Fleet Foxes @ The Junction 11/11/08

Fleet Foxes played to a sell-out crowd at the Junction on Tuesday night. Their self-titled LP needs little introduction, but any fear that it might translate into anything less than an entrancing live experience was utterly quashed on a night where the band gave about as generous and memorable live set as a band with such a slim discography could possibly give.

It’s unfortunate that I can’t really say the same for the support act J Tillman, who is in fact the Fleet Foxes drummer. The guy’s not short of charisma or humour, but it’s a shame that he couldn’t purvey that in his music: just one man playing fairly sparse acoustic guitar to the same plodding tempo over and over. At least he may have a future career in comedy. Oh yeah, and possibly in Fleet Foxes too.

Fleet Foxes were a marvel. Opening seamlessly with the intro of Sun Giant bleeding into Sun It Rises and a rollicking Ragged Wood, the band instantly portrayed a great understanding of how to provide their songs with enough instrumental, vocal and percussive flourishes to distinguish them from their album counterparts. The sound balance between Robin Pecknold’s acoustic pickings and Skye Skjelset’s sinewy guitar lines was perfect throughout. And then of course there was those vocal harmonies, those wonderful vocal harmonies.

Not that Robin Pecknold is incapable of holding things up by himself. Halfway through the set, the rest of the band left the stage, allowing Pecknold to shine with the stunning Oliver James. Its intricate pickings followed by the way those final vocals seem to hang there forever were a reminder after J Tillman’s deathly dull ramblings of what one man and an acoustic guitar can achieve. A similar sense of awe was achieved during the encore with Tiger Mountain Peasant Song.

When the band rejoined the stage for the main set, Skye Skjelset awkwardly announced a marriage proposal for one lucky(?) member of the audience. It was a night of considerable interaction with the crowd, not all of it good, owing to certain members of the crowd insisting on making idiots of themselves. The band handled it all admirably, however, and not without a fair share of humour. As they closed out the night with a personal fave Blue Ridge Mountains, I took heart from knowing this was just one of many sold-out nights they had played on this tour. That a band that plays music this blissful and distinctive can attract the commercial attention to match the critical acclaim gives me some faith in the human race in general. It’s just a shame that lewd, heckling comments such as “did you f*ck him?” go some way towards erasing that good vibe.

Time to grow up: Black Kids@ the Junction 28/10/08

Before anything else, apologies go to Ladyhawke. Due to other commitments, I ended up stumbling into the gig as Black Kids opened their set, and missed the entire support set. I gathered though from the general murmur of the crowd, that Ladyhawke were pretty good. Possibly better than Black Kids.

Not that Black Kids were especially bad, but just that in spite of all their polish and sheen on record, Black Kids are decidedly rough around the edges live, and not in a good way. The energy was there, right from early highlight Hit The Heartbreaks, but the execution was a little lacking. The biggest culprit was Reggie Youngblood, his tone-deaf yelping at times painful, and even threatening to derail I've Underestimated My Charm before its inspired coda came to the rescue.

The real issue though, is that a band which initially showed so much potential seem to already have hit a wall. Towards the end of last year, the band released the quite fabulous (not to mention free) 4-song EP The Wizard Of Ahhhs, which sounded like the Cure at their happy-clappiest mixed with boy-girl vocals and doo-wop melodies. One successful album later and there's no sense that the band have moved on: tellingly, all four songs were included on Partie Traumatic, as though the band were admitting they were playing their strongest hand right from the off. Over four songs, the formula works a treat, but over the course of an album, or indeed a live set, their glitzy, technicolour indie-pop runs pretty thin pretty quickly. They introduce one song as a ballad, but after about 8 bars, the song reverts to type, pinching the plinky-plonk keyboard from the Cure's Close To Me whilst it's at it. A new song and (supposedly) a Magnetic Fields cover whizz by without making any lasting impression.

The set wasn't without its highpoints: even a lowly one-song encore was sweetened considerably by the bitter-sweet drama of Hurricane Jane, and was probably the best performance of the night, and what the band deliver remains a cut above the exasperatingly dull and generic pap which seems to spawn from our shores. The crowd certainly got into parts of the set, with crowd-surfing aplenty from very early on, but when the band left the stage after Hurricane Jane, there was a general feeling of disillusionment. The band need to find more dimensions, and quickly, if they want to avoid being (an admittedly very colourful) flash in the pan.

I'll See You On The Dark Side Of The Moon

Cambridge will perhaps never be thought as being one of the great musical hubs like, say, Liverpool, London or Manchester, but it did spark one of the most striking and enduring unions between music and art to be found anywhere in the world. The artwork of Storm Thorgerson has become synonymous with the albums of Pink Floyd. Starting with 1968’s A Saucerful Of Secrets, Thorgerson has subsequently provided the artwork to pretty much every Pink Floyd release, creating some of the most iconic album covers of all time.

As part of The City Wakes, a week of events in homage to the life of Syd Barrett, Cambridge is holding an exhibition of Thorgerson’s Floyd-related artwork, entitled Mind Over Matter. Go see it on the second floor of the Grand Arcade shopping centre. Be inspired.

More on The City Wakes project, which is running from October 22nd until November 1st, can be found here, whilst Thorgerson’s work can be viewed here.

Something Old, Something New, Something To Look Forward To: October

October’s trio of recommendations:

Something Old: Built To Spill - Perfect From Now On (1997)

How Built To Spill aren’t more of a big deal is a mystery to me. Fairly popular in the U.S. but something of an anomaly on these shores, Doug Martsch and his pals have been crafting intricate and muscular, yet melodic and uplifting (Martsch uses the word “sun” more than any lyricist since Brian Wilson) guitar music for 15 years now. The high watermark is ‘97’s Perfect From Now On, a sprawling 8-song 54-minute epic, whose impeccable craft and attention to detail is second to none. Martsch is a true guitar hero and knows how his effects pedals to their fullest, but it’s his ability to arrange so many guitar parts so expertly and create mighty walls of guitar sound that make him so unique. The deployment of mellontrons and cellos are significant, lifting the climax of Made Up Dreams to impossible levels of loveliness, and giving album centrepiece Velvet Waltz real gravitas even before it moves into it’s phenomenal coda of layered guitar noise and crashing drums. Add to that Martsch’s endearing vocals and starry eyed lyrics contemplating the afterlife (Randy Describes Eternity) and, of course, the sun (Kicked It In The Sun), and you have one of the finest guitar albums of the 90’s. See it played in its entirety at the London Koko on November 4^th: I bought my ticket almost 6 months ago!

If you like this, try: Modest Mouse – The Moon & Antarctica (2000), The Halo Benders – The Rebel’s Not In (1998)

Something New: TV On The Radio – Dear Science

As wonderful as TV On The Radio’s last album, 2006’s Return To Cookie Mountain was, it was a pretty challenging listen that was never going to float everyone’s boat. Dear Science then, is the best response the avante-garde New Yorkers could have possibly made, an album that manages to be both their most ambitious and accessible to date. As pleasingly unclassifiable as ever, the hybrid of angular guitars, buzzsaw synths, looped effects, tribal drumming mixed with clattering drum machines, and the unique soulful vocal combination of Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone all remain in place but Dear Science adds even more layers to the TVOTR sound, with horns and plucked strings in clear evidence: just check out rousing first single Golden Age. That none of the songs collapse under their own weight is thanks to the production work of the band’s own David Sitek, who makes this a less harsh sounding album than previous works, and yet crisper sounding at the same time. There’s a looser, funkier approach to many of the songs here, most notably on Red Dress and the Prince-like Crying. Then there’s the grace of the ballad Family Tree, which could so easily have been a botch-job, but is handled with due care and attention. Lyrically too, this is less opaque than on previous outings. There’s the feeling of a state-of-the-nation address when Adebimpe raps the opening lines “he's a what?/he’s a what?/he’s a newspaper man/And he gets his best ideas from a newspaper stand”. It’s often an angry album, perversely put alongside the most uplifting music they’ve made. Not only is Dear Science one of the very finest releases of the year, but it might, just might, replicate Arcade Fire’s Funeral to become an instant classic.

If you like this, try: Talking Heads - Remain In Light (1980)

Something To Look Forward To: Deerhunter - Microcastle

If you’ve kept a close eye on internet music ‘zines such as Pitchfork, you will probably be all too familiar with the skeletal figure of Brandon Cox. Revered by some, reviled by others, the man behind Deerhunter and Atlas Sound knows how to make a name for himself, whether it’s slagging somebody off, revoking said slagging, or, perhaps more endearingly, posting music on a near-daily basis on his blog. After the intermittently great first Atlas Sound album Let The Blind Lead Those Who See But Cannot Feel, my interest has shifted back to Deerhunter and their forthcoming follow-up to last year’s excellent LP Cryptograms and subsequent EP Flourescent Grey. Those two releases saw the band seemingly develop as they went along: playing them back-to-back saw the band seamlessy move from kraut-rock to ambient psychadelia to dreamy guitar pop. The first, rather tasty single, the loosely Pavement-esque Agoraphobia seems to maintain that momentum, and makes Microcastle’s release at the end of this month all the more highly anticipated.

If you like their earlier work, try: Liars – Liars (2007), {{{SUNSET}}} – Bright Blue Dream (2008)

Something Old, Something New, Something To Look Forward To: September

After a few months absence, a return for my trio of recommendations of old, new and forthcoming releases for those seeking the alternative.

Something Old: This Heat-Deceit
Very much overlooked (by me included), the influence this short-lived London-based experimental band cannot be underestimated. Released in 1981, Deceit was the band’s second and ultimately final album. It’s chilling lyrics depict a damning view of the potential devastation of the Cold War (the cover is a collage of images of mushroom clouds, Ronald Reagan, Nikita Khrushchev and the like), but musically this was light years ahead of its time, and remains remarkably fresh and unsettling. The tribal drumming and angular guitars of Sleep paves the way for the monstrous Paper Hats, whose repeated discordant outro is like a template for the current crop of experimental noise/punk bands on the other side of the Atlantic (see Liars and Oneida). Elsewhere, strange, seething tape loops (Radio Prague), metallic percussion and unlikely instrument combinations (Triumph) make this a less than compromising listen, but Deceit skilfully weaves these attributes around genuinely memorable songs. SPQR genuinely rocks with its fierce guitars, and if you only hear one This Heat song, make it the phenomenal A New Kind Of Water, a genuine anti-anthem, and lyrically the most clear-cut (“acrid stench and festering tongue/New York, Moscow, Nairobi in flames”) in its condemnation of nuclear war.
If you like this try: The Pop Group: Y (1979), Liars: Drum’s Not Dead (2006)

Something New: Ponytail-Ice Cream Spiritual
One of the most outright fun albums to come out this year, Ice Cream Spiritual is an explosive blend of sugary melodies, bulldozer guitars and insane vocals. Ponytail share many of their best traits with fellow art-rockers Deerhoof: the sweet, almost child-like innocence of the tunes contrasted with the maniacal guitars and heavyweight percussion, the breakneck speed at which they can play, the surf-rock undertones, the female vocals. On the last point, however, the two bands do in fact differ: whilst Deerhoof’s Satomi Matsuzaki sounds like a Japanese schoolgirl, Molly Siegel shrieks, growls, squeals and generally throws a fit at the mic, and never actually sings as such. This all adds to the band’s appeal of course, particularly on the head-spinning opener Beg Waves, and on Late For School, where one of the other band members pipes up with the line “Oh no, I’m late for school!” and the song aptly descends into chaos. At 34 minutes, Ice Cream Spiritual is merciful enough not to pound you into the dust, but leaves you out of breath and knowing you’ve been on a heck of an ordeal, one you won’t mind experiencing again and again.
If you like this try: Deerhoof: Reveille (2002), Melt Banana: Bambi’s Dilemma (2007)

Something To Look Forward To: Of Montreal-Skeletal Lamping
Part of the anglophilic Elephant Six Collective (the source of cult acts such as Neutral Milk Hotel, the Olivia Tremor Control and the Apples In Stereo) so enthralled by late-60’s psychedelia, Of Montreal had churned out album after album of colourful whimsy and daft song/album titles for the best part of a decade, before they finally came of age with last year’s outstanding Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer. Following the break-up of singer Kevin Barnes’ relationship with his girlfriend, Hissing Fauna charted the bitterness and self-destruction of a clearly fragile persona. It was by far the band’s most ambitious effort, putting genuine substance behind the irrepressibly camp and chirpy nature of the band’s work (and backed up by a bizarre live show which could probably best be described as a homo-erotic take on Peter Gabriel-era Genesis). All of which makes next month’s follow-up Skeletal Lamping (for me at least) one of the most eagerly anticipated releases of the year. The album apparently continues the narrative from their last album, which sees Barnes descend into his androgynous alter-ego Georgie Fruit. Echoes of Ziggy Stardust anyone?
If you like their earlier work, try: The Beatles: Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), The Olivia Tremor Control: Dusk At Cubist Castle (1996)

Mindless Self Indulgence – Roundhouse, Camden – 11.07.08

First up on tonight’s electro-themed line-up is duo Robots in Disguise, bringing their girl punk band vocals to catchy yet silly electro-pop. With songs like “The Sex Has Made Me Stupid” and an energetic cover of The Kinks’ “You Really Got Me,” they serve as a perfect opening to the evening.

Next up, a move towards rave as IAMX and his band, dressed like true cabaret stars in glitter, heavy make-up and frills, take the stage and boom out some heavy-beat, synth-infused dark dance. Lyrics are mainly about parties, sex and sexuality – “Wanna be a sailor?” – but the audience laps it up and with surprising enthusiasm for a support band.

And then, Mindless Self Indulgence take the stage and fill all of it with their presence. Little Jimmy Urine leaps from the shadows to begin a frenzied rendition of “Shut Me Up,” complete with perfect high squeals for the phrase “knock me up.”

Any parents accompanying hyper-14 year olds would at this point be wondering just what they’ve let themselves in for. And that’s when Jimmy decides to introduce the show. “Tonight, people, we’re going to abuse you like hard drugs! What kind of drugs are you?...Love? Love?! Eugh! Get the f*** out of here, you hippy!” And welcome to the general repertoire of abuse that is to be the main part of the on-stage banter for the evening.

Mindless Self Indulgence love to insult their audience. They want a reaction. Frontman Jimmy spends an embarrassingly long time between songs informing us on just how ugly and stupid we are. At one point, the audience is “held hostage” – he refuses to play on until someone hands him a £20 note. Which some unwitting and most likely drunk fool does. A fool who is now £20 less rich.

But all of this adds to the sense of juvenile joy that Mindless Self Indulgence put into their music. Even though they play their most well-known material at the beginning, causing to a slight dip in atmosphere towards the end, their performance cannot be faulted on its raw energy. Steve Righ? swings his guitar around, mancially eyeing the audience. Drummer Kitty grins wildly. Bassist Lyn-Z arches backwards until her head almost touches the floor before springing two feet into the air. And Jimmy is like a kid having drunk 8 litres of Coca Cola.

Crazy lyrics and crazy stage antics? A gimmick? Many would think so. But then many take music far too seriously. MSI write songs that are bizarre, and quite frankly hilarious. And they just happen to be damn catchy. “Never Wanted To Dance,” a strange combo of electro-industrial-rock, is ironically one of their best dance songs. “Bitches” verges on rap, with repetitive bass and disjointed lyrics. “Faggot” gets the entire audience squealing hopelessly out of tune and chanting gleefully “I’ve been denied all the best ultra-sex.” What other band could get an audience to chant such things willingly?

And this is the essence of Mindless Self Indulgence. They’re like no other band and they’re a whole lot of fun.

Wherever you go Hugo: Urusen @ The Boathouse 01/08

Friday night saw the upcoming Urusen play at the Boathouse. Hotly tipped by the musical press, and shortlisted as one of the twenty bands vying for a Glastonbury '09 slot via the Rockstar '08 competition, they very much warrant the "one to watch" tag. But the night wasn't their's alone, as they were supported by a crop of local acoustic talent.

First off, my apologies to Lonnie Story, who I arrived too late to see. I was, however, fortunate enough to catch Cambridge-based Tallis Anne. If her quiet, fast-spoken words between songs and the occasional bum note suggested a hint of stage nerves then her incredibly powerful, emotive singing voice suggested otherwise, and I hope to see her become a regular on the Cambridge music scene, and maybe beyond. Next up was Peterborough-based Alex Hel and his mischievous guitar Timothy, which caused him no end of grief, as it went in and out of tune at the drop of a hat under his hard, fast playing. To his credit though, the charismatic Alex kept the crowd entertained at all times, and rallied well towards the end to play The Forester's Lament, which was denied from him earlier in the set by Timothy's erratic behaviour.

Finally it was the turn of the headliners. The only full band lineup of the night (although even they were a man down, missing double-bassist Jay Darwish), their rich, full sound captivated throughout. Urusen certainly boast an interesting and unique setup: the twin vocals and acoustic guitars of Ben and Peter interlink effortlessly, Nick adding another layer of sound with his cello, and Kieran providing drums and, later, keyboard. It was impressive to see the host of additional instruments which embellish Urusen's sound, most notably the Charango (imagine a twelve-string guitar in lute form). Each song seemed to have its own interesting background: Hugo ponders what it would be like to travel around with Venezualan president Hugo Chavez, whereas a long introduction to Impossibly revealed it to be the story of an embarrassing two-year teenage crush. The band was rapturously received, and returned for a one-song encore.

A good night of acoustic music at the Boathouse then, and there are plenty more ahead: check out here and http://www.myspace.com/acousticstage for the latest acoustic delights at The Boathouse and other local venues.