Don't Believe The Hypotheses!

Hypothesis: I actually think this review is a bit shit.  I stand by the opinion - two good bands, one which I should probably hate but actually have a lot of time for - but I don't think it's well written.  Never mind, an off-day is allowed.

31 HOURS/ ZURICH/ DAISY, Daisy Rodgers, Jericho, 23/3/18

Hypothesis: many performers portray characters, but some performers come to believe in them.  David Bowie donned theatrical masks, and Randy Newman’s vignettes are all voiced by different characters, but they were obvious artistic techniques, whereas Sun Ra really actually seemed to believe his interstellar back-story, and Anton Newcombe apparently doesn’t realise he’s talentless arse rather than rock saviour.  Although Daisy’s early recordings were strong, we were worried that their violent, obsessive imagery was proof of incipient stalkerism rather than a taste for macabre trappings.  Thankfully newer material veers away from this theme – and is, if anything, musically superior.  The new quartet is tight but light on its feet, decorating emo-pop tunes with mathy curlicues and post-rock textures.  There’s still a little darkness in the lyrics though: the new songs have more obvious hooks, but they hide plenty of barbs.

Hypothesis: you can love music, without being particularly knowledgeable about it.  We may have spent more of our life than we like to remember studying sleevenotes and sitting through support bands, but our experience is not necessarily deeper than someone whose record collection consists of Rubber Soul, the best of ELO and a Motown compilation strewn in a passenger seat footwell.  Similarly, although we can get everything Coldplay has to offer from elsewhere, they don’t deserve the abuse they get.  Zurich is another band that provides a handy, one-stop rock digest for the busy listener, squishing together a world of epically sad pop stretching from Joy Division to Maximo Park, via Doves’s dusky disco bombast.  Zurich might deal in broad strokes, big themes and barn door targets, but their arranging skill and melodic ear make them well worth the effort.

Hypothesis: prog has its plus points, but decent tunes isn’t one of them.  When 31 Hours starts up, with a web of impressive polyrhythms masking an anonymous composition, we’re inclined to agree.  However, it doesn’t take long for the set to reveal subtly catchy tunes hidden amongst ELP wigouts and late Floyd billows – we had David Sylvian jotted in our notebook before being treated to a one- Japan cover – and we realise 31 Hours has more in common with the carbonite-frozen pop of Glass Animals than anything Gong once wafted out of The Manor’s back door, with single “Castile” a window on a world where Gomez made Kid A.  Top tunes married to muso structure, in other words.  Hypothesis: even we aren’t right all the time.

You Let One Off?

Quick review of an all-dayer a little while ago, featuring a previously unseen paragraph, cut from Nightshift because there wasn't room/ it was about a band from outside Oxon/ it was undbearably knowing.

ROYAL PARDON, MD, Bully, 19/9/15

It’s quite refreshing to find an all-dayer with no trappings.  The mysteriously named Royal Pardon (“Run that past one again, footman”) from newcomer MD Promotions is not tied to charity, advertising, label promotion or the dressing up box, it’s a just a 7 hour selection of local music in a big beer-fuelled room, which is more than enough justification for a day out.  Opener Kid Kin’s laptop is broken, so we get a truncated, on the hoof mini-set of his texturally savvy library music melodies.  As ever, the tenor of his De Wolfe electro is a delight, but this swiftly salvaged set is perhaps indicative of a bill of often great music and great ideas that don’t necessarily always make for great sets. 

31hours are a band for whom stylistic cohesion is probably not a major concern, though that’s not to say their eclectic prog pop isn’t immensely pleasing.  If there is a thematic anchor to their music it’s that high fret-twiddling jam block-thwacking Afroals sound, which is probably the least interesting element, outweighed by freeze-dried Glass Animals balladry and lush Pompeii era Floyd soundscapes.

Pipeline’s funky contemporary indie is a far simpler proposition, along the lines of The Wedding Present without the poetry and Senseless Things without the tequila.  The vocals are winningly effortless, and if the set of snappy tunes runs out of steam slightly before the finish line, this is a band that is maturing steadily.

We Have A Dutch Friend, by contrast, have a long way to go.  Their blueprint of sweet Sundays lilts punctuated by strident Chumabawamba folk harangues is viable enough, but the playing is messily fragmented and joylessly stilted, probably because they appear petrified almost to the point of collapsing; perhaps that lowlands connection could suggest something to settle the nerves. 

We’re used to Tiger Mendoza’s hip-hop airs and post-EDM power pop, but tonight perhaps the best moments are when angle-ground guitar thrashes are laid over asbestos beats in a manner recalling light industrial acts like Ministry and Nitzer Ebb.  Some of the transitions between tracks are not as fluid as they might be, and sometimes different compositional elements seems to jostle each other to get to the front of the mix, but overall this set shows that ian De Quadros is an inventive and varied producer.

A small break is presumably there to let the engineer grab some dinner and go and find more Cliff Richard records to play us, but we return after 40 minutes to find the atmosphere changed for the better.  Not only is the room thankfully a little busier, but the later sets have a more coherent flavour, none more so than Cosmosis whose affable acoustic roots rock (think Stone Temple Pilots busking Cure songs) is presented with such unforced bonhomie even those of us who have an anaphylactic reaction to wackiness get swept up in the japes.  The lead vocalist keeps looking shiftily from side to side, as if to check that they’re getting away with it, but the set proves that music doesn’t have to be serious to be worthwhile.

Duchess announce that this is their last gig, which is a pity as their playing is tighter than ever.  It’s low-key as valedictory sets go, but not short on energy, especially a bouncy “South Parade”.  As well as inheriting Paul Simon’s trick of slipping filched global drum patterns underneath eloquent pop (Rhythm Of The Saints is in evidence as much as the obvious Gracelands), we catch snatches of motif and melody that remind us of “Walk On The Wild Side”, “Down Under” and “I Started A Joke” - but mostly we pick up pure character and musical fluency.  They will be missed.

Word count limited.  Bel Esprit: Longpigs.  Gene.  Gomez.  Las.  Mansun.  Stone Roses.  Sum of parts?  Nope.  “Creep” cover?  Best not, eh.

The Scholars were an epic alt stadium act who may as well have been called The Copy Editors, and whom we didn’t care for.  Strangely, Zurich, the trio that evolved from them are rather excellent despite ostensibly dealing in the same sound.  A lot of the bombast and bluster has been excised  leaving elemental, muscular glory pop with flightpath vocal lines and dark disco rhythms, along the lines of a Cinemascope Half Rabbits.  Their music might not be complex or mysterious, but it snags the spirit and skewers the emotions, an unexpectedly direct and affecting conclusion to a highly enjoyable but not always entirely convincing event.