Lego Team

See how many of the hidden Fall references you can spot, kids.

BRIX & THE EXTRICATED, Future Perfect, Bully, 16/11/18

Given The Fall’s influence, and vast alumni roll, the surprising thing is not that Brix & The Extricated formed, but that it hadn’t happened before. Scanlon & The Shift-workers, perhaps? Elena & The Remainderers?  Granny & The Bongos?  What marks The Extricated out from the slew of spurious heritage acts built around Alvin Stardust’s bassist or what have you, is that a checking their track records shows that 80% of the band were in The Fall and contributed to some of their best-known work (although not all at the same time), and that the majority of their two albums, and of tonight’s set, is original material written over the last couple of years.  Plus, since the band’s 2017 visit to The Cellar they have developed a more cogent, bolder presence, sonically and visually, evident from the outset, with a musique concrete intro tape during which Brix is led to the stage to deliver the first number blindfolded.

From the moment this is torn off, however, Brix is a tiny tornado on stage, covered in glitter and beads, and wielding a feather-bedecked radio mike like a voodoo fetish, prodding, joshing – and even, at one point, licking – her bandmates onwards in a flurry of cracking tunes that meld the melodic simplicity of Jonathan Richman with the fake leather fun of Suzi Quatro, around pulsating dirt-kraut rhythms (don’t forget this band features the greatest non-ranting Fall member ever, bassist Steve Hanley, along with his brother Paul behind the kit) and, surprisingly, some atonal Sonic Youth workouts.   This hen night shaman, telling wild-eyed tales of sex, spirituality and self-help makes us realise just how few middle-aged women there are expressing themselves in rock music, and how sad it is that tonight’s audience is mostly made up of The League of Bald-Headed Men.  An act like this deserves to be inspiring youngsters on how to make the best bad decisions, as loudly as possible, because they sure don’t play like greying veterans (although Brix is definitely too old to get away with breathless guff about finding the soul’s boundaries whilst wandering round India).  There are old fans who won’t forgive The Extricated for taking The Fall’s mysterious, inscrutable music and turning it into a glossy glam racket, and there are blinkered fools who refuse to punch the card of a 56 year old woman dressing up, rocking out and begging her lover to “hammer me to the ground” whilst swearing like a docker; fine, they can stay in moping, we’ll be getting down with the Big Prinzess. 

All Over

"It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven"
"Who, then, shall be saved?"
"With God, anything is possible"
"So, you're saying, that God could get camel through the eye of a needle?"
"Err...yes.  I suppose"
"So, the analogy is effectively meaningless, then?"
"Well, you see...oh!  Look over there!  A prodigal son" [Saviour scarpers]

OMNI, Future Perfect, The Cellar, 16/8/18

In the vacation after my first year at university, I was spinning some drill ‘n’ bass breakbeat abstraction, as my mum walked past my bedroom door.  As the track ended she said, “That’s really great”.  Then, after a perfectly timed pause during which I was wondering which Squarepusher 12” she’d most like me to tape for her car, added, “it’s stopped”.  Now, as well as this economically ruthless dismissal of an entire musical corpus proving that my mum could be a pretty good Nightshift writer, it puts my next comment into perspective: Omni are really good at endings; they’re incredibly talented at choosing exactly the right unexpected beat to halt on, or the most precisely pleasing unexpected chord to slice across a chorus you thought was being cued up for one more repeat.  They have thought carefully about the optimum clinical summary to each concise finicky composition, which is fitting as Atlanta’s Omni are a trio - ageing avant-ravers like me should note this does not make them Omni Trio – who are dedicated to marrying garage brevity to artful new wave choppiness, twining angular riffs together to create something spacious yet cohesively taut, like Gang Of Four or Wire (coincidentally or otherwise they have a single called “Wire”).

The set is not all cold, scalpelled precision, and amongst the laundry-folded rhythms and school swot vocals there are lighter touches that resemble early Young Knives without the panto playfulness, or Devo without the choreographed absurdity, as well as not one but two tunes threatening to break into “My Sharona”.  If it’s great when they stop, that’s not because silence is a blessed relief, but because each stark katana slice of a conclusion makes you realise what a tight and balanced sounds you’ve experienced for the last two and a half minutes.  Omni might not be the most revolutionary band you’ll see, but they add to a post-punk non-funk canon of nervy, nerdy brain rock immaculately.  It’s not too dismissive to observe they made me go home and listen to Gang Of Four and Wire.  Oh yes, and “My Sharona”.

What Comes After The Velvet Musical?

Another month, another review, another failure to recall the password for this site.  Hello to both of you who read this.  I was a tiny bit generous to Underground Youth in this, they really weren't very interesting until the last 7 minutes or so.

UNDERGROUND YOUTH/ SHOTGUN SIX/ CIPHERS, Future Perfect, Cellar, 17/5/18

We say it again and again, turn up for the first acts on the bill.  Not to “support the scene”, just to ensure you don’t miss a great band you’ve not heard of.  Those who arrive early tonight get a real treat, an opportunity to tour Ciphers’ charred cathedral of dark-hearted pop.  The first number moves from the brooding menace of Mezzanine-era Massive Attack to the melodic ire of Skunk Anansie, and the set blossoms like les fleurs du mal from thereon.  The sound is vast, but there’s still space for intricately interlocking guitars and chunky unfunk bass a la 23 Skidoo.  A new but deeply intriguing band.

“Just because a record has a groove, don’t make it in the groove”, sang Stevie Wonder, and how right he was (as well as presciently predicting a time when Truck Store would stock more vinyl than CDs).  It’s not just funk and soul that ride on the mighty groove, though, many genres benefit from a deep rhythmic furrow, such as the stoner grunge of Shotgun Six.  They make a huge, satisfying noise for a trio – though the giant gong should possibly count as a bandmember – seismic at the bottom end and psychedelically shimmering at the top.  Our single criticism is that the set is back to front, starting with the two heaviest, most hypnotic tracks.  Scrub that, they should have only played the first two tracks, for 15 minutes each.  The groove abides.

At Nightshift, we don’t believe in style over substance we believe in honesty, quality, talent and – wait, Underground Youth look really cool.  Black leather, floppy hair, stand-up drummer bashing out elemental Mo Tucker/Phil Spector beats, insouciant stares, the lot.  The music is good, too, impassioned yet unruffled scuzz pop with an Andrew Eldritch baritone, that’s not far from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club doing Joy Division.  Their songs start brilliantly, but do tend to stumble to an end when you want them to explode (or go on forever).  The last two numbers, perfectly balanced and building to an inverse stage invasion crescendo, are so good you almost begin to suspect they were fumbling on purpose earlier to ensure a big finish.  That’s a dangerous game, but, on this evidence, one they’re winning.   

Courses for Hoarses

I pretty much gave up on these blog intros about 3 years ago, didn't I?

HUSKY LOOPS/ LIFE INC./ TARPIT, Future Perfect, The Cellar, 15/3/18

Tarpit have found the right sounds, we’ll give them that: thick, building site bass tones somewhere between Bauhaus’s David J and The Fall’s Steve Hanley, stark authoritative snare cracks, and ruthless windchill guitar chops with an anaemic vocal wraith hovering occasionally in the background.  Trouble is, beyond a nod to Joy Division’s bar chart drum pattern dynamics, nothing happens.  Tiny semi-motifs occur, hang around a bit, then stop (or, more frequently, stumble to a shame-faced halt).  A Tarpit track is like the background to a Hanna-Barbera animation, the same sloppy details repeated in desperate need of something interesting on top of them.  Could someone not hook Tarpit up with some meddling kids?

Life Inc, in contrast, fill every corner of the sound field, intricate twin guitar licks coalescing around restlessly funky basslines over which the vocals enact the jazzy yearning of a West End Thom Yorke, much like a trendy DFA band from 6 years ago coolly riffing on 80s yacht rock and studio grooves - although at times they’re more like Corduroy doing Simple Minds.  It’s easy to be cynical about the way Life Inc.’s prissy arrangements waft up every crescendo of sensitive grandiosity, but each lunge and flourish buoys our spirits, and the drumming is, frankly, superlative.  This is perhaps not a band to set the world aflame (even as they dance into the fire), but they are a recommended listen.

When rock bands cite a hip-hop influence, it usually indicates either a rhythm section prone to lumpen stadium simplicity, or a priapic singer who writes slightly more syllables per bar than Steven Tyler.  London Italians Husky Loops have instead apparently studied the chunky beat collages of Wu-Tang’s RZA: there are literal homages in the chopped soul loops between tracks, and evbidence in the tessellating insistence of their elemental, yet fascinating compositions.  The best moments – and there are many in tonight’s set – feature rumbling sparse constructions of riff and fill spiked by masterfully timed pedal-stamps and skin-tight tempo changes, though they’re less good when they drop into Fragged Ferdinand angular indie disco; put it another way, the less they sing, the better they are.  Great hip-hop production is about oppressive space, making the gap between boom and bap weigh a hundred tons.  Husky Loops have uncovered this secret, and impressively reproduced it live.  For a band that literally sounds like a dog’s breakfast, they put on a spotless show.

Eggs, Rated

Not so long ago, I listened to all The Fall's studio albums (and a couple of gray area 10" records), one every 2 days, to identify a league table.  Sadly, this is now definitive.  MES gets a little propr in this review, too.

Slates
The Infotainment Scan
Perverted By Language
This Nation’s Saving Grace
Hex Enduction Hour
The Unutterable
Live At The Witch Trials
Your Future Our Clutter
I Am Kurious Oranj
Grotesque
The Real New Fall LP (Formerly Country On The Click)
Levitate
The Wonderful & Frightening World Of The Fall
New Facts Emerge
Extricate
Fall Heads Roll
The Remainderer
Sub-Lingual Tablet
Room To Live
Imperial Wax Solvent
The Light User Syndrome
Dragnet
The Frenz Experiment
Middle Class Revolt
Re-Mit
The Marshall Suite
Cerebral Caustic
Code:Selfish
Shift-Work
Bend Sinister
Reformation Post TLC
Ersatz GB
Are You Are Missing Winner

THE LOVELY EGGS/ PORKY THE POET, Future Perfect, Cellar, 15/2/18

Orwell’s 1984 was published 35 years in advance of the year it predicted; it’s only months until we’re the same distance the other side.  Similarly, Porky The Poet’s piece “They’ve All Grown Up In The Beano” is now nearly as old as that venerable schoolyard staple was when he wrote it.  If his script is you and me, Time likes to shove in a little call-back gag every now and then.  Ironically, whilst Time has had no debilitating effect on Phil Jupitus’s comedy skills despite the vintage of some of his material - the initials SPG and DHSS will be as meaningless to your average gig-goer as tape-to-tape dubbing or MS-DOS commands – the poet has become visibly less porky.  That Time, he gets you one way or another.

We’ve seen The Lovely Eggs a fair few times in Oxford since the first, a decade ago opening at The Wheatsheaf, and the turnout has steadily grown until this, a richly deserved Cellar sell-out.  Time, of course, is waiting in the wings to take the edge off, and maybe larger crowds have pushed the band towards beery singalongs and reduced dynamics (or perhaps it’s the other way round).  Whilst we may never again witness a wistful skip through “Oh, The Stars” or a grinning lope through “Watermelons”, that’s a small price to pay for a packed room led in a lusty chorus of “Fuck It” by what looks like a pair of kids’ TV presenters gone feral (they’ve all grown up on Blue Peter, and it went brilliantly wrong).  Despite one or two punky thumpers that aren’t hugely memorable, The Lovely Eggs still have a uniquely British take on shabby psychedelia, “Magic Onion” especially sounding like a Monkees song repurposed as a skipping rhyme by absurdist urchins.  The sneering spirit of Mark E Smith seems to have inhabited Holly Ross on newer songs like “I Shouldn’t Have Said That”, and his death reminds us that one day even the most driven originals will leave the stage, so don’t miss out the next time The Lovely Eggs come to town, and indeed keep ensuring capacity crowds at The Cellar, and other small venues, lest you live to regret it.  Meanwhile, Time takes a cigarette, but now has to slink out to the alleyway to smoke it.  Even he’s not immune to change.  So all togther now, fuck it, oh yeah.

The Minus (Ur)sine

With Irregular Folks and the Cowley Road Carnival in diary this weekend, festival season has begin: Cider, walk with me.

MINUS THE BEAR/JOAN OF ARC, Future Perfect, Bully, 9/16/17

Bright math twiddling.  Thick bubbling synths that could be slowly achieving consciousness in Herbert West’s laboratory.  Insectile lops and insistent drum tattoos.  Periods of drone stasis and sonic wave therapy.  Some floppy old second tier Britpop glam.  Oh, and it was all going so well.  Joan Of Arc set up some wonderfully eclectic and enticing music – think Parts & Labor with a smidgen of Bardo Pond and a dash of Tomaga’s dub-inflected churn, for starters – and then, intermittently, some clumsy sub-Molko vocals parachute in and ruin it all.  There’s even some frankly worrying vicar in a youth club gyrating.  It’s as if the band felt they needed some vocals to make the music acceptable, no matter how unsuitable.  If so, the singing adds legitimacy whilst being actively unpleasant.  A bit like the DUP, perhaps.  Still, there’s more than enough great stuff to enjoy here, and Joan Of Arc repay attention with a varied sound that could be four different bands battling for supremacy over 30 minutes; let’s hope the three good ones attain ultimate victory.

Minus The Bear might come from Seattle, but they could have been bred in a petri dish to please Oxford musicians.  They have a post-rock veneer, with some jerky guitars, staccato keyboards and vast punnetfuls of pedals, but beneath it they make big, old-fashioned yearning rock music, all impassioned choruses and reverby star-seeking solos.  There are times when their slick wide-angle rock resembles the articulate, post-Radiohead bounce of Maximo Park, and there are times when their brief tics and stutters fail to hide unashamed stadium bombast, like Zooropa era U2.  At the final whistle, what looked to be a close fight at first becomes a walkover, glitchtronica references floored by guitar solos on the crash barrier, enveloping textures thrown aside negligently by tastefully epic vocal angst.  Like our own Kanadia magnified, Minus The Bear are very good, but we wish they’d just give up the half-arsed post-rock pretence, buy some proper smoke machines and a big fuck-off fan and kick Brian May off the roof to take become the unfettered, billowy-bloused rockers they are deep inside. 

Oh! What A Lovely Wardrobe

I suggest you read this review quickly, before the election references go out fo dat.  Or read it in 5 years, either works.

THE COATHANGERS/ SPRINGBREAK/ SELF HELP, Future Perfect, Bully, 16/5/17

If this review were broadcast by BBC News this paragraph would be accompanied by an unnecessarily flashy infographic illustrating how new wave is an attempt to resolve the opposing forces of melody, energy and sloppiness.  Self Help may have a little developing to do, but at their best they stumble across this sonic tightrope impeccably.  “Won’t You” has the insane catchiness of Os Mutantes’ “Bat Macumba”, the cheery steamroller bludgeon of your favourite Buzzcocks classic and the droopy-eyed delivery of a band who just woke up from a week-long kip.  “Gooey” is a lost Wannadies hit delivered with the lackadaisical cool of The Strokes, albeit once the New York glamour’s been scrubbed off with lager-anointed chip paper.  There are superfluous moments – the odd guitar solo, and a tendency to decelerate every song to a teetering stop – but if Self Help can hone down to the glowing pop core of their music, they’ll be a glorious band.

Bristol’s Springbreak also pull in different directions simultaneously, but although they are the more intriguing band, the success rate is slightly lower.  Most of the set consists of sweet, perky indie pop lost behind an ambient peasouper of malleted cymbals and Cocteau Twins guitar shimmer, sounding like The Sundays would if you left them in your hip pocket and put them through the wash.  Although coming across as about the nicest and most ethical band you could hope to swap coloured vinyl with, there are times when the music feels frustratingly mismatched, but feminist rant closer “I’m Walking Here” pulls them over the victory line, the shoegaze fug acting as shimmering backdrop to the song’s euphoric anger, rather than obscuring veil.  Cue swingometer swoop.

You’d think that Atlanta punk trio The Coathangers would have no room for variation in their scrappy brattish bashing, but, in contradiction to every punk show played in history this set actually becomes more interesting as it goes along.  Sure, the first half is good, Ramones directness and Stooges scuzz played with the tinny-fuelled bonhomie of the post-record industry house show generation, but the second half is superb. Somewhere around the time of the most economic diss of Oxford on record (stare down the crowd; intone “Harry Potter” in a quavery voice; giggle), the band starts swapping instruments, loosening up, wobbling into a pseudo-rap territory and generally becoming more childishly joyous than is decent.  By the time of the last number, essentially a dumbass solo for squeaky dog toy, we’re reminded of ultra-early Beastie Boys, albeit with a more enlightened agenda.  We did have an animation to illustrate the journey this gig took, but someone’s sprayed a big pair of boobies on the monitor.  Landslide victory for the iron(y) ladies.

Delaware Soul

MUNCIE GIRLS/ CASSELS/ KANCHO!, Future Perfect, Cellar, 15/2/17

A few years ago any hipster worth their rosemary-infused artisanal salt was in a bass and drums duo.  That time has passed, perhaps because of fashion’s restless vicissitudes, or perhaps because people realised that economy of musical means demands increased precision, or at the very least a little effort put into arranging.  Kancho!’s two man tirade is built from crisp, incisive drums and rough blocks of bass granite, but they know that simply throwing everything in at once wouldn’t cut the triple strength septum-melting mustard for a full half hour, and have addressed their attentions to hooks, dynamics and slightly silly jokes.  Not that they’re preciously twiddly, any self-conscious mathy opening riff is just a disguise for old fashioned amp blasting, quickly discarded (“It is I, Leclerc; let’s rock!”).  This is an excellent set, possibly the best we’ve witnessed by them...just in time for them to split up.

Not since The Cellar Family has any Oxford-connected band brought the aesthetics of disgust to their music like Cassels.  Another skins and strings duo, albeit one with more intricate fluidity to their pummelling, Cassels ricochet between splenetic ire, mordant humour and defeated resignation, wrestling global and personal politics into punk straitjackets.  At their best, such as recent single “Flock Analogy”, a twitchy tattoo bolsters howled poetry and impassioned broadsides that reveal a burgeoning poetic sensibility.  There are lyrical missteps – describing the world as a “Huxleyan nightmare” doesn’t sound any less sophomoric just because it’s now true – and the set is oddly hesitant and apologetic when it should be declamatory, but Cassels are still something special.

Catch a few lyrics and you’ll realise that Exeter’s Muncie Girls are as politically charged as Cassels, but choose a less abrasive method of delivery.  Their perky punk pop has its roots in C86 fizz, and borrows its fat amped attitude from that early 90s lacuna between grunge’s early influence and Britpop’s colourful trade fair.  Their melodic vocals glide whilst the music canters in a way that resembles a less self-conscious Wedding Present or even a souped up version of The Sundays (The Sundays Before Bank Holiday Monday, probably).  It’s all good bouncy fun, and we can’t say a word against their opinions or general charm, but if Muncie Girls play a better set than Cassels, it’s the latter that have hooked our attention, and will drag us back for another visit.