There’s something about the post-industrial, post-fishing east coast towns and cities. One might consider them to be appropriately named: Hull is just a vowel away from hell, and Grimsby, well, forget Douglas Adams’ ‘Meaning of Liff’, it’s all in the first syllable. But as history shows, time and again, run-down areas reinvent themselves as creative hotbeds as people channel their frustration creatively, and ultimately lift themselves out of the doldrums.
And so, first, it was all exploding in Hull, and the fishy backwater hellhole proved itself worthy of the ‘city of culture’ title in no small part to its thriving music scene which has given us some belting bands of late.
Sewer Rats evoke the spirit of Seattle – another dingy city in decline before it became the musical hub of the world in the early 90s – with the EP’s lead track, ‘Mother Acid.’ It’s a gritty, grainy, guitar-driven effort, and Luke Morris’ vocals betray the influence of heavy psych and US hardcore, and are as much coughed and spat as sung. And as the rhythm section rumbles on, a twisted guitar solo teeters from the speakers. And such is the flavour of the EP as a whole: it’s got some serious heft, the hell-for-leather drumming combined with the gnarly vocals sounding very Mötörhead, particularly on ‘Take Me Home – and everything is, indeed, louder than everything else, amped to the max and close to overload.
It’s not friendly: it’s full-on, fierce, and fucking furious.
A year or so back, maybe, from the ashes of York-based psychedelic drone act Muttley Crew emerged York-based psychedelic drone act Soma Crew. Sort of. The same band in essence, it was undoubtedly time for a change of name, but there’s been something of a lineup reshuffle in the process, and, on the evidence of this, the first Soma Crew EP, a sonic evolution too. This means that while there are still heavy hints of Black Angels, and the songs are still built around two or three chord chugs swathed in layer upon layer upon layer which twist and turn over the course of six minutes or more, there’s new stuff going on which wasn’t present on the Muttley Crew album which came out in the Spring of 2015.
With a ragged guitar sound and Simon Micklethwaite’s vocals adopting a sneering, drawling tone, there’s a punk edge to the EP’s first cut, ‘Pulp’. After a left-turning detour around the mid-point, it bursts into a raging racket of dissonance. And all the while, the drums keep on hammering out a relentless mechanoid rhythm, holding it together while everything else collapses to beautiful chaos. The slow-burning ‘Path With Heart’ brings it down a notch or two and offers a more low-key and introspective aspect. It’s exactly the music you’d expect from a band named after a muscle relaxant which works by blocking pain sensations between the nerves and the brain.
‘Vital Signs’ is perhaps the first track here that’s truly representative of their live sound, a motoric droner, with murky, overdriven and reverby guitars yawning and veering across one another over a thumping locked-in groove with no let up for over six and a half minutes. The eight-minute ‘Prizefighter’ begins at a lugubrious crawl. It takes its time… and then the overloading lead guitar breaks in, noodling in a smog of a chugging rhythm to drive it to the end.
The rough edges and hazy production give the songs an immediacy, and beneath the layers of reverb and cavernous delay, there’s a pulsating energy that gives EP 01 (aka Soma) a rare vitality. Rebirthed, re-energised, this band may be habit-forming and should be used only by the person it was prescribed for.
There must be something in the air. Or the water. Or maybe it’s climate change. Or perhaps it’s simply how things go with the passage of time: Courtney Love becoming uncool has slipped off the radar, and there’s a whole new generation discovering Live Through This and albums by L7 tucked away in their parents’ CD collections. This is certainly the most rational explanation for the current rash of female-fronted grunge-orientated bands. It makes sense: look at the contemporary female role models. Outside the mainstream, proliferated by slick, overproduced r’n’b and anodyne pop and as promulgated by the likes of Beyoncé, Rihanna, and Miley, strong contemporary female role models ae few and far between: even the likes of Amy Lee and Hayley Williams – a front-woman who spawned infinite clones by virtue of being practically alone in her field – are inching towards moving beyond the position of well-established toward establishment. Besides, they never stood out quite as strong as the old guard: neither of them had the guts of Courtney in her prime, or Lydia Lunch, ever.
Weekend Recovery are a Kent-based band, who cite the likes of Paramore, Green Day and Jimmy Eat World amongst others as their influences, and they’re pretty self-evident in their debut single, ‘Focus’, which sees them go for what they describe as ‘a straight up catchy pop punk number’. It’s also precisely what they deliver.
But make no mistake, this is a band with ambition, grit and drive, not to mention some songs with aggression and edge, and here’s no question that Lorin Forster is a strong vocalist and front woman. Cliché as it is, with some high-profile support slots booked, they’re ones to watch.
With seven tracks and a running time in excess of half an hour, it’s one hell of an EP. ‘Elderflower’ is also a whole lot more than the prescriptive ‘post-rock’ tag attached to the duo. Much as I appreciate labelling as much as the next time-pressed music journo struggling to place a band and clutching for pointers for pitching a band in a review, and much as I like a lot of what slots into the post-rock bracket, Defy the Ocean are a band who create music that simply cannot be readily classified on their expansive and accomplished new release.
For a start, it’s more rock than post rock. It’s pretty loud. It’s pretty heavy. There are a lot of vocals. None of these are bad things, and ‘Elderflower’ is a work of depth, range and power. From the get-go, they demonstrate a knack for shifting between segments and moods with real panche, dragging the listener along with them: ‘Rest’, the first track may only clock in at two minutes and fifty-five, but it’s got more twists and turns and ideas and emotional range than some bands’ entire albums.
‘Veils’ is restrained, darkly atmospheric, moody and is perhaps the most post-rock track of the set. But it’s got a bleak, metallic edge that also tips a nod to the mid 90s alternative rock sound.
The title track breaks into full-on grunge mode, the quiet / loud dynamic and brooding atmosphere more Alice in Chains and Soundgarden than I Like Trains, and the crushing power chords are thick and heavy, and paired with a drawling vocal delivery, it calls to mind Melvins – the mellow piano breakdown notwithstanding. ‘Brine’ is serpentine, stripped back, and provides a distinct contrast with its chiming guitars which does call to mind I Like Trains – but then again, the burst of powerchords, distorted vocal and full driving climax, alludes to millennial progressive acts like Oceansize, Amplifier, Porcupine Tree, Anathema, and if anything, ‘Vessel’ amalgamates neoprog with the desert rock vibe of Queens of the Stone Age and their ilk. There’s a lot going on here, and it’s all well-assembled and musically articulate.
Everything about ‘Elderflower’ points to a band who aren’t confined to any one format or bank of instruments, which makes for a refreshingly varied collection of songs, and one which demands repeated listening in order to reveal its full richness.
Gang of Four’s Entertainment! Still stands as one of the definitive post-punk albums, capturing the zeitgeist of the late 70s. ‘Left’ and ‘socialist’ weren’t terms spat derisively by the media. The early years of Thatcher’s dismantlement of the country in the pursuit of the neoliberalist dream was already finding many disenfranchised and angry, with musicians articulating the sentiments of a generation in voicing dissent and dissatisfaction. Sound familiar?
I’ve been listening to Gang of Four since I was in my teens: too young to appreciate them in their day (I was born in1975), I was hooked a good decade before Franz Ferdinand and others started namedropping them and their status as one of the most important bands of the era. This isn’t any kind of hip gloat – not least of all because it would be a pretty shit one if it was. But my experience of the band live until earlier this year was limited to a few shitty VHS recordings, and the not so shitty various artists compilation VHS from circa 1984 that I picked up at a car boot in the early 90s.
So finally seeing them play live in 2016, given that the current lineup only features one original member could have been a disappointment on a monumental scale. But it wasn’t. the current lineup not only sounds great, but still has that vital sense of tension, of danger, that was always the band’s trademark.
‘Live… in the Moment’ captures this perfectly, and is released in two different forms: During a year spent touring the world, the band recorded two of the best, namely their sold-out show at New York’s Irving Plaza (which will be available as a DVD or download) and their penultimate show of 2015, at London’s Islington Assembly Hall, which will be available as an audio CD, double coloured vinyl album and download. The DVD will be packaged with the CD. Both, it has to be said, are excellent.
As a live recording, the quality is good, but it’s not excessively crisp or polished, and doesn’t scream heavy EQing, mixing, overdubbing. No, this is an honest, real live album that captures the intensity and immediacy of being in a room with a band playing live at high volume. If sounds and feels like a live album: as it should: any act who sound exactly the same live as in the studio may be musically accomplished, but fails to make the live ‘experience’ an actual experience. What matters most is that the separation between the sinewy, choppy guitar lines and elastic, funk-infused stop/start bass grooves is spot on.
Similarly, the concert visuals, whole shot from a number of cameras, is straight-ahead: dark, murky, primarily from a lower, audience vantage point. Budget? Maybe, although I’d prefer to watch something that replicates the actual experience of the live show, rather than some ponced-up, glossy fixed-up representation. My only criticism of the footage lies not with the footage itself – I can handle the wobbles and slightly amateurish hand-held pans – but the editing: the cuts are simply too fast, and the zooms on fretboards, etc., simply too… zoomy. With multiple angles to choose from, they haven’t always picked the best. Still, it’s watchable enough in a way fits with the rough ‘n’ ready, ‘as it was’ approach. Moreover, it sits with the band’s general ethos: this is no major-label, big-money production and no corporate exec’s coining it at the expense of hard-working artists.
The track listing draws from across their albums with the exception of Mall, although no-one’s going to be disappointed to see that Entertainment! Is well-represented, with ‘Love Like Anthrax’, ‘Damaged Goods’, ‘At Home He’s a Tourist’, ‘History’s Not Made by Great Men’ and ‘I Found That Essence Rare’ all featuring. The DVD also features ‘Return the Gift’, which doesn’t appear on the CD, as well as non-CD cut ‘I Love a Man in a Uniform’. They all sound great, spiky and urgent, ‘To Hell With Poverty’ as pertinent now as 38 years ago. Irrespective of their influence, Live… In the Moment shows that Gang of Four are very much a going concern, and a band who aren’t only relevant after all this time, but a cracking live act.
Puntastic pork punkers Kleine Schweine were one of the highlights of Live at Leeds for me this year, and several of the tracks featured in that set appear on this, their latest EP. Being angry political polemicists, keeping things current is important, and I’m pretty sure ‘Our Ex-Prime Minister Stuck His Dick In The Mouth Of A Dead Pig’ had a different title prior to release.
No doubt The Sun and The Mail would rail against these guys of they’d heard of them, vehemently rejecting their ‘hard-left’, ‘socialist’ and ‘communist’ politics and sneering at their yobbery, but in a climate where opposing racism is sufficient to see one branded a Trotskyist, context matters more than ever before. Kleine Schweine are pissed-off working-class punks from Leeds / London, and their music is the music of discontent, of frustration, a mans of calling out injustice. It seems almost unfathomable that in Britain in 2016 I should be writing about the voice of the repressed. But then, our current government have worked hard to quiet the collective voice of dissent not by appeasing it, but simply closing it down, not least of all with the help of the media who have simply ignored most major protests. If they’re not reported, they didn’t happen. And if they didn’t happen, then everyone’s happy. History is being fixed right under our noses.
If there’s one positive to be pulled, desperately, from the wreckage of a culture that’s resembling the bleakness of the early 80s, then it’s a resurgence of music that reflects the rage and pessimism of the times. Punk and post-punk inspired music isn’t just a stylistic affectation: it means something again. ‘There’s bodies, here’ bodies in the water!’ Neil Hanson hollers urgently on ‘If We Close All The Borders Down You Can’t Go To Benidorm’, exposing the hypocrisy of the Brexit brigade. If there’s any doubt, the minute and a half of thrash and feedback that is ‘Referendofdays’ should clarify their position.
Porcine of the Times – the EP’s title operates on at least three levels – offers six frenetic, kinetic tracks ablaze with fist-pumping ire. It’s fast, a hell-for leather explosion of gritty guitars, and raw – the production is more about replicating the immediacy of the live performances and preserving the integrity of the songs than polishing them – and as such, it feels like proper, authentic punk. The majority of the songs clock in at under two minutes, and the snarling lyrics are primarily vitriolic rants against the Tories, against the rich and privileged, the selfish and the ignorant. It’s sad, politically, that we’re back in the late 70s, but not so bad that at least the musical landscape offers some solace. This is the authentic voice of the people the not-so-silent half of Britain who stand for equality and justice. Britain needs Kleine Schweine right now.
What does it take to distinguish an album launch from a regular gig? A sense of occasion is definitely a major factor, and having built themselves a pretty formidable reputation as a live act, and showcased some killer tunes in the run-up to the release of their second album, NARCS have set this launch up nicely. Said new album is a real step up, harder edged and heavier than its predecessor, and is an album of our times. And where else could it be than at the Brudenell, the venue stands at the very heart of the vibrant Leeds scene? It takes some chops to invite Fighting Caravans to support, given that they’re one of those bands who are capable of blowing pretty much any act off the stage.
Perhaps not so much guitar and drum duo Mouses. Fronted by an androgynous nerd in heinous trousers, their glammy indie punk teeters on the brink of parody. But cranking out chords from one of the most fucked-looking yet still functional guitars I’ve seen, they’re lively and good fun and do the job of getting the crowd warmed up nicely.
Mouses
It’s pretty packed by the time Fighting Caravans take to the stage, Daniel Clark looking most fetching in full toreador getup. Their seven-track set shuns pretty much all of their debut EP, but does feature ‘In Sicily’, the b-side of their latest single release, which is corking. The small stage doesn’t allow much room for movement, but Clark can only be contained so long and sure enough, before the set’s out he’s disappeared to somewhere near the back of the venue.
Fighting Caravans
It’s rammed and absolutely fucking roasting before NARCS go on, and the cliché of the atmosphere being electric is entirely justified. They’re fired up, alright, and so are the crowd. Radiating waves of aggression, strident in their demeanour, front man Wilko’s face set in a scowl while guitarist Joe peels off sinewy guitar lines, pinned down by a full-throttle rhythm section, they’re on full power from the get-go as they kick off with ‘Mile Die’. The set’s focused primarily on the new album, the taut, highly-charged post-punk blast of energy that is A Thinking Animal, with ‘19’ and ‘Coast to Coast’ from their 2013 debut airing around the mid-point.
Narcs
Songs like ‘Bullingdon Boys’ and ‘Head Boy Sonnet’ give a fair indication of the primary targets of their fury, and there are some hefty riffs behind the venomous politically-charged lyrical delivery, too. A perfect and momentous gig requires the coming together of band and audience, and the show ends with Wilko being lofted around the venue above the crowd, the guitarist somewhere in the melee and drummer slumped on the floor behind a kit in disarray, amidst strewn guitars and trailing cables, which is a fitting climax to an intense and euphoric night. Most definitely an album launch, and not a regular gig.
Offering an exhilarating blend of grunge and punk (what’s that then? Gunk? Punge?), Birmingham trio Youth Man have done well for themselves on the live circuit in the past couple of years (they seriously killed I at Live at Leeds in 2014, with Kaila Whyte (Guitar and vocals) proving she’s a strong performer and a force to be reckoned with. Now they look set to consolidate that graft with a new EP in the shape of five-tracker Wax, on which they’ve striven to capture the energy of their live shows. And they succeed, too. This EP serves up a raw, visceral noise, a calamitous racket of guitars played faster than fingers can change frets, jagged shards of choppy treble slamming against frantic basslines and crashing drums. It’s raw and passionate, and as much as this is a raised middle finger in musical form, it’s a record that screams urgency rather than apathy.
Whyte hollers and screams in a way that reminds us just how refreshing Hole and L7 were when they first emerged on the scene. The ‘production,’ such as it is, is in your face, uncompromising – just like the music itself. It’s not pretty, but it’s real.
Given the fact that this release contains pieces based primarily around delicate solo piano work, there’s a curious bluntness and odd directness about the title that stirred a discomfort on first contact with Euan McMeeken’s latest project. The phrase ‘Love, if you love me, lie beside me now’ has a kind of domineering tone, with hints of emotional blackmail. It’s needy, but with controlling undercurrents. But then, such lines, particularly with the doubling of the word ‘love’, also has echoes of Elizabethan poetry.
None of this is conveyed in the six compositions here, at least on the surface. ‘No One Can Reach Us Now or Ever’ is an elegant piano piece, although there are atmospheric rumblings in the distance. In combination, they contrive to form an emotional ambivalence: the possibility that this could be an uplifting dream of safety and security is equalled by the bittersweet elegy framed in the knowledge that the only safe place is not on this earth. Perhaps it’s another subtle tendril of control, the same need to cling manifesting as separation from the world, enforced isolation. Perhaps not. Perhaps McMeeken’s compositions are intended as blank walls on which the listener’s thoughts and reactions can be projected, mapped, explored. Perhaps Ali Millar’s short prose piece provides the direction in its melancholy-hued narrative. More than anything, it’s not what is said over the course of the six tracks, but what is unsaid and what lies beneath the surface.
The pieces, although not designed to follow any overarching theme, do flow into one another very naturally, and the tone changes progressively between the beginning and the end. Sadness creeps into ‘Seen Through a Doorway’, and the notes waver and flicker in and out on ‘Under the Arc of the Sky’, and hang in a thick air, intimating hesitation, uncertainty. Strings enter at the midpoint of the final track, ‘There is Nothing Yet I am Here’, spreading an uplifting mood and a sense of optimism. And yes, perhaps there is hope. Perhaps this album s best appreciated when not searching for the meaning. Sometimes, some things simply are, and this is a magnificent, thoughtful musical work.
Growing up with musical tastes different from my friend and peers, I found a certain sense of freedom. It wasn’t that I cared more about music than friendships, although maybe that was sometimes the case: music off the beaten track offered something more relatable and opened my eyes – and ears – to new possibilities and ideas. Doing my own thing and finding my own music enabled me to appreciate and celebrate difference. Conformity is so dull. Following trends is mindless.
This eponymous release from Lord Kesseli and the Drums dos not confirm, it does not follow trends, and is strangely out of sync with everything that’s going on not only in the mainstream, but in most other musical circles right now. That’s due in no small part to its stylistic diversity. Dominik Kesseli described as “slowed down electronic club music, or in other words synthetic Science Fiction sound worlds with analogue raging textures.” And I suppose there is that. In collaboration with drummer and producer Michael Gallusser, Kisseli has certainly concocted something rather out of the ordinary.
The first track, ‘Arnold’ is kinda post-rock, but isn’t really completely overtly explicitly post-rock, in that it has dream-pop leanings too, and veers into expansive electro-prog territory – and after the best part of six minutes, I’m not entirely sure why we’re still waiting for Arnold.
‘Siri’ makes nods to Krautrock as it slides into 80s synth pop territory, but maintains a dark undercurrent – as indeed, did much of the music of the day: artists ranging from A-Ha to A Flock of Seagulls via Nik Kershaw and Howard Jones weren’t nearly as jaunty as all that. And it has a bloody great crescendo by way or a climactic finish.
‘Fade’ is a lugubrious monster, half post-punk, half shoegaze, and it bleeds into the skewed gothic country of ‘PureEmotion’. The nine-minute closer, ‘Kid’ is a behemoth of a track which builds – and builds – to a monumental crescendo of phenomena proportions being carried way in its dying seconds on a resonating piano note that glides into the quiet distance.
Because it’s so wide-ranging, one could wonder precisely who the band and album’s audience is. But cliché as it is, any act who make music for themselves first and foremost is on the right track – or at the very least, they’re doing it for the right reason. Musicians should, of course, be fairly paid for their toils, but as Lydia Lunch recently argued, if it’s for money, it’s not art, it’s commerce. If there’s any justice, Lord Kesseli and the Drums will find a broad and substantial audience. But ultimately what matters is that they have produced a distinctive record of quality: a work of art.
Aural Aggravation 