Perfume Genius, London, St. Pancras Old Church

Perfume Genius

By Russell Warfield

May 14, 2012

Although the clue was definitely in the title, I didn’t expect tonight’s setting to be quite so quaint. Completely un-renovated and seemingly still primarily intended as a place of worship, tonight’s performance takes place in the altar, lit by candles and soft lamps, with a massive, crucified Jesus as the de facto stage backdrop. Opening act Cate le Bon – performing solo acoustic numbers with a rustic Celtic charm – jokingly comments about feeling uncomfortable singing a song with the phrase “oh, Christ!” in such a location, and indeed it’s true to say that the dynamic of the event is unquestionably altered – the faintly stifling conventions of a musty old church causing the murmuring of people to get quieter rather than louder as Hadraes enters, taking the stage to expectant silence rather than welcoming applause. But if you had come for a party or a chit-chat, this was never going to be the gig for you. It’s unexpected and unusual, but St Pancras Old Church is a pitch-perfect setting in which to absorb the music of Perfume Genius – hosting a performance which proves itself more than worthy of its lofty surroundings. … Continue Reading

Beach House – Bloom

Beach House - Bloom

By Russell Warfield

2010’s Teen Dream was a colossal leap forward from what we’d previously heard from Beach House. Preserving the dream-like quality of their lauded nostalgia-laced ruminations, the duo refined their processes, tightened their structures and sharpened their melodies in comparison to the looser mood-piece feel of 2008’s (equally excellent in its own way) Devotion – a move which paid off to excellent effect. Hearing Teen Dream for the first time was enrapturing; a catalogue of quiet revelations – Legrand’s hooks hitting straight between the eyes with a previously unheard confidence, bolstered by a newfound clarity within the shimmering arrangements. Bloom, on the other hand, marks the first plateau in Beach House’s trajectory – not necessarily conceding a quasi-objective drop in quality, but undoubtedly signalling a stasis in their evolution; an album which sounds cut from exactly the same cloth as its predecessor. … Continue Reading

Off! – Off!

Off! - Off!

By Russell Warfield

It might sound paradoxical, but sixteen songs in sixteen minutes is a lot to take in. Press play – fucking hell - done. People talk about appreciating albums which they can fit into the time it takes to commute to work. You can nail this one on a coffee break. Twice. Of course, if you’ve any prior familiarity with Keith Morris’ work as part of Off! – or either of his previous seminal punkrock outfits Black Flag and Circle Jerks – you won’t be too surprised by this news. Off!’s debut LP is largely what you’d expect this pack of hardcore veterans’ debut LP to sound like: sixteen more gut-punches of exactly what came before it. Razor sharp riffs of choppy powerchords, super-tight drum patterns with a dangerous amount of fills-per-bar, searing five-second guitar solos, and Morris’ unmistakable vocal growling and snarling and spitting – all packed into tightly controlled explosions of thirty to sixty seconds. Hardcore punk exactly like they made it in the eighties. … Continue Reading

Kwes – Meantime EP

Kwes - Meantime EP

By Russell Warfield

For someone who’s ostensibly so prolific – working on songs since he got obsessed with a little electric piano at the age of four – Kwes hasn’t amassed a desperately substantial body of work since releasing his debut single ‘Hearts In Home’ over three years ago. There’s been an addictive second single, a collaborative mixtape with fellow pop screwball Micachu, and an EP of instrumentals, but we’re still waiting for something which feels like his definitive, flag-in-the-ground  release. And, although it’s his first collection of bona fide vocal-songs, and debut release through the natural outlet of Warp , Meantime still doesn’t give the impression that Kwes has truly arrived – just three songs (the opening track being an ambient sketch which bleeds into the EP’s single ‘Bashful’) not boasting enough substance to showcase his clearly considerable talents effectively, nor making a truly lasting impact on the listener. … Continue Reading

Death Grips – The Money Store

Death Grips - The Money Store

By Russell Warfield

Although it’s arguably the most intense cut taken from an album of borderline-violent intensity, ‘Hacker’ still stands out as being perhaps the most beginner-friendly starting point to the post-apocalyptic hip-hop aneurysm that is Death Grips‘ major label (I repeat: major label) debut LP The Money Store. Standing as the outfit’s closest approximation of a dance floor number, with its gut-slicing rhythms and just-about discernible chorus, the track also forcefully introduces you to their hyper-confrontational and anarchistic approach to sampling and arrangements – beats collapsing from under the song for split second periods, jangling guitars joining in for a bar, rhythm provided by heart-shattering bass, and rapper (in the loosest sense of the word) Stefan Burnett’s abrasive mixture of social commentary and unfathomable gibberish (“NOW WE’VE GOT ALL THE COCONUTS, BITCH!”). It’s noise pollution at its most exhilarating and, like the album at large, a complete fucking mess. And I’m still not a hundred percent sure if I mean that as an endorsement or a criticism. … Continue Reading

Polica – Give You The Ghost

Polica - Give You The Ghost

By Russell Warfield

At face value, it might seem like the most widely-reported aspects of Polica‘s sound could be little more than faintly irritating hipster-gimmicks. It’s hard not to half-suspect, before actually hearing Give You The Ghost, that an inordinately heavy use of auto-tune and the two-drummers-no-guitar set up might only be devices deployed to ensure that they get mentioned on the blogs whatever the weather; ready packaged talking points cherry picked from trends of recent popular music designed to give the illusion of substance in lieu of any actual ideas. But listening to opening track ‘Amongster’ soothes these suspicions, starting off their remarkably assured début with a delicious blueprint which they work from for the entirety of the album, setting into motion an singularly distinctive mood piece over the course of eleven tracks. … Continue Reading

THEESatisfaction, London, Madame JoJo’s

THEESatisfaction

By Russell Warfield

April 24, 2012

You’ll have to forgive this review for failing to get beyond the fact that THEESatisfaction – the slinky duo whose recent LP gave a much needed injection of old school spirit and soul into traditionalist black music – play their live shows from a fucking backing tape. In one fell swoop, all the soul is drained from this music – a hollow husk of a laptop in the shadows of where the horn section should be grooving, the bassist grinding, the drummer vibing. It’s immeasurably disappointing to discover that should-be high points like ‘Sweat’ – all peppy horns and gyrating rhythms on record – actually sound more vibrant and alive heard through tinny headphones on the tube than they do in concert, the backing tracks turning into a fuzzy, homogeneous porridge over the house PA. … Continue Reading

Keaton Henson – Dear…

Keaton Henson - Dear...

By Russell Warfield

Part of me thinks I should go really, really easy on Keaton Henson‘s debut album Dear…. Recorded alone in his bedroom and never performed live owing to Henson’s crippling anxiety, I’m reticent to turn the screws on a release which presumably marks a huge leap of courage for him, being brave enough to submit these songs for public approval. But combining the brink-of-tears vocal work of people like Damien Rice and Perfume Genius with the rustic fingerpicking of last year’s excellent Josh T Pearson record (saturated with all the dourness and heartache implied by these comparisons) requires an artist to walk a very, very fine line, the slightest hint of artifice or unwarranted melodrama bringing the house of cards down quite dramatically. And sadly, there’s a slightly try-hard streak running through Henson’s affectations which ultimately make these ten songs eye-rolling rather than eye-watering. … Continue Reading

Quakers – Quakers

Quakers - Quakers

By Russell Warfield

Listening to early cuts from Quakers in isolation was an exhilarating experience – the thunderous brass of ‘Fitter Happier’ and slick guitar lick of ‘Smoke’ supporting the relentless flows of Guilty Simpson and Jonwayne respectively, two screaming jugganauts which whetted plenty of appetites for devouring the full length in its entirety. Then listeners discovered that these songs were part of an album which was forty one tracks long - a project undertaken by Portishead’s Geoff Barrow which quite frankly sounded as intimidating as it did enticing. Intimidating on paper, that is. What Quakers actually sounds like, as it turns out, is an undeniably exciting hip hop record, and although nothing surpasses the tightly coiled quality of those early cuts, nothing during its marathon seventy-plus minutes lowers the bar by much either. … Continue Reading

Moonface With Siinai – Heartbreaking Bravery

Moonface With Siinai - Heartbreaking Bravery

By Russell Warfield

It’s getting harder and harder to tell exactly what Moonface ‘is’. Introduced as a sort-of side project to the sort-of side project Sunset Rubdown, the ‘band’ released its debut full length release last year, a weird (although, with Krug you can pretty much take that as read) collection of drawn out organ-based pop experiments. A year later, Moonface’s follow up takes an (un)predictably different direction: a dense and heavy hearted suite of break up songs, supported by the slowly expanding backdrops of Icelandic band Siinai’s kraut-rock stylings. It seems that Moonface (like Sunset Rubdown was before it) ‘is’ – if anything – a catch-all name permitting Krug to chase his eccentric musical whims down album-long alleyways. Which is to say that Moonface remains very welcome indeed. … Continue Reading