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: 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.

My thoughts on post rock

Tomorrow, I'm going to see Godspeed You! Black Emperor live. I'm pretty excited. I've been a fan of theirs (although not a hardcore one, some people can get very worked up on the subject of post rock) for a while now, and I'd definitely put Lift Your Skinny Fists and Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada in my John Peel-style box of records I couldn't do without. I've been listening to some of their other stuff as 'revision' for the gig, and I just can't seem to click with it. I've no idea why really - F#A#∞ has just as good reviews from all the usual fairly-reputable sources, and quite a few people cite is as better than LYSF. I really don't understand why. There is far less musical development during the songs that on their later stuff, which is fairly unforgivable when you're asking a listener to give up the best part of half an hour to listen to a single track.

Bardo Pond are another one. They're meant to be one of the quintessential space-y post rock bands, but I just don't feel anything when I listen to the music. It's all very well to put a drone over a wall of feedback, add some hushly spoken samples as vocals and stretch it out for 15 minutes or more - indeed, this is what GY!BE do best - but there needs to either be some musical development during the song or the inital idea needs to be capable of being stretched out for a long period of time. It can't just be a noise-fest. Any feedback added should be a bonus, not just a substitute for tunes or feeling. I'd say Explosions In The Sky were one of my favourite post rock bands because, despite not having as interesting ideas as some of their contemporaries, they write songs with structure that hold up on their own right, without having to drench it in feedback.

Fundamentally, post rock can be truly sublime, and there are certain moods where nothing else will do, but there is far too much self-indulgent uninteresting stuff out there.

Here's a video of one of my favourite post rock tracks, Moya by GY!BE. Make sure you listen through proper speakers - headphones are allowable, but computer speakers just won't do it justice.