Interview with Dirtblonde

The term ‘cool’ has been expressively and adoringly chiseled into the marrow of Dirtblondes’ body of rock’n’bone over the many years of their loud, gnarly, scuzz shattering career.

It’s fixated on every review, winking feverishly at hipsters everywhere with the stamp of approval that Dirtblonde are an official rock’n’roll dream. The real deal. Jagger. Iggy. Leather. Snarling.

So when I ask them about what a typical Dirtblonde day entails, their response is refreshingly uncool by the standards of modern rock’n’roll cliche.

‘A day in the life of Dirtblonde?’ Ivan begins, laughing, ‘would probably be a boring one. For me at least it’d involve listening to jazz and stroking my cat’.

Lula smiles in agreement, she’s wearing a Twilight t-shirt which again is totally anti-cool by the provisos of being in a shit-hot band. To those of us who harbor deeply secret Edward Cullen fantasies, the move is cool-as-fuck. Most of us have to hide our collection of Twilight paraphernalia under the bed next to the porn.

‘There’s nothing worse,’ Ivan elaborates, ‘than people trying too hard to be rock’n’roll all the time. Save rock’n’roll for onstage - you don’t have to be like that all the time. I mean, Iggy Pop plays golf and Mick Jagger’s always been pretty mellow’.

They go on to say how they don’t really listen to the sort of loud music you’d imagine of them at home. Instead they prefer a bit of John Coltrane, Moondog, Dusty Springfield or a spot of Cat Power whilst cooking.

Liverpool’s a weird city. Maybe the epidemic is nationwide, but the trend for creating impenetrable cliques and scenes within the local gig market is one Liverpool finds itself foul to year in, year out. Dirtblonde, it seems, are very much the outsiders in this arrangement. It almost seems that they’re more appreciated outside of their home city, than they are in it.

‘It’s not contrived. I mean, we’re not trying to be outsiders, we just don’t belong to any scene.’ Lula shrugs, ‘I think every city must be like this - it’s pretty competitive’.

‘It’s frustrating’ Ivan continues, ‘I don’t know what it is, maybe because we’re influenced by more American music like Sonic Youth or The Stooges. We’re not really influenced, I don’t think, by the same stuff as the rest of the bands in the city’.

So what do they think of the Liverpool music scene at the moment then?

‘There’s a lot of different scenes around - I mean you’ve got the retro Zanzibar lot, and then you’ve Class A audio, and Pete Bentham’s free rock’n’roll stuff...and then you’ve got a lot of the-’ Ivan winces trying to think of a polite way to proceed, ‘-shitty local bands. Uninspiring.’

Lula adds ‘But there’s a lot of great music in the city. We’re both loving the Anti-pop label - The Dead Class, The Temps, The Fraktures. The Long Finger Bandits are great too, and Pete Bentham And The Dinner Ladies’.

They love, they say, bands with a lot of energy - it’s something they always come back to, a quality which is incredibly evident in their own guttural, brazen-kinesis of a live show. They cite performances by The Dead Weather and My Bloody Valentine as the most notable gigs they’ve been to over the years.

Lula explains, ‘It’s easy to be cynical about The Dead Weather because they’re a supergroup and Alison Mosshart is a bit of a poser or whatever. But they were just so raw and had such a good time - they weren’t trying to prove anything. Alison Mosshart was just so unbridled and getting in everyone’s face. It was so exciting’

Whilst Ivan - a man with possibly the loudest guitar sound Purple Revolver has heard in recent years - thinks back dreamily to the My Bloody Valentine gig

‘It was just how loud it was. You could feel it in your body - the physical nature of the sound! Such energy, again’.

Dirtblonde are a band also notable for their experimentations with mixing spoken word pieces with rock’n’roll. Lula herself had a book of poetry published last year - At 3 o’clock I Think Of Sex And Death - and also co-ran Heartbeats, a rock’n’roll poetry night which has sadly escaped Liverpool’s clutches and moved down to London.

‘It’s always on the cards that I might bring it back on here’, Lula grins, ‘but I never set out to be a poetry promoter. I don’t want to be in charge of starting a poetry group or anything like that. Heartbeats was just fun - we wanted people to develop their performance, and get confidence about their work and move it out of their bedrooms and share it with people. We heard a lot of amazing work at those nights’.

We end with the token Smash Hits hypothetical question. Dirtblonde are at a party. It’s lame as fuck. They’re falling asleep. They open one last beer when Lo And Behold! A bloody genie pops out! He says he’ll grant them the presence of any 5 people of their choosing to arrive at the party and save the night, who do they pick?

Their eyes light up.

‘We have this discussion all the time!’ Ivan beams, laughing.

‘God, we do seriously discuss this all the time, and now that you’ve asked us I can’t think of anyone’, Lula adds grinning and spooling her mind through past ‘dream dinner party’ discussions.

‘Kevin Spacey!’ Ivan shouts out, ‘Oh! And Stephen Fry. And Jeff Goldblum! And Paul Rudd too. We have to have Paul Rudd’.

‘So I guess there’ll be no women, then?’ Lula interjects, laughing.

‘No, no - what about that comedian? Janeane Garofalo? She’d definately be coming to the party’,

‘And the Cheerleading coach from Glee - Jane Lynch. Her too. Definately’.

So what have Dirtblonde got in store for the future?

‘We’re gonna re-record and do a music video for our song Brooklyn. We’re gonna film it in the Laundromat on Aigburth Road’ They smile at each other in excitement. ‘It should be cool. Laundry rock’n’roll...’

Sounds awesome. We’re sure it’s going to be anti-cool, cool as Dirt.

Dirtblonde words: http://dirtblonde.wordpress.com/

Dirtblonde music: http://www.last.fm/music/Dirtblonde

Dirtblonde photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8861519@N03/

At 3 o’clock I Think Of Sex And Death by Lisa Jones (AKA Lula) is available to buy online here:

http://spikepublishing.wordpress.com/buy/ and is also available from Probe Records and News From Nowhere.

live review: Dirtblonde @ Hurdy Gurdy, Badformat, 19.02.10

Oh Hurdy Gurdy, file this one in the ‘Lesson Learnt’ drawer and move on. Essentially - if a gig night has taken less than a fortnight to put together, you can pretty much expect it to be a bit of a tits-up, lackluster FAIL.

Hurdy Gurdy at Badformat is tonight reminiscent of those early teenage gig nights that used to go down in Heaven’N’Hell (remember that joint?!) and The Zanzibar absolute beards ago in which the audience was only made up of the bands and their mates. You know, where there’s about five people going ape-shit-with-restraint before some Ramones-rip-off band onstage, and about forty people ambling round the bar high-fiving the bloke they sit next to in sixth-form history for his totally slick guitar skills.

It’s Friday night. Badformat has no phone signal and is as far away from the part of town where all your mates are as is humanly possible in the city centre. This is the gig equivalent of the arctic circle, or a Twilight Zone episode in which apathetic, mean spirited music journo’s are locked in the same gig for eternity until they can learn to just be NICE.

In keeping with this spirit allow us to politely skip through the evenings events, briefly mentioning the total lack of atmosphere and the fact that most people are either huddled round the bar or sitting off on couches around the permitter away from the stage area (unless of course their mates band’s playing), and jump straight to the point where the awesomeness that is Dirtblonde takes to the stage.

Sadly for the cool as fuck, rock’n’noise duo, the performance feels like one of those mid-90’s music videos in which a cool as fuck, rock’n’noise band tear up the stage to a frankly unreponsive, oddly assembled audience (watch Zero by The Smashing Pumpkins or anything from The Dandy Warhols).

Dirtblonde don’t let this stop them though. Having draped the unused drum kit with red LED lights and their mic stands with bright, twinkling scores of bulbs they burst into a sublime racket of gorgeously low register, apathetic vocals and roaring, throaty, louder than apocalypse guitar. Backed only by their trusty drum machine (never underestimate the power of a Boss Dr-670), they’re downright dirt-o-matic, scuzz lusty perfection.

‘This one’s about being an obsessive fan of someone’ Lula announces before they break into Superfan - a riot act of want that sees Ivan dropping to his knees for it’s finale, screeching his fingers across fret boards causing an ungodly, visceral disturbance. He’s bowed upon the floor for the act, as though in begging before a shrine.

There’s a cheeky nod to Patti Smith too, with His Name - a Gloria-esque spoken word, locomotive dreamscape of tersely built up raw pleading rhythm which is sumptuous for Lula’s honeyed delivery and Ivan’s chug-chugging accompaniment.

‘Here’s a slow one for those of you who don’t like too much noise...’ Ivan grumbles into the mic, probably at the scores of lifeless people by the bar shouting over his pneumatic guitar sound, no doubt wishing they were sat in the quiet of The Everyman Bistro eating quiche and discussing the misanthropic merits of silent discos.

They kick into Brooklyn, a plummeting, lost-soul of a song that pines and longs and hammers on with an underscore of melancholy juxtaposed by a determined, swinging fist of a riff that never quite makes the punch, but is opulent in it’s doomsy ongoing threat.

Their finale is as blissfully destructive as they’re notorious for. A Rock’n’fuck-it kick of the bucket that descends from sexy, heavenly moans to a riff-babel infestation of discordant destruction. Lula hangs her head like an unused puppet and bashes bass with an amorous determination for decorum whilst Ivan swings his guitar about the place like Leatherface with his chainsaw, before attacking the LED lights draped around the drum kit. He pulls them off and around him, becoming entangled like Mowgli fighting a neon snake before falling to the floor and writhing about in a onslaught of pure, precious din.

The set is over.
A smattering of half-arsed applause spills out, and a couple of yelps that sound more like the faulty mechanisms of a flare gun than a verbal accolade. It feels like Dirtblonde may as well have been playing in Sayers for all the good it did them, but then that’s Liverpool for you.

But sod it. Dirtblonde - Purple Revolver salutes you. Come round and fuck our office up anytime you want - you’ll probably get more of a crowd, too.


Dirtblonde words: http://dirtblonde.wordpress.com/
Dirtblonde music: http://www.last.fm/music/Dirtblonde
Dirtblonde photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8861519@N03/

Live review: Los Campesinos @ O2 Academy 12.02.10

Last time we saw Los Campesinos live, there was a great deal of buzz surrounding their now anthemic boogie-tasm tune You! Me! Dancing! and the audience was made up of Skins-lite teenagers hepped up on Lambrini and White Lightening determined to make us feel older than we needed to and too intimidated to dance.

Within the space of a couple of years, Los Campesinos - and their audience too, it would seem - have matured into quite the collective of intelligent smile pushing indie-pop masters. Gone is the Lambrini and the White Lightening. In it’s place is a band rider full of organic food and herbal tea.

Except there’s been a terrible mix-up - Tinchy Strider is playing the main room at the O2 Academy tonight just downstairs, and him and his ‘crew’ have somehow wound up with the Campesinos rider.

Los Campesinos vocalist Gareth bemoans in a barely decipherable low mumbling drone the fact that a member of Tinchy Striders crew have pissed in his pack of special herbal tea. ‘I like to drink it before I go onstage...you know, cause I’m trying to be like a good vocalist these days and so, yeah, no herbal tea for me’, he winces mockingly like the kid in school who’s had his Kit-Kat chunky had out of his lunch box and is trying hard not to cry about it.

Aaw. And so begins the loveliness that is a Los Campesinos live show - abound with raw teenage angst, some fantastically well written self-deprecating lyrics and walls of irresistible pop-noise that the crowd bops and bounds about to throughout.

The audience is fanatical, singing / screaming along with every song, their fists passionately pounding the air. Their fans believe in Los Campesinos, obsessively, irrevocably, and it’s easy to see why.

When ‘Straight In At 101’ is played, the lyrics are vastly anthemic (‘We need more post-coitus and less post rock’), and it’s impossible not to smile along, particularly when it’s sublimely Philip Larkin-esque ending finally hits, seeing Gareth prosaically pronouncing how his heartache wasn’t featured on the 100 most heart-wrenching break ups of all time over the top of some simple, thrumming guitar. (‘Imagine the great sense of waste/ the indignity/ the embarrassment/ when not a single one of them was mine’). Amazing.

They play a number of songs off latest album Romance Is Boring, and their sound is veering deliciously close to Hefner territory these days, particularly on tracks Who Fell Asleep In and new single Romance Is Boring, in which lyrics are performed with the vocal equivalent of an eye rolling at unachievable love affairs and doomed, lackluster coupledom.

The septet do struggle somewhat with sound quality though (what’s going on with sound engineers lately?) - which sees some of the best lyrics totally drowned out by an inconceivably loud bass. The audience is so plentiful and crammed into the auditorium that you can barely see the stage, and so it isn’t until about 5 songs into the set that you realise Oh Yeah, There’s A Violinist Playing With Them Too, which is a real shame since when the violin can actually be heard it adds a resonating sad face and spiraling intensity to songs.

You! Me! Dancing! of course makes a bat-shit excited appearance towards the end of the set, announcing itself with a teasing foreplay of rattling, scuzzy, noise - the crowd baiting hungrily for it’s blood by clapping uproariously along before breaking out into a mass jive of intensely joyous arse-shaking and limb convulsing when the opening riff finally kicks in.

They end with an endearing amount of humility, thanking the crowd again and again for coming to see them - ‘This is the second best thing we could be doing, and we’re so happy to be able to do it. None of us are any good at football to be doing the first best’, Gareth beams appreciatively before the band slam into Sweet Dreams, Sweet Dreams, seeing the Campesinos frontman jumping straight into the front of the crowd to hive five and love.

An everlasting queue forms at the merch table following the show, with Gareth stood at the side thanking and hugging each individual person for attending, and signing vinyls and cd’s happily. It’s a rare and lovely thing to witness, especially since the fans are so truly grateful to meet him and thank him for a show they’re ear to ear grinning over.

Somewhere downstairs, Tinchy Strider and his mates are probably flinging out piss soaked ginseng and blackcurrent tea bags as souvenirs to the red eyed masses gathering by the stage door to meet him.

Gutted. Luckily for Los Campesinos, the bereft aid of a couple of herbal tea bags did nothing to sully what was a perfect Friday night performance. Piss in all the boxes of tea you want, Strider, but you wont stop Los Campesinos from pissing all over your live show. And that is fucking science FACT.

Los Campesinos Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/loscampesinos

Los Campesinos Lastfm: http://www.last.fm/music/Los%2520Campesinos!?ac=los%20campe

Buy Romance Is Boring: http://tinyurl.com/ygekguo

The Ex & Brass Unbound, Stig Noise MMX and Zun Zun Egui live @ The Kazimier, Liverpool

Stig Noise MMX frontman Jacob is pacing about excitedly before yelping out at the already buzzing crowd ‘I can’t remember the last time The Ex played England, nevermind Liverpool’, he grins a wide coat-hanger grin which is mirrored back by the hollering, fervent crowd who’ve hungrily gathered in The Kazimier for the monumental occasion.

The set erupts into the finely tuned discordance for which Stig are consistently celebrated for. A melodic anarchy of brass, throaty lyricism, and killer onslaughts of bass, drum and guitar that never once veer far from perfection.

Each song is decadence - an irresistible array of limb twitching, unpredictable and mediated psychosis punctuated by the occasional spoken word vocal, dual drum finale and sumptuous tentative build ups of pace and noise that explode into a fever of hot tempered noise.

If this is the foreplay, you think to yourself, then fuck-help me when the main flesh scabblers finally arrive to headline later.

Second act, Zun Zun Egui are a little less exciting. Initially, they’re fucking outstanding - an audacious blend of the tropical, the tribal, experimental and downright doomsy. They begin songs down one path and without warning divert, screeching and attentively, down another totally subverting their own sound and the crowds expectations of it. But the formula wears a little thin and samey three songs into the set, and what was fresh and exciting to begin with becomes commonplace and predictable.

The frontman is charming and enthusiastic enough, shimmying, grinding and thrashing himself about the stage and the audience with enough energy to bring on an early Springtime, but his fellow bassist looks more than a little pissed off throughout the entire set, huffing and puffing after each song with the brattish expression of a young boy who missed his afternoon nap and didn’t get a biscuit with his glass of milk that evening.

But still, their sound is exactly what the audience is craving - the beats are heavy and the bustling bodies are busting out spazz-o-matic moves sponsered by Give A Shit How Stupid This Looks, I Gotsta Dance!

And then ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod - an entire ETERNITY passes before The Ex & Brass Unbound take to the stage, tune up, plug in and begin what is without a doubt one of the best live shows The Kazimier, and even possibly Liverpool, has ever witnessed.

That’s no exaggeration either. It’s so good that the vocabulary hasn’t been invented yet with which to do a review of them justice.

Featuring a line up of eight members (including 5 on brass), the post-punk no-wave legends are remarkable from the get-go. A flawless and dissonantly brooding performance off-set with shimmers of the jaunty and the relentlessly jazzy. Sweet Christ is it good. The vibe in the entire theatre is electric - the room awash with uncontrollable sweeping movement and spacious unbelieving smiles that will leave faces aching for hours afterwards.

Songs span intricately and incessantly, managing to explore songs within songs - the whole band looks ecstatic, and when you consider that this is a band that’s been around for about 30 years now, is a comforting and heart-warming thing to witness.

Their set develops an extensive range of genres, all played with a forcefulness that makes you bite your lip with such rapture that you might require stitches afterwards. Songs begin on triumphant, opulent levels and descend into a cacophony of debauched, poetic spewed noise.

A version of Hungarian folksong Hidegen Fujnak A Szelek is a perfect example of all this - seeing drummer Katherina Bornefeld take to the vocals, cow bell in hand, and create a sublime din of re-worked, idiosyncratic genius. A song which is by equal turns jubilant and disquiet at once.

Onstage camaraderie is big, the band beam at each other and are playful with the performance, hitting drum machine sampler buttons with guitar heads in sync, taking the piss out of the member of the brass band who dares climb up onto the above stage stage of the Kazimier to belt out a plunger muffled power bleat and at the some of the dancing going on in the crowd before them.

The band thankfully return for two encores - the highly desperate ear splitting screaming that follows their absenting of the stage leaves them with little choice - of unpredictable dance heavy joy. They end with a brass off which sees two of the brass band trying to tunefully outdo each other before crumbling into a myriad of onstage giggles.

Awesome - awesome - awesome. There just aren’t the words or the online space available to fully credit the gig with the praise it needs.

Put it this way, if you missed this gig you’re an absolute bloody fool. Simple as.