans are the same, ever eager to hear jazz standards or trad classics one more time. Sometimes familiarity allows an artist space to dig into a song (there’s a reason Ella Fitzgerald’s greatest recordings are all American songbook chestnuts, rather than new compositions), and sometimes it can be used as a springboard for new and radical ideas (Albert Ayler’s honking attack on Gershwin’s ‘Summertime’ sounds as though it's from a different universe to Ella’s). Montmorency – who get points for being named after the dog in Three Men In A Boat – have addressed four folk club warhorses on this EP, originally recorded in 2022. Do they bring anything new to the barn dance party? 

Most noteworthy are the vocals, with a simple unadorned tone at odds with the Mummerset aural cosplay of most folk singers, and the lightly quavering conversational tenor of ‘John Paul Jones’ almost reminds us of the literate angst of Hefner’s Darren Hayman. The other standout element is the lead guitar, which has a refined twang on ‘Shady Grove’ recalling the understated urbanity of The Shadows or even Bert Weedon, whereas the solo on ‘Sugar in the Hold’ comes with a whiff of Dave Gilmour. These moments of character catch the interest, but the upbeat countryish hoedown ‘The Fox’ falls woefully flat, and despite being a tale of carnivorous nature at its bloodiest has all the vim and vigour of a PTA meeting. There’s stuff to like about Montmorency, but these recordings are unlikely to become anyone’s go-to versions.