YUCK LIVE REVIEW: Live at the Thekla Bristol with Let’s Wrestle as support

OTHER GIG REVIEWS HERE

A much looked forward to gig to see these two bands.  I have been thwarted in my attempt to see Lets Wrestle twice in recent times, so to see them on the support bill was a pleasurable surprise.

Lets Wrestle are from London, England and the band consists of Wesley Patrick Gonzalez (vocals and guitar), Sam Pillay (bass), and Darkus Bishop (drums), a 3 piece that makes a lot of noise!

I have heard some of their music on various late night radio programmes and have intrigued me with their loud, rough around the edges sound and sense of humour.

Sadly, due to the early start, we arrived a little late and Lets Wrestle were already on stage.  At first I have to admit that I was a little underwhelmed by what I heard.  The first thing that struck me was just how out of tune Wesley’s voice was.  The whole band sounded very ordinary, more like an average pub band than a cutting edge outfit.

However, my impression gradually began to change as the set continued.  The songs were fast and furious on the whole, with a kind of nod to the rawness of new wave music of the late 1970’s, with a slightly updated edition.  What struck me most was the way the guitar playing really gave the music an individualistic feel about it, and contributed most musically to the songs.

The set got better and better with the stand out tracks for me being “Insects” and “Prick stuck in my zipper”.  The latter’s lyrics being being quite amusing.

After a 30 minute set I had warmed to them quite a bit, but my reservations remain.  If you are 16 and have never heard the array of new wave music around then this would be most entertaining.  In truth however, at present, Lets Wrestle have little innovative to offer the discerning music lover.

After a short interlude Yuckarrived on stage.  Yuck are Daniel Blumberg –guitar, vocals;  Max Bloom – guitar, vocals; Mariko Doi – bass; Jonny Rogoff – drums.

Their set began with Holing Out from the new album.  The crowd were immediately into the occasion and Big Jeff was there doing his bit for band relations.

Its funny how the talk of the evening very quickly turns to the fact that the venue is a boat!  Many bands find it quite a novelty to play on a boat and below the water line.  And so it proved with Yuck, who also made their acquaintance with Big Jeff as the local celebrity.

I’m sure the novelty factor has also aided the venue get on the short list of the best small venue in the NME magazine.

Back to the gig and the band were frankly superb.  From the moment they hit the stage the crowd were transfixed by the wonderful vocals that complement the more abrasive music.  His vocals are delicate and softly sung behind the music.  What transfixed me the most was the intricate guitar playing of Max Bloom.  It was an excellent show of intricate interwoven guitar playing combined with Daniel Blumberg’s guitar playing.

Then only possible criticism of this band is that the set seemed too short, it went like a flash finishing under an hour.  But this simply is testament to just how good they were and how much the crowd was enjoying it.

Much of their material comes from their first album released earlier this year, self titled it had a lot of critical praise as our YUCK Album  review shows. Despite their obvious nod to the likes of 80’s indie, the Mary Chain and so on, they don’t just copy the genre but put their stamp to it and evolve the sound.  They do it fantastically well and their live interpretation of the songs is superb.

They played one new song – Milkshake not on the album which went down well.

They also played one other not on the album that was on the b side of Holing Out – Coconut Bible.

In the end though the set had to end, and it ended on a high with Rubber, a previous single and a musical, feedback frenzy at the end to finish the gig.

Surprisingly, they did not come back for an encore, which was a big disappointment for the crowd who wanted more.  But this only makes me admire them all the more!

Set List:

Holing Out
The Wall
Shook Down
Georgia
Suicide Policeman
Milkshake
Get away
Suck
Coconut Bible
Operation
Rubber

There were too many stand out tracks to idly pick one or two, my advice would be to get to see them live and definitely pick up a copy of their album.

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THE KILLING: One of the best dramas of the last 10 years?

I don’t normally comment or review television dramas but I had to make an exception for this.

I stumbled across this drama on the recommendation of a friend who made a passing comment about this police drama they were watching. So my partner and I sat down one night to catch it on the iplayer.  After watching the first 2 episodes we were hooked.

It became a kind of addiction as we had 10 episodes to catch up on, and we watched them one after the other through the week. It became highly frustrating after watching the first 10 episodes and having to wait until the weekend to see the next 2 episodes.

It felt like a quiet secret that only ourselves and BBC4 kept, watching the twists and turns of the plot over the 20 episodes.

This Danish production was a revelation for UK tv.  Rather than have the run of the mill formulaic police series, where you may get 3 or 4 hours of a drama at best, where the signposting of the plot is so clunky and pedestrian you can easily go out for half an hour and come back and pick it up quite easily.

With the Killing you get 20 hours of non stop intrigue.  As black adder would say, more twist and turns than a twisty turny thing.

It is remarkable that a series that was so long kept the pace and intrigue going so successfully, always making the viewer wanting more.  One of it’s charms is it’s down to earth nature, without the ridiculous glitzy nonsense of other crime dramas.

The idiosyncrasies of the series were intriguing.  Almost every scene no matter where it was staged, people were smoking.  I had not really thought about it before, but this is just how it was in the UK just a few years ago.  It seems bizarre now.  It was also strange to see the comedic remarks over their Danish neighbours Sweden. Good to see a bit of inter regional rivalry!

The acting was also superb.  Sofie Grabol as the lead character Sarah Lund was superb.  The drama was dark and brooding but not overbearing.  All the acting was superb without a weak link.

The only police drama that springs to mind in this vein was the Prime Suspect thrillers, yet although these were excellent at the time, here you get 20 hours of drama that, other than the first series, knocks Prime Suspect into a poor second rate drama.

I am not one for dramas generally, they often leave me cold and disappointed, yet this Danish effort shows what can be done.

While those addicted to the Killing’s murder plot will be in a bereavement state at the moment, we were treated to the prospect of The Killing II later in the year. Like many, I will be looking forward to this, and will be light relief after trying to avoid the next few series of so called “reality television”.  It is just a shame we have to go to Denmark to get this amount of quality.

THE NANNY STATE IS ALIVE AND WELL: A case for constitutional reform

I hate pithy political slogans, slogan -ISM with this government rises in intensity it seems every week that goes by.  I truly thought that this may come to an end following the demise of the New labour project, how wrong I was.

Well I’m reviving a frequently used slogan from the Labour era, foisted upon us by the right of the political spectrum – THE NANNY STATE

Now I never believed in a “nanny state”, a philosophical discussion on the role of the state would be nice to have, but is virtually impossible in the popularism of today’s politics.  So what does it mean?

The term has been attributed to people as varied as Karl Marx, Iain Macleod (Conservative MP in 1965), Margaret Thatcher in the 1980’s and Bernard Levin. It describes the emotional feeling that “the state”, or government is interfering too much in peoples lives.  It does however, have a varying number of applications depending on whoever views the term as politically advantageous to use.

So it can be used within the sphere of economics and trade, to argue against protectionism in the market place; or a government that simply makes too many laws as Lord Hailsham argued in his book “Dilemma of Democracy”; or it is attributed to the interference in individuals lives, prescribing how people should live.

If we look at a brief history of modern governance in the UK it can be seen that actually the nanny state could be used against the left or right, and can be used to attack the values of the majority or the minority.

In 1945, our country was profoundly changed by the introduction of the NHS; Free Education to children up to 16 years old; and the introduction of the welfare state and pension provision.  This was brought in on a popular mandate due to the mass poverty experienced in the 1930’s.

Indeed there has never been a more popular government in terms of share of the vote in post war Britain, even when the Labour Party lost the election in 1951 they garnered more votes than the Conservative party.   It was considered no longer “civilised” for children to not be educated to a basic standard; or to die due to not being able to afford health care; or indeed to remain in absolute poverty in an essentially rich country.

The conservative party in the 1980’s and 1990’s professed to know what the country needed by embarking on a privatisation programme that was not mentioned in the original 1979 manifesto (sound familiar?).  We were told that what mattered was not “society”, but individuals and family.  We were given a back to basics policy by John Major, a moralising of such hypocrisy it cost a good number of politicians their jobs.

With New Labour we had both sides of the coin, with far too many laws passed, top down targets, yet liberal economic policies believing in deregulation of financial markets and the freedom of movement of immigrant labour.  The latter hardly being a manifesto commitment of the “nanny state”.

The Coalition

So now we have David Cameron and Nick Clegg, sharing the rhetoric between them.  We have the dishonesty of manifesto commitments cast aside and the rhetoric of decentralisation while at the same time lecturing the nation on the way we “should” behave. Is there really any difference?

Whether we believe there is a nanny state or not, the question should not lead us to whether it is the fault of the left or the right, but rather a danger of something else altogether. The philosophy of the state itself.

The “state”, whoever controls it, likes to use it’s power in order to achieve what it regards as it’s “agenda”. The rhetoric rarely matches its deeds, and the slogan of the nanny state can be used against virtually any government of the past 65 years.

The coalition has announced its wish to redistribute wealth on the basis of moral values with tax breaks for married couples.  It proposes to ban displays of cigarettes and advertising on its packets.

Andrew Landsley proposes plain packets on cigarettes

It talks of bringing power closer to the people, yet tries to cap council tax, effectively abandoning local accountability.  They tell us constantly that we live in a “Broken Britain”, and that they are here to fix it.  They say they have a mandate from the people, yet many of their policies were either not in the manifesto of either party or diametrically opposed to what was in them.

We are told something needs to be done about our “binge” drinking and that every town and city is a war zone and that more laws are needed to reduce the choice to drink in establishments past traditional closing times.

Is any of this any different to what has gone before?

Is the attack on the European Court of Human Rights a matter of reducing the nanny state of “Europe”, (bearing in mind it has nothing to do with the EU) or simply the fact that the executive of the UK always dislikes checks and balances and any limitations on power?

If the “nanny state” ever existed (which I do not believe it did), then it is alive and well with the current government and will get significantly worse over the coming years as they cling on to power.

How do we confront the power of the state

The question for those that talk of the nanny state is how do we curtail the power of the state not which government wields it.

In my view this can only be done with fundamental constitutional change.  This is the kind of change that sadly most politicians would not entertain in this country, largely because they see the power they can get in our system (which is almost absolute with a large majority).  But this opportunity for power is not for the people of this country, but simply for egotistical politicians.

The challenges to attempt constitutional change are enormous. If we look at the struggle at the moment for the AV referendum, this is the smallest of small changes to the electoral system, yet we get some of the most ridiculous arguments put forward against it. The very idea that any electoral system is legitimate when only £460,000 people decided the last election is plainly ridiculous.

In truth, the whole battle over state power, has nothing to do with party politics, but with those hungry for absolute power, and the public who need to hold them to account.

Next time we hear the call against the “nanny state”, perhaps we should ask them what their view is of constitutional change, I think we would get an interesting but predictable answer.

YUCK: YUCK – Album Review

Now we know what happened to Cajun Dance Party, the catchy song smiths Daniel Blumberg (Guitar, vocals) and Max Bloom (Guitar, vocals) have created a new project, now joined by Mariko Doi (Bass),  and Jonny Rogoff (Drums).

From North London, New Jersey and Hiroshima; this band have taken on the guise of a niche US indie sound akin to Dinosaur Jr, sonic youth and the early 1990’s shoegaze crowd.

It sounds as if this could truly be horrible, derivative nonsense, and a waste of your time to listen to, however, this is far from the case.  This album is truly excellent, and up their amongst the best of it’s genre.

It opens with an instantly catchy song Get Away, with a haunting guitar lick, and a sound reminiscent of the pixies. Quieter moments with the dreamy Shook Down; Suck; and the sublime Suicide Policeman; there are explosive moments with Holing Out and my pick of the songs Operation which sounds rough around the edges but again has that haunting guitar which holds the whole thing together.

You can hear a bit of Teenage Fanclub and Pixies in the music and for those of a younger age The Pains at being pure at heart.

I quite often have a go at derivative music that borrows far too much from eras’ of the past (see my previous post on Beady Eye!).  But as has been said before, there is only good or bad music, and this definitely fits into the “good” category.

Perhaps it feeds on my indie disposition but having grown up with the likes of the Pixies and a myriad of wannabe indie bands of the time, these do not sound like wannabe’s but genuinely have something to offer.

This won’t be the best album you hear this year, but it will give you a lot of pleasure.

TRACK LISTING

1.   Get Away
2.  The Wall
3.  Shook Down
4.  Holing Out
5.  Suicide Policeman
6.  Georgia
7.  Suck
8.  Stutter
9.  Operation
10. Sunday
11. Rose Gives A Lilly
12. Rubber

SINGLES

Rubber
Georgia
Holing Out
Get Away

http://www.myspace.com/yuckband

http://yuckband.blogspot.com/

BEADY EYE: The worst band since . . er Oasis

There are no guitar bands in the charts I hear the cry almost every week in some column or other debating the future of music.  Music journalists discuss the lack of originality in music and how pop music has been taken over by “manufactured” music and Simon Cowell.

In the last few weeks we have seen a remarkable publicity machine doing the work of the devil, as the “new” band from Liam Gallagher has showcased it’s new material.

The press has been lapping it up, with front covers in the NME and Q magazine.  The likes of Zane Lowe and John Kennedy lauding the “amazing” sound of the new album.

Then some reality checks as the first single doesn’t even hit the top 30.  There is a good reason for this, the song is crap, and the album worse.

For all the column inches and heaps of praise from Muso’s who frankly should know better, this band has been able to garner more publicity in 2 weeks than most bands are able to get in a year, yet their talent hardly deserves such praise.

Beady Eye are basically, well, Oasis without the talented one.  Noel wrote all the memorable and innovative songs, he even sang some of them.  The band that became Oasis in the first place was crap before he joined them, and now we are left with the scraps of this defunct outfit.

Don’t get me wrong, Oasis did some amazing things, their first 2 albums were superb and their attitude a breath of fresh air at the time. However, since the absolute debacle of Standing on the shoulder of Giants, which has to go down as truly one of the most disappointing album of all time.  The album that was to break America, saw them lose their way in spectacular fashion.

Despite a few high points since then, they achieved little in terms of innovation following this ill fated project, even though a few classics like “The importance of being Idle” and “Little by Little” kept them going.  They ended on a bit of a high with Dig Out Your Soul which was quite a good effort, however, for many they had become the Status Quo of Brit Pop. And this is where Beady Eye have taken off.

The very worst aspects of Oasis have been cobbled together to reproduce the most derivative, uninspiring dross.  Truly awful run of the mill music, ripping off as much of their idles as possible.

It is truly unbelievable that radio stations are still playing this awful music. and even worse that music publications decide this is what people want to read about.

Next time people discuss, where is the guitar music these days? Point them in the direction of Beady Eye and they will see exactly why.  If muso’s think this is worth the oxygen of publicity God help the music industry.