Meltdown Festival, Yo La Tengo, Royal Festival Hall, 12/06/11

I was back at the Royal Festival Hall on Sunday to see Yo La Tengo play a show as part of Ray Davies' Meltdown Festival.

It was billed as a Reinventing The Wheel show, the first of two sets being determined by the spinning of a wheel containing options such as Yo La Tengo Songs Beginning With S, Yo La Tengo Songs Beginning With A Vowel, Yo La Tengo Songs Featuring Names, their Sounds Of Science Soundtrack, a set of Dump songs (James' side project) and seeing the band act out a 30 minute episode of American soap (Seinfeld). In the end the guy from the audience who was invited on stage to spin the wheel chose a Condo Fucks set. For me, it sat somewhere in the middle of preferred options. I was rooting for songs beginning with S - Song For Mahila, Sometimes I Don't Get You, Season Of The Shark (which they played anyway), Shadows, Sugarcube, Saturday, I could go on...

For the second set they played a fairly wide selection of tracks, drawing on all recent albums. They chose to open with a sublime, twenty minute version of Night Falls On Hoboken. It brought back memories of seeing them play this venue in 2000 to support the release of one of my favourite albums And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out. Other highlights included The Weakest Part, Season Of The Shark and Cherry Chapstick. The set was as follows:

Night Falls On Hoboken
Big Day Coming
Avalon Or Someone Very Similar
The Weakest Part
Season Of The Shark
Black Flowers
Cherry Chapstick
Nothing To Hide
Tom Courtenay
Pass The Hatchet I Think I'm Goodkind

Autumn Sweater
My Little Corner Of The World

God's Children (original by The Kinks)
I Feel Like Going Home

Another excellent show, proving you never get the same set twice. A brief glance at some of their recent setlists shows how they still play a huge selection of their songs. It is heartening to know they still play a lot of material from And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out. Their ability to switch from tender, quiet songs to epic, loud guitar workouts always results in excellent, memorable shows.

I took some photographs that you can see here.

Low, The Barbican, 03/06/11

I was at the Barbican earlier this month to see Low. They were magnificent even by their standards.

The below review originally appeared on musicOMH. You can see some photographs by Tim Ferguson (@encosion) on Ragged Words here.

C'mon, the ninth album by Minnesota's enduring Low, is an aggregation of the many strengths contained within their previous albums and shows them to be a band that can still conjure intensity out of the most minimal of components. Tonight's show at the Barbican would see them play the entire album in confident, almost effortless style. Support came from Oupa, the side project of Yuck frontman Daniel Blumberg, who played a set of introspective keyboard-based songs, a world away from the guitar-heavy sound of his band.

As Low take to the stage, the most surprising sight is the addition of a fourth band member on keyboards. The worry is that these may disrupt the dynamic of the group, but they are employed with respect, for large periods almost imperceptibly so. It is still the husband and wife duo of Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker that are the focal point, their celestial, intertwining vocal harmonies showing no sign of aging or diminishing.

They chose to open the show with Nothing But Heart from the new album, in many ways quite a bold statement given the nature of the song. A solitary line is repeated over a deluge of guitar, forging a resounding crescendo, albeit one that never quite reaches the peaks of the album. This is followed by the pale, nuanced intimacy of Nightingale and the solemn, austere $20 which sees Sparhawk delivering the line "My love is for free, my love" with a foreboding intent. They continue to mine the new album, playing both You See Everything and Especially Me early in the set. Two of the strongest tracks on C'mon, they are almost musical siblings of a kind, and both lyrically dwell on themes of female insecurity, aptly conveyed by Mimi Parker's vulnerable, caressing, trembling voice.

They dip into 2005's The Great Destroyer, still arguably their most commercially successful album, on four occasions. During Silver Rider time almost seems to stand still as the vocals, guitars and drums trail away and hang suspended in the momentary void. The dark Pissing seems to have been infiltrated by a malevolent undercurrent, as to an extent does Majesty/Magic which also possesses a restrained, controlled incandescence. Drums & Guns, their strikingly angry and confrontational record, is represented tonight by Breaker and Violent Past, both songs featuring distorted guitars and spare drumming, registering as the hardest-hitting part of the set.

Throughout the show interaction with the audience is kept to a minimum, although just before Witches Sparhawk dedicates the track to his father, remarking mock-dismissively, "I think he had a birthday a few days back. We don't really keep track of that stuff in our family". After the following track Especially Me Parker immediately declares "that is dedicated to my mom, whose birthday is on 3rd April", to an outbreak of laughter amongst the crowd. Otherwise, they simply let the music do the talking.

They encore with the achingly beautiful Two-Step and the sublime desolation of (That's How You Sing) Amazing Grace. The barbed guitars of Canada briefly raises the volume before Laser Beam closes the set, acting as a reminder that they are at their best when they are at their quietest, slowest and most fragile. Sparhawk's occasionally fractious relationship with music and touring has been documented elsewhere (most vividly culminating in his guitar-wrecking performance at the 2008 End Of The Road festival) but their decision to play a career-spanning, populist set tonight shows a band fully at ease, comfortably accepting their role with grace and humility.

The set list was as follows:

Nothing But Heart

Nightingale

You See Everything

Monkey

Silver Rider

Witches

$20

Pissing

Last Snowstorm Of The Year

Try To Sleep

Done

Majesty/Magic

Something's Turning Over

California

Breaker

Violent Past

Two-Step

(That's How You Sing) Amazing Grace

Canada

Laser Beam

Meltdown Festival, Ray Davies, Royal Festival Hall, 10/06/11

I was fortunate enough to receive a press ticket to see Ray Davies open his Meltdown Festival at the Royal Festival Hall last week. The below review originally appeared on musicOMH.

The decision by the South Bank Centre to choose Ray Davies as the curator of 2011's Meltdown festival was not altogether surprising given their summer-long celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Festival Of Britain. There aren't many candidates that possess a similar level of elevated heritage and defined Englishness to that held by the former frontman of The Kinks.

His multi-generation spanning influence provided an added justification and a deeper context for his appointment. The festival line-up itself may not be quite as adventurous or genre-encompassing as some of its recent predecessors (those curated by Ornette Coleman and Massive Attack in particular) but that could not mask the sense of anticipation that buzzed around the foyers of the Royal Festival Hall ahead of the opening night. His first of two performances over the fortnight would see him play a set with his regular band, concentrating on classic selections from The Kinks' back catalogue and tracks from his solo career. Tonight's show would not feature anything from The Village Green Preservation Society, due to be performed with orchestra and choir on the final night of the festival. The first half of the show is largely acoustic, predominantly just Davies and one other band member on stage. His backing band would later expand to a well-drilled four-piece.

He opens with two lesser well known Kinks tracks, This Is Where I Belong and I Need You. Autumn Almanac follows, an early highlight, and the first of many tracks to involve the audience helping sing the chorus. He regularly engages with the audience, introducing Dedicated Follower Of Fashion as “an Irish folk song” and mentioning in an attempt at mild self-deprecation how he now fines himself whenever he mentions the words “The Kinks”. The slightly goofy Apeman appears early in the set alongside some tracks from the lesser frequented corners of The Kinks back catalogue.

His voice is still in great shape and he appears relaxed and sharp-witted from the beginning, joking with photographers and revelling in the occasion. He talks about how some of his songs have featured in films and does a funny impersonation of film director Wim Wenders just prior to playing the two tracks that appeared in his film The American Friend, Nothing In The World Can Stop Me Worrying About That Girl and Too Much On My Mind. The hits continue to come, the sensitively played See My Friends followed later by a woozy version of Sunny Afternoon. We get to hear the briefest of glimpses of Victoria, before Davies truncates the song in order to read a few lines from his autobiography X-Ray. Later, he reveals how he wrote Morphine Song whilst in intensive care after being shot in New Orleans in 2004, surprising in many ways as it proves that his ability to write catchy pop songs has not deserted him over the years, even in times of difficulty. It is also an example of how he likes to verbally annotate most of the songs played tonight.

Towards the end Davies leaves the stage briefly, returning in casual clothes for an encore that features Till The End Of The Day, All Day And All Of The Night and You Really Got Me, each song still possessing a raw, primal energy. The latter sees Davies speak about his brother Dave, crediting him with the riff and arguably changing the direction of rock music as a result. He plays a poignant version of Waterloo Sunset, tonight residing in its spiritual home, only a stone's throw away from the river, bridge and train station referenced in the lyrics. He modestly introduces it as “just a song, but one that means a lot to me”. Renditions of Days and Lola end the show.

Rumours of a Kinks reunion still abound, with brothers Ray and Dave recently trading offers to reform via the press in almost brinkmanship style, but tonight it doesn't really seem so important. The accomplished, generous and celebratory set played by Davies ensured that this year's Meltdown festival was to get off to a crowd-pleasing, flying start.


Two seats to my left was a certain Bobby Gillespie of Primal Scream fame.

The set list was something along the lines of this:

This Is Where I Belong
I Need You
Autumn Almanac
In A Moment
Apeman
Full Moon
Misfits
Dedicated Follower Of Fashion
See My Friends
Dead End Street
After The Fall
Morphine Song
Sunny Afternoon
Nothing In The World Can Stop Me Worrying About That Girl
Too Much On My Mind
A Well Respected Man
I'm Not Like Everybody Else
Set Me Free
20th Century Man
Victoria
Where Have All The Good Times Gone
Celluloid Heroes

The Tourist
Til The End Of The Day
All Day And All Of the Night
Waterloo Sunset

You Really Got Me
Days
Lola

Jessica Lea Mayfield, The Borderline, 30/05/11

The below review originally appeared on musicOMH. Also, tonight I learned that The Borderline have put back up the lists of bands to have played there by the stairs leading down to the venue. So many excellent shows!

When Jessica Lea Mayfield released her debut album, With Blasphemy So Heartfelt, in 2008 it saw her widely acknowledged as a precocious talent, her brand of grounded and emotionally advanced alt-country belying her 19 years of age. Tonight, still only 22 years old, she played a show at the Borderline in support of her sophomore album Tell Me which builds on and develops themes previously laid down.

One of her most striking attributes is the sense of world-weariness that pervades her performance, seemingly having already attained the sense of alienation, withdrawal and loneliness it takes other artists decades to cultivate. Indeed, the consistency of pace, method of vocal delivery and economical arrangements of much of her recorded output can momentarily threaten to become slightly suffocating. However, tonight she goes some distance to dispel this, instead breathing fresh life into the songs.

Two of the most obvious points of reference when discussing her music are Lucinda Williams and Gillian Welch, quite revealing in itself when you consider the age disparity between the respective artists. Two of her closest contemporaries are Devon Sproule and Caitlin Rose, although Mayfield seems to have been steeped in the ways of country music to a greater extent than most of her peers. She cuts a petite, feminine figure on stage and her laid-back insouciance can stray close to being mistaken for a lack of animation. After a few songs however she opens up, communicating with the audience more and allowing her understated stage presence to gradually grow into something more dynamic and engaging.

The rustic, barren guitar landscapes present within most of her songs find a welcoming home (and audience) at the Borderline. Her set is taken largely from her second album, with her disaffected, heavily-accented vocal drawl appropriately conveying the self-scrutinising lyrics of songs like Our Hearts Are Wrong, Run Myself Into The Ground and Sometimes At Night. Much of her music is draped in a heavy veil of melancholy, although the new album does incorporate more in the way of optimism, most notably on Blue Skies Again which is played towards the end of tonight's set. The musically upbeat Nervous Lonely Nights is also included as part of the short solo section she plays mid-set.

Her backing band ensure that the songs are a much heavier, more powerful proposition live than on record and several tracks are fleshed out with frayed, gnarled guitars. She occasionally delves into her first album, most memorably for Kiss Me Again, the undulating vocal melody betraying the disenfranchised resignation present within the lyrics. She finishes with Somewhere In Your Heart, revealing it to have been inspired by reading suicide notes on the internet. It provides a suitably morose reminder of the dark origins of much of her music.

At one point during the smouldering I'll Be The One You Want Someday she sings “I have a dream and that dream is perfection”. She may not have quite achieved that yet, either in terms of her albums or live performances, but she has established herself as an artist of soul-baring honesty, already in possession of a strong collection of songs and is certainly one to watch out for over forthcoming years.

Mercury Rev, The Roundhouse, 21/05/11

The Don't Look Back series organised by All Tomorrow's Parties whereby bands play albums in their entirety has resulted in some of the greatest shows I have been to in recent years. Hearing albums like 'Ocean Songs' by Dirty Three, 'Tindersticks II' by Tindersticks, 'Bandwagonesque' by Teenage Fanclub and 'Things We Lost In The Fire' by Low were all great occasions. However, when it was announced that Mercury Rev would play 'Deserters Songs' in full this raised the bar to impossibly high levels. I can't really put into words how much I love that album. I think I have probably not gone more than two weeks over the last 13 years without listening to part of it.I arrived early securing a place right in front of the stage. I think I may have tweeted to say how intense it was going to be. I wasn't wrong. I can't recall many more powerful moments than hearing The Funny Bird played live tonight.

The below review originally appeared on musicOMH.

When Mercury Rev released their landmark album Deserter's Songs in 1998 it represented something of a rebirth for the band, redefining them as astral dream-psychedelicists, a development alluded to but never quite fully realised on its predecessor See You On The Other Side. It was possible to view it as being instrumental in paving the way for some of the key guitar albums that were to follow over subsequent years. This is most evident in The Soft Bulletin by The Flaming Lips and The Sophtware Slump by Grandaddy, but also to a smaller extent in important albums by bands such as Midlake, Arcade Fire and Grizzly Bear.

The trend to play albums in their entirety has snowballed in recent years and there had been a perception amongst many that Deserter's Songs was long overdue a live outing. Shows like this would see if the band could translate the opulent sound of the album into a live environment. The panoramic, starlit beauty of Holes opens the show, sounding just as sublime as on record. The near-balletic elegance of both Tonite It Shows and Endlessly follow, each track featuring additional, harder-hitting drumming that serves to expand the sound. These were the first of a number of subtle embellishments that ensured the evening would not simply involve a basic facsimile of the album.

Similarly, the majestic Opus 40 tonight ends with an epic, extended guitar finale and the outré psychedelia of The Happy End (The Drunk Room) is slightly reworked as a guitar-heavy rock out. The other instrumental tracks on the album are more faithfully reproduced, both I Collect Coins and Pick Up If You're There succeeding as opaque, adumbral interludes. The latter sees Jonathan Donahue play a musical saw, replicating the theremin featured on the album. One other change from the album is guitarist Grasshopper's delegation of vocals to Donahue for the live version of Hudson Line.

It is Goddess On A Hiway that draws the biggest reaction from the crowd, although arguably The Funny Bird that follows constitutes the highpoint of the night, a rush of adrenaline full of stratospheric guitars and sweeping, escalating intensity. It is a breathtaking moment and confirms the band as sonic alchemists of the highest order. The glorious, kaleidoscopic Delta Sun Bottleneck Stomp is swathed in guitars and closes the main set, although it takes its time to achieve full speed.

Donahue pauses at one point to say a few words on the album, comparing it to some of the albums that he “clung to like a life raft” when he was younger. He appears genuinely appreciative for the love that has been bestowed on the album. He slightly ominously remarks that we may not see the band for some time, although is quick to deny they are breaking up. Donahue's vocals have become progressively more frail over the years but he remains a theatrical and enigmatic presence throughout the show, an expression of wonder seemingly permanently etched on his face. He conducts the band and lights throughout, enraptured by the spectacle taking place around him. As often is the case with full album shows, seeing what the band encore with can provide some of the most interesting moments. Their decision to cover Solsbury Hill by Peter Gabriel is on the surface an unusual move, although ultimately it is successfully subsumed into their sound. Old favourite Car Wash Hair is enthusiastically received by the audience, as is The Dark Is Rising, with its condensed suite of dramatic dénouements. A pulsating Senses On Fire closes the (relatively short) show.

Although tonight was a joyful and celebratory gig, afterwards it almost felt like a closing of a chapter, a bittersweet moment that we won't witness again, the band in the process of almost drawing a line under the album. This performance confirmed Deserter's Songs as their undoubted masterpiece, an awe-inspiring piece of work they will probably never come close to emulating. Tonight illustrated its timelessness and demonstrated exactly why it is so warmly and so regularly venerated.

Suede, Brixton Academy, 11/05/11

It is difficult to explain how big an effect Suede's debut album had on me when I first heard it as a 16 year old back in 1993. I had already gone through through fairly obsessive phases with other bands (mainly REM and The Smiths) but this was the first time I had was immersing myself in a band that was happening now and didn't have a history to get to grips with. Looking back on the album now it is the lyrical preoccupation with (homo)sexuality and drugs that appear most striking but at the time I barely recognised these factors, being blissfully unaware. It was the feeling of entering into a different, exciting world that attraced me to it, a sense of "other" that I could attached myself to with pride and passion. I really hadn't experienced anything quite like it up to that point and I felt almost compelled to align myself with bands such as Suede as a means of rejecting the mainstream, alienating culture that I hated and perceived to be proliferating around Newcastle at that time.

Fast forward 18 years later, and Suede announce they were going to play their first three albums in their entirety at Brixton Axcademy. I immediately decided I would go to see the first show. Listening to the album again in the week leading up to the show seemed to reinforce how great an album it is.

They were excellent. So Young, Moving and Metal Mickey were the highlights for me. After playing the album they played a selection of early b-sides and finished with Trash and Beautiful Ones from third album Coming Up. Nothing from Dog Man Star sadly (being saved for the following evening).