Croll Of Honour

Today's hangover cure: an extra hour in bed, and some Stravinksy.

DAN CROLL/ PANAMA WEDDING, Communion/ Transmission, Bully, 11/10/14

Going to see new bands at the moment is like one long pub quiz.  It’s not so much that the music is retro – pop’s been retro since the second minute of its existence – it’s just the current reference points are such odd mid-80s choices that we spend most of our time amongst trendy, bopping audiences with furrowed brow, trying to dredge up names that have lain dormant in the grey cells for 25 years.  New York’s Panama Wedding, for example, with their cleanly emotive, breathy vocals and bleached funk keyboard stabs, are essentially Huey Lewis crossed with Brother Beyond.  Two tracks in, presented with a riff redolent of “Owner Of A Lonely Heart”, we’re gearing up to abhor them, but it turns out that good pop music, played by a band that’s impeccably rehearsed without dropping into cynical posturing, will always melt the hardest heart.  “Uma” might be more suited to a rom com miniature golf montage than the Bully, but essentially these guys are Hot Chip with the irony replaced by gosh-darned American pluck and, frankly, they’re just as good.

When they’re not spinning Now 7 for inspiration, hip young things are copping some tricks from African music, although Dan Croll has recorded in Durban with the mighty Ladysmith Black Mambazo, so he has clearly taken his influences more seriously than most.  But, ignoring a few high life licks, tonight’s set owes far more to smooth, mildly euphoric pop, somewhere between Black’s Moss Bros sophistication and The Beloved’s cultured Ibiza comedowns.  Croll’s voice might be a little thin and falsetto-happy, but he has an articulacy that lifts the songs beyond mere fluff.  Whilst our favourite tonight  is “Can You Hear Me?”, an improbably huge bass drum making it sound like MOP’s take on “Cold As Ice” without the hip-hop, and whilst the odd guitar wail or gratuitous Meatloaf drum fill sticks in our craw, Croll, like his support, reminds us that well-made pop, with an ear for a ripe melody, will never go out of style, regardless of fashion’s whims.

Rooster or Riding Hood?

It's been so long, it feels weird not to be pasting an Ocelot piece in the introduction.  Not sure whether I'll be replaced yet.  Anyway...

LITTLE RED – STICKS & STONES (All Will Be Well Records)

Whilst it might be common practice to rely on first impressions in the arenas of job interviews, speed dating and general elections, we reviewers are supposed to look more closely, to sift the full evidence objectively before drawing a conclusion.  Pity, really, because it means that we judge this album by local trio Little Red to be a pleasant bundle of contemporary folk, when our hearts are still alight from the opening track, that made us sit up and take notice like nothing else on the record.

Said tune, “What Say You” is just charming.  From a clean finger-picked guitar figure, that has a whiff of the cosy, unflurried ‘70s library music style that Trunk Records christened Fuzzy Felt Folk, closely entwined male and female vocals bob on a charming little melody, like a toy boat on a choppy duckpond.   It sounds limpidly lovely, but like so many great folk tunes, the jaunty music hides a black heart, the lyrics telling of betrayal, disappointment and visceral knife crime.  There is a wonderful moment where the guitar drops out to let the vocals declaim the chorus unaccompanied, that structurally seems to owe more to club bangers than any folk tradition, and in all, the song is a micro-epic, hinting at a full and macabre tale in its 1’48” running time.

It would be unfair to criticise the remaining 8 tracks too harshly, but none of them can challenge this jewel of an opener.  There are plenty of sweet, sugary harmonies in the vein of Trevor Moss and Hannah Lou, and songs like “The Garden” recall our very own August List, albeit lacking in the bite that they would bring.  “Bonnie And Clyde” typifies the record, a beautifully put together little tune, right enough, but perhaps a touch too smooth, and with a “you and me against the world, babe” theme that is hackneyed and shopworn. 

In the future, we’d like them to either build on the wide-angled sounds of “Petal” or “Bonnie & Clyde” and make a giant, unashamed Clannad meets Fleetwood Mac studio confection, or alternatively to strip things down, get some dirt in the gears, and grind out something deeper and darker.  For now, this is an assured debut, with plenty to recommend it, but prettiness and poise might not bring out the best in Little Red – we’d like them to be rather less Little, and a much richer, bloodier Red.

Yellow Jack Swing

I just bought a ticket to this year's Audioscope festival in Oxford.  You should too.  Anyway, here's the last ever Ocelot article (from me, I mean, I presume it will carry on without me...although perhaps the pain will prove too much).

There are 6 members of Francis Pugh and the Whisky Singers.  None of them is called Francis Pugh, but they have been in various Oxfordshire bands of quite surprisingly varied styles over the years – you’ll quite probably have heard of some of them, but we won’t waste any time on the past, because the Whisky Singers don’t belong in the past...they belong in an eternal present where rousing folk tunes are sung in warm snugs, effortlessly emotional melodies are projected into the darkness outside, in defiance of bad times, misery and, you know, not being in an inn singing at the top of your lungs.

I’ve seen them play The Jericho Tavern, starting up acoustically in the downstairs bar, and leading listeners up the stairs.  In similarly inventive fashion, they’ve arranged folk pub crawls, where trundles down the roads of East Oxford are interspersed with waystations promising shots and shanties, pints and ballads.  There are some hints of early 70s Dylan about the band’s music, although they shy away from his more esoteric lyrical tangles, but any number of reference points can be drawn up...drawn up, and tossed away again, because any band that takes the best of train whistlin’ American song and melds it with unpretentious British folk traditions will always only be important in the moment, the precise second that the smoky tendrils of song drift out and surround you, the second your voice rises to sing along with songs you never heard before, yet somehow know.

Plus, they’ve got a cornet, that’s pretty cool.

YELLOW FEVER/ BIG TROPICS/ BE GOOD, Daisy Rodgers, Wheatsheaf 12/9/14

In a world that’s increasingly market-tested one of the great pleasures of small gigs is not knowing what to expect.  When Be Good take to the Daisy Rodgers stage, most often frequented by well-kempt indie poppers, we hadn’t predicted reverby late ‘50s balladry that sounds as if it should be about milkshake and eroticised motorbike crashes.  They deliver this post-doo wop very well, throwing in a little surf tremolo, some brash 80s colours and even a droplet of grunge slackness, and if it sometimes feels as though Marty McFly put the band together by nipping into his high school prom at ten year intervals, the effect is surprisingly cohesive: a few more gigs to settle the nerves, and another couple of tunes as strong as “I’d Have Told You Anything” and we could have a real contender.

A few years ago Big Tropics’ sound would have been an eyebrow-raiser too, but inexplicably in recent years the default setting for young bands in this town seems to have become sterilised, wipe-clean soul-pop in the vein of 5 Star and New Edition.  Whilst this isn’t necessarily a bad thing – we’ll take Debbie Gibson over Stevie Ray Vaughan any day – matters aren’t helped by bands like this who churn through up-beat tunes with dead-eyed resignation in place of gay abandon.   Whilst the gratuitous synth parts, straight from the 12” disco mix of the theme from CHiPs, go some way towards excusing the limply anonymous vocals, Big Tropics seem to have forgotten the golden rule of pop performance: always get high off your own supply.  We see a punter at the bar wearing white socks with trousers that are too short, which just about sums them up: it’s fun, it’s retro, but it doesn’t really fit together.

There are no shocks in Yellow Fever’s set.  They’ve become just as excellent a band as we knew they would be when we first saw them a few years ago, finding their teenage feet.  Again their sound, melding chiming hi-life guitar parts to A Certain Ratio style introspective indie-funk, has become more prevalent in the intervening years, but they manage to make the mixture smoother than many, by building it around a core of well-written tunes (indeed, a one-off cover of “Rip It Up And Start Again” fits snugly amongst their best tracks).  The sound has got heavier and denser in recent times, every jam block break counterbalanced by a crushing crescendo, but it’s an unforced charm, a sort of polite insouciance emanating from the stage that really proves how this band has grown in stature.  Like we say, character: it could be the most important thing your band will ever have. 

 

Supernormal 2014 - Saturday Pt 2

Fruit Canoe start well, messing with a vocal sample that might have been taken from a dodgy pyramid selling pitch but it doesn’t look as though anything surprising is going to happen to their averagely decent electronica, so we return to the barn to see vocal improviser Maggie Nicols.  In a world where many musicians make their living on a tedious whirligig of indentikit festival bookings, we can’t help but admire the fact that her bassist/sampler controller is not in the programme because he wasn’t sure he’d find anyone to look after his shitake mushrooms until the last minute.  As it is, his additions are fine, if a bit muddy in the mix, but it is Nicol’s vocal range that captures everyone’s attention.  She doesn’t so much explore a series of tonalities, as a set of characters, breaking into her own songs in a variety of languages, a Glaswegian skipping rhyme, or a stuttering Donald Duck glossolalia along the lines of David Moss.  Her technique is wonderful, and if a cheesy “I love life” reggae tune is too hippy for cynics like us, the set is still fascinating and good-humoured.

Nightshift spent Saturday morning eating bacon sandwiches and relaxing on the sofa - what, you think we’d camp with the proles? - listening to Palehorse’s LP, an excellent take on Slint’s taut rock with bonus heaviosity.   Live they lose this poise somewhat, and the music is far scrappier, but is also possessed of an inspiring energy – when they scream you feel as though you’ve been properly screamed at.  Contrast this with Mob Rules on the same stage earlier, who shot for a kind of Fucked Up hardcore, but had all the vigour and disgust of a Countdown contestant who’s been given three zeds. It’s a pleasing end to the day on the Nest stage, that sadly wouldn’t survive Sunday’s second dose of hideous weather.

Esben & The Witch’s neatly gothic pop theatre proves too calculated at Supernormal, where the truly harrowing will always trump overblown indie incantations, and where you might meet an actual witch, so we try our luck in the bar for the improbably name Unconscious Archives: Spatial.   Admittedly this turns out to be some shapes projected on a sheet whilst someone demonstrates the sound possibilities of the Dragon 64 home computer, but still, they had chairs.

We don’t get to see Sly & The Family Drone, as they set up in the middle of the field, and are surrounded by a ring of spectators, some of whom may have been joining in.  We have no idea where the band ended and the audience began.   We have no idea where soundcheck ended and the set began.  We have no idea where egalitarian abstract noise theatre ended and taking the piss began.  But we did quite enjoy it all from a position a few yards away, even if all we could really hear was one roaring guitar amp and a synthesised bass drum (rhythms optional).

Sadly, we weren’t able to attend Sunday, which is probably for the best as our turn at the Fall karaoke would have beaten all-comers (although as they didn’t name it Mark E. Oke, they don’t deserve our genius).  As a whole the festival supplied a heady mixture of high quality and fascinatingly idiosyncratic failures.  If there were no main stage highlights to come close to Evil Blizzard and Hookworms last year, the barn felt better utilised this time, and it was pleasing that the interesting performances were spread across the site more evenly than in other years.  Our only concern, when settling down to another doom rhythm, another guitar drone and another vocal delay unit is that the line-up is in danger of becoming predictable.  The one simple thing that makes Supernormal better than any other festival in Oxfordshire is that it has not yet become a brand, and doesn’t seek to sell us close-minded lifestyle choices instead of adventures: let’s make sure it stays like that.   Don’t give us what we want, give us what we’ll never forget

Supernormal 2014 - Saturday

We notice in Saturday’s Guardian Guide that Supernormal is singled out, with the description “vaguely leftfield”.  Considering our second day begins in a stone folly in which an old tape of accordion hits plays at random speeds, we wonder exactly what their music editor gets up to of an evening.  This piece is the work of Phantom Chips, who later fill the bar with dark fuzzy noises, and invite an audience member to don an udder cummerbund they’ve created: when the brightly hued cloth nipples are yanked different brands of digital skree erupt from the speakers.  The effect is like a cross between Incapacitants and Nursie from Blackadder, and frankly we’d like to see more of this madness in the bar, which seems to generally consist of a few people jigging about to classic soul tunes during the day.  Mind you, perhaps if there was much more of this the bar staff would revolt – we’ve already noticed that the First Aid tent is next to something called the Shed Sound area, a little gazebo from which the sound of amp hum and vinyl crackle can be heard a pretty much constantly, and we assume the St John’s Ambulance boys were self-medicating by Friday teatime.

Luminous Bodies features members of Supernormal bands Terminal Cheesecake and Part Chimp,. but what we hear is a default “Heart of The Sun” riff sounding like a suburban metal band warming up in the school gym, so we sneak over to see The Wharves instead, who have plenty of Throwing Muses about their warm, simple tunes.  Pity they wander through them so tentatively, like Shaggy and Scooby exploring a haunted mineshaft, but a strong melody will always win points.

On the Braziers House terrace, violinists Benedict Taylor and Hakarl have teamed up with an uncredited saxophonist for a relaxed improvisation, and these purely acoustic one-offs are the sort of thing we’d like to see more of at next year’s festival, there are so many nooks and crannies on the site that could be enlivened by a freeform blowout or a subtle bit of lowercase tinkling.  There are plenty of careering glissandi and percussive tonguing on display, but the music doesn’t sound gimmicky; in fact it reminds us oddly of Benjamin Britten at times...perhaps these are the gulls circling out of shot in Peter Grimes.

Back on the Nest stage, Sex Swing are covering doom trudge drums with bass sax honks and electronics, in a fashion that’s neither swinging nor erotic, but quite diverting all the same.  The whole set sounds like a didgeridoo reliving a harrowing post-gig night at the Holiday Inn with Rolf Harris.

Charismatic Megafauna apparently formed at last year’s festival.  We wonder whether they’ve actually met since.  Their show involves the three of them bashing out elementary rhythms and chanting clumsily, and is a good few rehearsals away from being convincing.  Reverse cheerleading, we suppose, but also sadly the reverse of any good.

We leave Henry Blacker and their incredibly entertaining rock chugs, something like a heavy Ten Benson, to see a rare performance inside Braziers House.  When punters at many festivals are content to sit playing hacky sack by their tents, or swilling in the beer tent until it gets late enough for someone famous, it’s truly heartening to see a wave of listeners stream through the door to see a solo piano piece by MXLX.  From our position in the doorway, we can’t see a single ivory, but the sound has a pleasing, if unrevolutionary, Philip Glass air, with a dash of Charlemagne Palestine’s intense key-pounding.

It’s only a short hop from there to the Barn, where Seth Ayyaz is vibrating a bunch of contact miked percussion.  After a few minutes we’re about to walk out when we suddenly start hearing massed church organs singing in the drones and loops, and before we know it our ears are filled with birdsong, Satanic mills, laughing policemen – either he’s an adept at sonic craftsmanship, or we have a very fertile imagination.  Later, the FX pedals come into play, adding a K K Null air to proceedings, although some breathy shakuhachi lines keep the music earthy.

According to the programme (and we know how reliable that can be) one of Fish Police is autistic.  Well, seeing as they’re about the only band on the Nest Stage that knows how to do an efficient soundcheck and start on time, perhaps they should have booked a few more.   Once we’re over the disappointment that they aren’t a themed tribute band (“Good evening, my name’s Sting Ray...”), we enjoy a thoroughly funky slice of urban pop, that moves between Starsky & Hutch synth and loping Arrested Development  good vibes by way of Prince’s smooth sleaze – rather refreshingly shiny and slick at a festival that can be somewhat doom-happy.

This being Supernormal, we expected Horseloom to be a vast device made out of surgical trusses that recreated the sound of pack animals dying in the Somme.  It’s actually man named Steve Malley, a single acoustic guitar and some lovely, mellifluous Martin Simpson style folk tunes.  He’s not afraid of a little Bert Jansch percussiveness to keep the songs dramatic, and even a tiny splash John Fahey dissonance to keep the senses keen, but for the most part the pieces are played with a limpid simplicity that makes this quite possibly the set of the weekend.  Perhaps his voice, though warm an unhurried, is a little pedestrian, but the playing is a sheer joy.

Breathless are a let-down after that.  We suppose their messy take on clean FM pop sounds can be likened to Maps, or the hypnogogic pop crew, but what they really sound like is some shut0in from 1985 recording Robbie Robertson covers on a C60 in his bed sit, because he thinks Paul Young has possessed his Goblin Teasmaid.