Diametric Straits

 Sorry, totally forgot to post this last month.  

THE EXACT OPPOSITE/ SECRET RIVALS/ LIFE UNDERGROUND, Jericho, 10/5/24 

In an entertaining set, Life Underground pull us in lots of directions, but all of them turn out to be separate paths up the big glowing mountain named Melodic Rock. So, signature track ‘Sunshine’ is a mixture between Roy Orbison and Steve Harley, two very different acts, but both of which are big on tunes.  Elsewhere we pick up on some 70s Dylan pronouncements, an early Kinks jangle, an airy glide past Fleetwood Mac, and a very small pinch of Bowie pizzazz. Sometimes the sound is clumpy Sunday pub-session rocking, but there’s enough attention to hook and songcraft here to make Life Underground well worth revisiting. 

Their best weapon might be drummer Mike Gore, who plays with a light carefree innocence which owes more to the early days of rock ‘n’ roll, or even skiffle, than it does to anything after 1966. When Gore joins Secret Rivals for their final song, it’s an unexpected joy as he brings a strange country lope to the tune. Prior to this some charmless programmed drums had marred an otherwise strong set, airless and graceless tom fills from an emo karaoke disc undercutting songs that want to fizz and bubble. Secret Rivals Mk II might not have the fight-pop ‘tude of the early incarnation, but Ash Hennessey’s vocal alternates nicely between Lush-style softness and cheeky rants, with Jay Corcoran busting in almost randomly with Scrappy Doo yelps. The Cure-chorus guitar sounds great, as do the rolling basslines from erstwhile Masochist, Vincent Lynch. Next gig, will they be a fourtpiece? 

As soon as Nigel Powell sits behind the drums, the Rivals’ lovable sloppiness is exorcised by clinical precision. Not that The Exact Opposite - Nigel with his old Dive Dive bandmate Jamie Stuart - can’t be fun or lovable, but their streamlined, stripped back mecha-indie is meticulously thought out, and their performance is flawless (one hilarious high-sped lap of the venue in search of a capo notwithstanding). The vocals are agile and striking, the guitar is just on the well-behaved side of angular, and the drums are impeccably controlled, whilst also packing a kick in the ribs when Powell wants to drive a point home. These songs are playful, intense, and yearning, and ae testament to the duo’s long history writing and playing together. Were they as good as we expected? The exact same. 

Bank Statement

Here's the annual Riverside review, shorter than other years, by necessity.  Inevitably, the discussion has started again in earnest, but this time it's about what wasn't written, rather than what was.  Most years someone says, "If you can't write anything nice, don't write anything at all", whereas this year the tone sems to be "It's far worse to write nothing than it is to write a something negative".  All good fun and games in the world of illogical musicians!

Did I use the pun Bank Statement for a previous Riverside?  Probably.

 

RIVERSIDE FESTIVAL, 29/7/12, Charlbury

When we were growing up, there was one of those “Everything’s a quid” type shops near us, called Kincheap.  After a while, some people complained that this cheeky name lowered the tone of Chelmsford High Street – they’d clearly never wandered down it on a Saturday night – so the local paper interviewed the owner.  “It’s a pun,” he explained, “because we’re king of the cheap shops”.  The journalist noted that this wasn’t very obvious, and asked why they didn’t make it clearer.  “Because if we did, it wouldn’t be a pun, would it?”  So, for a few weeks, Mr Kincheap became our favourite man on the planet.

We mention this, because it meant we were prepared for King Terrible.  We realised it was going to be a joke.  What we didn’t realise is that it was going to be nothing but a battery powered fluffy toy on a chair doing a little dance for 30 seconds.  Bloody funny, but we reckon they should have gone the whole hog, and had him on as headliner, with a sea of lasers and an intro tape of “Also Sprach Zarathustra”.  If you’re going to do bathos, do it big, and wait until more than five people have turned up.

Of course, starting a day with a shockingly poor practical joke is exactly why we love Riverside – it’s homely, it’ s friendly, it doesn’t care desperately for fashion or good sense.  This year, after some torrential rain, the festival was rescheduled because of ground conditions (the clue’s in the name), and we’re deeply glad the festival went ahead, even though it meant we could now only attend for one afternoon.  We feel as though we’ve fallen into some vast Duracell commercial as Blin’ Jonnie, the first real band of the day, play on the main stage: their set of harmless busker’s fluff is so drab and lifeless the battery powered toy beats them hands down.  If it weren’t for a bit of lively, fluent flute from Glenda Huish, we’d have trouble staying conscious for the duration.  In fact, we spent most of the set pondering why they pronounce it “blinn Jonnie”.  So, is it not short for “blind”, then? Weird.

  

Simon Batten reminds us a little of Riverside alumna Chantelle Pike, with his rootsy elegance and subtle melodic twists, but his voice isn’t as enticing, and it’s left to the drum accompaniment to keep things lively.  Over on the main stage something odd is happening, not only as Secret Rivals play a relaxed set with the minimum of ADD bouncing and yelping, but as it sounds unexpectedly great.  These songs shouldn’t work in a hungover Sunday afternoon incarnation, but they do.  The vocals twine together well, and the drums are crisp, not longer sounding like a dog made of snares chasing its own tail round a cymbal warehouse like in the band’s early days.  It’s highly enjoyable, we just hope they don’t go getting all grown up on us.

In some ways, the only negative thing about The Grinding Young is how bleeding Oxford their polite, ornate bookish rocking is.  Then again, the best song we hear is “The King And The Knave”, a medieval murder ballad that sounds like brilliant a cross between Radiohead and Fairport Convention, and you couldn’t get much more Oxfordshire than that unless you had Jacqueline Du Pre doing a Mr Big medley.

From across the field, The Shapes (sadly unconnected with Micachu) have a fruity organ that makes them sound like Squeeze.  Up close they’re less bouncy, but they do have a keen ear for a hook, and some neat mandolin licks, and we’rer enjoying it, when they blow it all by saying, “We’re going to do an old Bob Dylan song, don’t know why”.  Jesus, if ever a statement summed up weekend Dads’ bands.  Don’t do anything as an artist unless you can defend it.  If we thought they’d done it just to annoy us, it would have been something...

Now, Undersmile, they know exactly why they’re doing what they do, and they also know that it will annoy a lot of people.  We love them, from the unexpected grooves hidden in their deathly slow doom, to the odd vocal harmonies, that are so microtonally awkward it sounds like one person singing through a broken chorus pedal.  We’d used the word “elemental” in our notes, and that was before the cold heavy rain stopped the exact second their set did: metal bands invoking Zeus are ten a penny, but only Undersmile can attract old Cloud Gatherer himself.

Swindlestock are just another in a huge line of decent Americana acts from Oxfordshire, and we have to wonder whether Arkansas is clogged with Supergrass tributes and morris sides to balance things out.  Anyway, you’d have to be a pretty grim individual not to find something likable about Swindlestock’s bottleneck and fiddle spattered tunes.  On the Second Stage Count Drachma have at least come up with a new folk music seam to strip mine, playing traditional Zulu songs.  Last time we saw them they were a well-drilled quartet, but today they’re a duo, playing bass and guitar, using the odd loop pedal to allow space for some sax and harmonica.  It’s a slapdash, slipshod, shoved together affair, but we find a lot more to like about it than last time.  Ollie Steadman (of Stornoway fame) may not have the most commanding voice ever, but spacious duo arrangements reveal that he does have a skill in the natural, conversational phrasing that much folk song demands.  Fewer members and less rehearsal seems to be the key for this band – but don’t tell any others.  

The MC tells us that Mogmatic have been trying to get a slot at Riverside since the very beginning, and they’ve finally relented.  This’ll be good, then.  Well, be fair, they’re better than the intro makes them sound, bashing out some big boots pub rock with minor Sabbath inflections, but they can’t hold our attention when Ran Kan Kan are on the main stage, because big latin bands will nearly always trump clunky blues rock quartets.  With a vast lineup that almost demands the title of orchestra, Ran Kan Kan prove very adept at balancing their sound, and never let too much colour swamp the primacy of their Afro-Cuban rhythms.  Admittedly, Ran Kan Kan are doing nothing new with their material, but as we think it’s never a bad time to hear a good rendition of Tito Puente’s “Oye Como Va”, we’re very contented.  Bonus points to the trumpet player, for quoting “Black Magic Woman“ in their solo, offering us two Santana hits for the price of one.

Right next to the main stage, a Fire Service tent is offering the experience of being in a burning building, but from the outside it looks like a giant, surreal dry ice machine.  Over near the Second Stage, in a Bushcraft tent, some experts are showing tiny kids how to start campfires.  Some sort of cosmic balance is restored, you have to feel.  Our final visit to that end of the field rewards us with Skittle Alley favourites Superloose. Their banjo-picking tunes are sloppy and not hugely challenging, but their onstage giggles are infectious.  Having a laugh; there’s a good reason to make music, if you’re still reading, The Shapes.

Our day finishes with the excellent Brickwork Lizards.  As they play a mixture of 30s music hall, Hot Club jazz and North African melodies, you could easily imagine them tearing the roof off some NAAFI dance on the African front: not only would their music sound as good as it does today, but they’d have invented hip hop, too.  A brilliant end to our day, although there were still the pop treats of Dance A La Plage and Alphabet Backwards to go (Legal note: only one of these bands constitutes a “pop treat”).  Great to see Riverside bouncing back, with better sound than ever before, especially on the Second Stage.  Also, any festival that has Undersmile and Superloose on the same stage is alright with us – Riverside’s booking policy is a damn sight more adventurous than any number of big trendy promoters around the county, wouldn’t you say? 

Another great day out in Charlbury: King excellent.

Daft Punt

Here is my thorough review of this year's Punt festival.  I thought it was a strong night out, I saw nothing bad, and nothing phenomenal.  Mutagenocide were unoriginal and a wee bit sloppy (by the incredibly high standards of classic metal, anyway, where you have to be spotlessly good in a crowded field), but they were still worth a listen, and Manacles Of Acid were my favourite act.  It didn't feel as though there were enough surprises for me to call it a top rank Punt, but I guess that skipping last year  contributed to that somewhat.  It's a wonderful insitution, anyway, I'm looking forward to 2013 already!  


Elements of this review are to be found in Nightshift's Punt mega-article.

THE PUNT, Purple Turtle/ Cellar/ Duke’s Cut/ Junction/ Wheatsheaf, 16/5/12

Ostensibly, The Punt is a showcase for Oxford music, but secretly might not be.  Sounds like an idiotic observation, but in fact the annual night-long, multi-venue event isn’t a glossy advert for local sounds, or an aural taster menu to invite putative new listeners, it’s more like an initiation test for potential recruits to the scene.  In its duration and complexity The Punt is a challenge, not a night out – the musical equivalent of Atomic Burger’s Godzilla meal, the sonic sister to an episode of Takeshi’s Castle.  And if proof were needed curator,  Nightshift’s Ronan Munroe is a puckish trickster as much as a promotional ambassador, we need look no further the presence of Tamara Parsons-Baker as the opening act.  She is a performer of some talent, with a powerful voice, but her dark vignettes of wispy intensity are a deliberately perverse introduction to the night, barbed lines left hanging portentously in the room, wintry guitars providing the lovelorn backdrop .  It’s a strong set, but she’s at her best when she comes over as a more animated Leonard Cohen, and at her worst when she just sounds like someone bitterly sniping at their ex-partner.

Secret Rivals are a perfect foil to this opening gambit, with their melodic, 6 Music friendly pop nuggets.  On record we just keep on finding more to love in their scrappy indie pop flurries, but live they’re still a smidgen sloppy.  In a way that doesn’t matter, the joy of the band is that they toss the Mentos of pop into the Diet Coke of indie with gay abandon, and let the sugary mess explode across the venue.

Undersmile are a geologically-paced sludge metal band fronted by two atonally chanting ladies who look as if the creepy twins from The Shining have grown up listening to Babes In Toyland.  It all sounds horrifyingly like half-orc mating calls played at quarter speed, and is absolutely brilliant.  And also pretty rubbish.  But mostly brilliant.

The Duke’s Cut is a new Punt venue, and one where the fact that the performers are completely invisible to all but about ten of the audience is balanced by the decent ale and the cosy camaraderie.  Toliesel sound at first like The Band with some pub rock elements, and are perfectly pleasant, though they seem to be pushing too hard, turning sweet vocals into rough hollers.  But, we decide to stay for their whole set, and soon the music makes perfect sense, revealing winning melodies under the murk.  Even the crackles from a slightly overstretched PA add to the natural warmth of the music.  In a reversal of Punt logic, Toliesel win us over with slow increments of quality songwriting, rather than flashy bandstanding, making us glad we stayed the distance.  Although it was mostly because it was too much effort to push our way back out of the crowd.  We sincerely hope there was one random person sitting at one of the pub tables in the early evening, who was hemmed in and forced to listen for the entire night.

Simple probability dictates that there’s always one Punt act that gets an underservedly small audience, and this year it’s Band Of Hope.  Mind you, the fact that they’re playing in the cavernous Junction club compounds the problem.  Incidentally, the venue turns out to be a pretty good addition to the night, although we’re not sure a pile of rocks and road signs is a great decor choice, it makes the room look like a student’s back garden.  The band is a lush ensemble playing relaxing country and folk, with excellent flourishes from fiddle and pedal steel. At times they have a lackadaisical Sunday jam session air that erases some of the character form the songs, but “Baby You’re A Mess” is a solid gold winner.

We catch the end of Deer Chicago, and their sound, which can often seem unnecessarily bombastic and forcedly epic, works far better in a cramped sweaty Duke’s Cut.  Sadly, as things are running late we only catch a fragment of The Old grinding Young.  They sound a little like parent band Ute, but with Radiohead twitches replaced by expansive rootsiness.  Too early to tell whether this will prove a good move.

In contrast to the sludge avalanche of Undersmile, and the doomy prog of Caravan Of Whores, Mutagenocide proffer a far more traditional brand of metal.  There are elements of the post-Pantera stylings of previous Punt stars Desert Storm, but most of the set consists of resolutely old school chugging rhythms, twiddly guitar solos and growled vocals that are probably all about large-breasted elf duchesses in the Hades branch of Games Workshop. There’s very little to set Mutagenocide apart from a vast roster of metal acts up and down the count(r)y, but they’re enjoyable enough, the penultimate track pulling off some good aural pummelling.

When you see LeftOuterJoin expending vast amounts of energy playing live syn drums along with some pounding trance, you have to ask what the point of it is.  It would sound just the same (and fractionally more in time) if the rhythms were programmed.  But, artists don’t have to dwell in a world of cold logic, and in many ways the victory of this act is its very redundancy.  The set veers from excellent techno to cruddy Euro cheese pretty haphazardly, but the sheer spectacle is a euphoric joy.  The fact that he’s also brought trippy projections and two lasers into the Wheatsheaf, Oxford’s least rave-friendly venue, is worth as many extra points as you can tally. Plus there are some over-sized smoke machines, that trip the pub’s fire alarm, and cause the venue’s windows to be opened for the first time this millennium.  A set to remember.

Into the home straight at The Junction with rapper Half Decent.  His delivery is truly excellent, and the backing tracks are chunky but he does share a fault with nearly all live hip hop: paradoxically, what should be a match of visceral rhythms and intimate poetry, generally drifts into empty gesturing.  Half Decent spends a lot of his set asking us to dance and sing along, when he would do better concentrating on delivering some very wry, insightful fast-paced lyrics (and dumb fun lines like “Making girls wetter than a washing machine”, for good measure).  He puts on a good show to a gaggle of exhausted music fans, but we’re sure the rapturous stadium gig happening in his head was even better.

Manacles Of Acid is watched by the hardcore, the shell-shocked and those unbeatable party people who may live to regret it.  We started the night with a harrowingly bleak preacher disguised as a nice acoustic singer, and we end it with unforgivably niche electronica dressed up as a bright clubber’s party.  Using only vintage hardware (including a TR606 worn round the neck) the man named Highscores produces a seemingly endless string of classic acid house and Detroit techno which thrill s the faithful, but is clearly a closed book to half the room.  We fall into the former camp, loving the beautifully crafted layers of mutated basslines and crisp drum patterns.  There are confetti cannons and some sort of cross between a fly and a character from Starlight Express running round the room, who may or may not officially be part of the show, and it’s an uncompromising conclusion to the night.

And so we leave The Junction, dazed and deafened, feeling as though we’ve split the past five and a half hours equally between enjoying, working and speed drinking.  The Punt feels even more like a twisted musical hazing ritual as we wait woozily for the late bus home.  Thank you, Sir, may we have another?

Enemy Brats

I enjoyed writing this review, because Secret Rivals, two scant years ago, were an awful, clunky band who spent most of their time being idiots online - and now they're really good. Nice work.


SECRET RIVALS – MAKE DO & MEND (Has Legs)


Roger Scruton and Brian Sewell probably disagree, but pop music can explore pretty much any concept or sonic vista, and attracts composers as original and adventurous as, say, opera. Having said that, as much as we like to lock ourselves away for a weekend to wrestle with Scott Walker’s Tilt whilst making notes in the margins of Dylan’s Tarantula, there’s something to be said for pop that simply offers bags of barely controlled energy and a bloody big tune. That’s where Secret Rivals come in, having knocked up a collection of bubbling pop mini-riots that should charm anyone with even a fractional propensity towards having a good time.

“Ghosting” ushers us in with a light, summery indie-funk beat and some ramshackle, chirruping Byker Grove vocals. This is pretty much the blueprint for the record: bouncy rhythms rushing hell for leather towards the end of the song, with occasional stately keyboard lines watching over them like an indulgent parent, topped off with a battle between Clouds’ smilingly tuneful female vocals and atonal Dickensian scamp interjections from Jay. If there is a fault with the record, it’s that Jay’s yelping can become wearing. On “Tonight Matthew...” the contrast between an affable melody on one side and a punky little anti-rap on the other works well, reminding us of the interplay between Bjork and Einar on The Sugarcubes’ “Hit”, but on “Blisters” you just want the squawking little urchin to shut up and leave the song alone. He’s like the annoying chumps waving signs saying “Hi Mum!” behind news reporters on location. But then he sings the mournful closing title track, and reveals an unexpected delicacy and all is forgiven.

Anyway, for the most part the unpolished exuberance of the music whisks the listener along in its wake so powerfully, that there’s simply no time to consider stylistic infelicities: it’s like asking a child to critique the label on their supermarket brand Sunny Delight rip off, when they’re too busy having a tartrazine meltdown. “These Are Only Obstacles” is the one that really grasps us, a scrappily charming little snatch of melodic positivity that makes us teary eyed for the loss of John Peel – it’s enormous fun, but has a quiet, emotional undertow, and there are also some effective touches of melancholy on “Me Vs Melodrama” and “Make Do And Mend”.

We do wonder whether Secret Rivals, who seem to be garnering some impressive attention recently, have got quite enough about them to forge a whole career, but for now this album comes highly recommended, especially for anyone who can’t bear to admit that the summer is over...and, perhaps, looking to the future and worrying about artistic longevity is for people who don’t fully understand the joyous fizz of Secret Rivals’ music. If you’re looking for sensible, grown up stuff, we hear Roger Scruton has a website.

Spires Like Us

If you think this review is interesting, you may as well go and download the record. Free, innit?


V/A – SPIRES (download compilation)


For the most part, twenty-first century culture leaves us enraged or mordantly amused, provoking spittle-flecked rants that paint us as some unholy cross between David Mitchell and Travis Bickle. But, when Aaron Delgado from Phantom Theory decides to get some of his favourite local acts together for a free download compilation celebrating Oxford music you’d have to say that this is what the internet age is all about: the record is free, effortless, and was all round the world in the time it must have taken the curators of the old OXCD album to cost the cover art. And what’s more, it’s actually damned good too.

From the opening trio of tracks that could be subtitled “the riff in Oxford”, there’s a pleasing variety to the selections, and there are even a few eyebrow raisers for jaded Oxford cognoscenti – we were pleasantly surprised that The Winchell Riots could ease off the bombast with the affecting “My Young Arms”, and gratified that Spring Offensive’s sprawling epic “The First Of Many Dreams About Monsters” works in bijou edited segments. Also, Secret Rivals’ “It Would Be Colder Here Without You” is a lovely chirpy ditty with fluffy vocals which is like being on a bouncy castle made of cappuccino forth, and goes some way towards eradicating the effect of some woefully slipshod live sets. Every listener will have their own favourites, but our highspots are Alphabet Backwards’ “Collide”, whose dual vocals and tinny guitar sounds like two siblings singing along to their favourite pop song, recorded by holding a tape player up to Top Of The Pops, and “Filofax” by Coloureds, a stutterjack dance track which is like a fax machine raping a ZX Spectrum to the sound of Korean synth pop.

Only Vixens, with their clunking off-the-peg indie rock and stodgily portentous TK Maxx goth vocals, let the side down. “The Hearts, They Cannot Love”? Nor these ears, son. It’s also a pity that Dial F For Frankenstein’s demise means that the record is already one step away from being a scene sampler, but “Thought Police” is a decent valediction, like a Mudhoney dirge retooled for maximum amphetamine effect by The Only Ones. In some ways, the greatest tribute we could give Oxford music in 2011 is that we love this LP, but it’s not the compilation we’d put together, which only goes to show how many good musicians are currently working in the city. And if you don’t like it? Well, it’s the twenty-first century, there are lots and lots of other things you could be doing. Pity they’re all shit, really.