I’m not a particularly big fan of Patrick Wolf’s most recent album, The Bachelor – I tend to think that The Magic Position brings together all the elements that were interesting in those which came before (Irish folk, soulful balladeering, enigmatic and somewhat literary lyrics, electronica, orchestral flourishes, and of course that amazing voice) with a skewed pop sensibility that brings his work into focus in such a way that the new album (apparently the darker, more down-key sibling of The Libertine, to be released next year) appears a retrograde step. But having missed the tour for The Magic Position, I wasn’t about to miss Mister Wolf in person. And boy, was that a good decision!
If Patrick Wolf is anything – and he’s a lot of things – he is a consummate performer. Deeply charismatic and theatrical, but also with a charming sense of naturalness and spontaneity, he’s one of those musicians who makes you feel (and wish) that despite the adoring crowd they’re performing only to you. The energy he brings to the presentation of his rather kooky, queered material is phenomenal. Like Morrissey (with whom he shares the similarity of inhabiting an interesting liminal position between Englishness and Irishness, and a fascination with that landscape) he clearly inspires obsessive devotion. And, on the spatial note, the landscape in which his work sits is an interesting one – somewhere between the artificial glitz, grime and sleaze of the post-industrial urban centre, and the bucolic landscapes of the rural village and the surrounding woods, comfortingly familiar yet vaguely melancholy, even sinister. This is apparent in the stage show, with a literal image of 'the wind in the wires’ playing backdrop to a performance which encompasses three changes of costume (including a black, white and grey union jack one-piece number, and a golden vulture costume).
Live, even the most recent work, less impressive on record, is vibrant and moving in turn. There is a mesmerising quality to the show, a welcome relief from familiar the ‘going through the motions’ presentations, or on the other hand entirely artificial theatrical spectaculars which rely on gimmicks and rehearsed moves. Standouts are 'The Libertine', 'Blackdown', and 'The Magic Position' (naturally). I was hanging out for 'Overture', but you can’t have everything… Ultimately, this is one of those performances that makes you want to plaster a singer’s posters all over your bedroom walls like a naïve teenager, while at the same time invoking the nostalgia that one feels for that period – the same combination of energy, dedication and lust with melancholy, mythology and half-forgotten mystery which Wolf’s music itself evokes.
Showing posts with label live music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label live music. Show all posts
Monday, December 14, 2009
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Buzzcocks – The Forum, 20.11.09
There’s just something about Buzzcocks. While there aren’t too many ‘classic’ punk bands that I have a lot of time for (X-Ray Spex is probably the only other real contender), their songs of angsty, failed youthful romance are deeply sublime in capturing perfectly a particular moment, a particular desire, and in themselves lyrically (in both senses) foreshadowing the nostalgia with which one will look back at these times. Orgasm Addict remains one of the most archetypal manifestations of ecstatic (not to mention sexually ambiguous) polymorphous perversity in music (along, I’d add, with Richard Hell’s Love Comes In Spurts) - for a completely different version which captures the same spirit of (tender) perversion, try Momus' cover.
While in the 70s they may have been twenty-one wishing to be sixteen, from the vantage point of their early 50s, how does their music now come across to the listener? Well, for a start, only two original members remain – Pete Shelley (resplendent in a Mondrian-esque shirt), and Steve Diggle. But this tour, playing their first two LPs in their entirety (Another Music In A Different Kitchen and Love Bites) along with selections from the Singles Going Steady compilation, was not to be missed. At first, I found the performance to be a little straightforward, so to speak –the mood that many reunion tours have, a feeling that the band are fulfilling their roles by appearing on stage playing their songs, but no more. But as the night progressed, the atmosphere seemed to come together, and despite the contrast between the teenage sentiment of the songs and the appearance of those performing them (and despite awful sound quality), the performance as a performance came together with coherent enthusiasm. Highlights were the aforementioned Orgasm Addict, masterpiece and perennial crowdpleaser Ever Fall In Love, and my other personal favourite, Promises.
Ultimately, the sheer craft of the songs, how well they’ve stood the test of time, the beauty of the harmonies compared with the aggressive guitars, at times choppy and insistent, at others epic, along with the sheer pleasure of having access to this music which remains so vital, made this a night marked by the contradictory pleasure taken in energetic release, and in nostalgia.
While in the 70s they may have been twenty-one wishing to be sixteen, from the vantage point of their early 50s, how does their music now come across to the listener? Well, for a start, only two original members remain – Pete Shelley (resplendent in a Mondrian-esque shirt), and Steve Diggle. But this tour, playing their first two LPs in their entirety (Another Music In A Different Kitchen and Love Bites) along with selections from the Singles Going Steady compilation, was not to be missed. At first, I found the performance to be a little straightforward, so to speak –the mood that many reunion tours have, a feeling that the band are fulfilling their roles by appearing on stage playing their songs, but no more. But as the night progressed, the atmosphere seemed to come together, and despite the contrast between the teenage sentiment of the songs and the appearance of those performing them (and despite awful sound quality), the performance as a performance came together with coherent enthusiasm. Highlights were the aforementioned Orgasm Addict, masterpiece and perennial crowdpleaser Ever Fall In Love, and my other personal favourite, Promises.
Ultimately, the sheer craft of the songs, how well they’ve stood the test of time, the beauty of the harmonies compared with the aggressive guitars, at times choppy and insistent, at others epic, along with the sheer pleasure of having access to this music which remains so vital, made this a night marked by the contradictory pleasure taken in energetic release, and in nostalgia.
Monday, April 9, 2007
The Scientists + Howard Arkley
The Scientists rocked my socks on Saturday night - I got my three favourite songs (Set It On Fire, Swampland, This Is My Happy Hour) plus an impressive, blistering We Had Love. Quite a contrast from the last time I saw Kim Salmon, as part of The Darling Downs (with Ron Peno of Died Pretty)... they seemed to have acquired a non-original drummer who, despite her chissenefrega air, gave the music the irresistible tribal repetition which it works on - and Salmon himself was in fine form both as vocalist and guitarist.
I also headed to the Howard Arkley exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales today. Arkley's work was panned by John McDonald in this weekend's Spectrum for being formally awful (Arkley claimed that there was no irony or kitsch present in his work, either in his choice of subject or colour) - but I thought there was more to understand here, particularly considering that, since the death of the author, we needn't be guided by the way the artist intended her/his work to be read (and Arkley sounds like a typical, if amusing, tortured artist - McDonald retails the story of how, at the only major exhibition of his work during his lifetime, he signed catalogues at $25 a pop til he had enough for a fix, and promptly disappeared. He would, of course, die of an overdose).
I love Arkley's day-glo colours, his hyper-real airbrushed depictions of suburbia with their vague air of the sinister and the contrast between the airbrushing, which gives them an opacity belying the fact that they're painted on canvas, and the sharp relief of the wallpaper and pop art patterns he uses, so reminiscent of your auntie's parlour and of Liechtenstein (and there is a derivative element here, which doesn't necessarily undercut the work, to my mind at least). The earlier works, and those from just before his death in 1999, don't necessarily have the strength of the classic period, although there's a beautifully day-glo picture of the junkie's shot, so different to the usual and understandable darkness in which the subject is wreathed, and a striking portrait of Nick Cave... and I'm always interested to see suburbia taken as an ambiguous subject, without the old cliche of suburban utopia or the new cliche of the darkness that utopia hides (in the Australian context we might also think, as McDonald did, of John Brack) - one wonders whether Arkley cunningly anticipated the shiny consumer dream of the McMansion now being realised everywhere at such great cost.
Perhaps, also, this work, which transforms the physical moments of suburbia into something garishly gorgeous is speaking to me at the moment for other reasons - the joy that I'm taking in suburban moments, and in colour, the vivid green of bus-stop weeds, the electric artificiality of traffic lights, the oilslick purples and greens on the wing of the crested pigeons which my mother feeds on her balcony. And this is something which I've painstakingly created myself over the past months; but which also owes a debt to another presence, of which I won't mention anything more here, except to say thank you.
I also headed to the Howard Arkley exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales today. Arkley's work was panned by John McDonald in this weekend's Spectrum for being formally awful (Arkley claimed that there was no irony or kitsch present in his work, either in his choice of subject or colour) - but I thought there was more to understand here, particularly considering that, since the death of the author, we needn't be guided by the way the artist intended her/his work to be read (and Arkley sounds like a typical, if amusing, tortured artist - McDonald retails the story of how, at the only major exhibition of his work during his lifetime, he signed catalogues at $25 a pop til he had enough for a fix, and promptly disappeared. He would, of course, die of an overdose).
I love Arkley's day-glo colours, his hyper-real airbrushed depictions of suburbia with their vague air of the sinister and the contrast between the airbrushing, which gives them an opacity belying the fact that they're painted on canvas, and the sharp relief of the wallpaper and pop art patterns he uses, so reminiscent of your auntie's parlour and of Liechtenstein (and there is a derivative element here, which doesn't necessarily undercut the work, to my mind at least). The earlier works, and those from just before his death in 1999, don't necessarily have the strength of the classic period, although there's a beautifully day-glo picture of the junkie's shot, so different to the usual and understandable darkness in which the subject is wreathed, and a striking portrait of Nick Cave... and I'm always interested to see suburbia taken as an ambiguous subject, without the old cliche of suburban utopia or the new cliche of the darkness that utopia hides (in the Australian context we might also think, as McDonald did, of John Brack) - one wonders whether Arkley cunningly anticipated the shiny consumer dream of the McMansion now being realised everywhere at such great cost.
Perhaps, also, this work, which transforms the physical moments of suburbia into something garishly gorgeous is speaking to me at the moment for other reasons - the joy that I'm taking in suburban moments, and in colour, the vivid green of bus-stop weeds, the electric artificiality of traffic lights, the oilslick purples and greens on the wing of the crested pigeons which my mother feeds on her balcony. And this is something which I've painstakingly created myself over the past months; but which also owes a debt to another presence, of which I won't mention anything more here, except to say thank you.
Saturday, April 7, 2007
Pet Shop Boys + Jarvis Cocker + The Pixies + V Festival
It's been a gruelling two weeks of gigs, to which I have subjected myself in the name of edification and the pursuit of musical knowledge.
The unquestionable highlight was the Pet Shop Boys last night at the Hordern. I haven't been to the Hordern since my teens, but it's still more or less as I remember it - and since I was there with an absolute fanatic, I turned up at seven to get a place centre front, just behind the barrier. Now this, gentle reader, is something I don't usually do at gigs, because if there's one thing that makes me unable to concentrate on watching a band it's fear for my physical safety - but Pet Shop Boys didn't seem like it'd be that kind of environment, and it wasn't (now if only I could do something about all the people with cameras - whatever happened to good old fashioned memory?). They certainly know how to put on a show, complete with dancers, backup singers featuring the formidable diva Sylvia Mason-James, and even a giant dancing top hat to, ahem, top it all off. The thing the Pet Shop Boys do so well, and which few other bands manage, is the transition between the sublime and the ridiculous, between deep, heartfelt emotion, detached irony, self-reflexive as well as non-overtly-political satire, and silly hats.
Chris maintains his detached stance (despite a rather gorgeous yellow fluorescent hoodie - and I never though I'd call something fluorescent yellow gorgeous) behind the keyboards, while Neil, who gives off just the nicest vibe - you'd love to have high tea with him - is a still, anchoring presence, with a raised eyebrow and a half-smile, in the midst of the performance. The visuals also add a great deal to the work - I'm With Stupid, for example, which is not a favourite of mine, gains a new dimension with British and US flags splashed across a giant screen. And I got Flamboyant, my current favourite PSB track, which I'd been hoping for. But the absolute highlight was an understated, moving version of Rent.
The other solo shows I've been to, Jarvis Cocker and the Pixies, were both more mixed. Jarvis's new work is to my mind rather banal and forgettable - and seeing him live didn't do much to change my opinion on that score. On the other hand, it's Jarvis - you almost wish that he'd just abandon the music and do standup. His stylised dance moves have suffered not the slightest with age - and neither has his banter. Perhaps the most amusing moment was his interrogation as to the nature of Ipswich in Australia - which in one of his songs is used as an exemplar of a place you really, really wouldn't want to go (I don't think he quite realised the aptness of that in the Australian context...) Or, on the other hand, it could've been his interrogation of the pair of undies that was thrown on stage. And, dash it all, he's just so incredibly cute. Despite the musical blandness, I didn't for a moment regret going to the show (I would've liked some Pulp material, and could've done without the Springsteen cover - but I understand why he wouldn't want to play that, and cover-wise you can't win 'em all...)
If Jarvis was a larger-than-life personality but muscially bland, the Pixies were the obverse. Though the sound at the Big Top left a great deal to be desired, it was great to hear them - I was particularly excited that they opened with In Heaven, a cover of a song on the Eraserhead soundtrack, and I got the song I'd been hanging out for, Nimrod's Son, along with the majority of their other well-known work (although they've apparently disowned Bam Thwok, which I think is a shame, as I've decided that is actually a good song). But there just didn't seem to be much else happening - except for the dowdy Kim, who was a chain-smoking sweetheart, they simply stood on stage and played, which is something I don't like in a performance - and at times seemed fairly unrehearsed, as in the chaotic La La Love You. So, again, I wasn't sorry I'd gone - it's the Pixies, after all - but it did leave something to be desired.
And, finally, the V Festival, at which I saw all of the above and, well, the only other band I payed any attention to were Nouvelle Vague (even though they'd mistreated me by doing only a secret sideshow - but I hear they're coming back soon). Despite the utter inappropriateness of the venue for their loungey bossa nova covers of seventies and eighties alternative classics, they were a joy to watch, with their oh-so-French charm and a singer who was rather cute in that classically European, au naturelle way. The only thing I would've wished for is that they would've done some of the lesser known songs, which are my favourites of theirs - Sorry For Laughing, say, or Making Plans For Nigel - rather than a run through of the best-known songs they cover (Too Drunk To Fuck, Love Will Tear Us Apart, etc).
I haven't been to a festival for years, and though V had somewhat of an amateur-hour feel (you could tell that it's the first time it's been put on), it had a fairly laid back atmosphere - at least if, like me, you weren't drinking (the bar queues stretched halfway across the festival). But it reminded me why I dislike festivals - drunken yobbos in particular - and also of the way in which, for all my faults, I was raised with a communitarian consciousness. Doesn't the girl sitting on her boyfriend's shoulders ever think for a second that her pleasure is thirty other people's displeasure?
That aside, though, it was a fun and relaxed afternoon. Pet Shop Boys were spectacular, though I was glad I was going to the solo gig, as their set was essentially a best of; the Pixies (I only caught the end of their set) seemed to have it a lot more together, and with a lot better sound quality (which is saying something, given that it was outdoors); and Jarvis was, if anything, cuter than in his solo show, noting for example that Australian 'gobstoppers' wouldn't stop anything, except maybe a dog's arse - if it was cold enough...
So I now have, oh, two hours or so to breathe before I head out tonight to continue my unwonted live musical odyssey - not to mention what might be the last time I do the closing set at Ascension for some time... I was thinking of doing a 'greatest hits' of my closing sets, running through deathrock, oldschool industrial, and, of course, my signature eighties... but since I won't be drinking, don't expect Mickey or Belinda Carlisle. You've been warned that you don't need to be warned...
The unquestionable highlight was the Pet Shop Boys last night at the Hordern. I haven't been to the Hordern since my teens, but it's still more or less as I remember it - and since I was there with an absolute fanatic, I turned up at seven to get a place centre front, just behind the barrier. Now this, gentle reader, is something I don't usually do at gigs, because if there's one thing that makes me unable to concentrate on watching a band it's fear for my physical safety - but Pet Shop Boys didn't seem like it'd be that kind of environment, and it wasn't (now if only I could do something about all the people with cameras - whatever happened to good old fashioned memory?). They certainly know how to put on a show, complete with dancers, backup singers featuring the formidable diva Sylvia Mason-James, and even a giant dancing top hat to, ahem, top it all off. The thing the Pet Shop Boys do so well, and which few other bands manage, is the transition between the sublime and the ridiculous, between deep, heartfelt emotion, detached irony, self-reflexive as well as non-overtly-political satire, and silly hats.
Chris maintains his detached stance (despite a rather gorgeous yellow fluorescent hoodie - and I never though I'd call something fluorescent yellow gorgeous) behind the keyboards, while Neil, who gives off just the nicest vibe - you'd love to have high tea with him - is a still, anchoring presence, with a raised eyebrow and a half-smile, in the midst of the performance. The visuals also add a great deal to the work - I'm With Stupid, for example, which is not a favourite of mine, gains a new dimension with British and US flags splashed across a giant screen. And I got Flamboyant, my current favourite PSB track, which I'd been hoping for. But the absolute highlight was an understated, moving version of Rent.
The other solo shows I've been to, Jarvis Cocker and the Pixies, were both more mixed. Jarvis's new work is to my mind rather banal and forgettable - and seeing him live didn't do much to change my opinion on that score. On the other hand, it's Jarvis - you almost wish that he'd just abandon the music and do standup. His stylised dance moves have suffered not the slightest with age - and neither has his banter. Perhaps the most amusing moment was his interrogation as to the nature of Ipswich in Australia - which in one of his songs is used as an exemplar of a place you really, really wouldn't want to go (I don't think he quite realised the aptness of that in the Australian context...) Or, on the other hand, it could've been his interrogation of the pair of undies that was thrown on stage. And, dash it all, he's just so incredibly cute. Despite the musical blandness, I didn't for a moment regret going to the show (I would've liked some Pulp material, and could've done without the Springsteen cover - but I understand why he wouldn't want to play that, and cover-wise you can't win 'em all...)
If Jarvis was a larger-than-life personality but muscially bland, the Pixies were the obverse. Though the sound at the Big Top left a great deal to be desired, it was great to hear them - I was particularly excited that they opened with In Heaven, a cover of a song on the Eraserhead soundtrack, and I got the song I'd been hanging out for, Nimrod's Son, along with the majority of their other well-known work (although they've apparently disowned Bam Thwok, which I think is a shame, as I've decided that is actually a good song). But there just didn't seem to be much else happening - except for the dowdy Kim, who was a chain-smoking sweetheart, they simply stood on stage and played, which is something I don't like in a performance - and at times seemed fairly unrehearsed, as in the chaotic La La Love You. So, again, I wasn't sorry I'd gone - it's the Pixies, after all - but it did leave something to be desired.
And, finally, the V Festival, at which I saw all of the above and, well, the only other band I payed any attention to were Nouvelle Vague (even though they'd mistreated me by doing only a secret sideshow - but I hear they're coming back soon). Despite the utter inappropriateness of the venue for their loungey bossa nova covers of seventies and eighties alternative classics, they were a joy to watch, with their oh-so-French charm and a singer who was rather cute in that classically European, au naturelle way. The only thing I would've wished for is that they would've done some of the lesser known songs, which are my favourites of theirs - Sorry For Laughing, say, or Making Plans For Nigel - rather than a run through of the best-known songs they cover (Too Drunk To Fuck, Love Will Tear Us Apart, etc).
I haven't been to a festival for years, and though V had somewhat of an amateur-hour feel (you could tell that it's the first time it's been put on), it had a fairly laid back atmosphere - at least if, like me, you weren't drinking (the bar queues stretched halfway across the festival). But it reminded me why I dislike festivals - drunken yobbos in particular - and also of the way in which, for all my faults, I was raised with a communitarian consciousness. Doesn't the girl sitting on her boyfriend's shoulders ever think for a second that her pleasure is thirty other people's displeasure?
That aside, though, it was a fun and relaxed afternoon. Pet Shop Boys were spectacular, though I was glad I was going to the solo gig, as their set was essentially a best of; the Pixies (I only caught the end of their set) seemed to have it a lot more together, and with a lot better sound quality (which is saying something, given that it was outdoors); and Jarvis was, if anything, cuter than in his solo show, noting for example that Australian 'gobstoppers' wouldn't stop anything, except maybe a dog's arse - if it was cold enough...
So I now have, oh, two hours or so to breathe before I head out tonight to continue my unwonted live musical odyssey - not to mention what might be the last time I do the closing set at Ascension for some time... I was thinking of doing a 'greatest hits' of my closing sets, running through deathrock, oldschool industrial, and, of course, my signature eighties... but since I won't be drinking, don't expect Mickey or Belinda Carlisle. You've been warned that you don't need to be warned...
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