The Damned & The Dickies... oh yes it is!

Cap 'n' Dave are waving bye bye

 

Stan Lee being a Dickie

Two for the price of one.  Read a full review of their recent Birmingham gig, with additional pictures, here at Louder Than War.

Feel free to leave a comment!

Icelandic death art rock

Happened to catch Dead Skeletons at The End (the old Bar Academy), with the mighty Guile, the other night.

Here's a couple of pics...

Lost In Music - Mark Lanegan Band, Institute, Birmingham

You're album's riding the crest of a critical wave that already suggests 'Blues Funeral' will be recognised as one of the best of the year and demand for tickets for tonight's show has been strong enough to see the gig upgraded to the main room at the HMV Institute and yet as Mark Lanegan follows his band onstage he seems to wince in embarrassment at the roar that greets him.

Curious behaviour from a seasoned performer.  No acknowledgment to the crowd by word or deed, not even a pause to bask in the moment.  Yet this is a man with seven solo albums to his name stretching back to 1990.  And that's not even considering the plethora of collaborations, side projects and guest vocalist recordings and gigs to his name.

As has been well documented, until fairly recently, Lanegan operated in something of an 'altered state'.  James Dean Bradfield has claimed that despite having done an entire US tour together, Lanegan did not speak to him once during the course of their weeks in close proximity!

Now despite the bedraggled appearance Lanegan is clean and yet still his onstage persona is that of a man who would rather be someplace, anyplace else.

Hanging off the mike stand staring intently at a spot on the stage about a yard to his right - his default setting between songs - you almost wonder if he can go through with this.  By a cruel irony we have come to see a man seemingly crippled by nerves.

Then the magic starts.  As the band kick into 'Can't Come Down' Lanegan opens his mouth and out comes THAT voice.  That husky, death rattle barritone that seems to at once, envelope and threaten the listener.  And we know why we are here.

Killing Joke - Manchester Academy

Manchester sees Killing Joke in fine form.  As is becoming a habit with the rejuvenated Joke, early tour dates see various new songs road tested before the band settle on the ones that will become a fixture for the tour.

Perversely one of the songs that hasn't made the cut is new single 'In Cythera'. Played at Exeter and Bristol, but by Manchester it had been dropped.  But as it is a more reflective song about love and loss, it did sit a little bit at odds with the majority of the new material which sees Jaz & co raging at the ecological and economic implosion of the world.

Manchester 10/03/12 setlist - lovely!

Guile – The Tackeroo, Cannock, 10th February 2012

Hometown gig, expectant crowd.  The last thing any band want is a string to go on the bass about 6 seconds into the gig.  With no spare bass guitar.  Which is exactly how Guile’s return to their Cannock roots kicked off.

A lot of bands would have been thrown, or perhaps just walked off until running repairs could be made.  No such easy way out for Guile.  While bassist Adam ‘Fish’ Shaw, showed commendable grace under pressure restringing and tuning up with the minimum of fuss, the remaining members of Guile simply slipped into dirty, vaguely threatening, blues jam.  Shut your eyes and you’d believe Link Wray was about to walk onstage.

Magazine - Slade Rooms Wolverhampton

A band that can open with 'The Light Pours Out Of Me' can't really go wrong and as this latest incarnation - dubbed Magazine version 6.0 by Mr Devoto - showed, they've got the back catalogue and they're not afraid to use it.

When Magazine reformed in 2009 there was a sense of it being an exercise in experimentation, rather than a full blooded reunion.  Always too arch to do the obvious, God forbid 'play the game', you got the impression that Magazine needed a reason to justify breathing life into the old corpse again after twenty odd years.  And we're not talking pension plan top ups here (although I'm sure it's a pleasant by-product). 

Here at the pleasingly full Slade Rooms - that's pleasingly full of Old Men - we got our answer.  Alongside, 'Permafrost' 'Thank-You' and 'Motorcade' we get a brand new shiny song.  A new Magazine song.  A new Magazine song in 2011.

OK, let's rewind.  It's been reported for some time that the band were working on new material and no doubt an album's in the works.  But in amongst a 45 minute greatest hits set (this was a warm up for their Hop Farm Festival appearance supporting Iggy & The Stooges and Morrissey, in Kent...you couldn't make that up, could you?) up pops one previously unheard of song to confound us.

On one listen it owes something of a debt to Joy Division, with a naggingly familiar Hookyesque foundation.  Time will tell, but it fitted in with a set that illustrates why Magazine have stood the test of time so well, why they are so often referenced and why they will probably bear listening to in another 20 years.

Having said all that there is still that element of cabaret as with all reformations.  Barry Adamson's other commitments mean that Jon 'Stan' White has stepped into the old Jazz Devil's shoes for this tour.  Big shoes to fill and while White can't hope to be the same character as Adamson had become by the 2009 dates, he certainly did a good job musically (although I know others would disagree).

It's the same dilemma as guitarist Noko faces.  Clearly a good musician in his own right, but how much is he (can he) give of himself, when he's got the sizable task of filling in for the late, great and criminally under-rated John McGeoch?  To a lesser extent Noko is also covering for 'Correct Use Of Soap' era guitarist Robin Smith, [edit: see comments for correction to my schoolboy error] but it's McGeogh's work that always fought with Dave Formula's keyboards for attention.  Both running through Magazine's back catalogue like the greeting on a seaside stick of rock.

So how good are Magazine 6.0? I've no idea and to be truthful nobody will have until we get to hear the result of those new recordings.

What I do know is that live they're doing justice to a great and much neglected body of work and if the version 6.0 lineup can recapture some of the magic of those first three albums then Magazine will have found their reason to justify their reformation. 

Badly shot clip from way too far back, but you get the picture.

Go here for more of the same.

Gig Review: Our Mountain, Guile, The Yams - The Rainbow, Birmingham.

If it's worth doing it, it's worth overdoing it seems to be The Yams attitude. Three guitars and keyboards crammed onto the stage at The Rainbow does seem ambitious, but with all the guitars and some growling bass present in the mix, they quickly show their audio arsenal is not just for show as they quickly reveal a capacity for some heavy slabs of sound.

Opening with a song that sounds like it's about to break into a cover of ‘California Uber Alles’ gets the attention, although it never does launch into a full blown version of the Dead Kennedys classic,  it quickly settles into a pleasing riff of its own.

But the beauty of The Yams is their disciplined sound, simple in terms of finding a heavy, stoner rock groove and sticking with it, but take a closer look and beyond the initial pull of the heavy riffing and there's a lot more going on.

Each guitar contributes a different layer to The Yams sound, making is surprisingly clean, for all the weight it carries.  Keyboards however, were sacrificed before the wall of guitars. Or perhaps the keyboard player has more of 'Bez' role, playing in the hole just behind the strikers, as it were...

Impressively build riffing is the hallmark of The Yams, if they can get past the inevitable Queens of the Stone Age references and perhaps convince people they're from southern California rather than South Staffordshire, they might get the audience they deserve.

 

Next up are Guile stretching their legs and taking some new material out for a run, giving us a tantalising peek into their work in progress, while delivering a haunting set of beautifully crafted psychedelic blues punk, drenched in slide guitar and held together by thundering bass and drums.  Over it all the cracked, wounded voice of Neal Sawyer, sounding like a man with the weight of world on his shoulders and the pain of rejection in his heart.

Kicking off with the repeated jab in the face that is relative new song 'Kill Your Dreams' Guile then tore up the set list to preview new material for a small but attentive audience.

Showing a willingness to experiment with rhythm and texture that suggests a capacity to add a whole network of B road detours to the Guile motorway, this set at The Rainbow certainly offered some intriguing glimpses into the future.

One thing we do now know, is that the insanely infectious 'Deep By The Dockery' will be released as a single in September. Yes a single. You know, complete with b-side tracks. Proper old school!

Tonight 'Dockery' was played with glorious abandon, competing with a stretched out epic improvised take on 'I Wish I Was Heartless' for highlight of the night. Although both may have been eclipsed by a tight, nasty, urgent take on the set closing howl of alienation that is 'Alone On The West'.

Which is a good place to leave things, 'Alone On The West' is also going to be the title of Guile's forthcoming album. For my money their potent mix of blues, country, punk and psychedelia, continues to mark them out as one of the great unsigned hopes.  Only problem is, I'll have to find something new to say once the album does come out!

What to make of Our Mountain?  They try, they really do.  And in places they almost pull it off. Mainly with some dirty, '60's garage rock & roll with a set closer that felt like they finally dropped their art-house guard.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves.  The nucleus of Our Mountain hail from Australia and the rhythm section could easily pass for Nick Cave alumni.  Which I'm sure they are sick of hearing, but it's the sound of the Bad Seeds that's playing as they take the stage.  If the cap fits...

Well there are certainly echoes.  Our Mountain seem to have one foot in performance art and the other in a greasy garage doing up old motorbikes. Frontman Matthew Hutchinson comes on like the man who was thrown out of The Monkees for being too rock & roll - the man in the silk shirt and pudding bowl haircut is a ball of energy, pulling a variety of unlikely guitar hero shapes before exiting the stage mid-song to continue playing as part of the audience.

But then he has to, with statuesque, blond Abbey Lee, doing her ice queen, keyboards and er, dustbin lids routine, stage right, there's a fight for attention going on.  Which is no bad thing!

Our Mountain have some good ideas and better riffs, but ultimately didn't quite convince on this showing, perhaps trying a little too hard, while Guile and The Yams gave us honest from the heart rock & roll.