Forty Sense

This might not have been the greatest day of music I've ever seen, but it's the sort of thing that should always be celebrated.

FORTY YEARS OF PROMOTION, PRODUCTION & PERFORMANCE, ITS ALL ABOUT THE MUSIC, Port Mahon, 2/9/23 

This event is part of a month-long celebration of local promoter Osprey’s career spanning 40 years onstage, at the mixing desk, or at the helm of multiple gigs. There’s palpable love for the man himself on display from today’s punters and performers, and this reflects Osprey’s greatest trait as a promoter: passion. There are legions of successful musicians who got their first break at one of Osprey’s nights, as he took a chance on some nascent promise, and there are other acts to whom Os has stayed loyal for years, even if they’ve never picked up a following. Every healthy music scene needs this sort of supportive underpinning, just as much as it needs hip young gunslingers and breakout successes, and with that in mind this review will highlight acts who may not have had much previous coverage in this magazine (and if you need to know that he didnt, Beaver Fuel, The Foam Heads, and Matt “Charms Against The Evil Eye” Sewell are worth your time we prescribe Nightshifts passim, stet).  

The garden hosts a surprisingly varied roster, and starts strong with uke-slinger Bill Frizzell. His runaway -jalopy run through the top 10 singles from 40 years ago is unpretentious fun, but his musical setting of diary extracts from his time building Australian railroads in the 70s is brilliantly funny and dramatic: a one-man Edinburgh show surely beckons. Nash also has a playful approach to covers, mashing up contemporary pop culture tunes with a bit of hip-hop and a bourbon-blessed blues growl, but Paul Lodge makes him look predictable by comparison: the garden might have the vibe of an open mic night, but how often do you see people setting words by Nietzsche, Wordsworth, and a 12-century visionary abbess to delicate Dylanish music at your local? 

Tiger Mendoza is a name well known to Nightshift readers, of course, but how many times have we seen Ian de Quadros barrel through his tunes with only a trusty acoustic? Even shorn of their electro-hip-hop settings his songs stand up and his voice proves to be strong enough to take the spotlight...also, weirdly, he does the second cover of the day of ‘No Diggity’ - the Blackstreet revival starts here, we guess. Ben Jacobs deserves praise for turning in two sets of fluent, assured songs, but our favourite new find is The Station, a Newbury trio whose high-energy romp-pop falls somewhere between The Jam’s socially conscious concision and the fringe-flicking sensibilities of early Gene. Finding yourself in a small room, tapping a foot to a band who look like they’re having the time of their lives might not make the headlines, but captures the spirit of an Osprey event. We're looking forward to the fiftieth anniversary already. 

Oblique House Music

It might be worth mentioning in passing that Here Come The Warm Jets is one of the greatest albums ever made.

EMMA HUNTER/ LONDON GRAFFITI, Its (sic) All About the Music, Jericho, 16/3/23

Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies cards are a collection of mysterious, unusual, or downright paradoxical prompts to help anyone hitting a creative brick wall, perhaps most famously employed during the recording of Bowie’s Berlin trilogy. If we were invited to add a new Zen zinger to the deck, after witnessing Emma Hunter tonight it would be, “Restrict the options to expand the possibilities”.  The Hunter palette is elementary, just Tom Bruce on drums, and Emma on guitar and vocals; this latter pair can be put through a looper to build up extra textures, but this means that all the elements have to be immaculately placed to avoid any messy bleeds and clashes. Although the first thing to impress you about the set might be the rich layers of vocal harmonies (encore ‘Treacle Well’, with its breathy vocal sections, sounds gloriously like Laurie Anderson’s ‘O Superman’ exploding in a cathedral made of mirrors), what you might marvel at later is Tom’s inventive and ornate drum parts, which manage to fit in the gaps between Emma’s complex constructions whilst still oozing character and ideas. Jazz drummers might play in the pocket, but Tom inhabits the very seams.

Emma’s vocal melodies are touched by wonderfully subtle embellishments, trills, and curlicues, which nod towards techniques and traditions from the Mississippi delta, Spain, and North Africa, whilst always sounding natural and unforced. This is especially clear on ‘Morire’ (meaning to die, or fade away), a new single launched tonight which concerns someone drifting inexorably into alcoholism. We can definitely imagine Marc Almond interpreting the song’s tragic emotion well – though definitely not with Emma’s cast-iron pitching.

The ingenious exploration of limitations shown by Emma is contrasted by London Graffiti’s support set. They have plenty of charm, a literate cross between thoughtful British indie and melancholic American rock that sits somewhere between Counting Crows and Elbow. Singer JP has a warm, unhurried voice that edges towards the urbane passion of Paul Simon, but occasionally the lead guitar clogs the songs’ arteries with solos and wah-wah interjections that get in the way of the tunes. The last two numbers are more stripped back, and all the better for it.  London Graffiti put in a strong showing, but sometimes you just wish their approach was more...oblique.

That Juke Isn't Funky Any More

This review appears in the current issue of Nightshift. The editor forwarded me an email that one of the musicians sent him, making their feeling clear about this review. I was tempted to post it here, but then I though, let's not. After all, I'm not here to argue with anyone, and if someone doesn't like my tastes and my writing style, good on them. So, some truly mystifying punctuation aside, I'm happy enough with the email.

There are two issues that are interesting, though. Fristly, our chum (who shall remain anonymous), wrote, "Slating every band is quite easy to do, so i will look forward to reading a hyped review. But first, a bigger, better magazine must approve of the act. Then he can make a u-turn and try and keep up as much as his acute and narrow mind will allow. Enthusiastically claiming to have supported said act from the very beggining. I could be wrong, but this tends to be the case with small time talentless writers", and followed it up with, "Writing in magazines such as Nightshift isn't i imagine at the top of his ambitions, but he has punched well above his weight to even get that far".

The intriguing truth si that, irrespective of whether inability woudl preclude it, I have literally no desire to write for a "proper" magazine. Writing for Nightshift is the perfect job, precisely because I never have to worry about the kind of editorial or self-imposed volte faces alluded to in the first point. Unfortunately, no matter whether they were the most lauded act in the country, three of the acts in this review would be poor (although they range from lovably not quite there to hilariously atrocious), and it's great to be able to write for people who let you writer about no-mark Oxon acts and huge touring beasts and judge them in the same fashion.

Course, the thing that annoyed me about the review was that the editor got Artclasssink's name wrong. Typical.

There you go, a rather serious intro today - normal service shall resume. In fact, I'm just listening a K-Tel disco comp from a stack of vuinyl I have been gifted: "Naughty Naughty Naughty" by Joy sarney has a part for Mr Punch. Classy.




NUCLEAR SKYLINE/ VERY NICE HARRY/ ARTCLASSSINK/ THE JUKES, It’s All About The Music, Bully, 9/2/12


It’s All About The Music, as the promoter’s name would have it. Watching a band like The Jukes, you wish it were about something else, for once. Lightshow; dancing gimps; contentious race politics. Anything to distract from their atonal chugging guff, that’s like the Portsmouth Sinfonia playing Franz Ferdinand. A trumpet adds a little James-esque flourish, but the gig is unsalvageable.

“It’s a very very very nice song”, announce Artclasssink, before launching into something. They’re confident and audacious, we like that. They’re also wrong, of course. Like a desperate pool player, smacking the white up the table in blind hope, they shoot at various styles – Psych? Funk? Skank? Shoegaze? – but tend to end up muddled after a minute or so, looking to the incomprehensible vocal yelps to drag the song home. Yet there’s something lovable about this band, not least their evident self-belief. We feel musicians should grow up in public, so good on you, Artclasssink. Now get better.

Very Nice Harry shine in this company, with a highly polished melodic set of energetic, atmospheric pop. They’re at their least convincing when trying to be Foals (as is everyone except Foals, let’s be honest), but when they create more space in the music, with some neat delay pedal use, and drizzle it with Blake’s 7 synths, they boast some really quite impressive, dynamic songs, allowing Sam McNeill’s lithe, clear vocal lines a chance to unfurl. Very promising. Do you know what I mean, Harry?

Nuclear Skyline look excitingly like a greasy rockabilly bassist has gatecrashed a teenage grunge act, but they sound like any other clod-hopping, inexperienced punk band. Good spirited fun, of course, but lacking in anything memorable to balance the lack of musical prowess. Currently it’s brash and ballsy but not very interesting. They’ve got a Black Flag T-shirt and a shiny double bass, though. We’re sure they’ll come up with something, given time.

Beatific International

I'm listening to a full length CD of radio jingles from Coldseal Windows. I should stay out of charity shops.

THE KILL CITY SAINTS/ HOT HOOVES/ ZEM/ RAISING HARLEY, It’s All About The Music, The Bully, 14/4/11

The difference between most US sit coms and their British counterparts is the writers. In this country we have shows penned by a single author, probably in a four week blast in some provincial town, fuelled by tinned soup and Cash In The Attic, whereas American shows are thrashed out by huge rosters of writers, sat round a big glass table somewhere vastly important. It’s why an episode of Friends may have rafts of clever lines, but can feel distant, disconnected and arid. We’re reminded of this by Raising Harley, not only because he plays the theme to Scrubs (turns out after those eight bars it gets quite dull, and you really miss the theremin), but because his amiable busking is promising, but needs a little more character to snag our attention.

Similarly, new trio Zem have a lovely chunky rhythm section – despite injuries – but the chap strumming and moaning at the front is drabness personified. Seriously, it’s like someone won a competition. The arrangement of Paul Simon’s “Richard Cory” is a strong start, but again anonymity is their worst crime. Still, it all pales compared to crass Southern fried rockers Kill City Saints, a band so generically dire it looks like they’ve been created by committee to supply “Blues Rock Solutions”. The truly hideous renegade skull backdrop, lyrics about midnight trains, and adept but charmless guitar solos indicate a band with a huge taste deficit; the fact the singer is swigging vodka and Dr Pepper only confirms suspicions.

And somewhere in this sea of Not Quite Finished and Hideously Ill Conceived fall Hot Hooves, a band featuring members of Oxford favourites ATL and Talulah Gosh, bursting with approachable character and short on self-consciousness or pretension. Their melodic new wave thrives on taut concise structures, but if that suggests Wire they’re as much Eddie & The Hot Rods. The music’s thumping economy comes balanced by an wry airiness (Sample lyric: “My telekinesis/ Is falling to pieces”) whether it’s delivered in Pete Momtchiloff’s spasmodic mumble or with Bash Street cheekiness by Mac. At points Hot Hooves remind us of bands as disparate as The Auteurs and Ten Benson, but they doubtless have better, more obscure bands influencing them. Hell, they were probably in them.