Note: There are no live photos in this review because there were absolutely no cameras allowed at the gig, sorry!

Reading my gig reviews, you could easily make the assumption that I say that every gig is one of the best I’ve ever seen, but I promise you, this has just been a spectacularly good year for gigs! Sunday night I had the pleasure of seeing everyone’s favorite pocket-sized jazz musician, Jamie Cullum, and opener Imelda May at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC. I went into this sold out gig worrying that there was no way it’d live up to my expectations – I’ve been trying and failing to see Jamie Cullum live for about 5 years now, and I wanted it to be something extra special to make up for the fact that I had to miss watching the Oscars to see it. Basically, if it was anywhere short of Jamie’s amazing performance in his ‘Live at Blenheim Palace’ DVD, then I was going to be thoroughly disappointed. Fortunately, both Jamie and Imelda completely blew me away!

Dublin rockabilly songstress Imelda May played a powerful, vibrant 40-minute set to a nearly packed venue, and had everyone dancing along. She has a deep, raspy, soulful voice that captivated the audience, and she seemed to be having a lot of fun up on stage. She played more than 10 songs,  including ‘Johnny Got A Boom Boom,’ ‘Big Bad Handsome Man,’ and ‘How High the Moon.’ One of the best parts of her set was her wonderfully cheeky lyrics, like “Count my fingers, one and two / one of them is just for you / Count my fingers, one, two, three / the one in the middle’s to you, from me.” With the backing of her band, including a drummer, electric and acoustic guitarists, and a double bass player, Imelda thoroughly warmed up the crowd for Jamie.

Jamie Cullum is an absolutely fascinating and captivating performer. The energy with which he throws himself completely into his performance is just mesmerizing. He can switch from slow, brooding intensity to manic and impossibly intricate piano solos in the blink of an eye. At the end of his packed 2-hour set, I was amazed that he could still stand, he’d put so much energy into his performance.

As if his music wasn’t captivating enough, he was also hilariously entertaining between songs. In the first non-sung words out of his mouth, he said “Hello, my name is Justin Bieber.” Later he quipped, “Just picture me as Johnny Depp, I’m sure it’s not the 1st time…why are you laughing?” At one point he described the double bass player, Chris Hill, as a monster and said “That man has a fist full of sausages!” – I’m just going to  assume that’s a good thing in Jamie’s world.

But back to the music: not one of the songs got away without a generous helping of improv – I mean, come on, he is a jazz musician, after all. During crowd favorite ‘Frontin’,’ Jamie used the piano as one giant percussion instrument while beatboxing and singing. Even the slower songs like ‘What A Difference A Day Made’ were a big hit with the crowd. We all tried (and failed) to sing along, prompting Cullum to say “It’s hard trying to sing along with a jazz singer, isn’t it?” He had the crowd completely in the palm of his hand, whether he was making them scat along during ‘Wind Cries Mary,’ sing along and jump up and down to ‘Mixtape,’ or listen in complete silence to ‘Gran Torino.’ During the encore, he even convinced the crowd to sing the entire second verse of ‘All At Sea,’ and it sounded gorgeous.

But the indisputable highlight of the show was also its most unexpected. Toward the end of his set, Jamie had the band bring all of their instruments to the front of the stage, and instructed the crowd to part down the middle. The band then launched into Justin Timberlake’s ‘Cry Me A River,’ and the crowd went mental. Over top of that, Jamie sang the jazz standard ‘Cry Me A River’ off-mic, and then jumped down off the stage with his horn players, and proceeded to sing a capella from the middle of the crowd – simply amazing and completely unexpected. There’s really nobody like Jamie Cullum for genre-bending, mad scientist-type brilliance. This gig will be hard to top!

After the cut: Jamie Cullum Set List!

Read the rest of this entry »

Set list and photos courtesy of Mary Chang, USA Editor and gigmate extraordinaire.

Somehow, after years of loving British music, neither member of the D.C. branch of TGTF had ever been to a Muse gig, so when they announced they were coming to the Patriot Center, we knew we had to go. Having miraculously managed to get two general admission floor tickets (it sold out within 2 hours of the tickets going on sale), we headed down to the venue nice and early and staked out a spot on the left side of the stage just one row back.

Stood in front of what looked like three skyscrapers, opener Silversun Pickups went on right on time and played a solid 45-minute set, including ‘Substitution’ and ‘Panic Switch’. They weren’t quite my style but they sounded good and they thoroughly entertained the crowd as they filed into the 10,000-seat arena. The best part of their set, for me, was lead singer and guitarist Brian Aubert’s quips between songs, like “this is our second show on this tour – the band, not you guys – you don’t remember last night? You were reeeaaalllly drunk.” Plus, they get bonus points for having a female bassist and being unfazed by such a huge crowd.

After a 45-minute break, during which Mary and I were treated to what I shall refer to as a “smoke machine facial,” the light’s dimmed to thunderous applause from the now-packed arena. In quite possibly the best gig opening I have ever witnessed (and I’ve been to a LOT of gigs), they dropped the building-looking cloths to reveal each of the 3 band members in the middle of their own massive column with video screens on all sides, at least 6 metres up from the stage. With that, they launched straight into ‘Uprising,’ whipping the crowd into a chanting, fist-pumping frenzy. Throughout the show, they raised and lowered the bottom half of these columns, allowing the band to either seem to float above the crowd or to walk around the massive oblong stage.

These video columns were the biggest part of the set, but every aspect of the setup was spectacular: there were spotlights, lasers, a piano with a see-through lid and a rotating drum kit (not to mention Matt’s bedazzled leather jacket and trousers). But the real highlight for me was during the amazing ‘Time is Running Out,’ when they released giant balloons into the crowd that looked like eyeballs. When the balloons popped, they showered the crowd with red confetti. It was so much fun trying to hit the balloons that I nearly knocked off Mary’s glasses in a fit of joy.

They played all the crowd favorites, like ‘Supermassive Black Hole,’ ‘Resistance’ and ‘Starlight,’ plus ‘Knights of Cydonia’ in the encore, and in every song Matt, Chris and Dom played insanely well while acting like it was nothing – they’re just that badass. Their playing on ‘New Born’ was particularly spectacular, and Matt Bellamy has a surprisingly versatile and powerful voice live. In one of my favorite moments, Matt brought out his keytar and strutted about the stage playing the incredibly sexy ‘Undisclosed Desires’ (however, Mary argues that ‘Plug in Baby’ is far sexier). And Muse’s show is undeniably sexy: it’s the result of what happens when you successfully straddle that fine line between confidence and arrogance. They are extravagant and over-the-top, but they don’t take themselves too seriously, and because of that, the show is so much fun for the audience. It’s impossible to come out of a show that fun and not be entirely smitten with the band, so if you have not seen Muse live yet, then by all means, GO!

After the cut: set list and more photos!

Read the rest of this entry »

“Lovely to see you again. Hope you’re doing okay.” Those were the first quiet words of hello from Editors’s Tom Smith to the crowd at the sold-out 9:30 Club Sunday night. That may have been a tentative introduction but the band’s performance was anything but tentative. They played a nearly 2-hour set to an audience of adoring fans in love with their old hits like ‘Munich’ and “Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors’ as well as the synthy goodness of newer tracks like ‘Papillon’ and my personal favourite off ‘In This Light and On This Evening’ (released last year), ‘You Don’t Know Love.’

It was really interesting to watch the contrast of material from their first two albums made with traditional rock band instruments against the new songs, heavy on synths. The best moment of the night for me was ‘Bricks and Mortar’, watching lead guitarist Chris Urbanowicz leave his guitar behind for a moment to plug away at a synth, with Smith following not far behind to join him so they were pressing buttons feverishly in tandem. Electropop awesome sauce.

Joining the dark princes of English indie rock on this tour were the Dig, a rock ‘n’ roll quartet and the Antlers, a more fuzzed out, dream / experimental pop band. Of the two, I preferred the Dig, because they played straightforward, feel good guitar rock that isn’t showing up on American radio stations as it should. Songs like ‘You’re Already Gone’ and ‘I Just Want to Talk to You’ point to exactly what is wrong with most rock music today. It’s missing bands like this that make exciting but not over the top rock ‘n’ roll. The Dig is set to self-release their debut album ‘Electric Toys’ in America in late April.

MP3: The Dig – You\'re Already Gone

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

But it’s not like the Antlers really needed my endorsement anyway. The Brooklyn trio have a definite following in Britain, with their early March gigs at London’s Union Chapel and Brighton’s Hanbury Ballrooms already sold out. Songs from last year’s ‘Hospice’ are brooding pieces for the thinking man, somewhat challenging for the average pop music fan but worth the time seeking out if what you’re after is thoughtful lyrics with an interesting instrumental backdrop. I’ve heard them been compared to Fleet Foxes, Cold War Kids, Passion Pit, and I can see the reasons behind these comparisons, but I’d throw in possibly Beach House and Late of the Pier for good measure. If any of these bands named ring your bells, the Antlers just might be for you.

After the cut: photos and set lists.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last night we braved the rain showers, the freezing cold and the plain depressing evening and ambled along to Bristol’s Thekla to catch two bands that have been flying below a few radars of late.

First up was Brighton’s Peggy Sue. The indie folksy trio have just announced that their debut album will be out on Wichita in April, and so they’re hitting the road with Local Natives as a warm up to what looks set to be a year spent on the road. Having toured with Kate Nash, The Maccabees and Mumford and Sons, they knew how to command the stage and warmed up the limited Wednesday night crowd with some ease.

Sounding like Arcade Fire if they’d gained a few Fleet Foxes and spent a few weeks in the wild west of America with Gogol Bordello, they make a hell of a lot of noise for three people. With a wash board, accordion, and salvaged cymbals they started off slow with Long Division and Yo mama before notching it up a bit. Chat was kept short “due to a show on Monday where we just talked shit”, but they were none the worse off for it. Bluesy and lots of drums, they sound like so many bands you know (and love) and also something charmingly different. Definitely catch them if you can.

Then it was the turn of Los Angeles’ Local Natives. Not ones for having a massive hype machine behind them, they have built up a fanbase through relentless touring. They worked their way through the entirity of their debut long player, Gorilla Manor joking at the start of the encore “this is our last song – no, seriously, it’s the only song left that we know that we haven’t played!”.

So much of their set is full of anthemic, fists in the air sort of stuff, which we love here at theregoesthefear.com. Tighter than , you can tell that they know their songs inside out, stopping and re-starting songs in perfect unison. It’s almost like they’ve taken Fleet Foxes and injected them with a bit of Vampire Weekend or Two Door Cinema Club. They can also pull off the slower tracks (“Stranger things”, “Cubism”) with panache that doesn’t leave the crowd leaving for the loos or a fag break like Miike Snow’s set did.

Whilst both bands are no fresh faces to the touring circuit, both showed that they’re getting somewhere – it may not be an Arctic Monkeys rise to fame, but they’re definitely on the right tracks.

Enter our competition to catch Local Natives next week in Birmingham.

As we walked up the stairs to the main floor of DC9, the loud booming of Editors’ synthtastic ‘Papillon’ greeted us. I could tell this was going to be one great night. To be fair, Liberation Dance Party is always full of English electropop, but this time, VV Brown was in the house. To be honest, I wasn’t sure how many people in Washington knew who she was or what songs she was famous for; a lot of people go to Liberation for the open bar and to socialise, not necessarily dance or pay attention to a live act, if there is one. But I was proud of my D.C brethren for selling out DC9 and for the amazing, raucous reception they gave Brown and her band, and deservedly so for their short but high energy set.

VV Brown is one gorgeous woman, now joining Twiggy and Danii Minogue as a face on Marks and Spencer’s future adverts. So I’m not sure why she chose to obscure her face with a glittery, feathered mask. But I’ll admit it did lend an air of celebration to the festivities. Whether singing into her microphone or megaphone, beating on a conga drum, shaking a jingle stick, or playing keyboards, she looked right at home on the DC9 stage. She mainly played songs from her debut album, ‘Travelling Like the Light’, released last year, but there were some surprises. Brown asked the audience if they liked hip hop, and would it be okay if they played a cover of ‘Best I Ever Had’ by American star Drake. Was she kidding? This was Washington after all, chockful of urban radio stations. The fans ate this cover up.

‘Shark in the Water’, Brown’s upbeat love song that was supposed to be the closer of the night, became a massive crowd singalong, two boys next to me particularly keen on singing along to the chorus loudly and looking like they were going to make a move to jump on stage to touch Brown. When fans cheered for an encore, Brown and her band returned to the stage and played a song that she admitted really was an improvisation – I don’t think any of them had expected to receive such kudos from the audience. Her post-gig Tweets indicated that she was really touched by the reaction to her music and I’m glad: their set was absolutely blinding.

Editor’s note: this review would have been a lot more detailed, had an overzealous fan not snatched my notes in a fit of urgency at the end of the show. Mary Beth surmised that he grabbed the closest piece of paper – my notes – in order to get an autograph from VV. What an odd incident! Note to VV Brown fanatic: if you still have my notes, I’d like them back please. You have my contact information, please get in touch. Thank you.

On the train ride home, Mary Beth and I recalled the great songs that were played at the dance before VV Brown played, because it really was a night of English pop/dance epicness. Bill Spieler told me the complete list should go online at the dance party’s Web site sometime later this week, but I’ve included a list of the great songs we could remember. So after the cut: in addition to the usual photos, I’ve included a list of songs that were played on the night so you can have a feel for the epicness.

Read the rest of this entry »

After the La Roux show scheduled for last Wednesday (10 February) was postponed to 25 July due to the latest round of snow here, I was so worried about the We Were Promised Jetpacks boys making it safely to the States that I sent them a Tweet to check on them. Wednesday night they Tweeted me back from New York with the following exultant message: “don’t worry, we made it in yesterday!” Single gals like me wince just thinking about Valentine’s Day. This year however I was really, really chuffed because I knew I’d forget all about this when captivated by the Scottish rockers the night before V-Day, rocking out to their tunes at a sold-out show at the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hotel in Northeast. They’d played an opening slot here last October with comparatively older veterans of the music scene, Fat Cat labelmates Brakes and the Twilight Sad. But Saturday night, the Jetpacks were headlining.

First up on the night were Typefighter, a local Washington folk/pop quintet that looked and sounded oddly like Fanfarlo. This description is not intended to be a dig at either band; I just thought it was eerie for two bands to be playing such similar music, with four guys and a girl multi-instrumentalist / backing vocalist, having been put together separately but divided by an ocean. Speaking of oceans, Typefighter enjoys singing about them, as evidenced by the song ‘Ocean Floor’. Another great song is ‘Worth the Wait’, featuring the banjo and lead singer Ryan McLaughlin’s twangy, countrified, folky voice. Given the popularity of Fanfarlo, Mumford and Sons and Noah and the Whale, I imagine they would do extremely well in Britain. They’re currently unsigned but I imagine with their promising talent, they’ll be scooped up soon.

Bad Veins, a duo from Cincinnati, Ohio, played second. I’ve seen some duos at the RnR come up with some ingenious solutions to only having two members. In Bad Veins’s case, they employ a third “member”, an antiquated reel-to-reel tape player they’ve christened ‘Irene’, and Irene comes through with orchestration that would of course be impossible with just two humans. And as if having Irene wasn’t enough, singer Benjamin Davis also employs a telephone setup, so he can sing into the receiver and the resulting sound is just like you’d imagine someone singing to you down a telephone line. The backbeats are courtesy of drummer Sebastian Schulz, whose driving rhythms along with Davis’s vocals and guitar combine to make some great sounding rock. I thought hard about how to describe what they sound like – the drumming is as manic as Keith Moon’s in the Who, but Davis’s vocals on top can be angsty as Glasvegas’s James Allan but can sometimes be shouty.

Half past 11, so that meant it was finally time for We Were Promised Jetpacks, the band I had come all this way to see. I was bouncing off the walls the day in December when their first North American tour was announced. The band is so powerful instrumentally live and lead singer/guitarist Adam Thompson’s vocals are so cutting that this is not a band you can watch and simply sit and stare. There is something so incredibly liberating to singing along to ‘Quiet Little Voices’ playing in your bedroom. But it’s incomparable to the effect of the “oh oh ohs!“, multiplying the feeling a couple thousand times when you’re stood in front of Thompson, singing along with him and the other similar-minded fans squeezed into a tiny club like the RnR. Fantastic.

While stage banter is not the band’s forte, Thompson thanked the appreciative crowd for their applause between songs, and he must not have forgotten being mocked in October for being from Scotland (an audience member then equating Scotland as if being out in the wilderness with no running water) because when asked to tell a Scottish joke, he responded good-naturely with a wry smile, “a Scottish joke? Fuck off!” This of course caused everyone in the club to laugh.

But we weren’t there to laugh, we were there to be rocked by the Jetpacks. The band powered through 10 songs, with ‘It’s Thunder and It’s Lightning’ and ‘Roll Up Your Sleeves’ being major highlights for me. The set also included two new ones that might be on a new EP, but I can’t tell you for sure because it’s not on Fat Cat Records’s Web site yet, and the merch table was gone by the time the show was over and I couldn’t find any of the band to ask them about the new release. (The disappearing merch table is one of the few complaints I have about the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hotel, as I couldn’t get Miike Snow merch last September there either.) In short: it may have been Valentine’s Day, but thanks to this amazing show, I walked out into the cold Washington night with a spring in my step.

After the cut: photos and set list.

Read the rest of this entry »

Located in a slightly run down industrial area of Brooklyn, there’s not much about the Bell House from the outside to recommend it. Once you get inside, however, the venue is fabulous. There’s a cozy bar with very friendly servers open from 5pm, which is convenient if you’re mental like me and like to show up hours early for gigs. Inside the performance space, which is built in a converted 1920s warehouse, there are “25-foot wooden arched ceilings, a 450-square foot stage, and unobstructed views from any part of the room.” Three large chandeliers light the room between acts, and their playlist was fantastic (Phoenix, Yeasayer, Field Music, Fleet Foxes, the Beatles and Travis, to name a few). Although this was my first visit to the Bell House, I’m fairly sure that it would be impossible to have a bad gig experience there, and that was certainly true of the phenomenal Field Music show on Saturday night.

The first of two openers, the Mugs, are a local band who according to the barman play at Bell House so often they’re practically the house band. Featuring great harmonies and driving beats, this four-piece was very energetic, dancing around on stage through most of their songs, and had the crowd moving with them as well. A couple of highlights for me were the guitar breakdown in their third song and the song later in their set where the singer brought out a megaphone. Although the venue wasn’t packed yet and the crowd mostly hung back from the stage, they seemed to have a strong local following.  By the end of their short 30-minute set the crowd was yelling for an encore. While they sound much better live than they do in recordings, the Mugs are definitely worth a listen.

Second opener, the Spinto Band, came all the way from Wilmington, Delaware, for this gig, their first of the year. The band’s six members contributed to their rich, full sound. In all, they boast 3 guitarists (1 acoustic, 2 electric), a bassist, a drummer and a keyboardist. Their set was full of energy from start to finish, and their music was very dance-y.  While they definitely sounded like a modern indie band, something about their sound, most likely their harmonies combined with “oohs” and “aahs” and hand claps, reminded me of an earlier era. They made their set even more fun with the addition of the ukulele and the kazoo on a couple of songs. The only minor complaint I can make about their set is that it was sometimes hard to hear the vocals above the music, but overall they were a great opener, and they got the crowd energized before Field Music took the stage.

But of course the real highlight of the night was Sunderland band Field Music. They were originally scheduled to perform here in late November, but they had to reschedule because David came down with flu-like symptoms in the middle of the swine flu pandemic. They flew all the way from England (and returned the next day!) for this one-off gig because they felt they owed it to the fans and to Skippy, the venue’s booker, on whose birthday they were supposed to play in November.

In an industry that’s rife with gimmicks and auto-tuning, it was very refreshing to see the real thing: four men sitting down at their instruments to play their own distinctive style of pop music. Saying “we’re not very good at jokes,” they let the music do the talking, with just a short “thank you very much, indeed!” between songs.

Their set was a mix of about half “classic” Field Music songs from before their hiatus in 2007 and half tracks from their new album, ‘Field Music (Measure),’ due out in the UK on 15th February and in the US on 16th February. While the two live-only members, Kev and Ian, stayed on the guitar, keyboard and bass throughout the show, David and Peter Brewis rotated every couple of songs between drums, guitar and keyboards, with David even coming up front for a few songs from his side project, School of Language. The Brewises  later admitted to me in an interview that they’re terrified of playing the new songs live and are more comfortable with the others, but they seemed to have a great time playing them and they sounded fantastic. It’s a testament to both their performance abilities and the brilliance of their new material that the audience was just as into the new songs as they were their old favorites. The band’s signature complicated rhythms and intricate sound were somehow even better live than they are on the albums. For two men who have a very clear vision for their sound and control every step of the recording process themselves, it’s great that they’ve been able to find two men to play in their live band that can both fulfill their vision of the songs and add a little something special on top.

This was one of the best gigs I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been to quite a few, so I’m begging you, if you get the chance to see Field Music, then by all means, take it!

After the jump: set list and photos.

For more Field Music goodness, keep your eyes on TGTF over the next couple of weeks. We’ll have an interview with David and Peter Brewis, as well as a review of the new double album, ‘Field Music (Measure)’.

Field Music will be embarking on a three-week tour of the UK and Ireland starting on 15 February 2010 in London. Visit their myspace page to see if they’re playing near you.

Read the rest of this entry »

We Are Scientists made Washingtonians very happy last Thursday night when they stopped by the Black Cat. The D.C. gig was the second of only three gigs on the ‘Big Fuckin’ Deal Tour’ (the other cities hit being Philadelphia and Hoboken, New Jersey, not including a free show shoehorned in between D.C. and Hoboken at Penn State – lucky university students). Going along with the ‘limited engagement’ feel of this tour, bassist Chris Cain told me an extremely limited number of tour t-shirts had been made for this tour (30) and that I had snagged #26 (my lucky number even). The band have a new album coming out this spring; this and other topics were explored in an interview I had with Chris and singer/guitarist Keith Murray shortly before the show (a 2-part interview is forthcoming). But let’s get down to business with the gig report, shall we?

Opening this night for WAS were Uninhabitable Mansions, a Brooklyn six-piece who, judging by their MySpace, can take a joke. (Completely ignore the genre ‘Death Metal’ listed directly below their name.) I can see why were chosen for support: they engage in funny band member banter between songs, a trademark of WAS shows. Highlights of their eight song set were ‘The Brain is a Slow Wave’, starting off with gentle guitar crowds but then ripping into raucous rock ‘n’ roll, and ‘Do You Have a Strategy’, which was just feel good guitar pop.

Later the band made fun of their cumbersome band name, with cute as a button keyboardist/backing vocalist Annie Hart shouting out, “eight syllables of fun!” to refer to themselves and their singer/guitarist Robbie Guertin countering with, “that might be our new motto. We were thinking about putting that on t-shirts.” Just as cheeky was the band’s closing number, ‘We Already Know’, that bears a resemblance to R.E.M.’s ‘It’s the End of the World As We Know It (and I Feel Fine)’ for Guertin’s vocal calisthenics on this one. The band have an album out called ‘Nature is a Taker’ available on U.S. iTunes.

Following a brief intermission during which I met and chatted with two massive fans who had traveled all the way from California expressively for the show, the lights went down and the now-packed Cat rang out with crowd cheers as We Are Scientists as a three-piece emerged. Founding Scientists Murray and Cain were joined by Danny Allen, who Cain had explained to me earlier was on temporary loan from Australian band Youth Club. Straight out of the gate they played ‘Jack and Ginger’, a new song featuring sweet guitar riffs from Murray.

I did mention the banter between songs, yes? Well, right after the first song, a fan stage right shouted, “I love Chris!” This had the effect of causing Murray to break out yelling, wounded and in mock rage, “what the heck are you doing on the Keith Murray side? You all know I stand on this side of the stage and Chris stands on the other!” Resounding laughter all around. Another punter complaint of “D.C. needs to dance!” was met with Chris’s intro to ‘Inaction’ of “if D.C. can’t dance to this one, it ain’t our fault!”

Highlights of the night for me included ‘Let’s See It’, featuring killer guitar licks and its trademark “oh oh ohs,” and ‘Chick Lit’, the song that will forever be linked to the tonnes of wayward Pomeranians that appeared in its promo video. And then in what felt like a blink of an eye, the gig that I had been waiting for with much impatience (no pun intended) for weeks was over. In total, they previewed four new songs from their forthcoming third major album due out in the spring, and all fans in attendance including myself left abuzz with anticipation for the new release. Bring it on, Scientists!

After the jump: set list and photos.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s Christmas time and that of course means the annual Christmas party. This year as well as the work do we were invited to Radio 1’s Festive Festival at the legendary BBC Maida Vale studios, featuring some of 2009’s hottest stars and some of 2010’s rising luminaries – Marina and the Diamonds, Enter Shikari, Plan B, Simian Mobile Disco (pictured right), The xx, Mumford and Sons and Jamie T were all in attendance as Nick Grimshaw played out an extended version of his radio show.

Opening things up was Marina and the Diamonds, looking rather dapper complete with Christmassy shoulders (not strawberry’s as Grimshaw mistakenly thought). Opening with previous single ‘Mowgli’s Road’ she took a while to get the crowd warmed up, but come second song, the new single ‘Hollywood’, she was in full Florence Welch style arm flowing swing. All too soon she finished with ‘I am Not A Robot’, fragile vocals coming over perfectly. Of course I’ve been hyping Marina here for a while – now that I’ve finally got to catch her, she lives up to everything I thought.

I’ve never been an Enter Shikari fan, preferring to leave their 14 year old teen boy shout alongs to those that actually like them. However, in all honesty they were far better than expected – at times fragile vocals, at time proper stadium mosh pit sized anthems, Lostprophets mixed with Get Cape Wear Cape Fly’s social conscience – far better than I expected, truth be told.

Of course, with the whole show being broadcast live it was incredibly well prepared and things ran surprisingly smoothly – even Plan B’s pizzas turned up on time. It’s clear that the old days of “turning up and playing a record” are long gone – Grimshaw clearly puts a lot of love into each of his shows, and has a great team behind him.

The standout band for many people was Mumford and Sons (pictured left) – following on from being introduced by Greg James (in a very fetching Christmas sweater, giving a humorous intro on how much he loved the band, he’d left his family just for the session!), they provided the only proper dose of Christmas with their current single, ‘Winter Winds’, before also treating us to amazing versions of ‘Roll Away Your Stone’ and ‘The Cave’. To be honest, I finally see what everyone’s been raving about – energetic, humorous and some great modern day folk.

Cramming ourselves into the (tiny) vocal booth of Studio 4, we caught The xx treat us to ‘Islands’, ‘VCR’ and ‘Basic space’. Their album has been the top of everyone’s “best of 2009” lists, however, live they fall pretty flat, providing carbon copies of their album tracks. Maybe one to save for that Sunday night in and not a band to catch live.

Racing back to the main studio, Jamie T surprised us with a guest appearance, playing three tracks from his new album acoustically, which really showed off his song writing abilities – some great stories in his songs I need to go back and listen to again.

Finally, a bit of a surprise highlight for me – Simian Mobile Disco. I knew that live they were amazing, however didn’t expect that much from them from a 20 minute set, without their usual monster lighting setup. For one, I never realised just how hard it was for them to recreate their tracks live – disconnecting and reconnecting cables, switching switches, mixing faders – it was exhausting just watching them create their magic. The crowd loved them – as Grimshaw mentioned, if the weather continued snowing we might just have to have a lock in rave. Now that really would have been cool.

With that, I made a move out into the suddenly snow-swept capital to make my way home – It’s taken me a while to feel Christmassy, but a music festival is all that it took.

All pictures were taken by Nyree Riding. You can listen to the show again on the iPlayer until 11:02pm next Monday, 28th December 2009.

After the jump: more pictures.

Read the rest of this entry »

I have mixed feelings about the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hotel. It doesn’t have anything to do with the talent they book: I’ve seen several amazing shows there – Jack Penate / Miike Snow in September for example. The crowds usually aren’t as big or vocal (therefore the vibe’s not as great) as with other D.C. clubs, primarily because of the RnR’s location. It’s a pain to get to without a car and even if you can find a place to park, it’s the kind of place you’re worried to walk around by yourself late at night. But with the auspicious date of 12/12, Saturday night came round with a headlining gig by New York’s Phenomenal Handclap Band and I just had to be there. Before the PHB were two opening acts – unsigned Washington D.C. act Bop Beetle and two cousins from New York-by way of- Providence, Rhode Island, Javelin. I always have a soft spot for local acts that are thrust into temporary limelight as an opener for an out of town band, and I felt this for Bop Beetle. Javelin I’d seen before, as the opener for the Very Best in November at another small club, DC9.

Considering they’re unsigned and I’m thinking most people had never heard of them before, Bop Beetle has nerve to develop hand gestures to a song of theirs, ‘Permanent Premonition’. The singer (who alternated between his guitar and a complicated synth set-up) thanked two women in the center of the crowd who “brought it” and were doing the hand gestures along with him. Both duos must be given props for putting on entertaining sets despite the low number of people who showed up before it was the Phenomenal Handclap Band’s turn. Both acts were similar in that they relied on programming to make up for the lack of band members, and they both had a charming vocalist. But the percussion was different: in Bop Beetle’s case, the drummer was playing an actual drum kit, whereas Javelin’s “drummer” plays on an electric drum pad.

Of the two, I preferred Javelin, because the two of them are standing right in front of you with a table full of electronics and you’re wondering what music will come out of it all, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised. And their song lyrics are a lot funnier. I mean, who writes a song about a house cat (‘Oh Centra’) or one that’s titled ‘Lindsay Brohan’? ‘Vibrationz’ was introduced as a song about the innocence of young love and “middle school U.S.A. You know what I’m talking about.’ Yeah, I actually do. They ended with ‘Soda Popinski’, a video game-flavoured tune. I’m hoping for big things for this band and their album that will hopefully be released in March 2010 on Thrill Jockey. (And for those of you who like DIY, Pitchfork wrote an article about them recently offering to personalise a 12″ album jacket for you and will post it back to you with their next single, ‘Number Two’ inside – details here. The deadline for them to receive the jackets is 18 January, so if you want to take part, get cracking. Now just how neat is that?)

23.30 – time for the Phenomenal Handclap Band. Now I’ve written about this band loads because I really dig them. I’ve seen them several times and oddly, only one of those times was outside Washington (in New York with Friendly Fires). (I guess they must like us an awful lot!) A respectable crowd had finally assembled for the band’s last date in America this year, and the band arrived onstage to loud applause. ‘The Martyr’, with its Led Zeppelin-esque guitar work and Daniel Collás’s falsetto, was fabulous live, as was ‘Testimony’, with Joan Tick’s searing vocals. Even though we were in the middle of a D.C. winter, ‘15 to 20′, with its skipping rope-style rhymes, brought out the optimism and sunshine of summertime. The band’s encore, ‘Baby’, sung by the mysteriously/humourously named Bing Ji Ling (whose name means ‘ice cream’ in Chinese…er…huh?), is going to be their next single. The song’s lyrics of “baby / I could rule the world / with a beautiful girl / like you on my arm” is actually pretty spot on what I predict is going to happen with this band. If their star keeps rising, they could very well be ruling the world, the beautiful people in tow, this time next year. Watch this space.

After the jump: set list and photos.

Read the rest of this entry »