Scry Me A Riverside

I'm sure I went to the whole of Charlbury weekend in 2007, but for some reason I only reviewed one of the days, can't think why.

CHARLBURY RIVERSIDE FESITVAL, Saturday 16/6/07

“Got midgets on my mind”. “Sitting on a tall cushion”. Well, that’s what it sounds like Dave Ellis is singing, anyway. We can’t be sure, he has this slurred blues style that is as impenetrable as it is attractive. As his husky voice weaves its way around the slapped strings of his trusty guitar, it doesn’t take long to realise that Ellis isn’t doing anything too revolutionary, but it’s a good listen all the same. And, seriously, who doesn’t like that old John Lee Hooker boogie clomp just a little?

It may sound a bit like “You don’t sweat much for a fat lass”, but over on the main stage, Life Of Riley prove them selves to be pretty good for their age. Musically there are no great ideas, but the performance is tight and the vocals are surprisingly strong and melodic. I mean, I can’t remember a note of it now, but it sounded fine at the time.

A sudden downpour means that the Beard Museum tent is packed full for Lagrima, which is exactly the way it should be. You’d go some way to find an acoustic duo in Oxfordshire with more variation: Roz’ vocals can leap from sinister whispers to operatic howls (is she the rootsy equivalent to Ivy’s Itch’s Eliza Gregory, or am I getting carried away?) whilst Gray’s assured guitar work can recall The Cocteau Twins and Andres Segovia in the space of one song. And he has the best reverse reverb sound ever.

Is there anyone left who doesn’t revere The Family Machine? Not only are they movers and shakers behind stage hosts The Beard Museum, but they also write some wry country-inflected pop that can raise a grin and wring the heart simultaneously. Admittedly, there was nothing particularly special about this individual performance, but we can listen to songs like “Lethal Drugs Cocktail” and “Flowers By The Roadside” forever.

A dub band with a Tunisian vocalist singing in Arabic? Implausibly, that’s Raggasaurus. They get a huge response, but what impresses me is the control over their material. It would have been easy just to have everyone soloing at once, and to throw everything at the wall like a million crusty festival reggae bands, but Raggasaurus know exactly when minimalism works, and make sure that very little gets in the way of their taut bouncy rhythms and soaring vocals. OK, it might work a little better in a smoky dive than in a sunny field, and perhaps the keyboard could be toned down a little, but this is good stuff.

When my esteemed colleague Colin saw Earnest Cox recently, all he could see was some pub rock. Well, we heartily disagree, and can say nothing against their simple wired rock, which revels in draping a world weary vocal sneer over glorious endless two chord chugs. The lyrics to songs like “My Favourite Walk” and “State Of That” seem to recall tedious bar room conversations with spitting vitriol, and as ever we’re reminded of an amphetamine version of The Blue Aeroplanes; or we would if the fruity organ parts didn’t sound like they’d come straight from a Stax soul revue. A fascinating band.

We’re big admirers of Baby Gravy’s cubist prog-punk melange, but perhaps a balmy afternoon in Charlbury isn’t the ideal place to experience it. Iona (who may have had a couple of shandies) is swearing and insulting the crowd, desperate for a reaction, but ultimately we’re just too relaxed to plug into Baby Gravy’s abstract new wave. However, stick us in The Cellar and fuel us with cheap lager and we’ll be up there with the best of them.

Is it patronising to call a band “charming”? Well, fuck it, we don’t care, because we’re always charmed by Foxes!, especially Kayla’s honest and unadorned vocal. They have a home made bass, and in fact, the entire band has a wonky, school woodwork project feel, all odd angles and unplaned surfaces. But beneath all this lie some beautifully constructed melodies and a quiet sense of rock dynamics. Foxes! Is a band that has unobtrusively grown in stature to become one of Oxford’s favourites. We shall miss them when they move away later in the year.

If Foxes! slid into our consciousness slowly, then Witches did the opposite, bursting onto the scene with the whole package intact: baroque pop arrangements, dense and forceful live shows and even beautiful collaged record sleeves. By rights the prominence of the cabaret mariachi trumpet should become cloying, but somehow Witches never crumble under the weight of their own ornamentation. It’s odd to watch a live show with such a black density of sound, and still walk away humming the melodies.

Fearing we’d neglected the main stage, we leave the fine This Town Needs Guns to their own devices and investigate Souljacker. What we find is a bunch of young groovers giving it some chest beating wah wah rock action. They sound like Free, but they should be locked up. Ah, well, it’s a festival, let’s cut them some slack – plus they have a tune called “Jimmy Page Drank My Tea”, so at least they don’t take themselves too seriously. They’re perfectly good players, but it’s all somewhat stodgy, and we don’t imagine they’re a band who’ll be troubling us again soon.

Just goes to show, Charlbury is a fine day out, but the Beard Museum is the reliable option.

Dublodocus

Right, tonight I havce to write a long overdue review of a new LP, I don't have time to talk about old stuff, so you'll have to just find your own way around without any guidance.

RAGGASAURUS/ VIGILANCE BLACK SPECIAL/ THE TALC DEMONS/ JEREMY HUGHES – Klub Kakofanney, The Wheatsheaf, 4/1/08

We’re all justly proud of our music scene, but it’s worth remembering what Oxford is: a small provincial town in a semi-rural county. This means that for every Little Fish bursting into the limelight we have a bunch of market town blues bands dawdling through the classics. It also means we have Klub Kakofanney, a fantastically unglamorous hippy enclave that has been making people happy for as long as anyone can recall, and is about as far from the flick of a cool kid’s haircut as one can get…in fact, half the audience haven’t had a haircut in years. And the other half are bald.

After mightily-bearded Jeremy Hughes has played some intricate little guitar doodles, The Talc Demons take to the stage. Rami’s band are more often found playing interminable jam sets in empty midweek bars, but thankfully they produce a taut, condensed thirty minutes of his own circus freak pop, in which 70s rock clashes with funky reggae. His songs generally boast about 90 words per minute buoyed up by clipped, nasal guitar lines and bouncy rhythms, and they should definitely ditch the dubious covers gigs and concentrate on this quality fare. And change their name, obviously.

Last time we saw Vigilance Black Special they had a trombone and a lonesome Nick Cave swoon to their music; now they have no trombone and sound a bit like a sleepier version of Goldrush, the lyric “too much time kicking around in the half-light” summing the show up nicely. A decent band, with a rich lead vocal, but nothing to get excited about. Vigilance Grey Average.

Raggasaurus are a group who definitely weren’t formed in their stylist’s office: a bunch of stoned looking students playing dub, with a 50 year old Tunisian singing in Arabic over the top, who would have thought it? And who would have thought they would make such excellent music? The horns are acidic and subtly used, the rhythms are spry and infectious, and the bass is simply gigantic, causing glasses to topple to the floor behind the bar. Add some searing vocals, that seem to communicate messages of love and integrity even though nobody understands a blinking word, and the effect is glorious. A wonderful band, likely to enliven many an Oxford weekend, and one unlikely to appear on Skins any time soon.

Bloomsday

Since starting this blog I've pretty much managed to upload 3 reviews a week, but I'm away for Easter, so regular readers (splutter) will have to wait a bit for the next installment. Well, I've only been reviewing for about 6.5 years, there are a finite number of reviews in the pile, so it's best that we don't glut on them all at once, like chubby cosseted scum children. This is an old OHM review of the sort of odd free day out Oxford council used to run a lot, before they ran out of money.

I also interviewed fellow OHMer Russell Barker about his Oxford music compilation in this issue, but it's a bit dull, so I shan't type it all out!

FLOWER & FOLK FESTIVAL, Florence Park, 11/9/04

This City Council organised folk festival and floral competition is woefully advertised, and I only find it by chance. A pity, as the sparseness of the audience doesn't reflect the quality of the music. Senegalese visitor Jali Fili Cissokho begins proceedings, singing some quite lovely pieces and accompanying himself on the kora: if you don't like the beautiful grids and skeins of lively plucked notes, you can at least be fascinated by the instrument itself, which looks like the dried remains of a deep space crustacean.

Ed, Bob & Pete are onstage next. I dare say they actually have a band name, but in the absence of a programme we have to grasp what facts we can! Using dulcimer, bouzouki and fiddle, aongst others, they rattle through some traditional melodies, which is all perfectly elegant but somewhat polite and decorative for my tastes. Their vocal pieces are overly earnest too.

Youthfull dub troupe, Raggasaurus, wake us up with hot servings of mammoth antediluvain skank. Their instrumental pieces boast bouncy drumming and plenty of topnotch digi-delay knob-twiddling, and have a ramshackle charm. Thier obvious lack of rehearsal means that tunes grow organically, which is delightful; it also means they die a slow, agonising death, which is less so. Although Raggasaurus run out of ideas before the set ends, their witty bubbling reggae shows plenty of promise, if they're prepared to put the work in. Plus their excellent cover of the Dr Who theme is a highlight of the day - perhaps the TARDIS got stuck in police box mode because it was too stoned to bother changing?

Well, this is probably a timefiller: Pete, who played earlier today, is performing with a member of the headline band. Still, whether it's a desperate remedy or a longstanding collaboration, this turns out to be the best gig of the day. The duo really gets to the pulsing heart of traditional melodies, throwing them into the drizzly afternoon with vim. Unlike the earlier trio, they make the songs sound like vibrant and important music, rather than the soundtrack to some Tourist Board propaganda.

Scratch And Sniff don't really work, sadly. The two fiddle and squeezebox format throws up some decent arrangements, and whilst rhythmically it's not as neat as we'd wish the playing has soul. However, the two young ladies on vocals put in a lacklustre performance, and they look excruciatingly uncomfortable being there at all. To be fair this says far more about their youth and inexperience than their innate talent, and there are a couple of gorgeous moments, but unless they start seeing performance as something other than a chore they won't get too far. Oh, and please drop the Corrs cover, for all our sakes.