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BAD FRIDAY!
Peluché,
Dead Coast,
Les Sueques,
Calva Louise,
Flights of Helios,
Videocean,
Dirty Blondes
+ SoundsXP DJs

The Windmill, Brixton
Good Friday, 14th April 2017
3pm till late

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Gig Review

Gold Sounds/ Wayne Gooderham/ Electrophonvintage
London, Gramaphone

Article written by Ged M - Nov 23, 2008

Gold Sounds

The best things come in small packages: intimate venue, relatively small but knowledgeable crowd, and a line-up chosen with care by our LostMusic chums for the music they play rather than the scene they serve. The pessimistic might see all that brickwork in the Gramaphone as a prison, we see it as a castle of pop culture. It’s only the lagerpop beer that lets things down.

Electrophonvintage are technically a French band though tonight 50% of them are English (borrowed from Pocketbooks) and singer Remi has that enviable talent of non-native speakers of being about to tell funny jokes in his second language. They’re rightly described as sons of Sarah Records but tonight there’s plenty of Belle and Sebastian and the poppier side of Flying Nun in the mix. While the music is jaunty, the messages are generally lovelorn, confirming Chris Stamey’s wise statement that “some are always cold in the summer sun”.

For some family reason, Kelman the band can’t play tonight so singer/ guitarist Wayne Gooderham elects to perform a solo set. He spends time apologising for not having drums and keyboards backing him but really it’s unnecessary; while it would be good to hear full band versions, songs like ‘Commercial Road’ speak for themselves as examples of glorious gloom-pop, however they’re presented. Speaking to him afterwards (another advantage of those small gigs) I was surprised that he was so matter of fact about his creations; if I’d been responsible for creating the atmospheric Galaxie 500-like soundscapes that are on the latest Kelman platter I Felt My Sad Heart Soar, I’d be performing cartwheels.

Gold Sounds are from Nottingham. You learn that only when they speak; before then they’re the archetypal US band playing hypertensive guitar pop music, Pavement and Pixies-stylee. This is a very good thing: you can’t have too much catchy, direct rock'n'roll with impeccable influences. In a year when the previously reliable Spinto Band produced a deeply disappointing slab of average Americana, it feels like a form of ying:yang universal balance that we've found Gold Sounds to champion a certain sort of uplifting alt.rock with some astute folky touches. But for full effect they really need a record!

Links:
http://www.myspace.com/soundsgolden
http://www.kelmanband.com/
http://www.myspace.com/electrophonvintage