Audio Journal : 16/08/2010

Source: MySpace / (c) Ali Tollervey

It is an increasing trend that when I go to gigs, it's the support that are often way more interesting than the band you've actually paid to see. For example, all three support acts at the recent Kings Of Leon Hyde Park stadium-histrionic extravaganza knocked socks off the Followills.

So too did Dark Horses, opening for Kasabian at Brixton Academy. A warm-up show for an upcoming V Festival slot, it is always a big thing to see a band that have become stadium monsters in a comparatively small venue. Despite the energy of the crowd, it failed to move me. Much. Well, unless you count making me move not just to the back of the standing area but all the way to back of the balcony upstairs. Yeah, I know, I'm a wuss. I'm really too old for that crushing and pushing.

Moronic crowd aside, the set failed to impress me. As bands become larger, the opportunity to surprise diminishes, unless you count a Bonham-lite vignette drum solo (replete with a gong) from the band's Leo Sayer-lookalike sticksman; or the way one of the songs suddenly tacked on Giorgio Moroder's arpeggiating bassline and Serge began singing 'I Feel Love' (it's the laziest trick in the book when a song has a 4/4 rhythm; yawn). Consequently the set was literally no different to when we saw them at Wembley last winter – nothing wrong with that per se, but I just think seeing them do it once (venue aside) was probably enough. The best track was the motorik B-side 'Julie And The Moth-Man' (here strangely mixed up with lyrics from Salt 'n Pepa's 'Push It'), just like it was last time.

Dark Horses were excellent. They arrived on-stage to a tape of one of the Hell's Angel security guards from Altamont bemoaning the crowd touching his precious Harley, while an insistent drone burned harshly underneath. After a couple of tracks I began to detect some healthy Jesus And Mary Chain references in the fuzzy, distorted vibe (I'd like to believe this translates to their studio recordings, but I suspect it won't). I couldn't fathom what the caped female lead was singing, but that also adds to the JAMC allure. Tom from Kasabian joined her for part of one song, singing some laddish 'ooh-ooh' sounds, and dancing like King Louie. She returned the favour later with Kasabian. The cape I could have done without; a bit too Florence Welch for me, but it did have the name of the band on the back, which helped in that part of the set where they haven't introduced themselves and you're wondering who they are. It also broke up the shades and leather of the five guys behind her.

Most songs were tense, edgy affairs. There was one that harnessed the throbbing muted groove of the Reid brothers doing their best Velvets / Modern Lovers thing; they played electric mandolin; a guy looking like Sid Vicious played percussion – tambourine on some tracks, while on others he smashed a drum with a (Mary) chain. (The latter point reminded me of a gig in Colchester in 1997 where Navigator and Stars Of The Lid supported Labradford; a guy in Navigator repeatedly thrashed a chain across the stage). Synth, deep bass resonance and fuzzy guitars all made Dark Horses a compelling proposition.

Dark Horses @ MySpace

Download 'Rose' / 'Rose Unconcious'

Audio Journal by MJA Smith : 16/11/2009

Go to: My Other Blog / twitter.com/mjasmith

M and I went to see Kasabian at Wembley Arena on Sunday night. Wembley is quite possibly my least favourite venue, a feeling that was enhanced on Sunday by public transport issues and further compounded by not being especially bothered about seeing the band. M’s a fan, whereas I can’t seem to get past front man Tom Meighan’s laddish persona or Serge Pizzorno’s adoption of every rock pose in the Spinal Tap rulebook.

All that said, the most recent Kasabian album, West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum is a great album, as are their previous two come to think of it. As a live band, they’ve obviously more than mastered the dark art of stadium histrionics, which I often find irritating, but you have to concede they do it very well. So it’s fair to say, once I’d got past Wembley’s consistently terrible sound and the band’s onstage aloofness, I was really, really impressed… eventually.



The band arrived on their ephemera-cluttered and asylum-themed stage with the ‘Underdog’ B-side ‘Julie & The Moth-Man’, an upbeat crowd-pleaser which betters a number of tracks on West Ryder. The trouble was that the song packed such an instant sonic punch and required so much energy from the band that it took them several songs to get anywhere close to that song’s impact again. Consequently the single ‘Underdog’ fell flat, as did ‘Where Did All The Love Go’, one of my favourite tracks from the album. All was well by the crowd-sung coda of the anthemic encore track ‘L.S.F. (Lost Souls Forever)’, which carried on out of the stadium, into the Underground station and probably all the way to Baker Street. Even The Mighty Boosh’s Noel Fielding put in a typically creepy, elastic-limbed performance to a rapturous audience reception.

That reception was rightfully not extended to the second support act, Reverend & The Makers, a band who seem to rely on their front man’s aggressive, crowd-baiting arrogance and drunk-bloke-on-a-night-out posturing in the absence of a clear sonic identity. I wouldn’t say that their songs were necessarily bad, and they certainly seem keen to mine the same cocky electro-rock seam as Kasabian, but in comparison they are undoubtedly a much more mediocre offering. That, combined with the front man’s sub-Gallagher attitude and the skinny girl who seemed to be performing some sort of trite exercise routine behind her keyboards, and you get a band that will always be second on the bill.

On the train this past week I’ve listened to Grinderman’s eponymous debut. Grinderman is essentially a Nick Cave side-project, featuring a slimmed-down Bad Seeds and Cave himself on guitar for the first time. Described by Esquire magazine as ‘one of [the] five best mid-life crisis albums‘, the sound of Grinderman is the closest the latter-day Cave has managed to get to reclaiming the ur-punk nihilism of his earlier band The Birthday Party, the overall sound being one of atonal thrashing and noisy blues. My favourite track is the wild garage rock assault of ‘Honey Bee (Let’s Fly To Mars)’ with insectoid sibilant rasps from Cave in the style of The Cramps’s sadly-departed Lux Interior on the similarly bugtastic ‘Human Fly’.



Tom Waits’s Asylum Years was a weekend purchase, and provides my first immersion into the barrel-aged jazz torch songs of Waits’s seventies output on Asylum Records. Tom’s vocal sound is one that initially made for uncomfortable listening until I finally cottoned on to his Louis Armstrong-esque depth and tone. It is truly for artists like Waits that the oft-misused term noir was designed for, his emotionally-wrought songs clashing effortlessly with nocturnal tales of schlepping round New York’s seediest neighbourhoods, while all along you feel that a glass of bourbon was never far from Tom’s microphone stand. Next stop, Swordfishtrombones.

Magazine cover CDs are usually put together with a slapdash, unit-shifting mentality, but not The Velvets Revolution compilation given away with this month’s Uncut. The CD consists of fifteen artists supposedly influenced by The Velvet Underground and for once – with probably one exception from Espers – the tracks really do capture the spirit of the band Uncut are trying to draw comparisons with. It’s worth buying the magazine anyway for the profile and focus on the band, but the CD’s tracks from the likes of Suicide, Loop and the Brian Eno / Phil Manzanera project 801 all evidence the wide-ranging impact the Velvets have had on modern music, whether that be dirge-like scrapings (Fursaxa), motorik ‘Sister Ray’-inspired punk (Thee Oh Sees) or genteel Nico / Moe Tucker balladry (Hope Sandoval & The Warm Intentions).

Audio Journal by MJA Smith : 20/07/2009

Albums listened to on the journey to Cornwall we made recently.

Florence + The Machine: Lungs

I can sum up my thoughts on this album in just one word: hype. I tend to have an aversion to anything that's critically acclaimed by all quarters as it just seems too good to be true, and Lungs - so named because Brit-award winning Florence is obsessed with them; weird - is no exception. I just can't work out what all the fuss is about.

Florence's voice is too shouty for my tastes (it reminds me of the comparatively genteel, and infinitely preferable, Beth Orton only through a megaphone) and the sporadic use of glissando harp reminds me of Enya.

The track 'Howl' and the opener 'Dog Days Are Over' are pop highlights, but I'm at best indifferent on the rest. I'll conclude using a quote from the song 'Swimming': 'Your songs remind me of swimming / But I can't swim anymore.' In other words I've tried to like this, really I have, but I can't be bothered to try any longer as it's too much like hard work.

Albert Hammond Jr.: ¿Cómo Te Llama?

I guess I could look up what this album's title means fairly easily but I can't be arsed. Instead I'll surmise instead that it means 'What do I do next now that it looks like my band, The Strokes, are on a lengthening hiatus?'

The second album from guitarist / beardmeister Hammond Jr. is a much less instant affair than his debut Yours To Keep, but it's certainly a grower. Tracks like the quiet fuzz rock of 'Rocket' or the poppy, preppy 'GfC' prove once again that Hammond Jr. is much more than the long-faced dude next to Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas.

The version I have includes four live tracks, three of which are taken from his debut and sadly point to the fact that those songs were somewhat better crafted than these. Still, in the absence of another Strokes album, this will have to suffice.

Kasabian: West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum

If I was baffled by the Albert Hammond Jr. title, I am yet more confused by the title of Kasabian's third album. I've tried really hard to detest Kasabian - anything that is likened to Oasis, a band I've always disliked, is always going to get my goat - but actually can't deny that they're excellent, and this new album abundantly confirms it.

Arguably a much more consistent affair than their second, and only the briefest traces of the instrumental excesses (also known as 'filler') from their debut remain in the track 'Swarfiga', probably the weakest song on the entire album.

I'm a big fan of this album's loud, stompy numbers - 'Where Did All The Love Go?', 'Vlad The Impaler' and the glam-influenced single 'Free'.