Archive for the 'mp3' Category

2009 Festival Roundup: ATP vs. T in the Park vs. End of the Road

Look ma, it’s a post!

We’ve been pretty quiet this year, in part because we’ve just been very busy, but also because we haven’t really been all that inspired by anything – since Pains of Being Pure at Heart, that is. We have, however, just been to 3 of the most disparate festivals we possibly could have attended, all of which were good and bad for incredibly different reasons, and I thought it might be nice to provide some vague assessment of the pros and cons of the lot.

The Frogs at ATP 2009The Breeders-curated All Tomorrow’s Parties was our fourth visit to that festival so we knew what to expect – that is to say, wonderful indie-snobbery, comfortable tiny chalets, overpriced alcohol and bar staff who apologise for the red wine not being chilled, and lots of interesting-sounding bands we’ve never heard of on at unsociable hours of the morning. This year the lineup was particularly tasty – The Breeders, Throwing Muses, Teenage Fanclub, Bon Iver, Kimya Dawson, Deerhunter, Times New Viking, Shellac…all of whom failed to disappoint. Less exciting were Wire and Gang of Four (The Ledge disagrees about Gang of Four) – two bands we love but who I found uninspiring live. We’ve always enjoyed more of the obscure bands at ATP than we’ve disliked and this year was no different with brilliant sets coming from Whispertown 2000, The Frogs, Dianogah and Melt Banana.

The best thing about ATP and the thing which will keep us going back in future is, in fact, these gems of discovery as well as the ability to check out bands we’ve heard about, maybe know one song but whose albums we’d probably never buy – Melt Banana being a perfect example – and getting to experience their unusual and entertaining live sets. It also helps that it’s possible to get a decent night’s sleep without worrying about someone torching your tent….

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds at T in the ParkIn July we went to T in the Park for what was my fourth year and The Ledge’s second. Sadly, it didn’t remotely live up to previous years due to a poor lineup and a rather threatening atmosphere in the campsite. I’ve been shouting about how great T is for a while now, mainly because of the variety and number of bands on and the friendliness of the people we’ve encountered while there. Sadly, this year both were lacking. Although Nick Cave put on an amazing show and we really enjoyed The Twilight Sad, Elbow, Foals, James, Pet Shop Boys and Squeeze in particular (and, I’m embarrassed to admit, I found myself dancing to Blur as well…), it felt a bit like a nostalgia-fest. Gone was the wonderful Pet Sounds stage and all its indie variety and nothing replaced it – unless you count the tiny Futures stage which had very little to offer beyond Broken Records (clashed with something), Danananananaacroyd (or something like that), and The Twilight Sad. Back at the campsite for the first year I felt unsafe. We had our tent knocked down, we were kept up by people – who didn’t even have camping tickets – walking around shouting about what they could steal from empty tents and someone tried to steal a light from our tent – while we were inside the tent using it! It wasn’t nice and I doubt any of us will be going back again.

T Model Ford at EOTR 2009Finally, we found ourselves drawn to the End of the Road lineup (and the low cost) and we weren’t disappointed. Although I could have done without the extortionate prices on site (and what’s wrong with just selling chips or jacket potatoes? I don’t need an authentic Goan fish curry that costs £8 while I’m running between stages) and I can do without  parents who think bringing 6 year old kids to the barrier for the headline act is a good idea and that the people behind them should just know not to push, overall it was a friendly, well-organised, incredibly clean festival which produced a fair few amazingly intimate performances on secret stages and in smelly tipis. The Hold Steady were good as ever, Neko Case was note-perfect, and has a clear career path into comedy should she ever decide to go that way, Fleet Foxes handled the heckling well, The Leisure Society completely charmed me and I didn’t realise how much I’d missed Hefner til we saw Darren Hayman.  Plus, we got to be extras in a scene for a film about a fake band called Swipe.

Maybe it’s a sign of age (or extreme indie snobbery) that I’m growing increasingly frustrated with and bored by the big festivals in favour of the comfort, civility and ecclecticism of the smaller boutique festivals, but this year the little guys really outdid themselves both line-up wise and in sheer enjoyment.

Video: The Leisure Society covering “Cars” at End of the Road Festival

Video: Scene from Tamara Drewe of Swipe splitting up on stage, filmed from the crowd at End of the Road Festival as the scene was being shot

Posted by JustHipper on 26th September 2009 at 4:37 pm | comments (9)
File under atp,End of the Road,Festival Reviews,mp3,t in the park.

Gig Review: The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart @ Chorlton Irish Club, 22nd May 2009

We weren’t in the best of moods when we arrived at Chorlton Irish Club last night thanks to a wrong postcode on Ticketline and vague directions from a local which meant that we spent about half an hour driving through the unfamiliar streets of the South Manchester suburb trying to find the place. It also didn’t help that, from the front, the Irish Club looks small and unassuming. Go round the back, however, and the place is huge with a large car park overlooked by usual hordes of smokers and a long line of punters queuing to get in.

After a long wait at a crowded and understaffed bar (which left me pondering why the hell no one in this country even attempts to achieve the incredible speed and standard of service available in just about every bar in Dublin) we settled down, still slightly disgruntled, to watch Dutch Uncles who, under the circumstances, were like a breath of fresh air, their precision math-rock guitar parts tempered by some wonderfully efficient pop tunes and slightly odd dance moves from the lead singer.

San Francisco’s Love Like Fire were up next and, though they had some nice pop tunes under all that fuzzy guitar, they were slightly disappointing. There’s so much of this type of shoegazey dreampop out there at the moment and Love Like Fire didn’t have anything to set them apart from the crowd.

We first saw The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart supporting The Wedding Present at the Academy 2 late last year and were impressed enough to buy a copy of their excellent debut album there and then. They’ve gained a guitarist since then to thicken their sound (it worked a treat) and to make them appear less geeky (did not work so well) and it was a given that their brand of C86-era fuzzy indie pop would go down well in Manchester but, on the 50th birthday of the man whose band kick-started that era, no one could have predicted what happened next.

The opening song saw one punter barge his way to the front and start dancing like a lunatic while those of us around him stood just far enough out of reach of his flailing limbs. The band sounded immaculate and when “This Love Is Fucking Right” followed the place just went nuts and it seemed like everyone else in the packed venue had followed that one guy’s lead. The next forty minutes or so were a total frenzy of sweat, beer, crowdsurfing and small girls, Justhipper included, spilling over the monitors at the front of the stage as the crowd surged in all directions. It helped that the band front-loaded their set with the choicest, poppiest cuts from their album with the brilliant single “Young Adult Friction” following on from “Fucking Right” and then being followed by “Come Saturday”. The band were genuinely taken aback by the reaction of the crowd, that they weren’t just wrecking havoc for the sake of it: they knew the songs and were singing along.  Singer Kip frequently commented that this was the “best night ever”, and it would be hard for anyone there to disagree with them. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in a moshpit of that ferocity and I’d forgotten how much fun it could be as the shoe of a crowdsurfer came down on the back of my head and another pint of beer drenched the back of my t-shirt. I’d mostly forgotten the great sense of communal joy that can rise up from these events.

Something happened in Chorlton last night; something special. Band and audience came together to produce something much greater than the sum of its parts, to create a rare event that came out of the blue and that no one who witnessed will forget for a very long time.

The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart – This Love Is Fucking Right!

The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart – Everything With You

Posted by The Ledge on 23rd May 2009 at 8:24 pm | comments (6)
File under Gig Reviews,manchester gigs,mp3,Reviews.

CD Review – The Decemberists, The Hazards of Love (Rough Trade, 2009)

It’s fair to say that here at The Indie Credential, we like The Decemberists a littleok, a lot.

The Hazards Of Love

One of the things which appeals so very much is their penchant for storytelling, something that on The Crane Wife (and The Tain) they began to spread across song cycles – rather than just songs. So, when they announced that the new album, Hazards of Love, was going to be a concept album, it really didn’t come as much of a surprise. They’ve been building towards this for years. Lead singer/songwriter Colin Meloy is, for all intents and purposes, a writer who happens to put his stories into song, rather than a musician who happens to write lyrics. I think he’d probably be rather pleased if I described him as a modern-day minstrel – creating and reworking folk tales, allegories and morality tales.

Hazards of Love is quite an achievement. It manages to be a completely over-the-top ’70’s-prog-style concept album, a morality tale and a proper melodrama all rolled into roughly 60 minutes of song.  By virtue of being a musical the production has to have coherent songs and songs need things like choruses and repetition so precious time is taken being, well, songlike and the plot and the characters suffer; but because it’s a story it has to have a plot so the songs lose out on being really coherent, stand-alone songs because they have to drive the plot forward and tie together in the way that the songs on a pop record simply don’t. I hate musicals. I don’t hate this, but the result leaves me feeling slighly unfulfilled and wishing for a proper record, with, well, pop songs.

Despite this failure, which is not the fault of The Decemberists’ songwriting but a shortcoming of the format they’ve chosen, The Hazards of Love is a very enjoyable listen. There’s some great hooks and catchy bits and while I have very little time for guest singer Becky Stark of Lavender Diamond and her rather shrill singing voice, the gothic, menacing vocals of My Brightest Diamond’s Shara Worden are among the highlights.

What has me turning round in circles, and somewhat let down, then, is the plot itself – which really doesn’t go very far or say very much. Just to explain (and this is a spoiler so if you really don’t want to know the story, stop reading here):

William, our hero, was rescued as a baby by the menacing forest Queen who turns him into a fawn by day and a human at night. He gets himself caught in the underbrush where Margaret, the “heroine” stumbles across him. She goes to help him and while she’s untangling his hind legs he turns into a human. They fall in love and consumate the relationship. Margaret gets pregnant out of wedlock – and since her true love is part animal nobody knows who he is but she’s unrepentant. They want to be together so William begs The Queen to allow him his relationship by evening if he promises to return to the forest by day. They’re happy for a while. Then The Rake, a man whose wife died giving birth to his fourth child and who murdered his other three kids cause he didn’t like being a widower, kidnaps Margaret and takes her away to have his way with her.  The Queen is thrilled and helps The Rake get to safety with his captive by enabling him to cross the deep and rapid river – thinking William will be left to her in the forest. Instead, William makes a pact with the river to let him across to rescue her – saying the river can have him on the way back once she’s safe. As he makes his way to Margaret, the ghosts of The Rake’s murdered children swoop in for revenge, Margaret is freed and united with William and the two of them plunge into the river where they’re swept away to their death – together, still declaring their love for each other.

It’s over the top, it’s outrageous and it’s entertaining. The tunes and the use of instruments provide an ambiance to the tale – The Queen and The Rake get crazy heavy metal guitars while William’s parts are soaring folk melodies of standard Decemberists fare. The standout theme becomes “The Wanting Comes in Waves,” a refrain which repeats itself throughout – foreshadowing the ending when William and Margaret are swept away by the waves to their watery ending.

However, digging further into the story the holes appear. For starters, it seems Colin Meloy has plundered his own back catalogue for ideas. The fawn becoming human is reminiscent of the Crane Wife, herself. The kidnap (and the surrounding crazy guitars) are reminiscent of “The Island.” The Rake could be that same villain at a later date. The ending is akin to “We Both Go Down Together.”

Next, what exactly are “The Hazards of Love”? If this tale is correct the hazards are 1) rescuing random fawns can lead to falling in love with supernatural creatures; 2) falling in love with supernatural creatures might land you with a rather unpleasant mother-in-law; 3) pregnancy out of wedlock can cause fate to deal you an ugly hand – kidnap and drowning; 4) falling in love with a woman that your crazy mother doesn’t like can cause her to side with your wife’s kidnapper and let you drown. I’m not sure where these “hazards” arise – nobody gets a broken heart, nobody gets broken or damaged as a direct result of their emotions – only as a result of their massive character flaws and the cack-handed way they handle the situation at hand.

William is weak-willed, following Margaret blindly, rushing to his death – and he’s not the one who rescues her. And then there’s the women… Now in a morality tale (in particular in a Victorian morality tale), the heroine is actually a heroine. She makes a mistake, learns from it, redeems herself and has a happy ending – see the blind woman who gets her sight back at the end of Mary Barton. Or, perhaps, her mistake is so fatal that even if she learns from it, she dies anyway. In this instance, however, nobody learns anything so the story doesn’t actually achieve anything. In fact, the characters in this tale remind me a bit of Heathcliff and Kathy in Wuthering Heights – another haunting tale – but one in which the lovers got what they deserved because of their own inability to handle their emotions and act like decent human beings.

The second problem is the way the women are characterised – they are victims who do nothing but pop out babies and die (The Rake’s wife), they are flighty, selfish and demanding – and pop out babies (Margaret), or they are venomous and vengeful (The Queen).

Margaret, for her part, rescues the fawn, and for this she is a heroine – but this simple act of kindness is one any feeling person would offer. Rather, once she’s fallen in love and fallen pregnant she refuses to name the father and instead, retreats to the forest unrepentant and without a care, selfishly singing “And I may swoon from all this swelling / But I won’t want for love.” When she is kidnapped and in mortal danger, even knowing her true love’s promise to The Queen, she begs for rescue by him – without fear for danger to him.

The Queen for her part is wonderfully evil and menacing – but her maternal feelings are also of jealousy, anger and vengeance. If she cannot have the son she rescued as a baby all to herself, she would rather see him dead. She helps The Rake across the river, thanking him for “removing this temptation” – and sadly she’s right – Margaret is bad news. She’s misjudged her son’s feelings for the temptress, but does not come to his rescue as he drowns.

And this is where my brain really started churning… The format of the tale means the characters were always going to be half-formed and Colin Meloy would be stretched to deal properly with complex plot strands in the space of an album. But looking backwards across The Decemberists back catalogue it seems he’s struggled to write female characters from day one.

With the possible exception of Valencia, his Romeo and Juliet-style heroine in “O Valencia” off The Crane Wife, his adult female characters all fall into the categories above – helpless (Leslie Anne Levine’s young mother, the female lover in “We Both Go Down Together”), evil temptress (“The Bagman’s Gambit”), flighty and weak in the face of love (the narrator’s mother in “The Mariner’s Revenge Song”) – or even the object of comedy and derision (“A Cautionary Song” – he may be tender, but he’s still mocking the fact that the recipient of the tale has a mother who’s a whore). The only real saving grace in his portrayal of women is in the recent Always the Bridesmaid songs – but even here, “Valerie Plame” is remembered by a former lover (and is possibly the same villainess from “The Bagman’s Gambit”) and the other women, while sympathetic, are a little pathetic. “Raincoat Song” describes a Bridget Jones-style character. “Days of Elaine” is about a middle-aged woman stuck in her glory days of youth.

Ultimately, if you don’t mind a bit of prog rock melodrama, then The Hazards of Love is an intriguing, complex and entertaining listen but it is not without its faults – partially as a result of the limitations of trying to combine a story and a pop record into the same project, but partially because Meloy’s storytelling still needs development and because he needs to learn to flesh out his female characters into the three dimensional and sympathetic portraits he paints of his male characters.

The Decemberists – The Hazards of Love 1 (The Prettiest Whistles Won’t Wrestle the Thistle Undone)

The Decemberists – Margaret In Captivity

The Decemberists – A Cautionary Song

Posted by JustHipper on 27th March 2009 at 12:03 am | comments (6)
File under CD Reviews,colin meloy,decemberists,mp3.

Gig Review: Franz Ferdinand at Manchester Academy 1, March 6, 2009

Or, the gig where Justhipper posts a rant and Franz Ferdinand actually take the time to respond*

I was really looking forward to seeing Franz Ferdinand live again, especially after we didn’t bother on the last go round because we couldn’t stomach the idea of seeing them at the MEN Arena. Seriously, I was looking forward to this – enough to break out of my blogging lethargy.

I really wanted to go down to the Academy 1 tonight and have a great time and write a glowing review of Franz Ferdinand’s live performance. I can’t, however, because I can’t actually tell you much about what they were like. I couldn’t see anything and I couldn’t tell if they sounded any good.

What? You ask – you don’t know how they sounded? Nope. I was there, and I can’t tell you if they played a decent show or not because the sound system was so woefully inadequate that all I could hear for most of the gig was drums and a little bass. They might have played “Matinee” or “Take Me Out.” I don’t know. They might have played “40′” and “Do You Want To.” I don’t know. They might even have played “Darts of Pleasure,” “Shopping for Blood” and “Eleanor Put Your Boots On.” I really can’t tell you because I could make out very little of the gig.

I honestly may as well have stood in a crowd of people in my front room and listened to their albums through the wall on a blown speaker.

At least it barely lasted an hour before I could come home, sit down and be very irritated.

About four songs in to this joke of a gig, Bricking Chick got really hacked off at not being able to distinguish one song from another so she went to complain to the sound guy. He told her to “Fuck off.”  So she went to complain to the venue manager. What did the venue manager say? Well, for starters, Bricking Chick wasn’t the first person to complain about the sound that night. The venue manager said that they never got complaints about the sound yet had 3 before the end of the first song. The venue manager also said that the problem was that bands had to pay a little extra for use of the venue’s sound system – a new sound system that was installed when the renovations took place just over a year ago. This new sound system is really good. Except Franz Ferdinand didn’t have enough respect for their fans or care enough about putting on a good show for people who paid £20 a ticket + booking fee + postage to shell out the extra few pounds for an adequate sound system and instead brought their own rinky dink piece of shite that was not fit for purpose.

Thanks Franz Ferdinand – for the complete lack of respect and for the most disappointing gig I’ve seen in a long time.*

I want my money back.

*EDIT – I’ve changed the H3 to reflect the fact that Alex Kapranos has had the courtesy to come on here and explain the band’s position. It’s really top of him to take the time out of his day to do this for us. It’s clear that the band did think long and hard about the sound at the gigs – sadly in this instance the crappy acoustics of the Academy 1 let everybody down.

Your time is much appreciated Alex, and we’re looking forward to seeing you play at T in the Park in a couple of months.

Franz Ferdinand – No You Girls

Posted by JustHipper on 7th March 2009 at 12:46 am | comments (58)
File under franz ferdinand,Gig Reviews,manchester academy 1,mp3,Rant.

Gig Review: Stereolab @ Club Academy, Manchester, 17th December 2008

It has been an age since I last blogged and I apologise, but since returning from a two week holiday in the States in early November I became, overnight, what I can only describe as a Grumpy Old Man. All enthusiasm for just about anything had waned, and this included music and especially blogging about music. At a time when I should have been taking stock of 2008 and preparing year end lists of albums and gigs I was instead listening to little that didn’t involve Will Oldham or Tom Waits and not remotely looking forward to any of the gigs we had planned between then and Christmas. Things were so bad that I was quite relieved when the record company’s tickets for TV On The Radio didn’t come through on time and I got to spend the evening taking out my frustrations on the football pitch.

Stereolab @ Manchester Club AcademyWith the clouds lifting I was quite looking forward to seeing Stereolab at the Club Academy last Wednesday, but nowhere near as much as I should have been. I had been a few years since they were last in Manchester yet they are second behind The Wedding Present in the list of bands that I have seen the most: this was probably around the 20th time. Still, somewhere along the line I had forgotten exactly how wonderful Stereolab are live and it didn’t take long to be reminded as they began proceedings with the perky rhythms of “Percolator”. With Laetitia Sadier on fine form, having lost none of her considerable charm and Gallic cool in the intervening years, the band played plenty of familiar tunes from days of yore as well as a few choice cuts from the new Chemical Chords record, an album that I have yet to fully get to grips with, it being packed rather too tightly with dense four-minute pop tunes for my liking. Live, and given room to breathe, the Chemical Chords songs really come to life and the likes of “Neon Beanbag” and “Summer Sands” sounded like ‘Lab classics in waiting with Sadier emphasising the point asking us not to be disappointed that they were playing new songs because “in a few years, they will be old songs”.

Of course they played their best known pop gems “French Disko” and “Ping Pong” and they sounded as good as ever while “Cybelle’s Reverie”, played in the encore, was nothing short of incredible. The band are at their best when they lock into a solid hypnotic groove, which they do often, playing with a rare intensity, shooting glances to each other to signal small but perceptible changes in the formula and creating an irresistible sound that you’ll find impossible not to move at least one part of your body to. The lengthy coda to the otherwise serene “Lo Boob Oscillator” was particularly invigorating as was the classic “Stomach Worm” from their debut LP, Peng!, from way back in 1992. “John Cage Bubblegum”‘s combination of a repetitive, insidious groove with a great pop melody was the night’s finest moment as far as I’m concerned and the vociferous adulation of the packed crowd at the end suggested I wasn’t the only one.

With the band sounding tighter than ever this was easily the best I’ve seen from Stereolab since the tragic death of band member Mary Hansen in 2002. They seem to have rediscovered the elements that made them such a compelling live act in the 90s and it was only on the closing “Metronomic Underground” that Mary’s absence was really felt. For me, it was great to rediscover one of my favourite bands and, thanks to Stereolab, the rediscovery of my blogging mojo might not be too far behind.

Stereolab – Self Portrait with “Electric Brain”

Stereolab – Cybelle’s Reverie

Stereolab – Stomach Worm

Posted by The Ledge on 21st December 2008 at 12:17 am | comments (3)
File under Gig Reviews,manchester club academy,manchester gigs,mp3,Reviews,stereolab.

Gig Review: Tindersticks @ Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, 4th October 2008

Tindersticks‘ gig at the Bridgewater Hall last Saturday night was something of a renaissance for the band after years of what seemed like a steady decline in their popularity and the quality and quantity of their output. I can barely remember the last time I saw them at the Academy 2 in 2001 and if JustHipper hadn’t reminded me about that gig I would have been telling you that the last time I saw them was Glastonbury 1999.

Hopefully my memory will play similar tricks if I ever attempt to recall seeing support act Sara Lowes at any point in the future. I was initially impressed that a young, relatively unknown singer-songwriter would turn up with a seven-strong backing band in place but soon grew weary of her unremarkable and completely forgettable made-for-Radio 2 fare. We headed back to the bar after four songs and stood next to the great Guy Garvey as we ordered our drinks. He is a big bloke, in real life.

I won’t be forgetting the Tindersticks’ performance in a hurry. The Bridgewater Hall is a perfect venue for their brooding, melancholy, orchestral pop and the fact that they had a mini-orchestra playing with them was a major plus point. Their new album, The Hungry Saw, is a return to the sort of form they were in in their late nineties heyday and on the night they played the whole album (with the unexplained exception of “Mother Dear”), in order but in two parts with a bunch of oldies in between. They did a similar thing at Glastonbury in 1999 when they played the yet-to-be-released Simple Pleasures in its entirety. The first seven album tracks were played to perfection and it was the three instrumentals that really stood out from the rest. Where they tend to pass by with little more than a passing wave when listening to the album, live, and with the benefit of being able to see the orchestra play their component parts, they unravelled to reveal intricate, beautiful melodies that had previously gone unnoticed.

After the thoroughly entertaining “The Organist Entertains”, the soulful “Dying Slowly”, from 2001’s Can Our Love… ushered in a collection of older songs as well as a Townes Van Zandt cover (sadly not “Kathleen”). There were three songs in a row from their classic eponymous second album including “Travelling Light” which, despite being my favourite Tinders track, was the biggest disappointment of the night. It’s a song that really only works as a duet and with Stuart Staples singing it alone and changing the words so that each line was from his own standpoint it fell a little flat, despite the best efforts of the string section. “Sleepy Song” followed and instantly made up for it with the orchestra again excelling with its swells of strings and brass.

“The Hungry Saw” saw most of the orchestra turning their hands to percussion while “Boobar Come Back To Me”, the highlight of the new album, built from its quiet beginnings to a resounding crescendo. Stuart Staples, with hair cropped and sculpted sideburns, has aged very well and his voice hasn’t changed at all – for me it was always more rich, tender baritone than Vic Reeves club singer. He was on fine form all night, never more so than on “All The Love”, the slow burning, mournful lament that was the high point of the evening as far as I’m concerned.

The encore began with their cover of “If You’re Looking For A Way Out”, a song that at first seemed an unlikely choice of cover but that fitted right in with the downbeat soul of Simple Pleasures and that they have now made their own. The lively Spanish guitar flourishes and Mariachi horns of “Her” brought Calexico to mind and the sparse “The Not Knowing” brought matters to a sombre close. This was a tremendous return for one of my favourite bands of the nineties and Alzheimer’s will have set in by the time I forget this one.

Tindersticks – All The Love

Tindersticks – Travelling Light

Tindersticks – The Not Knowing

Posted by The Ledge on 11th October 2008 at 7:19 pm | comments (7)
File under bridgewater hall,Gig Reviews,mp3,Reviews,tindersticks.

Gig Review: Foals @ Manchester Academy, 8th October 2008

When we first saw Foals, just over a year ago, they amazed us with the sheer force of their delivery. The set was energetic and chaotic while still delivering loads of great hooks and dance beats. We expected great things from  the album and were disappointed at how clean and polished it sounded – none of the urgency or energy came across in the first couple of listens. So, I filed it away as a minor disappointment and didn’t think much of it until The Ledge told me he had secured a pair of tickets to see Foals play Manchester Academy 1.

I thought I should get the album back out and listen to it again a bit more closely. Clearly my original opinion had been coloured by the live experience which was intense and unexpected. While the second half of the album does lose focus and meander a bit and while I still think the production could have done with giving it a rougher edge, the first half of the album is actually very good. So by the time we headed down to the gig I was looking forward to it, in a fifth-gig-in-five-nights-dead-on-my-feet sort of way.

Thankfully we discovered we had access to the balcony which turned out to be a mixed blessing. It afforded us a great view of the gig without the usual crowd hassles and it kept us from having to wade into a giant mosh pit – which looked like good fun, but we were far too exhausted from the previous four days of activity. The problem is, our vantage point also meant we captured none of the atmosphere of the crowd, and there seemed to be loads of it as the moshers during opener Holy Fuck certainly seemed to be going for it.

Holy Fuck were quite intriguing for about 15 minutes as I couldn’t tell whether they wanted to be a rock-oriented dance band or whether they were trying to produce catchy math rock similar to Battles. Ultimately, over a 45 minute set they were a little boring. I think you’d probably have to be dancing to really listen to them for very long. I suppose they played that long because Dananananaykroyd, also meant to be on the bill, had cancelled at the last minute.

Foals received a riotous reception from the crowd on the floor, and while I can’t fault the quality of their performance, I can’t help but feel that they have yet to fully make the transition from a band playing tiny toilet venues to a band capable of filling a large hall full of 2,000 screaming teenagers. My two favourite tracks off the album, “The French Open” and “Cassius” sounded fabulous, and I was certainly humming along to the likes of “Olympic Airways” and “Electric Bloom” but on the whole the performance seemed far more withdrawn and less chaotic than previously and the band seemed not to know what to do with the crowd.

Many of the album tracks didn’t venture far from their polished album versions and much of what really impressed me about the previous gig just wasn’t there or simply didn’t translate well in the larger venue. To be fair, they had opened up a bit by the end and some stage diving occurred, but the intensity and anarchic atmosphere from the Night & Day had been replaced by what seemed to be a band not entirely sure of themselves.

Foals performance shouldn’t have surprised me. I spent much of the gig thinking that actually it felt a bit like watching the awkward performance delivered by Bloc Party the first time they played Manchester Academy 1 back in April 2005 only a few short months after playing a blinder at the Night & Day on Halloween night 2004 (and only a few short months before The Indie Credential came into being). I believe I expressed similar sentiments about Editors at Manchester Academy also back in 2005.

I suppose it is simply the nature of the music industry in 2008 that young bands are finding themselves becoming popular very quickly without time to really find their feet. I would also guess that they will learn to adjust their live shows over time and learn to fill venues the size of the Academy and bigger so perhaps next time we can stand in the balcony and get properly knocked off our feet.

Foals – The French Open

Foals – Electric Bloom

Posted by JustHipper on 9th October 2008 at 5:38 pm | comments (4)
File under foals,Gig Reviews,manchester academy 1,manchester gigs,mp3.

The Hold Steady Reschedule UK Tour for December

According to an email from Rough Trade, The Hold Steady have rescheduled their UK tour for December. Hurrah!

October dates were cancelled when guitarist Tad Kubler contracted Pancreatitis (ouch!), but he’s on the mend and they’re coming back once they’ve completed the rounds in North America. Here’s the dates:

  • 7-Dec Sheffield Leadmill
  • 8-Dec Oxford Academy
  • 9-Dec Nottingham Rock City
  • 10-Dec Manchester Academy
  • 12-Dec Bristol Anson Rooms
  • 14-Dec Portsmouth Wedgewood Rooms
  • 15-Dec Wolverhampton Wulfrun Hall
  • 17-Dec London Roundhouse
  • 18-Dec Glasgow Glasgow SECC
  • 20-Dec Dublin The O2
  • 21-Dec Belfast Odyssey Arena

And just for fun, so you too can celebrate, a couple of songs:

The Hold Steady – Knuckles

The Hold Steady – Killer Parties

Posted by JustHipper on 4th October 2008 at 3:15 pm | comments (0)
File under mp3,News,the hold steady.

Gig Review: Neil Halstead @ Sacred Trinity Church, Salford, 25th September 2008

We had quite a choice of gigs last Thursday and after planning to head down to the Night & Day for Broken Records we changed our minds, realising that we couldn’t pass up the chance to see Neil Halstead at Sacred Trinity Church. For starters, he tours rarely, whereas Broken Records are currently plugging away and are bound to be back soon when they have an album to promote. Secondly, Sacred Trinity Chuch is a wonderful venue and we could imagine hearing Neil’s beautiful folky, poppy ex-Shoegazer tunes echoing around the hall and we just knew it was going to be a good gig.

Daniel Land and the Modern Painters @ Sacred Trinity Church, SalfordOpeners Daniel Land and the Modern Painters started proceedings with what I can only describe as anthemic shoegazer indie. They reminded me a little of Doves and a little of defunct Manchester outfit Snowfight in the City Centre but with additional fuzzy guitar effects. I can equally imagine enjoying them in a dark, smoky basement with loads of smoke and backlighting as I can sitting in a field in the sunlight with a couple thousand people singing along. The songs were immediately effective and the band put in a good performance. The between-song banter was humble and funny and warm.

Neil Halstead has been on and off my radar for a while. I have one Slowdive album, Souvlaki, which I like but never really grew to love. I adore the first Mojave 3 album, Ask Me Tomorrow. Something about the way they marry the aesthetics of their shoegazer days with folky, twangy country tunes really appeals and the quiet restraint combined with the lyrics about love and loneliness still have me coming back to that album ten years on. I completely missed out on a couple of Mojave 3 albums but picked up Puzzles Like You, the most recent offering, to discover that they had mutated again and were writing pop gems that were more reminiscent of Teenage Fanclub than My Bloody Valentine. Needless to say we were expecting a bit of stylistic variety from Neil Halstead.

Neil Halstead @ Sacred Trinity Church, SalfordThe gig began with Neil sitting in a chair, playing soft folk songs on just his acoustic guitar before inviting the full band on stage. He was reserved, as expected, but did have a couple of funny stories to go with the songs – as folk singers do. He amused the crowd by playing a track he said he probably shouldn’t play in a church as it was about being woken up by people knocking on his door to teach him about Jesus Christ. The songs with the full band were still folky, with more of an Iron & Wine vibe than anything else – so it seems he’s gone the whole route from fuzzy guitars to soft country to American-influenced folk. Having heard music from every stage of his career, it actually makes sense – he’s always written light, airy melodies, he just changes the way he chooses to present them.

Midway through the set he sent the band back off stage so he could play a few Mojave 3 tracks for us. First asking the crowd for requests, he abandoned that idea when the only requests he received were for tracks he said he couldn’t play. He instead performed songs of his own choosing – sadly, songs whose names are unknown to us – before bringing the band back on stage to finish the set with a final few numbers before closing with a song about beards – dedicated to everyone with facial hair.

Overall, it was a lovely performance, pretty much what we expected, to be fair, and enough to recommend his solo album for purchase.

Neil Halstead – Martha’s Mantra (For The Pain)

Mojave 3 – She Broke You So Softly

Posted by JustHipper on 1st October 2008 at 8:40 pm | comments (2)
File under daniel land and the modern painters,Gig Reviews,manchester gigs,mp3,neil halstead,sacred trinity church.

Robert Forster @ RNCM, Manchester, 21st September 2008

Robert Forster @ Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester
Robert Forster was in fine form when we saw him last Sunday night at the Royal Northern College of Music in what was his first time back in Manchester since the tragic and untimely death of close friend and songwriting partner Grant McLennan put an end to The Go-Betweens as a going concern and robbed the world of one of its finest songwriting talents. Grant was never far from our or, I suspect, most of the audience’s minds for much of the evening, his absence heightened by the familiarity of Forster’s backing band – Adele Pickvance and Glenn Thompson were both Go-Betweens in the band’s noughties revival. I was expecting some kind of tribute from Forster but he didn’t mention Grant at all; what was left unspoken came pouring out in a spine-tingling, beautiful reading of “Quiet Heart”, one of Grant’s finest songs and the only one of his played on the night.

The evening began with Forster alone with acoustic guitar, strumming his way through “Something For Myself” from Bright Yellow, Bright Orange. Tall, besuited and with an impressive mop of silvery hair he looked every bit the elegant elder statesman of pop that he now is. Band members were introduced one by one with Adele Pickvance appearing first for “If It Rains” followed a couple of songs later by Glenn Thompson, who was on guitar and keyboard duties, rather than drums, this time around, and then 21-year-old Matthew Harrison on drums. This first section of the gig really set the tone for the evening: plenty from his new solo effort, The Evangelist, and from The Go-Betweens’ post-reformation albums with a couple of golden oldies thrown in for good measure. Surprisingly, for me, it was the songs from the first of those latter day Go-Betweens albums, The Friends Of Rachel Worth, that made the greatest impression. “Spirit” and “When She Sang About Angels” – which was preceded by a rather long-winded anecdote about gatecrashing a Patti Smith gig at the Serpentine Gallery that was about twice as long as the song itself – really shone and had me rummaging through the CD racks at home this week for a quick re-evaluation of what was previously my least favourite Go-B’s long player. Forster obviously likes it, though, and played all five of his compositions from it on the night.

The gorgeous “I’m Alright” brought us up to the 15 minute interval (are these unnecessary interruptions a contractual obligation in theatre venues or just a ploy to sell more beer?) with Thompson perfectly replicating Grant McLennan’s fluid, melodic guitar parts, as he did brilliantly throughout the evening. The second part of the set was like a beefed-up, lengthier version of the first with Forster switching from acoustic to electric, but what it lacked in real surprises it made up for in sheer quality. We got fantastic versions of Go-Betweens classics “Head Full Of Steam” and “Spring Rain” that had me wishing that we were all jumping up and down and singing along at the Night & Day rather than sitting passively in a theatre. However the venue’s excellent acoustics really brought out the lush, rich textures of the likes of “Clouds”, “Dive For Your Memory” and “Darlinghurst Nights”.

A thunderous “Here Comes A City” brought an end to the main set and the encore saw an outing for a couple of his solo tracks from albums other than The Evangelist. I was really hoping for a few songs off his first, and best, solo effort, Danger In The Past, but all we got was “Heart Out To Tender”, which isn’t exactly my favourite. Oh, what I’d have given to hear “Justice”. Similarly, “I Can Do” was the sole representative from Warm Nights and there was nothing at all from Calling From A Country Phone. The classic “People Say”, from way back in 1978, brought events to a rapturous close and from the vibrant quality of the performance and Forster’s obvious enjoyment of proceedings, I’d say that there is still plenty more to come.

The Go-Betweens – Quiet Heart

The Go-Betweens – Head Full Of Steam

The Go-Betweens – Spirit

Robert Forster – Demon Days

Posted by The Ledge on 30th September 2008 at 10:05 pm | comments (4)
File under Gig Reviews,mp3,Reviews.