Bingfield Heights

ICA, 23 February 2007

If you’re a fan of math rock maybe you’ll love Field Music too. They are English lit rock, very accomplished, very smart, very tough and tidy and a little bit fey; they announce ‘This is our penultimate song’ rather than ‘We’ve only got a couple of songs left.’ Tonight they play Shorter Shorter, A House is Not a Home, She Can Do What She Wants, all the neat, layered, clever pop they’re loved for from new album Tones of Town and earlier sets, with brothers Peter and David Brewis swapping between guitar and drums as usual, and with an extra dose of drumming from Maximo Park’s Tom English and John Bettie playing the trumpet and keyboards. It’s an adoring crowd at a sold-out gig, fans familiar with every line of every song, and they are mainly rapt, hearing how Field Music have rearranged and just played around with a lot of their stuff for the live setting. It all leaves me appreciative of their skilfulness and still waiting to feel really excited.

Before Field Music were The Ruby Suns, another band with those harmonies and sweet, sad tones from the Beach Boys. There’s five of them, twee indies from New Zealand based around Ryan McPhun and with his girlfriend on keyboards, plus a blow-up monkey, a few toy parakeets, leis round their necks and cutesy instruments (melodica, stylophone, plus little stickers all over their keyboards and too many handclaps). After very nervously playing three songs from their last album (which is better on record, by the way, and includes Maasai Mara and Look Out SOS!, two songs which help to explain why they were signed) the band liven up a bit. They even talk to the audience. Then they launch into some of the stuff for their new record (out on Memphis Industries later in the year) and look a lot happier. One – whose title goes unannounced – starts a bit like California Uber Alles and I start to feel a lot happier too, but then it drops back into twinkly so-so pop. It’s difficult not to compare The Ruby Suns with Architecture in Helsinki – another gang of Down Under mates with twee-pop in their hearts and a melodica on their stage – and they don’t come out of the comparison well.

And now down to business. The set of the night was up first, at 8:15pm, when the ICA was only about a quarter full. My new resolution, Bart Simpson style, is ‘I must always get to gigs in time to see the support band.’ Happily I did this time, and Zan Pan served up a massive helping of slinky psychy folkrock with an oozing dollop of funk sauce. They’re led by The Squire of Somerton, who released Transverberations on Memphis a couple of years ago, a track which may go into my Desert Island Discs should I ever get to sit and chat with Kirsty Young. Tonight the Squire is wearing a tight pair of red trousers, giving the crowd his best 1960s horror film stare, and playing a chunk of songs that have pomp and space-agey swooning, a tender, lonely Ziggy Stardust optimism. He sings of silver shards of memory in your eyes, of a brand new day, of riding to the infinite beyond. It’s the theme tune to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as reimagined by Prince and Marc Bolan. The Squire is a literary chap too, but his canon is not Field Music’s: he recommends we read The Man They Called My Wife, a 1960s novel by quite-a-long-way-under-the-radar US writer Stark Cole, and later sings us the storming Sirens Of Titan, named after the rather brilliant Kurt Vonnegut sci-fi novel from 1959 about the (non-)existence of god, loving the one you’re with and glowing flatfish creatures that make beautiful sounds. The songs are like medieval disco folk stories, something to sing and dance along to while discovering new, naturally occurring drugs in an English forest. Sometimes they launch into post-punky, brassy disco sounds, other times they saunter into JJ Cale cool foot-shuffles, or else they thug and crash about like a big horny dog running across the park right at you. One sounds like Let’s Go Crazy at the end, which suits me fine. The Squire of Somerton has been compared to Syd Barrett lots of times, but that doesn’t do him justice.
The rest of the band also deserve knighthoods. The drummer is a little man packed tight with joy and rhythm, baby. He twizzles his sticks while managing to be a banging thumping genius, he provides mellifluous, high and sweet backing vocals, he looks like the child of Helen Mirren and Maureen Tucker, and his grin is huge and unstoppable. He’s also called Richmond Stockwell; that name is the cherry on a very good cake. There’s a man in a kaftan on keyboards and Rick Wakeman, more or less, on bass. The four of them look like they are having a wonderful time, fully in possession of their own joy, and creating plenty for the few of us who got there early enough to see them.

# posted by Bing @ 7:51 pm 0 comments

Joanna Newsom with the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican
19 January 2007

There are things music does, describes, invokes, that words cannot get close to, we all know that. That clumsy crappy simile that writing about music is like dancing about architecture demonstrates this better than it explains it. But Joanna Newsom is the first artist to make me really this; you can mention influences or other singers and musicians who sound a bit like her, or talk about the set list and her fellow musicians (and I will) but Joanna Newsom really just shows us why music is wonderful and the world is good. It is soul balm and brain joy and heart food; it tickles and strokes your imagination.
And when did I ever think about how important looking is, in music? (Apart from staring at Jack White’s cock-shadow during a Brixton gig a couple of years ago, where I actually got quite breathless.) Watching Newsom’s hands – the steady left and the fleeting, plinking right – as you hear the harp sounds. And seeing the violinists lift their bows, wait, play… And the orchestra’s turning of the pages, all together; and the conductor swinging his hips a little as well as his arms. Seeing Newsom’s wingmen – Neil Morgan on a big drum and Ryan Francesconi on banjo – with eyes fixed on her, waiting for their time. And watching Bill Callahan, Newsom’s boyfriend and the man who is Smog, wait nervously behind a mic to one side for more than ten minutes, his legs getting wider and wider apart and hands deeper in his pockets like a little kid, until it’s his moment to add those beautiful bassy vocals to Joanna’s firm, strange angelly sound in Only Skin. (That’s the bit also where I really started crying.)
Newsom plays the whole of the new album, Ys, in one genius go, with the London Symphony Orchestra. (The album is partly orchestrated by Van Dyke Parks, who worked with Brian Wilson on Smile, and there is a Beach Boys lushness to the music.) She comes on to already rapturous applause, sits down and positions her harp. Then silence, and she takes a swig from a bottle of water. I’ve never witnessed so many people so quiet and still watching someone take a drink. And then whack, straight into Emily, the song about Joanna’s sister, and father, and love for her family and how they can teach you and show you other ways to see the universe (literally: “The meteorite is a source of the light, and the meteor's just what we see, and the meteoroid is a stone that's devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee,” Newsom explains. Emily is an astrophysicist…).
After Ys, live, there is no need for a second half, but oh it is good to have it. Newsom plays without the orchestra, some older songs (Sadie, Book of Right On, Clam Cockle Cowrie), a Scottish folk song (Ca’ the Yowes), and a new song which is a dirty, pelvis-tingling folk-country number, and nothing like anything on Ys. There is more chat, too, now that there’s no string section to get fidgety while she talks: a dedication to the tour manager (“a king among men”) and a girl whose seventh birthday it was (“she gave me a pillow,” Newsom explains, simply.) And then the show is over and Newsom pretty much skips off the stage, bouncing along on her standing ovation. This woman is a miracle.

# posted by Bing @ 7:50 pm 0 comments

Eagles of Death Metal
Soho Revue Bar, 22 January 2007
"I'm telling you this because it's true: this is the best fucking gig we ever played." Jesse Hughes, the snake-hipped, slick-haired frontman of The Eagles of Death Metal, is having at least as much fun as the two dozen women who've invaded the stage at this ladies-only night at the Soho Revue Bar. His guitar player, middle-aged and chubby with a floppy mohawk, is definitely having fun, snogging a girl who must on some level be aware that he is A: not sexy, and B: older than her dad.
I'd never been to a gig where the band were playing random cover versions and songs they hadn't rehearsed because they really didn't want to get off stage yet, or a gig where the lead singer wades through the crowd to a nearby podium in order to do a bit of poledancing, or where plastic cups of bison-grass vodka are handed out to the crowd. I recommend it though.
It's a brilliant idea – EoDM have always had a touch of hen-night Full Monty-with-guitars entertainers about them, so chucking them in a room full of women who like noise and booze and sex is a match made in heaven. Jesse is hilariously beside himself with excitement at the sight of a club full of lairy, rocky ladies, and he's a perfect gent, too – leaning forward to chat to women at the front, yelling "let's hear it for the ladies" repeatedly and apparently involutarily, and oozing nice-blokeness. He also has a particularly tight and lovely bottom, and the sort of huge moustache that leads a lady to thinking about her clitoris being tickled (the gig was in a former strip club, still owned by porno millionaire Paul Raymond, so I think it's okay to mention these things).
The music is kind-of secondary, but their catalogue of short, silly rock songs with at least two false endings serves well, as does a cover of Brown Sugar, and their yell-along I Want You So Hard is such a success they play it twice in a row. The highlight, though, was the woman in the hotpants and purple feather boa who took the second mic and knew all the words. That and Jesse's arse.

The Spitz, 5 August 2006
The Russian Futurists have a good song out, Paul Simon, with a dirty happy horn-y hook and a sprinkling of, yep, Paul Simonish, You Can Call Me Al joy. But live, they’re a letdown. Doughy Canadians in hoodies, they look like half the cast of Emmerdale and talk like cocky, dimwitted teenaged boys. Between-song banter that includes, without tongue even in cheek, “this is our sensitive song, for all the ladies,” does them no favours. They’re a bit like Har Mar Superstar without the libido or the energy, and the songs sound like they could soundtrack a dodgy 80s Saturday night TV show if only they were a bit more professional, or even interesting. The best thing about these tunes is how quickly they stop.
Peter, Bjorn and John give a much happier gig experience. They’re tight and lively, singer Peter leaping and hopping about with nervy abandon, and bassist Bjorn grinning like a giddy bear, singing along because he wants to and he loves the songs (there’s no mic anywhere near him). The drummer (John!) gets to take some limelight, too: he provides the whistling that is the hook for standout song Young Folks (that’s also the current single – a duet, on record, with The Concretes’ Victoria Bergsman). They have a sweet open-heartedness and clever, catchy pop songs; simple rock’n’roll with layer upon layer of influence, from synthy funk to Motowny pop to plain old rock, all worn lightly and with their own brand-new style. Bugger Top of the Pops; if Ready, Steady, Go! were still on TV, Peter, Bjorn and John would be on it every week.

the first Latitude Festival, Suffolk, 14-16 July 2006


When I set off, I know there’s a chance that the Mean Fiddler’s newest festival is going to be a bit too child-friendly, a bit too Guardian-reader, to scratch my dirty itches (and they’re not even that dirty. I like kids! I read the Guardian!). But while it is set in the grounds of Henham House, near cosy-posh Southwold in Suffolk, and while I do find a piece of apricot in one of my rather Fresh and Wild looking salads, my prejudices turn out to be exactly that. The Latitude festival managed to avoid being another Big Chill (the festival for people who don’t like festivals) because the music is better and you don’t feel like you’re surrounded by thirtysomethings from Stoke Newington. There is waitress service at one of the stages, but this is actually a brilliant idea on a hot lazy summer afternoon, and there is a poetry tent but, well, what’s wrong with poetry! (People keep calling Pete Doherty a poet: have they ever any poetry? Anyway.)

Patti Smith, on stage all powerful and sexy on Saturday, is the highlight of my weekend. She may be the highlight of my summer. She complains about the smoke machine (“We’re not a fucking heavy metal band”), talks about the just-restarted killing in the Lebanon, dedicates songs to Syd Barrett and Thomas Paine, and sings us an amazing acoustic set, with support from Lenny Kaye, including In My Blakean Year, Because the Night and, finally, the glorious, glorious Gloria. The next day she does a poetry reading, with her glasses on and a big grin, and reveals more of her political optimism and her imagination (“We could fight wars with guitars and huge amps. People would go deaf, but no one would die”), tells a Bob Dylan anecdote or two, and reads some of her poems.

I don’t see anyone else all weekend with Patti’s magic, but I find it hard to take my eyes off glowing, grinning singer Edward from Larrikin Love, and not just because he gets my paedometer twitching. The whole band look like Dickensian Club Kids, and Edward in particular seems delighted and slightly confused all the time. Their dishevelled, cheeky-chirpy, laidback songs are perfect for a pleasantly hungover sunny Sunday afternoon. They not only have a cowbell (there are always extra points for a cowbell) but a trombone. Lots of bands this weekend remind me of our beloved Dexys, simply by being a bit soulful and shambly, having a bit of brass and a sprinkle of Motown; Larrikin Love are one of them.

Not quite so suited to a sunny afternoon, but great all the same, are Lords. They play noodly dirty hard Led Zeppy rock, with lots of wobbly underwater-sounding oozing bass. They give the impression of just about managing to hang it all together (an impression that comes either from genuine shambolic playing or from lots of practice and being incredibly tight, I was too drunk to know which). They introduce their “bestest song” but don’t manage to say what it’s called. It is pretty bestest though, with some sax (it’s the weekend of brass!) that sounds how Lisa Simpson would if she’d spent time in Soho in the 60s experimenting with drugs and George Melly.

Lords’ touch-of-prog mates, Part Chimp, take themselves a bit more seriously, I think, although maybe my judgement is marred by the number of blokes at the front doing some very stern and oddly sedate headbanging (they somehow make it look a bit like chinstroking). Part Chimp provide murky nasty fug to wade about in, lots of aggressive lights and fog - in an 80s TV sci-fi style - so you can’t quite see them. They are almost pompous, but actually great.

Little Neemo are tucked away in the cool, dark film tent on the sweltering Sunday afternoon. Their songs on CD are dark, sad and lovely; live they are even more absorbing. Singer Gavin has a proper, old-fashioned, effortless, strong voice, honest and powerful and delicate. His two guitar-wielding wingmen harmonise and it’s great; one of them plays the accordion too, and is Gavin’s surly stooge. There’s some stage banter which sometimes becomes stage bickering, although it’s funny rather than uncomfortable. They don’t seem to have stage personas; they are here to sing their urban folk songs and they fancy a bit of a chat, too. The sweetly sozzled audience laps it up.

I had some good times in the poetry tent, too, and not just with Patti. There was some awful awful shit in there, of course (and an astonishingly obnoxious compere whose nose I could very happily have broken) but a few damn goodies, too. Thick Richard are a pair of entirely guileless and very talented men from Manchester who are very funny and dark, in that funny and dark Manchester way. They are from the same fine stock as Hovis Presley and John Cooper Clarke who, as if by magic, comes on straight after them. By this time, it is the early hours and, rather than finding myself any good hard drugs, I am actually sipping some very nice, organic hot chocolate. Quite right too, as Clarke is rather like a narky old gran, and I mean that as a compliment. He is sharp and sharp-tongued, ageing without too much grace, occasionally befuddled and full of strange, entrancing tales that don’t go anywhere, and jokes and poems that tread a line I love, between funny and awful (You ain’t nothing but a hedgehog, lying all the time. You ain’t never pricked an enemy and you ain’t no porcupine”). I’ve never seen him live before, but I knew he’d be a legend, and he is.

Field Music are pointy, nice-suits, old-fashioned pop, the Rumble Strips add fuel to my Dexys-are-everywhere theory, with a saxy, soully sound, and the Soft Hearted Scientists soothe my sore head and nourish my soul with their electric folky goodness. But most of the rest of the festival feels a bit disappointing. Antony and the Johnsons have a whiff of Jazz Cafe about them, I Am Kloot sound like they’re being David Gray with a sprinkle of Madchester maudlin this weekend. Absentee, shambling and dirty like a sexy sleazy uncle, are a good band, but whoever thought they should play in front of a massive screen showing Pepé Le Pew is an idiot, and the singer needs to SING UP A BIT. Last Town Chorus have a lap steel and a collection of gentle, lonesome songs, but they sound like they belong on The OC. I don’t know why people love British Sea Power, they are dull as shit, blokey noisy chuggy shit. Maybe they’re like campari and olives and I’ll like them when I get older. The Morning After Girls are entertaining but by-numbers, totally uninventive skinny boys (and one girl: liars!) in black with yawn-rockstar hair and some reverb. I just want more Patti.

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Into The Mystic: Bert Jansch, King Creosote, Adem, Max Richter, Mike Heron, Vetiver, Vashti Bunyan
The Barbican, Saturday 4 February 2006

The bumper night of folk starts on a glorious swooning high when Bert Jansch opens with Blackwaterside. Jansch is the folk giant from Glasgow who's known for his influence on others - Neil Young, Led Zeppelin, Johnny Marr. I start to feel foolish because I don't know enough about guitars to know how good he is, but then I know it feels good to watch him play and hear how beautiful the songs are.
King Creosote must be a bit scared coming on after Jansch, but their strain of folk is fresh and honest enough to earn its own place. Favourite Girl sees a few heads resting on shoulders around the hall. Yeuch, but ahh.
Adem comes right out and says how scary it is to follow two acts as strong as those. As if to underline the point, he and the band spend a few minutes tinkering and scurrying and "just mic-ing the snare" as the drummer sheepishly explains. Adem usually leaves me feeling a bit blank, but not this time. The set finishes with There Will Always Be ('..My door, it will always be open. There will always be lights on, there will always be room at my table for you...") and sweet sighs are audible from the crowd.

I miss the start of the second half but I don't mind. This is a marathon folky feast and I'm happy to leave out the Max Richter course. Mike Heron, he of the wondrous Incredible String Band, does a stint with his daughter, which is ever so slightly cringy but so open-hearted that you can't be mean about it. His songs are warm celebrations (Morning Stars, You Get Brighter) and anyway, from here on, everyone starts playing with everyone else and I love it when that happens.
Vetiver join Mike Heron on stage, although as far as I can tell, it's some combination of Vetiver, Espers and Currituck Co (Kevin Barker, Otto Hauser and another cute boy who looks lanky and beardy like they do. It's the folk Hanson!). I have yet to work out who's who, and the hairiness doesn't help. Then Vetiver (or whoever they are...) have the stage to themselves for a couple of songs (including a gorgeous version of Black is the Colour, influenced by both John Fahey and Nina Simone's arrangements, if I remember Barker’s intro rightly. Vetiver appreciate their ancestors).
And then, up comes the star of the show: Vashti Bunyan. The woman who made a record with Andrew Loog Oldham in 1970 then disappeared up to Scotland. Almost 40 years later, with a little help from a couple of things that didn't exist when she started out - Devendra Banhart and the internet - she has become something like the godmother of folk. That 1970 record, Just Another Diamond Day, was re-released in 2000. Her second album, Lookaftering, came out last year and has been warming up my iPod for the past few weeks. As well as Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom, the new album features a few of the musicians here tonight, including Max Richter, Adem, Kevin Barker and Otto Hauser. After a few songs, Bunyan is joined on stage by all of them, and Kieran Hebden trundles out, too. The songs are beautiful. She opens with Hidden ("This is not a folk song," she warns us. "It's a love song.") then Diamond Day, Here Before and Rainbow River, all delicate, dark songs made even more delicate and dark by her voice, which is soft and steely at the same time. She's very, very nervous though, and it's a shame you can't imagine her ever saying boo to a goose. According to her website, Vashti Bunyan never sang with her guitar in front of an audience until she played on Later With Jools Holland last November, and so to be headlining in front of around 2000 people sitting quietly in their seats at the Barbican must be pretty terrifying.
After the show, down in one of the Barbican's strange 'is it a room, is it a hallway?' areas, Circulus play their own set. I doubt Circulus are terrified of anything. They're dressed in medieval capes and huge sleeves (I might buy a big felt hat as a result of seeing them), there's a scent of patchouli in the air, and they play dirty, folky, frotting-with-the-pagans songs for a fantastic hour or more. When head loon Michael Tyack explains why we actually are all made of sunlight as he introduces My Body Is Made Of Sunlight, I am utterly convinced.

The Broken Family Band
Water Rats, London
6 January


The Broken Family Band were the last straw for me at the folky Green Man Festival last summer, where I saw some great music (from the likes of King Creosote, Joanna Newsom, Bonnie Prince Billy) but eventually came out in a rash from listening to men with beards complaining that their girlfriends are never as nice to them as their mum was, or something. They’ve been getting good word-of-mouth, though, so I thought they deserved a second chance last week, headlining in one of my favourite venues. Now I know better.
The Broken Family Band used to be an indie band called Hofman; for whatever reason they decided to jump on the folky wagon, and here they are. They play chugging, twangy, bland songs. I fear this may be alt country. The problem is that they don’t really mean what they say - they’re going through the motions. Whatever you want to call it - integrity, soul, honesty, bottle - they don’t have it.
There’s a lot of chat in between songs, lots of friendly heckling. Singer Steven Adams is wearing New Balance trainers, Carhartt jeans and a Penguin shirt; he’s an indie-folk android. His banter is self-deprecating, smug and not half as funny as he thinks it is. Is he like that in general, or just when he’s on stage? I don’t know what this band think or feel about anything, except I’m sure they’re chuffed to have got this far. Chris Martin means it more than they do. They sing a shouty, soulless song about loving Jesus Christ. Do they really? Who knows. Maybe it doesn’t matter. I idly imagine Jason Pierce, a man who knows how to write a song about Jesus, walking on to the stage and beating them up with a big crucifix.
Where the Hell is my Baby? is their best song. Which makes me think it’s a cover version. Also, these boys are from Cambridge; I’ve met lots of people from Cambridge and none of them says “where the hell” or “my baby”, even if they have had a couple of holidays in Texas. They might as well sing about Route 66 or Taco Bell.
In a way, none of this would matter if the songs were great. But it does matter, because the songs will never be great until these boys get some soul.

Lady Sovereign
The ICA, London
31 October

Who’s not going to like Lady Sovereign? The woman is set to take over. Her songs are ace, for a start. The new single, Hoodie, is a boogie-oogie-oogie bum-bouncing piece of grime magic. The show’s closer tonight, Public Warning, is a proper noisy ravey ska rock punk whambanger. She’s 19 years old, 5’1” and cute, and she can pull off being a cocky little fucker. She punched a bouncer before the gig tonight. It’s Halloween and she swaggers onto stage in a pumpkin-coloured Adidas trackie and a Chucky mask. She belches, inspiring herself to start a burping competition among the audience (“You can win a hoodie!” she announces, wide-eyed. “It’s Adidas!”). She tells us about pissing herself when she was drunk (“Everyone’s done it”), meeting Gordon Brown last week (“He says he likes my stuff”) and beating another girl up with a broom. She introduces Hoodie saying, “Everyone, put your hoods up. See, no one got shot!” Sov does great banter, and I’m so bored with mumbling blokes with guitars.
She also reignites my love for rave (no, really, that’s a good thing). Her DJ, Frampster, plays before she comes on. It’s very loud, the ICA is very dark, everyone faces the stage, it’s like Bolton in 1990.
Jay-Z is working on her album, out next February. So is Missy Elliott (she’s a fucking raver too), and it looks like the Neptunes will be as well. This seems like some amazing rags-to-riches tale when you read the Guardian plugs about the little girl from Neasden, but when you hear Lady Sovereign you realise that it’s not amazing at all. She’s a genius. They’re lucky to be working with her.
She’s a great MC, she’s funny, she only gives a shit about stuff that matters. Her songs make me happy. I think I may have a Lady crush.

The Green Man Festival, near Hay-on-Wye, 19-21 August

The Green Man Festival had some fabulous folky treats, and it was in a gorgeous place - the grounds of Baskerville Hall near Hay-on-Wye, in a lush Welsh valley where we watched the full orangey moon rise like a backwards sunset, with dense woods covering the hill opposite the main stage, bouncing back the songs and hiding 19th-century dog graves.
On Friday night, The Incredible String Band laid the foundations for the weekend. They are proper 70s folksters; I felt like we were at one of the old-school stages at Glastonbury (this is no bad thing). They are one of those bands that make you want to be a member, because they look ruddy and content, and they sing honest songs about love and dancing and water and animals.
Bonnie Prince Billy and his country cohort Matt Sweeney headlined on Saturday. At first I thought he was a bit pompous, but after a couple of songs I realised it was the crowd of hushed boys that was pompous; Bonnie Prince Billy is great. A couple of nice touches popped the pomp anyway: a flare flew across the sky just as the band were getting to the chorus of I See A Darkness (very inappropriate, obviously, and probably very annoying for the band, but it was a bit magical and made everyone suddenly start singing along). Then Billy got a girl of about nine and two little boys on to the stage (his kids, maybe, I don’t know) to sing and dance with him to I Am A Cinematographer. They clearly weren’t prepared for this, and were terrified and funny and natural, and not at all twee.
There was still a lot of twee going on - Aberfeldy spring to mind - but more troubling for me was the cumulative effect of listening to emotionally dysfunctional men singing about loves lost or never won for an entire weekend. Get over it, boys. It’s funny for a bit, but after two days you start feeling a bit ragey. That old virgin-whore theory is still going strong, and it seems there’s a lot of men who are very pleased that they can grow a beard but terribly sad that they can’t find a girl who’s as nice as their mum.
Among the dumbasses though were some good uns making the sun that bit shinier. Among them were Jeffrey Lewis, who makes very sexy folk, and King Creosote, who has the bottle and the pure motives you need to write good music.
But the real magic, the great and glorious highlight of the weekend, the performer who put heart and beauty and real jaw-dropping genius into the festival, was Joanna Newsom. You get nervous writing about her set because you know you won’t do it justice. What a powerful joy to have someone writing fantastic lyrics, making wonderful songs, singing them with a voice that is sweet and clear but has strength and darkness too. Every song is a little story, they are poems with words that you revel in. She’s enjoying them too, as she sings them, the sounds and the shapes of each syllable and each line. She is beautiful, and cute, and this has been lamented, as if it is a shame that such a great songwriter should be saddled with being so beautiful. Rubbish. Are we not to take women seriously if they are sexy? Is that the best we can do? It’s an absolute wonder to go and see Joanna Newsom, I felt amazed and lucky that things can be so good.

Moshi Moshi night: Peter Von Poehl, Absentee, Architecture In Helsinki
The Purple Turtle, 14 July

The Moshi Moshi night was beautifully put together, each act warming things up a little more, in perfect synch with the venue which, by the end of the night, was roughly the hottest place I’ve ever been.

First up was Peter Von Poehl, and he’s a great opener. He’s from Sweden, I think, and he works that Scandinavian shtick, singing slightly twee folky songs and looking cute and skinny and like he should get out more. Between songs, he tells a story about waking up one morning to find a mouse looking him right in the eye. His landlord sets traps, and soon there is a mouse massacre. He tells it with brilliant timing, whimsy, deadpan style. Maybe it should be a B-side.

Absentee play lovely, lolloping songs that make you want to sit round a campfire, eating beans and talking to your horse. The singer, Daniel Michaelson, rivals Antony Johnsons for having the voice you least expect to come out of that body. He’s a skinny little thing with a gravelly, bassy, soothing sound pouring out of his mouth. Their album, Donkey Stock, includes tonight’s ace, rollicking closing number, Something To Bang, and My Dead Wife, which has an inspired, mournful segue into You’re The One That I Want.

The stage looks empty, we’re waiting for the last band, and Architecture In Helsinki, who are crouching out of sight, slowly stand up like time-lapse flowers in spring. They bring the same kind of grinning, good joy too. There’s eight of them, from Melbourne (they chose their name because they like how it sounds), and they take turns to sing, dance and play a school-orchestra array of instruments that I think includes keyboards, guitar, clarinet, tuba, trumpet, recorder, trombone and tambourine. It’s a ramshackle operation but don’t be fooled - they know what they’re doing. The songs are crafty, melodic gems; sweet, short and anarchic. (The new single, Maybe You Can Owe Me, has It’s 5! on the back, maybe my favourite song.) Everyone is happy. They come back for an encore (and apparently because the bouncer wouldn’t let them out of the back door) to a frankly adoring crowd. And they give us a cover of Love Is The Drug that provides me with a fabulous ‘Oh, it really is, it’s like I’m hearing the words for the first time’ moment. Then they’re off stage, my cheeks hurt from smiling, and the Moshi Moshi DJ turns out to be the man who owns every one of my favourite records. Oh, what pleasures there are to be had.

Artrocker July 2005

Stylish Riots at Cargo, Sunday 19 June 2005

Why book an all-dayer for a Sunday in June at Cargo, which has a big courtyard, and then have the bands play inside? If the neighbours don’t like the noise, book somewhere else. As it was, Dogs, The Boxer Rebellion, Thee Unstrung, Vatican DC, The Priscillas all played in a big, hot, dark, half-empty room while anyone with the slightest lust for life was outside going, ‘Shit, it’s hot, isn’t it?’, smiling and drinking shandies.
But even if the promoters had had some understanding of sunshine and/or air-conditioning, Stylish Riots would have been a letdown. Every time I went to check the next band, there was another group of blokes on the stage who’ve spent too much time studying the same post-punk and not enough time writing songs. I stand by my (drunken) assertion that rock and roll has more to do with hair and shoes than most of us like to admit, but when I’ve stopped admiring the scuffed white plimmies and the 1982 shaggy cut, I still want something worth listening to.
At one point, I try to escape the dirge and find Mr David Viner outside doing an acoustic set. He’s a talented man, but he plays cover versions of old blues and folk songs. Covers. At least we’re getting the original ingredients instead of the watered-down stuff indoors. I start to wish that the crowd would listen more carefully. Instead they are becoming a kind of Camden Big Brother - drunk people who want to feel cool, be the centre of attention and have sex.
There were two sets that kept me in the big hot room: The Priscillas and Dogs. I think The Priscillas listen to The B52s, watch Russ Meyer films and drink daiquiris while these boys are wanking over Joe Strummer. They rock, they’re funny, they’re saucy.
Dogs may be post-punk copycats like most of the rest of this lot, but when they play a good set (which is usually), not only do they have some fine songs, they have enough presence to keep you watching, to actually engage you. Each one of them is a distinct character on the stage; they’re like a kids’ cartoon (moody dog, cool dog, friendly dog, shy dog, happy dog that humps your leg). By the end, I think I like them more than the lager-filled losers invading the stage and trying to crowd surf in a half-empty room.

Death From Above 1979, Metric, Test-Icicles
Scala, Thursday 26 May 2005


Test-Icicles are naughty boys, surly teenagers delighted by what they're getting away with. Which may be the point of being in a band. The drummer sits at his kit reading a magazine and drinking a beer - I didn't see him pick up a stick once, although he came forward a couple of times to chuck beer at the crowd. The other three swap guitars between songs, take turns to sing and yell and throw insults about. It’s all either very cute or very annoying.
It’s also either genius or retarded. They sound 80s post-punk (when will it stop?) but they’ve got chunks of Minor Threat and Beastie Boys and Faith No More; they're not just Bloc Party 2. I listened to my favourite of their songs again today: Circle, Square, Triangle. It's ace. Their first single on Domino is out in July.

Metric must only be on the bill because of some business or Canadian hometown connection with DFA 1979. They are awful. The lead singer is Dido-does-Britpop (I feel a bit sick just writing that) with one of those voices that people describe as sardonic, as if that's a good thing. It's not.

Death From Above 1979, on the other hand, are A Good Thing. A man with great hair on bass, a man with great hair on drums and singing, making loud, hard, fast, great songs. I love them. Sadly, at this gig they play all the really great songs (Romantic Rights, Blood on our Hands, Going Steady) in the first ten minutes, after which I just get pissed off with sweaty moshing men in shirts who should be at a Bad Manners gig, 20 years ago. I've seen DFA 1979 before and they were one of the best bands I've ever heard live, but tonight it's not right, like a date you should have had a day later, when you were both in a better mood. At the end, though, Test-Icicles join them on stage for a shambling, noisy, happy couple of minutes, and I go home smiling.

Barfly Camden, Tuesday 24 May

The Interpol-alikes from Birmingham are actually pretty fantastic

The first couple of songs I spend near the back, resolutely nonplussed, thinking: they sound like Joy Division; they sound like U2; they sound like Ian Curtis singing with U2. Towards the end of the second song I'm shifting forward and out of snotty smartarse mode, just thinking about how nice it is to see a band at the Barfly who don't have shaggy, we're-in-a-band, we-listen-to-post-punk hair. Then Editors play their third song, Blood, and around this time I reach the tipping point, the magic gig moment where you start fixing on one repeated lyric, or the bass line, like a little zen student, and you get that feeling that you understand exactly what they mean, exactly how they feel, and no one else has ever expressed it quite that way before. I don't mean to make it sound like an epiphany, or some super-spiritual experience, because it isn't - it's what should happen at every gig. You forget to look around to see if there's anyone in the crowd you want to suck your cheeks in for, you forget to work out what sharp, insightful and hopefully witty remark you'll make about the band afterwards, you forget that you need a pee.
You may think they sound like a not-so-good Interpol on record, but we all know that seeing a band live is a whole different thing to buying the seven inch, and live, at this gig at least, Editors bring back my teenage swoon. I don't mean because they're sexy (although singer Tom Smith and guitarist Chris Urbanowicz have a Carl/Pete homoerotic stage thing going on which is, you know, quite exciting). The teenage swoon is the romantic, excited feeling you have when you think that a band gets you, and you get them. Their final song, Open Your Arms, teeters between pompous and epic, but when they play it, I am in full swoon. It may not be a life-changing, soul-shaking thing, but it's why we go to gigs.

Madame Jojo's, Tuesday 17 May 2005

Retro isn't so retro when the boys doing it are so young you suspect there's afterbirth behind their ears

At the gig, everyone you speak to says that The Checks sound like early Rolling Stones, and that's because they’ve been listening to the blues: Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf, the stuff Mick and Keith were soaking themselves in when they were still teenagers. There's no new spin on it, either - except, crucially, these boys are young. Very young. And sexy. They wear tight jeans, tight T-shirts, and front man Ed Knowles is as camp and cocky as Mick Jagger was when he used to strut about in that long scarf and those cock-gripping trousers. Their youth means that: A, they are hot, mesmerising, even; B, they are full of plain, sincere enthusiasm. They play unreconstructed, chugging, bluesy rock and roll, with no tongue in cheek. Maybe it’s something to do with their heritage - The Checks are from New Zealand and have the same shameless plundering habits as that Australian, irony-bereft AC/DC tribute band Jet.
Knowles makes fearless, jerking, unselfconscious lead-singer moves that remind you of that other Antipodean boy, Craig Nicholls, and also have you suspecting he's seen a few videos of Joy Division in between listening to the Bo Diddley back catalogue. The other four (who are cute too but will, I think, always just be "the other four") look upright and eager, like they're on The Ed Sullivan Show, except for one point when the lead guitarist steps to centre and gives us a dangerously proggy solo, politely escorting us back to the Isle of Wight, 1971. At the end of the set, we've heard nothing new but we feel damn good, we love rock and roll. And we've got the horn.

Artrocker May 2005