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Friday 6th April 2012
All Day BBQ Festival

Sparrow and the Workshop
6 Day Riot
The Nuns
Singing Adams
Y Niwl
Colours
Dignan Porch
+more tbc

The Windmill
Brixton
Price tbc

On Our iPod

Golden Grrrls - New Pop 7”

Chris Devotion & The Expectations - Amalgamation & Capital (album)

Trailer Trash Tracys - Ester (album)

Throwing Up - Mother Knows Best 7”

Howling Wolf - Complete Chess Masters 1951-60

The Ketamines - A Rotten Bond/1 Yr (from Oddbox Singles Club Pt 2)

Cardinal - Hymns (album)

Proper Ornaments - Taking the Gamble Out of Buying 12”

Darren Hayman - January Songs (album)

Various: Marshall Teller EP 12”

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Gig Review

Latitude Festival - The National / Kristin Hersh / These New Puritans / Standard Fare etc
Henham Park, Suffolk

Article written by Matt H - Jul 20, 2010

Richard Hawley

I didn’t really go to Latitude for the music, which with two small kids in tow is probably just as well. But much fun was had and I managed to catch one or two jewels too, so let’s just concentrate on those eh?

Friday night in the Word tent had a great triple header with Wild Beasts, Richard Hawley and The National hot on each others‘ heels. I’ve never quite got Wild Beasts and still haven’t to be honest, but with two absolutely belting vocalists they do verging-on-the-stadium-sized indie atmospherics (sprinkled liberally with hints of the 80s from Orange Juice to early Simple Minds) better than most. Richard Hawley is in slightly subdued form due, it turns out to bronchitis (suck on that Bono). To compensate most of the ballads go by the wayside and the rockier tunes are blasted out, his band unleashing tightly controlled mayhem to highly enjoyable effect.

The National

I’ve seen The National before and though they were good I‘d left slightly underwhelmed. No danger of that this time out. Matt Berninger and co were superb. Impassioned, going from harsh to gentle and back, they’re bursting with all the life that is subtly restrained on record. It’s helped by a sizeable following treating the songs from Boxer and High Violet like singalong classics. And deserve it. All National albums are slow burners which take a while before suddenly revealing their genius - this was the point when I realised just how much High Violet had got its hooks in and blossomed for me. Alligator lends only a couple of songs (no All the Wine!), but Mr November in particular makes the crowd go nuts - at least down the front. I’ve spent too much time at small scale indie-schmindie gigs of late, this was a proper rock concert and all the better for it.

Saturday was a bit sparse so thank goodness for Standard Fare. Wide-eyed and slightly fazed by being there at all they still turned in a magic wee set of indiepop par excellence. They have a burgeoning collection of really excellent songs, borne out by a great newie. Hopefully the Latitude experience will convince them that they do actually belong in this sort of company and they’ll really make a go of it. Other than that I half heard Teeth while catching up with someone we hadn’t seen in a decade. Their shouty, thumping electronica has all the engaging quirkiness of the Lovely Eggs and might be similarly brilliant in short doses and irritating in long ones. And for the couple of songs we managed to catch The Horrors looked like they got the balance just right with their goth rock, properly brooding and atmospheric.

Kristin Hersh

Sunday brought Kristin Hersh both reading from her forthcoming memoir and playing a short set. You always approach it with a bit of trepidation when one of your favourite artists branches out. But the extracts are clever, suitably intriguing and just plain funny (even the bit about being hit by a car). Playing later in the Word tent (a bit sparely attended at first - Mumford and Sons having hoovered up the biggest crowd of the weekend at the main stage, there’s no accounting for taste…) you can see that the ways she talks about her songs as independent entities isn’t just flummery. Fixed on the stage, she does seem genuinely to be channelling rather than performing them. And I’d forgotten just how fabulous and how many million miles from a folky with a guitar she is. Her voice switches in a trice from hoarse loveliness to the harshest scream going. Just as I was musing that I couldn’t think of another artist of such consistent brilliance without any stand out songs, she finishes with Your Ghost. On a boiling hot day I get a shiver down my spine and the hairs on the back of my neck literally stand up. Wonderful. Finally, in the best decision of the weekend I decide to leave Charlotte Gainsbourg to her own devices and hit the woods to see These New Puritans instead. When a band takes to the stage with a basic set up of two percussionists, a range of tricksy electronic equipment and a pair of bass clarinets (I think, it’s been a long time since I filled out my Observer book of the Orchestra) to go with a seldom used guitar, your interest has to be piqued. And they were impressive - a tightly regimented but impressionistic mix of dance and tribal rhythms overlaid rock, electronic and classical sound and choruses. Genuinely artistically ambitious, they are what lots of other bands are cracked up to be and aren’t - with a serious presence live that goes beyond their records.

So amongst everything that’s one band reconfirmed as a favourite, one artist rediscovered and one new passion. I might not have come for the music, but that’s a decent haul in anyone’s terms.

Links:
http://www.latitudefestival.co.uk/home/
http://www.thesenewpuritans.com/
http://kristinhersh.cashmusic.org/strangeangels/