Bank Data

The review of this year's Riverside is up at MIO. No arguments yet, but it's early days. Course, I like people moaning about my reviews, because it proves they're being read...yes, even idiots who don't understand what a review is are welcome to join the fun.

I did want to post the first paragraph and put the rest up 24 hours later, but the editor wasn't up for me fighting my petty battles on the front of his website. Pah.

I'll stick Sunday up in a day or two.



RIVERSIDE FESTIVAL, CHARLBURY, 18-9/6/11


Riverside was brilliant because it was free and everyone had a good time and all the musicians were great and it was brilliant.










Right, is the coast clear, have they gone? You know, those people who can’t tell the difference between a review and a press release? That lot who don’t quite grasp that the best compliment you can pay a musician is actually to listen to them? The gaggle who do one of the absolute highlights of Oxfordshire’s music calendar a disservice by getting upset if someone dares admit that one of the performers was, perhaps, not that great?

Good, then we level headed people can get on with talking about the Charlbury Riverside festival 2011, always a beautifully run, welcoming event, and one that we organise our summer around because we’d hate to ever miss it. In some ways, it doesn’t spoil the event if the music is duff at Riverside but we must admit, this year the lineup was, pound for pound, the strongest it’s been for quite some years. And starting with Peerless Pirates certainly couldn’t dampen anybody’s spirits, even as the first of many showers blew across the festival. They play classic indie welded onto rugged, shanty-style basslines that justify the band’s name: think The Wedding Present with arrangements by Guybrush Threepwood. Not always painfully original – you don’t have to be Scott Bakula to make the quantum leap from their opening tune to “This Charming Man” – but they offer friendly, jolly music that inaugurates the festival almost as well as the near visible battle in compere Lee Christian not to say naughty words on the mike.

This year’s lineup on the second stage is definitely the strongest and most intriguing since the Beard Museum left the helm, and our first visit rewards us with one of the sets of the weekend. Last time we saw STEM, it was all acoustic guitars and bongos and it couldn’t have been more worthily earthy if the PA were powered by a tofu wind turbine. Now they’ve returned to their Neustar roots to give us fat, brooding trip hop in the vein of Portishead and Lamb. Emma Higgins has a richly soulful but mysteriously intimate voice, like Grace Jones whispering secrets in your ear over port and cigars, and John West’s electronics envelop her with dark wings of autumnal sound, that's often only a breakbeat away from early Moving Shadow material. Perhaps a tad too in thrall to their mid-90s influences, this is still a band that is worth investigating as soon as possible.

We cock a quick ear in the direction of Mundane Sands, whose expansive folk rock is played with relish and personality, before visiting the charmingly odd man selling the coffees. You want a tasty Americano and a string of confounding non-sequiturs, you won’t get a better option anywhere in England. Last year we began to wonder whether he was some sort of live theatre installation, so unexpected were his utterances. You wouldn’t get that at your corporate energy drink sponsored mega-fests, eh?

They ought to show videos of Samuel Zasada before every acoustic night and open mike session in the county, with a subtitle reading “This is what you’re aiming for; if all you’ve got are miserable sub-Blunt moans, go home and try again. Thank you”. There have been alterations and expansions to the Zasada lineup since our last meeting, but they can still imbue their tunes with a gravitas and texture that’s sadly lacking from nearly all of their peers.

The Black Hats have only really got one song. It’s a goodie, though, a slick new wave canter with an anthemic culture-yob chorus and the hint of some amphetamine ska lurking just below the surface. They play it a bunch of times today. We like it every time. Job done.

Like Samuel Zasada, Tamara Parsons-Baker has been showing up the paucity of talent in most acoustic performers with a powerful, dramatic voice and some bleakly imposing lyrics. The Martyrs is her new rhythm section, featuring colleagues form the recently disbanded Huck & The Handsome Fee (not to mention much-missed sludgehogs Sextodecimo). We like the fact that there is pain and bitterness evident in the songs, but the delivery is always melodically accessible; they sugar the pill like Oxford’s answer to The Beautiful South.

What’s that? No, we quite like The Beautiful South. No, honestly. Anyway, Tamara & The Martyrs don’t actually sound like them, they play a sort of gothic blues, it was just an analogy. Look, let’s make this easier, and move on to The Dirty Royals. No room for confusion here because they sound – and to a certain extent, look – like first album Blur. Not a band that has “develop sonically” at the top of the To Do list stuck to their fridge, maybe, but to dislike their mixture of upbeat indie and airy West coast psychedelia you’d need a cold, black heart and a suspicion of music in general. And we have both those, and we still enjoyed it.

We wander over the see Welcome To Peepworld, and are simply astonished by the first two songs we hear. Their semi-acoustic sound is cohesive and balanced, but like mid-period Dylan the songs are allusive and intriguing to keep you hooked as the music floats by. We’re just wondering how amazing it is that two vocalists as different yet as impressive as Tamara Parsons-Baker and Fi McFall could share a stage at a free provincial festival, and pulling out the thesaurus to look up “astounding”, when Welcome To Peepworld toss it all away. Why, why, why did they have to start the affected cod-Brazilian vocal trilling? What possessed them to do all the horrible, Morrisette trash with the lazy repetitive lyrics about bad relationships and the criminally uninteresting use of two good guitarists? We thought we’d found one of the best bands in Oxfordshire, but Peepworld broke out heart and we had to leave. No, no, it’s nothing, there’s just something in our eye...

Things are more reliable over on the main stage, with The Anydays. As the name suggests, they’re a band for all seasons. So long as that season is early summer. In North London. In 1964 or 1994. Again, this is a good band, but not one who are interested in pushing the envelope. In fact, they probably wouldn’t even open the envelope unless they knew it contained loads of lager and Chelsea boots and old Pye seven inches. But if ever there’s a place for well-made moddish rocking, that place has got to be a big field at a free festival. Even as we’re nodding along, we imagine somehow merging The Anydays, The Dirty Royals and The Black Hats, to turn three solid local bands into one world-beating Friday night behemoth.

Smilex are playing on the second stage, uncredited in the programme. If you don’t like Smilex, you should get a bit tired and a little damp, and walk over to find them playing a set just when you weren’t expecting it, and we reckon you’ll come out loving them. Days like this is what Smilex are for - well, this and Your Song - rousing flagging crowds with their irrepressible energy and remarkably well-made sleaze-punk. Each of their songs is like the quick, sharp tingle of pulling gaffer tape from your chest; can’t think where we got that image from, Lee.

Borderville are sort of the opposite of Smilex. They are a truly excellent band, but one whose music, for all the bow ties and bombast, works better on record, where the sensitive playing is evident and where it’s possible to relish the subtle melancholy beneath every epic composition. An evening in a field just doesn’t do them justice, the environment seems to demand more immediate gratification than they offer. It’s like putting P G Wodehouse on Mock The Week. A favourite act of ours, but not a set that we really got much out of.

And then it was home, because that’s what the transport dictated - the countryside’s all very well, but it’s nowhere near our bed. There was still Charly Coombes, The Rock Of Travolta and Leburn to go, all of whom we know to be highly reliable options. A very strong day of music, in a delightful setting, it’s pretty hard to find fault with that.

2010s - Thousands Of 'Em!

As is traditional at this time of year, I selected my favourite local releases from 2010, for the MIO roundup. It's all pretty exciting this year, with a special podcast, a roundup of selections from a handful of contributors, and a public vote, which makes interesting reading. Essentially, it all goes to show how much MIO has changed this year - and I don't just mean the URL. It's now a truly fantastic resource if you like Oxon music...and if you don't, then what are you doing reading this? No kittens or nudity on this corner of the 'net, you must have got lost.

Anyway, it transpires that I was rather more obtuse/poetic/inane/lateral/smug in my descriptions of the best releases, but there you go. I still think the Morse-Hebrides joint allusion is pretty sweet in the Stornoway summary, and I think I'm the first person to go public with a Cursing Force gag. Happy new year, and so on.

By the way, I have a few plans for 2011, which will intrigue me, but will probably eat up time and put to bed once and for all the concept of running this as an actual blog where things are, like, blogged? Oh my God, my internal monologue has gone, like, totally Californian? So, you can expect just a few updates here every month? Rest assured they shall be awesome, and in no way groody?

I have an odd desire to listen to "Valley Girl" about now?



Alphabet Backwards - Primark

Sherbet-fuelled melodic nugget about the death of the High Street. As unashamed pure pop lovers, the Alphabets wear their hearts on their sleeves (shirts: £1.35)

Borderville - Joy Through Work

Only Richard Ramage can come close to Borderville in terms of literate lyrics that sneak up on strong emotions whilst you're not looking. If The Relationships are a mythical village school fete, Borderville are a baroque Hallowe'en masque at the end of time.

D Gwalia - In Puget Sound

Like a creaky harmonium making a drunken hour long phone call to the Port Talbot Samaritans.

Samuel Zasada - Nielsen

Rich, full-bodied and peppery with unexpected subtleties. Or am I thinking of shiraz?

Space Heroes Of The People - Dancing About Architecture

More totalitarian techpop from the now drummerless duo. One day there'll be none of them left in the band, just an autonomous laptop. And it'll be great.

Spring Offensive - Pull Us Apart

The cowbell rehabilitation starts here!

Stornoway - Beachcomber's Windowsill

There's been a murder, Lewis: Stornoway have destroyed the opposition for best Oxford LP.

V/A - Round The Bends

Surprisingly coherent grab bag of 'head covers raises dosh for needy nippers. Therefore if you don't like it you're evil as well as stupid.

Vileswarm - The Shaman's Last Waltz

Frampton comes undead! Euhedral reads the rites.

Xmas Lights - Treading The Fine Line

Posthumous release by much missed emperors of isolationist metal, a great ear-scouring sign off for Oxford's original Cursing Force.

The Song Remains The Sam

Not been much going on here, has there? Well, that should all be changing, as I wrote two (2) reviews for MIO on Sunday, the first of which is below, and there are no fewer than two (2) reviews in this month's Nightshift too, so expect plenty more coruscating opinion to come.

SAMUEL ZASADA – NIESEN EP

Sometimes it’s hard to say exactly what it is that makes an artist. Michael McIntyre, for example. Come on, his material’s not that terrible. It’s hardly comedy gold, but if other stand ups were delivering it you might give a half smile or a light chuckle, before wandering off to make a cup of tea. But something about McIntyre’s repulsive comedy style makes you want to destroy your telly. In fact, he’s so mind-meltingly infuriating, you want to throw out your flat screen and climb up to the attic to find your old cathode ray beast, just so you can have the pleasure of sticking your foot through the screen and watching as the exploding sparks shower your living room; snapping a McIntyre DVD just isn’t satisfying enough, so you have to slog back up to the attic to lug down the old VCR, record all his Comedy Roadshow routines onto VHS, solely so you can enjoy the thrill of ripping every inch of tape from the cassette and tossing it into the air whilst naked and daubed with woad.

And Samuel Zasada are the same in reverse. It’s easy to point out impressive elements of this record – the slinky bass, the warm chocolatey voice, the winning melodies – but it’s hard to work out why it’s quite so wonderful, and why it’s so enormously likely to end up on Oxford best of year lists when December rolls around. Like so much great pop music, this EP is far more than the sum of its parts, meaning that it cuts right to the heart without leaving the listener dissecting the construction as they might with classical, prog or jazz.

Despite a jarring, wistful note in the arpeggiating guitar figure in “Omit”, this EP is a little less dark than previous Zasada offerings, and the incisive rhythmic accordion stabs give the track a buoyancy that would not have been feasible in the dense introspection of Samuel Zasada, 2009 vintage. Similarly, the jaunty banjo on “Of Late” adds a wry smile to the gothic folk misery we’re used to.

Perhaps the real development on this record is in the vocals. David Ashbourne has always boasted a rich, resonant voice, but on previous recordings we’ve always been concerned that he was foregrounding his vocal ability at the expense of the song. Take a listen to “Losts & Founds”, our favourite on this EP, and you’ll hear how far he’s come. There’s passion here, but whereas once we’d suspect that he would have groaned and sweated his way through proceedings like an over-egged 80s rocker, now he uses his impressive pipes to further the song: listen to the delivery of the line “You crazy people”, it has just the mixture of despair and incredulous amusement that the words demand. The fact that the tune is a funky little acoustic strut built on a sassy hi-hat rhythm, like an open mic twist on blaxploitation soundtracks, doesn’t do any harm either.

We could go on, but as we said the songs here work best on their own terms, and it doesn’t add much to pick them apart looking for secrets, or to cast our net around looking for musical analogues. This is an immersive collection of quality melodies that should entice even the weariest acoustic critic: hell, it’s making us smile, and we have minor burns, a broken toe and several feet of knotted video tape cutting off our circulation.

Sleepy, Hollow

I recently became the World Handjob Champion. I had to beat off stiff competition.

Sorry.


THE EMPTY VESSELS/ SAMUEL ZASADA/ NUMBERNINE – Moshka, Bully, 9/4/10


Numbernine have been away for a few years, but they still peddle a perky, carbonated britpop that is immensely enjoyable, if slightly hackneyed. In their time away from the stage, they’ve had a slight shuffle and Alex Horwill now plays drums (although it may be him on the somewhat superfluous samples and backing tracks), and he has a natural bounce that suits the songs even if a couple of golden clunkers tell of a lack of rehearsal. The bass is still the best thing about the band, supple and springy yet capable of building some pretty solid rock edifices on occasion. It s only the lead vocals that are mild let down: plenty of pep, but they do tend to shove falsetto in place of melodic invention.

The songs are of a high calibre, even if most of them sound as though they’re being beamed in from 1994. “My New Mantra” tries to stretch the envelope with a proggy Eastern flavour, but ends up feeling dyspeptically like Gene playing Zepellin, and the band are happiest with tracks like “London”, reeking of Camden market and redolent of NME inky fingers gripping pints in The Good Mixer. All in all, it’s good to have Numbernine back, they make a great unpretentious pop noise, and have a couple of cracking tunes, not least “Talk”, a melodic barnstormer that still reminds us happily of The Longpigs at their best, five years since we first heard it.

Samuel Zasada’s first number has fantastic folky intricacy and rectilinear motorik groove mashed together like Pentangle through the square window. Later, gorgeous three-part harmonies wash over a scuzzy tale of saying “’Fuck you’ to The Man”, as if Lou Barlow had started writing for Peter, Paul & Mary. Last time we saw Samuel, his voice knocked us back, but that was pretty much all there was to like; since then he has placed himself in the middle of an excellent trio and thought very intelligently about arrangements, concocting a dense sonic fug that truly suits his rich, gothic voice, but that doesn’t obscure some sprightly melodies. Samuel hasn’t been content to strum a few chords in flyblown open mics, letting his impressive voice do all the work, he’s clearly been honing his music into something a little bit special. The work is paying off.

Speaking of good singers, get an earful of Matt Greenham from The Empty Vessels, who has a cracking pair of lungs and a love of wide-straddling rawk howling that’s only a set of leather kecks and a three figure a day drug habit away from the glory days of MTV. The band is well-drilled, and unrepentantly retrospective, happy in the warm, yet shallow, pools of classic rock. This is refreshingly honest, and feels like coming back to homegrown veg after too long with the polished, perfectly shaped carrots in Tesco’s: you know, tasty and caked in mud and, quite possibly, shaped like a willy.

And that’s all great of course, but only for about fifteen minutes. By twenty not even a kickass flailing limb-o-matic drummer can stop the attention wandering (we realised, from staring vacuously at the guitarist’s T shirt, that the Os in The Doors’ logo look a lot like coffee beans, for example). An interesting noise like a rat gnawing a modem turned out to be a faulty pedal, and we began to realise, as another identical song started chugging along, that old school was rapidly becoming old hat. All of which feels pretty hard on The Empty Vessels, who are clearly having a blast and probably don’t want to change the musical world any, but this didn’t alter the fact that we weren’t really young enough, drunk enough, or from Wantage enough to fully enjoy these threadbare rock archaisms. This is a very good band, but one that doesn’t stand up to criticism very well; if you’re enjoying the music, it’s probably not because you’re thinking about it in any great detail, or thinking about anything whatsoever except the advisability of a ninth pint or whether you’ve got a chance with the one over there with the black jeans.

As their forebears Reef might have asked mid-song, “Alright now?”. Yes, we are alright, thanks. Alright, but not, you know, ecstatic.

Lux Interior

Last night I was talking about mashups, and in my sleep I dreamt one! Well, not a mashup, precisely, but an arrangement mixing Jacques Brel's "Amsterdam" with Michael Nyman's theme to The Piano was played by Oxford's Les Clochards and a colliery band. Maybe I'll make it happen.

INLIGHT/ JESSIE GRACE/ SAMUEL ZASADA/ LUKE KEEGAN – Jericho, 5/6/09


“What are you here to see?”, asks the girl at the Jericho’s desk. “Just, err, music”, I reply. It turns out that the organisers use this method to calculate how much to pay the performers. Bit depressing, really, isn’t it? A whole system predicated on the assumption that nobody is going to come out on the offchance they’ll hear some good music looks like a tacit admission that the promoters have already given up on the idea of enticing fresh blood into the venue, and are relying on the acts to bully their friends and colleagues into coming along. What’s even more depressing is that they’re probably right.

Anyway, as the system seems grossly unfair to Samuel Zasada, who is standing in after a change to the advertised lineup, we put our tick against his name. But before we get to Samuel, there’s the unpleasant matter of Luke Keegan’s set to deal with. There he is, strumming away at some forgettable acoustic songs, droning in a voice that’s half pub singalong, and half lax karaoke Bowie, whilst a chap who looks fantastically like a spry Erroll Brown adds some very proficient, but rather disjointed bongo accompaniment. Looking up at one point I see I am one of four people actually listening, three of whom appear to be close friends or family, and the gig begins to feel like an episode of Flight Of The Conchords. “Did you hear about tomorrow?”, sings Luke; yes, it was when I woke up and realised this was a bad, and very boring, dream. Thankfully the last song has a bit of drama, featuring the howled chorus “I never had that bloody hammer”, which is either an impassioned defence in a brutal murder inquest, or the sound of a petty argument in a carpentry workshop.

When Mr Zasada starts up, we decide that he’s well worth our cover charge support, as his voice is immense: creamy, guttural and melodic, with the breath control to rip into some intriguingly wordy verses. He’s got a real talent, but this set seems deliberately designed to hide this fact. The accompanists don’t help any: a man playing possibly the most uninspired cajon we’ve seen, and a woman who might well be Britain’s top canine ventriloquist, as she seldom opens her mouth, and when she does the sound is clearly inaudible to human ears. Ignoring this dismal pair, the songs just don’t seem to be quite there. We’d like to see Samuel with a nice tight band at the more literate end of roots pop – say, something in the Counting Crows line – and then we feel we’d have something to get excited about. Once again, the last track is the winner, as the two stooges leave the stage to let Zasada sing a brutal murder ballad, which sounds like Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” rewritten by Travis Bickle. At one point I look up and discover that I’m one of two people actually listening. I’m not sure which is sadder, that the braying horde is not giving this musician a chance, or that he’s not utilising such a great voice to make them sit up and listen.

Jessie Grace’s appearance ups the quality of the night enormously. Put simply, she has a gorgeous voice, and some pretty impressive control to go with it. In the opening number, which sounds like a version of “Heart Attack & Vine” rearranged by Joni Mitchell, she swoops from sweetly sinister incantation a la mid-period P J Harvey to gutsy rock stridency, with just a hint of soul. She plays the first half of the set on a tiny guitar - is it an alto? - giving just the right amount of garage fuzz to offset her clear, winning voice. Later she switches to a standard acoustic, and the set drifts a tiny bit into Tunstallised neo-folk pleasantries, before the final number (it’s a good night for set closers, evidently), with its playfully lopsided rhythms impresses us once again with Grace’s abilities. I’m reminded of the first time I saw Laima Bite, or Richard Walters: with a voice like this, why isn’t everyone in the room twitching with excitement? But, like Bite or Walters, behind the voice the songs themselves don’t make a gigantic impression on first listening; there are certainly no lyrics that catch the ear. Still, I’m quite prepared to put the effort into finding out whether Grace’s songs turn out to be growers.

When Inlight crank up, the first thought is that there’s been a gross miscarriage of musical justice in this town. They’ve had any number of stinking reviews, but the first tune not only shows a band who look like they’ve been playing together since they were put on solids, but is also an epic piano-led swoon that really isn’t far from A Silent Film’s celebrated stock in trade. The following track only serves to bolster such musings, revealing an instinctive knack for balancing the quartet’s sound, and showing the bassist’s subtle inventiveness.

Sadly, the effect is marred once they get to a mawkish ballad, because not only is the song asinine and vacuous, but the same audience who were literally shouting and banging tables during the previous sets are in rapt silence and serving me a stew of black looks just for having a conversation near the back of the room about how good the band are! Still, you can’t judge an artist by their fans; I’d certainly have to sling the old Wagner records on the fire, if so. Ultimately Inlight don’t quite have the compositions to hold the attention for a full set, and too many songs seem to exist solely because they can play them well. It’d be nice to see some more adventurous writing, and an appeal to something other than the broadest emotions, but we can imagine that on a huge stage in the summer dusk Inlight could be just the ticket. Does the critical reappraisal start here?

Fuck

Fuck. I just typed loads then deleted it all by mistake. Fuck, once again. So here's a really recent review that I can just paste from the document. Fuck.

SAMUEL ZASADA – BURIED (demo)


I want to grow up to be
Working 9 till 5
I want to grow up to be
More dead than alive

Samuel Zasada’s latest home recorded EP opens with these lines, and a cynical tale of thwarted youthful aspirations. It’s a nicely put together and surprisingly jolly little tune, and it could be a mixture of Radiohead’s “Fitter Happier” and Karel Fialka’s surprise hit “Hey Matthew” as created by Counting Crows. It’s a decent nugget of rootsy rebellion, but it feels more like something place two thirds of the way through your third album, not as the opening track on a bright new demo.

Luckily, this is soon followed by the best track on the record. “Buried” sounds like some strange Jewish funeral music, with mournful harmonised vocals, the corpse of a klezmer bassline and the slightly saucy sounding line, “Will you part my sea?” Whilst most acoustic singers are sitting around moaning about being a weeny bit lonely, Zasada has cut right to some truly exhausted, lovelorn sentiments here, that are more Thomas Hardy than Damien Rice, thankfully. “Place Your Words In Tune” continues the surprisingly effective dirge-pop mode, with a nice slow build and the most eerie slowly oscillating melodica drone you’re likely to come across. If you slowed this down and put reverb on the reverb it could almost be a lost Michael Gira track.

“Inside A Bomb” is equally bleak, seemingly owing its roots to a Southern prison worksong. It’s another strong performance, harmonica puffing over the top like thick polls of exhaust fumes, and our only criticism is that Zasada’s vocals tend toward a gravelly sincerity that sucks some of the wit and irony out of the lyrics (we’re not entirely sure what’s going on here, but any track this doom-laden that starts “I grazed my knee as a little boy” has got to be a little tongue in cheek, right?). The problem is worse on closer “The Blade That You Hold”, on which the vocal is an angst-ridden groan that resembles a maudlin drunk Tom Jones impersonator. Zasada has a powerful voice, but we prefer it when he doesn’t sing as if he’s trying to impress a listless open mike crowd, and tempers his tone to the subtleties of the music. This is all a little too close to Chad Kroeger for comfort, as Zasada constipatedly keens the refrain “It’s where I take delight”. Ironically, Samuel, it’s the only thing we dislike about an incredibly promising and assured recording. Doesn’t sound like he has much growing up left to do, as an artist.