Tag Archives: O2 Academy Oxford

Space

O2 Academy, Oxford
9th March 2013

Space are usually lumped in with other Britpop bands of the mid-to-late 90s in the national memory, but they fitted the “pop” – in the genre sense – much better than Suede or Oasis. The “Brit” part also deftly characterised the Liverpudlians; lots of the bands of the time were quite austere, but Space gave a somewhat wry side glance at life.

They actually hung on until 2005, with dwindling success, but like so many of their contemporaries, they (Tommy Scott and Franny Griffiths from the original lineup) recently reformed. Understandably, tonight they concentrate on their first two albums and the most recent, as if their other two – the delayed and eventually unreleased Edwyn Collins production Love You More Than Football and the 2004 relative flop that preceded their split, Suburban Rock ‘n’ Roll – never existed.

From the old stuff, for every Avenging Angels and Neighbourhood there is a Charlie M and Mister Psycho – juxtaposing the macabre with the mundane, and making light of it. The 50s jangly spookiness, organs, rockabilly and mariachi stylings are still present in the newer stuff, but it’s even darker, if anything: Crying on the Webcam is just creepy, She’s in Love With a Boy in a Body Bag apparently combines Sergio Leone with necrophilia, and the frantic, Madness-esque album title track, Attack of the Mutant 50ft Kebab, definitely has an air of “sod it, let’s do what we want” about it. Burn Down the School continues the extraordinary-things-happening-to-everyday-people theme of their biggest hit Me and You vs the World, which has a ska-punk makeover tonight.

They finish with a medley of Dark Clouds and La Bamba – a natural segue – and stalker tale Drop Dead, “One for the fans,” Tommy explains. And with that, he jumps into the grateful crowd, revelling in their long-standing appreciation.

From Nightshift, April 2013

Professor Green

O2 Academy, Oxford
1st November 2011

Hackney rapper Professor Green is at his career zenith today, with the current number one, a second album just out and a reality TV show now available on 4OD. There’s certainly a lot to latch onto – the singsong delivery, the humour, the cheekiness… charm discernible to people who don’t usually stray into his territory.

His earliest chart successes – Just Be Good to Green and I Need You Tonight – skip along at a jolly pace, with Pro bounding around and furiously polishing the air; and it’s all about him, his backing band efficiently rendering his chart-friendly guest stars unnecessary.

But the material from his new album is mostly an anticlimax. I shouldn’t feel as relieved as I do when he follows the hostile D.P.M.O. with the much more fun first album track Kids That Love To Dance.

His development as an artist probably needed this step into contemplative introspection – the Eminem-like rant on his number one, Read All About It, about his Dad’s suicide and criticism of his talking about it, seems excusably cathartic – and it’s probably a deft step to avoid sliding into parody, but the night is defined by this dichotomy. The new stuff is more like the earlier Jungle: more aggressive than playful; more lugubrious than energetic. Self-deprication has slipped into self-indulgence; stuff like Astronaut – about a rape victim turned drug addict – would have felt too serious on his first album. But the overall loss of the sparkle of songs like Monster is a shame.

Luckily, the wit hasn’t totally been abandonded: the new album’s title track, At Your Inconvenience, a critique of the music industry, has some bite, despite the lolloping backing. He even makes that Travie McCoy/Bruno Mars shipwreck of smugness Billionaire listenable. But while the new album might end up defining his legacy, it’s the old stuff that currently gives him the most credit.

From Nightshift, December 2011

N-Dubz

O2 Academy, Oxford
20th July 2011

Reality TV stars, cultural icons and generational spokespeople N-Dubz, who have been around for a decade and churned out three albums, are surely too big for Oxford now. They’ve even got two dancers, slightly incongruous behind the main personalities. Tough-as-nails porcelain doll Tulisa needs to lay off gargling tar but skips her way around her vocal duties with nonchalance, in both crowd-pleasers like Strong Again and slower ones like Love Sick. Fazer (cheesiest line: “could all hands in the building report to the sky”) has got the best “swagger” and out-Tinchys Tinchy on their versions of Number One and Spaceship. And Dappy spends a lot of the gig waving around a hat – an over-ear style he claims he no longer wears – to whip up excitement for a chance to win a backstage audience with the band. Meanwhile, their surprisingly tight musicians blast out an unexpected 80s synth rock breakdown during one of the four (four!) costume change breaks. (My favourite costume is the Kryten-style body armour, incidentally.)

The Bay City Rollers ended up being glam “for the kids” – descended from something a lot more credible – and N-Dubz seem to have become “for the kids” too, making grime, one of the genres they fall into, more accessible and commercial, however preposterous a great proportion of the population might find them. Chances are they’ll eventually inspire more nostalgic ridicule than devotion (the self-referential lyrics might date badly, for one thing), but they’ve managed relative longevity for a band largely beloved of those of a tender age (“NDublets”), so who knows what way the national mood might swing after their impending eighteen-month hiatus.

Despite their notoriety, there’s still more charisma in one of Dappy’s hats than the entirety of Matt Cardle, and at least they’ve bothered to engage their audience and choreograph a show to suit. They’d no doubt be mortified if a certain demographic of the “haters” actually did like them; that’s not what they’re aiming for, and they’re doing very nicely at not achieving it.

From MusicInOxford.co.uk

East 17

O2 Academy, Oxford
2nd September 2011

As is customary these days, “edgy” 90s boyband East 17 have (yet again) reformed, though this time the gaffe-prone proto-Dappy, Brian Harvey, has been replaced by the requisitely tattooed and baseball capped Blair Dreelan. Songwriter and rapper Tony Mortimer is back, sometimes brandishing a guitar (sadly hard to hear in the mix). The other two, John Hendy and Terry Coldwell – who don’t seem to have aged – look delighted to still be there.

The poppier stuff like House of Love, It’s Alright, Let It Rain and the slightly risqué (if you were in your early teens at the time) Deep and Steam is still fun, but John and Terry – who do the occasional harmony and now stand in line with the others rather than dance behind them – still seem underused. In the slower, more R&B ones like Hold My Body Tight, Someone to Love, If You Ever and Around the World (which I’m sure didn’t use to sound so Lighthouse Family), Tony’s rapping seems lacklustre, but that could be due less to lack of effort and more because what worked in 1994 doesn’t work now.

Oddly, given the marketing opportunity, they only do one song from their imminent new album; if the rest of it is anything like the sub-Olly Murs Secret Of My Life, it’s probably just as well.

Tony’s songwriting is still impressive – Stay Another Day has outlived the output of most mid-90s boybands and remains one of the most memorable ballads of that decade – and he could surely still do a Gary Barlow and churn them out for X-Factor finalists. But for all the nostalgic excitement of the audience, it feels a little flat. Brian was the band’s Robbie and Mark in one, but Blair’s voice and banter seem to work so satisfactorily that it makes me wonder how necessary Brian was in the first place. Yet it still seems a bit pointless without him.

From Nightshift, October 2011

Emiliana Torrini

O2 Academy, Oxford
9th September 2009

Let me be clear – I’d turn up to see Emiliana Torrini sing the phonebook. But it doesn’t mean that I think everything she sings is perfect. I loved the dreamy electronica of 1999’s Love in the Time of Science, but found 2005’s Fisherman’s Woman achingly beautiful yet sad and difficult to listen to (fitting for a work borne out of several personal tragedies). And last year’s Me and Armini was a little on the odd side. For example, according to Emiliana tonight, that album’s title track is about a stalker whose spirit has entered her via whisky…

However, her performance tonight wins me over and makes me reappraise those two most recent albums. The focus is her voice, and her versatile five-piece backing band visit everything from table steel guitar to harmonium, glochenspiel and bowed cymbals to recreate her records’ varied instrumentation around it.

Her songs are unashamedly personal; she means them, rather than acts them, and takes her time to explain them to us.

It’s almost as if you have to see her singing to really appreciate it. Her voice can be both strong and vulnerable, melancholy and uplifting. Quirky like her fellow Icelander Bjork and at times reminiscent of the Sugarcubes (her drummer Siggi was a founding member), she’s not bothered about sticking to genres; Me and Armini visits reggae and Heard It All Before jazz and ska, yet she mostly sticks to the acoustic folk of songs like Heartstopper and Fireheads, occasionally veering towards the strangely prog in Gun and into the lush synths of To Be Free. Unemployed in Summertime was originally trip hoppy, but tonight it’s more like jazz and country – yet doesn’t lose any of its charm. And big European hit Jungle Drum is far less twee live.

Lovely is the best word for it, and I leave feeling all warm and fuzzy.

From Nightshift, October 2009

2manydjs

O2 Academy, Oxford
5th June 2009

The Dewaele brothers are busy people. Part of top Belgian pop/rock/electro combo Soulwax for the past 14-odd years, David and Stephen are also the remix/DJ duo 2manydjs, who emerged in the early 00s with some legendary bootleg sets. They used to have a show on Belgian radio, and tonight’s gig is part of a tour to celebrate the launch of Radio Soulwax as a web radio show (featuring Soulwax live, DJ sets and special guests, apparently).

This is a live production set – mixing and producing live rather than mixing just pre-prepared stuff, so no outing for Bootylicious/Smells Like Teen Spirit.

It’s a constantly changing amalgamation. I spot NY Lipps – a mashup of Funky Town and Soulwax’s NY Excuse – being mixed into their own remix of Soulwax’s E Talking – a live mix of their own remix of their own song!

The highlight is really the animated record covers. Dizzee Rascal’s eyes and eyebrows dance to Bonkers (which, predictably, drives the crowd crazy); MGMT bop on the cover of Oracular Spectacular; the mouth from Fischerspooner’s #1 album has an artistic case of record vomiting; and the assorted members of the (Human) League Unlimited Orchestra are looking lively (for their age) during Open Your Heart (Love and Dancing was arguably the first proper remix album, of course). The mainstream (Bodyrox’s Yeah Yeah) joins the more obscure (is Mr Oizo’s Cut Dick obscure?), the older (CLS’s Can You Feel It), the currently cool (Tiga’s Shoes, Justice’s Phantom Pt II) and rock (The Clash’s Rock the Casbah and AC/DC’s Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap).

It’s much more interesting than a standard DJ set, and there’s some very clever technical wizardry going on. I guess they’re doing it with CDs, mixers/samplers, a laptop and crafty planning; I can’t work out how the synchronised cover art fits in, but I can see them beavering away twiddling knobs to some effect, so I’m satisfied. Mystery AND fun – bargain!

From Nightshift, July 2009