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.

Das Pop @ O2 Islington Academy, 26th November 2009

The best thing to come out of Belgium since Tintin

The O2 Academy in Islington felt disappointingly empty when Das Pop took to the stage last night. However, the band soon filled the stage with their eclectic mix of impossible-to-stay-still-to beats, fantastic English and dungarees. Oh, and fun – the band are a huge amount of fun to experience.

Das Pop are a ¾ Belgian, ¼ New Zeeland pop band that have been making music since in some form or another since about 1998. Last year they supported Alphabeat and The Feeling on their UK tours. Their current headline tour of the UK was cut back so this and Glasgow were pretty much the only dates left.

The band thundered on to the stage with a powerful version of Fool For Love. As a non-native English speaker, lead singer Bent Van Looy’s lyrics are very precise and interesting in the same way that Abba managed. There aren’t many songs around today that include words like ‘reverberate’, which just goes to show the fact that the British are woeful at languages compared to the other European countries – even our own language...



Anyway, the set list was predominantly drawn from their 3rd album, the eponymously titles Das Pop, which was produced by fellow Belgians Soulwax and is generally great (and available from Amazon here).

As well as the lyrics, one of the things that seems to characterise an upbeat Das Pop song are really interesting beats that I personally find it very difficult to stay still to, All of the guys in the band seem to be accomplished musicians, and this is clear with the quality of the performance – it was really tight and sounded amazing.

So, despite the poor lighting that Bent seems to be constantly adjusting himself and made for some really poor photographic opportunities, Das Pop shone. Stand out tracks were Underground, The Last Thing, and a rather amazing cover version of Frank Sinatra’s Very Good Year.

If Dad Pop come back to these shores any time soon I would really urge you to catch a performance – I guarantee you won’t be disappointed.

Das Pop’s third album, Das Pop, is out now

Noah and the Whale @ The Hospital Club, 25th September 2009

Free gold and silver

It's not often that Barclaycard gives you anything for free. Having worked there for 7 years I probably know this better than most. So there was no way I was going to turn down free tickets to the Barclaycard Mercury Music Session that I won on Twitter, even if I didn't know much of the band.

Anyway, The Hospital Club seems to be a relatively exclusive place in Covent Garden that has a club / music venue in the basement. It's much nicer than it sounds. And has a fairly amazing lighting rig. The gig was being filmed for TV (I believe, although no sign yet). Oh, and there was free beer courtesy of Stella :)

The support act for the night was Golden Silvers, who I had heard of in passing but didn't know any of their stuff. I have to say that I was pretty impressed - catchy pop was the genre and it was performed particularly well. They had a random guy playing percussion and vocals called Tommy, who looked the least rock and roll band member since the guitarist of Das Pop but we found out that it was actually the first gig he had done with the band so all was forgiven. The most impressive moment award goes to the last song, which they performed a cappella without a safety net. Respect. They have proven themselves to be a band worthy of consideration and I will purchasing their album.


Endearingly most of the band came out into the audience to watch main act Noah and the Whale. Sadly I have to say that they were something of a disappointment after the energy of Golden Silvers. The only song I knew of NATW was 5 Years Time, which they didn't actually play. Instead we heard material from their new album, The First Days of Spring, which is reasonably morose. Now I have nothing against morose as a theme, but it doesn't really make for a fun evening out. I have to say that I can't really remember most of the songs - maybe you need to be holed up at home whilst feeling slightly depressed for them to make an impact, after which time you would probably put them on repeat and cry into your wine glass about how they are really about your life. Or something. Either way, I was drinking free beer so it made less of an impression.

The band were a strange combination. There was an excellent violinist who also played the keyboard - the stage set up should have really had both pieces of equipment on the same side but instead the poor guy had to race across the front between songs to change stations. Also, he had hair like Erik Hassle, who is my current benchmark for crazy hair.


The lead guitarist looked like he had always wanted to be in a rock band and wasn't going to let the fact that he had somehow ended up in a morose folk outfit prevent him from rocking out like a member of Guns N Roses. The lead singer, in complete contrast, was very serious. At one point he even stopped a song and started again because the audience were talking too much. I can really see how that would be a bit soul destroying but it happens every day to bands of all descriptions in pubs and clubs around the country. Surely the thing to do is play louder and better so that people want to listen? Oh well.


Anyway, I had a nice free evening courtesy of Barclaycard and discovered a new band, but I wasn't inspired into getting the new NATW album any time soon.

The Last Days of Spring is out now