Thrust Never Sleeps

This is one of those gigs performed by old friends, which you go to out of loyalty, but which actually turn out to be excellent.

ANTON BARBEAU & THRUST/ CHARMS AGAINST THE EVIL EYE, Common Ground, 16/5/25 

Charms Against The Evil Eye inhabit that sweet spot characterised by free festivals at the turn of the 80s, in which laidback hippies rubbed against nascent new-wavers, mellowing proggers started to think about adding more tunes, and rock took on jazz influences without the self-conscious fusion fanfare. Many of Charms’ songs sound as though they may have started as bucolic John Martyn reveries before being sharpened and sped up with amphetamine intensity, all rubbery bass and hyperstrummed guitar. Set closer ‘Terry Walpole’s Camera’ chucks 60s psych-pop at us with punk energy, like Buzzcocks in kaftans, and more whimsical numbers still come with a caffeine jolt, putting extra canter into the Canterbury sound; even ‘Green’, the set’s most stoned and wide-eyed track is Caravan with go-faster stripes. It’s a delightful set, the band having quietly become a great proposition whilst you weren’t looking. 

Charms become THRUST to back Anton Barbeau, a prolific Californian songwriter who resided in Oxford for a few years in the noughties. Although he is keen to stress that it has been 7 years since he and the band have been in the same country, let alone room, concerns  on- and offstage about rustiness evaporate as they fly into live favourite ‘This Is Why They Call Me Guru 7’, a sort of bubblegum kraut-rock mantra. Barbeau’s best material balances literate surrealist troubadouring with drug-pumped spaciness and pure pop hooks - think Robyn Hitchcock Presents Popol Vuh Vs ABBA – and tonight is a glistening string of classics, from the compact chug of ‘Dust Beneath My Wings’ to the Eurovision–inspired sex-romp that is ‘Milk Churn In The Morning’, via the abstract collapse of ‘Banana Song’ (which might be the only moment the set veers towards egregiously wacky). Local folker Susanna Starling joins for a couple of excellent numbers, including ‘Leave It With Me, I’m Always Gentle’, one of Barbeau’s most elliptically lovely lyrics. It may have been years since he played in Oxford, but tonight may be the best set we've seen. To apply twisted Ant-logic, he should definitely visit less frequently more often. 

Nudy Bah!

When I submitted this review, the editor wrote back, asking if there was any chance I could remove the word "mong".  Erm, yes, without a doubt.  I must have been 17 before I discovered what mong meant, after many years of calling people "mongs" and "monging out" - I still sometimes forget what it actually means and how offensive some people may find it...to me it just sounds harmlessly childish like "doofus" or "durr-brain", and I find it comes out unbidden.  So, in Nutshaft you'll have seen it replaced with the word "dweeb", but I've left "mong" in below for the sake of honesty.  There's a lso a little bit extra here than what ended up in the published edition, making it EVEN MORE critical of the shit acts.  but they were pretty shit...or at least one of them was, and 2 were just unconvincing.  Evil Eye were good, although I have seen them play better.

Oh, and here's the June Ocelot piece, which is absolutely idiotic.  Or mongy, if you prefer.

Vegetable fronds uncurling against an alien horizon.

Exasperated scientists arguing with hidebound politicians in a striplit bunker.  Thick teak tables are pounded, plastic coffee skiffs upended, sheaves of closely scrawled paper collapse in the slipstream of a flailing white-coated arm.

An unearthed Neanderthal riff mutating on contact with air, spinning into Mandelbrot patterns, engulfing camera crews and lone hikers alike.  A light drizzle on the heaving, writhing hell creature, as it rests before the next attack.

Augmented hyenas tearing at the carcase of a lost courier in a feral weed-choked city.  Cracked surveillance cameras film the atrocity from multiple angles, sending the footage to data banks that shall never be accessed.

A rusty blues mechanism marching to a burnt out war, a conflict that has become meaningless habit to a cyborg militia.  Ballistics flash on the horizon, scarring the brown dusk, but are ignored by trudging chrome feet. Forces clash.  Infantry fall.  The final result is ambiguous.

A trio made up of members from much missed Oxon acts Dr Slaggleberry and 50 ft. Panda has made a record of abstract rock and brutally ornate dynamic switches played with a winning mixture of improbable precision and sweaty metal abandon.  It is available in digital form on a pay what you wish basis from Bandcamp, or in a fetching handmade sleeve on CD.

Pretentious rubbish by ponces who wouldn’t know a proper tune if it bit them on the balls in 13/8.

At least one of these is a fair description of Masiro’s debut EP.

NUDYBRONQUE/ CHARMS AGAINST THE EVIL EYE/ TORN LIKE COLOURS/ MARK SOLLIS, It’s All About The Music, Wheatsheaf, 13/6/14

Mark Sollis’ voice sits somewhere between a supper club crooner and a wounded bear.  He has a song about sheep, replete with melodic bleating, and a song about local musical miserablist and walking Gallifrey Base discussion board, Mark Bosley.  Put it like this: he has character, and character goes a long way.  But, sadly, not always far enough.

Torn Like Colours, on the other hand, have apparently had all their character removed, possibly by the sort of high-spec vacuum packing device used to seal an astronaut’s risotto.  Their music is a hideous melange of suburban rocking, something like Lita Ford without the leather, and relentlessly joyless chirpy pop, something like drive time on Satan AM.  They try to inject some interest by knocking out a tired mash-up and nicking an intro from “Eye Of The Tiger”, but none of it saves a moribund set.  We suspect this band escaped from an English language teaching video in 1988, in which some plucky kids save the endangered youth club with pop and rock, whilst explaining the gerund.

Charms Against The Evil Eye also sound like they’re stuck in about 1988, where their lives were filled with erudite indie, poetry and occasional caches of scratchy Oxfam psychedelia.  The lyrics could mostly have been culled from Science & Nature questions from Trivial Pursuit, which is a refreshing change from the norm, and the songs are neat, built on unexpectedly muso-ish fretless bass and precise drums, and topped off with guitar that jumps between Peter Buck chiming and blurred Gedge hyper-strums.   Highly enjoyable, if lacking spark at some junctures.

Our beer-soaked gig notebook simply reads “floppy Suede mongs” under the heading Nudybronque.  Not really fair, as their music has the melodic sensibility and feeling of restless invention that typified pre-fame Pulp, but in a way they’re more a bundle of proto-Britpop signifiers than a band; probably great to start a cultural studies discussion with, but not great to listen to.  We suspect this set, in a hot empty room, after the band missed soundcheck when stuck in traffic, is not the one on which to judge them, and our notebook’s dismissive damnation is probably a long way from describing a promising band.  But, sadly, perhaps not far enough.

 

The Spillage People

Got to be quick, the bath's running.   Since my last post I filled my iPod.  It's a full-fat maximum size one, too.  I'm all the way up to compilations in hard cases beginning with Q, in my loading.  I guess I'd need about 14 iPods to hold all my records.  I have a lot of records.  It doesn't make me a getter person, sadly.

THE GRACEFUL SLICKS/ THE HAWKHURST/ CHARMS AGAINST THE EVIL EYE, Klub Kakofanney, The Wheatsheaf, 7/9/12

There’s a sense of wonder about Charms Against The Evil Eye.  Not only are they named after a creepy exhibit in the Pitt Rivers – there must have already been a band called Shrunken Heads Are Bare Cool – but their lyrics, concerning topics such as interstellar dark matter and autumnal ambience, could have been swiped from The Boys’ Big Book Of Science and I-Spy The Undergrowth.  Spread a little wide-eyed, mild psychedelia over friendly three chord jaunts in the manner of Robyn Hitchcock – or even their chum Anton Barbeau – and the effect is winning in the extreme.  It’s great to see Matt Sewell, a strong writer who’s never quite delivered live, finally find a rhythm section that can make these songs breathe. Charming stuff, if you’ll forgive the pun.

The Hawkshurst aren’t charming.  They’re angry.  Angry, political and into danceable folk, in a mid-80s antagonistic hoedown style, unsure whether to neck some cider or start a riot.  They’re definitely at their best channelling their rage, Fleur Fatale’s warm yet strident vocals trading haranguing licks with John West’s pipes, somewhere between The Oysterband and Chumbawamba.  When they ease off the throttle, and start indulging in fraught, wordy ballads that sound like Counting Crows, we lose interest drastically.  Come on, guys, stay irate: why not tape a picture of the MP for Witney to the backs of your instruments?

The Graceful Slicks aren’t a band who look as though they notice politics. Or anything since 1968.  Their early gigs were good, but prone to slip into tired Brit-pop grooves or Black Rebel self-consciousness, but now they’ve uncovered the true elixir of sloppy psych garage in the spirit of Sky Saxon, The Velvet Underground, or The Morlocks, and are wonderful.  All their songs are identical, thrashing a multi-guitar groove relentlessly whilst vocals mutate from murmur to howl: they change instruments and mike duties after each track, but it always sounds the same.  It will always sound the same.  Life is a myth, space is an illusion, and time one livid final flame.  Until it’s time to get the bus home, anyway.