Tag Archives: Oxford

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

Rosalita and Off The Radar

The Jericho Tavern, Oxford
4th March 2009

Rosalita are an interesting proposition. Visually, there’s something of a shambolic swagger about them – and I’m not really sure about singer Kris’s white woollen overcoat, hat, grey jumper and the mockney voice he sings/talks/yelps in – but the music is far more tight. It has a punchy, melodic 80s bass-led and synth-augmented vibe, and there’s quite a bit of ska in there somewhere among the hooks.

Manga Girl is a nice slice of pop-punk punchiness – something The Faint might do if they lightened up a bit. What Would Your Mother Say (a cautionary tale of a youngster going off the rails) is also quite sparky and catchy, and Art Attack is – joyously – about Neil Buchanan’s Art Attack (“Not as good as Hart Beat… TV ain’t what it used to be”).

All more fun, I’m afraid, than Off the Radar.

On paper, they’ll probably sound great. But therein lies the problem – they come over as far less the sum of their parts. It’s a shame, because they’ve been together for ages and have obviously finely crafted their style and songwriting, but their particular blend of jangly rock n’ roll blues indie pub rock doesn’t work for me. The guitar parts are too frenetic and just meander around without really nailing anything, and the rest doesn’t get anywhere either.

There’s nothing really wrong with songs like Cut to the Chaser and The Man from Del Monte – they’re just not very memorable. On the plus side, the harmonies between guitarist Daz and bassist Tim sound rather charming.

The whole experience reminded me of watching a TV programme because it sounded great in the Radio Times, but then realising when it’s finished that you were quite happy to sit through it but weren’t engaged at all and can’t remember anything that happened. Like the second series of Heroes, really.

 

From Nightshift, April 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

The Subways

Carling Academy, Oxford
2nd October 2008

I wasn’t really expecting to like The Subways. The Welwyn Garden City trio’s first album, Young for Eternity, was released in 2005 and completely passed me by in a flurry of mid-2000s post-punk garage rock and bands with plural names all starting with “The”. Since then however, singer and guitarist Billy Lunn and bassist Charlotte Cooper have split up, Billy’s had nodules on his vocal chords and they’ve recorded a second album in LA with Butch Vig. All these things have influenced the result, this year’s All or Nothing, a record which has made me regret my ignorance a little.

Tonight’s set neatly highlights the contrast between the first and second albums. The audience favourite Oh Yeah, epic With You and 60s-esque dollop of Ash-like nostalgia Mary are generally more lyrically naïve, whereas the latter album’s Kalifornia and new single Shake! Shake! demonstrate some social awareness; introspection is everywhere, especially on Always Tomorrow, I Won’t Let You Down and the more acoustic Strawberry Blonde. Butch Vig’s production has resulted – or maybe coincided – with a heavier sound; free download single Girls and Boys is the heaviest they get tonight, though they never sacrifice a tune for noise.

There’s no lack of energy; Billy obviously thinks he’d be too hot if he wore a top, which lends him a slightly dodgy Iggy Pop vibe, and Charlotte’s hairdo takes quite a thrashing. Charlotte and Billy obviously still share a certain synergy; their voices complement each other quite sweetly and they look to be still at ease with each other professionally, which is quite heartening in the resentment- and anger-filled world of rock.

They finish with Rock & Roll Queen, a three-year-old song which must be their best known, by virtue of its (and the band’s) best-known appearance – in this year’s Guy Ritchie film, Rocknrolla. It’s anthemic and catchy – and ticks all the popularity boxes while not really being structurally, musically or lyrically their best hour. Their extended performance of it allows Billy the opportunity to crowd surf and orchestrate a deafening screaming competion between both halves of the audience, which goes on for ages and leaves everyone on a high.

 

From Nightshift, November 2008

Wakestock

Blenheim Palace
29th June 2008

The Winchell Riots
I only catch two songs, which is a shame, as I like what I hear. Being rather early in the day, the arena isn’t very full, but they fill it with their epic, reverb rock sound. I don’t hear enough to really be able to tell, my initial impressions are that they sound like what Keane would sound like if they were any good. 

Little Fish
Who’d have thought a bloke and a girl could make so much noise? Especially a girl as tiny as “Juju”. Every inch the rock n’ roller in her white skinny jeans and red braces, she’s an instrument in herself – her voice creates everything and her guitar follows. I don’t think PJ Harvey or Suzi Quatro are unfair comparisons. The repertoire is varied, from blues to rock via soul, with a lot of bravery, pain, anger and compassion thrown in. Occasionally it gets a bit frighteningly yelpy, but it’s mostly challenging and intriguing.

A Silent Film
How annoying – a local band I haven’t bothered seeing before because I didn’t think they’d be this good. Epic, layered, reverby, synthy, earnest – their sound is great. Their songs sound good, but I have no idea how commercial they are – I’m just enjoying the interesting sound they’re making. Not heard anything as inventive yet accessible as this in quite a while. And their cover of Born Slippy is amazing.

The Dykeenies
Pretty standard teen pop/rock/indie, as far as I can tell. Very popular with the “youth” who have appeared out of nowhere (and are surely too young to be here). I’m reliably informed that they’re a cross between Fall Out Boy and Busted; I wouldn’t know – I wasn’t born in the 90s. Quite tight, tuneful and catchy though.

Black Kids
I think I’m being won over by the Black Kids’ catchiness. The sheer poppiness irritated me at first, but the influences have been showing through – rock, disco, early 80s pop-funk, even Motown. They’re still not the tightest band live I’ve ever seen, but tunes like recent single Hurricane Jane whip the crowd up anyway, so they’re doing something right.

Lightspeed Champion
Look, it’s the bloke who used to be in Test Icicles and he’s wearing a furry hat! He’s got a female drummer! And a violin player! So automatically cool, obviously. It’s all a quite jolly singer-songwriter-with-wry-observations-about-life type of affair, but not twee, despite excursions towards 60s surf rock (which win me over with the quirky chord changes). He seems like a nice guy, and it’s all quite appealing.

Estelle
Estelle is on the sassier end of cool. She’s brought a huge band with her, but this grandiosity is dampened the moment she starts chatting to the audience (apparently, men are getting on her nerves so much that she’s written a song about it). She toasts and raps as well as sings, and it’s not an R&B borefest – there’s even some reggae and grime in there (but not, alas, any Kanye). She puts her heart into it, and it’s quite a refreshing change to the rest of today’s lineup.

Young Knives
Oh no! They don’t sound so quirky anymore. Except when they play their older stuff. But the stage presence is still eccentric, so they’ve not deserted us completely, despite Henry’s declaration that Hot Summer made them multimillionaires… The Beatles-like harmonies and guitar interplay are still in evidence, too, and Turn Tail is lovely. The crowd are somewhat distracted during their set by a giant red WKD beach ball, though.

The Streets
Your reviewer doesn’t like The Streets. No amount of lazy, soul-destroying, endlessly repetitive basslines smothered by Mike Skinner’s arrogant, posturing, rambling, uninspired, self-aggrandising, boorish boasting – conspicuously devoid of any rhyme, rhythm or anything else interesting whatsoever – would persuade her otherwise. And so it transpires.

The Futureheads
Hold onto your heartrate, it’s the Futureheads! Never knowingly laid back, their marriage of frenetic punkery and beautiful harmonies would be charming if that description didn’t seem a bit too odd to apply to them. The ever-popular Skip to the End requires synchronised crowd jumping, the mere sight of which exhausts me into taking my leave…

 

From Nightshift, August 2008

Alphabeat and Palladium

Carling Academy, Oxford
28th January 2008

If the words “Danish” and “pop” automatically make you think of Aqua, Junior Senior or Whigfield and sigh, fear not! Alphabeat are far less one-dimensional.

Poppy and jaunty yet more heartfelt than flippant, they flirt with Motown and soul, but not in any dodgy Toploader way; 10,000 Nights of Thunder reminds me of the Supremes despite Anders and Stine’s boy/girl vocal swooning, and What is Happening is a slower but still perfectly Radio 2-esque slice of pop-soul harmony. The single Fascination was Radio 1 playlisted, but there is better; they’re still innocent, kooky and Europoppy enough to get away with the lovely Boyfriend and its lyrics about holding hands, parents not wanting to know and whatnot.

Alphabeat are so infectiously upbeat that it’s difficult not to be charmed by them.

Palladium, on the other hand, are rather irritating. The fact that their best song (High 5) sounds like sixth formers trying to play a medley of Van Halen’s Jump and that Orson song raises alarm bells immediately.

The official line of them meeting on the session musician circuit and discovering a mutual love of Toto and Hall & Oates sounds very suspicious; the whole thing gives the distinct impression of being manufactured, especially considering their woeful, presumably Virgin-dictated look. I resent having had a childhood being told that particular acts were unfashionable only for them to resurface 20 years later via embarrassing, exploitative and frankly offensively cynical plagiarism with the sole purpose of lining record executives’ pockets. It’s the glam rock 50s revival all over again.

So it might not even be all Palladium’s fault, despite the posturing; their guitar/keyboard noodling (especially on the very AOR White Lady) shows they can play quite well. But for all the harmony and structure, they just can’t muster up memorable songs – which defeats the object, surely?

 

From Nightshift, March 2008

The Sounds

The Zodiac, Oxford
24th March 2007

Imagine for a moment, if you will, that you are the impossibly pert pop punk pixie Maja Ivarsson, lead singer of Helsingborg’s The Sounds. Surrounded by your four not-bad-looking-either male bandmates, you’re actually quite happy to be crammed up next to your devoted audience downstairs at the Zodiac; your jaunty synth rock is designed to get under your listeners’ skin, and you’re also quite partial to getting closer to your audience by way of the odd crowd surf. (You’re tiny so nobody’s likely to drop you.) Oxford may be a world away from the New York scenes among which your recent, second album Dying To Tell This To You fits perfectly, but your appeal is pretty international.

Your music mostly has just the right blend of commercial and cool to have attracted celebrity fans like Dave Grohl and Bam Margera (whose wedding reception you recently played at); Tony the Beat is probably the best so far – addictive, catchy and more sophisticated than the rawness of most of your first album, Living in America. The more anthemic Song with a Mission, Painted by Numbers and Queen of Apology come close behind though. Despite demanding the audience’s attention, you’re kind enough to leave guitarist Felix and keyboardist Jesper to do some sweaty electric drumming at the end of Ego.

Comparisons to Blondie are inevitable but flattering, and you might concede that your band is not the most original there has ever been, but who cares? Your magnetic yet dangerous demeanour is such that nobody’s likely to argue with you. Your voice is at times as vulnerable and delicate as that of The Cardigans’ Nina Persson, but you’re leather to Nina’s wool. You’re having fun belting out some great tunes, and the Zodiac is transfixed.

On the evidence of tonight, I think you’d be quite chuffed to be Maja Ivarsson.

 

From Nightshift, May 2007

The Noisettes and The Victorian English Gentlemens Club

The Zodiac, Oxford
22nd January 2007

IMG_0867

Cardiff lo-fi trio The Victorian English Gentlemens Club (deliberately lacking an apostrophe) revel – and excel – in unconventionality. Emma, Louise and Adam’s art punk is a quirky, shouty affair, with disjointed melodies and rhythms crashing into angular and edgy guitars. Their scant respect for songwriting conventions is often confused and confusing – like in the wonderfully titled My Son Spells Backwards – but works far better in the impossbily catchy Amateur Man and Ban the Gin. Veering from Devo to The Young Knives and back again, it might not – deliberately – hold together all of the time, but it’s always interesting.

While TVEGC suit the intimacy of downstairs at the Zodiac quite well, it’s far too small for The Noisettes. Singer and bassist Shingai – for whom ‘charismatic’ seems far too weak a description – is literally climbing up the walls, such is her energy. Headline touring to promote their debut album What’s the Time Mr Wolf and fresh from supporting Muse – in whose arena venues their sound was subdued and strangely lost – The Noisettes are bursting with tunes and styles, as if they’re trying to cover all bases with the first album before polishing one direction. Shingai’s versatility covers everything from soul to hard rock via operatic screeching, while the other two look like refugees from Camel and are quite happy to noodle away on their own, weaving in and out of Shingai’s bass and voice. They’re adept enough to sometimes do away with the bass guitar without losing volume or depth, too.

The blues-rock fusion is often a bit jumbled but it’s all very frenetic and fun; Don’t Give Up is an exalting rally cry, while Sister Rosetta (Capture the Spirit) is a multi hook-laden anthem. However, the real star isn’t the music but Shingai; forget Beth Ditto, this is the current coolest woman in rock.

 

From Nightshift, March 2007

Photo: © Kirmie

Erasure

New Theatre, Oxford
3rd September 2007

We all know what Erasure sound like, don’t we? Even though the arrangements and even instrumentation may change (they recorded album of acoustic/country and western versions of some of their old songs last year), an Erasure song is still unmistakable – not least due to Andy Bell’s distinctive voice. He could sing the Chinese national anthem and make it sound like a torch song of loss and redemption.

There was a point in the mid 90s where they became very unfashionable – and songs from that era are noticeably absent tonight. But the hardcore support (now far more the age for Radio 2 than Radio 1) meant they reached a point where they could afford to put out whatever music they wanted without having to rely on commercial success – which meant they stuck around long enough to benefit from the 2000s synthpop resurgence.

On this tour, in support of their new album, Light at the End of the World, out are Andy’s flamboyant leotards and feathers, but in are glittery camouflage gear and Jackson Pollock-inspired suits. A sense of humour pervades – Andy prances, struts, joins the backing singers in cheesy arm movements and even introduces a lamb puppet called Mint Sauce to ‘help’ him sing. The costume change interval is accompanied by a pages-from-Ceefax ambient track and a stream-of-consciousness monologue from screens on the stage, encouraging us to wave our hands like we’re on drugs – among other random thoughts.

So what about the new stuff? Well, surrounded by the soaring catchiness of songs like Chorus and the anthemic Love to Hate You, it doesn’t fare too badly. Breathe – the only track from 2005’s Nightbird here – is easily the best thing since their heyday, but recent single Sunday Girl isn’t too bad either. Nothing exciting enough to draw in many new fans – but certainly enough to keep the existing ones happy.

 

From Nightshift, October 2007

The Go! Team and Smoosh

Oxford Brookes University
5th March 2006

Some bands have a gimmick which dominates their marketing and carries their career. Smoosh don’t need one – but, for the moment at least, they might not be able to avoid it. Seattle sisters Asya (13, keyboard and vocals) and Chloe (12 today, drums) recorded debut album She Like Electric two years ago (!), but their quirkiness, precociousness and lack of self-consciousness aren’t intimidating at all. Their piano pop is like Ben Folds without the melancholy, and they seem to not feel constricted by verse-chorus pop conventions. Remember their name.

Smoosh are bound to develop and mature their sound, which is something The Go! Team have done in the last few years, evolving from their beginnings as one man – Ian Parton – in a Hove flat with a four-track recorder and sampler. Unlike similarly sample-happy Fatboy Slim and The Avalanches, however, there were always live instruments played over the top – hence the need for the six-piece band we see tonight.

Frontwoman, singer, rapper, MC and enthusiastic cheerleader Ninja acknowledges to the crowd that the Mercury-nominated album Thunder, Lightning, Strike isn’t heavy on lyrics, so she teaches us some. Ninja’s vocals often add dynamism to the riffs and loops, but sometimes her dancing adds more to the party than her rapping. She’s good for the live experience, though; there’s less rapport between the band and the audience in the few tracks she doesn’t do much in, like Junior Kickstart. Get It Together and Ladyflash, however, are a triumph, as are new tracks like Do It Right.

As kitsch and crazy as the B52’s and Japanese bands like Plus-Tech Squeeze Box, The Go! Team come across as a superficially shambolic but subtly complex and layered school orchestra thrashing up funk, hip-hop, indie, symphonic 70s TV themes and anything else they can find. Above all, however, they’re different and fun.

 

From Nightshift, April 2006