Stereophonics @ HMV Hammersmith Apollo, 17th & 18th October 2010

Never say Never...

OK, so I am so behind with this blog that it seems impossible that I will ever catch up. Oh well, I guess I have to start somewhere, and what better place to start than the Stereophonics?

To be fair, I had said previously that I wouldn't go and see the 'Phonics live again, so it may seem strange to be writing about 2 gigs on the bounce. However, I'm a sucker for a one off concert and they were playing two of them. In celebration of them re-releasing their first two albums, they were playing both of them in full over 2 nights, including B sides. And I had a pre-sale link. No brainer really.

Anyway, Word Gets Around was first on the bill and my favourite 'Phonics album. Having seats is always wise for the Stereophonics as there tends to be a lot of beer and plastic cups flying around. It was obvious that much of the crowd had been queuing all afternoon so it was nice to turn up late and be able to sit down. I have to say that the band were much better than I expected. They are always so supremely professional and can produce the sound from their records in a way that many live bands can't. What is often lacking from my perspective is the little moments that make the gig magic - if it just sounds like the album I can sit in the comfort of my own home and listen to my cd player. This time front man Kelly Jones exceeded himself and talked a lot about the making of the recrod, where the songs came from, and started off with a tribute to Stuart Cable, the drummer from the original band line up who sadly died earlier this year. The fans approved and it set up the evening as pretty special and unique.


Highlights for me were the anthems A Thousand Trees and Tramp's Vest, and just hearing some of the more obscure tracks really brought home the raw energy that the band must have had at the beginning. The final encore included tracks from other albums and the crowd went mad.


I knew the second night would struggle to live up to the first - apart from anything else, Word Gets Around is my favourite album for all that there are some standout tracks on Performace. The energy wasn't quite as high as for the first night - maybe because a lot of the fans had been there for both and were as tired as I was - and there was certainly less chat from Kelly. The night didn't really get going from my perspective until they covered Sunny Afternoon by the Kinks. All in all it was a great show but was never going to be as special as the first night.


I should mention that support on both nights was provided by Matthew P, who had some nice songs (I particularly liked Feet on the Ground) and a fantastic animated sign - I would reccomend that you check out his Myspace .

So there we go. I can definitely say that I have had my Stereophonics live fix now. Well, for now anyway...

The special editions of 'Word Gets Around' and 'Performance and Cocktails are available now from all good music retailers

Ellie Goulding @ The Garage, 10th February 2010

Ellie Goulding has been much heralded as the sound of 2010, winning the BBC Poll of the same name and being high up on any list of the Next Big Things.It was therefore only fitting that she should be headlining one of the nights at the HMV Next Big Thing festival, which took place over 6 London venues and a week's worth of gigs in February, the premise being that you get to see 3 'hot new acts' and all for the princely sum of £10. With no booking fee. NO BOOKING FEE. A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!

Anyway, the first act was a guy I hadn't heard of called Tinashe, who played the acoustic guitar and was accompanied by a great drummer who, now I come to think about it, looked quite like Animal off of The Muppets (he also had a sort of 'fallen Erik Hassle' hair cut, but more of that later). Tinashe interacted really well with the audience and between the 2 of them they created a pretty cool sound. The music was fun and upbeat, and really made me want to hear more. Check out his myspace or catch him on tour with the Noisettes later this year.

Next on was Erik Hassle (he of the hair and the electro-pop sounds). He has some good songs - his current single 'Hurtful' being my favourite - but he didn't make a huge impact on the night. He was given a warm reception but not an excited one. In an age of female pop princesses I sense that he's struggling to find his niche. I shall see him again at the end of the month when he's supporting Mika, so we'll see how well he comes across there.

Finally the main act of the evening, Ellie Goulding, came onto the stage. She had that slight confused air of someone who isn't used to the limelight, saying that she hadn't expected so many people to be there. Given the amount of hype behind her she's better get used to it.

And what of the hype? Well, she can certainly sing - her voice is sweet and she trills like a little bird. Her folk / electro sound comes together best on new single 'Starry Eyed', which she closed the night with. Previous single 'Under The Sheets' also resonated but the rest of her stuff sort of washed pleasantly over me without making too much of an impression, including a cover of a track by American band Midlake (there's been quite a lot of fuss about them recently, I must check them out). It was all very nice, but not hugely memorable. Maybe hers is the kind of music that needs a couple of listens before it lodges itself in your brain. Who knows.

Well, on the basis of that performance I'm definitely going to get a copy of the album when it comes out, but I probably won't be going to see her play live again until her music has got the better of me...

Starry Eyed is out on February 22nd

The Album Chart Show @ KoKo, 8th February 2010

Cold feet, warm heart

It’s always nice to have a freebie. Especially an unexpected one. And it’s surprising how many free nights out there are to be had in London if you look in the right places and have the right friends. Anyway, I was the grateful recipient of a spare ticket to the Album Chart Show recording on Monday, which seems to happen every week at KoKo in Camden.

A quick moan before I get started – I know I shouldn’t really as it was a free night out but even so – doors were supposed to open at 6.15pm so we turned up just before 6pm to hear the announcement that doors were pushed back an hour. And did I mention that it was snowing? Brilliant. I mean, they record this show every week, you’d really expect them to have a much better handle on how long things will take and when to tell people to arrive. It meant that when they finally let us in at about 7.30pm to see the first act on the bill, JLS, they had quite a cold and grumpy audience who weren’t particularly excited about all the clapping and cheering they were asked to do for pick up shots and the like. The delays continued all night, with JLS having to do some retakes because of technical difficulties (I felt quite sorry for them). Things were so delayed that I had to leave before final act The Courteeners made it on stage.


Anyway, back to JLS. They are one of my favourite outputs from the X-Factor phenomenon (NB. This isn’t saying very much – we were just grateful that it wasn’t Jedward) and I actually really enjoyed their performance. One of my compatriots was very unimpressed by the amount of miming going on, but they were doing some dancing that would have made singing impossible, and they did sing live for a few of the tracks where the dancing requirement was reduced, including an acoustic number accompanied by a guitar. The boys from the band came over really well – they chatted to the crowd in between songs (and yes it was mostly self promotion about their tour and new single but they didn’t have to bother as they obviously weren’t playing to their home crowd) and they really tried hard to get the audience going. I was pleasantly surprised and I may well be investigating a purchase of their album soon.


Next up was supposed to be The Courteeners, but a man-flu suffering Mika was pushed up the bill as he wasn’t at all well. He looked quite poorly but pulled out another ridiculously high-energy performance out of the bag. The man bounces round like he’s made of rubber, and you couldn’t hear anything wrong with his voice. You could see his extremely excellent band were making an extra effort to support him, and they managed 5 out of the planned 6 song set, including Relax, Blame it on the Girls, Grace Kelly, rain and Big Girls (the finale was due to be We Are Golden, but I guess that was a step too far). The crowd went mental for the guy – he had the benefit of a sympathy vote as well as being amazingly good. There was silver and gold confetti released from the ceiling during Big Girls (they seemed to like that at the Album Chart Show – JLS had the multi-coloured version at the end of their set. I can only assume it looks good on TV) which got EVERYWHERE, to the point that the last bit didn’t come off me until I had a shower the following morning. Nice.


As I already mentioned, I made a swift retreat once Mika was finished and missed The Courteeners. Having seen them support the Stereophonics back in 2008 I hadn’t been particularly struck by them but I understand from my friends who stayed to the end of the evening that they were rather good. I guess I’ll have to watch the show on Friday to find out!

This episode of Album Chart Show will be shown on Channel 4 on Friday 12th February at 11.20pm

Vampire Weekend @ The Garage, 3rd February 2010

Ready for the Weekend

The Relentless Garage is a recently refurbished venue just by Highbury and Islington tube station, and on Wednesday it played host to a few hundred Vampire Weekend fans who had won an HMV competition to see the band play by pre-ordering a copy of their second album, Contra.

The band took to the stage surprisingly early at 8.30pm and performed an hour-long set including favourites from their eponymous 2008 album and songs from their new album, which recently topped the US Billboard Chart.

The lead singer Ezra Koenig mentioned several times that they were just getting back into touring so they were grateful of the opportunity to practice, and it was probably a comfortable experience playing new material in front of a crowd who has definitely all purchased the second album. But the band seemed pretty polished, even with the new tracks, and are obviously great musicians. The crowd went pretty wild and personally I find that Vampire Weekend churn out they type of music that it’s impossible to stay still to.

Following on my last gig when I saw Editors play at the Water Rats, Vampire Weekend definitely continued the trend of band members who look like they turned up to the wrong gig. They keyboard player seemed completely out of things, wrapped up in a thick cardigan in a room that wasn’t at all cold, and although he managed to play all his parts, some of them did seem slightly slower than they should have been. The views from the audience included ‘stoned’, ‘on heroin’, ‘jet lagged’ and ‘flu’, but what ever it was he was definitely somewhere else.

Having said that, it didn’t impact on the gig as a whole and it was great to be up so close to the stage when previously I’ve only seen them on huge outdoor stages, including supporting Blur in the summer at Hyde Park. Although the set was short and they didn’t do an encore, it was more than enough to make for a fantastic evening. I certainly now have higher expectations of them when I seem them play Brixton later in the month!

Vampire Weekend are touring the UK in February

Editors @ Monto Water Rats, 27th January 2010

All sparks will fade out

Editors are used to playing venues that hold thousands rather than hundreds, so the 200 people at the XFM Live Session at the Water Rats were significantly closer to the action than they would be at a regular Editors gig.

Opening the evening's entertainment was a singer-songwriter called Karima Francis, hailing from Blackpool if the tattoo on her neck was anything to go by. She had a really pure voice and began proceedings with a beautiful song called The Author and was rewarded by an almost silent audience. She seems really personable and was joking and interacting with the audience very comfortably. The 5 song acoustic set went down surprisingly well with an audience primed and ready for some loud rock music - check her out on myspace here to hear what caught their attention.

Just after 9pm Editors took to the stage and performed a set lasting just over an hour. They got a great reception from the crowd with a mini mosh pit forming at the front, and the biggest reaction saved for All Sparks and Munich, the biggest hits from their Mercury Prize nominated 2005 album The Back Room, and closing number Papillion.

Editors continues a trend I have noticed recently in several others (most famously Das Pop and Noah and The Whale) where one member of the band looks like they are actually supposed to be part of a different group entirely. In Editors, this role is filled by their bass player Russell Leetch, who looked a little bit like a public school boy and wore a granddad collared shirt, which stood out like a sore thumb amongst the black-t-shirted-indie-rock vibe of the rest of the band. Strange.

Also strange was the mix of fans the band seemed to have attracted. Only a small number were heavily tattooed goth rockers; at the front there seemed to be a high proportion of both large sweaty men, and woman in their early 30s, with younger kids (late teenage, early 20s) slotting in just behind.

Editors put on a good show and front man Tom Smith is certainly a showman and has a fantastic voice. His posturing was positively snake-like and he sort of writhed across the stage, seemingly dislocating his jaw at least once every 5 minutes and looked like he could have swallowed a watermelon whole. But for all the intimacy of the small venue, he didn't engage with the audience much at all. The guys all seemed to be excellent musicians and spanned both guitar based music and electronica, but what disappointed me about the gig was the lack of texture and contrast in the performance. Everything was loud, like a wall of sound pounding you around the ears. And I felt that they lost some of the subtly and impact that could have been achieved if there had been just a bit more variation in the volume - more light and shade please. Interestingly I did get this from their records but in a relatively short set they seemed to get overrun over by the noise and the sound.

But a good concert (if not a great one) and thanks again to Barclaycard for providing me with another free night out.

Editors' third album, In This Light and On This Evening, is out now.

Being Human Series 2 Preview @ Curzon Mayfair

OK, so I know it's not music January is always a slow gig month...

Being Human has always been slightly ahead of the curve when it comes to the current trend for all things vampire related. The BBC Three show following the lives of a werewolf, a vampire and a ghost trying to live normal lives began as a single pilot episode back in 2008 and was commissioned for a full series following really strong support from the online community. Being Human has a really strong fanbase in the virtual world, with a very active blog on the BBC website, lots of extra videos, articles, interviews and the like, whetting the appetite of the hundreds of online fans for the second series which launches on BBC Three on Sunday at 9.30pm.


To celebrate this, an exclusive preview of the first episode was held last night in Mayfair, allowing a couple of hundred excited fans the opportunity to see it before anyone else. Intermingling with the fans were a whole cast of characters from the world of Being Human, all familiar to the fans – security staff from the creepy CeSSa (Centre for the Study of Supernatural Activity, which has had it’s own website in the run up to Series 2) checking for anything out of the ordinary, a tea making ghost (mush to the approval of those queuing outside in sub-zero temperatures who were rewarded with hot drinks), a vampire and a werewolf, as well as an attack in need of medical treatment. The main cast were all there and took to the stage just before the screening, much to the approval of the excited audience, doing their thank yous and generally looking slightly uncomfortable with all the attention.


The show itself picked up directly after the end of series one, where George the werewolf, played by the excellent Russell Tovey, had killed the dangerous leader of the vampires, Herrick, and all is ‘back to normal’. A short montage went over the key points from the previous episodes, before focusing back on the lives of George, vampire Mitchell (played by the devastatingly attractive Aiden Crichlow), and ghost Annie (Lenora Turner, whose performance hits just the right combination of stir crazy).

The great strength of the show is the struggle of the characters to live normal existences despite their ‘conditions’, and not letting them take over their whole lives (or in the case of Annie, death). The main focus of Episode 1 on the relationship between George and his girlfriend Nina, who he has inadvertently turned into a werewolf without realising. Well, it could happen to anyone really. Sinead Keenan turns in a sensitive performance in the role of Nina, coming to terms with the reality of what is happening to her, and I’m pleased to say that there has been an improvement in the prosthetics and CGI arena, which was the only thing lacking from Series 1 and made the werewolf transformations much more watchable. The menacing presence of an organisation hunting down supernatural beings was introduced, the undercurrents of which were bubbling under the surface of the happy conclusion reached at the end of the episodes.

It will be interesting to see how the series develops with 4 main characters rather than 3, as Nina is now a member of the household. The character of Mitchell certainly had less story time than in previous episodes, although there was a lot of set up storylines yet to come. It certainly opens up a number of changes in the balance of power between the main characters and with it a number of new directions become possible. The endearing quality of Being Human is how funny it is, and there were several laugh out loud moments throughout the episode – why a naked Russell Tovey should be funny I have no idea as he is looking pretty fine, but it is. Actually, the nudity and the sex seemed to be a bit more graphic than the previous series and I’m not surprised that the age limit for the preview was 16. The show stood up really well on the big screen and it certainly has a cinematic quality...Being Human the movie anyone??

Series 2 of Being Human starts on Sunday 10th January @ 21.30

Scouting For Girls @ The Tabernacle, 30th November 2009

OK, first things first. I'm sure SFG would be the first to admit that they're not the best musicians in the world, but they have 2 great assets that make them a fabulous band to see live:

1) They know how to create a perfect pop song

2) They are a group of really lovely, down to earth guys who have a huge amount of fun performing

Nearly 2 years after their debut album hit the number 1 spot, SFG were embarking on the firth of 3 Christmas parties for their Wolfcub fans. About 500 were lucky enough to have tickets for the Tabernacle, which is a bit like a church hall but in a good way, and an hour before the gig was due to start they were treated to the band themselves mingling and bringing round mince pies, chatting and happily posing for photos. The band always seem slightly bemused by their success and this was just one of the many ways they like to say thank you to their fan base.

When the band finally got on to a stage decked with Christmas decorations it felt a bit like you were down the local pub and some of your mates had decided to stand up and make some music. Except that SFG's musical repertoire includes such gems as 'She's So Lovely', 'I Wish I Was James Bond', and 'Keep On Walking'. It's impossible not to sing and dance along, and the whole occasion seemed quite quite joyous.

SFG also used the opportunity to road test some of their new tracks from the second album, Everybody Wants To Be On TV, which is out March 22nd next year. There was something familiar about the new songs - and not in a bad ripped-off-from-someone-else way. They have more of a so-catchy-that-you're-singing-along-halfway-through-the-first-chorus sort of feel. 'Posh Girls' was the standout track for me, and with this new material it looks like album number 2 is definitely one to watch out for.

SFG's second album, Everybody Wants To Be On TV, is out 22/03/2010