Phoning it in

Dispatches from the back of the venue

RIYL: This Heat

  • These New Puritans

    These New Puritans

    It’s fair to say I was an early adopter of TNP. Initially they had some of the hallmarks of what I call Lamacq Rock ™. Evening Radio 1 friendly, signed to Domino, and with neo-post-punk sound that got them bracketed with Klaxons, LCD Soundsystem et al. The drummer was a model for brands like Dior and Prada. So far, so late 00s Indie Pop. But from the off there was something otherworldly about them. I saw an early gig back in 2008 and there was definitely something going on, a certain intensity and seriousness, whatever it was…they meant it. It wasn’t this gig but it went something like this: 

    In fact the clues were all there – they sure weren’t The Kaiser Chiefs. And sure enough 5 critically acclaimed albums later, here they are at the White Hotel which is already packed to the rafters, rapt and ready. Now settled around a core of twin brothers Jack and George Barnett they have evolved into a band that can be comfortably filed alongside the unfathomable fringes of the mildewy English underground alongside This Heat, The Work, Robert Wyatt, Anthony Moore, Scritti Politti, imperial phase Talk Talk, Bark Psychosis – you know ‘that lot’. This is deadly serious music but with a yearning melancholic edge and a very appealing musicality and melody. They also like beats, some tracks are underpinned by a lurching, hip hop influenced, massive attack thwack (which they were always doing from the early days).

    Tonight’s set draws on the delicate but bracing new LP ‘Crooked Wing’ along with choice cuts from their modest but tightly quality-controlled back catalogue. We get everything from piano driven, post-Industrial ballads like ‘I’m Already Here’ – to a thunderous, tub-thumping ‘We Want War’. Twin Jack is an engaging vocal presence – besuited, sometimes donning a Bowie-esque trilby, throwing some shapes and generally making an effort to put a bit of a show on and ‘project’ (readers of this blog will know how much I appreciate that).

    The sight-lines in the ‘orrible ‘otel mean it’s hard to see what else is going on but there are mallet instruments, a tabletop guitar thing and lots of electronics and percussion including the obligatory chains for someone to rattle. On previous live occasions they could be a little dry, a little studied – often swelled to 10 or more musicians, depending on the budget. Tonight they perform as an economical 4 piece, in a packed club rather than a more theatrical setting – and far from being limited by the more minimal approach they really shine – the songs get a chance to roam more than usual – like ‘V – Island Song’ which extends it’s beautiful organ coda out so we can bask in it for a few more minutes. They’re ‘a band’ tonight rather than the twins and some hired hands.  

    It all comes together with the closing epic ‘Organ Eternal’ – interlocking Steve Reich keys, gradually building percussion and lightning bolts of guitar that builds slowly into a series of crescendos and waves that far outshine the (already excellent) LP version. Toward the end, they borrow a neat trick from Kraftwerk and each Puritan steps away in turn takes a bow, leaving the stage to the others to keep the eternal groove going until there is just one Puritan left to decide when to take us out of the stratospheric orbit back down to Salford. This is the best performance I’ve seen them do. Coherent, connective and definitive. No encore. Less is more. They really should play more. Catch the 4 Piece Puritans if you can. 

  • Still House Plants

    Still House Plants

    This month the band are the cover stars of The Wire magazine – that extraordinarily resilient and outré music publication which, at the time of writing is still readily available in WHSmiths – if you go past the overpriced confectionery, magazines are now relegated to the back of the shop – there I see Still House Plants on a shelf, in a Railway Station branch of WHSmiths – looking very cool but strangely out of time and very much of it.

    Cut to the White Hotel, in darkest Salford – I guess the closest the North West gets to a venue like London’s Cafe Oto – where in between decadent all-nighters that start at midnight, they do put on lots of artists such as you might read about in The Wire at more sociable hours. There are 3 musicians gathering on the stage and as they start to play I’m immediately struck by telepathic interplay between them. This is very much a group. One brilliantly innovative, minimalist guitarist (cut from the same cloth as Wire’s Bruce Gilbert, John McGeoch or David Pajo perhaps), a fantastic freewheeling drummer who has a very stripped-down kit -(Robert Wyatt or Wire’s Robert Gotobed springs to mind -yeah that good) -and a singer who spends the set hunched over a mic stand facing the band but has this remarkable, husky soulful voice that rises up from nowhere and adds an unexpected emotional heft that absolutely lifts this music into somewhere stratospheric.  

    The songs aren’t conventionally structured and they veer between danceable beats and sounding like the drums are falling down stairs but it never gets tedious or overly chin-stroking – this is deeply experimental music you can dance to, or just stand back and take it all in.

    It’s an exhilarating, and hugely energising experience watching them lock in and out of each other doing their thing. It turns out I haven’t seen it all before, there is still music out that there can surprise and delight that is completely otherworldly.  I pick up a beautifully packaged CD, make my feelings known to the disarmingly charming musicians at the merch stand and walk back into the darkness of Salford. Still House Plants moved me. Let them move you.

  • Swell Maps

    Swell Maps

    I’m back at the ultimate Salford grotspot to celebrate the music of the mighty Swell Maps in their current incarnation as Swell Maps C21.

    Support comes from Dutch group Geo who are enjoyably unhinged and have a very heavy low-end bass groove that works a treat with the huge speakers in the venue. Swell Maps were always a curious proposition (and I’m certainly not an expert), more of a loose musical collective who were active in the early 70s but having put out a single in 1977 get lumped in with Punk but really they pre-dated and post-dated it at the same time and tonight reflects that very well.

    Leading the celebrations is original member Jowe Head – who has some art school history with Manchester. In tight formation around him are the great David Callaghan (a brilliant artist in his own right and as part of the brain frazzling Moonshake), drummer Jeff Bloom, singer and keyboardist Lucie Rejchrtova and – festooned with a clankening of badges, Post-Punk gun for hire and fellow IdealCopyist – the great Lee McFadden.

    Everyone shares vocal duties and lyric sheets are swapped around as the set isn’t carved in stone. We get lots of the visceral, Motorik Swell Maps sound but also new material, and some nice nods to the extended discography of the band including a lovely version of ‘Jellybabies’ the song Epic Soundtracks recorded with Robert Wyatt in 1981 (beautifully sung by Lucie) –

    that one in particular sits this in context with that curious, hard to fathom strain of 70s British music that covers This Heat, the Canterbury Scene and the ROI thing. Perfect. Alas things are running late (not Swell Maps fault) – but there’s no way I’m leaving before a closing medley of glorious fuzzy ‘Midget Submarines’ and ‘Full Moon in My Pocket’ which veers quite logically into ‘Mother Sky’ by Can – which is ringing in my ears as my cab driver veers in out of the mad traffic back to the station. We made it! Hooray!