Peter Gabriel - New Blood

By Stuart Anderson

Although seen recently more as a music industry innovator rather than as an artist and performer, New Blood finds Peter Gabriel following in the footsteps of fellow ’80s eccentric and collaborator Kate Bush and revisiting, recalibrating and re-releasing highlights from his considerable back catalogue.

However, rather than merely patching up production deficiencies, unearthing previously unreleased songs or reinterpreting tracks that never really satisfied, Gabriel has rerecorded a sizeable chunk of material without guitars or drums but with a full orchestra. Conceptually then, New Blood is not a record seeking to rewrite history or redress lost opportunities; rather it signifies Gabriel’s exploration of the sound palette that an exclusively orchestral arrangement affords. In his own words, Gabriel is excited to “work with the dynamics and extremes…still and stark at one point, fat, fleshy and emotional at another”.

If one wonders why Gabriel chose not to write an album of wholly new material rather than reworking past glories, it seems he drew inspiration from his earlier Scratch My Back project, a song exchange concept album on which he covered songs by artists such as David Bowie, Paul Simon, Elbow and Radiohead and invited them to cover a song of his for the second part. (It seems Radiohead were particularly unhappy with Gabriel’s version of ‘Street Spirit (Fade Out)’ and have declined the offer to partake in the follow-up record, which is a shame as a Radiohead version of ‘Exposure’ really would be quite wonderful.) Whilst preparing songs for the associated tour, Gabriel and arranger John Metcalfe decided to expand on the half-dozen songs that made up the set and release an album proper.

And although Gabriel states that the tracks were chosen in an effort to “make the most interesting journey”, rather than just cherry picking the hits, the record is comprised of a more than fair proportion of his most popular cuts – ‘Sledgehammer’, ‘Steam’ and ‘Biko’ excepted. Thankfully, and as a special bonus, ‘Solsbury Hill’ makes it, but only because of the volume of requests received for its inclusion.

But the oft-asked questions that greet the release of any Gabriel project remain: what does it mean and does it work? Time for oft-spouted answers: I’m not completely sure and yes and no.

The coruscating and see-sawing strings that punctuate ‘The Rhythm of the Heat’ and ‘Darkness’ are reminiscent of Hans Zimmer’s “Soviet-Bloc chords”, those huge, fat orchestral riffs that coarse through the recent Batman movie soundtracks (particularly The Dark Knight), though the former is shorn of their palpable malice. However, the unsettling power of the songs is bolstered by a stripped-down vocal performance from Gabriel in the former and wondrous brass and woodwind notes in the latter.

Indeed, the vocals play a role as least equal in importance to the orchestral arrangements. At 61 years old, Gabriel’s voice has mellowed somewhat, and the often sharp, nasal edge it once had has been blunted and oxidised by time. In some cases, it is hypnotic; the soft, almost spoken vocal that opens ‘Intruder’ is beguiling but soon breaks and gives way to dense and potent strings, hyperbolic and pounding percussive notes and nightmarish scratches, whilst the emphatic and forceful instructions in the chorus of the of ‘Digging in the Dirt’ are as potent and as downright scary as ever.

Stripped of its electronic shackles, ‘Wallflower’ becomes a hauntingly beautiful lullaby; the delicate piano and violin harmonise as wonderfully as the poignant vocals, but elsewhere, and it might seem an obvious criticism, ‘Don’t Give Up’ really does suffer due to the absence of Kate Bush. Instead, the female part is provided by Norwegian Ane Brun and it lacks the warm, smoky and burned sugar flavour that Bush’s timbre bestows.

The John-Cusack-ghettoblaster-held-aloft classic ‘In Your Eyes’ is lovingly treated; in fact, it’s exquisite. The exuberant, undulating strings at first seem to jar with the memory of the material, but as soon as Gabriel kicks into the verse, the orchestration is stripped back and only gentle bass notes support the vocal. And, right on cue, those pulsating strings come right back at you when the middle eight and the skin tingling chorus return; only now they’re representative of a celebration, a glorious and gleeful rendering of joy, of love and of completion; it gels wonderfully.

The twinkling percussion and sweeping strings transform ‘Mercy Street’ almost into a hymn, whilst ‘Red Rain’ is glossy and brassy, with Gabriel’s harmonised vocal still packing a powerful punch. Yet, as good as the orchestration is here, the driving and shuddering programming and bass notes of the original are missed and the track lacks a little verve.

Indeed, whilst the orchestration is wonderfully stereophonic with the arrangements neatly observed and separated, Gabriel’s voice often sounds lifeless and flat; more often than not, it is mixed bang in the middle of the channels and, on occasion, is overwhelmed by the pulsating sonic landscape that envelops it.

‘Solsbury Hill’ is a fantastic closer and a highlight of the album. The single violin that skips high over the resonant piano part is joyous and provides an almost fairytale ending, despite the occasional melancholy of the lyric.

New Blood is only the ninth studio album that Peter Gabriel has released since walking out on Genesis and setting out his own stall in 1977 and, on this evidence, there’s no doubt that Gabriel remains as innovative, as passionate and as inspired as he ever has. However, as much as one might enjoy New Blood (and enjoyable it is) the overwhelming desire of any Peter Gabriel fan is for him to complete and release I/O, rather than tinkering with past glories. However, as a stopgap to that event, this’ll do very nicely indeed.

By Stef Siepel

On the first proper day of Fall – rain, cold, the whole shebang – The Field will try and make the sizeable crowd at the small Ekko venue forget the horrid weather. The Field, headed by Axel Willner, has recently released the album Looping State of Mind, one that has garnered a lot of positive buzz. So much so that the floor at the Ekko is filled with people, most of them probably somewhere in their twenties. A lot of them are they who you expect to be there, for The Field is not necessarily a band that you know if you are not into music (and if that is not true, where the heck were the other people? Some extra bodies are always welcome for a night out, no?). The music is a bit minimal, bit veering on the techno side of the electronic music spectrum. But like the title of the new album suggests, he can loop anyone’s socks off.

Willner is accompanied by a bass player on his left, a drummer on his right, and two glasses of red wine next to his gear. If you think the bass player and drummer are there just to flesh out the sound of Willner a tad you might just be pleasantly surprised to hear there is some real gusto in both the bass and the drums. They are clearly audible and certainly do not take a backseat to whatever magic Willner is working. So you’ve got the beat Willner is producing, you’ve got the drums (whether it is full on drumming or ticking the hi-hat or whatever), and you’ve got a rolling bass. All three provide a layer, so you can pick and choose whatever is taking your fancy at that moment and have your feet tap/dance to that. Don’t have me make you believe it are three separate entities though, the three instruments work very well together too.

The Field starts with something off of their new album, and it sounds good. The band is not fixated on Looping State of Mind though, and they even veer to their debut by playing opener ‘Over the Ice’, which leads to a rapturous response from the crowd. The first few rows are dancing avidly while in the back the people are more sedate in their physical reaction to the music, though with the hooting and hollering after each song they are sure to get their love across for this tight band. The band is even getting so much love that the bass player and Axel Willner exchange quite a few timid smiles, whereas the drummer leans over his drum kit and tries to enthuse the audience by enthusiastically screaming and gesturing back at them (which, admittedly, sounds more like him picking a fight than anything else, but it was positive energy, let me assure you that).

The big thing is, the band is tight. The beats are flowing, the bass lines are rolling, and the drums are thumping; there is always something you can hang on to. Not only that, but they are king at looping those things whilst knowing when to start changing it up slightly so it doesn’t get monotonous. The only minus is that the gig might’ve been slightly too short with them playing about an hour. And it sure felt as quite a short hour as well, as the time went by like that, and you just imagine someone snapping his fingers on cue. The band manages to loop quite a few of the audience into a state of hypnosis. They might not win the award for most talkative band of the century, but talking would probably just break their magical hold on those out on the floor anyway. When they are looping stuff like this, temporary captivity isn’t that bad a state to be in.

The Raghu Dixit Project - photo by Natalie Shaw

Following the raucous and utterly trollied feel of T In The Park, the ‘brow’ of my summer of festivals made a giant leap upwards – not geographically, pedants! – to Latitude: the world’s finest in posh festivals.

It’s a resplendent site, is Henham Park; it has a lake, brightly-coloured sheep, knitting tents, modern art and poetry, cheese and wine for crying out loud – but not to fear, for what it’s also got is an excellent line-up and a brazen, excitable atmosphere.

The crowd is notably different at Latitude, for starters in its placid politeness. There’s silence in most zones of the audience while a band’s on, no matter the time of day – and the sound is incredible throughout the festival, loud and bassy where it demands and soft and reverby for the likes of The Leisure Society.  And the highlights, as the setting and the crowd have set the scene for, are truly special. They’re to be found on the smaller stages, a neat walk across a lake from The National, Foals and Bright Eyes – who are all pretty spectacular – at Henham Park.

The intensely likeable Raghu Dixit Project (all the way from Bengaluru, southern India) are bold and entirely transfixing, with Raghu Dixit himself turning a sleepy 12pm crowd into a triumphant party. He’s now India’s biggest non-Bollywood artist, a former scientist who marries eastern and western folk tradition with some massive great hooks. There’s an electric violin and pogo-dancing in ‘Hey Bhangawan’ as the set proceeds, lying just underneath Dixit’s incredible vocal which browses a catalogue of styles without settling.

Another triumph is Glasser, a beautiful surprise – her 2010 album Ring suggests something colder and more glacial than her hypnotic performance provides. It’s minimal in how Cameron Mesirow silkily glides rather than does star-jumps through ‘Tremel’, but not the ice-box I’d imagined. It’s cooing and flowing and theoretical, but sweetly swoony too.

Dels is similarly excellent. ‘Trumalump’ is euphoric but there’s as much darkness in Dels’ blustery flow as there is fun. The way it’s disguised in a fearless verse-hook-verse-repeat structure is fascinating, as if the Ipswich rapper thought about how to release his tricks as he was compiling his set of super-clever songs. As the set goes on, the ill dissonance of ‘Droogs’ being in the same set as huge anthem ‘Shapeshift’ makes this Ipswich rapper a fascinating concept indeed. Anyone who uses the word “exfoliate” (on ‘Eating Clouds’) as a metaphor for ridding oneself of ‘the competition’ has got to be worth it.

Cocknbullkid comes alive on the Lake Stage, and Anita Blay is playing the sort of show that my dreams predicted – the songs are bold and bright, more exaggerated than they feel on her album Adulthood. Her self-referencing neuroses on ‘Asthma Attack’ fill the air, she’s aloof as a proper popstar should be and it feels like I’m at a proper-big concert. And boy, she can sing.

Thank ye, Latitude. And now for a mud-free bed…

Muso’s Guide is working with Vodafone VIP across festival season, be it live-blogging, video-interviewing artists, Tweeting (we’re at @musosguide) or reviewing weekends in handy snapshot form.

Vodafone VIP is part of the VIP programme for customers, and Muso’s Guide is taking on official music blogger status at some of the summer’s hottest festivals. There are currently competitions running to win tickets to Latitude, T in the Park and Wireless, with more to come over the summer.

The Vodafone VIP experience extends further too – there’s a Vodafone VIP area across fashion, festivals and Formula 1 over the summer, a viewing platform giving customers shelter and brilliant views,  a recharging truck capable of charging 2,000 phones at once and selected apps allowing festival-goers to see what’s on and where, locate their tent via GPS and  plan schedules for their weekends.

Visit http://www.vodafone.co.uk/vip to find out more.

T in the Park

We bring you the round up from our next stop in an 11-festival calendar with Vodafone VIP – Scotland’s pride, T in the Park festival.

For those who presume that a festival containing 70,000 ‘revellers’ (as the local papers will have you picture it) in a giant muddy field can’t possibly have the excitement of their favourite band headlining a venue in their town, T in the Park is a strong challenger.

Many of the same acts are filling the upper echelons of 2011’s big-draw festivals, it must be said, but there’s something different in the air around Glenrothes [Ed: or Kinross - as pointed out by the commenters below (sorry!)] - it’s a sense of hysteria, theatricality and excitement that spreads farther out than just the rows in front of the barriers.

It’s not just in the crowd that the performance button’s been switched up to maximum, but the stages too. Metronomy are in their perfect setting: a dark tent with crowds thronging towards the front. They’re a smoother machine than ever on this showing, and uncompromising with each note – there’s nothing missed, but with The English Riviera’s warmer tunes not one bit as clinical as non-fans may have had it down for around the release of Nights Out. This sounds overly defensive: the point I’m trying to make is that if there are a more startling incredible live band out there than Metronomy, then we’re yet to find them.

Diplo’s set is another of Sunday’s highlights, with snippets of the producer’s work with Beyonce and M.I.A. turned up to full blast alongside crunching, lurching cuts from Major Lazer and Hudson Mohawke – the womp and wobble of ‘Pon De Floor’ shakes up T’s raviest tent into a far later setting than its 6pm ought to feel. The set’s attention-deficit makes it seep into at such an early time, but it’s a stormer nonetheless

Arctic Monkeys’ Friday headline sits sour-faced at the opposite end of the scale, for lack of show – the sound in most of the area around the main stage is muddied and distorted, disguising the variation between their most raucous material from the debut and their most contemplative – as the music’s spun out ever since. 2manydjs whip proceedings up into a frenzy earlier, but it’s Saturday and Sunday where T in the Park comes alive.

Beyonce has members of the audience in tears as she turns on the style and flicks the switch on that incredible, effortless voice and stage-show – all without even breaking into a sweat. It’s difficult for non-showmen Coldplay to follow that, but a firework display and a rousing ‘Fix You’ keeps the crowd’s spirits raised.

Gerard Way’s My Chemical Romance blast out ‘It’s Not Okay (I Promise)’ early on Sunday, recreating teenage rebellion in the desperately longing way that only they can – it’s not a nostalgia that brings back anything as necessary as Pulp’s, as Jarvis Cocker reminds us just why music needs characters to get fans pro-active.

In spite of Pulp’s mere hour on-stage, Cocker emerges out of the shadows wide-eyed, toying playfully with the crowd by throwing Twixes into the front row, but more than that – praising the SNP victory and rousing the huge crowd into one collective, together. If you put N-Dubz’s instructive “put your hands in the air” together with Ke$ha’s filthy-girl cynical tunes and time-intensified fame, they don’t come close to the level of popstar that Cocker performing ‘Babies’, ‘This Is Hardcore’, ‘Disco 2000’ and ‘Common People’ have him achieve. It’s easy for time to erase just how consummate a frontman Cocker is until he’s on-stage in your horizon, when it all becomes apparent. Pulp’s reunion is essential, not only as an exercise in nostalgia but an exercise to many of today’s top-drawer acts – acts who are shy of conflict, or opinion and of spontaneity.

Muso’s Guide is working with Vodafone VIP across festival season, be it live-blogging, video-interviewing artists, Tweeting (we’re at @musosguide) or reviewing weekends in handy snapshot form.

Vodafone VIP is part of the VIP programme for customers, and Muso’s Guide is taking on official music blogger status at some of the summer’s hottest festivals. There are currently competitions running to win tickets to Latitude, T in the Park and Wireless, with more to come over the summer.

The Vodafone VIP experience extends further too – there’s a Vodafone VIP area across fashion, festivals and Formula 1 over the summer, a viewing platform giving customers shelter and brilliant views,  a recharging truck capable of charging 2,000 phones at once and selected apps allowing festival-goers to see what’s on and where, locate their tent via GPS and  plan schedules for their weekends.

Visit http://www.vodafone.co.uk/vip to find out more.

A happy customer enjoying the Vodafone VIP viewing platform at Hard Rock Calling

Muso’s Guide is working with Vodafone VIP across festival season – here’s the latest in our jaunts:

Nostalgia is a destructive beast, particularly when it stultifies engagement with what the present-day brings. What’s more, it can blind-side people into glamourised over-emoting of what may never have been how they recall it. And it’s with this kind of admittedly dubious overthinking that I approach Hyde Park’s gates for the third day of Hard Rock Calling, longing for more personality and drama in exchange for the impressive tally of nothingness racked up over the festival’s first two days.

Essentially what the day brings is a gloriously warm, melody-stuffed day of ‘90s FM radio. It’s as if the past 10 years haven’t happened, even down to the last detail of our celebrity-spot of the day: co-host of Radio 1’s Sunday Surgery in the year 2000, Emma B. This patronising ‘study’-type analysis of a day of music is entirely selfish – it’s the first day I’ve seen focused purely on music from my lifetime that I wasn’t the right age for. It’s like running headfirst into a great-big chorus. Given it’s not a “hard rock” one, but sue them. If it’s all about the raucous crowd pleasers and the drum fills (that one bar in Lighthouse Family’s ‘Lifted’) that make me think of the ‘fill’ button on my old Casio keyboard, I’m happy.

Vodafone VIP charging truck at Hard Rock Calling

The sheer joy in bouncing directly between the Pepsi Max stage and the main stage for Barenaked Ladies, Adam Ant, Mike and The Mechanics, Stevie Nicks, The Lighthouse Family and Rod Stewart sweeps up the undercurrent of suspicion and spits it over the fence. The sunny loungey riffs from kings of “everything’s gonna be OK” The Lighthouse Family in a packed-out tent of ladies trying to control their heckling, drunk husbands is a worlds apart from a music critic’s usual milieu. For instance, rarely has the word “sublime” been more aptly-fitting to a song than Mike and the Mechanics’ ‘Living Years’. Stevie Nicks tears through a set of giant pop songs like ‘Gold Dust Woman’, from Rumours. The heartbreak of ‘Landslide’ and the buoyancy of ‘Dreams’ are perfect in the blazing heat. It’s the perfect backdrop for the throng and force of her rasp, and it’s hard to imagine that vocal coming out of a younger person.

Rod Stewart and his three costume changes are a rousing success, and he pulls out all the stops for the 50,000 people out in London’s blazing sunshine. Ronnie Wood takes to the guitar for ‘Maggie May’, and The Faces’ own ‘Stay With Me’ – and the mood is one of intense joy. And on ‘Young Turks’, Stevie Nicks returns to the stage to make a guest appearance. The covers from Stewart’s Great American Songbook series are mixed heartily with the rock classics like ‘Baby Jane’, and even though it’s a two-hour set probably years in the making it feels exciting and personal. There’s a still of his four-month-old baby son Aiden, and he even starts kicking footballs out into the crowd during ‘Hot Legs’. It’s a welcome sense of fun after the first two days’ flatness.

The crowd on Saturday at Hard Rock Calling

This is a festival in the lightest sense of the word – there’s a Tube home and a bed between days. But as far as cramming as much into one day as possible, Hard Rock Calling wins.

For a review of Friday and Saturday (The Killers, Kaiser Chiefs, Bon Jovi), see here

Muso’s Guide is working with Vodafone VIP across festival season, be it live-blogging, video-interviewing artists, Tweeting (we’re at @musosguide) or reviewing weekends in handy snapshot form.

Vodafone VIP is part of the VIP programme for customers, and Muso’s Guide is taking on official music blogger status at some of the summer’s hottest festivals. There are currently competitions running to win tickets to Latitude, T in the Park and Wireless, with more to come over the summer.

The Vodafone VIP experience extends further too – there’s a Vodafone VIP area across fashion, festivals and Formula 1 over the summer, a viewing platform giving customers shelter and brilliant views,  a recharging truck capable of charging 2,000 phones at once and selected apps allowing festival-goers to see what’s on and where, locate their tent via GPS and  plan schedules for their weekends.

Visit http://www.vodafone.co.uk/vip to find out more.

Hard Rock Calling

Muso’s Guide is working with Vodafone VIP across festival season – here’s the latest in our jaunts:

The weekend’s triple-header opens with headliners who wouldn’t immediately bring to mind the “hard rock” guns; Nevada’s The Killers have been away and still sing about boyfriends who look like girlfriends, indie rock ‘n’ roll and ponder whether we’re ‘human’ or one of Rudolph’s friends. So far, so fey – but even through the rain, Brandon Flowers’ fans pull through, gently swaying to the indie-disco of years gone by. The keyboards’ datedness sound double-dated in 2011, and unfortunately the Kaiser Chiefs don’t fare much better.

It’s the Leeds band’s first big show since releasing their new you-choose-the-tracklist album The Future Is Medieval, and even they don’t seem fully there. There’s an extra that’s missing, the vacancy palpable in their comparatively blank stares; there’s nowhere near the same fury and excitement in their adorably laddish chants that there was when Employment was unleashed, with all its giddy silliness.

The second day of Hard Rock Calling is less of a washout, but still ultimately lacklustre but for an impressively ferocious performance from Evaline in the Pepsi Max tent early on. Frontman Richard Perry turned on the performance-switch and the entire band were transfixing; with over-dramaticism and bodies flung around, it’s not only a perfect energy but one backed by music. ‘There There’ takes an Interpol-esque driving bass and lumps it in with the sweatiest, grittiest drumming seen this side of The National. This is a band to make you dust off your guitars. There’s more ‘want’ in Evaline’s set than the many far more established bands on the day’s line-up.

Bon Jovi’s mammoth three-hour headline set (how do you drum for three hours, solid?) is one-paced, short on humour but of course, packed with hits. ‘It’s My Life’, ‘You Give Love A Bad Name’, ‘Livin’ On A Prayer’, ‘Bad Medicine’ – they’re all there, and the screaming masses have the time of their lives. It would’ve been a welcome move if Jon and his friends acknowledged their own silliness, but instead we are left flat by a repetition of the same power chords to a slightly different tempo. A cover of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ tips the set over into the deep end, and spontaneity doesn’t feel like an option here – it’s just one of Bon Jovi’s stops on a check-in/check-out world tour.

For a review of Sunday (Rod Stewart, Lighthouse Family, Mike and the Mechanics), see here

Muso’s Guide is working with Vodafone VIP across festival season, be it live-blogging, video-interviewing artists, Tweeting (we’re at @musosguide) or reviewing weekends in handy snapshot form.

Vodafone VIP is part of the VIP programme for customers, and Muso’s Guide is taking on official music blogger status at some of the summer’s hottest festivals. There are currently competitions running to win tickets to Latitude, T in the Park and Wireless, with more to come over the summer.

The Vodafone VIP experience extends further too – there’s a Vodafone VIP area across fashion, festivals and Formula 1 over the summer, a viewing platform giving customers shelter and brilliant views,  a recharging truck capable of charging 2,000 phones at once and selected apps allowing festival-goers to see what’s on and where, locate their tent via GPS and  plan schedules for their weekends.

Visit http://www.vodafone.co.uk/vip to find out more.

Its Monday once again which means its time for a trawl through this week’s harvest of singles in search of something just off the beaten track worth a listen.

The History Of Apple Pie
You’re So Cool
When listening through ‘You’re So Cool’ you find yourself immediately transported back to the memory of some sleepy beach barbecue smouldering under a rosey orange sun burnt to the horizon line. You passed out listening to an old Idlewild CD and Belinda Butcher singing ‘Drive It All Over Me’. You woke up drunk and balled up in a bundle of stolen wooden deck chairs. From its opening, throaty guitar chugging, ‘You’re So Cool’ projects a pleasingly lazy, sun-bleached vibe that clings to your throat like the saturated, humid smog of summer air. It’s this almost visual and falsely nostalgic quality that makes for such an engrossingly pleasant listen. The cover isn’t half bad either, looking like the front to an romantic comedy starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt or similar. ‘Your’re So Cool’ is out on Roundtable.

Younghusband
Carousel
This sandy lensed vision of a summer in denim shirts and slo-mo sunshine continues with Younghusband’s ‘Carousel’, out this week on Too Pure. The entire track feels as if blended out into a fluttering wash of ringing guitar, murmured vocals and sharp, snappy drums, the latter of which slices through the haze to provide some welcome shape to the floating ambience overhead. The result is a breathy, atmospheric smudge of a song that ebbs, flows and swells with its bassy foundations, with the momentum often feeling quite bottom heavy. It’s charmingly understated and enjoyable enough and although not immediately memorable, it does leave you lingering over the replay button for another run through. You may not find yourself mumbling along to ‘Carousel’ after you’ve put it down, but your ears will yearn for its shimmering warmth once it’s gone.

Metronomy
The Bay
Metronomy’s latest has a far more exact and clean sound in comparison. ‘The Bay’ is a song beating from a synthetic heart and every element seems to pulsate to a bass drum that snatches up mouthfuls of sound with every beat. This thumping core gives a solid platform for Metronomy to build on, allowing for some unashamedly pop flourishes. From the near-ear sweeps that fly through each transition, possibly the closet thing we have to the star wipe in music, to a nigh-funk bass line that snaps back and forth like an old soulman’s crotch at the care home disco. The vocals feel well measured and unobtrusive even manage to turn an inability to pronounce Berlin correctly into a little knotted, hidden treasure you look forward to with each return to the chorus. ‘The Bay’ isn’t so awfully effective that it could be considered a guilty pleasure but there’s an element of near-cheese that makes it so much more intoxicating. Destined for dance floors across the land.

Balto
The Railyard
Absorbing from its outset, ‘The Railyard’ contains an elegance missing from the other tracks covered this week. Balto have created a richness through their writing craft and balanced arrangement that is both beautifully sincere and thoughtfully considered, not to mention effective. The vocals feel framed by the instrumentation, adding space or texture to emphasise and encourage the voices which are clearly the focal point of the track. ‘The Railyard’ lingers with you after listening and, with such pretty production that brings out the true colours of the vocalists and instruments, you’ll keep coming back for more. If such an accolade were to exist, this would be track of the week.

Patricia Vonne
Cut From The Same Cloth
Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarrantino are supposedly fans of Patricia Vonne (her music has appeared on the soundtracks to ‘From Dusk Till Dawn’, ‘Once Upon A Time In Mexico’ and ‘Hellride’) but perhaps it was her ability to ape a second-rate dusty country sound, perfect for the wild west B-movie aesthetic both so often dabble in, rather than the substance of her music that earned her credits. ‘Cut From The Same Cloth’ sounds like it was almost written for the opening titles of a regional US cop show, or a bar scene in one of the aforementioned director’s films. It feels rigid, disconnected and sterile and, in terms of the average and generic, cut from the same cloth.

Weezer's Rivers Cuomo, from near the front of main stage: atop a sign, below a screen

August 28-29, 2010

Leeds Festival is a sheer delight. The crowd isn’t necessarily dead excited for one band in particular, more enthralled by the sheer amount of things at its disposal.

(The following review ignores the Friday because, unfortunately, I wasn’t there. Sadface-”boo” me.)

Saturday’s main-stage bill is killing me (not good ‘kill’) with its entire line-up of  ‘dumb’ schtick, skate-punk, nu-metal and rap metal FUSION (perish that thought) from the super-late ’90s/early ’00s, bravado, and jokes about wanking and Mexicans.  An attempt to make myself more informed will inevitably be met with criticism that Reading/Leeds’s selection of bands within said header is A Good One, but I can’t tell my Limp Bizkits from my Good Charlottes. I last just 10 minutes through the way of Blink-182’s headline set, because I don’t understand what it feels like to jump around as instinct – even though I realise how prematurely aged that makes me sound. Are brains less instinctive to use? Were they even more unfashionable back then, when this was big?

I was rathermore into Darren Hayes, Artful Dodger and my Pure Garage I compilation at the time you see, so I can’t remember. And I therefore have a total lack of nostalgia for the Saturday bill. “But it’s Weezer,” I hear you cry. “But it’s a melody, just like Darren Hayes’s,” says your mate. You’re both right; Weezer are great fun live, and I forget my preoccupation just like a good girl oughta. Frontman Rivers Cuomo climbs on everything, crashing and falling like the class joker… and a complete and utter buffoon.

I’d probably be more “but it’s Weezer” myself if I held Pinkerton on the pedestal most music-loving people seem to, but without that it’s little more than a half-fun/half hideously valueless “sure you’re still having a mid-life crisis dude, but where’s your self-respect?”-type situation. “And where’s yours, you Savage Garden loving dimwit?” I hear you cry; I’m not sure, truth be told, but can conclude that I need more – and needed more, at 15 – than fulfilment in a 10-second space.

Back in my comfort zone, it’s immense to see Magnetic Man getting all amazing as the sun sets, and the audience’s reflexes at their danciest. And it’s more than the 10 seconds that the music reverberates for, as the beats are met with a veritable quake by the entire packed tent. I’m excited by just how simultaneously The People head-bop, raise arms, and “lose it” to the familiar doof/lurching-doof rhythms. Bass drums pound, settle and infiltrate with such force that I ponder whether Skream, Benga and Artwork possess Godly powers. And that’s excitement, m’lord.

Summer Camp put on another of the weekend’s great shows, with Jeremy Warmsley and Elizabeth Sankey – now without the band – as shiny and adorable as they are on their records. ‘Veronica Sawyer’ is just beautiful, and not-on-record ‘1989’ particularly shines through; the romance and twinkles of their sound are presented with a stride that’s getting more charming each time I see them play. The choruses are so crashing that they could – and should – be loved by hundreds of thousands.

And now for the gratuitous MAN-rock vs. LADY-pop angle of the piece, wherein I can carefully disguise the gap between the music I was brought up on, with – the bill. Queens Of The Stone Age‘d be a force akin to the power trio of Magnetic Man if Josh Homme’s eyes weren’t busy rolling back and forth during their most manly of manly numbers, ‘No One Knows’. Marina and the Diamonds gives me more in the way of danger… if danger is thought of more as steadfastly-stuck-to tautologies.

Ms. Diamandis a superstar regardless of who she’s terrorising, and ‘Shampain’ is her gold-card. Her machine-like demeanour isn’t new, but to see it hit the sycophantic crowd exactly where it hurts is super-special. Her preposterously self-obsessed songs come to life through an icy, impenetratable wall that I’m happy to sit behind. Marina wears the pop star outfit, does the pop star poses and really gets the fame game.

The pleasures continue with Yeasayer, save a mid-set lull because it’s just too darn much to be that damn obvious for so flipping long. Blood Red Shoes have a ruddy great time later on, and I do too. Everything Everything are all I could wish for at their secret-ish set to an enthusiastic crowd late on Sunday, but I’ll spare you that and direct you to the 1,800-word spectacular that is my words on Man Alive, instead. Hell, I’ve been writing for a long time now.

Thanks Leeds, it’s been fun. And a special thanks to Gaymers for hosting us, and Avis for the means to drive up at the last-minute.

hudson mohawke

July 31, 2010

I get off the bus early, mindlessly following some scenesters on the assumption they are Field Day bound. My assumption is misplaced, adding half an hour to my journey, but not misguided. Field Day annually entertains a  few thousand hipsters with an enviable line up of musical innovators,  vanguard pop and  fairground rides. However, with the last three years blighted by sound issues, ridiculous queues and the unforgiving weather – murmurs of style over substance have been rippling through Victoria Park.

My first port of call is the Blogger’s Delight tent for London/Brighton experimentalists Mount Kimbie. As the duo wander on, my friend turns to me and says “I love bands that appear to have stepped straight out of their bedroom and onto the stage.”A valid observation. Yet behind their charmingly humble demeanour rumble bone-shaking beats. Unashamedly emotive, Mount Kimbie layer haunting textures and glacial, glitchy complexity onto their two step skeleton.  Add a blistering death metal guitar solo, a cymbal and a live snare and you have whimsical dub-step for the post-step generation.

Stumbling out into the summer sun (fourth time lucky on the weather front then) I blink my way to the main stage for The Fall.  Last time I saw the Mancunians, I was in the photographers’ pit, sans ear plugs, and narrowly avoided Mark E Smith stepping off the stage and onto my head. Incredible as it was, my ears were ringing for three days and this time I decid to keep a safe distance. However this highlighted the common Field Day criticism: although the quality of sound has improved, the outside stages are still not loud enough. The shambolic musings of the post-punk  pioneer simply do not carry at such low frequencies. The conversation soon turns to whether or not Mark E Smith shops at M and S and I decide to stick to the tents.

Intending to look in on Warp’s golden boy on the way to Caribou, I linger on the fringes of Hudson Mohawke for the first few genre hopping minutes. A proponent of Glasgow’s Aquacrunk scene, Hud Mo’s fractured bleeps soon draw me in. By Ooops, a track which de-constructs Tweet’s Oops (Oh My) and reassembles it over a bass line filthier than the lyrics of the original, my thoughts of moving on are forgotten. It’s always nice to have a choice of rhythms to dance to and this audience is dancing on every pivot going.

My final destination is the Bugged Out stage for electronic trio Moderat. After a seven year hiatus Modeselektor and Apparat are collaborating again. Under the monocle of Moderat, the Berliners synergise the former’s aggressive beats with the latter’s immersive ambience, to epic effect.  Their tumultuous, all encompassing sound unite a good-natured audience in delirious appreciation. The vast improvements in sound from previous years are palpable as thumps and glitches ricochet within swathes of glorious sound. As the head-liners draw to an intoxicating  close I receive the text : “plano awrtfrward? Can you meet me behind the black trimelap?”. Evidently I am not the only one overcome by the heady combination. Field Day’s style has now found it’s substance.

Arcade Fire

July 7, 2010

Ladies and Gents, the Arcade Fire are back. Returning to London for a ‘secret’ show at the Hackney Empire, the anticipation is huge. The band is using this gig to road test songs from their upcoming LP, The Suburbs, and boy oh boy, it sounds like a fantastic record.

Kicking off with ‘Ready To Start’ and ‘Modern Man’ the new tracks retain the anthemic style of past efforts with a few subtleties thrown in, like the jaunty piano on title track ‘The Suburbs’. The fresh material seems to go down well with an enamored audience who, in all honesty, would lap up anything thrown at them. These guys know how to work a crowd.

Frontman Win Butler stands tall and channels confidence as his comrades run wildly around him, employing drum sticks to bash anything in sight. From pianos to chairs to fellow band members, everything on stage takes a beating.

‘We Used To Wait’ is the pick of the new songs, with thumping verses, a soaring chorus and lyrics that echo the crowd’s sentiments. “We used to wait for it/Now we’re screaming/Sing the chorus again”. It ends in Butler offering himself up to the seething mass of bodies before him. He is devoured graciously, mic stand and all.

With a capacity in the region of 2 000, the Empire is as about as intimate a show as these guys are likely to play. Their upcoming tour features consecutive nights at New York City’s famous Madison Square Garden, a venue with a capacity of 20 000 punters. Not to mention a return trip to the UK to headline Reading and Leeds Festivals in August.

Understandably, it’s when the band delves into their back catalogue that the place really goes crazy. From their debut album, Funeral, ‘Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)’ is even more immense live than it is on record with its grizzly guitar exploding through Butler’s vocals. Unrelenting distortion follows the track and leads straight into ‘Rebellion (Lies)’ to give the set its climax.

The evening is capped with a four track encore that includes the bands staple closer ‘Wake Up’. The amount of energy poured into this song has the pit heaving, the gallery shaking and the building’s foundations considering defeat. As the cameraman turns his lens to the crowd, images of ecstatic fans, throughout the Empire, are projected onto a large screen. You’d be hard pressed to find a happier crowd.

What stands out, however, is the limited amount of material played from the outfits sophomore album, Neon Bible. The decision seems justified given the hysteria that tracks from Funeral generate but it will be interesting to see what songs are being played in a few years time. The success of Funeral shackles Butler and co, who no doubt hope The Suburbs will break them free from the irony that a debut album about death and commiseration continues to define them. Tonight, though, is a celebration of past accomplishments and an upcoming album that may just change all of that.