Improv/Comedy

This was about the most fun a review has been to write since some of the old Truck shakedowns.  I'm amused that it requires specific knowledge of two quite different, but equally obscure, cultural byways - it's a bit like a sketch I wrote the other day which hinged on the listener knowing about both Borges's influential literary techniques and Lennie Bennet's Lucky Ladders.  Never to be performed, I fear.

THE BOHMAN BROTHERS, Oxford Improvisers, Old Fire Station,15/1/19

There’s a doctorate to be written about the crossover between leftfield comedy and improvised music.  There are high profile fans, of course – Stewart Lee got air time for an improv duo through his Comedy Vehicle series, as well as facing the Celebrity Mastermind third degree on avant-guitar trailblazer Derek Bailey, whilst Vic Reeves snuck an Evan Parker solo onto a top 20 album (“Pack it in, Parker!”) – but there is also a partly shared outlook.  Perhaps it’s because both stand-ups and improvisers are often relegated to the sort of pub corners and dysfunctional function rooms that the lowliest of toilet venue rockers would sneer at, perhaps it’s that both art forms always make the most sense in an intimate live environment, or perhaps it’s just that in both cases the unexpected is rarely regretted or ignored, but embraced and incorporated into the show. 

The Bohman Brothers combine the absurdity of the oddest comedy with the most dadafiedimprov.  They have the classic comic double act dynamic, one uptight and starchy in his collar and tie, the other relaxed and wayward in a potting shed sweater.  It’s Morecambe and Wise, Bert and Ernie, ego and id.  An introduction in which welcoming platitudes are haltingly and exhaustingly mumbled over a recording of car crashes has the surreal mundanity of vintage Ted Chippington, a feeling bolstered by the fact that the duo make their close-miked scrapes and percussive skitters, not from catgut and drumskin, but from rubber bands, classroom geometry sets and a couple of fetching old-school toast racks. 

We’ve sat through self-conscious art music trying not to laugh before now, so it’s wonderful tonight to see guffaws invited with such deadpan hilarity, and cut-up texts - think Burroughs meets Mark E Smith meets spam emails - are delivered impeccably: after all, timing is a key concept in both music and comedy, and The Bohman Brothers’ strange, yet strangely ordinary, performance embodies both.  Coincidence, perhaps, but we are overjoyed that the final word enunciated, in a hilarious exchange of contrasting extracts from an old guide to tree frogs and a medical Mills & Boon novel is “mother-in-law”.  Fluxus?  They’ve only just met us!

Drinka Pinta Milk Affray

I'm listening to brass band music.  Why aren't you?

Happy Christmas, etc.

FIGHTMILK/ SUGGESTED FRIENDS/ PET SEMATARY, All Tamara’s Parties, 6/12/18

Although, if she ever gets the success she deserves, it will doubtless be with a full band in tow, we always enjoy Gaby-Elise Monaghan most in a stripped back format, such as her Pet Sematary project.  Tonight she is joined by a guitarist who bolsters her bewitching bluesghoul wails with picked notes enshrouded in misty reverb, or sheets of disquieting ambient noise, creating textures that recall Daniel Lanois or Angelo Badalamenti, but it’s the voice that commands your attention, sometimes frail and intimate, like Jeff Buckley without one eye constantly on the mirror, and sometimes sweeping epically on tumescent waves of sweet bleakness. 

Suggested Friends prove that, when it comes to pop music, a tight, sprightly band will always win out over mere good taste.  They bombard us with a string of buzzing punked up versions of songs that would fit neatly into some hideous drive time AM radio show, in which Split Enz rub shoulderpads with late 80s Fleetwood Mac, and Counting Crows lend some safely grizzled guitar licks to the bombast of post-reggae Police.  But, as if to prove that the magic comes from the chef not the recipe, they play with such wonderfully taut abandon – especially the drummer, who just looks ecstatic to be alive and allowed to it stuff - it is impossible not to find the whole experience intoxicating.  New song “Turtle Taxi” was written two days ago, and rehearsed once, but sounds like the band have been playing it all their lives.  It also sounds like Men At Work.  Glorious.  And slightly awful.  But mostly glorious.

We’re not often fond of the term frontperson, as most bands are a collaborative effort, and the one with the mic is no more important than the one with the sticks, but sometimes you see an act where the singer is so mesmerising, you couldn’t pick the rest of the musicians out of a police line-up ten minutes after the gig.  Lily from Fightmilk is just such a performer, a fizzing bomb of guitar-wrangling and yelping, her slightly prissy indie outfit making us think of a grown up version of Hermione Granger, or Rebecca and Enid from Ghost World, or perhaps even Wednesday Addams, mixing fearsome intelligence with astringent superciliousness, dishing out lyrical putdowns to ex-partners like a laconic teacher (and her request for those who want an LP to “see me afterwards” is just too perfect). Musically it’s all decent enough, a melange of the less theatrical end of the Britpop spectrum and Johnny Foreigner’s playground scrap pop, and although we’re hard pressed to recall much about the songs, we know we’ve witnessed the sort of unforced star quality that can only truly be experienced in a small live music venue.    

Lego Team

See how many of the hidden Fall references you can spot, kids.

BRIX & THE EXTRICATED, Future Perfect, Bully, 16/11/18

Given The Fall’s influence, and vast alumni roll, the surprising thing is not that Brix & The Extricated formed, but that it hadn’t happened before. Scanlon & The Shift-workers, perhaps? Elena & The Remainderers?  Granny & The Bongos?  What marks The Extricated out from the slew of spurious heritage acts built around Alvin Stardust’s bassist or what have you, is that a checking their track records shows that 80% of the band were in The Fall and contributed to some of their best-known work (although not all at the same time), and that the majority of their two albums, and of tonight’s set, is original material written over the last couple of years.  Plus, since the band’s 2017 visit to The Cellar they have developed a more cogent, bolder presence, sonically and visually, evident from the outset, with a musique concrete intro tape during which Brix is led to the stage to deliver the first number blindfolded.

From the moment this is torn off, however, Brix is a tiny tornado on stage, covered in glitter and beads, and wielding a feather-bedecked radio mike like a voodoo fetish, prodding, joshing – and even, at one point, licking – her bandmates onwards in a flurry of cracking tunes that meld the melodic simplicity of Jonathan Richman with the fake leather fun of Suzi Quatro, around pulsating dirt-kraut rhythms (don’t forget this band features the greatest non-ranting Fall member ever, bassist Steve Hanley, along with his brother Paul behind the kit) and, surprisingly, some atonal Sonic Youth workouts.   This hen night shaman, telling wild-eyed tales of sex, spirituality and self-help makes us realise just how few middle-aged women there are expressing themselves in rock music, and how sad it is that tonight’s audience is mostly made up of The League of Bald-Headed Men.  An act like this deserves to be inspiring youngsters on how to make the best bad decisions, as loudly as possible, because they sure don’t play like greying veterans (although Brix is definitely too old to get away with breathless guff about finding the soul’s boundaries whilst wandering round India).  There are old fans who won’t forgive The Extricated for taking The Fall’s mysterious, inscrutable music and turning it into a glossy glam racket, and there are blinkered fools who refuse to punch the card of a 56 year old woman dressing up, rocking out and begging her lover to “hammer me to the ground” whilst swearing like a docker; fine, they can stay in moping, we’ll be getting down with the Big Prinzess. 

Crumbs! Another Review!

Here's my latest.  I don wonder whether The Library will win the coveted Most Visited Venue Award at the end of 2018; the 'Sheaf being shut for a month might topple it from its perch.

Oh, and speaking of such things, go pledge some money in the Save The Cellar campaign, I sure as hell have: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/cellar-forever

TABLE SCRAPS/ GHOST OF THE AVALANCHE/ GRUB, Paladin Promotions, Library, 11/10/18

Jazz, according to the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, is “delicious hot, disgusting cold”. There’s some truth in this gastronomusical equivalency, but some foods – a cheese-laden pizza, say – are delicious hot and disgusting, yet impossibly, guiltily alluring, cold.  And, a set by Grub is like gorging on a congealed quattro formaggio, licking the greasy cardboard box, and scratching your backside with the tiny white tripod out of the middle: dirty and satisfying, all at once.  Their music is basic, stodgy, Stoogey rocking, with just enough grunge-punk sneer in the vocals to stop it getting too serious (though,  band who cover the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme will never be Leonard Cohen, we guess).  At its best their music is galvanised molasses, thick and electrifying, and at its worst it’s just dumb, loud riffs.  Which is a pretty good, as worsts go, you have to admit.

Brevity is the arse’ole of punk wit, but sometimes the nasty, brutish and short approach to songwriting can wear over the course of a gig.  Bath’s bass and drums duo Ghost of the Avalanche are a dab hand at constructing heavy punk munitions that fly hell for leather (with extra leather) in a way that resembles a cross between Motorhead and our own lamented thrashferrets Winnebago Deal, but, after a clutch of micro-songs we just want one of those pummelling basslines and yelps to go somewhere unexpected, fun though they are. About two-thirds into the set a slower stop-start piece, like the work of a wonky sozzled Stranglers, is a boon, and sets off the following return to headlong rock scampers all the more pleasing.

Scuzz-psych warriors Table Scraps don’t have any issues with songs being too short, and tonight the longer those grooves get unspooled, the better.  Their blueprint is a straightforward amalgam of garage grease and psychedelic repetition, something like Wooden Shjips with bonus vocal delay and distortion. One track sums it up by sounding rather like “I Wanna Be You Dog”...but only if the dog was on a badass mescaline trip, thought it was its own stick and tried to fetch itself.  Another tune reveals a Cobain-like mix of wholesomeness and depravity, with the refrain “Now you clean your teeth” (possibly – we mentioned the distortion and delay, right?).   It’s all great, until the last track, which is great squared, an unstoppable juggernaut that drops the cool contemporary clothes and dives straight into being Hawkwind.  For about ten minutes.   “For sale: silver machine.  One careful owner.  Runs like a dream.  Only drawback, may never stop”.

    

Average Outcomes

Nobody reads these bits.

MEANS OF PRODUCTION – THE DEPTHS (no label)

Means of Production’s first two EPs are all steady forward propulsion and glaring intensity, like taking Model 500’s night drive down an endless underpass on a hospital gurney, staring up at the strip lights.  On.  Off.  On .  Off.  “The Depths” is different, having a greater feeling of space, with the individual notes as discrete events, tiny self-contained dots of digital sound, which hover around you like a pointillist mist.  The vocals are also a development, Tim Day having put aside the wounded elk OMD yelp of Space Heroes Of The People for a flat and understated intonation (think luke-warm leatherette), which perfectly suits the lyrics’ impersonal Ballardian cataclysm of landslides and “inescapable fluorescence”.  The track builds to a wonderful TARDIS materialisation swirl, leaving you uncertain quite what this cyber-oracle is warning about, but eager to hear more.  The depths?  We’ve barely scratched the surface.

Tiger Mendoza’s remix brings out the track’s melodic core, adding a tiny cuddle of harmonisation to the vocals, making them inviting and perhaps even comforting (heart-warming leatherette), and placing them over a sassy strut of a rhythm.  Even here, though, the friendly aura is dispersed when the phrase “she has gone into the sea” is repeated with the travel-sick wobble of worn out tape (and how we’re looking forward to Walkman-wielding hipsters discovering that little sonic treat in a few years).  Fred Ugly’s remix is simpler, a chunk of colourful, handmade, slapdash fun, like spending a drunken hour running on airport travelators, which lightens the mood, and yet, in its own way, also has an inherent queasiness.  Any tips for getting vomit stains out of this leatherette?

All Over

"It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven"
"Who, then, shall be saved?"
"With God, anything is possible"
"So, you're saying, that God could get camel through the eye of a needle?"
"Err...yes.  I suppose"
"So, the analogy is effectively meaningless, then?"
"Well, you see...oh!  Look over there!  A prodigal son" [Saviour scarpers]

OMNI, Future Perfect, The Cellar, 16/8/18

In the vacation after my first year at university, I was spinning some drill ‘n’ bass breakbeat abstraction, as my mum walked past my bedroom door.  As the track ended she said, “That’s really great”.  Then, after a perfectly timed pause during which I was wondering which Squarepusher 12” she’d most like me to tape for her car, added, “it’s stopped”.  Now, as well as this economically ruthless dismissal of an entire musical corpus proving that my mum could be a pretty good Nightshift writer, it puts my next comment into perspective: Omni are really good at endings; they’re incredibly talented at choosing exactly the right unexpected beat to halt on, or the most precisely pleasing unexpected chord to slice across a chorus you thought was being cued up for one more repeat.  They have thought carefully about the optimum clinical summary to each concise finicky composition, which is fitting as Atlanta’s Omni are a trio - ageing avant-ravers like me should note this does not make them Omni Trio – who are dedicated to marrying garage brevity to artful new wave choppiness, twining angular riffs together to create something spacious yet cohesively taut, like Gang Of Four or Wire (coincidentally or otherwise they have a single called “Wire”).

The set is not all cold, scalpelled precision, and amongst the laundry-folded rhythms and school swot vocals there are lighter touches that resemble early Young Knives without the panto playfulness, or Devo without the choreographed absurdity, as well as not one but two tunes threatening to break into “My Sharona”.  If it’s great when they stop, that’s not because silence is a blessed relief, but because each stark katana slice of a conclusion makes you realise what a tight and balanced sounds you’ve experienced for the last two and a half minutes.  Omni might not be the most revolutionary band you’ll see, but they add to a post-punk non-funk canon of nervy, nerdy brain rock immaculately.  It’s not too dismissive to observe they made me go home and listen to Gang Of Four and Wire.  Oh yes, and “My Sharona”.

Verdant Servants

Day 1
I've accepted a challenge from Georgia Tazda to post over ten days ten reviews I have written: no explanation, no comment, no explanation, just the review.  I nominate The Beatles.

GREEN HANDS/ SEEDS OF DOUBT/ RODENTS/ JEFF, Divine Schism, The Library, 9/7/18

Jeff are a new duo making an unhoned punk clatter, a clarion for anyone who’s ever wanted to stick on a Buffy T-shirt and sing a noisy song about “not wanting to grow up”.  Are they any good?  Not really.  Does it matter?  Not a jot.

Rodents pull off the trick of sounding taut and honed, whilst being as loose as twenty year old Y-fronts.  They sometimes sound as though someone’s melting Tom Tom Club under a magnifying glass, and sometimes like a bunch of woozy, late September wasps doing the Blue Orchids on Stars In Their Eyes.  There are moments of fizzing, Gedge-a-tronic guitar, but the high point in a set of pleasures comes with a slow, rubbery groove, as if Fat White Family had swapped all the sleaze for jobs at an owl sanctuary.

Their vocalist exchanges his laconic, Country Teasers sneer to take the drum stool for Seeds Of Doubt.  Their name sounds like the most disappointing Dr Who story of the 1970s, and lyrically they tend to paddle in the shallows of the underachiever, telling drab stories of someone living on Hula Hoops, for whom the cafes at Harrods and Sainsbury’s are equally out of his social reach.  The music is all mid-paced chiming guitar and mumbled vocals, a desiccated R.E.M. swapping southern gothic flourishes for a prosaic drift of gold-buyers’ leaflets at a bus stop.  It’s good, but better appreciated on record, rather than in a sweat-drenched cellar.

It’s nearly eleven when Green Hands go onstage, and we’ve lost about a quart of sweat.  What we need now is something uplifting and energy-spiked; what we don’t need is something that moves from a slow, late 70s Dylan groove to the clunky horn-rimmed pop of a slipshod Lloyd Cole.  There’s lots to like in their set, from a Neil Young spaciousness to melodically mournful vocal, but we’re not convinced.  Then again, when people with such varied T-shirts as The Doors, Sleater-Kinney and Belgian techno pioneers R&S Records – not to mention our Buffy-clad friend – are clearly loving it, does it matter?  Not a jot, we expect.