Truck 2013 Friday Pt 2

Frankie & The Heartstrings play on the main stage on Friday.  We literally cannot tell you anything about them.  The programme mentions The Smiths, Orange Juice and Dexy’s, but we’ve already seen how accurate that thing is.  Instead of writing notes, our we draw a picture in our notebook of a local musician who’s walking past, which says everything about how interesting The Heartstrings are.  It’s not even a very good picture.

We were talking to someone earlier in the day about how wide a range of customers festivals now get, embracing a greater variety of age and social background than in the distant past.  Sadly, though, they still attract the stupid.  A girl in a portaloo next to us is shouting to her friend outside: “Oh my God!  It stinks in here!  It smells like...it smells like...shit!”.  If that’s a surprise, it begs the question what she was planning on doing in there if not the passing of human effluent.  Hopefully she couldn’t work out how to unlock the door.

Kudos to the Virgins stage for booking a couple of the more unusual acts of the festival, even if they’re well known to Oxford gig goers, not least a favourite of ours, King Of Cats.  Max Levy’s tortured rodent screech and his allusive – or perhaps, elusive – lyrics won’t be garnering fans as swiftly as Ady Suleiman, but he has a small, appreciative following, probably because underneath the awkward swagger, he can actually write songs.  He’s playing with a rhythm section today, although the solo songs work best, possibly because his music is intimate and idiosyncratic, or possibly because his timing’s so wayward the band sounds weird, one of the two.  We fervently hope a Trucker or two got their “I won’t forget this!” moment from Max, and are currently telling baffled friends about his geeky intensity.  “He’s like a beat poet Rick Moranis.  No, he’s like Kurt Cobain if he’d never left the D&D Club.  Oh, I can’t explain, you have to go see him”.

What’s worse?  Bands like The Joy Formidable who make a “come hither” gesture as soon as they’re onstage, or punters who actually move closer?  Performers, stop worrying about a few measly feet of space, and listeners, if you want to jump about having a good time, don’t wait for a formal invitation, it’s a fucking rock festival not the Jane Austen Re-enactment Society.  That rant aside, the band is rather good, throwing out graceful, melodic pop songs with a nice punchy rhythm and choruses people can hoof beachballs into the heavens to.  Plus, we like it when drummers sit side on at the front of the stage, it’s like showing your workings: The Joy Formidable, the Pompidou Centre of rock and roll.

Bo Ningen is a very good band, at times a great band.  They take the ultra-scuzzy garage burn that Japanese bands seem to do so well – Guitar Wolf springs to mind – and add some untamed freakout sections, as well as a mystical rock vibe which sort of reminds us of Steppenwolf, and then play it all in a manner that suggests someone said Didcot power station will explode if they ever drop below maximum intensity.  Which is great, but as it’s in the Barn we can’t hear most of it, just a sort of rhythmic hum, so we buy a CD.  If we throw the stereo down a well and sit in a cowpat, it’ll be just like being there all over again.

We don’t like Ash, but we drop in on the main stage and see that lots of people do, so we nip out in case we stop being miserable, and it all goes a bit Christmas Carol.  The Ghost of Indie Discos Past is certainly in attendance, any road.  And just to prove we don’t mind music that revisits the past we’ve come direct from the Saloon, where an uncredited white haired gent is chiming out Dylan and Byrds covers on his Rickenbacker, and we rather enjoy it.  Then the Bennett brothers get up to join him.  If Betfred had a kiosk on site, we’d have put good money on that happening.

We really like Beta Blocker & The Body Clock’s music, it’s like a Benylin-woozy Dinosaur Jr with the odd new romantic synthetic flourish.  Sadly, the vocals let them down, sounding like petulant children who won’t do their homework, and with so much charmless reverb over the top you have to assume they really wanted to play the Barn.

We should have gone for a wee when they were on, because afterwards we lose our sweet spot in the Saloon to answer the old call of nature (no aroma surprise reports from next door, this time), and when we return The Original Rabbit Foot Spasm Band are in full swing, and the building is impossible to get into.  From what we can hear from outside the group is killing it as usual, the shouts and screams coming through the swing doors tell us that there’s not much difference between the Rabbits’ raucous jazz riot and a proper western bar brawl: bodies fly about the place, the noise is intense, and the piano never stops playing.

Truck 2011 Saturday Pt 3

Back at the Blessing Force love-in, Chad Valley is showing us round the dessicated remains of a freeze dried Ibiza night from 1989. By putting sweaty, nightclub music of the past into an amniotic reverb womb, Chad Valley’s set is a little like what the staff of Ghost Box records might play if they were cruising for a shag. It’s actually remarkably good music, although we often worry that Hugo Manuel’s voice isn’t strong enough to carry the material, but as with all the Blessing Force endeavours, we feel as though we’d need to be Mahakali to make air quotes sufficient to capture the levels of reference and irony. Which is why the collaboration between ODC Drumline and Coloureds is a pleasant surprise. Far from being a smug game for BF buddies, as feared, the drumline is actually four very well drilled players, who have rehearsed some decent arrangements to complement Coloureds’ jittering techno. It’s highly enjoyable, although in a twist of inverse logic, a collection of crisp, clattering martial snares actually detracts from the rhythmic power of Coloureds’ material, and we can’t help feeling that, despite the evident skill and effort involved, it would be more satisfying to just hear Coloureds. Oh, and twice as loud, too, thank you.

Plus, no matter how hard they tried, they could never actually be more of a noisy party conclusion to the night than The Rabbit’s Foot Spasm Band, who turn the cabaret tent into a jazz apocalypse. Limbs stick at random from the beyond capacity tent, mikes are used and discarded to the confusion of the engineer, dancers leap onstage and are summarily booted off, and all to the sound of solid gold brutal jump jazz. Everyone who doesn’t like jazz should be made to watch the Rabbit’s Foot...and many people who do like jazz should too, because they like the wrong bit. Sheer carnage, there’s no better sound to turn in to bed to.

Truck 2010 Saturday Pt 2

We decide to watch Thomas Truax in the Rapture tent instead of the main stage, as there’s a something wonderfully intimate about his music, behind all the carny Meccano band schtick, and it’s nice to sit close enough to see the manic madness in his craggy eyes. A young lad of about eight leaps up to take a photo of mechanical drum machine Mother Superior with the same excitement most boys would reserve for David Beckham, so we conclude that the nation’s future is safe. The music is wonkily great as ever (clunk click, every trip), but his cover of the Eraserhead theme is like an ice cream van in Hades, which is just about perfect.

The name Man Without Country sounds like a Truck billing rebellion, and they also sound great on paper, but they’re running late and Bellowhead are starting early, so we never find out what they actually sound like. Bellowhead don’t get mentioned often when people compile their top local acts, but they should: find an act that can mix musicianship, melody, arrangement and danceability together anything like as well, we dare you. Everything about their big band folk concoction is amazing, and if our notes are illegible it’s because we were trying to write them whilst dancing like a stevedore on annual leave in a Threshers warehouse. Bellowhead have thrown so many ideas at the wall they’ve had to build another wall, but what’s astounding is how well it all works, and how much fun it manages to be underneath all the musical cleverness. Reassuringly extensive.

After that Lau are a let down, which is harsh because they’re clearly a superbly virtuosic folk act, but we’ve had our folk bones reset in funny shapes by Bellowhead. Next time, maybe.

“This is the future” chant Phantogram, because they’ve got some synths, see. Not really the future, is it, more a refracted present, seeing as they sound like The XX mixed with Crystal Castles. Bloody good, though, as only glacial synth pop drenched in reverb (splash it all over) can be. Ah, the reverb, surely it’s the sound of 2010. If you want to taste the zeitgeist buy an Ariel Pink album. Or sit at the bottom of an empty culvert with a broken radio playing Heart FM, there’s not much in it.

Mew sound alright, but their gate reverb stadium drum sound reminds us of Simple Minds so we sneak off to see Ms Dynamite. Us and the rest of Oxfordshire, as we don’t get in, but it does let us watch the headliner we should have been watching all along, The Original Rabbit’s Foot Spasm Band. Most trad jazz and blues comes to us pickled and dried with all the life leached out of it by some dead-eyed sense of heritage; The Rabbit’s Feet let the music live, but this time it’s the band that are pickled. Seriously, half of them seem to be drunk. And the other half paralytic. But they can still play fast, loud, funny and with as much passion as anyone on the bill. They’re grrrreat.

Twinge Kingdom Valley

One of Picture Book is the offspring of Kid Creole, of Coconuts fame. That's a solid gold fact you can take to the bank...if the bloke at the bar who told me was telling the truth.

THE ORIGINAL RABBIT’S FOOT SPASM BAND/ SPACE HEROES OF THE PEOPLE/ PICTURE BOOK – Klub Kakofanney, The Wheatsheaf, 6/2/09

At their best Leeds’ Picture Book are a cross between Lamb and Sade (as in “Smooth Operator”, not “120 Days Of Sodom”), at their worst they’re a load of old balaerics. They do show plenty of rhythmic inventiveness in their sleek techno pop, and a nice line in flatulent 80s keyboards, but the vocals aren’t able to breathe life into the songs; if they had an Alison Goldfrapp or a Roisin Murphy hamming it up we might be talking. Having said this, the last two tracks blow the rest of the set out of the water, the finale pitching keening violin against the synth hum, and single “Strangers” is a fussy bustle of dubstep keys and exuberant syn-drums that are half Karl Bartos and half Tito Puente. More like that, please.

Space Heroes Of The People have always been about balance. Their music is live enough to feel organic, and programmed enough to seem inhuman; the sound is minimalist enough to be hypnotic, but compact enough to class them as an ace pop band. It’s a tough tightrope to walk, but tonight they nonchalantly saunter across, possibly stopping midway for a somersault or two. Perhaps it was the live vocals, perhaps it was the unexpectedly meaty Sabbathesque half time sections, perhaps it was the righteously hefty sound that the engineer coaxed from them, but this was a superb set. We just can’t shake the image of Maggie Philbin coming onstage halfway through “Barbie Is A Robot” to explain what a vocoder is.

The Original Rabbit’s Foot Spasm Band are not at all original, but everything else about them is fantastic. They play 30s jazz songs, but we feel as if we’re in a sordid sweaty speakeasy, not some horrific sanitised tea dance. These songs (“Mack The Knife”, “The Sheik Of Araby”) are about sex, narcotics and impossibly louche tailoring, and they should be treated with the dirt they deserve, not emasculated by legions of function jazzers. The Spasmers get to grips with the soul of the music through riotous trumpet, rasping sax, and by being heroically, Biblically, drunk. This, my friends is the authentic sound of New Orleans…possibly during the hurricane.

Punt 09 Part 2

Back to The Cellar for the home straight, and some molasses thick drone rock from Spiral 25, who turn the venue into a dark womb of numb bliss and stoned paranoia. Their music has definite narcotic nods to the likes of Spiritualized and Loop, and the sound is beautifully controlled, reined in and moving at its own geological pace.

Finally, after what seems like three hours, The Original Rabbit’s Foot Spasm Band take the stage. (Pedant’s note: they’re not strictly a spasm band, as they don’t use home-made instruments). They might not be the greatest band to ever play the Punt, but they are possibly the best closing act, whipping up a frenzy with their self styled “chav jazz” covers of 30’s classics. It’s a wonderful mix of drunken showmanship and muso chops, of rousing singalong choruses and quicksilver brass solos, that has some people dancing on the stage like goons, and others nodding appreciatively in the corner. Then, in a flurry of whinnying trumpet and discarded plastic pint skiffs, we’re suddenly at the end of The Punt, out on the street and wondering why we can’t do this every night. The next morning, of course, the answer is painfully obvious…

My Bunny Valentine

Something bang up to date now, a review from this month, printed in the most recent copy of Nightshift.

THE ORIGINAL RABBIT’S FOOT SPASM BAND/ SPACE HEROES OF THE PEOPLE/ PICTURE BOOK, Klub Kakofanney, The Wheatsheaf, 6/2/09



At their best Leeds’ Picture Book are a cross between Lamb and Sade (as in “Smooth Operator”, not 120 Days Of Sodom), at their worst they’re a load of old balaerics. They do show plenty of rhythmic inventiveness in their sleek techno pop, and a nice line in flatulent 80s keyboards, but the vocals aren’t able to breathe life into the songs; if they had an Alison Goldfrapp or a Roisin Murphy hamming it up we might be talking. Having said this, the last two tracks blow the rest of the set out of the water, the finale pitching keening violin against the synth hum, and single “Strangers” is a fussy bustle of dubstep keys and exuberant syn-drums that are half Karl Bartos and half Tito Puente. More like that, please.

Space Heroes Of The People have always been about balance. Their music is live enough to feel organic, and programmed enough to seem inhuman; the sound is minimalist enough to be hypnotic, but compact enough to class them as an ace pop band. It’s a tough tightrope to walk, but tonight they nonchalantly saunter across, possibly stopping midway for a somersault or two. Perhaps it was the live vocals, perhaps it was the unexpectedly meaty Sabbathesque half time sections, perhaps it was the righteously hefty sound that the engineer coaxed from them, but this was a superb set. We just can’t shake the image of Maggie Philbin coming onstage halfway through “Barbie Is A Robot” to explain what a vocoder is.

The Original Rabbit’s Foot Spasm Band are not at all original, but everything else about them is fantastic. They play 30s jazz songs, but we feel as if we’re in a sordid sweaty speakeasy, not some horrific sanitised tea dance. These songs (“Mack The Knife”, “The Sheik Of Araby”) are about sex, narcotics and impossibly louche tailoring, and they should be treated with the dirt they deserve, not emasculated by legions of function jazzers. The Spasmers get to grips with the soul of the music through riotous trumpet, rasping sax, and by being heroically, Biblically, drunk. This, my friends is the authentic sound of New Orleans…possibly during the hurricane.