I’ve seen Adam Green a good few times and have so many great memories of his shows. The time in college when I had to sneak an underage girl into the show at Night & Day. The time at Leeds festival when we were dancing like idiots, loaded on cheap whiskey and rolling in the grass. The time in Germany when hundreds of people stormed the stage, went mental then disappeared right after his set. All unforgettable nights of entertainment. This show was a little more refined, but still with the same mischievous cheek that makes him so unique. Dressed like a camp Elvis Presley and jumping around like a maniac, crowd surfing at every opportunity, one thing you can’t accuse Adam Green of is being boring.
I was a little worried that he’d only play his new material (new album Minor Love being what they call ‘a grower’) but what we got was a brilliant cross section of his entire back catalogue, with tracks being played from every album. Even including a closing medley featuring his classic cover of The Libertines’ What A Waster.
Entertaining from start to finish, there wasn’t a single lull in the entire set. Everyone left with a smile on your face. The perfect antidote to an otherwise dreary Monday night in Manchester.
When I’m not earning a living as a member of Manchester’s elite Bloggerati, I do a bit of moonlighting. Even so, I’m going to keep this as impartial as I can.
There’s a lot of really good musicians in Manchester, a ton of talented bands and an endless stream of opportunities for Saturday night fun. We’re famous for it. This is both a blessing and a curse. Being exposed to so much talent can raise expectations so much that it’s hard to be impressed – this is part of the reason so many touring bands consider Manchester a tough crowd. It’s not because we’re moody or too cool to show appreciation. It’s just that we’re so used to seeing talent that what a crowd in say, Peterborough, consider great, we’d probably find boring.
Last night however, I found myself uttering the words Holy. Bloody. Hell. Denis Jones is a genuine, absolute, bona-fide genius. And a home grown one at that. With the Mancunian drawl of Guy Garvey, the wit and charm of John Bramwell and the one-man-band loop and effects talent at a level I havn’t seen since Jeff Klein, Denis Jones demonstrated he is perhaps the most talented and innovative musician on the scene at the moment.
Playing to a packed to the rafters Band on The Wall, with a backing band and complete audio/visual setup (as well as bringing his own stage), he’s also shown us that he’s ready to make the step from pub/indie clubnight fodder to full blown concert performer. And about time too.
Catch him at small venues while you can, he’s about to blast through the stratosphere. Friend Rock’s tip for 2010, so far.
I hope you’re as excited as I am – one of my favourite bands are reforming. The 22-20’s. (you must remember them. Almost indie darlings of 2004 that only *just* didn’t quite make it).
Quite why half-arsed second raters Kings of Leon became so big yet far better contemporaries (namely The 22-20’s and one of New York City’s most exciting bands The Witnesses) didn’t I find baffling, to the point of almost rage (people who know me will be all too aware of my opinions on this). It’s great to see The 22-20’s return and I can’t wait to hear more from them. January, so far, has been a great month for music.
They’ve sneakily stuck up a new track, Latest Heartbreak on their (pretty much deserted) MySpace page. Keeping true to their gutsy blues rock roots, and with an even more psychedelic edge reminiscent of The Black Angels, if this is anything to go by then I for one am very, very excited about any potential new material or live dates. Stay tuned!
This is one that is going to need some heavy rotation on the Friend Rock Stereo before it finally sinks in. A record so complex and intricate that on first listen left me feeling dizzy, bewildered and drained. I felt like time had passed yet I couldn’t quite recollect what had happened. You know when people claim they’ve been abducted by aliens and lost track of what they’ve done for the last few minutes/hours? Well, they havn’t. They’ve just been listening to These New Puritans.
It seems like there is absolutely no rhyme, reason or structure to this record at all. Part trip hop, part Sufjan in classical mode (see our review of the outstanding B.Q.E), part Bloc Party, part demonic horror movie soundtrack, it sounds like absolutely nothing I’ve heard before, yet at the same time completely familiar. The best analogy I can think of is that if you imagine find every piece of music that has ever been written, and play it all at once, you’d probably get something pretty similar to Hidden.
With influences ranging from caveman-inspired drum rhythms, to medieval chanting, through to classical symphonic melodies and electronic beats, this album is essentially a postmodern deconstruction of what music itself is. More than a record. A true work of art. Bigger than the iPod, bigger than the stereo. This should be heard in galleries.
An early contender for album of the year.
10/10
Hidden is released on 18th January on Angular Records. They play The Deaf Institute on 3rd February.
I never quite know what to make of Adam Green, New York City’s most popular export of the Anti-Folk scene. He, along with Kimya Dawson (everyone’s favourite angst ridden twee singer-songwriter. Lads – girls love her. Girls – lads love girls who love her) was a founding member of The Moldy Peaches, who around the turn of the century changed the face of what was then considered ‘folk’ music. They took away the pipe and slippers and replaced it with the beer bottle and the bong. After a series of hilarious yet touching solo records (the highlight being 2005’s Gemstones), Adam Green seems to have grown up somewhat with the last few albums.
Jacket Full of Danger, Sixes and Sevens, and latest release Minor Love show that there is a serious songwriter behind the cartoon character. While this is all well and good, what really made Adam Green appeal to me in the first place was his ability to pen a hilarious and darkly comic lyric with a wonderfully poppy tune. This has now been diluted, and resulting sound is really just an essence of what Adam Green is really about.
I sense that this is intentional on his part – no longer content with being an ‘indie jester’, he obviously wishes to be considered a more serious songwriter, with a higher level of maturity. This is to be commended, and though he does run the risk of alienating a fairly big chunk of his audience in doing this, he’s going out of his comfort zone and trying something different. Not all artists bother to do this.
6.5/10
Adam Green is playing at Club Academy on February 1st.
Recently signed to EMI and with a track on the Fifa 10 soundtrack (along with The Whitest Boy Alive and The Answering Machine – top video game tuneage), the future looks bright for one of my most recent German discoveries. Edgy art-rock guitars reminiscent of Franz Ferdinand but with more testosterone fade into slightly ‘messier’ chorus chord-slashing that makes me think of The Libertines back when they were innocent (okay, well just less guilty than they ended up). You might think, by that description that I find them a bit derivative. Well, yes, they are – there’s no great musical innovation here. They wear their influences on their sleeve and aren’t afraid to show it – like so many German bands whose primary influence is British indie rock/pop. Unlike some other bands I’ve reviewed recently (See hereand hereand herefor examples of a band so thick and full of themselves they completely missed the point of objective criticism. Anyway…I digress…) Auletta do this with a degree of fun and tongue-in-cheek charm that really works. This is music to listen to while having a beer getting ready to go out, to listen to with your mates and have a good time to. There’s no need to overthink it, which is exactly why I’ll stop writing now.
Auletta are currently on tour and are playing the marvellous Magnet club in Berlin on March 4th. With a bit of luck I’ll be there. Who fancies it?
The Chameleons were once described as “The best band you’ve never heard of” and never was a truer word spoken. Every experience I’ve had watching Mark Burgess (singer, guitarist, songwriter) has been a bit, well, strange. I first encountered him playing in the back of The Castle Hotel at a funeral wake. I’ve since seen him play in Matt & Phreds (the legendary Manchester jazz club), The Moon Under Water (the legendary Manchester, umm..Wetherspoons..), Retro Bar (the night we were under siege by the crazy Russian and Glaswegian football hooligans) and finally last night in Sub61 (a weird club off Deansgate – a sort of cross between dingy indie club and scally strip joint).
Typical of a Burgess gig, I didn’t find out about it until the morning of the show (he has about 5 websites – none of which are regularly updates, performs under various names and you never really know what to expect). We turned up at 8pm after finally finding the venue, handed over our £10 to get in (eek!) and got a beer (£1.50 a pint. Get in!). There was one support band, The 66, who, while technically talented and very tight sounding, were completely devoid of originality and I found them totally uninspiring. Imagine Ian Brown singing for The Music, having only ever listened to Kasabian. I’m sure you know exactly what I mean. Rent-a-lad crowds with daft haircuts and Fred Perry jackets. *yawn*.
After what seemed like an eternity, Mark Burgess/Chameleons Vox/The Chameleons took to the stage. Now reunited with drummer John Lever, and with a full band backing him, this is as close to the original Chameleons show as we’re ever going to get. Burgess was suffering with a bad throat and could hardly sing. This changed things somewhat. Instead of stripping things down a bit and playing a subdued set, he seemed to want to embrace the gritty sound and scream every note as loud as possible. While this made for a show that was full of energy and punk influenced enthusiasm, I personally felt that by taking this approach they lost a lot of what appealed to me in the first place; the harmonic complexity and time shifts that made them stand out from their peers. Last night, the atmosphere was more ’some old band who were almost famous’ than ‘one of the greatest bands from Manchester who deserved to be a lot bigger than they were.’
This was a dire shame, as every other time I’ve seen Chameleons Vox he/they have really stood out as being phenomenally talented, and what I love about Mark Burgess is his ability to take old songs and change them into something different, which is perfectly demonstrated in his solo show and the acoustic Strip album. I will go and see him again, and I still love The Chemeleons. For now though, I think Burgess should stick to his solo acoustic set, and leave the louder sound to recorded material.
Air Cav have been gigging around Manchester (and beyond) for years. I was in fact at their very first gig in a dirty sweaty Zumeba (R.I.P) ‘back in the day’, when a typical Friday night was watching Loose Canon at the ‘Gardens and the hot new things in Manchester were Polytechnic and Jim Noir. Those were the days. Remember Pie Match?
This is how I felt last night. Watching Air Cav belt out some cracking new songs, as well as some old classics such as the stomper A Call To Arms (still, even now, one of my favourite tracks to come out of a new Manchester band for years) filled me with an overwhelming sense of nostalgia. The crowd were different, the venue was different but hearing those songs transported me back to 2005. Remembering this gig, that gig, this party, that night. Those were good, fun, carefree times and I had the time of my life. Air Cav probably sum up that era in Manchester’s DIY scene more than any other band, for me.
That is not to say that they are somehow ‘indie dinosaurs’. Far, far from it. With an album in the making next year and a development of their sound into something entirely on another level (I can just imagine a Polyphonic Spree style choir backing them one day) Air Cav have well and truly battered the wall down between the part-time and the professional. I’ve been saying it for years and it still holds true. One day, they’ll be bloody huge. And deservedly so.
At the moment, we like our loud bands. Chucking off the twee as fuck image and embracing noise. Spiritualized® didn’t let us down in that respect. 2 drummers, an orchestra, full gospel choir and live band, all cranked up to 11 in Manchester’s Apollo. We had pretty good seats in the stalls and by the end of the night I thought my ears might actually explode.
As many of you must know, this was part of the Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space reissue tour. Jason Pearce played the entire album, from start to finish with a level of passion and (oddly restrained, in the only way he can) epic energy that most bands can only dream of. A pioneer or minimalist psych-rock, this was a celebration of a groundbreaking and seminal record, but also a demonstration by Pearce of how it should be done. An open letter to the new wave of ’shoegaze’ revival bands (The Horrors, even?) stating that no matter how hard they try, nothing they do will come close to …Floating In Space.
There was no support band, no encore, no ‘banter’ with the audience and for the entire show, Pearce never moved from his chair at the side of the stage. Rude? Professional? In the zone? Probably all three. But then again, I don’t think I’d actually want him to do the usual ‘entertainment’ routine of telling jokes and chatting to the crowd. This wasn’t an entertainment show, or An Evening with Jason Pearce. It was purely a showcase of a brilliant work of art. The minimalist ideology permeates through the artwork (see above), through to the music itself, right into the stage performance. Even his outfit of plain white tshirt and trousers. Who could really ask for more than that?
Friend Rock has previously described Serpentine Pad as “The loudest thing we’ve ever fucking heard”. I mean that, of course, in a good way. They’re loud, yes, but put that aside for a second and you’ll find they have a depth and harmonic quality to them that really shines through. Serpentine Pad are a gang of very talented musicians, and are probably the most prolific band since Ryan Adams’ pop-punk project Pinkheart Revolution. With one self produced album already out, countless demos and another album on the way, this is a band that really have the momentum to become a driving force in Manchester’s exploding DIY post-punk scene.
And..now to the main attraction, San Francisco’s Sleepy Sun. Part Jefferson Airplane, part Black Angels, Part Brian Jonestown Massacre, part Mazzy Star, this is a band very obviously proud of where they’re from. In fact, it would be impossible for this band to be from anywhere but SF. With dreamy licks, droning reverb and a singer so involved in the music it looked like she was, at times, about to have a fit, Sleepy Sun would not look out of place on stage at Woodstock. Having said that, there were none of the stereotypical ‘psychedelic’ images that you might expect from such a band. These guys are the real deal. Newly signed to ATP Records, the future looks bright for them.
Oh, and the singer is a lovely girl called Rachel. We shared a cigarette (American Spirits…what else?) and it is a moment the sad little fanboy in me will treasure for a while to come…
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Still Fighting It by Ben Folds never fails to put a lump in my throat. Listening to it while on the way to the Academy for The Low Anthem! 10 hours ago
We will be relocating to the Academy to see The Low Anthem tonight. Currently 'blasting out' David Ford over the @bandonthewall office. 13 hours ago
