Bart Davenport/Homescience/Amazing Pilots/Ladybug Transistor (The Arts Cafe, London)

On Saturday people on the boating lake in Regent’s Park may have been pleasantly reminded of the age of imperialism by the sight of a small yellow girl rowing a tall poncily reclining white guy round the lake, although Alec had admittedly rowed me round the lake for the previous 45 minutes, and the Irish arguably have as much cause for resentment about imperialism as us yellow people do.

At night I’d decided to indulge my delusions of indieness by going to a gig at the Arts Cafe. We had a good time, but I ended up enjoying the performance of Bart Davenport (who wasn’t even advertised) most, and Ladybug Transistor (the only band I’d actually heard of) least. In between those two were Homescience (not the most cohesive or animated performers around, but their songs were mildly Pavementy so I liked them well enough) and The Amazing Pilots (who were, in contrast, incredibly cohesive, really got into their performance, and had much better rapport with the crowd, but whose songs were for the most part less interesting except for one called I Thought About It And I’ve Still Not Changed My Mind, which lived up to its rather great title).

Alec bought Bart Davenport’s CD on the strength of what he managed with just the quality of his voice, his songs, his guitar and the occasional kazoo, but it turned out to be disappointingly glossier – a bit too sunkissed and xylophoney – than what we’d been expecting from the performance. Still pleasant enough though, and well worth looking up if you like Summer Hymns or Yuji Oniki, who produced some of the CD.

There was nothing I specifically disliked about Ladybug Transistor, but there seemed to be a sameness to all aspects of their performance and their songs that didn’t capture me at all. In response to the last sentence of this review at Pitchfork, I guess I do just prefer the less sophisticated and trippier ways of channelling 60s sound that the Elephant 6 bands come up with (which reminds me, must go listen to my Olivia Tremor Control CDs for maximum summerness).

All Tomorrow’s Parties Are Elsewhere

GUESS WHAT??? All Tomorrow’s Parties!!! Has been rescheduled!!! To March 14-17!!! In UCL….A.

Sigh. So near, yet so far.

Would’ve made a great birthday present. Sigh.

Is anyone out there very rich, very generous and very foolish? Anyone at all?

I didn’t think so. Sigh.

Tori Amos (Hammersmith Apollo) / Rent (Prince Of Wales Theatre)

Tori on Friday. Rent on Saturday. Hence broke, grouchy and essay crisis-ridden on Sunday.

Tori:

Was objectively good, but not what I waited seven years to see. As a performer she gave all the charm and musicianship I’d expected from her, but managed to choose a setlist with very few songs from her repertoire that I love, which is quite an achievement given how much I do like most of it. It could be argued that some songs weren’t possible because she wasn’t playing with her band – Hello Mr Zebra comes to mind as a song that might suffer from the loss of those jaunty horns, but you could also say that someone like her who adapts things like Smells Like Teen Spirit for solo piano could probably find a way round that.

There were songs that simply left me cold – Juarez, Honey, Suede, Not The Red Baron. There were songs I don’t “enjoy” per se, but still had to hear live, and was glad to have experienced – ’97 Bonnie And Clyde, Me And A Gun. Then there were songs I do quite like but which still fall short of the ones I truly love – Putting The Damage On, Little Amsterdam, Upside Down, I Don’t Like Mondays, Leather, Time, Cruel, Only Women Bleed, I’m On Fire, Landslide. Then there was one song I love – Playboy Mommy. This is why I ultimately left a little disappointed, not with her, I guess, but just by chance.

Songs I’d have liked to hear: Silent All These Years, Precious Things, Pretty Good Year, Past The Mission, Cornflake Girl, God, Professional Widow, Blood Roses, Hello Mr Zebra, Marianne, Jackie’s Strength, 1000 Oceans, Real Men.

Oh well. Just my view, others saw it differently, and I still left the concert no less of a fan than I was before it.

Rent:

If you’re in London, and you’re considering going to the production currently running at the Prince of Wales Theatre, don’t. Adam Rickett is a terrible, terrible Mark: camp acting, reedy singing voice; whoever acted Roger seemed to think he was a member of Spinal Tap instead of a struggling indie musician and felt the need to strut everywhere crotch-first and generally just act very cock rock, had an accent that seemed to waver wildly between Geordie, vague American and comically stereotypical New Yorker, and a singing voice that couldn’t hack the high notes in One Song Glory.

Light My Candle was either directed by an utter moron, or the actors completely screwed it up. Either way, I don’t understand how anyone who’d ever seen a good production of Rent, listened to the soundtrack, or even just read the fucking libretto, for crying out loud, could have butchered it so completely. Musicals don’t tend to lend themselves to gradual development of relationships or characters. You’re expected to accept that he loves her and she loves him, truly madly deeply, usually to the death; why and how this is so is superficially explained at best, and just imposed at worst. The reason I’ve always loved Light My Candle is that it seems to convey, better than most, some feel of how people interact before the sweeping heartfelt declarations of undying love. The flickerings of attraction. The banter, sometimes shy, sometimes daring, the wondering, the hoping, finally the confirmation. We got none of this. No Mimi bending to search for her stash on the flood and Roger sneaking a look, Mimi noticing:

M: They say I have the best ass below 14th street – is it true?
R: What?
M: You’re staring again.

Just Mimi getting down on the floor and deliberately arching her booty up at him like a slapper right from the start.

No understanding of Mimi’s response to Roger’s quip about Spike Lee shooting down the street – first “bah humbug” because she’s laughing at the joke, second “bah humbug” at him, tenderly, a little awkward, their hands finding each other. We got two careless “bah humbugs” from the couch, then Mimi shooting across the stage and grabbing at him.

I realize I sound like a complete obsessive to anyone who isn’t familiar with the musical, and probably even to most people who are. I could go on, but I’m too tired and pissed off. Just be glad I haven’t seen a bad production of Les Miserables yet.

Happy Snippets

Snippets from the weekend (no more than snippets, though. Tufts in the fur of the woolly mammoth of my current happiness. Some of the reasons I’m happy make me go a bit shy and fluttery, and I don’t feel like writing about them here):

After an extraordinarily taxing day, Thai food, Mercury Rev and charming company made for an extraordinarily pleasant Friday night. Even though I somehow managed to buy a Rev T-shirt that was shocking in its random ugliness (I blame the wine, and Alec for not stopping me), and even though I was the lucky one who got to sit next to Stupor Guy, whose travails on the astral plane manifested themselves in the inexorable downward drift of his upper body towards an increasingly cringing me, the gig still had its moments – nice renditions of The Dark Is Rising, Spiders and Flies, Hercules, Tonight It Shows and Goddess On A Hiway’s always fun. I do wish they’d played Endlessly and A Drop In Time though, and I don’t think they played anything from Boces or Yerself Is Steam, which was a little disappointing.

Their live sound is rougher round the edges than the pristine sound on the last two albums. Their album sound feels as if each component of a song (think Endlessly, for example) occupies a distinct musical space with clearly delineated boundaries, and exists quite happily there without really interacting with other elements of the song, even though they all complement each other very prettily when taken as a whole. Like a consomme. Live, it’s more of a stew, or perhaps a chunky soup, and I’m not sure how much I actually liked hearing the songs that way. For me, Deserter’s Songs and All Is Dream are the sound of late nights studying or reading in bed, just right for the spaces between the sounds of night drizzle and Gower Street white noise. Having said that, I do think gigs are meant to sound different from albums, so all this is more commentary than complaint.

Saturday was the President’s Cup, the only intervarsity tournament for novice debaters in the UK, and something Mark and I had been slaving over (well, kind of) for the past couple of weeks. Relentless perfectionist that I am, I’m still half convinced that every person who kept coming up to me and raving about how fantastic the tournament was, was either piss drunk or just being polite, but there does seem to be considerable consensus that it was a resounding success. Which makes me happy, although it could all have been so much better if not for a plethora of organizational failures that I know I made, and which I feel lucky for getting away with.

Special mention must be made of:

  • Mark, tournament convenor AKA My Bitch, who ran himself ragged during the day, supplied alcohol at night, and has generally been absolutely lovely to work with because of his ability to find hilarity in drudgery and give wonderful hugs when I’m not in the mood for hilarity.
  • Russ, who sacrified his Saturday to perform the extremely boring functions of a tournament drudge, because I really needed the help, and because he’s sweet like that. (Oops, he hates being called sweet. Oh well.)

After Saturday, Sunday was a day for nothingness. Woke up at noon. Practised the organ for evening mass. Spent the rest of the afternoon in bed with Seamus Heaney and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, falling in love all over again with the Olivia Tremor Control’s Dusk At Cubist Castle, munching Kettle Chips, breathing in chrysanthemum tea. Had fun at evening mass playing my calypso version of How Great Thou Art. Chocolate pancakes a la Mark for dinner. Subjected Alec to The Lost Children (stomach-turning song on the new Michael Jackson album, to be excoriated here in the very near future). Camp dancing extravaganza with Mark to New York City Boy (Pet Shop Boys), which might possibly have been quite inconsiderate to Stefan downstairs due to my very creaky floorboards. In retrospect, I suppose you could say it wasn’t actually a day of nothingness, except in the sense that it involved nothing that detracted from happy, happy, happy me.

(Are you tired of this yet?)

Gibber gibber Yo La Tengo gibber gibber

Note to self: Never forget the night of 10 April, because it’s the night you went to indie rock heaven.

Before I get to the part where I start gibbering and spluttering, I should begin by doing what I can manage coherently.

Right, so the Yo La Tengo (gibber, splutter) gig was last night. The supporting acts were Sue Garner & Rick Brown and Broadcast. I’ll start with them.

I’d never heard of Sue Garner & Rick Brown before, but was very pleasantly surprised. Imagine Sarah McLachlan’s voice singing with Ani DiFranco’s attitude accompanied by Sonic Youth remixed by Tortoise. Kinda like that. I’m definitely going to look around for their album.

Broadcast, which I had heard of, were extremely disappointing. In terms of presentation they were far slicker than Sue Garner & Rick Brown, but their music paled in comparison. Maybe I’m just a nitpicky classical musician, but when the melody line is the same as the bass line and all other accompanying lines, the song sounds boring. I only realized last night how right that particular rule of SATB (soprano alto tenor bass) music theory was – about avoiding a situation where the different elements of harmony carry the same tune such that you’re basically hearing the same tune simultaneously over a couple of octaves.

Quite often, they’d be constructing this interesting soundscape, and then their lead singer would start singing, and I’d get pissed off. For one thing, the melody was usually boring, as I’ve said. Another thing was that her voice reminded me of the Corrs, which meant it blended so effortlessly into the background that I forgot I’d ever heard it. And then almost all the songs seemed to involve her singing “Aaaaaaaaaaaah” and swaying from side to side and then going “Lalalalalalala etc.” I can’t really describe it in writing, but it really was immensely irritating. Which is a pity, because other than her singing, and the melody she was singing, the rest of their music was reasonably interesting, especially towards the end of their set where they started going a bit wild with squealing feedback and dissonance and thunderous drums.

And now we come to Yo La Tengo. Oh. My. God. I’ll just abandon all pretence of being cool and cynical and laid back now, and say that it was one of the most amazing gigs I’ve ever been to, probably second only to Sonic Youth, and second only because Sonic Youth are very slightly more charismatic as performers.

Yo La Tengo: Thank you. Thank you for alternately rawking and whispering your way through the show, and being equally compelling for each. Thank you for taking Blue Line Swinger and making it into an expandable universe both screaming and serene even better than you did on the record – it must have been at least 15 minutes long but I was entranced. Thank you for effortlessly switching instruments and kicking ass with whatever you picked up. Thank you especially Georgia (BRILLIANT drumming) for doing that while looking sweet and dumpy and motherly and nothing like the rock star you are – and forgive me if I ever meet you in a small-town supermarket and don’t recognize you while we both stock up on drain cleaner or something equally domestic. Thank you for responding to our clapping, stomping and screaming by coming back out twice to play encores.

Thank you for your beautiful noise.

Maybeeee Someone’s Gonna Save Meeeee

Tickets bought to see Stephen Malkmus at ULU on April 12, hooray, hooray!!! But now there’s a dilemma – I assume he’ll sing lots of songs from his solo album, so do I go buy it so that I don’t end up listening in ignorance? I originally intended to wait till it was available second hand at Django, or buy it cheap in Singapore when I go home for the summer. And is it an affront to him as a solo artist to hope he sings some Pavement songs as well? I’m not asking for much, just AT&T, Shady Lane and In The Mouth A Desert. Please?

Now that’s done, I have to go toddle down to various roadside ticketing agents and see what I can scrounge up for Yo La Tengo (April 10). And hey, contrary to my previously voiced fears, I’m not going to have to slink in alone and grit my teeth in envy eavesdropping on everyone else talking to their friends about how much they love Slanted And Enchanted, or I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One, because Marten, sole indie-lovin’ friend in London, decided that the gigs were just too good to pass up.

Yay. :) Going to these two gigs will go far towards lessening my genuine pain of missing Bon Jovi when they play here in June!

And hordes of indie readers leave in disgust.

The NME Thing: Mansun/King Adora/Sunna/Mull Historical Society (Astoria, London)

I knew I had to do the NME thing at some point during my time in Britain. Tonight I went to a Mansun/King Adora/Sunna/Mull Historical Society gig at the Astoria with Matt, Alec and Nina. As I’ve said before here, it wasn’t the first gig I’d choose to go to out of all available, but Matt wanted to go, and I figured I might as well go since I’d have company.

We got there during Mull Historical Society’s set. I can’t say I was distressed at having missed any of it. I suppose a charitable music journalist could call their lack of packaging, stage presence or sound quality refreshing in this age of manufactured musicality, but I was underwhelmed. Of course, if they become the next Radiohead, I’ll have to delete this post hurriedly and drop smug little references into conversations about how I watched them when they were unknown and knew they were going to make it big, but somehow I’m not too worried about that happening.

The second act, Sunna, was definitely an improvement. Sure, they didn’t sound like much more than a rather derivative heavy rock/lite metal Bush/Metallica/Pearl Jam amalgam, but they had catchy enough riffs, showmanship, and at least some level of variation in their songs. They had the Metallica ballad, the White Zombie-esque dancey metally track, the Pearl Jam’s Spin The Black Circle stylie thrash, and other appropriately dark toned, minor keyed extended jams, all involving lots of flashing lights and people risking whiplash. All good fun.

King Adora. Hmm. I didn’t realize how many of their songs I actually knew until I heard them perform. I was generally distracted during their set by the antics of a group of what looked like 14 year olds who were obviously huge fans. One had orange King Adora bumper stickers stuck across his face. At the end he ripped them off in a swift and manly gesture and waved them ecstatically in the air. Ten seconds later, one hand came down from its aerial worship and surreptitiously checked an eyebrow. Ouch.

The main feeling I had at the end of Mansun’s gig was frustration. This is a band whose first album I thoroughly enjoyed, whose second album I thought showed a significant evolution of sound, and whose third and most recent album I felt to be profoundly uninspired and so tediously Mansunesque it sounded like a Mansun tribute band.

Live, The Chad Who Loved Me, Taxloss, Blown It/Special and Wide Open Space (all from Attack Of The Grey Lantern and Six) were immensely satisfying, and Paul Draper can definitely sing live. But ultimately, these performances just showed up the mediocrity of the new material even more. I Can Only Disappoint You was as boring live as it is on the album. They tried to give Electric Man some resonance by washing the band in warm yellow light during the chorus (“Bring your sunshine to me, oh, electric man”) but if the music doesn’t move me, clever lighting won’t change that.

Other musings:

Is there some unwritten requirement that when you go to a gig, if you don’t have a T-shirt of a band performing, you have to wear another one with some other band in the “scene” on it?

Do indie boys really think that disgusting haircut (and I use the terminology loosely) looks good? Only Beck looks cool with it, boys. And that’s actually just because he’s Beck. It’s still a dumb haircut even on his dear little genius head.