Live Review: Woods @ Bush Hall, 13/03/2011

Bush Hall is a strange place for indie rock gigs. Its plush carpets, elegant chandeliers and tasteful lighting are a startling change from the usual London circuit of darkened basements and the upstairs rooms of pubs. But that's OK, because Woods don't really play indie rock, and Bush Hall suited them suprisingly well. Walking in there feels like travelling back in time to an era when bands used to play concerts rather than gigs, when someone like Bob Dylan on his first electric tour could take his confrontational show to the Royal Albert Hall. In fact, the whole gig felt musically and atmospherically like we'd been transplanted back about 40 years (with the exception of the 95% check-shirted crowd). All three of the bands playing are steeped in musical tradition, managing to escape their influences to more or less exciting effect.

For the two support bands, The Doozer (shit name) and Spectrals (better name), everybody stayed sitting down around the sides of the room. That might seem a bit dispiriting for the bands, but The Doozer played the gig sitting down anyway (also in the slightly bizarre combination of smart shirt/v-neck jumper and tracksuit bottoms). Idiosyncratically English-sounding folk rock, with just electric guitar and bass, they were inoffensive enough, but equally there's nothing particularly interesting either: the overall effect was of a band who've listened to a few too many Steeleye Span records and don't really have the songs to do much interesting of their own at the moment. I wasn't really sure why they'd be touring with Woods, but it was made clearer later when the bassist reappeared to play drums with the headliners on a few songs.

I saw Spectrals a couple of weeks ago supporting the Pains of Being Pure at Heart, when they were pretty much ruined by awful sound (they seem to be the current go-to support band for touring mid-level American indie bands). This time they were much better, and their woozy, deeply 60s-influenced pop songs came across well. They combine classic song structures with warped-tape guitars and reverbed-out vocals, which a lot of bands are doing at the moment, but I get the feeling it's not quite there yet song-wise. They're still a young band though, and I wonder if pretty soon they might start to really write great songs to go with the arrangements, which are good. Apparently Louis Jones, who pretty much is the band on record, just finished self-recording an album, and the songs he played from it sounded interesting, so I'll reserve judgement until I hear that.

I suppose in a way that's what Woods do too, combining songs which could have been written in the first summer of psychedelia with tape effects and home recording. But the way they pull it off is much more fully realised, creating a whole aesthetic with their cover art and self-run record label as well as with the music. There's also the fact that Jeremy Earl, guitarist and songwriter, can really sing, a high keening falsetto which sounds like no-one in modern music as much as it does Richard Manuel of The Band. In fact, The Band as of about 1967 is the comparison that really leaps to mind with Woods in their more song-based phases: the frantic, brittle guitar solos on latest album highlight (and one of the best songs of the gig) Blood Dries Darker could easily have been played by Robbie Robertson, and the overlapping harmony vocals work together like Manuel's with Rick Danko. The whole way they approach performing live, too, feels like a basement jam session: instruments are swapped, people come onstage to play a few songs before leaving, arrangements are worked out on the fly (I'm pretty sure from the way he was talking to the guitarist that the drummer had never played the encore song before). But they manage to pull it off with such stylistic coherence that it never gets self-indulgent.

More so than either of the other bands playing (which I guess is what you want from headliners) Woods manage to actually engage with musical tradition, and add their own spin to the classic sounds they borrow. A lot of that's due to tape operator G Lucas Crane, who fleshed out the sparse arrangements with subtle loops and harmony vocals, getting his fuzzy, tinny vocal tone by singing through one ear of the pair of headphones which he wears over his face like a mask. Only a couple of times the noise really made itself felt, invading the songs and twisting them out of shape, but it didn't need to. Mostly this gig was Woods in pastoral acoustic mode, concentrating the crowd's attention on Earl's guitar and voice. Live, stripped of some of the sound collages and tape hiss which colour their records, they sounded more open and sunny, which favoured the more poppy end of their songs (Suffering Season, also from the most recent album At Echo Lake, was another highlight). It's a shame to miss some of the darker and more mysterious elements of the sound (although they did play the long psych jam September with Pete), but it worked well live.
Walking out of the venue at the end into the cold streets of Shepherd's Bush felt slightly strange, like being pulled back into the present from the timeless and comfortable cocoon Woods create. But for that hour, you could forget you were in London in March and get lost in their atmospherics. And isn't that enough from a pop band?

Live Review: Josh T Pearson @ The Slaughtered Lamb, 23/02/2011

To be honest, I approached this, Josh T Pearson's first solo gig in the UK since the recording of his solo album, with some trepidation. The album's been getting rave reviews from the critics, but it's a daunting listen: unremittingly bleak and sparse, seven songs in over an hour, five of them over ten minutes. I foresaw a long evening ahead.

But first (after arriving at the impossible-to-find Slaughtered Lamb) was Jack Cheshire, who played at our very own UCL Union for a Folkulture night back in the sepia-tinged days of 2007 or 2008. I remembered him being pretty good, and that's exactly what he was again this time. Solid folk-inflected singer-songwritery stuff, but without any real substance or anything of particular interest. The kind of thing that you can literally find on any street corner from a busker in a stupid wooly hat, although since I last saw him he has released an album, so presumably some people must like him a lot. Anyway, after a few songs I started looking around at the audience who'd packed the basement of the pub instead, which was quite interesting in itself.

Here's the elephant in the room: Josh T Pearson was the founder, guitarist and songwriter of Texas band Lift to Experience, who released one of the most critically acclaimed records of the 2000s in "The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads", and one of my personal favourites. Lift to Experience's only album, it alternates between reflective, minimalist guitar and almost spoken word narrative and some of the loudest, most intense firestorm guitar playing I've ever heard, tied together by the concept of an utterly bizarre apocalyptic narrative in which Texas becomes the Promised Land. But Pearson abandoned the project in about 2002 and hasn't played any of their songs since. What were we going to be in for tonight?

To his credit, Josh Pearson didn't shy away from his past history, perhaps recognising that nearly all of the crowd were there because of his previous band. Instead, although he never named them, his "old, noisy rock band" felt like a constant presence, with Pearson more than once apologising for coming back "ten years too late, and with a country record". Because for certain what we got wasn't anything like Lift to Experience in their feedback-laced peak, although it did perhaps share some of their religious fervour.

Josh Pearson shuffled onto the "stage" (actually just a corner of the room) in all black and with a very unkempt and long beard, looking like nothing so much as an Old West fire-and-brimstone preacher. There's definitely a certain mythology surrounding him personally, especially given his semi-dissappearance and refusal to tour since the breakup of LtE, and that's part of the persona which he exudes when he gets onstage. And though the songs he played fit that persona, his onstage banter really didn't. This was a very strange gig.

I'd estimate he spent maybe half of his onstage time actually playing songs, beautiful and hushed and spiritual. Although the new album's full of epics, he only played a couple of them, and the ones he did play he heavily edited, cutting out at least a couple of verses. "Sweetheart I Ain't Your Christ", plaintive on record, became a pointed personal rebuke, full of religious preaching as well as regret, bringing the crowd to a truly awestruck silence. He followed that by introducing a Boney M cover ("Rivers of Bablyon").

The other half of the set consisted of Josh telling some truly terrible jokes (he's a genuinely funny guy, although I'm not sure how much of that is because of the incongruity with his appearance and songs), and then having a ten-minute conversation with someone in the audience about the evils of the fur trade. He seemed to know the guy pretty well, and they've had this conversation before. "I watched the videos you gave me," he claimed, "they just made me hungry". A Texas boy through and through.

Disappointingly, it was a really short set, but he still played my favourite from the new album, "Country Dumb", as well as a couple of the songs which he used to play a few years ago, now seemingly abandoned. Less pure country folk than his newest stuff, but with the same intensity that's really his strength, "The Devil's on the Run", complete with mass crowd vocals, was a fitting end to a good (if slightly odd) set. Hopefully it won't be ten years before the next album.

Live Review: The Loves Retirement Party, 13/02/2011

Last Sunday, the Loves had their last ever gig, splitting up after more than 10 years in which they had released a few albums, played a few Peel Sessions and played many, many gigs. They still hadn't really made much of an impression on the wider music scene, and Simon Love (the frontman, who had seen more than 30 band members come and go over the years) decided to call it a day. They released their final album last month, and thought it would be fitting to go out by organising an all-day gig featuring a lot of their contemporaries the day before Valentine's Day. They put together a really enticing bill of 8 bands, including Comet Gain, Pocketbooks, the School and the Lovely Eggs.

The Werewandas were on first. Obviously very nervous, despite being a collection of people from other London indiepop bands, they played 60s pastiche girl-fronted pop. they were a pretty good way to kick off the whole thing - the band was fairly tight and the singer had a voice that was perfectly suited to the genre,  but none of the songs were especially memorable in themselves.

Micktravis, who used to play with Tompaulin, then came on and performed some acoustic songs about how he couldn't get a girlfriend. I'm a big fan of Tompaulin, and I enjoyed his set, mostly comprising songs about failure with girls and how he missed out on success - fairly depressing subject matter, but that was played with him seeming fairly cheerful, which felt quite odd. He apparently claims to have discovered the Loves - in which case he fully deserves his place in a gig where he didn't quite seem to fit with the rest of the bill.

The Vinyl Stitches, again, were a slightly different type of band to most of the stuff you get at this kind of indiepop gig. They were garage rock plain and simple, with fuzz and howling guitars. Not really my kind of thing, to be honest - the first few songs were pretty good, but they all sounded exactly the same. They had to have a 5 minute break about 2/3 of the way through their set due to having blown an amp, and I don't think many people would have complained if they hadn't come back out afterwards.

There was a marked step up in quality and professionalism before the next band, Pocketbooks. They're a band I really like, and I played their first album to death when I first got it. Quintessentially indiepop, with vocals and piano parts that lend a twee element, they've made some truly brilliant songs, foremost among which is probably Footsteps, an early-set highlight. I hadn't seenthem in a while, not since the Indietracks warm-up gig at the Brixton Jamm last year, where they appeared to be working on a new direction for their second album - that time, I thought they were straying worryingly close to a lounge jazz band. Having seen their newer stuff again, it does sound like they did go through a phase of that kind of thing - some of the songs I didn't know had extremely laid-back jazzy piano parts, with little of the drive that makes Pocketbooks special. However, the songs that they introduced as being 'new' seemed to have gone back to the style of their first album, albeit with the occasional laid-back interlude, and I think it was probably just a phase, and not an entirely new sound for the band. Which is definitely a good thing - it's always good for a band to try new things out and incorporate them into their sound, but last July I felt they'd lost what made them great.

The Lovely Eggs were on next. I didn't know much of them, other than the two closest things they have to 'hits', 'Have You Ever Heard A Digital Accordion?' and 'I Like Birds (But I Like Other Animals Too)'. They're a completely unique two-piece, with utterly bizzare and occasionally touching lyrics sung over a variety of styles of music, even inside single songs. They have a good strand in Brakes-y 20 second vitriol, and are able to absolutely rock out when needed. The set seemed to draw heavily on both their new album, released the day after the gig, and their last effort, 'If You Were Fruit', but I don't think most of the audience really knew many of the songs, at least when they started - lead singer Holly somehow manages to imprint each song on your brain within moments of the introductory drum blasts. I'm not sure how well they work on record, but live they were definitely a lot more fun than just another indiepop band, and got the crowd (which grew considerably during their set) really up for the rest of the evening.

The School were on next, doing a set that drew fairly heavily on Loves covers and less heavily on their album, which I have been obsessed with recently. While this is fair enough at a gig put on especially for the Loves, I'd probably have preferred them to do their own songs, such as my recent Song Of The Day, 'I Want You Back'. Most of the lyrics were fairly muffled at best, and although this is probably the fault of the sound rather than the band, it detracted slightly. They were still great, but it was my first time seeing them live, and I don't think it quite lived up to their recorded material. I'll still try and see them again at a gig more focused on them, though, as the album really is one of my favourite indiepop albums of the last couple of years.

I'd seen Comet Gain fairly recently at the same venue, back at the Winter Sprinter in January. This set was fairly similar - again, they seemed fairly drunk, and there was still no 'You Can Hide Your Love Forever', although they did seem to be closer to playing it this time, seemingly only held back by not actually being able to remember how to play it. There was less of the stage banter this time, as presumably they did not want to steal the Loves' thunder, but it was a solid set that further cemented their place in my brain as one of the quintessential London indiepop bands.

The Loves finally made it to the stage at about 10:00 and rattled through a fairly typical set. There were many 'extras' sued, with a (pretty much completely inaudible) string section and the backing dancers the band had at Indietracks last year brought on to add excitement. Fortuna Pop!'s Sean Price was brought on to be the 'Jesus' figure. There was a definite party vibe, with the band all swigging sparkling wine. To be honest, there isn't really much to say about the gig - it was ace, and exactly as I (and probably everyone else) expected - it was good enough to make you really disappointed they're splitting up. It's easy to understand why they are, though. Fundamentally they had nowhere left to go, and they just didn't really have the audience - the video posted below, their final one, has just 322 views on YouTube at the time of writing. A massive shame.

Live Review: (Not) The Track & Field Winter Sprinter, Part 3 - 06/01/2011

Finally, the (slightly short) 3rd part of this mini-festival review. Only about 3 weeks since the event. Oh well.

The Leaf Library were on first, playing some nice piano-based indiepop tunes. They were pretty good, but I found they were a bit 'wall-of-sound'-y - there really wasn't that much space to think or even breathe in their songs. They could do with introducing a few rests into their repertoire. They've had an album out since the gig, which is available for whatever you want to pay over at their Bandcamp, and it's worth a listen if you're into melodic indiepop. I've downloaded it, and have only listened fairly briefly, but it seems to play to their strengths more than the live show did.

I hadn't seen The Wave Pictures live as a full band before, and they weren't really like I expected. The focus was definitely on David Tattersall's virtuoso guitar playing and plaintive lyrics, but the rest of the band were great too, both instrumentally and vocally. They had a few sound problems but came through unscathed eventually, showing the experience they've built up over the past few years. They've been on the scene for a while now, and to be honest I think 2011 is a bit of a make-or-break year for them - they deserve a bigger audience, but whether they'll ever get one is starting to look doubtful.

Darren Hayman was on last, with his backing back the Secondary Modern, and they were brilliant as ever. Most of the songs he played were either the best songs from the (extremely good) new album or have been staples of his live set ever since I started seeing him live, which made for an incredibly good, tight set. Most of the songs were love songs with a bit of a twist (such as the song Darren introduced as being about a woman singing her love to a loyal dog as she was led off to the gallows). Again, there were a few sound problems, the most notable of which was the DJ booth taking on a mind of its own, but they didn't detract from the gig at all. The older songs, such as his lesser-known old band the French's 'hit' 'The Wu-Tang Clan', which I vastly prefer in its modern format, alternated (as ever) between harrowing and barnstorming, and the new songs such as 'Winter Makes You Want Me More' fitted in well. My personal highlights were probably the songs from 'Pram Town', my favourite Hayman album, with 'Big Fish' and 'Out Of My League' really showing just how good a songwriter he still is. He's currently doing a project where he tries to record a new song every day of January, which I recommend checking out. He played the new song written on the day of the gig as part of the encore, and it was great, but my favourite is the one he did with Elizabeth Morris of Allo Darlin'.

Live Review: (Not) The Track & Field Winter Sprinter, Part 2 - 05/01/2011

Veronica Falls started off the second day of the Winter Sprinter. The crowd was noticeably different to most London indiepop gigs - there are a lot of checked shirts and hipstery glasses - which waas a sign of their growing audience and buzz. I did a post on them yesterday, which outlines my thoughts on the band, and here they played an excellent set, with all the songs I knew and a couple of high-quality covers. Found Love In The Graveyard was the highlight, and this is a band to whom the 'big things are expected' cliche is readily applicable.

The Loft were up next. They've aged less badly than some of the first-wave indiepop bands (Mighty Mighty in particular looked about 90 when I saw them last summer), bar a slight resemblance between the drummer and Geriatrix from the Asterix books. Not knowing much apart form their biggest song, 'How Does The Rain?', I was pleasantly surprised. It's always good to see bands like this from a historical point of view, but quite often (see the aforementioned Mighty Mighty and the Orchids, for example) they really aren't that great live. The Loft seemed like they hadn't changed at all, despite having a 20+ year hiatus. I suppose that means they aren't as tired of it all as some bands that have kept goig right through.

Comet Gain, with their endearingly shambolic frontman David Feck on hilarious form, had all the ingredients for a terrible gig - sound problems, tuning problems, getting to the stage very late and then overrunning, not playing my favourite song of theirs (You Can Hide Your Love Forever) - but played a brilliant set, interspersed with hilarious 'banter' between songs. The band were obviously drunk, and indeed admitted as much halfway through the set, saying that Sean from Fortuna Pop! had been trying to give them tiny beers but that they'd managed to get drunk anyway. The crowd really loved them as well, which always helps. A few diehard fans were requesting a few fan favourites, the most frequently-heard of which (Movies) was played at the end of the set, despite requiring a couple of restarts and a brief working-out of how to play it. They've gone up in my estimations massively as a band after this gig.

The third and last segment of this gig review is coming soon - hopefully in less time than it took this one to appear!

Live Review: (Not) The Track & Field Winter Sprinter, Part 1 - 04/01/2011

Over the last 3 days I've been to every night of this mini-festival at the Lexington. Organised by Fortuna Pop! supremo Sean, it was the perfect opportunity to get 2011 off to a great indiepoppy start. 3 nights, 3 bands on each, with bands taken from the whole spectrum of indiepop, from the C86 veterans The Loft, who featured on the original compilation that gave the scene its name, right through to Veronica Falls, an up-to-the-minute fuzzpop band for the Upset The Rhythm scenesters. I think I'll just do a post for each day, as otherwise it would get a big over-long, with a paragraph on each band.

Evans The Death started the first night, deputising for one of my most-anticipated bands of the week, Shrag, who had to drop out through illness. I saw them at the Buffalo Bar a couple of months ago, and wasn't that impressed, and they didn't do anything to change my mind this time. I liked the dual vocals, which sounded like they were singing the same thing just a third apart, and the rhythm section was fairly tight, but the guitarist was woefully out of tune for most of the set and all their songs sounded very similar. Luckily, they all looked about 13, so they've got enough time to hone their skills and develop a bit.

Standard Fare only played a fairly short set, but they were, as usual, brilliant. Playing all the better songs from their (slightly hit-and-miss, in my opinion) debut, they appeared to be having fun on stage, which is always a start, and some of their songs are in the very top echelon of modern indiepop.  Some really impressive musicianship also set them apart, in a scene where it isn't totally necessary. They closed the set with Fifteen, one of my songs of last year. They're just completely charming in everything they do, from the fact that their guitarist is the happiest man in indiepop (closely challenged by Allo Darlin's Bill Botting) to their apparent shyness between songs. I really have no idea how Standard Fare always seem to be so far down the bill at indiepop gigs - even with the original lineup for this gig, while Shrag were still scheduled, I'd have put them as headliners like a shot. As it was, they were originally due on stage at 8:30. Crazy.

Having only seen the Loves before on the large outdoor stage at Indietracks, and not having been completely convinced by them on record, I was very surprised by how good they were live. One of the few bands this week who stretched the definition of the term 'indiepop' to breaking point, they seemed far more inspired by 1966 than 1986 (apart from in the department of facial hair, unfortunately), playing a set that mainly consisted of Nuggets-y garage pop. This can be heard pretty well on the track they did for the Fortuna Pop! sampler a couple of years ago, Xs And Os. Much like Standard Fare, they were enjoying themselves on stage - it was the drummer's birthday, so they all got out small party hats half way through the set, and they brought Paul Wright, the founder of the Track & Field Organisation, onto the stage to play the part of Jesus in one song (a role performed on record by Doug Yule of Velvet Underground fame). It was fundamentally a great gig, both musically and for the atmosphere they generated in the crowd, and I'm pretty disappointed that I've finally got into them so late, with their last gig scheduled for Valentine's Day next month.

I'll do posts on the second and third days in the near future!

My Gigs of 2010

Here is a quick run-down of some of my favourite gigs I went to this year, in chronological order. There were a few near misses, such as seeing the National at the Royal Albert Hall on election night, which would doubtless have made the final list had I not only been able to get a ticket for the balcony, right up in the top of the venue surrounded by the famous acoustic mushrooms. Overall though I think this selection gives a fairly good representation of what was an excellent year of live music for me.

Pavement @ the Brixton Academy, 13th May

Pavement's unashamedly money-focused reunion had the potential to be fairly dull and pedestrian. Luckly, however, they'd lost none of their slacker charm, and they played a hit-filled set at the Brixton Academy, probably my favourite larger venue. They managed to fill the massive space (partly with sound, partly with massive inflatables), with Bob Nostanovich as crazy as 10 years ago and Malkmus showing that he really is a genuinely top-notch guitarist, despite seeming completely detached from his instrument. Even the weaker stuff from the later albums went down very well, and 'Here' provided one of my favourite live performaces of the year.

Indietracks Festival, 23rd-25th July

Aah, Indietracks. Probably the nicest place I've been all year. A collection of a couple of thousand twee-sters in a steam train depot in rural Nottinghamshire, with sets from some of the biggest and best indiepop bands of modern times (POBPAH, the Smittens, Ballboy, Allo Darlin') and the late 80s-early 90s heyday (the Pooh Sticks, the Orchids, the Primitives). Really felt like a proper community, in a way that bigger (worse) festivals can only dream ofThis was maybe due to the fact that such a high proportion of the people there were in bands, and enjoyed talking about themselves and about music in general, even if they happened to be queueing for an ice cream (Max from the Smittens is apparently a lecturer in Geography at Leeds University! Who knew?). Will definitely be going back for the foreseeable future.

The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart @ the Buffalo Bar, 1st August

‘Asked to describe their sound lead singer Chip said “USA! USA! USA! Touch my dong!” before falling over sideways.’

At the end of their UK stay, also encompassing a headlining slot at Indietracks and a London gig at Heaven, which was frankly slightly disappointing, POBPAH played a secret gig at a half-full Buffalo Bar under the name 'George Washington's Penis'. They played us a set crammed with both new songs and old favourites. Gave a sighting of that rarest of beasts, the indiepop moshpit, inches from Kip's microphone.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor @ the Troxy, 13th December

Outlined on this blog already. I'd been waiting for this gig for ages, and it really didn't disappoint. Definitely one of the most impressive live shows I've ever seen, despite the understandable lack of crowd interaction. Everything was exceptional, from the slightly quirky venue to the images projected behind the band. From a high-brow point of view, definitely my gig of the year.

Live Review: The National @ the Brixton Academy, 30/11/2010

I'd seen the National a few times before this gig, the most recent being at the Royal Albert Hall in May. The release of their most recent album, High Violet, seems to have catapulted them, if not into the mainstream, at least into much larger venues. This was the second of three sold-out nights at the Brixton Academy, one of the largest venues in London, showing that there is a massive market for the National's brand of introspective baritone indie rock.

The openers, Phosphorescent, were enjoyable, but didn't seem to go down very well, with many of the audience talking throughout. Although a standard problem at gigs of this size, I don't think they did anything to help themselves, with the set seeming to fall half way between enjoyable indie pop and introspective folk - it didn't really succeed at either, and long drawn out guitar solos are never going to go down that well at a National gig. Still, good enough for me to want to track down an album or two for a more involved listen.

Starting with 'Runaway', they played a set that drew on each of their last 4 albums. All the new stuff was performed and received exactly as you would expect, with big singalongs on the singles and chin-stroking on 'Terrible Love' and 'Lemonworld'. Matt Berninger's voice was in fine fettle, despite him saying he had a sore throat, with his voice very high in the mix. The Dessners and Devendorfs were also obviously on top form, not least in their bantering with Berninger. The Arcade Fire's Richard Reed Parry guested on guitar on many of the new songs, continuing the run of special guests started by Sufjan Stevens the night before. The band gradually built the crowd up through the gig, with the majority of their slow-burning classics such as 'Slow Show' and 'Secret Meeting' played early on in the evening. After the raw, shouty interlude of 'Abel', from 'Alligator', the opening arpeggios of 'England' rang out (a song that, according to Berninger, has now been renamed 'France') into the void above our heads - I think High Violet was written to be performed in arenas like this, and none of the new songs struggled to fill the space. Fake Empire, possibly the National's most famous song following its use in Barack Obama's campaign material, closed the main set superbly.

The encore kicked off with a very nice surprise. 'Lucky You', the closer from their second album, 'Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers', is one of my favourite National songs, yet is rarely played live. As soon as the opening piano chords kicked in, a lovely hush came down over the room. Or, rather, over the whole room except one guy, standing right behind me, who told his friends that he 'didn't know this one' and started chattering away. He was hushed by his friends, but he, and others in the crowd, definitely took away some of the magic of seeing the National live. The advantages of a big gig were shown in the next song, however - Berninger launched himself into the crowd, racing like a pro (see what I did there?) to the very back of the auditorium, without even the luxury of a radio microphone. He continued this through the next song, Terrible Love, before returning to the stage and, with the Dessners, closing the gig by leading the whole 5000-strong crowd in a completely unplugged, unamplified version of 'Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks'. With this original and stunning finish still hanging in the atmosphere, we walked out into a Dickensian snowstorm on the streets of Brixton, which seemed incredibly fitting.

The Brixton Academy is surprisingly intimate for its size, but I think it's pretty unfortunate the National will probably never play the smaller venues in London again. With their star continuing to rise, the bad points of this gig might even be further magnified in the future. Despite these niggles, though, this was a truly triumphant gig, one of my best live experiences of the year.

Live Review: Godspeed You! Black Emperor @ the Troxy, 13/12/2010

Until the last few weeks, GY!BE hadn't played live or, indeed, done anything as a band for about 7 years. So far, it isn't clear what the members want from this reunion - whether there'll soon be a new album in the works, or a more extensive tour, or whether they'll just go back to their own disparate projects, the most famous of which over the last few years has been A Silver Mt. Zion. They've been keeping their hands close to their chest, with a period of 'introspection' to follow these gigs. Basically, however, the 3 London gigs at the Troxy this week represented the best chance for me to ensure that I got to see the post-rock pioneers live, in case this was going to be the last opportunity.

The opening band, Dead Rat Orchestra, only got about a 12-minute-long set, due to the sound-check overrunning, but I thought they were pretty interesting. It was basically experimental woodblock-and-hacksaw-based percussion, a wailing fiddler and a guy who just 'played' various objects, including a record player, creating a hypnotic Deep South chain gang-style folk. I really enjoyed it, although a full-length set might have been a bit wearing.

Godspeed came out punctually at 8:30, setting us up for a marathon set. As the various band members got settled, and the projectionist started crafting some of the backdrops for the rest of the set, they started out with 15 minutes of drone. This can be wearing (as it was at the recent Swans gig I went to), but here it served to set the ambience for the rest of the evening, and just made the beginning of Gathering Storm (the first movement of Lift Yr. Skinny Fists, in my opinion their best full-length album) all the more powerful when it finally arrived. From this, they progressed through tracks from every one of their major releases, with an emphasis seemingly on those from Lift Yr. Skinny Fists, with barely a break - as on their albums, the ideas all mashed together into one glorious whole, with it being difficult to discern where ideas and builds ended or began. After 2 and a half hours, they finally brought the set to an end with the tour de force that is BBF3, from their Slow Riot EP. At the end, they left with barely a wave, let alone an encore, with only guitarist Efrim staying around onstage to mould the shards of feedback that closed the gig.

All the members of the group distinguished themselves. The least obvious, but perhaps the most effective, was the projectionist, working towards the back of the room. He created an on-the-fly set of low-key images that perfectly captured the senses of the music being performed, from transfixing sequences of numbers and letters, through to atmospheric shots of a claw-like crane working in the shadow of a huge bridge somewhere in small-town America, to shots that made it look as though the band were flying through the sky or racing through the hills. There was some very experimental playing - the use of a double bass bow on a hi-hat was something I had never seen before, and a lot of screwdrivers were used on all 3 guitars almost constantly from very early on in the performance.

None of the members of the band sang, or even said, a word during the performance. They used occasional vocal samples, such as the one in BBF3, that were, as far as I could tell, identical to the ones used in the album recordings. These gave some structure to the music, and served to heighten the sense of dread and dissatisfaction, but were also in a way beautiful - indeed, Chart #3, featuring little else but the violin and a voice sample, was one of the most affecting passages of the night.

A minor disappointment was the lack of many additional instrumentalists - Gathering Storm just doesn't have the same effect when the initial blaring of the horn section is played on a glockenspiel, and the lack of a cello was possibly responsible for my favourite track, Moya, being left out completely - but after a while you began to forget about the recorded versions and were just taken with them in their beautiful, breathtaking builds. This was a brilliant show, in every respect, and GY!BE truly are a step above any of the other bands trying to do similar things at the moment. We can just hope that they will be back, either with more shows or new releases, at some time in the not-too-distant future.

Live Review: Teenage Fanclub @ the Electric Ballroom, 08/12/2010

On Wednesday I went along to Camden to see Teenage Fanclub play at the Electric Ballroom, at a show that had apparently been moved from the Forum in Kentish Town due to a lack of ticket sales. This is criminal - such an influential, well-loved band should be playing much bigger stages, and indeed in my opinion should be a mainstay of radio, a status that their far less consistent fellow ex-Glasgow C86 scene progenies Primal Scream have enjoyed during their recent renaissance. 

That said, any band with as many albums as Teenage Fanclub are going to have had lulls during their career. Not having seen them before, I was apprehensive as to how many of the songs I would recognise - since their classic  early-to-mid-1990s run of albums culminating in 1997's Songs From Northern Britain, they have released 4 albums, only the latest of which has gripped me even momentarily. 

Support was provided by Yuck, a band tipped as London's 'next big thing' by quite a few people recently. I had seen them before, supporting the Pains Of Being Pure At Heart at Heaven in August, and hadn't thought much of them. Indeed, I thought that time they were pretty much what I expected from the members of Cajun Dance Party, darlings of the Bernard Butler 'indie' set, trying to 'go Sonic Youth'. Here, however, they were completely different - the superior sound system allowed even the noisiest of their songs to be appreciated, with the song that seemed to be about milkshake (I'm not sure what it's called) a particular highlight, and I definitely now think the hype has at least some basis.

Even when Teenage Fanclub came out on stage, I was still fairly apprehensive - with them clearly having entered middle age, I didn't know whether it would be a gig with enough energy to live up to my expectations. This was dispelled immediately when they fired into Start Again, one of their best songs, with a surprising intensity. The classic songs kept coming, with the setlist pretty much just drawing on the older albums and the better songs from this year's Shadows, with some of the onstage banter being genuinely hilarious, a rarity for such an established band. Baby Lee, the lead single from the new album, held its own next to my personal favourite TF song, Don't Look Back. Despite a few notable absences (especially Neil Jung), I'm not sure they could have put on a show more perfect for their (mostly slightly ageing) audience.

Here's a YouTube video of the opener, Start Again (sorry for the lack of visual quality, the sound isn't too bad though)