THE SHAODOW KNWS

I'm listening to Public Enemy at the moment, they popped up on a compilation I have on. I always forget just how great they are. Fittingly, here's a hip hop review, albeit one that doesn't sound like "Don't Believe The Hype".

See you later, silly rabbits.


MR SHAODOW FEAT. GHETTS – GET STRONGER (Download single)


He may not be the most prolific of Oxford-connected musicians, but Mr ShaoDow has got to be up there with the hardest working. On any given weekend you’ll most likely find him playing a gig in some small provincial town, or traversing the length and breadth of the nation to sell his CDs on the streets. Perhaps our image of the dedicated performer in the 21st century isn’t of somebody practising six hours a day, or playing three hour marathon sets, but of someone spending huge chunks of their day online, updating statuses and emailing the frighteningly diasporic contemporary music media. Depressing? Maybe, but then again ShaoDow is getting his work heard all over the show, and what’s more, it’s being done 100% on his own terms.

Fittingly, this new single is a paean to positivity and effort: “Knock me down, I get stronger”, warns ShaoDow, painting himself as a sort of hip hop cross between Obi Wan Kenobi and a weeble. Can’t argue with that philosophy. Musically “Get Stronger” is a satisfyingly heavy, juddering whirr of a track, a dubstep version of an aging VW trying to start on a cold morning, and ShaoDow’s delivery is his most rugged yet to appear on record, which is fitting as his style has been slowly morphing from the cabaret one liners of old to a fast, intense, head down chaingun delivery that’s something akin to Twista raised on British club music (ShaoDow may have criticised the culture in the past, but the B side here, “Stay Away” owes a fair bit to grime) . We might miss the incisive humour of “Watch Out” or “R U Stoopid?!”, or the joyous madness of “Cockney Thug” in this record, but these are definitely ShaoDow’s most mature and well-honed bars, there’s not an ounce of spare flesh on the lyrics, and we’re suitably impressed by a sequence that rhymes “calibre”, “Africa”, “mafia” and the excellently ballsy “I grab fear by the trachea”. Ghetts offers a little respite with a more relaxed, thoughtful style that recalls previous ShaoDow collaborator LeeN, albeit with a slightly straighter face.

This is an excellent release, and one that may well propel ShaoDow on to the next step in his career. What we hope to see next is some recordings that marry this sleek professionalism with his irrepressible character and originality, but until then this single comes highly recommended. We must admit, however, that we don’t care for “Stay Away”, which not only has an annoyingly nasal sub-Albarn refrain, but also appears to boast some unreconstructed “my Dad’s bigger than your Dad” lyrics, which is the sort of thing ShaoDow normally avoids.

What’s that? We shouldn’t end the review on a negative point? That’s OK, ShaoDow doesn’t mind: whatever doesn’t kill him makes him stronger.

Daisy Bones (Of Dead Saints, Presumably)

I was looking over the posts yesterday, and the number of times I introduce a piece by noting how ill I feel is concerning. Today, just so you know, I feel fine. This gig did its best to alter that, of course...

RELIK/ COWBOY RACER/ BREATHING LIGHT/ BROWNIAN MOTION, Daisy Rodgers, Jericho, 7/5/11


“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it”.

Groucho’s words ring true as we leave the Jericho after as much of Relik as we can handle. Daisy Rodgers promotions have been an excellent addition to the Oxford scene for the past couple of years, running well thought out, friendly nights, with lots of character (consider the dubiously named Rodd Of Hotness game, which allows advance ticket buyers to vote for a cover version to be performed on the night). The nights are also incredible successes – whilst many promoters of unsigned bands are found hoping for a turnout in double figures, the only trouble Daisy Rodgers’ door staff has is working out whether they have time to nip to the loo at some point in the steady stream of customers. But, whilst we have only support for the Daisy experience, this particular gig was something of a damp squib.

The depressing thing for us about the last election was not necessarily that the result wasn’t what we had hoped for, but the fact that so many people didn’t bother to vote (let’s not even start discussions on the referendum). Staffordshire duo Brownian Motion evoke a similar feeling: their dramatic, rootsy flurries, pitched somewhere between Counting Crows and Sheryl Crow aren’t really for us, but they truly deserve a better reception than 95% of the Jericho gives them, not so much talking through their set, as howling and whooping like chimps on a rollercoaster. The odd, wistful Cowboy Junkies moment in Brownian Motion’s set are immediately lost in the sea of babble, which is a pity as this is their strongest element.

Breathing Light’s first number has a turn of the 90s, polished goth feel to it, the unhurried, melodic female vocals and lightly scuffed guitar and keyboards instantly bringing to mind Curve, Lush, or even the first Cranberries LP. They’re pretty good at it, but the second number reveals a stronger influence: Portishead. “I Remember” is pretty much “Sour Times” without the chorus, and their Hotness vote-winning cover is “Roads”. They do a decent enough job of aping the introspective Bristolians, and it certainly suits the pellucid vocals, but they don’t really have the gravitas in the rhythm section to pull it off, and the set works best when they bring in a brighter, neo-shoegaze sound that reminds us a little of Tsunami (the US ethereal pop band, not Mark Cobb’s local rockers). It’s a highly promising set from a band who could do with working out what their own voice sounds like.

Cowboy Racer is the new project of Salad’s Marijne Van Der Vlugt. There are some other, session muso types onstage, but it’s Marijne most people have come to see, and it is she whom we find endlessly infuriating. Why does she drop into husky whispers and kooky chirrups mid-song, whilst gesticulating oddly, is it supposed to be sexily kittenish? Why does she suddenly leap on the spot, wild-eyed like TV-AM’s Mad Lizzie, are we supposed to feel swept up in euphoria?

Van Der Vlugt has a pleasant voice, but it’s a bit too thin to keep the interest alive in songs that sound like a toned down Transvision Vamp with electronics from the Byker Grove incidental music library. “R U Receiving Me?” is the best track, with unabashed Tomorrow’s World keyboards and some robotic disco-Kraftrwerk vocals, but even this melding of Yello and Goldfrapp isn’t as convincing as it should be: like the rest of the set, it feels undercooked and presented with a whiff of desperation. It takes them three tries to get through set-closer “Yellow Horse”, even though it sounds like a seven year old improvising over a Megadrive game – again, how can that end up sounding boring? Of course, there are middle-aged men around the stage staring intently throughout and filming the gig for their archives – one guy even has a smart phone in either hand. The technology has changed since they used to watch Salad, but sadly the music is equally slight and unsatisfying.

Relik don’t do much for us, but they are at least generic, not enraging. Their big-boned songs seem designed for fists in the air rock solidarity, taking a blueprint from The Foo Fighters and adding a little bit of Placebo, and we suppose they manage it well enough, keeping the sizable crowd entertained. If you like blocky, unsubtle clomps that sound like The Stereophonics strained through a giant tissue, then Relik will probably do the trick. Also a good choice if you like the idea of gigs (you know, drinking lots of expensive beer, talking through the supports and then standing in a big huddle feeling the same uncomplex pleasure of togetherness), but tend to find concerts in Oxford a bit frightening or confusing. Actually, Relik are good band for people who find the Daily Star crossword frightening and confusing. As Groucho nearly said: A child of five could understand Relik; send someone to fetch a child of five.

Beatific International

I'm listening to a full length CD of radio jingles from Coldseal Windows. I should stay out of charity shops.

THE KILL CITY SAINTS/ HOT HOOVES/ ZEM/ RAISING HARLEY, It’s All About The Music, The Bully, 14/4/11

The difference between most US sit coms and their British counterparts is the writers. In this country we have shows penned by a single author, probably in a four week blast in some provincial town, fuelled by tinned soup and Cash In The Attic, whereas American shows are thrashed out by huge rosters of writers, sat round a big glass table somewhere vastly important. It’s why an episode of Friends may have rafts of clever lines, but can feel distant, disconnected and arid. We’re reminded of this by Raising Harley, not only because he plays the theme to Scrubs (turns out after those eight bars it gets quite dull, and you really miss the theremin), but because his amiable busking is promising, but needs a little more character to snag our attention.

Similarly, new trio Zem have a lovely chunky rhythm section – despite injuries – but the chap strumming and moaning at the front is drabness personified. Seriously, it’s like someone won a competition. The arrangement of Paul Simon’s “Richard Cory” is a strong start, but again anonymity is their worst crime. Still, it all pales compared to crass Southern fried rockers Kill City Saints, a band so generically dire it looks like they’ve been created by committee to supply “Blues Rock Solutions”. The truly hideous renegade skull backdrop, lyrics about midnight trains, and adept but charmless guitar solos indicate a band with a huge taste deficit; the fact the singer is swigging vodka and Dr Pepper only confirms suspicions.

And somewhere in this sea of Not Quite Finished and Hideously Ill Conceived fall Hot Hooves, a band featuring members of Oxford favourites ATL and Talulah Gosh, bursting with approachable character and short on self-consciousness or pretension. Their melodic new wave thrives on taut concise structures, but if that suggests Wire they’re as much Eddie & The Hot Rods. The music’s thumping economy comes balanced by an wry airiness (Sample lyric: “My telekinesis/ Is falling to pieces”) whether it’s delivered in Pete Momtchiloff’s spasmodic mumble or with Bash Street cheekiness by Mac. At points Hot Hooves remind us of bands as disparate as The Auteurs and Ten Benson, but they doubtless have better, more obscure bands influencing them. Hell, they were probably in them.

The Sharron Nights

Morning, morning, Jameson here.

No, it's not, it's me. And it's lunchtime. Sorry, as soon as I started typing, Derek Jameson popped into my head, how unpleasant.

Anyway, here's a review. To be honest, this is a deadline day review, and I think it reads like it. Sorry about that, Nightshift and Kraus deserve more, to be frank. But I'm a busy and/or lazy man, what are you going to do?


SHARRON KRAUS – THE WOODY NIGHTSHADE (Strange Attractors Audio House)


The sleevenotes to this new CD are a paean to the album format, eroded and endangered in our MP3 playlist era. We couldn’t agree more, but, like those scientists who try to explain how miniscule a fraction of the universe’s lifespan human beings have existed in, we would expect a folk singer to be unconcerned with a format that has been around for only fifty odd years, a tiny fragment of the history of song.

But this is definitely an LP, not a random selection of songs, and it’s a record with a constant, misty atmosphere. Kraus’ voice high and delightfully reedy, but it lends itself more to ghostly melody than cracking out a rousing folk narrative: her allusive singing and vaguely evocative lyrics are more Bert Jansch than Norma Waterson. There are even hints of PJ Harvey’s recent recordings. Musically it’s ethereal and unsettling too, from the keening feedback that opens the album to the woozily plucked strings on “Two Brothers” that sound like a weary traveller pushing through a dense forest: it’s like the sound a night at the Twin Peaks Folk Club. All drums on the record are reverbed and stately like the faded memory of percussion, the washed out toms of the title track a resigned, slow walk to the gallows (roll over, Berlioz).

Individually these songs may not be startling, and it’s certain that Kraus couldn’t challenge Spiers & Boden for the Oxford oral tradition trophy, but The Woody Nightshade is a gorgeous, immersive listen, that you want to start again as soon as it’s finished...which is about the best definition of a good album we can think of.

Dawn An Hour Later

Been enjoying a lot of 2nd hand classical vinyl recently. Especially good are multi-disc sets, Karajan doing Brahms' German Requiem is going on the deck later. One thing troubles me, though. Why - why in the name of fucking bastard hell - do so many classical boxsets split the sides between discs? I mean, you might get two records, the first fo which has side 1 & 4, and the other side 2 & 3. Seriously, how does that make even the tiniest whiff of sense to anybody?

Sometimes I think that, if I ever invented a time machine, I'd never use it, because people in the past were STUPID.


DAWN PENN/ JAMATONE, Skylarkin’ Soundsystem, Cellar, 3/3/11


The night is running just shy of an hour late. “But that’s all the better, you get to see the support”, says our host Aidan “Sky-” Larkin. Yeah, brilliant, hooray – less exciting for those of us who actually turned up on time, of course. And doubly depressing when the support aren’t actually that good. Their chunky, approachable roots sound is solid and melodic, something like a supermarket brand Black Uhuru, but Jamatone don’t ever quite achieve the cohesion of a good reggae band. They spend most of the gig standing on the edge of the groove, peering in. The vocalist keeps our interest, with a warm, unhurried style and a stage presence with plenty of character - which is good as the hackneyed lyrics can’t be said to have any – which is all good until half way through the set when he cedes the mike to a younger model. The new singer has a staccato style that is an interesting contrast, but it grates awkwardly against the band’s rhythms, which is ironic as the band actually improve noticeably for the last couple of tracks; perhaps adding a little dancehall phrasing to a straight pop reggae style might work, but as it is he just sounds like a clumsy version of Eagle Eye Cherry.

Compare Dawn Penn’s delivery. Within seconds of climbing on stage, she reveals a mastery of phrasing that makes every line matter, and gives every word weight. Each tiny portamento at the start of a phrase, every subtle vibrato at the end make the songs sound natural and conversational, as so many great pop songs should be. Penn’s voice, as befits a woman nearing 60, doesn’t have the sweet clarity of her early rocksteady recordings, but it has a deeper timbre and air of experience that is, if anything superior, reminding us oddly of Johnny Cash. The Man In Black is also a good reference point for Penn’s ability to recreate a song, and give a trite ditty an air of gravitas and richness you’d never expect was there. It took us a good few bars to realise that one naggingly familiar tune wasn’t a soul classic, but All Saints’ “Never Ever”! Of course, a healthy attitude to found material is one of the pillars of Jamaican music, from the endless and inventive versioning of rhythms to the unpretentious approach to melody that says that any track is worth covering if it has a tune that can be used, but Penn is a master of the art.

In case this sounds impressive, but somewhat honed, like a seasoned cabaret performer, we must also note the wonderful spontaneity of the gig. Second to Penn’s easy melodic sense is her understanding of musical space. She twists and elongates lines as the whim takes her, but is also content to drop the vocal for bars at a time, remixing the songs from the inside. If you thought that late Johnny Cash was a weird reference point, then you’d better sit down before we tell you that technique somewhat recalls latter day Mark E Smith (although we are certain that Dawn would be a better person to have a drink with). When she does “You Don’t Love Me” as the inevitable closing track, we are stunned by the liberties she takes with it, improvising lines and melodies, giggling and narrating ad hoc sections, as if it’s the first time she’s ever sung the song. Pretty audacious when you consider that it’s the one piece half the audience has specifically come to hear. We’ve seen some of Jamaican music’s greats play live – most, it must be said, at Skylarkin’ events – but this is the best, an effect heightened by the intimate atmosphere, which stops the music slipping into empty gestures (although the guitarist does smuggler in some overwrought Dire Straits solos whenever Penn’s back is turned). Why wasn’t this gig sold out ten times over? Has nobody heard of Dawn Penn? Wake the town and tell the people!

Interesting Developments

Vaughan Williams is ace. That is all I have to say today. Ace.


FIXERS – IRON DEER DREAM 7” (Young & Lost)


Jack Goldstein from Fixers claims that he found the title “Iron Deer Dream” in a book about Sylvia Plath, was unable to discover what it might mean, and subsequently found he couldn’t locate the passage again. It’s not essential, but it helps to suspend your disbelief and imagine that a suicidal poet’s biog sent an esoteric message to the band, it chimes well with their self-professed spirituality, and it certainly goes with the single’s cover, a tye-die fractal Masonic mystery that inhabits that wonderful space between beautiful and truly hideous.

It’s also useful if you manage some other mental dislocations. It’s handy to forget Fixers’ clumsy involvement with Blessing Force, a movement nobody can actually define, except to the extent that Fixers think they’re not in it anymore, and it sort of helps to try not to think about the extent to which the single sounds like latter day Animal Collective. Because it does. A lot. Which is fine, because not only have the Collective made some wonderful records, but their sound was only a rough collage of borrowed tricks anyway. In actual fact, “Iron Deer Dream” is better than Animal Collective’s recent recordings, although probably not quite on a par with their best work. Finally, in your Fixers reception yoga meditation, endeavour to ignore the way the track fits in with the already stumbling Hypnagogic Pop movement. Because if you start thinking about any of these things, you’ll dismiss Fixers as a zeitgeist scavenging trend parasite, and fail to notice just how brilliant a band they are.

From the nagging organ that sounds like Steve Reich arranging “California Girls”, “Iron Deer Dream” is a lovely little song, and may be Oxford’s first glimpse of summer. In truth, it’s barely song at all, it’s a cycling fade-out from a half-recalled childhood radio broadcast (as the references to the Berlin Wall seem to confirm). Over and over the melodic fragments turn, and immersing yourself in the song feels simultaneously like riding a powerful swell of sound, and drifting safely in amniotic fluid. If you could surf in a hammock, “Iron Deer Dram” would be your soundtrack.

Ironically, the song actually has its own little outro, and to be frank it bows somewhat overly deferentially at the altar of the Beach Boys (and we say this as proper Wilson worshippers ourselves). Our other issue is that the vocals are slightly too yearning, and there seems to be too much energy going into expressing barely decipherable lyrics that don’t appear to mean much. Perhaps they’re casting a spell. We wouldn’t put it past them.

“Iron Deer Dream” is Fixers’ calling card, and a fine one it makes. However, glorious listening experience though it is, it actually adheres slightly too much to their own template, a template that live sets indicate they may already be growing out of. If absolutely pushed we shall admit that we prefer the B side, “Egyptn Aberration CULT”, a tip of the hat to Detroit techno legends Drexciya, who don’t get nearly enough recognition (slightly confusing tributes from Turner Prize nominees notwithstanding), that also reminds us of the wonderful Model 500. The crisp handclaps are just as hypnotic as “Iron Deer Dream”’s reverby melodies, and less woozily dizzying. It reminds us of that bit in The Bell Jar that says “went batshit at a rave to ‘Strings Of Life’”...or did we imagine that?

Bayou Chemistry

Here's my review from the latest Nightshift, which is fresh on the shelves this weekend. I'm keeping my reviews pretty much down to 2 or so a month at the moment, as I have another writing project on the go. Probably not something for these pages, but it's shaping up quite well so far. Nice to be kept busy. Pissing it down out there, think I'll stay in my cosy study for a while.


THE BAYOU BROTHERS, The Famous Monday Blues, Bullingdon Arms, 7/2/11


We’ve seen some outstanding performances at The Famous Monday Blues over the years, along with some of the worst gigs ever. In the former category, some spotless musicians have treated the blues form as a lingua franca, using it to communicate ideas and emotions of great subtlety with a deft touch and original variations; in the latter, we find hordes of denim zombies ploughing through the same clunky rhythms, the same threadbare lyrics and the same crass wailing axe solos. With bad blues guitarists, a few simple things are repeated over and over, and quality is judged solely on how swiftly they do so. Is this art, or a game of bloody Tetris?

Thankfully, tonight these po-faced pentatonic widdlers are far away, as a righteous zydeco party is whipped up by The Bayou Brothers, a Louisiana Cajun band from San Diego (which is a little like a band from County Armagh called The Bleedin’ Bow Bell Cockneys, but never mind). Cajun music is a rough melange of black blues and French song, typified by fluent accordion passages and clattering rhythms played on metal washboards, and is one of those genres that always works so long as it’s played with enough conviction. And despite this being a Monday night with an average crowd that’s slow to thaw, the Bayou Brothers certainly can’t be criticised for a lack of energy, grinning their way through two invigorating sets, and regularly doling out spare washboards to audience members of varying rhythmic ability.

At their best the band’s evident enjoyment of the music is infectious, and their openness to random punters’ interventions reveals a relaxed unpretentiousness that makes us feel like we’re at a gig in some deep South commune. On the reverse, the band sadly has a taste in cheesy ersatz gestures, from the so-called “squeezebox” which is really a disguised Roland keyboard that needs nary a squeeze (basically the much maligned keytar resurrected for folkies), to the percussionist in the golden blouse who smiles manically throughout in a way that nobody does outside Disneyland without severe medication. Her “name our cute ‘gator” competition just about tips us over the edge. Do they have Butlins in California?

A straight cover of Ray Charles’ “Hallelujah I Love Her So” is generic, and perhaps without the zydeco sprit the band is no great shakes. But then again, who cares? For tonight, all too rarely at a blues gig, we’re not here to polish the traditions or venerate technical musos, we’re here to dance, drink and get lost in the clockwork hoedown of washboard blues...and on a cold Monday within the Bully’s ugly breezeblocks, a little escapism is no bad thing.