Animal Collective - St. George's Church
So called as their number is more a carousel of contributors than a fixed line-up, ‘Animal Collective’ have long reigned as one of the hottest tickets in experimental music. God only knows what Sunday night’s congregation would have made of their performance in St. George’s Church on Monday for it was pretty far removed from a conventional live show.
But the hallowed setting suited their sprawling, euphoric sound and as on record, their harmonised vocals evoked the redemptive, hymnal qualities of prime-time Brian Wilson. Beneath this, three of their personnel set about deconstructing their repertoire by way of banks of electronics and each song was reproduced as a spectre of its recorded cousin - crushed into a millions of tiny pieces and re-assembled on the fly as flickering, pulsating loops.
It was an intense and disorientating experience but as soon as I stopped thinking about how it was made, or what it all meant, one that I was more than happy to surrender myself to.
posted by: Jim Brackpool @ 10:33 PM
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Los Campesinos - Komedia
Really, your love for Los Campesinos is going to depend entirely on where you sit on the Indie 1 to 10 scale. Say you’re a 1 - proud owner of Shine compilations 3 and 4 / went to see Oasis at Knebworth / regularly sport a Kooks T-Shirt – you’re probably going to find their twinkling glockenspiels, scratchy guitars and nagging synth lines pretty jarring.
If, however, you’re closer to a 7 or 8 - you know all the staff in Rough Trade by name / Jeffrey Lewis sleeps on your floor when he comes to town / you are in a band (extra point here if you release your own music on hand made 7”s) – Los Campesinos’ brand of righteous indie ire, raggedy arrangements and unabashedly twee stylings will probably appeal a little more.
The Cardiff Uni based septet know a thing or two about this here Indie 1 to 10 scale: ‘International Tweecore Underground’ namechecks a handful of alt.heroes it’s actually OK NOT to like (Black Flag’s Henry Rollins and Fugazi’s Ian Mackaye) and by turns their songs rail against mainstream, NME endorsed indie, misogyny in the music press, the affected keytar posturing of their so-called peers and self-obsessed stars both mirthless and excessively earnest in delivery. Easy targets you might think but there’s enough wit, invention and lyrical twists and turns here to keep you guessing and indeed, chuckling throughout.
Live, their’s is a messy, clattering sound that chucks about violins, keyboards and boy-girl vocals with all the slapdash glee and joyful abandon of a pre-school music group let loose in a guitar shop. And this is no bad thing, for what they lack in polished musicianship they more than make up for with infectious energy and barely concealed delight at finding themselves two weeks into the biggest national tour of their career - their first outing since graduating in June. Eye contact and joyful grins are exchanged across the stage throughout the show and frontman Gareth happily extends his lyrical thrust to the between song banter. Describing the progress of the tour so far, all fine apparently until they hit Birmingham that is when, gasp! a Hard-Fi T-Shirt is spotted amongst the front row!
They dispense with a succession of what sound like mini-anthems in waiting – ‘You and Me Dancing’ eliciting an especially rapturous response - and in a none-more Indie display of solidarity, support act You Say Party We Say Die! join them onstage at the encore for a bout of co-ordinated hand jiving. When 99% of bands can barely crack a smile on stage, let alone choreograph an inter-band boogie you - as Los Campesinos so often do – have to question their motivation. Perhaps they’ve all forgotten this being in a band lark is, like, supposed to be fun?
posted by: Jim Brackpool @ 10:10 PM
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Gravenhurst - Freebutt
Listening to their Warp released latest album ‘The Wasted Lands’, you’d be forgiven for thinking Gravenhurst may have stopped buying records in 1994, so heavily is it steeped in a pooling of styles from the more cerebral end of the indie spectrum; Shoe-gaze, post-rock and Smithsian melancholy all getting a look in. Really though this is no bad thing as Gravnehurst are currently sitting on one of the finest albums of the year; a bona fide future classic that positively oozes quality, class and craft.
Originally Gravenhurst was the experimental folk project of vocalist Nick Talbot, now they’re expanded to a four piece and the quartet’s flawless, measured playing and precise dynamic control brought the songs to life with arresting clarity. Relentlessly haunting and mournful, they combined circling riffs, slo-mo arpeggios and Talbot’s sombre, pillow soft vocals to great effect, punctuating songs with blasts of intense white noise and scorching feedback.
Talbot is far from your conventional frontman, songs are introduced with a matter of fact sneer and the set is delivered with all the pizzazz of an attended rehearsal. But when you’ve mastered music this moving and intense there really is no need for tacky showmanship.
posted by: Jim Brackpool @ 10:25 PM
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Maps - Barfly
Maps, then: Too synth-poppy for the Indie set, too Indie for your electronica types, way too twee for the hipsters and quite possibly too ‘out-there’ for the mainstream. It’s a tough one. And really, would they be here tonight without their shortlisting for this year’s Mercury? For sure it’s given them a sufficient boost in profile to embark on a nationwide tour of this scale. Not that “We Can Create” doesn’t deserve a bit of recognition - it’s a unique and occasionally innovative record. Unfortunately it’s just not a particularly tasteful one; sickly, cloying and all too often sounding like the drippy electronica that features on the demo pages of geek-tech magazines like Future Music.
Expanded to a four piece for live purposes Maps take to the stage to the strains of Surgeon’s seminal, drone-tastic remix of ‘Mogwai Fear Satan’ and it’s a neat summation of writer/producer/singer James Chapman’s various reference points - bit of shoe gaze here, a bit of electronica there, synth driven and densely layered like a compacted symphony. As an opening gambit it’s a pretty bold statement, but the band make a decent fist of replicating the album for live consumption. A live drummer gives the record’s sequenced breaks the requisite shuffle and Chapman’s otherwise weedy vocals are gifted a celestial sheen by way of some subtle digital trickery.
Kick drums and bass lines ride high in the mix and each number leaps from the system like a buffed and streamlined club track. Eventually, with a majestic “It will Find you” - its heartbreaking chord sequence and pulsating bass line simultaneously dark and dreamy like prime-time prog-house - things finally began to slot into place. Throughout the venue everyone’s gently nodding and swaying, couples are embracing and the hitherto soulless Barfly assumes the ambiance of a packed festival tent at THAT moment on the Saturday evening. You know, that point when everything starts to go a bit woozy and trippy? It’s a beautiful moment, man.
Head bowed and eyes shut tight throughout , Chapman displays all the showmanship of a remedial school child; ambling about the stage between songs and generally looking like he’d much rather be at home in front of the sequencer with a pot noodle than onstage facing a row of freakish superfans. But come the end of the set, this apparent indifference reveals itself to be nothing but honest to goodness humility and you have to consider what the alternative would be: A pompous, preening front man, relentlessly emoting and exhorting you to feel their pain coupled to music as stirring and cinematic as this? It would be like Bono fronting a trance version of Keane. And nobody wants that. This will do for now.
posted by: Jim Brackpool @ 10:11 PM
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Tuung - Komedia
Over the course of 3 acclaimed albums, Tunng have succeeded where many before them have failed, creating a distinctive and cohesive sound that combines both acoustic instruments and synthesised textures.
On record these disparate sounds are skilfully and often imperceptibly merged.
Live, however, this marriage wasn’t quite so successful.
Their whirring, skittering drums frequently felt disembodied and alien, clipped vocal samples sat too loudly in the mix - so often as to be downright intrusive - and some of the subtle sonics of the recorded versions were replicated with some fairly predictable preset synth sounds, destroying much of the character they gave the songs in the first place.
My attention wandered too during the more repetitive material which was tied to an all too formulaic pattern: Skeletal arpeggios were layered like pseudo-sampled loops whilst the four vocalists embellished in close harmony. The overall result little more than drab and sketchy folky mantras.
Their more uptempo material faired far better though. When underpinned by a gentle 4/4 chug, Tunng evoked the insistent thrum of a distant rave over the horizon – albeit one emanating from the Acoustic tent rather than the Dance tent. When this was blended with a bit with a dash of drama the results were startling; ‘Take’ off latest album ‘Good Arrows’ came at you all stalking and sinister, like some distant cousin of Orbital’s ‘The Box’.
Combining the plaintive, austere and celebratory across the set overall made for a satisfying, well rounded show and playing up to their strong Brighton ties, it didn’t take much to win over the partisan crowd who gamely clapped along with the band before whooping and hollering for more.
posted by: Jim Brackpool @ 10:20 PM
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Jack Penate - Old Market Theatre
Back in Jauary Jack Penate was just one of a clutch of bright young LDNnners swept up in Lilly Allen’s straight talking slipstream. Nine months later and Penate is enjoying a degree of mainstream success with a fistful of punchy singles sitting pretty in the upper end of the daytime radio charts.
It’s not difficult to see Penate’s appeal, blessed as he is with dashing looks and positively bristling with charisma on stage. To boot, his particular brand of hooky, stop-start guitar pop manages to straddle Rockabilly, Blue-eyed soul and honest to goodness Indie giving him genuine cross-generational appeal.
Apparently Penate’s not been to bed in the last 24 hours but other than some rambling between song banter you wouldn’t have guessed it as he bounded across the length and breadth of the Old Market’s ample stage, spanking the life out of a newly acquired Telecaster with some white-knuckle rhythm playing.
Sadly though the lack of solo instruments, characterless workaday style of his backing band, relentless jangling and frenetic pace at which the bulk of the material is delivered all become a little wearing.
There is some respite in a delicate reading of ‘My Yvonne’ during which Penate proved he possesses a voice of some depth and versatility. So why such a compelling performer and skilled songwriter is sticking so rigidly to one stylistic template is both a mystery and a shame.
posted by: Jim Brackpool @ 10:12 PM
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Foals - Komedia
If last night’s line up at the Komedia represents anything approaching a snapshot of Indie Brighton 2007 then the scene is indeed in rude health. Everyone knows that periodically, Brighton is capable of throwing up a pop phenomenon or crossover act to fly the flag, but can anyone recall a time when 3 home-grown bands, each one ‘export ready’ to use industry parlance and – whisper it – ‘cutting edge’ have occupied the same bill at one of the town’s premier venues?
OK, so Foals actually originate from Oxford but only on arrival in Brighton did they stabilise their line up and hone the sound that has had them touring the provinces, festivals and in some cases – house parties and kitchens of the UK for the last year. So last night was both a homecoming and a send off of sorts for both Metronomy and Foals who head out on a major nationwide tour together this week.
Maths Class were first on though and struggled with the early doors; their twin frontmen seemingly more interested in ruffling and restyling their preposterous hairstyles and writhing self-conscientiously than fully engaging the crowd. Metronomy faired much better and ignited the atmosphere with a deft mix of Krauty tick-tock techno, wonky wistfulness and seasick Cardiacs style synth lines.
Sensing there was something of a party on the cards Foals duly rose to the occasion and from the off the stage was a blur or whirling guitar necks and flailing limbs, each member twitching and convulsing to the band’s metronomic throb.
Their’s is a neat, wholly contemporary take on indie-dance that fuses the pulsating, dirty disco of !!! with the measured menace of Mogwai. Indeed, Foals have much in common with traditional post-rock, such is their mastery of desolate atmospherics and sparse, graceful interplay.
But last night they more than proved their ability to concoct live dance music for both the head and the feet, inspiring a disco mosh pit the traditionally stuffy Komedia will not see the likes of for some time yet. Things reach boiling point with a searing reading of ‘Mathletics’ and as the venue empties nobody doubts they’ve just witnessed a truly special band taking flight.
posted by: Jim Brackpool @ 10:32 PM
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Robyn - Audio
Robyn was a child star in her native Sweden at 13 and despite scoring an international hit in 1997 with ‘Show Me Love’ she’s never really converted, batted repeatedly between majors attempting to mould her into whichever unit shifting pop tart was hogging the charts at the time.
Things changed in 2003 when she fell in with fellow Swedes ‘The Knife’ and producer Klas Ahlund. Sensing her moment had arrived, she piled her life savings into her eponymous LP and set up her own ‘Konichiwa’ label to release it on. A bit of a gamble then, and one that despite a fistful of acclaimed festival appearances and the patronage of heavy hitters Rob Da Bank and Jo Wiley, a gamble that is yet to pay off - the mega stardom for which she was tipped in January apparently some way off yet.
It’s surely just a matter of time though and Robyn clearly felt she had a point to prove at Audio on Wednesday. She bounded onstage and from Go to O was ducking and weaving like a Vegas prize-fighter, tossing her perfectly coiffured mega fringe about and working the entire crowd from left to right. She looked every bit the platinum pop star and sung like one too, her vocals pitch perfect throughout. She’s blessed with a versatile and hugely expressive voice, kissing you off one minute with all the insouciance of the coolest kid in the playground nicking your lollipops and kicking sand in your face. Then the next, she’s got you sobbing into your pint pot with impassioned tearjerkers like “With Every Heartbeat.”
Her signature track ‘Konichiwa Bitches’ was the highlight of the set: a perfect synthesis of the cutesy, lithe and the deadly, and it packed a substantial lyrical punch with its torrent of biting put-downs and sensational bombast. Brutal in its high impact minimalism, her drummer deftly layered up its tight, precision-point percussion until the whole venue was writhing and grinding as one.
She wrapped up the set with a stripped down version of ‘With Every Heart Beat’ and had her adoring crowd wave their cameras and phones like they were in the presence of a solid gold pop legend. Not quite yet – but a year or so from now….just maybe.
posted by: Jim Brackpool @ 10:36 PM
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