My Kind Of Show

 

TV21/We Were Promised Jetpacks – Glasgow, Accies Club – Oxjam Benefit, 27th October 2007

After the arena show the night before this, to be honest, was more my sort of gig. The attendance might only have been a hundredth of the SECC gig, but at least you could hear the bands properly.

The venue itself, a rugby club social club, was a little bit unusual and it was certainly a little off the beaten track. That may therefore have been a factor in a small-ish turnout which was a shame not just for the bands but for Alan the promoter. However what the audience may have lacked in numbers was more than made up for in enthusiasm.

Happily the low turnout didn’t affect the performances of either of the bands. I’d seen We Were Promised Jetpacks play with TV21 18 months ago and whilst stylistically this is clearly the same band they are noticeably more confident both in their performance and their songwriting. Their blueprint still largely features stop/start songs but within that template they’ve found more varied ways of making their point. Singer Adam typifies this best – his range of vocal delivery seems so much greater now.

They’re also relaxed enough to count the punters in both sections of an L-shaped room then take a call on a mobile between songs to direct friends to the venue! All in all it’s an enjoyable set and I hope I’ll be able to catch them again before too long.

Whilst the recent TV21 shows have been excellent without exception the nature of this show illustrates that the last year has been a slightly frustrating experience simply because all the gigs have been support slots of one kind of another. This therefore was a chance for the band to break out from their core set and spread their wings a bit. And they do this with the introduction of four “new” songs.

A couple, ’Rain’ and ‘Waiting For The Drop’ have both had previous 21^st century outings but the version of ‘Rain’ in particular was streets ahead of the rather ragged version from May last year. Impassioned and powerful, this was the best vocal performance of the night from Norman, in fact maybe even of all the gigs I’ve seen over the last couple of years.

The biggest surprise though was the inclusion of ‘Through Different Eyes’, like ‘It’s Me’ another song which was only ever recorded for a radio session. On record it always sounded a bit like a b-side, however the interplay of the guitars gave it real energy and I’m really hoping that it will resurface again very soon.

‘Playing With Fire’ was another song resurrected for the first time and whilst it might not have been as tight as the rest of the set due to limited rehearsal, it fitted in perfectly as an encore.

Otherwise it was pretty much business as usual – and that is undeniably a good thing. Having apparently not played it at their Undertones support at the Garage, ‘Snakes and Ladders’ was back as the set opener and sounding as good as ever. In fact that can be said about all the familiar tunes from the last 12 months with perhaps ‘Something’s Wrong’, ‘It’s Me’ and another blinding version of ‘Tomorrow’ the highlights.

The only disappointment of the night is that no genuinely new material has been added to the set. But it’s a minor issue and I think the fact that I’ve now seen TV21 ten times in the last 2 years is a testament as to just how good these guys are right now.

TV21 play the Liquid Room, Edinburgh on 8^th November with the Undertones. (Tickets). Their EP, Future Revisited is available through their Myspace.

We Were Promised Jetpacks play as part of 25 Band Weekender at the Doghouse, Dundee, on Saturday (3^rd November) onstage at 5.00pm whilst they are also playing at Po Na Na in Edinburgh on 9^th November (tickets) and Glasgow later on.

From WWPJ, here’s a cracking song from their EP given away at the gig:

We Were Promised Jetpacks – Quiet Little Voices

All going to plan, more TV21 next week.

Tv21 Setlist

1. Snakes & Ladders 2. When Cole Was King 3. End of A Dream 4. Through Different Eyes 5. It’s Me 6. Swimming 7. Rain 8.Waiting For The Drop. 9 Something’s Wrong 10. Last Man Standing 11. Shattered By It All 12. Ambition 13. Look To The Sun 14. Tomorrow 15. On The Run

Encore – 16. Playing With Fire

A few not very good photos (and a couple of ok ones) from the show here.

Expanding Blogroll

Have come back in tonight to find a comparative explosion in traffic. Part of that seems at least to be down to two new blogs recommending MPT. It only seems fair to say – back at you chaps!

So, Sweeping the Nation and This Recording, thanks very muchly. If you’re not already acquainted with them, please go and pay them a visit.

Minority Report

Arcade Fire – SECC, Glasgow – 26th October 2007

Let me say at the outset – it could just be me being a miserable bastard. But tonight’s Arcade Fire gig in Glasgow was a disappointment.

I’d been moderately dreading the show because the venue doesn’t have a good reputation sound-wise. It shouldn’t therefore be a huge surprise that the sound tonight was, at best, little more than serviceable. But was that really just down to the venue? I kind of suspect not.

Firstly both supports sounded better than the headliners. Not brilliant but certainly clearer. Maybe that’s to be expected after all both Wild Light (awful name, btw chaps) and Clinic have far less complex set ups than the 10 piece headliners. But surely we have a right to expect to hear a band we’ve paid £30 to see sound at least half way decent?

The trouble is that the disparate instrumentation, which works so well on record seems simply chucked together in a live setting into, at times, something of an unholy din. You just can’t hear the horn or the trumpet, the keyboards or the violins, hell, even the guitars, in their own right at any point. And if the sound was barely better than serviceable by the end, there was no excuse for the fact that it was downright awful for the first 3 or 4 songs. In fact I could hear little more than drums and bass for the first 15 minutes and was totally bewildered by the euphoric reaction to each song. Was everyone just expecting dreadful sound and was just pleased to see the band whatever they sounded like? Or was it just my ears?

Enough moans about the sound (it did improve as the set progressed) but the show did little to change my mind on the ‘Neon Bible’ material which came over as decent but far from startling. For me the show didn’t really take off until the last few songs with both ‘Power Out’ and ‘Rebellion (Lies)’ sounding as good as at the Barras. ‘Intervention’ sounded right as the first encore rather than having to follow straight on behind the 2 previous songs and ‘Wake Up’ was the only song capable of rounding things off, although to be honest it didn’t pack the same punch this time around.

Disappointingly that was it but then they had really nothing else to play.

In conclusion, I very much doubt I’d be in a hurry to go and see them next time around, and certainly not at the SECC, unless the next LP is as good as ‘Funeral’. But I’m not holding my breath.

Earlier on, I missed most of Wild Light so can’t really pass comment (apart from the name). Clinic though were pretty decent but never quite managed to engage the audience. They played a lot of short songs but were perhaps best on the couple which had a bit of a groove. I may well try and find out a bit more about them.

A final Grumpy Old Man Grouch. This wee lassie next to me spent Clinic’s last song howling for them to finish. Ignorant, really. Young people, eh?

Arcade Fire setlist

1. Black Mirror 2. Keep The Car Running 3. Neighbourhood #2 (Laika) 4. No Cars Go 5. Haiti 6. My Body Is A Cage 7. Kiss Off (cover) 8. Ocean of Noise 9. Neighbourhood #1 (Tunnels) 10. Well In The Lighthouse 11. Headlights Are Like Diamonds 12. (Antichrist Television Blues) 13. Neighbourhood #3 (Power Out) 14. Rebellion (Lies)

Encore

15. Intervention 16. Wake Up

The highlight of the set:

Arcade Fire – Neighbourhood #3 (Power Out) (from ‘Funeral’)

Buy ‘Funeral’ and ‘Neon Bible’ here.

Myspace Jukebox Jury (5) – The Phantom Band

This wasn’t a conscious decision to revive this feature, but rather an impulse in aquiet moment to follow up a link in the last Chemikal Underground mailout.

The Phantom Band are Chemikal’s latest signings and, judging by their Myspace, a good one. There are 4 tracks on offer which illustrate that this isn’t a band that’s going to be easily pigeon holed. However, as stab at that, they perhaps are something like Sons and Daughters mixed up with maths rock (and I am overly familiar with neither of these reference points!)

You can hear both sides of their single (released in July) at Myspace. The A-side, ‘Throwing Bones’ is brilliant, whilst the B-side is an instrumental which takes us back towards post-rock territory. You can still get the limited 7″ from Trial and Error whilst the e-version is available here.

The other 2 tracks on the PB Myspace are at least a step removed from these two songs – ‘Crocodehl Dundee’ is another instrumental, it reminds me a bit of Battles without the Pinky & Perky vocals, and it’s even better than ‘The Riff’ whilst ‘Dethalle’ features vocals and is slower perhaps more bluesy than the single.

Here for an extremely limited time only is a low bit-rate version of the A-side:

The Phantom Band – Throwing Bones (single – buy it)

The Phantom Band are playing a headline date on Friday 2nd November at the ABC2 in Glasgow – try their Myspace for tickets.

The even better news (for me, at leas,t since I can’t go on the 2nd) is that they then support Malcolm Middleton on his 2 Scottish dates in December – at the ABC in Glasgow on 5th and at the Liquid Room in Edinburgh on the 6th. Tickets here.

Give Me Something To Believe In

Bob Mould – Circle of Friends (DVD – MVD Visual 2007)

The new Bob Mould live DVD, ‘Circle of Friends’ arrived in the mail the other day and it’s absolutely superb. A record of the closing show of his 2005 full band tour from Washington DC’s 9.30 Club, ‘Circle …’ is a blast through the highlights of his extensive back catalogue featuring not just songs from his solo career but also Husker Du and Sugar classics.

It is a blistering recording, brilliantly capturing the full on Mould live experience. Whilst I wasn’t at this particular gig it was a reminder of the fabulous London show we’d seen earlier in the tour with exactly the same setlist.

Highlights? Well, the majority of Sugar’s ‘Copper Blue’ was played and the opening triple salvo of ‘The Act We Act’, ‘A Good Idea’ and ‘Changes’ is tough to top although the run of Huskers songs from ‘Hardly Getting Over It’ through ‘I Apologize’ to ‘Chartered Trips’ comes close.

The best of Bob’s last solo LP ‘Body of Song’ also stands up well to the classics with a particular highlight being the incendiary reading of ‘I Am Vision, I Am Sound’.

What is clear from the DVD though is what a great band this is and it seems that they will continue to play with Bob in future.

If you need a reminder of this man’s genius, then buy this DVD. (Here, perhaps)

And here, from the DVD is the 2005 version of one of the greatest rock songs of all time:

Bob Mould – Celebrated Summer (from ‘Circle of Friends’)

Bob has a new LP out early next year called ‘District Line’. I’m looking forward to it already.

Losing Control

Went to see ‘Control‘ the other night and was very impressed. Any film based on true events always has a thin line to tread between representing the truth and fitting the truth into a movie format but director Anton Corbijn walks that line brilliantly, no doubt in large part due to the involvement of many of the principals.

The end result is a movie that feels authentic throughout and one that captures the mood of late 70s Britain very well. The only sequence I have any real issues with is the crowd reactions during the riot gig, which feel very Hollywood. But it’s pretty much the only mis-step in the whole film.

Sam Riley has rightly won praise for his portrayal of Ian Curtis but the whole cast deserve credit. Of course the ending is shattering, particularly when you know what is coming but even if you don’t, the choice of music and lyrics throughout draws an unerring straight line to the tragic conclusion. The off camera nature of the deed itself almost allows you to keep it filed away but Samantha Morton’s reaction on finding the body of her husband tips the balance. This is where the audience loses control.

You suspect that there will be 2 categories of people who will see this film. Of course, as a music fan, if not a Joy Division obsessive, the film has a particular resonance. But I’m not sure how it plays purely as a film to someone who isn’t aware of that context. Certainly as soon as the house lights went up I was surprised that there was light hearted conversation amongst the young-ish largely, student audience because both myself and Mrs MPT needed a few minutes to properly compose ourselves.

It’s not all bleak though. I’m surprised to hear of criticisms that the movie buys into the ‘grey, grim young men’ image of the music. If it’s not a riot throughout, it nonetheless seems to capture some of essence of the humour of being in that band and the balance feels right for the movie.

Go and see it if you can.

Joy Division – Transmission (live) (from ‘Still’)

The Joy Division LPs have been remastered and reissued on CD this year with an extra disc in each of a different live gig. Buy them here.