Operator Please - Pressure Point
There’s no escaping it; Antipodean quintet “Operator Please” are young. Frighteningly young. Like 17-18 young! Yikes!
But whilst they possess power, musicianship and discipline belying their age, their sound is too frequently unfocused and incoherent with many of the songs crying out for some serious editing. Over the course of the set they flitted between charging power pop, string laden ballads and feisty electro pop and it was a slightly uneasy mixture.
Occasionally it all slotted beautifully into place though; 2007’s Single of the Year contender “Song about Ping Pong” crackled with ram-a-lama attitude and potential Bond theme “6/8” built around a gorgeous predatory chord sequence and deep soulful vocals was another standout.
Their youthful joie de vivre won out eventually and trading enthusiastic grins and winks throughout their complete lack of pretence was especially refreshing. Thankfully they’ve as much potential as they do time on their side and we can expect great things from them in the future.
posted by: Jim Brackpool @ 9:00 PM
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Elle S'Appelle - Barfly
Though they lacked the cocksure delivery of woeful headliners “Go Faster” (a band so derivative and contrived they blundered time and time again into outright mimicry) Elle S’Appelle are nonetheless a hugely refreshing young outfit: A boy/girl/boy trio who’ve swapped those jarringly omnipresent Telecasters for sweetly overdriven organ sounds and serve up a barrelling take on indie pop that’s quirky and sophisticated in equal measure.
Their tunes were stuffed with arresting rhythmic detail and blink-and-you’ll-miss-‘em hooks. And whilst the quick fire time changes and sprawling arrangements suggested a considered and methodical approach to their songcraft there was certainly nothing tricksy or clever-clever about its execution.
Jaunty and fizzing throughout they recalled Blondie, Stereolab and a host of classic 60s Girl Groups and ‘Little Flame’ and ‘Monkey Shine’, er, shone, as cracking future singles. Elle S’Appelle are simply irresistible and demand your further investigation.
posted by: Jim Brackpool @ 9:07 PM
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Cut Copy - Digital
Cut Copy are back with a follow up to their cult hit LP “Bright Like Neon Love”. In 2004 their energetic fusion of chugging indie and filtered Frenchy electro was relatively fresh. These days it’s the genre du jour so they’ll need to bring something new to this particular party to stay on the guestlist.
From the off it was evident their aspirations stretch further than the Digital-sized clubs they’ll inevitably be trawling for the next year or so. The new material swapped the incessant repetition of their back catalogue for festival sized choruses and anthemic, ravey production but sadly, to mixed results.
At their best they recalled the exquisite dancefloor driven melancholy of New Order and the bittersweet nostalgia of Phoenix or Daft Punk. At worst, “Pumping Big Room Commercial House” sprang to mind and their set occasionally evoked a cheesy chart dance PA from Bodyrockers or the like in some tacky provincial nitespot. Not cool!
posted by: Jim Brackpool @ 8:55 PM
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Smashing Pumpkins - O2 Arena
There’s consternation whenever a once credible band announces a reformation.
Invariably, it’s nothing more than their now desperate leader grasping at the last of their muse or a ride on the cash cow about the festival circuit;
concerns made more pertinent when the reformatted band contains just half of its original line up.
Do Smashing Pumpkins, bereft of original members James Iha and D’Arcy Wretzky stand a chance of matching their former incarnation? Visually these two players were integral: flanking towering, tyrannical frontman Billy Corgan like two stately guardian angels, ratifying the band’s otherworldly image and chiming sweetly with Corgan’s lyrical bent and vision of a band heavier than heaven and equally transcendental.
Well, the new line-up barely looks the part but sonically they’re an equal match for Pumpkins of yore. Love it or loathe it, Corgan’s voice remains one of the most distinctive in rock and pushed high in the mix, it dominates throughout. One moment he’s cooing and clucking, the next he’s guttural and rasping like some stroppy mutant toddler chucking sheet metal and lightning bolts out of the pram. Drummer Jimmy Chamberlain’s explosive ‘why hit it once when you can twat it 8 times?’ drumming is as captivating as ever and when the two of them combine to bring “United States” to a shuddering psyched out climax, sadly it proves to be the sole highlight in an otherwise crushingly dreary set.
Lord knows who Corgan thinks he’s playing to but this arena isn’t full of completists and die-hards. Rather, 20,000 old hands who saw the band peak creatively around double album “Mellon Collie…..” Why then, instead of sticking to the anthems and a handful off the new album, do they opt for a set list spanning 18 years of obscure album tracks, soundtrack numbers, B sides, and three covers (including Girls Aloud) thereby alienating the vast majority of the audience?
Half an hour in, everyone realises it’s gonna be a long haul and the atmosphere plummets, never to return. Over the course of 3 hours - save for a sublime acoustic version of “1979” - sludgy riff blurs into sludgy riff and the whole thing quickly becomes tedious and depressing. Even the more familiar numbers are inexplicably retooled, “Today”’s metronomic opening riff is stripped of its chiming music-box quality and “Bullet with Butterfly Wings” is delivered at an ungainly four times the tempo of its recorded cousin.
They encore with an utterly superfluous Echo and The Bunnymen cover (Lips Like Sugar) and by this point people are flooding out of the stalls like heartbroken home fans fleeing the shrill of the final whistle. As Corgan proffers a none more patronising dedication to British music it merely confirms suspicions: Here is a man deeply out of touch with his fans and his band’s heritage and that indeed, is a crying shame.
posted by: Jim Brackpool @ 8:49 PM
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Stars - Concorde 2
Canadian duo Stars stole their way into my record collection by way of 2004 single “Ageless Beauty” and despite checking the right boxes musically (Cocteaus and Prefab Sprout covering Pet Shop Boys in a fuzzy shoe-gaze style? Yes Please!) something about them just didn’t sit right.
I was hoping a live show might persuade otherwise but this wasn’t the case. In polo neck and sensible jeans, frontman Torquill Campbell though achingly sincere throughout, only grated with his jerky histrionics and their guitarist’s bolted on solos too frequently sat on the tasteless side of widdly-woo.
But although they may be hard to love, they are even harder to hate and the strength of most of the material was undeniable; “Elevator Love Song” positively glistened and “Take Me to the Riot” stood out with its thumping Smithsian chorus. A trio of softer numbers captivated in the middle of the set and with the intensity ramped up, the Concorde fell silent and even I had to succumb to their hypnotic charm.
posted by: Jim Brackpool @ 7:22 PM
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