{"id":7539,"date":"2010-08-07T10:51:58","date_gmt":"2010-08-07T10:51:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thejoycollective.co.uk\/blog\/?p=7539"},"modified":"2014-09-05T18:15:23","modified_gmt":"2014-09-05T18:15:23","slug":"fucked-up-japanese-voyeurs-facel-vega-barfly-cardiff-15-07-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/review\/fucked-up-japanese-voyeurs-facel-vega-barfly-cardiff-15-07-10\/","title":{"rendered":"Fucked Up \/ Japanese Voyeurs \/ Facel Vega : Barfly, Cardiff : 15.07.10"},"content":{"rendered":"

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“Your mother’s<\/em> coming out on a seven-inch!”.\u00a0 Ah, le mot juste<\/em>.\u00a0 Still readjusting to Barfly’s particular charms (Tetleys and the scent of piss, essentially), it’s mere minutes before Facel Vega’s innocent plugging of a forthcoming release is zinged right back at them by an army-coated wag.\u00a0 More of him later.\u00a0 Meantime, tonight’s too-early openers are on cracking form.\u00a0 They do the loud-fast-rules stuff just fine, and with more than enough twisty, yelpy\u00a0Blood Brothers dynamics,\u00a0brattish charm and jerking histrionics from the rail-thin frontman\u00a0to snare any passing indie noiseniks.\u00a0 If they actually\u00a0get the chance\u00a0to, that is, as gigs are apparently more sporadic than usual on account of them living at opposite ends of the country.\u00a0 Shame.\u00a0 The split LP with Harbour is a doozy.\u00a0 Go get.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Japanese Voyeurs claim they welcome those enjoying “burgers, Gummo<\/em>, Acid King, Kyuss and dinosaurs” while eschewing “club anthems, Hannah Montana, cream tea and pleasantries”.\u00a0 Hmm.\u00a0 I recently had a burger and a cream tea in the same day, Japanese Voyeurs; where does that leave me?\u00a0 It’s a moot point, perhaps, as from tonight’s evidence any similarities to Acid King or Kyuss amount to a female vocalist and the odd downtuned guitar respectively.\u00a0 We’re squarely in ’92 grunge territory here, and sadly not in a good way; there are promisingly heavy interludes but they’re lost in unspectacular ditties and the sort of vaguely gothy bad-ickle-girl lyrics that dozens of\u00a0poor Kat Bjelland clones turned out years ago.\u00a0 And the keyboard player must surely own the van, or he’d be shaking his Timotei locks and jabbing out meek one-note doodles in another\u00a0 band.<\/p>\n

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Is it fair or even relevant to ask whether Damien\u00a0‘Pink Eyes’\u00a0Abraham is the punk Tim Harrington?\u00a0 Of course it\u2019s not, you moron, so shut up.\u00a0 OK, well, they\u2019re both fat guys who like stripping off and have masses of charisma.\u00a0 Both funny guys, in their own way, with Abraham playing the natural, engaging raconteur to Harrington\u2019s hilarious non-sequitur king.\u00a0 Both exude an infectious, inclusive enthusiasm that flips the standard rock crowd invasion over into a manic, all-eyes-on-me walkabout.\u00a0 And both, you could argue, have utilised their magnetic personalities to propel their not especially radio-friendly bands up festival bills, affording them must-see status and a cross-genre appeal their chuntering, epic hardcore (or arty post-punk) might not otherwise have found.<\/p>\n

Which is a long way of saying, Fucked Up are a strange sort of phenomenon.\u00a0 Nothing much here sets their third Cardiff visit in 18 months apart from the first two (a jaw-dropping, frenzied sweatbox on Clwb\u2019s ground floor and a rug-pulling mid-bill slot before the Bronx upstairs months later).\u00a0 There may well be people here who\u2019ve seen all three, and more besides on the endless tour-festival-tour cycle the Toronto six-piece have enjoyed this last few years.\u00a0 This band loyalty \u2013 keep them coming back, every show is different \u2013 isn\u2019t easy to pull off.\u00a0 Tonight, as you watch Abraham\u2019s bandmates blaze heads-down through another layered epic, pausing to observe his antics with wry, familiar amusement (again, a sight Les Savy Fav fans would recognise) you realise that, for the punk kids hollering along as they high-five the marauding singer and the casual observers grinning at the back, the music and the spectacle come as one and make it worth endless repeated viewings.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ve got the tunes, no mistake.\u00a0 \u2018Crusades\u2019 is dispatched dangerously early\u00a0at a sea of jabbing index fingers, but a set balanced typically neatly between familiar ‘Chemistry…’ \u00a0material and completist-friendly older stuff has more than enough in reserve.\u00a0 It’s weird how an hour plus of relentless five, six minute punk\u00a0ragers avoids sagging.\u00a0 It helps when Abraham’s circling the room, patting, stroking and high-fiving all and sundry with a crushed pint pot stuck to his forehead.\u00a0 Our army-coated pal\u00a0is notably placated after being dragged onstage to slow dance with Abraham’s heaving sweat-sodden bulk.\u00a0 “Bez from the Happy Mondays, everyone!”.\u00a0 That’ll learn him.\u00a0\u00a0 Miles of mic cabling allow him to fulfil his promise of visiting street level mid-song (“there’s free beer and cocaine up there”, apparently), and the banter is well-balanced between endearing anecdotes, fuck-yeah social politics and a level of self-awareness and mockery which can draw the sting from crowds far more rowdy than tonight’s beaming lot.\u00a0 It takes something to bring music like theirs across genres without being remotely watered down, and whether he’d admit it or not he’s a big part of why Fucked Up draw you back again and again.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Your mother’s coming out on a seven-inch!”.\u00a0 Ah, le mot juste.\u00a0 Still readjusting to Barfly’s particular charms (Tetleys and the scent of piss, essentially), it’s mere minutes before Facel Vega’s innocent plugging of a forthcoming release is zinged right back at them by an army-coated wag.\u00a0 More of him later.\u00a0 Meantime, tonight’s too-early openers are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[459],"tags":[468,1408,1174,1409],"class_list":["post-7539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","tag-barfly","tag-chuffed-up","tag-facel-vega","tag-japanese-voyeurs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7539\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}