Truck 2013 Saturday Pt 2

Luke Smith can be found in our record collection between Jimmy Smith and Mark E. Smith, which seems pretty fair as a) he’s pretty useful on the old keys, and b) he’s resolutely English, a deeply acquired taste, and has changed a band member every time we see him.  His lovable Stillgoe meets Betjeman schtick is much as it always was, even after a few Trucks away from the bill, although the addition of young female vocalist has turned set stalwart “Please Be My Girlfriend” into a sort of tea room version of The Smiths’ “Girl Afraid”.

Crash Of Rhinos are epic and wired and excited, but like lots of angular emotional rock there doesn’t seem to be much underneath it all worth being epic, wired or excited about.  They’re like getting Gielgud all dressed up in his Richard III costume, then making him recite excerpts from Teen Wolf.

Now, LA duo The Bots on the other hand are properly gigantic, a vicious mess of feral guitar and pummelled drums that takes in Sabbath riffs, Hendrix via Last Exit solos, punk vocals and more pummelled drums.  It’s irreverently witty, too, and our favourite moment is when one of them breaks off from caustic guitar screeches to stop and play three notes on a farty synth repeatedly for about two minutes.  The other one, in case you’re wondering, was pummelling the drums at the time.

And So I Watch You From Afar are on the main stage.  It’s almost too easy.  They might as well be called, And So I Nip Off To The Bar.  Which isn’t to say they’re rubbish, but their twiddly posty-rocky thingy is not as interesting as watching kids climb over the giant CD sculpture, or trying to explain cryptic crosswords to a Swede (partial success).  Fight Like Apes are better, not least because their singer is dressed like Siouxsie and if they are overly fond of a repeated singalong vocal line, they know when to kick in enough energy to take a song home.

The timetable says the Jamalot stage should host The Fridge & Bungle Experience now, but it looks a lot like Ilodica to us.  You have to love the way that he just plays his relaxed roots whilst members of the organisation set up the stage around him, laying down airy melodic lines and singing in a style equidistant between Max Romeo and Horace Andy as if he is lost in his own musical world.  He’s a proper ragamuffin too – we mean that in the original sense, his scruffy martial jacket makes him look like a disciple of The Libertines gone dread.  He jams out a track with Pieman, who is next on the bill, which is rather a sweet way to treat set changeovers.  Pieman is not, as you might expect, a Headcount tribute act, but a beatboxer of some frightening ability, who is incredibly adept at replicating dubstep wubs and scratchadelic curlicues as well as the traditional drum sounds.  And he can rap, it turns out.  The bastard.  Our only criticism is that his show is a crowd-pleasing diversion, we’d like to see him doing something more substantial one day, or perhaps a set of collaborations.

When The Subways run onstage, fists aloft, like second rate telethon presenters, or clueless youth workers, we fear for our teeth, which can only take so much grinding of a weekend.  But they’re actually  - whisper it – good fun.  They know their way from one end of a tune to another, they look as though they are sincerely having a ball onstage, and their set does actually make us a smile, even whilst we fail to recall any of their music mere seconds after it has finished.  Plus, it’s endearing that their stage moves are a vindication for clumsy wedding dad dancing the world over.

The only thing that annoys us about Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip is the “Vs”.  Considering they’re a laptop twiddler with a taste for 8 bit squiggles and late 90s breakbeat wrangling, and a beardy spoken word artist with a love for classic hip hop and Detroit hardcore, their music is a surprisingly cohesive collaboration.  We can, on the other hand, talk at great length about why we admire them, from the impossibly infectious music to the erudite lyrics to the fact that they’re politically engaged musicians who don’t resort to rabble-rousing simplifications.  This 45 minute show is inevitably a bit of a greatest hits workout, and we would have liked more time to explore their more esoteric work – not to mention a clearer vocal mix – but seeing a packed tent leap manically to a track we first saw Scroobius play solo to fewer than 20 people in The Zodiac, before the P.I.P. was a V.I.P., is pleasing.  In fact, whilst this set is going on, other stages were being headlined by ShaoDow and Rolo Tomassi, two more acts Nightshift first discovered playing blinding gigs  to q tiny smattering of listeners, and it’s truly heartwarming.  Or depressing, of course, depending on how you look at it.

After that endorphin blast, The Horrors can’t compete.  We think they’re fairly good on record, but the show is an anonymous parade of plodding drums and synth washes, like karaoke backing for a mid-80s Simple Minds song everyone’s forgotten.  There are hints of an atmospheric tune here and there, but after seeing Toy this is cruelly thin broth to serve as the final course.

It has been a thoroughly enjoyable festival, with the Saturday especially rich in treats.  On one of our visits to see the ever-helpful Rapture Records stall, one of the staff announces, “It’s OK!  Truck is complete, the Thomas Truax records have arrived!”.  New York’s Meccano music maestro made a welcome return to the Veterans stage this year, and our only concern for coming events is how mavericks like him find a place on the bill, and get a chance to earn their place as future veterans.  Once you felt the curatorial sway over Truck, from the Bennetts themselves to Trailerpark’s PC, to Alan Day, and if this resulted in some mystifying decisions, it also gave the festival a stamp of identity that nowadays doesn’t seem to quite remain.  We saw some truly outstanding acts this weekend, but if you want to, you can go and see most of them sharing bills at other festivals all the way through the summer.  As we said at the outset, mix up the stages, and throw in some more adventurous act choices, and Truck could easily be better now than it ever has been, but if it becomes just one more identikit summer stop for the floral welly crew, then we’ll lose a vital part of what always made it special, and all the volleyball nets in the world will never buy that back.

Saliva Novello

I just watched The Great Rock & Roll Swindle.  It was quite entertaining, up until the end when McClaren nipped off and Jonesy just ran round Brazil and got his cock out.  Old Malcolm may have been a conniving little scumbag, but he was far more interesting than a couple of dopy yobs.  I was unsurprised to see that Rotten was not involved ; )

MR SHAODOW – CUT THE BULLSPIT (DiY Gang Entertainment)

Bullspit?  How coy is that?  OK, swearing isn’t always clever, but prissy self-censoring bowdlerisms never look good.  Luckily, it’s about the only criticism we can make about Shaodow’s outstanding new album (which is really a glorified single, padded with alternate versions, old favourites and skits, but for four quid on pre-order we’ll not complain).  The new material reveals Shaodow’s maturation into an artist of true stature, finding an alchemical blend between the erudite witticisms of his early tracks, and the roof-igniting ringmaster he has become live.  Built on a loop from Bizet and some barefaced party-down handclaps, the title track should be a kitsch mess, but underneath the frothy fun of the hook, and winking lyrics about minotaurs and Slimer, the rhythm kicks like a wild Pamplona toro.  A nice alt take featuring reggae star Serocee is fitting, given Shaodow’s dancehall-like tendency to strip mine single rhyme schemes in a way that differentiates him from the fanciful balletic flow of most other literate, theatrical rappers, from  Flava Flav to MF Doom.

The real jewel here, though, is “Posh Boy”, a hilarious riposte to those who say that Oxford Law graduates can’t rap, over a brilliant econostep beat that sounds like a broken Xerox.  “Real” is a complex word in hip hop mythology, but in being honest about his background, Shaodow embodies it better than most UK rappers.  Aside from “Actin Up”, a collaboration with Zuby that dilutes both performers’ skills, this record is a must. Shaodow’s sold over 10, 000 records by gigging and working constantly; his ceaseless dedication should be an inspiration to any number of weak-kneed, moaning musicians who can’t see beyond their last bad review or sparse crowd.  Have hard work, self-belief and sincerity made Shaodow a better artist?

No spit.

 

Holy Truck

Of course, since I wrote this review Truck festrival (or rather, Steventon Events, who run it) has gone bust. I decided to leave the review as it was writtena day or two after the event, rather than go into hysterical eulogies. I'll miss it, though, for all its faults.

Sat & Sun copming very soon.

Yes, there are a lot of words here. Don't read them if you don't weant to, I don't mind. There are plenty of blogs out there that average 10 words a post, go and find them, if you don't like reading. You deserve each other.


TRUCK FESITVAL, Hill Farm, Steventon, 22-4/7/11

FRIDAY

Oh, there’ll be letters. Pints will be mumbled into. The internet may be utilised. Truck has done the unthinkable, and redesigned the festival site. Not only is the main stage in a different place, it’s in a different damned field. And the barn is gone. Everyone loved the barn. Everyone loved the atrocious acoustics, awkward bottleneck entrance and lingering smell of cow faeces. Who wants this new Clash stage, with its high-quality PA and easy access?

Well, we do. We feel that, for the most part, Truck’s new, more spacious layout is a success, and if they have co-opted some of the trappings of the well-heeled boutique festivals they helped to create – posh sit-down dining, stalls selling over-priced nick-nacks made from old Penguin paperbacks – the old, unpretentious, home-made atmosphere still survives. And, yes, you can still buy doughnuts from the vicar and grub from the Round Tablers (quote of the weekend: “I got a lovely burger, but it was weird to buy it from the masons”).

Our weekend starts in the new Clash tent, with Gaggle, a large bunch of vibrantly bedecked young ladies doing a line in big tribal pop chants. It’s something like a school nativity play version of Bow Wow Wow, and is good honest fun. There are about 35 of them, which we suppose might look impressive if we hadn’t just spent 20 minutes as part of a large and twitchy crowd at the Steventon level crossing, as some sort of ovine emergency meltdown caused by sheep on the line a few miles away meant that the barriers had to be kept inexplicably closed.

The Wood stage is a cosy, intimate tent that is sadly a little underused over the weekend, but it’s a the perfect place to watch Water Pageant, a likable folk-pop trio, whose delicate sound might get lost in larger spaces. At another corner of the site, the Last.FM stage is curated on the Friday night by BBC Oxford Introducing, and we’re tempted to say this was the lineup of the weekend. The Braindead Collective swap their free improv racket for an exploration of open-ended pop, and it works beautifully, Chris Beard’s lucid, careening voice sailing high above a mixture of dub touches and Fripp-like effects.

Mr Shaodow follows them admirably, with a crowd pleasingly boisterous set that may have hidden some of his clever lyrics, but highlights his way with an eager audience. Shadow is one of an odd breed of Oxford-connected artists who always get a rave reception at Truck, but who generally play to small, indifferent audiences in the city (cf testpilot, nervous), and with this in mind we can hardly blame Shaodow for keeping things accessible. One question though: are we missing something or is DJ Watchcase the worst hip hop moniker in a fifty mile radius?

You Are Wolf aren’t mentioned in the programme, but we stumble across her making complex loops of vocals and keyboard, to deliver a lilting traditional folk song over the top. She then announces it was actually a Dolly Parton cover! Did we imagine this?

Back at the Wood stage, London’s Non-Classical club have taken over for the evening, and we have the pleasure of being amongst the small attendance for one of the sets of the weekend, from Consortium 5, a recorder quintet. In previous years a recorder only ensemble at Truck might have meant Piney Gir and chums arsing about and playing smugly dire Steely Dan covers, but Consortium 5 is a highly drilled, professional group of musicians, offering us a little Purcell and a lot of contemporary composition. The sonic range is astounding, from the sound of a baroque traffic jam through a Ligeti-like cloud of chirrups to the final number, a mass of breathy percussive bursts and gasping trills, like Thomas the Tank Engine and friends playing Takemitsu. It’s random discoveries like this that make Truck special.

There are lot of people on the Truck bill this year who Used To Be In Bands, which is fine, but there are also a lot Whose Dads Used To Be In Bands: Truck wants to watch that it doesn’t become some sort of indie Cornbury. An example for the prosecution would be Liam Finn, offspring of him out of Crowded House, who is decent enough but pretty dull, going for a wall of sound pop effect, but losing us swiftly.

Perhaps feeling guilty for giving up on Finn so quickly, we decide to give Africa Junction more of a chance, and are amply rewarded for doing so. At first, they sound too studied to make anything from their polite African percussion – Jesus, we left East Oxford for the weekend to get away from this stuff – but as the tempo drops, and the balafon starts to lead the music, it wafts out of the Cabaret tent like a warm sirocco.

Johnny Flynn reminds us happily of childhood TV, and Rolf Harris painting vast wall-sized pictures with house paints. Flynn’s band similarly takes simple, bold strokes and throws them together to create something impressive. There’s nothing here we’ve not heard before, just chunky folky choruses, lively trumpet lines, bluesy guitar licks, and a bit of ‘cello to underpin things, but the whole is rather lovely.

James Surowiecki wrote a book called The Wisdom Of Crowds, claiming that large groups of people are effectively cleverer than individuals. Our problem with this theory has always been that vast crowds of people are generally seen assembled to watch adequate but unexciting things like Coldplay or Michael McIntyre – just how fucking clever can they be? Still, we get a little buzz of pleasure in seeing hundreds of Truckers swaying along to Bellowhead’s outstanding version of “Amsterdam”, squeezing every drop of tawdry voyeurism and tragic celebration from Brel’s composition. In truth, this is the outstanding moment of set that is very good, but doesn’t reach the heights of their 2010 performance. Uncharacteristically, it’s the slower tracks that are more successful this time round, although the wah-wah mandolin does lend a funky edge to the more upbeat songs (images of Starsky & Hutch driving through Cecil Sharp House in a flurry of madrigal manuscripts). Not up to their own high standards, perhaps, but still probably the best festival band on the circuit.

Nipping out to catch some of Spring Offensive’s set turns out to be an excellent decision. We’ve always admired their music, but tonight the Introducing stage witnesses a band coming of age. Not only do they perform with an acidic intensity we’ve never seen before, but new track “52 Miles” takes the melancholic triumphalism of their best songs, but replaces the Youth Movies guitar twiddles with a slow-burning haze that eventually erupts into a bloom of furry beauty. A very good band just got better.

And we follow that be revisiting a good local band whom we had somewhat forgotten. Dive Dive remind us that they can produce bitter little nuggets of pop excellence, and send us off happily into the night, or at least towards the beer tent.

THE SHAODOW KNWS

I'm listening to Public Enemy at the moment, they popped up on a compilation I have on. I always forget just how great they are. Fittingly, here's a hip hop review, albeit one that doesn't sound like "Don't Believe The Hype".

See you later, silly rabbits.


MR SHAODOW FEAT. GHETTS – GET STRONGER (Download single)


He may not be the most prolific of Oxford-connected musicians, but Mr ShaoDow has got to be up there with the hardest working. On any given weekend you’ll most likely find him playing a gig in some small provincial town, or traversing the length and breadth of the nation to sell his CDs on the streets. Perhaps our image of the dedicated performer in the 21st century isn’t of somebody practising six hours a day, or playing three hour marathon sets, but of someone spending huge chunks of their day online, updating statuses and emailing the frighteningly diasporic contemporary music media. Depressing? Maybe, but then again ShaoDow is getting his work heard all over the show, and what’s more, it’s being done 100% on his own terms.

Fittingly, this new single is a paean to positivity and effort: “Knock me down, I get stronger”, warns ShaoDow, painting himself as a sort of hip hop cross between Obi Wan Kenobi and a weeble. Can’t argue with that philosophy. Musically “Get Stronger” is a satisfyingly heavy, juddering whirr of a track, a dubstep version of an aging VW trying to start on a cold morning, and ShaoDow’s delivery is his most rugged yet to appear on record, which is fitting as his style has been slowly morphing from the cabaret one liners of old to a fast, intense, head down chaingun delivery that’s something akin to Twista raised on British club music (ShaoDow may have criticised the culture in the past, but the B side here, “Stay Away” owes a fair bit to grime) . We might miss the incisive humour of “Watch Out” or “R U Stoopid?!”, or the joyous madness of “Cockney Thug” in this record, but these are definitely ShaoDow’s most mature and well-honed bars, there’s not an ounce of spare flesh on the lyrics, and we’re suitably impressed by a sequence that rhymes “calibre”, “Africa”, “mafia” and the excellently ballsy “I grab fear by the trachea”. Ghetts offers a little respite with a more relaxed, thoughtful style that recalls previous ShaoDow collaborator LeeN, albeit with a slightly straighter face.

This is an excellent release, and one that may well propel ShaoDow on to the next step in his career. What we hope to see next is some recordings that marry this sleek professionalism with his irrepressible character and originality, but until then this single comes highly recommended. We must admit, however, that we don’t care for “Stay Away”, which not only has an annoyingly nasal sub-Albarn refrain, but also appears to boast some unreconstructed “my Dad’s bigger than your Dad” lyrics, which is the sort of thing ShaoDow normally avoids.

What’s that? We shouldn’t end the review on a negative point? That’s OK, ShaoDow doesn’t mind: whatever doesn’t kill him makes him stronger.

Cowley The Beast

A review of a pretty bad day out. Mind you, they're all bad days out now aren't they?


OX4, various venues, 9/10/10


Throughout the afternoon, passersby are enticed up to the doorway of Cafe Tarifa by the music the Oxford Folk Festival has booked, only to turn away after discovering the £5 entry fee, yet the vast majority of those who have spent twenty quid on an OX4 wristband don’t venture out to see anything until the sun has set. Somewhere in this paradox is the promoter’s eternal frustration, and the problem couched at the heart of OX4. You can go on all you like about “Oxford’s Creative Quarter” and musical diversity, but whilst this festival may superficially resemble The Punt, OX4 is more like a touring gig writ large: there are a handful of big acts (all from outside the county, if not the country), and the rest of the multifaceted day is like one long local support act that nobody goes to see. We visit the open mike at the new INevents space, to find the host begging for participants – it seems a musical community, like music itself, just can’t be forced.

But good music there is, and it’s OX4’s secret victory that all the best acts we see are homegrown. The Folk Festival stage is strong, with highlights from Bellowhead’s John Spiers, and Huffenpuff, a duo of accordion and soprano sax/flute, which blithely skips through the glade of musical history grabbing fragments of Breton, klezmer and jazz like so many falling blossoms. Hretha build intricate yet reserved instrumentals that are full of delicate mystery, and construct their arrangements with clockwork precision when most post-rockers rely on sketchy dynamics. Despite taking far longer to set up than one man with a keyboard has any right, Chad Valley make a quietly euphoric music that isn’t far from late 80s Scritti Politti or a sun-bleached Beloved, and once you’ve forgiven the fact that the vocal sounds like Tony Hadley with hiccoughs the set is strong.

Some days it feels as though every band in the world can be defined with reference to The Beach Boys. In that sense Fixers fall somewhere between the approaches of Animal Collective and The High Llamas, but more importantly they play the set of the day. The smooth, AM sound beneath the soaring falsetto serenades is as much Dennis Wilson as it is Brian, and intrigues those of us who feel that Surf’s Up is at least as good as Pet Sounds. The pastel-tinted songs are also dusted with mid-80s synth tones and Phil Spector drum patterns, yet manage to retain a cohesive and individual air.

Fixers are proof that music can be retro and still feel fresh, but the lesson has been lost on most of the larger acts. Everything Everything offer a stilted ersatz funk that could make Arthur Russell spin in his tragically early grave, and Glitches are the same but worse, a Wanky Goes To Hollywood melange of syn drums, stupid hair and ineffectual yelping. Jesus, we love the 80s and these two acts are making us sound like we write for Proper Music Pub Rock Weekly by their sheer lack of vision. Dog Is Dead are a tight band with some decent tunes, if you can battle past the fact they sound like Level 42, and Willy Mason is impressive in holding a large audience with just an acoustic and some slow paeans, but does remind us queasily of an unhoned Springsteen. More reference grabbing from Abe Vigoda, who make a passable swipe at Talking Heads artfunk and Devo japery without having the character to equal either.

The hipster homogeneity of the name acts, with influences stretching from Now 5 to Now 8, takes the edge off the event, but as with all art, the gems are there for the dedicated. Our final act is the excellent Mr Shaodow, for whom half the room sadly leaves within minutes, but who energises the remainder with pure expertise, originality and intelligence. As someone who has lived in London, China and Oxford, he could tell you that good musicians are united by hard graft and talent, not their postcode.

Truck Or Treat

Hello.

It's been a while, sorry about that. I'm as busy as can be over here. I shall get this blog back on track hopefully in the enar future. Anway, here's the 1st part of my Truck review, elements of which appear in the current Nightshift.


TRUCK, Hill Farm, Steventon, 24-5/7/10

SATURDAY
In recent years Truck has been all over the national press, popping up in The Independent Magazine or The Guardian’s guide to festivals, but whilst this may be deserved none of these culture jamborees seem to capture what we think is good about Truck. Forget your indie cred and girls in fifty quid wellies, we adore the vicar frying donuts, the Round Tablers serving reasonably priced tea, the slightly makeshift feel of most of the stages, and – in short – the fact that it doesn’t look like something that’s ever likely to excite the staff at The Guardian. The other great thing about Truck, which is perhaps true of all good festivals, is that it always surprises you with great unknown acts. Openers Meursault aren’t a bad little group to stumble upon, volleying melodic laptop rock into the balmy afternoon. Their inherent drama reminds us of Witches, and our only criticism is that they come across as desperately earnest, as if they were pleading before a medieval ducking stool.

Something Beginning With L are a new name to us as well, and if their woozy cover of Whitney Houton’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” marks them out as hypnagogic trendies, the majority of the set is just good old guitar and keyboard rock music, finished off with a gorgeous plangent voice. At times they remind us of Texas – even down to the cowboy hat – but not in a way that is infuriating. “Lovely” begins with L.

It’s the same every year, we want to like the cabaret tent but never find anything good. We’re desperate to enjoy Jim Davies, who seems like he’d be a great man to share a few pints with, and who has a natural humour about him, but who must have left his punchlines behind in the rush to get packed. Sadly his tales of working as an advertising copywriter are good, but don’t really connect; it does, however, give us an excuse to pepper this review with idiotic promotional slogans.

In a swirl of NASA suits, bubble machines, theremin and stylophone Spaceships Are Cool prepare for takeoff. Their wonderfully tuneful music is akin to something on the Duophonic label minus the furrowed brows, and at least three tracks sound like White Town’s bedroom wonder “Your Woman” covered by a cheery Glaswegian indie band. They’re one of the best acts of the weekend, but if they have a Smile-Off with members of Alphabet Backwards stand well back, you might get caught in some hideous chirpiness crossfire. Put the freshness back.

They also give out tiny origami space shuttles to the crowd, which we find scattered around throughout the day; is subliminal craft merch a new sales concept? God knows Atlantic Pacific could do with some of that subtlety, they play a very dull yet not upsetting set, which is only interesting because it provides the first glimpse of a Bennett brother onstage. What do we win?

We were fervently hoping Thomas Tantrum in The Barn would be Thomas Truax going ape because all his machines had gone wrong, but sadly not. Nothing else about them is a let down, though. Get past the ultra-contemporary pared guitar sounds, and you find pop gold something like The Cardigans, or perhaps even The Cowboy Junkies, if they were cooked in a cutely effervescent pixie pie. It’s musically spotless and hugely enjoyable, at times reminding us of pretty 90s popstrels Tsunami (not the later Oxford band of the same name). Swiss Concrete don’t make shit smelling barns, but if they did...

The programme tells us “Luke Smith hasn’t missed a Truck Festival since he first played ten (??? citation needed) years ago”. How sweet, he’s so much a part of the scenery, they don’t even bother proof reading his write up. And as such criticising him would be like visiting Wiltshire and giving Stonehenge a bad review, but luckily we adore him anyway. We could ramble on about his intelligent lyrics and adept piano, the excellent growling John Harle tone of the soprano sax or the warm comic humanity of his delivery, but all you really need to know is that throughout the set the sound engineers were grinning like loons, and they’re a notoriously surly bunch. Smith is somewhere between Betjeman and Stillgoe, and is an English eccentric to be valued...and he does make exceedingly good tunes.

Active Child plays some lovely harp, but spoils it by covering the music with horrible Eurhythmics drum programming. The he stops playing the harp. Then we leave.

Boat To Row are likened in the programme to Stornoway and Bert Jansch, which is phenomenally generous and puts us off their folky pop at first, but eventually we warm to them, and we mentally file them alongside Sonny Liston as pleasing acoustic troubadours. Still, nothing here to get the pulse racing, so we let our fingers do the walking and pick something at random from the programme.

Fucking fingers. We’re back at the Cabaret tent, where two men (who may be Bishop & Douche, but we’re not certain) are playing the introductions to cheesy records to inexplicable applause. God, how we hate the Nathan Barley world we live in, sometimes, that equates recognising something with understanding it, and thinks quoting something is the same as criticising it. This is desperately unfunny and makes Boat To Row seem like a halcyon age, so we leave ASAP. Because we’re worth it.

Luckily it means we catch some of Mr Shaodow’s set from the door of a packed Beathive. Only a few years ago he was fumbling his way through a Punt set whereas now he (and battle brother LeeN, amongst others) has the crowd by the scruff of the neck, and is sending it, frankly, loopy. The only down point is the overlong freestyle section, where Shaodow starts asking for suggestions from the audience like a hip hop Josie Lawrence. The improv raps are good, but why try to impress on the fly when you’ve already written such astounding rhymes?

We think that Y was on our bus, trying to impress some 15 years olds and telling a dizzy girl she was psychic; on Sunday he’s refusing to leave the tiny Rapture Records stage whilst he slurs non-sequiturs and plays fudged arpeggios on a weeny keyboard, like a horrific cross between Suicide and John Shuttleworth. Somewhere in the middle of this embarrassment, though, he put a tiger in his tank and churned out a steaming wall of psych rock noise, along with an ace jamming band (double Bennett score!). Imagine all the great sounds that influenced Spacemen 3, and then put them together replacing the narcotic mope with a Watney’s Party 7 barrel of fun, and you get a set that might not be complex, but is exactly what is needed as the afternoon tails away. Some toddlers are also going nuts for it, alternately dancing crazy and running their fingers through the pebbles in the Village Pub tent like people on their first acid trip. “Dude, my hands are so big. For a three year old”.

Hit (South) Parade

Something different today, my favourite Oxford records of 2009, as published with other selections on Oxfordbands. The text style of the first line refers ot the fact that Alphabet Backwards' bassist, Josh, was smothered all over billboards, buses and TVs in 2009 as part of one of those infuriating mobile phone ads, in which he talked guff about starting a "super-band", or something equally facile. He is actually a very good musician, but from the ads you'd assume he was just a twat who clumps along to "Smoke On The Water" in his Mum's attic. Hopefully the phone company paid him handsomely for his time, but sadly I imagine he did it for free, the starry-eyed pop flump.


Alphabet Backwards: Alphabet Backwards
gr8 bnd v g pop lol [send to entire address book]

A Scholar & A Physician: She's A Witch
The funnest ball of funny electro fun anywhere in the world this year, from Truck's production go-to boys.

Borderville: Joy Through Work
"A band's reach should exceed its grasp/ Or what's a heaven for?" - Robert Browning (nearly)

Les Clochards: Sweet Tableaux
Oxford's wry Gallic cafe indie children deliver a blinder. Sounds like fat Elvis twatted on creme de menthe and blearily stumbling round the Postcard Records' bordello.

Hretha: Minnows/ Dead Horses
Orthographically frustrating upstarts produce clinical post-rock excellence.

Mephisto Grande: Seahorse Vs The Shrew
A revivalist hymn meeting seen through Lewis Carroll's mescaline kaleidoscope.

The Relationships: Space
Beuatiful chiming indie pop coupled with the most articulate lyricist ever to have flaneured the Cowley Road; think R.E.M.'s Reckoning crossed with Betjeman's Banana Blush, record collectors!

Mr Shaodow: R U Stoopid?
Serious messages, approachable humour, lyrical dexterity. His best yet, and that's some benchmark.

Stornoway: Unfaithful
The startled bunnies of lit-pop had a meteoric year. Let's be honest, you won't get long odds on their debut LP featuring in this list next year...

Vileswarm: Sun Swallows The Stars
An experimental dreamteam of Frampton & Euhedral, offering "doom drone": does exactly what it says on the tombstone.

Belting It Out

A festival in a Christian youth club. A not particularly interesting review with a shit pun for the title. Hardly a marriage made in heaven.

BELOW THE BELT ALL-DAYER, The Mish, 23/11/08


Never let it be said that we don’t enjoy finding new musical experiences, in addition to the usual Friday night down The Sheaf, but who seriously would have thought we’d find ourselves at an all-dayer on a Sunday. In a youth club! Run by a church!! With no bar!!! Once we got over the weirdness of it all, we decided that The Mish, on St Clements, is a rather lovely little place, with a decent sound system and a relaxed friendly atmosphere. It’s like falling into some alternate universe where The Cellar is clean and comfy, and serves mugs of coffee.

G-Block kick things off with panache, but seem to be suffering from that hip hop epidemic, Crewitis, which causes an uncomfortable swelling of the MC roster. There are so many rappers onstage we don’t even notice one of them till he steps from the shadows to take the mike, and although there’s a wide range of styles on offer, not to mention some real talent bubbling under, the entire set feels unfocused and fragmented, with so many vocalists strung together. A jam on a Fugees rhythm, whilst a little too soft-centred to do them justice, shows what G-Block can do when things are tidied up. Ultimately the set tails off, primarily because one unimaginatively strummed guitar can never take the place of a full fat beat, but there’s more than enough potential here to make it worth remembering the name G-Block.

Sadly Vultures don’t reprise their Charlbury set, but instead opt to play in a two guitar, semi-acoustic duo formation that’s relaxing but hardly revolutionary. The vocals are still sweet and catchy, and it sounds not unlike The La’s playing some sort of post-hoedown chill out session, but this is not the sort of stuff to set your Sunday aflame.

The excellent Jon Fletcher revives proceedings with a show that just oozes gigging experience: it’s not just his assured guitar fingering or his loose unhurried vocals that show he’s a past master at this sort of thing, but it’s the off the cuff banter that draws everyone together and manages to make the event feel like an intimate party for the first time that day….which is exactly how a basement full of sofas and hot chocolate should feel on a cold winter’s day. “Hold My Breath” reminds us of Bert Jansch’s unflustered melancholia, and the whole set balances implausibly between introspection and cheekiness in a thoroughly winning fashion.

Excellence of a different sort when event organisers Baby Gravy take the stage, mixing Gang Of Four’s stutter funk with the glorious vacuity of Gwen Stefani’s strip-lit mall pop. There’s plenty of fuzzy early 80s awkwardness here, of the sort you can find clogging the pages of Artrocker, but there’s also an intensity in the performance that other neo-wave poseurs lack (the effect isn’t harmed by the fact it’s bloody loud!). Admittedly the rhythms sometimes stumble when they should bounce, but when the buzzing keyboards stomp inexorably over everything like a giant BBC “B” sprite and the declamatory vocals start thumping at your eardrums, you know that these tiny details don’t matter.

Mr Shaodow pops up unexpectedly to crack out a tune with Baby Gravy, and treat us to his new single, “Grime”. It such a pleasure to see that his confidence has grown to match his wordplay over the past couple of years, and where once we saw him stuttering like an inexperienced comedian between tracks, now we see him working a room to perfection – even if that room is mostly empty and enjoying a nice sit down.

Rambunctious punk pop should have been the ideal chaser to this heady double act, but somehow Among The Giants have missed the target. The lumpy, chugging music is passable, but is let down by the horrible vocal foghorn honking all over it. If he really tried hard, the singer could sound like a bladdered trucker offering you a fight on George Street, but at the moment he’s slightly less charming. Still, nice to have something to aim for, eh?

Just as our thoughts are turning longingly to a Sunday roast, The Repeats cap the afternoon off immaculately. Imagine, if you will, a fizzy pop version of Talking Heads, sprinkled with rubbery bass and spindly guitar that could have been borrowed from Battles or Foals, but reminds us more of Ghanaian hi-life and township jive. There are even some unexpectedly jaunty keyboards that could have come from some ancient stadium gig by Paul Simon, 10CC or even Genesis. Admittedly, The Repeats have so many ideas laying around they do occasionally trip over them, and the vocalist could probably push himself a touch harder but the whole effect is as intoxicating as you’d expect an arch indie band featuring a cowbell and clave breakdown to be. A band to actively seek out.

And sadly, here our festival ended, though there were four acts left to entertain the crowd – which never got particularly large, but never lost its friendly atmosphere – and we leave the Mish hoping that our next Below The Belt experience is not too far away. And features some beer, naturally.

Punt & Jury

Interesting one, this. A lot of lukewarm reviews of acts that have grown in stature in the interim. Except 32, who are probablys still atrocious - don't think they've played a gig since this. Don't know how they managed to blag this, to be honest. Must be very nice young lads, or possibly schooled in mesmerism.

THE PUNT 2007, various venues

Jessica Goyder’s Joni-Mitchell-meets-jazz tunes are as light, sweet and frothy as a cappuccino topping, and she plays them with great dexterity. But we’re telling you this because we already knew it, not because we heard it at The Punt, where a weedy PA turned Jessica’s Minnie Ripperton scatting into the sound of an adenoidal, constipated Clanger. I know Borders is hardly Knebworth, but really the sound of pages turning shouldn’t be as loud as the music…

Mr. Shaodow seems to have found the volume control, but has inadvertently stumbled across a slapback sound that would make Sun Studios cream. Not really what a rapper wants, we’d have thought. Still, Shaodow overcomes such obstacles with a confident performance of his literate and amusing tracks. Musically it’s superb, but Shaodow really wants to work on his stage patter, he comes off like a desperate Butlins comedian at times.

Thirty Two are repugnant. Ostensibly they’re metal, but the way the guitars chug through their chords with no sense of dynamics reminds us more of some twobit bar room blues band. At one point blue and red spotlights make the band look like they’re on one of those 80s 3D films; if only the music had the same illusion of depth.

Mondo Cada’s brutal grunge metal is just what we need to eradicate the memory of Thirty Two, and they deliver one of the best sets of the evening. Sludge riff bleurgh pounding psychedelic violence Eynsham psychosis rumbled: even sense and syntax cower before the might of Mondo.

Another unexpected treat comes in the shape of Joe Allen and Angharad Jenkins at the rather cramped QI bar. His songs are subtle and well-constructed, but it’s the fluid folky electric violin ladled over the top that really wins us over. It’s like a tiny bonsai Cropredy happening just for us! Joe might want to be careful that his neatly packaged angst doesn’t send him down the white slide to David Gray purgatory, but for now we’ll happily celebrate a great new voice in town.

The Colins Of Paradise is comfortably the worst band name at The Punt. They’re certainly no slouches as musicians, though, resolutely wheeling out light funk grooves with well-trained sax solos battling six string bass flourishes. If only it weren’t so horrifically trite and soulless, we’d be frugging away like anyone. Can we do our “Flaccid Jazz” joke again now, please?

It’s the vocals that make a lot of people wary of The Gullivers, but we think the bruised and awkward quality of Mark Byrne’s singing works rather well against the suburban punk thud of the music. Tonight’s performance is uneven, but lovable, like a gangly Dickensian urchin who’s grown out of his clothes.

Their music oscillates wonderfully between free improv dribbles and testifyin’ gospel rock, with occasional trudges into Tom Waits territory, and Mephisto Grande go down a storm at a crowded Purple Turtle. Much as we like them, it still feels more like half of SCFT than a proper band, but perhaps it’ll take time to heal the loss of one of our favourite Oxford groups.

Stornoway are possibly Oxford’s best band at the moment, and we love them. But when you’re listening to their delicate folk pop from the back of a packed Wheatsheaf, and not all the band are present, it’s hard to take much away from the experience.

And the other contender for top local band title comes from Borderville. If you tried to teach martians about rock music with nothing but videos of Tommy and the musical Buffy episode, a Rick Wakeman album and a scratchy 7” of “Ballroom Blitz” they’d probably turn out performances just like Borderville. Fun though Sexy Breakfast were it’s great to see Joe finding songs that really suit his voice, and a band who can be theatrical without being smug (well, OK, maybe a tiny bit smug). “Glambulance” calls for fists in the air, and for one night The Music Market is a Broadway theatre.

We only catch the last tune by The Mile High Young Team. It sounds pretty good, and certainly better than their rather overly polished recordings. It’s not much of response we suppose, but then Punt should leave you confused, dizzy, and possibly slightly drunk.

Postcode Rock

One of many festival reviews that I'll be posting from the archives in the next couple of weeks. Elements from this were used in Nightshift, but the tone of the printed review was rather different. I'm more cynical, essentially. But that's how you like it, you slavering dogs. Oh, happy new year, by the way.

OX4 (You! Me! Dancing! & Truck), Various venues, 10/10/09

When picking up our tickets, we ask whom to seek out. “Dalek.” Uh-huh. “Or The Big Pink”. So much for “a celebration of the artistic talents of OX4”, then. Later, The Scholars (who were very impressive, though we cruelly dub them The Sub-Editors) ask “Have you all seen loads of bands today?” to a response of awkward silence. Yes, we might wish our scene were a huge healthy exploratory organism, lapping up different sorts of music, but the truth is that people generally stick to what they know, and you need big names to get a big crowd. Still, if there was minimal cross-fertilisation between the evening audience and the Folk Festival's afternoon crew, the latter did book some excellent acts, highlights being The Reveranzas’ caffeinated singsong, and The Selenites’ attentive and surprisingly Victorian sounding parlour string arrangements.

Anther good find were The Dead Jerichos, who spice their Fred Perried lad garage with the bits they like from Foals (disco hi-hat, rubbery bass) whilst completely ignoring the bits they don’t (preening, reading books). At an unusually busy Bully Stricken City make with the 80s chant pop, a little like The Sugarcubes and a lot like Bow Wow Wow without the wow, and at a weirdly empty Academy Charlie Coombes doles out chirpy 70s pop, which is fun aside from one Stilton John piano ballad. Mr Fogg’s subtle show is the surprise of the day, balancing trombone, harp and electronics to sound like “Hunter” era Bjork played by Peter Gabriel and Radiohead – a long way from the stadium bombast we saw last month.

Action Beat bring four drummers and four guitarists. Start. Chug. Crash. Stop. Joyous. The Big Pink pull the healthiest audience, and sound like The Jesus & Mary Chain covering Ultravox; they’re decent, but Baby Gravy’s mess of strip-lit mall pop and new wave fuzz is more enticing. Dalek’s muffled set sounds like Ice Cube jamming with Neubaten, which would be good if it didn’t sound as if they were playing next door. It’s left to local evergreens Witches and Mr Shaodow to play our night out in style.

OX4 was a huge success, so congratulations all round. However, it seemed to have a Lamacq/Barfly air of “Isn’t music just great?”. Well, yes, of course, but it can also be petrifying, delicate, mysterious and downright hilarious, and we didn't find any evidence of that. We look forward to next year’s OX4, but our local festival would involve giving a single venue to Kakofanney, The Spin, The Famous Monday Blues and Off-Field and making them wrestle until they’d come up with a line-up. For that, we’d pay any money they asked.

Truck 2008 Pt 2

The Family Machine have always looked to us like lovable scamps in a 90s British romcom, around whom everything goes wrong, but who come up affably smiling. In the midst of some random sound engineering, the unflaggable cheeriness of the band makes us assume that Hugh Grant is taking notes in the wing. After all the problems, it’s a glorious set from some of Oxford’s best songwriters, all lachrymose acoustic laments undercut with a plucky determination – we imagine a video of slow motion clips of missed penalities, fluffed catches and other sports failures to “The Do Song”, intercut with footage of Jamie Hyatt winking from the bleachers.

Was it really less than two years ago since we saw Rolo Tomassi at The Port Mahon as part of a single figure crowd? In a packed Barn they get a heroes’ welcome. This is, of course all good and proper, because their maximalist metal constructions are simply amazing, with intricate drums, throat shredding screaming and even more buzzy keyboards that are only a curry away from being Rick Wakeman, which seems to be a theme of the Barn today. The dexterity involved in the performance is incredible, but it doesn’t get in the way of the riotous passion on show. They do a track that sounds like “Eye Of The Tiger” remade by Napalm Death and Goblin. If you want more than that in your life you are greedy beyond belief.

Having read some embarrassing nonsense following Jay-Z’s Glastonbury booking that music festivals aren’t the place for hip hop, it’s a joy to see the Beat Hive jam packed fro Mr Shaodow’s frenetic set. He’s clearly happy too: much as we love his music, we’ve always felt that his shows can be somewhat nervous and twitchy. Clearly the adoring reception has pushed him to greater things, as he prowls the stage, ranting into two mikes simultaneously and generally sending a tent full of dancers insane, whilst never missing a syllable of his excellent lyrics. Asher Dust helps out with the odd piece of singing and a nice red hat, but this is Shaodow’s hour, and he deserves it.

When you see someone in a scarlet astronaut suit playing limp, Bowie-ish country songs out of tune and saying garbage like “I fell in the whoop-de-doo” and, “show me love, you kitty cats”, you begin to think that it must be an elaborate musical prank. We still don’t know if Y is a serious musician or a practical joker – either way, it’s a shit way to spend your life.

“Next on ITV3, When Irony Goes Bad, this week featuring rubbish band Dead Kids”. The spectacle of men dressed like The Quireboys who play songs that all sound like Van Halen’s “Jump” without the subtlety, and smothered with crap synths and tinny guitars is enough to sap the strength. Dead Kids look like something that was cut from Nathan Barley as being too awful to even satirise. Terrible shouty singer too. OK, we’re prepared to believe it’s a bit of harmless fun; but if anyone over the age of 14 tries to tell you this is punk attitude, kill them. Kill them, for they shall never know better.

Martin Simpson has a taste for language, introducing his set with a discussion of the adjectives “bucolic” and “crepuscular”, and clearly relishing the visceral imagery of his opening traditional ballad, lingering over the phrase “the bloody steel”. He also languidly enjoys every line of a bottleneck tune, which reminds us that the blues is an intelligent narrative music, not just an excuse to show your beery market town mates how fast your left hand can go. Of course, Simpson’s guitar playing is also phenomenal, varying from lutelike delicacy to swift percussive passages via sleazy Chicago blues, but he never milks it, always letting the song lead the way. He was playing The Albert Hall for the Proms the day after, we feel lucky to have caught him somewhere so intimate. Not to mention bucolic.

Some competent folk rock from Texas’ Okkervil River, who know how to do lush and full blooded, their line up including two keyboards and occasional trumpet. At times they resembled The Arcade Fire without the Biblical bits, but far too often they just passed the time. We asked three people in the crowd who they sounded like, and nobody could actually come up with a name; this means either Okkervil River are trailblazing geniuses, or forgettably generic. Make your own minds up.

We’re slightly suspicious of the Don’t Look Back movement in which acts perform their pivotal albums. When it was announced that The Lemonheads would do the excellent It’s a Shame About Ray at Truck, the first thing that sprang to mind is that it’s 27 minutes long: in their billed show they could have played it three times, and left space to mime turning over the record. As it is, they crack through the album, minus a couple of tracks, in record time, and it feels something like a contractual obligation. After a couple of minutes, Evan Dando comes on for a solo reading of Smudge’s excellent “Outdoor Type” and “Being Around”, before the band return in a seemingly much more relaxed frame of mind for another thirty minutes or so of superior playing. The problem is that these were never main stage songs, they’re vulnerable, retiring, lovable (and probably stoned) little tunes that are most likely happier out of the limelight: as is Evan, who seems unappreciative of the crowd and mutters barely a word. Not really a disappointment, then, but great as these songs are, the show added nothing to them.