Urban Landfill

The Ettes, 'Danger Is' EP

I've got a lot of time for Rolling Stone magazine. Over the years its produced some of the most spot-on rock writing around, and fostered the careers of Lester Bangs, and Greil Marcus, two of my all-time heroes. But sometimes they can get it very very wrong indeed. According to the blurb that I've been given along with the new Ettes EP 'Danger Is', they've apparently described the  LA-based garage trio as 'the new Cramps'; that's well wide of the mark, and not a little offensive coming in the light of Lux Interior's death. The new Cramps they are not. 

Hungover-ranting aside. It's worth letting The Ettes into your life. Don't be put off by the trappings that come with them - yes, they've got celebrity mates, yes, they've got an ironically amusing name, yes they do look a little too over-styled. But, amongst all the waffle, they've got some cracking songs. Coming in the slipstream of the White Stripes, which made it OK for mainstream music fans to  listen to garage bands, 'Danger Is' showcases The Ettes' short, catchy fuzz-blasted power-pop (they call it Beat Punk, but that doesn't really mean anything). Songs to drink beer, hug your mates, pump your fist in the air, snog a stranger and start a fight to. Apparently, a couple of tracks on the EP were produced by some dude from the Black Keys. 

There's nothing cerebral here, and nothing particularly original - they don't do anything that bands like The Cut In The Hill Gang and the Detroit Cobras don't do - but I guarantee that chucking tracks like No Home onto the stereo will improve your day. Check 'em. 

Chrome Hoof with Marcus Coates, 'Ritual For Elephant and Castle, The Coronet, London, June 5, 2009

There's been a lot of noise made recently about the regeneration of Elephant and Castle. Southwark Council is apparently working hard to turn the place round by 2020. As well as, hopefully, ridding the whole area of the faint smell of urine, there's an ambitious programme of building, the way being led by a monstrous tower-block (just what the area needs!), with the aim of turning the whole area into a sanitised car-free plaza of joy. Southwark has, astutely, been looking to win the cultural hearts and minds hence a blossoming of press articles over the last few months looking at the areas 'thriving cultural scene' (ummm The Coronet, Corsica Studios and the Ministry of Sound, by my reckoning). You know, kind of how they've been trying to do to New Cross since forever.

Despite my cynicism, tonight's show was refreshingly different. Billed as a 'Ritual for Elephant and Castle', the aim was to exorcise the area and provide a cultural platform for regeneration (casting out the demons of Southwark Council's previous failures, presumably). A product of artistic collective NOMAD, it saw rising performance/video art star Marcus Coates collaborate with doom, prog, disco stompers Chrome Hoof. According to the press release, its the latest fruits of their ongoing residency, but anything else they've done together seems to have passed me by. We were promised 'one hell of a rock'n'roll disco show and, by golly, they didn't disappoint.

A collaboration between an artist and  a rock band should be terrible, on paper at least. It gets me thinking of Neil Young having a live painter on stage with him at his last headlining London shows, and some of Yoko Ono's questionable happenings. But there's definitely a natural synergy between Coates and da Hoof. Both are credible artistic bodies in their own right - Coates has steadily been gaining plaudits over the last few years, most recently forming part of Tate Britain's Altermodern, with Chrome Hoof's brand of cross-genre space rock gaining them fans from right over the musical spectrum. Both also have a track record in surprising and subverting an audience's expectations; Coates with his exploration of the role of the shaman in contemporary culture, Hoof by radically re-imagining what we define a rock band to be (eleven people and two dancers on stage - no problem!). Both resist pigeonholing and both are producing some of the most exiting work in the UK at the moment.

After impressive support from  Wildbirds & Peacedrums, first up, were Chrome Hoof. I have to admit I was a massive fan of Leo Smee's first band, retro doom-mongers Cathedral back in the 1990s but this is the first time I got to see his new project. I'm an admirer of their debut Album - Pre-Emptive False Rapture, but it works so much more effectively live than it does in records. Sure, we got the stand-out tracks from their platter, but this band is about much more than the songs - its the sensual overload of the totality that the live experience is all about. It's not subtle, its certainly not fashionable but its not supposed to be. They've emerged from the land of an NME-stylist's nightmare and do exactly what you shouldn't do on stage - fusing everything from metal to jazz to Parliament funk. Hell, they've even got a couple of terrifyingly in-character dancers, looking like refugees from Blake's 7.

After a few songs, Coates makes his entrance. Wearing a giant horses head. Not a rubber mask, but what looks like a REAL horses head from a taxidermist. With scarily real eyes and everything. Coates' artistic method is based on taking journeys to the spirit netherworld, and reporting back his interpretations of what he sees. This, he combines tonight with an extension of his shaman persona. He starts gently, with a locally-relevant traditional folk song, then as he enters the animal world,  he becomes horse rock god. It's an explosion of sex, of nature, of dormant animalism. I could ramble on about Coates for hours, but I'll leave it there, for now.

In short, it works as an extension of Chrome Hoof's set. Importantly, and this is a crucial feature of the rest of Coates' work, it's done with a sense of humour. When Coates' time is up, he retreats back into the shadows from whence he came and its the back to the Hoof to round things off. 

As far as Friday nights out go, this one was life-affirmingly joyous - part performance art, part rock sure. Yes, the place was packed out by twatty art students, but, above all, it was good old-fashioned fun! 

Ed Harcourt & friends, Union Chapel, London, May 30th, 2009

Ed Harcourt once walked out of a gig by legendary US composer Van Dyke Parks because the sustain pedal on his keyboard wasn't working. A bit of an unfair way to treat Brian Wilson's chum? Probably. Whatever, the karmic wheel had turned into place this evening, as Harcourt's piano was similarly afflicted in the beautiful setting of the Union Chapel. Aside from that incidental setback, a beautiful summer's day a nearly full church and the gently fusty smell of Christianity meant that everything was in place for a triumphant evening.

 Picture credit - thanks to miss.drivel

And a glorious triumph it almost was. Everything was there - a carefully put together set list, featuring a splattering of well-loved old favourites (Hanging With The Wrong Crowd, Born In The 70s, Apple Of My Eye), a few numbers of his latest EP (Russian Roulette, Caterpillar) and a couple of great new songs (including the impressive Do As I Do), a cracking  band, and backing vocals from his wife and sisters-in-law in the form of The Langley Sisters. Whilst it was an impressive show from the consistently, excellent Harcourt, it fell just slightly short of being the magnificently magical evening it could have been.

Don't get me wrong, the were four or five moments of joyous sublimity - the suitably psalm-esque Something To Live For, eventually completed without use of a microphone after a couple of false starts, made the collective hairs on the back of the neck of most of the congregation stand up, Russian Roulette was a joy as was (as ever), This One's For You. The duet with outstanding support singer Josephine Oniyama too was memorable. As if he needed to remind us, Harcourt again proved he's one of the nation's greatest singer-songwriters (I hate that phrase, it makes me think of Joan Baez, but that is what he is. A singer-songwiter, he's not Joan Baez), but one that's shamefully overlooked by the majority of stay-at-home Susan Boyle fans.

For me, Harcourt seemed a little distracted tonight, as witnessed by him visibly ranting at his stage crew after the show outside the dressing rooms - the dodgy pedal clearly had a big effect. Harcourt's shows are always slightly shambolic affairs - in part due to his eclecticism, but tonight's suffered slightly for it - didn't make the move from the great, to the stratospheric. I did think I noticed Van Dyke Parks shuffle past me at one point, though...

Dead Confederate - Wrecking Ball

There's been a lot of keyboard-bashing recently about the boundaries of psychedelic music. Lot's of pretty fruitless umming and ahhing about claiming bands for a certain movement or other. Lots of beard stroking and cogitating about how certain bands are nu-gaze (urghh) or neo-psych (ouch). All pretty introspective, and pretty appropriate if you think about it. But without wanting to get into a Foucauldian analysis of the classification of differernt-types of music, it doesn't really get us anywhere.

Dead Confederate, a hairy bunch of chaps from Georgia in the US, have just pushed Wrecking Ball into this space (whatever we may call it). It's an album that should make the purists shit themselves and that can only be a good thing.

The band were most recently seen in the UK on a bill that featured both Darker My Love and A Place To Bury Strangers - two bands that are more easily assimilated into the psychedelic domain so it's pretty easy to see how they are being marketed this side of the pond. On a first listen, it seems as though Dead Confederate are suffering from a similar musical identity crisis to all the British shoegazers - do they actually have an idea of how they fit into the musical landscape, and are they relevant in 2009?

I mean - just take a look at them - all checked shirts and sideburns - at a first glance you could be looking at an early 90s picture of Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains or Mudhoney. On record, as well, a large part of their music does - initially at least - seem to borrow from the hard rock/grunge traditions. Hardy Morris' vocals are the first thing that strike you - the raspy, emotional strains that wouldn't seem out of place on a Nirvana record. The heavy, crunchy guitar chords, followed up with epic soloing not heard outside my angsty adolescent bedroom since around 1994. Songs such as 'Goner' sound could have fitted in nicely on the soundtrack to Clerks.  And the stadium rock drumming - let's not forget that. So, are we all ready for the great grunge revival? Or are we talking about the dawn of the great 2009 Grunge-Gaze ((c) Russell Williams, 2009) movement?

Just when you think you've got the measure of Dead Confederate, and are ready to dismiss them as grunge-revivalists (I know I was) - well, that's when things get really interesting. After a couple of listens, you start to move beyond the lumberjack look and start to really appreciate their sensitive, epic songs. For all the heavy rock trappings, Wrecking Ball is a remarkably mature, and restrained album. Though they flirt with them, they never actually spill over into naff rock cliché territory. Their intensity remains shackled, and ultimately their plaything - in a similar way to The Black Angels or even Dead Meadow - something particularly pertinent on tracks like The News Underneath. 

For me, Wrecking Ball was a pleasant surprise. At times, the album can feel a little one-paced, but the sheer joy of some of the songwriting on the album is its saving grace. All The Angels is worth the price of the album alone, it's certainly one of the best tracks I've heard all year. Definitely worth getting hold of, and worth sticking with.

Is it grunge? Maybe. Is it 'Psychedelic'? Possibly. Does it really matter?

A Place to Bury Strangers, London King's College, April 6th, 2009

There probably should be some kind of health warning associated with A Place To Bury Strangers. It's not just the fact their stage show apparently flies headlong into the face of the UK Health and Safety Executive's recommendations for the use of strobe lights, it's the sheer complex intensity of their music that's the issue. The fact that I've been listening to them a lot recently (hell, this is the third time I've written about them in the last few months), and a lot of that has been through headphones, there's probably something very wrong indeed happening where my brain used to be. As such, I make no apologies at all for writing entirely subjectively about the Kings College show.

Picture of the band via Nathan Wind as Cochese licensed under Creative Commons

This is the second time I've seen the band  in the space of a few months. At the risk of getting all leather elbow patchy, seeing a band like this twice in quick succession is pretty interesting from a critical perspective (and part of the reason I went to see My Bloody Valentine twice in a week not so long ago). I've already been blown away by the sheer visceral roar of their music; my mind corrupted, my eyes and eyes numbed into an ecstatic  trance. This time, I wasn't about to get my self caught up in the frenzy. It was a Monday night, after all.

Once you've been shocked, offended or stunned, once the limits of acceptability have been transgressed, its impossible to be corrupted a second time and whilst the set list was largely the same, tonight's gig had a hugely different dynamic to the band's last London show at the ICA before Christmas. Last time was about being beaten into submission by the bombast, being mesmerised by the light show, this time I was able to start making out the layers, seeing that there's much more at work than just loud noise.

Don't get me wrong, loud noise is still an important part of their sound - they play it as another instrument in a similar way to MBV - but there's more going on. For me, tonight was about a gradual build of intensity, a slow creeping annihilation rather than a blitzkrieg. It was about Oliver Ackerman's twisted guitar noises, about how he inhabits the music on stage, turning from retiring shoegaze/indie popster to dangerously-crazed shaman within the space of their 70 minute set.

A Place to Bury Strangers are about more than just playing songs, they move beyond performance and start getting really physical. The music articulates the angsty, silent inner roar that you feel when you wake at 3.30am. Wow. I'm going to be leaving them alone for a bit. 

A Place To Bury Strangers, Missing You (Single)

It's a pretty good time to be Jono Mofo. Sure, he might have been cursed by parents with a particularly unfortunate sense of humour, but hey, he made it out of his native South Wales and is holding down a relatively stable job in glamorous New York City. His local football team, the mighty Cardiff City, an unfashionable bunch who (aside from making it through to last season's FA Cup Final) haven't really achieved a great deal since wining the cup in 1927 and beating Real Madrid in 1971, look as if they might get promoted this season to the top flight. 

Oh, the day job's going pretty well too. Jono's on bass duties in A Place To Bury Strangers. They aren't quite as mighty as the Bluebirds, but they've had a hell of a year. From being the buzz band of last year's SXSW, they've toured with the Dandy Warhols and MGMT, wowing audiences with they darkly psychedelic debut album and their punishing live show. They've been getting reviews from the alternative sections of Her Majesty's press that use impressive phrases like 'exhilaratingly effective', 'ferocious eloquence' and 'Fuuuuuukkkkkggggheellllll. YES.' They last stormed around the UK, scaring epileptics and horses alike at the end of last year.

Now, they're back. Which is good news if your ears have stopped ringing from the last shows. If not, then its probably best that you see a doctor. On no account should you go see them live. T

To mark their return, the record label is issuing a live favourite and the opening track from their debut album, Missing You, as a single (out April 6th, collectors and obssesives). It's one of the album's standout tracks and showcases Oliver Ackermann's skin flaying guitar, taking no prisoners on the way.

It's a good track, and all, but surely most of the people that would be likely to buy it already own a copy of the album and the extra tracks (a demo version, and two remixes of their last single, the charmingly named To Fix A Gash In Your Head, one of which by Peter Holmstrom from the Dandys) aren't going to be the type of things you are going to play over and over again. What the hell, buy it. It'll only cost you a couple of quid. 

Better still, go see them on their upcoming tour of the UK (bigger venues this time, and you get to see Darker My Love, who I PROMISE will blow you away if the headliners don't): April 1st, Glasgow, Stereo, April 2nd, Manchester, Ruby Lounge, April 3rd, Leeds, Cockpit, April 5th (the same day as Cardiff City play Swansea - please tell me Jono is taking the rest of the band to this!?), Birmingham, Barfly, April 6th, London, Kings College.

Annette Messager, The Messengers, Hayward Gallery, London

I headed along to the Hayward with the intention of writing something about Mark Wallinger's The Russian Linesman. He's won the Turner prize, he's best known for dressing up as a bear and he's convinced the powers that be to erect a ruddy great horse in the south of England countryside, so I was expecting great things. If time permitted, I'd check out the Annette Messager retrospective, The Messengers, as well.

I hadn't, then, banked on being sidetracked, even blown away by the show I was only interested in as an afterthought. I thought Wallinger's show was going to be the main draw, but it's the Messager collection that contains the major works out of the Hayward's spring offerings, with Wallinger's curated show only really playing second fiddle.

Messager is a Paris-based artist whose work repeatedly calls into question various issues of identity. Her work centres a great deal on the nature of female identity and the materials she works in, some of the questions she deals with in her work are the staples (some could even say cliched) of female artistic introspection - toys, meditations on female beauty, children, absences/presences. What makes Messager's work so powerful, however, is that its never trapped in a female cul-de-sac, it talks equally about the male experience; she uses the female as a starting point to explore universal  questions of identity.

The Messengers is the single most disturbing yet profoundly touching and liberating contemporary art show I've seen in some time. Perhaps some of Messager's best known works are her stuffed 'pillows and pikes', but here her larger scale works have the most impact and are the most genuinely rewarding.

Messager's work skirts the boundries of the horrific, the unspoken terrors that surround us at all times. This is brought vividly to life in the collections first work, Chimaeras, the realisation of a personal horror, and takes in the harrowing photo montages of Children With Their Eyes Scratched Out (which is pretty self-explanatory really).

Nothing, however, prepared me for Casino. This formed part of Messager's submission that represented France at the 2005 Venice Biennale. Part of its impact stems from the surprise factor, so I won't go into detail. Suffice to say, I found it both terrifying and intimidating, but also ultimately exhilarating. It is a joy to experience.

Another large work, Articulated-Disarticulated (pictured) is similarly touching. A room filled with vaguely animal, vaguely human puppet forms are powered by a system of ropes and pulleys, making them toss, turn and twitch pathetically. This is apparently a response to the BSE/Mad Cow crisis, but also a sombre comment on the roles we all play from day to day.

In short, its a staggering show. It runs at the Hayward until May 25th. I suggest you check it out. 

Altermodern, Tate Britain, London

At last, after the sheer mess of GSK Contemporary, its a real relief to see a high-profile London contemporary art show that has a clear direction. That show is 'Altermodern'  the new Tate Triennial at Tate Britain. As the name suggests, its built around curator  Nicolas Bourriaud's conception of altermodernity, which defines an art for a globalised world, to be understood in 'relation to economic, political and cultural conditions'.

As such, the 28 artists whose work is reflected within are all responding, to some extent or another, to Bourriaud's concept which, by its very nature, is a little abstract. That said, its inevitable that some of the artists have much greater success in relating to altermodernity than others.  Bourriaud, perhaps best known in art circles for founding the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, has defined his concept as (wonderful word alert) 'polyglot', with the altermodern artist reflecting a 'contemporary experience of mobility', so maybe the wide range of responses is the whole point. Well, at least he has a vision...

Equally, as always seems to be the case in a contemporary art showcase, the results are patchy - there are some phenomenally strong works here, together with some (well, one at least - more on that later) works of almost staggering crassness.

The first thing you notice about Altermodern is the way the Tate space has been transformed - the works spill out of the gallery into the central building hall (or the Duveen galleries as they are more formally known). After recently playing host to Martin Creed's magnificent runners (Work No. 850), they have been transformed, most notably by two works; Matthew Derbyshire's 'Palac', which detournes the entrance of the gallery, forcing the visitor to redefine his own relationship with the space, and  Subodh Gupta's 'Line of Control', a huge mushroom cloud composed of stainless steel kitchen utensils. Gupta's work, whilst visually stunning, is, however one of the show's more confused pieces. It’s message is lost within its shimmering ‘wowness’.

Once inside, its refreshing to see a number of artists that have been on the fringes of large-scale Tate recognition for at least a couple of years finally arrive. Marcus Coates, whose work takes the traditional cultural concept of the shaman, clad in animal skins, and examines its role in contemporary society, a great example. 'The Plover's Wing' is Coates' most explicitly political work to date, dealing with the issues surrounding the Israeli/Palestinian conflict in a way that I would anticipate that even Tony Blair in his role as Middle East peace envoy hasn't yet tried. 

It's also great to see Olivia Plender again at the triennial. Whilst her piece included her 'Machine Shall Be the Slave of Man, But We Will Not Slave for the Machine' is perhaps the most clearly 'altermodern' work in the collection, and is definitely the most contemporary, in that it is placed directly within the context of the global recession. What the work gains from its inclusion of external current events, it loses by being, quite frankly, the most boring piece in the Triennial. 

Other fascinating works that particularly warrant closer investigation include Mike Nelson's installation 'The Projection Room', Spartacus Chetwund's (winner of the prize for best name) video 'Hermitos Children'  and, my particular favourite, David Noonan's slightly sinister sepia stage sets.

Special mention must go to Nathaniel Mellors, whose 'Giantbum', is possibly the most juvenile, insulting and idotic piece of contemporary art I've ever seen  and  I'm still (after having been back to Altermodern twice) shocked that a work so mediocre has made it in to the show. I'll let you see it for yourself. I spent both visits cringing. 

That said, Altermodern is a vibrant, fascinating and (mostly) intelligently put together show. The average pieces are more than made up for by the variation included and the overall boldness of Bourriaud's curatorial vision.

Go! Altermodern runs at Tate Britain  until April 26th

Seasick Steve, Hammersmith Apollo, London, January 31st 2009

Let's get this straight from the outset. Seasick Steve is a character, nothing more than that. Sure, he's been marketed very well over the last couple of years - the stories about him hopping freight trains and being a loveable bum sound fantastic and he dresses credibly badly. But lets not delude ourselves here - the guy hasn't been plucked from obscurity by a saintly record company. He's been around for years, he worked as a knob-twiddler on a couple of Modest Mouse records. He apparently lives in Norfolk.

That's part of the reason why I found tonight so depressing particularly when I saw the number of people soaking it all up at the sold-out Apollo. It's even more distressing when you put it in context; the same venue saw the death of Ziggy Stardust  the pre-eminent example of the self-conscious stage persona. But whilst Bowie's creation was a clever, knowing creation, a satire on the star system as much as a product of it, Seasick Steve comes across tonight as a cynical marketing product, nothing more. The persona's served him well over the last couple of years. Steve's been nominated in the best international solo male category for this year's Brit awards, and he's sold out venues around the country during this, his highest profile tour to date. 

Tonight, Seasick 'hobo, tramp, bum' Steve takes to the stage and plonks himself in the middle of a bleeding stage set. It's designed to look like a good, old porch from the deep south. Best of all, pride of place above his head sits a fully-illuminated Budweiser sign (is this supposed to make him seen credible, or is there some kind of sponsorship involved here? Its hard to tell). Even the on-stage stories and gags seemed painfully rehearsed. It all comes across as an act, manufactured, sanitised and a million miles from the 'reality' he's selling us onstage.

In all, the Seasick Steve live show was a very shallow experience and musically one-dimensional. It's almost as is he's playing the blues for people who have never heard the blues before (tip: check out the music of Muddy Waters). It all left me feeling a bit empty. I left early. 

Book: Florian Zeller - Julien Parme

I made a personal vow that if I reviewed anything else by Florian Zeller, then I wouldn't again bang on bitterly about how young he was. There's been loads of hype around him being the latest enfant terrible of French literature, so pointing out that he's young, dashing and talented is quite frankly a little trite.

As infuriating as this may be, it's almost impossible not to mention age when writing about Julien Parme (his most recent novel, published in 2006) however, as Zeller seems to be foregrounding it as one of the work's major themes. It tells the story of the novel's eponymous adolescent hero during a 48-hour period in Paris. There's everything you might expect in a typical coming of age novel - war with parents, running away from home, romance. On one level, it reads very much as a slightly more light-hearted and mature revisting of a lot of the ground covered in Zeller's first novel, Neiges Artificielles. 

Where the novel really gets interesting, however, is when you start looking at Julian Parme through the filter of Zeller's own position in the text. It might not be critically fashionable, but his own relationship with the hero, and the associated development is the most pleasing part of the novel.  Parme is a 14-year who dreams of becoming a great writer, but doesn't want to seem to actually have to do any writing. He's in love with the idea of being as well-known a man of letters such as La Fontaine, with the cliched trappings of literary success, but doesn't actually seem to understand the toil involved in picking up a pen and actually writing. 

On one level, it looks throughout the novel as if Parme can't be a writer because he doesn't actually have the experiences that will give him anything worth saying. On another, the novel tells the story of his coming of age as a writer; by the end of it, he's certainly got enough material to start writing it. As such, its tempting to see Julien Parme as the story of Zeller's own coming of age as a novelist. In a great French tradition, Parme is a wonderfully unreliable narrator, always leaving you questioning how much of him you can take a face value and always complicating an easy reading. 

Without wanting to disappear up my critical arsehole, there's also a school of thought that says Zeller is deliberately trying to subvert any such straightforward readings of Julien Parme. He dangles lots of clues in front of the critical reader, seemingly aching for them to be de-coded. In addition to the biographical angle I've mentioned above, what are we to read into the obviously absent father figures in the book (his own, that of his friend Marco)? In addition, there's a temptation to search for intertextuality and clues within other texts (La Fontaine's Fables, Hesse's Steppenwolf). There are also a number of other symbols in the text that are probably begging for decoding - the blind old lady, the mysteriously illuminated writer's window that Mathilde shows Julien.

Going too far down any of these critial paths, would probably be a red herring, however, but its illumating to see how Parme has moved on from his debut and is able to play these literary games with his readers. It reminded me of a less smart-arsed version of Martin Amis' The Rachel Papers. In a nutshell, however Julien Parme is ultimately an enjoyable coming of age novel - one where Zeller is really starting to show his talents as a writer.