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.

Sungs Frum An Urt Gullery

This is quite a wordy review.  Lots of sophomoric chat about the nature of live performance.  Don't read it if you're hoping I'm going to be describing Grace Exley's bared midriff in great detail, and if you don't like old men moaning about the price of beer.

I listened to Pieces In A Moden Style by William 0rbit (sic) today,. having bought it in a charity shop.  Jesus, it's worse than I expected: how can you make Barber, Cage, Satie and Vivaldi all sound the same?  And so horrible?  If you see it in the charity shop I shall return it to, I advise you leave it on the shelf.  

THE GOGGENHEIM/ THE LAMPOST GULLIVERS/ VIENNA DITTO/ FRANCIS PUGH & THE WHISKY SINGERS, Stone Free, The Jericho, 6/10/12

We’re just buying our first overpriced beer at the Jericho’s main bar, when suddenly a lilting little country ditty, in a sort of cleaned up jugband style, wafts pleasingly past our ears.  It’s Francis Pugh & The Whisky Singers, a quartet that has elected to start its set in the downstairs bar, perhaps hoping to lead the drinkers, Pied Piper style, into the upstairs venue.  Predictably, we are the entirety of their entourage as they take to the stairs.  In the venue, they continue to play unplugged, in the middle of the room, which creates a delightful intimacy, even if they could do with learning how to project the vocals.  The material is enjoyable, high quality country tunes with a small hint of self-effacing wit, as if they know that four young chaps from Oxfordshire can never really play in this downhome style without a sly wink.  The trumpet parts are the secret ingredient, not least because they carry so clearly without amplification; and did we hear an unexpected Handel influence at one point?  It’s a good set, and a friendly introduction to the evening, although part of us thinks that, far from being a mildly diverting novelty, people singing unamplified narrative folk songs belong in a provincial pub far more than squid nibbles and Peroni at four pounds forty a fucking pint.

Vienna Ditto may have a sound based on synthesised beats and fuzzy electric guitar, but they retain the unhurried ramshackle air of the Whisky Singers.  Many of their songs marry chunky electro-disco to rockabilly, in a space somewhere between Goldfrapp’s steely sensuality and Imelda May’s glossy gutsiness, with the merest whiff of turn of the century pop sophisticates Shivaree.  This is all well and good, but what truly makes them special - aside from Hatty Taylor’s rich, chanson-style voice – is their relaxed, handmade approach.  Whilst many bands with gorgeous, arcing pop songs like this would have rehearsed them to the hilt and found some session rhythm section types to fill up the sound, Vienna Ditto spend most of the set huddled together over a keyboard and electronics set up, pushing buttons and giggling, like a drunk couple trying to knock up a post-pub dinner on a camping stove.  Writing epic pop songs is a skill; performing them so they feel like wonderful secrets whispered into the audience’s ear is sheer talent.

Speaking of talent, at the beginning of The Lampost Gullivers’ set, we begin to worry that former Suitable Case and Mephisto Grande vocalist Liam Ings-Reeves wasn’t the excellent musician we had him down as, but a cabaret blues growler whose music had been getting slowly less interesting over the years.  Bash bash bash went the bass and drums, snarly-warl went Liam, in his best zombie Tom Waits voice, and it was all perfectly diverting, but not vastly exciting.  About a third of the way into the set, however, we quickly moderated our opinion.  Suddenly, the music took on a lithe, tensile quality, replacing the cartoon bluster of the opening numbers with hypnotic, rubbery rhythms, turning the preacher-rock hollers into sticky, deep-fried krautrock.  By the end of the set, our faith is firmly restored, and we can hear the deft muscularity underpinning even the dirtiest blues clatter.

Pop music, ladies and gentlemen, is and always has been, at least partly, about dressing up funny.  So, fair play to The Goggenheim, who are all garbed as Alex James (possibly), with nice clean flat caps, and are fronted by Grace Exley, in glittery silver affair with vast head-dress, looking like a dancer from a Busby Berkeley musical about Ra the sun god in New York.  Sonically they’re equally theatrical, laying Gong wooziness and affected vocal declamations over thumping drums and disjointed guitar.  At their poppiest, on “Moth”, they sound rather a lot like 80s oddballs Stump, but at their most outlandish they’re simply mystifying: “Ah Samina” consists of an unfathomable chant with false vibrato created by manually wobbling the throat, like a 70s schoolchild pretending to be a Silurian.  It’s not all arsing about, though, and the music would be infuriatingly wacky if it weren’t played so well, with some outstanding metronomic drumming.  You also get the feeling that Grace is continually embodying different characters, rather than just putting on silly voices.  In one song she seems to be subtly detourning blues chauvanism with the words “Gonna see my woman, but she’s a cow”, and in “Housten” she might be cocking a snook at lachrymose country tunes about misfortune and loss by singing of salvaging nick-nacks from a crumbled life.  But, equally, she might not.

The Goggenheim are a fascinating, exciting mix of performance art, punk pop and psychedelia who have tailored their performance to the artificiality of the concert environment: their music thrives on the distancing effect of the boundary between stage and audience as much as The Whisky Singers’ feeds from its removal.  This gig, curated by local music photographer Johnny Moto, seemed designed to explore different ways performers relate to a crowd.  Whether the musicians joined us, engaged us in conversation, gave us antagonistic stares or foxed us with surreal spectacle, we were constantly reminded just what a gig in a small venue can do that no volume of free MP3s and YouTube videos can.