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Pictures from some recent gigs we've hosted:

29 March 2013 - Brixton, London

Viv Albertine, VuVuVultures, Left Leg, Mickey Gloss, Big Wave, No Cars, Arthur Gunn, Simon Love (Pictures)

8 March 2013 - Lexington, London

R.Ring, Golden Grrrls, Slushy Guts and Equinox (Pictures)

On Our iPod

Deerhunter - Monomania (album)

Cosines - Hey Sailor Boy (7")

Proto Idiot - You're Wrong (album)

Goat - Stonegoat (7")

Kid Congo and the Pink Monkeybirds - Haunted Head (album)

The Fuzz - Air 7"

Mikal Cronin - MC II (album)

Mark Mulcahy - Dear Mark Mulcahy, I Love You(album)

Veronica Falls - Waiting For Something To Happen 7"

Various Artists - Polly Wally: Gritty, Buttshakin' Rhythm 'n Soul (album)

The Epstein - Murmurations (album)

Lightning Bolt - Oblivion Hunter

Robyn Hitchcock - There Goes The Ice (2x 12")

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Gig Review

Jeff Mangum
Union Chapel

Article written by Adam W - Mar 17, 2012

There are few artists clothed in such reverence as Jeff Mangum. The final release from his former band Neutral Milk Hotel, 1998’s In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, inspires such obsessive adulation from fans and critics that all kinds of myth-making are allowed to prevail. As a result, the story of Mangum’s subsequent seclusion, and the speculation surrounding his emotional and physical whereabouts over the last 14 years, is a narrative difficult to resist. Particularly when coupled with the crypticism and emotive craft of his music.

With Mangum not having set foot on a London stage in those 14 years, it is with almost unrivalled anticipation that he walks up, alone, beneath the pulpit of a resplendent Union Chapel. He opens with Oh Comely, a lilting 8 minute stream-of-consciousness, and the entire church is wracked with silence. His remarkable voice, lowered slightly by age, cuts through lines of song (at once both oblique and seemingly universal) with searing emotional impact. The explosion of applause at the end is borderline deafening.

Neutral Milk Hotel’s music defies easy categorisation. It is pop, it is slacker-rock, it is manufactured whimsy all drowned in strange, loud and jarring orchestration. But tonight, stripped bare, all of Mangum’s songs hold up to scrutiny. His set touches upon all of his releases, including a stunning rendition of ‘lost’ NMH track Little Birds. Former bandmates join him (such as during a haunting version of Ghost) and disappear, providing brilliant flourishes to the material.

But tonight is all about Mangum. He strums his guitar with remarkable energy and his eyes glare with a terrifying intensity, but it is his voice and his words that grip the Chapel into silence (in spite of his constant requests for the crowd to sing). His soaring, guttural roar, switching from tenderness to anger to sadness often in the space of one line, is breathtaking. The haunting and lucid poetry of Two-Headed Boy, for instance, is delivered so loudly and clearly it almost perforates this reviewer’s eardrum.

After a marching band interlude (which emanates from the back of the Chapel), he disappears to rapturous applause. He returns once for a beautiful rendition of acoustic ditty In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, and once again for a heartbreaking reading of Daniel Johnston’s True Love Will Find You In The End. It is a shattering end to an extraordinary performance.

Tonight, Jeff Mangum didn’t just meet the expectations of a uniquely reverent crowd – he exceeded them. Tonight wasn’t about the continuation of an indie-rock myth, but a beautiful performance of beautiful songs with enough depth, emotion and intrigue to last a lifetime. Let’s just hope we don’t have to wait another lifetime to hear them again.

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