Scissor Sisters

By Nia Thomas

May 16, 2012

Scissor Sisters returned to the stage at Shepherd’s Bush (or “Shepherd’s Minge” as Ana Matronic lovingly referred to it) last week to preview songs from their new album Magic Hour.

Support act Little Boots kicked off the evening with a set of old singles alongside songs from her next album. Opening with the song that brought her to early attention, ‘Stuck on Repeat,’ and first single ‘New in Town,’ both receive an enthusiastic response from the audience. It’s a shame that the crowd’s enthusiasm is not matched. Little Boots, known for her skills as a songwriter as much as a pop star, doesn’t seem to be completely comfortable with herself onstage which is where so many of her contemporaries excel. She then performs two new songs ‘Headphones’ and ‘Every Night I Say a Prayer,’ the latter sounding like a great Kylie song with handclaps galore. Both showcase a more disco direction. Songs like ‘New in Town’ and ‘Remedy’ remind the crowd that Little Boots knows her way around a great song even if she doesn’t make an original mark on them. She closes with ‘Shake,’ similar, in many respects, to ‘Stuck on Repeat’ in its icy electro flavour, which suits her more than the pure pop she co-writes so well.

Scissor Sisters, on the other hand, have everything from stage patter to old songs perfected and they burst with infectious energy when performing their new songs. The band bound on to the stage with frontman Jake Shears dressed like a sexy bee performing ‘Any Which Way.’ New, Pharrell Williams-produced track ‘Inevitable’ makes its mark and is followed by ‘Take Your Mama,’ a big singalong moment, during which guitarist Del Marquis sounds incredible. After premiering ‘Let’s Have a Kiki’ a week before, it’s exhilarating seeing a song that’s been an obsession for merely a few days performed perfectly with a dance routine, headsets and backing singers/dancers (‘Matronicons’) joining them at centre stage. Azealia Banks collaboration ‘Shady Love,’ which rhymes Obama with Madonna has the same cheekiness that oozes throughout Kiki. Ana Matronic’s solo performance of ‘Skin This Cat’ is unexpected but excellent, with the Matronicons dancing either side. This is followed by Jake performing ‘Mary’ by himself, providing a more downbeat moment in the middle of the party atmosphere. Their encore consists of their latest single, the Calvin Harris-produced ‘Only the Horses’ and debut album-era fan favourite ‘Music is the Victim’ and the set finishes without a dull moment.

Best Coast – The Only Place

Now Playing – twice every week, a roundtable of our writers will give their views on some of the recently-released new tracks. It’s as simple as that! If you want to tell us what you think of the song, feel free to leave a comment below.

Track: ‘The Only Place’ by Best Coast

Average grade: 4.9

Anna: Always happy to receive some surf pop, perfect for when driving to the beach (or riding on the train in the rain in May, thanks). As it is more polished than the previous offerings though, the weak flatness of the vocals is more pronounced and this in a way brings the infectiousness down a bit. I’m not exactly sold on the sincerity of the lyrics’ naivety either. 5.7/10

Linda: Best Coast’s previous album, though hailed as the return to surf pop by some, was never really my thing. Perhaps it is because I never really spend any time listening to that one, that this new track seems as innovating as Mitt Romney’s ideas about America.  3/10

Stuart: This is a quite cute and jangly listen that makes me wish (though just for second) that I was back in the late-’90s / early-’00s when this kind of stuff dominated the alternative charts and I could squeeze into my pair of ridiculously straight-legged pink flares. It’s fluff, but inoffensive, upbeat and clap-along happy fluff. And here’s a prediction: this summer, this track will feature on an advert for either a bank, a mobile phone network or a sanitary towel. FACT. 5/10

Harry: It’s a classic Best Coast track. A lively low-fi pop song about the west coast with a cute little melody – But that, in itself, is a problem. This shows little development or change in direction from the debut album Crazy For You. Bland, unimaginative and uninspiring lyrics about how wonderful California is coupled with a happy-go-lucky chord sequence hardly makes the “dark”, “emo” and “grown up” music Bethany Cosentino promised. Oh well. It’s a sunny Summer track for a sunny Summer’s day. 5/10

Stef: A nice jangly affair by Best Coast. However, jangly stuff has never been my thing, but it is nice enough to listen to when you go on a road trip or something, and I like the sentiment behind it (if I listened to it correctly, which might or might not be correct). 6/10

Amon Tobin

By Nick Cowan

May 12, 2012

Ninja Tune favourite Amon Tobin delivered a second tour of ISAM, an audio-visual spectacular of his most recent album at Brixton Academy on Saturday. On stage, an ominous structure is shrouded in darkness. It’s made up of a collection of large cubes resembling a giant game of Tetris that isn’t going too well. Inside, the homunculus electronic producer/DJ Tobin pushes magic buttons and a kaleidoscope of CGI wizardry is projected onto the cubes in time with the music, rendering far off landscapes, spaceships, vivid colours and other fit-inducing scenes. The awe-struck audience searches for the appropriate response to this sensory overload, some twitch and some dance but they aren’t in the majority. Those familiar with Tobin will know that danceable beats are not offered up easily on ISAM with hip-hop and jazz beats slammed against jerky, droning noise. On top of this there’s a massive cube made of spinning machine parts to watch; most people resign themselves to a humble head nod.

The large machine morphs into a spaceship that jets off into space, bid farewell by a chorus of ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ as shooting stars fill the cubes like a Window 97 screensaver. Every so often the central cube is backlit and Tobin is revealed. At one point he acknowledges the now quite high crowd and conducts ‘Wooden Toy’ in time with a giant projection of himself made out of sound waves before disappearing back behind the veil, presumably to read the paper while no one can see. Seeing music and cube work in harmony is enthralling but occasionally does feel a bit like a Nokia PR stunt. You half expected the CGI spaceship to morph into a snazzy phone showcasing all new social features that will finally make life worth living.

Later on Tobin moves away from ISAM to deliver a more conventional and danceable set and the visuals take a back seat (well, as much as a 25ft pulsing cubes of colour can take a back seat), which loosens the crowd up enough to dance some. For the encore, Tobin decides to calm things down and brings the show to a close with an ambient end. The decision seems slightly misguided given that it’s only 10:30pm and by the looks of the crowd, most will be heading on somewhere to satisfy their now expanded need for sensory input. But all in all it’s a good show and it’s great to see Tobin investing in creating unique live experiences, however you can’t help wondering how engaging the set would be without the visuals. Well, if all else fails, you can always put on ISAM and watch this.

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.

What makes tonight’s gig particularly special is the manner in which the desperate fragility of debut LP Learning and the breakthroughs of confidence and resilience of 2012’s Put Your Back N 2 It are allowed to co-exist so effectively. Early set highlight comes in the form of the shattering ‘Lookout, Lookout’, a rendition which (cliché alert – but it’s true) had goosebumps running up and down me for its duration. But rather than being immediately followed by more despair and torture (on the LP’s tracklisting, we’re next treated/subjected to ‘Mr Peterson’), we’re lifted out of the mire by the uplifting swell of ‘Dark Parts’, and lines like ‘Normal Song’s’ “no memory, no matter how sad / and no violence, no matter how bad can darken the heart / or tear it apart.” For every descent into Hadraes’ storied past of depression and chemical dependence on first album cuts, these moments are always juxtaposed with a glimmering ray of optimistic hope taken from its follow up; dramatic swoops between peaks and troughs adding a true sense of drama to the set, delivering redemption and (I’ll permit myself to say, since I’m in a church) salvation for Hadras – and his audience – every few songs, with no diminishing returns.

In more purely sonic terms, tonight’s set also sees a comfortable marriage between Hadraes’s early stripped back delicacy and the fuller textured maturity of his newer material. Flanked by two band mates, one providing dark, gorgeous synth texture, the other alternating between drums and guitar, the sound is permitted to expand and contract as the material desires, and without jarring. Wisely, ‘Mr. Peterson’ remains un-tampered with, while the epic sweep of stuff like ‘Dark Parts’ is recreated beautifully, resonating around the stone walls as if expecting to be joined by a full choir and orchestra at any moment. In all, it feels like a performance from an artist at a particularly special period in his trajectory – a perfect balance of simplicity and intricacy to the musicianship, combined with a similarly effective balance between despair and hope in the lyricism. And although there’s nothing to suggest that the best of Perfume Genius’ work is behind him, this is undoubtedly a time capsule moment in his career – a special moment in his development before hopefully (for his own sake more so than his listeners) continuing to move in the direction of artistic maturity and personal fulfilment.

Passion Pit - Take A Walk

Now Playing – twice every week, a roundtable of our writers will give their views on some of the recently-released new tracks. It’s as simple as that! If you want to tell us what you think of the song, feel free to leave a comment below.

Track: ‘Take a Walk’ by Passion Pit

Average grade: 5/10

Richard: I’m not really a synth man. So, a synth powered song was always unlikely to satisfy my musical needs. ‘Take a Walk’ starts out quite interestingly with a stampeding drum beat which sticks around throughout the song; though it does get a little jarring when combined with whiney little girly man vocals and a horrendously dour chorus, which should in theory be anthemic, yet comes across quite anodyne. 4/10

Kenny: Not a band I knew ’til now beyond their name. This sounds like it’s got a bit of a message behind it although it’s quite an upbeat treatment for the story of a family/business breakdown. Hear it enough on the radio and you’ll probably find yourself humming it in the shower but it’s not really got any longevity so 5/10

Thomas: Take a Walk exceeded my admittedly low expectations of lightweight indie synthmongers Passion Pit, by being rather bizarrely about the impacts of capitalism and recession on US families. It’s peculiar combination of Hudson Mohawke-esque chunky electro tune and parochial social consciousness.  Quite endearing. 7/10

Stef: Listening to it now it doesn’t sound so bad as I first thought it was. It’s a nice summery, radio pop tune, but it lacks catchiness to really dance to for me (Cut Copy it is not), and the longer the song goes on, the more cheesy it starts to feel to be honest. That chorus in particular just lacks the oomph to keep it going. 4/10

We Are Augustines – by Julia Stryj

By Julia Stryj

May 10, 2012

When I first heard about We Are Augustines and their tough past as individuals and the struggle towards the end of their previous band Pela, I was instantly amazed by the band’s determination and passion. Their surprisingly uplifting – considering it deals with a lot of the bumps that were on singer Billy McCarthy’s road – debut album Rise Ye Sunken Ships is constantly being listened to. Driving through the never ending rain to Glasgow to see them on their first proper headline tour since the album’s release in the UK, I find out that the support band is on at 19:45. That means a relaxed dinner is replaced by a quick take away as I don’t want to miss My Goodness.

Before the guys from Seattle come on stage Beastie Boys are played through the sound system, an obvious tribute to MCA. As soon as My Goodness start playing it’s clear to see and hear why the two-piece are compared to The Black Keys. Singer and guitar player Joel Schneider and drummer Ethan Jacobsen are playing raw Blues Rock’n’Roll in an incredibly loud and controlled way, but it’s still a lot livelier than The Black Keys.

It is a very nice touch that We Are Augustines watch their support act from the back of the audience, and I wonder how much longer they will be able to do this with hardly anybody in the audience noticing or recognising them.

The sold out ABC is filling up, which is great considering the gig was initially planned for a smaller venue, before We Are Augustines walk on stage to their ‘Instrumental’ song. They get right into their set, which covers the whole album plus the song Rise Ye Sunken Ships. After the first two songs most of the audience is infected by the band’s passion and soon it isn’t only the choruses that they are singing back.

This seems to give the already highly charged Brooklyn band even more energy for every song, culminating in ‘Book of James’ that singer Billy McCarthy introduces as a happy song even though it deals with the suicide of his brother James. The audience is doing as they are told and sing and dance along to the incredibly powerful song.

Billy, who keeps saying that he does not want the gig to end, is visibly overwhelmed by the reaction they get from the audience. Before he plays a wonderful version of ‘East Los Angeles’ on his own he tells us that we should never give up on anything we are passionate about referring to Eric and him having played for 10 years together and as We Are Augustines for a little over a year.

Rob Allen and Eric Sanderson return back to their instruments to perform their last two energetic songs, finishing off with ‘Chapel Song’. By that time Billy and Eric are continuously at the front of the stage to be closer to the enthusiastic audience and Eric ends up doing his first stage dive, smiling and playing the guitar while the crowd carried him back to the stage. This sparked Rob Allen on into a powerful drum “solo”, accompanied by Billy’s guitar, and Eric on keyboards, turning the 3-minute single into a 6-minute climax of an unforgettable gig.

All photos by Julia Stryj. More of Julia’s work can be found here.

Savoir Adore

By Matt Churchill (@geetarchurchy)

May 7, 2012

Hailing from Brooklyn, Savoir Adore are in the UK for only the second time in their (relatively) short career. They’re busy cramming five UK dates in to their European tour, which also takes them to Amsterdam and Paris over just eleven days.

Paul Hammer and Deidre Muro, who began working together in 2007 as solo artists, have coerced a likeable and talented trio of musicians to join them and who now provide the backbone of a fully formed quintet. The release of Dreamers, an EP featuring two brand new tracks ‘Dreamers’ and ‘Sea of Gold’ as well as a host of remixes, happily coincides with the tour which kicked off at the cool but sweaty Notting Hill Arts Club earlier this week. The Queen of Hoxton provided a similarly sized, but more open feeling venue for the second night of the tour.

Opening with the atmospheric ‘Sarah’s Secret’, the fifth track of second album Into The Wooded Forest, the band fall into their stride straight away, capturing the audience with one swift grab. “Outside!/We travelled here to start the war” is an opening rallying cry for what’s to become an engrossing and magical set.

Former single ‘We Talk Like Machines’ crashes in with a furore, its hypnotic bass line and flitting glittering keyboard counter melodies cutting through the assembled ensconced mass who were by this time hooked. The flirtingly good ‘Bodies’ rolls on next, with dark blue lights adding a mysterious undertone to the track. The response from the crowd gets louder after each song, and Savoir Adore find themselves getting more and more captured by the response. They are enjoying it and aren’t afraid to let us know it, to see a band so into their art and connected to an audience is a special sight. ‘Loveliest Creature’, one of the oldest songs in the set, is an aggressively beautiful pastoral track which, when played live, has a tender naivety. This contrasts wonderfully with the more fully formed and confident ‘Sea of Gold’, the second track from Dreamers. It duly makes its entrance here, slowing the pace a little and hinting at a the dancier direction of songs to come.

A cry of “we love you Paul!” cuts through the gap in between tracks. The frontman appeared somewhat baffled, amused and humbled by this outcry of adoration, he’d best get used to more of the same if Savoir Adore’s upcoming third record Our Nature is as good as the two new synth driven songs played as the set hit its climax would suggest. Finishing with ‘Dreamers’, Savoir Adore save the newest song in the set to triumphantly close the gig. The crowd have grown into the set with each song and now call for more, yet this is sadly not forthcoming.

If you’re looking to find a group that will flourish you with a cavalcade of glorious harmonies, chilling melodies and addiction-inducing rural soundscapes, Savoir Adore should be your first point of call.

You can download the Dreamers EP in the iTunes store now, and keep an eye out for Our Nature, due to hit stores both virtual and bricks and mortar soon.

By Nick Levine (@nicklevine)

When planning the itinerary for last weekend’s festival of music and culture, it is surprising that despite being a resident of Camden, I have not heard of a number of participating venues taking place at the Crawl.

The journey on Saturday starts late in the afternoon at the Electric Ballroom to see Denmark’s The Rumour Said Fire. Playing to a sparse but gradually filling up room, the band zip through songs from their debut album The Arrogant. Vocalist Søren Lilholt has something of Chris Martin about him due to his designer stubble, chord jacket, thinning hairline and battered acoustic guitar. Musically, The Rumour Said Fire are proponents with a pleasingly sound similar to that of Fleet Foxes, which may yet become camp fire sing-alongs in the future.

Next up, after a short stroll to the Monarch, Echo Lake have the crowd worshipping at the feet of their sonic cathedral. Rolling back the years to the early ninties with their shoegazing sound, they may be revivalists but when the songs are this good it doesn’t really matter. Former single ‘Another Day’ is a particular stand out, and features soaring Nico-esque vocals across a reverb heavy sound.

Echo Lake

Over at Camden Rock, Jehst are working a pretty rambunctious crowd. If anything, they prove the naysayers wrong in their claims that the Crawl is only about indie music. With their unique blend of social dissatisfaction and Brit Hop, they are the heir to Plan B’s voice of the working class. Meanwhile, Icona Pop, the act which follows have a bratty pop sound which harks back to Mel & Kim. Despite a mixed set, future single ‘I Love It’ is a huge electro pop anthem in waiting for drunken dancefloors the land over. The night ends at The Enterprise to see the much vaunted Bastille. Squeezed into a humid and huddled venue, the band have an indie electro sound, and alongside their original material play a couple of covers of nineties Euro pop songs.

Sunday starts at The Lock Tavern to see new Wall Of Sound signing Echoes. Their big electro ballads go down with the punters as well as the Sunday roasts being served up. Heartbeat is a genuine anthem in waiting, and should be considered as a future candidate for England’s Eurovision entry. After a short stroll to St Michael’s church, we find Toy ripping through a set of prog influenced numbers. The setting is apt for them as their huge sound is complimented by the acoustics of the venue.

Bastille

The Colonel Fawcett is one of the newer venues  in Camden and on Sunday was hosted by Back To The Future Music. Highlights included the baggy stylings of Matter People, as well as Spacefight, a band at a very nascent stage but with their rock reggae sound definitely marking them out as an act to keep tabs on. The final stop of the evening was Micachu at the Jazz Café. Despite a very experimental sound, the room was packed to the rafters with a diverse audience. Cutting an androgynous figure, Micachu and her band played a set based on her debut Jewellery and forthcoming longplayer Nothing. Gaz Coombes at the Cuban was a show too far. All gigged out but satisfied, the only option was to return home for a much needed sleep.

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.

The duo themselves, of course, are as fiercely cool yet effortlessly humble as the LP would have you believe. Frequently breaking into amateur dances as the groove wins them, lines like “when you look at the surface / the world is flat / flatter than your ass / flattered that you ask” sound as kooky and sassy delivered eyeball to eyeball as they do on record, being tongue in cheek with a serious conviction. And there’s no quibbling with the uplifting powers of a woman simply standing before you, reminding you to “take a break from life and learn a lesson / I’m just suggesting that you respect the talents that you do have / Or go out and learn a skill”. As on record, the live show finds the duo at their finest, coolest and most compelling when the focus is placed squarely on the vocal interplay – a strength which flourishes brilliantly during the shorter and more tightly coiled of their vignettes, numbers where the vocal lines propel forwards without being burdened by needlessly repeated refrains, segueing between melody and rap with instinctual flair.

But there’s no getting past that backing track, and plenty of the songs don’t sport decent enough vocal chops to transcend it. Even with just the live instrumentation of a skeletal drum kit, support band Young Fathers boasted a sound (if not necessarily a collection of songs) which upstaged THEESatisfaction’s two-dimensional, compressed soundscapes without even trying. As the crowd gets excited and puts handclaps behind ‘queenS’ early in the set, the sense of anticlimax as the crowd waits for an extra layer of groove to kick in – a groove which never materialises –  is palpable. For the entire set, the performance is marred by the nagging desire to have, if not a full blown band, at least a bit of live instrumentation, and although it’s a lazy writer’s cliché to deride a lot of this set for ‘feeling like karaoke’, it’s a hell of a lot less lazy than pausing the pre-programmed set-list on your laptop as you saunter off-stage, primed and ready to start the encore of an alleged soul, blues and old school hip hop revival with the touch of a keypad.

Sea of Bees

By Nick Levine

April 19, 2012

On the last night of their UK tour, Julie Baenziger and her band are 5,373 miles away from their home town of Sacramento. Outside the venue, London has just experienced a torrential downpour of biblical proportions. This should seem like a foreign environment for Sea Of Bees. However, the show is more akin to a homecoming.

Here to promote their sophomore album, Orangefarben, Sea Of Bees are steadily building a word of mouth fanbase through Baenziger’s emotive lyrics and folky charm.

Opening with ‘Skinnybone’,  Baenziger  takes to the stage unaccompanied to perform a solo take on one of the standout tracks from 2011’s Songs For The Ravens. Clad in a sleeveless sweater, and with unkempt hair, Baenziger is every inch the troubadour. No glitz is needed. The honesty and charm of the songs, alongside Baenziger’s sheer kookiness are more than enough to fully engage the sold out audience. Between songs Baenziger interacts with the crowd by giving shout outs to acquaintances and friends, alongside telling them how floored she is by the size of their turnout.

For the rest of the set Baenziger is flanked by a full band. Between songs multi-instrumentalist Amber Padgett provides good banter, with her and Baenziger riffing off of each other to comical effect. As a full band, the sound is a lot beefier but still deliciously intimate. ‘Gone’ is a pretty good representation of Sea Of Bees’ folky pop sound, drifting along in a mid-tempo pace with the chorus providing ample room for Baeenziger to display her vocal theatrics.

Prior to the band’s cover of John Denver’s ‘Jet Plane’, Baenziger explains how her homage to the song was inspired by the journey she has taken since operating under the Sea Of Bees guise. She realized that her musical endeavours had enough momentum to mean that her life was about to dramatically change and that there was no turning back. Her take on the classic is more heartfelt than the original due to it being slowed down, having the effect of the overall sentiment being more sombre.

Finishing the set with two tracks from Song For The Ravens, ‘Gold’ and ‘The Woods’, the latter is perhaps the best showcase of Baenziger’s talents. In demonstrating her stunning vocal range, Baenziger reaches impossibly high notes, contorting her face ever so slightly to get there. Mesmerising stuff.