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BAD FRIDAY!
Peluché,
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The Windmill, Brixton
Good Friday, 14th April 2017
3pm till late

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Gig Review

Silver Abduction/ New Morning Blues/ She Keeps Bees/ Golden Animals
London, Wilmington Arms

Article written by Ged M - Sep 6, 2009

Silver Abduction

Silver Abduction play six songs, all of them very different sounding, from shoegazing to sixties ballads, and all containable within the adjective "Lynchian". No longer the dulcimer playing frontwoman of the Eighteenth Day of May, Alison Bryce has traded folk songs for torch songs and stands, elegantly dressed and looking like Veronica Lake, with her hands twirling expressively in her lap in the manner of some Indian temple dancer. It’s both sultry and spooky, and ends moodily, with a cover of Xavier Cugat’s ‘Perfidia’ that transforms the Wilmington Arms into a nightmare nightclub.

Reviewers like to have niches to put bands into. This one goes into “?”. I’m stumped by New Morning Blues, not because they’re so original but because they’re so not. They’re not bad but not good, a band who play in a bar but who aren’t a bar-band. All I remember is the singer’s shirt and the drummer’s uncomfortable seat position, but I’m not in Top Shop or DFS, I’m at a gig!

Jessica Larabee: She Keeps Bees

Jessica Larrabee of She Keeps Bees is repentant. She offended the people of Leicester last night with her use of “fuck” and “pussy”. What a bunch of crybaby fucking pussies! Jessica is encouraged to use earthier language by the more cosmopolitan crowd in the Wilmington, which suits both her and her songs. She and drummer Andy LaPlant make a feral blues-inspired noise that sounds like early Patti Smith and PJ Harvey, but it’s the encore that sends you reeling: Jessica sings an acapella blues, not even close to the microphone, but her voice carries throughout the venue and even into our souls with its sharp delivery. It’s the sort of song that can lift your opinion of a band into the stratosphere, I fucking swear!

Cinderella-style (I have the ugly sisters to prove it) I have to leave before the end of the set by Golden Animals but what I hear confirms the promise of their album. The hirsute, poncho-wearing Tommy Eisner plays guitar and sings while the amazonesque Linda Beecroft perches strangely atop a drum kit and provides backing vocals. Theirs is a Californian take on the blues, a laid-back and more Top of the Pops version of the form, like a poppier Kills with a velvet-voiced singer and some compelling rhythms on songs like ‘The Steady Roller’. It’s great while it lasts and not for the first time I find myself cursing living in the South London suburbs as I run for a train.

Photos courtesy of that prince among cockneys Bob Stuart at Underexposed

Links:
http://www.myspace.com/thesilverabduction
http://www.myspace.com/goldenanimals
http://www.myspace.com/shekeepsbees