Monthly Archives: May 2015

SWERVEDRIVER live

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OXFORD O2, 22 May 2015

This is awkward.

On stage, Dearly Beloved. In front of them, NOTHING. Beyond the nothing, at the back of the room, punters. Must be a bad smell coming off that band coz it’s a big gap and it feels like a void, yet it doesn’t deter DB from hitting it like headliners. Maybe they’re used to big spaces. They are from Canada.

The problem here isn’t the music (and there’s no repulso whiff either, thank feck). It’s age. See those whip-thin 19-year-olds ready to Destroy the Void with kinetic energy and mass kickass? Exactly. Not bloody here, are they? This is a Swervedriver gig, which means that when Dearly Beloved look out from that stage, they see history: the early middle agers. Poor bastards.

But if they’re gutted they don’t show it, impressing with short multi-riff tracks, stacks of gear shifts and upfront bass that’s warmthickwarm with Royal Blood yet flanked by guitars for a proper desert-punk attack. Listening to their Enduro album, recorded down at the Joshua Tree with Dave Catching and a walk-on from no less a maestro than Chris Goss, they do not disappoint on CD either.

With Swervedriver, you know exactly what you’re gonna get: tunes and melodies roughened just enough by pedal-action, volume and distortion. Simple enough, innit? Not much looks to have changed since they were on this very stage in 2008 except that they’ve now got a new record out, Mick Quinn from Supergrass is standing in on bass patrol and everyone here is seven years balder/fatter/greyer or, at the very least, just seven years older. Adam Franklin still looks to me like he should be in Clutch, but the local rag has a different band in mind.

“I picked up the Oxford Mail today,” says the soft-spoken frontmanfella. “It had a Swervedriver feature that we did.”

[slight pause]

“They printed a picture of the Thurston Moore Band.”

Nice. Still, no-one here’s in any doubt about who Swervedriver are and for a sizeable few it’s a chance to live it up like 1995. Me, I’m just after a few of those glory-day faves at High Volume – not diehard enough to be chasing the new album, but a chance to hear Raise/Mezcal gems live and loud? Shityeah, and when For Seeking Heat, Deep Seat and Rave Down land pretty early it’s clear we’ve got a crowd-pleaser ahead. Son of Mustang Ford spikes the pace and Franklin still looks right at home coaxing mini storms from that frayed Jazzmaster, so much so that you just start to wonder and hope … maybe they’ll cut loose with a full-squall never-ender? Will they? But it’s a distant hope because tonight’s not the time. Tonight’s about the tunes, and on that front the best is definitely saved til last with a brace of Mezcal highs – locomotive surf-psyche beaster Last Train to Satansville (their greatest 6 minutes 45, no?), and the woozily muscular Duel to finish. THIS is why you come and see Swervedriver live: a Mezcal Head finale and muted hearing for the walk home. Mission accomplished.

UNDERSMILE live

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The Wheatsheaf, Oxford, May 9 2015

Is this going to be Undersmile‘s big year? Already they’ve done the Roadburn Festival in the Netherlands, and new record Anhedonia has gone top of the Terrorizer charts by bagging its Album of the Month accolade in the current issue. This, surely, is Big News, and with rumours flying that tonight may well be their only Oxford gig of 2015, there’s a feelgood homecoming buzz about the Wheatsheaf. Lotta smiles, lotta chatter.

But before Witney’s super-strength export close this Buried in Smoke event, we’ve got a support set from Essex troupe Earthmass – and with a name like that you just gotta deliver, right? But before we can find out, singer/guitarist Chris Houghton makes for the mic for a quick word.

“I know you metallers are a sentimental lot so I just wanted to say that … well, my nan died yesterday.”

Oh … bummer. ‘sheaf crowd twitches. Not sure what to do with this information.

“So this is for her. She never actually heard us play, which is probably for the best. It would have fucking killed her.”

And once first track Awake/Crisis cruises from sparse intro to bruised-up pounding, you know he’s right coz Earthmass do spacious post-metal the Isis way: clean bits, raging bits, gut-growling downtuned crunch, mebbe even a scrape of Tool’s discordant prog spook. Very nice, Earthmass chaps. Very nice indeed. Looking forward to giving that Collapse CD some heavy rotation.

But if mid-tempo riffage is just TOO DAMNED FAST for your slothmetal tastes, and instrumental breaks just TOO DAMNED CHEERFUL for your subterranean nightmare vision then you can always always always turn to

u   n   d   e   r   s   m   i   l   e .

Yeah. The pace stops here and when they step up, they say nothing. Not. A. Word. All those pre-gig smiles and chit-chat are long gone when Hel and Taz, white dresses catching spectral light, take centre stage side by side and the band prepare to unfurl Sky Burial: haunting, drowning, none heavier. Probably. Atacama Sunburn, possibly tonight’s peak ‘mare centrepiece, showcases the extremes of their expanding sound as delicate post-rock quiet makes way for scream-in horror harmonies from the depths of the grim. Fearsomely intense, Undersmile utterly inhabits its own world, locked in while we look on like cult metal Stockholm Syndrome captives. As one punter puts it on the way out, ‘There’s no-one like ’em. They’re in a field of one.’

Second that. An acquired taste yes, but no-one – and that means, no-one – does doom quite like Undersmile.

Anhedonia by Undersmile and Collision by Earthmass, out now.

More Oxford gigs and stuff at Buried in Smoke

A Tad heavy, brothers

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REWIND APRIL: THE RETURN OF TAD DOYLE

Record Store Day was the big news for April and the record shops are now getting back to normal, assuming they had a ticket to the RSD party in the first place. I put a few thoughts down meself in the last post but if you wanna chew on some no-messing wordage from someone with all the right credentials – music obsessive, full-time traveller, workaholic – check the fanatic, Henry Rollins, and his post last week for LA Weekly. Lean fat-free writing, as ever.

Best bit of new listening this month has been Brothers of the Sonic Cloth, a beast of a debut from a two-band Seattle veteran who’d not played music for five whole years until, one SoCal day driving on Interstate 805, the radio planets aligned and forced an epiphany somewhere around San Diego. The track? War Pigs. The epiphan-ee? Tad Doyle.

Now there’s a name to ponder, alongside a few others: Tad, Mudhoney, Soundgarden, Seattle. My confession is that aside from a split-cassette promo – Tad with Clutch, how good is that??? – from 1995, mes collection is shamefully Tad-less. Why? No good reason (well, student budget was probably the reason) so Inhaler, 8-Way Santa and the like are on that years-long list of stuff to look out for at CD fairs. Right now though, thanks to Terrorizer’s Feb interview, we’re here at the very start of Tad Doyle’s new era – and the future looks VERY solid.

Brothers of the Sonic Cloth turn out a primal, earthy blend of doom-rooted post metal, as you’ll know for sure when first track Lava comes hulking out the speakers like Megabeefus Neurosisus on a downhill run. Other tracks stretch out and hint at something bigger, more spiritual – check the quiet ritual summoned by The Immutable Path, or the Salvation-era Cult of Luna dynamics at play in Empires of Dust … no wonder Neurot Recordings were the Chosen Ones to cut the Brothers loose, for it is a mighty roar. Small band too – Tad guitar, wife Peggy bass, Dave French drums, that’s it. Keep track of all things BOTSC right here.

The last word in this Rewind is a word of honour for another three-piece:

WE PLAY ROCK AND ROLL

And we are …??? Motorhead. Now added to the Glastonbury bill they will surely be greeted like the fckn heroes they are, so let’s hope that Lemmy’s strong enough to pull it off and bask in a sweaty all-conquering afterglow of motorheadoration. Illness meant the great man was a shadow with sideburns at Hyde Park’s BST last July, which was a bit difficult to watch, and he’s still looking gaunt if the pics in this month’s Metal Hammer are any indication. As he finishes the follow-up to 2013’s bristling Aftershock, he’s more aware than ever of his physical limitations so there’d be nothing more heroic and life-affirming than a Glastonbury shake-up by one of THE institutions in amplified rock and roll. COME ON LEM.

’til next time!