Monday 20 November 2017

Brix and The Extricated @ Oslo, London, 3rd November, 2017

My 5th Brix gig! She's a legend of The Fall. Backed with other revered former members such as Steve and Paul Hanley, the band just gets mightier and mightier.

I had a different song from Brix and the Extricated's first album in my head each day in the week leading up to this, and the week after. It's an outstanding collection of new songs, livid with grinding bass and alive with the powerfully confident vocals and surefire lyrics of Brix.

Old Fall songs are in the mix live - but just three make the album: LA, Feeling Numb and Hotel Bloedel. All of which, Brix co-wrote or wrote. Hotel Bloedel was actually the first song Brix wrote - before she even met Mark E Smith. It was the song he first heard that inspired him to call her a "Genius" and invite her to join the band - when she played him a tape of it in his car one night, after they met in a bar, post-Fall-gig. So any detractors who think The Fall is all about Mark E Smith and his ego can do a runner. Brix is a talented component of The Fall past, and a remarkable force right now, on stage and performing once again.

She'll draw you in with her hectic vocal delivery, all full of intent and infused with a smashing passion and defiance.

Something to Lose has a Fall clatter intro and bursts into a percussive, driving grind, Brix carefree and singing to us directly. Steve Hanley's bass playing is obviously an almighty part of the force of the band too.
Damned for Eternity and Pneumatic Violet are catchy as hell. And Brix's persona as frontwoman doesn't need to convince anyone. She asserts her vocals half-rap style, strutting around the stage, here a punch to the air for emphasis, here a kick to emphasise her words.

I love her new t-shirt that suggests a double-meaning: LIVE.

Perhaps the best moment comes as Siobhan Fahey - one of her old pals in pop - joins the band on stage to duet with Brix. If a member of Bananarama singing Totally Wired kitted out in glitter is any Fall fan's idea of crossing a line - bring it on. Brix and Siobhan are having a ball, reeling off the lines normally ranted out by Mark E Smith. It feels like necessary defiance, rejection of the bullshit notion of only men being allowed to own guitar music and that it must be done SERIOUSLY!

But that's a fun gig climax, when everyone's clearly had a few. It's not to be forgotten that Brix is a songwriter to be taken seriously and in her own right. I celebrate every gig, every time she sings out and crushes all the times women were never afforded equal respect and the chance to take centre stage with guitars. Brix is brilliant, and bring on her rightful recognition in rock stardom.

Penny Pepper, author reading @ The Dublin Castle, Camden, 1st November, 2017

Penny Pepper's memoir First in The World Somewhere is a must-read book, written in impassioned fashion about all the awakenings lent to her from punk, London, sex. All notions of living a life defined or confined by a disability were vehemently rejected. She lived independently with her partner in crime, Tamsin, performed gigs, wrote erotica, went about everything on her own terms. As she pointed out, if punk was about breaking down barriers, it had to be inclusive of disabled people.

On this Rock n Roll Book Club evening at punks' favourite the Dublin Castle, she delighted us with anecdotes, confessions, poetry. Sat alongside a beloved, autographed image of Morrissey which is framed and sat atop a lacy tablecloth (as he'd wish), she tells us about their letter exchanges, and how she overcame her shyness by becoming the singer and writer Kata Kolbert.

We get the privilege of hearing some of her songs recorded in the early 90s, along with Smiths favourites and punk and new wave classics. Penny describes her own songs as "punky, folky pop."

Penny rips into a poem called Fucking Special, where she slams the idea of having "special" schools, and the rest of it, as a disabled person. It's an incredible, powerful moment.
She reads choice pickings from her autobiography, and chats with fellow author and Smiths devotee Julie Hamill about how letter writing transported her away from the misery of her home life as a teen. She admitted to building up a "tense obsession" with Morrissey, recognising herself in his lyrics: "If the people stare, then the people stare..." She was used to being stared at.

She said how everything he said made her feel understood, singing about being an outsider, and toeing the line against Thatcher in grim 80s Britain. He told her she wrote beautifully, sent her rare vinyl - perhaps aptly, it was Barbarism Begins at Home. And Moz even wrote her a happy birthday greeting in green crayon once! He once invited her to a Royal Albert Hall gig by the Smiths, offering her "every kindness and assistance" - which was all great, sitting in the special box seats, until she could not get out at the end...

Julie has some personal messages for Penny - including one from the once editor of Jamming! magazine. She'd written to him in the 80s, contesting that if the publication was really about "breaking down barriers," as its strapline claimed, that ought to include disabled people getting access to gigs. Tony Fletcher's message to Penny tonight read: "Jamming provided you with a soapbox - but you're the one who stood on it."

Her memoirs were based on her personal diaries of the time - influenced by Anais Nin! Great to hear that Penny's diaries have now been placed in the National Archives.

She writes in her book about feeling imprisoned, stuck at home with her parents, due to having still's disease from birth, which affects her joints and means she uses a wheelchair. In those days, she says, if you were disabled, you either lived with your parents or in a care home. She demanded independent living and got it, describing how she and her friend Tamsin - also disabled - had "fire in our bellies" and wanted to live just like others in their 20s, drinking vodka, partying, having boys over, cooking for themselves.

And, when it came to writing, she says it took her a long time to realise that she had as much right as anyone else to do so - and it's the same with her having a sexual identity. She hates media perceptions, how biased and damaging they are.

"How I am, how I was - I was loved. It took me a long time to get there," she says.

Hear snippets of Penny reading on Unbound publisher's website.

Thursday 16 November 2017

Desperate Journalist @ The Garage, London, 10 November, 2017

A second Desperate Journalist gig in London within a few weeks of the last. I grabbed the chance! Just a 30-minute set, which left me hoping for an encore, but it was perfectly delivered - in the usual crisp, shiny indie style,.

Why Are You So Boring? continues to sound like an anthem. Lacking in Your Love, epic as ever with its crepuscular, swirling guitar notes winding around dreamily, all hazily reminiscent of This Twilight Garden by The Cure.
Resolution sounds better with every live performance, or maybe it's just grown on me as another indie pop hit single sounding success. Christina burst in with further pop aplomb.

Great to be down the front, singing along and enjoying the splendour of it all.

From my spot, I didn't get the whole band in the photos, but I thought I'd include them anyway for the lights and the pop stariness of the three quarters of the band I did capture under pink and green dazzle.
All the chorus pedal guitar riffs are still ringing out in my ears and I'm full of adoration for this band.

Slotface @ The Cellar Bar, Oxford, 23rd November 2017

Norwegian indie-rock act Slotface are part roaring Nirvana-style grunge guitars, part careful string-picking, melodic indie pop - and it works a treat.
Haley's vocals are rasping, growling at times, but give way to gentler, more thoughtful moments. Scandinavian indie-pop has been known to be incredibly marvellous over recent decades, but it's mainly been led by Sweden, what with the gigantic splendour of Labrador Records leading the charge with the Radio Dept., The Shout Out Louds, Sambassadeur, and more. The rockier, heavier end of things has probably been best represented by the part-Danish Raveonettes, but I'm open to hearing about more bands I've missed along the way.
It's welcoming, refreshing to hear some new, young upstarts from Norway, I'd say. Plenty of highs in tonight's basement bar gig. The Cellar Bar is a trove of a venue and has just recovered from threats to its future, so tonight feels like a celebration and we're celebrating in other ways with a special occasion around this date being the reason for our trip to Oxford city, and this very gig. Note that, please, Oxford City Council - small music venues bring in tourism too !
One highlight had to be seeing all the young fans at the end of the night, crowding round singer Haley at the merch stall, telling her how brilliant the band's performance was. Towards the end of something like a 50-date tour, those must've been warm and wonderful words. I also liked being reminded of the years I spent approaching bands like that, nervous, young, in thrall and praise. Long may that all live!

Desperate Journalist @ The Dome, London, 19th October, 2017

A Fierce Panda Records bop with one of Britain's best indie bands of the day.

I hadn't been back to the Dome in Tufnell Park since my indie-rock student dancing days of the late 90s when they had Loony Tunes night! It's a great, medium-sized venue with a friendly air, and suited Desperate Journalist well.

Me and a friend burst into the venue just as Young Romance were tearing into their instantly anthemic Wasting Time. I was reeled in right away by the pounding Jesus and Mary Chain stand-up drumming, melodic synths and guitars swirling to perfection. 

The comparison of singer Claire's vocals to Kate Bush is easy and true, the high pitch pop and light delivery. 

One of the best moments comes through with the persistent refrain: 'I don't want a love like this anymore / No, I don't want a love like this anymore!' followed by 'Get out, get out / Be on your way.' More in the melody and emotion than anything, so immediately anthemic, Danceable bliss!

They are, quite simply, fabulous, and I have lacked the nous to find them up to now. Album was instantly bought, and I greatly anticipate the second one that's currently being recorded, along with a 2018 spent gadding about watching them lots!
Desperate Journalist have been at the uppermost end of my list of favourite, emerging, young indie bands since I caught them at a nascent gig supporting Six By Seven in 2013. Many a gig, CD, badge, and t-shirt from the band has been snapped up eagerly by me since. I went onto to see the band again within a couple of weeks of this gig, as I clamour at any opportunity.

Since I've not written about the band on here just yet, I need to point out the shiny layers of Cure and Smiths influences - hypnotic guitars all atmospheric and emotive, aching, impassioned vocal deliveries and the most thoughtful and lyrical song words I've heard from a band in quite some time.
The melodies are entrancing, Cure-perfect with vocals delivered in the most Morrissey-idolising way - sometimes drawn out, always with meaning, emotional emphasis, intent - but still Jo Bevan's own style with it all. There's also the added kick of Manic Street Preachers' rock bluster, epicness of Suide, and other British rock influences both musically, lyrically, and in the band's star-like garb and cosmetics. Now that I'm aware that Jo is in the premium Duran Duran tribute band, Joanne Joanne, I can also pick up on 80s synth-op influences more.

On stage, Jo and her band are heroic. They ought to become massive any day now. They've been working away, and their second album advances much of the qualities of their first, in catchiness,  delivery, production, everything. The strength of the musicianship has reached an ideal.
I love the emphatic singing, the way Jo adorns the mic to her, wire winding and close, so the music becomes a meaningful appendage. She sings with power and strength. She sings with Moz-like tremulousness. 

The newer songs feel more tender at times, and many are more forthright in their outright melody, with Why Are You So Boring an all-out pop hit, if you ask me.

All a bit glorious and special - onwards to further brightness they stride.