Catch-up: Cato mess with my concepts, my inner vision.

That's an insane picture. I got it from Of Montreal's MySpace, from an album called 'Of Montreal as mythology'. There were no other pictures in the album. I thought that it would be a reasonably good way to preface a review of a band I've talked about a million times before on this blog. Just click the 'Of Montreal' tag at the side to check them out...

Oh wait, I tag things in a completely senseless way, by venue and nationality. As if anyone ever wanted to check which Danish bands I'd seen or how many gigs I've been to in Crawdaddy since September 2007.

A better way to preface this review would be to go look at these incredible pictures at State and this interview at Aoife B's gaff.

Okay.


I turned up at the Button Factory alone and stood around, trying not to look awkward while people arrived. Nobody I recognised. A weird sort of in-betweener crowd: half were comfortable, beer in hand, waiting around the back to step up when a band appeared. The other half were excited, on edge, 80% female and at the front. I belonged at the back. But I went to the front. Sorry if you were a short girl and I was standing in front of you. I've put in the same fawning hours you have, get off my back.

Casio Kids played first and I was initially thinking, "wow, Unicorns!". Then it all got a bit smoothed out in a sort of a Hot Chip vibe. But then, gradually, it became clear that Casio Kids are Scandanavian. A quick Google shows that they're Norwegian, but I could not stop hearing Swedish bands once I realised they weren't Anglo-American. The Shout Out Louds. Jens Lekman. Even fucking Dungen. It's something about the inflection when they sing.

They passed the time, and I like that they sing in Norsk, but nothing to write home about.

If you were about to write home, however, and you needed something other than "things good here, hope all is well at home" to tell the people in the old country, you wouldn't have had long to wait.

Enter Of Montreal. BP Helium in Eno-mode as in 2007 (rather than Low-era Bowie mode, as 2008, if I remember correctly). A tiger, a pig, a smattering of shadows, a diplodocus-headed gentlemen of some description, and a respectable family. And Kevin Barnes, character in his own postmodern fantasy. Much of the excitement of this show is in the insane, postmodern theatrics that go on, both behind Kevin and involving Kevin. An anthropomorphic tiger hunting to tense music is exactly that in this context - it's not a song with a theatrical accompaniment.

But I suppose I should mention music. Minuses first:

- He's not feeling the lyrics. But hey, who says every singer of their darker hours has to crucify themself on stage to satisfy me.

- As with every Of Montreal live show, the sheen is dulled a little in performance, and the backing tracks are always a touch busy... as if everything's not in its right place. Although maybe that helps.

+s?

Well, as Damien Hirst knows well, if you're just arranging diamonds, you're going to end up with something pretty valuable no matter what you do. Of new material, 'Triphallus to Punctuate' was my favourite, as it is on record, because of its bizarrely disco-fried "ah yeah" part as much as anything else. Of old material, 'Sink The Seine-Cato As A Pun' was pretty stellar, as was Gronlandic Edit, and though there was nothing further back than Sunlandic Twins, 'Wraith Pinned To The Mist' waved that flag fairly well.

Just a good show then, right? Just an American band, bigger than small clubs but smaller than big theatres. Same setlist all tour, even if it synchs with performance art. Worth the entrance fee, definitely.

Kevin smears himself head to toe in shaving foam and leaps into the crowd. You see a hand flailing so you grab it to right him onto his feet and feel you've done your part. Go home happy.

"Do you think they will do an encore?" I heard an obviously largely housebound fellow attendee ask.

'Suffer For Fashion', immediately weighing in on a level above the entire regular set. 'I Was Never Young', holding the fort. Then (you know this already if you ever wanted to know, so there's no point in suspense, especially in a textual medium where there is no temporal block on you) Smells Like Teen Spirit.

Which they apparently no longer issue the lyrics to at birth. But I bellowed them nonetheless. Leapt around and knocked the guy-protecting-girlfriend and the I-need-to-get-this-on-camera-phone and the lets-do-live-song-by-song-analysis people out of their comfort zones a little I hope.

Haha

It was great. Insane, but great. Five members and four actors on stage, blasting it out. Crowd giving it straight back. If you don't have 'em, steal 'em. The encore, as usual with OM gigs, lifts the show and makes the whole thing seem that much more epic.

So fuck you, the everyone I know who went to the last one but didn't go this time. This was great, even if I think I nearly killed myself sprinting up Dame Street for the last bus because of it.

Old OM posts:
Fawning about Fauna
And about Skeletal Lamping
December 2007 in the Button Factory
The early 2007 show was before the blog, I forgot this


++

A delicate mix of sweat and menstrual blood.

I've been listening to Parenthetical Girls since their first album (((GRRRLS))) came out in 2004, or pretty soon after. Jamie Stewart produced half of it (Side A and Side B are the same songs with different producers), so I decided to download it and see what it was like, if only because I was in the first throes of Xiu Xiu excitement and I was riled up to hear anything that had their name associated with it.

It was camper than anything I was used to. There was something about the sincerity in the stripped pop layers that took me by surprise. It was too keyboard-heavy and close-focused to fit in with vaguely baroque pop bands I was into at the time (Arcade Fire, Sufjan Stevens), and not nearly life-affirming enough to line up alongside the sunny indie (Architecture in Helsinki, Polyphonic Spree). Songs like Love Connection (which ended up covered on Etiquette by CFTPA) seemed to have a sort of body poetry that was different to anything I'd heard before. I'll block-quote some, seeing as I set the precedent with the Why? post:

Chapped lips, tongue kiss, insert expletive
Fluids of a summer night
With slight duress, forced imperative
Find me quoting Donovan
The delicate mix of sweat and menstrual blood
Seeping into trampled grass

Zac Pennington is the kind of self-obsessed, sex-obsessed, hyper-camp pop experimentalist I can get on board with. Strangely enough though, four years and two more albums after I first heard (((GRRRLS))), I had never actually seen what he looked like. So when he appeared, thin as a rake and bejumpered in threadbare blue, I was... no, I wasn't taken aback at all. He looked exactly like I expected. First time that's ever happened.

The set the ( ) girls played was short, with no encore, but it was heavy on old material and there wasn't a lowlight in the bunch. The revolving cast of Guy In Tight T-Shirt, Red Jumper Man and Kind Of Cute Girl took up duties on various synths, glockenspiel, drums, gamelan singing bowls, autoharp or whatever else, while Zac sojourned into the crowd, illustrating his every perfectly-enuniciated word with a graceful extension of his thin arm.

Among the finer expressions of love and lust was his index finger to index finger measurement of you- can-guess-what during the line "I felt his size, close to a dozen times" from Unmentionables off this year's Entanglements.

The undoubted highlight, however, was the medley of Love Connection Pt. 1 and Love Connection Pt. 2*. This was called in by Guy In Tight T-Shirt and met with an "are you sure?" from Zac, but they carried through with it and it made my night. Further sweetness was added by the fact that they apparently rarely play either of the songs, nevermind back-to-back with no gap.

The homely, fire-placed atmosphere of the upstairs venue in Whelans added a lot to the experience, as did the impressive Former Soviet Republic in support, and all in all, the gig was as good as I could have hoped.

I've been incredibly lucky with gigs lately, but before you say "But Karl, EVERYTHING gets a positive review", whet yisser appetites for the next post. Where did I go to escape the weekend Whelans crowd? Stay tuned to find out.

++

*Love Connection Pt. 1 and 2 are on different albums, so it's not just like playing King of Carrot Flowers Pts. 1, 2 and 3 together. I hadn't even considered how they'd fit together until last night. Perfectly, as it turned out.

And your eyes are piss-holes in the snow.

"I'm just not used to being out and about this early on a Sunday. My body doesn't know what to do." - heard in conversation outside Twisted Pepper on Abbey Street whilst waiting for the fantastically devised stripped-down Why? matinee set, not so long after noon.

Thanks to the manoeuvres of LitSoc (who like Joni for his poetic lyrics), DURNS (whose RN stands for Rock Nostalgia, leading me to believe that they were drawn in by the MOR rock of Gemini Song), Analogue (because Bren was in a position to make the calls, and because Why? are our official collective ninth favourite band*) and Bodytonic (who I assume opened their new venue at a strange hour so that people would know it was there), this genuinely exciting prospect came to pass. There were probably somewhere a little above fifty people there, all seated, and they saw something pretty unique.

Are lyrics poetry? That can't be answered with a yes or a no because the definition of poetry isn't static, and the nature of lyrics is also pretty varying. If I was to be anal about the whole thing, I could mention that almost everything that pop-culture considers poetry is actually lyric poetry, from Shakespeare to Ginsberg. But I won't. I'll do it by experiment.

Here's
To inhaling crushed bones
through a dried up
white out pen
and riding the backwards racer
in hot June rain
in a matching blue and gold
plastic bag / poncho / raincoat.

It's a wooden coaster
with a medium hill height mean,
high hill to flat ground ratio
you know I'd sell my shingles
for a thimble dip of snow.
Back then I'd've sold my single
for a fingertip of glow.

That's the form of the first verse of Crushed Bones from the liner lyrics to Elephant Eyelash, by the way, I didn't just space it out so it'd look like that.

I personally think what Joni Wolf does is more lyrics-set-to-music than a contiguous rock and roll song type of thing. All of the lyrics (excepting maybe the few songs that are actually sung straight through) heave with internal rhyme, with perfect measurement and judgement so that there can always be a lot of syllables if there needs to be, without there ever being too many. These songs (they are definitely songs, even if you concede that they could constitute poetry) would stand alone. Take away the careful guitar and keyboards of Alopecia and Elephant Eyelash, or the bedroom fuzziness of Oaklandazulasylum and you would still have the skeleton of something genuinely excellent.

It might even be better.

Some of the time it was. The Fall of Mr. Fifths (off Alopecia) in particular came off amazingly, stripped of its organ and the cushion of reverb. The sight of Joni, microphone left on its stand, rhyming to the backing a single drum, conjures images of San Francisco beat gatherings to me. It's almost mesmeric.

I asked him awkwardly about this while I tried to jam the synth that I had to inexplicably provide back into its case after the gig had finished. He must do it often, I said. In exotic places like Oakland, coffee shop Anticon gigs must be the order of the day. He looked vaguely pitying and explained that he wasn't part of "that scene".

Another convenient imagined reality smashed. But really, that just made the Twisted Pepper set even more unique.

Some day, Those Geese, I will write an unreadable, 5,000 word post on Why? as poetry using academic standards. There's so much. The recurring obsession (or identification?) with Christ and Christianity in general. Bones, whether raped, snorted or inhabited. The bizarre images in general. It will be done. No it won't. Oh well.

++

*This statement is not true.
**This picture was nicked off the Analogue blog, and was taken, as far as I can tell from the Properties, by the magnificent ivebeentired, whoever that is. Nice picture, yo.

And your eyes are slits in bags of fat

Disclaimer/Acknowledgement: This gig was ages ago. I have the same excuses every blogger has, so I won't bore you with them.

Why? at Andrew's Lane Theatre. Where have I heard that one before? Oh yeah, here. But lack of imagination notwithstanding, it was great to get a second visit off Joni and crew on what is essentially the same tour. Bands (Of Montreal, Deerhoof, Animal Collective) seem to have started skipping us over again this winter. Even if we've started to bleep on the radar of bands like this, the second sweep through Europe generally heads straight to the UK without so much as a cursory glance at "the best crowd in the world".

On the evidence of this redux, however, it appears that good behaviour (i.e. loud cheering) has indeed yielded us the proverbial "nice things". Hurray.

The set was essentially the same as last time, possibly in a different order. It's amazing how good it was, given that fact. These songs in their live format don't seem like they could ever be old. The arrangements are tense, much closer than the occasionally too-clean productions on the album, and needle-point tight. The clacking snare-rim beat of Crushed Bones (opening track on Elephant Eyelash), strewn with daydreamy arpeggios, provides the perfect tensile canvas for Joni to sing over. Or rap over? Speak over? Sing-rap-recite.

It's hard to tell exactly what Joni is. There is definitely a literary character to what he does, almost like a novel full of fictionalised diary entries but with no clear conclusion. Musically, indie rock cannot fully claim him, because of the clear hip-hop influences, for example on the drums. But hip-hop doesn't want him, as I found out on a rap forum I was lurking on while trying to find Pharaohe Monch's album*. "Pussy-ass Jew boy bullshit", or something to that effect.

It obviously doesn't matter where he's categorised. That's a job for people like me on the midnight oil, and has no actual importance. The gig was (almost) as packed as last time, and the people there were (almost) as zealous as last time. And what was last time? I believe I concluded by literarily calling it "deadly" at the time. This was deadly too. Real atmosphere, real chemistry. But above all, great songs.

I'll be right back with more Why?

++

*the secondhand CD rack at ground level right in front of the counter in the new Freebird facing onto the Central Bank is THE source for every decent rap album since 1980.

**the picture is of Josiah Wolf, whose skill at playing glockenspiel and drums at the same time is beyond impressive***

***those two asterisks don't refer back to anything specific in the text.

Swoop swoop (rock rock)

(This is what I wrote on my phone as a review of BATS, one of the best live bands to be seen in Dublin, after their support of Lovvers in the Boom Boom Room):

Science is the doctrine
Music is the medium
AND BATS WILL DESTROY YOU

The no-fi photograph from the same phone/mindset.

++

This banana could be you! Or me!

Nowwwwwwwwwwww...

As Crawdaddy filled up for Fight Like Apes, there was a definite sense of anticipation. It felt weird, like on of the landmark shows people talk about - The Smiths in the Hacienda or Radiohead at Glastonbury 97 or whatever. The room was heaving. They played at the same time as the Concretes, but I can't imagine even having given half a thought to seeing that. It was like a big fight or something. Like when Bernard Dunne fought Kiko. It wasn't the title fight, but if he fucked it up (which he did) it was back to square one. Luckily, Fight Like Apes were not knocked out by a Spaniard in the first round. The opposite, really. Gig of the weekend.

That was this time last year. "Elephant 6 on punk rock tablets" I said. "Like a wall" I said. Various other universally positive things I said. It was definitely gig of the weekend. It was probably gig of the year, being honest. But obviously things have changed between my ears and Fight Like Apes in the interim. I'm one year less wide-eyed about the fact that an Irish band can actually be GOOD. And they put out a single I really didn't like.

So how were they in Meeting House Square, the damp towel of venues?

Great, actually. Unlike SEBP and Bats, they were sufficiently loud to connect (possibly to do with the pseudo-scientific "synths=full wave walls of sound" theory I invented out of my arse last year) even though they kept giving out to the soundman, who was probably on a drawbridge over a pit of Dublin City Council alligators.

The high points were manifold. Either I'm starting to appreciate the lesser spotted (non-first EP or Do You Karate?) Fight Like Apes songs more, or I'm just listening harder because I don't know them as well, but some of them really shined. Knucklehead is an amazing song, and must be feeling very unfulfilled that it wasn't the A-side to its Photoshopped cousin Something Global. Accidental Wrong Hole is still one of the best premises for a song in existence. The new one that's a letter to a roadie called Samuel, dispensing with his services with a double-suplex followed by a backbreaker, is power pop in a good way.

The new one with the words "lovely noise" prominent was alright... suffered from a bit of lyrical Something Global-ism in that it was very "you do this, we hate you for it". But y'know... who am I to judge, that's pretty much what I do on this blog (except it's usually love). And I hope they weren't trying to imply that Yo La Tengo aren't deadly.

I need to stop rambling on so much in this blog, I used to have a kind of concise style and I avoided the word "I".

The middle-aged man who, last year, stood beside me and Bobby and laughed completely out of proportion to his increasingly piss-taking tennis jokes (they were wearing sweatbands) turned up again. Like, it started with "They must play tennis" "Ahahahaha!" but by the end it was just like "Racket!" "Ahahahahaha!"... "Andre Agassi!" "Ahahahaha!" He must be related to someone in the band, or work for HWCH. I hope he enjoyed it as much this year.

Did I? I suppose, in a different way. Some people I talked to didn't, but I thought it was really good. The way they play and act seems naturally more geared towards bigger stage and a bigger crowd now, and that helps in somewhere like Meeting House Square. They fought on the ground and threw a bass at each other. They played great noisy pop songs with intensity. Their album is streaming on entertainment.ie from tomorrow, and fickle as I am, I can't wait.

++

Dance of the Sugar Rush Fairy

Okay, back to do this after an absence due to dog ear haematoma removal. Let's do this shit.

Grand Pocket Orchestra are back (i.e. I haven't seen them in a while), and they've evolved (like a Pokémon) into something essentially the same but intangibly better. Boat loads of songs I hadn't heard before were spilled out into Andrew's Lane Theatre on Saturday with maximum aplomb. It wasn't just that I hadn't seen them performed before... they were songs I hadn't heard before, a style that was new and different. Less finger-paint, more Jackson Pollock.

New single Ballet Shoes is an example of it, to an extent. Hearing that song makes me do the band-comparison stream in my head. Vampire Weekend? Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!? Built To Spill? Am I just going mad? Possible. But other songs, only experienced for their sub-two minute durations and then part-forgotten after they zoomed by, had even more of an impression. One of the songs, with no guitar in the intro, reminded me of something Sunset Rubdown might do. Another one didn't remind me of anyone from America, and I can't remember any details apart from thinking it was DEADLY.

In my last Fight Like Apes post, I finished saying something silly like "Grand Pocket Orchestra, step it up" or whatever. But I have to admit, as stupid a remark as that was, I was not fully expecting them to make a leap. I liked them, and I expected them to be as good as they were for a while yet. The kind of band I'd go to see at a festival, or at Whelans maybe if I had the money to spare. I'd buy what they put out, and use it in my CD alarm clock. But, to borrow Ian's expression... shit just got real, yo. Excitement is kicking in. Genuinely anticipating their next EP. Waiting on an album. Wanting to see the songs that they played so briefly again, and get to know them. I can't wait to watch this unfold.

Apart from intelligent and engaging new songs, Grand Pocket Orchestra still have: an ADD-esque mentaller for a singer, a lady with an octopus-like capacity for playing multiple instruments simultaneously, a vaguely unsettling guitarist and an excellent drummer with a mohawk. The live show has never been less than excellent with this combination. But imagine: GPO action figures... how is that not a good idea?

++

Lowlands Notebooks - Sunday etc

Lykke Li:

magnetic personality - eclectic music - tendency towards hit or miss -banging single

+


MGMT:

songs all either "bleeeeep or faaar away" (thank you Katie) - limp - bad

-


Sigur Rós:

quiet loud fairytale thing - not half as bowled over as my friends - most of the set ordinary - regular gig, not theatre set-up as Oxegen 2006 - highlights did hit the nordic sublime

+


The Roots:

sore neck from jerking it and trying to dance to rap - unused to this - virtuouso instrumentalists - guitar/bass solos for twelve hours - rap as part of the music, not over the music - ultimate fun - genius festival closer

++

Lowlands Notebooks - Friday etc

Holy Fuck:

sweaty, communal, committed, Lovely Allen, Super Inuit. ultra buzzing vibrant violent headnod energy.

++

Hot Chip:

ragged, loud, second record, Nothing Compares 2 U, bit classic rock, bit festival set

+

Lowlands Notebooks - Flaming Lips

pixellated, made of space

panda head

streamer rafter disaster

alien rainbow mess

future laser, retro box of light

squid gong

SHEETS OF LIQUID SKY

last party in the world

++

In Rainbows

Radiohead Day 1. It rains on the queue, like it always does. Bat For Lashes plays. Her band have a lot of interesting instruments, including a horn played with a bow, but she doesn't really capture my imagination. It rains some more when she finishes. Then, ten minutes before Radiohead are due on: rainbow. Two rainbows. The significance is not lost on anyone.

Started with All I Need, which pretty much set the tone for the day. The gig in Marley Park in 2006 was basically a festival set, all the songs one could pogo to. But this is the In Rainbows tour. The regular set was full of stuff off In Rainbows, and stuff that followed that general vibe. Lucky, for example, came out early, and a couple from (my favourite Radiohead album) Amnesiac appeared. Guitar rock in general was limited. A good thing.

Thom is a weird guy. He's like an avatar of all this horrible stuff he sings, complains and makes artwork about for a living. Fake fits for dances. Gurning. Staring down Scotch_Mist style webcams which operated as cameras for the big screens. His straight-to-camera, eyebrow-raised, way-too-close rendition of You and Whose Army? straight down the lens raised laughs. But it was pretty frightening too.

I was happy to see Myxomatosis, complete with body-twisting, Boney King of Nowhere dance. Everything In Its Right Place was not the set closer, Videotape was. Better yet, How To Disappear Completely ended the first encore. Just the type of weird but representative, slight sick-feeling set I was hoping for.

Second encore brought Supercollider, a new song, which I'm assuming is about this fucker. Then Just, and Paranoid Android. It is impossible to not fill with joy hearing Paranoid Android. It is a work of utter genius, and very possibly the best song ever written. I know I love superlatives on this blog, but I've devoted a solid five or six years to Radiohead and have consistently listened to and loved them more than any other band. I will never get sick of spending €70 to see them (or getting tickets as presents, as the case is with tonight).

Heading out again after dinner. See you there.

++

Within the fruit there are worms.

In my life, I've e-mailed Jamie Stewart a total of maybe four or five times, trying to impress on him how incredibly important it is that he come to Ireland to play. He's e-mailed back a few times too, but it was all polite, meaningless words mostly. Or at least no commitments. Not that I expected him to just jump into a helicopter because I e-mailed him or anything.

The point is that I was happy when Xiu Xiu announced. After three days of an exam-study-gig-(or Champion's League final)-sleep schedule, I was getting tired, but it was Xiu Xiu. Come on, like. I noted to my friend Goo that when we were at Why? in Andrew's Lane, which is a shed, it was packed out with enthusiastic people with angular haircuts, but that Whelans was only half full for Xiu Xiu? First time they've been here ever, and no-one turns up? For shame Dublin.

It was way louder than I was expected. Certain quarters have complained about Xiu Xiu being sort of self-aware drama, or "music as nightmare" - it's not something I necessarily agree with, in terms of their recorded output, but the gig was definitely down that aisle.

Most of the time they weren't playing melody, Jamie and Caralee were hitting something very hard, whether cymbal, bell or snare. Ches Smith was hitting things hards all the time he wasn't being silent. Devin Hoff's electric double-bass made everything that much more ominous in person than it comes across on record.

There were whispers and there were screams. There was no banter whatsoever, except for a couple of muted thank yous and a "this is our first time in Dublin" at the end. There was no encore. It was just an hour and a bit of blasting through Women As Lovers and choice cuts from earlier albums. Even poor Clowne Towne was at the receiving end of a no-nonsense belting, in the absence of Caralee's arpeggiating Mini-Moog thing on this tour.

It's hard to pick highlights, because it was more like a rehearsed art show than a rock gig. Everything is integral, and it works as a whole set, not as a list of songs. It's stupid to pick stuff out. BUT. I'm going to anyway. Clover off La Foret, with gamelan bells and pin-drop silences was really mesmeric. No Friend Oh! is just a good song. Master Of The Bump had a bizarre boudoir vibe. There weren't bad songs.

The complaint I could make is this: I know they were at the end of a tour, and they're not the most populist band in the world anyway, but a little personality could have gone a long way. I know Dublin orgasms any time someone pretends to like it more than elsewhere, and I'm not saying that, but some sort of acknowledgment that they were playing a real-life place and not just a date on a tour might have been nice.

Also, in case they ever come back:

Do not sing along to the hurried, whispered lines about rape and self-loathing.

Just a tip, take it or leave it.

++

No More Pocket Combs

Singing along to Why? is like reading along to a short story. Nobody told that to pockets of devout fans in Andrew's Lane last night though. While it's a little awkward to see people pumping fists and shouting "I'LL SUCK THE MARROW OUT AND RAPE YOUR HOLLOW BONES YONI!" in any situation, never mind at a gig, the rock show contingent made things a little exciting if nothign else. It took Yoni about six songs to break out of his ultra-serious face, but once he acknowledged the several hundred people working themselves into a frenzy in front of him, the whole thing took on a sort of a personal colour.

Apart from the energy of the room, the gig itself was surprisingly excellent. I was expecting something much more lo-fi and... white-boy hip hop. It wasn't like that at all, for better or for worse. They stuck mostly to Alopecia and played all the prominent songs from it. A Sky For Shoeing Horses Under was particularly impressive for Josiah's ability to play breakneck vibraphone and drums at the same time. The Vowels allowed a bit of bobbing and was probably a highlight, though I have to say that they're such a tight live band that the best songs on the night were just the best songs from the albums.

Which would mean Gemini obviously, being the aural proof that MOR can be good if it has great lyrics. Catching unconnected sentences of those great lyrics was the best part about seeing Why?. Even though the hair-cutted masses did their best to half-rap along, Why? is in essence the stream of consciousness of one guy from Cincinnati. It's immune to outside circumstances, because it's so self-absorbed. It's like a diary. That's why he's so good.

They promised to come back soon, like everyone does. I'll practice my words and my fist-pumping in the interim. I'll definitely be there though, because this was deadly.

++

Lights Are Blinding My Eyes

Last night I saw someone I've been listening to since the year I did my Junior Cert for the first time. The Streets blew up too early for me I think. There was never a chance of me shelling out for tickets to a big outdoor gig, really, so I was so resigned to never seeing Mike Skinner in the flesh that it just never really entered my mind.

Then Budweiser stepped in. Say what you will about corporate sponsorships, any nice-ish beer that's willing to subsidise a gig in a tent on a fake island in a dock in April is well worthy of my thanks. I also enjoyed the six tubes of orange jelly beans Nokia gave me, so help me God.

I was surprised by how much fun it was, actually. Mike Skinner, complete with diamond-encrusted in-ear monitor, was exactly as charming as he seems, even when he was calling the crowd a pack of wankers. I pogoed at a gig for the first time since Radiohead in Marlay Park, and I wasn't madly put off by having two or three strangers on my lap at various points when Mike decided everyone had to hunker down.

Like LCD Soundsystem, The Streets manage to transpose non-rock music to a rock-show environment pretty well. The set was weighted towards older songs, from Original Pirate Material or A Grand Don't Come For Free. The opener, Turn The Page, as well as Let's Push Things Forward and Could Well Be In got me on a nostalgic Junior Cert-studying kick, and obviously Fit But You Know It was deadly. Everything was good actually, even Let It Be-sampling Never Went To Church which is a terrible song under normal circumstances. I had a lot of fun, fuck credibility.

Credit to my lovely girlfriend Katharine for the photograph.

++

Jens Lekman

Google the name Jens. If your Google is the same as mine (and I assume it is), the first result will be this website. Nothing to do with Jens Lehmann, or any other Jens. Jens Lekman, Swedish indie crooner extraordinaire and sexiest man in Indie Rock according to my bro Scott's readers* takes that honour.

He probably deserves it too, not that Google is a meritocracy. Being the sexiest man in the credible world has not gone to his head, judging from his performance at Whelans. Comfortable and earnest, he took the stage with his "percussionist" (apparently Swedish for "occasional bongo tapper") Tammy after a decent performance from Fat Cat's Dakota farmboy Tom Brosseau, where he made his announcement. "I'm doing this show for the money. I'm broke."

Luckily, as my friend observed, Swedish people are generally equipped with better senses of humour than most Northern Europeans. It's probably true though. He didn't bring a full band because he couldn't afford it, so he played through most of Night Falls Over Kortedala with only his guitar, his bongoist and occasional looped oohs for support. He explained several songs rather charmingly, bringing a little humanity to what sometimes can seem polished or unambitious music. "Why don't you tell us a funny story, Jens?", Jens asked himself, and he obliged.

The backing track kicked in for the last two songs before the pretend-end of the set, including the highlight Opposite of Hallelujah, which is one of the singles of the year I reckon (because actual physical single release is irrelevant when you have the internet) but the encore songs were again endearingly stripped down, like the rest of the set. Seeing Jens Lekman stripped of band and samples is just a different way of experiencing the music I think. Not worse, anyway. Not that I have anything to compare with. I enjoyed myself a lot, and I'm definitely a bigger Jens fan now than I was before.

Oh, and some famous guy played a few songs with him on violin. Big clap to you Dublin for cheering the three-song special guest five times as much as the headline act. I'd take Jens any day, I'll be honest.

++


*Note: I do not actually know Scott Lapatine or any other Stereogum contributor, and they are certainly not my bros.

North Strand Klezmer Band

I've never seen a live klezmer band before. So on Tuesday when the Trinity Jewish Society put North Strand on in Cassidy's as some sort of e-mail getting event/opportunity for everybody to realise that Jewish culture sometimes comes in very intense, North Dublin-based, seven man packages. An appreciable effort, and a worthwhile one.

Downstairs in Cassidy's was empty. This was a clever deception, because upstairs was absolutely jammed and sweaty as fuck. I can't imagine how stubborn and dull someone would have to be to stay downstairs when they heard the klezmer vamp and and the manic dancing kick in. Absolute brilliance.

They played a variety of different Jewish songs with Yiddish names which I have no chance of being able to reproduce accurately, even if I remembered their sounds. They also played some songs with names in English, like Merchant's Arch. And some gypsy songs.

They played vamping, incredibly Eastern European sounding brilliance on incredibly Eastern European sounding instruments, with no hint of irony at all. The place was packed to capacity and pumping. It was the best gig in a while. If you haven't seen them, you have to. Really. Preferably in a very full upstairs bar.

Hit them up on MySpace. "Other/Ska/Other" doesn't even begin to describe it.

General Post Office.

Fun is the new black. Grand Pocket Orchestra sound like Danielson Famile, Go! Team, White Stripes, bluegrass, punk rock and a multi-pack of Skittles all in a blender, but most of all they sound like the sound of the blender. The band is idiosyncratic in hitherto unheard of ways (for an Irish band). If somebody drew them with crayons, you'd know immediately who it was, and if someone mentioned "tweeabilly" trying to be clever and stupid at the same time you could stand up and put on some Grand Pocket Orchestra to shut them up. Their songs are very short and most of the singing comes in the form of a super-sped-up Daniel Smith and even sometimes almost Jack White-like yelp-bark-squeals. It's very interesting stuff, and great fun to watch. Keep eyes peeled for a postulated EP.

++

Ham Sandwich

Ham Sandwich's greatest seift so far in their brief but productive (four singles?) life has been to convince people that it's Niamh's show. She's the obvious candidate: she's attractive, she wears cool stuff, she doesn't sound like a culchie eejit and she is, lest we forget, a girl. So she gets the magazine specials on girls in Irish indie, the most camera time on the Late Late Show. People take Ham Sandwich the same way they take Yeah Yeah Yeahs - it is the singer, and then the band. They're wrong though. She's an excellent singer without doubt, and her pose striking is den scoth, but it really is all about Podge. The difference between a good Ham Sandwich gig and a bad Ham Sandwich gig is almost entirely down to Podge's behaviour. If he acts too much of a cock, tosses his guitar around too much, forgets to tune, grins when he should be singing or talks to his ubiquitous friends about matters concerning Meath-folk, the music can be ruined. And he drives the music too, he plays the key guitar parts and provides the unusual half of the vocal unison that seems to make Ham Sandwich stand out.

Luckily enough, he was on his best behaviour tonight. Ham Sandwich opened Tripod on Saturday for some reason, and even though I missed the beginning due to bookshop duties, I had a lot of fun. Smart money is on the early slot and the good behaviour being down to industry presence, and I would love to see a Ham Sandwich album on a good label. Their recordings to date have been great, but nailing down a live show has sometimes eluded them. Tonight they look polished though. They looked like they belonged in Tripod (due to the guitarist's slightly-less-endearing-than-Barra-Immediate rock and roll posing and to Niamh's inimitable presence even if it does seem a little affected when Podge is grinning at her and she's pretending to be serious), and they seemed like they could do it anywhere. It would be lovely to see England like Ham Sandwich. Thing is though, it's not just polish or even just catchy songs. There are those moments where something cracks and you realise that there really is something going on in Kells. The guitar crash bridge in Click Click Boom (played by Podge mostly from the ground but at least fully clothed and not grinning too heavily) sounded intense tonight, and the drop into the chorus in Sad Songs is proof in dark times (like, hypothetically, after an embarassingly bad Tower Records in-store) that Ham Sandwich are at the top of Irish indie on their own merits. They could make it, even, if they get a good bounce.

++