gig review - HecklerSpray

Gig Review: Soul Rebels Brass Band @ Band On The Wall, Manchester

August 5th, 2012 By Mof Gimmers

Soul Rebels Brass Band have a story. And fuck, the white middle classes who will be fawning over this lot as they make their way around Europe, love a tale of triumph over adversity. Like the blues singers who went blind and lost all their fingers, only to grow more fingers, which they also lost, who made amazing dustbowl tales of misery, SRBB have extreme discomfort and tragedy backing them up.

Basically, all you need to know is that they’re from New Orleans and were punched straight in the gut by The Flood, left to whistle by a slow reacting government and using music to drag them out of one kind of funk and straight into another.

However, to focus on this doesn’t really do the Soul Rebels justice. It wouldn’t matter one jot if these guys just happened to be out of town while misery knocked on the door because, when they strike up their invigorating blend of N’Orleans jazz, Lee Dorsey funk and shameless enthusiasm for a good time, you’re not exactly wringing your hands and thinking of tough times.

Gig Review: Vintage Trouble, Manchester Academy 3

August 5th, 2012 By Mof Gimmers

“It’s funny when people ask me that. We like to have a good time, all the time,” said Ty Taylor, lead singer of rock ‘n’ soul outfit, Vintage Trouble. “Like Spinal Tap?” His face fell. See, Vintage Trouble is irony-free soul music. They’ve got a really, really lousy name – Vintage? Really? Why not throw ‘retro’ in there as well? Or ‘stonewashed’? – but loadsa bands have, right?

See, Vintage Trouble take their facsimile version of ’60s soul music around the world which is lapped up by those who were there and still regard it to be the best music in the world. And while you can convince yourself that to be true, there’s something missing from this crew of slick soulsters.

And that’s context.

HecklerPlay: Sufjan Stevens Live at Manchester Apollo

August 5th, 2012 By Si Sharp

Pretentiousness is something into which you have to throw yourself. Give into entirely. Not pretentiousness as in the arch cynical theatrics of someone who has simply studied how the eccentric behave, but true commitment to an ostentatious display of self-belief.

And at Sufjan Stevens’ gig, we were treated to a soundtrack to the apocalypse, songs about the inner body and outer space, and a lesson on how sound is more important than language. During one of many such talks, Stevens explains how noise is the more potent form of communication, used by the screaming baby fresh from the womb, but how language becomes dominant as you grow up.

As you read this, it probably reads like cod-philosophical gubbins but like a psychedelic experience it all made sense at the time. And unlike the meanderings of an acid-fried mind, it all makes sense afterwards as well. Why? Because we saw theory become application.

Hecklerplay- Bring Me the Horizon Live in Manchester

August 5th, 2012 By Si Sharp

During the summer if the heat gets too much, rather that buy a fan, consider inviting much-lauded Australian noise-merchants Parkway Drive over to play a quick set. We've never been cooled down by the breeze coming from speakers twenty metres away every time the bass drum is kicked.

Their career-spanning set got a reaction worthy of a headliner from the young audience. They alternated between punk-paced metal noise and sludgy breakdowns which conveniently let the old-timers do some slow-motion moshing.

There are few bands dividing people in the metal scene quite like Sheffield?s Bring Me The Horizon. Examine any left-of-centre genre and you\’ll always find the band that makes people sneer.

Live Review: Dylan Moran

May 13th, 2011 By Si Sharp

It's hard to believe that Dylan Moran is only now on the cusp of middle-age. His misanthropic character always made him seem world-weary for a young man.

His passionate but impotent feeling of victimhood, the ease with which he could see through the fa?ade of social mores and the fact that even in his twenties he showed physical signs of alcohol in a way that most of us don't have to worry about till our mid-thirties. Was he really the youngest winner of the Perrier award?

Tonight he brings his ?Yeah Yeah? tour to the Salford Lowry. After five meandering minutes he suddenly hits his stride and maintains the pace for most of the show. He offered new insights on old, if timeless, topics.

Gig Review: Dum Dum Girls & Mazes, Manchester Deaf Institute

August 5th, 2012 By Mof Gimmers

Gigs are boring aren’t they? Middle aged blokes with backpacks on throwing their arms around and singing all the words to the b-sides planted squarely in the middle of a throng of disaffected teens who aren’t sure whether to look like disaffected teens or really let loose and throw their bap and go nuts.

Such is the world we find ourselves in where everyone is too jaded to have a real good time before bands who aren’t sure if they’re supposed to be aloof or act like they’re your best friend on twitter.

Mercifully, most of that went out of the window last night when Mazes and Sub Pop’s Dum Dum Girls took to the stage in Manchester last night, providing, somewhat surprisingly, one of the most fun gigs of 2011.

HecklerPlay: Iron & Wine, Manchester Academy 2

August 5th, 2012 By Si Sharp

Samuel Beam has been making records under the Iron & Wine moniker since 2002, specialising in lo-fi, hushed, folksy acoustic storytelling, but 2007?s The Shepherd?s Dog?s full band and upbeat tempos opened a new chapter.

It was difficult to categorise (if indeed you desire the ordered world of categorisation) and took sounds from different places musically and geographically. Its skill wasn?t in its courage for plucking ideas from far-flung corners but in the casualness with which it carried it out.

It doesn't scream its influences in your face, Albarn-like. Instead it found the thread that runs through folk music regardless of its origin. You might spot calypso, west African, or dub if you listened out for it but you'd probably just hear infectious songs sung with a gentle lilt.

HecklerPlay: Interpol- Live in Manchester

August 5th, 2012 By Si Sharp

Unlike their fellow New Yorkers that broke at the start of the last decade, Interpol have run a marathon rather than a sprint.

The Strokes were the band of their generation with the sound of the time, and their subsequent career is often looked, unfairly, through the prism of that brief moment when they were everywhere.

Interpol?s long game seems to be paying off. They are almost at that safe stage where they can maintain indie credibility and healthy sales, at least for an alternative band. All they have to do is keep releasing good quality albums and they?ll become part of the rock furniture. The question is whether that's enough for them.

Gig Review: Jim Noir @ The Ruby Lounge, Manchester

August 5th, 2012 By Mof Gimmers

“What’s up with you lot? You seem more nervous than me and I’m nervous as fuck!” It’s not often someone takes to the stage with that level of naked honesty and self-deprecation who has seen success like Jim Noir.

Hailing from Manchester, it’d be easy (and frighteningly lazy) to lump Noir in with a whole host of Other Mancs, expecting him to swagger about the place and pout like a sulky school-kid who thinks he’s too cool for learning.

However, while many look to the city for the next Ian Brown or Liam Gallagher, Jim Noir is still spearheading the antidote to all that bravado and bringing along a sort of class-clown good-timery that is a shot of sunshine, straight in the arm and all over your stupid, grinning face.

Gig Review: Linkin Park, Who Cares Where It Was? It Could’ve Been Anywhere…

August 5th, 2012 By hecklerspray staff

Week after week they shuffle into the stadium. Their team no longer have anything in common with them. The ticket prices go up and up and the only thing that improves are the salaries of the players, subsidised by people who could be doing something better with the money.

Their loyalty to the brand is so intense that it blinds them to their exploitation. I've never understood why football is so popular and I've often stated that no film or band would inspire such blind faith. That, outside of the beautiful game, the fans would simply say ?no more, you're taking the piss out of us and we have a choice?.

Last Saturday whilst watching Linkin Park it gave us absolutely no pleasure to be proved wrong.