A bit of Sunday folk – Bandstand Busking for Halloween survivors

Be it madness in Manor House or not, once Halloween’s done and dusted we’ll all be in need of some Sunday goodness, the pure and straight kind. And here’s an ample reason to stroll past the burnt out pumpkin husks, disgarded masks and green bloodstains that wreaked havoc mere hours ago: Bandstand Busking is back for its latest installment.

Bandstand Busking involves pretty-sounding bands playing on pretty London bandstands.  Where once these circular stages held countless shows, now most lay ignored and unused.  BB changes this, persuading up-and-coming folsky musical acts to play a few acoustic songs to a sleepy Sunday audience. The atmosphere is cordial, and quaint touches abound – blackboards, speeches, nice hats, even smiles…

There are two performers this week: first up, Sleeping States are a Bristol fivepiece centred around main man Markland Starkie (the kind of name where you just have to be famous).  Long buzzworthy but somehow never quite making it, they play mellow, hot-water-bottle folk with a pleasantly grainy feel.  Guitars and background arrangements throb along as Starkland’s soft, graceful vocals soothe like a cool breeze on a hot day. The lyrics are especially good, painting elegant pictures, and a Bandstand Busking show should offer the perfect chance to be enchanted by them.

Following next are The Twilight Sad, one of the brigade of braying Scottish epic-makers out there at the moment.  More straightforward than Glasvegas, this is intense, sublime rock: brooding strings fretfully follow James Graham’s portentous, oh-so-Scottish vocals as he builds up to the next peak, each song drenched in despair. This is a man who’s suffered in life, and he’s not afraid to tell you about it.  Quite how The Twilight Sad’s morbid sound suits the glare of a Sunday afternoon remains to be seen – but it could be utterly perfect. 

Bandstand Busking
2pm, Sunday 1 November – Northampton Square, Finsbury/Clerkenwell (map) (info)

Sleeping States on MySpace
The Twilight Sad on MySpace

MP3: Sleeping States – Gardens of the South (zSHARE)
MP3: The Twilight Sad – Reflection of the Television (zSHARE)

London’s Halloween alternativa: Manor House warehouse parties

Halloween seems to become a bigger deal with each 12 months that goes by in London.  This year there are so many balls, raves, parties and promotions that you’ll do well to move without elbowing a fellow ghoul or knocking over a zombie’s zombie.  All well and good – or evil – but the real scare is unwanted: the cost of these nights tends to be truly devilish.

Here’s a very cool alternative: the return of the little-known Manor House Warehouse Party (become a fan to guarantee entry).  Hosted by three trendies who live above a warehouse space on a back road off a back road off a back road off Seven Sisters Road, these combine a house party vibe with live bands and intermittent DJing, the crowd often spilling outside onto the wide, faceless street. The parties cost a piffling £3 and are populated by the most scenic scenesters. 

For this latest edition, Halloween costume is optional.  Drinks are available, but the best advice is to bring your own.  One final word to the unwise/undead: the parties tend to get VERY hot, so dress light.

Succeeding cocknbullkid as this weekend’s headline act are the excellent Fenech-Soler, providers of exciting electronica-pop.  The vocals (occasionally Coldplay-esque – good spot by The Music Ninja) blur high and low, male and female, and the pace veers between come-down, and GET UP!!!.  It’s a lot synthy, a bit indie, somewhat bedroomy and very warehouse-y. (17 Overbury Road, http://www.multimap.com/s/OCgbxhbM)

Incredibly, given Overbury Road is scarcely 100m long and filled with around a dozen buildings, there are other parties there on Saturday.  The even-less-frequent Spatchcock nights return for another installment; I’m not sure about entry costs, but again drink is cheap.  Halloween cossies are essential this time, though.  Performers include Astrohenge and The Exploits of Elaine. (21 Overbury Road, http://www.multimap.com/s/OCgbxhbM)

I’ve no idea about the other parties, but they won’t be hard to find if you’re there anyway.  I really recommend going - filled with pretentious pricks these warehouse parties may be, but they nonetheless offer a very distinct Saturday night option.  And I defy you to feel elated at seeing a quiet suburban backwater be suddenly filled with vampish youths.

MP3: Fenech-Soler – The Cult of Romance (zSHARE)

Singers with drums – it’s officially a trend!

What is it these days with singers playing a drum?  It’s a definite trend (SOIWT! being such a modish, style-setting, Vogue-advising and super-kool blog, I’m officially permitted to make these sorts of industry-sweeping, analytical comments).  Just as I’d got used to 75% of singers pointlessly tapping a tambourine, too.

The latest and highest-profile case of drum flu came this week in America, as London’s own Florence & the Machine assaulted a poor percussion during her nervy rendition of Kiss With A Fist on David Letterman’s Late Show (yep, she’s made it) - follow the video link below for proof.  Previous outbreaks of this pandemic include Fanfarlo at Field Day and Efterklang at Bestival, although in this case the disease is at an unusually advanced stage, with all members of the band playing all instruments, including the mike-side drum, in a sort of demented musical ferris wheel.

It seems a particular pose is needed, too.  Instructions are thus: 1. lean forward approx. 45º degrees; 2. hit the drum in a dandyish-but-intense way, keeping to a simple-as-piss rhythm, preferably fast – if only arm is used, leave the other one hanging somewhere eclectically; 3. nod your head far too often; 4. move your hips up and down (and feet if possible), ideally to suggest that you’re made of elasticated rubber; 5. close your eyes and look generally gaga and intense, as if you are now part of a remote African tribe in Togo.

Now, there is a precept here: Don Henley and Phil Collins were both marvellous talented drummers and singers.  Chris Cornell’s also been known to leather a cymbal or two.  But these are are genuinely two-talented individuals; not bored bellowers who want to do something with their hands.  Because that’s my theory, anyway.

I can almost hear the (rhythmic) patter of feet as the Drummers’ Union forms a picket line outside The Lead Singers’, er, Union, and demand that their skillset not be mocked by these amateur tappers afront the stage.  “If yer not singing, SHUD UP”, they yell, drumsticks thwacking around threateningly.  Dancing around or gesticulating: these are fairer and worthier pursuits of crooners during instrumental sections.  But to mock a man’s (or woman’s) livelihood – well, that’s just not cool.   (Unlike SOIWT!, of course)

Have I missed anyone?  Has this actually been lasting for years?  Am I a frigging genius?  Please write comments and tell me!

MP3: Florence & The Machine – Kiss With A Fist (zSHARE)
MP3: Florence & The Machine - Drumming Song (zSHARE) (see what I did there?!)

Deptford’s finest – Tapetheradio and Officer Kicks

Deptford was famously tipped last year by a New York Times and Guardian travel writer to be London’s most happ’ning area.  It also has a depth of bloggers and some trendy-wendy bars.  And now it has what every up-and-coming enclave needs: a decent musical scene…

-TAPETHERADIO
The new kids on the block.  An unsigned trio,  Tapetheradio peddle a full-blooded, gentlemanly kinda rock, full of majestic riffs, burly basswork and passionately-bayed choruses.  There’s something very elegant about the stuff - not especially unusual or beguiling, nor with very complex lyrics, but immediately soothing on the old ear.  With a support slot with Athlete booked and four very solid songs on a sparse MySpace page, playlist duty for Absolute Radio awaits like a insatiable congestion charge.

Live dates: Fri 30 October – Riverside Studios, Hammersmith; Mon 2 November – The Fly, St Giles
Tapetheradio on MySpace
MP3: Tapetheradio – Save A Life (Artwork remix) (zSHARE) (all I could find, but quite good)
Buy: Tapetheradio’s Save A Life here.

- OFFICER KICKS
Faster, giddier and gladder than TTR, Officer Kicks are a few waves ahead of their fellow Depters by virtue of Bestival shows, Q Magazine acclaim, a record label being bagged and a play of that most laddish of programmes, Soccer A.M.  It’s appropriate: theirs is a shouty, scurrilous rawk sound, bristling punk sensibility and an “us & them” mentality. Guitars whine and drums throw flashy tantrums; such mayhem feels a mite predictable to my fussy noise-receivers, but I’m certain many will like it…

Live date: Thurs 26 November – The Monarch, Camden
Officer Kicks on MySpace
MP3: Officer Kicks – Automatic (zSHARE)
Buy: Officer Kicks’ Six Grand Plot here.

The Boy Least Likely To

Here’s a rare piece of gentle ambience from the northern wilds of the UK, an area more renowned for grandiose/grumpy/grandiose-and-grumpy rock rousers.  Comprising Peter and Jof, The Boy Least Likely To sing about pajamas, porches, balloons, lemonade and Spiderman in fey, enchantingly childish ditties about mundane episodes.  Jof’s playful vocals float over a background of woodwind, Peter’s folksy guitar and tootling electronica reminiscent of CBBC shows – those about robots and talking trains, rather than papier maché volcanoes. 

I suspect the daintiness has a sell-by limit, whereafter it becomes intensely irritating, but for now, for me, it’s joy unconfined at the mo.  EVERYBODY TOGETHER: I’m glad I hitched my apple wagon to your starrrr……. (tra la la)

As comments on the MySpace page rightly observe, there’s something very anorak-like and Bell & Sebastian-esque about all this.

The Boy Least Likely To on MySpace The Boy Least Likely To – A Balloon On A Broken String (zSHARE)
Buy The Boy Least Likely To’s music here.

MP3:

New London music – The Rifle Volunteer

Ahhh – with the nights truly drawing in, chill winds blowing, pumpkins being sculpted and fireworks starting to decorate the London skies, it’s definitely the season for some warm, wholesome musical nourishment.  And here, right on cue, are The Rifle Volunteer.  Based in Islington, their rich, lustrous songs are perfect for evenings under the blanket in candlelit rooms, a mug of tea close by and a half-written love letter freshly abandoned, never to be finished.  With two guitars and a bass lending powerful prangs and keys plugging the gaps, this is a sombre rock sound: equally understated and epic.   Right now, with moods darkening as quickly as days, such sonic Xanax is precisely what’s needed.

If you are tough enough to brave the chill winds and leaf showers, The Rifle Volunteer are launching debut single End Season with a show at the Boogaloo next month.  A date at the Relentless Garage follows in December.

Live dates:
Thurs 19 November – The Boogaloo, Highgate (Facebook event page here)
Tues 15 December – The Relentless Garage, Highbury

The Rifle Volunteer on MySpace

MP3: The Rifle Volunteer – With Footsteps (zSHARE) – kindly provided by the band, thanks guys!
Buy End Season here.

Tickets on sale Weds morning for “intimate” Florence & The Machine gig

I remember watching Florence and her then machine with about 50 other revellers in  Black Gardenia a few years ago: it was intimate and she was largely unknown, although the talent was obvious.  Those days are long gone now, with FloMa  selling out Shepherd’s Bush Empire and making adverts for o2, but here is perhaps one last chance an exclusive and cosy show.

On her website and MySpace page today, Florence announced she’s to play The Tabernacle on November 27, with “special guests”.  The show’ll be part of the NME Calling series, and is even described as “intimate” by the rousing redhead (or by whoever wrote the copy, anyway).

Most importantly, tickets for the gig go on sale at 9am this Wednesday, the 28th of October.  Nowhere does it say where, but safe bets would be either Florence’s aforementioned website (advise signing up in advance) or The Tabernacle‘s own page.

Live date
Fri 27 November – The Tabernacle, Westbourne Park

MP3: Florence & The Machine – Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up) (zSHARE)

London Live Dates – incl. Nneka, John Maus and Broken Records

My latest collection of forthcoming London concerts that merit investigation:

John Maus
Hawaiian-based and blessed with a boomingly low voice, John Maus was never going to just fit in.  Be it the atmospheric brood of Do Your Best or the electro-based, jazz-like Pure Rockets, his music is weird, often sinister, and discomfortingly mellow, as if he’s scarcely bothering to put any effort in. To boot, he looks annoyingly cherubic. And yet, much like the songs of his former cohorts, Ariel Pink, he has a dainty, unexpected likeability beneath the roughshod surface. 
Weds 28 October – The Rest Is Noise, Brixton (a new bar from the folk behind the Amersham Arms)
John Maus on MySpace (check out the comically-listed critical dismissals)
MP3: John Maus – Do Your Best (zSHARE)

Marina & The Diamonds
No matter how often my iPod shuffles on one of Marina’s folksy-rock tunes, I’m still amazed at her lyrical ability to paint the prettiest little scenes out of thoroughly mundane episodes, or perfectly encapsulate the peaks and troughs of romance.  Bettter yet, she’s a polished live act these days, flirting, talking and singing majestically, while still seeming the pleasant girl next door.  A more personable Florence, then: less exotic and slender, more humble and humourous, and blessed with just as distinctive a voice: this one cutely Welsh, infused by red wine and velvet. 
Tues 3 November – The Relentless Garage, Highbury (tickets here)
Weds 18 November - Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen, Shoreditch
Marina & The Diamonds on MySpace
MP3: Marina & The Diamonds – Hermit The Frog (zSHARE) (an old song)

Nneka
If much more elegant chanteuses are your thing, Nneka’s jazz ballads might be just the ticket.  Blending rhythms and sounds from her native Nigeria with the precepts of Westernised soul, she sounds (and looks) a bit like Lauryn Hill – but a stripped-down, eerie version.  Though often funky, Nneka’s perceptive songs tell of a struggle for identity, be it her own - her parents relocated to Germany while Nneka was just four – or that of her homeland, its river the scene of a constant oil-based guerilla war.
4 November – University of London Union (ULU), Bloomsbury (tickets here)
Nneka on MySpace
MP3: Nneka – Niger Delta (zSHARE)

Broken Records
A Scottish act rather overshadowed (weren’t they all?) by the clamour over Glasvegas, Broken Records specialise in beautiful, string-based rock chaos.  On their most rollicking rides, guitars are thrashed, violins plugged, drums thwacked and Jamie Sutherland’s chesty vocals thrown out like imminently-exploiding grenades.  There are also calmer numbers though, imbued with the sort of romantic tenderness that makes you want to squeeze your lover’s shoulder and whisper warm words in their ear.
Thurs 5 November - Bush Hall, Queens Park (tickets here)
Broken Records on MySpace
MP3: Broken Records – If The News Makes You Sad (zSHARE)

SWIMMInG / Dimbleby & Capper
These two are among seven upcoming acts lining up as part of this latest free Last.FM night at Cargo.  Dimbleby & Capper (whom someone tracked down on my blog recently by searching “pretty blonde singer london short-hair”), aka New Cross-lass Laura Bettinson, offers introverted pop that contains odd samples and eccentric arrangements, and yet sounds somehow vintage and old-fashioned; Nottingham-based SWIMMInG, meanwhile, come on more epic, their anthemic sound boasting a rather euphoric, sun-drunk mentality that slowly seduces.
Fri 6 November – Cargo, Shoreditch (details here)
Dimbleby & Capper on MySpace / SWIMMInG on MySpace
MP3: SWIMMInG – Panthalassa (zSHARE)
MP3: Dimbleby & Capper – Beautiful But Boring (zSHARE)

Pete Rock & CL Smooth
Hip-hop legends (both in terms of performing and producing) and a choice name to drop for many of today’s young rappers, Pete and CL are back in town for a one-off London show. You can probably imagine the way things will work: the show will sound nostalgic and very nineties; the Mount Vernon duo will show they can still cut the mightiest MC-ing mustard; and plenty of fun will be had by all, even if it is a Monday night.  We’re eminiscing over them indeed - can 15 years really have passed?
Mon 9 November – The Relentless Garage, Highbury
Pete Rock & CL Smooth on MySpace
MP3: Pete Rock & CL Smooth – They Reminisce Over You (zSHARE)

Veronica Falls
With a song called Beachy Head, it seems the South Coast is a favourite destination for this intense foursome.  The epic coastline chimes rather well with the intense, fraught sound Veronica Falls produce, one centred on careering guitars and Roxanne’s chameleon voice – peachy during Found Love In A Graveyard, poisonous and punky in the new number.  Their gothic glamour ought to particularly suit the dim Old Blue Last well, even if they’d secretly prefer shore-side to Shoreditch.  Support at The Victoria comes from Manchester’s raw, thrashing and potentially smashing Hyacinth Girl.
Thurs 12 November – The Old Blue Last, Shoreditch (details here)
Sat 14 November – The Victoria, Mile End (with Hyacinth Girl)
Veronica Falls on MySpace / Hyacinth Girl on MySpace
MP3: Veronica Falls – Found Love In A Graveyard (zSHARE)
MP3: Hyacinth Girl – Everybody Knows (zSHARE)

Cabezón Key

Hailing from Caracas (the capital of Venezuela, dontcha know) but now based in London, Cabezón Key are ostensibly providers of an typically rhythmic Latin rock.  That is, a rhythmic Latin rock enhanced with bouncy dub beats, deep bassy grooves and whining vocals. 

Sometimes Cabezón Key’s sound is stark and primal, syrupy thick and drum-powered; at others the softest guitars float slowly into a long, murmurous jam, particularly the amazing Amor, on which the feel is of a dusty cantina populated by snoozing mestizos and rickety wooden tables.  Lord knows how that translates to dapper London joints, but I’d suspect intimate, atmospheric venues like Cafe 1001 or Shunt (where they recently performed) would suit better than large stages with noisy crowds. 

I’ll keep an eye out for future London live dates for Cabezón Key.

Cabezón Key on MySpace

MP3: None available as yet, but I’ll ask Cabezón Key if they’ll supply one, so definitely check back.
Buy Cabezón Key’s music on iTunes here.

Will Shunt ever close?

It’s a question I’ve been pondering for some time now.  This after numerous declarations from the theatre/lounge bar of last nights and claims of final events, only for more nights, more events, and one more, revised, closing date. 

Shunt‘s unwillingness to slink off into the odorous London Bridge night seems at odds with the spirit of these times.  This is an age of of fashion fairs, one-day festivals, temporary installations and pop-up bars – even the thoroughly-excellent Double Club in Angel, after procrastinating once, managed to keep its closure promise.   No-one sticks around any more; even “Everything Must Go”-type closing sale shops are outlawed in our impatient society.  If your time is up, just sod off.  Shunt’s just not entering into the  2009 mentality.

Opinions on the venue are perhaps uniquely wide-ranging.  For some it’s the epitome of coolness; they salivate over the esoterica on offer at this unmarked freak parade, revel in its performance art and brash décor, and exult at the cleverness of founding a club in the vaults below a dusty train terminus.  But for others it’s a grotty, dusty dinge-hole, populated by prententious pratts in velvet jackets,blighted by far-too-abstract “entertainment”, and fatally undermined by the difficulty involved in simply getting a drink.

Whatever your take, you’ll be happy or sad (or indifferent) to hear that Shunt has a brand-new closing date: Saturday 14 November.  Time will tell if they keep their word…