WEEKEND NACHOS / THE AFTERNOON GENTLEMEN / WITCH CULT / PARISO / ATOMÇK, Croft, 1st
POWERCUP / PIZZA HI-FIVE / ATOMÇK / MERCILESS PRECISION / Loads more, Gryphon, 14th
If like me your youth was soundtracked to a significant degree by dear old Uncle John Peel interspersing the Ragga Twins and Ukrainians hits with brutally fast, pummelling minute-long belches of downtuned guitar, biscuit-tin blastbeats and throat-ripping screams, you’ll have retained an enduring fondness for this stuff. Grindcore and its infinite variations dominate this storming pair of Bristol gigs, the first of which sees Weekend Nachos (from DeKalb, Illinois, home of Charles Bronson and sharing that band’s howling, breakneck intensity), excellently grimy South Coast bruisers Witch Cult and tempo-shifting punker labelmates Pariso line up with local funsters Atomçk and the splatter-flick vocal histrionics of The Afternoon Gentlemen. Over at the Gryphon, residents Let The Bastards, Grind! bring Home Improvement enthusiasts Powercup and greasily lo-fi two-piece Pizza Hi-Five together with Atomçk and a hefty supporting cast of antisocial grind, crust and doom urchins. Bracing, energising stuff.
THE LOBSTER BOAT, Undertone, 5th
Last September, in the approximately ten-minute window between releasing The Wave Pictures’ Beer In The Breakers and Long Black Cars albums, frontman David Tattersall and his lesser-known oppo Howard Hughes (of French outfit Coming Soon) recorded a low-key set of typically melancholic, literate pop called The Lobster Boat. The duets certainly showcase Tattersall’s house style, wordy and observational lyrics punctuated by deliciously anachronistic Tom Verlaine guitar solos; past collaborators Andre Herman Dune and John Darnielle are echoed, down to a darkly pretty cover of the Mountain Goats’ ‘Waving At You’. This tour was scheduled to accompany the LP’s release, but due to illness is only now rescheduled; it may not be as timely, but it’s no less worth your while.
SEA LIONS / GOLDEN GRRRLS, Buffalo, 6th
It’s a kind of surf music, sure, but there’s a brittle, tinny quality to it more redolent of eighties Bristol or nineties Dunedin that suggests Sea Lions were more given to sitting in desolate coastal cafés on windy January afternoons than to even own a pair of board shorts. Winsome ‘n’ lovelorn lyrics, trebly jangling and flattened, Anglicised vocals make them a near-perfect Slumberland band, but their Everything You Wanted To Know… album is as long on sighing pop hooks as it’s short on running time. Do not miss the glorious Aislers Set / Shop Assistants slacker-pop of Golden Grrrls, whatever you do; wonderfully charming at the Flux=Rad Japan benefit a while back, their short and sweet second single ‘New Pop’ is an utter gem, cooing boy/grrrl vocals and roughed-up charm.
BRISTOL LADYFEST GIGS, County Sports Club, 6th and Fleece, 7th
BELLIES! / TOTEM TERRORS / THINKPRETTY, Buffalo, 27th
It ought to go without saying, but for the slow on the uptake: Ladyfest welcomes everyone. Even you. Inspirational and inclusive charity-led awareness-raising at its best and most vibrant, the Bristol arts community’s contributions to the annual cultural festival showcasing women’s work in the arts and entertainment industries is predictably impressive. Take some time to check http://bristolladyfest.wordpress.com for details of this year’s charities and the wide-ranging events, taking in film, comedy, art exhibitions, creative workshops and some cracking gigs. The Fleece hosts a massive alldayer on the Saturday, highlights including fantastically charismatic, gleefully arse-kicking sister-brother noise-rock Hysterical Injury, Rozi Plain’s poised, tender folk and the banjo-plucking French-tinged acoustica of This Is The Kit. The opening party at the County Sports Club on Colston Street has Big Joan’s Annette Berlin, the seething Riot Grrrl screech of Crash! Paris and perennial Joy faves Bellies!, the most grin-inducing skronk-pop clatter imaginable. Bellies! also grace Cardiff again this month with the splendid minimal post-punk robo-twitch of Totem Terrors, so if you can’t make any of the Ladyfest events (and you should), do not miss that.
JO SCHORNIKOW, Louisiana, 9th
A friend, a Fence Records obsessive and all-round stout fellow, recently emailed me recommending sweetly miserablist NYC indie-folk duo The Shivers. The following day an email appeared in the Joy inbox from Jo Schornikow, an Australian singer-songwriter, itinerant organist and currently one half of The Shivers, promoting her solo UK tour. I’d have missed this listing entirely if not for the coincidence, but I’m glad I didn’t; The Shivers’ More is a fine enough record, but Schornikow’s own songs are gems. Her First Time, Long Time is a deceptively breezy and relaxed listen, reflecting on familiar themes of love and transience, as you’d expect for someone whose career took her a world away from the jazz clubs and churches she played in back home. She’s got a winning, candid charm and there’s a sort of timeless quality that finds you reaching for comparisons to Laura Nyro or Carole King rather than anything more contemporary.
SHARON VAN ETTEN, Thekla, 10th
It’s the voice that stops you in your tracks, grabs you by the arm; the voice and the words, sometimes calm, or defiant, or anxious, or bitterly sarcastic. With a back-story and glorious, bruised, soaring vocal range like hers, comparisons between Van Etten and Cat Power are as inevitable and lazy as the assumption that her stark, confessional songs are autobiographical. The twist is that they are, and that first-person intimacy, particularly on 2010’s Epic, ought to be a difficult listen. That is isn’t reflects the often stunning quality of the songs themselves, folk and country, laments and exhortations, intimate and solo or arranged for a small ensemble cast. Van Etten has found a voice and a determined, questing confidence that demands the attention in the way of, say, Nina Nastasia, Marissa Nadler or Shannon Wright. As her well-documented personal issues are essayed and self-healed, the journey is a fascinating and rewarding one for others too.
WOODEN SHJIPS, Fleece, 10th
The slow hit of Wooden Shjips’ narcoleptic drone-boogie works in a very simple, primal way. The beauty’s in the repetition, not just in the minimal patterns and insistent grooves within single tracks, but in the way a whole set coalesces into a singular, driving mass that stays thrilling regardless of its length and of the lack of movement or interaction from the band’s members. The bad-vibes Stooges chug, and diesel-sucking guitars recall any number of garage, psych and biker-rock wrong ‘uns, while the droning organ and insistent basslines are prime Suicide, Ripley Johnson’s vaguely forboding muttering completing the picture. You could just as easily replace those references with Hawkwind, Spacemen 3 and the furthest reaches of Krautrock, and that’s the thing – use even a limited palette in the right way and you transcend the influences in spite of yourself. If there’s been a slight refinement of style in recent releases, live they still seem utterly untroubled by time and progress, as though they could happily riff and drone and solo away until dawn if no-one stood in the wings tapping a watch. Get up close, hear the amp crackle and the warm buzz of overheated keyboards and nod out.
ORCA TEAM / JOANNA GRUESOME / MOUSE DEER, Croft, 12th and Buffalo, 13th
It’s Nautical Indiepop Month at Buffalo, where Pacific NW transplants Orca Team (see?) offer a more studied, starchily Calvin Johnson take on the prevailing turn-of-the-60s beach party vibe than do the less knowing, more emotionally direct Sea Lions. Not that there isn’t plenty to enjoy here, though, something roughly akin to Nodzzz attempting a set of Eddie Cochran and Jan & Dean covers. Skeletal and linear, with gawkily catchy basslines skimming across the surface and a pleasingly bleached-out hey-let’s-party attitude which offers intriguing hints of a lo-fi B-52s. Cardiff’s own fuzzed-up pop kids Joanna Gruesome support here, offering the kind of cutie noisepop they should be far too young to remember (Velocity Girl, Cub, Boyracer et al) and doing a startlingly good job of it.
WU-TANG LEGENDS, Newport Centre, 16th
Well. Newport’s Big Splash festival is a weekend-long, multi-site free event of participatory family fun, music, crafting and youth-friendly ‘urban’ activity. Oh right yes, and four of the Wu-Tang Clan. In a Newport leisure centre, on a Monday evening. Incredulity aside, this is a heck of a coup given it’s one of five UK dates they’ll do; while its slightly oblique name should forewarn that it might be a slightly loose definition of Wu-Tang, and despite apparent doubts about Method Man’s attendance, it’s undeniable that Ghostface, Raekwon and even GZA can still slay live if they put their minds to it. Don’t know about you but even at £27 and with one group album in ten years, a set based on Wu-Tang classics and bits of Cuban Linx, Ironman and Liquid Swords still sounds pretty tidy to me, and if that’s what this provides there’s no reason it shouldn’t be excellent knuckleheaded fun.
WANDA JACKSON, The Factory (Porth), 16th and Thekla, 18th
When I was about five I was given a small record player and a bunch of hand-me-down records. The first LP I ever owned was a K-Tel “Rockin’ & Rollin’ Greats” compilation which, obviously, I was transfixed by. It had the scariest song I’d ever heard (‘Wipe Out’ – that cackling intro terrified me), the best version of Stagger Lee ever (by Lloyd Price) and Wanda Jackson squawking and squealing through ‘Let’s Have A Party’. It was completely brilliant. I’d no idea what she meant by “shaking a chicken in the middle of the room”, and I pretty much still don’t. Fifty-two years after she released that, the Queen of Rockabilly still belts out Jack White-produced rock & roll and country standards and this month hits the bright lights of Porth. Where did it all go right, Wanda?
TRUCKERS OF HUSK / FAILED NASA EXPERIMENT / HANGMEN, Clwb, 21st
Cardiff and Ammanford’s leading five-man percussive hydra return for their second gig in the capital this year, unless I’m an idiot (I am). This is cause enough for celebration, of course; their exhilarating, shapeshifting math-rock brew has evolved into manifold new shapes over time, with densely layered samples, buzzing synths, saxophone and carefully deployed, inscrutable vocal rounds filling it out. Accelerated Learning is, by their usual recording pace, still very much fresh, yet the Truckers website tantalisingly hints at the impending release called Night Eraser – EP? Unlikely second album? Interactive CD-Rom adventure where Kelson and Rhodri traverse the A474 to Ammanford solving crime? The truth will out. Get to this early for Failed NASA Experiment, Murray Ward’s one-man assault of blissed-out drone, warped tape manipulations, and hazy, beauteous sun-damaged avant-garde joy as well as a further dose of July surf rock, courtesy of Swansea’s great Hangmen.
PLEASE MIND YOUR HEAD III: THREATMANTICS / THE GENTLE GOOD / THEM SQUIRRELS / GINDRINKER / LOCAL SPORTS TEAM / SHE’S GOT SPIES / THEM LOVELY BOYS, Clwb, 22nd
Third annual fundraiser for the extremely good eggs of brain injury charity Headway, again featuring a fine and diverse line-up of eminent local types and organised by our pal Justin. Raffles, stalls, brantub, booze, increasingly tipsy and rambling introductions and a clutch of reliably excellent bands makes it pretty much mandatory as far as us bulbs are concerned. This time out, the lucky dip brings us the fine musical stylings of Threatmantics, The Gentle Good, Gindrinker and the lesser spotted and always completely brilliant Them Squirrels. Cheap entry, guaranteed fun, the satisfying glow of helping a worthy cause plus it fills an otherwise dull Sunday. No excuses, people.
JOE MCPHEE & CHRIS CORSANO / LAND OBSERVATIONS, Cube, 23rd
Closing out this month’s recommendations, this one is hard to beat, a potentially explosive meeting of two forces of nature. McPhee, a multi-instrumentalist embraced more in Europe than his homeland for years (a Swiss label was inaugurated specifically to showcase his work) and schooled in Coltrane, Ayler and Coleman, has immersed himself in the avant-garde all his long career. From post-Civil Rights free jazz and its overlaps with funk, Eastern mysticism and African music, to working with electronic composer and ‘Deep Listening’ pioneer Pauline Oliveros, to his brilliant latter-day collaborations with Paal Nilsson-Love (both as a duo and in a barnstorming ensemble with the Thing and Cato Salsa Experience), McPhee’s remained in the vanguard of weird, powerful and way-out music. Chris Corsano you’ll know, from his many collaborations and ensembles (Rangda, Six Organs, Bjork etc), as an astonishingly fluid improv drummer. Should be an incredible night. Land Observations sound very interesting too – if you recall Exeter kraut/post-rockers Appliance, this is guitarist James Brooks’ new minimal guitar outfit. Nice.
