Akron/Family, London Relentless Garage

Akron/Family

November 18, 2009

You know those old friends you’ve harboured for nostalgia’s sake who you occasionally force to a gig because you just don’t fancy going on your own and your music-loving friends are probably watching The Decemberists that night? Yeah, I feel bad about that too. I’ve never come close to understanding their “woah this is really weird” reflex when they watch something as decidedly un-weird as, well, shall we say a guiro for literary device’s sake? Ok, let’s say that.

For the first time ever, I’m in that feeling. I’m thrown, I’m confused, I’m close to having a fit in reaction to the “crazy” lighting. I’ve thought more than your average easily-confused Man, but it doesn’t help. I feel like I’m watching this show through glasses with the wrong prescription.
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Patrick Wolf, London Palladium

Patrick Wolf

November 15 2009

For all the flack he gets for being gay, posh and dressing like an idiot, you can’t fault Patrick Wolf’s drive and work ethic. This time last year, he was without a record company – he took his half-finished forth record and completed work on a double album, before splitting it into two discs. The first of these, The Bachelor, was released in June this year, with Wolf having funded the remaining recording work and subsequent promotion through the website Bandstocks. Ever the individual, the album featured dark, camp dance-pop songs and string-drenched epics, managing to end up on the right side – just – of overblown. … Continue Reading

Peggy Seeger/Norma & Mike Waterson/Martin Carthy, London Blackheath Halls

Peggy Seeger

November 13, 2009

The support act outshines the star here so completely that this is a gig of two halves.

Reclusive Mike Waterson’s rare appearance, in baggy jumper and cloth cap, holds us spellbound with ballads, tales and rhymes of fishing and dockers and lads loving lasses. Martin and Norma (his sister and brother-in-law) chime in with ancient and modern folk. They sing sad songs to remember their dead sister Lal, the troubled singer- songwriter. Norma sings a calypso from Montserrat, where the black slaves rejoice when their sister dies but sing dirges whenever another new baby is born into bondage. … Continue Reading

Muse – London O2 Arena

Matt Bellamy, Muse

October 13, 2009

Few things fit together as well as Matt Bellamy does with his guitar, but he proves that he can rock the piano just as well.

When Muse take the stage on the second and final night of their sold-out London O2 shows, an eager roar of applause sprouts from a crowd that can’t even begin to predict how remarkably epic and comprehensive a set they are about to witness.

So many bands are guilty of diluting their live performances with a heavy flow of tracks from their latest albums, to encourage slacking fans to purchase the CD. While Muse play the majority of their newest album, The Resistance, they do, on the other hand, give fans a treat with a slew of favourites from previous albums. With the likes of ‘Plug In Baby’, ‘Supermassive Black Hole’, ‘Hysteria’, and ‘New Born’ performed, the audience has no reason for disappointment.

Perhaps most pleasantly shocking is ‘Cave’ off of the band’s 1999 debut album Showbiz. A rarity at their concerts, this rendition reflects the band’s recent incorporation of orchestral sounds to their music. … Continue Reading

Yo La Tengo, London Roundhouse

Yo La Tengo

November 8th 2009

At one point during Yo La Tengo’s mammoth, celebratory two-hour set at the Roundhouse in Camden, Ira Kaplan mentioned that the band had been together for a “very, very long time” – it’s been around twenty years, in fact, and the trio’s quiet focus, mostly understated energy and, at times, ferocious power pointed to a band enjoying many of the benefits of (relative) old age and none of the drawbacks. Songs from their occasionally stunning current record, Popular Songs, were intermingled with fan favourites and classics in a set that was confidently paced and emphasised the range and depth of the band’s song-writing over their career.

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Bloc Party, Bournemouth BIC

Bloc Party

October 31st 2009

Bloctober comes to an end.

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Max Richter – London Union Chapel

Max Richter

October 30th 2009

Tonight Max Richter is playing at London’s Union Chapel as part of the Marginalised festival. The festival has been lucky enough to have such artists as Gavin Bryars and Michael Nyman. The Marginalised festival is in its second year supporting the charity Margins, which is based right here in the Union Chapel. Margins helps the homeless and people with both mental health and alcohol problems.

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The Candle Thieves – London 93 Ft East

The Candle Thieves

I’m not going to open with the old “everyone tries too hard these days” adage, swiftly followed up by the “it’s so awesome to see a band just focus on the tunes” axiom. I could also precede a series of “aah, they’re really cute”-type words with “and I really love Merriweather Post Pavilion but y’know…”. I’m not going to patronise The Candle Thieves like that though, as there’s no reason to be so defensive. Neither am I going to say “this is a guilty pleasure” (the worst incarnation of praise), nor “if you like the sterner stuff, then this probably isn’t for you”.

I find self at 93 Ft East tonight watching the Alcopop! Records duo, and their set induces an omni-smile. The sound is one of warmth and fun, of adolescent simplicity and helluva fun songs. They’re a duo dressed in identical black suits, white shirts, black ties and heavy-rimmed glasses, and they throw in a couple of glockenspiels, a harmonica, a bubble-machine and a drum for jokes. And we hear word that someone’s here from Germany to see them. Holy…

Sitting close to The Boy Least Likely To in their tweeness, The Candle Thieves’ stage set involves a cuddly bear attached to a mic stand and a blow-up shark. And they come on to the theme from Jaws. Their songs are deftly constructed pop gems, with perfect peaks like an ostentatious piano slide and spot-on audience interaction. ‘The Sunshine Song’ is like The Voluntary Butler Scheme without the annoying affectations, and ‘Sharks And Bears’ is pretty stark in its simplicity: “sometimes I dream of sharks/sometimes I dream of bears,” ponders The Candle Thieves’ Scott McEwan. The other half of The Candle Thieves is called ‘The Glock‘ (or sometimes ‘Glockenshiels‘, from a bit of research), too – it’s a pretty fetching branding exercise.

Never dumbed down through their loveliness, The Candle Thieves’ pop is nonetheless a sugary beast. The songs with the textural changes work exceptionally well, but much of the set is rather lonely – the setlist appears to have too much let up. … Continue Reading

Everything Everything – London ICA

Everything Everything

November 4, 2009

Everything Everything produce super-smart pop songs. They’re made from the finer stuff; rawboned, syncopated three-part harmonies and damn soaring choruses hatchet-stitched together with rock-solid drumming. It all makes perfect sense. The arrangements are complex, the synths stolen straight from ’80s power-pop and the lyrics Internet-smart. They’ve a song called ‘Photoshop Handsome’, after all, as in attractive but only after your face has been tweaked. That’s how clever this Manchester four-piece are in a snapshot, and I’m ready and waiting for them to blow my mind live.

As it goes, their set comes across muddy, samey, and screechy at worst. Gone is the crisp, fresh sound of the recordings, the sparkly exhuberance of ‘My Kz, Ur Bf’, the exciting way they sequence space-age plinks against the knowingly-derivative mathy guitars, the offbeat. The guitars are way too low down in the mix, too. And instead of being taken aback by Jonathan Everything’s amazing vocal range, I’m left frustrated. His falsetto screeching on ‘NASA Is On Your Side’ isn’t abrasive as such, instead coming across more painful. The lower-down monosyllabic passages go down a treat however, which is probably against Everything Everything’s expectations. I think they’re overreaching; when the bawdiness isn’t the highlight of the song, it’s questionable what it’s doing there in the first place.

The wave of ’80s-referencing super-pop bands following Cut Copy‘s benchmark for confident and glossy-sounding dancefloor-botherers has been astonishing, taking many different twists and turns along the way. Everything Everything’s take is completely distinct, coming across not only self-assured but with truly distinctive harmonies at the heart. They sound so pinpointed on record that I’m staggered by just how little of that comes across tonight.

They’ve gone too far on getting their recordings to sound that labyrinthine that unfortunately they can’t live up to their own jittery, perfectly clattery perfectionism live just yet. And I can’t hear the lyrics at all. Take ‘Suffragette Suffragette’, which passes by like a face in the crowd tonight. The lyrics “who’s gonna sit on the fence when I’m gone/who’s gonna sit on your face when I’m gone” are anonymous, in spite of that being a massive part of Everything Everything’s unique charm. Are they shy of their wordplay, or is it that there’s so much else that they don’t know what to showcase first? … Continue Reading

Styles Make Fights, Newcastle Cluny 2

Styles Make Fights

November 4th 2009

Barely two weeks ago, we extolled the virtues of The Cluny. Well, Newcastle’s greatest gig spot recently said a commendable ‘fuck you’ to the recession and commandeered the former theatre next door, turning it into a mini-Cluny, called, of course, Cluny 2. The place is imbued with as much character as its big brother, and is a fitting addition to the family.

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