Music Reviews / Previews

‘Bring earplugs’ they said. ‘Stand at the back’ they said. ‘They’re the loudest band in New York’ they said.

Well ‘they’ get top marks for believing the hype, but they could also require after-hours schooling for a little reality, because if A Place To Bury Strangers are the loudest band in New York then the city that never sleeps is in line for some well deserved shut eye.

It may be the aural abilities of The Legion, Shoreditch’s nearest thing to an alpine ski bar, but even stood close to the stage with ears unplugged, our tympanic membranes remain intact and not even a drop of blood trickles from our auditory canal.

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“I had a stroke you know, and it’s affected me deeply,” says Edwyn Collins to the hushed Shepherd’s Bush Empire crowd. “I’m working every day on it though,” he promises, “and I’m recovering my progress. Gradually, I’m up and up.”

This last sentence is delivered with a broad smile as Collins sits on a small amp in centre stage. His report on the illness he has suffered is brief, partly because of the effects it has had on his speech, but also because he is intent on giving his audience as much of the music they came for as possible.

In reality, the short story is incredibly modest, because the stroke that Collins refers to actually left him unable to walk or talk, let alone play the guitar.

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When bands get big and famous, they tend to shun the grimy pubs and seedy back ally clubs. Instead of playing for a crowd of seven pissed old men who are more annoyed that you’re unsettling their darts night you elevated to superstar venues.

From playing horrible branded beer based academies, arenas and festivals, it’s a great milestone for any band, The Futurehead’s are no exception. After gigging around the North-East for to long, they finally got their spring bored to stardom with Hounds Of Love.

However, The Futureheads tonight played a very special and unique gig. In association with lovely tasting Gaymers cider and Channel 4, they aimed to take bands back to their hometown roots. And hecklerspray was there to see the band rekindle their love for Sunderland and play an intimate set for a handful of lucky competition winners.

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There are many things that can stir up a sense of dread at the opening stages of a gig.

Poorly-judged chemical consumption, signs reading ‘Carling only’, or The Others as a support act are a few, but a wanker in a trilby and sunglasses (indoors) is just as effective.

For this reason, the start of Wednesday’s Cut Copy gig was an apprehensive one, but this man’s presence can be easily explained.

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If you know Tindersticks, you’ll be more than familiar with the world they inhabit.

It’s a sonic landscape of occasional desolation, soothing melancholy and introspective melody, all hazed out through a 3am red-wine-and-cigarettes blurry filter. In short: if you’re looking for an album to soundtrack the million-plus hours of GTA IV rampages you’re going to be enjoying from Tuesday, you need to search elsewhere.

If, however, you’re looking for a haunting, swelling, oddly fitting mixture of the stripped-back and the orchestral, then The Hungry Saw - Tindersticks’ first album since 2003’s Waiting For The Moon, and the seventh in their catalogue so far - may just float your boat nicely.

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Fact One: The Jackson 5 don’t blame it on sunshine, moonlight or bad times. They blame it on the boogie.

Fact two: The Carling Academy are bastards for charging nearly six quid for two shots of vodka.

Fact three: Elbow are the most underrated band in the UK.  

With four albums under their belt, Elbow took their latest offering, The Seldom Seen Kid, on the road to showcase a few of the brilliant tracks that are featured on it, alongside mixing in a few older hits.

While talking to a friend who worked at the bar, she uttered the words “I’ve been told there like one of those miserable Radiohead-style bands, so I knew you’d be here tonight.”

Hmm, great that our music tastes have been pinned down, but slightly wrong about Elbow being the soundtrack to a suicidal cult's last few hours on earth.

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King’s Cross may be the organised and illustrious (read overcrowded and stinking) gateway to our fair capital for many visitors, but pitch up at the station on a Monday evening and you’re not exactly overcome with options for that something special.  

Yes, there is the excellent Water Rats venue just up the road, and passing The Scala the strains of Infadels drift out from their live show, but the area is more of a specialist in chain pubs, disgruntled travellers and tramps selling travelcards than in any kind of enjoyable experience.  

However, tonight is a little different, and the promise of a free gig at The Big Chill House (easily the best bar around here) has brought a fair crowd to the Pentonville Road. And not just any old crowd either, because picking his way through the chattering punters is Romeo Stoddart, Richard Bacon’s best chum and lead singer of hirsute harmonisers The Magic Numbers. As with all aspects of life, celebrities validate our own actions, meaning there must be something of interest here tonight.

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We saw The Long Blondes at Fibbers, York - a place they had previously been banned from for using foul language(!) You would never believe it to lay eyes on them; Bassist Reenie in particular looks like a head girl.

So, there we were, bottle in hand at 10.00 pm still waiting for the headline act to perform on a rostrum no larger than a paddling pool; tired and our feet aching from perching up on tippy toe for the last hour and a half.

This was a strange and very tall crowd: teenage boys modelling themselves on Tony from Skins, young girls trying to ape lead singer Kate Jackson by wearing ballet shoes and stripy tops, miserable loners fake-frowning for England and the odd drunk standing at the front when, frankly, they could have seen the stage from the bus stop outside.

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Jim Reid once described the experience of playing in a band with his brother William as ‘like being locked in a cupboard with somebody for 15 years’, the point being that if it was anyone else you could open the door, push them out, then kick them in the arse for good measure.  

Of course, you can’t really do that to your brother (just think of the trouble you’d be in with mum), but the Reid boys managed something similar when they killed The Jesus and Mary Chain live on stage in 1998 with a raging argument.

Unfortunately, there’s no footage of that event on YouTube, but you can find a video of the 1985 riot that the band were blamed for. It’s legends like this, coupled with the bickering of the brothers Reid, that built the bands reputation as mad, bad and dangerous to know, and it continues to linger today.

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Way back in 1979 at 33 years of age, Neil Young famously sang that it was better to burn out than to fade away. It was advice taken rather too literally by Kurt Cobain, quoting the lyric from Hey Hey, My My on his suicide note before taking a shotgun to his head, but it seems Young himself decided long ago that burning out simply wasn’t an option.

That’s not to say that he’s faded away - far from it for his fans. The now 62-year-old Young is back in Britain for the first time in five years tonight and there’s real anticipation in the air at the Hammersmith Apollo. Of course, this is a pretty hardcore crowd - the leather waistcoats and beards on display highly reminiscent of Steve Coogan’s Saxondale - but with six further sold out dates, there’s every reason to be excited.

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As we arrive at the entrance a reporter from a lesser publication, standing immediately in front of us, is struggling to convince the ticket booth lady he’s on the guest list.

“But you’ve got to let me in! This was arranged a month ago! I love this band!”

The ticket booth lady looks at him as if he’s a mirror and she’s a cat who’s caught sight of her own reflection and says she can’t do a thing. Disgruntled man leans forward and whispers something. Ticket booth lady turns around and delegates the decision to a younger lady, who further delegates it to some hidden face in the next room. A minute passes. The queue behind disgruntled man grows in synch with his humiliation. Eventually the word comes back and he’s allowed in. He snatches the tickets and makes a grizzly bear sound as he storms inside. We approach the desk.

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London’s public toilets have long provided ageing single men with a source of entertainment, and Ginglik, a converted ex-loo underneath the sharp end of Shepherd’s Bush Green, is keeping this fine tradition well and truly alive.

The Duke Spirit are playing here tonight, and this rather excellent little venue is inexplicably full to the rafters of greying rockers, nervously sipping their beer as sweaty young support punks Dead Kids leave the stage and push past them.

Far from being the onlookers at a gig by a band returning with only their second album, it feels like being magically transported to row A at an Oasis stadium-stuffer, but the presence of these obvious rock aficionados does attest to the underground popularity of the band’s first album, Cuts Across The Land.

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