One More Time With Feeling

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SEPTEMBER REWIND: NEW NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS, AND GAME OVER FOR UNDERSMILE

September 2016 was Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds month. Not for the first time this year, loss has dominated a new work by a major rock artist who, it seems crass to say, can be trusted to handle it with honesty and grace.

One More Time With Feeling, the black and white film documenting the making of Skeleton Tree, showed at Oxford’s Phoenix Picturehouse as part of a national screening the night before the album’s release. And as you’d expect, given the circumstances, it’s an intense, almost physically emotional viewing experience. You watch Nick Cave’s disorientation, bewilderment and scatter-brain distraction as he talks around What Happened, while he and the band somehow piece the album together in the WH aftermath.

Skeleton Tree provides the film’s axial structure, its spine. Each track is performed in the order it appears on the album, interspersed with interview cuts – in taxis, hotel rooms, studio, performance space, office – with Cave, with his wife, with the Bad Seeds. Then there is Cave’s inner voice too, dropping in a first-person narrative flecked with self doubt, notes (“I must remember to be kind”) and deprecating humour.

Cave looks tired. The music is anything but. Weighty yes, but weary? No. Jesus Alone, the first track to be aired from the album, crackles with hypnotic spook while Girl in Amber drifts in and out of time. Anthrocene, meanwhile, is organic, scratchy, night-time glitchy – shades of Radiohead? – right up there with Cave’s latter-day best, and though it’s early days, there’s a touch of Blackstar in the way this album makes you feel: infrequent listens will go a long way. A week after the film, I played Skeleton Tree – side 1 one night, side 2 another – and each time I just stood and watched the vinyl while fragments from the film ran through my head, putting faces into and onto the music. Skeleton Tree might be ambient, pushing the quieter moods from Push the Sky Away, but it is not background. Too compelling. But again, it’s early days and no doubt there is more to be revealed with future plays.

Leaving the cinema on September 8th was a slow, dazed, contemplative drift back into the temporarily inconsequential, and if you’ve lost someone then One More Time With Feeling will bring it right back. It is a draining film to watch, but funny – sometimes – and poignant too; Arthur’s twin Earl appears, and Cave and wife Susie Bick say that they are ‘making the decision to be happy’, to care for each other and everyone around. 

Where does Nick Cave go next? Change was one of his themes in the film – the fact that, after trauma, you are changed on the inside, but the world outside isn’t. How does Cave the storyteller, Cave the live performer, carry on while carrying Arthur’s absence? Things must change… because Cave is forever changed.

Undersmile over

Just read in Nightshift mag that Undersmile, one of THEE heaviest of bands not just from the Oxford area but from any area any fckn where, have split. Not sure what that means for Coma Wall (good for autumn listening, by the way), but half of the band are carrying on in true drudge dread style with new band Drore.

’til next time!

INDICA BLUES: Ruins on the Shore

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CRUNCH N’ DRIFT: METALLIC STONER, IN ITS OWN TIME
Back when Pantera rode their Vulgar post-Cowboys breakthrough, a sort-of sub genre called groove metal emerged for a bit and Anselmo’s crew were very much its big-name associate, yet for all the rigid rubberised riffage of tracks like Mouth for War or Walk, not much about Pantera’s aggro attack spelt GROOVE, and definitely not by the time The Great Southern Trendkill unleashed its peak hostility sandblasting in our faces.

What’s this got to do with upcoming Oxford quartet Indica Blues?

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Skull duggery with Indica Blues

Groove, metal – but not THAT kind of groove, not Pantera’s thrashing battery. Formed from the essence of Sabbath’s Snowblind riff 17 seconds in, Indica Blues trundle out a fat line in downtuned metallicised stoner in a sludgy meter, and that’s pretty much it. No deviation, no stylistic leaps and barely a tempo shift in half an hour, their debut Ruins on the Shore EP revels in nothing more than the awesome power of unhurried riffs unfolding into more unhurried riffs.
Yep. It’s that simple.
Arms to the Sky’s opening semi-solo and ground-level chug shows off the metallic end of Indica Blues – thick yet clean with fuzzy crunch, velvet sharp, measured, anon vocals knocked way back so it all feels instrumental. Feed the Pyre follows that impassive mass with a bit more swing and a decisive end, and if Wasted Landscapes is a mite doom-contrived with its devil’s vibrato intro then the emergent spacey jams more than redeem, coming off like one of those post-Kyuss bands (Dozer, Beaver, hunnerds more) who copped an astral twinkle whenever they dropped the tempo and cut the bounce. This is the stoner end of Indica Blues, and it’s this stuff that makes the EP work – this shit could really fly if they let it.
Last track Ruins on the Shore pulls it all together into a near 11-minute meander that dissolves into a floating loose-groove drift (nice bass) for the last third or so. Dead Meadow on a Down trip? EP highlight right there, as is track #1. Indica Blues might not do avant, opting instead for mid-length runs down a familiar route BUT…it’s a route marked Slow Heavy Load, so what’s not to explore? Get your solid rock fix at Indica Blues bandcamp.

SEE ALSO Earthmass and Morass of Molasses for similarly Wheatsheaf-friendly heavy rock action, and Caravan of Whores for a direct link to Indica Blues – CoW are Indica guitarist John Slaymaker’s previous band.

Rockaway Oxford

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REWIND AUGUST: FIRST-CLASS FAIR, HARD-WIRED METALLICA

Bored with browsing worn old classics at record fairs? OK, we know that’s never true, but if you want a record fair with new-new vinyl (Aphex Twin Cheetah) as well as the old old, DO NOT MISS the next Rockaway record fair when it comes to Oxford. I went on July 30, thinking it was the usual fair in a different location, and left the place wishing it wasn’t so long ’til the next one. Mint, new and recent rock, metal and punk selections like Ty Segall, Carcass, Fu Manchu, Monster Magnet, Candlemass and Napalm Death made for a browse that dug deeper than yer average, and all genres looked well served. The next Rockaway fair in Oxford is November 26th, check their facebook thing for updates.

New old-sounds from way out

Did you catch Julian Cope’s 6 Music psyche-out? What a stellar double-hour – nothing current, all late 60s distortion and garage savagery. Most disturbing? Kim Fowley. Most welcome reminder of lost genius? The Misunderstood. Most flat-out mesmerising? Savage Rose’s A Trial in Our Native Town… recorded in 1968??? NO WAAAAAY. Doom-psyche witchafunkadelica via The United States of America, it sounds like it was recorded tomorrow. Don’t know how the rest of their stuff stacks up but have a go at A Trial… and see what you feel.

For new sounds with ancient resonance, check Hypnopazuzu, the new Tibet ‘n Youth movement between the Current 93 and Killing Joke luminaries. Freakzone played The Crow at Play and it’s a hypnotic, sweeping summoning from somewhere beyond. F-zone interview with David Tibet and Youth this weekend.

The last word

Metallica, Hardwired, new album soon, new track now. Hearing the news from out of nowhere put a buzz into breakfast that Friday morn, as did Hardwired itself. Very much in the Death Magnetic slipstream (My Apocalypse chopped with a Metal Militia fragment, right?) but slashed to less than four minutes, it’s gonna be a gig anthem for sure – in your face, no reinvention, no depth, pure pace and fury, a 2016 headliner of a headbanger. Don’t analyse it, just HAVE IT. 

’til next time!

Warsaw music tour

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Record shops: two words that make a perfect pair. Always much more than spaces that sell music, record shops become spiritual Rough Guides in any town or city but especially when you go abroad. Map out a route of record shops and you’re already exploring. Track ’em down and your footwork orients you in your temporary new land: those stores become your compass, your inter-national grid, your urban ley lines.

But you need a start point so, remembering that one of his LA Weekly missives was about a trip to Warsaw, I checked the Henry Rollins LA archive and got the name of recommended shop #1. Add a DIY search online, grab a tip from some Warsaw insiders and lo, we have a short list. Time was nearly as short as the list so this summary is neither exhaustive nor extensive, but for the muso-fan Warsaw first-timer, it might just offer that all-too-crucial start.

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Find the Muzant sign and you find nothing. It’s all subterranea, see. You gotta descend, into a basement emporium of 2nd-hand CDs, records, videos and music-related gear. Do it. Good prices, high browse potential, spot on for back-catalogue gap fills across all genres. 

Q: Where is Muzant record shop?  A: Warecka 4/6

Asfalt
By far the coolest – and by that I mean, should I even be in here? – of the record shops today is Asfalt, a retail offshoot of the Asfalt hip-hop record label. Which probably explains why it feels too cool for neanderthalian guitar excess, but it’s an immaculate find. Step in off the street and you see a black-trim cafe bar with a nightclub vibe. Good coffee. Look up the stairs and there’s the store: small, clean, new and packed with vinyl. Not much in the way of rock, and even less much approaching METAL, but experimental-ish types get a look in, there’s a tonne of funk and jazz and, of course, a formidable array of hip hop, beats and electronica. 

Q: Where is Asfalt record shop?  A: Kredytowa 9

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The online forum gave the address as Tamka Street, but Vinyl Tamka has moved to Chmielna 20, dead near the city centre. The doorway is 7-inch plastered so you’re in no doubt that This Place Does Records, and inside you’ve got a vinyl-heavy selection. Plenty of rock, prog, pop, metal, jazz and beyond, and a stack of rarities and special editions showcased on the walls.

Q: Where is Vinyl Tamka record shop?  A: In the courtyard, Chmielna 20

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I mentioned Rollins at the start, and this shop is the reason – you can check HR’s write-up here. Narrow is the word: one aisle, left-to-right/front-to-back vinyl, two-way traffic on a single-track road. Loaded with flickability.

Q: Where is Hey Joe record shop?  A: Zlota 8

For the record (sorry), these are all worth finding and Hey Joe warrants a revisit by itself, but if there was one store calling me back that day, it was Asfalt – something to do with the label, the aesthetic and the sheer new-ness of it all. To go back and plunge into some unknown deep-cuts funk or gamble on a pristine cassette near the counter just kinda felt right. 

So, we did go back to Asfalt the next day. Saturday, 10am. 

It was shut. OK, no probs, come back two hours later. Still shut. EH??? Word was that the Asfalt bods had done a festival the night before and so hadn’t made it to the store yet…

I said I wasn’t cool enough, didn’t I?

Good coffee, though. Again.

TUNELESS IN WARSAW 

Julian Cope on 6 Music

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ARCH DRUDE IN FOR IGGY POP

We’ve had some stellar radio stand-ins on 6 Music for Jarvis Cocker of late, and this week we get the Arch Drude packing the Iggy Confidential slot on Friday 22nd, 7pm, for two hours of psychedelia – a must-listen, surely. Who knows what qualifies as psychedelic in Cope’s hefty book – I mean, Sleep’s Dopesmoker DEFINITELY, though that ain’t gonna make it onto a two-hour Friday night trip – but we may well get sunburned freak outs, acid fry-ups and sunnO)))shine daydreams cocktailed with the likes of Roky Erikson, Sky Saxon, Can, early Floyd and prime Love.

Floyd and Love have gotta be a cert for the playlist surely, because they’ve inspired and named Cope’s location-free festival that’s happening Right Now, every day this month, wherever YOU are:

SydArthur Festival

Buddhist appropriation entirely intended, SydArthur is a tribute to tenyearsgone Syd Barrett and Arthur Lee who passed away just 28 days apart in July/August 2006.

As ever, Cope needs little encouragement to evoke the Cosmic Order, the ancients, the gnostics and the sha-manics in rock n roll, and so the SydArthur Festival – a festival of the mind, of the head – is now a Thing on Head Heritage. Check the calendar and note that JC’s broadcast is George Clinton’s birthday. Parliafunkadelic on the playlist?

Line all of this up next to Uncut magazine’s fine fine fine Arthur Lee/Love feature last month and you can’t help but fire the Love revival machine so an in-through-the-side-door review may be on its way v soon.

Tune in Friday, turn it ON.

(br)Exit music

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REWIND JUNE: ENDUM BLUES + ROLLINS ON AIR

Revolution blues? No way is this a revolution, despite some claims. No, it’s the referendum blues and we got a nasty, nauseous dose, but surely no such shitefest a title as Referendum Blues actually exists in song form so we might as well just stumble On the Beach, shakey and shaken, for a ditch-weary Revolution Blues by that man Young: sinister and unsettling, yet musically pure-as.

And while we’re rejecting faux claims, what about the Far-Age call for a brexit independence day? Independence from what, a consensual union that we signed up for? Fuckwit. There was an independence day this week though, and it’s an obvious thing to do but sometimes you gotta be obvious to banish the loony tunes and KEEP SANE… leap to the Superunknown and take in that low-end 4th of July chug. Soundgarden, yes. Music always wins.

Anyway… we need (a) soul to lift sunken spirits. But who?

HENRY ROLLINS, ON UK RADIO. Sitting in for Jarvis Cocker on the 6 Music Sunday Service for four weeks, he’s as pure an example of a music obsessive as you’re likely to hear and he’s got the tunes to back it up. Guerilla Toss, Ngozi Family, Soccer Team… who are these bands? And why do they all sound like they could be your new favourites??? Of course, Rollins has his inside-the-biz stories, but he also knows when he knows nothing, and it’s that counterbalance, that utter helplessness in the face of mind-blowing music, that make for some vital radio listening. You might still be able to catch a couple of episodes on the iplayer.

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Rollins tracklist: old school iplayer

Right, time to get outta this short late unravelled-by-brexit Rewind. Could have said a few words about a new Melvins album, Three Men and a Baby – as satisfyingly warped-heavy as only Melvins know how – but, as of last week, it’s not the new Melvins album any more, is it? Basses Loaded just came out. Looks like Melvins will figure pretty heavily in the next few weeks.

’til next time!

 

TESTAMENT: live review

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TESTAMENT @ OXFORD O2 ACADEMY, 19/6/2016

Track one: OVER. THE WALL. Foolhardily suicidal, or a Buster Gonad-sized show of ballsiness?

Buster G all the way, thrashers. When you’ve survived as much and as long as Testament have, there’s no danger of an old-skule anthem – a GENRE anthem, no less – blowing your load too early because you know you’ve got a tankload of classics to unearth, and that’s exactly what they do for the next hour and a half: lay a thrash masterclass on us with a line-up that almost defies the eyes. Chuck Billy front, Steve DiGiorgio bass, Alex Skolnick and Eric Peterson guitar pyro and, possibly the highest of highlights, machinist Gene Hoglan on drums… shit-yesss. Can’t claim familiarity with all or even most of his credentials but his un(s)toppable human-industrial assault on Strapping Young Lad’s City has blown my mind for nearly 20 years now, so the chance to see the SYL/Dark Angel/Death backbone ain’t one to miss. And here he is, with Testament in a not-packed O2, and their opening shot is Over the Wall. Does it get much better?

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Eric Peterson: hornthrower

One look at Chuck’s permasmiling face says it all: no, it doesn’t get much better, and his virtuoso mic stand air-guitaring tells you that he’s having a ball up there (though he still looks like he could twist your head off one-handed). As for Skolnick and Peterson… effortless displays of musicality and velocity.

Tracks played? Take your pick from any number of goldies from a lifetime in the thrash premiership…. The New Order, Dog Faced Gods, Practice What You Preach, Disciples of the Watch, Rise Up and More Than Meets the Eye span it all, while the mosh-mental Into the Pit – ‘written about the crazy motherfuckers when we started, and now it’s for YOU crazy motherfuckers’ – does no wrong. D.N.R. is, with Hogan propelling it, fearsome.

Formation of Damnation seals the night off, and if Chuck is distracted by mic issues then no-one on this side of the stage is. Formation is as rampant as everything else tonight and a colossal reminder not just of how special Testament are, but of how relevant they remain. Tonight’s gig has a real family feel about it, and at the head of it all is a class-act combo of passion, precision and bullshit-free speed metal.

Welcome back, Testament.

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ADAM ANT: live review

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ADAM ANT @ OXFORD NEW THEATRE, 8/6/2016

Are we excited about this?

Oh yeah. Just a bit a lot. Heyday pop revivals aren’t the kind of gigs I go to but you’ll have to forgive the undercurrent of gush in this review because this is the exception: it’s ADAM ANT, and the New Theatre feels like a stage set for the return of a lost hero.

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Making History

Which, in many ways, it is. For many of us here tonight, Adam and the Ants weren’t just a pop band from back in the day. Adam and the Ants were/are Pop Love #1, the very first and first loves aren’t forgotten, are they? That stuff runs deep, and the reason why those albums from 1981 and 1982 remain in your life while others don’t is because every time you played them again, even after years of exploring and branching off and out into all kinds of music, you still loved the sounds that broke through the tape hiss.

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Remains of the day. KOTWF tape RIP

And in some ways, those A&TA albums sound even better and oddball eccentric on return. With more music and knowledge packing your ears and creaking your shelves (files? clouds?), Adam and the Ants aren’t just TOTP idols like they were when you were seven or eight. They’re post-punk, digging Bowie and Roxy and Iggy but flashfunflamboyant and rhythm-heavy with tough guitars and 50s surf and Western spaghetti and storytelling bravado… not the usual chart-topper mix, is it?

Now it’s 8 June 2016. Last week was the 40th anniversary of the Lesser Free Trade Hall gigs in Manchester by the Sex Pistols, a band who supported a pre-Ants Adam in Bazooka Joe, and it’s just gone 35 years since the Bazooka departer set Kings of the Wild Frontier loose. Adam Ant plays it in full.

So the show starts with the main item, straight in without announcement to Dog Eat Dog and on through to Human Beings without banter, deviation or improv. You’ve got the tracks, what else do you need to know? That the two-drummer line-up does the record’s Burundi rhythms justice? That Ant’s voice is ON and in top nick, and so is he, belying his 63 years with ease? 

True and staggeringly true. And if the guitar overdrive sometimed flattens the subtleties of the Ants’ original, it means his band are more than suited to the Dirk tracks that dominate the second half and to me, this is where the gig starts to feel like a proper gig. Not because Kings ain’t ace – it is – but because after that, we don’t know exactly what’s coming. Even Ant himself looks more relaxed post-Kings as he leads the band into Beat My Guest. And Christian D’or. And .. fuck it, I’m just gonna reel off as many tracks as I can remember in no particular order so that you know exactly what kind of a set he’s pulling off these days: Stand and Deliver. Cartrouble, Xerox, Never Trust a Man (With Egg on his Face), Vive le Rock, Press Darlings, Fall-In, Prince Charming, Desperate But Not Serious, Goody Two Shoes, Red Scab, Marc Bolan’s Get it On. How’s that for a bunch of killer tunes after an album of killer tunes? Vive Le Rock surprises – forgotten how ridiculously catchy it is – while Press Darlings has possibly the best stickwork of the night, which might be a controversial claim given that we’ve just had KOTWF in full but with those drums and that riff, the track takes on a Killing Joke air. Never noticed that before. 

The night ends with the ever-sleazy Physical (You’re So), a reminder of Adam Ant’s legacy, post-punk credentials and alt-rock influence. Still a showman, still a maverick and still carrying a misfit aura, the joy and affection pulsing out for the band and their leader is proof that we are all Ant’s people. Wherever next for the Wild Nobility?

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Oxford, penultimate date

POP LEGENDS + POP’S LEGEND

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REWIND MAY: SHOULD YOU SEE YOUR CHILDHOOD MUSIC HERO ON TOUR?  

The Music You Leave Behind – that’s P-music, right? Pop music. But eventually, you become old enough to know better than to leave it behind because everything comes back around anyway. But when there’s a pop star – OK, the pop star – from your youth, the one you first really got into, on tour playing THE album, do you go? Do you shell out for the live senior version or just stick with album youth version? Dunno dunno dunno, so to delay things further we’ll hop to another kind of pop: Iggy.

He was on these shores the other week and if you’ve seen any clips from his current tour, you’ll see a man who looks like he’s fighting the limitations of his own body and yet, when he’s let loose near a stage, he still can’t fucking stop himself, even at this late hour in life. Crowd surf at the Albert Hall, was it? His gigs are one-man war zones, yet the reason Iggy’s out there at all – maybe for the last time, who knows? – is Post Pop Depression, and now that we’ve had two whole months to live with it, we can say for sure how great a record it is. When he hooked up with Homme last year, he can’t have known about Bowie’s accelerating endtime – not really – but in a Blackstar world, Post Pop Depression seems to know, seems to tell, seems to share. Something. About finality? Perhaps. PPD is ghostly, though deserted rather than haunted…a slow erosion, a fading print. Still got an edge though, and what makes it work is a band who feel the space (desert influence?) and play with and around it with a richness that Iggy’s solo voice – the post-confrontation, post-exposure, post-Stooges voice – finally deserves.

Anyway, back to that other kind of pop: music. Not because Duran Duran hit Oxford for the Common People festival on Saturday (even though they did), but because ADAM ANT is in town next week, playing Kings of the Wild Frontier. To go or not to go?

Sir Adam of Ant is my pop idol #1, much like it sounds like he was for Alexis Petridis in this feature,  though surely the headline overstates things a bit – if Adam Ant redefined pop, where were the colonies of Ant-alikes? However, he did own the charts and he did it with a style and a soundclash that was all his own, as did Frankie Goes to Hollywood a couple of years later. They put out albums that STILL sound brash, brave and brilliantly flawed today.

(for the record: have just put Kings of the Wild Frontier on – side 2, track 1. Completely proves the point. Now going full white-stripe for Ants Invasion, Killer in the Home, Dog Eat Dog…).

Can Adam Ant 2016 enhance the perfection trapped in those records, tapes and childhood memories? Or is it a gig best left alone?

’til next time!

Status update, Friday 3rd: ticket bought. Who am I to resist? CAN. NOT. WAIT.

GOD DAMN: live review

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GOD DAMN, SLATE HEARTS, WARDENS: OXFORD CELLAR, 22/05/2016

Bit weird. He was here a second ago – the God Damn singer, I mean – wandering around offstage, mic in hand, mixing it with the punters, and now he’s… not. Where go he? And why is everyone looking in my direction?

COZ HE’S STANDING ON THE BAR AND OVER MY HEAD, straddling the beer taps while screamo-ing a ‘nasty little song with a horrible title’ (his words, not ours. We Don’t Like You, mebbe?) over our heads. And it’s only the second track of the set.

Welcome God Damn, the Wolverhampton two – sometimes three, so let’s call ‘em a two-and-a-half for tonight – who knock nine shades of brown out of the guitar-drum format and pulverise the place, but we’ll get back to them soon enough coz tonight we’ve got a three-strong bill that’s two-parts local.

Up first are Wardens, a trio of quiet-looking Ox lads who look a bit like two brothers and a tall singer, probably because they are… two brothers and a tall singer. Tidy, punchy set mind, packed with small but perfectly-formed anthems in a Foos Manchu kinda way, catchy enough to make you feel like you know their stuff even if – like me – you don’t. The funkier Go Figure is a highlight, as is the Cobain-ish grit in the vocal. Nice work, Wardens. Good warm up.

Next on the Cellar stage are Slate Hearts, another local three-piece but now we have looseness and MOVEMENT up there, all limbs and shirts and flop-hair flying. The look might be early 90s indie – Steve Lamacq would cream hisself – but the sound is a harder blend of twisted Sub Pop-erama and Mudhoney frazzle-fry, with more going on than first meets the ear, I reckon. Definitely another one to check further.

Right then: God Damn, on the road touring their Vultures album, and if you wanna see a band put shit-eating smiles on strangers’ faces with a set that’s Holy Devoted to guitars, drums and the righteous power of unadulterated amplification, this is where you go. Vultures the album nabs some desert-scene groove and roughs it with Winnebago Deal attitude, but God Damn live are way bigger than a two-piece has any real right to be – when Thom Edwards stomps his pedal board, hits Kyuss oomph mode and ups the force of an already tidal riff, you KNOW you’re alive. Starting the set with Vultures itself, and ending with the nine-minute backporch intoxication sludgecrawl that is Skeletons, God Damn give us a good-time gig that’s loud, life affirming and just a bit fucking mental. Planet Rock Radio might well be the place ‘where rock lives’, but God Damn gigs like this are where rock comes ALIVE.