My Bloody Valentine - The Roundhouse, 23 June 2008

Hallo. I went to see My Bloody Valentine again and it was EVEN BETTER than on Friday.

A rearranged set-list, clearer sound. I can hear Kevin and Bilinda's vocals enough to recognise individual words tonight, whereas on Friday their voices drifted in and out of the fog, so you'd have to strain to identify them. Tonight I also get a great position in front of Kevin, one person back from the barrier, so I can peer at his pedals and marvel at his selection of guitars.

Best song of the set is 'Come In Alone', a majestic beast, storming in a stately manner. 'Sueisfine' is rendered almost unrecognisable again, rattled out as a hardcore thrash, complete with backdrop of irradiated blue skies full of fluffy white clouds whizzing by dementedly. ‘Soon’ expands into a repetitive beat drone dreamscape. I can clearly hear/feel (thanks to the blasts of warm sound-waves on my face) the way the sound is ratcheted up throughout the set. Bass kicked up monstrously for 'Slow', and up again to nearly unbearable levels for 'Feed Me With Your Kiss'. I scrunch my earplugs in deeper, preparing for the finale - the blasting away of time and space in the middle of 'You Made Me Realise'. It's like being strapped to the outside of a rocket on blast-off (I imagine). Shivering chaos. And then further noise gets piled in on top, deep, boneshaking. Its not just the awe-inspiring loudness, but the pressure of it effecting your whole body. I stand still and try to absorb it, watching Kevin tinkering with the sound. It's not just a testosterone fuelled noise mush, crazy shrieking frequencies blend in and out, now and then a pedal is tapped introducing or removing slices of noise. I start to hear ghost symphonies playing deep inside the maelstrom. Towards the end the frequencies creep upwards, creating the feeling of being plummeted back towards earth from outer space, tearing up the atmosphere. A sickening trajectory.

The back projection is showing a disorientating freefall of images – like a cross between falling out of an aeroplane and seeing your life flash before your eyes. Three quarters of the way through the twenty-two minute (we timed it, we nerds) aural assault the images cut to a black screen with slashes of white light strafing up and down horizontally. As each light beam passes over Kevin’s face, it reveals him watching the crowd through narrowed eyes, looking kind of evil, trying to figure if we deserve more punishment. Clearly we do, when the chords of the song finally fall back into place and we’re released from our suspended state to grab onto the tune like it’s a life raft, we find it’s a life raft adrift on a sea that’s aflame, the remainder of the song just discernible beneath an unearthly shriek. Horribly brilliant.

M. B. V. Good

It's My Bloody Valentine Season!

Thursday 12th June sees a flurry of excitement from the Kitten old-skool gig-going masssive as we discover My Bloody Valentine are playing at the ICA over the weekend. The ICA? That's (relatively) tiny! Tickets and guest list places are secured, though not for me as I have an urgent weekend appointment to run round and round a garden with two dogs and two small boys.

Saturday morning reports trickle across the wires:
'All good on the MBV front. AMAZING (really)'
'So the good news is that MBV still sound, and look, just like MBV. 15 songs, all post Ecstasy, one of which lasts for considerably more than 3 minutes.'
I start to feel excited about our rendezvous with the Valentines, we've got tickets for their penultimate Roundhouse gig. Then, a text from M. There's a spare place going for the opening night at the Roundhouse, do I fancy it? Er, YES!

Friday 20th June: a queue snakes from the Roundhouse doors up the road and round the corner. Anyone who isn't queuing is over the road in The Enterprise, There's Nat, the 'Bishop of Shoegaze', there's that bloke from The Early Years who looks like an owl...and here's M bearing Valentines tales and magic guest list words. And behold...a triple A pass. A ha ha ha! In your face, world!! (It turns out there's another pass I could have on Saturday, but I don't notice the text until Sunday. Why world why??!!!)

My Bloody Valentine wander onstage, start playing 'Only Shallow', and oh dear! every other band in the universe might as well give up now, MBV show us how far everybody else hasn't come in the twenty years since these songs were written. Now I remember why I was never totally taken by the likes of Ride and all that 'gazey lot, they were inconsequential meteor showers to MBV's whirling universe. By the time Lush et al appeared, we'd already gorged ourselves on Valentines and Spacemen and Loop. We were spoilt.

My Bloody Valentine still look exactly like My Bloody Valentine. Kevin, shaggy of hair and saggy of clothing, lurking nondescript to the left and just doing this...stuff with a guitar that nobody else in the whole world seems capable of, bending sound, creating ripples in smoke. Bilinda's apparently unchanged delicate looks bely the fact that she's complicit in kicking out this raging storm of music. That was always the beauty of MBV, they didn't need big characters or fancy staging (although there are some magnificent back projections filling the stage with colour and light tonight), each member was a vital component, but they just each did their thing and let the music destroy us all. There's the fabulous Debbie on bass. I'm glad to see she's still doing her vicious 'I'm digging your grave' attacking action on the noisy bits, throwing her whole body behind the chords. And of course, Colm's out of body drumming blur. I never could figure out where he found the stamina to hit things like that.

The set takes in tracks from the two albums and assorted EPs the band released after 'Ecstasy' - the record that saw them shift from trebly indie noise-pop scamps to sonic adventurers. I was always more of an 'Isn't Anything' girl than a 'Loveless' fanatic (although it's like saying I prefer breathing to eating). The more visceral attack of the likes of 'When You Wake (You're Still In A Dream)', the queasily punning 'Sueisfine' (which threatens to become unmoored tonight, a skidding and sliding maelstrom, I find it hard to catch its beat) and machine gunning 'Feed Me With Your Kiss' are the songs that make me grin the widest here. And then there's the oozing 'Slow' grinding along on monster bass, compelling the crowd to sway and lurch in time to its sickly rhythm. Oh, and 'Thorn', soaring and dive-bombing on drill-bit guitars - it sounds so vital, I have to do a bit of good old hair shaking to it. The softer textures and intricate layers of the 'Loveless' tracks, the fluffy fog of 'Blown A Wish', the looping, dipping, loopily dippy 'When You Sleep', the whalesong keening of 'I Only Said' seem to fill the Roundhouse with a tangible haze of downy sound. The audience reacts with the most glee to 'Soon', the familiar ticking rhythm and see-saw tune setting off a burst of enthusiastic dancing that dies down after everyone realises they're not as young as they were.

Finally, it's time for that behemoth of sound terrorism, 'You Made Me Realise'. How will the band top their previous performances during which they bent and stretched the middle of the song over one chord louder and louder for longer and longer until they were easily topping ten minutes, blitzing the audience with NOISE? I always had to stick my fingers in my ears when it happened. Thank the Lord that today I've had the foresight to nip into Boots for some earplugs (also available free at the Roundhouse bar). I love MBV but they're not destroying any more of my hearing.

So, the song starts up with its familiar bursts of atonal urgency, swooning and gliding across the verses, exploding into car crash patterns, until The Chord happens. Oh Sweet Baby Jesus and His Mary Chain! It. Is. LOUD. Nuclear Bomb going off loud. Rearrange your DNA loud. For nearly twenty minutes the band stands casually chanelling pure white noise up into the domed roof of the building until I peer upwards nervously, convinced it's going to crack open like an egg. I sneak my earplugs out for a few seconds...argh! and quickly stuff them back in again. I've seen MBV doing this aggressive noise assault business on numerous occassions, but I've never experienced anything like this: shrieking, roaring, twenty jet-planes taking off in your head. I can feel the soundwaves soft and warm on my face, rattling my teeth, as a slightly uncomfortable pressure across my chest. For a while I close my eyes and sort of sunbathe in it all, strobes bright on my eyelids. After a while I look around. People are hunching over, fingers stuck in ears, creeping away from the front, looking stricken. It's uncomfortable, but it's also genius.

I glance at my watch, it's twenty-five to eleven, Oh God, what if the band are planning on playing this chord all the way up to eleven o'clock? They don't, eventually, the remainder of the song crashes back in, we snap our heads in time to the familiar beat, relieved, riding survivor's highs. And then it's the end. We came, we saw, they wiped the floor with us.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – 9 May 2008, Hammersmith Apollo

Much has been made of the revitalising effect of old Nick’s nasty old Grinderman project on The Bad Seeds repertoire – the way playing bone-crunching raw eyed swamp rock has fired them up. Certainly the latest Bad Seeds album, ‘Dig, Lazarus Dig!!!’ sees our Dark Lord in a playfully rockin’ mood (and using the punctuation of an excitable twelve year old girl). So as we settle into our circle seats, feeling quite young in comparison to our fellow audience members (all traces of past gothery erased – these are nice mums and dads reliving their big-haired youth), we wonder what delights there are in store. Surely the band won’t be able to surpass the last time we saw them - a sublime mix of the devotional and the deranged, complete with gospel singers.

Whomp! Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds hit us right between the eyes from the get-go and don’t let up for two hours. They are spectacular, filled with a ferocious lust for life, booting their older songs up the arse and dragging us by the hair on a rip-snorting ride around the new album.

The Bad Seeds are on top form – men who mean business. Aside from Mr Cave himself, Warren Ellis is the obvious star of the show. Looking like a wild eyed prophet who’s just staggered in from the wilderness, crazy old man beard and hair a-flurry, he wrenches diabolical shrieks from guitar and viola alike. You’ve never truly seen a man play viola until you’ve watched Ellis terrorising the instrument. Who knew you could treat it like that? During ‘We Call Upon The Author’ he’s on his knees, supplicant in front of a crazy guitar/mandolin thing alternating between torturing noise from its depths, pounding on the floor with his fists and going into unlikely backbends to reach for the microphone.

Wire-thin, managing to carry off a look that no fifty-something man should really be attempting, Nick Cave is squeezed into a tight jacket, pinstriped kick-flares and pointy Chelsea boots. He looks like a character from ‘Yellow Submarine’. Later, he emerges wearing a skinny-fit ‘Dig…’ tee-shirt plundered from the merch stall and Good God he looks amazing; rushing frenziedly across the stage; cavorting out to tease the front row of the audience; hurrying back and forth to bash out a few notes on his keyboards; doing crazy Cave-esque hands-above-the-head disco belly-dances. He even goes for the full-on rock-out factor by strapping on a guitar for odd numbers. This isn’t the Cave of reflective sojourns behind a piano that’s for sure. The man Entertains. And that’s before you even get to The Songs.

‘Tupelo’ rumbles stormily, complete with a vast, thunderous night sky as a backdrop. It’s screamy and sweaty and full of thrillingly intense viola desecration. ‘Deanna’ is full-on vaudeville, a crazy-eyed clap-along. ‘The Lyre of Orpheus’ takes up the music-hall thread, the audience encouraged to join in with its half-camp/half lamenting refrain of "Oh! Mama!" which they do with gusto. ‘Papa Won’t Leave You Henry’ rollicks around menacingly. ‘Let Love In’ is given a Johnny Cash make-over, in the way Johnny Cash gave ‘The Mercy Seat’ a make-over (a song, incidentally, conspicuous by its absence tonight – but really, there’s such an embarrassment of riches on display here its presence is unnecessary). ‘Today’s Lesson’ and ‘More News From Nowhere’ are both unspeakably groovy in different ways (one a Stooges/ organ-funk swagger, the other laconically swinging).

Cave introduces ‘We Call Upon The Author’ thus, "Check this out. This is worth the price of admission alone." He’s right, the band ransack the entire history of garage rock, funnelling it into a hypnotic hurricane of a song, before cracking it with white out blue-funk NoiZE. Jeez, no wonder they need two drumkits.

There are few concessions to Cave’s sublime oeuvre of big bad ballads, we get ‘The Ship Song’ (squeals of joy from the audience) and the ever gorgeous ’Into My Arms’, but that’s really not what tonight is all about. To prove it, the set ends with a double flourish, ‘Hard On For Love’, as nasty as the title suggests and a terrifying ‘Stagger Lee’, the stage illuminated blood red, Cave screaming at the top of his lungs. Argh!!

Here’s ‘In The Ghetto’ with a young Mr Cave looking thoroughly skagged up, but damn! totally cool. See how beautiful he is with that magnifique explosion of hair? Who knew heroin was such a great conditioner? Man, what a crime it is that that hair is slowly being lost now. Can’t we get a preservation order slapped (no pun intended) on it? Luckily, thanks to the cannily cropped press shots and artfully framed videos (the edge of the frame always seems to come just above Nick’s eyebrows?) we can try to not notice the obvious and keep our memories of those raven-tressed glory days intact.

The Tamborines / Roy And The Devil’s Motorcycle – 2 May 2008, Dirty Water Club

It’s been a while since we’ve been dahn the Dirty Water Club, and in our absence time seems to have progressed. It’s no longer 1967 with the garage / psych kids in the back of The Boston Arms, we’ve fast forwarded a decade and the place in crawling with ye olde punk rockers – there’s a blue mohican on display and everything. We clutch our drinks as Johnny Throttle do their unreconstructed punk rock maniac skinny body thing across the stage. Johnny Throttle's singer is that crazy bloke who used to be in The Parkinsons. Maybe this is why these punksters are here? They don’t seem all that interesetd in proceedings though, nor in The Paper Dolls who are girls in the garage rock ’n’ roll ladies (and mans) from the USA and rattle along entertainingly enough. Meanwhile, The Tamborines are feeling a bit unnerved by all the punker-ing, what will they make of The Tambos’ Velvets-JAMC-Feedback-Psych smash up?

Next though, it’s Roy And The Devils Motorcycle. Tinkering around their MySpace page, I learn that they are ‘three guitarist brothers [who] grew up in a Swiss mountain village. Soon after moving to a larger town with a 'rock club', where they first saw Spacemen 3 and some other sonic pioneers of the time they got immersed in the energy of garage punk and primal rock and roll’ Cor! I’ve been looking forward to seeing them and Christ on a bike! they’re stupendous!

Roy And The Devils Motorcycle look like they don’t give a shit about anything much, a motley gang just mooching onto the stage and then casually locking into these huge outer spaced, hypnotic drones laced with evil feedback, guitars churning and wailing. They do monstrous thousand yard stare grooves driven by nasty ragged garage blues, whiting out into the stratosphere. It’s utterly captivating. The band’s Spacemen 3 influences are easy to espy – there’s a hobo spacerock cover of ‘May The Circle Be Unbroken’ – once also covered by Sonic and Jase – and a song that takes up where the Spacemen’s ‘Suicide’ left off, building an unhinged fireball of sound.
These are exactly the kind of spaced drones we want; raw and menacing and going on for a very long time so you can get properly lost, not someone making floaty noises with a few distortion pedals and thinking they’re the new My Bloody Valentine. Woohoo! Roy And The Devil’s Motorcycle are the mostest!

We haven’t see The Tamborines for a while and here they are with a new old drummer, i.e. the drummer they originally had before the last drummer and the drummer before that. He seems like a very nice man, especially as he kisses me on both cheeks continental style when we’re introduced. He can sure whip up a storm on the old Dirty Water drumkit as well. This heavy hurricane thump is most in evidence on The Tamborines cover of Beat Happenings ‘Bewitched’ which they whip into an evil hoodoo of voodoo sound, Lulu scowling ‘I got a crush on you, I got a crush on you’ cattily. It’s nice to see her take the lead on a song, managing to look menacing whilst stationed behind her keyboards. As ever, the band kick out a magnificent electric storm of noise laced with pop art beats. Even the punks appreciate it.

Harmonia – 19 April 2008, Queen Elizabeth Hall

Tonight is the first! ever! live UK showing of the marv and legendary Harmonia. It’s only been, um, thirty-four years since these kings of kosmiche initially emerged from the Forst countryside with ‘Musik Von Harmonia’ refracting the sunlight into weird new shapes.

As we arrive, Led Bib are going Free Jazz squibbly squonk mental in the foyer. The sound they make hurts our insides and upsets our sense of balance. It makes the lady at the ticket desk scowl testily. We cower in a corner until the scary jazz has dissipated, then make our way into Queen Elizabeth Hall’s soothing wood-lined auditorium to find our seats amongst an ocean of beardy baldy men (inc. author Toby Litt who fits in well).

The beardy, baldy men and us and a small boy who has been brought along by his beardy baldy man dad are in a state of high anticipation. The stage is set mysteriously with three trestle tables swathed in black cloth. Laid out along the tables is Equipment – laptops and wires and stuff. You know the way it works with electronica – lots of Equipment, not very sexy, unless it’s olden times analogue Equipment with big reel to reel tapes and clacky bakerlite switches and dials and things. Which it never is.
Harmonia take up their positions behind the tables. Hans Joachim Roedelius is bald as an egg and wears his trousers old-man high – this is perfectly acceptable as he’s in his seventies. To the left of the towering Roedelius, Dieter Moebius is small and bespectacled. To Roedelius’ right, Michael Rother appears to have hired a younger man to pose as him.

And so they begin, stretching delicate ambient sounds out across space, choosing notes carefully. The beardy, baldy men are a bit let down. This isn’t a greatest hits thing. This is three men renowned for their mischievously experimental explorations with sound doing what they do – experimenting, improvising, building precarious structures with slivers of noise. Behind them, a screen twitches with images of themselves as younger men, in monochrome days of longer hair and lots more Equipment. The small boy is lead out weeping silent tears of boredom. After some time, a voice from the audience calls in frustration ‘Make it louder!’ They make it louder, washes of sound filter the room, techno beats thud engagingly. It’s weird to be sitting still and silent amidst an assault of such obvious dancey sounds.

Michael Rother takes up a guitar – ooh! to throw furzy, looping chords into the mix, a motorik backbeat kicks in – aah, that better. Then…more ambient drops of sound. I discover its best to close your eyes and really concentrate on each note, making each one into a little universe to be explored minutely. Time is elastic. How long have we been in here, sitting in the dark, absorbing soundscapes?

Then, finally, finally ‘Immer Wieder’ from meisterwerk second album ‘Deluxe’ ripples and flexes its way across the auditorium, yawing laconically. Beautiful. Underneath its mighty flood you can sense mass sighs of contentment. This is really what everyone came for. As the song comes to a close, too soon, too soon, the audience is euphoric, leaping to its feet to offer a standing ovation. It’s been an intriguing and touching evening.

Phil Wilson - 10 April 2008, Gramaphone

The Gramaphone is full of big grins and bobbing heads. Pocketbooks are playing back-up band to Phil Wilson who’s bashing out a pop euphoric cover of The Go Between’s ‘Lee Remick’. Next, they take on an exhilarating ‘In The Rain’ by Wilson’s olden band, eighties indie poppers The June Brides. It’s a fabulous, fun-filled, life-affirming end to a sweet-hearted gig.

We learn from Phil Wilson’s MySpace that he has once again taken up music, performing as a solo artiste. Tonight’s gig should therefore not be confused with the brief but jolly June Brides reformation that happened a few years ago
(evidence here). To make it even more confusing, Mr Wilson is joined by two original June Brides - viola player Frank and trumpet man Big Jon and their set consists pretty much entirely of The June Brides’ back catalogue played along to a backing track. Not that anyone here is complaining. These songs are tatooed onto our fluttering indie kid hearts. Songs that hop, skip, jump and jangle their merry way out of our pasts and back into our arms like they’d never been away. Like we’d never put aside guitars strummed with such violent enthusiasm, trumpets soaring sunbeams straight to our hearts and pop tunes that made us dance stupid steps, singing along fit to burst, ‘Lets shout out loud to prove that we’re alive’. They’re all here, those songs, ‘Every Conversation’, ‘I Fall’, ‘Sunday To Saturday’. Yay! Then there’s the teary, cheery downbeat ache of ‘This Town’ which makes me feel like someone’s walked over my grave – sort of nostalgic and freaked out and happy and sad as the trumpet line tangles its way around my heart and twirls up and over the rooftops.

We also get the Phil Wilson Creation Records solo stuff, like the fab flamenco-tinged gallop of ’10 Miles’, the wistful croon of ‘Even Now’, the country stagger of ‘Waiting For A Change’. There’s even room for a new Wilson song which fits in with the general jangle just fine, perhaps getting a bit lost amongst all the swooning over yesteryear that’s going on.

It may be pure nostalgia, but we get our pop thrills where we can. Oh yes, and can Pocketbooks always be Phil’s band please?

The Lionheart Brothers – 1 April 2008, Hoxton Bar and Grill

Into the heart of darkness that is Hoxton we venture to see these whizzy wee Norwegians fizzing out songs from their fab MBV meets the Beach Boys swirling pop feast of an album. Live, they’re more squirly shoe-gazey and less weirdly-flavoured West Coast bubblegum, but they’re still exhilarating, especially when the one that looks like a small boy dressing up as a Keith Richards new romantic pirate goes mentals with his guitar, throttling it and whacking it around all over the show, making squiddly sqaaww noises for aeons. Fun!

The Dilettantes / Sky Parade / Winter Drones / Time. Space. Repeat - 21st March 2008, Sonic Cathedral at The Social

It’s Good Friday, so diligently we go to worship at Sonic Cathedral. We take the sacrament (in a glass, with ice, numerous refills) and settle in for Time. Space. Repeat. who are just one bloke today doing swirly, drifty, shoe-y, post-rock-ish stuff with his guitar and voice. It’s pleasant enough, but I get distracted by the episode of shit sixties sit-com ‘Mothers In Law’ that’s showing on a screen behind the stage. In it, The Seeds are making a rather embarrassing guest appearance. They have lovely shiny hair and Sky Saxon swirls his cloak around. Hurrah! "We hope you like it. We think it’s gassy!"




Where were we? Oh, now Winter Drones are playing. Prior to clambering onstage, their keyboard player has been sitting with her back to me, sticking her bony elbows into my shoulders. This suggests a certain lack of co-ordination, as does her actual keyboard playing. But this is Winter Drones’ (good name, well done) first gig so we’ll give them some leeway, eh? Their songs hint at the whites of eyes rush of early Telescopes dissolving into the static crackle and snowfield hum of, er, late Telescopes. Intriguing.

Sky Parade are a bit too manly rocking for me. A bit too (metaphorical, I hope) foot on monitor, wind in hair riffin’. They’re another one of those bands that feature an ex-BJM band member (they get everywhere, don’t they?) in this case ex-bass player Tommy Dietrick – now vocalist/guitarist. And although they have their swirling moments and psych twinges, they’re just too sleek and rawk for me. Their sound suggests The Cult circa ‘Love’- dark, sleazy, goff-tinged. When I was fourteen, this would have been a good thing. Now it leaves me cold.

As anyone with eyes and ears nose, Joel Gion is the reason everyone digs ‘Dig’, Ondi Timoner’s Dandys/Jonestown crockumentary. He’s the one with the wild frizz and ginormo fly-eye shades, the stupid voices and the wacky antics. Well, he was. That was a while ago. Now he’s the leader of The Dilettantes, a band of psych-rock troubadours who take to the stage and give it some welly in a fine mod-poppin’ style.

They work their way through a set of beat tunes that sounds like its been lifted wholesale from some pop-sike compilation of long-forgotten garage-rockin’ nuggets. The guitars sparkle and sunshine melodies snap at your heels – these are perfect tunes for dancing like a loon.

Joel concentrates on playing the songs, not playing the fool. He sings in a rumbly drawl, shaking his tambourine with classic Gion aplomb. "Here comes the tambourine man, yeah you know what I mean" he sings on ‘Ready To Go’, storming in on a thumping backbeat - a spikily groovy call to arms for the beatkids. ‘Subterranean Bazaar’ is a furious fuzzin’, hard janglin’ freakbeat delight, blamming along at breakneck speed for optimum pop thrills. ‘The Whole World’ is high as a kite bubblegum fun that gets the crowd singing along with its instantly insistent ‘ba ba bas’, and for the few minutes it lasts the world is a goggle-eyed whirl of colour. ‘Don’t You Ever Fall’, on the other hand, does pastoral wide-screen psychedelic swoonage in the vein of the lovely Lovetones.

The band look fab in that Carnaby Street threads ago-go way that Yanks can get away with. We ponder the fact that if The Dilletantes were British, their clothes would make them look like gits. We also ponder the fact that one guitarist looks like Noddy Holder. Excellent work all round.

Horowitz / Town Bike / Mai 68s - 20 March 2008, Betsey Trotwood

Hurrah! First Bank Holiday of the year coming up and to celebrate there’s a handy Spiral Scratch Pop Show being held in the perfect indie-pop venue!

At least two of The Mai 68s songs begin with ‘Be My Baby’ / ‘Just Like Honey’ (delete according to taste) drumbeats leading me to think that maybe all their songs are going to start like this. Such an affectation would, of course, be utterly stylish. Turns out some of the songs have different rhythms. Oh well. I enjoy The Mai 68s and the racket they make. I like their plundering of revolutionary iconography in true first year art student style – the band name, the sixties underground garb, the er, shout-outs to Ulrike Meinhof. They have a stand-up drummer playing in the ‘bom, bom, bish’ style (like Bobby G. in The Mary Chain, obvs.) They have a guitarist who spends most of the gig ‘tuning’ up and who has more pedals than he knows what to do with, including, joy! a Fuzzface! As a result there are some highly satisfactory levels of fuzz ‘n’ feedback. It’s hard to tell which bits of these are actually meant and which bits are bonus noises as The Mai 68s don’t seem that in control of proceedings. This is another reason I enjoy them.

I also like the girl singer in her beret ‘n’ scarf ‘n’ glass of house red who divides her time between hissing at her band mates and intoning from her Big Book of Lyrics. The first ‘song’ involves Beat-like poetry being recited from the Big Book of Lyrics, whilst feedback reigns supreme -‘Howl’ set against a howl. Another song involves ‘nicking words from Dylan Thomas. He won’t mind, he’s dead’. One song stands out. ‘Froth On The Daydream’ (hey these kids know their French avant-anarcho stuff!) turns out to be The Mai 68s single – released in an edition of 100. As it says on their web site the song is delicious ‘sugar-coated chaos’, although there seems to be more chaos than sugar-coating going on here. There’s time for one last track, ‘Shall we do a noisy one or a jangly one?’ they ponder. The audience wants jangly, so that’s what we get. Just about.

Town Bike hurtle in wearing matching bowling shirts, pulling wheelies, doing headstands on their handlebars and generally fizzing about in an attention-grabbing manner. They’re full of energy and enthusiasm and it would be rude not to enjoy their 50 million song collection of punk-pop buzzbombs. Like fellow Liverpudlians Zombina and The Skeletones (only without the, you know, zombie element) they play on that whole fifties (American) High School bubblegum schtick, as originally appropriated by The Ramones and not left alone since.

Their first song is the Town Bike theme song which introduces each member of the band and their particular foibles (the bass player can get you anything knock-off apparently). One song features ‘audience participation’ – time for the indie milk-sops to clap their hands. In encouragement, singer and live-wire Sarah, yells ‘Pretend you’re watching Stereophonics’. So we all throw things at the band (not really). After a nosebleed race through fistfuls of punkpop fun, Town Bike end with the ridiculously stick in your head-ish ‘Trouble Fuckin’ Rocks’ which I initially hear as ‘Trevor Fuckin’ Rocks’ and think is a nice tribute to everyone’s fave Lost Music popbloke.

'Hug Target’, ‘Super Snuggles’, ‘I Need A Blanket’ – you could be forgiven for doing a bit of a sick at the industrial strength ultra-tweeness of Horowitz’s song titles. Or you could find them adorable and do little shuffly popkid dances to the songs and revel in the buzzsaw guitar action provided by Ian (he of the Gwegowy Webster voice and ‘What’s under the hat?’ hat) and Pete. Horowitz is just these two playing infectious, endearing guitar lines, whilst behind them lurks a large, bemusing-looking (technical term coming up) ‘backing music machine’ (yes, one of those).

‘Popkids Of the World Unite’ indicates that Horowitz have clearly been time-travelling and listening to our conversations circa 1987, when we’d snigger at ‘the swirlies’ (non pop-kid types in perms and stilettos) and sing ‘Popkids of the world unite and…hang the swirlies, hang the swirlies, hang the swirlies’ (two Smiths songs for the price of one, see?). Not very nice now I come to think of it. Unlike Horowitz, "All I ever wanted was a happy, happy heart and your cutesy hand in my hand" they sing and that’s the song lodged in your head for, ooh, at least the rest of eternity. ‘Sweetness I Could Die In Your Arms’ is full of spangly guitar sparkling like raindrops over a comforting fuzz meadow. ‘Traceyanne’ ends in the time-honoured indie-pop fashion with lots of ba ba bas and fervently jangled guitars peaking with a pop squeal of joy. ‘Sister’ is extra fuzzy and buzzy and thus extra enjoyable. For, despite the hardcore tweeness going on here, Horowitz are kicking up quite a racket. The kind of racket that’s only achievable with the treble and the fuzz turned right up, so our ears get a right old battering as the sound bounces around the Betsey Trotwood’s brick cellar. But hey, that’s what indie-pop’s all about. Right pop-kids?

The Lodger - 13 March 2008, The Gramophone

A soggy Thursday night, an extra-long wait for the bus, two not-that-inspiring support bands…and then The Lodger come on and play an over-in-the-blink-of-an-eye set that makes sullen hearts soar. They may not look it (just some blokes, now with added girl), but The Lodger are something special, festooning the room with bursts of spangling pop rattled out on careening guitars. Their songs are like sherbet lemons, exploding open with melodies. Attack is the best form of defence and we’re easily sucker-punched by the fistful of new songs the band fling at us, making us eager for the new album, ‘Life Is Sweet’ due out in May. Forthcoming single ‘The Good Old Days’ out-Orange Juices Bricolage – it has the funk AND the jangle and is terrifyingly catchy. A short, sharp dose of Springtime. Of course there are the beloved older songs too, which we still cherish. Take ‘ Many Thanks For Your Honest Opinion’. Remember when that was a wee demo blinking its way into the world, impressing me from the get go? I feel all heart-warmed and nostalgic when it gets played as tonight’s set closer. The Lodger I love yer!

The School / Pocketbooks / The Sunny Street / The Give It Ups -12 March 2008, Buffalo Bar

Here we are down the Buffalo Bar again shimmying in an idle indie breeze, but in a shock move we’re not at a Fortuna Pop! night. We’ve broken our F Pop! only rule and ventured into Goonite territory for a little light midweek pop fun (although Sean FP! is in attendance, so the world hasn’t spun that far off its axis).

First up are the shockingly schmindie The Give It Ups – some might say the band are asking for it with that name, but some would be being needlessly cruel and not paying attention to the cheery pop manoeuvres occurring in front of them. It would be a cold-hearted soul indeed who couldn’t find some joy in the foolishly wistful ‘Be My Cat’. The very silly ‘I Wanna Be Metal’ and the fairly silly ‘Dinosaur Song’. It’s all very BMX Bandits ramshackle. This is my favourite kind of ramshackle – as captured on the BMXer's splendid ‘E102’ E.P. (sample: “Stop, stop stop something’s went wrong!’) During the final song the glockenspiel falls off its stand and the wee glockenspiel man has to scrabble around on the floor for it. He gets it set up again, only for it to tumble back down. All this is hilarious and brilliantly, pathetically indie. I choose to view the incident as an ironic pastiche of the fumbling, apologetic world of twee indie-pop - a brilliant piece of performance art.

We precariously surf the ridiculous/sublime interface between The Give It Ups and next band up The Sunny Street - a cool electro pop sorbet between tonight’s sugar sweet indie pop courses. With elegant Gallic nonchalance they describe themselves as a ‘London-based French popduo founded on a boring day… The songs are mostly about love.’

The band consists of Remi from Electrophonvintage on wistfully strummed guitar playing to a backing track emanating from a tiny i-Pod lying at his feet - we keep worrying he's going to stand on it. He's accompanied by downy, sugar-spun vocals from Delphine who's looking elegant in a navy dress and heels, like she’s just nipped out from taking high tea at the Waldorf. Their music sounds like the best of Labrador records, taking in both The Radio Dept’s daydream ennui (on 'Greasy Crisps' - an unlikely title for this achily delicate wisp of a song) and The Acid House King’s Springtime sweetness ('Comedians'). In fact The Sunny Street’s album can be found on fellow Swedish label beginning with ‘La…’, Lavender. The Sunny Street are today’s most delightful discovery. Even their cover of the cheesy old Haddaway dance track ‘What Is Love?’ sounds waifishly touching.

Twinkly ivory-tickling heralds the arrival of Pocketbooks newly released single ‘Waking Up’ and grey skies turn blue. The last time I saw Pocketbooks was in September 2006 (I’ve been busy, okay?) and cripes, they’ve come a long way baby. They’re knocking out perfectly-formed indie pop songs left, right and centre, dizzying us with their dash.

Belle and Sebastian are the obvious reference point here – sprightly, heart-burst pop backed with fearsome song-writing skillz. Fab. Like B&S, there are skinny white Northern Soul bits just discernable in Pocketbooks’ sound; certain drumbeats and rhythms, piano sounds and handclaps make me hear ghost versions of the songs scooting off across the dance-floor garnering a brass section and boys doing talc-fuelled spins as they go.

Emma’s ice-cream vocals tumble around Andy’s counter-point voice and we revel in the wordy, wry kitchen sink lyrics about lost Oyster Cards (oh little blue card you truely are a cultural reference point for our times), night buses and library cards, although professionally I absolutely cannot condone the line ‘I’ll let you use my library card’. ‘Cross The Line’ sees some classic boy/girl vocal action with Emma and Andy cutely trading waspish remarks. The sweetly exasperated-sounding ‘Don’t Stop’ comes complete with lyrical Grange Hill metaphysics ‘I’m lost inside a flippin’ vortex’.
Slathered over the top of Andy and Emma’s keyboard lines is Ian’s fantastically spangly guitar which makes you think "Sea Urchins! Yeah!" and jangles so ferociously that it threatens to detach itself from the rest of the band and overwhelm the whole of Highbury in a Jim Beattie-esque sonic tidal wave. Its all mighty exhilarating pop kids.

Finally it's The School and their syllabus of swinging sunburst pop. They’ve got a brand new drummer, and leader Liz is feeling sleepy, but it doesn’t really show as they rattle through a set that sounds like it’s constructed from pop classics from a parallel universe. ‘Shoulder’ will have you convinced it’s a cover such is the perfection of its shoo be doo girl group northern soul swirl. Liz’s panda-eyed girl next door voice has the tiniest little crack in it giving it an endearing warmth and vulnerability. There’s chirpy new single ‘Valentine’ (an untimely release on pink vinyl) and the galloping swoon of ‘Let It Slip’ and ‘Can You Feel It’. My favourite is still the anomalous ‘Sunshine’ a great big pop spectacle that sounds like a lysergically demented school orchestra and the exception to The School’s rule of girl-group cute-pop.

Keyboard Choir / Champion Kickboxer / Hong Kong In The 60s / The Leaf Library – 22 February 2008, Buffalo Bar

This month’s Fortuna Pop! Beat Hotel happening is imbued with the spirit of Our Lady of the Oscillator, Delia Derbyshire. There she is on the flier looking all ‘60s girl-boffinish in her hair-band, leaning over a bank of reel to reel tapes. Utter coolness.

The Leaf Library are the first to display their Radiophonic Workshop-inspired pop for our delectation, making a welcome return after a loonng time of not being here. They emit sounds that spin perfectly between electro-drone kosmiche and downy, gazing-out-of-windows indie-pop. There are rogue moments of jangling amidst the electric hum. I catch hints of Tigermilk era Bellend Sebastian in their second song - sweet YTS electronica. The third song (sorry no titles here) is dizzy drone loveliness, autumnal and luminescent. The fourth song ebbs and flows elegantly, tucking sparkly guitar in amongst a restrained, pattering Mo Tucker minimalism. The fifth song, an old one, is chiming machine-tooled motorik indie-pop and sounds like ripples on a lake with Stereolab vocals, (sorry the ‘S’ band had to be mentioned here at some point).

The stage is shadowy, highlighted by red light, adding an air of the bohemian. Through the crowd I catch glimpses of the drummer, a girl with a cascade of perfectly straight blonde hair, her face in profile against the red back wall. To her right, Jona does his Thurston Moore thrashy thing on a Rickenbacker bass. Up front Kate plays keyboards and sings. Sometimes there are girl vocals, sometimes boy vocals from guitarist Matt (Matt scoffed at the idea that he could be perceived as a ‘boy’ when I mentioned it before, but I mean the vocals are boyish). For the final song they switch and share the singing as the music rises from drifting and delicate to droning and shuddering, careening along on a reverbed up ending. Marvellous.

In a shock move, Hong Kong in the 60s, list ‘old Chinese and Japanese pop’ amongst their influences. It is a musical genre about which I am damn ignorant, so I am keen to be enlightened. To begin, the band is Tim and Mei Yau on keyboard and guitar, playing faltering, other-worldly pop. A few songs in, they are joined by Christopher who strides onstage to crack out a splendid, throaty rendition of Beat Happening’s ‘Redhead Walking’, whilst the others throw a louche garage swagger into the song. This, though, is an aural anomaly, mostly HK in the 60s make fragile music, laced with spectral tape crackle and softly fizzing radio interference. Mei Yau sings delicately against a glowing keyboard sound. The songs are lulling in their delicate hesitancy, like Broadcast at their most soothing or Saint Etienne relaxing under cherry blossoms. Hong Kong in The 60s end with another cover, this time taken from the fabled oriental pop genre, ‘Tian Mi Mi’ by Teresa Teng. It is melancholically beautiful, with a delicious heart-tugging undertow topped by oddball electronic squiggling produced by Mei Yau on a er, little wibbly keyboard thing (technical term). Hurrah! I feel a bit enlightened now.

We last saw Champion Kickboxer in February 2005 when their mossy, spooky single ‘Like Him and Her and Her and Me’ had recently been released. They don’t play it tonight (old news), but it’s okay ‘cos Champion Kickboxer have new spookily mossy songs to be heard. Their set starts off in early Super Furries sort of territory (the Ankst singles years), rambling over similar psychedelic meadows and marshes to those inhabited by Radio Luxembourg. But where Radio Lux do Barrety sunshine, Champion Kickboxer submerge into an eerie netherworld of sprained popsongs. Their songs are esoteric, ponderously odd, a touch queasy. There are tripsy tunes and drip dripping mournful melodies. The band employ toppling, twining vocals to great effect, voices bouncing off one another, echoes in a basement - see the stately ‘Master Of Dancing’ and the sorrowful swirl of ‘Photos’. The songs appear to become progressively more unhinged, there’s one about a monster plant, and something about ice-cubes in the garden. By the end we’re lost in a rapturous lysergic whirl. Which is just as it should be.

Our first tangling with the mighty electronic wonderscapes of Keyboard Choir was at Truck 2006. Disappointingly, the Choir are no longer clad in fabulously shit home-made robot costumes – bah! Where’s the fun in that? It’s almost as if they want us to listen to the music and not be distracted by folk clad in bog-rolls and tinfoil shuffling around the gaff. So Keyboard Choir stick to rumbling out clutches of apocalyptic synth assaults, soaring across sickly orange skies and nose-diving dizzyingly. They are lead by a conductor who stands centre-stage, back to the audience (you know, like…a conductor) gesticulating at several keyboard players (the ‘Keyboard Choir’, see?). We are ensconced in a far corner, but through the magic of that-mirror-that-is-inexplicably-on-the-wall to one side of the Buffalo Bar stage, it seems like the conductor man is facing us. Mirrors ,eh? We take all this in for a while, but midnight is approaching and the 277 is about to turn into a pumpkin or be driven by mice or something, so we sneak out, sound-tracked by shattering universes.

My Sad Captains / Fireworks Night / Gold Sounds – 18th February 2008, Hoxton Bar & Grill

We have been feeling bad. Dark times upon us. So what better way to demolish the demons than to venture out into a fog furled February night for some Pop Times? And who better to provide those Pop Times than the ever-reliable Fortuna Pop! Yes.

We are dahn the Hoxton Bar and Grill, but don’t worry, there’s a very low level of Shoreditch twattery, it being Monday ‘n’ all, and out back where the gig action is the pop kids are gathered. First on, Gold Sounds (Pavement fans, perchance?) who gladden our hearts with a spot of glintily melodic Americana by way of Nottingham. They are charming and cheering and they’ve bought their embarrassing friends with them to dance over-enthusiastically wedding reception style at the front. Aww.

Fireworks Night (good name) are a whole ‘nother kettle of fish. Their sound wraps a velvety cloak (probably with curious symbols embroidered on it) of mystery and drama around proceedings, enveloping us in their Angela Carter ‘Nights At The Circus’ world. With a dual viola/violin attack providing shivers down spines, they create an atmosphere of Eastern European folk-tales and gypsy dances; of ‘30s Berlin hedonism, and sinister soul-searching nights. Excitingly, the first swaggering shanty of a song sees violin girl beating the crap out of a cardboard box with a wooden spoon. The introduction of the aforementioned string instruments to the sound creates a droning kosmiche element to the second song, which is mighty fine. The set dips slightly in the middle – it’s all too much, a little samey, plus the singer has distressing hair. Happily, the final song is a chilling epic balancing on the eerie lament of a musical saw, wailing and searing and exhilaratingly dark. Brrr.

And so to My Sad Captains, who, as a friend comments, have turned into the kind of band you’d pay to see. They race through their psunny psych popsongs, sending out honeyed good vibes. Around them flit the ghosts of The Go Betweens, The Flaming Lips, Grandaddy, even The Bodines here and there. My Sad Captains seem to have gorged themselves on all manner of jangley goodness from the pop music larder, chewed it up and spat it back out into the world (in a lovely way). Their pop is brimming, gloriously twisted, afloat on melodies that corkscrew merrily round your brain. Last year’s single ’Bad Decisions’ shines brightly, a familiar face in the crowd, addled by ‘ba ba bas’. Forthcoming White Heat released tracks, the happy heartbreak spiralling of ‘All Hat And No Plans’ and the twinkly, glowing, harmony heaven of ‘Great Expectations’ are new friends we know we’re going to love. Brightness shines. Yipee!

The Clientele / The See See / Le Volume Courbe / The No Sorrows - 25 January 2008 – Buffalo Bar

Sean Fortuna Pop! has played a blinder with this month’s Beat Hotel line-up and everyone wants a piece of tonight’s West Coast / psych-folk action. The place is sold out and sold out and sold out. Many-hued indie folk queue anxiously, waiting to be greeted by cheery door-girl Mar Dulok. David Luxembourg drifts by, ticketless. We go for a pre-gig snifter in the pub and nearly choke on our cheap vodka when we realise Kevin Shields is sharing our table. Then we really do choke on our cheap vodka when Terry Hall strolls in to join him. Terry Hall is a bona fide proper Popstar, not a person out of an old indie band. He must be a popstar ‘cos we knew who he was in Primary school. We have to keep glancing at him. Later, when we get our hands stamped with ‘Too Much’ on the door, we remember Fortuna Pop events used to offer a twin stamp that said ‘Too Young’ (I think it’s lost now), how great would it have been to offer Terry Hall a choice between the two? Very great, obviously.


Anyways, it turns out Terry Hall’s son (who we observe asking his Dad for crisps in the pub - sweet!) is playing guitar with Le Volume Courbe. Charlotte Marionneau is Le Volume Courbe adding extra players as and when needed. She has a naif-ish waif-ish charm, cracked, girlish, heavily French-accented vocals and is clearly not that comfortable with being on stage. Full marks to her for braving the crowd and for managing to play a Swanee Whistle on one song with cute dignity. Accompanying Charlotte, alongside the aforementioned guitar are a drummer and Mel from The Clientele – sweeping the group along with elegant dips and glides on violin. The songs are tremulous and delicate, some scant seconds long. ‘I Killed My Best Friend’ is eerily jaunty and spookily enchanting. They end with a whispy, whispery, banjo-pluckin’ version of ‘Freight Train’

Before any of this The No Sorrows play a splendid set of psychedelic space-folk. They fill my head with visions of owls and witches and make earthily mournful music. ‘Wild Sun’ sounds like racing chaotically over green and brown fields and I thoroughly enjoy their haunted songs. Even better, the band’s folksiness is tempered with some good old noise, one song coming on like Dinosaur Jnr’s ‘Thumb’ with distorted guitars bleeding through. The No Sorrows are that rare thing – an intriguing discovery.

With The No Sorrows and Le Volume Courbe in the bag, I can’t fail with The See See, ‘cos I love ‘em (that's me at the front wearing a See See badge like a saddo - look I forgot it was there okay, I didn't wear it on purpose). The band rattle through a rambunctious raft of songs that twirl and stagger between folk, country and psychedelia. Opener ‘Late Morning Light’ swirls sleepy-eyed and spectral into a monster of distortion. ‘Half A Man And A Horse’s Head’ (that would be a kind of inverted Centaur, I guess?) is toe-tappin’ and country-swingin’. ‘Up The Hill’ is hazy and laid-back, riding on sweet vocals and lazily jangled guitars. The See See have the whole ‘band as a gang’ thing nailed as well – they look like they’re enjoying themselves, enjoying playing off of one another – it’s a joy to behold. On top of that, watching Ben Swank’s drumming is a whole new spectator sport, I especially enjoy the bits where he stands up and slides rag-doll-like down the wall to hit the skins. Top entertainment all round.

The Clientele are one of those bands who’ve been knocking around on indie bills for years. I’m always pleased to see ‘em in a line-up, always buy the albums and enjoy them, although never in a this-record-saved-my-life! kind of way. Last year I looked the other way, and somehow The Clientele got mighty popular – hence the frenzied queuing tonite. I’ve tried hard to enjoy the band’s latest album ‘God Save The Clientele’– as everyone else seems to be raving about it – but it keeps skating off my ears. Singer/guitarist Alasdair is a virtuoso genius on the old twangling strings, though, and tonight’s set turns out to be pretty darn mesmerising.

The Clientele kick off with one of my faves, ‘Since K Got Over Me’, effortlessly sending out shimmers of sound like ripples on a lake. Theirs’ is a distinctive sound, full of floaty, reverb-ed guitar and Alasdair’s ghost-vocals, the songs sounding like out-takes from Buffalo Springfield’s orphan album ‘Last Time Around’. The Clientele are masters of their craft – a drifting, languid, filtered-sunlight West Coast vibe, but their set shows there are other strings to their bow. There’s the sudden, surprising funkiness of the feisty ‘Bookshop Casanova’, and ‘The Garden At Night’ breaks out the garage stomp for a brief but frenzied fuzz attack.
The piece de resistance is an epic version of ‘Lamplight’. As the song flickers, the room (cramped as it is) shrinks down to a pinpoint focus on Alasdair’s guitar which starts speaking in tongues, shivering and whirling out dervish music. It’s hypnotically beautiful.

To close, Lal from The Peoples Revolutionary Choir lurks awkwardly in a corner of the tiny stage to narrate his way through the short story prose-piece of ‘Losing Haringey’. He manages surprisingly well, but unfortunately all we hear is him muttering as the band chime through circling lullaby chords. It doesn’t really matter though, it all sounds so delectable.

Club 8 / The Would-Be-Goods / The School – 10 Jan 2008, The Luminaire

It’s the first gig of the year and dress me in a dufflecoat and serve me a Ribena, if Fortuna Pop! haven’t served up the indiest gig of the year as well. The popkids are out in force, queuing up the Lumi stairs alongside the obligatory smattering of Swedes who always turn up to cheer on their countrymen when there’s Scandi-pop in the air.

First up it's Liz Love, a radiant sunbeam of girl-pop charm dressed in a blossom yellow frock, leading her ramshackle gang The School. Despite first appearances, The School are not just another jangley-twee schmindie band, and though they could possibly do with some rather more vigorous rehearsals you can’t help but note the song-craft sensibility at work here. This is twirling baroque pop that’s been lavished with 60s girl-group stylings and cute, school-orchestra instrumentation – note the frowning concentration of the glockenspiel boy. ‘Valentine’ and ‘Let It Slip’ bop and shimmy along sweetly, daydreaming of Darlene Love and dansettes. ‘All I Wanna Do’ rolls in on a ‘Be My Baby’ beat (the best kind of beat), before disconcerting all and sundry with a weird ‘Eastenders’ aping keyboard line. I like The School’s songs best when they flirt with The Beach Boys’ teenage symphonies and The Zombies’ pop odysseys, when the violin adds a burling undertow and unexpected shivers, or when the guitar glides and slides lazily, most notably on the psychedelic storybook swirl of ‘Sunshine’. The band end with the incongruously Christmassy ‘Kiss Me In The Snow’, insisting that it’s a "New Year song". Whatever the weather, The School make me smile.

The Would-Be-Goods are badly served by the sound and by singer Jessica’s cold. There are specks and sparks of life amongst the rather drear rumble of songs going by, but the band’s wit and elegance is cotton-wooled. I stop paying attention and am lured by the Sounds XP chaps entertaining me with a vodka cranberry and moustachioed dance moves. One song makes me look up in interest like a pop-fuelled meercat. Unlikely as it seems, a thumping great glitterbeat and chunky guitar elbow their way into the room. A pity that the ignition fails to catch and the sound peters out into a bleat. Even the racing-green buzz of ‘Emmanuel Beart’ is a tad limp. A pity.

We’ve been wondering if Club 8 are going to be any good live. There are only two of them aren’t there? Will they use backing tracks or what? Happily, core Club 8-ers Karolina and Johan are joined by a band of fellow beautiful people (even the bloke with shaggy hair, vest and a flat cap looks cool – that’s how icily elegant Swedes are) – the line up swelled to three boys and three girls – pleasing symmetry and a nice surprise. No half measures with tapes here, and despite the still slightly dodgy sound Club 8 end up surpassing our expectations. Light from the glitterball shimmers off them as ‘Jesus Walk With Me’ shivers into the room. Karolina’s voice is a cool glass of water – fresh, simple, pure. The set is short and sweet, mixing new album tracks with old, the indie-pop kids twisting gently in the bittersweet breeze blown up by the drifting valium disco of ‘Whatever You Want’ and the brittle, delicate ‘Love In December’. The band ends with the gently grooving bongo-mongo driven ‘Heaven’ with Johan busting out some actual bongos and the song bursting into bloom all blossom bright for the chorus.

And for an encore we get Club 8’s lollopingly cheery hit of yore ‘Saturday Night Engine’ which generates what’s going to have to pass for a rock ‘n’ roll riot tonight with an out-break of enthusiastic audience wiggling and singing-along. Altogether now, "Hey! You ! Stop that singing cause the Club 8 is all there needs to be"

SFA Hurray! December 31 2007, Royal Festival Hall

What would be an enjoyable way to spend Neu Years Eve, hmm? How about with your favourite band in one of your favourite venues? And so it came to pass that we attended Super Furry Animals ‘Best New Years Eve Party…Ever’ at the Royal Festival Hall.

In 2007, SFA regained their rightful place as my tip-top-most favest band, thanks to their mighty pop odyssey ‘Hey Venus!’ and some fearsome live action at the Roundhouse. Tonight I am on my thirty-fourth Super Furry gig. I loves 'em.

And the Royal Festival Hall I also love; its optimistic ‘yay! we won the war and Britain be ace innit’ 1950s architecture and ‘we are the mods’ interior design. I love the idea that the ‘ball and net’ pattern for the carpet was completed by mistake when an apple was casually rested on the blueprints. Or the fact that when the RFH was refurbished last year the architects drew a little fox on their drawing up in the rafters ‘cos a family of foxes moved in during the renovation work (it’s true, I’ve seen the plans). I love the way I can roam around, up and down the stairs onto all the levels, gazing out the windows or leaning off the balconies marvelling at the (quite choppy and dangerous-looking) river and my city expanding enticingly in either direction. Don’t even get me started on the wonderousness of the main auditorium. Anyway, that's closed tonight, and the bands play downstairs in the more knees-up-friendly Ballroom. You have to celebrate New Year in the Ballroom really, don’t you?

We are treated to not one, not two, but three sets from the Super Furries, interspersed with two charming riots courtesy of Deerhoof and a spot of wandering about the Festy Hall visiting the ‘VIP Starf*ckers Blah’ (complete with red carpeted entrance and fake paparazzi flashing in yer face), the Old Man Pub, spotting olde Furries memorabilia (horses from the ‘Phantom Power’ stage set, a model of that teddy bear with it’s head in a vice, an ancient banner ca. the first album) and peering at Pete Fowler doing a drawing (‘Can you guess what it is yet?’ ‘Er, a Prog-rock Viking yeti monster with skull effects-pedals?’)

9pm: The first Furry set takes us on a journey of ‘ooh! they haven’t played this in years’ oldies and oddities, including 'Ymaelodi A'r Ymylon', 'Torra Fy Ngwallt Yn Hir' (personal faves for various insane reasons) a dreamy ‘Demons’ - with the crowd joining Gruff in happy ‘ba ba bas’ in lieu of the brass solo, ‘Hometown Unicorn’, a fab new song – the name and gist of which has been lost to vodka consumption, and ending with oh joy! ‘Ice Hocky Hair’.

10.30pm: A set similar to the one played to great effect on the Furries recent tour. I’ve been listening to ‘Hey Venus!’ a lot, and so it is with great glee that we greet the opening ‘Gateway Song’ and its swooning slide into ‘Run Away’. I frolic about merrily to the stuttering electro funk-up of ‘Baby Ate My Eightball’ and the multi-armed Eastern waveathon ‘Into The Night’. Hurrah! What a fantastic time we’re all having. Ending on an optimistic note to last us 'til midnight we get ‘Keep The Cosmic Trigger Happy’ with Bunf waving a placard that reads ‘Keep It Real’. With his crazy hermit hair and beard combo, he doesn’t look at all like a crazy old street preacher, oh no.

The countdown to midnight sees us watching a film projected onto the back of the stage. In it, SFA are riding around en route to the RFH in a golf cart. Then, as the clock hits twelve, here they are trundling triumphantly onto the stage in the self-same golf cart and cranking into 'Slow Life'. Gruff dons his Transformers helmet and hands out ‘party favours’ to the front row. He plonks into my hand one of those little kaleidoscope thingies that make you see the world in lots of refracted sections – like a fly’s eye. (side note: I once gave my friend K one of these for Christmas – she showed it to Bobby Gillespie who peered through it and announced, ‘It’s like being on Ecstasy!’ Doh!)

Midnight: This is the big old party, dance and holler set packed with the biggest, most rampagingest Furry songs for the happy crowd to bellow along to (not that they haven’t been doing this before), e.g. '(Drawing) Rings Around The World', ‘Golden Retriever’, ‘God! Show Me Magic’, ‘Hello Sunshine’ (how sweet to hear a room full of folk angelically chorusing ‘I’m a minger. You’re a minger too.’) and many more that are now lost in a haze of Grapefruit Absolut.

During ‘Receptacle For The Respectable’ Gruff favours Doritos as his crunchy percussion instrument (past percussion choices have included chewing on celery or carrots). I know they are Doritos as I am showered with the things when Gruff flings the left-overs into the crowd. Not the politest way to pass round nibbles. Or the most effective, as the tasty corn-based snax are instantly crushed to minute crumbs by our feet joyously stomping to the booming death-techno bit kicking in.

Of course the final song has to be ‘The Man Don’t Give A Fuck’ which, surprisingly, seems a tad underplayed. No matter though as we’ve had a huge dose of Super Furry goodness to inoculate us against the woes of coming back to earth on a chilly January morn, and look! here is an assortment of aliens, golden retrievers, pandas, etc lining up on stage as wobbling techno beats our cheery ears. Happy New Year!

Why Can't We Just All Get Along? and Fortuna POP! present The Christmas Covers Party! 15th December 2007, 93 Feet East

Tonight’s premise: Nottingham promoters Whycan'twejustallgetalong? and the lovely Fortuna Pop! have invited a motley collection of their musical chums to come and play a festive bash. There are lots of bands on the bill (seventy-five ‘artistes’ altogether!) so to save us getting bored, their remit is to provide us with three songs apiece – each of which must be a cover. It’s a Christmas Covers Party!

Confusingly, the normal schimndie suspects who usually make up the audience at such events are in short supply, and the hall is filled with extraordinarily up-for-it posh people, dancing to ‘lowest common denominator crowd pleasers’. These ‘crowd pleasers’ range from the mildy irritating (‘Stuck In The Middle With You’) to the teeth-grittingly hideous (pop pap from the 80s – the stuff that drove me into the arms of indie in the first place, seeking an alternative to the crap that spewed from the charts and the radio and everywhere. We hated that music with a passion – it represented the evil Thatcherite leaching of society of any noble values. But hey, it’s alright now, we’ll just listen to it ironically. Or something). The general ambience tonight, helped along by the dodgy old music, is spookily reminiscent of the Official 6th Form Christmas Disco I attended in 1987 (there was also an unofficial 6th Form Christmas Disco where everyone wore pyjamas and there was a bar and a band and a drunk pulling over the Christmas tree, but that’s a whole ‘nother story). It’s weirding me out a tad.

Every now and then a snow-machine expectorates great clouds of erm ‘snow’ (foamy stuff that lodges on your eyelashes, rather like the real thing but more painful) over those of us haplessly standing near the front. It’s all frightfully festive with the bands gleefully knocking out some entertaining/appalling (often in the space of one song) musical moments.

Moments of genius include My Sad Captain’s sweet and breezy rendering of The Flaming Lips’ ‘Race For The Prize’. They are sparkly and jangly and cheer me up no end. Father Christmas (Oli and Clive) is in good form, entertaining us all with Christmas songs livened up with a spot of saw-playing. He’s also learned a modern pop song in order to bond with the young people – it’s Pixies’ ‘Here Comes Your Man’ sounding heart-warmingly jolly as a ukelele-riddled Country singalong.

The Jingle Belles are members of Not in This Town and Saint Joan, along with Emily Chemistry Experiment. They are pious girls, coming on angelically shrouded and halo-ed, eyes cast to heaven, the skies filled with bells pealing…until their heavenly sheets are cast asunder to reveal that The Jingle Belles have actually gone for a sort of S&M/Gothic take on the Christmas theme. Oh, hang on, they're being Madonna (not THE Madonna). They raucously knock out ‘Like A Prayer’ and brilliantly take on hoary old spook-rock number ‘Come To The Sabbat’ by Black Widow. This basically involves plinking out the song’s hippy-skippy pixie riff on a cranky guitar and alternating it with chants of ‘Come, come, come to the Sabbat, come to the Sabbat, Satan’s there’ in ever more histrionic shrieks. It is obviously unutterable genius.

More genius occurs in the form of Keytarded. Their name alone deserves some kind of prize, now add to that the fact that Keytarded are the three Bearsuit ladies dressed in ‘rollergear’ (tiny shorts), each armed with, yes, a keytar. They play a fabulously rinky-dink cover of ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ that almost tops (as it were) Frank Sidebottom’s version, especially when the last chorus is rendered in "miaows" rather than, you know, boring old words.

Keytarded are joined by a duo of fabulous ‘backing dancer’ boys (out of Bearsuit), one of whom looks like a living Simpsons character and does some brilliant expressive facial work, really capturing the sensation of horror incurred when going ‘down, down, down into a burning ring of fire’. The three song rule is broken, but it doesn’t matter as everyone’s having glorious fun, especially during ‘Livin’ On A Prayer’ which we all bellow along to, shamelessly. Again the ghost of Christmas past raises its head: at the Official 6th Form Christmas Disco, Fiona Riches brought along her copy of ‘Livin’ On A Prayer’ and with much fanfare insisted on playing it, much to our indie-minded abject disgust. It’s good to exorcise these horrors. Isn't that what Christmas is all about?

The Hot Puppies / Santa Dog / Olympians - Notting Hill Arts Club, 1st Dec

Brrr! On a chilly wind and rain-lashed December afternoon, Notting Hill Arts Club provides a twinklingly cosy basement haven. Even better, those loveable bounders at Sounds XP are in charge, bringing us a bill of scuffed up garage scratching, jangling guitars and robust pop goodness. There are lots of friendly faces here - it’s like a big indie cocktail party, only with cheap, yet appalling ‘house beer’ (although for one round only we do indulge ourselves in a ‘Tropical Martini’ which features half a passion fruit bobbing across its surface like a tiny, abandoned rowboat).

Olympians are The Bridge Gang without their bass lady. To make up for this lack of mixed gender chromosomes, singer/guitarist Jose is dressed in a tee-shirt emblazoned with an ‘XX’, complementing the drummer’s ‘XY’. They ratchet out a sharp short set of scritchy voiced, knock-knee-ed raw garage scrapings. A cover of The Gories ode to everybody’s favourite teenage poison ‘Thunderbird ESQ" fits in perfectly with the snappily strangulated guitar, shuffle-bash drumming and Jose’s forlorn rasp. Afterwards, everyone agrees they’re great.

Santa Dog’s singer Rowena can always be relied upon to be dressed up in a quirkily stylish manner, yet she has a disconcerting Lesley Judd-ishness to her that makes things interestingly uncomfortable as she rocks away on her guitar, like a primary school teacher gone feral. She wriggles her eyebrows, pulling faces to embellish the band’s wooshing pop tales. Silkily janglesome guitar lines ring out, touched with a 60s West Coastian glow, and at times almost detach themselves from what the rest of the band is doing, i.e. expansive guitar pop. Despite their best efforts, Santa Dog just don’t get their claws into me.

When they’re not spinning us round in ruby slippers The Hot Puppies are filling our heads with fairy tale swoopings. Take the Kate Bush melodrama of ‘Somewhere’, which sounds like a mysterious, brooding woodland swaying against a star-scattered backdrop of midnight skies.

Singer Becky is a sparkling jewel of a front-woman, shining from the stage and imbuing the songs with a gorgeous urgency and glam dramatics thanks to her soaring voice. What’s more, The Hot Puppies have got the funk in a bouncy bassed, darkly groovin’ ‘80s way. They are a brilliant pop band, as evidenced by the chewy chunk of funked up gawky pop perfection that is current single ‘King of England’ and swirling epic synth beast ‘Clarinet Town’. The songs make you want to dance and prance, jump and frolic joyfully, which indeed is precisely what everyone did during the band’s Tapestry Goes West festival set. This afternoon, everyone’s more in the mood for gently bobbing about nursing secret smiles, hugging the The Hot Puppies sound close.

What a lovely time we’ve had and it’s only 8 o’clock, time for Sounds XP DJ Vodka Volauvent to play his signature tune, Russ Abbott’s ‘Atmosphere’. We wave our specs in the air like we just don’t care and hastily scarper to the pub.

Sonic Cathedral 28th November 2007

Things of note from an evening of worship at Sonic Cathedral :
1) A spectacular 3-way beard-fest. featuring Nat Sonic C., Barry Tapestry and John Dream Machine. Imagine the static they could produce between them – fuzzed up indeed.

2) A triumvirate of garage classics makes me feel all happy, beginning with the mighty 25 (or so) years before its time proto shoe-gaze warp-athon ‘Mindrocker’ and continuing through the sneeringly splendid ‘Why Don’t You Smile Now’ (I still think The Del-Monas version is the best – pure girl-venom) and the "red with purple flashes" ‘How Does It Feel To Feel’.

3) The way the onstage lights shine upward, casting eyelash shadows that make Miranda Lee Richards look like a doll (in a lovely way) adding to the dreamy, ethereal quality of her wispy folk twistings.

4) The Warlocks have at least two songs over which you can sing ‘High School’ by the MC5 (albeit at a funereal pace).

5) The Warlocks look odd when they start moving quickly, but at the same time they sound good when they’re taking a scummy Crampsian approach to things and ratcheting up the garage racket.

6) Despite the two drummers (hurrah for two drummer bands – they great!) and a copious selection of guitar pedals (I can see a Big Muff and a Memory Man and er, lots of others) The Warlocks don’t seem to have their old aura of occult majesty and doomy power. The Black Angels are doing it better now. Sorry.

Sound Carriers / The Monks Kitchen / Limn / Mixedcases - 26 October 2007, Buffalo Bar

It's the last Friday of the month. This means it's time for The Beat Hotel, and there’s a bumper crop down at the Fortuna Pop! hop tonight. Every one’s a winner.

This is Mixedcases’ (otherwise known as Mark West from Fanfarlo and Wolfie) first live outing and to celebrate he’s playing in his socks so he can use his toes to manipulate the tiny buttons on the pedals and gadgetry that clusters round his feet. Mark has surrounded himself with equipment, creating a nice sort of bedroom studio effect on stage – it suits his softly glowing, synthy, robot-beat space-pop. It’s the kind of music you’d find snuggled on Sweden’s Labrador Records – gentle vocals atop comforting cough candy tunes that can vere towards the itchily unsettling. 'Time To Go Now' sounds like it’s the great grandson of ‘Space Oddity’, or the sound of streetlamps breathing quietly to themselves on a frosty night. Then it all gets a tad raucous with what sound like the birth cries of a new genre – a mash up of soft-hearted indie electro-pop and clashing, smashing d’n’b beatz. It sounds great – a bit uncomfortable, but invigorating.

Limn’s USP is that they have two drummers sitting centre stage FACING EACH OTHER! Fantastic. Sadly, this thrilling state of affairs doesn’t last long as one of the drummers then starts playing guitar instead; scritchy skree high pitched twingly guitar. Limn have a tendency to mix and match instruments, crunching out all manner of oddball sounds, keeping you on your toes, so you’re eager to hear which path of chaotic tuneage they’ll rush along next. There’s Ron Johnson Records-style awkwardly angled cacophony pop, and then a great sixties lounge ‘Take 5’ kind of moment and one that’s sort of jazz with a ‘My Sharona’ bassline (cripes!) Then Limn make songs that have me thinking, ‘Hmm, Battles but on a picnic, or maybe Animal Collective but without the picnic”. The tunes wibble and weave and allow your imagination to wander with them, so the last one, full of angularly tooting ‘Trumpton’ guitars conjures an image of Hank Marvin on a motoring holiday in idyllic English countryside. With a knotted hankie on his head. Joyful.

The Monks Kitchen seem like they should be Scousers, but I don’t think they are. They play foot-tappy, folk-stroked, shanty-ish songs that twinkle and rumble along on simple bluesy bass lines. A Rickenbacker and a capo-ed acoustic guitar provide a sound like freshly cut grass, full of lovely skittish melodies, whilst the combined Monks vocals add up to some irridescent harmonies. One song makes be go especially melty and unable to stop grinning, and I suddenly realise it’s ‘cos it sounds like The Butterflies Of Love. By the end of their set I'm thoroughly charmed by the sunshine-sparkling-on-the-waves songs that The Monks Kitchen have just conjured so unassumingly for us.

Finally, it’s all aboard a golden cloud with The Sound Carriers to scud about the ceiling on David Crosby’s floatiest, most marshmallow-iest trip. The Sound Carriers are news to me – and hurrah! it’s very good news, ‘cos this is a band that manage to cram in hints of everything you love about the West Coast ‘60s sound: The Byrds, The Buff, Love, CSNY; as well as the retro-futuro sounds of Felt, Stereolab, Broadcast - that dreamily vintage Radiophonic Workshop feel. And then The Sound Carriers throw in a dash of Tropicalia just to liven things up, getting really rarver funky in places.

The band are lead by a string-bending geezer who has an unfortunate default facial expression of deep smugness, as if he knows we're all thrilling to the layers of ringing chords he's knocking out. Maybe he is smug about it - there's no reason not to be. He's accompanied on vocals by a petite, keyboard-playing girl who looks like a cross between Francois Hardy and Juliette Greco, which is clearly a marvellous thing. Also worth noting is the bass player's guitar strap which is decorated with horse brasses - somehow this is quite disturbing. Anyway, a high old time is had by all, swooning and shimmying gently to The Sound Carriers' slightly sinister sun-psych. So much so that the band is able to in