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.
Sunday, 29 August 2010
Truck Or Treat
Hello.
It's been a while, sorry about that. I'm as busy as can be over here. I shall get this blog back on track hopefully in the enar future. Anway, here's the 1st part of my Truck review, elements of which appear in the current Nightshift.
TRUCK, Hill Farm, Steventon, 24-5/7/10
SATURDAY
In recent years Truck has been all over the national press, popping up in The Independent Magazine or The Guardian’s guide to festivals, but whilst this may be deserved none of these culture jamborees seem to capture what we think is good about Truck. Forget your indie cred and girls in fifty quid wellies, we adore the vicar frying donuts, the Round Tablers serving reasonably priced tea, the slightly makeshift feel of most of the stages, and – in short – the fact that it doesn’t look like something that’s ever likely to excite the staff at The Guardian. The other great thing about Truck, which is perhaps true of all good festivals, is that it always surprises you with great unknown acts. Openers Meursault aren’t a bad little group to stumble upon, volleying melodic laptop rock into the balmy afternoon. Their inherent drama reminds us of Witches, and our only criticism is that they come across as desperately earnest, as if they were pleading before a medieval ducking stool.
Something Beginning With L are a new name to us as well, and if their woozy cover of Whitney Houton’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” marks them out as hypnagogic trendies, the majority of the set is just good old guitar and keyboard rock music, finished off with a gorgeous plangent voice. At times they remind us of Texas – even down to the cowboy hat – but not in a way that is infuriating. “Lovely” begins with L.
It’s the same every year, we want to like the cabaret tent but never find anything good. We’re desperate to enjoy Jim Davies, who seems like he’d be a great man to share a few pints with, and who has a natural humour about him, but who must have left his punchlines behind in the rush to get packed. Sadly his tales of working as an advertising copywriter are good, but don’t really connect; it does, however, give us an excuse to pepper this review with idiotic promotional slogans.
In a swirl of NASA suits, bubble machines, theremin and stylophone Spaceships Are Cool prepare for takeoff. Their wonderfully tuneful music is akin to something on the Duophonic label minus the furrowed brows, and at least three tracks sound like White Town’s bedroom wonder “Your Woman” covered by a cheery Glaswegian indie band. They’re one of the best acts of the weekend, but if they have a Smile-Off with members of Alphabet Backwards stand well back, you might get caught in some hideous chirpiness crossfire. Put the freshness back.
They also give out tiny origami space shuttles to the crowd, which we find scattered around throughout the day; is subliminal craft merch a new sales concept? God knows Atlantic Pacific could do with some of that subtlety, they play a very dull yet not upsetting set, which is only interesting because it provides the first glimpse of a Bennett brother onstage. What do we win?
We were fervently hoping Thomas Tantrum in The Barn would be Thomas Truax going ape because all his machines had gone wrong, but sadly not. Nothing else about them is a let down, though. Get past the ultra-contemporary pared guitar sounds, and you find pop gold something like The Cardigans, or perhaps even The Cowboy Junkies, if they were cooked in a cutely effervescent pixie pie. It’s musically spotless and hugely enjoyable, at times reminding us of pretty 90s popstrels Tsunami (not the later Oxford band of the same name). Swiss Concrete don’t make shit smelling barns, but if they did...
The programme tells us “Luke Smith hasn’t missed a Truck Festival since he first played ten (??? citation needed) years ago”. How sweet, he’s so much a part of the scenery, they don’t even bother proof reading his write up. And as such criticising him would be like visiting Wiltshire and giving Stonehenge a bad review, but luckily we adore him anyway. We could ramble on about his intelligent lyrics and adept piano, the excellent growling John Harle tone of the soprano sax or the warm comic humanity of his delivery, but all you really need to know is that throughout the set the sound engineers were grinning like loons, and they’re a notoriously surly bunch. Smith is somewhere between Betjeman and Stillgoe, and is an English eccentric to be valued...and he does make exceedingly good tunes.
Active Child plays some lovely harp, but spoils it by covering the music with horrible Eurhythmics drum programming. The he stops playing the harp. Then we leave.
Boat To Row are likened in the programme to Stornoway and Bert Jansch, which is phenomenally generous and puts us off their folky pop at first, but eventually we warm to them, and we mentally file them alongside Sonny Liston as pleasing acoustic troubadours. Still, nothing here to get the pulse racing, so we let our fingers do the walking and pick something at random from the programme.
Fucking fingers. We’re back at the Cabaret tent, where two men (who may be Bishop & Douche, but we’re not certain) are playing the introductions to cheesy records to inexplicable applause. God, how we hate the Nathan Barley world we live in, sometimes, that equates recognising something with understanding it, and thinks quoting something is the same as criticising it. This is desperately unfunny and makes Boat To Row seem like a halcyon age, so we leave ASAP. Because we’re worth it.
Luckily it means we catch some of Mr Shaodow’s set from the door of a packed Beathive. Only a few years ago he was fumbling his way through a Punt set whereas now he (and battle brother LeeN, amongst others) has the crowd by the scruff of the neck, and is sending it, frankly, loopy. The only down point is the overlong freestyle section, where Shaodow starts asking for suggestions from the audience like a hip hop Josie Lawrence. The improv raps are good, but why try to impress on the fly when you’ve already written such astounding rhymes?
We think that Y was on our bus, trying to impress some 15 years olds and telling a dizzy girl she was psychic; on Sunday he’s refusing to leave the tiny Rapture Records stage whilst he slurs non-sequiturs and plays fudged arpeggios on a weeny keyboard, like a horrific cross between Suicide and John Shuttleworth. Somewhere in the middle of this embarrassment, though, he put a tiger in his tank and churned out a steaming wall of psych rock noise, along with an ace jamming band (double Bennett score!). Imagine all the great sounds that influenced Spacemen 3, and then put them together replacing the narcotic mope with a Watney’s Party 7 barrel of fun, and you get a set that might not be complex, but is exactly what is needed as the afternoon tails away. Some toddlers are also going nuts for it, alternately dancing crazy and running their fingers through the pebbles in the Village Pub tent like people on their first acid trip. “Dude, my hands are so big. For a three year old”.
It's been a while, sorry about that. I'm as busy as can be over here. I shall get this blog back on track hopefully in the enar future. Anway, here's the 1st part of my Truck review, elements of which appear in the current Nightshift.
TRUCK, Hill Farm, Steventon, 24-5/7/10
SATURDAY
In recent years Truck has been all over the national press, popping up in The Independent Magazine or The Guardian’s guide to festivals, but whilst this may be deserved none of these culture jamborees seem to capture what we think is good about Truck. Forget your indie cred and girls in fifty quid wellies, we adore the vicar frying donuts, the Round Tablers serving reasonably priced tea, the slightly makeshift feel of most of the stages, and – in short – the fact that it doesn’t look like something that’s ever likely to excite the staff at The Guardian. The other great thing about Truck, which is perhaps true of all good festivals, is that it always surprises you with great unknown acts. Openers Meursault aren’t a bad little group to stumble upon, volleying melodic laptop rock into the balmy afternoon. Their inherent drama reminds us of Witches, and our only criticism is that they come across as desperately earnest, as if they were pleading before a medieval ducking stool.
Something Beginning With L are a new name to us as well, and if their woozy cover of Whitney Houton’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” marks them out as hypnagogic trendies, the majority of the set is just good old guitar and keyboard rock music, finished off with a gorgeous plangent voice. At times they remind us of Texas – even down to the cowboy hat – but not in a way that is infuriating. “Lovely” begins with L.
It’s the same every year, we want to like the cabaret tent but never find anything good. We’re desperate to enjoy Jim Davies, who seems like he’d be a great man to share a few pints with, and who has a natural humour about him, but who must have left his punchlines behind in the rush to get packed. Sadly his tales of working as an advertising copywriter are good, but don’t really connect; it does, however, give us an excuse to pepper this review with idiotic promotional slogans.
In a swirl of NASA suits, bubble machines, theremin and stylophone Spaceships Are Cool prepare for takeoff. Their wonderfully tuneful music is akin to something on the Duophonic label minus the furrowed brows, and at least three tracks sound like White Town’s bedroom wonder “Your Woman” covered by a cheery Glaswegian indie band. They’re one of the best acts of the weekend, but if they have a Smile-Off with members of Alphabet Backwards stand well back, you might get caught in some hideous chirpiness crossfire. Put the freshness back.
They also give out tiny origami space shuttles to the crowd, which we find scattered around throughout the day; is subliminal craft merch a new sales concept? God knows Atlantic Pacific could do with some of that subtlety, they play a very dull yet not upsetting set, which is only interesting because it provides the first glimpse of a Bennett brother onstage. What do we win?
We were fervently hoping Thomas Tantrum in The Barn would be Thomas Truax going ape because all his machines had gone wrong, but sadly not. Nothing else about them is a let down, though. Get past the ultra-contemporary pared guitar sounds, and you find pop gold something like The Cardigans, or perhaps even The Cowboy Junkies, if they were cooked in a cutely effervescent pixie pie. It’s musically spotless and hugely enjoyable, at times reminding us of pretty 90s popstrels Tsunami (not the later Oxford band of the same name). Swiss Concrete don’t make shit smelling barns, but if they did...
The programme tells us “Luke Smith hasn’t missed a Truck Festival since he first played ten (??? citation needed) years ago”. How sweet, he’s so much a part of the scenery, they don’t even bother proof reading his write up. And as such criticising him would be like visiting Wiltshire and giving Stonehenge a bad review, but luckily we adore him anyway. We could ramble on about his intelligent lyrics and adept piano, the excellent growling John Harle tone of the soprano sax or the warm comic humanity of his delivery, but all you really need to know is that throughout the set the sound engineers were grinning like loons, and they’re a notoriously surly bunch. Smith is somewhere between Betjeman and Stillgoe, and is an English eccentric to be valued...and he does make exceedingly good tunes.
Active Child plays some lovely harp, but spoils it by covering the music with horrible Eurhythmics drum programming. The he stops playing the harp. Then we leave.
Boat To Row are likened in the programme to Stornoway and Bert Jansch, which is phenomenally generous and puts us off their folky pop at first, but eventually we warm to them, and we mentally file them alongside Sonny Liston as pleasing acoustic troubadours. Still, nothing here to get the pulse racing, so we let our fingers do the walking and pick something at random from the programme.
Fucking fingers. We’re back at the Cabaret tent, where two men (who may be Bishop & Douche, but we’re not certain) are playing the introductions to cheesy records to inexplicable applause. God, how we hate the Nathan Barley world we live in, sometimes, that equates recognising something with understanding it, and thinks quoting something is the same as criticising it. This is desperately unfunny and makes Boat To Row seem like a halcyon age, so we leave ASAP. Because we’re worth it.
Luckily it means we catch some of Mr Shaodow’s set from the door of a packed Beathive. Only a few years ago he was fumbling his way through a Punt set whereas now he (and battle brother LeeN, amongst others) has the crowd by the scruff of the neck, and is sending it, frankly, loopy. The only down point is the overlong freestyle section, where Shaodow starts asking for suggestions from the audience like a hip hop Josie Lawrence. The improv raps are good, but why try to impress on the fly when you’ve already written such astounding rhymes?
We think that Y was on our bus, trying to impress some 15 years olds and telling a dizzy girl she was psychic; on Sunday he’s refusing to leave the tiny Rapture Records stage whilst he slurs non-sequiturs and plays fudged arpeggios on a weeny keyboard, like a horrific cross between Suicide and John Shuttleworth. Somewhere in the middle of this embarrassment, though, he put a tiger in his tank and churned out a steaming wall of psych rock noise, along with an ace jamming band (double Bennett score!). Imagine all the great sounds that influenced Spacemen 3, and then put them together replacing the narcotic mope with a Watney’s Party 7 barrel of fun, and you get a set that might not be complex, but is exactly what is needed as the afternoon tails away. Some toddlers are also going nuts for it, alternately dancing crazy and running their fingers through the pebbles in the Village Pub tent like people on their first acid trip. “Dude, my hands are so big. For a three year old”.
Tuesday, 10 August 2010
Mage To Make Your Mouth Water
It's still all a bit frantic over here, but I've found time to sling up this review for Music In Oxford (hereinafter to be known as MIO). It's an interesting example of how to pitch reviews for a site like this. I could have reviewed this in the style of The Wire, but it seemed to me that whilst some of the readers would know a lot more than me about drone based improv, lots of others would have no experience whatsoever, so something more open-ended seemed to be required. It's sort of interesting to have a readership and peer group that's defined, not by social or musical similarities, but by simple geography. So, was I too chummy, or too obtuse here, for the random reader? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
And why not talk to each other in the comments, as it seems as though my not posting anything does very little to affect the number of views the site has - in fact, if anything the last fortnight has seen more visitors than usual. As curious as Alice Lidell with a curious orange that kills cats.
VILESWARM – THE SHAMAN’S LAST WALTZ (Eyeless)
They call it “doom drone”.
Leftfield musicians – or at the very least their admirers – are madmen for creating genres. We’re all familiar with electronica’s offshoots spliced into ever narrower branches, with sub-genres breeding deformed offspring like so many rampant Chernobyl rabbits, but keeping tabs on the myriad diffractions of noise, improve, alt rock and out metal can induce dizziness, nausea, and a strong yearning for some nice simple pop music. Despite all this, Vileswarm’s coinage is a useful addition to the lexicon. This CD might be a collection of gestural, amelodic drone music, but it has a density and sense of sludgy ritual that it shares with the more evocative, leaden shades of metal. This music may well be improvised (although there could easily be an over-arching structure, we’re not entirely sure) but it’s a long way from Derek Bailey’s “non-idiomatic improv”. The Shaman’s Last Waltz is, in many ways, unmusical. It generally avoids motifs or rhythms, and “incidental” noises are foregrounded as much as recognised musical sounds – we can hear guitar strings being brushed as much as we hear them being plucked, and the sound of sitting at a drum kit is given the same space as hitting it. We hear Vileswarm “playing” in the way that children, not musicians, play; we hear performers exploring their instruments as much as we hear them mastering them.
“The Shaman’s Last Waltz Pt I” is a long track, but it feels more like a series of sonic tableaux than a single piece. There are sublimely eerie moments, the sound of a creaking dead cart in a toxic fog bank vying with a recording of someone raping a harmonium in a medieval microwave for our affections. Drums are brushed in scuttling clusters and guitar tones waver. At the end a knob-twiddling electronic sound lets the side down, as it isn’t inherently mysterious, coming straight from a Tom Baker Dr Who soundtrack. “Pt II” is less eventful, and has an oppressive, pressurised atmosphere. An oscillating synth near the conclusion has the overbearing power of very early Tangerine Dream, and envelops us with a slow amniotic presence. This isn’t so much music you listen to, it’s more music you live in.
Ironically, despite the fact that it’s separate from the “Shaman” sequence, closing track “Lotus Prayer” is the most ritualistic track, sounding like a recording of Gyoto monks at their devotions (or, at times, like some old janitors clearing up trestle tables after a village craft exhibition). The track even obliquely approaches musical structure, being a set of variations on a non-theme (two notes and a rhythmic rustle). It’s certainly the most cohesive piece here, but in a way the least intriguing.
This record may not be as good as some work by the two collaborators: it doesn’t have the stark organic beauty of Euhedral’s best music, nor the wired Manga velocity of a great David K. Frampton gig, but it’s an enjoyable listen. Most of all we like the way the LP feels exploratory. So much music that calls itself “experimental” or “leftfield” is drawing on a whole raft of ossified, time-honoured tricks and traits, with a standard sonic template as predictable as any 12 bar blues. Vileswarm conversely sound as though they’re truly trying to find new ways of working together, and attempting to conjure up - the record’s title and cover art imply this is the right term – new experiences. In an odd way, it sounds like the work of alien musicians, who are fully trained in traditional musical forms, but who have never seen human instruments before, and aren’t sure whether the rub them, blow them, or stick a spare tentacle into one of the holes. And if that doesn’t give you a clear idea of whether to investigate this act or run a mile, nothing will.
And why not talk to each other in the comments, as it seems as though my not posting anything does very little to affect the number of views the site has - in fact, if anything the last fortnight has seen more visitors than usual. As curious as Alice Lidell with a curious orange that kills cats.
VILESWARM – THE SHAMAN’S LAST WALTZ (Eyeless)
They call it “doom drone”.
Leftfield musicians – or at the very least their admirers – are madmen for creating genres. We’re all familiar with electronica’s offshoots spliced into ever narrower branches, with sub-genres breeding deformed offspring like so many rampant Chernobyl rabbits, but keeping tabs on the myriad diffractions of noise, improve, alt rock and out metal can induce dizziness, nausea, and a strong yearning for some nice simple pop music. Despite all this, Vileswarm’s coinage is a useful addition to the lexicon. This CD might be a collection of gestural, amelodic drone music, but it has a density and sense of sludgy ritual that it shares with the more evocative, leaden shades of metal. This music may well be improvised (although there could easily be an over-arching structure, we’re not entirely sure) but it’s a long way from Derek Bailey’s “non-idiomatic improv”. The Shaman’s Last Waltz is, in many ways, unmusical. It generally avoids motifs or rhythms, and “incidental” noises are foregrounded as much as recognised musical sounds – we can hear guitar strings being brushed as much as we hear them being plucked, and the sound of sitting at a drum kit is given the same space as hitting it. We hear Vileswarm “playing” in the way that children, not musicians, play; we hear performers exploring their instruments as much as we hear them mastering them.
“The Shaman’s Last Waltz Pt I” is a long track, but it feels more like a series of sonic tableaux than a single piece. There are sublimely eerie moments, the sound of a creaking dead cart in a toxic fog bank vying with a recording of someone raping a harmonium in a medieval microwave for our affections. Drums are brushed in scuttling clusters and guitar tones waver. At the end a knob-twiddling electronic sound lets the side down, as it isn’t inherently mysterious, coming straight from a Tom Baker Dr Who soundtrack. “Pt II” is less eventful, and has an oppressive, pressurised atmosphere. An oscillating synth near the conclusion has the overbearing power of very early Tangerine Dream, and envelops us with a slow amniotic presence. This isn’t so much music you listen to, it’s more music you live in.
Ironically, despite the fact that it’s separate from the “Shaman” sequence, closing track “Lotus Prayer” is the most ritualistic track, sounding like a recording of Gyoto monks at their devotions (or, at times, like some old janitors clearing up trestle tables after a village craft exhibition). The track even obliquely approaches musical structure, being a set of variations on a non-theme (two notes and a rhythmic rustle). It’s certainly the most cohesive piece here, but in a way the least intriguing.
This record may not be as good as some work by the two collaborators: it doesn’t have the stark organic beauty of Euhedral’s best music, nor the wired Manga velocity of a great David K. Frampton gig, but it’s an enjoyable listen. Most of all we like the way the LP feels exploratory. So much music that calls itself “experimental” or “leftfield” is drawing on a whole raft of ossified, time-honoured tricks and traits, with a standard sonic template as predictable as any 12 bar blues. Vileswarm conversely sound as though they’re truly trying to find new ways of working together, and attempting to conjure up - the record’s title and cover art imply this is the right term – new experiences. In an odd way, it sounds like the work of alien musicians, who are fully trained in traditional musical forms, but who have never seen human instruments before, and aren’t sure whether the rub them, blow them, or stick a spare tentacle into one of the holes. And if that doesn’t give you a clear idea of whether to investigate this act or run a mile, nothing will.
Thursday, 5 August 2010
Update rape
Afternoon
Everything's a bit busy at the mo, so I'm just checking in with an update. The Truck review is done, but I shan't post it till Nightshift is out. I have sent a review to Music In Oxford, and you can have that once I return from madness next week. I also have another demo to review for them, so I'll try to do that soon. Thereafter, I'll decide what to do with the site. Now the archive is strip mined I'll have to look in to whether I'll make this into a real blog, to allow you the three posts a week average you've been used to, as there shan't be ebnough proper reviews to keep up this frenetic, whirlwind pace (ahem).
What was that? Music In Oxford? Yes, www.oxfordbands.com has changed its name, so go to www.musicinoxford.co.uk for your local music news, reviews and poorly typed rage.
In the meantime, read the old posts, I bet you missed some. Or go outside and do something less boring instead.
Everything's a bit busy at the mo, so I'm just checking in with an update. The Truck review is done, but I shan't post it till Nightshift is out. I have sent a review to Music In Oxford, and you can have that once I return from madness next week. I also have another demo to review for them, so I'll try to do that soon. Thereafter, I'll decide what to do with the site. Now the archive is strip mined I'll have to look in to whether I'll make this into a real blog, to allow you the three posts a week average you've been used to, as there shan't be ebnough proper reviews to keep up this frenetic, whirlwind pace (ahem).
What was that? Music In Oxford? Yes, www.oxfordbands.com has changed its name, so go to www.musicinoxford.co.uk for your local music news, reviews and poorly typed rage.
In the meantime, read the old posts, I bet you missed some. Or go outside and do something less boring instead.
Saturday, 31 July 2010
Cornbury 2010 Sunday Pt 2
The infamous Cornbury rain kept off for the festival, and the feeble little drizzle that did start evaporated in the face of Raghu Dixit’s whirlwind of bouncy positivity. T shirts describe it as “Indo-World folk rock”, and whilst we’re not sure “Indo-World” makes any more sense than “Anglo-Oxonian”, the “folk” bit is fair enough, and the “rock” bit is beyond discussion. Dixit’s voice is keening and powerful enough to knock you back on your seat even as the funky fusion rhythms make you want to get up and dance as though David Gray were a distant memory. The band is fantastic, varying the tone with fizzing violin, snaky bass and Dire Straits guitar. At one point they sound like a carnatic Levellers, and at another they build up a chunky rhythm like a Bollywood Los Lobos, but at the heart of the music is a warmth and exuberance you won’t often find. Normally when we describe an act as “a good festival band” it’s a back-handed compliment, for Raghu Dixit it’s a golden commendation. Simply joyous.
Were we implying earlier that sound engineers are childish? Well, here’s Flash Harry PA mainman and outstanding engineer Tony Jezzard with Reservoir Cats who definitely aren’t children: they play proper grown up blues with big boys’ growly-wowly vocals, clever twiddly-widdly guitar solos and sophisticated lyrics about women with whom they might have had sexy-wexy. Genre assassination aside, they’re actually a good group, having plenty of fun onstage, boasting a reliably sturdy rhythm section and, God help us, some of those wailing guitar solos sound pretty decent. Plus we know that nothing we say will change this band one fraction, and that in itself is worthy of respect.
Folk: is it music by the people, music about the people, or music for the people? For Oxford Folk Festival star booking Seth Lakeman you have to feel it’s the latter two definitions that count, as he is keen to ground each song in real events in his introductions, often celebrating people otherwise off history’s radar, and because his music has a simple, easily apprehended structure. Forthcoming album title track “Hearts And Minds” is a crowd rousing song, but in the sense of “Let’s all believe the same thing”, rather than “Let’s get some cudgels and duff up the ruling classes”. It’s a performance of egalitarian, humanitarian music, spiced with his fluid fiddle playing and outstanding double bass. It wasn’t our favourite show of the weekend, but it did demonstrate that there is plenty of excitement to be found in mainstream music, and that Cornbury’s conservative roster can provide all the elation, surprise and fun as experimental or obscure music. It also reminded us that no music is more boring and enraging as music that is professionally boring and unadventurously enraging, so we’re not complete converts to the Cornbury ethos just yet.
Were we implying earlier that sound engineers are childish? Well, here’s Flash Harry PA mainman and outstanding engineer Tony Jezzard with Reservoir Cats who definitely aren’t children: they play proper grown up blues with big boys’ growly-wowly vocals, clever twiddly-widdly guitar solos and sophisticated lyrics about women with whom they might have had sexy-wexy. Genre assassination aside, they’re actually a good group, having plenty of fun onstage, boasting a reliably sturdy rhythm section and, God help us, some of those wailing guitar solos sound pretty decent. Plus we know that nothing we say will change this band one fraction, and that in itself is worthy of respect.
Folk: is it music by the people, music about the people, or music for the people? For Oxford Folk Festival star booking Seth Lakeman you have to feel it’s the latter two definitions that count, as he is keen to ground each song in real events in his introductions, often celebrating people otherwise off history’s radar, and because his music has a simple, easily apprehended structure. Forthcoming album title track “Hearts And Minds” is a crowd rousing song, but in the sense of “Let’s all believe the same thing”, rather than “Let’s get some cudgels and duff up the ruling classes”. It’s a performance of egalitarian, humanitarian music, spiced with his fluid fiddle playing and outstanding double bass. It wasn’t our favourite show of the weekend, but it did demonstrate that there is plenty of excitement to be found in mainstream music, and that Cornbury’s conservative roster can provide all the elation, surprise and fun as experimental or obscure music. It also reminded us that no music is more boring and enraging as music that is professionally boring and unadventurously enraging, so we’re not complete converts to the Cornbury ethos just yet.
Last Of The Summary Whines
And with this I have no more reviews to post. Maybe it will spur me on to finish the Vileswarm review I've had on my pile for about a month. Review of last week's Truck is looking good (or long, which is the same thing nowadays), but you'll have to wait till Nightshift is out before I post that. However, you can buy this week's Oxford Times and read their scintillating review, which mentions all of four acts, and very nearly comes close to making a critical judgement on one of them; plus they've got a huge snap of Marc West from BBC Oxford grinning like a village idiot disguised as Rusell Brand, which is so much better than a well framed portrait of one of the performers. I aspire to reach that journalistic level one day, once my prentice work is through.
CORNBURY, Cornbury Park, 3-4/7/10
Sonny Liston (FKA Dear Landlord, which was a much better name) won the BBC Oxford Introducing competition to open the Second Stage on Sunday, and worthy winners they were. Their songs are uber-perky folk-indie strums, with lots of vibrant trumpet and literate lyrics about Charles de Gualle, generally sounding a bit like Belle & Sebastian rewrites of “Summer Holiday”, which is a lovely way to start the day. With two great vocalists who can deliver even wordy lyrics convincingly whilst keeping the summery pop melodies afloat, we could be hearing from Sonny Liston again before too long.
Jon Allen maintains our relaxed bouyant mood. He may come from Devon, but his songs all have a laidback pseudo-country singer songwriter waft that we like. To be frank, his songs all sound like Bob Dylan circa Desire, but that will do for now.
The Lucinda Belle Orchestra entice us at first, because they have a harp in a leading role, which is especially welcome as Sonny Liston left theirs behind, but you strictly need more than five people for an orchestra, right? Belle has an excellent voice, but one can ruin the effect by milking it, right? “My Voice & My 45 Strings” is a top tune, but a standard harp actually has 47 strings, right? AOR cafe jazz with a contemporary radio sound is very nice, but we’ve heard it all before, right? So how was the set? Alright.
The Blockheads were always an odd proposition, pub rock passion mixed with punk sneers and funk chops, topped off by a tone deaf romantic/cynical poet obsessed by sex, ethics and Essex. Dury has of course sadly passed on now, but we’re glad the band have chosen to keep the unique vision alive, and if the set was a bit of a chicken-in-a-basket cabaret turn, you can bet that if Ian is looking down on us, he’d hate his memory to be enshrined too formally. Now, getting an impressionist to replace your lost vocalist is a dangerous ploy. It can work – as anyone who saw The Magic Band at The Zodiac can testify – but the cartoon character on the mike for The Blockheads just goes to show how much more there was to Dury’s performance than swearing and glottal stops. It’s a slightly 2D show, that sounds like the aging cast of Grange Hill jamming with Redox, or perhaps the Mighty Boosh hitcher joining Hall & Oates.
That’s the criticisms out of the way. On the plus side every musician on stage is simply astonishing and, what’s more, is still clearly having the time of their life. The band delivers a hits selection, but don’t shy away from original arrangements to keep things fresh, the sax solo on “Clever Trevor” being the greatest musical moment of the festival. Plus, they have a vault of cracking tunes so deep, they make Squeeze look like Milli Vanilli.
We dropped off during Danny & The Champions Of The World, which had more to do with our exhaustion than their music, though it’s still probably not a press cutting for the rehearsal room wall. In fact, we thank them for it, as our impromptu nap meant we missed Reef. We wake to the sounds of the last track by Harper Simon (another from the Taylor Dayne reject list?) on the Nero’s stage, and it sounds like nice jovial shiny drivetime pop, so good luck to her, but Fisherman’s Freinds are the real deal.
They are late middle aged men from Port Isaac who sing a capella shanties. They have some intelligent harmonies, but they aren’t precious about the performance, honking out the songs like nine Cornish vuvuzelas filled with navy rum. This is folk music with big balls and simple melodies (Middle eight? Never heard of one, chum) that cut straight to the heart and force even the most reticent tongues to shout along like eighteenth century street vendors. All this, plus oodles of camp innuendo between songs, what a simply brilliant band. They get a huge response from the healthy crowd, which does the soul good to witness. The surprise find of the festival.
And we had to bloody follow that with Brainchild, whose charmless, brash rock is like a cross between The Towers Of London and Evanescence at a greasy bike rally. There’s a girl singing in a disinfected raunchy style, some “Baker Street” saxophone, and a raddled looking specimen done up like a drunken cross between Alice Cooper and Screaming Lord Sutch at the front. All of them look and sound like they’re from different bands, each of which is equally atrocious. We last two numbers. Later, we return to find the sax player signing autographs for kids, and the front of house mixer telling us they were the best band of the weekend: either this tells us that they got better very quickly, or that you can’t trust engineers and children to choose your music for you.
But our revolt against Brainchild meant we got unexpectedly to see Newton Faulkner, who turns out to be a surprisingly decent showman. He quickly builds up a conversational rapport with the crowd, which is no mean feat on a big stage after a day and half of music, so that the set flashes by. He also has an agile voice, and an impressive array of extended guitar techniques. Pity that we didn’t care for his songs much - we could have sat and listened to him telling jokes and playing covers all afternoon, but his own tunes didn’t grab us. It’s a masterclass for boring acoustic strummers the world around, however: gig is a doing word, after all...
CORNBURY, Cornbury Park, 3-4/7/10
Sonny Liston (FKA Dear Landlord, which was a much better name) won the BBC Oxford Introducing competition to open the Second Stage on Sunday, and worthy winners they were. Their songs are uber-perky folk-indie strums, with lots of vibrant trumpet and literate lyrics about Charles de Gualle, generally sounding a bit like Belle & Sebastian rewrites of “Summer Holiday”, which is a lovely way to start the day. With two great vocalists who can deliver even wordy lyrics convincingly whilst keeping the summery pop melodies afloat, we could be hearing from Sonny Liston again before too long.
Jon Allen maintains our relaxed bouyant mood. He may come from Devon, but his songs all have a laidback pseudo-country singer songwriter waft that we like. To be frank, his songs all sound like Bob Dylan circa Desire, but that will do for now.
The Lucinda Belle Orchestra entice us at first, because they have a harp in a leading role, which is especially welcome as Sonny Liston left theirs behind, but you strictly need more than five people for an orchestra, right? Belle has an excellent voice, but one can ruin the effect by milking it, right? “My Voice & My 45 Strings” is a top tune, but a standard harp actually has 47 strings, right? AOR cafe jazz with a contemporary radio sound is very nice, but we’ve heard it all before, right? So how was the set? Alright.
The Blockheads were always an odd proposition, pub rock passion mixed with punk sneers and funk chops, topped off by a tone deaf romantic/cynical poet obsessed by sex, ethics and Essex. Dury has of course sadly passed on now, but we’re glad the band have chosen to keep the unique vision alive, and if the set was a bit of a chicken-in-a-basket cabaret turn, you can bet that if Ian is looking down on us, he’d hate his memory to be enshrined too formally. Now, getting an impressionist to replace your lost vocalist is a dangerous ploy. It can work – as anyone who saw The Magic Band at The Zodiac can testify – but the cartoon character on the mike for The Blockheads just goes to show how much more there was to Dury’s performance than swearing and glottal stops. It’s a slightly 2D show, that sounds like the aging cast of Grange Hill jamming with Redox, or perhaps the Mighty Boosh hitcher joining Hall & Oates.
That’s the criticisms out of the way. On the plus side every musician on stage is simply astonishing and, what’s more, is still clearly having the time of their life. The band delivers a hits selection, but don’t shy away from original arrangements to keep things fresh, the sax solo on “Clever Trevor” being the greatest musical moment of the festival. Plus, they have a vault of cracking tunes so deep, they make Squeeze look like Milli Vanilli.
We dropped off during Danny & The Champions Of The World, which had more to do with our exhaustion than their music, though it’s still probably not a press cutting for the rehearsal room wall. In fact, we thank them for it, as our impromptu nap meant we missed Reef. We wake to the sounds of the last track by Harper Simon (another from the Taylor Dayne reject list?) on the Nero’s stage, and it sounds like nice jovial shiny drivetime pop, so good luck to her, but Fisherman’s Freinds are the real deal.
They are late middle aged men from Port Isaac who sing a capella shanties. They have some intelligent harmonies, but they aren’t precious about the performance, honking out the songs like nine Cornish vuvuzelas filled with navy rum. This is folk music with big balls and simple melodies (Middle eight? Never heard of one, chum) that cut straight to the heart and force even the most reticent tongues to shout along like eighteenth century street vendors. All this, plus oodles of camp innuendo between songs, what a simply brilliant band. They get a huge response from the healthy crowd, which does the soul good to witness. The surprise find of the festival.
And we had to bloody follow that with Brainchild, whose charmless, brash rock is like a cross between The Towers Of London and Evanescence at a greasy bike rally. There’s a girl singing in a disinfected raunchy style, some “Baker Street” saxophone, and a raddled looking specimen done up like a drunken cross between Alice Cooper and Screaming Lord Sutch at the front. All of them look and sound like they’re from different bands, each of which is equally atrocious. We last two numbers. Later, we return to find the sax player signing autographs for kids, and the front of house mixer telling us they were the best band of the weekend: either this tells us that they got better very quickly, or that you can’t trust engineers and children to choose your music for you.
But our revolt against Brainchild meant we got unexpectedly to see Newton Faulkner, who turns out to be a surprisingly decent showman. He quickly builds up a conversational rapport with the crowd, which is no mean feat on a big stage after a day and half of music, so that the set flashes by. He also has an agile voice, and an impressive array of extended guitar techniques. Pity that we didn’t care for his songs much - we could have sat and listened to him telling jokes and playing covers all afternoon, but his own tunes didn’t grab us. It’s a masterclass for boring acoustic strummers the world around, however: gig is a doing word, after all...
Thursday, 29 July 2010
Cornbury 2010 - Saturday Pt 2
The employees at the adjacent Nero’s coffee tent seem to have been getting high off their own supply, dancing manically behind the counter to Staton’s set, so we stay to see what their tiny stage can offer. Edinburgh boy Alex Cornish has some Damien Rice style tunes and is backed by a useful trio. He’s just as good as some of the people on the big stages. Obviously there are two ways you could take that...
At a festival with a slightly more mature demographic, over 50% of those watching Ben Montague are under 20. Poshstock is all very well, but a festival’s not complete under you’ve seen some drunk kids (though we were less forgiving when they kept us awake all night). Anyway, what drew the youngsters to his rather likable Radio 2 pop, has he been on Hollyoaks or something? Whatever the story, he has a warm voice, and the band make a decent fist of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” alongside their own sprightly tunes. As the girls swoon over his tasty looks and the adults tap along to his decent acoustic everyman rock, it’s like the second coming of Craig McLachlan & Check 1-2.
After Montague has put a spring in our step, Imelda May knocks us off our feet. Her band play a turbo-rockabilly, all slapped double bass, Duane Eddy guitar, scorching trumpet and battered tambourine, over which May’s feisty Dublin voice wails with a sassy, gospel passion. The songs are relatively generic, but played with firy conviction, and even “I’m a creepy, sneaky freak” can sound like Byron if you sing it as viscerally as Imelda May does.
After these two, all Riverside have to do is keep the party going. And they give us David Gray. That’s like having ten minutes to score a hat trick, and bringing on Heskey. His set is just as tedious as you’d expect, and he doesn’t even interest us by being particularly awful. He does that “Babylon” one. He does that one that sounds like that other one. He does some we know and some we wish we didn’t. Then he does several million more. Everybody at Cornbury is watching this, or has had the sense to get out of the arena, so we have the odd experience of visiting a deserted toilet block at a crowded festival. Turns out that taking an echoey piss in an empty trailer housing 22 well used urinals is just like watching a David Gray gig.
At a festival with a slightly more mature demographic, over 50% of those watching Ben Montague are under 20. Poshstock is all very well, but a festival’s not complete under you’ve seen some drunk kids (though we were less forgiving when they kept us awake all night). Anyway, what drew the youngsters to his rather likable Radio 2 pop, has he been on Hollyoaks or something? Whatever the story, he has a warm voice, and the band make a decent fist of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” alongside their own sprightly tunes. As the girls swoon over his tasty looks and the adults tap along to his decent acoustic everyman rock, it’s like the second coming of Craig McLachlan & Check 1-2.
After Montague has put a spring in our step, Imelda May knocks us off our feet. Her band play a turbo-rockabilly, all slapped double bass, Duane Eddy guitar, scorching trumpet and battered tambourine, over which May’s feisty Dublin voice wails with a sassy, gospel passion. The songs are relatively generic, but played with firy conviction, and even “I’m a creepy, sneaky freak” can sound like Byron if you sing it as viscerally as Imelda May does.
After these two, all Riverside have to do is keep the party going. And they give us David Gray. That’s like having ten minutes to score a hat trick, and bringing on Heskey. His set is just as tedious as you’d expect, and he doesn’t even interest us by being particularly awful. He does that “Babylon” one. He does that one that sounds like that other one. He does some we know and some we wish we didn’t. Then he does several million more. Everybody at Cornbury is watching this, or has had the sense to get out of the arena, so we have the odd experience of visiting a deserted toilet block at a crowded festival. Turns out that taking an echoey piss in an empty trailer housing 22 well used urinals is just like watching a David Gray gig.
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