Crumbs! Another Review!

Here's my latest.  I don wonder whether The Library will win the coveted Most Visited Venue Award at the end of 2018; the 'Sheaf being shut for a month might topple it from its perch.

Oh, and speaking of such things, go pledge some money in the Save The Cellar campaign, I sure as hell have: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/cellar-forever

TABLE SCRAPS/ GHOST OF THE AVALANCHE/ GRUB, Paladin Promotions, Library, 11/10/18

Jazz, according to the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, is “delicious hot, disgusting cold”. There’s some truth in this gastronomusical equivalency, but some foods – a cheese-laden pizza, say – are delicious hot and disgusting, yet impossibly, guiltily alluring, cold.  And, a set by Grub is like gorging on a congealed quattro formaggio, licking the greasy cardboard box, and scratching your backside with the tiny white tripod out of the middle: dirty and satisfying, all at once.  Their music is basic, stodgy, Stoogey rocking, with just enough grunge-punk sneer in the vocals to stop it getting too serious (though,  band who cover the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme will never be Leonard Cohen, we guess).  At its best their music is galvanised molasses, thick and electrifying, and at its worst it’s just dumb, loud riffs.  Which is a pretty good, as worsts go, you have to admit.

Brevity is the arse’ole of punk wit, but sometimes the nasty, brutish and short approach to songwriting can wear over the course of a gig.  Bath’s bass and drums duo Ghost of the Avalanche are a dab hand at constructing heavy punk munitions that fly hell for leather (with extra leather) in a way that resembles a cross between Motorhead and our own lamented thrashferrets Winnebago Deal, but, after a clutch of micro-songs we just want one of those pummelling basslines and yelps to go somewhere unexpected, fun though they are. About two-thirds into the set a slower stop-start piece, like the work of a wonky sozzled Stranglers, is a boon, and sets off the following return to headlong rock scampers all the more pleasing.

Scuzz-psych warriors Table Scraps don’t have any issues with songs being too short, and tonight the longer those grooves get unspooled, the better.  Their blueprint is a straightforward amalgam of garage grease and psychedelic repetition, something like Wooden Shjips with bonus vocal delay and distortion. One track sums it up by sounding rather like “I Wanna Be You Dog”...but only if the dog was on a badass mescaline trip, thought it was its own stick and tried to fetch itself.  Another tune reveals a Cobain-like mix of wholesomeness and depravity, with the refrain “Now you clean your teeth” (possibly – we mentioned the distortion and delay, right?).   It’s all great, until the last track, which is great squared, an unstoppable juggernaut that drops the cool contemporary clothes and dives straight into being Hawkwind.  For about ten minutes.   “For sale: silver machine.  One careful owner.  Runs like a dream.  Only drawback, may never stop”.

    

"It Was Either That Or Seeoouuyyx, Basically"

Ooh, I've done my back in.  Seriously,. typing this is agony.  I suppose I'd better stop.  Ow.  It even hurt typing, "ow".  Ow.  It even hurt typing, "It even hurt typing, 'ow'".  Ow.  Etc...

CHEROKII/ BLACK CANDY/ BEARD OF DESTINY, PALADIN, Wheatsheaf, 18/11/17

Beard of Destiny are an act we associate with mediocrity, tending to slip into well-meaning but second-rate Sunday afternoon line-ups, but you can’t judge someone by the company they keep, and athis duo is one of Oxford’s hidden musical gems.  Tonight’s show consists of thumping drums, blues-pickled guitar and a gold lamé jacket, and although the playing is pretty searing, the lyrics have a pier end cheekiness that makes for a nice change from broke down women and cheatin’ Chevvies, so that the Beard are a strange cross between Dr Feelgood and Chas ‘n’ Dave.  Crowd-pleaser “Hubba Bubba” is basically ZZ Top played with the cool intensity a noughties math-schooled strings and skins duo, plus any band that can leaven serious blues licks with a song called “The Ghost Of Larry Grayson Perry” is alright by us.

Cumberbatch’s Sherlock looks at a room, and clues and associations flip up as text in front of this eyes.  If he’d been watching Black Candy, the phrase “Rage Against The Machine” would have come popping out from every conceivable angle, until he couldn’t see anything at all, knocked over someone’s Green Goblin, and earned himself a sharp kick in the mysterious case.  Because Black Candy’s strain of rap metal really sounds like RATM.  Unless it sounds like The Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage”…covered by RATM.  And whilst it would be easy to shrug off a band reuniting for giggles who were second hand the first time round, it’s impossible to deny that they absolutely, and incontrovertibly, rock like bastards.  Flagrantly steal from whomever you want, boys, just keep kicking out the jams, and we’ll be there.

Cherokii are also a band for whom the pedal rarely, if ever, leaves the metal.  We’re exactly 2 bars into the gig before bassist and vocalist Jack’s outsize sombrero falls casualty to righteous headbanging, and drummer Felix’s top hat gets tossed away before the song ends.  And that’s what we want from a band like this, riffs, sweat, hair, and riffs, in none of which are Cherokii deficient.  They even have some extra riffs, in case some of them party too hard and have to have a lie down. 

As well as plummeting headlong, Cherokii are quite adept at arrangement, and give their songs nuance with a piccolo snare and a gloriously overloaded octaviser pedal, so the gig never gets homogenous, the amphetamine hurtle of “Shit Brown” balanced by the snakier, 70s groove of “Smoking Gun”, and there’s even room for a camply comic new song about identity politics and dinosaurs. If there’s one thing that niggles, it’s the relentless showboating; we’re all for a bit of theatre in our rock, but dragging a floor tom out onto a table, hitting it a few times then dragging it back won’t be giving Stomp any sleepless nights, and immediately siphons off the gig’s energy.  A silly hat will do for the stage craft, lads, just stick to making that excellent noise.