You Let One Off?

Quick review of an all-dayer a little while ago, featuring a previously unseen paragraph, cut from Nightshift because there wasn't room/ it was about a band from outside Oxon/ it was undbearably knowing.

ROYAL PARDON, MD, Bully, 19/9/15

It’s quite refreshing to find an all-dayer with no trappings.  The mysteriously named Royal Pardon (“Run that past one again, footman”) from newcomer MD Promotions is not tied to charity, advertising, label promotion or the dressing up box, it’s a just a 7 hour selection of local music in a big beer-fuelled room, which is more than enough justification for a day out.  Opener Kid Kin’s laptop is broken, so we get a truncated, on the hoof mini-set of his texturally savvy library music melodies.  As ever, the tenor of his De Wolfe electro is a delight, but this swiftly salvaged set is perhaps indicative of a bill of often great music and great ideas that don’t necessarily always make for great sets. 

31hours are a band for whom stylistic cohesion is probably not a major concern, though that’s not to say their eclectic prog pop isn’t immensely pleasing.  If there is a thematic anchor to their music it’s that high fret-twiddling jam block-thwacking Afroals sound, which is probably the least interesting element, outweighed by freeze-dried Glass Animals balladry and lush Pompeii era Floyd soundscapes.

Pipeline’s funky contemporary indie is a far simpler proposition, along the lines of The Wedding Present without the poetry and Senseless Things without the tequila.  The vocals are winningly effortless, and if the set of snappy tunes runs out of steam slightly before the finish line, this is a band that is maturing steadily.

We Have A Dutch Friend, by contrast, have a long way to go.  Their blueprint of sweet Sundays lilts punctuated by strident Chumabawamba folk harangues is viable enough, but the playing is messily fragmented and joylessly stilted, probably because they appear petrified almost to the point of collapsing; perhaps that lowlands connection could suggest something to settle the nerves. 

We’re used to Tiger Mendoza’s hip-hop airs and post-EDM power pop, but tonight perhaps the best moments are when angle-ground guitar thrashes are laid over asbestos beats in a manner recalling light industrial acts like Ministry and Nitzer Ebb.  Some of the transitions between tracks are not as fluid as they might be, and sometimes different compositional elements seems to jostle each other to get to the front of the mix, but overall this set shows that ian De Quadros is an inventive and varied producer.

A small break is presumably there to let the engineer grab some dinner and go and find more Cliff Richard records to play us, but we return after 40 minutes to find the atmosphere changed for the better.  Not only is the room thankfully a little busier, but the later sets have a more coherent flavour, none more so than Cosmosis whose affable acoustic roots rock (think Stone Temple Pilots busking Cure songs) is presented with such unforced bonhomie even those of us who have an anaphylactic reaction to wackiness get swept up in the japes.  The lead vocalist keeps looking shiftily from side to side, as if to check that they’re getting away with it, but the set proves that music doesn’t have to be serious to be worthwhile.

Duchess announce that this is their last gig, which is a pity as their playing is tighter than ever.  It’s low-key as valedictory sets go, but not short on energy, especially a bouncy “South Parade”.  As well as inheriting Paul Simon’s trick of slipping filched global drum patterns underneath eloquent pop (Rhythm Of The Saints is in evidence as much as the obvious Gracelands), we catch snatches of motif and melody that remind us of “Walk On The Wild Side”, “Down Under” and “I Started A Joke” - but mostly we pick up pure character and musical fluency.  They will be missed.

Word count limited.  Bel Esprit: Longpigs.  Gene.  Gomez.  Las.  Mansun.  Stone Roses.  Sum of parts?  Nope.  “Creep” cover?  Best not, eh.

The Scholars were an epic alt stadium act who may as well have been called The Copy Editors, and whom we didn’t care for.  Strangely, Zurich, the trio that evolved from them are rather excellent despite ostensibly dealing in the same sound.  A lot of the bombast and bluster has been excised  leaving elemental, muscular glory pop with flightpath vocal lines and dark disco rhythms, along the lines of a Cinemascope Half Rabbits.  Their music might not be complex or mysterious, but it snags the spirit and skewers the emotions, an unexpectedly direct and affecting conclusion to a highly enjoyable but not always entirely convincing event.

Yellow Jack Swing

2 gigs this weekend, in tiny venues: lovely mixture of the inspired, the enjoyable and the deeply (klub) cack.  And half decent beer.  Stuff yer bloody O2 arena shows, sonny.  Here's something from The Tossalot.

What sort of music do you like?  Oh, you know, bit of everything.  Since about 2004 that has been the only answer given by anyone to this question.  Without exception.   Perhaps it’s now international statute and we somehow missed the announcement.  Whatever the reason, I really miss a time when people were honest about genre affiliations, and happily, even proudly, stated their predilection for trad jazz, northern soul, baroque, drum n bass, or what have you, because most of these “bit of everything” types secretly only really go to one sort of gig.  That’s partly why I like Skeletor promotions: they just say, “screw it, we like metal.  So here’s some metal.  Did we mention the metal?” 

And not only do they provide a much-needed metal service, they do it bloody well, offering monthly gigs mixing high calibre local and touring acts, sorting us much-needed drinks deals in the rather pricy Academy, and making suitably crass metal posters with all skeletons and that on.   They’re also not afraid to give stage time to Oxfordshire’s younger metal fraternity, giving exciting Academy shows to teenage bands who wouldn’t even be allowed into the majority of Oxford’s venues. 

You want technical metal, progressive metal, death metal, some other sort of metal that you might not be able to accurately categorise, but which is definitely metal?  Good on you, go to Skeletor, it’s fucking great for metal.  Unless you want stoner metal, in which case go to Buried In Smoke, who are equally great, but perhaps that’s another article for another day.

YELLOW FEVER/ BRIGHTWORKS/ DUCHESS, The Wheatsheaf, 3/1/14

Anyone who has been to the wrong student parties is wary of percussion: witnessing a stoned gaggle attempt to recreate side two of Exile On Main Street using only bongos and kitchen implements can put you off for life.  Still, in the right hands it can be a powerful tool, and Duchess are at their best when three of them are bashing, scraping or rubbing away at something sonorous, whilst chirpy pop vocals and African-influenced guitars gambol gaily over the top.  From the “Wild Side” fret slides at the start , to the Bow Wow Wow does Taiko clamour at the end,  Duchess’ set is a bundle of bouncy, upbeat glee, and if it might feel as though they’d dropped through a timewarp from a UCL charity bop in 1986, one’s cynicism can only survive as long as one’s feet remain still.

Brightworks also swipe a few Ghanaian guitar licks, but are an altogether odder proposition.  The mathpop trickeries are an interesting addition, albeit not one to raise many Oxonian eyebrows, but the vocalist is what really makes Brightworks unique, crooning poetic fragments with an atonal angst, whilst occasionally poking out rinky-dink lines on a tiny keyboard, like an emo John Shuttleworth.   Occasionally they remind us of rubbery 80s pranksters Stump, but in general easy reference points remain elusive.  Brightworks are many things throughout their set, and, frankly, “any good” isn’t always one of them, but we need artists whose output can’t be boiled down to a single hashtag.  Now more than ever.

Yellow Fever have always been fun, but in their early days they were happy to base their sound on Arctic Monkeys’ rabble pop, which placed them firmly in a comfortable, crowded field.  Over the past couple of years they’ve refined this sound, removing the blokey, everyman wallop and replacing it with either a taut intensity that brings them in line with local heroes Spring Offensive, or a freeze-dried fake funk that is a little like early Foals.  At their very best Alexis Panidis’ woodblock-heavy rhythms underpin (yet more) West African guitar twiddles and Dele Adewuyi’s quietly emphatic vocals smuggle in an emotional subtlety, and you can’t help but feel that another year or so will see them as one of Oxford’s very finest acts.

Good Will Punting

Here's my review of this year's Punt festival. Fragments of it were used in Nightshift's roundup, but obviously only the nice bits, because they booked the acts.  Music In Oxford didn't do a review this year, sadly, so most of this is being seen for the first time.  Calm your thundering heart and read on.

Random thought for today, has anyone ever made this awful joke?  Cartoon frame of Minnie the Minx or similar, clearly the last one on the page, in which she's tucking into the traditional pile of mash with snorkers sticking out at angles having a "nosh up" in a "snooty" restaurant.  She's looking at us, saying.  "Reader, I married him *Chortle*".

THE PUNT – Purple Turtle/Cellar/Wheatsheaf/Duke's Cut/White Rabbit, 8/5/13

Like cultural futures market traders, some people go to see unsigned acts so that they can spot successes early on: “I saw them before you’d ever heard of them, chum” is a common cry, and might be one familiar to anyone who caught Young Knives, Stornoway or Fixers at previous Punts.  Tonight’s event is odd because, although it may well source a few similar anecdotes for future pub raconteurs, for those of us who live in the here and now the bill is chock full of potential, but a little short on match-fit performers and finished articles.

The Purple Turtle PA, sadly, doesn’t seem to be either of those.  As an engineer battles gamely throughout the night, the timings fall further behind schedule, and the sound becomes more and more wayward.  For Phil McMinn (who has played the Punt previously as part of Fell City Girl and The Winchell Riots, despite his cheeky onstage claims) this is a minor issue and, although the mix might be missing some laptop trickery, his acoustic songs with violin touches cut through technological difficulties. We’ve always admired rather than loved his previous acts, finding them too bombastic and desperately emotional to truly embrace, but this outstanding set hinges on his fantastic, ruby port voice, and a knowing way with melody and dynamics.  If the music is more down to earth than his old bands’, then the lyrics certainly are, touching on mountains, tents and, quite possibly, pony trekking and Youth Hostels, with a wordy dexterity that occasionally recalls Joni Mitchell.  Give that man a gold star, and some Kendall mintcake for his napsack.

More veterans stripping things down next door in The Cellar, as Listing Ships take to the stage for the first time as a trio, having lost a member to parenthood (which has probably killed more bands than drink, drugs and gate reverb put together).  No offence to the departed guitarist, but the band is a revelation as a threepiece, giving the compositions enough space to add a cheeky sashay to what was once a clumping krautcore goosestep.  Tonight keyboard parts reveal new squelchy qualities, and basslines suddenly exude the aromas of dub and New York punk funk: seriously, we can suddenly hear ESG in there, along with the predicted Tortoise and Explosions In The Sky. 

Candy Says...relax!  They might as well, they’re still soundchecking back at the PT.  Oh, they’re about to start...oh, no they’re not.  Must dash.

Beginning to know what a ping pong ball must feel like, we nip back to The Cellar for a bracing waft of Duchess.  We enter to a delightful bit of summery, Afropop fluff, which bears a marked resemblance to Bow Wow Wow.  It’s often lovely stuff, but they could do with going a little more wild (in the country) to lift these promising songs.  Perhaps if they swap one of the percussionists for some gigging experience, we’ll have a great band on our hands.

Limbo Kids have made some superb recordings, which is what you’d expect from members of Ute and Alphabet Backwards.  In the White Rabbit, though, the glacial fragments of late 80s chart hits they arranged into delicate towers of song seem to topple like so much icy pop Jenga.  The vocals are cheery but thin, the band look a little uncertain, and the whole affair is tasty, but somewhat undercooked.  This is their debut gig, we understand, and the conclusion is that they could well have been the best act of Punt 2014, but for now they’re just providing the hold music before our first visit to our favourite Oxford venue.

The Wheatsheaf, apparently held together by scraps of tattered carpet and the accrued tar of ancient cigarettes is not only our Oxford bolthole of choice, but also the most fitting venue for some proper rock in the Punt, making its rock ‘n’ roll case from the tattooed boozers in the downstairs bar to the leaking toilets in the venue above.  In the darkness with a pint of cheap ale is perfect place to see Bear Trap, a scuzzy quartet of grungers who look as though they should come from Oxford, Michigan, making mall rock in the back room of the local Lutheran chapel to kill drab small town weekends.  There are backwards baseball caps on- and offstage, all nodding vigorously to greasy rock that kicks like an irate lumberjack, but whines like a petulant teen.  We’d be lying if we said that these thrashed chords and raw snarls were in any way original, but we’d also be lying if we said we don’t sup back that cheap ale at double speed, with a dumbass grin on our silly face.

If Bear Trap look American, Ags Connolly doesn’t half sound it.  Not only is his music old school one-man melancholy country – or Ameripolitan music, as he and his fellow Shaniaphobes like to call their sound, to differentiate it from whatever stadium schmaltz is being labelled country this week – his voice is pure Midwest drawl, which is odd as when speaking he betrays his West Oxfordshire home.  Normally this would be an unforgivable crime, but Ags’ voice is just so damn good, unhurriedly lolloping along the melodies like a cowpoke taking an easy stroll back from church on a glorious day, that all is forgiven.  Like Bear Trap, his music isn’t going to break new ground, but if it’s looking to break a few hearts, it might just succeed.

Fearing that we’d neglect The Duke’s Cut if we didn’t make the effort to walk there now, we make the rush there to check out The August List.  Thankfully, it’s not as punishingly busy as last year, but it’s still hard to make out much of this enjoyable duo’s music from the back of the crowd, in the doorway of the Ladies’.  Experience tells us that the music is a sweet, smily balance to Ags’ lachrymose laments, with unhurried porch-swing ditties drifting in from some mythical Deep South farmstead.  There’s an unforced connection between their voices that you only get if the singers are brother and sister, or husband and wife.  Or, judging by their musical reference points, both.

We have thoroughly enjoyed Death Of Hi-Fi’s recent album, but live, and shorn of many of the guest vocalists, their music feels like a functional backdrop, rather than a main event.  Like the paranoid feeling that things keep happening in your peripheral vision, the music always seems as though it’s about to usher in something big - whether that’s a stunning guest turn or a brash corporate pep talk, we’re not sure – but it never quite does.  Only rapper N-Zyme really makes a mark onstage, and he displays a nervous energy that seems to hamper his performance a little.  A strong band best suited to the studio, perhaps.

Our experience of tonight’s Punt has been of people doing old things very well, and people doing new things that might need a little nurturing or rethinking before they’re great, but that doesn’t mean that any of the performances are bad.  Except Nairobi’s, that is.  It’s a little unfortunate for them that both Duchess and Limbo Kids have nodded towards the post-Foals African influenced rhythms they favour, and we try to bear in mind that the PT sound system is shot away, but even with these byes, what we see is clumsy and disappointing.  With guitars doing an ugly Hi-Life widdle over clunky drums and a vocal that sounds like a disconsolate moose, it’s as if this set has been put together solely to annoy Andy Kershaw.  Sadly, the wonky world music jam happening in the doorway of Moss Bros as we wend our way back to The Wheatsheaf is more satisfying.

Like a hideous breeding experiment between Stump and The Peking Opera, The Goggenheim bring some much needed theatricality to the Punt.  Everything about this band is grating, from the unjazz skronk of the sax to the repulsive Man At C&A striped vests to the shrill declamatory dada vocals, and yet, against all logic, their songs feel like glorious pop nuggets. Whilst the band nail the wayward blowouts of improvisors Bolide to trashy backbeats and Beefheartian trellises, matriarchal abstract diva Grace Eckersley wails and coos barely coherent mantras.  There’s an otherworldliness about The Goggenheim, as well as a love of the cheap and brash, as if it were the sort of thing two-dimensional sci fi monsters might listen to on their night off. 

And so, we leave the frugging Macra and boogying Aquaphibians and make our way to The White Rabbit for the Punt’s denouement.  In a way, the biggest revelation of the night is how well this works as a final venue: the Goggenheim provide a mystifying climax, and this welcoming little pub acts as a come down party.  We slurp down a nightcap and enjoy After The Thought, who starts off in the style of Artificial Intelligence electronic acts such as B12 or early Black Dog, and then adds a sizable tray of guitar pedals.  There’s a sparse, almost systems music feel to the loops and rhythms, and a lot of the set sounds like the third Orbital album with half tracks turned down and someone playing guitar over the top.  The effect is hypnotic but, just maybe, it’s not quite as good as the third Orbital album without half the tracks turned down and someone playing guitar over the top.  Like much of tonight’s bill, After The Thought is an act with a relatively short gigging history, and we’re sure that soon this enjoyably textured music will become even more encapsulating.  Whether Matt Chapman will become an “I saw him first” topic for future boasts we don’t know, but we do know that we’ve explored a varied set of local acts, and supported a bunch of excellent Oxford venues that should be cherished, which is perhaps enough of a boast for anyone with a real love of live music.