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.