Adrian Cooper has been unwell

The Playwrights

2009-11-10T00:04:00.005Z

There are bands that you always associate with the summer. Maybe it’s because their songs recall memories of warm, sunny days in the park, the feeling that the longer days bring with them endless possibilities and new hopes, or just because they sound great in the open air.

The Playwrights are all these things. Their debut album, ‘Good Beneath The Radar’, crept out with the onset of summer last year and proved to be one of the best albums of the year. Sonically, it’s a beguiling and effervescent mix of the Auteurs, Sea & Cake and the first side of David Bowie’s “Low”. If we can take time out to turn a hackneyed music journalist cliché on its head for once, the Playwrights sound like Syd Barrett on no drugs. Despite an edginess to the music that brings to mind the type of US underground bands in which Southern records specialise, there’s a peculiarly English sound to the Playwrights.

“The Englishness is something I’m really proud of,” says Playwrights guitarist Ben Shillabeer. “Hopefully we’re reflecting who we are and where we come from – in a natural way, in the tradition of bands like Crescent, Movietone, Hood and, more recently, Seachange. I’d like to think it’s got an integrity and isn’t a contrived Carry On, 'ooh how’s your Favver’ Englishness that some bands adopt.”

Far from sounding like another bunch of mockney chancers, the Playwrights approach to their music harks back to days where invention was more important than imitation and you are always more than just the sum of your influences. “I went to art school, and this background certainly informs my songwriting. It’s that sketchbook approach where if something resonates for you, you write it down or take a photo of it or cut it out and stick it in and use it for yourself. Stuff from books, films, photos, novels, newspapers, phrases heard on the television or radio; day to day experiences, things I’m exposed to and feel an affinity for get written down and turn up in a song.”

“Got a case of the dreads,
I’m a potential island here.
Screaming into a dead mic,
Just chewing the scenery.
Farmed out to private practice,
Firing a pistol into a blank wall.
Let’s look at the husks of our dreams,
Snapshots taken from too close a knowledge.
There’s something missing from this screen,
You lose control by degrees.”
(‘We Are The Stuffed Men’)

Lyrically, the Playwrights portray not so much of a sense of ostracism, of having been forced out from the crowd, but of a willingly chosen estrangement. Do you think that this reflects your outlook or attitude? Do you see yourself as an outsider?

“I’ve always felt on the fringes of stuff, somewhat detached and never fully involved – not comfortable with the really ‘straight’ people but not at ease with the really ‘out there’ people either,” explains Ben. “It’s a cynicism I guess; a self-consciousness that I carry with me in social situations. There's that Samuel Beckett quote: "he had an abiding sense of melancholy that sustained him through brief periods of joy.’ – I guess that sums me up. But the lyrics aren’t just from my own insecurities. It’s everyday stuff like how we interact at work, in our homes, in relationships, with our surroundings, with technology. It’s that feeling that when you’re talking with someone you’re having totally different conversations – symptoms of the modern age.”

“But I think collectively as a band we’re outsiders too, due to our sound. People can’t pigeonhole us. We get compared to a lot of ‘80s bands but I can’t really hear it myself, although I can see why people might lump us in with recent bands like Interpol or Franz Ferdinand. We definitely haven’t styled ourselves to be like anything, and some people aren’t quite sure how to take us. But I think we’re a fucking good rock band (albeit an art-rock band), without having any of that contrived rock ‘n’ roll, ‘five boys who are gonna change the world’ bollocks about us.”

Before the Playwrights, Ben played guitar for Bristol jazz-punk behemoths Soe'za, whose line-up also included Playwrights singer Aaron Dewey on cornet. Both Ben and Aaron have toured with John Parish and appear on his 2002 album, 'How Animals Move'. With so many other musical projects going on already, what motivated you to form the Playwrights?

“The band was formed when I asked Aaron to help work on some new songs of mine back in 2001. I’ve always written and recorded songs on a 4-track, ever since I first started playing guitar; but I’d never found the right outlet for them. My first band was just with college mates and we never did anything significant. Then I moved to Bristol and joined Soe'za, where I contributed parts and ideas but very rarely entire songs. And I’ve done a few projects here and there but never totally been happy with the outcome.”

“I found myself with this collection of songs taken from a box of tapes that I wanted to develop. Aaron and I share similar ideas and I knew his voice and musicality could enhance my songs in ways I could never achieve on my own and we could do ‘something bigger, something better’ with them. So we started out as a duo, playing practically everything ourselves. Now we’re a five piece, with Maff (Rigby, drums), Nathan (Edmunds, guitar) and Andrew (Smith, bass) all inputting ideas. I guess the motivation comes from the enjoyment of making some challenging music, with many ideas and sounds and influences whilst working in a pop framework. We’re trying to be the best we can be, making pop music that hopefully has a bit of depth to it and we’re having fun whilst doing it.”

FischerspoonerOdyssey

2009-11-09T23:48:00.002Z

Fashion can be a fickle beast. Three years ago Fischerspooner could do no wrong. They looked fantastic, they gave good interview and they’d recorded a great debut album. In short, they were the favourites of journalists and fashionistas alike and the world was theirs for the taking.

But then, as is the wont in tales of this type, things started to go awry. They released an album, 2002’s ‘#1’, to a grand total of absolutely no sales at all. Not only did it fail to dent the chart, it barely even left a scuffmark on pop’s shiny surface. But that’s hacks and slavish fashion sheep for you. They might claim to like a record but that’s no guarantee that the majority of people making the assertion have ever heard it or even harbour the slightest desire to do so. Shot by the hand that feeds and all that.

Anyway, three years is a long time in music and an eternity in fashion. Which quite possibly goes in Fischerspooner’s favour. Last time around there was such a proliferation of like-minded bands that Fischerspooner were merely part of the crowd and probably missed out on a lot of the credit that they would have otherwise been afforded. But now, divorced from the vagaries of scene mongering and electroclash, it’s possible to judge them purely on the terms of their music, rather than as a prevailing trend.

And ‘Odyssey’ stands up to scrutiny very well. Their cover of Wire’s ‘The 15th’, on ‘#1’, should have suggested that there was more to Messers Fischer and Spooner than first met the elaborately made-up eye. Actually, Wire work well as a point of reference here. Much of ‘Odyssey’ is informed with a similar feel to Wire’s ‘154’, only run through a sequencer rather than bashed out with the more traditional drums, bass and guitar. If you take LCD Soundsystem as a barometer of modern post-punk, then, much as the likes of Q & Not U and Les Savy Fav are only a couple of steps more rock than James Murphy, Fischerspooner are merely one step less rock than the DFA boys.

In theory, ‘Odyssey’ represents Fischerspooner’s attempt to reconcile their music with their more traditionally rock based influences, including, at least according to the sleeve notes, the Stooges, Bowie and My Bloody Valentine. But filtered through a big shiny box scrawled with the legend dance-floor filler. In reality, this doesn’t make for any major sonic leap forward, or backward depending on how you look at these things, but it does make for a more coherent sounding record. ‘Just Let Go’ is probably the nearest that you’ll get to an ‘Emerge’ on here, all throbbing disco beats and pulsing rhythms, interspersed with stuttering guitars. ‘Cloud’ is closer to the electroclash (computer)blueprint, with its hint of Duran Duran, while ‘We Need A War’ takes a Susan Sontag lyric and turns it into a Pet Shop Boys classic that Neil Tennant forgot to write. And ‘Circle’ is, as much as this may take you by surprise, a Boredoms cover.

Three years ago, Fischerspooner came dangerously close to being written off as a pair of vacant performance-art chancers that had got lucky. ‘Odyssey’ shows that we should consider ourselves lucky that they bothered to stick around long enough to give it another try.

Einstürzende NeubautenKalte Sterne, Tabula Rasa

2009-11-09T23:30:00.004Z

Band names are shit. Think of your favourite band. What is it with that name? When you really get down to it, what the fuck is it supposed to mean? What does it say about the band? What does it say about their music? All too often, the answer is nothing, nothing at all. This is where German bands tend to have the advantage. Kraftwerk, Neu, Einstürzende Neubauten. All three names say as much about the band as the music itself.

Translated, more or less literally, Einstürzende Neubauten means knocking down new buildings. Colloquially, it refers to the knocking down of high-rise flats of the type erected in the housing boom of the 60s and 70s. The type of multi-storey prefab shit holes that you find in new towns across Europe. Heavy-duty construction turned back into destruction, and that’s exactly what Einstürzende how sound.

‘Kalte Sterne’ compiles the abrasive primal pounding rhythms and clanging guitars of their early (1980-82) singles, laden with the sound of power drills rasping metal. ‘Tabula Rosa’ (originally released in 1993), a far less punishing listen, sees them honing their electro-industrial beating into more traditionally-structured songs while exploiting Blixa Bargeld’s Bad Seeds connection to bring in Nick Cave’s former muse and paramour, Anita Lane, to provide the feminine touch.

So, to summarise, the Germans – good at band names, not currently so good at football.

Pit Er PatShakey

2009-11-09T23:17:00.002Z

Ever wondered what a supergroup comprising members of Blonde Redhead and 90 Day Men would sound like?

No? Neither had I before now but you could hazard a guess that this is something that has occupied the minds of Pit Er Pat recently. Should such collaboration ever take place, there’s a fair chance that it would sound quite a lot like ‘Shakey’.

Off-kilter keyboards mix in with rapid-fire drumming, arrhythmic time changes and disembodied male and female vocals, with Fay Davis-Jeffers only a Japanese accent away from sounding just like Blonde Redhead’s Kazu Makino. However, the tone of much of ‘Shakey’ shuns the often frantic, high-tension sound of Blonde Redhead for a more laidback, slightly uneasy listening approach as voices and instruments entwine around each other to create an album driven by hypnotic drones and otherworldly sounds.

PavementCrooked Rain, Crooked Rain: LA’s Desert Origins

2009-11-09T22:11:00.006Z

Let’s dispense with the dialogue. Pavement’s ‘Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain’ was one of the finest albums of the 1990s. Stop your internal debate. I’m right, you’re wrong. I can prove it on an Etch-a-sketch.

Admittedly, it has always been a moot point amongst Pavement fans about which of their albums is the better: Slanted & Enchanted’ or ‘Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain’. And the conclusion most commonly reached is that it’s practically impossible to decide. Personally, I prefer ‘Slanted…’ but not only is that neither here nor there, it also doesn’t mean that I think it’s the better of the two albums.

As with 2002’s ‘Slanted & Enchanted: Luxe & Reduxe’ reissue, the tenth anniversary of ‘Crooked Rain’ sees the release of ‘Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: LA’s Desert Origins’. And, once again, the original album has been expanded into a veritable Christmas stocking of a reissue stuffed to the brim with bonus tracks, b-sides, demos, previously unreleased songs, oranges, Toblerone and those little chocolates that look like coins.

Chances are that most of you will already be familiar with the album itself but let’s recap anyway. ‘Crooked Rain...’ was, quite simply, one of the most perfectly realised records to be released within my lifetime. It was the moment when Pavement made good on all their early promise and proved that they could be consistently wonderful.

In essence, ‘Crooked Rain...’ is the encapsulation of everything that ever had been termed slacker music - Stephen Malkmus’ loquacious lyrics and nasal drawl, a barrage of unstable guitars and a rhythm section that sounded both ridiculously tight yet utterly laid-back at the same time. Never before had an album recorded by a band so heavily influenced by the Fall sounded so tuneful.

Nestling in the midst of this masterpiece were the triumvirate of drop-dead great singles - alt.pop anthem ‘Cut Your Hair’ (allegedly a parting shot at former drummer, Gary Young), the slacker-country jig of ‘Range Life’, and the quasi-existential bop of ‘Gold Soundz’ - each of which helped the album be so well received that some felt inspired to claim that ‘Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain’, much like New York before it, to be so good that they named it twice.

Once you’ve successfully navigated the album itself the good news is that it doesn’t end there. There’s that glut of extra tracks to get through. The rest of the reissue adds the b-sides from the ‘Crooked Rain’ singles, and the ‘Jam Kids’ / ‘Haunt You Down’ seven inch. The first disc finishes with a pair of tracks lifted from compilation albums released around the same time as ‘Crooked Rain’: ‘Nail Clinic’ from ‘Hey Drag City’; and the rollicking REM tribute ‘Unseen Power of the Picket Fence’, from the ‘No Alternative’ benefit album.

Unfortunately the ‘Crooked Rain’ b-sides don’t hit the mark with quite such the same regularity as those from later singles though ‘Camera’, ‘Jam Kids’, ‘Haunt You Down’ and ‘Nail Clinic’ are all worthy additions to the album, and ‘Unseen Power...’ is easily as good as the majority of the songs on ‘Crooked Rain’ itself.

As seems to be the norm with these reissues nowadays, the second disc is comprised of demos and previously unreleased tracks, which is where it all starts getting a bit patchy.

The demos include early sketches of a number of songs from both 'Crooked Rain...' and its 1995 follow-up, 'Wowee Zowee'. The most notable versions here are a bare bones take on ’Range Life', minus the Smashing Pumpkins diss, and a piano-led version of ‘Heaven Is A Truck’.

But, as usual, there’s a reason why many of the extra tracks on here never made it past the demo stage and that’s that they’re just not as good as other Pavement songs. ‘Rug Rat’ proves that the Fall influence can be taken too far, ‘Fucking Righteous’ is basically an uninspired Velvet Underground rip-off and ‘JMC Retro’ is little more than an unsuccessful Jesus and Mary Chain pastiche. ‘Flood Victim’ is barely even a song while ‘Colorado’ sounds like it was lifted straight from a John Carpenter score, only shorn of the sense of brooding menace that you would expect.

Fortunately, the balance is redressed by the ‘Crooked Rain...’ styling of ‘All My Friends’ and ‘Same Way Of Saying’ and the ‘Slanted & Enchanted’ nature of ‘Soiled Little Filly’ and ‘Hands Off The Bayou’ before things are bought to a close with the rather stunning jilted jazz lick of ‘The Sutcliffe Catering Song’ (which was eventually retitled ‘Easily Fooled’ and released as a b-side to ‘Rattled By The Rush’), which would have fitted perfectly onto the first side of ‘Wowee Zowee’.

Despite the filler overkill, ten years later and 37 songs richer, Pavement’s second album still sounds as much like a masterpiece as it did back in 1994.

‘Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain’: so good, they released it twice.

John Cale

2009-11-09T02:58:00.003Z

Recent musical history can be a horrible thing. Okay, so in the greater scheme of things it doesn’t really have what it takes to be classed an atrocity, but early interviews with the Stereophonics are at least a galling memory. But what really niggles here is not their ploddingly pedestrian rock, but the much more horrific realisation that they not only idolised Tom Jones, but were going to be largely responsible for yet another undeserved revival of his fortunes.

In this instant, they confirmed what we had already begun to suspect, that they were nothing but a bunch of musically stunted valley boy rock dullards in love with the idea of being in love with music, while having no concept of what being in love with music really meant. To them, it meant following tradition, being part of the pantheon of same old same old, rehashing the same songs based around the same chords that channeled the same sole emotion. But more than anything else, it meant challenging nothing. If they had had the slightest interest in breaking away from the established notions of music, then there would have only been one name that they could have mentioned, a musician and Welshman of whom they should have been proud. A man without whom the course of both contemporary and modern classical music could well have turned out to be very different. That man is John Cale.

But they didn’t even mention his name. Fucking numbnuts.

John Cale grew up in Ammanford, South Wales, just outside Swansea, which, as coincidence would have it, is where I went to university. Just before I graduated, BBC Wales screened a documentary about Cale, timed to roughly coincide with the publication of Victor Bockris’ collaborative effort with Cale, ‘What’s Welsh For Zen?’. Before this, I knew he was Welsh but didn’t know from whereabouts in Wales he came. The documentary showed the village, the street, and the house in which he grew up. I’ve never been one to idolise anyone, but, for the first time ever, the temptation to go and find this house arose. It would be one of those one offs – my friend, also a big Velvet Underground fan, and I would drive to Ammanford, find the house that Cale lived in, and leave it at that. Of course, given that we were students and that it was a rather pointless crusade on which to set off, it never happened. But the inspiration was there.

When you consider the distances involved, it was a rather pathetic cop-out on our behalf. We only had a thirty mile round journey to make. Cale’s voyage through music started in his rural Dyfed home, took in Goldsmiths College in London before heading to Boston and New York, where he worked with the composer LaMonte Young and formed his own avant-garde ensemble, the Dream Syndicate, before a session recording backing tracks for the Pickwick record label led to a chance meeting with Lou Reed.

General opinion has it that, despite now being a mild-mannered and patient man, at this time Cale was a cantankerous, belligerent and curmudgeonly individual, who also displayed a raft of other character traits that generally mark a person out as someone whose company you might not enjoy for a single minute. Thankfully, these were all the attributes necessary to make bearable spending more than a minute in the company of Lou Reed. If Cale had been a less domineering force in his early years, we may have lost out on some of the greatest music ever made.

Cale’s career since has been well documented, so let’s just skip briefly over the parts about the Velvets and Andy Warhol; the tales of suffering bone-crunchers after injecting water in vain attempts to catch any dregs of heroin left in their syringes (but remember, you read that first in Bockris’ biography of Lou Reed, just in case any lawsuits are pending); the inevitable fall out with Reed; the sessions spent playing guitar for Nico; the parade of solo albums; his work as a producer; ‘Songs For Drella’, the 1990 collaboration with Lou Reed recorded to honour Warhol’s death; and the horrendous and thankfully short-lived reformation of the Velvet Underground.

‘blackAcetate’, his 22nd solo album, continues Cale’s challenge to himself. Despite being a more traditionally rock record than much of his back catalogue, ‘blackAcetate’ is only the second album that he has recorded on ProTools and sees him trying to push the boundaries of how he writes and records music. Once again, the album jumps between styles and influences, always looking for a new way to express itself without merely repeating what has gone before. Which is a lot more than could be said for the last Tom Jones album.

As far as the land of your fathers, your daffodils and your pissing rugby goes you can stuff it all up your ass. It’s all about the Cale, and it always will be.

The Magic Bandthe Garage, London

2009-11-09T02:41:00.005Z

You never expect to get to watch some bands. Sometimes they fall by the wayside before you get the chance to see them in the flesh. Sometimes you just have to accept that it wasn’t meant to be.

When a band splits about twelve years before you had even heard of them, then the chances of ever watching them play are, shall we say, quite remote. Which just makes it all the more astounding that I’m here watching a bunch of old men in varying stages of mid-life crisis, and that’s just the audience. Boom boom.

Bad jokes aside, it is worth taking the time to say that entering the Garage tonight felt like walking into a back issue of Q. The almost exclusively male crowd is easily the wrong side of its forties. Those of them that look like they earn a living appear to do so as accountants or finance directors of small, inconsequential companies. The rest of the crowd look as if they’ve never earned a living in their lives: pitiful little men with the faces of 50 year olds atop the scrawny bodies of malnourished children. Men who can be heard muttering, “think of all the girlfriends who never got Beefheart, who said it was all unlistenable shit, but they’re still going strong today, shows how much they knew about music”.

At this point I’d to draw your attention to the header at the top of this page. The Magic Band. At the Garage. Not at Wembley Arena, Finsbury Park, Brixton Academy, or even the Barbican or the Shepherd’s Bush Empire, (the last two both venues that they played last year). This is the Garage. This is a world tour whose only UK date is a 500 capacity former sweatbox in North London. So let’s not get too carried away about their success. There’s a reason that Don van Vliet once sang ‘My Human Gets Me Blues’, and this may well be it.

Ah, yes. Don van Vliet, the man without whom none of this would be possible. An artist, musician and musical visionary. The man who locked his band in a house for three months while he taught them ‘Trout Mask Replica’. The captain that fled his ship in 1982, before it had even started to sink, so he could run off to live as a hermit in the desert and concentrate on painting.

Also, there’s a problem with the price here. The Magic Band may have become more than just a curiosity again, but at £20 a ticket, they’re still very much a luxury. Which is why the crowd tonight is so ridiculously homogenous. Why would you spend £20 on a ticket for a gig at the Garage, when you could take that money, go to Fopp, or wait for one of the more overpriced high street stores to have one of their countless sales, and buy Beefheart’s best albums for that same sum.

But anyway, 491 words in, and still no mention of the gig. I should get on. The most frustrating thing about all this is that we’ve reached a stage in musical evolution where the Magic Band actually make sense. In a time where free-jazz is no longer mentioned in the same sentence as the bogey man, where Radiohead reach number one with albums of unlistenable wibble and the best busker in London plays guitar like he’s David Pajo, I think that people are ready for the Magic Band.

During a set lifted largely from the ‘Clear Spot’ and ‘Trout Mask Replica’ albums, there are songs that sound as if they could have been released by any of the better post-rock bands in the last few years. ‘On Tomorrow’ wouldn’t sound out of place at a Tortoise gig, while Rockette Morton’s preceding bass solo (yes, I know, a fucking bass solo, but, man, you had to be there) could put Billy Mahonie to shame.

Obviously, on these and other instrumental songs, the absence of Don van Vliet is an irrelevance. Elsewhere, John ‘Drumbo’ French does such a Beefheart impression so convincing, even on the vocal only ‘Orange Claw Hammer’, that anyone not familiar with the history probably wouldn’t have guessed that French was only ever a drummer in the original incarnation of the band.

What is obvious though is that the Magic Band are still capable of knocking out the delta-blues-voodoo-stomp-swamp-rock better than anyone else. They lurch their way from one masterpiece to another, from ‘Circumstances’ to ‘Steal Softly Thru Snow’. Though they do then ruin things slightly with ‘Evening Bell’, a two-minute piece for one guitar that has no obvious rhythm and makes absolutely no bloody sense at all. But then, contrary bastards that they are, they follow this with ‘Electricity’ and ‘The Floppy Boot Stomp’ and everything is peachy again.

In the end, my only complaint is that I’d prefer it if Drumbo didn’t take so much time out to between songs to talk to the crowd (oh, and that they don’t play ‘Ice Cream For Crow’ or ‘Ashtray Heart’, but you can’t have everything). Okay, so he’s being polite and wants to tell people some of the background about the songs, but it would be good to hear this set played Blues Explosion style, with only a howled song-title and the occasional “1, 2, 3, 4” separating each track. Though obviously, the fact that a large number of Magic Band songs are either so syncopated or contain three different time signatures means that they’d be impossible to count in.

But as the band come back on to encore with ‘Brickbats’, any such grumbles are left far behind. The Magic Band still sound mighty and, against a lot of odds, I got to see the evidence up close and personal.

Billy Mahonie, Trans AmIslington Academy, London

2009-11-09T02:32:00.002Z

There’s an odd crowd here tonight. It could be because most the press that Trans Am get is in the style magazines. Perhaps the Islington Academy just attracts a ridiculous number of people that just go there to be seen, rather than to see the bands. Or maybe Dave Stewart’s mates are just so old that Alzheimer type disease has set in, and they’ve popped in to see him, having forgotten that the aged duffer doesn’t own the place any more.

Whatever the reason for this bizarre mix of fashion victim and haggard former hippies, there’s a pair of white-haired sexagenarians eagerly pointing a range of cameras at Billy Mahonie for the duration of their set. The truly sad thing about this though is the fact that when they first launch into one of their many songs whose titles continue to elude me, there are very few other people paying any attention to a band who are quite possibly Britain’s best post-rock troupe.

Instead, while Mr and Mrs Fred Hale (the oldest man in the world, do try to keep up) work their through film after film, most of the crowd have a collective chat, a particularly loud chat that constantly threatens to drown out Billy Mahonie in a sea of babble. Seriously, some people just can’t recognise greatness even when it’s waving intricate and elegant interlocked riffs in their face. But as the volume builds, Mahonie start to win over the ignorant onlookers. By the time they go all Fugazi throwing an epileptic fit on their pugnacious closer ‘Düsseldorf’, they’re an angular and finely honed colossus that is impossible to ignore.

It could be because Mahonie were so good, or have something to do with me being so tired, but Trans Am don’t really cut it tonight. Each time I’ve seen them before, I’ve been transfixed by their barrage of droning synths, growling bass and staccato drumming, but right now, something just isn’t clicking.

The crowd has started to leave, taking the atmosphere with them. Trans Am bassist Nathan Means’ close physical resemblance to Vernon Kaye is getting to me more than usual (the orange mesh trousers aren't really helping), and the set is too repetitive, the songs too derivative of each other, to hold my interest for long. It’s getting late, I’ve got to get up for work in the morning, and I’m feeling dehydrated, and no matter what they do now, Trans Am aren’t going to escape the fact that they were outclassed and upstaged by Billy Mahonie.

Blonde Redheadthe Scala, London

2009-11-09T02:19:00.002Z

It’s nights like these that make it all seem worthwhile. I don’t really know how it happened but I spent the last nine months in some sort of musical coma, oblivious to all that was going on around me, with no idea what was happening, when albums were being released or who was on tour.

I’d become disillusioned with gigs and was finding more comfort in James Ellroy novels than in smoky, dank disgusting venues with shit sound and overpriced drinks. Then Blonde Redhead finally came to town. Having spent so much time on the fringes, I was almost unsure how to react. It had been so long since I’d felt the excitement, the anticipation of knowing that I was going to able to go and watch a band that I totally love.

And then, as the staccato twin riff of ‘Melody Of Certain Three’ kicked in, it was as if I’d just had witnessed an epiphany. This was what I had been missing. It wasn’t that I was just burnt out, or had seen too many bands. I’d just seen so many merely average bands, that I’d almost forgotten what it was like to experience such brilliance, such genius first-hand.

It’s there in the way that they fuse the art-rock styling of Sonic Youth with the fervour of Fugazi, a perfect mix of poise and passion. Music that not only sends shivers down your spine but raises the hair on your head and sends the endorphins coursing through your mind. And they don’t just pull off such a feat once, the exhilaration builds with every song, from the interlocked guitars of ‘Futurism Vs. Passéism’, through a super-charged ‘Maddening Crowd’ and into an especially sparse and haunting rendition of ‘In Particular’.

They even get away with an encore of ‘In An Expression Of The Inexpressible’, on the record the only of their songs that doesn't induce a feeling of blissful awe. Live, however, it’s a twisting spiralling juggernaut of a song, as Kazu Makino saves her best Yoko Ono howl for the finale, screaming her near inarticulate desperation over Amedeo Pace’s jagged, bruising guitar hooks. It shouldn’t work, it’s just too far from what even the more musically liberated onlookers would describe as accessible, or maybe even listenable, but tonight it’s the most mesmerising climax that you can imagine.

Blonde Redhead have set the standard by which I will judge every other band this year. As much as I’d like to proven wrong, there are few bands whom I can imagine managing to scale such heights.

ElectrelaneAxes

2009-11-09T02:08:00.003Z

It’s good to see progress in action. When Electrelane first arrived back in 2000 they were an intriguing blend of space rock and film soundtrack, incidental music that was so disparate from everything else around that it was practically coincidental to fashion and trend. Their second album, ‘The Power Out’ and the preceding ‘I Want To Be The President’ EP, added muscle and greater substance to that equation. Not only that, but where some of the tracks on their debut, ‘Rock It To The Moon’, were too drawn out for comfort, ‘The Power Out’ was a leaner creature, stripped of procrastination that just hunkered down and got on with it.

Axes, the Steven Albini-produced third album, and first to feature new bassist Ros Murray, continues this evolution. Although it remains true to the blueprint laid down on ‘The Power Out’, the ideas contained within that album have been now been expanded upon, allowed to grow organically, and revel in their own glory, while simultaneously looking to the past and future for sustenance.

Once the thrash of opener ‘One, Two, Three, Lots’ has died down, a riff akin to Neu’s ‘Isi’ signals the beginning of ‘Bells’, a krautrocking epic that can stand proud alongside it’s Teutonic predecessor. The shuddering stop-start rhythms of ‘If Not Now, When?’ build on this promising start, juxtaposing gentle piano arpeggios with a driving beat that gradually becomes more and more insistent.

The impressions of perpetual motion and locomotive power increase the further into the album you get and become most apparent as the sound of faraway howling train horns ushers in ‘Gone Darker’. As the track gathers pace, the horns are replaced by the background squeal of distant sax, locking into the groove and dragging the song along with its discordant shrieks.

It’s certainly not all easy sailing, ‘Business Or Otherwise’ and its jerky spazz-jazz rhythm and lack of recognisable notes gives the distinct impression that someone foolishly let John Cage in the studio, while “these Pockets Are People’ and ‘Suitcase’ sound suspiciously Electrelane by numbers, though the former does serve as a useful, if perhaps overly long, intro by a heavy and punishing cover of Leonard Cohen’s ‘The Partisan’.

If you can ignore its couple of minor shortcomings, your perseverance with ‘Axes’ will ultimately be rewarded. All we need to do now is see where Electrelane go from here.

SlowdiveCatch the Breeze

2009-11-09T01:53:00.003Z

Is a cliché still a cliché if it happens to be true? Similarly, do clichéd descriptions remain clichés when they are the most appropriate way to describe how a particular band sounds? Is it possible to talk about a Slowdive – shoegazers to a (wo)man – compilation which brings together highlights from their entire back catalogue, without using words such as transcendental (cliché #1), or celestial (cliché #2)?

Part of the then infamous scene that celebrates itself, Slowdive stumbled out of the Thames Valley area at the start of the ‘90s to make beautiful music laden with soaring (cliché #3) guitars and lots and lots of effects pedals. The likes of the eponymously titled ‘Slowdive’ and ‘Catch The Breeze’ do a pretty good job of setting out the initial Slowdive blueprint, hovering as they do around the point of equilibrium between the squally feedback (cliché #4) of Ride, and Lush’s ethereal (cliché #5) wall of sound (cliché #6), topped off with Rachel Goswell dislocated, elfin vocals. Elsewhere, their cover of Syd Barrett’s ‘Golden Hair’, from the ‘Holding Our Breath’ EP, takes the concept of building sonic cathedrals (cliché #7) to extremes, managing to sound as if there was got a whole chapter of Franciscan monks locked away with them in the recording studio.

After their early EPs and first album, ‘Just For A Day’, Slowdive began to refine that blueprint, and 1993’s ‘Outside Your Room’ EP and ‘Souvlaki’ album, which included the Brian Eno collaboration ‘Sing’, signalled a move away from volume and towards a gentler, more ambient sound.

By the time that the ‘Pygmalion’ album was released in 1995, Slowdive barely resembled any of the bands that had been considered their peers five years earlier. The percussion had been stripped right back to a series of minimal beats that were overlaid with sparse notes and spacerock drones. This change left Slowdive having more in common with Seefeel and other bands mining the seam between guitar music and electronica than with the likes of My Bloody Valentine or the Pale Saints.

Since the demise of Creation Records, much of the Slowdive back catalogue has been unavailable. ‘Catch The Breeze’ is the first step towards rectifying that, and should allow a new generation of effects pedal geeks to learn to celebrate the scene that celebrated itself.

Delia Gonzalez and Gavin RussomThe Days of Mars

2009-11-09T01:43:00.005Z

Not content with re-appropriating some of Can’s finer moments with LCD Soundsystem, DFA boss James Murphy has obviously decided that the label could do with some more groovy proto-krautrock, which is where Delia Gonzalez and Gavin Russom come in.

While LCD have become the sound of now (well, the sound of ten months ago anyway), ‘The Days Of Mars’ could have crept out on an obscure German label at any point during the past twenty years.

‘The Days Of Mars’ is one of those records that breaks free of such petty notions as trend, fashion or era. Much like an updated take on Tangerine Dream or a subdued Kraftwerk, its minimalist bleeps, looping motorik and melancholy soul mean that this record will still sound fresh this time next year and that’s not something that could be said about everyone on the DFA roster.

SuicideA Way of Life, Why Be Blue?

2009-11-09T01:34:00.003Z

Five albums in 28 years is not a very impressive record. To put it into perspective, it’s about 397 albums less than the Fall have released in a similar period. But that’s all that Suicide managed so far, and this could well be one of the main motivating reasons for the re-release of their rather modest back catalogue over the past few years.

Suicide’s third album, ‘A Way Of Life’, was first released in 1988, shortly after the duo reformed following an absence that spanned the majority of the 80s. Nowhere near as harsh or abrasive as its predecessors, it’s a still a fairly unforgiving album, full of repetitive dirges, atonal droning and spasticated rhythms, though lacking the strangulated screams that had made their 1977 debut album so hard to listen to on a regular basis.

Essentially, this is the sound of Suicide with the drama and aggression turned down. ‘Jukebox Baby ‘96’ sees vocalist Alan Vega overdoing the Elvis sneer and murmur in a manner that Billy Idol would pee his pants to mimic. ‘Surrender’ seems to be set to the tune of A=ha’s ‘Manhattan Skyline’ and is, bizarrely, the closest thing that you’ll find to a Suicide ballad, and if ARE Weapons ever take to covering the Jesus & Mary Chain’s ‘Honey’s Dead’ album, it would sound just like ‘Rain Of Ruin’.

‘Why Be Blue?’, originally released in 1992, is the more focussed, and therefore better, of the two albums, powered by heavy staccato beats and doom-laden electro-pulses that veer between the Fall’s experiments with electronic music, Cabaret Voltaire and the an abstract take on the clipped pop of the Pet Shop Boys.

While ‘A Way Of Life’ sounds a bit too much like a collection of ideas gathered together for posterity, Suicide’s fourth album appears to have been recorded with a more carefully thought out vision in mind, meaning that ‘Why Be Blue?’ makes for a more comfortable listen than your average Suicide album.

StereolabInterlock, Kyberneticka Babicka, Plastic Mile

2009-11-09T01:27:00.004Z

Bloody Stereolab. No sooner do they put out a compilation of all their hard to find EPs – saving you much eBay stress and money – they follow it with a limited edition triple seven inch. Fortunately, new fangled technology means that all six tracks are also available as a download. Unfortunately, Stereolab continue to follow their recent trend of always being good, but rarely being great.

Such normal service means that the perfect pop days of ‘Ping Pong’ and ‘French Disko’ are behind us, with four of the new songs content to amble along pushing all the right buttons without bothering to flick your switches. But just when you’re least expecting it, ‘Interlock’ pulls out most of the stops, sticks it to the man and reminds you why you loved Stereolab so much in the first place.

The Dirty ThreeCinder

2009-11-09T01:19:00.003Z

You almost wonder how he finds the time. Despite having been a member of the Bad Seeds for the past few years and working on other solo projects, ‘Cinder’ is the seventh album that violinist Warren Ellis has released with the Dirty Three.

Much like the previous six albums, ‘Cinder’ is a tautly wrought with dueling violin and guitar, melancholic sounds and funereal longing. Unfortunately, with the exception of ‘Great Waves’ – on which Cat Power's Chan Marshall provides the vocal for the first Dirty Three song to ever feature lyrics – it sounds a lot like the previous six albums.

If you can ignore that fact that it’s also overly long, there’s nothing wrong with ‘Cinder’, it’s just that Ellis has done it before, and done it both better and more concisely.

Juliette & the Licks…Like A Bolt Of Lightning

2009-11-09T01:15:00.003Z

History says that this should be terrible. Actors should rarely be encouraged to pursue a recording career. But, against all the odds, Juliette Lewis has not only managed to release a credible mini-album, but a rather fine one too.

‘…Like A Bolt Of Lightning’ is brimful of the sort US AM radio three-chord Joan Jett meets David Lee Roth’s ‘Living In Paradise’ turned 80’s new wave punk rock that you suspect that Juliette’s ‘Natural Born Killers’ alter ego, Mallory Knox, would have listened to while fleeing the scene of her recently butchered parents.

If Courtney Love hadn’t wasted her talent flashing her tits, beating up passers-by and making monthly court-appearances, if Hole were still be with us, this would quite probably be what they’d sound like now.

CanUnlimited Edition

2009-11-09T01:08:00.004Z

Quick wake up call for anyone that thought Krautrock started with Kraftwerk. It didn’t.

Can formed back in the late ‘60s and, along with the likes of Tangerine Dream, laid down the original blueprint that was merely updated by Kraftwerk a few years later. Originally released in 1976, Can’s eighth album, ‘Unlimited Edition’, was compiled from a series of recordings made over the previous eight years, and runs the gamut from nasty hippy music to juddering and heavily syncopated motorik.

Despite the vintage of ‘Unlimited Edition’, it’s obvious how influential Can still are. Just a single listen to ‘Connection’, recorded in 1969, shows that, at least in spirit if not actually in person, LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy really was there.

Mission of Burma, the Playwrightsthe Institute of Contemporary Art, London

2009-11-08T23:47:00.003Z

There are few things as disappointing or soul-destroying as watching your luminaries embarrass themselves in front of your eyes. And few things are as likely to initiate a publicly humiliating fall from grace as a seminal band reforming as a way of dealing with their collective mid-life crisis.

The Velvet Underground were a bitter and petulant abomination of their past self, Arthur Lee has only managed to get away with it by drafting in a new band to pose as Love, and we’re all waiting with baited breath to see what happens with the Pixies. So when Mission of Burma got back together to play All Tomorrows Parties a couple of years ago, you may have feared that it was all set to go horribly wrong.

But before we talk about the old, let’s look at the new. While the Playwrights may not yet have broken into the public consciousness, with a Careless Talk Costs Lives tour behind them and high profile support slots like this, they’re making a damn good go of it. Where last years’ ‘Good Beneath The Radar’ was loaded with a post-folk air and chiming guitars, they’ve gone and got hard on our ass. The new songs punching out into the crowd as singer Aaron Dewey snarls his way through ‘Guy Debord Is Really Dead’ and guitarist Ben Shillabeer jerks around the stage, battering tunes out of his long-suffering instrument.

Having to follow such an adept performance, it seems even less likely that Mission of Burma will be able to pull this off. But age doesn’t seem to have taken its toll on them, and while Roger Miller spends the first of tonight’s two sets looking uncomfortable on stage, this is about as close to a triumphant comeback as you can get with the ICA’s dodgy PA system.

The PA not only muddies the sound disgracefully, it highlights how much more interesting, and tuneful, Clint Conley’s songs are than Miller’s, and also how much better a voice he has. While the likes of Miller’s fast and rasping ‘Fun World’ start to blur into an almost unidentifiable mess through the distorted PA, Conley’s ‘Academy Fight Song’ and ‘That’s How I Escape My Certain Fate’ still sound great.

When ‘That’s When I Reach For My Revolver’ breaks through the fuzz and hiss of the overloaded system it still sounds as fresh and vital as it must have on it’s release 21 years ago. Mission of Burma have proved that it is possible for a bunch of middle-aged men to return without making tits of themselves. Let’s just hope that the Pixies have been paying close attention.

Soe'za

2009-11-08T23:29:00.004Z

Popular perception often says that in order for a band to have any chance of recognition that they either have to come from London, relocate to London, or play a London gig at least once a month. Now, this shouldn’t be the case, but as with all self-fulfilling prophecies, once something has been accepted as true, then it becomes true.

Fortunately, there are exceptions to this rule. Sometimes it’s possible to override the lazy and myopic views of both the industry and the punters and prove that it is possible to overcome such obstacles as an apathetic local population and put yourself on the map, no matter where you happen to be located.

Gather together enough like-minded and similarly determined people; form some bands and find a venue sympathetic to your cause, or at least willing to let you use its back-room for a nominal return, and all of a sudden you’ll find that other individuals and bands will gravitate towards you and, lo, a scene is born.

This is how things went in Bristol in the mid to late ‘90s. The Pull The Strings collective centred around a handful of bands – of which Soe'za were one of the more prominent – a local pub venue and a connection with Southern Records that allowed the added bonus of regular gigs from the likes of Les Savy Fav, Sweep The Leg Johnny and 90 Day Men.

Released in 2000, Soe'za’s debut album, ‘Founded By Sportsmen And Outlaws’ proved them to be the British contemporaries to the Check Engine; a record rammed full of jazz-punk licks melded with, and tempered by, hardcore tendencies that grew out from the taut cadence of dual drums and agitated guitars. But what really set Soe'za out was the way in which this was dressed with cornet and French horn, offering a glimpse of musical sophistication rarely encountered within the confines of your average provincial pub gig.

Then, as is so often the way, circumstances got the in the way of progress. Due to the rather incestuous musical environment in Bristol, where everyone seems to be in about eight bands at once, Ben Shillabeer and Aaron Dewey left the band to pursue their other commitments in the Playwrights, while other members disappeared on prolonged sabbaticals.

All of which means that Soe'za’s second album, ‘Why Do You Do?’, gradually assumed that often-dreaded mantle of long-awaited, while a low-key existence meant that they almost dropped off the radar outside of the south-west.

Thankfully, ‘Why Do You Do?’ has finally found its way out of the primordial fog, via Nottingham-based indie label Gringo, and set about re-establishing Soe'za’s profile.

When compared to ‘Founded By Sportsmen…’, Soe'za’s sophomore album strikes you as a different sort of beast, more restrained and less frenetic. Jenny Robinson’s move away from the second drum kit means that there is more opportunity for her softer, more soulful voice to provide a foil to Ben Owen’s rapid-fire undulating stream of consciousness lyrical flow. The scattershot drums remain, but they’ve since been joined by rolling rhythms that sound as if they’ve dropped straight off a Salaryman record, while album closer ‘Wounded Hounds And Their Treatment has more than a hint of Karate’s sparse notes and whispered vocals about it.

The only question left should by why do you do what? But once you’ve heard Soe'za, the only thing you’ll want to do is dance, and the reason you’ll want to do that is because it’s impossible to not do so. Time to get yourself both the albums, and put your dancing shoes on.

GravenhurstArts Cafe, Camden Monarch, London

2009-11-08T23:15:00.004Z

There are two sides to every story. Newton proved the existence of equal and opposite reactions, Chinese philosophy gave us the Yin and the Yang, Freud based his theories of personal development on the twin drives of Eros and Thanatos, and Robert Louis Stevenson had Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Gravenhurst, as with many other singer-songwriters (sorry, I know that that’s a bit of a dirty word), deals with the age-old dichotomy between the acoustic and the electric guitar.

Maybe a brief history lesson is in order at this juncture. Once upon a time there was a band called Assembly Communications. Their sound was pitched somewhere between the desolate beauty of Red House Painters, the effects-pedal driven onslaught of Ride’s early singles and soaring vocals reminiscent of Art Garfunkel. They built themselves a solid fan base around their adopted hometown of Bristol, took In The City by storm and turned down record deals. But then, for reasons that won’t be entered into here, the band split.

After a while singer Nick Talbot started Gravenhurst as a solo adventure. The understated majesty of Assembly was still there, only this time the thundering guitars had been replaced by a lone, fragile acoustic guitar. But it seems that this wasn’t enough. Alongside the solo effort, a new electric Gravenhurst were also being assembled (ahem). So now, depending on the night, you can have either the solo acoustic Gravenhurst or the full electric movement of the three-piece Gravenhurst.

If it’s Tuesday, it must be the Arts Café. Full band, electric guitars and effects-pedals. Last time I saw the electric Gravenhurst, I wanted to cry. The music was just too beautiful, the longing so perfectly expressed. Tonight, however, the tears are nowhere near my eyes. They’ve been replaced with an overriding feeling of joy. This is music that moves me. Even though new songs comprise the majority of the set, there’s a welcome sense of familiarity to everything they play. I feel like I already know these songs, that I’ve lived with them, that I’ve already taken solace in them.

Whatever the reasons for the formation of a full band, it’s strange seeing the difference in Nick’s demeanour from one night to the next. With the band he looks relaxed, comfortable being on stage. But the night after at the Monarch, he seems nervous, awkward as he stands there alone, the subject of the crowd’s undivided attention.

Musically, there’s not a lot to choose between the two sets. The songs differ (only ‘Damage II’ and ‘Blacks Holes In The Sun’ feature in both), but this is mainly because there hasn’t been yet time to for the band to learn them all, or for the songs to be re-arranged. But, electrically, ‘Black Holes…’ is so mighty that as a set-closer it’s perfect. As Nick stops singing, the guitars arc into a crescendo of wailing noise, building louder and louder, almost in direct retaliation to the delicate sound that has gone before. ‘The Diver’ still sends shivers down my spine, but the spookiest moment of the two sets has to be Nick’s solo rendition of Hüsker Dü’s ‘Diane’. Originally a barked and frantic tale of rape, when stripped down to a single guitar, the song takes on a new, and somehow much more sinister, air, as if the victim’s suffering has been made more prominent by the reduction in volume.

It’s been said that there are two sides to all of us. If that’s the case, then surely there’s room in your heart for the two sides of Gravenhurst as well.

Killing Joke

2009-11-08T23:07:00.002Z

Following the acrimonious and very public dissolution of the Sex Pistols, John Lydon claimed that his new project, Public Image Ltd, would reject the notions of punk, instead replacing them with the bass-heavy throb of dub, frantic polyrhythms, and unstable frenetic guitars; in short, Public Image Ltd were going to deal in little short of anti-music. Unfortunately, no matter how good the rhetoric behind PiL, their first album still sounds that bit unfocussed and disappointing.

“This morning, shortly after eleven o’clock, comedy struck this little house in Dibley Road. Sudden, violent, comedy. Police have sealed off the area, and Scotland Yard’s crack inspector is with me now.”

Which is where Killing Joke come in. Formed by singer and keyboardist Jaz Coleman and drummer Paul Ferguson in early 1978, eventually filling the line up with Geordie and Youth (no real names around here), on guitar and bass respectively, Killing Joke sonically sat that much closer to Lydon’s concept of the death-disco, brutal beats pregnant with ominous pulsating keyboards and a snarling desperate vocal that carried lyrics that painted a grim view of the present and an even darker prediction of the future.

“I shall be aided by the sound of sombre music, played on gramophone records and also by the chanting of laments by the men of Q division. The atmosphere thus created should protect me in the eventuality of me reading the joke.”

Originally released in 1979 and 1981, Killing Joke’s self-produced first albums – the eponymous debut and the sophomore ‘What’s This For…!’ – laid out their uncompromising blueprint for all to see and hear. Often credited with being one of the instigators behind the nascent Goth scene of the early ‘80s, Killing Joke transcended the movement before it began, becoming ever more vicious and punishing while their black-clad peers slid towards humourless self-parody.

In fact, ‘What’s This For…!’ saw Killing Joke refining the post-punk elements of their sound. ‘The Fall Of Because’ is the aural embodiment of PiL’s ‘Metal Box’, ‘Tension’ is the bleakly claustrophobic cousin of the Knack’s ‘My Sharona’, the effervescence joy of the latter supplanted with paranoid sense of alienation and despair, while ‘Follow The Leaders’ sounds like nothing less than a dub version of Joy Division’s ‘Isolation’.

“It was not long before the army became interested in the military potential of the killing joke. Under top security, the joke was hurried to a meeting of allied commanders at the ministry of war.”

Not being a band to mess with a winning formula, 1982’s ‘Revelations’ takes up where ‘What’s This For…!’ leaves off, but benefits from a much cleaner, and therefore more readily accessible, sound courtesy of producer Connie Plank. Although it’s essentially business as usual, much of ‘Revelations’ hints at a new found urgency and a desire to heard, a feeling in part created by the simple fact that the vocals were just that much clearer in the mix.

“In 1945, peace broke out. It was the end of the joke. Joke warfare was banned at a special session of the Geneva Convention, and in 1950 the last remaining joke was laid to rest here in the Berkshire countryside, never to be told again.”

Around the time of ‘Revelations’, relationships in the band started to go awry, prompting Youth to abscond, leaving the way clear for Paul Raven to take his place. ‘Ha!’ – Killing Joke’s fourth album – was recorded shortly after, pieced together from live recordings taken from a number of shows in Canada. From here on in, infamy beckoned, but it was during this period in their early days that Killing Joke most mattered.

Querelle, Controller.ControllerBarden’s Boudoir, London

2009-11-08T22:29:00.004Z

Right now, I’m ready to worship Querelle. No one else seems to have lifted the best bits from two of my favourite bands – Sonic Youth and Blonde Redhead – and yet can be seen playing a 300 capacity in a basement underneath a carpet shop in Stoke Newington to celebrate their signing with the Sink and Stove record label. So it’s incredibly frustrating that whoever took their soundcheck tonight doesn’t seem to hold them in such high regard as I do.

And, judging by the mood onstage, it seems that I’m not the only person that has an issue with the muddy sound. Try as they might, there doesn’t seem to be anything that Querelle can do it. Things just aren’t going their way, all the low-end is bouncing back off the ceiling and walls and what should have been a smart, clipped sound is rendered flat and toneless. But even through the sludge, you can hear that there’s something beautiful trying to force its way out. It’s there in the way that ’Nothing Lost Nothing Found’ sounds like an art-rock onslaught on Joy Division’s ‘Atrocity Exhibition’, all cavernous drumming and a jagged guitar that keeps dipping tantalisingly into feedback without ever quite breaking the boundary that divides music and noise.

Fortunately things go better for their new label-mates, Controller.Controller. On record, they sound like Pretty Girls Make Graves car-jacking Lomax but live they mutate into a deep-down low and nasty ten-legged punk-funk machine intent on turning their crowd into braying slaves to their fidgety staccato rhythm.

Imagine what the Rapture would sound like now if, rather than getting all loved up and trancey, they had followed up ‘Out Of The Races And Onto The Tracks’ by filling out their sound and delivering on the promise that the Gang of Four stylings that that song had promised. If, instead of making their songs all polished and shiny, they’d unleashed a barely contained rampant beast and gone on to record the album of adrenaline-fueled disco-punk for which we’d all been hoping. That mythical album would sound just like Controller.Controller.

Not only that, but they’re every bit the real deal live as well. Okay, so the stage isn’t exactly on the large size, but it’s literally seething. Singer Nirmala Basnayake is careening across the front of the stage, shaking her ass to her band’s insidious and infectious rhythms. Behind her, jerking and lurching guitarists are jumping on and off the stage, trying to avoid a drum kit that is being played so hard that it’s bouncing across the stage. The drummer meanwhile, clad in a balaclava and goat mask ensemble, is smashing out the beat on the ceiling.

It’s as if you’re witness to a funk-punk Bacchanalia, there’s nothing that you can do to stop yourself from getting caught up in the heady exuberance of it all. It’s time to give in to the moment and lose all control.

John Parishthe Spitz, London

2009-11-08T21:27:00.003Z

John Parish has always been something of an enigma. One of those people whose name you’ve always known but, other than ‘Dance Hall At Louse Point’, his 1996 collaboration with PJ Harvey, very few people outside of his loyal following actually know anything that he’s done, a situation exacerbated by his seemingly random appearances of other people’s records.

Similarly, it’s also quite hard to know what to expect of Parish. Five years ago, he was playing with a thirteen-piece band, last time he headed off on tour he was down to just nine people. Tonight’s four-piece, including Parish, seems practically anorexic by comparison.

Another inconstant here is Parish’s musical style, which changes as regularly as the number of beds on his tour bus. ‘Dance Hall At Louse Point’ was a brash, howling translation of PJ Harvey’s solo work. He flitted through pared down rustic folk before adopting the expansive textural landscapes of ‘How Animals Move’. More recently Parish seems to have settled, for the time being at least, for an intimate-sounding barroom blues, in part reminiscent of Tindersticks, if they had stripped of their strings, horns and unfathomable vocals, or the ‘Sticks’ American peers, the National.

But this current incarnation of the Parish band demands an intimate setting, and that is the last thing that he’s granted tonight. A large part of the crowd is restless – that large part obviously not including the substantial number of people that leave before Parish sheepishly saunters onstage more than an hour later than expected. Although not quite an ungodly time of night, it’s far too close to the witching hour and the new go-slow stylings struggles to connect with those who remain. Proceedings also aren’t helped by the fact that the new electric line up of tonight’s support band, Gravenhurst, have just played a spellbinding and exceptionally loud set that is still reverberating around the venue.

In fact, when all these factors are put together, Parish is just too underwhelming tonight. Anyone that came along hoping for the six guitar art-rock ensemble of a few years ago has been left disappointed and unfortunately that seems to be the overriding emotion tonight. Looks like Parish’s enigmatic status is safe for the meantime.

Secondhand Daylight

2009-11-08T21:07:00.003Z

I have an admission to make. Maybe it says something bad about me; perhaps it highlights some inadequacy that I had otherwise kept hidden. It’s possible that I’m about to make a social faux pas equivalent to arriving at a Middle-East peace talk wearing nothing but gaffer tape and electrodes. But, I don’t care any more. It has to said. The time has come to get it off my chest.

I suffer from a near-obsessive need to regularly purchase vinyl that other people have already used for their own nefarious purposes.

Okay, so I may have misled you there. I’m not admitting to a penchant for wearing used PVC clothing. Just that I find it incredibly hard to go longer than a couple of weeks without buying secondhand records. I should maybe point out that when I say records, I don’t just mean records. I mean music in general. I’m not a luddite snob with an aversion to CDs. I just find it easier to class all music as records and I also think that CD is a particularly ugly looking abbreviation.

If you look at it from at the viewpoint of an evolutionary behaviourist, then perhaps it’s my preconscious mind expressing the primeval urge to be a hunter-gatherer, a deep-seated need to return home at the end of the day clutching my prize, the ultimate proof of my manhood – this would also offer a rationale for the surge of aggression & territorial possessiveness which I often want to direct toward any other shopper who should be so bold as to approach the section immediately to my right (assuming that with an alphabetically order shop, you work your way through the section from left to right), and he (and it is usually a he) dares to casually flick through a rack of records that I have not yet perused.

Of course it’s possible that, rather than being the innocent victim of an ancient innate male character trait, learnt during millennia of living in a harsh and hostile environment, I could just be a geek. But let’s not dwell on that for prospect for too long. It would rid me of a useful get-out clause. And anyway, if it weren’t for secondhand record shops, my collection would be sadly lacking in albums by Lou Reed, Blondie, Bowie and the Action Swingers. How could I be expected to survive?

But before we continue, I urge you to stop your internal dialogue. You have judged me without first knowing a vitally important fact. You have classed me as a record collector and, as such, unworthy of your time but I refute this libellous claim. I am not a record collector. Record collectors buy records simply the sake of ownership. I buy records for the sake of having the music to listen to as and when I please. For me, the song is the ultimate goal; for the collector the fact of ownership is more important than the music. I have not, and shall never, walk that long and lonely path.

But...back to my obsessive-compulsive disorder. I suppose it all boils down to the fact that I derive two different forms of pleasure from buying secondhand records. First, there’s the general pleasure from having purchased a good album. You know that you have will have this for years to come, and that the album will be there any time you want to have a listen. But you can get that satisfaction from any record, no matter where it was purchased.

However, with secondhand records, that feeling is intensified. This wasn’t just a record you walked into a shop and picked up from the shelf. This is a prize, a purchase to be cherished. While it may not quite be like finding buried treasure, finding a great album after an hour digging through the racks is at least akin to finding a forgotten twenty pound note in your pocket. Granted, it may be only be a short-lived cheap thrill but, while that feeling lasts, you’re the king of the world - bulletproof and indestructible.

Obviously there are different grades of secondhand record shop. You can’t expect to get the same return for your efforts at an Oxfam as you can from a specialist retailer. It’s not so much the effort that is required for a thorough search, more the fact that your average charity shop is full of battered copies of musicals and Brahms box sets from the Reader’s Digest. But, the occasional dip into their mucky wares can still produce small gems, especially when you find Kraftwerk’s ‘Computer World’ for less than £2.

The next level is the standard independent retailer with a small secondhand section, such as David’s Records in Letchworth. This sort of shop is the real teaser, the bait that first gets you into buying secondhand records. You’re looking for the band new album by some random US hardcore band, but then, out of the corner of your eye you spot Hüsker Dü’s ‘Candy Apple Grey’ in the secondhand section. Result. Before you know it, you’re checking the used record section before the new releases, just to make sure that no-one else picks up a bargain while you’re not looking.

Then there are the small, exclusively secondhand, shops such as Alan’s in East Finchley or More Music in Swansea. Shop where you the range of stock, and catchment area of their sellers, mean that you may not be finding the most treasured albums in your collection, but there’s a reasonable chance that you’ll find something that takes your fancy.

Larger shops can be divided into two categories. Firstly, there are those that specialise in certain genres, such as the excellent Replay Records on Haymarket Walk in Bristol, where I spent more time than I’d care to admit when in lived in the city. As they limit the sort of music they hold, it’s always worthwhile to spend a good hour looking through all the shelves, particularly as they’re very good at marking the price down on anything that hasn’t sold quickly. Any visit to my former housemates is usually accompanied by a trip to Replay and, more often than not, rewarded with a couple of bags full of very good, and very cheap, records.

Secondly, there are the evil shops. By which I really mean the various branches of Record & Music Exchange in London, though there must be other similarly despicable outlets around the country. Mainly because they’ll quite happily sell you scratched records and CDs, won’t let you listen to them in the shop to see if the marks are merely surface damage or something more serious and won’t give you a refund when you discover that you’ve been conned.

Then, finally, there’s eBay, the big daddy of secondhand record shopping. eBay scares me. There are too many possibilities. I could live on eBay, spend entire days searching for records and placing bids. If the hunt for secondhand records is indeed derived from the repression of the hunter-gatherer instinct then eBay is its ultimate expression. A place where not only do you get to seek and succeed, you also get to fight for your prize, for the right to call yourself King Monkey. I fear eBay and yet I also bow to its superior power.

That feels better now. A weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I have had my confession and I feel stronger, purer, for it. Just don’t go getting me mixed up with Rob Gordon, the neurotic shop-owner and music obsessive from Nick Hornby’s ‘High Fidelity’. I’m not a geek.

TigaSexor

2009-11-08T20:36:00.003Z

Well, it was long time coming. Despite having been around for what now seems like years - as a remixer to the likes of Felix Da Housecat, Cabaret Voltaire and Fischerspooner, working alongside Zyntherius for the mighty 'Sunglasses At Night', and so many appearances at Trash that the term guest DJ no longer seems appropriate - it has taken three years for 'Sexor' to finally reach completion.

In some ways that may actually be a good thing. Back in the day, it was hard to know who to take seriously and who was just along for the ride, in it for the fame and out for kicks rather than to actually do anything as banal as add substance to the musical cannon of the genre. As such, Fischerspooner were often ridiculed and dismissed as thrill-seeking one-trick party animals and Peaches was hailed as nothing less than a spokesman for a new generation.

In the four years since the cold heart of electroclash not only seems to have warmed but also gain the ability to emote more than a superficial desire to buy Prada shoes, take coke and act as if you're too good to be seen to be having fun at Nag Nag Nag. Not only that but now that most of the feckless chancers have abandoned what they believed to be a sinking ship, it's possible to the more fresh and vital acts to stand out from the thinning crowd once again. And in such an environment, Tiga stands out like a beacon.

Given how fast music evolves and trends come and go, it's almost surprising how much 'Sexor' sounds like it could have been released at any point in the last six years. Had this album come out in 2000, it would have been proclaimed as groundbreaking, in 2006 it's merely very, very good. Maybe it's a result of having spent so long in gestation - 'Pleasure From The Bass' was recorded in 2002 and originally saw the light of day, or at least the shiny chrome-plated neonlicht of nightclubs, in 2004 - but when you consider that this has been spawned by a genre that wasn't expected to survive a year without imploding, Tiga has pulled a masterstroke by managing to divorce this album from the vagaries of fashion to deliver something that, if not exactly timeless, sounds just as at home on your stereo right now as it would have a few years ago and will still do so in a couple of years time. Just as Kratfwerk's gleaming exterior housed an emotive, progressive soul, the pulsating rhythms of 'You're Gonna Want Me' and the incessant motorik of 'Good As Gold' conceal the sort of humanity that electroclash's detractors could never have expected to find lurking within.

In fact, along with Fischerspooner's 2005 album, 'Odyssey', 'Sexor' is proof that, far from being dead and buried as many had predicted and hoped, not only is there life in electroclash, it seems that the genre may in such rude health that a resurrection may not be that far off.

Chris BrokawIncredible Love

2009-11-08T19:45:00.004Z

Some people don’t like to make a lot of noise, they’re not overly eager to draw attention to themselves, they tend to keep things on the quiet side. The career of Chris Brokaw appears to be a case in point.

Brokaw first cropped up in New York slow-core luminaries Codeine – a band so slow that glaciers can cross continents before a song reaches its chorus and narcoleptics could fall into slumbers between beats, yet still wake up in time for the next stroke of the drums. And as Brokaw was the man supplying that beat, you have to wonder if maybe the sloth isn’t the only creature that lives out its life at a fraction of the speed of the rest of us.

After Codeine’s ’Frigid Stars LP’ and ‘Barely Real’, Brokaw headed off to Boston, laid down his sticks for a bit in favour of a guitar and joined forces with Thalia Zedek in Come, a band only marginally less sedate than Codeine. More recently, Brokaw seems to be making something of a habit of playing in bands featuring other established musicians. He’s returned to the drums in the rather spectral New Year (alongside former Bedhead brothers Matt and Bubba Kadane), plays in Doug McCombs intricate post-Tortoise post-rock outfit, Pullman, and also in Consonant, the band formed by former Mission of Burma man, Clint Conley as well as making guest appearances on recent records by the likes of Evan Dando and Karate.

And if you think that that sounds like enough for most people, you may be surprised to know that he’s also found the time to hold down a solo career (though if that is the case, you’d perhaps also be wondering why this article existed in the first place). So it’s no mere coincidence that Brokaw is about to unleash his second solo album, ‘Incredible Love’.

You know the way that Bjork’s ‘It’s Oh So Quiet’ starts off all soft and tranquil, then suddenly shouts ‘arrrgghhhhhh!!!! I’m a bit loopy me’ in your ear just when you were about to drift off to la-la land? Well, ‘Incredible Love’ is a bit like that. OK, so it’s not like Brokaw gone and torn his larynx out screaming like a good ‘un or ripped the volume knobs off his guitar trying to turn it up further than it was designed to be played, but compared to what has come before, this still feels like something of a departure.

It all starts innocuously enough. ‘Blues For The Moon’ is a gentle and engaging number that nicely draws you in and leaves you with the false impression that this Brokaw is going for the less whiny Jeff Buckley aesthetic. All of which means that the opening bars of ‘Move’ feels somewhat like a slap in the face, as the volume increases and it all starts to get a that little bit rowdy, and it doesn’t end there. Things continue in this vein across the album – soft songs interspersed with hard-edged rock outs, gentle melodies begetting pounding drums and rough-hewn rockers, beefed up by the presence of Karate’s Jeff Goddard and former Rodan man, Kevin Koultas.

But the most intriguing thing about ‘Incredible Love’ is that when you go back for another listen, which you will many times over, you find that the majority of the songs are not actually anywhere near as loud as you first thought. So how you have just been tricked into thinking of this as something other than it really is?

The answer can only lie in Brokaw’s willingness to understand that delicate doesn’t necessarily have to equal indistinct, that it is possible to take intricate songs and record them in a manner that means that listeners won’t have to strain themselves trying to enjoy the album, that gives a depth and strength to the sound that most people would never think of using, something that has been apparent on nearly every record on which he’s ever played. And not only is ‘Incredible Love’ is all the better for it, it is indeed quite incredible.

The OC

2007-11-26T00:12:00.002Z

British youth soap opera/teen-drama. Just doesn’t cut it, does it? As if. Hollyoaks. Bunch of fucking crap. Why waste your time watching it?

No, if you want to while your hours away watching twenty-somethings playing teenagers, be it television or cinema, you have to turn to America. It seems that they’re just so much better at than we are. The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Pretty In Pink, Bring It On, American Pie (but only the first film, let’s put the kibosh on the sequels), My So Called Life, Buffy, the list just goes on. But – and it’s quite a big but – that list most definitely doesn’t include Dawson’s pissing Creek.

No, I don’t care who you are; it’s not worth trying to start this debate with me. You can’t win, so I won’t even bother listening to what you saying. Blah blah blah, like, whatever.

That’s not enough? You want reasons? Overly sentimental, unbearably saccharine sweet and twee, drawn-out long past its sell by date, smug as fuck plot lines, and I don’t fancy Katie Holmes. Sorry.

But of course, we also have to take into account the James van der Beek factor.

Mr van der Beek, please approach the bench. I present you with exhibit A, the lower half of your face. How do you plead? Guilty? Too fucking right you’re guilty.

Ok, so I had no problem with James van der Beek in ‘Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back’ or ‘The Rules Of Attraction’, but as far as Dawson goes, you’re having a fackin' laugh, guv’nor. Foolishly sensitive film geek fucks up his love life and loses his girlfriend to the US version Toady from Neighbours. Get over it. Move on. Look, she has. She’s screwing your best mate.

If I wanted hear about the trials and tribulations of being a movie addict trying to get by in the real world, I’d have a chat with New Noise’s very own Eddie Robson. I used to work with him. He’s a nice chap, once you get over his remarkable resemblance to Muse’s Matt Bellamy. And he’s got a book out about the films of the Cohen Brothers, which is more than you can say for Mr Chin.

Anyway, I’ve digressed enough. If you’re after non-patronising teen-drama, with geek-chic skateboard kids, hard-drinking beauties, philandering parents, a bitch queen royale, and a bloke that once died of a heart attack in Neighbours, all based around a reworking of the classic Pygmalion story, then there’s only one place for you to turn. And that’s Orange County, California, baby.

Yeh, you got it. Welcome to the OC.

We’re supposed to pretend that the series is all about Ryan. The Chino boy who was saved from himself just about in time to stop from him turning bad, but who’s still rough enough to punch out anyone that looks at him funny, burn down a house owned by his recently adopted mother’s business, and shag his newly acquired grandfather’s girlfriend in front of the girl he really wants. The perfect post-American Dream rebel with a cause. Like Jack Kerouac raised as trailer trash, but denied the opportunity to place his mother on a pedestal, left with no choice but to lash out at his tormentors.

But really, we know that he’s little more than a plot device. He’s only there so that situations can evolve around him. He’s a catalyst for change, a fulcrum rather than a focal point, and an excuse for a regular ruckus.

No, all the real fun is going on around Ryan. First off there’s Summer. The tart with a heart, only she keeps her heart well hidden behind a wall of vicious put-downs, scything glances and mini-skirts. She thinks she’s all that, and, truth be told, she probably is. Even if she isn’t I wouldn’t want to be the one to tell her. She’d probably have your balls off in an instant. Along with your bladder and lower intestine.

And there’s her verbal sparring partner, Seth Cohen. King geek extraordinaire, the Graham Coxon of US teen-drama. Let’s face it, he’s the kid that we’d all like to be. Good T-shirts, never falls off his skateboard, has hair that marks him out as being just that little bit different, and he’s willing to argue with the girl of his dreams when it comes to music.

And it that isn’t enough for you, he almost manages to pull off the perfect coup. Rolling around semi-naked with Summer in the pool house while he’s got another girl stashed away in his bedroom, playing with a toy horse.

Finally, we get to Marissa Cooper, the OC’s contender for the throne marked teen-drama goddess. A true challenger for the position previously held by Shannon Doherty and Eliza Dukshu. I’d marry her if we didn’t already share a surname.

Where do we start? She’s toying not only with alcoholism and drug abuse but also with Ryan’s heart. She tried to kill herself in a seedy Tijuana bar, is having to deal with watching her parents split up but also watching her mother chase Seth’s grandfather. Her ex-boyfriend is a jock twat who managed to sleep with half the female population of the OC without her knowing. Basically meaning that she gets flit between playing the nice girl next door one moment and fucked-up drug hoover the next. What more could you ask for from a leading lady?

OK, so that’s the kids sorted (well, all the important ones anyway), all you need know for a killer drama is a reasonably believable basic premise. Something along the lines of Ryan starting the series getting caught while trying to steal a car, or some other relatively minor act of juvenile delinquency. That should suffice.

Maybe then his mother and her abusive boyfriend do a runner while Ryan is in custody, leaving with nowhere to turn other than the kind-hearted community lawyer, Sandy, that was dealing with his case. Who then takes Ryan home to meet the wife and their seemingly socially-awkward son, Seth, who just happens to the same age as our lovably roguish Chino troublemaker. Sound good so far? Yeh? Good, then we’ll continue

Imagine for a moment that Ryan’s initiation into OC life doesn’t go so smoothly to start. He keeps getting into fights, usually with Marissa’s boyfriend. At the beach, in the diner, on the boardwalk; wherever Ryan goes, chances are he’ll be coming home with a shiner. And just to antagonise his new home life, each black eye invariably earns another black mark from Sandy’s immeasurably wealthy wife. But Seth doesn’t seem to be acting so introverted anymore, so maybe it’s all going to work out for the best. In fact, maybe they should adopt Ryan.

And once you’ve mixed that little lot together add a succession of parties, Ryan's and Marissa's on-off, should-we, shouldn’t-we, what about my boyfriend-sod him, he’s a lying cheating bastard anyway relationship and the gradual build up of sexual tension between Seth and Summer.

Then you’ve got the near-apocalyptic road trip to Tijuana which cumulates with Marissa knocking a bottle of pills down her gob, and the occasional sortie back into Chino – allowing for the use of grainier and less vividly-coloured film to further highlight the differences between the rich suburb and the scummy run-down poor area. But hey, at least Ryan’s growing up on the right side of the tracks now.

And there it is.. Everything you could possibly wish for from the perfect teen-drama. So next time bleak British teen-soaps are getting you down, just head on over to OC for some fun in the privileged sun because, as every easy-living, hard-partying California rich-kid knows, the future’s bright, the future’s Orange County.

The Make Up

2007-11-26T00:02:00.000Z

"I wanna introduce four of the most generously gifted motherfuckers that I know. Straight out of Washington, DC…the Make Up. Let’s give it up.”
Introduction from ‘After Dark: Live At Fine China’

It’s not often that a band comes along that perfectly sums up everything that you want, and should demand, from a group. In reality, such an occurrence is so rare that should such a band come along, you’re more or less obligated to love them, obsess over them and stalker them like a nutter every time they set foot in the country as you. But unfortunately these bands come along so infrequently that it’s been years since we were last given the opportunity to express our love in such a drastic and morally dubious manner. In fact, it’s been eleven years since a new band came along and showed themselves to both the personification of our dreams and the realisation of our desires. It’s been eleven years since the dark underbelly of Washington, DC, spawned the Make Up.

The Make Up formed around the core of Nation of Ulysses, a DC area band that made like Rocket From The Crypt with an added socio-demographic political agenda and claimed an intention to “wreck society through direct action by destroying its institutions and the men who serve it, and by relying on the people's forces to spread the doctrines of P-Power and Ragnarok; to consolidate the New Nation, while never forgetting the need for constant purging”. As you may notice, they weren’t exactly your common or garden DC hardcore band.

Styling themselves as an international revolutionaries, the NoU not only declared themselves the first wave of the Ulysses Jihad and waged war on complacency and the US government – laying claim to a number of fictitious assassinations and embassy bombings – but pronounced these claims so loudly that singer Ian Svenonious believes to this day that the CIA hold files on him and regularly keep track of his actions.

When the time came for NoU to part ways, it was obvious that the nation had not fallen, that the masses continued to be repressed, and that there was still work to be done and from the ashes of NoU, via a brief sojourn as Cupid Car Club, rose the phoenix of the Make Up; bold, magnificent and ready to continue the good fight.

“Do not review if...the review would condescend to MAKE-UP's pretension of ideology and dismiss it as sophomoric and naive, as MAKE-UP recognise the unconscious ideology of insipid psychology undermine meaning through invisible propaganda for its father and benefactor, advanced capitalism…6) unless you understand that this is truth on tape…”
From the sleeve-notes to ‘Sound Verité’

Looking like a mix of a Maoist party conference, the Symbionese Liberation Army and the Black Panthers, the Make Up comprised three former Ulysses jihadees – the aforementioned Svenonious (now less a singer than an evangelical rock and roll prophet who could be found sermonizing his congregation as often as actually singing), bassist Steve Gamboa and drummer/percussionist James Canty (brother of Fugazi’s one and only Brendan Canty) – and Michelle Mae, formerly the bassist in proto-riot grrls, the Frumpies.

"Of all the sectarian developments stemming from Christianity in the former colonies, perhaps the strangest and most fascinating is the one called Gospel Yeh Yeh, which, though originating in Washington, DC, seems to be spreading elsewhere at an alarming rate."
From the sleeve-notes to ‘Destination: Love Live! At Cold Rice’

Sonically, The Make Up evolved drastically during their transition from the frenetic soul-punk revue of NoU. While none of the energy or fondness for zealous performance was lost, the Make Up’s mix of MC5, post-DC hardcore, Arthur Lee’s Love (even going so far as to write a protest song demanding his release from incarceration), gospel, rhythm and blues and punk – what they referred to as the Gospel Yeh Yeh sound – was the nearest thing you can find to an incendiary device in your record collection.

The band’s image and politics were echoed in every thing they did. Not only did they perform in matching black uniforms, they could be found arriving at their shows in matching daywear. Far from being the last gang in town, the Make Up projected the idea that they were the only gang in town, and you were welcome to join as long as you could prove your devotion during the gig. Make Up shows (the the prefix used to come and go depending at which record sleeve you happened to be looking, representing the band as both concept and a definitive article in their own right) were characterised by the ever more outrageous antics of Svenonious, often to be found in the midst of his disciples; braying with ruthless abandon like a revitalised James Brown, urging on his fans, pushing them to the point where they abandoned any sense of inhibition and became part of the spectacle itself. Early on it wasn’t unusual for the Make Up to be greeted with initial apprehension, only for this to turn to undying zeal and supplication by the end of the show.

The Hives and the (International) Noise Conspiracy may have lifted most of their ideaz straight from their copies of After Dark and Destination Love, but they were little more than inadequate pretenders to the Make Up’s throne. While repeated attendance at either a Hives or (I)NC gig quickly showed that Pelle Almqvist and Dennis Lyxzén were merely leading their respective bands through a series of rehearsed moves, loaded down with clichéd posturing and identikit rhetoric, the Make Up live experience was the real deal; insurrectionary, inspired by solidarity and a deep-rooted need to express the raw emotions that would have otherwise remained bottled up inside, as can be witnessed on the any of the three live albums currently available – ‘Destination: Love’, ‘After Dark’ and the soon to be released ‘Untouchable Sound’.

Since their demise in 2000 (it was, apparently, only ever intended as a five-year plan) the majority of their rank and file have since been found working under the monikers of Scene Creamers and Weird War, but regrettably that revolutionary spirit has never since been captured as perfectly as with the Make Up. By way of a legacy they have leave behind them, in addition to the live albums, three studio albums – ‘Sound Verité’, ‘In Mass Mind’ (the sleeve-notes to which featured a treatise on the industrialisation of the music industry); ‘Save Yourself’ (by which time the band also included Alex Minhoff, formerly of Six Finger Satellite) – and a whole host of seven inch singles, collected together on ‘I Want Some’.

The dream may be over, but the spirit lives on, on record and carved on the soul of their fans. But do not fear, these things are not meant to last forever, and we can at least look forward with hope for the next band to come along and grant our wishes.

"Dear diary,
We are crossing the country now, playing cities large and small and it seems that indeed the problems that affect us at home beset people everywhere. We will do our best to galvanise this discontent into a tight fist, to discipline these ragtag bands so they can properly be named an army, and they shall read Clausewitz and Guevara and all the various handbooks on martial concerns."
From the sleeve-notes from 'I Want Some'

The Rogers SistersMean Fiddler, London

2007-11-25T23:59:00.000Z

If they were more mainstream, the chances are that the Rogers Sisters (well, the women anyway) would have been on the cover of every lads mag/bottom-shelf soft-smut rag in the country by now, and their faces would adorn notebooks alongside Playboy bunny-themed stationary in WH Smith. But as it is, the Rogers Sisters (and male non-sibling, Miyuki Furtado) are ours, and ours alone.

The public at large doesn’t seem to care about them. Amongst the mad scramble for trendy New York bands that took place a couple of years ago, the Rogers Sisters were somehow left behind. Sure, they got some attention, their name was bandied around for a few months, and there was probably at least one day when they were officially the hottest prospect on a platter of tasty morsels but for some reason both inexplicable and unexplainable, it didn’t last. Before they had a chance to consolidate their position, the Liars and Yeah Yeah Yeahs stole their thunder. And just to make matters worse, everyone then forgot about their more talented and, for the sake of battering this fact into the public conscious in the vain hope that you’re shallow enough to pay attention for this sole reason, better-looking peers. Fucking idiots, the lot of you.

So we find ourselves here, watching a pair of beautiful girls and their rather striking mate playing fidgety music full of wired and Wire-y guitars, taut drums and garrulous bass. Laura’s drumming is just an erratic spazz beat away from echoing true post-punk polyrhythms of Gang Of Four and the Raincoats, Jennifer stands there, guitar slung around her looking all cool and ever so slightly restrained, the perfect foil to Miyuki’s rock and roll antics. In a lesser band, there’s a chance that leaning back, letting go a torrent of spittle, neatly picked out in the stage lights, and catching it back in your mouth would be crude and ungainly, but tonight it merely confirms that Miyuki deserves to be regarded as your second favourite Hawaiian – only just missing out on the number one spot to San Jose and USA striker, Brian Ching.

As it is, the Rogers Sisters are the ultimate party band; new wave travellers forging a path between Theoretical Girls and the B52s, Huggy Bear and Assembly Line People Program, Le Tigre and Ill Ease. Which is exactly where we should want to find them; kicking out the jams in a world of their own, just being there, looking good and sounding even sexier. Just for us.

TV on the Radio

2007-11-25T23:51:00.001Z

I’ve always been a sucker for a band with great hair. The Make Up, 90 Day Men, At the Drive-In. Make of that what you will but bear in mnd that if I were shallow enough to judge a band purely on their hair then I’d be a life-long fan of Kid’n’Play.

And before you start with the style over content argument, I’m not saying that hair is the defining feature of a great band. I realise that other factors are important – you know, the boring stuff; talent, ability, stage presence, songs, that kind of thing. I’d also like to point out that, in theory at least, I’m not adverse to bands with no hair at all. But if you look back through the annals of rock’n’roll, you’ll see that image has it’s role to play in establishing a band as being more than just part of the pack. Image is what makes one really good band stand out from another.

What it all boils down to is that when a band is already musically strong, a good strong image is the finishing touch. And when you’re talking image, great hair is the icing on the sartorial cake.

Bearing this mind, you can understand why, having already read enough about TV on the Radio for them to pique my interest, the first time I saw a picture of guitarist Kyp Malone, I was sold. I had to hear this band.

On stage Kyp is the personification of the immovable object. He’s built like a bear, he’s enormous, the realisation of The Thing from the Fantastic Four. And on top of all that, he’s got the most amazing beard/afro combination going on that makes him look like this giant bipedal lion. The man is a fucking modern-day Sphinx come to life.

First time I saw them play, they were supporting Blonde Redhead. I say supporting, because officially, they were. But for whatever unannounced reason, TV on the Radio were on last, sometime after midnight. For some bands, this would be a problem. Blonde Redhead are a hard band to follow on an average night and this was anything but an average night. Their first London show in an age, moved from the Garage to the Scala, and with a new album to boot. But even after all this, TV on the Radio were magnificent.

Magnificent, but also very hard to pin down. OK, so the time of night and the earlier alcohol consumption may not have helped, but at first listen, TV on the Radio are an intriguing and beguiling mix of sounds. Basically, that night they were a tremendous, vibrant noise; a full-on wall of sound with falsetto vocals and lock-groove rhythms. I left the gig that night knowing that TV on the Radio were good, yet still not knowing quite what they were.

Their debut album, ‘Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes’, makes it clear. Well, as clear as it can given that the band not only somehow mix classic US alt.rock with dub, soul, deep rumbling electronics, lilting horns and military drum tattoos, but also invent the alt.rock barber shop quintet croon-fest. In lesser hands, there’s the risk that this would all come out sounding like an indie Sting pastiche but as TV on the Radio hands are as fine as their hair, they carry it off perfectly.

Video may well have killed the radio star, but it’s clear that the true stars of TV can be found on the radio, big hair and all. It’s time to turn on, tune in and rock out.

The Eighties Matchbox B-Line DisasterLondon Rhythm Factory

2007-11-25T23:47:00.002Z

A support band. Like Mclusky degraded 100 times. Imitation doesn’t guarantee anything, continued xeroxing will always result in lesser quality. An old man in a stinking and fetid leather jacket twitches away as if he likes them. Maybe he does. Each to his own.

Let’s not linger. It’s for the best.

Step back.

Step back, and feel yourself. Feel the cold beer in your mouth, washing around your fillings. Feel the sweat of 200 people settle on your skin. Feel your sphincter muscle tighten, feel your buttocks clench.

Step forward again. Against all odds, for a mere twenty seconds they sound like Chuck Berry playing the Pixies’s ‘Bone Machine’. Twenty seconds of greatness, gone in an instant.

Fade out.

Cast your mind back six hours. Starring blankly at a monitor. Spacing out, a combination of a glucose-induced hypermania and sleep deprivation. Eyes unable to focus, skittering across the empty screen, not latching on to anything, not functioning properly.

They say that everything you do, everything that you say is a self-portrait of yourself. So what does that say about me? What does this say about me? That I’m empty? That I’m waiting for information, awaiting input?

Fade back in.

Plato said that we don’t ever learn anything. All we do is recognise things that we know from our time in the ether, our time between incarnations, our time between times. I know this to be true. At least, I know that Socrates said that Plato said this. Can we ever really know what Plato said, when it was all written down and reported by Socrates?

But that’s not important right now. What’s important is that you recognise the Birthday Party, Bauhaus, the Cramps. See all these things in the band that strutted out and started playing what Stevie Wonder may well have dubbed ‘Songs In The Key Of Death’.

"I've got my limbs tied up and a blindfold across my eyes,
Got the feeling I know that I'm gonna have to tell a lie."

The band look like degenerates. They look like the cast of a 50s B movie. A guitarist that lurches back and forth like an extra in ‘Dawn of the Dead’ hamming it up for his one moment of on-screen glory. A singer that looks like all he ever wanted to be when he grew up was a Ramone. But, damn, the boy sure can scream and howl.

Dark rumbling bass lines that cut you to the bone, cut you to the quick, cut you to the sphincter. Internal body temperature averages around 37°. Theoretically, the closer the temperature in here gets to 37°, the less likely it is that you will notice if you shit yourself.

Every song sounds the same. But every song sounds great. ‘Breaking The Law’ played voodoo-swamp blues style. ‘I Could Be An Angle’ sounds like a circus carny guarding the gates of Brighton Pier. And against this backdrop, amidst this turbulence, ‘Celebrate Your Mother’ sounds like a work of genius. Psychobilly genius, but genius all the same.

If everything that you sing is a self-portrait, then what does ‘Celebrate Your Mother’ say about Guy McKnight?

ColdplayX&Y

2007-11-25T23:41:00.000Z

That Coldplay are bland, overrated and uninspiring goes without saying. Unfortunately, it’s what has to be said that is going to cause problems me here.

Back in the summer of 2000, Coldplay were just another Travis wannabe, coasting on the success of the dire ‘Yellow’ and a fortuitous Glastonbury appearance. And it was looking like that was as far as it was going go, their time was going to pass as quickly as it had come, ‘Yellow’ would be consigned to the reduced bin of musical history and we could get on with our lives.

But what happens when the wannabe not only eclipses but also obliterates their idol’s public profile?

Five years on, ‘A Rush Of Blood To The Head’ and one celebrity wedding later, Coldplay are still with us, and crazy frogs aside, it seems that their momentum has become as irrepressible as glacial flow.

But all this window-dressing has distracted us from the fact that, at some stage in the recent past, Coldplay have morphed, albeit slowly and practically imperceptibly, into an amalgam of the House of Love and early U2. In theory, this should be a good thing.

And it almost is. The songs have gained texture and are loaded with an organic feeling that that they used to lack. Where the early singles sounded forced and unwieldy, ‘X&Y’ makes for a more satisfying listen. What’s more surprising that is that ‘Talk’ not only contains the riff from Kraftwerk’s ‘Computer Love’ but is co-credited to Herren Hütter and Bartos – a pair known alleged to have removed former band mates from writing credits when reissuing their earlier albums – and Brian Eno plays keyboards on the aptly named ‘Low’. So not only is ‘X&Y’ reasonably good, it’s also officially credible. Damn them.

But this doesn’t mean that all is well. It’s a shame that Coldplay haven't yet grown out of their reliance on the piano as a source of melody, as the more predominantly guitar-based songs sound a lot stronger and better suited to the restrained production of the album. The intro to ‘What If’ sounds too close for comfort like Elton John’s ‘Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word’ and Chris Martin’s voice just isn’t strong or interesting enough to withstand repeated listening.

That Coldplay are bland, overrated and uninspiring goes without saying. Unfortunately, it’s whether I don’t like this album or that I don’t want to like this album that is causing me problems.

The RaveonettesPretty In Black

2007-11-25T23:27:00.000Z

“Here she comes walking down the street,
She’s got something you would love to meet,
It’s her heart and her heart is black,
Think of ice cream sliding into a crack.”
The Jesus And Mary Chain, ‘Here Comes Alice’

In 1985, the Jesus and Mary Chain turned their back on post-punk and new pop, preferring to take their cue from their anachronistic love of the Shirelles and the Ronettes, the Velvet Underground and the Ramones, the Beach Boys and Bob Dylan.

Likewise, the Raveonettes emerged from Denmark in 2002, paying no heed whatsoever to overriding trends, choosing instead to draw inspiration from the likes of the Shirelles and the Ronettes, the Velvet Underground and I think you can see where we’re going here.

So, the Raveonettes sound a lot like the Mary Chain. But for once, a band has taken that influence and altered it, albeit only subtly, to make that sound their own. Where the Raveonettes’s previous records, ‘Whip It On’ and ‘Chain Gang Of Love’, bought wholesale into the brothers Reid early fuzzed to the max feedback thing, ‘Pretty In Black’, as with the Mary Chain’s later ‘Stoned And Dethroned’, strips it all back to the bare bones, allowing the both the tunes and Sharin’s and Sune’s icy vocals to the fore.

Only these Danes have gone one further than their Scottish predecessors. Not only have they borrowed from their idols, they’ve managed to enlist some of them as well. Former Ronnette Ronnie Spector sings backing vocals on ‘Ode To LA’, Martin Rev of Suicide plays on three songs and Velvet’s drummer Mo Tucker crops up on another four.

Fortunately, ‘Pretty In Black’ is about more than just the guests. ‘The Heavens’ is loaded with pathos and a countrified twang reminiscent of early Neil Young; ‘Seductress Of Bums’ rewrites the Pretenders’ ‘Hymn To Her’; ‘Love In A Trashcan is only a big muff away from being the best song that didn’t make it onto ‘Whip It On’; and their cover of the Angels’ ‘My Boyfriend’s Back’ is just a call and response backing vocal away from being a ‘Leader Of The Gang’ for a new century.

While they will probably never venture too far from comforting shadow of the Mary Chain, ‘Pretty In Black’ does at least show that the Raveonettes know how to find their way into the light, and suggests that we may find them there more often in the future, albeit dressed head to toe in black and wearing wraparound shares.

“Here comes Mary,
All dressed in black,
Her heart so heavy,
A love attack,
Her dying cigarette in the rain.”
The Raveonettes, ‘Here Comes Mary’

Querelle

2007-11-25T23:14:00.000Z

Some things are a long time coming.

Querelle were formed in London by a trio of estranged Italians (singer and guitarist Gypsy, best friend Valentina on drums and originally Gypsy's sister Stef on bass, since replaced by Antonio, a former band mate of Gypsy and Val back in Italy) way back in 2001, but somehow the forthcoming self-titled mini-album, released on Sink and Stove Records at the end of July, is their debut. With many bands, this would have been an annoying wait; for Querelle fans, and one would assume the band themselves, this has been a period of interminable frustration.

Part of the reason for this delay could be put down to teething issues. As in the I'll tear you apart like Jaws in a pool of neon tetras kind of teething issues.

"We split up after a bunch of gigs as we were about to kill each other and we could not play our songs without bursting into tears. We got back together after six months with the same line up but we kept attempting homicide and sabotage."

So we find ourselves here, four years and two split-singles - one with the Dudley Corporation, the other with the Wow - later, finally cradling the album in our slightly sweaty, appreciative hands, clutching at it like some hard-fought treasure, hoping that our patience will be richly rewarded, grateful the motivating spur that keeps Querelle's flame flickering did not diminish with the passing of time.

"[These are] songs that need to come out, chords that need to exist, rhythms that need to rumble, houses that need to be bought down..."

Fortunately for us, and again you'd imagine for Querelle, the album is stunning. It's everything for which we could have hoped and, yes, as the cliché has it, so much more.

"Up and down the shanty town that you've become there's nothing to be found,
I rock'n'roll I twist and shout I scream out loud I don't make any sound,
I love myself like no one else,
But not enough it's just a little crush as such"
'Shanty Town'

From the opening cyclic riff of 'Shanty Town' to the closing refrain of 'Diverging', it's clear that this record is exactly as it should be: elegaic, full of natural grace and staggering poise, the precise realisation of a Querelle gig. In order to exist, everything in life needs to discover balance in order to survive, must find that point of equilibrium between creation and destruction, life and death, love and hate, love and lust. And in keeping with the greater themes in life, Querelle have found their philosophers stone, the fulcrum around which their world can revolve and evolve.

While their art-rock stylings (think Sonic Youth, Blonde Redhead) and spazz-jazz poses (Theolonious Monk, Sun Ra) may flirt with the avant-garde, the melody and hooks of songs like 'Little Silly Things' show that they're more than happy to lick the tit of pop, aiming for, and often coming pretty to close to achieving, to attaining their dream of sonic perfection, and as both Pier Paolo Pasolini and Blonde Redhead have put it, finding a way to express the inexpressible.

"We all hope to live out the dream that we grew up with, which is not fame and money, but creative freedom and probably some recognition. The kind of parable that the biographies of our favourite bands show."

"It sneaks into your ribcage,
It sits upon your heart it tears your little silly dreams apart,
I hope it keeps you awake at night I hope it holds you tight,
I hope it hits you right between the eyes"
'Just A Song'

Such talk of perfection, brings us, as it was always destined to, to 'Sore'. While the other songs here more than justify the high expectations with which we approached the album, 'Sore' takes those suppositions, smashes them into little pieces and builds something new, magnificent and previously undreamt of from the scattered remnants.

It starts off like a long-lost relation of Sonic Youth's 'Expressway To Yr Skull', takes a lonely, melancholic guitar riff and turns into a work of art, an object of beauty. And just as the bridge tumbles in, it opens its heart to us, affording us glimpses of the childhood spent growing up listening to My Bloody Valentine and the early Ride EPs. And as with all the best songs by all the bands mentioned above, 'Sore' lifts you up with it as it reaches for the heavens. It's that song that, when you first hear it, fulfils everything that you wish it could. It's the song that is going to make you fall in love with Querelle. It's the song that most completely represents everything that they seem to symbolise.

"Heaven sent an angel just to let me know,
Let me feel what blooming flowers feel when they fuck the concrete on the pavement"
'Sore'

Some things are a long time coming. And some things, it turns out, are well worth the wait

The War On Pop, Volume 2

2007-11-25T23:07:00.000Z

There’s something wrong with pop. Deeply, perhaps irreparably, wrong. But don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about the concept of pop, I’m talking about the state of our pop. Ultimately, I suppose that it all comes down to your definition of pop music. To me, pop is there to entertain; to provide a constant rotation of shiny new songs that are supposed to make daytime radio more bearable. Songs that will make you smile, if only for three minutes, and that you won’t mind having stuck in your head for the next two weeks.

And it’s for these reasons that I’m not only pro-pop but also proud of it. I’m not saying that I’m a slave to it; I’d have to check to see who was at number one in the chart. Even then, the chances are that even then I wouldn’t be able to pick it out a line-up, (band or song) unless it’s still bastard Band Aid 20. And the only line-up I’d want to see ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ and its evil perpetrators and progenitors in would be arranged against a wall facing a firing squad, but I’ll deal with cover versions and charity records another time.

But despite the casual mix of ambivalence and hatred that I’m displaying here, I’m all for pop. In fact, I think it’s essential part of our lives. At best, pop is the distillation of contemporary music forms, reshaped into a more accessible structure and given a memorable chorus. Pop is capable of being, and should always be encouraged to be, an art form that’s every bit as valid as the Dillinger Escape Plan/Shellac/Dalek album that you’re listening to whilst calling me a bummer.

Obviously when I bandy about words like art form, I’m not talking about Westlife. Westlife always have been, and always will be, unadulterated toss, served up lukewarm to a public that no longer knows any better. But then, for every Westlife, you’ll also discover that somewhere out there, lurking disturbingly like a bad smell in a pair of pants, there’s a Kasabian, Libertines or Razorlight to avoid. I don’t see how indie kids think they have the right to criticise pop when the same bunch of arseholes spent a proportion of their precious student loan on the fucking Keane album. You have to remember that no matter what form of music you look at, there’s good shit and there’s bad shit. And underneath all that shit, there’s the likes of Westlife and the Libertines, wallowing around in shit, gulping down great mouthfuls of shit, and regurgitating it into three minute chunks of bile and bilge.

To provide a bit of perspective here, the most horrendously feeble and arrogantly atrocious song I heard all year wasn’t Eamon's ‘Fuck It (I Don’t Want You Back)’’, ‘Call On Me’ by Eric Prydz or even Natasha Bedingfield’s ‘Unwritten’, it was ‘Glamorous Indie Rock’n’Roll’ by the Killers, whose debut album is somehow nestling at number seven in the New Noise albums of 2004. Baring that in mind, do you really think that you can justify thinking that band X is any better than pop star Y just because they write their own songs instead of being handed them by a team of major label recruited freelance songwriters?

For too long, pop has been mistreated, because the people in charge of pop no longer understand it. As far as the major record labels are concerned, the single is a redundant artefact from another time. Creating a single has become such a quick, automatic process that the market has become saturated and such an abundance of product inevitably leads to a loss of quality. As the standard of songs is lost, then the public’s tolerance for any given record is reduced more rapidly, and the record label have to increase the frequency with which they release singles to maintain their sales figures.

As I said last time round pop isn’t, and in fact shouldn’t be, about the artist, it’s about the song. Record companies think that, if they are going to pay to promote a song, then they have the right to expect that artist that they made record to be successful. But, essentially, the record companies don’t understand their market. When it comes down to it, pop kids don’t care about the artist, they’re there for the instant kick; the song is master; the artist is at best secondary, if not completely peripheral, to the whole process. But the sliced-bread manufacturing process that the labels have adopted doesn’t recognise this fact.

There’s only one way to save the pop single, and that is to bring about a dramatic improvement in the quality of the music being released. In order for this to be achievable, then the labels quickly need to learn that they’re going about things the wrong way. What we need is a return to the stable of pop stars approach used by the likes of Stock, Aitken and Waterman in the 80s.

Forget about even trying to release albums with individual artists. What we need are good, strong singles released by the right pop star. We need carefully picked writers crafting songs for artists who are afforded distinct styles by producers that don’t want to work on autopilot all day long. And this can only happen when you want to write, produce and release songs that will still stand up in six months time.

At present, the nature of the market – which has been dictated by record label policy – is essentially to churn out any old shit safe in the knowledge that the more singles they stick out, the more publicity they’ll get for the album, which is where they can actually make some money. But pop albums are generally shit; a couple of good songs surrounded by acres of filler.

Instead, get yourself a stable of about ten good performers, be they solo artists or bands. Make sure the songs that you give them match the image that you want them to portray and that those songs are creative, tuneful and, above all else, good. Then once you’ve got yourself a bunch of hits, sling them out on a retrospective collection maybe once or twice a year. The sooner the standard of the pop single improves, the better it will be for all of us.

The War On Pop, Volume 1: Girls Against Boys

2007-11-25T22:54:00.001Z

Ladies and gentlemen, we live in a time of inequality and nowhere is this more apparent than in the world of music. But this isn’t the time for a discourse on the absurdly small number of women in bands or how Karen O has somehow been raised to the status of role model. This is the time to look at an altogether different dichotomy between the sexes; one that seems to inform all of pop, and one that is essentially a self-fulfilling tool of segregation – why is male pop so shit?

Before we go any further let’s get a basic premise out the way. Pop is the ultimate product of a manufacturing industry. The concept of pop group is alien and should any of you claim to hold a preference for any particular pop group over any other, then you are failing to grasp the most basic rule of pop. That rule is that the song is king; the performer, once you look past vocal style, is an irrelevance and the sooner you learn to cut your ties to group or artist the more enjoyment you will derive from pop music.

I’ll return to this premise at a later date but, for now, it suffices to say that the methods employed by pop’s manufacturing base is currently out of sync with reality and the record companies in control of the means of production have forgotten the rule.

Motown got it right. Stock, Aitken and Waterman got the method right but choose the wrong artists. In brief, to create successful, and good, pop, the producer should maintain a stable of artists and writers. The songs should be distributed amongst the artists and be released as singles. The producer should then, at regular intervals, release an album compiling those singles. The artist themselves should not be afforded an album of their own. If the artist proves to be a lasting success, then they can be granted a singles compilation of their own at a later date. I’ll expand on this at another time but, in essence, this means that the pop artist’s greatest hits should be able to be viewed as the ultimate pinnacle of pop, a sure-fire success rammed full of wondrous three minute nuggets of joy and abandon.

But if recent pop best of compilations are anything to go by, all they do is highlight the gender disparity. There’s an underlying mantra at play here – girl pop good, boy pop bad.

Just look at the best pop songs of the last few years: Jamelia’s ‘Superstar’, Destiny’s Child’s ‘Bootylicious’, Beyonce’s ‘Crazy In Love’, Danni Minogue’s ‘Put The Needle On It’, Britney’s ‘Baby, One More Time’, tATu’s ‘All The Things She Said’, Sugababes’ ‘Freak Like Me’ and ‘Round Round’ and all the singles lifted from Kylie’s ‘Fever’ album. Notice anything there? They’re all sung by women, there isn’t a single man amongst them. Is the state of male pop really so bad? Unfortunately, the answer is yes, it really is.

In a society that claims to want to throw off the shackles of gender roles and attain equality, then why are men and women expected to play such different roles on record? Women in pop are encouraged to be strong, to be independent, to be angry, to be outraged, to want sex, to want to not have sex, to be anything they want to be. Men have to settle to be overwhelmed with love, distraught at not having their love reciprocated, or to brag about how good they are at stuff in an attempt to get women to fall in love with them. In short, pop men portray themselves as weak, pathetic, arrogant (but only if the group are being marketed as bad boys), narrow-minded or just plain desperate.

Perhaps the most obvious example of the pop gender gap can be seen with even the most cursory glance at Pop Stars: The Rivals. Who was better, Girls Aloud or One True Voice? Which could you dance to, and which made you want to vomit, ‘Sound Of The Underground’ or ‘Sacred Trust’? Which of those two groups still exists?

The same distinctions can be drawn between Britney and Blue. The Britney compilation, ‘My Prerogative… Greatest Hits’, comes close to what a pop best of should be. Admittedly not every song is earth shattering but it is at least consistently listenable throughout. It’s an album that won’t put extra strain on the skip button on your remote. ‘The Best of Blue’, on the other hand, is an abomination.

Firstly, Blue should never have been allowed to continue for long enough to amass enough singles for this collection to exist. I find it physically hard to listen to this album. It’s like I have some specific and rather acute form of Gilles de la Tourette’s Syndrome. Other than ‘All Rise’, every song has my finger twitching until it hits skip while my mouth utter profanities that would make your mother blush and would stun your English Literature tutor with their complexity and originality. These songs are embarrassing.

I’m embarrassed to be listening to them (and at least I have the excuse that I’m only doing so for your benefit, dear reader); god knows how Blue weren’t too embarrassed to record them. You imagine the rehearsals taking for every, as various the group have to continually stifle that particular type of nervous laughter that tends to accompany the intense discomfort that you experience when you’re in a situation where you don’t know how you should best react.

Even the music is an extension of these roles. The girls get squelchy bass lines, clipped Krautrock rhythms, dirty synths and pounding beats. The boys get mincing melodies, melancholic strings and lame piano ballads. Shit, at least when the girls get lumbered with the ballad, they’re still usually singing about how they’re strong enough to get over whatever it is that might have happened while the men just sound like they’re either stalkers or walkovers.

Where Blue contribute nothing but bilge and piffle to the pop cannon, Britney gives us ‘Baby, One More Time’, ‘Toxic’, ‘Oops!… I Did It Again’, wall to wall floor-fillers every one of them. And this is the perfect illustration of the gender divide. We’re supposed to dance with the girls, yet cry with the boys. Every possible action has been taken to stop the men form seeming in anyway threatening to young girls.

Back in the 70s, the Osmonds were supposedly made to regularly shave their chests to hide the signs of puberty and sexual awakening as this would scare off their pre-pubescent fanbase. Nowadays, with the use of sex as a tool of saturation marketing, it has become necessary to emasculate the men in other ways. This has led to the reduction of men in pop either to show-offs whose actions could never hope to match their words (as with Robbie Williams) or weeping pussies so lacking in balls that it’s impossible to ever imagine them being able to maintain an erection.

This is best illustrated by the cover versions on the Blue and Britney compilations. On ‘The Best of Blue’, you’ll find versions of ‘Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word’ and ‘Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours’, while Britney gives us ‘I Love Rock’n’Roll’ and ‘My Prerogative’. What are these songs tell us about the performers? Just look at the lyrics.

First, ‘Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word’: “what have I got to do to make you love me…, what do I do when lightning strikes me and I wake to find that you’re not there…, I’m sad, so sad, it always seem to me that sorry seems to be the hardest word”. Not only have they fucked everything up, they’re not even man enough to apologise and sort things out because they’re too lacking in courage. Jesus, this stuff is every bit as bad as Dashboard Confessional, and at least Chris Carrabba scores some cool points with the girls by virtue of being able to play guitar and by having tattoos. Even Dashboard make Blue look like a bunch of panty-wearing no-dick pussy-boys.

To add a bit of perspective here, compare those lyrics with ‘My Prerogative’. “They say I’m crazy, I really don’t care, that’s my prerogative, they say I’m nasty, but I don’t give a damn, getting boys is how I live. Everybody’s talking all this stuff about me, why don’t they just let me live, I don’t need permission, make my own decision, that’s my prerogative”. Britney politely requests that you allow her to live her life as she sees fit, and it you don’t like it, you can fuck off and die. You go, girl.

The battle-lines have been drawn, and at the moment the women are trouncing the men in the pop stakes. Unless the men find some way to break free of their assigned roles and stop acting such a bunch of effete no-hopers, then there’s no chance that they will ever catch up again. Maybe, just maybe, this will happen and the men will attain some semblance of equality. Until then, if you’re looking for me, I’ll be over there, dancing with the girls.

SeafoodClwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff

2006-09-06T13:39:00.001+01:00

Some people seem to be of the opinion that there’s no reason for Seafood to exist; that if they want to listen to Sonic Youth, then they’ll listen to Sonic Youth; that if they want to watch Sonic Youth, then they’ll wait three years for them to come over to play, and then cry when the tour gets cancelled after all their gear gets nicked (nothing quite like the real thing, eh?). However, if you want your alt-rock rampage laden with razor-blade hooks, doused with searing feedback, and still contriving to contain more pop than the Smash Hits Poll Winners Party, then it’s time to welcome Seafood into your lives.

There’s a table lamp in the corner, the drums and mic-stands are laden with flashing lights, and up on the wall is Seafood’s very own slide-show, changing picture with each song. If it’s people fishing on a riverbank, it must ‘Dig’; a house on a lake can only mean it’s time for ‘Porchlight’; while ‘Guntrip’ is greeted rather fittingly by a couple of crows feasting on a corpse, creating that Boxing Day ambience which almost leaves you expecting to hear your dad mumbling about the focus before slipping in a half-naked picture of your mum, just for a laugh obviously.

Clearly enjoying the opportunity to headline a tour for change, Seafood are out to entertain, piling through the set with maniacal grins on their faces, and even attempting to make peace with the Welsh crowd - “we love Terris honest” they quip. Course you do, Kevin, of course you do. Unfortunately, no-one seems to have warned them how petty your average Cardiff crowd is, and four songs in, with Seafood having failed to either produce a Welsh flag or an offer to play upfront against Ireland at the weekend, the foolish gathering of disinterested onlookers in front of the stage begin to drift away, oblivious to the barbed-wire melodies of ‘This Is Not An Exit’, or the unrelenting barrage of ‘Guntrip’, as the noise assault steadily builds in volume and intensity, leaving the band battered by their instruments in front of a dwindling crowd.

As ‘Folk Song Crisis’ reaches it’s dramatic finale, everyone is hunched over their guitars, fervently smashing them against the floor, while David’s lachrymose voice turns vehement scream, tearing the ear-drums out of anyone with the good sense to keep watching, as he’s left howling “I wish the wretched town would fall”. Given the nonchalant manner in which Cardiff responded to Seafood’s fine effort tonight, you can’t really blame him.

mcluskymclusky Do Dallas

2006-08-24T14:11:00.000+01:00

Steve Albini must be think he’s in hog heaven right now. Not only has he just put on the American ATP with Sonic Youth, he’s got the British version to look forward to later this month and as a result he’s going to be over here to witness his latest progeny be unleashed on a largely unsuspecting country.

Mclusky are more than just the most recent band to pass through Albini’s Electrical Audio studios, they’re practically the screaming resurrection of Albini’s old band, Rapeman. You may want to make a note of that. Rapeman, not raperock. There’s none of this wussy mid-life crisis posing as teen angst for the mclusky boys.

If anything, mclusky are the antithesis of such pompous whining. ‘Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues’ is a breakneck charge though cruel and nasty punk rock and ‘What We’ve Learned’ is a carbon copy headfuck stomp of Albini’s Big Black. They even manage to staple their hardcore sensibilities to a pop song on ‘To Hell With Good Intentions’, though I doubt I’ll ever forgive them for nicking the lyrics from dead comedy genius Bill Hicks.

Despite all this, there’s a lingering suspicion that ‘…Do Dallas’ isn’t the sound of mclusky at their best. ‘Our Pain & Sadness…’ was a statement of such brutal intent that it was always going to be hard to equal, let alone surpass. While they occasionally match the ferocity and intensity of their debut, ‘…Do Dallas’ falls just short of the mark. If they hadn’t already shown us that they can do better, maybe it would be different. For now, this may be enough for mclusky to do Dallas, but they’re gonna have to do better next time if they want to claim a Dynasty for their own as well.

And if, as the song puts it, Gareth Brown says that “all of your friends are cunts” maybe they also need to stop hanging around with Mohobishopi.

Royal TruxFleece & Firkin, Bristol

2006-08-23T14:02:00.002+01:00

In the true tradition of rock’n’roll, the old legends are never lost, but continue to reverberate around us, tempting us with mythology, until they later re-emerge, embodied in deep within the genealogy of Royal Trux. From Stones swagger to Stooges nihilism, New York Dolls sleaze to Beefheart blues, it’s all there in the purest form possible in a band so true to the spirit that they sold their soul to the man, only to have it given back when the man found that he didn’t understand it.

It’s there in the way Jennifer hangs off the mike stand, equal parts Janis Joplin, Nico and Joey Ramone, scowling through her sunglasses, the music coursing through her, lost to the occasion as Neil slouches to one side, slung over his guitar, content to allow the spectacle to carry on around him. In the way that ‘Waterpark’ bristles with braggadocio, that ‘Run, Shaker Life’ sticks barbs into the recognised notions of Americana and ‘Blue Is The Frequency’ is intent on driving itself further onward, until only the moment is allowed to exist and everything else is eclipsed by the relentless driving hooks.

Every last low-down look, every scuzzed-out note may have been seen and heard before, but rarely to such devastating effect, and only Royal Trux are capable of sounding so potent and volatile that it is as if the past, present and future of rock’n’roll have merged together in a determined effort to put on the greatest show of all time.

Stephen MalkmusStephen Malkmus

2006-04-05T13:49:00.000+01:00

The kings are dead; long live the king.

Following the protracted demise of Pavement last year, it seemed that perhaps all was lost, that Stephen Malkmus had abandoned his throne once and for all, leaving no-one to take his place. While Birmingham’s Jameson have been making all the right noises, they’re no more than viable a prince regent and still need someone to keep the seat warm until it’s time for their domination. So not only is it quite surprising to find Malkmus back so soon, but once more sounding so vital and fulfilled.

Although to be fair to him, that ‘Terror Twilight’ as sounded so flat and lifeless was more to do with the overly constrictive production of Nigel Godrich, a man responsible for making every album he touches sound like it was recorded in a bread-bin (though Radiohead fans don’t seem to mind, perhaps because the majority of them already have their heads so far up their arse that the real world has long sounded dull and muffled). Instead, Malkmus alter-ego Clarence Skiboots has been let loose at the helm, and as a result, the music sounds more vibrant and effervescent than it has since 1995’s ‘Wowee Zowee’, full of echoing noise, with clanging guitars fighting for precedence over Malkmus’s skewed vocals.

In place of the good ol’ Pavement boys behind him, this album sees Malkmus backed by the Jicks, namely bassist Joanna Bolme and former Elliott Smith drummer John Moen, though you probably won’t really notice the difference, with only Scott Kannberg’s dissonant guitar missing from the sound. As is his way, Malkmus’ lyrics are as obtuse as ever, ranging from tales of being kidnapped by Turkish pirates on ‘The Hook’ to an auto-biographical account of Yul Brynner’s life, while his penchant for English league football once rears its head as Stoke-on-Trent finds its way into ‘Pink India’.

For all the trauma and upheaval that led to this album, it seems that it has really been worthwhile. If Malkmus can continue to sound this wonderful, then Jameson are gonna have one hell of a long wait for that crown.

San QuentinThe Verge, Kentish Town, London

2006-04-05T13:40:00.000+01:00

As big a phenomenon as it is State-side, it’s not been that long since, over here, emo was almost an insult to be thrown at punks who were not only too polite to rock out, but even dared to take themselves seriously. But with punk’s burial at the hands of Blink182 and Wheatus, the all too brief flowering of At The Drive-In has left the kids wanting more than such dumb-ass punk-pop will ever be able to offer.

Fuelled by Fierce Panda’s recent emo-worshipping ‘Go’ EP, those old Van Pelt records have found their way back onto the turntable. As one of the highlights of ‘Go’, San Quentin were set to lead an emo-shaped charge this side of the Atlantic, along with like minded souls such as Hundred Reasons, jetplaneLanding and the Starries.

However, just as it was all looking so rosy, San Quentin have gone and pulled the plug. After prestige appearances with Jimmy Eat World and American alt.rock heroes Superchunk, San Quentin have decided that this low-key gig in a tiny north London club will be their last. It hardly seems fitting that it should end in such a manner, but there’s not much we can do about that now.

Fronted by Tom Davies, also of Mogwai’s post-rock nemesis, Immense, San Quentin were the archetypal mild-mannered and hard-rocking emo band. From the fidgety guitars of ‘Six Seconds’ to the ‘Goo’ era Sonic Youth thrash of ‘Potato Skin’, it was all there, power, passion and integrity in abundance. As the thunderous finale of ‘Arms Folded’ roars through the room, the sense of loss in the crowd is all too obvious. As far as show business clichés go, San Quentin have got it spot on. They’ve left us wanting much, much more. Its such a shame that their premature demise means that they won’t be around to deliver it.

San LorenzoNothing New Ever Works

2006-04-05T13:39:00.000+01:00

There’s something rumbling in the West Midlands, hundreds of kids are running around with crazed looks on their faces, guitars slung around their knees. Somewhere among them stride San Lorenzo, touted as the newest challengers for Mogwai’s increasingly precarious throne. However, don’t assume that ‘Nothing New Ever Works’ is just another excuse for a bunch of bored kids to try and replicate/rip off that old quiet-loud, nice and soft/hard as fucking granite formula that so many others have been caught peddling in recent times.

From the very start, there’s enough evidence here to suggest that Stuart Braithwaite would be wise to abdicate his self-appointed position as King post-rock before thing starts to get messy round chez Mogwai. ‘Jun’ opens proceedings with a stuttering art-rock swagger of discordant guitars and yelped vocals, coming across like the incidental music for a kids television programme starring Captain Beefheart as a mentally ill door-to-door salesman and ‘Dead Amps’ is the sound of Nirvana offering Shellac outside whilst sneakily slipping a jackhammer into their back pocket.

Elsewhere, San Lorenzo craft a towering majesty from shifting time signatures and staccato drumming, as the sparse elegance of ‘Life Without Mountains’ treads a path not dissimilar to that of Red Stars Theory. Eager to not be pigeon-holed so quickly, San Lorenzo prove that they’re capable of more than full-on sonic assaults with a couple of brief glimpses at their softer, more fragile side as they stray from their effects pedals. Recalling the fragile nature of the Radar Brothers, the abatement of volume allows them to express themselves more clearly, as ‘My History Is Valid’ becomes both rallying cry and statement of self-affirmation (“my history is valid, it’s something I will defend, I stood my ground, when confronted on a train, my history is the context in which I live”), before ‘Some Trust’ clearly states their agenda and offers their opinion of their current contemporaries (“everything is for sale, your music’s shit”).

As ‘American High Rock Song’ rumbles to a close, you can almost hear that free Kappa gear coming in useful as the soon to be deposed Mr Braithwaite does a runner to the comfort of his mummy. While he strops about, you’d be wise to join San Lorenzo’s lynch mob for a party while they finish off the last of the Buckfast.

ChikinkiExperiment With Mother

2006-04-05T13:31:00.000+01:00

The thing with Bristol, yeah, is that it’s never going to be known for anything other than trip-hop. No matter how hard the resurgent alt.rock and hardcore scene tries, they’re always going to be playing second fiddle to those blokes with made-up names who spend all their time in dark and gloomy studios playing with Tracey Thorn. If that’s the case, then how were you planning to explain the current phenomena known as Chikinki?

Showing an eclecticism that encompasses the droning dirge-pop of ‘Delivery 25’ and the mutoid drum’n’bass barrage of ‘Like It Or Leave It’, it appears that Chikinki are setting themselves up to be Add N To (X)’s precocious younger brothers, until they throw you off kilter with the mournful Elliott Smith aping ‘Elvis Impersonator’, while much of the proceedings are imbibed with the spirit of the Make-Up, proving that sometimes it really isn’t possible to approach this sort of thing with any prejudices about how a band is going to sound.

In fact, you could almost go as far as to say that ‘Experiment With Mother’ should be considered the blueprint for bands looking to combine their guitar-based vision with a wider-ranging diversity, without reducing your music to a awkward combination of guitar-wank and clumsy beats as is so often the case.

Even given the almost pornographic artwork, you get the feeling that Rupert, Boris, Trevor et al have been experimenting with more than just their mother, and given that the resultant concoction offers up new surprises at every turn, this sort of thing should be encouraged if Bristol is ever going to throw off its stereotypical musical heritage.

MogwaiAnson Rooms, Bristol

2006-04-05T13:30:00.001+01:00

Pesky little tykes, Mogwai. From the moment they haul their not inconsiderable bulk on to the stage, they prove to be a perplexing concept, the aching succour of Low played by prematurely balding, angry young men in Kappa and football shirts. One moment they’ll soothe you with their delicate structures, the next they’ll try to knock out your teeth and force firecrackers into the bleeding cavities.

Despite stooping to such commercial prostitution as actually having lyrics, ‘Cody’ gently caresses the heartstrings, only for the pile-driving rampage of ‘Like Herod’ to sever them with a machete and feed them to a passing pit bull terrier. A clever trick that they then follow by losing both the songs and the plot in such a heavy wash of effects and tempestuous feedback that even the drummer can no longer find a rhythm, leading to a mind-numbingly indifferent performance, which is only rescued by the appearance of Luke Sutherland for an epochal rendition of ‘Christmas Steps’.

However, having been seen alongside a musician who hasn’t yet needed to join Weight Watchers, it seems that the plump little chaps are left feeling a bit self-conscious, and so turn on the strobes for the duration of ‘Mogwai Fear Satan’, just so we can’t look at them any more. If they were to use all that free sports-wear for its intended purpose and get some exercise, they may finally be able to catch up with the consistency that has kept recently escaped them. Should that happen, Mogwai could be rightfully remembered for their melancholic, malevolent beauty rather than for being a bunch of slap-heads with big mouths and even bigger waistlines.

Echo Is Your LoveSheets Of Blank Fucking Paper

2006-04-04T18:42:00.001+01:00

What is it with European bands these days? All of a sudden it’s not enough for them to gain precious television exposure prancing about on Eurotrash singing about licking exotic fruit, they have to go all art-rock on us in the hope that we’ll take them seriously as well. First it was Icelandic shoe-gazers Sigur Rós and German post-rock outfit Jullander. Now, before you can say 'he may only be a substitute at Barcelona, but that Jari Litmannen’s a bit fucking good', here comes Finland’s most recent export, Echo Is Your Love.

Weighing in somewhere between the Blonde Redhead and proto-riot grrls Bette Davis & the Balconettes, 'Sheets Of Blank Fucking Paper' provides the proof that screaming really is an international language as Nea hollers away like a good ‘un while the boys work through their No Wave obsessions.

Originally forming to make "beautiful noise without being tied to too many chains of song structure", the Love more than live up to their manifesto, as layers of cacophonous guitars are welded over a juddering rhythm section, even if 'Not So Cool Pop Stars For Hire On The Spot' could more accurately be described as painful the away it lurches along seemingly unconcerned by the concept of tune or melody.

Elsewhere, 'Black & Red Lies On Yellow' sounds like 'Death Valley ‘69' had it been recorded by Huggy Bear instead of Sonic Youth, while 'Nym' goes for the slow and brooding approach before guitarists Micho and Ilai turn all nasty, liberally dousing everything in squalling, if not deafening, feedback. They may not have what it takes to knock transsexual Israelis and teenaged Danes out of the Eurovision Song Contest, but Echo Is Your Love may be about to claw back some credibility for Finnish music.

CayFleece & Firkin, Bristol

2006-04-04T18:37:00.001+01:00

You hate to resort to the same lazy comparisons, to stoop so low enough as to pull those familiar names back out of the bag when faced with a band so desperately in need of their own identity, but sometimes you’re left with little choice. On record, there’s nothing essentially wrong with Cay that couldn’t be fixed by a touch more imagination in the song-writing department, maybe employing an occasional hint of subtlety instead of leaping for the volume control every time they reach a chorus, or even a slight digression from their already formulaic structure. Regrettably a live setting only serves to further highlight the flaws, to emphasis their reliance on repetition of a theme run into the ground so many times by so many bands before them.

While the buzz saw joyride of 'Better Than Myself' still captures the essence of 'Dirty' era Sonic Youth – with Anet screaming away like someone who has just been forced to watch the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire simultaneously – they only really have two other songs; those that want to be 'Better Than Myself', but aren’t quite so good; and those that want to be 'Better Than Myself', but aren’t as fast or as good.

It’s during these slower moments that that dreaded references most obviously rear their heads; the way the guitars get all broody and Anet stops screaming long enough to have a cigarette between verses; where those years spent listening to too many Hole and Babes In Toyland albums begin leave their indiscreet stamp over proceedings. While the more discerning among us cringe as memories of too many Friday nights at bad provincial indie discos resurface, the kids down the front use the respite as an opportunity to sip at the remnants of their spilt and illicit pints, before once more hurling themselves at each other like crazed dogs as Cay drop yet another mosh-friendly barrage from their big bag of songs.

Part of the problem is that Cay seem fated to attract this kind of audience. You just can’t escape the feeling that if you were still fifteen you would have been impressed by the sheer volume and aggression with which they play; that you would have jumped about and shouted along with the chorus before going home hoping that your parents wouldn’t realise that you had been drinking again.

As it is, Cay have been playing the same venues each time they’ve toured for the last year and a half, and you know as well as they do that they’ll be back here again in six months time. You can only hope, for their sake as much as your own, that somewhere along the line they’ll find that extra little something that will allow them to progress part this point, but until then it’ll be Groundhog Day again and again and we’ll just have to hope that they’re content playing to the little kids in the Slipknot t-shirts for the foreseeable future.

Guildford Live 2000

2006-04-04T13:54:00.002+01:00

You can't help but get the impression that this weekend has been put together by someone's mum who saw a bit of Glastonbury on the television, and decided that it looked like a nice excuse for a picnic. It shows not only in the choice of location, but also in the choice of bands. At first glance, Terrorvision may deal in heads down, bare-chested, white-knuckle rock, but once you look past the loud guitars it becomes apparent that it's rock that your mum would approve of, rock which helps to clear away the dirty dishes after having been invited for dinner. While their performance is competent enough, you just don’t believe that they mean it, man, it's rock lacking the filth and grim of low-down living, rock devoid of everything that can make it so essential. When it comes down to delivering that pure visceral rush, Terrorvision are found wanting, for who wants to settle for 'Tequila' when you could have a bottle of JD, a bag of coke, and a room full of prostitutes waiting backstage.

Thank fuck then for Motörhead, here to liven up proceedings with some real rock'n'roll attitude. On stride Lemmy and Phil 'the beast' Campbell, looking like they've just been poured into their black denim and leather. Surely this is more like it. Sadly though, it's still not right, it's just more of the same, an hour-long trawl through the hits, from 'Ace Of Spades' and 'Overkill' and onwards to 'God Save The Queen'. Just to make matters worse, it seems that they only have one tune, and there's only so many times you can hear slightly different versions of the same song without getting bored as Lemmy grunts away over the top, in a voice so deep and hoarse it sounds like he's been swallowing gravel, gargling razor-blades and chewing on Mariella Frostrup.

The Rolling Stones knew how to rock, they were the bona fide article, you could tell they were Satan-worshipping, model-fucking alcoholic junkie reprobates just by looking at their skinny, wasted bodies as they jerked around the stage. Unfortunately they got shit in the mid 70s and have never been the same since, and just to prove how accurate a tribute band the Counterfeit Stones are, they certainly don't seem capable of rocking without a certain kind of chair. Just like the real thing, they seem to be stuck in an early eighties vision of musical hell rather than the glory days of the late '60s, a feat which is matched by Counterfeit Mick's gaudy American football getup. So it doesn’t matter how much they put into 'Sympathy For The Devil' and 'Let's Spend The Night Together', it's never going to be enough to convince that covers bands are a good idea.

You'd think that maybe those one-time politicised punks Stiff Little Fingers can inject a bit of passion, provide a spark of fervour, but, for all their rebellion through association with earlier more controversial peers, they're probably just here because your older brother used to listen to them, and because that nice Bruce Foxton has joined them now - you know, the one that used to be in the Jam with that lovely Paul Weller. Just to test the patience of their fans they toss out 'Alternative Ulster' within moments of arriving onstage before trudging through their dreary pub-rock racket, resplendent in their matching shirts bearing the SLF emblem, making them look like some over-50s bowling team out for a spot of karaoke.

Your sister used to love Soft Cell you know. Your mum certainly knew that and as she ran out of ideas of who to put on the bill, here comes Marc Almond (pictured above), the man least likely to rock. But while he may not wish to get down and dirty with the sweating hordes, having even neglected to bring a drummer to the party, there’s no doubting his ability to entertain. Dressed in the obligatory black, but sporting a rather spangly little number for the occasion, he pirouettes and prances his way across the stage like the virile young man he obviously sees himself as. By the time he's done 'Why Do You Love Me, Why Do I Let You?' and 'Something's Got A Hold Of My Heart' he's already proved to us that Neil Hannon owes his entire career to this self-styled gothic crooner. As 'The Days Of Pearly Spencer' and 'Jackie' bring his time here to an end, he has reigned triumphant and shown us that, against all the odds, he has somehow remained a true star, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is the true spirit of rock'n'roll.

Hefner

2006-04-04T13:37:00.002+01:00

It's probably not possible to be any more indie than Hefner. They're the epitome of awkwardness, blessed and cursed in equal measure with their fresh-faced look of innocence and naivety. Darren Hayman (pictured) has the best voice that you’ll ever hear coming from someone who supposedly can’t sing, and they often invoke memories of the Wedding Present, the Go-Betweens and the Violent Femmes. As if that wasn’t enough, John Peel loves them so much that not only did they get five songs in last year’s Festive 50, with 'The Hymn For The Cigarettes' effortlessly claiming the number two spot, but he's also willing to stake his very reputation on them, as bassist John Morrison explains, "all the main national radio stations in Europe get asked to have a representative DJ that they take to Groningen, it’s like a radio festival thing, and whoever it is get asked to bring an act with them. They asked John Peel to do it this time, so he asked us to go with him. He seemed more excited than we did. After the show he was really pleased that it went really well, he said he thought we had a four-nil away win". "Every country you go to there is someone who purports to be the equivalent of John Peel", adds guitarist Jack Hayter, "you kind of got the impression that all the European sub-John Peels were there with their idea of alternative bands".

Their recent EP of gospel covers also came about via John Peel and his radio show. "When we’re touring we all bring CDs, and we had a phase where first of all it was a lot of soul music, and it just seemed to creep into people bringing gospel CDs", says Jack. "We had this little idea of just doing a couple of cover versions live, I can’t really remember how it happened but we did various Peel sessions and I think it was mentioned to a producer. They said that would be a really great idea for a session, in the old way that when ever John Peel had sessions, people would go in and do something completely different, they wouldn't just go play their fucking singles or two tracks off the album and try and record them in exactly the same way. It seemed to get a really strong response on the Peel show, so it made sense to release it".

You’ve gone on the record recently pledging your support for Ken Livingstone in the London mayoral election; do you think it's important for a band to be political in their outlook? "Darren's songs aren’t generally overtly political", explains John, "but for anybody who lived in London, or was involved in any of the campaigns and disputes in the 1980s, the whole business of the GLC was quite a formative thing. Also there was the opportunity to say to Tony Blair 'you’ve sold us down the river', I think that makes it important that we support Ken Livingstone". Is it possible for a band to have any tangible effect on the outcome of the elections? "It depends on the general level of consciousness", asserts Jack, "and we're not so presumptuous to say that Hefner can have that effect".

You're often represented as being defiantly lo-fi in your attitude towards music, particularly on 'Breaking God's Heart', which lead Too Pure to describe the album as sounding like demos. Jack is quick to defend his band mates, "I wasn’t around for the recording of ‘Breaking God’s Heart’, but I certainly get the impression that there wasn't an intention to do a lo-fi recording anyway, it was just a necessity, I'm sure if we had better technology at home then we could sound like Yes or AC/DC". Why did you re-record the songs from 'the Hefner Soul' EP for the compilation album? "We just thought the original versions sounded shit", states John matter-of-factly. What about the comparisons that you generally incite, how do you feel about the continual references to the same few bands? "The first time we got compared to the Violent Femmes, it wasn't something we could claim never to have heard, but it wasn’t like we said 'let's sound like the Violent Femmes'. I think a lot of that came from the first album, the way that it was really stripped down". Jack is more amused by the whole situation, "I had friends who are really into the Violent Femmes who were outraged by the comparisons".

Do you feel held back by the image that's portrayed by the press, do you think that it's time you were allowed to move on, and gain recognition for who you are, rather than have people turning up with a preconceived opinion of the band? "I think sometimes people are a little disappointed with the way that we are, and the way that we are live. It's such a laugh, we have such fun with it", says John, "I think from the lyrical side of things they expect us to be moody and tense, they don't expect us to be smiling". "It’s very easy if you've got a singer with glasses and songs about relationships for a journalist to go geeky bloke, lives in a bed-sit; so you do your best to shatter those myths", Jack grins and continues, "about half an hour ago, Darren got asked if he still lives with his parents, and he nearly twatted the guy".

How about the themes of the songs, the majority tend to concentrate on almost adolescent subjects, girls and alcohol for the most part? John swiftly fends off the criticism, "but most pop music is about fancying girls or fancying boys". What about the themes of the records, 'The Fidelity Wars' was concerned with relationships and infidelity, while you’ve said that the next album is about London. Do you feel trapped by the subject? that it's important to follow through an idea for the entire record? "I think always there's a kind of a theme to a record or Darren's lyrics, but he goes much wider and he uses something in particular, he’ll be singing about the hymn for the cigarettes or the hymn for the alcohol, but he tells another story within that". Are you worried that you're going to end up making a concept album? "I think that by definition you’re not going to end up with a prog-rock album", laughs Jack, "I think you'd be hard pushed to turn any of Darren's songs into a prog-rock concept". John, however, is more willing to concede a point, "I guess in a way there is a kind of concept to Hefner, with the covers and the themes to the albums. When Darren does interviews he'll often say he really liked the way that with Smiths or Joy Division records, even if it didn’t have the name on it, you could see that here's another Smiths record". Do you wish that you were able to have a greater input into the image, or are you happy with the set-up as it is at present? "Darren does all the covers and it's totally up to him what he does. He always shows everyone the artwork, but I'm sure if one of us said 'that's absolute bollocks', then he might take notice".

AngelicaThe End Of A Beautiful Career

2006-04-04T13:32:00.000+01:00

If you’ve not been paying much attention recently, you may have led to believe that Angelica are no more than the next Kenickie. While some may judge that as an achievement in itself, 'The End Of Beautiful Career' sees Angelica step out of the shadow of their defunct contemporaries and gleefully announce their arrival at the debutante ball. This is how Kenickie must have sounded in Johnny X’s most vivid dreams, if you can look past the incestuous undertones implied by that notion. If they had grown up wanting to be Scorpions rather than Pink Ladies; if their favourite film had been the Wicker Man instead of Saturday Night Fever; and if they’d hadn’t gone Disco, but gone looking for a disco that played Fugazi; then this what is the first Kenickie album could have been.

Despite Holly’s sweet, almost child-like voice, a closer listen to her lyrics reveals a tendency towards extreme violence and retribution, a little like adding your artificial sweetener to your morning coffee only to that discover your spoonful of saccharine has a strychnine aftertaste. So 'Bring Back Her Head' describes how she wants to treat the new girlfriend with the same malice that nice girls usually reserve for their Barbie, while 'All I Can See' makes clear her intention to gouge your eyes out the first time you piss her off. Where debut single 'Teenage Girl Crush' saw Angelica set themselves up as Skinned Teen with talent, much of this album suggests that these girls have been listening to the sound of underground America since, and when Brigit takes over the vocals for 'Concubine Blues', we’re treated to a less intricate take on Sleater-Kinney, before the guitars go all Sebadoh on 'You Fake It, You Make It'.

Occasionally, their true ability is only hinted at rather than given the opportunity to flourish, but then everyone hates a teenager who thinks that they know it all. By the end of the year though, the lazy comparisons should be all but forgotten. Until then, be warned, there’s enough evidence here to suggest that if you dare mention the K-word to their faces, they’re not so likely to kick you in the bollocks as rip them off, stick 'em in a jar and post them to your mother for as a Christmas present, before going home to write a song about it.

The Action TimeVersus The World

2006-04-04T13:24:00.000+01:00

History is always subjective, the past can be rewritten at will, and the only truth that ever matters is your own. In fact, if the rhetoric is strong enough then history can be cast aside altogether, allowing a new past to be fabricated that will then take on a new life of its own. The Nation of Ulysses claimed responsibility for a worldwide campaign of violence against United States embassies and the history of the Ulysses Jihad obliterated any true past that may have existed previously.

Having learnt from their forebears, the Action Time come to us with their past lovingly created and recorded, whether much truth lies within their stories has been rendered unimportant as a desire for excitement replaces the need for a less interesting reality. They present themselves as criminal masterminds on the run from the FBI, pulp fiction authors and part-time pornographers, students of Phil Spector and former go-go dancers who have come together to reclaim the art form of rock n‘ roll from the capitalist graveyard of pop radio.

Pitching themselves at the point where the Make Up meet Comet Gain, the Action Time are a riot of Jack Duvall’s skinny white-boy soul, the pounding Motown rhythm of Miss CC Rider and the jagged guitars of EB Rockets fronted by the Gospel Yeh-Yeh swagger of singers Rock Action, SK Sparkles and Miss Spent Youth.

'Versus the World' is their manifesto, a treatise for war and peace "using violence to reach beyond gravity’s pull" ('Soul On Ice') in order to stir up modern society once more. Even when the songs sound candy-coated, they’ve been laced with strychnine, as 'Rock‘n’Roll' spurns pacifism in order to create a better place to live ("I know I shouldn’t say it but it’s gotta be said, some of you people would be better off dead"), as they take on the mantle of a terrorist cell, hiding their dissent under the cover of sharp clothes, perfect eyeliner and gleaming polemic. This may not be your truth, it may not even be theirs, but when the past has been seized and rewritten with such insight and attention to the finest details, and the music is infused with the twin forces of passion and politics, who are we to doubt them, for the Action Time are here to prove once more that music can save your soul.

Har Mar SuperstarYou Can Feel Me

2005-11-16T13:57:00.000Z

If you look like an Estonian plumber who has accidentally wandered onto the set of a porn film because you really are there to fix the plumbing then you’d generally have a lot of things for which to be thankful. But still, the nature of the gratitude contained in the opening salvo of Har Mar Superstar’s ‘You Can Feel Me’ is little short of surprising. Rather than the expected ‘thanks for not drowning me at birth’, ‘thanks for trying, Mr Hair Replacement Treatment Doctor’, or ‘thanks for having a fat fetish, Ms Dirty Kings Cross Prostitute’, Har Mar is actually thanking his fans for buying his albums. It would seem that no matter how many people are writing him off as a bad joke, the sweaty little sex-dwarf is shifting the records.

And once the nausea induced by the cover shots has worn off, it’s not hard to see why. Fuck me if the man hasn’t taken sleazy ass R’n’B and made a record that actually worth hearing. Full of fat and funky synth riffs, ‘Power Lunch’ is already one of the best singles you’ll hear all year and it’s ‘deeper, deeper, I can feel your beeper’ chorus is worthy of providing the soundtrack to anyone’s cheap hot-spot holiday philandering this summer. Alternatively, if you’re planning to spend your hard-earned time off work lazing around the house in your underwear, you can always turn to ‘We Could Be Heavy’ for all your lecherous needs. Stick it on the stereo and pump up the speakers loud enough for the neighbours to hear (‘who went and made a woman, out of the sweet little girl next door, I think it’s time we got together because we never got to mesh before’).

In fact, Har Mar seems to have a tune, and the time, for any eventuality; and he’s determined to get you in the mood. Not only is ‘You Can Feel Me’ as contagious as the STDs you can’t help but suspect that Har Mar has but it’s probably the most reliable aphrodisiac that you can buy without a prescription. Ask my girlfriend, or the woman next door. Just one week of ‘You Can Feel Me’ has turned me into a sex-maniac. So, if you’re still not taking Har Mar seriously, the joke’s on you.

Various ArtistsEverything Is Ending Here: A Tribute To Pavement

2005-10-10T14:02:00.000+01:00

I have problems with cover versions. In fact that’s an understatement. I have a major problem with cover versions. Shrouded as tributes to the original artists, they’re often little other than a cynical ploy to get more radio play and higher sales figures than a laughably average and/or appallingly shit band could ever manage purely on their own merit. But that’s enough about Westlife and Pop Idol for now. There’s a more pressing debate to consider.

Should cover versions be a straight remake of the original, indistinguishable other than for the vocal, or should they be radically reworked and remoulded in the style of the covering band? (Shit, I feel like I’m stuck in the obligatory five second ‘look, I am a journalist, honest’ segment of Sex In The City here) I suppose that proof must exist that supports both sides of the argument. Just for the record, the best cover ever is Sonic Youth’s rearranged version of the Carpenters’ ‘Superstar’, while the worst is quite probably ‘It’s Raining Men’ by Geri Haliwell, for every conceivable reason and on every possible level.

‘Everything Is Ending Here’ is the usual collection of notable names and unknown chancers, and features former label mates of Pavement (Bardo Pond), kindred spirits (Silkworm), future affiliates (Oranger) and general rip-off merchants (Garlic), all in addition to three different covers of ‘Here’. As you’d expect, the majority of the album comprises of average bands doing average covers of Pavement songs that sound like little more than band [x] playing at being Pavement.

There’s the usual problems with otherwise good bands either choosing the wrong song –Comet Gain doing ‘Ann Don’t Cry’ – or trying to sound like Pavement when they could have done a much better job had they recorded the song in their own style (Saloon). The album is further weighed down by bands coming up with adequately good takes on great songs - Number One Cup, Julie’s Haircut, Boxstep – that are just never going to compare to the originals.

‘Everything Is Ending Here’ raises the age-old question relating to cover versions, why would I ever want to listen to these songs when I could listen to the originals? And as far as twenty-six of the tracks on here go, the answer is I wouldn’t.

In fact, to truly pay tribute to Pavement, surely it would be better to just ditch the double album approach and just give me a mini-album of the best songs. Make sure that you include Fuck’s spectral take on ‘Heaven Is A Truck’; Magoo’s time signature skewing of ‘Perfume-V’ and Tindersticks’ mighty fine, mournful version of ‘Here’. That really would be the perfect place for everything, including Pavement’s legacy, to end.

ps. I’d like to dedicate the Tindersticks version of ‘Here’ to yet another season of ignominious underachievement, dubious defending, and general mediocrity from Tottenham Hotspur -

'I was dressed for success,
but success it never comes,
and I’m the only one that laughs,
at your jokes when they are so bad,
and your jokes are always bad,
but they’re not as bad as this'.

Jetplane LandingThe Metro, London

2005-09-29T13:24:00.000+01:00

We all know that Saturday night television is where it’s at. You’ve got to get yourself a prime time slot between the full time football results and Blind Date if you want to be a star. And given the chart success of Hear’Say and the bastard offspring of Pop Idols, it’s clear that the popular music format is the only way forward.

Jetplane Landing know that they need to grab both the pre-pub crowd and the terminally depressed Tottenham fans, and they’ve come up with a plan: a bunch of nice lads playing songs in the style of their favourite bands, while Matthew Kelly presides over the show with his steely gaze and scary smile.

In an effort not the disturb the children, bearing in mind that this is only a pilot, Matthew Kelly has been given the night off so it’s down to the contestants to provide all of the entertainment. In the cunt Kelly’s absence, you can tell that Andrew Ferris and brothers Jamie and Raife Burchell are up to the job as they saunter on stage, pick up their instruments and announce “tonight, Metro, we’re going to be Braid, Unwound, Jimmy Eat World, Shellac, Van Pelt and the Lapse”.

And you know what, they’re really are all six bands at the same time. They’ve got the duelling guitar and bass, the pounding drums, the slightly nasal vocal delivery and such a mighty wall of sound that the PA gives up halfway through the night. They’ve got the songs about heartbreak, even if the screams of “fuck you and your opposite sex” on ‘What The Argument Has Changed’ do give a rather bitter variation of the theme. They’ve got their put downs ready for the inevitable confrontation when Pete Waterman and Nigel Lythgoe berate them for not having a dance routine, as Jamie snarls “silence the critics, I may have found the answer” during ‘This Is Not Revolution Rock’, before not breaking into an Irish jig.

After the show, it’s clear that the pilot has been a glorious success. Primetime ITV here we come. The title of the program? Given the emo nature of the music it’s going to have to be called Tears In Their Eyes.

Ikara ColtThe Metro, London

2005-09-29T13:22:00.000+01:00

The manual of popular journalism says that it’s about time for the Ikara Colt backlash to start. They’ve had twelve months of glowing press, released a couple of incendiary singles, and have got their first frenzied national tour out of the way. In other words, they’ve been built up enough for everyone to notice when they fall. They’ve had their fun, so now it’s supposed to be time for the jaded hacks of the music press to have theirs.

Only it doesn’t look like it’ll be quite that easy to knock them down. While most bands walk into the trap of their own accord by becoming complacent and listless as the world falls at their feet, Ikara Colt are refusing to play by anyone’s rules other than their own. They’re still sticking to a thirty-minute set, but while this is a necessity for many people, they’ve justified much of the hype by dropping half of the old material for new songs that are every bit as compelling. They still open with the barbed adrenaline rush of ‘Escalate’ and rip though ‘Sink Venice’ with fervour, but now the brooding menace and funereal pace of ‘City of Glass’ adds another dimension to the set and proves that their usual high-speed tempo isn’t employed to hide a lack of ability.

That’s not to say that everything is going their way. If you listen closely enough you’ll notice that Clare Ingram isn’t having the best night of her career on guitar and Dominic Young keeps racing ahead of everyone else on the drums. But Paul Resende’s voice seems to be getting stronger with every gig, so there’s not really much cause for complaint just because they screw up the occasional tempo change. They’re still a near-perfect amalgam of hardcore ethics and riot grrl intensity, so we may as well throw away the manual, accept defeat and applaud another damn fine night.

The Starries, BaxxterFlapper & Firkin, Birmingham

2005-09-29T13:18:00.000+01:00

It may be a cliché but there’s no denying that one particular type of musician is always going to turn to out to be the most unreliable and troublesome person in a band, so it’s no surprise that tonight’s gig sees both the loss of Baxxter’s drummer and the continued initiation of the Starries’ new sticksman. Following the rather controversial and possibly unnecessary sacking of Twist’s Lisa Lavery, Baxxter’s very own Kelly Southern finds herself moving on to fill their newly acquired bass shaped whole, leaving Greg Smith and Russ Griffiths out for blood, as they scream and hurl their way through their own nasty brand of grunge, before trashing their guitars and storming off in an alcoholic haze.

Since the equally unexpected departure of the Starries’ Stephen Kelly last year, it seems that a new sense of purpose has fallen upon his former band mates, as they continue to break in replacement drummer Greg Ikin. Recent times have seen the Starries hailed as Birmingham’s champions of rock’n’roll, a vicious edged hardcore band with the self-belief to fuck shit up and make one hell of a racket while the rest of the Midlands was going mod-crazy, a dedication to their calling which left members of the audience limping away with torn ligaments after their comeback show, the damage caused by the crowd’s stage invasion during last year’s Arts Festival still evident.

Maybe it’s just the effects of cheap alcohol that’s left them looking so determined, poised on the edge of the stage, as guitarists Richard Burke and Geordie trade barbed wire riffs and barked vocals, mistreating their voices as much as their instruments, caught up in their own new found resolve, making a mockery of anyone that thought they couldn’t keep going after having lost a founding member. In fact, the change in personnel seems to have been even more beneficial than their tour support with like-minded noiseniks Idlewild ever was. ‘Water Flow’ makes like Hüsker Dü manhandling Imperial Teen’s perfect pop hooks, while the Fierce Panda endorsed ‘Feature 85’ has gained an urgency that it had previously failed to capture.

Following the recent success of American bands like At The Drive-In and Queens Of The Stone Age, it seems that the British public may have finally woken from their Britpop induced slumber and with everything falling back into place so neatly for this particular bunch of inebriated Brummies, local off-licences and promoters should be warned, for the Starries are more than ready to unleash their discordant brand of hardcore havoc on unsuspecting gig goers once again.

Papa MFleece & Firkin, Bristol

2005-09-15T13:12:00.000+01:00

Surely it didn’t have to be like this. Dave Pajo and Alan Licht stand alone on stage, slowly picking out the opening notes of ‘I Am Not Lonely With Cricket’, occasionally stooping to fiddle with buzzing guitar leads. The other members of Papa M have left the stage to wait in the crowd until they are required again, but five minutes later nothing has changed, the same four notes are ringing around the room, and Pajo remains stock-still, having not once faced the crowd since coming on stage.

He keeps this pose all night, and you have to stop yourself from shouting at him, just to make sure he’s still alive, that the slow, deliberating melodies coming from his amp are not just the result of the final muscle spasms of a dying man. It doesn’t help that musically nothing seems to particularly stand out, on record ‘Roadrunner’ may be unassailable but when stripped of that context, it becomes just another series of sounds, slowly winding their way to their rambling conclusion, before being replaced by another near-identical song. For all their flaws, at least Mogwai understand that all music requires a focal point and compensate for their lack of vocals with volume and aggression, but all too often Papa M give you nothing to concentrate on other than their own meandering. ‘Drunken Spree’ briefly manages to redress the balance, but it says a lot about a band when the only time that they manage to hold your attention is with a rendition of the Byrds ‘Turn Turn Turn’, as newfound intricacies are played out on duelling guitars and banjo.

But you still can’t help from feeling cheated, that the reverence directed towards Dave Pajo is perhaps given too freely. He may have played his part in changing the course of American alternative music but that doesn’t make him untouchable. There’s no doubting his obvious genius, but sometimes you need that little bit more. He may not like touring, but after all these years you’d think that he should have got used to it, however, he still stands there for the entire show without even acknowledging our presence before him, with only his frequent nervous fidgeting to prevent him from becoming motionless. As post-rock becomes increasingly ubiquitous, you find yourself hoping that such iconic figures will press forward and open new channels, but Papa M seem far too content to remain static, and that just can’t be considered enough anymore.

Skunk Anansie, MuseNewport Centre

2005-09-15T13:10:00.000+01:00

Muse skip out, shower us with confetti and break into a spontaneous Spike Milligan routine. Except that they don’t, for as you all know, Muse are the new Radiohead, and therefore are a bit gloomy, a hint doomy, a tad moody, and quite possibly a touch broody as well. Fortunately, while the likes of Mansun strop about in the shadows, pouting at their reflections and smudging their eyeliner, Muse know the difference between heady angst and sticking their head up their arse, even if drummer Dominic Howard’s hair does look suspiciously like it’s been styled by Nicky Clarke’s rectal cavity. ‘Muscle Museum’ grinds together grunge dynamics and art-school theatrics, and Matthew Bellamy does his skinny white boy guitar hero thing while ‘Fillip’ dishes out the sort of sonic dissonance that would leave Brian Molko gagging in awe, all howled falsettos and jagged Stooges riffs.

Like epic shoe-gazing survivors Inner Sleeve possessed by Strangelove’s forlorn spirit, Muse are the proof that there is a more cerebral alternative to the dull and dour Britrock which has recently found itself in the ascendancy, and shows that, when given the opportunity, Radio 1 Evening Session fodder indie can occasionally grow up to be taut, edgy and doused in emotion without lurching into either mediocrity or MOR territory.

Unfortunately, Skunk Anansie soon bludgeon all such ideas into the ground, as Skin jumps about like Bez with in-growing toe-nails and Ace churns out his tepid proto-metal schlock-horror guitar blasts. If you could hold her still for long enough, and look further than that voice, you would find that Skin is little more Andi Peters in big boots, pushing yet more cock-rock bollocks (if you’ll excuse the patriarchal language bias) down the throats of a room full of pubescent girls so desperate for someone to worship that they can’t see the glaringly obvious flaws right in front of them.

J Mascis & the FogFree So Free

2005-09-15T13:00:00.000+01:00

The connection between hoary old grunge refugees and trashy pulp-horror novels has never been widely publicised before now. But unless my memory fails me, the Fog was a Frank Herbert novel in which a malicious bunch of densely collected water-droplets drove the seemingly peaceful inhabitants of a seaside town to commit despicable acts of wanton evil, in one point driving a boarding school PE class to turn on their teacher, tie him to the wall bars and fuck him in the ass till he bled to death.

Fortunately, this particular Fog doesn’t seem to have the same effect on dear old J Mascis. True, he may have been the cause of thousands of cases of acute deafness, and there was that time when he spilt up Dinosaur just to get rid of Lou Barlow, only to reform the band the next day without telling him, but hey, Lou seems to be dealing with it a bit better now. Well, the next Sebadoh album may disprove that last bit, but let’s let bygones by bygones and look to the future.

But the future seems to be one thing that J has no truck with. In fact, ‘Free So Free’ is little more than a celebration of his past. The name of the band may have different, but not a lot else has changed round Mr Mascis’ way. Which is, like, totally fucking great. ‘Free So Free’ is everything that made Dinosaur great in the first place. The laconic drawl is there, the hooks remain as mighty as they ever were and J’s guitar solos still have that habit of making a break for the state border as soon as you take your eye off them. Recent single ‘Everybody Lets Me Down’ may as well be called ‘The Wagon, Part 2’, while album opener ‘Freedom’ even starts with a patented Lou-era bass line.

So, if we ignore the nasty weather conditions, ‘Free So Free’ is business as usual. The songs may well have remained the same, but given that they’re every bit as good as ‘Freak Scene’ and ’Feel The Pain’, you’re not gonna catch me complaining.

Sigur RósÁgætis Byrjun

2005-09-14T13:57:00.000+01:00

You know that feeling when you wake up and can’t remember which day it is? Well, take pity on Sigur Rós. They may still be a relatively new name in the UK but have actually been going since 1994, and are now having to do all that new band stuff again despite already having two albums under their collective belt. Originally released in Iceland last year as the follow up to 1997’s ‘Von’ debut, ‘Ágætis Byrjun’ is our first proper introduction to their somnolent charms. Almost appropriate then that the title should translate as a new beginning.

Ranging from eerie warblings in a vein similar to early Verve, to prolonged drone-rock outbursts, ‘Ágætis Byrjun’ provides ample justification of their current status as the biggest band in Iceland. ‘Svefn-G-Englar’ is still as affecting as when you first heard it a year ago, while ‘Flugufrelsarinn’ gently grows out of silence, as it slowly rises up and starts to lap over you like the tide, leaving the languid ‘Olsen Olsen’ sounding almost urgent and aggressive in comparison, despite the haunting melodies that lull you into a sense of spiritual reverie.

The nature of these songs means that it makes little difference that you haven’t got the slightest clue what on earth singer Jonsí Birgisson is on about. Even if you could speak Icelandic, you still wouldn’t have a hope because the little rascal has conspired to invent his own language. But it may be for this very reason that Sigur Rós sound so captivating. While the majority of the post-rock types currently littering your record collections leave you wishing that the lazy buggers would get round to writing some words, your complete incomprehension of the lyrics allows you to concentrate on the tranquil mood created by the music without being distracted by what Jonsí is actually singing.

A recent BBC program invited a number of intellectuals and Terry Christian to debate whether rock’n’roll was going to become the religion of the new millennium. If it is indeed to be this way, then you may want to consider joining the church of Sigur Rós.

BisMusic For A Stranger World

2005-09-14T13:50:00.000+01:00

It’s the question that’s on everybody’s lips – how will Bis react to being dropped by their beloved Beastie Boys and cast out from the Grand Royal haven? Well, if ‘Music For A Stranger World’ is anything to go by, then it seems that they’re still in denial because if they were dropped for being shit they certainly don’t appear to have bothered doing anything to rectify that issue. While they had originally endeared themselves to a pop-starved public by re-enacting the punk wars on a Bontempi and drum machine and bouncing around like prepubescents wrecked on Hooch and sherbet dip singing about school discos, they now seem intent on imitating the sounds that blighted our school discos that we all endured for so many years.

In an effort to recreate such soulless, whining trash, ‘Are You Ready?’ sees Manda reaching for even more helium than usual, turning herself into some mutant Debbie Gibson parody before revealing that she has about as little idea as to how they still exist as we do (“Unsure of what is going on / I bite my lip and I cannot seem to stop”, ‘I Want It All’). And then just to pile on the disappointment some more, ‘Beats At The Office’ reveals itself to be yet another us against the man rant instead of a thinly disguised metaphor for a spot of sly under the desk masturbation. It is, however, a pile of wank, so maybe that’s the link.

Bis don’t want this mini-album to be treated as a stopgap and hope that we will consider it a “proper” release. The last proper release I had was brown and lumpy and recently disappeared around the u-bend. ‘Music For A Stranger World’ could soon be following it.

British Sea PowerThe Decline Of British Sea Power

2005-09-14T13:47:00.000+01:00

There must be something in the water in Brighton. Maybe it's effluence, perhaps industrial waste, possibly even a mix of dead fish, used condoms and washed up big beat DJs. Who knows? Long-shore drift is a curious beast. It gives and it takes. But the moment you try to mess with it, it’ll ditch your neighbour’s cliffside villa into the sea faster than a game of hunt the weapons of mass destruction. Or maybe it’s written into the housing contracts? Three bedrooms, two receptions, sea view, £320 a week, must form slightly quirky off-kilter rock band. Whichever, Brighton bands tend to err on the eccentric side of life. Look, over there, it’s Clearlake with their fictitious fishing village and neo-Floydisms. And who’s that behind you? It’s the Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster doing their hard-rocking, donkey-punching psychobilly Cramps revival thing while their singer does his best to impersonate Jon Penny from Ned’s Atomic Dustbin.

So it’s little surprise then, that British Sea Power have come across as being a few pavilions short of a seaside resort. But if that’s what made them sound like a curious new wave amalgam of Magazine, Talking Heads, post-Pixes era Frank Black, and mid-70’s David Bowie, then I’m all for it. Which is just as well, because each song on “The Decline Of…” is essentially just a variation of that theme. ‘Remember Me’ would have had no problem making itself at home on either of the first two Frank Black albums, ‘Carrion’ sounds like the entirety of Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ album compacted into four minutes and the seventy second thrash of ‘Favours In The Beetroot Fields’ is loaded with riffs straight out of a Howard Devoto songbook.

On this evidence, it seems that auto-instigated rumours of British Sea Power’s decline may have been greatly exaggerated, just as long as they don’t use that cliff-side swimming pool.

Notes from the Underground #1

2005-09-13T13:40:00.001+01:00

So where do we start? Something about being sick, angry and unattractive if my memory serves me correctly. I’m hoping at least two of those are incorrect, but as I’m going to nick a title from Dostyevski, it’s only fair that I give him his due by bothering to re-read the first paragraph.

Perhaps I am sick. I’m sick of trawling round scabby indie-dives on my own. I’m sick of searching for a scene that isn’t financed by major labels. That isn’t staffed by coke-addled media-whores sucking on ketamine and Smirnoff ice, who grace a gig with their presence purely because the band has had a bit of press recently and, for this week at least, can be considered cool and trendy, man. Perhaps this is the time to say I remember when no one had heard of Bobby Conn, back in the days before he was playing venues as (s)wank and salubrious as Trash. But then, what does my opinion count? This is only what I’m trying to do as a living. That’s right, I’m sick, sick of it all.

I may well be angry. Anger can be good. Anger keeps you searching for a reason not to be angry. Anger keeps you hungry. I’m angry that this hasn’t worked out as planned. I was moving to this wondrous city, and this wondrous city would welcome me with outstretched arms. But my anger has been stirred by the sea of whores I that swim before me. Am I going to play their games? Am I fuck? I’m trying to find a solution to all this negativity. I’m chasing after ghosts of promises of bands that can change my life. I know that there’s an underground out there, and it’s waiting for me to come knocking. Problem is, at the moment I’m buggered if I can find the door. I’ve seen glimpses of this hallowed turf. I’m beginning to recognise faces. I’m beginning to recognise faces that aren’t trying desperately hard to be Faces. This can only be a good thing. The signs that I have found are hopeful, I just having difficulty in following their directions. I found San Quentin. Then they split up. What is a boy to do? But at least they gave me hope. San Quentin showed that my search might not all be in vain.

What’s that you say? What is this search I talk of? I’m searching for no more than anyone else is. This isn’t some mystical holy grail I’m looking for, just a place that I can feel at home; a place where the music can take hold of me; a place where maybe, just maybe, everyone knows my name.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Sickness. Anger. There was more than that under consideration. The final ignominy. Sick, angry and unattractive. I believe that was the deal. Sickness and anger I can comment on, these are concepts within my understanding. Attractive or unattractive? That’s not for me to say. Perhaps it is for you to decide, to guess, to find out. My ramblings will take me far and wide, across the breadth of this city, and occasionally further afield. I’ve been there before; I shall go there again. I am afraid of nothing. I am scared of nothing, other than the possibility that I may fail in my search.

So that’s why I’m here. Why are you here? Why are you still reading? Are you laughing at my plight or are you crying with me? I’ve seen how these things work in Bristol and Birmingham (and don’t work in Cardiff). A city like London must have more to offer me. I’m just going to have to try harder to find it. Are you going to help me? Or are you going to sit there and watch as this city falls to its knees, and throws itself in the gutter in desperation.

I’m willing to search for the bands that could save London’s music scene from the evils of the multinational industry. I’m looking for a music scene that places the emphasis on music rather than the scene. Are you going to accompany me on this search, or have you already stopped giving a shit?

Notes from the Underground #2

2005-09-13T13:34:00.003+01:00

It’s Saturday night. Where am I? Where are you? Have you been looking for me? I’ve been out there, searching the streets, braving the sweat pits looking for the heartbeat of this city. If you’re lucky I’ll tell what I’ve found. I won’t pretend to have done all this since we last met. A quick glance at your social calendar would prove the dates just don’t add up. As some of you may have realised, I’m not always the most prescient of the Bleed team.

Sometimes I feel like Happy Harry Hard-On from ‘Pump Up The Volume’. All alone at night, either running around in circles screaming along with ‘Kick Out The Jams’ or drowning my sorrows with Leonard Cohen. This is one of those moments, but minus the MC5 and the cheery Canadian. Right now ‘Pet Sounds’ is echoing around my still and barren room. Tonight, I decided the blood could pump around the arteries of London on its own. It didn’t need me to watch over it. I thought I’d stay here and talk to you instead.

How have you been? What have you seen? What have you discovered so far this year? I thought for a moment that I’d found plenty, but then if that’s the case, why am I talking to you as I watch British Summer Time limp in. This is obviously a gap in my diary. So I’ll share my thoughts with you and to try not to let Brian Wilson distract me too much.

You’ll have to forgive me if I’m not chronologically correct, but as my friends may tell you, I’m not always that good with dates. That may be why I’m here leaning against an empty bed, procrastinating about music while my friends are tucked up with their significant others. But at least I have my friends to fall back upon. I was there when our very own provincial serpent, Bremstrahlung X Jones, was dancing among the beautiful people in Bristol’s Thekla. It was I that Brem grinned at as the DJ dropped ‘Lust For Life’ and Brem finally learnt what that primal beat could do to a man. I was still in Bristol the next night, dancing on a chair, probably looking as if I had a vibrator stuck up my ass that someone had kindly tuned to free jazz, while the Check Engine provided that first true buzz of the year.

There have been others since; other moments that justify my motivation. Back in London, being stunned by just how fucking awesome Eska have become since I saw them last. Watching Disoma’s singer crawl around the floor at the Verge, barefoot and howling like a newborn baby as Tom Duggan grinned that special grin of his in the background. Witnessing Southern Record’s very own post-rock teddy bear, Tom Davies, moonlighting as Audiowhore, and feeling the smile spread over my face as he finished his set of fractured, instrumental folk by dancing across the stage to sampled cut-ups of Roy Walker and Catchphrase. Hearing Mountain Men Anonymous blend white knuckle post-rock with electronica and turn themselves into Godspeed You Black Autechre.

I passed through Birmingham to see the triumphant return of Idlewild and to listen while Pete from the Regulars tried to convince me to drive back up there a month later just to watch their gig with the Butterflies of Love instead of waiting for the Butterflies to play London. At least I know I’m loved somewhere, even if it is in Birmingham. In London I may still feel faceless, I may be an unknown quantity, but I’m not without my influence. I introduced a friend to the Les Savy Fav live experience. He looked on in wonder as Tim Harrington (pictured above) brought the lighting rig crashing down onto the stage so that he could run off with the mirror ball. Harrington is punk rock, and I love him for it. In exchange I was taken to see the Appleseed Cast. We queued for three quarters of an hour, in the middle of the Dublin fucking Castle; a bunch of emo-kids in the middle of a nightmare vision of bad mullets. Forty-five minutes sweating like fools while ageing wannabes pushed their way past us with a look of contempt on their haggard face. Yet once we finally found ourselves safe in the dingy backroom, Appleseed and Cursive made it all seem worthwhile.

This may have be enough to last some of you a year. But for me it has merely got my blood up; I need more; I need to keep looking. But it’s no good; I can’t ignore Brian forever. He’s taunting me with his voice, his songs and his message. He’s talking to me. Yes, to me, not to anyone else. He’s waited all these years just to give me guidance. “I know there’s an answer,” he’s saying, “I know now but I have to find it by myself.” He’s right you know. You’ve no idea how much that says to me. Truth be told, neither have I. But I’m still here talking to you. That’s a good start. He went mad, you know? Totally fucking mental crazy. Brian filled his living room with sand because he thought his piano was causing forest fires. I long for the day when I believe that my songwriting is so powerful that it’s capable of causing natural disasters. Not so keen on the living in a house filled with sand part of the deal, but as long as the neighbours don’t complain, I suppose I’d learn to deal with it. In the meantime I’ll settle for finding someone else whose songwriting has that same power. I think that’s why I started on this journey in the first place. There must be an answer; otherwise all of this will have been in vain.

Brian also made his children shit on newspaper in front of the entire family. But as we know, we can’t have everything. At least not yet anyway.

MohobishopiBeatbox, Swansea

2005-09-09T14:10:00.001+01:00

Fed up with bands being built up just so they can be knocked down when they drop out of fashion? Well, here’s a novel idea; how about knocking them down before they’ve even discovered the bottom rung of the ladder? Let’s not even give the fuckers an opportunity to work out how to climb out of the doldrums in the first place.

Mohobishopi are V2’s new little darlings, but then they live in Wales, so that shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. But wait, before you cry ‘oh no, not another safe, dull, mediocre rock band who never even deserved to make it onto the pub circuit’ you should take a couple of minutes to listen to the singles again, because on record, Mohobishopi sound like Ten Benson forming a tribute band who can’t decide if they want to be Magoo or Mercury Rev. The buzzing effervescence and saccharine coated pop of ‘Smoke Yourself Thin’; the Flaming Lips homage (or libel case, depending on your point of view) of ‘Fingers Are Cool’; and the trash-punk aesthetic of ‘Kate Is Cool’ may even lead you to concede that Wales has finally been partly responsible for creating a band who see that John Cale as having had a more significant impact on music than Tom Jones could ever have hoped.

All sounds good so far doesn’t it, so where’s the catch? When does the backlash start? Well, right here and right now unfortunately. After arriving late for the gig and then soundchecking forever, you’d expect Mohobishopi to set out to prove that there’s more to their oeuvre than hysterical hype, empty rhetoric and other people’s tunes. But it seems that even such a simple task as gaining the crowd’s attention is beyond them. If we must play music journalist games – and as that’s what I’m not getting paid for, I suppose we must – Mohobishopi sound like a flight of stairs falling down …, well, just a flight of stairs falling down; a jumbled mess of notes, a tuneless clatter of instruments and a few pained yelps in the background contributing to such a ramshackle cacophony that, instead of one of the most talked about new bands in Britain, leaves Mohobishopi somehow conspiring to sound like fifth-form art students rehearsing in a bread bin.

Within the space of three songs they’ve already lost the crowd, and the only time that they are able to prise a reaction from the listless audience is when Martin trips over his amp, unplugging the guitars and bringing a much appreciated respite to the embarrassing spectacle unfolding in front of us. When the debacle has finally abated, Mohobishopi mutter their goodnights, and slouch off, feigning nonchalance, but even the thick layer of arrogance and pretension that they’ve slapped on as liberally as their eye-shadow can’t have hidden the fact that their departure was greeted by complete silence, with not even the slightest spattering of applause or heckling.

If this was had been an early gig by a bunch of incompetent unknowns then maybe you’d let them off, suggest that maybe nerves and a desperate need for affection had got in the way of their talent and ability. You’d ignore the fact that they just seem to be trying too hard, that their wacky outfits, carefully rehearsed posturing and fake American accents leave them looking about as contrived as Westlife. As it is, V2 seem determined to throw money at them, but if tonight’s performance can be considered typical, then rotten fruit (or perhaps tinned, if you’re feeling particularly sinister) would be much more appropriate.

It appears that Mohobishopi can’t really be bothered, so in that case, why should we? As with most people so eager for your attention and adoration, it’s maybe best to ignore them and hope that they fuck off back home to cry in their bedrooms, surrounded by the records that they’re so desperate to imitate, until they learn how to behave themselves in public. If you see Mohobishopi in the street tomorrow, spit on them – eventually they might get the message. For now, they should just try and remember that if they insist on sticking their head up their arse, then they’re just going to smudge their make-up.

Yo La Tengo'Summer Sun'

2005-09-06T13:59:00.000+01:00

You always remember the good summers, and you always seem to look forward to the next, hoping that it will be as good as the summers past that you still hold so dear. Which just means that you leave yourself wide open to disappointment when they don’t live up to your hopes and expectations. Yo La Tengo albums are a bit like summer. It doesn’t seem to matter how good and nice and pleasant each album is, somehow it always pales into insignificance when compared to their 1997 classic, “I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One”. I wish it wasn’t this way but every time I listen to “Summer Sun”, I find myself yearning for “I Can Feel The Heart…”. What makes this even worse is that ”I Can Feel The Heart…” isn’t even the direct predecessor to this record; it’s the one before the one before.

I had problems last time round, with “And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out”. But I had hoped that it would be different this time. A late contender for last year’s single of the year, Yo La Tengo’s cover of Sun Ra’s “Nuclear War” was little short of solar-fried genius. I got my hopes up again, and once more I find them brutally smashed asunder.

“Little Eyes” and “Season Of The Shark” hint at what once was, but “Summer Sun” never seems to deliver what it, albeit briefly, promises. The album is too gentle throughout: where there used to be squalling guitars in between the moments of calm, now there’s just more mild whimsy.

I don’t want to sound greedy, but there’s an imbalance in this relationship. In the past, they’ve given me genius and I’ve reciprocated with my love but it feels like I’m the only one willing to make the effort. Six years ago I was in love with Yo La Tengo, but now it looks like I have a hard decision to make. It’s time to take a step back and try to just be friends, you see, they just don’t seem able to touch me the way in which they used to.

Low'Things We Lost In The Fire'

2005-09-06T13:55:00.000+01:00

Sometimes the strangest partnerships can be the most rewarding. Some people swear by peanut butter and jam; Edmundo and Romario helped Sao Paolo win the inaugural World Club football Championship, even though Romario had previously banned his striking partner from his bar following a feud which started within weeks of their first playing together; and Low have once more enlisted the production skills of Steve Albini. But, as with the p&j sandwich and the silky skills of Brazilian football’s most troublesome pair, this unlikely combination of the slowest band since Galaxie 500 and post-hardcore noise-nik is also proving to be a winner, having already resulted in the seemingly effortless beauty 1999’s ‘Secret Name’.

As such, we pick up here where ‘Secret Name’ left off. Loaded with understated beauty and a depth of sound that slowly builds in power in spite of the funereal pace that prevails, ‘Things We Lost In The Fire’ evokes an almost spiritual grace, gradually overwhelming you as the voices of Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker draw you further into their world.

Following the classic Low blueprint, ‘Things We Lost In The Fire’ finds a balance between the bass-heavy resonance of ‘Whitetail’ and ‘Whore’, and an affecting sublimity, characterised by the rumbling opulence of ‘Sunflower’ and former single ‘Dinosaur Act’. Album closer ‘In Metal’, reminiscent of much of their recent ‘Christmas’ mini-album, even manages to challenge ‘Immune’ as the archetypal Low song, with Mimi’s yearning vocal (“wish I could keep your little body…in metal”) carrying you over the droning guitar and pounding drums as they gradually rise to cacophonous levels, leaving no doubt that Low have managed to make a record that is every bit as wondrous as ‘Secret Name’, and continue to inject a spirituality into their music that is both breathtaking and life-affirming in it’s vitality.

Sonic Youth'NYC Ghosts & Flowers'

2005-09-06T13:48:00.000+01:00

When we last saw Sonic Youth at All Tomorrow Parties, they had just stuck their guitars so far up their arse that they practically had to open their mouth and reach down their throat to detune them, so you will be forgiven if you approach ‘NYC Ghosts & Flowers’ with a touch of apprehension. However, with their more experimental material now being released on their own SYR imprint, you can put your fears to one side you because the Youth have got their passports out, and are in the customs line for planet listenable.

While the days of such art-rock pop gems such as ‘Schizophrenia’ or ‘Sugar Kane’ may be gone, ‘NYC Ghosts…’ is Sonic Youth’s most accessible, and most concise, record since 1994’s ‘Experimental Jet Set, Trash & No Star’. From the insistent urgency of ‘StreamXSonik Subway’ to the Velvets chug of ‘Renegade Princess’, this is the sound of Sonic Youth’s reinvention, taking its cues from ‘A Thousand Leaves’, but offering a much more refined sound, full of sparse instrumentation and measured dissonance.

The sonic turbulence that had been displayed at Camber Sands is not entirely absent from the record, but is carefully restrained, utilised rather that indulged, and it’s only on the closing ‘Lightnin’’ that they allow themselves to disintegrate into a barrage of white noise, completely devoid of tune or melody, as a wailing trumpet ekes out a sorry existence amid Kim’s mutterings.

Alongside ‘Side2Side’, which echoes the chiming guitars and lyrical simplicity of their ‘Confusion Is Sex’ debut, ‘Small Flowers Crack Concrete’ shows how far Sonic Youth have come, how far they have pushed themselves over the last two decades. Where they previously wrote songs in dedication to their recently dead idols, Thurston’s beat-poet narration on 'Small Flowers…' could have easily been culled from the psychosis-driven, stream of consciousness prose of William Burroughs or Allen Ginsberg themselves, as he monotonously depicts a New York city of Warholian proportions (“narcotic squads sweep thru poet dens / spilling coffee and grabbing 15 yr old runaway girls … mystery plays of shit and nothingness … death poems for the living gods of America / plastic saxophones bleat, bleed for nothing”).

When you add to this equation the artwork (drawn by Burroughs himself, natch) and Jim O’Rourke’s co-production, ‘NYC Ghosts & Flowers’ is the sound of Sonic Youth casting aside the pretenders and charlatans that have sought to depose them, and reclaiming the throne we feared they might have carelessly given away. The only true disappointment is that, at just under 45 minutes, the album comes in a bit on the short side, but as the old adage goes, you should always leave them wanting Moore.

Check Engine'Check Engine'

2005-09-06T13:45:00.001+01:00

Every now and then, a band comes along that completely blows your mind; a band that leaves you desperately searching for the superlative that sums up how they make you feel; that leaves you grasping the edge of your seat and gasping for air. Check Engine have just become that band.

As with most bands that take your breath away so succinctly, they remind of many people, yet you fail to find a comparison that fits just right. There’s more than a hint of Sweep the Leg Johnny – hardly surprising when Check Engine can count Sweep’s very own Steve Sostak and Chris Daly among their number – but Check Engine fit songs into 30 minutes where Sweep would have found room for only four. Essentially, they’re a jazz-punk band in a similar manner to Soeza, but while Soeza seem to draw from the swing of New Orleans, Check Engine owe much to the frantic sounds of New York. Let’s just say that they sound like Ornette Coleman and Sonny Rollins locked in a room with Fugazi and leave it at that.

Rhythms shift at random, the guitars are calm and sedate one moment; at each other’s throat the next, while the saxophone spirals through exuberance and despair as the mood takes it. But Check Engine never stray into unlistenable territory, their songs are never unwieldy, just their titles (‘She Asked Me Some Questions & I Answered Them’, ‘So, We’ve Got Balls Can Balls, What Else We Got?’).

Check Engine are like a David Lynch film. They make the complex sound simple, and turn the simple into something very complex indeed. They don’t always make sense first time round. But the more effort you put in, the more you find. The incomprehensible tempo changes and disparate vocals begin to come clear. And then the more that you find, the more you realise that this is a record that you will hold onto forever.

Jameson'Somewhere Forever Inside'

2005-07-05T18:26:00.002+01:00

You know that bit in Forest Gump when Tom Hanks decides that life is like a box chocolates? Well, in the same manner, Birmingham’s Jameson are a bit like a box of fireworks. Throw in a lit match, and you never know quite what is going to come out; though the chances are that it’s going to fizz and flash for a bit, before exploding into a glorious mess of colour and stars. Tonight the display begins with ‘Eraser’, an effervescent little catherine wheel of a song, all turbulent shapes and shouty bits, before ‘Burden The Process’ and ‘Black Dairy Squeeze’ bring on the big bangs and even bigger flashes of both brightness and brilliance.

Although Jameson rarely stray too far from the comfort of Pavement’s shadow, it’s only on ‘Four Square Fraternity’ that the influence perhaps becomes a little too apparent, maybe borrowing slightly too heavily from ‘Crooked Rain’. In this instance though, there’s no worry of familiarity breeding contempt, as it’s skewed country hooks ease their way under your skin with such ease that you have no defence from their charms, until you’re left feeling safe in the knowledge that if everyone’s favourite slackers choose not to return to their special place in our hearts, we already have a more than adequate replacement so eager to take their opportunity that they’ve started to dig their way into your life by the fourth track. In fact, ‘Four Square Fraternity’ sets their agenda so succinctly that it would take something very special to follow it.

Fortunately Jameson have had the hindsight to do so with ‘Magik Band’, undeniably the true gem in their crown of sparkly little numbers, and a classic by anyone’s reckoning. The guitars lap at your body like a particularly calming tide, washing over you as Stuart tells the tale of his two-fingered, ambidextrous, bass playing hero, before the squalling noise breaks in, thrashing you against the rocks as the adrenaline and excitement threaten to pull you apart in a brief enthralling moment until Stuart guides you back towards tranquillity once more, while proving that it’s possible to that quiet-loud thing without trying to rerecord the Slint back catalogue.

'Somewhere Forever Inside' closes with ‘Sprinkle The Axis’, which leaves Jameson staggering about like those little kids who never learn, the one who pick up the sparklers by the wrong end, those who return to the firework that didn’t go off, only for it explode in their face seconds later, a riotous racket of churning chords and mangled instruments. But, as the man says, they "always get up when they fall down" and surely that’s a message from which we can all learn.

Apparently, their friend Stephen is looking for a magik band, but on this evidence, it appears that he may already have found them. If there’s any justice, some day soon everyone else will realise it as well, but until then, dream on believers.

Various Artists'War Tunes, Volume 1'

2005-07-05T18:24:00.003+01:00

First, some good news. Not only is ‘War Tunes’ completely free, it picks up where Sink & Stove records’ own ‘Hospital Radio Request List’ left off in 2000 by highlighting some of the best music to be found coming out of Bristol right now. Even better, there’s not a single piece of sodding trip-hop on it. The bad news is that there’s not many copies left, and it’s only available at Choke promoted gigs in Bristol, which could be a bit of a fucker for some of you.

While you’re already feeling the disappointment wash over you we should dispense with the experimental lounge-core wank-silage of Madnomad. We could also pretend that the Hustler had seen fit to contribute one of their rather fine Mudhoney gone stoner thrashings and not ‘Turtle’, which does little more than drag a couple of pleasant guitar codas through a very predictable quiet-loud mangle in a we want to be Slint kind of way.

Now that’s out of the way, let’s concentrate on all that is great about ‘War Tunes’. Chikinki continue to refine their synth-driven electronica on new track ‘Drink’ while we try to invent a new word to describe their sound. We’d call it eclectonica, but that would be ridiculous, so you’re just going to have to trust us on this one. Bronnt Industries Kapital throw some Aphex shaped nastiness into their textured DJ Shadow flavoured grove and Psycho-Naïve even moved over from France to share his Parisian Metro inspired ambient beats.

Back with the guitars, Ivory Springer bring some taut hardcore noise, while their spiritual brothers, the Signal, come on all menacing as their post-rock goes all ultra fucking heavy on ‘Matching Claws & Beak’. Former Assembly Communications singer Nick Talbot turns up with his new band Gravenhurst (pictured above) and makes like Nick Drake fronting the Red House Painters. Elsewhere, the Raconteurs do their sleazy swamp-rock thing, John Parish crops up alongside the post-folk of Morning Star, and Soeza prove once more why they’re Bristol’s favourite sons and daughter on the luscious and restrained jazz-punk of ‘Now & Again’, lifted from their still awesome sounding ‘Founded by Sportsmen & Outlaws’ album.

As some old soul duffer very nearly asked, ‘War Tunes’, what are they good for? Nearly fucking everything, that’s what. Now be good little girls and boys, get your arse down to a Choke gig and find yourself a copy.

Preston School Of Industrythe Garage, Highbury

2005-07-05T18:16:00.001+01:00

”Under the pavement, the beach” cried the situationists in 60’s Paris. Well, jump forward 30 years and in North London the cries haven’t changed all that much. “Under the Pavement, the Stairs”, or rather the Spiral Stairs, for Scott Kannberg, as he known to his parents, is back. The man responsible for all that fidgety frat-rock noise in Pavement has returned with a new group, but has thankfully brought some familiar sounds with him.

Like Stephen Malkmus before him, Kannberg has left the archetypal lo-fi indie rockers behind, and come back sounding like nothing’s actually changed. But then that’s the root of the Preston’s appeal. Everyone’s here because they loved Pavement, so no one is going to complain that there are no obvious differences on show. As the jagged and jarring guitars mix with undertones of 70’s rawk and a subtle country twang it becomes apparent that this isn’t so much a revolution as a matter of trademark sounds being slanted and transplanted onto a new band. Instead of a first date with an unknown stranger, tonight feels more like an emotional reunion of old friends.

Whether it’s a matter of catharsis or just an opportunity to set the record straight, it seems that Kannberg wants to make that we know how he feels about the whole Pavement situation on ‘Whale Bones’ (“I don’t want you to feel bad”) and ‘Follow The Sun’ (“I know that you like us”). As he launches into the Dinosaur Jr. aping new single, ‘Falling Away’, Scott Kannberg’s role in life becomes clear. Spiral Stairs has come back to save good old-fashioned college rock. He’s going to take it back to where it belongs, at school. And not just any old school, but at the Preston School of Industry.

Quasithe Monarch, Camden

2005-07-05T18:13:00.001+01:00

Bollocks to your sterile “no sex please, I’m in a boyband and in love with Britney Spears” posturing of mainstream pop, sexual tension and coupling rule the roost in rock these days. From the Mormon monogamy of Low, through the junkie love of Royal Trux to the ‘are they or aren’t they siblings/married/incestuously fucking’ bewilderment surrounding the White Stripes, it seems that everyone is at it. All of which just go to show far ahead of their time Quasi were, having already taken the next step forwards, the once happily married having become disconsolate divorcees, leaving the way open for loving bliss to become bitter loathing.

Given this state of affairs, and the ridiculous number of bands that can count Janet Weiss and Sam Coombes amongst their ranks, then you can forgive a jet-lagged Janet for looking more than slightly confused as she takes to the stage. There’s no sign of Carrie and Corrine, so this can’t be a Sleater-Kinney gig. While Sam is over there in the corner fiddling with his keyboard, there’s no sign of Elliott Smith or his smelly old hat, so if it’s Thursday, it must be Quasi.

And the good news is that Quasi means dissonant lo-fi pop like Ben Folds would make if he had a chip on his shoulder and a bitter lemon up his ass. As they shake the sleep out of their eyes, Sam and Janet prove to be the alt.rock Carpenters as their discordant tunes and discontented lyrics tell the tale of their estranged relationship. Sam’s bitterness and bile spills out on ‘It’s Hard To Turn Me On’ and ‘Nothing From Nothing’, but as they crash through the finale of ‘Our Happiness Is Guaranteed’, it’s hard to disagree. Let’s hear it for divorcees in rock, the true choice of the jilted generation.

BroadcastFleece & Firkin, Bristol

2005-07-05T18:09:00.001+01:00

Imagine the sort of music that would have accompanied early editions of Tomorrow’s World, analogue keyboards and drifting guitars, painting a picture of a future where expression has been stripped down to it’s basic counterparts and a chemical formula exists for every feeling. Now imagine the band that would make this music, holed up in their studio, labouring away to produce just the right bleep, the perfect whirring noise. Now look at he stage, for that band would appear to be Broadcast, modelling the finest retro-futurist look, as dated yet timeless as the instruments before them and the music that they’re playing.

Only something’s not quite right. For a band so concerned about the failings of producers that they built their own studio – and then had to delay the recording of their album while they learnt how to use the equipment – they seem to relish the opportunity to play live. In fact, they create a claustrophobic wall of sound so powerful and enticing that the audience look on in wonder as Broadcast prove themselves to be the Stereolab that you can’t dance to – even if ‘Papercuts’ does lead a few brave individuals to at least try to do so – and ‘The Book Lovers’ even manages to raise an enthusiastic cheer before proceeding to rattle the walls and ruffle your hair with it’s heavy bass. ‘Come On Let’s Go’ holds all the style and sophistication that St. Etienne carelessly threw away when they first mistook kitsch for good taste, while ‘Lights Out’ lends a cinematic feel to proceedings, as Trish’s voice grows in stature though out, awash with emotion, until we can all feel her sorrow and resignation.

Finally ‘Hammer Without A Master’ allows them to build themselves up for a glorious finale, drum sticks are stuck into fretboards, an oppressive metronomic time signature echoes around the room and everyone in the crowd loses themselves in Broadcast’s new found majesty, transfixed by the cacophonous climax. If you look carefully at Trish once more, you can almost see tapping her heels together, almost hear her whispering “there’s no place like drone, there’s no place like drone, there’s no place like drone”.

McLusky'My Pain & Sadness Is More Sad & Painful Than Yours'

2005-07-05T13:57:00.000+01:00

What’s that on the horizon? It’s making one fuck of a racket. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, you twat, it’s McLusky and they’re here to obliterate the history of Welsh music and make the world a slightly safer place to visit again.

At a recent gig for Radio 1’s Cardiff Sound City fandango, the usual bunch of ‘oh, aren’t I trendy’ Welsh fashion-whores crammed into a tiny club to celebrate how cool they must all be, and then tried to dance to McLusky’s bastardised noise onslaught, only to look on in bemusement and fear when singer Andy Falkous began to pound his body against the stage and Jon Chapple started thrashing himself with his bass. Hear them scream; see them run like little bunny rabbits, ‘Nurse, the evil men have escaped again’.

‘My Pain & Sadness…’, which amply illustrates just how they managed to alienate so many clueless people in such a short space of time, is little short of a call to arms, which offers a sneer to their supposed contemporaries just before smashing them over the head with their ferocious and snarling yet beautiful music. Given that McLusky sound like Nirvana torturing Big Black, you just know that there’s gonna be no messing with these boys. Former singles ‘Joy’ and ‘Rice Is Nice’ flash past before you’ve had time to realise just how good they are, yet still leave you feeling like you’ve just been buggered by Black Francis. ‘Friends Stoning Friends’ nicks the riff of Sleeper’s ‘Inbetweener’ and the chorus of Terrovision’s ‘Oblivion’, sums up Welsh life in one line ("you’re moving to the city cos your village is shit") and still sounds great. And if the friends that they’re stoning are art-pop no-hopers Mo-ho-bish-opi, then we’re gonna be laughing even harder.

In spite of this though, ‘whiteliberalonwhiteliberalaction’ is their true pièce de résistance, as they kidnap the traditional off-key discordance of Pavement and get it pissed on cheap vodka and Molotov cocktails. Even the title is a barely concealed dig at the Manics; at how many levels do you want one song to be so utterly brilliant?

If ‘My Pain & Sadness…’ is any indication of what to expect from McLusky, then the cock-rock blustering and laddism of the majority of Welsh indie-rock is about to be blown away and buried in a disused mine shaft. In short, the future’s bright, the future’s real fucking nasty sounding, and Terris definitely aren’t invited. You’d better get used to it, or get out the way, cos otherwise McLusky are gonna pursue you until you die along with the bloated corpse which has constituted the Welsh music scene for far too long.

Shellac‘1000 Hurts’

2005-07-04T13:52:00.000+01:00

"Fucking kill him, fucking kill him, kill him already, kill him". It’s not quite as catchy as Daphne & Celeste's 'Ugly', but if he has any taste, your milkman will be singing ‘Prayer To God’ while doing his rounds next week. For now though, all you need to know is that Shellac are back and Steve Albini's not a happy bunny. It's been said that this is an emotional record, but there are only negative emotions on display here. '1000 Hurts' is loaded with such vitriolic anger and disgust that it's the most brutal album that you’ll have the pleasure of hearing all year.

By the time 'Canaveral' finds Albini questioning the cause of his torment ("what do you think would make him stick his cock in my wife?") with despair in his briefly fragile delivery, '1000 Hurts' has already ousted Marvin Gaye's 'Here My Dear' as the ultimate account of adultery and retributive violence wished upon its' protagonists.

But it's not just the lyrics that force their way inside your consciousness, as ever the rhythm section of Weston and Trainer hacks into you like a blunt knife, as if they're driven by some insatiable hunger. Fortunately, where previous excess allowed 1997's 'Terraform' to lose its focus, the intensity rarely lets up here. Once the opening shard-like chords of 'Prayer To God' kick in there’s no relief from the trauma of '1000 Hurts' until long after the album screams to a close with the serrated rhythms of 'Watch Song', in which Albini makes the polite suggestion that his rival may wish to meet him outside.

If Albini really is out for revenge, then Courtney Love should start looking over her shoulder, and friends of Urge Overkill may want to check that Nash Kato hasn’t already topped himself. The rest of us, meanwhile, can sit back and relax, because hostility and vengeance fit Shellac like a glove; a glove fitted with barbed-wire knuckle-dusters.

Various Artists'The Hospital Radio Request List'

2005-07-04T13:48:00.000+01:00

After Sony's 'Cigarettes & Alcohol' debacle, you could be forgiven for refusing to admit that compilation albums exist, but thankfully, Sink & Stove Records may be about to provide you with some well-deserved solace. Spawned from Bristol’s currently vibrant music scene, 'The Hospital Radio Request List' is the perfect antidote for such bloated blathering, firmly placing its faith in new artists determined to put their art ahead of their bank balances.

The tight-knit nature of Bristol's post-rock scene is reflected by the large crossover of shared resources, with many of the songs recorded in Sink & Stove owner Ben Shillabeer's studio, who also pops up in Soeza (along with Kiska’s multi-instrumentalist Aaron Dewey) and the Fall Project, while many of the other bands on here feature contributions from a central core of musicians. However, when they are responsible for some of this record’s highlights you can forgive them the occasional touch of incest and nepotism. As such, the jazz-punk-swing of Soeza's 'Young’s Elastic Constant', and the hypnotic lock-grooves of Tortoise types Kiska, are the equal of anything that you’ve found in the NME's On section recently.

'The Hospital Radio Request' also sees rising Bristol's stars flanked by a number of their more established peers, including nearly everyone that’s ever played with PJ Harvey. John Parish weighs in with the spectral '116 N.O.' in addition to providing guitar for the Ideal Husbands; Rob Ellis premiers his new band Christmas; and drummer Jean-Marc Butty turns up with Canadian alt.rockers White Hotel. Elsewhere, James Banbury of the Auteurs showcases his Possessed side-project, and perennial lo-fi blues-man Terry Edwards takes a break from the Tindersticks and Gallon Drunk to bring us the scuzzy jazz of the Scapegoats' 'Asthma'.

As alternative programming on national radio continues to decline, with the lo-fi eclecticism on offer here, from the Aphex Twin whirrings of Vagus Nerve to the deadpan reminiscences of Mano Poderosa, you can be sure that hospital radio is the only channel you’re going to want to listen to from now on.

Essential Festival, 2002Rock Day

2005-07-01T14:08:00.000+01:00

There’s supposed to be two sides to every story, but it’s not often that those two stories are so blatantly contradictory as those flying round at Ashton Court this weekend are. The promoters have cited safety issues as the reason that they’ve had to close two stages and pull about 14 bands from the bill. A fair enough suggestion at first until it becomes clears that those safety reasons are due to the waterlogged conditions. While that might still sound vaguely reasonable (I was at Glastonbury one of those years that saw in excess of 80,000 swimming through pig shit for three days and there’s no way I’d go through that again), it does seem that little bit strange that not only have they pulled a couple of the headline acts from the bill, but that the ground has miraculously been deemed dry enough for the other two other days of the festival

The other story in circulation is, say we say, just that little bit more interesting. This second account says that advance ticket sales have been so poor that the promoters couldn’t afford to pay the advance fees, leading to a number of bands being pulled off the bill by the bands’ agents. I would use the word allegedly at this point, if it were not for the fact that the promoters have finally admitted that they fucked up big time.

So anyway, this pantomime of farce and rumour means that no one actually knows which bands are supposed to be here anymore, and there’s a lot of lost and confused kids wondering around not knowing where, or if, there favourite band is playing. But hey, it could be worse. There is some good news: Reef aren’t playing anymore, but there is also some bad news – the Levellers have pulled out, and just to rub it in even more, now they’re even headlining a one of the fucking stages. Seems that there’s nothing quite like the prospect of a shit-stained mudslide of a festival to draw the Levellers’ hell-spawn gout-ridden crusty fucks of a fan-base crawling out into the daylight. Today’s other major surprise is the absence of co-headliners Therapy?, though I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether that’s a good or a bad thing.

Of course, you’re faced with the problem that the bands have now been scattered across the four remaining stages, and the chances are that the bands you wanted to see now all clash with each other. Still, we’re here, so let’s just make the best of it.

Over on what may still called the third stage, Kids Near Water take a break from their chubby emo-kid angst to announce that their t-shirts won’t available on the merchandise stall as they didn’t want to their fans to get ripped off by the extortionate prices being charged. Now, at this point we could be cruel and say that in that case their fans would have been better off waiting for the Get Up Kids to tour, but it’s sunny, I’m really appreciating being back at an outdoor festival after the sweat-pit hell of All Tomorrow’s Parties, and while they may not be breaking any new ground, these Kids are alright so I’ll leave the cutting wit for someone more deserving of my rancour.

Such as your new new favourite band. The Bellrays have been grabbing press like a Manchester United metatarsal bone, but you wonder if anyone would have noticed them if it wasn’t for Lisa Kekaula impression of an afro-sporting Divine after successful hormone treatment. Given that half the bands appearing today seem to play some form of down and dirty garage rock, we may as well just listen to ‘Respect’ ‘Gimme Shelter’ and ‘Kick Out The Jams’ on our own time. Sahara Hotnights also fall foul of this trap, a setback further exacerbated by the fact that Essential is the only place in Britain today to feature more Swedes than the Everton midfield.

Down towards the spongier end of the field, Jello Biafra is proving that occasionally angry young men do indeed grow up to be angry old men. Thankfully Jello has spent his later years of life reading up on world evil so instead of spouting random bullshit, this man most definitely knows what he’s talking about. As the lecture starts you have to wonder if anyone is paying him any attention, but he can at least claim full marks for effort. As much as I want to hear what he’s got to say, to make sure that my rage towards consumerist-culture doesn’t prevent my from enjoying a day I spent a fair amount of my hard-earned wages on, it’s time for me to run away to the less contentious climes of a Cave In gig.

Having done so, I find myself surrounded by children. I don’t know what it is about Cave In’s prog-tinged post-hardcore, but not only do the majority of people around me look too young to get served alcohol, if the badly scrawled band names on the bag of the girl in front of me are anything to by, some of them are too young to have been taught how to spell. Time to seek adult company, time to go listen to some more of Mr Biafra.

I arrive back just in time for his tirade about the inadequacies of US airlines, and how while America may look own on the Arab states at least they go to the effort of protecting their planes with reinforced hulls and by placing an under-cover anti-terrorist commando on every flight, while America claims to rule the world, but is content that airport security has one of the highest job turnover levels in the country. He’s like Bill Hicks without the jokes, and with so many impressionable young kids wondering around that’s just what we need right now. Jello says ‘question authority, fight the fucking power, just don’t listen to the Dead Kennedys while you’re doing it cos they’re not the band they purport to be anymore’. Ohhh, tetchy.

But hey, we’ve been educated, now it’s time for some rock’n’roll, and the Dirtbombs are happy to oblige. But they’re struggling with bad sound. For a band that’s always fairly stripped-down, this is disastrous. Thankfully though, they gradually they start to claw it back. Mick Collins throws a few high-kicks, and their fiery soul-punk begins to win though.

Following closely behind the ‘Bombs, the (International) Noise Conspiracy should be in a position to win over the crowd, as their choreographed communist chic explodes onto the stage. Unfortunately, no matter how much I want to love this band (of course I want to love them, they’ve spent three years trying to be the Make Up), I have a problem with it all. It all seems so fake and forced. They’ve spent so long perfecting their moves that they can’t connect with the crowd at all. It doesn’t matter where they are, or to whom they’re playing, nothing ever changes. It’s the same moves, the same ad-libs. The first time you see them it’s a revelation, the second it’s just frustrating. On record they’re an overtly political band, but that doesn’t come across live. If it weren’t for the fact that singer Dennis Lyxzen used to be in Refused, you wouldn’t even know that the Noise Conspiracy had a socio-political agenda.

Thankfully Rocket From The Crypt have what it takes to save me from my despondency. On a day where confusion reigns, it’s good to know that Speedo and the boys can be relied upon to pull out the stops. Forget the White Stripes, the Rocket boys have been doing that matching outfit thing for years, and even though last year’s ‘Group Sounds’ album didn’t exactly propel them back into the charts, there’s still no one that can touch the magnificence of their rock’n’roll revue. As they crash into their tried and tested closing triumvirate of ‘Middle’, ‘Born In ‘69’ and ‘On A Rope’ it becomes all too clear that the majority of bands that played today will never be this good. Speedo is a god, and everyone that is stumbling around crying about the non-appearance of Reef has got a hell of a lot of worshipping to catch up with. Time to get down on your knees, non-believer.

All Tomorrow’s Parties, 2001

2005-07-01T13:37:00.000+01:00

It’s already been marked down as the musical event of the year; the post-rock party where everyone invited is a friend of Tortoise, a nirvana for people who used to listen to Nirvana. A lost weekend in a sterile holiday camp that, thanks to the inclusion of most of the Def Jux roster, has somehow managed to be more hip-hop than hi-de-hi. So much so, that if you weren’t there, you’re possibly already either fabricating stories so you can convince easily-impressed acquaintances that you were, or invent some watertight alibis that place you at some equally exclusive happening that very weekend.

So, maybe it’s time for those of you who find yourselves in this predicament to seek some consolation, to take heart that maybe you’re no the only ones constructing lies and exaggerating stories, because, when it really gets down to it, All Tomorrow’s Parties wasn’t actually very good this year.

Yeah, you heard that right. So perhaps some of you consider that blasphemous. That maybe it had nothing to do with the bands involved, but that maybe I just didn’t get it, that in the face of such illustrious heavyweights as Tortoise, Television and the Sun Ra Arkestra, I buckled under the strain of non-conventional chord structures, and gone running off to my chalet to play with the oven and sofa-bed.

Well, bollocks to the lot of you then. If that’s what you think, than so be it, just don’t claim to be anything other than narrow-minded, musically-elitist, post-rock wankers who think that the sun shines out of David Pajo’s arse and sets on Doug McCombs slap-headed dome.

Last year’s ATP was a celebration of alternative music that promoted the talents of brand new British music alongside their American brethren – led by a transatlantic triumvirate of Mogwai, Sonic Youth and the recently rejuvenated Wire. If you add the mostly excellent company of my chalet mates –including former Signal bassist James Dart, who at one stage managed to convince the lot of us that he was eating his own shit (it’s a long story, I’m not going into it here) – and it’s immediately obvious that ATP2000 was going to take some topping.

Unfortunately, what started out by looking like a promising line-up soon proved unable to rise to the challenge laid down by their predecessors. Instead of the 40 or so bands that showed up last year, Tortoise only invited their mates, which wouldn’t have been so bad, if only they actually had a reasonable number of friends to ask along. The late exit of ESG means that there were only 23 bands on offer here, and no one had been scheduled to take to the stage until 5 o’clock each evening.

To exacerbate matters further, some fool decided that we were bound to want to see every band that was playing, the running times were arranged so that while one band was playing upstairs, chances are that there was no one on stage downstairs. So if you happened to think that The Ex were nothing other than a piss-poor third-rate hardcore band, there wasn’t anything else to do other than go and sit in the pub. Factor in the large number of misguided idiots that ran away from the hip-hop under the belief that it wasn’t real music, and this suddenly becomes a very common occurrence over the weekend. In fact, if Trash can lay claim to have more people wearing Prada shoes per head than any club in London, then ATP2001 wins the prize for highest per capita incidence of people muttering about how it might not be necessarily be bad, it just isn’t their kind of thing.

But maybe I’m just moaning too much. It’s possible that I was alone in thinking that US Maple that, compared to the syncopated discordance of their early albums, were little more than bitterly disappointing pub-rock shambles; that the hip-hop should have been spread out over the entire weekend, instead of being lumped together on one stage on the Friday night; and that the Sun Ra Arkestra’s brand of jazz sounded about as free as an incarcerated paedophile.

I may also have even been the only person that thought that Lambchop really could have played some tunes instead of a barely audible dirge; that no matter how good the Sea & Cake are, we didn’t really want to stand still and watch them for two hours; and that Boards of Canada provided a worthwhile alternative to getting wasting on tequila and absinthe with the Doc from Birmingham’s Bearos record label.

Maybe everyone else thinks that Rick Rizzo and Tara Key from the normally enjoyable Eleventh Dream Day were anything other than excruciatingly painful to watch; and that, despite Television sounding surprisingly fresh and vibrant for a bunch of pensioners, waiting 90 minutes for them to play ‘Marquee Moon’ could have been more entertaining than watching Roman Polanski’s 1962 movie ‘Knife In The Water’ while finishing off the weekend’s supply of beer and pasta in a guacamole dressing in the comfort of a chalet. But given all this evidence, you’d probably have to be in Tortoise to have disagreed with me on every point.

In fact, if a passing stranger tries to tell that any of the bands other than Tortoise, Mike Ladd, the Def Jux posse, Yo La Tengo and Broadcast were worth seeing, chances are that either they weren’t really there to witness post-rock’s eventual post-mortem, or they’ve got their chin-stroking head stuck so far up their miserable arse that their opinions don’t really count anyway.

Bristol Community Festival, 2000

2005-07-01T13:21:00.000+01:00

Despite having spent the last few years in the not inconsiderable shadow of Portishead, Massive Attack et al, it’s time for the local post-rock and hardcore scene to put Bristol firmly on the map. Having appeared at last year’s In The City extravaganza, Assembly Communications quickly set the standard for much of the weekend. Their emotive barrage sounds like the Red House Painters played by Slint fans, and brings forth a tidal wave of tumultuous effects and brutal guitars which wouldn’t have sounded out of place on Ride’s first album. If that isn’t already a contradictory enough proposition, they also somehow manage to simultaneously batter the crowd back into the ground while Nick Talbot’s mesmerising voice - equal parts Nick Drake, Art Garfunkel and chain-smoking choir-boy - succeeds in lifting the avid onlookers ever higher, and ‘Fires In Distant Buildings’ shows that hardcore needn’t rely on bludgeoning the senses into submission.

Then Crashland turn up to prove that not everyone in Bristol listens to good music, as the punk-pop Shed Seven run through their motions like the tired old has-beens they’re rapidly becoming, and not even their ‘New Perfume’ is enough to entice the more than a passing disinterest, before Toploader show that it doesn’t matter how much money your record label is spending on promotion, it can’t make up for a blatant lack of talent and charisma. It’s always a worrying sign when your band is better known for the singer’s haircut than their records, and that’s the Achilles heel that they should really be worrying about right now.

The lock-groove rhythms of Kiska make the most of the outdoor environment, swelling to fill the open spaces until the hills are echoing with their Tortoise-shaped percussive rumbling. Their Korg and guitar duel provides the perfect backing for multi-instrumentalist Aaron Dewey to get his cornet out on ‘Broken & Unfixed’, before managing to switch instruments mid-song during their finale, first joining Rob Nesbett on keyboards then finally returning to his drum-kit.

With each passing day, Mogwai’s claim to the post-rock throne becomes ever more precarious, and local heavyweights the Signal are the latest name to join the list calling for abdication, as the discordant syncopation of ‘Sentinel 2’ shows an urgency and drive that Stuart Braithwaite would die(t) for, while the thundering motorik of ‘Dance Of The Fool’ recalls such hardcore luminaries as Fugazi and Shellac.

Having to follow such self-assured unsigned bands would give most people more than a mere headache, but Seafood seem incapable of taking a weekend off right now, so there they are once more with their sordid orgy of Sonic Youth art-rock, Sebadoh riffs and Pixies dynamics. Recent months have found Kevin Hendrick stumbling in the right direction down the path from geeky indie-kid to surrogate Thurston Moore, as he hurls his bass around and gashes his hands open in his exuberance while David Line perches himself on the very edge of the stage, roaring though 'Porchlight' and 'Folk Song Crisis', the intensity and volume builds to cacophonous levels behind him, before staggering off on their never-ending journey around Britain.

All Tomorrow's Parties, 2000Friday

2005-05-12T13:45:00.000+01:00

It’s a festival, kids, but not as we know it.

It takes a day for the shock to subside, and the civility and relative sophistication of it all to sink in. You’ve got a bed, a shower, a roof, and even your own film channel, even if most of them do rather suspiciously look as if they’ve been recorded off the television. There is however a catch. You know how at your average festival when half of the bands are shit, you always seem to miss a few that you want to see? Well, within the post-rock sanctuary of Camber Sands, you’re just going to have to accept the fact that you’re going to miss a lot of good bands, so before we go any further, apologies must be extended to Labradford, Pram, Plone and Tarwater; and also to Scott4 for having finished their set while we were still driving round in circles somewhere in Sussex; and the Radar Brothers for having to play while we stumbled around the site looking for our chalet.

This means that it’s left to the Delgados to belatedly start proceedings for our weekend, as their whimsical, fragile folk tries it’s hardest to hold our attention. Unfortunately a predominance of songs from ‘The Great Eastern’ means that their bittersweet melodies and vocal interplay is prevented from stimulating the senses to the same extent as a particularly haunting rendition of ‘Pull The Wires From The Wall’, and their decision to play acoustically does little to lift the subdued atmosphere.

Luckily Stereolab are waiting just round the corner to bring us another broadcast from the socialist manifesto that you can dance to. Given the rather select crowd before them, Tim Gane and his comrades opt to leave the pop numbers at home and dive headlong into a display of whirring noises, krautrocking keyboards and lilting harmonies which get the party, and maybe even the Party, moving again as Laetitia takes this opportunity to show off her new hairdo, which leaves her looking rather scarily like a hepcat Hilary Swank.

Not to be outdone by Stereolab surreptitiously slipping in a bit of French, the Super Furry Animals treat us to a predominantly Welsh set, which, despite our complete inability to understand a single sodding word, provides fresh hope that ‘Guerrilla’ didn’t signal an end to their previously undisputed creative genius. New single ‘Ysbeidiau Heulog’ shows a return to the frazzled and fazed sound of their early Ankst days; while ‘Northern Lights’ bounces along like the big plastic reindeer on Gruff’s amp wishes it could, and the frantic blast of ‘Calimero’ stakes their claim as outsiders to steal Pavement’s vacant throne. Having thankfully chosen to leave out ‘The Man Don’t Give A Fuck’, the Super Furries end the day accompanied by the man who probably can’t get a fuck, as Stuart Braithwaite joins them onstage to twat about with a tambourine while standing nowhere near a microphone. Still as the saying the saying goes ‘it’s my festival, and if you won’t let me play, then I’m taking it home’.

All Tomorrow's Parties, 2000Saturday

2005-05-12T13:43:00.000+01:00

After a night of luxury spent cooking sausage and beans on toast without the risk of getting grass in the saucepan before settling down with a bottle of wine to watch the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the Exorcist and Hellraiser, the last thing you want to be greeted by the next day is the promise of yet more carnage and spilling of blood. However, …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead prove to be a much more appetising proposition than their moniker suggests, even if you can’t help but get the impression that you’d probably find them a lot quicker if you followed the trail of old Sonic Youth albums. The vibrant assault of ‘Richter Scale Madness’ takes their influences and throws them in the gutter, before jumping in there with them and rolling around a bit, as their filthy swagger and frenzied guitars exceed anything that Leatherface or Pinhead could have imagined in their most despicable dreams.

As a rule, Clinic just shouldn’t work. Not so much a manufactured band, more of a ‘here’s one I made earlier’ Blue Peter style invention created out of the leftover pieces of others - a droning bass line from here, a staccato guitar burst from over there, and that incoherent, slightly reluctant sounding vocalist that you found down the back of the settee, all held together with a cyclic drum beat and a bit of sticky back plastic. On paper they sound bizarre, a rambling mess of frustrated ideas and half-finished songs, but on stage it all makes sense, as krautrock and the Velvet Underground fall victim to a William S. Burroughs cut and paste job, as he invents the perfect band, before ripping them apart and putting them back together in a different order.

It must be hard to live up to expectations when your previous band has helped alter the course of American alternative music; but having done so twice, firstly with hardcore icons Squirrel Bait, and then with Slint, you’d have to forgive Brian McMahon if he chose to hide away from publicity and the public eye with the For Carnation. With each new incarnation, he seems to get quieter and more elegiac, and has now become so minimal that you have to hope that the For Carnation are his last band or we’ll all be buying records almost completely devoid of sound, but tonight their sparse instrumentation and funereal pace require too much hard work and concentration to be fully appreciated, especially when encountered in the middle of a marathon trawl between bands and stages.

Thankfully Shellac can be relied on to bring the noise, with their taut, angular onslaught resembling the aural equivalent of a brain haemorrhage, and their precise, jagged rhythms show why Steve Albini remains so well respected after so many years. Despite of the image that seems to have been built up of Albini as petulant and elitist, Shellac are willing to accept their position of entertainers as readily as that of as musicians, and Bob Weston even takes a break mid-set to take questions from the audience.

At a festival of bands so heavily indebted to them, surely we can expect the loveable, middle-aged noiseniks of Sonic Youth to use this opportunity to reaffirm their position in our hearts, to show their contemporaries how it should be done. You can feel the expectation in the room, as the opening barrage of ‘Contre Le Sexisme’ encircles us, building layer upon layer of noise, sounding like the end of the world. But then the contrary buggers go and ruin it all by continuing in the same vein for half an hour, and then follow that with another hour of static noise, before limping back on with their single concession to the desolate fans huddled at the back of the hall, and stumble their way through the still graceful ‘Sunday’.

Despite the tragedy of it all, you’re left not really sure if you should be complaining, having seen your favourite band perform what is likely to be a rare set of experimental songs, and relishing the opportunity to further establish themselves as avant-garde pioneers, while issuing a challenge both to their fans and peers. Even while accepting the valid arguments that you can’t expect someone to continue to play the hits every time they tour; that ultimately the only people they should aim to please are themselves; Sonic Youth need to remember that there’s only ever a thin line between art and arse, and tonight they only served to disappoint their faithful following by exposing them to a tortuous display of ignominious self-indulgence which is bereft of any function or purpose.

All Tomorrow's Parties, 2000Sunday

2005-05-12T13:41:00.000+01:00

Fortunately Sunday offers Sonic Youth’s, Steve Shelley the chance to save face, as the droning alt.country of his other band, Two Dollar Guitar, and the laconic drawl of their Harry Dean Stanton lookalike singer gently ease you back into another day of music. Which, after having shared an invigorating absinthe breakfast with Bearos Records (or rather, sat in the sun with Bearos while taking advantage of the kind offer to drink their absinthe), is a good way to kick things off. Unless, of course they happen to followed by the Bardo Pond, which they are, who seem determined to mess with your head once more as their shoegazing cacophony meanders about for a bit before realising that they would have been better suited to 1989, and buggering off back to their time machine.

After Sonic Youth you could be forgiven for turning your back on instrumental music, but Papa M are all that it takes to show you that true beauty can be achieved without words. Whereas Thurston and his cronies were content to ramble tunelessly for an hour and a half, Dave Pajo understands the need for a driving force in the music to take the place of vocals, and therefore the instrumentation is always building towards a specific point, the guitars working off each other to create a new eloquence, and as such, even their 15 minute rendition of ‘Turn Turn Turn’ sounds as articulate as the original.

It’s a rare occasion when Pajo can’t be considered the most influential musician on the bill, but Wire not only can be held responsible for shaping the sound of as many of this weekends bands as Sonic Youth or Slint, but have been around long enough to have been an influence to those bands themselves. Following the blanket slagging of their recent Royal Festival Hall gig you’re expecting to be disappointed, so what follows is nothing short of a revelation.

Maybe they read the reviews, maybe they saw Sonic Youth and felt the need to prove that middle-age doesn’t necessarily make you artistically redundant, but Wire take to the stage as if they believe it’s 1978 and they’re at the 100 Club for the first time. In short, it’s like punk is still happening, and right before our very eyes Wire are taking steps towards injecting it with an art-school sensibility. Shorn of the ‘80’s detritus that they relied on a month ago, much of the set is drawn from ‘Pink Flag’ and ‘Chairs Missing’, as the syncopated beats, awkward riffs and robotic drumming immediately dismiss any notions of granddad rock, and the crowd are left mesmerised by Colin Newman as he screams and rants his way through their very own definitive history of art-rock.

You’re left wondering just how Mogwai are going to follow that, how Stuart Braithwaite’s mob can justify their position as headliners, and what the cheeky little scamp is going to have to say for himself tonight. Fortunately they seem to have risen to the occasion, and are filled with a much greater sense of purpose than when they last dragged their bloated forms around the country, as if the string quartet have forced to them become more disciplined, and any feelings of awe they may have playing to so many of their idols are soon put behind them. ‘Christmas Steps’ and a reworked ‘New Paths To Helicon’ are devastatingly brutal, building in volume to levels that would have Kevin Shields reaching for the earplugs, but they still find themselves hamstrung by their tendency to draw songs out for too long, until ‘Ex-Cowboy’ finds itself flailing about pointlessly going nowhere.

Yet the new songs are capable of keeping people riveted for half an hour at a time, recalling the Omen’s sinister score as the strings ricochet off the dense barrage of noise, it’s just a shame that, just as we were beginning to forgive him for being such an arse all the time, Stuart then goes and ruins it all by calling Ken Livingstone an evil cunt. But then ‘Fear Satan’ brings the weekend to a final close, and it’s time to grudgingly admit that there may be life in the cretins yet. If only Stuart can learn to keep his mouth shut long enough to prevent anyone from kicking the crap out of him first, it’s just possible that we may fall in love with the stupid buggers yet.

Les Savy Fav, Sweep The Leg JohnnyPull The Strings, Comedy Pub & Fleece & Firkin, Bristol

2005-04-27T18:34:00.000+01:00

Some people say it’s not what you’ve got, but what you do with it that counts. Others may claim that size is everything. Well, judging by recent events, Bristol’s Pull The Strings collective have got it sorted on both counts. With four gigs in five weeks, things seem to be about to go into overdrive, as a gang of local aspirants are joined by the cream of the Southern records roster for the ultimate in alt.rock extravaganzas.

Kicking off proceedings, and neatly coinciding with the release of their debut album ‘Founded By Sportsmen & Outlaws’, are local jazz-punk types Soeza, who intriguingly decide to celebrate the occasion by unveiling a set half-filled with brand new material. Perhaps not the wisest sales strategy, but then who needs marketing when you’ve got a song called ‘From Crown To Anus’. Both rousing and rowdy, Soeza take Fugazi as a starting point, and then strap on a discordant horn section that will have Dexy’s fans writhing around the floor in ecstasy as ‘Young’s Elastic Constant’ and ‘CSE Woodwork’ make them a hard act to follow.

A feat not made any easier but the microphone’s sudden death sometime just before Chicagoans 90 Day Men take the stage. Stripped of their vocals, much of the impetus is lost from their edgy freeform-jazz gone DC hardcore onslaught, although extra points should be awarded for having a bassist with a hairstyle straight out of Eraserhead.

Having become rather ubiquitous on Bristol’s live music scene of late, Chikinki are now a refined mix of garage riffs and cyclic noise, the electric bass-drums driving them onwards as forthcoming single ‘Like It Or Leave It’ stamps Rupert’s sexually-obsessed lyrics onto a backdrop of distorted electronica and drum’n’bass, while ‘Robot Age’ goes a long way towards invoking the paranoia-infused rhetoric of the Make Up.

No matter how accomplished Chikinki have become, there’s no way that anyone can match Les Savy Fav right now. The appearance of Brooklyn’s finest practically guarantees a memorable gig, and they seem incapable of disappointing. As ever, they’re a chaotic experience, with singer Tim Harrington so fond of his audience that he spends most of the set in the midst of the crowd, encouraging people to dance on chairs, gently fondling his fans while barking out his vocals. Before the night is over, he’s crawled through the crowd on his hands and knees, and knocked out the lights with a mike-stand, yet this does nothing to detract from the music. ‘Who Rocks The Party?’ bellows Harrington as they reach the climax of their performance, when quite obviously, Les Savy Fav not rock only the party, but rock the Birthday Party and Brainiac as well.

Alter-ego of local post-rockers the Signal, the Pendulum Swings open the second phase of Pull The Strings gigs, exhibiting a tendency for vibrant dynamics that mark them out as more post-grunge than anything else, though doused with a liberal sprinkling of the Red House Painters, as their resonating motorik builds towards a climatic melee of barbed guitars and thundering drums.

Coming from a similar direction as Bristol’s own Kiska, Tristeza tease the traditional hardcore template and add in copious amounts of jazz to the mix, as their soothing sounds and gradual tempo changes act as the morning after 90 Day Men’s big night out. Gradually, as their set progresses, Tristeza add more and more to their music, with looping space-rock intros giving way to repetitious grooves which soon phase back out into white noise, as the drum-kit begins to fall apart under the pounding of their exuberant sticksman, who calmly reassembles his kit while the others keep playing, etching out a framework which sees them evolving into a post-punk King Crimson.

The return of Sweep The Leg Johnny to Bristol proves a more than sufficient finale to events, and ups the ante to such a level that they just can’t be matched for skill or showmanship. Falling somewhere between Miles Davis fronting the Stooges and an emo Captain Beefheart, Sweep are a relentless proposition, capable of forcing the audience into awe-induced submission, as signer and saxophonist Steven Sostak channels such energy and conviction into his performance that by the end he’s sweating so much that he appears to have wet himself, and you’re even willing to believe him when he says that the new song they play tonight is actually called ‘Sometimes My Balls Feel Like Tits’, during which Sostak’s saxophone duels with the guitars, switching tempo and rhythm seemingly at random, until each time you think that they’re coming to a close, Sweep shoot off in an entirely different direction, which, like the band themselves, is utterly enthralling every time.

The Mars VoltaULU, London

2005-04-20T14:08:00.000+01:00

Live music is all about the spectacle. Let’s be honest here, when it comes down to it, as long as the band sounds alright, all we actually want is to be entertained. We’re not here to appreciate the finer points of a diminished chord, we’re here because we want the adrenaline kick, we want to feel those endorphins tearing through our system. We’re here because we want to be surprised, because we want to feel alive.

Which is just as well, because right now I’ve got absolutely no idea what’s happening onstage. It’s all a complete blur. Omar is flagellating himself with his guitar. There’s a tank of a man jumping on his keyboard. The bassist hasn’t stopped spinning round for the entire set. Somewhere in the midst of the staccato rhythms, hidden beneath Cedric’s pained yelps as he hurls himself around, there may even be a song. It may be called ‘Cut That City’, but I wouldn’t swear to it.

The Mars Volta are like watching chaos theory unravelling. They’re like the Make Up having an epileptic fit, or the frantic garage punk of the MC5 terrorising a space-rock jazz quintet, kind of rama-lama-Sun-Ra-ra if you will. But then, I don’t care if you won’t. The Mars Volta certainly don’t care if you won’t. They’re not playing for you. If they were, they would never have split up At The Drive-In, and you wouldn’t be running for the bar with a scared look on your face. Fuck doing it for the kids – Omar and Cedric are quite obviously doing this for themselves.

Normally that would be a crime. It’s just not punk rock, is it? But incredibly, the Mars Volta get away with every excess imaginable. As uncompromising as they may have become, they’re still performers. While there is a very definite chance that they’ll stick their head up their arse and get their afro caught in their pubic hair, there’s never going to be any risk of the Mars Volta being boring.

They may not be so much At The Drive-In as at the drive-through spaz-jazz gymnastics team avant-prog wank spectacle, but at least it’s the spectacle that we had been hoping for.

…And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of DeadFleece & Firkin, Bristol

2005-04-19T18:50:00.000+01:00

Following a minor diversion back in Texas that may lead to the boys being better known by their trail of rednecks, the …Trail Of Dead are on a mission. That mission is to fuck shit up by embarking on a tour of duty; destruction and trouble making that will leave many of their contemporaries looking like limp-wristed acoustic guitar-hugging lightweights.

While there may well be a scarcity of recognisable tunes or melody on display here, what the …Trail Of Dead lack in subtlety they more than make up for in pure rock n’ roll exuberance. In their singer, and part-time drummer, Conrad Keely, they possess a true star, a man determined to play the game like a good ’un, whether that involves throwing himself around on top of the amps, or spouting random shit at the audience as Jason Reece looks on, unconvinced by his admissions, “I want to finish telling them my thought. I’ve not taken any ketamine tonight”.

Whatever he says, every Trail of Dead song seems to have been raised on adrenaline and force-fed amphetamines from an early age. They rush past like a barrage of white-noise terrorism, as ‘Mistakes And Regrets’ pile-drives into ‘Prince With A Thousand Enemies’, before ‘Totally Natural’ finds itself rudely usurped by ‘Richter Scale Madness’. Often the only distinction between songs is who’s singing and who’s behind the drum kit, as Conrad and Jason routinely switch places, each eager for the opportunity to exact more abuse on a different instrument.

As ‘A Perfect Teenhood’ nears it’s tumultuous climax, the whole-scale trashing of equipment begins with an impetuous vigour, though it appears the men in black and blue are a little fussy about who gets to touch their gear. An overly enthusiastic onlooker mistakenly decides to save bassist Neil Busch the trouble of pushing over his own amp, and swiftly finds himself on the painful end of a pair of the finest Texan boots, as drums and guitars crash to the stage all around him. No matter how clichéd it may all sound, the …Trail Of Dead are here to save rock n’ roll, so you may as well stick around to watch the spectacle unfold.

Idlewild

2005-04-19T18:40:00.000+01:00

You remember the old days. The days when you had to slog your way around the country, slowly building a fan base, gradually adding to your sales, before finally getting the breakthrough and getting played on Radio 1, and then maybe, just maybe, being asked to appear on to Top of the Pops. You know the way it was, the way it should be, back in the days before Top of the Pops became such a blatant marketing tool used to peddle any old trash that the record label’s would have trouble shifting without that extra bit of media attention. Well, for Idlewild, that how it still is. While every Tom, Dick and fucking Blink 182 gets pushed onto TFI Friday in the time it takes to say ‘oh, Chris, you’re great, here’s some more money’, instead of paying their bribes; and let’s be honest, just appearing on TFI and repressing the urge to smash the smug fucker in the face and not urinate on his motley collection of sycophants that he routinely wheels out for a chat practically counts as a bribe, they’ve been paying their dues; so their recent burst of television coverage must be seen as something of a triumph, not only for themselves but for music in general.

Compared to a number of bands around at the moment, Idlewild’s Top of the Pops appearance was a long time coming. It seems now that bands are getting pushed onto TV before they’re ready for a record deal, let alone such large-scale national exposure, while you had to wait two years. “With ‘When I Argue I See Shapes’ going top 20, we really should have had a bit more television”, suggests bassist Bob Fairfoull. “Things like TFI, Jools Holland and Top of the Pops, we really should have got a wee while ago”.

Did you feel justified in finally getting there? “We’ve had singles that have charted with piss all television”, he says indignantly, “but I think it was about time we got these programmes”. How did you find doing Top of the Pops? “Top of the Pops is a bit strange”, he says, “everything seems to be centred around the audience. They tell the audience exactly where to stand and exactly how many seconds they’re supposed to clap, and if somebody claps out of time you have to do the whole song again”.

Was it odd being on there as a guitar band when so much of the content is now more typically radio-friendly dance music? “Before we went on they had the audience listening to ‘Song 2’ for five minutes”, laughs Bob, “so that they could teach themselves to dance properly to rock music”.

When it came to recording ‘100 Broken Windows’, Idlewild made the unusual decision to work with two different producers, US underground genius Bob Weston, and former Manic Street Preachers producer Dave Eringa. What were the reasons for working with two producers, especially two that are so different from each other? “We’d always wanted to work with Bob. We really admire his work”, explains Bob, “he’s recorded albums with a lot of our favourite bands, and being in Shellac …basically the guy’s a bit of a genius, a kind of god-like character in a way”. “Dave Eringa was kind of a more practical choice”, interjects vocalist Roddy Woomble. “Although we recorded good stuff with Bob Weston, we couldn’t have recorded the whole album with him, Dave kind of focussed it“.

Was it a conscious effort to make it more accessible and commercial? “No, we realised we couldn’t do a whole album with Bob Weston”, Roddy carries on, “it wouldn’t have made sense to anyone, us as well. We needed someone to gel it together”. “It wasn’t so much commercial”, confirms Bob, “it’s just a whole album with Bob …I don’t think the label would have liked it”.

At the time there were a number of rumours going round that there was a great deal of conflict between yourselves and the label. Was the decision to work with Dave Eringa as well as Bob Weston influenced by this at all? “Not really. First we did a session with Bob in London, and it was more our fault than anyone else’s, we weren’t properly focussed,” Bob tries to further clarify the situation. “We didn’t know what it was we were trying to achieve and it didn’t work. Food said it hadn’t worked; we thought about it and they were right. It was nothing to do with Bob. They gave us ample opportunity to work with Bob again. It wasn’t so much a conflict as trial and error”.

Rumours about the supposed conflict had gone so far as to suggest that you’d been dropped by Food, and that Deceptive were going to release the album instead. “Food aren’t in the habit of dropping bands”, sighs Roddy. “Even Jesus Jones and Shampoo are still signed to Food”. “You get these rumours”, adds Bob, “I heard just last week that we were getting dropped last August, but they’re not going to fucking do that if they’re putting out a single in October are they? It’s just bollocks, you get these ridiculous stories”. He continues, laughing again, “it’s like, I’m gay for Christ’s sake …apparently”.

Despite having only been around for a couple of years, Idlewild have already become something of a father figure to other bands, regularly taking unsigned bands out with them for their first taste of national exposure. Seafood’s seemingly never-ending haul around the country started as support to Idlewild, while, more recently, the likes of San Lorenzo and the Starries have been given the opportunity to win new fans outside of their home towns. Is there an intention on your behalf to choose bands with a relatively low media profile for support slots? “Yeah, pretty much”, agrees Bob. “Basically we’ve got a lot of really good friends who are in really good bands, and we believe that they deserve an opportunity. A lot of bands did us favours when we had nothing, and we’re just basically returning the favour”. How far have you thought about taking your patronage of smaller bands? Have you ever considered putting on a larger event, like an all dayer to push them further still? “We tried to do a big gig in Scotland this year”, Roddy shrugs his shoulders, “but it wasn’t very well attended. We’re not popular enough”. Tortoise are already lined up for next years All Tomorrow’s Parties, and Shellac are supposed to have asked for the one after, so maybe you should put your offer in for 2003 now. The grin returns to Roddy’s face. “But we’re not cool enough to get asked to do that”.

And that seems to be the crux of Idlewild’s biggest problem. They seem to be revered and reviled in equal measure in Britain. While some see them as the accessible face of a resurgent underground, others are all too happy to dismiss them as a bunch of undeserving chancers, to discard them for being too pop, not being hardcore enough, and view them as no more credible than the Stereophonics, and it seems that there’s little they can do about it at the moment. Their recent excursion to America has further highlighted this discrepancy. “Over in America we’ve got credible underground status, Bob Weston had some difficulty understanding that we weren’t an underground cool band in Britain, that we’re commercial sell-outs”, explains Bob. “He just didn’t understand it, but that’s the way that some people see it”.

Does it bother you that you’re not always taken so seriously here? Roddy seems unfazed, “there’s no such thing as selling out”. Given that the attitude towards you seems different in America, is it important to you that you’re successful over there? “I suppose so, It’s one of the biggest places in the world so it is important to do well over there”, says Bob. “We’ve only done six or seven shows on the east coast, it was just basically us saying hello”. “Obviously we want to play over there and get a fan-base”, adds Roddy, “but there’s people in the mid-west who haven’t heard of the Beatles. We’ve just to go over there and see what we can do”.

So that’s that for now then. They’ve finally found their way onto our television screens, and are happy to be there, even if it does involve sitting around listening to ‘Song 2’ all day. Half of the rumours you here about them aren’t true, and they couldn’t give a damn what you think of them anyway. For now, it’s back to the festivals, and some time in the near future, America will point their way and beckon once more. And who knows, in their own way, they may even get to be bigger than the Beatles yet.

The Make UpTJ’s, Newport

2005-04-19T18:26:00.000+01:00

Pity poor Mick Jagger. Imagine the sense of loss and despair he felt when he last settled down to flick through the old photo-albums. There was Keith sharing a smoke with Brian, there’s Marianne popping down the shops for a Mars Bar, but wait a moment, where was he? Why had his body disappeared from all the pictures? And where had it gone?

If only the gnarled and wrinkled old philanderer had had the presence of mind to trek all the way to Newport for the evening, he would have found the answer. For there, standing on the shoulders of the cool kids down the front, was Mick’s adolescent body, jiving about as if he had somehow relinquished all mortal control over his own body. Picture the scene as Ian Svenonius, purveyor of the finest Gospel Yeh-Yeh sound, glances out over the audience, and meets Mick’s petrified gaze, before throwing his new-found form across the stage, stuffing the microphone down his gullet and treating us to another his rabid chimpanzee impersonations.

In any other situation, Ian would resemble no more than your eccentric, alcoholic uncle popping round to interfere with the kids, the cat, and the goldfish, but tonight, the Make Up are everything they have every dreamt of being – James Brown fronting the MC5, the Black Panthers following the doctrines of Mao Tse-tung, international terrorists directed by Malcolm McLaren – and the pretensions are swept aside by the intensity and passion of their rhythm’n’blues soul revue.

Fortunately for the devoted following, the Make Up have had the foresight to come up with the music to match the rhetoric, and they now sound as sharp as they look in their matching uniforms. The taut guitars and growling bass provide the perfect foil for Ian’s sermonising vocals, as he prowls through the crowd, coaxing backing vocals from his loyal followers, while the black-magic blues of ‘Save Yourself’ implores you to be his Doctor Frankenstein, and ‘Born On The Floor’ raises serious doubts about this man’s childhood and parental upbringing.

Forget Kevin Rowland and his big-girl’s blouse, forget the new soul rebels, the Make Up are the Nu-Soul Communists, and Ian Svenonius is king funky-monkey, and as ‘C’mon Let’s Spawn’ so eloquently states, he wants to a big fish in our small pond, so let me hear you say yeh, before he’s institutionalised by the CIA.

McLusky, Yeah Yeah YeahsHighbury Garage, London

2005-04-19T18:20:00.000+01:00

We’ve all done it. You spend months going on about how good a band is. You drag all your mates to see them, and then they’re shit. Last time I saw these two bands they were terrible. I was embarrassed. My friends never wanted to see them again. Fuck, I was lucky that my friends were even willing to speak to me again.

First off were the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Last week’s New York kids supreme, and when I first saw them, they were fucking appalling. They were little more than an art-school strop, all ripped tights, temper tantrums and electro-shock hair, knackered sound and a bad Altered Images impression. In short, they were so bad there was no conceivable reason that they could ever have had any good press. Thank fuck that this time is different.

They still sound like Altered Images, but now they’re Altered Images having a fight with Mazzy Star in a seedy punk club. No, really. I’m not making this shit up. OK, so maybe there’s a touch of Jon Spencer Blues Explosion swagger as well, but that’s your lot. However, as Karen O howls her way through the primal scream therapy of ‘Art Star’, it’s clear that second time around, they really are worthy of the hype. Still not sure why Karen O is being hailed as such a sex symbol though; I’ve shat more attractive foreign objects.

And from the tortured look on McLusky bassist Jon Chapple’s face, I wouldn’t like to say that he isn’t excreting something large and painful right now. But no, that’s just the everyday strain of being in McLusky that’s doing that. You give so much that sometimes it’s going to hurt. Other times, it might snap completely, and they could be left sounding like a shambolic mess of fluffed songs, retching and misguided anti-London diatribe. At least that’s what happened last time. And it went out live on xfm. So it’s just as well that this time they’re back on form. They’re tight and taut, and when ‘Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues’ drops, it sounds like an explosion onstage. It’s messy. The crowd is still reeling when Falko takes a cheese-grater to his vocal chords for ‘Collagen Rock’. Right now, McLusky really are the fucking bomb, and as they put it so succinctly themselves, the world loves them and is their bitch.

Les Savy FavThe Comedy Pub, Bristol

2005-04-19T18:16:00.000+01:00

The show started with a balding man in a hockey shirt giving out plastic flowers to members of the crowd, but now he appears to have other things on his mind. Right now, this balding, and it must be said, rather odd looking man in a hockey shirt is bouncing his way through the crowd on a chair back to the spot where, only moments before, he had left a mic stand hanging precariously from the ceiling before returning to the stage for his seat so he could sit in the crowd and sing while watching his band lurching around. That plan having been well and truly scuppered by such irrelevancies as physics and gravity, the audience are then invited to dance on the chair, while Tim Harrington, for it is he, clambers atop of his amp to address his public, “I want you all to turn to your neighbour and kiss them, boys and girls, boys and boys, girls and girls, open mouthed. What’s wrong with you, you all a bit shy in Bristol or something?”

Welcome then, to the live spectacular that is Les Savy Fav, contemporaries of the Make Up, but somewhat lacking the refined elegance and sophistication that is generally suggested by such a comparison. What we’re faced with is nearer to the Blonde Redhead having a fight with the Birthday Party and losing, or the Jesus Lizard if David Yow had grown out of the worrying habit of exposing his rectal cavity to the audience between songs.

As far as the songs go, it’s pretty shambolic from start to finish. From the looping beats and monotone French narration of ‘Intro’, to the jerky rhythms of ‘New Teen Anthem’ and ‘Hide Me From Next February’, everything is played at a such a frenetic pace that the songs merge together into one coalescent whole, full of staccato guitars and frantic drumming, as Tim Harrington runs through his cabaret act.

In lesser hands, this would have descended into a quagmire of fumbled songs and embarrassed looks, but not only are Les Savy Fav up to the challenge, they carry it off with such style and dignity, they leave you wondering why everyone can’t manage to be this compelling and entertaining.

Seafood

2005-04-19T18:04:00.000+01:00

We meet Seafood at the beginning of their first full national headline tour, on the very brink of fame and fortune, lurking around the very fringes of civilisation (well, Cardiff to be precise). Kevin Hendrick (bass / vocals) stumbles in first, apologising for being late after getting lost in town, and is soon joined by guitarist Charles MacLoed, leaving David Line (vocals / guitar) and drummer Caroline Banks perusing the local music shops in anticipation of the guitar abuse that is bound to occur on a regular basis over the next couple of weeks. Having just been record shopping, Kevin’s not too happy with a certain retailer, “I’ve just been to HMV, they’ve made a mistake on the little cards in the racks, and the single is listed as ‘Bent’. Seafood do not release records called ‘Bent’”.

It seems that as far as Wales is concerned, Seafood are determined to make their presence felt at every possible level, despite their attempts to pass off their recent verbal assault on Newport’s latest saviours. “That wasn’t about Terris, if anything that was an attack on the NME, which is quite weird as we were quite grateful that they gave us a piece. They gave us our first ever feature, and here we are telling them how shit they are,” explains Kevin. For a moment you’re tempted to believe him, but he’s not finished, “I’ve never liked the idea of a fad band. Hopefully they’ll prove us wrong and be a good band, but I heard a song of theirs and I didn’t like it.” Fighting talk, surely, but are you up for the challenge, do you have the courage of your convictions? “I’m actually quite worried because we’ve got a day off in Glasgow, and Terris are playing on that Saturday. We’re hooking up with Idlewild, and they’re saying we’ll go and see Terris, I think they’d beat us up.”

Anyway, enough of such nonsense, in case you haven’t been paying attention, it’s still only two years since the gloriously skewed ‘Scorch Comfort’ single crept out on Fierce Panda, only to initiate a media frenzy of slightly more realistic proportions, even if Seafood did manage to kill off their hype before it ever really got going. “We put our first single out and it got loads of attention, it got A-listed on xfm, got some Radio 1 play, and all these record companies just started chasing us. We only had about four songs, and were really a shambles. These people that came to see us at one gig were just putting the money back in their pockets because we couldn’t even remember one of our songs, we just finished halfway through and walked off.”

In that time, Seafood have gone from scaring off A&R men in dingy north London dives, galloped around Britain with the Llama Farmers and Idlewild, and found themselves playing the CMJ festival in America, though according to Kevin, “it was more of an experience just for us to go out there and play America, but in reality it wasn’t really much different to playing a half-full gig in London.” Oh well, back to the long hard slogs around the country to build up a fan-base then. “We are going out to America again this year in the spring, a mini-tour around the east coast, as we’ve got a record being put out by a Boston label, two of our early singles, ‘Porchlight’ and ‘Scorch Comfort’ back to back, so we’re going to play New York, Boston and Philadelphia.”

Until then, it looks like once more around dear old Blighty, even if the prognosis is more hopeful this time. “I think people perhaps read the reviews and overall have a pretty positive view, the press build it up and say Sonic Youth, and all that stuff, but I think people are like ‘well, they're in the press quite a lot, we’ll go and see what they're like’ and hopefully we’ll pick a few fans that way” says Charles. “We’re getting to forge our own identity now,” adds Kevin, “and these people who are coming to see us are seeing us for the first time, it’s our chance to impress them.”

How have the tours changed as you moved from supporting other people to headlining in your own right? “We’re a proper band now,” suggests Kevin, “I was dying for the chance to headline, but it’s been really cool for us as it’s allowed us to develop in the quiet, and now we can take it on as a headlining band and be pompous.” Do you think that people have already formed an opinion of you, based on the recent press, without perhaps having actually heard you? “The way the album has been received by the press has been cool. It’s been pretty positive, had good reviews. They do pick up on the Sonic Youth and all that, but at the moment that's fine, I just think that’s good company. This is our first album, I’d be more concerned if we do our second album and we were getting those reviews. We love pop songs; we’ve got a pop mentality. As much as we like Thurston Moore blowing a trumpet out his arse, we also like full on pop, we’ve got that sensibility about us. We will write a pop song, I’m telling you, it’s in us, it’s just we’re not going to force it out, we don’t know exactly how to go about it, but its working well like that, I don’t know how else to do it.”

No matter what the outcome of the tour, whether it ends in fame and fortune, or hospitalisation at the hands of a slightly irate Newport kid whose mouth is presently bigger than his band, Seafood appear to have a pretty good idea of how things should be going right now, and what they need to do in order to take that next step forward, without compromising their music or work ethic. “We’re not going to be a pin up band, and that’s cool, I like that. I just want to really feature in some peoples lives, be quite an important band”.

As far as Kevin is concerned, this seems to be Seafood’s main goal. “That’s why, if we were offered Top of the Pops then we’d do it. If they want to take our brand of music and put it on Top of the Pops, then that’s cool, but we’re not going to go and write a Stereophonics by numbers song just to get on”.

It seems inevitable that the tour will bring with it countless reviews all throwing those same few references about once more, but just in case any of you are feeling too scared to venture out and discover the wonder of Seafood for yourselves, then let Kevin dispel any fears you may have that they’re intent on grandiose destruction of tunes and equipment every evening, and are actually quite nice boys and girls after all; “last night we went a bit mental at the end. I apologised for the mess and I said I’d tidy it up, that’s not very rock and roll is it?”

McLuskyBeatbox, Swansea

2005-04-19T18:01:00.000+01:00

Having recently been responsible for the aural irritants known as Terris and Mohobishopi, South Wales is probably the last place you’d be expecting to find anyone worthy of being classed as the latest next big thing, but try not to let the geography put you off. While the best their local contemporaries can muster is empty rhetoric and unfulfilled promises, McLusky are an altogether different proposition, a snarling combination of punk aggression and hardcore ferocity, prowling the stage like caged animals spitting their anger and vehemence into the faces of their captors. They may look like the last thing you’d want to meet in a dark alleyway late at night, or in the middle of the park on a bright summer’s day for that matter, but sometimes salvation can come from the least likely places.

It’s there in the abrasive ‘Joy’ as bassist Jon Chapple contorts into new shapes behind his mic, as Andy Falkous screams his way through ‘White Liberal On White Liberal Action’, all raw attrition and white-knuckle guitars. It’s probably only a matter of time before some hack claims that this anger and attitude is the direct result of their environment, that McLusky’s power and passion is fuelled by the frustration of South Wales living, but McLusky are so essential that any such eulogising is rendered irrelevant by their very existence, because who gives a fuck about the origins of this noise when it’s this pure and vibrant.

As the final riposte of ‘Who You Know’ is hurled across the room, you’re left reeling from the impact, overwhelmed by the feeling that you’ve just been cut to the bone, as their hooks slice effortlessly through sinew and muscle to leave you completely exposed and breathless. Hardcore, it would appear, has come to settle the score.

Appleseed Cast, Cursive, TerrashimaDublin Castle, London

2005-04-19T17:56:00.000+01:00

Terrashima are the worst band I’ve seen for years, if not ever. They’re so bad I think I want to fight them. I don’t really know why, there’s just something about this particular combination of conceit and ineptitude that riles me. They’re punk, 1979 style. You know, punk as in ‘we’re fast, we shout, we serve no purpose in life other than to piss people off and no one has ever told us that we really shouldn’t bother’ kind of way. The worst way. Come back Blink182, all is forgiven. The guitarist’s t-shirt reads ‘live fast, die young’; the sooner the fucking better as far as I’m concerned.

So thank fuck for Cursive and the Appleseed Cast then. There’s none of this arrogant shit from them. Cursive are never gonna come round here acting like they own the place. Cursive don’t need to tell us good they think they are. We can tell how good Cursive are for ourselves. You can see it in the way that singer Tim Kasher stands there looking like Roddy Woomble’s older brother, wearing his broken heart on his sleeve. That may sound like a cliché, and who knows, maybe it is, but you should take every preconception you’ve ever had about an emo band, and leave them at the door. Cursive are emotive. They sing about the ups and downs of life. You can tell by the look in their eyes that they mean it, man.

On paper, there’s nothing to distinguish them from any other emo band, unless you count Gretta Cohn’s cello. But it’s what you feel in your heart and your head that counts. And deep inside, as ‘Sink To The Beat’ leaves you grinning like an idiot, you know that Cursive are nothing short of a revelation.

Such a revelation in fact, that the Appleseed Cast have trouble following them. Not that’s there anything wrong with Appleseed. It’s just that you haven’t had time to regain your composure before half of their set has washed over you. It’s all very pleasant. It’s all very loud. Maybe that’s the problem. Caught between the PA and the monitors, all I can notice is the immense volume. I hear guitars surging together. I can see Christopher Crisci singing. I can’t hear him, but he’s singing anyway. All the songs sound the same. I know they probably aren’t, it’s just that to my untrained ear, being unfamiliar with the band, I wouldn’t recognise anything if you played me the albums straight after the gig. By the time they encore with ‘Fishing In The Sky’ and ‘Marigold & Patchwork’, it all makes sense, but it’s almost too late. They’re post-hardcore kids turned shoe-gazers. The only comparsion that makes it through the haze is Juno. This is a good thing. It’s just I can only give so much of myself in one night, and tonight I’ve already given my heart to Cursive.

Querelle, PsychoSunThe Metro, London

2005-04-19T17:51:00.000+01:00

We all know what an Italian is supposed to look like. Elegant, sharply dressed, with an effortless touch of style. Basically, they’re so much fucking fitter and better dressed than the rest of us, especially if we happen to be sartorially challenged and British, an all too common combination.

At least that’s what I thought up until the moment that PsychoSun rolled on stage. Where do spiky moustaches, shit hair or crap shirts stretched over rotund stomachs come into the equation? What the fuck is going on? I must be seeing things.

In that case, I must be hearing things as well. They probably think they’re playing drop-dead cool garage rock. I imagine they lay awake at night wishing they were Jon Spencer or Judah Bauer. Unfortunately all those sleepless nights appears to have affected their ability to write songs. This sounds far too much like the early 90’s retro-punk shit that spawned Britpop. We don’t need to go through that again. Please make them stop. I don’t want to have nightmares. I need order in my life. I need my national stereotypes to be reconfirmed; else I fear I shall go mad.

I need to see Querelle. They’re the complete antithesis of PsychoSun. They’re the epitome of what I wanted an Italian band to be. They’re a male singer, and a couple of girls on bass and drums. They’re stunning. Their clothes are perfect. I’m staring at them, transfixed, lost in my lust. The entire crowd is. You could cut the sexual tension in the room with a knife.

And then they start to play. I’d heard them compared to Sonic Youth and the Lapse, but I’d never actually heard them. My expectations were high. And somehow Querelle manage to exceed them. They do sound like the Lapse and Sonic Youth, and the Blonde Redhead as well. They sound like three of my favourite bands, but without being derivative. I’m thinking that maybe they’re perfect. In my head I’m already stalking them.

It’s all my friend can do to stop herself from gawping at the singer. His hair is shagging in his eyes, and his guitar is smashing against his skinny hips as he violently wrenches feedback from the tortured instrument. The bassist has got that nonchalant, impassive, ‘I’m only a smile away from being beautiful’ look. The only reason I’m not staring at her is that I’ve just fallen in love with the drummer. She’s screaming at her drums, writhing around as if she’s climaxing behind her kit.

As the aching guitar and thundering drums crash into a cacophonous finale, I realist that I never want to be without Querelle again. I want to rush out and buy their records. The only problem is that they haven’t even made any yet.

The StrokesLouisiana, Bristol

2005-04-19T17:43:00.000+01:00

Despite having only having been in the public eye for a month, there’s no doubting that the Strokes could have easily filled a venue twice the size of the Louisiana. In the new rock friendly musical climate, they are perhaps the first true post At The Drive-In band, where the music is no longer considered enough, where people have finally woken up the fact that they’re supposed to be entertaining us, that no matter how sharp you sound, you are duty bound to look even sharper. In fact, while half the country is still struggling to come to terms with the last big thing, the next one is already here.

While American rock is gradually winning its fight against the manufactured bands in the charts, the Strokes look and sound as if they have just stepped out of the Factory, styled by Andy Warhol and steeped in the glamour of late 70’s New York art-rock. Within the space of just one song, they’ve rejected 20 years worth of music, caught up in a sound that originated in CBGBs and was epitomised by the likes of Television and the Modern Lovers, Devo and the Dead Boys.

Not only that, the Strokes look the part as well. Julian Casablancas curls himself around the mike, equal parts David Bowie and Iggy Pop. Bassist Nikolai Fraiture contents himself with modelling the perfect bob, calmly watching as Albert Hammond Jr., looking like Abel Ferrera in ‘Driller Killer’, delivers staccato bursts of guitar while jerking around the stage as if he’s been licking batteries. For all the retrograde influences, you can’t knock their style, their passion, or their brilliance. The Strokes are the sound of the Richard Hell’s blank generation coming of a modern age, and you’d be a fool not to celebrate that.

Billy Mahonie, Jullander, ReynoldsSilver Rocket, Upstairs at the Garage

2005-04-19T13:23:00.000+01:00

Welcome to post-rock central. Not since shoegazing have so many anonymous musicians turned their heads to the ground, and refused to smile or speak for the entertainment of so few. But that’s not to say that it’s all wibbling arse and pretentious guitar pyrotechnics around here. Fortunately the cream of post-rock are gathered here today to prove that some of them are able to play for the crowd’s pleasure as well as their own.

Though maybe someone needs to tell that to Essex boys Reynolds. A most contrary of beasts at the best of times, tonight they’ve blatantly gone and forgotten that not writing lyrics doesn’t mean that you can completely ignore such trivialities as melody or tunes, and if you’re going to pretend to reject all notions of traditional song writing, you really should drop the cock-rock antics as well. But apparently Chris Summerlin thinks that he needs runs through his repertoire of AC/DC impressions while wanking over his guitar like a frustrated adolescent, even if no one else would agree with him.

Fortunately Berlin’s Jullander aren’t prone to similar acts of public self-debasement, and are more than content to hunker down over their instruments and bash out a grinding motorik instead. Their tenacious guitars lock together so perfectly on ‘Blende’ that you barely even realise you haven’t got the slightest idea what they’re singing about.

But no matter how valiant Jullander may be, there’s no way that they’re going to match the majesty of the Billy Mahonie live experience. In fact, Mahonie are practically unassailable right now, as they build on the promise of their recent ‘What Becomes Before’ album, rapidly banish all thoughts of a certain bunch of balding, belligerent Scotsmen. Along with New York’s Paul Newman, Mahonie have succeeded in pushing the post-rock format into new ground, as they add folk and free jazz to their already eclectic oeuvre. Billy Mahonie are offer all the proof necessary that post-rock can be concise and enthralling, and as a dramatic encore of ‘Düsseldorf’ shows, they’re more than capable of post-rocking out with the best of them.

Soeza, BuckyPull The Strings, The Comedy Pub, Bristol

2005-04-18T14:07:00.000+01:00

Def Leppard? One-armed drummer? Bollocks to that, Bucky have got a one-handed drummer called Jeff, and he plays his floor-tom with his stump. How fucking rock’n’roll do you want him to be?

You want the British Moldy Peaches? You got it. You want the Violent Femmes to go rockabilly under the watchful eye of the Reverend Horton Heat? You want fries with that? How about a wisecracking duo with a penchant for lo-fi garage-rock and songs about families who build conservatories with their dead children’s trust funds? You want that to eat-in or to go? No matter which way you look at them, Bucky make their own peculiar little corner of the underground a nicer place to be, with a great line in wit and surreal bullshit to boot, as well as presenting the best advertisement for disabilities in rock this side of a wheelchair-bound theremin player.

And just when you’re thinking to yourself ‘how the fuck is anyone going to top that’, Soeza saunter onto the stage, fresh from a week touring around France, and with all credit to Bucky, they sound completely fucking untouchable tonight. Like your favourite hardcore luminaries chewing down on healthy doses of jazz and soul, Soeza cram their widescreen soundscapes into perfectly executed four minute doses of awe-inspiring brilliance which leave you wondering how the likes of Fugazi have remained so creatively limited over the last decade, as Bristol’s finest purveyors of post-hardcore grooves pull out all the stops.

No matter which way you turn, their songs are loaded with hooks just waiting to drag you into their world. The bass and twin drum backing hold down the beats while the guitars bring such a surging momentum that Aaron Dewey and Daniel Cornfield’s horns rise up and leave you captivated by their breathless eloquence, unable to escape their clutches. Within minutes, you’re utterly lost in their rhythms, and it’s like love at first sight. Not that nice, cuddly lovey-dovey bollocks, but the full-blown desire verging on obsession, daytimes stalking, and night-times hiding in the bushes, stealing pants from the washing-line, headfuck lust that you can’t help but give in to. It’s time to give in to their charms, cos once you’ve let them into your world, you just ain’t gonna be able to live without Soeza, baby, so you’d better get used to it.

Belle & SebastianBrixton Academy

2005-04-18T14:04:00.000+01:00

Adrian met Michela on the tube at Oxford Circus underground station. He was quite surprised. He was late and had been expecting to find her already waiting for him in Brixton. But no, she got on the same carriage as him and came and sat down next to him. She was very excited to be going to see Belle & Sebastian.

By the time that Adrian and Michela got to the venue the support band had already finished. Adrian didn’t even know who the support band had been. When he later found out that it had been Life Without Buildings he was very disappointed to have missed them. In fact, Belle & Sebastian were already halfway through their opening song when Adrian and Michela arrived so they tiptoed around the back of the audience so that they would not disturb the band.

Adrian thought that the songs that Belle & Sebastian played were all very nice. He wished that he could say something more complimentary about them, but to tell the truth, he was only half-concentrating on the band. Belle & Sebastian were boring him a bit, especially when they were playing songs from their last two albums. Adrian realised that he hasn’t really listened to these records very much. He couldn’t even tell you what many of the more recent songs were called. He recognised one of them, one with a lyric that said “she met another blind kid at a fancy dress, it was the best sex she ever had”. Adrian thought this was funny, because it was very unlikely that anyone in Belle and Sebastian had ever had sex. Someone nearby said that the song was called ‘The Model’. Michela turned to Adrian to say that she hadn’t known what the song was called either, but that she didn’t care, because she was very happy to be there. She was dancing along to every song. Adrian admired her energy.

After about half an hour, Stuart Murdoch told the audience a story about how he used to watch Blue Peter, and how they would often have a steel band on the programme. Stuart said that it would be nice to see a steel band again. Then a steel band come onstage and played Bob Marley’s ‘No Woman No Cry’. Adrian didn’t think that was a coincidence. He thought that maybe this had been planned in advance.

After the steel band left, Belle & Sebastian came back on stage and played some of their better songs, including ‘Dog On Wheels’ and ‘The Boy With The Arab Strap’. Adrian wondered if Belle & Sebastian actually knew what an arab strap was, or if they just thought that using it in a song title made them sound more grown-up. He also wondered why they were playing so quietly all the time. How was anyone supposed to hear them? Adrian thought that maybe Belle & Sebastian fans were too fey and weak to hear loud music without getting a nose-bleed, and that Belle & Sebastian were being so quiet because didn’t want to make a mess in the hall.

But when they came encored with a cover of the Only Ones’ ‘Another Girl, Another Planet’, Belle & Sebastian were playing so loudly that everyone had to stop talking. Adrian thought that maybe they had just forgotten to turn the PA on earlier.

After the show, Michela decided that Belle & Sebastian were now one of her favourite bands. Adrian hadn’t been so impressed. He thought that they could have tried a lot harder, and that they weren’t being very nice to all of those people who had spent so much money to go and watch the show. In fact, Adrian thought that is was rude of Belle & Sebastian to have put on such a lacklustre performance. But maybe he was just disappointed that they hadn’t played ‘She’s Losing It’ or ‘Seeing Other People’. These were his favourite Belle & Sebastian songs. While Adrian walked Michela home, she said how much she had enjoyed the show. Adrian was not so enthusiastic, but nonetheless he had still had quite an enjoyable evening.

NME Premier TourCardiff UniversityJanuary 2000

2005-04-18T14:00:00.000+01:00

You know when some scholar with far too much time for introspective contemplation claimed that if you sat an infinite number of monkeys at an infinite number of typewriters for infinite length of time, that eventually one of them would replicate the complete works of Shakespeare? Well, if you got one sloth, broke both of its arms, gave it a guitar with only three strings, and played it the latest Travis album, it will have written Coldplay’s entire set after about four minutes, and that includes the time that’s needed to work out that it isn’t a particularly good idea to eat the fretboard.

Contemplating why anyone needs another asinine, atrophied take on Radiohead and REM would stretch the most creative imagination, so quite how Coldplay’s obviously stunted ingenuity has allowed them to decide that they need to be that band must have taken a transcendental leap akin to that which lead to the discovery of fire. So for now, we can only hope that Coldplay and fire find themselves closely associated more often in the near future.

In these post-modern, post-rock, post-apocalypse times (depending on which crack-pot religious cult you joined in a drunken stupor on New Year’s Eve), it’s comforting to find a band so determined to recreate their vision of the future now, and with all the subtlety of a mass-murdering doctor. When Campag Velocet follow tonight’s limp-wristed, inept openers with a performance of such force and commitment, proceedings are instantly injected with a much-needed touch of class and an even more necessary kick in the arse.

Looking like some bizarre new form of urban hermit, Pete Voss strides about the stage safe in the knowledge that, come armageddon, it’s only going to be him and the cockroaches left breathing, as Campag Velocet do a Burroughs style cut-up job with the Happy Mondays back catalogue, a tattered copy of ‘A Clockwork Orange’, and the Situationist International manifesto before ‘Bon Chic Bon Genre’ and ‘Drencrom Velocet Synthemesc’ batter our bodies with an intensity generally only felt by victims of biological warfare.

Remember that film ‘Big’, when Tom Hanks finds himself trapped in the body of a school-kid and gets into all manner of japes far to hilarious to go into here. Well, Jacques Lu Cont is your dad trapped in the body of a toddler overwhelmed with delight at having managed to wipe it’s arse unaided for the first time, at a Blue Peter karaoke party.

Les Rhythmes Digitales look like the techno Beastie Boys, jump about like B’Witched on hot coals, but after about four songs, become as annoying as a happy-hardcore Rod, Jane and Freddie, as the lip-syncing, funk bass, and incessant cheekiness begin to leave a nasty taste in the mouth, and long-repressed memories of Don Johnson, designer stubble, and shoulder pads the size of Dallas begin to resurface along with a timely reminder that the 80’s were in fact, completely crap, until the initial image of a cabaret Add N To (X) fades away, leaving Jacques and Jo’s crazy, madcap antics resembling a pair of stick insects having an epileptic fit.

You only need to look at Michael Head to know that Shack have lived hard lives; with so many years struggling in the shadows of their peers; spiralling through drug abuse, critical acclaim and commercial failure. You know that he’s sincere by the way that the sweat beads glisten on his forehead, you can tell that he’s kept his integrity because he plays an acoustic guitar, and you know he’s shit because he’s got his mouth open and words are coming out.

There are many reasons that a band can see out their career wallowing in self-piteous obscurity, and occasionally, just occasionally, it’s because they’re nothing but yet another fucking exponent of classic songwriting played by real musicians with real instruments, people with no fucking concept of the possibilities of guitar music, people so hung up on the past that they consider ‘Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band’ to be the best album of all time, people who run away scared at the slightest suggestion of innovative song-writing, people who only buy three fucking records a year (one for Christmas, one for their birthday, and one as a special little treat when they get three numbers on the lottery), people who would be quite content to watch Cast play down their local pub every fucking Thursday night until the next fucking millennium. It’s just unfortunate that this time round, they’re actually trying to fool us into believing that this insipid, retrogressive, whining pub-rock drivel should be conceived as fiery and passionate tales of an underdog with a story that needs to be heard, or that it is any more relevant to our lives than the glue-sniffing, piss-head busker propped up outside the local train station.

Shack? Shack of shit more like.

Underworld‘Beaucoup Fish’

2005-04-14T18:34:00.000+01:00

When Irvine Welsh inadvertently changed the face of dance music by plucking 'Born Slippy' from it's original obscurity, and dance-floors around Britain began to echo with shouts of "lager, lager, lager", Underworld became the techno standard that far too many people tried to copy. Fortunately, Underworld have had the foresight to abandon their original mocking title 'Tonight, Matthew, I'm Going To Be Underworld' in favour of ...well, in favour of, erm..., 'Beaucoup Fish'.

'Beaucoup Fish' starts off where Underworld last left us, bass heavy beats setting the rhythm, while near incomprehensible lyrics cycle over the top digging their way into your consciousness. However, two years can be a long time (unless you happen to be in My Bloody Valentine, then it’s merely a tea-break), and the likes of Air and Etienne de Crecy have not only ignored Underworld’s blueprint, they didn't even bother getting it translated into French in the first place, having set a trend for a more-sophisticated coffee table approach to dance music.

Accordingly, 'Beaucoup Fish’ “promises to distil the tried and tested Underworld sound into a streamlined power-house musical soup" (cheers, press release), which, despite sounding like an extract from a business plan submitted to the bank manager to get a loan, basically seems to mean that they now sound a bit like Daft Punk playing the Underworld back catalogue

Underworld appear to refer to their new checklist too often. Vaguely quirky intro - check; rapid repetitive beat and Mogadon induced mumbled vocal - check; song lasting just that bit too long - check; run out of ideas and fade song out - check. Where the formula works, the effects can be amazing, especially on the stand-out tracks 'Something Like A Mama', and 'Moaner', first heard on the latest Batman soundtrack, the former sashaying along in a blissful daze, and the latter a nasty, repulsive beast containing a venomous and bitterness rant directed at a single unnamed character and their boyfriend that would have Tricky hiding behind the sofa, a kind of Jekyll and (Karl) Hyde for the stilted generation.

Unfortunately, at least half of the album pales in significance when compared to these two tracks, and the final feeling is that even Underworld have fallen foul of the lack of innovation and imagination so prevalent in the current generic, ‘here's one I remixed earlier’ dance music scene that has allowed Fatboy Slim to be held up for reverence. Instead of returning with one fantastic EP, Underworld have opted to play it safe, and resorted to a Pete Waterman styled mass production approach to their music. Ultimately 'Beaucoup Fish' is series of nice touches, leading to a couple of flashes of true brilliance, but as Paul Gascoigne knows, that isn't always enough these days.

Snow Patrol‘Songs For Polarbears’

2005-04-14T18:32:00.001+01:00

Sometimes, no matter how good the original blueprint, quality is going to lost as a consequence. While many bands have taken the Pixies/Girls Against Boys formula, added their own twist, and made it their own, at times it can sound just that bit too contrived. A narrow line exists between reinvention and rehash, and despite Snow Patrol's obvious good intentions, they stumble along that line for a while, then lose their footing and tumble in the wrong direction altogether.

More than anything else, 'Songs For Polarbears' is a frustrating and disappointing listen, because the potential is there, as rather ironically proved by album opener 'Downhill From Here'. Sounding like Magoo with the treble turned off during a particularly severe world helium shortage, Snow Patrol quite happily lurch through their choppy chord changes, but when the buzzing squealing guitars arrive, they bury them more quickly than the victims of a fatal dose of dysentery at the height of summer. Then just as you expect the guitar mangling to start, instead of running their instruments through the shredder, they simply hand them to the roadie and ask to chip a piece out of the fretboard with his chisel, an interesting idea in itself, but just not that compelling after the third listen.

Elsewhere, Snow Patrol opt for the acoustic approach, and they are magically transformed into the Warm Jets, though that will be the Warm Jets with all the edges sanded down, the soaring choruses replaced with another pedestrian chord change, until eventually all you can do is hope that they find a couple of Guided By Voices records before returning to the studio.

In the end you can't help but feel sorry for the polar bears, not only are they continually being hassled by evil marketing men trying to coerce them into yet another overly sentimental Coca-Cola advert, the only time someone cares enough to write an album for them, this is all they get.