Category: Live Reviews

Merchandise / Lower
Islington Assembly Hall
9th June 2014

Its been about two years since Florida’s premium genre crossing punk band first appeared on the radar. At the time, they had just released breakthrough record Children of Desire on Katorga Works, a label that has released some of the best American punk and hardcore of recent years (Hoax, Hounds of Hate, Creem). Perhaps it is because of this that a gig at the Islington Assembly Hall, a rather grand venue and certainly one you wouldn’t expect to see a Katorga band play, came as such a suprise. However, Merchandise’s star is truly rising, with a record due out on 4AD this year surely to cement that.

Denmark’s Lower opened the proceedings to a somewhat sparse crowd. Lower are a band that carry a fair amount of hype around them, releasing a split with fellow countrymen, Iceage, they are the perfect band to play before Merchandise. A droney post punk band that could play in front of an ATP crowd, or a noisy hardcore crowd.

With a debut LP due out imminently, parts of the band’s set were unfamiliar to much of the crowd, lending to a fairly uninvolving show. With that said, despite a lacklustre response from the audience, the performance was strong. Its clear that the band’s ability to write songs has grown a lot between records, with the new songs played tonight being the highlight. Be sure to see them support label mates (Matador Records) Fucked Up on the 18th June at the Scala.

After Lower, the stage was set for Merchandise. Mercifully, the crowd had grown significantly, and whilst it wasn’t a rammed venue, there certainly appeared to be a lot of support for the band. Merchandise have two main strengths. The first of which is their vocalist Carson Cox, not only does his Morrissey-esque croon hold up throughout the hour they spend on stage, he’s also an excellent frontman, connecting with the crowd with ease throughout, and thanking the audience in such a way that it never comes off as trite. The second highlight of the band is their guitarist D. Vassalotti who is a constant showman, always experimenting with what noise he can create within the surprisingly poppy music being played.

Merchandise played a set that covered much of their discography, from audience favourite ‘Time’ to ending on ‘No You and Me’ from their recent Record Store Day split with Milk Music and Destruction Unit. Perhaps a bold move to finish their set with a song from a split that only a few people may have heard, especially when omitting such well known songs as ‘In Nightmare Room’ yet I believe it to be a risk that paid off.

As well as songs from their past, a couple of new songs were played, most notably ‘Little Killer’, a song that was posted online just a week or so before. What strikes you the most is how hooky this track is, not only catchy but also finishing within four minutes, leading one to wonder if this marks an end to the sprawling, ten minute tracks that made their Children of Desire LP so memorable.

As the show draws to a close, you’re overwhelmed with not only how strong Merchandise’s performance was, but also how accessible much of their set was. Merchandise could be a suitable support act for some really big bands if they so choose, and with a new album penned for the end of August, we could be seeing them playing some very interesting shows sooner rather than later.

Tim Lewis

Vertical Scratchers
The Waiting Room, Stoke Newington
May 8th, 2014

It’s with a sense of relief that we greet Vertical Scratchers as a power-trio as they step out onto the small but cosy stage in The Waiting Room tonight.

Vertical Scratchers, you see, have made an album this year – ‘Daughter Of Everything’ on Merge Records (review here) – that over-flows with quirky genius pop songs that are utterly addictive and compelling. They are the latest song-writing vehicle for John Schmersal, part of the stunning 90s noise rock band Brainiac whose incredible run of music was cut cruelly short in its prime with the death of singer Tim Taylor in 1997. After some time John continued to make challenging music with the brilliant Enon before most recently, moving onto Vertical Scratchers.

However, a brief glance at YouTube showed some footage of them playing live as a two-piece and to be honest, the performance wasn’t a patch on the lush pop of the record. It lacked bottom end without a bass player, obviously, and the songs were not shining through in the way that they should have done. Which is why, when the band walk out onstage tonight, that it is with a sense of relief to see them emerge as a three-piece, hardly pausing for breath as they begin to plough through the choice cuts on ‘Daughter Of Everything’ with energy and gusto. Occasionally Schmersal’s soft vocals get lost under the barrage of fizzing guitar and crashing drums but the melodies contained within songs such as ‘Turn Me Out’, ‘Memory Shards’ and ‘Way Out’ cut through like a razor and crackle with energy and static. ‘Pretend U Are Free’ brings things down a little with its Beach Boys-style harmonies and ‘U Dug Us All’ is slimily hypnotic and mesmerizing.

Let’s hope there’s much more to come from Vertical Scratchers. With this band Schmersal has crafted some of his greatest songs to date. Fingers crossed he’ll continue to scratch that itch for some time to come yet.

James Sherry

Mogwai
Royal Festival Hall, London
24th January 2014

Mogwai have just claimed a top 10 album in the UK for the first time in their 19 year career with their eight studio album Rave Tapes. Despite a generally sombre mood which you come to expect from the Scottish post-rock heroes, the band are clearly enjoying themselves and extremely thankful to be playing to such a huge audience at the prestigious Royal Festival Hall.

Rattling through a mammoth 18 song set with just the odd “thank you very much” in between songs, the band took the audience on a true sonic journey – the crunchy ‘Rano Pano’ taken from 2011’s Hardcore Never Dies see’s the audience commit to a light coordinated headbang, while ‘Take Me Somewhere Nice’ and the soaring The Hawk Is Howling opener ‘I’m Jim Morrison, I’m Dead’ provide truly spine-tingling moments.

Very often with bands so deep into their career, audiences favour certain albums and tracks, however there was no visible consensus among the crowd tonight, with newer material like ‘How To Be A Werewolf’ raising as much of a cheer as Come On Die Young’s ‘Christmas Steps’. There were some omissions from the set which I’m sure would have been appreciated by a good proportion – no songs from the band’s debut full length getting an airing tonight – though this is forgivable given the amount of tracks the band have at their disposal.

The heavy emphasis on electronics from their more recent work was often in stark contrast to the heavy distortion of the more guitar led tracks which at times made the set feel slightly disjointed. However, this has become a trademark calling card for the band who have never released an album with a similar tone to the last. Where other post-rock bands have been happy to go through album after album, creating quiet/loud, quiet/loud tracks, Mogwai pretty much perfected this (see ‘Christmas Steps’) and moved on to completely different soundscapes.

Despite their clear modesty, there’s still so much about Mogwai to get excited about.

Joe Parry

Girl Band
23rd January
The Old Blue Last, London

There are hundreds of adjectives that spring to mind as Ireland’s Girl Band clatter through their first track of the evening. The one I’ll start with is ‘unassuming’. For a band who look so pleasant, they make a particularly ugly brand of post-punk – all chainsaw guitars, throbbing bass and extraordinarily unusual structures. Ugly their sound may be, but it’s also touches on sheer brilliance.

Mixing longing drones with blisteringly raw and fast tracks, the energy never relents despite their chaotic unpredictability. For a band with such little melody, they manage on several occasions to get the packed out audience moving – such is a testament to the thought that has gone into crafting each of their tracks. Each track seems to have just about the right amount of each ingredient – even shoehorning in some quiet moments to allow the each nuance to breathe.

Repetition is a key tool in Girl Band’s repertoire. Many of their songs take an idea and let it naturally unfold and reveal itself, until you’re faced with cacophonous wall of jarring discordance. As the tracks move and swell, frontman Dara Kiely’s lazy monotone erupts into a pained howl, mirroring the rest of the bands erratic chaos. Given more time, audiences will be screaming the lyrics right back at him.

The bands cover of Blawan’s ‘Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage’ is a definite highlight, taking the throbbing techno of the original and skewing it with dark industrial stabs, while recent single ‘Lawman’ gives their set a true feeling that venues this small will soon be out of the question for Girl Band.

Joe Parry

Winnebago Deal
w/ Desert Storm / Flack Blag
The Cellar, Oxford
January 18th

It’s been nearly four years since Oxford’s favourite power-punk-rock-and-fuckng-roll duo Winnebago Deal last blasted us senseless with their oppressively loud high-voltage noise. They’ve been missed. This is the band who when they first crashed onto the scene in the late 90s had everyone cupping their hands over their ears screaming “how the hell do two people make such an oppressively loud noise!?” This is the band who played as Mondo Generator with Nick Oliveri and just about survived. They toured relentlessly, supported Fugazi, released a batch of great records, then came to an eventual halt after a good long run with the album ‘Career Suicide’ in 2010.

Since then, guitarist Ben Perrier amped up the speed for the mighty Blasted, as well as cranking up the garage rock n’roll with Los Pepes. Drummer Ben Thomas hasn’t picked up his sticks in two years and tonight, with less rehearsals than you can count on one hand, both Bens will not only be roaring through a 45 minute set of prime Winnebago Deal rockers, they are also opening the night with their Black Flag covers band, Flack Blag – the Deal plus friends stampeding through prime-Flag material from the early days (‘Fix Me’, ‘Wasted’) to later songs like ‘Annihilate This Week’ and ‘My War’. They are infinitely more preferable to the Greg Ginn version of Black Flag that I was unlucky enough to witness at Ieperfest in Belgium last year. Unlike Black Flag, Flack Blag play with energy, passion and conviction, hurling themselves into these American punk rock classics with aplomb. And despite the small amount of rehearsal time, they are tight and on it. The stop-start parts of ‘Slip It In’ are razor-sharp. The deceptively weird timings in ‘Depression’, ‘Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie’ and everyone’s favourite ‘Nervous Breakdown’ are spot on. We screamed our throats raw to every word. That’s how you do it Ginn.

Next up, Oxford locals Desert Storm warmed the crowd up nicely with a set of crushing Clutch style classic rock grooves that got heads nodding and hips shaking. The venue is packed and the receptive crowd give it all they got. But it’s the arrival of Winnebago Deal that really kicks things up a gear. They quite literally detonate across the stage, still fired up from the Flack Blag set earlier. You could never tell Ben Thomas hasn’t played drums for a couple of years as he powers through his second set of the night. Anyone who had forgotten quite how loud, menacing and hard rocking Winnebago Deal are and were is very quickly reminded as the likes of ‘Did It, Done It, Doing It Again’, ‘Just Cruising’, ‘Manhunt’ and ‘Whiskey Business’ slap us senseless about the cranium. The crowd goes nuts. Both Bens are a blur of riffs, sticks, sweat screams and hair. This is what rock n’roll thrills are all about.

With a bit of luck Winnebago Deal will stick with us for a bit. We need a band that rocks this hard in the UK. There aren’t many. They play London at the Black Heart on the 31st of January. Don’t miss it.

Words/pics/video by James Sherry

METZ / Cheatahs / The Wytches
Village Underground
28th November 2013

Stepping into the cavernous realm of Village Underground there’s a real buzz in the air, and no wonder – the three bands playing tonight make for a top notch bill. What better way for two freshly squeezed bands to cut their teeth on the tour circuit than to hit the road with METZ? Playing shows together across Europe for the entirety of November, tonight brings this epic musical relay to a close.

The Wytches kick things off with their dark garage tones. Straight into a psych scare, building shimmering riffs up to fully fuzzed out noise with all the crashing drums and shrieking howls you like. ‘Robe For Juda’ confirms how on point this three piece are. It sounds massive.

Baton passed, contemporary shoegazers Cheatahs jump on stage, rattling off numbers recognisable from the Coared and SANS EP’s. Harnessing momentous, driving rhythms fused with a guitar sound only describable as the duelling banjos of grunge, they are rocking. Cheatahs most recent singles are showcased tonight too, with October double-A-side ‘Cut The Grass’ / ‘Kenworth’ proving instant crowd pleasing material. Despite their complexly distorted sound not being perfect in this air craft hanger-like venue, set closer and arguably strongest song to date, ‘The Swan’, still soars.

Steaming straight into ‘Dirty Shirt’, frontman Alex Edkins emits a vivacious energy that self-multiplies with every song tonight. It’s very hard to pick a favourite of the set METZ play, each song is delivered with even more balls than the last. ‘Negative space’, ‘Wasted’ and ‘Sad Pricks’ all kick the shit out of each other.

If there’s one thing to be said about METZ it’s that they’re fucking loud. This Toronto trio know no boundaries when it comes to making a racket. The aural uproar they generate tonight is so deafeningly good it makes you want to hurl yourself into the PA and shatter into a thousand pieces.

METZ are essentially a one trick pony, but fast paced, thunderous hardcore is exactly what you want from a show isn’t it? Of course it is! And no one does it better than these three. Touring their eponymous debut relentlessly ever since its release in 2012 their live show is utterly destroying.

Closing with ‘Wet Blanket’ and a wall of coma inducing feedback, its clear METZ do nothing by half. It’s either full throttle or go back to sleep. I’m deafened, and I can’t wait until they return to London.

Words: Dave Palmer
Photo: Village Underground

Civil Civic / Jiboia
Corsica Studios
27th November 2013

A strict rule applies this evening: No bands allowed containing more than two human beings, with a minimum of one robot per band. Jiboia makes no exception to this. Flying solo, piloting a table crammed with more gadgets and gizmos than you can shake a stick at. He climbs to a high sonic altitude, looping and layering his way through the set. After fifteen minutes of electronic play he busts out the guitar and spills some Zappa style riffs all over his percussive drones. At times I’m a bit lost in these layers, but just watching Jiboia rocking out in front of his Marshall stack, you can see how much he digs what he’s doing.

Civil Civic ascend the stage, teasing everyone with an extended intro to ‘It’s Krill’ before erupting into full throttle CC groove. There are no buts about it, this duo rock. Their live show is engaging and exciting, full of mean guitar and bass riffs that’ll shred your face clean off, balanced with true pop sensibilities.

When you listen to Rules –Civil Civic’s cracking 2011 debut album- you have a picture in your head of which instruments play particular melodies and hooks. Yet when you see their live show, witnessing the finest guitar, bass and synth ensemble tear it up before your very eyes, this picture is totally flip reversed. There are a lot of hooks and effects on Rules that sound as though they’re indefinitely made with a synthesiser, but in fact most of this wizardry is played on guitar. And some of the more intricate riffs you assume are played on guitar actually lead from the bass.

Listening to this debut post-gig you hear things in a totally different way, and that’s not a bad thing. Tonight, guitarist Aaron manipulates his strings with a finesse one can only attain through a teenage love of Moore and Ranaldo I’m sure. He makes his guitar squeal like a banshee whilst delivering sludgy riffs that sound even meaner than Ben’s boundless bass work.

Watching Civil Civic play you feel a grin unfolding across your face. Rocking around their electronic, cuboid band-mate turned light show, they’re a lot of fun to watch. Bassist Ben’s dance floor antics establish that above all, they’re here to have fun, and they want to have fun with you. Civil Civic aren’t a pair of clowns though, not by any means. The tunes they play tonight all hold the same sincerity and downright edgy cool that they do on record. Highlights come in the form of ‘Lights On A Leash’, a mean slow builder rising to an off the cuff breakdown of epic electronic proportions. ‘Street Trap’ and ‘Less Unless’ both prove instant winners too.

Despite a serious amount of string breakage suddenly occurring mid-way through crowd pleaser ‘Run Overdrive’, this lot aren’t phased. The re-stringing operation flys by as Aaron jumps on the keys for an impromptu synth interlude, then they’re back in the game for a triumphant encore.

With hints dropped of some new music to come from Civil Civic in the New Year, I am more than excited to see what this duo do next.

Dave Palmer

Shellac
Netil House, London
November 27th

Within my group of friends and bands that I played in around the mid-nineties, Shellac were incredibly influential. When I listen back to music we made then, you can clearly hear the shift in sound and style that they brought with them with that first batch of incredible singles and the ‘At Action Park’ album. A lot of it was down to the hugely original drumming style of Todd Trainer. He introduced a whole new minimalist, yet immensely powerful, choppy drum style that I am still trying to rip off to this day! That combined with Bob Weston’s grinding bass and Albini’s sheet metal guitar created one of the most distinctive, original sounds to emerge from the 90s US underground.

It’s hard to believe that twenty years have passed since Shellac first made their presence felt. Insane as it may seem, but for followers of Big Black and Rapeman, Shellac still feels like Steve Albini’s new band! However, the fact of the matter is they’ve been doing this a long time now but what is immediately striking, as the band take to the stage bathed in suitably minimalist white light, is how fresh they still sound. The fact is Shellac are far from prolific. In twenty years they have produced just four proper albums (a fifth is due in 2014) and their tours and live shows are few and far between so when they do get to play, in their own sardonic way, they look like they really enjoy it. When they open tonight’s set with ‘A Minute’ from their classic debut album ‘At Action Park’ it sounds just as brittle, spiky and dynamic as it did when it first burst out of our speakers all of those years ago. Taunt and tight, the Weston and Trainer rhythm section is hard to beat. Todd is a genius behind the skins. His rolls, his fills, the way he strikes the skins, his weird face, his posture. It’s hard to take your eyes off him. Well, at least it would be if Albini wasn’t to his left, slashing out razor guitar noise, his guitar strapped around his waist (how does he keep it strapped on like that?), howling into the microphone. He is equally mesmerising.

I’ve seen many Shellac gigs over the years and this is certainly up there with one of the best. The sound is clear and sharp (but could be louder) and they play every song you could ever want to hear, even ‘Copper Song’ – one of my personal favourites. ‘Wingwalker’ is particularly ferocious tonight, with a spectacular spoken ramble from Albini (“I haven’t got a house, but I have got a plane…motherfucker,”) and for an hour and half, they play everything any Shellac fan could want to hear, and more. Let’s hope that next year finally brings the new Shellac album we’ve all been waiting for and they grace our shores once more.

James Sherry

Mac Demarco
Scala
28th October 2013

Montreal melody maker, Mac Demarco has landed in London to kick-start his European Tour and my has he pulled quite the crowd. Having sold out this Kings Cross cavern many moons ago his fans are packed in from miles around. Hungry for something good, they get it. A quick wave hello and Mac and his band plunge into album opener ‘Cooking up Something Good’ and immediately everyone’s in sync.

Watching Mac Demarco perform, you appreciate both his skill as a song writer and the musicianship of his band. His songs are catchy, simple pieces of pop, full of lyrical wit and could totally work stripped down with Mac strumming an acoustic on his own. However bassist Pierce is the cherry on top of this tasty musical cake, bringing a funky element that feels essential to these simple songs. Macs music feels dead honest too, there’s nothing hidden behind effects pedals or matching outfits here. This lot turn up, plug in and play, just the way it should be.

Although essentially guitar pop, there’s a lot going on. In ‘Rock n Roll Night Club’ Mac adopts a deep, Elvis style croon and ‘Ode To Viceroy’ extends to a slack Pavement drawl. The dreamy tale of ‘The Stars Keep On Calling My Name’ holds the indie sincerity of Blur while mixing in the upbeat sweetness of Best Coast.

But where does this genre bending end? After rattling through the highlights of his debut 2, there’s time for a bit of larking around. Jamming the likes of Rammstein, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin and even Metallica gets a good sing-along going before veering into ‘She’s Really All I Need’.

Downing his guitar for set closer ‘Still Together’, Mac reveals his inner romantic. Down on one knee, he’s holding the crowd in the palm of his hand, with everyone singing his heartfelt lyrics straight back at him with full force. As the final chorus of “Together…” rings out i wonder if this choice of set closer is more a thank you to his fans than just an ode to his beloved. Either way, following a rapturous applause, encore ‘My Kind Of Woman’ harnesses the sexy atmosphere and sends sparks flying, albeit mostly amongst the lads down the front hoping for a high five from the main man.

Dave Palmer