Islet - image from thisislet.com (the unofficial fansite)

March 5, 2010

I could prepare for writing this review by trawling endlessly, needlessly for track names, photos, and an overview of what the selected few hacks who’ve written about Islet have to say. I did, in fact, and it turns out that more’s been written about their decision – be it because of a lack of recorded material or otherwise – to shun the internet. They have no MySpace, sure, but the fact is that an image-search reveals their appearance, a look at their Last.fm or Songkick page (subject to gig promoters’ efficiency) tells of their upcoming tour-dates and press, just like this, is still filtering through. They’re proof that hometown-phenomena still happen.

More importantly is just how astonishing a live band this Cardiff quartet (on this showing) are. It’s a rhythmically mesmeric assault bursting with all sorts of variation. They swap instruments relentlessly and each song is gawpingly stirring, leaving the audience amazed. Everything they emit is so fluent, even when they take on their more tribal persona and run around the venue calling out or playing their guitars at members of the crowd.

There’s a frenzy around every sound they plug into, and when unexpected sections fizz out of the same band-members, the same instruments, it’s astounding. Islet’s rock-smart and dramatic unpredictability is confounding, turning their vision into colossal sound. Vocals, or rather sometimes sounds, pepper the music with new dimensions, and the sheer exuberance of the performance is stirring, fascinating.

Drawing on a mind-sweep of similar artists including the likes of Holger Czukay and Steve Reich for their bold and oft minimally-textured mind-blowers, there’s also a lot to be taken from the likes of no-wave royalty Half Japanese and Swans in Islet’s sound. All of this is a giant disservice to their sheer squeal, so take name-drops and references as mere SEO-friends rather than literal buzzwords.

I’ve heard a few people separately squeal something along the lines of “Islet are the sort of band that make we want to make hand-made fanzines”, and I can join that collective now. Their super-human show exists outside of structure, time and expectation.

Field Music

March 3, 2010

Field Music are avant-pop doyens. That sure sounds pretentious but it’s shorthand for “Field Music should be selling out the Royal Festival Hall but audiences’ attention-spans just aren’t big enough to let that happen”. They sell out the Scala no sweat, which marks the well-deserved success of their comeback record Field Music (Measure), but tonight – while a great platform for their instrument-swapping skills, astounding musicianship and general loveliness – lacks magic.

It feels taut, with let-go occurring only in bundles between the music, incongruously. This isn’t in a way that the music feels mechanical, tricksy or other such, more that the Scala’s sound techs take around 30 minutes to get the sound right. The imperfections are brightly-lit among the mammothly-varied set, where the striking counterpoint between all-too-serious performance and deadly-funny audience-interaction becomes apparent.

Even after opening with a nervous take of ‘Give It Lose It Take It’, it’s a given that the audience at the Scala are lapping up Field Music’s rebirth of the guitar band. Though after seeing them twice this year without the addition of a piano, the bigger show makes the flaws more visible.  With the added piano, the songs don’t feel as tight as they should. Though saying that, criticism of a set including the stunning pop-epic ‘Share The Words’ has to be tempered, sated and taken relatively.

Endless comical chat between songs is lovely but oddly apologetic; it detracts from the hardy determination in the vocals on ‘Shorter Shorter’. It’s odd then that School of Language track ‘Rockist Pt. 4′, from the School Of Language album, is tonight’s highlight, its contrasts more marked and assured than on much of the show. Sure, that’s due to the clearer-cut stop/start nature of the song in comparison with Field Music’s wilder, even less predictable variation, but there shouldn’t be so many dips.

‘The Rest Is Noise’ is bass-heavy through fault of the sound techs, though its heavy prog passage makes up for the fallings in sound. To contrast with that, the funky riffing and more open, timeless passages of ‘Each Time Is A New Time’ are note-perfect. David Brewis’ falsetto is similarly assured throughout, when employed, and ‘Effortlessly’ sounds just that.

By all standards, this show is fantastic; by Field Music’s own, it falls short.

The casual gentleman, taking an evening on stroll along London’s Borough High Street, would be forgiven for noting the Roxy and passing on by, suspecting it to be both expensive and designed to appeal to those Londoners, whoever they might be, who don’t like pubs.  In fact this is London’s best-concealed cinema where fine films are exhibited to those who can put up with the drink prices.  On a Tuesday evening in late February the screening room is playing host to a high proportion of men in full beards and faded baseball caps, tell-tale signs of something afoot. The Archie Bronson Outfit are back in town equipped, if the rumours could be believed, with an album even better than the particularly tight and rocking Derdang Derdang.

The Outfit are launching Coconut, with an accompanying selection of videos screened to a packed room, and it’s all seriously impressive stuff.  Derdang Derdang is a much loved record, but restricted by its rockabilly template which walls the music off from variations in tone.  Coconut tackles these shortcomings head-on, taking itself a little less seriously, loosening the grooves and letting in a lot more funk.  Track one, ‘Magnetic Warrior’, kicks in with a guitar groove that harks proudly back to the days of early 90s indie and PJ Harvey’s ‘Dry’.  The video, a cut-out re-animation of A Matter of Life and Death, is a masterpiece of self-deprecating silliness.

In fact, this turns out to be the defining theme as the next track, ‘Shark’s Tooth’, a casually brilliant song surely born of an active interest in exotica and surf guitar, is performed in someone’s garage decorated with tin foil and plastic flowers.  The same garage returns in ‘Wild Strawberries’, but this time the band wears Invisible Man bandages.  ‘Hoola’, for obvious reason, is accompanied by a plastic brain attacking London via some very low production values, while the backing vocals sigh over unsettled guitar and keyboards. ‘Bite It and Believe’ cunningly reduces the production budget still further by using on a rotating image of singer Sam Windett’s magnificent bearded features.  ‘Hunt You Down’ is more gentle than its title would suggest, and its awesome dinosaur-themed video makes good use the concrete creatures of Crystal Palace Park. ‘Chunk’ dives down a world music dead-end, and the audience seem non-plussed by the accompanying video of a man doing ‘comedy’ dancing.  However, this is a minor blemish. The album is essential, a real step forward, and the films are a delight.  Do yourself a favour: get into the Outfit.

Kubla Khan

February 19th 2010

Kubla Khan have transformed over the last few months.  Their last London gig, at 229 Great Portland in November, showcased a good band but lacked a decent frontman.  That’s not to say singer Matt Heanes was bad – far from it, in fact.  He just lacked that showmanship quality that a nine-piece band needs.

Fast forward to February, then, and how things have changed. Matt was visibly more relaxed, and interacted much better with the audience. Wandering about the stage and shouting “How you doing?… I said how you doing?!” it was evident his confidence has grown since the last time they were in London, and rightly so.

Heanes has a great voice, and Kubla Khan are a very tight band musically. Funk should be something you can move to, and the band as a whole seemed to be juxtaposed between chilled out and high on adrenalin. ‘Karma Comes Around’ is a catchy song which I still find myself humming to a week after the gig, and it was good to see the band having fun on stage whilst they played; the horn section were rocking out when they weren’t playing, laughing and joking with each other.

There was a good crowd at the Indigo2, and they clearly enjoyed the set, which included ‘Set Me Off’ and ‘I Wish I Could’.  I felt the encore was slightly lazy as half the band didn’t even bother leaving the stage, but Kubla Khan ended the evening with a good rendition of Aerosmith’s ‘Dude Looks Like A Lady’. Once again Matt entertained the audience, having a bit of banter with some people he thought were Geordie, but actually just went to Newcastle University. “That’s good enough for me”, he cried, a north-east native himself. 

The band definitely had bags of energy to kick off the weekend, and I can’t help but think that if they’ve improved this much in such a short space of time, it will be interesting to see what their next show will bring.

Shearwater

February 25, 2010

The Scala is almost its own death knell for anyone fortunate enough to have seen Shearwater play the Union Chapel in ‘09, where the fluidity and sky-scraping power of their repertoire peaked in a setting so perfect it was as if custom-tailored. The audience sat on pews like a dedicated congregation, the stage spot-lit to maximum effect with every movement and sound microscopically audible.

That this pre-emptive warning sign capitulates is not devastating, just a matter of inevitability. Jonathan Meiburg and his comrades turn in a stunning show, but it fails to reach the chilling heights of their show previewing new album The Golden Archipelago last year. The majesty of their sound is clear, but the ordering lacks structure meaning that the piercing vocals lack cogency. The strength of ‘Seventy-Four Seventy-Five’ outside of its natural context on Palo Santo makes it feel bleak and hard-hitting, lacking the glow and grace normally accompanying it. With the release of more Shearwater material comes the realisation that they are masters of album-ordering; LPs are to be devoured in their entirety, as they offset each weighty build with a retreat.

Fragility and a touchable exploration of beauty fill the Scala, ‘Meridian’ being received to whoops and cheers as the drums crash on the ocean of reverb, and as ever; ‘Rook’ pushes relentlessly forward with its intense, rocking guitars. Guitars swell on set-highlight ‘Leviathan, Bound’ and their instrument-swapping impresses as ever, but the ominous feel of the playing never quite hits the grand crash it’s seemingly striding towards. Shearwater are a marvellous entity, make no mistake, but it’s either unfortunate that their show last year peaked so high or fortunate that I was there to see it.

Yeasayer

February 23, 2010

In Heaven, not everything is fine. The beer tastes like ass, and the men’s toilets smell worse than ass. But ass isn’t important here, not tonight anyway, because the sound at least is near divine.

There’s a hell of a lot of people, a varied grouping at that. Not surprising given the fervent hysteria Yeasayer’s Odd Blood is currently stirring among the music press. If All Hour Cymbals was Dad’s little folk secret, Odd Blood is the electro-psychedelic party music for da yoof, and all have gathered this evening.

Yeasayer’s support comes from fellow Brooklyn twosome Javelin. Their set is accompanied by an ’80s movie montage of assorted promo videos featuring Casio keyboard demos, tennis lessons with a mulleted Andre Agassi and BMX biker clips. Javelin’s synth and drum pad shtick provides quite the novelty soundtrack, and while I’m sure this ironic gimmickry goes down a storm in Brooklyn, here the 80s was an achromatic time, and the two dimensional songs do little to stir an attentive audience now cramming into the vault of Heaven. It’s the curse of the support act. In their defence, Javelin play with genuine moxie that keeps the audience captivated. But that’s not why we’re here.

Lights dim and Yeasayer take the stage to rapture and an array of colour. Opening with stomper ‘The Children’, they go on to play mostly new songs.  What strikes me is how comfortably they play live. The harmonies on ‘Madder Red’ are so precise I question their authenticity, but it’s real. ‘Tightrope’ is played a little slower than usual, but the band displays confidence and emotion. The blissful cascading airy synths and pulsing bass of ‘I Remember’ fill the cavern with awe. Chris Keating is note perfect, his voice breaking for the “woah-oh” with ease and genuinely moving sentiment.

I’d like to say that the once po-face performers have loosened up live, given the celebratory nature of many of their news songs, but I’d be lying. Keating is most deft, gesticulating, flicking his fingers, cutting lines with the edge of his hand and flitting around his allocated spot. Elsewhere bassist Ira Wolf Tuton rocks casually; Anand Wilder – despite his stints on vocals and rather fetching boiler suit attire – remains largely stationary. Again, unimportant details considering the brilliant sound they’re making.

Yeasayer’s more rousing numbers find the crowd doing all movement necessary. ‘Love Me Girl’, ‘Rome’, ‘O.N.E’, ‘Mondegreen’ and ‘Ambling Alp’ played in succession toward the end of their set. Where the bass on the ‘Ambling Alp’ recording was somewhat incidental, it carries solidly and transforms the song in to one of the many highlights of the evening. The encore brings relief for the hardcore fans, ending with ‘Grizelda’, ‘Sunrise’ and ‘2080’.

This will be the smallest venue Yeasayer will play. Their disco-tinged pop looks set to be a festival favourite this summer, and if tonight’s performance is a demonstration of their live ability, they’ll be a delight.

Spoon

February 18, 2010

If you would look at a photo taken at this gig you might be led to believe that Spoon is a band of middle-aged indie-rockers standing on a stage and simply playing their own instruments to no theatrics at all. I mean, there they are, these men around the forty from Texas, standing there without much ado. They are dressed reasonably sharp, I’ll give them that. No Interpol antics though. However, the venue is almost at full capacity, and it would be absurd if all these people paid 20 euros to see some guys simply play their own instruments, right? Right? Luckily Spoon isn’t just any old indie-rock band. In Amsterdam they give three convincing reasons as to why they are at the head of their class: their oeuvre, their ability to play, and the “secret” theatrics and literary elements to their music.

So, the oeuvre, practically endless that is. Not only does the band have a plethora of albums and songs, a good many of them are actually really good as well. Spoon does a good job of dividing the setlist over a couple of albums rather than simply playing a bunch from their two most recent ones. This allows them to mix and match about forty worthy songs, no mean feat. They can even leave off trump cards like ‘Jonathan Fisk’ off of the Kill the Moonlight album, with which they ended their London gig if I’m informed correctly. Such omissions in the Amsterdam setlist exemplify the luxury problem Britt Daniel and co have. Of course, everyone in the venue has his or her personal preferences, but probably every song on the setlist is someone’s favourite.

It is not just the quality of the songs though, it is the quality of the playing as well. Aside from gig closer ‘The Underdog’ every song is played superbly. The astonishing thing is that a different instrument will hog the spotlight per song. Sometimes it will be a nifty bit of piano, but it might as well be some ridiculous catchy bass play, Jim Eno’s drums, or Britt’s guitar sharply cutting through. At one point the bass produces an almost disco like sequence which would not have been out of place in a club for people to dance to. Admittedly, the jam catches most people off guard so there is little actual dancing, but no one in Amsterdam can say they did not provide the opportunity to do so. Britt Daniel’s voice is in good form as well. High, low, soft, hard, or squealing: Daniel has no problem hitting the notes and delivering the lines in exactly the right way. The control he has over his voice is downright impressive.

Admittedly, there are more bands out there who can play a tight live show and who can piece together a strong setlist (however they might not have the same amount of choice as Spoon), but for some reason it is Spoon which is seen as perhaps the best band in their field (well, in America at least). Their live show showcases some of the extra qualities which makes them just that bit more special. Their last album Transference, for example, might be considered as exemplifying the inability to communicate or convey ones feelings. A bit of literary analysis this is probably, but during these new songs you see Daniel stop singing mid-sentence, you see the band cut off their own songs, and during the wicked ‘Nobody Gets Me But You’ the instrumentation seems to increasingly overlap the words uttered, which at one point seem to be delivered pathetically while the drums and guitar roar through it. The bass happens to be quite catchy though, so lovers of irony will perhaps note that you are effectively dancing on someone’s inability to convey his or her emotions. The songs starts with the line “Nobody gets what I say/ there must be some way to convey”, but speech is rendered ineffectual as if it were a Ionesco play.

Then there are the additional sound effects coming from the extra pedals and equipment the band has on stage. Especially the echoes add just that extra bit of punch to make you feel it, and sometimes the effects literally shake the foundations of the former church turned venue. It are these little touches which really add to the feel of the songs. Perhaps this is best illustrated by the track ‘The Ghost of You Lingers’ from the Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga album. Daniel turns in quite the performance, anxiously churning out lines as “If you were here, would you calm me down?”. The sound effects literally seem to fly past you as they are flung into the crowd. The song uses mostly keyboard, but at the end Jim Eno’s drums come in, and those drums are turned up a tad for this song to make their entrée really dramatic. Such additions just help build a song.

So, yes, ‘The Underdog’ as last, and it so happens that Britt Daniel ends with a track he forgets the lyrics to. He laughs it off, and the crowd probably does as well, because after such an inspired set everyone is allowed a little mistake. Daniel has been a gentleman throughout the set. The band will never win the award for best stage banter, but Daniel’s movements are elegant, and when he addresses the crowd and thanks them profusely he seems quite sincere and grateful. So yeah, on a photo it might seem like a bunch of dads (they easily could be someone’s father if they aren’t already, family information usually is lost on me) getting up there playing their instruments while not resorting to any visible of Montrealesque techniques. However, Spoon proves that all those little extras they do fuse into a very good live show indeed. So a simple picture of a Spoon show might not tell the whole story, and superficiality is shown to be deceptive once again, and in the Arts that is a definite plus.

This is really NYPC - image by Natalie Shaw

February 22, 2010

Before being given a sneaky preview of New Young Pony Club’s new album (due out March 8th) The Optimist, I’d have cowered at the idea of their new material forming the backbone of my listening habits for longer than 10 minutes. That’s not to say the debut Fantastic Playroom was insubstantial, more just temporary and self-imposedly limiting; its aping of the ‘78-’81 was niche, sure, but more than that – it failed to whet the appetite for much more. And this contextual cherry-on-top adds even more fervour to Tahita Bulmer and her band’s charming comeback in a show where they fully free themselves from the restrained sound of yore.

The same can’t be said for support act Lyrebirds, who offer a defunct sub-Maccabees, Topman-shorn set that makes me reconsider my existence. It’s diluted and entirely unmemorable, even though it’s disguised in manic strobe lighting almost enough to let it slip by as the side show. Though at least it’s not as shonky as Chew Lips, fronted by Tigs, who pulls shapes from the air like a RADA drop-out. Mic-lead straddling attempts to overshadow the stasis, as the anonymous synth-plinking continues to stall. If it’s a parodial triteness, then even ‘watching’ with closed eyes isn‘t enough. While Chew Lips are ‘just’ having fun to their own music (praises be!), the package of nasal hiccups, monotonous hooks, dry melodies and Karen O mimicry form an irksome and colossal clunker.

New Young Pony Club eulogise my opinion on Chew Lips. The pace at which these glorious pop songs are flung out is dazzling, but not as dazzling as the truly striking contrast between their new and old material. Crowd-pleasers ‘Ice Cream’ and ‘Get Lucky’ are taut snatches of electro, sure, but it’s the let-go in the new material that brings the most joy. Thank whoever freed NYPC from their self-imposed restrictions, for they’ve blossomed into purveyors of truly blinding pop songs.

And the post-feminism at the forefront of their catwalk is no longer pinpointed by abstruse lyrics, instead something more touchable – emotion. Bulmer fuses these two distinct personalities into an all-dancing, starry stage-show, an idol less impossibly untouchable and more human; an instigator. The title track from the new album (’The Optimist’) mixes Primary Colours-style swirling synths with reverby syncopation, parts dropping in and out before the song reaches a its soaring key change at the end. ‘Lost A Girl’ sees NYPC entirely drop the quasi-talky shtick, with their poster-girl Tahita Bulmer’s vocals unafraid on top of glorious harmonies from Lou Hayter and Sarah Jones. ‘Chaos’ is a perfect bridge between old and new, with those familiar off-beat bass hooks set so tautly against the vocals.

PJ Harvey’s ‘Dress’ is covered excellently, shimmering, and the Metronomy-style plinks, twinkles and build ups on ‘We Want To’ glamourise the lead to the chorus just perfectly, through building textures and thicker harmonies. This is all without so much as a mention of ‘Ice Cream’, ‘Get Lucky’ and the forcibly snide “revolution in the bedroom” arrogance of ‘Hiding On The Staircase’ from Fantastic Playroom, which in spite of filling the room with familiar smiles, fails to power up to the next level like much of the material from The Optimist. It’s only on ‘Dolls’ that New Young Pony Club take a step backwards, the vocals possessing a smidgeon too much flatness in the verses to counter-balance the dirtier bass.

There’s some hesitance for the first few songs, sure, a few drum-beats hit slightly off-time, but it’s the first proper showing of the new material and a fantastical sample of just how this band have developed. And it’s telling that pre- the the leak of an album, the audience mostly comprises a younger demographic more interested in the clothing on-stage than the band’s incredible development. Surely not a sign of the future to come.

The Chapman Family

February 15th 2010

The Georgian Theatre plays host to three strikingly separate bands this evening as part of the NME Awards show series. Rotating the order every night in the tour’s other shows in York and Leeds; it is the turn of Frankie & The Heartstrings to get proceedings underway tonight.

Striding on with assured confidence, the hotly-tipped act from Sunderland waste no time in pressing their case. In Frankie, they possess a front man who resembles Morrissey in the foppish-nature of his styling and Paul Smith in his bounding energy. Their songs are a potent combination of angular-pop guitar melody and regionalised dialect vocals. The Teesside crowd appears enthusiastic and provides the encouragement that it is apparent the band never really needed in all honesty. Former Kenickie member, Pete Gofton (AKA J Xaverre) provides some energetic guitar and keyboard work alongside the rest of the band who are all on fine form. An endearing performance which leaves us intrigued to hear more, a band to be keeping tabs on for sure.

Next up are Newcastle-based band Little Comets, who are also an act with their respective stars on the rise (pun very much intended). A stagecraft unlike no other, they have some old blue rope of the sort you used to make a ‘tarzee’ with as a child with various percussion hanging down, they are certainly engaging. Their singer appears to lose a few pounds in sweat due to the oversized fleece-jumper he sports but it doesn’t affect his energetic performance. Their highlight track is soon-to-be single Joanna, a pop-tune that is likely to win them even more plaudits.

Wrapping up the whole occasion are homecoming boys, The Chapman Family. This lot are scary, seriously. Their set is a tour de force through the macabre of dark-rock music and it is all the brainchild of the severely imposing singer, Kingsley Chapman. Stalking onto the stage with a jaw line that looks stronger than Joe Calzaghe, he launches the band into their first song and it is LOUD. In the way it should be, of course, and there were more than a few raised eyebrows in the crowd which was populated with a fair share of adolescent youngsters more used to the fey pop of Frankie & The Heartstrings than the brutality of The Chapman Family.

We find ourselves unable to take our eyes off the band, switching between the members trying to work out exactly what to make of them. Pop Chapman provides an energetic performance with some deep fuzz bass, throwing himself about the stage that amplifies the atmosphere. By the close of the set, Kingsley is frantically wrapping the microphone cable around his neck in ever-tightening circles whilst on his knees in an apparent stage-suicide. The difference is that he means it. Recent singles ‘Kids’ and ‘Virgins’ provide the highlights of the set and the band are playing with voracity as if each song is to be their last before someone tells them that they’re going to pull the plug. Powerful, gripping and ultimately different, The Chapman Family do not disappoint. They are performing at SXSW next month and we predict they’ll go down a storm. If Kingsley is still alive by that point…

Stornoway

February 14th 2010

Presented by Twisted Folk, this tour juxtaposes the two very different entities of Beth Jeans Houghton and Stornoway. Although billed as headliners, it is the fine young gentlemen from Oxford that take to the Sage stage first and on whom we shall focus. The whole aura around Stornoway is carried in a very understated fashion, a minimalist approach signified by the apparent meekness of lead singer Brian Briggs. He ambles closer to the microphone in instalments before mustering a barely registering “hello”.

Once the band strike up, the facade of simplicity dissolves into the many layers of their thoughtfully constructed tunes. Each song is well-received by a crowd that needed some encouragement, even for a Sunday night outing, yet thankfully Stornoway’s charm does enough to win them over. It is plain that many are here to see them on the back of TV appearances on Jools Holland’s Later… alongside Jay-Z; Foo Fighters and Norah Jones, and a BBC Radio 1 session for Huw Stephens.

We manage to spot one lady in particular who seems to be growing in delirium as their set progresses, rocking backwards and forwards whilst clapping in a strangely afflicted manner, and can frequently be heard calling for various requests. Such fandom is something that is surely only to increase where Stornoway are concerned, with their debut album expected sometime later in 2010.

Back to the matter at hand and the performance remains as sterling as one this writer has witnessed in the past couple of years. Supported by their friend Rahul Satija on violin and brother Adam Briggs on trumpet, their sound becomes augmented with a striking, piercing and ultimately beautiful quality. The likes of ‘End Of The Movie’ and ‘Cold Harbour Road’ receive the utmost of attention from the audience, seemingly enthralled and entranced throughout and only regaining composure upon the song’s ending.

A special reception is reserved for the band’s single from July 2009, ‘Zorbing’. An insanely infectious and sunny record likening the beginning of a romance to the thrills and spills of rolling down countryside hills inside a water-filled bubble. Who are we to argue?

“I’ve been singing you this song inside a bubble / Been zorbing through the streets of Cowley”

As a reward for their devoted attention throughout the set, Stornoway agree to perform one more track – electing to taken an acapella route. The genuinely warming ‘We Are The Battery Human’ is the highlight of the evening.

‘Cos we’re the new generation, generation / We are the battery human / But we were born to be free-range, free-range”

They shuffle off the stage in a similar fashion to their entrance to the sincere applause of a now-infected crowd. They are infected with the folk charm and honesty of Stornoway and its at this point that we realise we are contaminated in exactly the same manner.