Dylan, Like The Beams Of A Balance, Is Always Varying

I had an absolute blast writing this review.  The gig was such great fun (I think Bob was having more fun than everyone), and whilst 20% of the time I was laughing at some clunker of a wrong note or something, the other 80% of the time I was giggling with joy at the playfulness of it all.  Sincerely, every old rocker's gigs should be like this, hats resolutely off. to the man.

Archivists can note that I don't actually know who the promoter was; there wwre probably about 17 involved.  Hats off to the PR person for getting a brace of guest passes for little old Nutshaft, though, that was brilliant.

BOB DYLAN, NEW THEATRE, 4/11/22

The crowd pouring out of The New Theatre seemed to be split on whether this was a good or bad gig. Certainly it was gloriously odd. That Bob elected to play piano throughout was eyebrow-raising, but that he sat at a rickety old upright heroically out of tune with the backing quintet was a free temporary facelift. Even weirder, the nearest mic to the piano appeared to be 6-feet away, leading to a fuzzy, sub-aquatic mix straight from a David Lynch soundtrack (anyone who thought they’d been dreaming when they saw the gig announced might suspect they’d never woken up). And Bob did nothing to dispel the unreality, striking the ivories with authoritative spareness like Thelonious Monk via Les Dawson, and keeping the band on their collective toes with odd rhythms. Songs from the last album were played relatively straight – although they already sound like beautiful half-forgotten ghosts of drawing room ballads – but old tracks bore almost no resemblance to the original composition: they played “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” like they’ve never heard it before, and “Gotta Serve Somebody” like they’ve never heard any song ever, words crammed into an ill-fitting melody like a Nightshift writer trying to fit into their teenage jeans. These are not cock-ups, but deliberate playful decisions, risks that are entertaining regardless of whether they pay off.

 Received opinion is that Dylan’s voice is a batrachian croak for which the concept of individual notes is a faded memory. Certainly, for much of 1992’s Good As I Been To You he sounds as though he’s actually dying in the vocal booth (and then come back as a tipsy zombie for 2009’s inexplicable Christmas In The Heart), but after a decade of studying the urbane stylings of Sinatra, his voice has become a warm, avuncular buzz somewhere between Bing Crosby, Tom Waits, and Vincent Price. His singing tonight is sweet and melodic, and even if the mudpie mix means we catch maybe 10% of the words, his timing is impeccable, by turns dramatic and hilarious. Wayward phrasing is his super-power; maybe he was bitten by some radioactive rubato in Greenwich Village.

It’s a joy to see an elder statesman onstage who neither plays everything fixed-grin safe, nor cynically runs out the clock with half an eye on their bank balance. If this were a Dylan tribute, you’d bottle them offstage; if this were a new act, you’d be raiding their Bandcamp on the bus home. Fixing any of the oddities would have made this a better gig. But being a better gig would have made this a much worse gig.  

 

 

Piece of Bis

OK, I've decided that what I'll do is post my MusicOMH reviews one in arrears.  This means there will be an average of 4 weeks between posting on their site and here - but go and sign up for the site if you want them more quickly.  Here's a fun little album from some pop kids who probably now have their own kids.

BIS – SYSTEMS MUSIC FOR HOME DEFENCE (Last Night From Glasgow)

Pop music is synonymous with youth, of course, but nobody can stop time. The public is generally happy to see their favourite artists slip into middle age so long as they can still turn out a tune, happy to forego low hairlines and narrow waists, and everyone just pretends that jumping over the drum riser or busting out a slutdrop was never a big deal in the first place. But when an act celebrates their juvenility from the outset, aging becomes a harsher curse. Musical Youth might turn in a decent festival set, but there’ll still be a little cognitive dissonance you won’t get with UB40 and anyone who’s encountered The Nashville Teens on the nostalgia trail can only find their senescence risible. Sonic Youth were perhaps ironic enough to carry it off, but seeing their craggy, lined faces in their final years as a band still. And Neil Young is just taking the piss.

Bis have managed to walk that tightrope rather nicely. Yes, they may not all have been old enough to buy a pint when they first appeared on Top Of The Pops – the first unsigned act ever to do so, an achievement which puts them into both the record books and  the roster of classic pub quiz questions – but, despite the odd lyric about sweetshops or Teen-C power, their feeling of youthful effusiveness came from their fierce independence and love of euphoric pop music rather than any post-adolescent energy. And this has not changed on their sixth studio album, the same infectious bounce and sly wit is in evidence as it was back in 1996; they just go easier on the hairclips nowadays.

Some of the lyrics do reflect a more middle-aged mindset, where mortgages and school runs might take place of rollerblades and school discos. Headaches and Stress are not exactly titles one would have found on a 90s Bis album. Even when the themes are somewhat more universal, the band reveal that they’re in their forties: lead single Lucky Night is a grinning swipe at men who co-opt feminism as an item in their chat-up arsenal (“Patriarchy is a bad scene/ Baby, I’m the vaccine”), but it’s hard to imagine any bar-room lothario under 35 asking for someone’s email address.

The music still packs a sherbety punch, though, regardless of the topics covered, embellishing the fizzy, buzzing indie-pop of old with some sonic references which actually predate the band’s first recordings by 7 or 8 years. Stress is an indie anthem with Walken-tickling levels of cowbell, but also has a vintage rave breakdown, and some perky backing vocals from Manda Rin that sound pleasingly like Betty Boo. (I Got My) Independence – a track title to sum up the Bis ethos in every decade, perhaps – starts with some pounding Italo house piano, before morphing into a, Express Yourself-era Madonna tune via some crisp 909 snare. Lucky Night’s package holiday party sound is like something from the second-tier of Stock, Aitken & Waterman’s roster – think Sonia or The Reynolds Girls – and We Do Structures might have a name like an ancient po-faced Numan B-side, but has a winking hi-NRG rhythm with more in common with London Boys. There’s even a track entitled The Lookback, pledging that “we do the lookback to see where we’ve come from”, in case there was any doubt (and, for the record, the lush synth pads this time nod towards the Madonna of Vogue, with a hint of The Beloved’s melancholy 3AM wistfulness).

The sounds of 1989 are big business currently, and a band like the superb Confidence Man can take some vintage chart pop and some juicy Chicago house basslines to create a night at the Platonic NYC gay club of your dreams, but on Systems Music For Home Defence, Bis bring the same pleasures down to earth. Instead of big budget fantasies the album sound more like someone playing along to favourite pop tunes through fuzzy amps and singing with equal zest and wonky pitching into a marker pen microphone. And if that doesn’t sound like fun to you, you’re probably too old.

 

 

Cabaret Voltage

 I was very happy with this review, and pleased that the editor was prepared to print it.  Apologies for the over-zealous spacing, I can't fix this when pasting the text in, and don't fancy retyping the whole thing. 

JEFFREY LEWIS & THE VOLTAGE/ MAX BLANSJAAR/ THE DUMPLINGS, Divine Schism, Florence Park Community Centre, 30/9/22

Jeffrey Lewis has a method of accompanying tunes

With a bunch of rhyming couplets and some Powerpoint cartoons,

And with these micro-TEDx talks he gives us the straight dope

On the birth of NY punk acts, and on Star Wars: A New Hope;

Also covered, just to show the breadth of scope that Jeff’s got

Are the second Evil Dead film and the great Fitzgerald, F. Scott.

These poems are instructive and they entertain just fine

Even though there are sometimes far more syllables than can comfortably fit into a single line.

His songs are also playful, and are certainly conducive,

All new wave lofi antifolk with rhymes like Dr Seuss’s.

Lewis’s guitar-playing is neither big nor fancy,

But listen closely and you’ll find it’s sweet, and quite Bert Jansch-y

(Although it must be said he is not wary of the joys

 Of extended abstract passages and grating feedback noise).

The lyrics touch on common themes with open honesty,

Like the pains of breaking up or taking too much LSD.

The backing band is hot, but know not to get in the way

Of the neat melodic songs nor all the witty things they say –

In this respect he’s mirrored by Max Blansjaar, his support,

A young local songwriter who has definitely sought

Some of the best musicians to be found in Oxford city

But they never overshadow any quirky little ditty.

(We also saw The Dumplings whom we’d hardly say were tight 

But those who don’t enjoy it must have hearts of anthracite.)

Some of the show is clownish, and some of it even loonier,

Like a song on getting ghosted borrowed from Ray Parker Jr.

But for all we’re painting Lewis like a wacky old gag-vendor,

The lyrics often turn out to be touching, sad, or tender,

And the jokes end up quite moving, must have been the way he told ‘em -

And walking home through Florence Park we swear we saw Will Oldham.

Sketchleys of Spain

Here's my latest review for MusicOMH, and the first to which I've given 5 stars - but, fair enough, it's a killer (though if I could get away with not giving marks out of 5, I'd be all the happier).  I think I might start delaying my MOMH posts, as it's behind a paywall; I don't think I can never share things with you, but perhaps I could wait a month, which would be the equivalent of waiting until a print mag was off the shelves, and therefore fair game to reproduce.  Course, the problem is I'll probably forget, but we shall see.

DRY CLEANING – STUMPWORK (4AD)

Mixing a Dry Cleaning gig must be a nightmare. The band creates such a dense sound, interlocking riffs twining thornily, that a declamatory vocal would be the instinctive choice, but Florence Shaw’s delivery is always muted, pastel-toned, and dispassionate, as if a dentist surgery’s automated receptionist had started offering existential commentary (Press 1 for appointments, press 2 for a wry encapsulation of the human condition). But simply burying the vocals in the mix, shoegaze style, won’t work because Shaw has a huge library of micro-inflections that give unexpected depth to the often disjointed lyrics: the line “If you’re rich you look good, that’s not news” on opener 'Anna Calls From The Arctic' is pitch perfect, and the tossed off plea “Can you not?” on 'Kwenchy Kups' is like a whole character study in three syllables. Luckily, that’s some venue engineer’s dilemma for another day, and on Stumpwork we can revel in every subtle vocal intonation, as they play against the knotty rhythms.

Although Shaw has stated that the lyrics on this album have moved away from the found texts of their debut New Long Leg, it definitely feels more collage than essay, lines rubbing unexpectedly against each other, the poetic cheek by jowl with the preposterous. But themes swim out over repeated listens even where individual songs remain oblique. A major concern on Stumpwork would appear to be finance and the impulsive consumer, with different tracks noting “I’m bored, but I get a kick out of buying things”, “That’s what money’s for, isn’t it? For spending”, and the hilarious “Nothing works, everything’s expensive, opaque, and privatised. My shoe-organising thing arrived, thank God”. Press 3 for sales and self-justification under late capitalism.

The album also features a roster of tiny instances of intimacy, such as “let me squeeze you and do your hair”, or “I’d love to hold you across the middle and be your shoulder bag”. The title track features a gloriously prosaic undercutting of the school of pop romance in which hearts flutter and nerves tingle:

I feel your approach/ All the hair on my arms raise up/ Because you are wearing a fleece/That has become electrified

Even on 'Gary Ashby', the only song that’s fully decodable, about the loss of the titular pet tortoise, the mundane and quotidian are deftly presented in a way that makes them feel surreal and otherworldly (Press 4 for Harold Pinter and Alan Bennett). And even this hides the menacing mysterious line “Dad’s got blood on his head”.  And if unexplained wounds don’t surprise you, sudden moments of potty-mouthed filth just might - Press fucking 5 for some shit or other – which sound doubly incongruous in Shaw’s tranquil unruffled tones. The debased handicraft of the album cover, spelling out the title in soap-adhered pubes, might have served as a warning that the odd bit of smut might pop up. Most inexplicable is the claim “I’ve see your arse but not your mouth, that’s normal now”, though perhaps Naked Attraction gets heavy rotation on the Dry Cleaning tour bus TV. 

Mesmerising as the words and delivery are, the album is also musically excellent. Like the debut, there are clear nods to classic alt rock, especially in the fleet-footed but anchoring basslines – Press 5 for Peter Hook and Kim Deal – but the sonic range is broader this time, from the warm jangle of' Gary Ashby' which nods towards The Blue Aeroplanes, to the sludgy unfunk groove of 'Liberty Log', replete with woozy tape wobbles. The last few tracks are the most exploratory, with dubbier textures and the intense hypnotic guitar sounds of post-rock (or even post-metal), but the biggest surprise is at the other end of the album, where 'Anna Calls From The Arctic' swoons in a humid, sun-sleepy synth and clarinet bliss-out, as if Penguin Cafe Orchestra were trying to imitate 808 State’s 'Pacific'. By the time the goth hypnotism of 'Icebergs' fades away, with a quietly dawdling sax that sounds like hip-hip banger 'The 900 Number' dropping off to sleep, you’ll be ready to flip this wonderfully enigmatic record over and return to track one.  Press 0 to hear these options again and again.

Vowel Obstruction

I discovered today that production company Celador is a play on "cellar door", claimed by certain people (eg Drew Barrymore) to be a highly euphonious phrase, and not a sort of flower or Spanish aperitif as I'd imagined.

CLT DRP/ CONGRATULATIONS, A New View, Jericho, 11/9/22

We joke that Congratulations might be a rock Cliff Richard tribute – and, be honest, a drop-tuned stoner burn through “Devil Woman” would be a joy – but the Brighton quartet are even more unexpected. Firstly, in their bright primary-coloured threads they look like Mystery Inc have fallen on hard times and started a Butlins showband, and secondly they sound like...everything. At once. Seriously, one track reminds us of Rage Against The Machine, The Cramps, and Bucks Fizz in the space of 4 minutes, and whilst not every song is as wilfully lopsided, there are plenty of tracks chucking spiky post-punk guitar solos at fat, fuzzy glam riffs, and then putting an abstract pop chant over the top, like eclectic oddballs Islet on a cocktail of Sunny Delight and mezcal. They even schmooze out a camp pseudo-Prince jam, where even the irony is in air quotes. Perhaps we imagined this whole beautiful mania. Confabulations?

Their hometown tour buddies CLT DRP are clearly having their own little version of Only Connect. We’ll leave you to work out what the name signifies (spoiler: sadly it’s not OCELOT DRAPE). The trio deal in aggressive electro rock, and whilst this might bring to mind images of Chicks On Speed or Peaches, they are both weightier, throwing out denture-rattling synth patterns and tympanum-skewering ring modulated guitar, and more controlled, with a glorious line in clinically battering drums and vocals that can do a lot more than just screechily hector (although they do also screechily hector pretty damn well). There are moments that recall Atari Teenage Riot, some passages that update the stalking noughties darkstep of Distance, and even one track with the funky flavour of early Beasties, albeit with rather more enlightened gender politics - COOL TO DO RAP? - but the real surprise is how much metal there is underpinning the imposing rhythms. But dissecting the sound is probably less important than revelling in the aural thrashing we’re getting from this digital cat o’ nine tails (or maybe CLEATED ROPE)

Honour Thy Myth Tapes As Hidden Intentions

Spent about 2 minutes wondering whether the "surname" here was Fanni Tutti, or just Tutti.  The rest of the review wrote itself, lovely record.

COSEY FANNI TUTTI – DELIA DERBYSHIRE: THE MYTHS & THE LEGENDARY TAPES – ORIGINAL SOUNDTACK RECORDINGS (Conspiracy International)

It’s pretty universally recognised that electronic composer Delia Derbyshire added the arrangement and production trickery that turned Ron Grainer’s Dr Who music into one of the BBC’s most iconic TV themes, and it’s comparatively common knowledge that she was involved in the psychedelic tape noise classic An Electric Storm by White Noise, but who knew that she had a preternatural intuition when it came to vinyl, being able to identify different passages or instruments just by looking at the grooves? It’s a moment that comes up early in Caroline Catz’s docudrama Delia Derbyshire: The Myths & Legendary Tapes, and this near magical ability creates an unexpected connection between the subject and industrial pioneer Cosey Fanni Tutti, who has ben known to delve into the arcane, who features heavily in the film, and whose soundtrack music is now released, a little belatedly. Much as the film is idiosyncratic, mixing biographical dramatisations with Fanni Tutti’s artistic responses and occasionally morphing into fantasy, the soundtrack is not simply a series of remixes, or an attempt to imitate Derbyshire’s techniques, but is inspired by the Derbyshire archive and her original studio notes. Fanni Tutti calls the outcome “an alliance of our sensibilities”, and trying to work out where the line between the two composers lies is futile - although there are samples of Derbyshire speaking on 'Snuff Chorus' and 'Tatum Ergo', her fruity giggling voice sounding oddly like Camilla Pilkington-Smyth’s vocal fragments which were scattered across early Art Of Noise records). We also hear muffled vocals on 'An Individualist'. Does this represent Derbyshire struggling to be heard in a male-dominated and deeply conservative Beeb? Or does it just sound cool?

There’s surprisingly little here that truly resembles the applied sound manipulation Derbyshire was asked to undertake for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. The goofy tones of 'Four Bebe' sound like vintage commercial library music, of the sort collected by Barry 7 on his Connectors compilations, and 'Psychedelic Projections', the album’s only example of a real beat, has the tropical bounce of synthesised exotica that might have provided the bed for a long forgotten travel show. 'Most of Animals' is an intense steamy rasping drone, but it ends with the ersatz sounds of toucans, crickets, and elephants, like a more playful version of David Tudor’s synthesised 'Rainforest' pieces and one can imagine a snippy BBC producer’s note “lose it all except the last 10 seconds”. The title of 'Cosmic Static Noise Wasps' could easily be imagined as the sort of wild, abstract request made to the workshop by an adventurous producer (if not in Derbyshire’s era, this sort of thing must have been a daily occurrence for Paddy Kingsland soundtracking The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy).

The track does indeed capture the buzz of intergalactic bellicose vespids (probably) but it is also a deep and dense two minutes of sonic exploration. Much of this album is a beautiful showcase for creating enticing textures from minimal sources; check the spooky dynamo hum of 'Delia Tones' or the sturdy aural barrier of the aptly named 'Ceiling Of Sickening Sound'. The thoroughness of Fanni Tutti’s treatments is suggested by titles like 'Guitar (Twickenham Studio 3)', which sounds nothing like a guitar but quite a lot like a cross between a cello and a cyber-tuba, and 'Cornet Lament', which might have once been a brass instrument but now comes across like a medieval reed instrument lost in the underworld (should have called it 'Shawm Of The Dead').

Perhaps the album is a little too long and disconnected for a single listening experience, and some listeners might find that the character of the music changes from track to track - cheeky one moment, unnerving the next - but this is possibly evidence of the record’s soundtrack origins (not to mention consistent with Throbbing Gristle’s approach). Regardless, it’s a wonderful selection  to dip into. Pick up the disc, find a bit that looks tempting, and see where you end up – and if you can spot the space-wasps in advance, you might just be a sound-wrangling genius too.

Supernormal 2022 Part 3

 There are inevitably a handful of things that don’t quite land. Reciprocate’s plaintive US alt-rock style doesn’t excite, coming off like a wheedling petulant Pavement, and - it pains us to say - Nightshift, whose buzzy mantric tunes have potential, but whose performance seems tentative. Oh, and we’re also invited to climb over a stile, go into the wood, and look at a blue polystyrene cow (and then to go straight back, because there’s really not much to do once you get there). But to balance this there’s always something inexplicable and intriguing, like LDSN/Yakki Da!, who play melodica and make wonky loops from fragments of a story about going on holiday we can never quite decode, like a child’s summer holiday project being sucked into a black hole, or The Tuna Raffle (not a band or an artwork, but a raffle for a shitload of canned tuna; no, us neither). 

The final live set of the weekend is Birmingham electronica legend Surgeon, whose relentless clanging techno set is a joy, and also a masterclass in how to make something endlessly fascinating from minimal means. In a way, this is a great metaphor for the whole festival, which is a Sellotape and sawdust affair run on hope and good will rather than wodges of cash or corporate sponsorship partners, but which manages to surprise and delight with every iteration, constantly feeling new by never losing its core identity. Asking whether Supernormal is a good festival is like asking whether manna is good fast food, it’s so far ahead of the competition in Oxfordshire (and probably the universe) that the question is utterly meaningless. So here’s our final judgment: smashing.

SIDEBAR

“Mum, can we go see Taskmaster?”

“No need, we have Taskmaster at home.”

Molly is “Taskmaster at home”, running around the miniscule Colour Out Of Space stage, florid and flustered, attempting to achieve 30 one-minute tasks with no particular resources, before a klaxon announces that she’s (almost certainly) failed. It’s stupidly entertaining, and typical of a strain of clowning that runs through this year’s festival. An act like Secluded Bronte, including films criticising the cameras they’ve been shot with, is witty, but Taylor & Luck are flat-out hilarious, dreaming up a preposterous Abingdon ghost story with accompaniment that is half free improv, half Foley. There’s a lofi comic absurdity to so many of this weekend’s sets they could have been taken to Ipsden or Edinburgh with equal justification, from the brilliantly named Run The Bath, which is essentially “Emo Philips plays Ivor Cutler on V/Vm Test Records”, to Fluxus plumbers Usurper, the Mario/Chuckle Brothers mash-up we never knew we needed. The absolute monarchs, though, are The Slipshod Ramblers, a duo in what might be homemade albino Womble outfits playing bleak, Beckettian folk songs, and getting them exactly wrong: “Death, she knocks for us all” they intone, but probably only because we died laughing.