Yellow Jack Swing

2 gigs this weekend, in tiny venues: lovely mixture of the inspired, the enjoyable and the deeply (klub) cack.  And half decent beer.  Stuff yer bloody O2 arena shows, sonny.  Here's something from The Tossalot.

What sort of music do you like?  Oh, you know, bit of everything.  Since about 2004 that has been the only answer given by anyone to this question.  Without exception.   Perhaps it’s now international statute and we somehow missed the announcement.  Whatever the reason, I really miss a time when people were honest about genre affiliations, and happily, even proudly, stated their predilection for trad jazz, northern soul, baroque, drum n bass, or what have you, because most of these “bit of everything” types secretly only really go to one sort of gig.  That’s partly why I like Skeletor promotions: they just say, “screw it, we like metal.  So here’s some metal.  Did we mention the metal?” 

And not only do they provide a much-needed metal service, they do it bloody well, offering monthly gigs mixing high calibre local and touring acts, sorting us much-needed drinks deals in the rather pricy Academy, and making suitably crass metal posters with all skeletons and that on.   They’re also not afraid to give stage time to Oxfordshire’s younger metal fraternity, giving exciting Academy shows to teenage bands who wouldn’t even be allowed into the majority of Oxford’s venues. 

You want technical metal, progressive metal, death metal, some other sort of metal that you might not be able to accurately categorise, but which is definitely metal?  Good on you, go to Skeletor, it’s fucking great for metal.  Unless you want stoner metal, in which case go to Buried In Smoke, who are equally great, but perhaps that’s another article for another day.

YELLOW FEVER/ BRIGHTWORKS/ DUCHESS, The Wheatsheaf, 3/1/14

Anyone who has been to the wrong student parties is wary of percussion: witnessing a stoned gaggle attempt to recreate side two of Exile On Main Street using only bongos and kitchen implements can put you off for life.  Still, in the right hands it can be a powerful tool, and Duchess are at their best when three of them are bashing, scraping or rubbing away at something sonorous, whilst chirpy pop vocals and African-influenced guitars gambol gaily over the top.  From the “Wild Side” fret slides at the start , to the Bow Wow Wow does Taiko clamour at the end,  Duchess’ set is a bundle of bouncy, upbeat glee, and if it might feel as though they’d dropped through a timewarp from a UCL charity bop in 1986, one’s cynicism can only survive as long as one’s feet remain still.

Brightworks also swipe a few Ghanaian guitar licks, but are an altogether odder proposition.  The mathpop trickeries are an interesting addition, albeit not one to raise many Oxonian eyebrows, but the vocalist is what really makes Brightworks unique, crooning poetic fragments with an atonal angst, whilst occasionally poking out rinky-dink lines on a tiny keyboard, like an emo John Shuttleworth.   Occasionally they remind us of rubbery 80s pranksters Stump, but in general easy reference points remain elusive.  Brightworks are many things throughout their set, and, frankly, “any good” isn’t always one of them, but we need artists whose output can’t be boiled down to a single hashtag.  Now more than ever.

Yellow Fever have always been fun, but in their early days they were happy to base their sound on Arctic Monkeys’ rabble pop, which placed them firmly in a comfortable, crowded field.  Over the past couple of years they’ve refined this sound, removing the blokey, everyman wallop and replacing it with either a taut intensity that brings them in line with local heroes Spring Offensive, or a freeze-dried fake funk that is a little like early Foals.  At their very best Alexis Panidis’ woodblock-heavy rhythms underpin (yet more) West African guitar twiddles and Dele Adewuyi’s quietly emphatic vocals smuggle in an emotional subtlety, and you can’t help but feel that another year or so will see them as one of Oxford’s very finest acts.

A Day In A Manger

I'm trying, and failing, to think of good science/music puns.  Here's Jan's Ocelot piece.  Not sure how much longer I'll write these Ocelot articles.

It’s the new year, and it’s time to explore fresh vistas.  New broom, sweeps clean, and all that.  Actually, all brooms sweep clean, otherwise they’re just sticks; if your old broom didn’t sweep clean, then clearly you left it too long to get a new broom.  Anyway, forget brooms.  Why did you bring up brooms, this is a music column.  So, we suggest that you go out and discover a new act or two, so you can talk about them in later years when they’re ginormous, with a smug condescending tone.

One band you could start with is Balloon Ascents.  I stumbled across this Oxford quintet recently, and were astonished by the relaxed confidence on stage – so much so that my muzzy old brain harked back to memories of shows by glam urchins Sexy Breakfast.  And, although there’s a taut sense of cabaret about Balloon Ascents, they also have a light, folky subtlety in their sound – refreshing for such a young band - which has perhaps been influenced  by Stornoway.  Like all great pop music, they sound utterly timeless and astonishingly contemporary, and if they’re perhaps yet6 to write a killer song, the construction of their current set is evidence of great compositional skill, that is just one giant hook away from wrenching the hearts away from a generation of listeners.

There’s not much online yet, just a couple of live acoustic videos.  These are fine, but don’t capture the graceful weight of the full band...still, that’s all the more reason to seek them out in some cosy venue near you, isn’t it?

PAUL BRENNAN – JUST A DAY (Own Label)

Slowly, Paul Brennan has been nudging his way into our consciousness as a singer-songwriter who doesn’t wallow in a drab morass of self-pity, and as a purveyor of simple, old-fashioned  tuneful songs, who doesn’t turn this conservatism inwards in an endless spiral of dead rock traditionalism and tedious hardware worship.  It’s a bit odd that Brennan, a man who pens hummable melodies with straightforwardly emotional lyrics with solid, unfrilly arrangements should be such a rarity.  Perhaps just singing a song, like telling a joke, is much harder than it looks.

“Just A Day”, it has to be said, wavers on the edge of being a joke, taking a potshot at the hollow consumerist centre of Christmas.  This, of course, is nearly as much of a cliché as spraying fake snow in shop windows and Christmas Eve vomit in the gutters, but it doesn’t stop it being a valid point.  What we like most about the song is not the easy ¾ strumming, nor the damnedly catchy Ringo-simple vocal line but the undercurrent of hope that saves the song from being an empty tirade.  In the video, a drunken, angry Santa stumbles through the streets of Witney before collapsing in tears at a graveside, and it’s easy to see Brennan as the sad, sozzled conscience of Britain, perhaps taking the mantle that Paul Heaton seems to have let slip.

Brennan’s last single was “Dance Like Morrissey”, a jaunty indie cross between The Wonderstuff and The Saw Doctors – the video to which saw him once again get twatted on spirits, incidentally – and some adept Googling found a discussion of the song on a Morrissey message board, where one listener had observed “you sound like Michael Stipe if he’d just been kicked in the mouth”.  Not quite sure how they came to this conclusion, but one of Brennan’s strengths is that he doesn’t revel in the obfuscatory mystery of R.E.M.’s best lyrics and vocals, preferring to shoot straight for the heart – although perhaps when “Just A Day” breaks down to a sleighbell rhythm with the line “just hope you’re not alone” it’s a festive homage to “Everybody Hurts” (or, at least, “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide”).  This might not be the most sophisticated record of the year, but if you relish the idea of singing along to a great melody, and surreptitiously wiping a tear away as you hoist your 11^th gin of the evening, Paul Brennan will be a name to watch out for in 2014.

 

Unfetter Cheese?

Nutshaft's editor was hit by a surprise change in submission dates by its printers this month, so I had to change my schedule and write this review in a few stolen moments.  To be honest, it came out alright, although it might be a bit purple...and I got the LP name wrong in the original.  Still, the editor should have corrected it, isn't that his job, or something?  Here's the Dec Ocelot plug thing, whilst we're at it.

I went to a gig the other day.  It was promoted by It’s All About The Music (although as this was not their first event I’ve been to where the promoter didn’t even enter the building, I wonder whether there isn’t an ulterior motive).  I saw some great music from Oxford, Swindon and California via Berlin, but I was driven to write about Charms Against The Evil Eye, Oxford’s whirlpool of prog, pop and Pitt Rivers signage.

Once upon a time Matt Sewell had a band called The New Moon, and they made some very pleasant lightly psychedelic folk-pop tunes, about cosmology, bifurcating felines and a very strange, acid-fried photographer.  The songs were good, in a crepuscular Robyn Hitchcock vein, but the band never quite did them justice, decent though their efforts were.  It was the addition of a new name and a supple, almost jazz-inflected rhythm section that lifted the band and made them one of Oxford’s secret gig pleasures, often to be found in the dusty corner of some odd line-up somewhere in the shire, playing to a select coterie of appreciators.  Not that they can’t ramp up the noise and the three chord garage fuzz if they end up higher on the bill...even if someone not a million pages from this column thought they resembled The Black Hats’ dads at this point.

If you like your songwriters intellectual, melodic, laconic and looking a bit like Vic Reeves, then I suggest crossing your fingers, carving an oaken talisman, donning a Mesopotamian pendant and heading out for some Charms Against The Evil Eye.

FREE CHOW – ASLEEP WITH MY HAND IN YOUR MOUTH (Own label download)

Sometimes, you just know the title came first.  Take Robert’s Web, the atrocious 2st century Carrott’s Commercial Breakdown in which comedian Robert Webb introduced ‘net clips with a dead-eyed resignation.  Or, consider Jesus In Furs, Free Chow’s Christmas song: surely the name came first, and the concept of throwing nativity lyrics at The Velvets’ finest bondage anthem later.  Either way, it’s great fun, a Benylin-wooze of varispeed tape vocals and cheap guitars which, considering the LP also on offer, is not too sacrilegious.

For, Asleep With My Hand In Your Mouth is a brutal stream of tacky noise and schoolboy taboo bashing, somewhere between The Butthole Surfers and V/Vm, sliming its way from the ersatz sex waltz of “This Is My Scrotum” to the Stylophone country of “Freight  Train”, presets goosestepping over common decency with every bar.  Childish nonsense, in many ways, but high quality childish nonsense: we love the Chicory Tip bass keys on “Don’t Touch Kids”, the Rocky Horror meets Jigsaw weirdness of the opener, and the fact that jukebox, pukebox rock ‘n’ roller “PB Party” manages to make jokes about both Hamlet and putting peanut butter up your arse.  When our tabloid media increasingly indulges in ethical paradoxes, denouncing pornography whilst celebrating unceasing titillation, demonising supposed deviants whilst shoving airbrushed teenage midriffs where the actual news used to go, perhaps the only option is to blow a big raspberry, stick two fingers in the air and make an ugly pop song about pederasty.  We like this record.  We may not always enjoy it, but we like it.