FLASHERS MAC
A blog about why you should read it.
Wednesday, 3 November 2010
Crystal Castles - The Roundhouse, London 15/10/10
Monday, 1 November 2010
The Vaccines - 27th October, The Cornerhouse, Cambridge
***Published November 2010
One minute and twenty five seconds of their set opener ‘Wreckin’ Bar’ is all that The Vaccines needed to snare the attention of every soul at The Cornerhouse that night. Similarly six months, a few tracks on the web and a badly exposed photograph of a girl with her face out of view was all it took for them to cause the same buzz that hit The Strokes, The Libertines and even The XX not so long ago.
‘Hello we’re The Vaccines from London, and this is...a song’ says singer Justin Young three or four songs in to the set before dancing across the stage and almost taking out his guitarist. Their presence in the room is striking enough to improve the mood tenfold the moment they hit the stage. It’s seems like the band have realised very early on that taking pop music seriously is about as silly as taking a goldfish for a walk.
It’s their direct sound, thick with irony and reverb that keeps causing comparisons to the great gun wielding pop-producer of the 60’s Phil Spector. Now any idiot could tell you that punk and indie has been borrowing from Phil’s formula since the late seventies, but The Vaccines are not The Jesus and Mary Chain and they are certainly not The Ramones; they’re just The Vaccines, and that’s what’s so bloody exiting about them
It’s all over very quickly, the set lasts around twenty minutes before the band run off the stage and outside the venue to hand out free T-shirts from the back of their Transit van. I asked Justin (who used to perform acoustically under the alias of Jay Jay Pistolet and tour with Mumford and Sons) what he made of the Phil Spector comparisons. 'Flattered' he said before talking animatedly about Spector’s work with various girl-groups and his influence on The Beach Boys. He seemed genuinely dumbfounded that so many people were interested in meeting him after only their eighth gig.
That’s right, it’s only their eighth gig - most bands this young arrive at venues like this to play to the barstaff and the support acts. It’s easy to be suspicious of hype like this but watching them play live genuinely felt like watching something special unfold.
Everything Everything - Anglia Ruskin SU Academy
***Published November 2010
From Manchester (cue references to historical indie obscurity) Everything Everything have steadily risen from being just another wacky indie band on the BBC Introducing Stage to having their first album Man Alive hitting the top twenty in album chart sales. Their busy tour hit our very own SU academy on the 5th of September.
A few hours before the show I was ushered behind the stage by a distracted looking tour manager. I’m introduced to Lead vocals Jonathan, Bass Jeremy and Guitar Alex (who promptly fell back to sleep on the sofa and stayed that way for the remainder of the interview). Jeremy is tall and well spoken, Jonathan is wearing surgical scrubs.
I asked the about their openness towards pop music and if they felt it was something that is translated directly into their sound
Jeremy - Definitely. Just for not wanting to let go of the basic totems and emotion caused by shape of a musical phrase I suppose.
Jonathan - We like the hidden sadness in shiny commercial pop music, when you take it apart and look at its bare bones theres of lot of real melancholy in the actual writing of it, I think maybe we take that on a bit.
EE’s music does teeter between shiny pop and outright pretension, resulting in a tongue-in-cheek charm that infuriates as many as it delights. Something quite rare about the band themselves is the attention to detail in both the lyrics and the music behind it. I asked them to explain the elements of the music that they thought about first when constructing a song and how they approached recording it all.
Jonathan - ‘Errm...chords and harmonies and rhythm is what we start out with. It’s very rarely an extended lyric, it might be one or two phrases. Some of our recording is really slick, some of it is really cheap. On one of our demos we had this horrible synthesized harpsichord. We always assumed we’d swap it out for a real one but the producer said “No this part of your sound, keep it in!” Some of the bedroom demos we made were included on the album as well because there was something about them that made them worth listening to in that state. It would’ve probably killed it if we did it again.’
Finally I asked them to list some bands they’d been listening to recently, they were refreshingly vague in their response.
Jonathan - ‘We really like the Foals record, the Arcade Fire album as well. Besides that...R Kelly put a new album out, we love that.’
Jeremy - All I’ve been listening to is jazz of late. The Bad Plus released a new album, we all love it. Especially him, he’s jazzed-out
A few hours later the que outside the canteen that is live venue is reassuringly long. Clientele including the late-teens NME crowd and a few cynical bearded musos who must have been impressed by EE’s stellar performance on Jools Holland a few weeks back.
When they finally hit the stage the band deliver a tight energetic performance. Jonathan's twitchy falsetto voice hitting every syllable and the rest of the band’s noodling is perfect. Fully conscious this time, Alex proves to be an incredibly skilled guitar player. The set is full of everything we knew from the album already and some new songs, including an a-capella tune with vocals from every band member (believe me, it sounded much better there than it does being read from this sheet of paper).
It’s all too easy to dismiss Everything Everything as a half baked attempt of industry hacks to pocket the EMA grants of naive sixth-formers (one writer at pitchfork.com dismissed the lyrics that reference internet culture as ‘the self-absorbed musical equivalent of having 12 browsers open at the same time’).
Yes, they are a squeaky clean pop group when you put them next to the music press’ so called ‘slacker rock’ scene that may or may not be happening at the moment, but delve a little deeper and you’ll find a collective of people that love having a comprehensive taste in music so much that they want to be in the band that does everything. Hence ‘Everything Everything’ I guess.
Reading Festival 2010
I’ve got this theory that whoever it is that’s up there allocating fate and cosmic irony was having a right old laugh this year. After years of having to brave the pouring rain GLASTONBURY saw the bluest skies imaginable; READING on the other hand run afoul of a downpour Wednesday evening leaving the campsite swampy enough to test the thickest of Wellies. Still, we soldiered on. Most of us had endured scumbag touts, dodgy websites and obscene ticket prices to get us through the gates and a little slime wasn’t going to dampen our spirits, no matter how much it looked like the Mud Flats of Alaska.
Friday’s party atmosphere at the main stage was eventually kicked off by gypsy-punks Gogal Bordello who's terrific presence made all concerns about the weather seem completely trivial. Later Biffy Clyro’s Simon Neil shocks everyone with his Hulk Hogan-esque bleached beard and pink trousers. I’m just happy to hear an appropriate mix of their recent balladry and their pre-Puzzle wackiness.
Next (maybe the performance of the entire weekend) it’s Queens of the Stone Age. They’re on mindblowing form, it was like somebody unleashed the Kraken and made it sexy. Their set was stuffed with fan favorites like ‘I think I lost my headache’ and ‘Misfit love’ and some obvious (but no less perfect) choices like ‘No one knows’ and ‘Go with the flow’. Finally after busting out one last guitar storm in ‘A song for the Dead’ Josh Homme smirks down the microphone and simply says ‘Guns ‘n’ Roses’. There’s scattered laughter in the crowd, who know already that the other ginger bloke’s band who are up next aren’t going to match that in a million years.
They could have at least turned up on bloody time though. Guns ‘n’ Roses (or Axl Rose and a few mates) wandered on stage 58 minutes late, by which time a sizable chunk of their audience had wandered back to the campsite. Everyone else had to sit tight while the band waded through songs from their recent turd ‘Chinese Democracy’ and the occasional hit before embarrassingly their set was cut short due to a noise curfew. Needless to say, seething hatred radiated from the population for the rest of the evening. Axl is about as cool as wearing socks and sandals to a wedding reception.
Most of Saturday felt like a build up to the reunion of the ultimate ‘will they, won’t they’ band, The Libertines. They did show up however, punctual as a German train and to the opening music of Vera Lynn’s ‘We’ll meet again.’ It was a great set and despite a certain members tired history of unreliability they truly pulled it out of the bag. ‘Time for heroes’ causes such a riot in the first fifty rows that they had to momentarily stop playing due to safety concerns. Wonderful.
A surprisingly small bunch stuck around to watch Arcade Fire’s headline slot. Presumably everyone else wanted to watch some predictable drum-and-bass at Pendulum on the NME stage. Didn’t matter though, it just meant that the informed minority had a better view of one of the best live bands on earth. Some highlights (of a flawless set) were ‘Intervention’, ‘Mountains Beyond Mountains’, ‘Power Out’. Then finally, because any other choice would have just been silly, ‘Wake Up’. It was bold, euphoric and so pleasing to see them playing the space that they’ve deserved for so long.
Sunday was a great chance to relive the music you loved in your early teens. Now you’re older and maturer you make out like you’re only going to see Limp Bizkit and Blink182 because of some ironic double standard. When truth be told, this music makes you want to refuse to do your homework as much now as it did ten years ago. Limp Bizkit eventually won everybody over and was hugely entertaining.
Anyone who ever listened to Blink182 throughout their teens probably knew already that their live performances were among the worst, but this little fact didn’t seem to stop most of the festival wanting to see them play on a stage way bigger than their music was capable of filling. It was true though, their performance was terrible. Tom Delong constantly got his own lyrics wrong then even stopped singing altogether to point out that he ‘sung the last verse super-badly.’ It didn’t matter though, if anything the set was saved the complete stupidity of it. That and them putting an end to the weekend with their rendition the old classic ‘Family Reunion’ - You’ll have to look up the lyrics yourself because I’m certain they wont let me print them in this publication...
Delphic - The Junction - 16/03/2010
Ian Brown - Corn Exchange 7/12/09
***Published December 2009
At a feeble twenty years old I may have been the youngest person at the Corn Exchange that evening. Floods of late twenties/early thirties men still donning that token Adidas stripe top (zipped-thru to the chin) all here to watch ex Stone Roses frontman Ian Brown perform his own brand of spacey Madchester theatrics.Tonight was going the be the most 90s night Cambridge had seen since err, the 90s. - Not that that was a bad thing of course. Even my companion Richard got partially shellsuited for the occasion.
Brown struts on stage with that recognisable arrogant swagger. The lighting team instructed to make him look as messiah-like as possible. Oozing confidence he bops his shoulders to the competent beats made by the rest of his band. Opening track ‘Love like a fountain’ results in a graceful sway from the audience. Who are careful not to spill their pints, careful not to look like they aren’t having fun. It’s not long before the band play the excellent ‘F.E.A.R.’ The room fills with blinding light, pints are spilled, grown men begin singing their hearts out. All of the sudden the £27 entry fee seems almost justified. I’m having a ball. Eventually Brown takes a break to play with his audience. He makes pincer motions with his hands and accuses the rowdy heckler at front of being a lobster before simply stating ‘This is Cambridge, I thought you people were supposed to be smart.’
There’s almost no denying it; Brown’s music is ever so slightly silly. But the singer’s persona and the conviction he uses to deliver each song is not without its charms. Looking at the crowd and their complete adoration of the King Monkey himself it’s clear I’m not the only one who’s figured this out. However, I guess something about the entire affair seems a little forced. Did I come here to see Ian Brown play or did I come here to watch the guy who sung ‘I am the Resurrection’ in 1992? It wasn’t until the band started the encore with the bulletproof classic ‘Fools Gold’ that I realised that I was probably standing in a room full of Stone Roses fans, myself included. And whether this is saying something about the vitality of Brown’s earlier work or about the quality of his solo work since I’m not entirely sure. But I suppose none of this matters, Brown is still an excellent showman after all these years despite his music swaying occasionally towards the pointless.
Bowling for Soup - Corn Exchange 20/10/09
Is there anything you could expect from a band called ‘Bowling for Soup’ other than complete stupidity? Well, no. But the crowd of fifteen year olds didn’t come here for anything life changing and neither did I. BFS are an unbelievably catchy pop-punk band formed in 1994 Texas Years later they are still playing the same tunes with the same sense of naivety and immaturity. Their original fanbase may have grown up a little but they sure haven't.
The tour is to promote their seventh album ‘Sorry for Partyin’ and they are supported by The Leftovers, MC Lars and Zebrahead. The three sets gave me plenty of time to work out how to use the expensive camera I had rented for the evening, but not much else really.
The set begins with their 2000 single ‘The Bitch Song’ which tells the story of a man so devoted to his lover it makes him stop caring about her horrible personality (‘You’re a bitch But I love you anyway/you can’t sing but you still put me to sleep’). Surprisingly, this song is pretty sincere in its own little way. The set continues and the security staff have a hard time dealing with the sea of sweat covered school kids crowd surfing over the barrier and upsetting the photographers.
The band are sure to fill their set with the regular crowd pleasers such as ‘High School Never Ends’ ‘Punk rock 101’ then my favorite ‘Girl all the bad guys want’. Except a handful of new tracks including the moderately funny ‘My Wena’ - where singer Jared declares his love for a girl called Wena (or his penis, It’s not made entirely clear).
Of course, their set finishes with the 2004 single ‘1985’ which lasts a good three minutes longer than the original recording because lead singer Jared wanted to hear the audience sing the final chorus in an Antonio Banderas accent. The audience are having fun but nowhere near as much fun as the actual band are having. I’m not ashamed to admit that I still love this type of music and I might not ever grow out of it. Maybe it’s because the music reminds me of past times or maybe its because I’m secretly still 13 years old. Either way you’d be surprised how often I put away my Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen CDs to be replaced with this joyful brand of pop-punk silliness.