Reviews
19 Feb 2012
Colour Me Wednesday @ The Wilmington Arms, London
We need hope like we need oxygen, but in hard times it can seem in short supply. Even though the last 15 months have seen the biggest explosion of protests, demonstrations and riots for generations, you’ll struggle to hear any echoes in a sleepwalking pop culture.
Comet Gain sing that ‘music will save you, again and again’ but between the melodramatic mainstream - where a heavily-bankrolled Brit School clone can claim not to be about the ‘price tag’ - and the bubbling-underground protest scene there’s a huge gap to be filled.
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19 Feb 2012
Merrill Garbus’
tUnE-yArDs' reputation as a live act that will have you both dancing and swooning at once precedes them. Garbus, perhaps, knows this and she eases us into her set of layered sounds and interrupted rhythms with a stripped down acappella introduction to live staple ‘Party Can (Do You Wanna Live)’.
the girls are join in with the happy syncopated dancing as the song develops from its base layers to a cartoon jungle of groove.
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16 Feb 2012
Slow Club @ Heaven
This place is usually big club nights and dancing, and
Slow Club opening with an incredible, slow motion, acoustic cover of
Pulp’s ‘Disco 2000’ is at once an acknowledgment and a subversion of that. The audience is full to the brim and yet you can hear everything as clearly as you would if listening to a high quality recording - on an even better set of headphones.
Straight from the beginning this gig is all about the two voices, showcased both separately and together in different, awesome ways. When Rebecca and Charles talk in between songs, you may not get everything, but when they sing, you hear every syllable. They do minimal but not too stripped down, loud and quiet, slow and fast, glittery and casual all mixed up together. They are dressed down and the set list is on a paper plate, but the blinding lights ricochet crazily off the golden drum in the front. Sometimes the two extra instrumentalists come forward, are given a full introduction to the audience and occupy central spots as Rebecca goes over to the back of the stage to play the big drumkit. A minute later the band will retreat and it’s just Rebecca and Charles, switching places at the very front edge of the stage, one guitar and no microphones, singing ‘Gold Mountain’ to the crowd which is too stunned to really sing, just humming shyly to the chorus. Rebecca laughs through the lyrics.
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14 Feb 2012
She Makes War @ The Green Park Tavern, Bath
One-woman army
She Makes War has earned herself quite a reputation for being one of the hardest working independent musicians on the planet. Tonight, she brings her Telecaster and dolphin-embellished ukulele to the Green Park Tavern in Bath as support for fellow busy bees and collaborators
The Hysterical Injury as they launch their (rather brilliant, might I add)
debut album,
Dead Wolf Situation.
She Makes War’s main weapon is her voice, which she uses with a great sense of skill and an acute awareness of its power throughout the performance. Lucid and melodic, yet seemingly effortless, her ethereal vocals form the basis for each song, complemented by the rhythmic strumming of her guitar and the shimmering sounds of her ukulele.
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14 Feb 2012
Dead Wolf Situation, The Hysterical Injury, Crystal Records
Let’s make this clear:
1) This review is going to require the use of CAPITALS and italics in a bid to avoid using exclamation marks, which are entirely UNCOOL and not appropriate for comment relating to a hotly tipped affair like
The Hysterical Injury’s debut album.
2)
Riot Pop does not refer to over-excited new bands, equal portion energy, three-chord knowledge and too many ideas. It was true “back in the day". Now, only the latter – too many ideas, so little time - remain. Riot Pop, 2012, represents high quality musicality, some mighty fine INDEPENDENT pop songs, the bare bones of them without the cushioning production techniques, sex, death and rebellion, complete with swirling vocal arrangements, woo-hooo’s and catchy riffs – all of which is a pretty fair description of the songs within The Hysterical Injury’s debut LP,
Dead Wolf Situation.
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14 Feb 2012
Screws Get Loose,
Those Darlins, 13 Feb, Oh Wow Dang.
There are some people whose nod of approval is more of a death warrant. Like the time we saw Sonia in Eastenders wearing a cardigan we owned, we knew we had to get rid of it. When David Cameron says he listens to your band, it’s time to put down your instruments. On the other hand, some approvals can be the kiss of life. With a glowing recommendation from
Best Coast’s Bethany Cosentino, things are off to a good start for
Those Darlins.
Their debut album was released a few years back and had critics and music fans alike salivating at their brand of nu-country. For new release
Screws Get Loose they sure have shaken off those country shackles, though touches remain here. Now less of a barn dance and more of a dirty backyard party fuelled by Moonshine and raging libidos, Jessi Darlin has taken her band down the retro girl band route and thinks nothing of melding together a bunch of genres: pop, garage, vintage rock & roll and country to name a few.
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12 Feb 2012
Wild Flag + Peggy Sue @ Electric Ballroom
“We’ve been watching Wild Flag every night trying to steal their moves, but it just doesn’t work. Might do a double kick now. We tried at soundcheck. Didn’t work.”
Peggy Sue are an adorable band, though a while ago they may have seemed an odd choice as support to
Wild Flag but it turns out that they’ve now graduated to a much more electric band. So maybe it’s no double kick levels, but with all the liveliness and extra instruments (apart from guitar, Rosa plays keyboard and a drum, plus there is a backing guitarist/bassist/drummer in the background shadows), it definitely makes sense.
As part of a Gender and Music class this
Girls Are has been taking we were recently supposed to think of examples of musicians who support the status quo; appear to uphold it in order to protect other values, subvert it superficially, and lastly, actually challenge and threaten the established order. For that last category, somebody yelled “Wild Flag!”, and I jolted in joy and agreement. There’s something so raw and radical about this band: composed of middle-aged women, which is not a position that’s easy to hold in pop culture and all legends with a baggage of success and recognition – that makes it even more difficult to be taken for who they are and not in terms of what is expected of them. But Wild Flag don’t give a fuck about your expectations. Against the annoyingly retro-maniac reunion trend, they resisted resurrecting their previous bands and created a completely fresh, original and powerful quality. Translated into a live performance, it has ‘badass’ written all over it.
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10 Feb 2012
Born To Die,
Lana Del Rey, Interscope, 30 Jan 2012
Hype can be a terrible thing for an artist. In this age of instant gratification, dictated to by fickleness and pre-emptive cynicism, a backlash can occur as swiftly as the adoration seemed to first arrive. Some people love to watch a downfall. The aimless trolls of the internet criticise those who crumble under the pressure they created or don’t live up to the impossible expectations set for them. The poster girl for this particularly modern strand of bitterness is
Lana Del Rey. Introducing her seems a pointless activity when everything that could have been said about her already has been, but strip all that away and we have her new album,
Born To Die.
The titular track is a stunning way to start the album; an existential love song tinged with despair and faint desperation. “Choose your last words/This is the last time/Cause you and I/ We were born to die” Del Rey croons in a gravelly purr. We melt. ‘Off To The Races’ sees Lana quoting Lolita (“Light of my life/Fire of my loins”) and revealing a father complex Freud would have a field day with, while ‘Blue Jeans’ yearns for a patriarchal relationship in which she’s utterly looked after, marrying a bygone attitude with programmed drumbeats and samples.
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5 Feb 2012
There’s a new London-based folk act creating quite a stir on our stereos at the moment, in the form of vocalist Elena Tonra and her guitarist boyfriend, Igor Haefeli. Under the name
Daughter, they have been playing live together since November 2010 and their latest EP is released by Communion in the UK, a fairly new label known for its repertoire of folk artists. But don’t dismiss them as yet another twee girl-plus-guitar act - these mournful lovebirds have staying power. The release of their debut EP,
His Young Heart, back in April 2011, quickly attracted attention, along with well-deserved praise.
However it is their most recent offering,
The Wild Youth EP, which is proving to be something to get excited about. Drawing on the dark, haunting tones of their previous release,
The Wild Youth unleashes the kind of emotional intensity you might find in a heavy romantic novel in less than twenty minutes of playing time, while maintaining a sharp optimistic drive throughout. “I think I should be a little more confident in myself, in my skin,” Elena sings determinedly in the opening track, 'Home'.
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2 Feb 2012
New Year New Start Alldayer @The Well, Leeds
Despite their early start at 4.30pm, when
Slow Science hit the stage at the
Bombed Out Records’ New Year New Start, the venue is already alive with loyal fans of the DIY/independent punk label -from all over the country. The yearly all-day event has been running on and off since 2001 and involves a selection of bands who have released records through the label. The Well itself is a rock venue/pub just outside of the city centre and has a history of promoting punk and metal bands, usually in a DIY fashion, like today.
Soon the loud and energetic 90s indie rock sound of Slow Science has the band room filled with excited faces. With Stacey and Jon sharing vocals, the harmony effect is similar to 90s emo band
Jejune, whilst the constant tempo changes, intricate guitar playing and energy make it feel fresh and exciting. Stacey’s bass is turned up loud so that every note is booming through the speakers as she bounds around the stage with enthusiasm, the growling melody adding more to the band’s sound than just a rhythm section. Opening song, and also to their EP, ‘Kidnap to the South’, is a pop punk frenzy, with the distorted sound coming through the monitors creating a raw
Husker Du feel. Launching straight into ‘The Ballad of Joe “Mama” Besser’, the crowd is now fully on board, singing along to the contagious “wooooah” parts. Slow Science have impressed with their polished playing that still doesn’t lose its old school raw feel.
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