This Is Not TV

I will confess that I am a sucker for a song that sounds like what it is – I’m not sure what the term is, but it’s a similar thing to pathetic fallacy… actually, it probably has nothing to do that. So any song that is both a story lyrically and a journey musically is probably gonna have me well pleased.

The Brute Chorus, halooing from that cultural wasteland known as Lon-Don (never heard of it), have sculpted one of those songs in the shape of ‘She Was Always Cool.’ Dave Ferret’s thumping bass and Matthew Day’s whip crack handclaps create a sullen atmosphere into which sails James Steel’s suitably sullen vocal, lovestung and singing of “wonderful weeks lost at sea”. This angry old salt grows more irksome and fractious until the chorus breaks like a ray of sunshine as he remembers the good times. Hopelessly romantic, but knowingly nonsensical too. Our dour raconteur returns and the gloom settles again. Musically a cross between Razorlight and the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, but don’t let that put you off.

‘Artemissia’ sees more percussive intro work, taking a bass drum and dusting it lightly with guitar. The pleading voice that tugs at the hold strings de la heart sounds a bit James Yorkstony – nothing wrong there – but any kind of pathos shunts slowly and amusingly into bathos as legion upon legion of instruments, including a mellotron and kazoo, add to the waltzing swell of the chorus. “That’s when I knew I would never be the same,” chips in another old salt is his lyrical vessel is swamped by the simple and rich melody. Simple, but not bland. A nifty nautical pairing with a few titters to lighten the wine dark sea.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Glasgow alt rockers and friends of David Gest Attic Lights have been bloody busy this year. Not content with releasing their debut album and a slew of singles, they’ve also taken time to pen what sounds suspiciously like a Christmas song. But this is not it. Sorry to build up the old expectations like.

‘Late Night Sunshine’ is the fifth single by my reckoning to be released form the album ‘Friday Night Lights’ and continues their quest in recalling a more innocent and immediate age of pop. Though the melody has just a smidgeon of Snow Patrol about it and the kind of mass appeal you associate with boy bands, the theme is a timeless play on love Romeo and Juliet style with lines like “I know I will go blind if I stare at you too long.” Not the only cause, mate.

Vulgarity aside, the double tracked vocals and apple-cheeked naivety is pure Bay City Rollers meets ELO, with the melody resting upon the shoulders of Kevin Sherry as the guitars construct a whimsy of chords and general mood music. Nothing too challenging, just simple pop that fades out to the line “you are the sun”. Doing what it says on the tin, old school.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Yeah, just catching up – look, I’ve been busy okay? – and I know with singles that it’s just a case of grabbing what you can as it flits past on its way to stardom or obscurity but… ah what the hell, here goes. If anything I am trying to prove that there is no such thing as a late review.

Now, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’… kidding, obviously. Copy Haho live in the wilds of North Scotland, make indie pop noises amid the cows and rehearse in a portakabin. Sounds like paradise. From this bucolic setting they have strayed to the urban landscape of the recording studio (note: studio might not actually be urban) to record their follow up single to ‘Bookshelf’, ‘You Are My Coalmine’. You dig? Oh stop, before someone gets hurt.

A deep, roiling baritone riff under a twinkly guitar as beloved of the Kings of Leon opens the song while the drum diddles and twiddles along. There’s no real rush to introduce any vocals. When Joe Hearty does kick in, he cheerfully sings ‘I am the dirt in your nails, you are the dirt in mine.’ It’s a song about miserable interdependence, but as happy as you can get about it. Simple tune, interesting rhythms – in fact, it makes me think of one very influential band who used to do just this. It’s the Cure, circa Kiss Me, but with a hint of Pixies too… and I think I’ve already mentioned KoL.

Flipping the CD… achieves nothing, but there is a second track, an ampop bounce along, ‘Cutting Out The Bad Parts.’ The drums slip in and out of syncopation like a ADHD child coming out of a Ritalin fugue and… it’s all good fun.

Copy Haho may be in the middle of a field somewhere, but they’re still unavoidably mainstream indie – nothing wrong with that, I suppose. Confident, bouncy and ultimately disposable, but all the more fun for it.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Always a brave move, calling your band a silent anything – not the first adjective you associate with music, unless you are thinking of John Cage – but I suspect the Oxfordian quartet of Robert Stevenson (vox, keys), Lewis Jones (guitar), Ali Hussain (bass) and Spencer Walker (drums) wish to add the certain sepia-tinted gravitas associated with the age before talkies to their indie pop proceedings. Of course, the unspoken synonym of ‘brave’ is ‘stupid’, so this could be the proverbial bullet in the hypothetical foot by providing lazy hack writer with more ammo than is entirely necessary.

It starts well with ‘Sleeping Pills’, so I holster up the cynicism cannon for a moment. Chime synths purr along as a distorted guitar ratchets up, like an expensive high performance car accelerating into the night witnessed only by myopic cat’s eyes winking and twinkling as the overdrive grumbles into life with the mathy post-rock verse, embellished by Robert’s half whispered cold war paranoiac vocals. As he sings about a hats containing “tiny bombs or sleeping pills”, you are swept up in a sound as drippily romantic as Keane or as epic as Muse, but without the broadness of the former or the bombast of the latter. By the close of the first track, you are quite exhausted.

‘Julie Jane’ mercilessly maintains the pace, with Spencer pounding out an artery rupturing beat that almost bursts the song. Ali sends the bass rumbling and muttering like a regretful lyrical drunk as Lewis steers his guitar into the choppy seas of Interpolic wail-riffery and Robert goes all doe-eyed and psychopathic. Still good.

Okay, I’m getting tried now. ‘Thirteen Times The Strength’ has that same pounding rhythm, that same earnest optimism, that same rolling Nyman-esque piano. I can detect a touch of laziness here, but Robert and Ali try to paper the cracks with a wonderfully expressive bass line and a desperately downward spiralling vocal. But I am beginning to detect a theme…

Fortunately, ‘One Wrong Door’ comes in the nick of time as the defining track on the album. A cello deviates proceedings as the riff oscillates decadently like a Noel Coward tango. Vocals shoot off into the stratosphere melodically while remaining earth-bound lyrically. It has all that steampunk elegance of the Grammatics and though it doesn’t quite have Dominic Ord’s chops vocally it is a heart-cracking marvel.

Which makes the next three songs really disappointing. Returning to the formula of Nyman piano, one-paced drums and almost redundant guitars where there is nothing wrong with them… there’s nothing spectacular about them either. Apart from the soulfully seductive bass, which shines throughout.

I am about to give up, but fortunately ‘You Will Leave A Mark’ prevents me from unloading. Using a heavier piano line and a more definite guitar wail to underline the expression of love as a scar – “my heart is bursting again” telexes a swooning Robert frankly – makes for an exciting, mortifying experience, a tantalising taste of all that A Silent Film could achieve. I’ll leave off on the last three tracks as I just want to remember them doing this…

A Silent Film tread dangerous waters, that’s for sure. I can detect a tangible temptation to sell out and go for that Keane/Nyman/Muse sound by the numbers… but they’d be selling themselves short. Though there are no real stinkers here, there are some definite high points that just eclipse the rest – I think I’ve made myself clear which ones I’m talking about. It’s arrogant of me, I know, but I think that ASF have a real chance to shine and succeed beyond the whole commercial schtick if they dare to be different, get decadent and get outspoken.

Popularity: 16% [?]

The cosy confines of this inner-city social club seemed, at first, an odd place for Fucked Up to host their travelling punk rock spectacle. However, it turned out to be the perfect venue. Vocalist Pink Eyes took full advantage of the low stage and the split-level lay-out, bounding into the crowd, going for a wander and standing atop the Brudenell’s red velvet upholstery, spouting between-song rhetoric while holding onto the ceiling.

This was my first taste of the Fucked Up live experience but most of the crowd already knew the drill. As the big man wades through them, screaming into the faces of those looking most ill-at-ease, he’s like the Pied Piper to budding local punkers who, treating him like some super-tame Russian circus bear, excitedly jump on his back and swing around his neck, partly as a ritualistic macho wrestle-dance and partly as a show of blatant PinkEyesMania: ‘‘I touched him!!’’ ‘‘He let me shout into his mike!!’’

Every major city has its local hardcore nutcase; unhinged, worldly-wise characters whose omnipresence at gigs guarantee it being more of an event. Toronto’s resident nutcase is just that bit more entertaining. He’s a scary-looking yet charming fella, playing the attention-grabbing ringleader, turning to a bit of impromptu comedy as the band take yonks to fine-tune their guitars, winning over and recruiting troops to join his creative energy collective.

As their frontman goes for a stompabout, the band plug away onstage without him and they’re a compellingly odd-looking bunch, one guitarist appears to be aged about 12 while the bassist sullenly sways her long dress in time to the fury she’s helping to create. Their thoughtful take on full-on rage rock has the requisite level of Black Flag power, locking into metronomic Krautrock drone-outs on the rare occasion when they slip out of 5^th gear pace. The drummer hammers away on his minimal kit like a hydraulic machine at full pelt, ensuring everyone else has to raise the intensity levels of their big, fat familiar chord chains in order to match his power.

The NME may not been made welcome in the D.I.Y punk scene but their recent voyeurism and gushing enthusiasm for all things Fucked Up is understandable. Witnessing one of their shows is an exhilarating blast of total entertainment and their inventive, far-sighted approach to creating punk rock, particular on record, make them a refreshingly exciting band to treasure. And for all the precious scenesters who have all their early 7”s (still available at the gigs, recent converts) and bemoan their growing popularity, surely their name alone will always ensure A-list status on daytime Radio 1 will be as likely as Pink Eyes getting a hair weave and becoming the new face and body of Kellogg’s Special K.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Wakefield, home of the Cribs and the Research, is not the sort of place you’d expect to be a breeding ground of pop stardom… then again, where is? Stupid statement. It’s just that Shake Shudder hail from there and… well you have to say something, don’t you?

Three song EPs, eh? Enough for a taste, not enough for a reasoned estimation. Well, my taste is this. From opener ‘Pound for Pound’ the jagged guitar and martial drums drag a furrow through your nerves, hastily filled by the plodding, apologist bass line. Then, to add to the trauma, Russ’s over-smoked voice starts screaming off key. It’s not the most pleasant of introductions… like being introduced to your daughter’s boyfriend and finding he isn’t house broken. There is however the ghost of a good tune here, but, stop me if I’m wrong, I’m sure Franz Ferdinand have done this one.

‘Numbers’ is a slight improvement, but it still sounds like a badly tuned radio, and that voice…

…is better when quiet. There. It may be the last song, but ‘Only When I’ manages a few bars of consistent pleasant indie pop before plunging into disparate static. ‘Course, that might be the idea in which case: good. But I don’t think it is. Rein it in boys; less is more. And fix that bloody radio. It’s setting off my migraine.

Popularity: 1% [?]

To drag me away from the Brainwash festival it would take something pretty bloody spectacular. A trip to Nashville, courtesy of Jack Daniels, falls into that category. Hey, they might not be able to buy me, but I never said anything about them renting me for a while. I am a whore.

But amidst the corporate hurly burly, which I must confess was very good (JD do good hospitality; so good parts of my body still ache after a month), and the good-natured channelling and itinerising, a small group of independent minded media types… and me managed to tunnel our way out of the prescribed entertainment enclosure (strawberries do not, repeat, not make a relish; it’s wrong in so many ways) and head for the wilds of Nashville, beyond the bluegrass and cowboy boots; the real Nashville; the dive bar.

A ridiculous statement, I realise – even by turning up in what might be described as ‘the genuine article,’ we’re making it touristy, unreal – like Heisenberg’s theory, where the very act of observing effects the outcome. That said, Springwater (the oldest Dive bar in Nashville) was certainly as real as you could get without being born and bred in Nashville from a long line of Nashvillites.

It’s not my idea though, I can’t claim that. Tom, a guy immersed in the spirit of things from the tips of his cowboy boots to the top of his ten-gallon hat had had the place recommended to him by… someone at the Nashville Hilton, I think. Showing my intimate knowledge of things in general, I ask what the hell a dive bar is anyway. “It’s a bar where all the money goes into the beer and none goes into the décor.” Finally, a place where my shabby style might fit the surroundings. Only I’m dressed in a suit and trying my darnedest to look like Nick Cave. For the first time in my life, I might be overdressed.

On the trip over (crossing to the other side of the tracks, I kid you not), we see an 18-foot high cut out of Joe Elliot advertising a forthcoming bill featuring the legendary Def Leppard, which leads to a heated discussion about favourite Def Leppard lyrics and America’s continuing love affair with 80’s AOR. In fact, America is a country that was so comfortable with the eighties that, for the most part, it has decided to stay there. Only the technology has advanced… it’s like being in a Glenn Larson series. I’m expecting the sleek taxi to do a 90-degree turn at any moment, leaving us pressed against the windows in an hilarious mockery of inertia.

Pulling up outside the bar, I start to get a bit scared. The complimentary booze in my system is starting to wear off, and chicken wire seems to play an eminent role in the décor of this place, as do surly-looking men standing on a ramshackle ground floor balcony affair designed for smoking comfort. I giggle a touch hysterically and mutter “we’re going to die” under my breath. It is unclear how to get into the place – no brightly-lit porch, no ‘entrance’ sign – when we do find the door, it is almost indistinguishable from the wall, decorated with the weathered legend ‘Springwater.’ With Tom leading the way, we step into…

… one of the nicest bars I have ever been in in my life. It looks like shit; Tom wasn’t lying about the no décor budget policy. But it’s a good kind of shit. The walls are covered in gig posters, layer upon layer that you could probably date the bar by, the bar has four taps, no liquor, and stools occupied by slumping clientele who have been taking advantage rather heavily of the cheap local beers on offer (not just Bud; proper American dark and pale lagers like Dos Peros). The centre of the bar room is dominated by a pool table, ruled by amiable shark Bob, who’s relaxed attitude to pool rules doesn’t conceal the fact that he could and does wipe the floor with all of us (“we don’t have too many rules,” he drawls, “that’s how fights start”). Over in the corner a juke box whose eclectic selection includes the KLF is momentarily silent as the bands rock up room 2.

This is a dimly lit, open sided affair with a mix of booths with slashed chairs and wobbly circular tables, surrounded by equally wobbly chairs, where grungy kids roll cigarettes or pop pills, medicinal or otherwise. A blues-country combo plough their way through the standards, the frontman your traditional pub chanson bonhomie, the bassist a relic feeling his way around the familiar and unfamiliar. Figures skulk and nod appreciatively before returning to their pitchers and self medicating to obscenity; at one point I am approached by a muted but amorous drunk who can only manage the words “I’m your sister… I ain’t seen you for a while,” before being escorted to a taxi by her friend. This is grubby hedonism at it’s best.

A third room abuts the second, which is open on all sides for, again, the comfort of smokers (though the no smoking inside rule is pretty relaxed throughout Nashville in general) with windows made of chicken wire. Pretty chilly, but I’m sure I can see a bridge in the distance across a car park, but details are sketchy as the beer is kicking in.

Traditional blues country gives way to post-country, closer to Earth’s latest work than Hank Williams, and we all wander throughout engaging in our own little adventures: Suzannah gets chatted up by an arborealist enforcer and a prison designer; Tom gets called ‘a wanker’ and has to explain to the good humoured gentleman about British swearing; Bob hands us our asses at pool and I indulge in a cigar that looks like a whistle and tastes like a peach. It’s weird but not threatening (not the cigar); authentic but not forced. Post-country gives way to grunge-country, performed by the woman who was popping medication like M&M’s and is now droning on the edge of hearing with occasional bursts of enlightening tunefulness.

It’s funny that such a monumental genre as country is so maligned and misunderstood. Like rock or metal it has it’s sub genres, fusion points, costumes and customs. Only in the UK we stand and mock it while committing ourselves to the same crimes we accuse country of. In that grotty, magnificent venue I got an inkling of the vastness of country. Plus the beer was really cheap and the natives friendly.

To complete the night, we say a fond farewell to Springwater and return to Broadway to have a second bite of the tourist cherry. Dozens of bars play various genres and sub genres of music – Nashville isn’t just about the myriad variations of country, but if you’ve got a steel guitar it helps. Tootsies (the famous) buzzes with booze and bravado, so we dive in, mingle with the crowd and make our way to the stage, obtaining tequilas and beers on the way and tossing spare change into the frequently touted tip buckets – wages are below minimum for workers in these establishments, so any coming, glad of it. An acceptable covers band is blasting out pop country and MOR for the pleasure of the assembled and when Def Leppard comes on, I am a man possessed: to beguile the times, look like the times. It’s less laid back here though, a miasma of fights waiting to happen and southern fried lust fills the air – I narrowly avoid being the dish de jour for a pumped up pilgrim with fists a-primed on the dance floor. Thanks Tom.

This is the Nashville you expect, complete with Stetsons and Sheryl Crowe, but it’s more of a stereotype for fellow Americans than visiting, ahem, dignitaries. Us ‘sophisticated’ European types find ourselves seduced more by the simple heritage of the dive bar, closer to venues like the Brudenell Social Club or the Freebutt and closer to the heart of any thriving local scene. I only wish I could find out more, stay longer, chat, drink, assimilate, but for now I shall be satisfied.

I manage to stumble back to the hotel in one piece to rest my weary spinning head; spinning not just from the booze. Nashville, I love you; America, I love you; beer… we shall probably fall out in the morning…

Popularity: 20% [?]