Mermaid Girl

"They don't come to see you for your fins, doll...", he drawled. A shot of whiskey burning his oesophagus - a plume of smoke pihrouetting from his mouth.
"They come, cos you're a pair of tits that can't run away".

Mermaid Girl wriggled up back onto the stage - a rock she couldn't dive off - and dreamt of inhaling the whole ocean the same way her boss would smoke a cigarette.

Jeffrey Lewis/ Liverpool Barfly/ 07.05.09

A great number of this country’s anti-social and depressive tendencies could probably be remedied fairly quickly if Jeffrey Lewis’ brand of nihilistic, quick-witted optimism was available on prescription from the NHS.
Prior to his onstage appearance, Lewis can be found at the merchandise table, drawing cartoons on the backs of Rizla packets and scraps of paper for excitable swarms of twenty-somethings with enormous Cheshire Cat grins.
Onstage, he obtains the same reaction from the entire audience. An amazingly adept storyteller, Lewis is at times uproarious (‘Good Old Pig, Gone To Avalon’) and others endearingly touching (‘Alphabet’), and the audience is transfixed and awe-struck for the entire show.
Songs ‘No LSD Tonight’ and ‘Williamsberg Will Oldham Horror’ are delivered pitch perfect and prove Lewis’ prowess for live shows - songs which surely can’t be improved upon, are further buffed up into sparkling, impassioned vignettes of imaginative comedic observation.
Song’s off new album ‘Em are I’ sound particularly amazing, with ‘Broken, broken, broken heart’ delivering a crushed, heart-yearning set of lyrics against an ironically-upbeat melody of pure determined optimism.
The show is essentially flawless, at times it can be heavier than anticipated, and the songs shudder out excitedly. Lewis’ backing band are an exceptional bunch too, delivering powerful, quirky and personality heavy backing vocals, beats and melodies which supportively enhance every sublime moment.
Like an anti-folk Harvey Pekar, Lewis also demonstrates his craft for comic books with what he calls his ‘low-budget short films’. Flipping through cartoon filled A2 sketch books, he regales the audience with poetic tales of finding a hand on the floor, a detective detecting the oddball plot twists of his own story, and a concise history of communism - which, under Lewis’ deft ability and charisma, is more entertaining than is even fathomable.

Published on the-fly.co.uk and rockindustry.co.uk.

Rolo Tomassi, Grammatics, Pulled Apart By Horses/ Liverpool Barfly/ 21st April 09

Pulled Apart By Horses are dangerously seductive. Combining the potency of every incredible pop song ever made with deliriously heavy grunge-grumbling guitars, hysterical wailings and a devastatingly pounding rhythm section, they are emphatically impossible not to love.
Offstage, front man Tom writhes and jerks himself amongst the audience - a possession of unrestrained delirium, matched by vigorous, thrashing and at times, jovial, vocals. Melodies grind, bounce, roar and trickle majestically against each other, whilst drums are pounded fierce and explosively.
Set finale, ‘Meat Balloon’, with it’s sublimely addictive chant of ‘We are so macho!’, is a prime demonstration of the bands dexterity for insanely catchy hooks coupled with exquisitely beastly guitar riffs. Perfect.
Grammatics’, however, have a delicate and theatrical sound, the splendour of which is emphasised when songs build into sumptuous walls of sound, juxtaposed with moments of grinding ferocity.
Despite this, a great deal of their sound seems lost, enveloped in it’s own outstanding convolution and as a result parts of the set can be somewhat forgetful and performed with a little less energy than is expected of a band sandwiched between two of such exhausting and spirited power.
Enter the exhausting and the spirited - an eruption of high-paced, torrid, grimy noise known as Rolo Tomassi. It’s all ridiculously intelligent and complex stuff, with jittering indefinite time signatures that jolt about within songs and utterly insane guitar riffs that are perplexingly intricate (the pace with which fingers tap strings and frets is menacing in itself).
Lead singer Eva Spence is truly the sexiest person in existence to produce such an unhallowed growl, as she does. Skipping a serpentine samba about the stage to the disordered sound ruminating from her fellow band mates, she’s dazzling to the point of rapt captivation.
Tracks ‘Macabre Charade’ and ‘Oh Hello Ghost’ demonstrate the bands great ability for ambience, with the slightest glimpses of a pop sensibility that works tremendously and keeps the set fresh, reducing Eva’s voice to an unexpectedly sweet and hushed pitch. Whilst songs ‘Fuck The Pleasantries’ and ‘Film Noir’ are fearsome, body-breaking noise fests which tantalise and terrify.

Courtesy of Rockindustry.co.uk

Fucked Up, SSS, Metro Manila Aide/ Korova, Liverpool/ 01.03.09

The excitedly assembled audience has suddenly tensed up. Why? An incoherently, angry-as-fuck drunk who’s clearly been on the Castlemaine all day, has somehow wandered his way in.
Luckily, Metro Manila Aide are angry-as-fuck too, but thankfully possess more charm and articulacy than this 25-stone worth of gob who is heckling them.
Combining the energy and power of early Suicidal Tendencies and the powerful, rambling prosaic’s of Radio Ethiopia-era Patti Smith, MMA are astoundingly confrontational and delectably damning. (Front Man) bounds through the audience like a reneged preacher, grabbing audience members by the head and pushing them down onto the floor.
‘Geeerroofff the stage lad, yer shit…’ wails the heckler, during opening salvo (song title), an atmospheric and curt piece of prog-punk ironically bashing the inherent negativity of the home towns populace.
Brooding and altruistic, their passion and energy is intoxicating and fresh. The heckler, meanwhile, is still shouting proclamations to the contrary. It’s almost too good to be true to have a live example of the exact sort of villiage-idiot, Carlsberg culture which MMA so vehemently rail against.
Thankfully, the village-idiot has mysteriously disappeared by the time SSS take to the stage. And not a second too soon either - a mere few seconds worth of SSS’s swelteringly fast-paced thrash-metal could devour a man like that whole.
SSS are something of a Liverpool thrash institution - a fact exemplified by the heaving pit of fans who never miss a lyric to chant along with, or a pummelling drum-roll to pound their fists to.
Songs (song title, song title, and song title) are performed powerfully and feverishly, and prove the bands prowess for the heavy and the unrelenting, though the entirety of the set too, is flawless and taut. Each song a vigorously heavy purr of disorder that pounds inexorably.
The bands finely-tuned set is heightened by a tight and continual banter with the local audience, constantly reminding one to ‘pull yer keck’s up lad’ and providing the sort of comedic observations about life in Liverpool which are rewarded with high-fives and cheers every time a song finishes.

Courtesy of Rockindustry.co.uk


The band members of Fucked Up are plugged in and waiting onstage. `Damiaaaan`, bassist Sandy wails down the microphone, impatiently. `I’m sorry…` she continues, softly addressing the audience, `we’re just waiting for someone`. That someone finally arrives, bounding through the crowd to the sound of their raucous adulation.
When Fucked Up finally begin, the audience is joyfully baiting for their blood, and the band are more than willing to deliver it. The songs are furious imprints of everything that makes Punk-Rock amazing. Each one is a vigorously heavy purr of disorder that pounds inexorably and with a cocky exuberance.
The enigmatic Damian Abraham parades about the stage and floor, a sizeably shirtless sweat-fest whom the audience eagerly get up-close and personal with. He picks up members of the energetically flaying audience up over his shoulder mid-performance and bowls them back out into the pit, masterfully conducting the chaos that is fervently escalating before him.
Fucked Up’s charm is vibrant and intoxicating - they engage with the audience in a playfully intimate manner that enhances, rather than retracts from, the actual music. Liverpool is endlessly ribbed by Abraham, who brings up the recently ruined Premiership chances of Liverpool F.C. and muses over the existence of John Lennon.
When some of the exhausted pit members before the stage beg him for some of his bottled water, he pours it into their mouths and makes a comment about how Manchester `warned him` about how `Liverpool will steal the shirt off your back…` - the crowd laps up the jest - a punk pantomime - reacting to him with a good natured onslaught of boos that breaks down into a united cackle.
The finale showcases a cover of Black Flag’s `Nervous Breakdown` , rewarding one of the most clearly excitable audience members with the chance to provide guest vocals for it, before Abraham takes back the mic to finish with a disjointedly merry (if weirdly predictable) cover of Blitzkrieg Bop.
Fucked Up prove themselves to be more buoyant than their name may suggest - a powerfully guttural example of how Punk-Rock should be performed, leaving tonight’s audience completely bowled over by the Canadian bands unstoppable charm offensive and their beguiling, driving sound.

First published in Clash Magazine (issue 37)May 2009.

Animal Collective/ Liverpool 02 Academy/ 26.03.09

(4/5)

The sudden hype surrounding Animal Collective is evident in tonight’s audience. For every person here who is a clear obsessive fan wriggling little dance moves out along to the music, there are at least 100 furrowing their brows in a state of abject confusion.
For those woefully unfamiliar with Animal Collective’s genre defying ways, tonight is perhaps not the best introductory gig. Whilst the performance in itself is exciting, ethereal and dreamy, it’s let down by poor sound quality which occasionally swamps songs into completely distorted and indistinct noise.
However, AC plough through and it is a testament of their talents that a great deal of songs still manage to sound rewardingly exceptional despite the setbacks of sound. They introduce themselves with a low thrumming bass as pulsating synth lines simmer in and out of the auditorium. It’s an impressive opening that beguiles and intrigues. It delivers the audience into a united grinning delirium, as though AC were some kind of wonderful musical opiate and we were all breathing it in.
Songs are heavily textured and seem like small reinventions of extremely tired genres, twisting clichés and standard genre elements on their heads to create something altogether more interesting. Banshee like wails are yelped and screeched formidably and through a series of FX pedals which echo and distort beautifully.
Despite a brief lull somewhere in the middle of the gig that sees songs merge seamlessly and forgetfully into another that sounds near identical to it, the gig is, frankly, lovely. A persistent loveliness that is pop without being twee, experimental without being pompous and dark without being indulgent.
As the gig comes to a close, the audience has dispersed into a full on contagious dance-a-thon. Party poppers shoot off, and despite the band seeming very pissed off and having to interrupt songs to declare so (The lights are wrong. The sound is terrible), the crowd simply love them all the more for it. Even those initially baffled by the band are twitching about in a loved-up delirium, they might not know what AC are, but they know they bloody love it.

Courtesy of Thefly.co.uk

Dogshow / Kazimier, Liverpool/ 27.02.09

(4.5 / 5)

Dogshow could fuck this country up. Give them the chance to perform their techno disco-isms in the centre of a major city on a Monday morning and they will debunk the tired responsibilities of the working week. Such is the subversion and power of their sound, that few would make it into work. There would be no point. Once you experience Dogshow there is no way to eradicate them from your memory, nor from your impulses. Dance and you will be happy.
They are, effectively, a two man circus; a big-top of euphoric noise, and tonight they don't disappoint. A gospel of the inebriated and the playfully unhinged - they are the soundtrack of the satisfying, lost weekend. So their entrance at the mischievous and effervescent hour of midnight seems appropriate and perfectly timed. Teasing the audience with a delicate hum which builds with the same pace of a perfectly formed striptease, the audience pulsates with anticipation, eager to lose themselves to the macabre-techno oddities of the enigmatic band.
The first song finally struts out, erupting at the same instant as the enthusiastic, dance-happy crowd does. There are people dancing who look as though they've never dared dance in public before, but Dogshow are infectious. Resisting the urge to dance to them is futile and as ridiculous as resisting the urge to breathe.
The music parades itself, seamless and exhilaratingly unpredictable - the organ grinds to creepier crescendos with each song, sirens blaze out from nowhere and the tempo is dropped and raised with playful skill, a trick which works the already fervent audience into an even bigger lather. The drums, powerful and lascivious, are nothing short of amazing.
When the band quietens, suddenly, the audience are reminded of the inevitable end of their jazz-riot haze. People look visibly disturbed and a little lost, they begin begging en-masse for the instant return of their dance saviours.
The finale arrives with an exhausted and cocky swagger akin to that of a punk show. Melodies cascade and fluctuate, feedback permeates over layers of peaking sound and Dogshow bow out, arms raised triumphantly, smiling widely at their adoring public who howl and cheer with desperate vigour in celebration of what they've simultaneously just witnessed.

Courtesy of Thefly.co.uk

Son Of Dave/ Liverpool Barfly/ 2.05.09

(4/5)

Son Of Dave is sat on stage dressed like a less-malevolent version of Judge Doom from Who Framed Roger Rabbit. He’s been rambling for a minute or so about being lonely, before gesturing at the perplexed audience and drawling, ’Weeelll, we’ve got a little party going on here, don’t we?’.
A party, perhaps, but a party in which all the guests turn up at once to discover the host already deep into a bottle of vodka and a little too drunk for company.
However, SOD (AKA Benjamin Darvill) somehow still manages to put on a fucking good show (and he’s not that drunk, really). A one-man-blues-beat-box of soulful and rousing proportions, with a fantastic talent for a witty anecdote (or twenty), Darvill is exceptionally charismatic, displaying a personality which is worth the 10 quid entry fee alone.
Beset by ongoing technical problems, the set is anything but smooth-sailing, with Darvill constantly having to re-adjust the levels of his equipment and jostling the sound engineer for not ‘getting it’. However, this is all remedied mid-set, with Darvill proudly displaying the power of his human-beat-box bass - ‘BOOOOMMF‘, it thunders down the micophone, ’That sound should make you want to shit yourself!’, he chuckles wryly to himself before launching into an excitable version of ‘Nike Town’.
The gig builds to a satisfyingly rewarding climax, performing an emphatic rendition of ‘Hellhound’, ‘ripping off James Brown’ mid-song, and performing what is undoubtedly the best cover of ‘Low Rider’ I’ve ever heard.
“You’d better clap this next one” he mumbles despairingly, “otherwise I’ll go back to my dressing room and hang myself whilst masturbating”. The crowd howls with laughter, and luckily for him go bat-shit crazy with adoring applause.

Courtesy of The-fly.co.uk