Collar Up, Shooting Stansfield – Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh

March 25, 2011

Playing to launch their single ‘A Jam Jar Full Of Wasps’ the trio of Collar Up grace the gathered throng with one of their finest performances, aided in no small part by the excellent sound quality that this venue continually achieves. Too often in the past it has proved impossible to hear song introductions and the like, but that curse is dealt with tonight so proceedings pass off pretty much by the book. … Continue Reading

Iron and Wine, Daniel Martin Moore – Town Hall, Birmingham

10 March, 2011

Despite being the ‘second city’, there’s as an odd lack of decent, credible bands stopping in Birmingham. So it comes as welcome news to learn that Iron and Wine, in its latest incarnation, aren’t only playing in our city, they are doing so in Town Hall, a beautiful and overlooked venue in what is, let’s face it, not otherwise the prettiest of cities. … Continue Reading

Elbow – Motorpoint Arena, Sheffield

19 March, 2011

Arena Gigs. A scourge of ‘proper music’ symptomatic of the soulless lucre-driven market in which we wallow, or a necessary evil which we must all occasionally abide to enjoy certain bands at the more popular end of the scale? Well, now that Elbow are officially ‘A Big Band’, then it would appear that the only way that it is now possible to enjoy their enduring meat-n-potatoes charm in the live setting is for us to drag ourselves to the identi-hangars which punctuate the outskirts of our major cities. … Continue Reading

Bruno Mars – Koko, London

Take some squeaky clean pop vocals, throw in some guitar riffs and a membership to Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club and you end up with the chart topping artist that is Bruno Mars. The singer-songwriter and producer, who shares the writing credits for hits such as B.O.B’s ‘Beautiful Girls’ and Cee Lo Green’s ‘Fuck You’, dominated a large chunk of the world’s radio airwaves in 2010. This successful run seems to have carried over to this year by selling out Camden’s famous Koko venue two nights in a row. … Continue Reading

Cocknbullkid, Sparkadia – Camden Barfly, London

March 8, 2011

Plan B – London O2 Arena

March 10, 2011

Cut Copy – Club Academy, Manchester

March 5, 2011

One of the things which you can say pretty confidently about the live Cut Copy experience is that the whole thing is a near-perfect replication of their recorded output. Whether you consider that to be damning with faint praise, or a tantalising confirmation that Cut Copy pull off exactly the live show which you want them to probably depends on whether you’re the sort of person who lurks at the back of the venue nursing a pint, or the sort of person who’s grinding the barricade, fist in air. … Continue Reading

Jamie Woon, Ghostpoet – Leeds Cockpit

3 March, 2011

A couple of months ago, the BBC proudly told us that Jessie J was the sound of 2011. I assume that, upon hearing the news, you did the same as me and whittled your available courses of action down to only three options: slash your throat, hibernate until 2012, or somehow muddle through the year, hunting for sounds in other nooks and crannies. I plumped for the third option. After delving into the dusty bowels of the BBC’s runners up list, I found that the prize for fourth place went to a chap called Jamie Woon – a solo artist known for his electronic production, and soulful voice. Touring with fellow British newcomer Ghostpoet, Woon reminds us – all sneering irony aside – that just because rackets like ‘Do It Like A Dude’ get all the accolades doesn’t mean that they’re the cream of the British crop. (You should hardly have needed me to tell you that Jamie Woon is better than Jessie J, but it’s good to re-establish first principles from time to time).

Ellie Goulding, Somerset House

Muso’s Guide was invited down to London Fashion Weekend – swanky! – by the lovely folks at Vodafone VIP, to see a very special Ellie Goulding performance indeed. It was all a delight, and I was even rewarded with a little goodie bag.

Something called a cake-pop was then handed to me en route to my front-row seat, which for the benefit of our less-knowledgeable readers, is a really delicious and super-dense pink cake on a stick. It was ‘”by Juicy Couture”, of course. I texted my mum about it, it was such a moment.

Goulding sung between models trotting up and down the catwalk, and the oddness of her vocal came across far more than on record – it’s a strangely timid yet powerful thing, a thing that makes her best songs sound so delightful and different. She turns it on and turns it up with ease, and at times she’s sounds so angelic she could be a real-life Disney heroine;  take that sparkly “woah/ oh” refrain on ‘Starry Eyed‘, which spurs on the song into a giant-sized chorus.

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Efterklang – The Sage Hall 2, Gateshead

February 26, 2011

Sometimes a gig is more than just a band standing on a stage playing songs to a room full of people who like their records. Very occasionally, there are instances where band, venue and crowd come together in a beautiful and poetic unison and it’s suddenly about more than mere music, it’s about an experience in the fullest sense of the word. Tonight, (unexpectedly to me, I must concede), Efterklang provide one of those magical gigs.
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