Polskaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

I'm in Krakow at the moment, about a week into a month-long wander through Europe ending at Lowlands in Holland. I've been to Vienna, Bratislava and Auschwitz so far and I'll be in Warsaw by tomorrow night, but in keeping with my diligent efforts to conscientiously document my entire experience of live music, I am going to blog for a minute between checking e-mails and train timetables in a net cafe.

I saw Gipsy Kings accidently in a square in the middle of the Old City in Krakow last night. They were pretty funny. Latin rhythm, tourists shaking their bum-bags, gypsy dancers gypsy dancing. My girlfriend loved it. She was brought up on the Gipsy Kings. I, on the other hand, was discovering them for the first time apart from that Bombolayo song that I didn't know was by them.

It was funny. I laughed. The singer kept saying "Polskaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" even though everyone in the square at 10 on a Sunday was an American tourist or a stag night. An experience.

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About as much use as a cuntless whore

Okay, the title is a little strong. Fight Like Apes releasing Something Global in Tower Records. It's pretty much a consensus opinion from people I've talked to that the single is bad and sounds like sickly polished pop-punk. It sounds like that live too. Even their good songs (including the one that contains the line this blog is named after) are losing edge and gaining polish. I really, really, really did not want to be sitting here saying "I liked their early stuff" before the album even came out. But it's hard not to.

Their best songs have been the same ones since way back when. Jake Summers and Lend Me Your Face. They're still good, but the bite's not there any more. It used to seem like May Kay was going to climb off the stage, grab your skull, put a foot on the wall for leverage and rip your face off whether or not you wanted her to. It's not like that any more.

Without the roughshod, grinning lunatic side, they're just another band. Just another Hooray For Humans. That minute change in mood makes the kitschness and the pop culture pillaging seem more contrived than inspired.

I assume the album's going to sound like Something Global, production-wise, and have the boring songs (i.e. anything not on the first EP or some of the second EP) on it. There's still a chance they could write 10 great songs in the next year or so and come out with a good second album, because all the things that made them so good are still hanging around somewhere underneath the Mr. Muscle approach. But as it stands, I don't know. I'm really sad about making this post. But whatever.

Grand Pocket Orchestra, you're up.

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Oxegen Preview

Friday:

Mud

Saturday:

Tent-slashing

Sunday:

Despair

Dot's Ugly Cadence

So last night's gig then, put on by new Analogue Magazine Promotions/etc guy Daniel Gray in conjunction with Hefty Horse. I resigned my part in the casual comedy at about nine o'clock (it went well I thought) and then went for a short walk to buy a quarter of fizzy cola bottles before returning for Disconnect The Dots.

Their deal is mostly instrumental, with effects on the vocals so that they sort of become part of the music rather than on top of it. There is a core of really intelligent songwriting in what they do, and at various points they sounded to me like Sunny Day Real Estate, certain of the louder Smiths songs and High Places, but always with the sampler beeping time in the background. Between the mix, the guitar sound and certain moments of uncertainty, they may not have acquitted themselves quite perfectly, but I, knowing the pair of them but not knowing what their music would sound like, was quite impressed by some of their songs, particularly the Dan-on-guitar, Cáit-singing, no sampler one (which was the Sunny Day one) and the last one.

Ugly Megan headlined, and I'm still a big fan. They had toys and thumped acoustic guitar beats, and twee melodies to the hilt. I described all that stuff in the last entry I did about them so I won't do it again. What came across to me the most this time was how much they're into rap and rap culture. I don't know how I missed it before, I thought the Snoop cover was just one of those twee jokes. But no.

They did a cover of American Boy which was in fact better than the Snoop one by a fair bit, and one of the highlights of their set was a song that goes "I'd give you all the love that a pimp can give a ho, because you're my favourite ho, my favourite ho, fo sho". Over the twee-est Moldy Peaches strummy backing ever. Their "encore" was probably my favourite though. Intricate guitar-thumping beat that reminded me of The Caterpillar by the Cure.

After dumping my stuff in the apartment of someone I don't know (sorry!) I ended up at Cadence Weapon in Club NME, which was surprisingly empty. I hadn't heard much Cadence Weapon, but I was disappointed. The dancey beats and "jump!" parts do nothing for me. I was expecting a sort of MF Doom type thing for some reason (because people were calling him the saviour of rap occasionally + he's a nerd) but his actual lyrical skills are nowhere near as good. Nowhere near. I was also disappointed that he played mostly dancehall in his DJ set. So down with Cadence Weapon

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Part Time Job

Something I do occasionally is make music on my four track. It is usually layered up with fake versions of things like French horns and Moog sounds. It's about things varying from date rape in the Abbasid empire to Macbeth, taking in city-tiredness and feelings of resignation on the way. I call it/myself Treehouses.

On Thursday I'll be supporting Ugly Megan and Disconnect The Dots in Anseo on Camden St. I won't have the layers of French horns, but I will have electric piano, drum machine and Fender Stratocaster with which to back myself up. I'll be playing for about 25 minutes, some time not long after 8 o'clock.

The €6.50 door price goes on financing a 'zine that the Indie Bar Kid is trying to print, which contains such interesting things as this interview with So Cow, a rambly piece on Nitelink music by me, and a Reviews section set in 1995 (again including reviews of Tupac and Green Day by me, as well as Pavement, Pulp and much more).

Come down and watch. I'm not promising anything, but come anyway.