FRANCOIS AND THE ATLAS MOUNTAINS @ THE CASTLE 29 January 2012

Tonight’s gig was not a planned outing. Meeting an old friend for a drink turned into seeing a sold out gig thanks to a kindly promoter who secured me the only returned ticket. The fact it was sold out appeared at first to be down to the local support for Butcher The Bar. The five piece led by Joel Nicholson play a mellow Americana-tinged folk-pop, gentle strums and plaintive grooves with soft, mild-mannered vocals. Touches of clarinet, miniature xylophone, some fantastic drumming and a song based on a William Blake poem all sound more interesting than it was. Very pleasant on the ear but I found it all a bit too mild-mannered and forgettable on first encounter.



Lead guitar was played by Matt from Walton Hesse who to me are a much more interesting proposition. Which shows how much I know. Butcher the Bar have just finished a European jaunt supporting Death Cab For Cutie and Walton Hesse remain unsigned and without an official release. A damn shame.


The start to the set by French four-piece Fránçois and the Atlas Mountains was delayed by the rigging up of the copious amounts of kit. The five-piece were dressed in outfits lost somewhere between beach casual and prison scrubs. As another lost moment passes chasing faulty leads, things do not look promising. Following the gentle palate-teasing opening of ‘Azrou Tune’ however things swiftly pick up. The band - two drummers, two banks of keyboards and Monsieur F. Marry on vocals and guitar (although several instrument changes occur) - deliver waves of shimmering polyrhythmic joy in their “songs of the seaside and the desert” accompanied by a vast array of exotic percussion.



As the set progresses programmed beats are added into the mix, locking the band into hypnotic and steadily more intense grooves. For ‘La Vie Dure’ Fránçois goes walk about in the crowd, at other times the (shifting) frontline of players indulge in synchronised arm lifts and dance moves. It is both heavily choreographed but also loose-limbed and spontaneous, Fránçois at times adopting an intense Ian Curtis stare, at others swaying with double-jointed robotic abandon. The slinky Gallic grooves, with hints of North and West African rhythms, were subtle but deeply infectious.



After a seven song set the band dispense with the ritual of walking off stage and returning to play a three song encore. Still entrancing it didn't match the rapture of the second half of the main set but I’m converted. Vive la République.

The Set List:

Azrou Tune
Les Plus Beaux
Edge of Town
City Kiss
Royan
La Vie Dure
Way To Forget
Slow Love
Piscine
---
Do You Want To Dance
Be Water
Buried Treasures

CHRIS DEVOTION AND THE EXPECTATIONS Amalgamation and Capital

This year BBC4 are repeating, week by week, Top of the Pops from 1977. Next January when they get to 1978 I wouldn't blink an eye to see Chris Devotion and the Expectations on screen. The music of the Scots four-piece fast-forwards from lively new wave guitar pop of that era (‘Tell The Girl’) to the ferocious garage revivalism of The Hives (‘I’m Already Home’ ) and the rapid, righteous rock ‘n’ roll of Rocket From The Crypt (‘Pinhole Suit’, ‘You’ve Got It All’). Along the way there’s some variety – the brief ballad ‘Eyes Open Now’, a Woody Guthrie cover plus the strummed acoustic and double-tracked lead guitar of ‘Blister’ wouldn’t sound out of place on Sugar’s “Copper Blue” – but most of these sixteen short songs (two have the impertinence to break three minutes) tend to fired-up feistiness.



Despite an album title that sounds like an Economic Studies primer, the band’s loud drainpipe-jeans pop majors on girlfriends and failed relationships rather than fiscal policy. Chris Devotion does link the two (“relationships (amalgamation) on a subconscious level are a matter of what we want from the other person (their capital); what they offer us”) but relationships – starting them, leaving them, wanting them – prevail with the political bite being left to the caustic ‘Surveying the Young Professionals’ and the rowdy folk-protest anger of Woody Guthrie cover ‘I Ain’t Got No Home’.

Full-bodied and fiery, "Amalgamation and Capital" packs a potent punch for 38 break-neck minutes even if not all of its many hooks stick in the mind once it’s over. But at its best, caught in the (two minute) moment of punky exuberance and pop hooks, it is a refreshingly off-trend and fine place to be.



Chris Devotion and the Expectations Amalgamation and Capital [BUY]

LAURA J MARTIN @ DULCIMER 22 January 2012

Tonight’s gig opened with Jo Gillot playing finger picked acoustic folk-blues that sang of red and grey squirrels, travelling rafts and the stealing rich in sweet and crystal clear tones. She may have been using a borrowed guitar (“mine’s in Preston”) but if she hadn’t told us, I don’t think anyone would have been the wiser. Lovely stuff played to a sold out crowd at this Imploding Inevitable Festival Night.


By the time Emily and the Faves took the stage, things were definitely cosy if not imploding. The four-piece play a punchy psyche-pop – a limber and funky rhythm section given an added emphatic thump from a single band member dedicated to percussion and backing vocals. Over the top, Emily Lansley (one third of Stealing Sheep in a different life) plays guitar that alternated between rapid pop strumming and languid psychedelic twang, all delivered with precision and confidence. It was odd then that Emily was less confident between songs – checking the sound levels, apologising for consulting a hand-written set-list and confessing to have forgotten to bring any of their CDs to sell (a shame because I had cash in hand). A beat group for Liverpool to be proud of.



Tonight was part of a short tour marking the release of Laura J Martin’s debut album “The Hangman Tree”. Having repeatedly missed her at Green Man festival for the last two years it was a delight to catch her in somewhere as intimate as the packed upstairs room of Dulcimer. Also having not seen her live I wasn’t sure what to expect – solo performance or large backing band? Laura was accompanied by Pete Williams on drums but only for three songs. For the remainder she played on flute, mandolin or keyboards expanding the sound through live looping or pre-programmed backing tracks. The effect – with projected backdrop – was nothing less than stunning.





Opening with instrumental ‘Doki Doki’, Martin showed off both her skills on the flute and the looping stations, adding in layers of sound with a stockinged foot whilst hardly pausing for breath during highly animated playing. Following songs saw her seated at the keyboard or switching between mandolin and flute – often in the same song. She may be a diminutive figure but alone on stage she is a powerful presence. Songs were given an extra theatricality through hand gestures, rolled shoulders and hip shimmies, or wielding the flute like a Kendo baton, repeatedly punching it towards the audiences. Nine songs including an encore sounds a slender set but it felt rich given the variety of instrumentation and the swing from the quiet (‘Tom’) to loud (‘Spy’) plus a new song too in ‘Sour Grapes’.



The final song of the main set was ‘Salamander’ which on the album is sung with Euros Childs – I can think of no higher compliment than to say tonight he was not missed. The song finished with solitary repeated notes on the mandolin and a dramatic flourish and then silence – spell-binding. The encore was a Kathy Smith cover (“discovered thanks to Andy Votel’s ‘Folk is a Four Letter Word’ compilation”). I don’t know the original but Laura J Martin made it sound convincingly like her own. A very talented woman. Her album alone is worth chasing down. But finally based on experience I can say that seeing Laura J Martin live is equally essential.



The Set List:

Doki Doki
The Lesson
Fire Horse
Tom
Jesse
Sour Grapes
Spy
Salamander
---
It’s Taking So Long

LAURA J MARTIN The Hangman Tree

In June 2010 I wrote about Laura J Martin for this esteemed organ when she only had one single to her name. By the end of 2011 that had risen to three singles. Now, on possibly one of the most depressing days of the year, comes her debut album on Static Caravan. “The Hangman Tree” bundles three songs from those singles - the title track being one of them - into this sixteen-song flighty folk odyssey that is the perfect antidote for lifting spirits flagging with the January blues.

If you are familiar with the singles you will know to expect: intricately arranged, jaunty folk-jazz excursions, mixing eastern vibes and a percussive, soulful swing, all powered by flute, mandolin, xylophone or piano with Martin’s vocals switching from child-like (but never infantile) innocence to breathy sultriness. What you might not expect is how far-ranging these excursions go in their allusive, magical story-telling – from deserts to Morecombe Bay to Japan – and aided by some curious collaborations and pairings.


‘Spy’ is a delightful blend of Lalo Schifrin espionage soundtrack with savage Ted Hughes bird of prey imagery in a tale about a careless ninja. The sparse mandolin and girly-voiced folk whimsy of ‘Tom’ sounds as though it was plucked from a Trunk reissue of an obscure 70s children's TV show music if a lyrical reference to “Superman 3” didn’t give it away. ‘Silent Maria’ turns harpsichord elegance and clockwork winding noises into a one-Mississippi counting song. ‘Jesse’, a song about a murderer, alternates clip-clop rhythms and piano with a serene string passage; the equally rhythmic ‘Fire Horse’ tells the tale of 17th century Japanese arsonist Yaoya Oshichi complete with hand-claps and more of that exceptional flute-playing. These odd-couple/inventive collisions are followed through with her guest collaborators. A duet with Euros Childs on the dusty ‘Salamander’, all quivering tension, halting piano and a kazoo solo, may not be a surprise but sparring with granite-voiced Canadian rapper Buck 65 on ‘Kissbye Goodnight’ is.



In its scope and strange story-telling, “The Hangman Tree” reminds me of a richly illustrated book of fairy stories, exotic and slightly magical, blending innocence with darkness hidden in corners and unexpected places - and is utterly beguiling. This time last year Static Caravan released Hannah Peel’s “The Broken Wave”, another inventive album by a solo female multi-instrumentalist with Liverpool connections and an impressive address book. Twelve months on, Laura J Martin trumps that excellent record with her debut and may just provide the Birmingham label with a commercial as well as critical success.

Spy by Laura J Martin

Laura J Martin The Hangman Tree [BUY]

DAN HAYWOOD'S NEW HAWKS @ DULCIMER 19 January 2012

Mikey Kenney aka Ottersgear, here performing solo, opened tonight’s Now Then Manc evening. He played an intense acoustic folk that felt quite traditional in many ways – songs about snowbells, phantoms of the fog, huntsmen and nature's armies – but he could also up the tempo to lost-in-the-moment thrash or shift his voice from deep burr and off-mic yodel to a crisp falsetto on a song about frozen Michigan (a cover I thought but later discovered was an original composition). He finished with a celebratory fiddle reel that was neither Christian rock nor about paedophilia (as had unkindly been suggested). Captivating stuff.


“We’re Samson and Delilah and we’ve come all the way from....Whalley Range”. Somehow I’ve managed never to see Manchester-based Samson and Delilah (or hear their two albums) and, duped by the name, I expected a duo. Here they performed as a five-piece: upright bass, keys, drums, acoustic guitar and accordion with flute thrown in too. They played dark, dramatic folk which from quiet beginnings took off to a steady processional marching beat. A little too earnest at times (“this is about genocide in Africa”) they deserved better than the disrespectful and overly chatty crowd gave them.



For tonight’s headliners, the nine-piece Dan Haywood’s New Hawks, the distracting chatter seemed to vanish. They weren’t a particularly intimidating group but as the roll call of names and home towns showed they were an eclectic ensemble and not, it has to be said, looking like they were all in the same band. Opening song ‘David in Cedars’, all Eastern shimmer and mystery punctured with the barked name “David!”, however showed just how cohesive they were from the off. There was a loose jam-band vibe to proceedings, not the least from a Korg synthesiser player sat cross legged on the floor rug and bongo drums throughout, all overseen by the loose-limbed band leader signalling changes with a nod or a waved hand, even consulting the crowd (“shall we finish here or go round again?”).





Players often doubled-up instruments during a song - Paddy Steer on both lap-steel and bass pedals - or swapped them swiftly – the mandolin alternated for electric bass. The set-list appeared to be decided on the hoof and songs were often preceded by a leisurely tune-up that almost casually ushered in songs. But what songs. And what lush delivery. If you were over-awed by a triple-vinyl 32-track debut album, this 11 song set was a fine introduction that added a fiery spontaneity to the album tracks. Dan Haywood’s odd tales of the incidents and characters encountered during a year living in rural Scotland can be a curious and expansive listening experience on first encounter – as well as epic - but in a packed upstairs pub room it made perfect sense whether gentle country ballad or folky hoedown or any of the many points in between. The final two songs – a space-jam ‘Smiley Patch’ into dance-along ‘Superquarry’ may have been the two best closing songs I’ll hear all year. Shame not to get an encore but what a way to go out on a high.



The Set List:

David In Cedars
Spate River
John’s Shoes
Farewell Comeback
New Wool
Fear of Lightning
My Heart Was Set On Xmas Eve
Killer Of Men
Jackaroos
Smiley Patch
Superquarry

PORCELAIN RAFT Strange Weekend

There has been a raft (ouch) of one-man, two-word band name outfits surfing the spreading tail-end of chillwave in different directions: Washed Out, Memory Tapes, Neon Indian, even extending to the retro sythn-pop revivalism of Twin Shadow. The opening track on the debut Porcelain Raft album, ‘Drifting In And Out’ (followed by ‘Shapeless and Gone’ and later ‘Put Me To Sleep’) suggests another fellow traveller tracking this curve. Mauro Remiddi aka Porcelain Raft distances himself however from a reductive re-run of blissed-out balminess even on the first song. ‘Drifting In And Out’ is built on frail voiced melodies and compressed tinny bedroom-pop beefed up with crisply churning electronic textures - more The War On Drugs than Washed Out - and given the (post-)rock propulsion and epic sweep of say Sigur Ros with some darkly spluttering electric guitar and ecstatic yelps to boot. It sets the template for the album: melodic pop nuggets created on a laptop, draped in electronic effects and instrumentation and then projected on to a vast panoramic canvas.

“Strange Weekend” also does deliver blissed-out drift (‘If You Had A Wish’) and icy romance (‘Backwords’) but for most part feels as though it is turning the wistful into the epic and widescreen whether in the campfire-psychedelia of ‘Shapeless and Gone’, the catchy soul-pop shuffle of ‘Put Me To Sleep’ or the squeaky disco pleas of ‘Unless You Speak From Your Heart’ . The New York-via-London, Italian native’s voice is tiny amongst such surroundings but is never lost or dwarfed, instead it is the quiet core of the grandeur and scale around it.



The bedroom epics of “Strange Weekend” are not universally successfully: ‘Picture’ is a stripped back Lennon-esque strumalong that is too drippy and cloying, both lyrically and sonically, for its own good. A late whoosh of surging electronic crackle comes too late to rescue it. Remiddi shows he can do quiet effectively on the final track ‘The Way In’, a cosmic, heart-searching torch song closer. Here and where the dynamic between the lone performer and his large-scale panoramas is maintained, is where the expansive dream-pop rush tastes sweetest. “Strange Weekend” is out next week on Secretly Canadian and Porcelain Raft is supporting M83 on all UK dates this week.

Unless You Speak From Your Heart by Porcelain Raft

Porcelain Raft Strange Weekend [BUY]

A WINGED VICTORY FOR THE SULLEN @ ACADEMY 3, 14 January 2012

There’s a video on You Tube of A Winged Victory For The Sullen playing at Unsound Festival in Krakow. The venue is uncredited but it appears to be a 18th century church, candlelit with rich burnt-orange colours. A hallowed and serene setting for the post-classical soundscapes of the musical collaboration between the composer Dustin O’Halloran and ex-Stars of the Lid man Adam Wiltzie. What to make then of the first calling station for A Winged Victory For The Sullen’s debut UK tour being Manchester Academy 3: a typically characterless and scuzzy student union venue with black drapes, dark concrete walls and a sticky floor (next booking the two day Academy Metal Festival)? Luckily neither support nor headliner seemed to find the venue a distraction from their entrancing music.

Belgium’s sleepingdog also features Adam Wiltzie in a separate musical collaboration with Chantal Acda. However their support slot makes musical not just practical sense: their “glacial moving, dark cough syrup pop music” providing the perfect warm-up (as with last year’s slot supporting Low). Acda alternates between piano or acoustic guitar accompanied by the carefully controlled drones of Wiltzie. For the second half of their six song set they are joined by two percussionists: one on brushed snare drum, the other on a variety of hand instruments plus ankle bracket chimes. Even performing as a four-piece they kept it all hushed and contained, allowing the songs to unwind around Acda’s serenely cool but warming tones. Delicious medicine indeed.

“And my name is Adam. And we're going to play you seven songs of death and heartbreak" came the declaration after each player had been introduced. The two core collaborators in A Winged Victory For The Sullen faced each other across the stage: O’Halloran on electric piano and Wiltzie on guitar and drones, the former the more serious looking, upright and dressed in black, the latter bent over, often turning his back to the audience in loose fitting cardigan and jeans. Between them sat an inner circle of the three piece string section – cello, viola and violin. The set started in near darkness with the main source of illumination being the reading light reflection off the string section’s musical scores. What followed was a richly evocative playing of the duo’s eponymous album in which the drones and strings create slow moving surges and swells, deep and majestic, interwoven with the reflective piano motifs and repetitions. It was mysterious and moving in equal parts. Each song was punctuated by fervid applause from one of the most attentive and appreciative audiences I’ve been part of. And further lightening the mood was the occasional footballing comment from American Wiltzie: “How come Man City got so good?”.


As the set progressed, the illumination increased - and so did the animation of the duo, each rising and surging as the music did. The extra lighting started to make the raw surroundings more evident but the concrete pillar-box framing of the ensemble actually worked to create a beautiful tableau effect. Finishing with a final new song that added a subtle layer of grit to its glacial progression, the five musicians left the stage to more of that rapturous applause. And all the house lights were flicked suddenly on to reveal the prosaic setting. For sixty absorbing minutes we could have easily been in Krakow. And realising we weren’t, we still had the sounds of A Winged Victory For The Sullen in our heads, which like death and heartbreak, take time to fade.

FREE SWIM Dennis

On last year’s two (free download) EPs, Free Swim tackled a man who decides to have two extra hands grafted on to this chest and the Himalayan adventures of a Giant Panda named Yolanda. Two more EPs are promised this year and today the first of those (not ‘officially’ released until “20 February 2012”?) is up for download on Bandcamp and Soundcloud. Although Free Swim are now a four-piece live band (visual evidence here) the “Dennis” EP was written, recorded and produced solely by Free Swim mastermind Paul Coltofeanu. And like the previous EPs it has a concept “A budding bromance is inadvertently derailed by an undeniably lovely girl called Sophie Buttercup”. If the concept doesn’t sound too promising (a PG Wodehouse short story? A rejected Divine Comedy B-side?), rest assured the delivery is.

Opener ‘Oh Dennis’ tells of the budding friendship-cum-infatuation with Dennis (“I met you one day in the park / playing tennis..”), all sweetness and yearning admiration over a chunky guitar riff and stylophone squiggles, like The Monochrome Set meets Momus. The relationship is cemented in the stomping ‘Croydon Fernandes’, in which The Monkees go laddish new wave and take on beat poetry. References to The Human Centipede, Geoff Capes, Ken Bates, air cello and then complaining about the shell in a Morrison’s Scotch egg come thick and fast and I have to confess to not being entirely sure what is going on in the rough-and-tumble of this song but at its climax our hero is informed - by text - that Dennis has met and fallen in love with Sophie (“I dropped my phone / left all alone”).

The nimble, even jazzy ‘The Smell of Pregnancy’, all dainty brushed drum tip-toe alternating with more churning guitar riffs, comes complete with the return of Quirrence the narrator and an extended spacey slap bass outro as the expulsion of our leading man is made complete. It also features references to Vienetta and National Trust properties. An air of soft-voiced resignation hangs over the mournful piano-framed ‘Cycling in the Ardeche’, set several years later, until Dennis gets back in touch (“we hugged like men”). And Dennis has a request for our would-be romantic.... Will it be a happy ending? I won’t spoil it – you know what you have to do to find out for yourself.

Not as immediately addictive or as off-the-scale surreal as “Yolanda The Panda”, this EP is still a nonconformist treat, delightfully swimming against the tide of current trends and mixing a fine English whimsy with muscular DIY pop. Highly recommended.

Free Swim - Oh Dennis by Free Swim

Free Swim - Croydon Fernandes by Free Swim

Free Swim Dennis [FREE]

STANDARD FARE Out of Sight, Out of Town

What’s in a release date? The sophomore release from Standard Fare was originally slated for 12 December release last year. A home (base) town launch on 2 December followed, it was available digitally direct or via iTunes later that month and reached number 9 in Sweeping The Nation's Top Fifty albums of 2011. But later press announcements gave a more review/consumer friendly release date of 16 January for “Out of Sight, Out of Town”. Or is it 23 January? It matters little and it’s probably no more than a second bite at the promotional apple, but maybe Standard Fare now have the opportunity – deservedly - of finding themselves in two years' worth of End of Year Charts?


Many songs here remain full of escape and leave-takings but “Out of Sight, Out of Town” is no musical departure from 2009's debut "The Noyelle Beat": again punchy indie-pop guitar tunes with a hint of brittle vulnerability behind their formidable feistiness and boy/girl vocals win the day. The settings maybe cafe bars, quiet parks and the dance floor but the real territory mapped out here is the space between people: infatuation, fooling around, emotional turmoil and lust. And in a neat reversal of the dalliances with younger bedfellows on ‘Fifteen’, here we have Emma taunting someone on their age preferences “I hear you’re into older women / do you know what you’re doing?”. The dynamic and mood of each song is often led by the guitars: poppy and carnival-like on ‘Half Sister’, full of chiming regret on ‘Darth Vader’ or languid reflection on ‘Early That Night’. But what sticks in the mind on these first listens are the majority where the guitars buzz angrily (much more angrily than on the debut?) with a serrated-edge rawness.



It’s all delivered with a confident and finely buffered sheen. Many of the titles read like captions from the Jeremy Kyle Show and there’s a lyrical bleakness or at best ambivalence to some songs “you can struggle all you like but we’re destined to die unknown / but the future’s bright, the future’s dead”. Last year’s infectious single ‘Suitcase’ even relates to the Holocaust. However “Out of Sight, Out of Town” overflows with a rambunctious, sexy optimism and a paints a more substantial, detailed and deep picture of modern relationships than the cover’s cartoon town illustration suggests. A power-pop pep-up for whatever winter month it was/is released.

 Standard Fare - Suitcase by Melodic Records

Standard Fare Out of Sight, Out of Town [BUY]

MANCHESTER GIGS IN MUSIC: January 2012 Pt.1

Definitely thinner pickings in the first month of the year but still some choice gigs this January; mainly a selection of mid-weight, mid-tempo US guitar bands, lots of local talent plus the odd alt-folkie. Definitely not mid-anything is Wild Flag, the heavyweight indie super-group made up of members of Sleater-Kinney, Helium and The Minders cruising into Manchester on the last day of the month. And prior to that the pick of the local bands is American guitar rock-leaning Easter ("firing out like Neil Young versus Pavement and Sonic Youth" says Manchester Music). Their 'Something American' (featured below) was just crowned Number One in Song by Toad's Top Fifty Records of 2011 - not too shabby.

As ever a mixtape [54 mins / 62 MB] of bands playing Manchester this December to help inform your gig-going decision-making - link in the post below this one.

Mcr Gigs in Music Mixtape: January 2012

Wild Flag Romance [3.51] (31 Jan Sound Control BUY TICKETS)
Howler Back Of Your Neck [7.00] (30 Jan Deaf Institute BUY TICKETS)
Milagres Here To Stay [10.08] (7 Jan Deaf Institute BUY TICKETS)
Cymbals Eat Guitars Definite Darkness [15.01] (7 Jan Deaf Institute BUY TICKETS)
Easter Something American [19.28](12 Jan Dulcimer BUY TICKETS)
Burning Buildings Wandering Bear [23.57] (6 Jan Fuel FREE)
Porcelain Raft Put Me To Sleep [27.47] (18 Jan The Ritz BUY TICKETS)
Trailer Trash Tracys Dies in 55 [30.36] (14 Jan Kraak BUY TICKETS)
The Early Years Like A Suicide [36.07] (31 Jan Kraak BUY TICKETS)
Casiokids Golden Years [40.06] (20 Jan Deaf Institute BUY TICKETS)
Francois and the Atlas Mountains Royan [44.19] (29 Jan The Castle BUY TICKETS)
Dan Haywood's New Hawks David in Cedars [50.25] (19 Jan Dulcimer BUY TICKETS)
A Winged Victory For The Sullen Steep Hills of Vicodin Tears [54.46] (14 Jan Academy 3 BUY TICKETS)

And not forgetting:
6 Jan Well Wisher Fuel / 7 Jan Maria and the Mirrors + Corpsekisser Kraak / 9 Jan Purson + Gnod Gullivers / 12 Jan Henry Rollins Bridgewater Hall / 13 Jan Shmoo + The Narrows Ruby Lounge / 14 Jan Brown Brogues + Great Waves Roadhouse / 18 Jan M83 The Ritz / 19 Jan Binary The Castle / 21 Jan Gary J Armstrong Night & Day / 21 Jan Denis Jones Band on the Wall / 22 Jan Foe The Castle / 22 Jan Laura J Martin Dulcimer / 23 Jan The Louche FC Band on the Wall / 26 Jan fin The Castle / 27 Jan The Secret Sisters Ruby Lounge / 27 Jan Baby Bird Band on the Wall / 30 Jan The Jon Cohen Experimental The Castle / 31 Jan Alejandro Toledo & The Magic Tombolinos Ruby Lounge / 31 Jan Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry Band on the Wall

MANCHESTER GIGS IN MUSIC: January 2012 Pt.2

Manchester Gigs in Music Mixtape: December 2011

Manchester Gigs in Music - January 2012 by Follyofyouth on Mixcloud

Or download mixtape [54 mins / 62 MB] here.

BENJAMIN SHAW There's Always Hope, There's Always Cabernet

I succumbed to the croaky cabaret songs of Benjamin Shaw (“Born in hate and raised in Blackpool”) earlier this year upon hearing his 2010 EP “I Got the Pox, the Pox is What I Got” and slapped lead song ‘Thanks For All The Biscuits’ on this Cloud Sounds podcast back in March. Now at the tail-end of this year comes “There's Always Hope, There's Always Cabernet”. And somehow the despondency is even more epic and the Mark Linkous-on-Mogadon vocals even more anguished. His self-penned bio sets the scene beautifully: “Lurching from one disastrous Customer Service job to the next, and each day turning to nought but filth, there was one of two paths Shaw could take to escape: either write the next great British novel, boldly staking claim to all that is good and pure in the land; or buy a pushbike and pedal himself into oncoming traffic. Luckily, Shaw had neither talent nor bicycle clips, and instead sat in pubs and wrote songs”.


Most of these pub-written songs are five to six minute studies of dusty, domestic despair layering crackle and interference over spidery Sparklehorse sparseness played out on mournful guitars, frail piano or lurching organ. Some of the incidents are astonishingly mundane – dreading a job interview the next morning (‘Interview’), regretting leaving the house because it means being alone for seven hours (‘Home’) or the simple domestic bliss of “something nice for supper, a house, then a dog” – but they are turned into widescreen, (anti-)heroic dramas of wretchedness that wring out the despair for all it's worth. Less tolerant listeners may be tempted just to shout “get over it!” at the speakers. Or like me you may luxuriate in wallowing face down in the deep end of self-pity.

As well as the intense despair (that word again), there’s also a bleak but wicked anti-climactic humour at play here. The drawn-out horror at the ordeal of recruitment and the crushing boredom of the work place at the beginning of ‘Interview’ cracks me up. The faux positivity of ’The Birds Chirp and the Sun Shines’ (“I never wanted to stare into the abyss / celebrate good times come on” sung as though on suicide watch) has a similar effect. The depressive even creates a bitter joke out of an instrumental passage: 'An Exciting Opportunity' is 2.5 minutes of unrealised crackle and hum and aimless plucked notes that never materialises into anything but musique concrète. But let’s not kid ourselves. For the most part “There's Always Hope, There's Always Cabernet” is a mordant slo-mo belly-crawl through the mire of depression.

‘Hulk’ suggests these desolate feelings are uncontrollable: “maybe it won’t / maybe it don’t / maybe it won’t take me over tonight”. Such feelings took the life of Sparklehorse’s Mark Linkous. Let’s hope for Benjamin Shaw this is a more cathartic process and that the only self-slaughter associated with this record is the slogan of Shaw’s record label Audio Antihero: “Specialists in Commercial Suicide”. And you could help avert this form of hara-kiri through purchasing your own set of these anthems for doomed losers. A wise investment but let’s hope any success doesn’t take Benjamin Shaw too far from the pub and his winning ways with failure and desolation.

BENJAMIN SHAW // How To Test The Depth Of A Well by TheArtOf...

Benjamin Shaw There's Always Hope, There's Always Cabernet [BUY]

TOP TEN ALBUMS OF 2011

Tired of lists yet? Sadly I’m not - never have been, never will. So here’s another - highly subjective – albums-of-the-year list to throw on the December scrapheap.

This year in addition to the ten below, this year I’ve enjoyed albums from Asva, Awesome Wells, Emily Barker and the Red Clay Halo, Beirut, Benjamin Shaw, Bright Eyes, Richard Buckner, Euros Childs, Comet Gain, Jonnie Common, The Decemberists, Dirty Beaches, Doomed Bird of Providence, Eat Lights Become Lights, Christopher Eatough, Emmy The Great, God’s Little Eskimo, Girls Names, H Hawkline, Half Man Half Biscuit, Hannah Peel, Herman Dune, Invisible Elephant, Rob St John, Jonny, Las Kellies, Lanterns on the Lake, The Leaf Library, Low, The Low Anthem, Mazes, Megafaun, The Middle East, Moon Duo, The Mountain Goats, Moustache of Insanity, Okkervil River, Parts and Labor, Josh T Pearson, Pete and the Pirates, Pulco, Sarandon, The See See, Shady Bard, Shimmering Stars, Singing Adams, Siskiyou, Tasseomancy, Timber Timbre, Trips and Falls, Sarabeth Tucek, The Victorian English Gentleman’s Club, Tom Waits, The Voluntary Butler Scheme, Woods, The War on Drugs, The Wave Pictures, The Wednesday Club and William The Contractor.

Thanks to the four bands who took the time to help wrap up the year over the last two weeks - Y Niwl, Free Swim, Gintis and The Indelicates.

And so my Top Ten Albums of 2011 looks like this....

10. LIZ GREEN O Devotion! [BUY] [Spotify]

A long time coming but well worth the wait. Marvellously atmospheric and surreal tales of murder and bereavement: pre-war blues never sounded so fresh and alive.



9. KING POST KITSCH The Party’s Over [BUY] [Spotify]

Ten tracks of top-drawer basement-pop from Charlie Ward. Versatile vintage guitar riffage and retro-futurist sounds that reference The Sonics, The Beta Band, The Kinks and ‘Odelay’-era Beck, to thrilling – and cohesive - effect.



8. MY SAD CAPTAINS Fight Less, Win More [BUY] [Spotify]

The modest masters of melancholic introspective indie-pop return with a similar/different sophomore album that emulates The American Analog Set, The Microphones and Beck’s ‘Sea Change’. Sublime.



7. VERONICA FALLS Veronica Falls [BUY] [Spotify]

Sometimes records incorporating singles dating back two years plus can lack coherence or freshness. This self-titled debut from the Glasgow/London boy/girl quartet neatly overcomes any such pitfalls to deliver superior death-fixated indie-pop.



6. THE DOUGLAS FIRS Happy As A Windless Flag [BUY] [Spotify]

A subtly shape-shifting and engrossing debut from head Fir Neil Insh and his post-folk collective. Gauzy bliss-pop perfection - what “Lone Pigeon re-recording Sufjan Stevens’ “Seven Swans” might sound like”.



5. THE INDELICATES David Koresh Superstar [BUY]

A fifteen-song rock opera about the life and times of cult leader David Koresh from his early years in Houston to the fateful siege in 1993 in Waco, Texas with the Branch Davidian sect. Humane, witty, sophisticated and deeply moving.



4. BILL CALLAHAN Apocalypse [BUY]

Third album from Bill Callahan having shed his Smog moniker but still making enigmatic music both stern and transcendent, earthy and other-worldly.



3. BILL WELLS & AIDAN MOFFAT Everything’s Getting Older [BUY] [Spotify]

Piano ballads and spoken word chronicles of modern life and ageing – by turns gruff, sordid, nostalgic, romantic, hopeful, bleak. I don’t think there’s another record this year (or any?) that could match the emotional span from the cheap fuck cynicism of ‘Glasgow Jubilee’ to the humane optimism of ‘The Greatest Story Ever Told’.



2. tUnE-yArDs W H O K I L L [BUY] [Spotify]

A more slick and sophisticated album from Merrill Garbus than 2009’s “Bird-Brains” but not losing an ounce of the inventiveness, rhythmic virtuosity and vocal power of her debut. It may have been recorded in – the horror – a conventional studio and feature saxophones, but she still sounds brilliantly unique.



1. GINTIS Idiot Guides and Plans [BUY] [Spotify]

I love hard-luck stories and siding with the losers. The tale of bringing “Idiot Guides and Plans” to life sounds tortuous. It was put out by their label (run by fellow travellers The Loungs) out of love rather than commercial interest. But despite all this and the pained frustrations of small-town lives and thwarted ambitions on show here, Gintis don’t deserve sympathy. They just deserve your eyes and ears for these ten songs of downcast beauty and flawed humanity. The album poses big questions about deterioration and death, faith and freedom, but is also petty, childish and very funny. A beautiful record.



FoY Top Ten Albums of 2011 by FollyOfYouth



Here’s to celebrating more great music in 2012.

HALF MAN HALF BISCUIT @ THE RITZ 17 December 2011

So Manchester institution The Ritz has been taken over by the HMV group as part of their business diversification strategy. Architecturally it keeps all its features and great sightlines but its ‘smartening’ up with padded booths and brown and beige paint everywhere just feels an attempt to turn the place into a (money-making) club. Which is only reinforced when finding out that tonight is curfewed at 10pm. Ah HMV, remember when it used to be about the music?

Support band Lovecraft are an interesting proposition: prog-pop played by what appears to be a band formed in the Junior Common Room: a polo-necked lead singer, a fresh-faced five piece backing band sporting white shirts and ties (lower sixth-formers?) and two female backing singers in boots and white cloaks and sporting gratuitous cleavage. And of course they are signed to Probe Plus Records – exactly the kind of non-conformist, ambitious – and fun - music that has nothing to do with the zeitgeist or the charts.



And so to Half Man Half Biscuit. As with their last Manchester gig at Academy 1, they occupy a large open stage with minimal set-up, lighting or stagecraft – but tonight with some surprising, occasional bursts of dry ice. There’s something of the workman-like pub band about HMHB: they’ll pitch up in unfamiliar locations and turn in a dependable set of old and new songs (27 songs tonight with 7 from this year’s release “90 Bisodol (Crimond)”). But unlike many bands, professional or amateur, Half Man Half Biscuit nearly 30 years into their career possess a peerless scathing wit, deliciously clever word-play and some thumping good tunes.







The sound wasn’t always the best, Nigel Blackwell’s vocals were occasionally muted, but the crowd bonhomie and singing overcame any deficiencies. All songs, even the newest, were sung word for word back to the stage by a motley (and let’s face it ageing) assortment of fans in Dukla Prague and Tranmere FC tops, many band T-shirts, the odd Santa outfit and even one man in a customised ‘King of Hi-Vis’ singlet.





Highlights? Too many to mention – ‘Running Order Squabble Fest’ early in the set, a six minute version of ‘Twenty Four Hour Garage People’ with a modified list of late night purchases (“a sachet of optimism”), a Manchester themed cover in the encores (The Bee Gees’ ‘Tragedy’), and even comedy in mundane incidents like faulty guitar straps. The recent, lengthy article on The Quietus makes an excellent argument for the importance and relevance of “one of England's darkest, funniest, smartest groups”. HMHB never tried to be ‘vital’ even back in 1985 but in a strange way their scathing attack on celebrity, pretence, pettiness and pointless behaviours could not be more relevant today. A great evening of communal goodwill and celebration with nothing to do with Christmas (well except ‘All I Want For Xmas is a Dukla Prague Away Kit’). As the band sing on their new album: “while you were capturing the zeitgeist, they were widening the motorway”. Genius.



The Set List:

The Light At The End Of The Tunnel
When The Evening Sun Goes Down
Joy In Leeuwarden
Running Order Squabble Fest
Shit Arm, Bad Tattoo
Petty Sessions
Excavating Rita
Bob Wilson Anchorman
For What Is Chatteris
Left Lyrics In The Practice Room
All I Want For Xmas Is A Dukla Prague Away Kit
Tommy Walsh’s Eco House
Look Dad No Tunes
We Built This Village On A Trad Arr Tune
Lark Ascending
Vatican Broadside
National Shite Day
L’Enfer C’Est Les Autres
Restless Legs
Turned Up Clocked On Laid Off
Twenty Four Hour Garage People
Rock n Roll Is Full Of Bad Wools
Joy Division Oven Gloves
99% Of Gargoyles Look Like Bob Todd
---
Fix It So She Dreams Of Me
Tragedy
Everything’s AOR

THE LOST CAVALRY Snow City Radio EP

The London indie-folk five-piece formed by ex-Fanfarlo guitarist Mark West return with their second release of the year after July’s ‘Desert Tracks’ single (the song also included amongst these four tracks). This EP follows The Lost Cavalry's 2010 debut “Waves Freeze To Rolling Hills” and continues that record’s blueprint of weaving delicate strings and chimes with a more robust guitar, bass and drums set-up to create cleverly orchestrated alt-folk mini-dramas but here adding an extra globe-trotting dimension. So “Snow City Radio” takes us from Arctic outposts to a sunken city via Namibian diamond mines shifting locations with the surety and speed of a quality international short story collection.

The title track tells of a polar radio station team about to dig in for the frozen winter not sure if either anyone is listening to their transmissions or what the winter will bring but sounding positively cheerful about their precarious fate. The upbeat mood is continued on the even more serious war-torn ‘Desert Tracks’ (which I wrote about back in July).



The other two songs on the EP are darker in tone. The twitchy and tense ‘The Tower’, with its sinister cymbal crashes and edgy strummed guitar, tells of a secretive world where people are tracked by robotic cameras. Its sense of paranoia and suspicion peaks in some delirious and stark sheet-metal guitar noise. ‘The Flood’ is equally elliptical but suggests a drowned post-apocalyptic cityscape ("the ground floors of buildings where we now keep our boats”) but again positivity shines through in the massed la-la-la singalong finale.

“Snow City Radio” is similar in texture and tone to their first EP but has a clear hint of extra confidence and swagger about it. I continue to be nothing but impressed with The Lost Cavalry. They seem to be drawn to extreme locations or incidents but are richly equipped, like an indie-folk Swiss Army Knife, with endlessly optimistic and highly melodic survival tactics.

The Tower by The Lost Cavalry

The Lost Cavalry Snow City Radio [BUY]

WRAPPING UP 2011 with The Indelicates

At the start of 2011, I knew The Indelicates by name and reputation only. And my faint grasp of their reputation suggested a difficult, arty clique of headstrong provocateurs (Simon and Julia Indelicate did after all meet at a poetry slam). This was only reinforced upon hearing that their third album was to be a fifteen-song rock opera about the life and times of cult leader David Koresh from his early years in Houston to the fateful siege in 1993 in Waco, Texas with the Branch Davidian sect. Hmmm ‘difficult’, ‘arty’.


But “David Koresh Superstar” is a supremely imaginative, clever, downright catchy re-telling of modern history as musical cabaret sung by the tale’s key protagonists. It has the structure of a stage musical but trumps that – largely – shallow genre with songs that span outlaw country story-telling and art-rock polemic, that are sophisticated without being complex, that play with genre but never fall into pure pastiche and contain more humanity than most bleeding heart liberal bands could muster in a career let alone a single record. If this is difficult art, please please please give me more. Here Julia and Simon Indelicate reflect (provocatively?) on the last twelve months.

What we will remember most about 2011 is...
Julia: Touring America for the first time. It was brilliant :)
Simon: I'm not answering this on the grounds that Alzheimer's is a common condition, still uncured and I don't want to tempt fate.

What should be forgotten about 2011…
Simon: 98% of the output of opinion journalists.

The best gig we played was...
Julia: Probably the Super Special Edition performance we did for Grahm Eberhardt in Port Byron, Illinois.
Simon: Yeah, that was really good. Also, that one show where we managed to get almost everyone who appears on David Koresh Superstar onstage in a working men's club with Jools Holland's PA. That was stressful, but amazing.



The best gig we saw was...
Julia: Honestly really haven't been to any that weren't ours. So I shall give you something else. My favourite comics this year have been "1969" by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill and "The Undisputed King of Nothing" by Paul Stapleton.
Simon: We hate live music, it's like being a pornstar asked to talk dirty to her husband. My favourite sandwiches of the year have included the Roast Pork from DiNic's in Philadelphia, the Banh Mi from Baoguette in the East Village and the Reuben from the downtown deli in Seneca Falls.

A record from 2011 that will be still be played in 10 years time?
Julia: That's a tough one...
Simon: No records from now will be played in ten years time because pop music, as an artform has been concluded. None of it makes any sense except in reference to itself, it can't do anything weirder, more dangerous, more simple or more knowing than it already has so all we're left with is to rake the greying pieces into briefly diverting new patterns. It will follow poetry into oblivion, Pop will only be the preserve of bespectacled hobbyists for a while, then the mentally ill, then it will suffer for ever as the consolation of frumps. That said, there's probably some pre-teen girl out there who really likes One Direction and who will play their album again to herself ironically when she's twenty-two.

Overlooked in 2011?
Simon: The fact that 'One Direction' have been so named by a Neuro-Linguistic Programming savvy Marketing Professional because when you say it out loud it sounds like 'Wand Erection' and arouses pre-teen girls without them knowing why. Also us, as usual.

Brightest hope for 2012?
Simon: A Free Libya? Honestly, we all need to stop thinking about boys with guitars.

And what can we look forward to in 2012 from The Indelicates?
Simon: We are writing two musicals, a grotty cabaret album, two films, an audio story book about magpies and goblins and a children's novel. Julia will be making more necklaces.

I'll repeat what I said when writing about “David Koresh Superstar” back in May: “Less a review, more an instruction to buy forthwith”. Hurry join the sect.

Something Goin' Down In Waco - The Indelicates by FollyOfYouth

The Indelicates David Koresh Superstar [BUY]

WRAPPING UP 2011 with Gintis

There have been other champions of Abergele’s Gintis but the one that brought the band to my attention was Ted from the Cloud Sounds podcast. Hooked from first listen a couple of years ago, I eagerly awaited the release this April of second album “Idiot Guides and Plans”. It was not an easy gestation for the follow-up to their 2006 debut as the band describe on their label’s website: “sadly an unfortunate amount of family circumstances, distance between band members (who all had to move from the area for various reasons), abject poverty, depression and even short periods of homelessness delayed completion of this album for 3 to 4 years. However the band feels this record is a triumph over adversity and it has all been done “in house” getting friends to play brass instruments for free, Steve and Chris at TAPE did not charge for their time nor use of the studio. It cost barely a penny to make this record, using borrowed instruments and relying heavily on the generosity of others (which is good, because the band have and continue to have nothing) but what it is rich in, is depth, love, warmth and sincerity. We hope that you will feel like part of the family too”.

Gintis may not sound like winners but their modest, sweetly psychedelic melodies are indeed triumphs, mixing small-town domesticity and human failing with big themes like scientific rationalism, existential doubt and technological obsolescence. Carl Roberts (vocals/guitar) and Kyle Lee (guitar) from the band share their thoughts and experiences of 2011:

What we will remember most about 2011 is...
Kyle: As a band, for me personally it would be supporting Evan Dando. Nice to play a decent venue, plus we got to support Evan Dando!
Carl: The creation of my "Vera" night that I go to. Four of us sit around getting smashed and we each pick a song to listen to. However there are rules. First song to kick the night off is always something off “Safe As Milk” by Captain Beefheart, every fourth song (i.e. after everyone has had one selection) we listen to ‘Vera’ by Pink Floyd, every fourth ‘Vera’ we listen to live ‘Vera’. If you reach five live ‘Vera’s you listen to ‘We'll Meet Again' by Vera Lynn, however we have not reached this yet. Double ‘Vera’ signifies the end of the night. Every now and again we have a "special artist round", Nick Drake can only be played in a special artist round and not on any other "normal" round. If you put a pringle on your chin, you can pretend to be Roger Waters.

What should be forgotten about 2011…
Kyle: Not much we do we need to forget about, usually fun all the time.
Carl: Erm... can't remember anything worth forgetting.

The best gig we played was...
Kyle: Either the Evan Dando gig in the Tiv, or our home town gig at the start of the tour. Nice to have people that know your songs around you.
Carl: Supporting Evan Dando in the Tivoli in Buckley, it was set up by a lovely bunch of guys called The Reads and they kindly asked us to come and play as they knew how much we loved Big Evan. He is the reason I write songs pretty much. It was a great gig and we didn't let ourselves down. We didn't get to meet him, nor did he watch our set, but it was just nice to know he was sharing a stage with us, and also he rattled through countless amazing songs, that was a pleasure to behold.

The best gig we saw was...
Kyle: Either Jonny or Bright Eyes, both extremely good gigs.
Carl: Rob Gintis and I travelled to Brussels to watch a band called Flotation Toy Warning. They are one of the greatest bands on this planet. Their drummer produces our stuff. Really nice guys, mind-blowing songs, amazing gig.



A record from 2011 that will be still be played in 10 years time?
Kyle: “Idiot Guides and Plans”
Carl: “Go Go Boots” by The Drive-By Truckers - have fallen in love with this album this year. Great country, the way it should be.

Overlooked in 2011?
Kyle: Jonny
Carl: Got to be us hasn't it? Some good bands bubbling under that I really hope release records next year such as Onions and Morffe.

Brightest hope for 2012?
Kyle: There’s loads of good music out there, but my new favourite at the moment is Conor Mason
Carl: That Dev's son in Corrie's golfing career takes off.

And what can we look forward to in 2012 from Gintis?
Kyle: Might be able to get a couple of songs recorded for an EP we want to do, hopefully demo the new album too. Hopefully more gigs, and we'd love to do a couple of festivals over summer, if anyone will have us.
Carl: Tough one...We don't have much planned really. Hopefully we can get a few dates together with our buddies The Loungs.

It's positive the band don't remember anything bad about this year but it’s heart-breaking they didn’t even get to meet Evan Dando when supporting him. It’s also heart-breaking they don’t get the acclaim or attention they deserve either. Maybe, even though they don’t necessarily agree about next year, 2012 will bring them more of both and more people will feel part of the Gintis family?

The Bakery Song - Gintis by FollyOfYouth

Half As Much by freshhairrecords

Gintis Idiot Guides and Plans [BUY]