Sons & Daughters @ ULU

[Originally published on Orange.co.uk]

“That was a song to kill your girlfriend to. This is one to kill yourself to.”
From any other band, such throwaway nihilism might amount to little more than posturing: but no one familiar with Sons & Daughters’ macabre fetishism can doubt their devotion to the cause. Here to showcase their third and most fully-realised album to date – the Bernard Butler-produced The Gift – the Glasgow quartet arrive at tonight’s headline date on the cusp of a long-awaited commercial breakthrough.

Central to their visceral appeal lies singer Adele Bethel. Appearing on-stage in an ultra-revealing slip of a number, her rapturous banshee wails and spasmodic tambourine-thrashing suggest not so much a front-woman as a Dionysian force of nature. Scott Paterson’s growling vocals prove themselves a menacing counterpoint to Bethel’s, while adding a touch of loucheness to proceedings.

Crucially, the band now have the material to back up their ferocious live reputation. Newies such as the Franz Ferdinand-gone-feral intensity of former single ‘Gilt Complex’ and the yearning Morrissey inflections of ‘The Bell’ slip effortlessly into the cannon, while old favourites ‘Dance Me In’ and ‘Johnny Cash’ – the latter re-worked to channel the raw claustrophobia of the Stooges – have lost none of their lusty impact through over-familiarity.

Ploughing a furrow of heady, apocalyptic Roots'n'Roll, Sons & Daughters’ enthralling evocation of rock’s dark side stands up to comparison with Tom Waits and Nick Cave, twin demigods of that particular pantheon. You wouldn’t want to get too close, but from a distance it makes for a hellishly thrilling spectacle.

The Ting Tings @ Hoxton Bar & Grill

[Originally published on Orange.co.uk]

The next big thing: a double-edged compliment if ever there was one. Having formed less than 12 months ago, much-hyped Manc duo The Ting Tings arrive for their biggest headline show to date all too aware that the fall from grace can be brutal should you fail to measure up.

If the pair are fazed by the palpable sense of anticipation in this rammed East London venue, they certainly don’t show it, dispatching their new single ‘Great DJ’ as a sassy, confident opening salvo. Sure, it’s join-the-dots indie-disco, but the insistent post-punk riffs and singer Katie White’s sultry, knowing delivery raise it above the generic. ‘Fruit Machine’ – its “kerching!” hook possibly reflecting their record label’s reaction upon hearing the track – is playful and erotically charged, a teasing vocal building to a Karen O-style caterwaul for the chorus.

Sadly, the quality dips from here on in. Drummer Jules De Martino switches to guitar duties for ‘Traffic Light’, an ill-advised stab at a stripped-down blues ballad which only serves to disrupt the set’s momentum. Much of the material sounds rather two-dimensional, the backing tracks failing to have the impact a full band might have provided. An instantly forgettable newie even manages to summon the unwelcome spectre of Republica.

Despite White giving it her best rip-her-to-shreds Debbie Harry moves and De Martino’s undeniably infectious energy, it’s hard to shake off the niggling whiff of contrivance surrounding the Ting Tings. The band’s vogueish grrrrl pop sound is just rough enough around the edges to be marketed to a credibility-conscious indie market, while remaining safely daytime radio-friendly. Not a bad thing per se, it’s just that with the likes of The Go! Team and Black Kids so definitively setting the standard in exuberant, distortion-heavy pop, it all sounds a little tame.

Interest is belatedly revived with their hook-laden, Toni Basil-aping anthem ‘That’s Not My Name’, but it’s not enough to stave off the gnawing sense of anti-climax at the end of this half-hour set. In a notoriously fickle musical climate, the Ting Tings have the air of a purely ephemeral concern.

Falling Off the Lavender Bridge - Lightspeed Champion

[Originally published on Twisted Ear]

Candid acoustic soul-bearing courtesy of former scenester

Noisenik agitators Test Icicles were one of those infuriatingly faddish industry buzz bands whose short-lived hype frenzy quickly evaporated once rock journalists ceased to be titillated by their gimmicky moniker. Few mourned when they announced their split in 2006, least of all band member Dev Hynes who claimed that "we were never, ever that keen on the music. I understand that people liked it, but we personally, er, didn't." In short: we pity the fools.

Mercifully, Hyne’s new vehicle Lightspeed Champion are musically unrecognisable from his previous cohorts. Recorded in Omaha, Nebraska with resident Saddle Creek producer Mike Mogis, and backed by moonlighting members of Tilly and the Wall and Cursive, it’s perhaps no surprise to discover a debut album steeped in lush, introspective alt-country, but with a roguish geek pop edge.

Written by Hynes at the age of only 19, Falling Off the Lavender Bridge is a record defined both by its creator’s precocious musical accomplishment and his eyebrow-raising candour. Previous singles 'Galaxy of the Lost' and 'Tell Me What It’s Worth' showcase Lightspeed Champion’s flair for literate, deceptively upbeat folk-pop. And while Emmy the Great’s mellifluous backing vocals help to sugar the pill somewhat, they can’t completely mask the undercurrent of angsty ennui which lurks beneath the surface.

Self-consciously nerdy and unaffected, Hynes presents himself as a reluctant spokesman for a generation grown prematurely jaded. But unlike, say, Alex Turner, whose alienation manifests itself in sneering condescension towards his peers, Hyne’s tone is a broadly sympathetic one. Whereas most of the acclaimed indie rock lyricists du jour favour an impressionistic, abstract, approach, Hynes style is blunt and deeply personal to the point of crudeness (“wake up smell the semen,” he urges during sprawling, hook-laden 10-minute epic 'Midnight Surprise', making listeners of a more sensitive disposition nearly choke on their sleeve notes). 'I Could Have Done this Myself' is a frank and comical chronicling of an underwhelming sexual encounter, propelled by a rousing, Arcade Fired-up guitar onslaught. 'Devil Tricks for A Bitch', with its withering commentary on racial factionalism, is a yearning country lament recalling Conor Oberst at his most emotionally fraught.

It doesn’t all work: 'Salty Water' is slight and forgettable, never really managing to stir from its oblique, ponderous slumber. But we can forgive such minor lapses when treated to such twin delights as 'Dry Lips' and 'Everyone I Know is Listening to Crunk' – the former a shimmering slice of early-REM jangle-pop, the latter a wistful, retro-tinged campfire croon.

Deploying liberal sprinklings of humour and pathos to a tapestry of folksy, homespun musical sophistication, Lavender Bridge is a bruised but big-hearted debut, serving notice on a new and formidable talent from this self-styled musical polymath.

Manic Street Preachers @ Brixton Academy

[Originally published on Orange.co.uk]

It’s been a difficult decade for the long-suffering Manics devotee: forced to witness the band’s steady decline from fiery glam insurrectionists to bland everyman rock has-beens.

It seems even the hitherto blindly loyal glitter‘n’tiara brigade have abandoned the cause, judging by the disappointing lack of sparkle in tonight’s audience.

Thankfully, this pre-Christmas greatest hits set finds James, Nicky and Sean in defiant mood – re-energised after their solo outings and critically rehabilitated after a (partial) return to form with eighth album Send Away The Tigers.

Any set which begins with ‘Motorcycle Emptiness’ is setting the bar high, while 'Little Baby Nothing''s high-octane refrain of ‘cultural alienation, boredom and despair’ is delivered with irrepressible lustre. But newies such as the guileless ‘Autumnsong’ are not disgraced in such illustrious company, while a blistering ‘Your Love Alone Is Not Enough’ sounds every bit like their best single of the noughties.

The Richey-era material already seems like it's being beamed in from another lifetime, but songs such as ‘La Tristesse Durera’ and ‘Roses In The Hospital’ have lost none of their incendiary potency. We can even forgive them the odd throwaway number such as ‘Ocean Spray’ because, well, it's Christmas.

From the moment a beefed-up cover of The Cult’s ‘She Sells Sanctuary’ segues into ‘Motown Junk’, the Manics can do no wrong. Closing with their stately proletarian elegy ‘A Design For Life’, this is a band trading on past glories, but doing so with undeniable class.

'Ames Room' - Silje Nes

[Originally published on Twisted Ear]

Less really is more for a unique talent

Long before Sigur Rós became the obligatory soundtrack for sweeping vistas on wildlife documentaries, Nordic musicians have turned to the dramatic natural wilderness around them for creative inspiration. So it is with Norwegian multi-instrumentalist Silje Nes, who spent her formative years in the tiny town of Leikanger in Norway’s largest fjord of Sognefjord, before moving to Bergen in 2000 to begin making music. Her otherworldly and largely improvised recordings are collected on this endearing, understated debut.

From the off, the lyrics suggest an artist immersed in the environment around her. Over All is a glockenspiel-flavoured nursery rhyme teeming with both natural and supernatural imagery: buzzing bees, swamps, frogs and monsters. This child-like awe of the natural world is complimented by a poetic flair and bold musical invention: similar qualities which saw Joanna Newsom installed as indie folk darling last year. With its crisp arpeggios and lilting melody, Drown is disarming in its delicate simplicity, a shimmering, ethereal flight of fancy. Shapes, Electic is the first of several near-instrumentals, with Silje cooing wordlessly over a backdrop of scratchy ambience and woodwind. It's a perfect mood-setter before the gorgeous title track, an implausibly sweet lullaby with echoes of Stina Nordenstam's Little Star (a compliment of the highest order). A counterpoint to such gossamer pop delights comes with Giant Disguise, a hypnotic, slow-building rootsy mantra which evokes a similar druggy inertia to much-missed Domino acolytes Woodbine.

The second half of the album sees a slight dip in quality, with several wilfully unfocussed mood pieces so minimalist as to barely register. Many of these songs were actually written as recorded, lending them a necessarily unfinished air. Even so, there are a couple of hidden gems: Bright Night Morning is a rustic torch ballad possessed of a nagging, frazzled melancholy, like a stripped-down Mazzy Star. Melt, with its wispy refrain “the summer sun will make this melt” repeated softly over a spare guitar riff, is dewy-eyed and mesmerising.

At its best, Silje’s music conjures up a world of fragile beauty and kaleidoscopic intrigue. Like Four Tet and Boards of Canada, there’s a warm-blooded nostalgic core to this organic electro-folk which underpins the spirit of experimentalism. Ames Room is the sound of an artist alive with possibility, guileless in outlook and boundless in imagination.

MySpace

'Milkmaid Grand Army EP' - Midlake

[Originally published on Twisted Ear]

Before the Gold Rush: timely re-issue from Texan luminaries

Or “how I learned to quit worrying and embrace my wonky art rock past” as it perhaps should have been subtitled. To clarify: Milkmaid Grand Army is not Midlake’s eagerly-anticipated follow-up to 2006’s sophomore LP The Trials of Van Occupanther. It’s not even new material, but a re-issue of the Texans’ long-since deleted debut EP from 2001, pre-dating their Damascus-style conversion to pastoral, harmony-drenched Americana.

First impressions: hmm, this doesn’t sound much like Midlake at all, at least not in their latter-day incarnation. What it does sound like, (unnervingly so in places) is Radiohead circa 1997. Not surprisingly, as it turns out: the release of OK Computer represented something of a musical epiphany for singer/songwriter Tim Smith, who played the album every day for a year.

The result is seven tracks steeped in turn-of-the-century progressive rock stylings: multi-layered guitar parts, sparse piano motifs, distorted vocals. All it’s missing is the Nigel Godrich production credit.

Opener She Removes Her Spiral Hair gives an early indication of what to expect: a menacing guitar riff and insistent percussion leading into a sneering growl of a vocal which veers off in desultory directions. Paper Gown continues in a similarly downbeat vein, all brooding, woozy psychedelia, sounding to these ears like a lost outtake from Grandaddy’s stately lo-fi opus The Sophtware Slump. Excited but Not Enough and Roller Skate (Farewell June) see a welcome change of tempo, the former an adrenaline shot of dissonant bombast, the latter the sort of falsetto-driven drone rock patented by Clinic. Closer Golden Hour hints at the classicist sensibilities which were to follow, a mournful, minor key lament which owes an obvious debt to (yep) Radiohead's Exit Music (Theme From a Film).

Recent Midlake converts may find this EP hard-going and a little too self-consciously obtuse in flavour for their palates, lacking the obvious musical cohesion and songwriting élan which marks out Van Occupanther as one of last year’s most enchanting releases. While there's much to admire, it’s the sound of a songwriter too obviously in thrall to his influences to yet dare to transcend them. As a stop-gap release it represents an interesting insight into the band’s musical evolution, but one destined to remain a non-essential curiosity for all but the completist fan.

I'M FROM BARCELONA

Not me of course. And not the band either, it transpires. Read my review of their ULU gig here