rock | Music Boats

PUP live at Project House review – propulsive pop punk pandemonium
10
May

The Canadian racket-makers specialise in gloomy songs about hopelessness and self-loathing, but this exhilarating blitz of bangers in Leeds brought nothing but joy to an amped up crowd eager to throw their drinks – and each other – in the air.

About three songs into PUP’s Leeds gig hands are already sprouting up from the centre of the crowd between songs. It’s not out of music-induced joy, but requests for the paper cups of water the stewards in front of the stage are already handing out – such is the heart-racing intensity of this band’s mosh-primed punk tracks. By the time a much needed drink comes my way, the next song is already revving into gear, a volley of cymbals setting the people around me in frenzied motion. I end up drinking half of it and spilling the rest over myself and the poor woman next to me in the ensuing carnage. 90 minutes later, it will be hard to spot a concertgoer not drenched in an odorous mix of water, sweat and beer as they stagger out the venue and back into reality.

PUP have no doubt seen scenes such as these many times before. The Toronto quartet are now five excellent albums in to a steadily successful career in the business of laying their hearts on the line over high octane guitar riffs and pounding drums. 2016’s fan favourite The Dream Is Over and more polished follow-up Morbid Stuff were nothing less than classics of the genre, Stefan Babcock’s unremittingly grim lyrics about harsh Canadian winters proving a winning combination with his anthemic and gloriously catchy melodies. Those albums were a creative high water mark that PUP – and most rock bands, in fact – have struggled to regain ever since, although this month’s new release Who Will Look After the Dogs? proved Babcock’s appetite for catchy nihilism isn’t going anywhere soon (the very first lyrics read “Staring into the void now / You’re going down with the ship”.)

In fact, PUP’s numerous songs about depression, hopelessness and loneliness are so intensely bleak you can understand Babcock feeling a little uncomfortable singing them night after night to packed rooms of thrilled fans. “These songs are so depressing, but we play them and you guys look like you’re smiling and having a good time and it feels… good,” Babcock tells us touchingly at one point. Cue Sleep In The Heat, a song about living alone and “blacking out on my carpet” which sparks sheer bedlam. “You wasted away / And nothing I do is gonna save you,” Babcock’s lyrics admit, but the fans are more interested in belting the free-spirited “woah-oh” hook, one hand on their chests and the other in the air as if it were the national anthem.

Such is the remarkable power of music: write a good melody and even words written from the lowest depths of depression can feel paradoxically awe-inspiring, life-affirming and even hopeful. Time and again, PUP pulled off this artistic miracle in front of an anarchic crowd lapping up every last power chord. Totally Fine’s flirtation with suicidal ideation sparked a wave of crowd surfers, crashing over my shoulders every 30 seconds or so. Free At Last had us screaming PUP’s most brilliantly bitter lyric (“Just ‘cause you’re sad again / It doesn’t make you special”) as Nestor Chumak sprinted through a sinuous bass line and Steve Sladkowski delivered one of the night’s many exquisite guitar solos.

The up tempo bangers came quick and fast, and perhaps a more shrewd use of the band’s slower numbers might have resulted in a stronger reception for recent single Get Dumber – for my money one of the band’s most exhilarating singles to date, but during which I found myself pogoing mostly alone. Babcock apologised before playing his pet song at the expense of the fans’ wishes (a cacophonous PUPTHEBAND Inc. Is Filing For Bankruptcy), but really this show offered a generous helping of old fan favourites. Nine year old magnum opus DVP was breathless musically and literally – one person pinned hard against the barriers had to be hurriedly extracted by stewards mid-song. Babcock couldn’t help but smile when a huge mosh circle formed spontaneously at the grand climax of Scorpion Hill; PUP have long graduated from the days of verbally coordinating these things. All Babcock needs to do is give a quick plea for a baseline level of personal safety at the start of the gig, and the rest of the mosh runs like clockwork, limbs flying and bodies rushing towards each other with instinctive glee.

Like all the best gigs, there was a sense that even Babcock and his bandmates felt that this particular gig was a special one. “Leeds has always been kind to us,” he told us gratefully, and there was a glint in his eye as he romped through an apocalyptic-sounding Paranoid, the band given extra heft by two guitarists from support act Illuminati Hotties. Hotties vocalist Sarah Tudzin stayed on stage for a rendition of Reservoir and promptly missed her cue for the first verse. No bother – the crowd were screaming along so loudly the vocals were barely audible anyway.

Metal-leaning Full Blown Meltdown was an oddly non-anthemic choice of song to close on, and PUP admirably refused to go through the usual encore pantomime. I had moshed my way to the front and was shouting the lyrics back at Babcock when he locked eyes with me, jumped off the stage and grabbed my hands, urgently shouting something off-mic. It didn’t take long for me to get the message – I set about hauling him into the air, pulling at his jeans and then lifting up his Converses above the sea of bodies behind me. It turned out to be a textbook piece of surfing from Babcock, moving at pace around the room six feet above the floor in a smooth arc before washing up back on stage just in time for the end of the song.

With that, PUP left the stage and the crowd caught their breath. A woman collected her cardigan now in tatters on the floor beside me. A man stood alone in the centre of the room holding up a single leather shoe, searching in vain for its owner. Friends reunited and hugged tightly before recounting their own tales from the mosh pit. I beelined for the water stand then relocated my own friends to hug and brag to about my moment with Stefan. The whole gig had been an extraordinary mix of violence and tenderness, loathing and loving, depression and euphoria. In each case, it was the latter that stuck with us in the smelly taxi ride home.

Jeff Rosenstock: HELLMODE review – punk’s golden boy plays it safe
25
Apr

Billed as both his most chaotic and “solid” record so far, Jeff Rosenstock’s seventh full-length is neither, but still provides its fair share of satisfying if familiar punk rock hits.

There are few acts in rock today that can depict this era’s lingering sense of apocalypse (the broken machinations of late-stage capitalism, the corrosion of American democracy, the imminent decay of the whole planet above all) quite as sharply as Jeff Rosenstock. The veteran New York punk who started his career in an unhinged DIY collective called Bomb the Music Industry! (exclamation mark mandatory) has now spent over ten years dissecting his converging personal and global worries in the form of an increasingly lauded and hit-dense discography, peaking perhaps with the smooth-flowing masterpiece of angst WORRY., an album so definitive it deserved a full stop in the title.

This year’s promisingly titled HELLMODE was hailed by promoters and early reviewers as his most chaotic, anarchic and, in Rosenstock’s own words, “solid” record yet, so it’s something of a disappointment that it ends up sounding more or less like the six albums that preceded it. The good news is that any Jeff Rosenstock album is a good one, and his knack for sticky hooks and pithy distillations of a very millennial form of pessimism isn’t going anywhere. HELLMODE is front loaded with tightly written numbers. Exhilarating opener WILL U STILL U is packed with instrumental left turns and belting gang vocals that wouldn’t sound out of place next to the 40-year-old’s very best. Lead single LIKED U BETTER winningly pairs a jaunty keyboard earworm with that sinking feeling of being able to escape your own anxieties. DOUBT follows suit, nurturing a false sense of ease before erupting into a screechy, cathartic polemic. Oftentimes Rosenstock’s dismay at the state of the world – the climate crisis in particular looms over this record – veers towards a relatable defeatism. “The world doesn’t owe you,” he concludes powerfully in standout FUTURE IS DUMB, thus summarising ten years of intense creative output in a single harsh truth.

It’s a shame that Rosenstock couldn’t quite maintain his momentum, especially when it comes to album centrepiece HEALMODE, which does away with the rest of the record’s nuance and undermines the prevailing sense of gloom with the tired, sickly sweet message that love alone can save us from unmitigated disaster. It doesn’t help that the clichéd lyrics are delivered with a cautious softness by Rosenstock, whose voice is much better suited to angry ragers about the constitution than cutesy love songs with an acoustic guitar. Hookless LIFE ADMIN follows, which stands out as one of the limpest tracks Rosenstock has released in years.

As is customary for a Rosenstock album, it all ends in a somewhat theatrical seven minute epic, although there’s very little in 3 SUMMERS that can outdo the much more memorable closing numbers in Rosenstock albums of years gone by. Above all, that’s the key limitation of HELLMODE: with the exception of flawed moment of calm HEALMODE, there’s little invention to be found here, and this distinctive form of volatile rock is better served by most of Rosenstock’s previous releases. True, this is a competently delivered album by an artist who clearly knows how to set a room alight with blaring guitars and verbalised deep-seated dread. It just helps if you don’t know what you’re missing out from the rest of Rosenstock’s oeuvre.

Los Bitchos live at Star and Shadow review – scintillating cumbia finds a new home on the Tyne
19
Apr

Sturdy trainers were indispensable for a night of moving and shaking in one of the trendiest little venues in Newcastle. Armed with an arsenal of percussion, it was Los Bitchos’s touching onstage chemistry that turned a good show into a fabulous one.

It’s been a wild week, but something about stepping into the modest crowd inside the Star and Shadow felt like home. I’d been slightly nervous on the bus journey across Newcastle city centre – perhaps a sign that my solo gigging confidence has been lost somewhere in an almost concert-free summer – but seeing the lights and the staging and feeling the atmosphere of anticipation reminded me why I love live music so much, with company or otherwise. It helped that the Star and Shadow turned out to be my sort of venue. Cinema by day, the small complex is proudly independent and volunteer-run, and it felt like it with its artsy handmade signs and exposed overhead ventilation ducts that butted up against a mirrorball hung up by string, giving the place a cobbled together feel, albeit lovingly. No one I had asked since moving to the city three days earlier had even heard of the venue, which was small enough for the merch queue to be almost non-existent and the bar queue an unusually polite single line leading to one side. The typically awkward task of wrangling my way to the front was a cakewalk; in fact I did a little too well, and my spot front and centre with some space around me was a bit more of a challenge to my shyness than I had bargained for. Being the only member of the crowd in a fresh, bright tangerine Los Bitchos t-shirt admittedly didn’t help me blend in.

The Star and Shadow seemed to suit Los Bitchos too, a somewhat underground four-piece from London whose remarkably niche style of guitar-driven ’80s instrumental cumbia (Latin-American dance music with roots in Africa) has gained them some notoriety as the queens of their genre in the Big Smoke. To call Los Bitchos Londoners is to discount the improbable variety the band members offer. Australian former drummer Serra Petale plays lead guitar and acts as frontwoman; Swede Josefine Jonsson, formerly of a garage rock band, takes bass; Uruguayan model Agustina Ruiz plays synthesiser and born-and-bred Londoner Nic Crawshaw both plays drums and is a working physiotherapist in the NHS.

Despite their disparate origins, as soon as the music started Los Bitchos were one inseperable unit, and the undeniable chemistry between performers was a joy to witness. Whether performing coordinated footwork (the band simply having too much fun for it to come across cheesy) or sharing swigs of tequila between songs, the four women were clearly keen to share the spotlight as evenly as possible. Leading the charge was Petale with her slinking, frictionless guitar lines and carefree dancing which was well replicated by an energetic audience. Jonsson was an authority on bass, her riffs heavy and thumping, and Crawshaw was an engine at the back on kit, her kick drum providing an everpresent thwack that got the crowd’s feet moving. Percussion is an essential part of Los Bitchos’s appeal, and every member had a crack on some sort of percussion throughout the night. The several exhilarating drum breaks involved a flurry of clattering cowbell and rippling bongos, a tapestry of sound too detailed to fully appreciate in the moment. In the midst of it all, the four of them looked like they could hardly be having more fun. Even Ruiz, tasked largely with holding down long notes on a relatively quiet synthesiser between sorties on an egg shaker, rarely stood still amid the frenzy.

I had quietly hoped that a live show would give Los Bitchos – and Petale in particular – time to explore their tracks with some improvisation, but instead songs largely stuck to their original blueprint, with Petale’s guitar playing never beyond the remit of your average intermediate guitar player. Instead, the smartly crafted ostinatos were performed with purpose and passion by Petale, who often seemed utterly lost in the groove. At her best, like on impulsive plodder Pista (Fresh Start) or hopelessly earwormy The Link Is About to Die, Petale’s hooks felt inevitable, and quite capable of being played over and over for many minutes without losing any of their appeal. Throbbing Tripping at a Party, which at times sounded like a quaint cumbian Benny Hill Theme, was another example of Petale at the top of her game both in terms of songwriting and performance.

Drum breaks were amongst the show’s highlights

Wisely given the billing it deserved, Las Panteras was an ecstatic, roof-demolishing set closer. A final build – faster, louder and even more thrilling than the original – had the crowd in raptures. The end result was a room of invariably hot and sweaty revellers begging for more; poor Star and Shadow lacked the air ventilation to deal with such an invigorating dance number. Tequila, fulfilling the wishes of several crowd members, was the fated encore follow up. Changing the formula for possibly the only Latin-American surf rock standard in Western popular culture was a necessity, and Los Bitchos’s Tequila was refreshingly intense, Ruiz belting out Spanish into the mic with the force of a pop punk star behind a wall of rock guitars. An uninhibited yelp of “Tequila!” from everyone in the room marked a fitting end to a deeply lovely night of joyful music from musicians that didn’t take themselves or their art too seriously. Such an act isn’t always easy to find.

I walked back onto the quiet evening streets of Shieldfield glowing with that addictive post-gig high, not before taking an opportunity to thank Ruiz and Crawshaw who were already calming down with cigarettes on the entrance steps. A Los Bitchos gig had been a strange way to come to terms with the big week of change in a new city, but it had worked wonders. I couldn’t have wished for a more delightful inauguration.

Welly: Big In The Suburbs review – puts the fun back in British indie rock
21
Mar

Welly’s debut album is winningly silly, although its political satire feels a little too safe, and the comedy in Elliot Hall’s cartoonish vocals wears thin quickly.

“It’s very serious, at least it is later on, and you’re not to laugh at the serious bits,” a pompous presenter tells us at the start of Welly’s debut album. “I’ll tell you when that comes.” It’s as good a manifesto as any for this lively indie upstart with a penchant for wry observations of modern life in the vein of witty Americans Cheekface, as well as their ever popular British indie peers Sports Team.

Elliot Hall leads the charge, delivering absurd character portraits and the occasional political barb with a nasally yelp à la Squid’s Ollie Judge, yet somehow even more cartoonish. His delivery adds rowdiness to Big in the Suburbs’ noisier numbers (‘Home For the Weekend’, ‘Deere John’), but risks becoming headache-inducingly irritating over the course of a 50-minute album.

It helps that the words he’s singing are interesting, mixing quickfire puns with political takedowns. “She’s fallen in love with a gameshow host / The chase was on, but it’s pointless now,” the self-assured title track offers, before turning its attention to the more serious matters of the housing crisis and “nationalised hate”. ‘Shopping’ is a shrewd dissection of modern consumerism, even if Hall’s vocal delivery sounds like a whiny nine-year-old throwing a tantrum.

Punky and ragged single ‘Deere John’ attacks a lonely, alcoholic husband (“You’re too old for nightlife!”), whilst ‘Soak Up the Culture’ turns its scorn to self-obsessed gap year girls. It’s all entertaining enough, but also feels only surface-level deep, cheaply mocking the symptoms of inequality and social malaise rather than attempting the trickier task of pinning down the root causes.

That said, fans who dismiss Welly based on Big In the Suburbs’ patchy first half will miss this album’s surprising shift in tone in the second half. Album highlight ‘Pampass Grass’ sounds like a distorted ABBA rendition, succeeding in telling a series of tragic character portraits whilst also making it all irresistibly danceable. “I’ve got to get out!” Hall belts in endearing disco number ‘The Roundabout Racehorse’ whilst ‘Family Photos’ intriguingly hints at personal struggles behind Hall’s comic showman, although the meek outro exposes his vocal frailties.

In the end, Big In the Suburbs doesn’t quite marry Hall’s love of political satire with his desire to deliver something more emotionally impactful. Often the album’s many characters feel deliberately shallow and archetypal, lyrical strawmen for Hall to fire his witty one-liners at. The result is fun and entertaining, but recoils from offering something more meaningful or artistically vulnerable.

It’s exemplified in the spoken word piece ‘Under Milk Wood’, a poignant poem about zooming out from life’s fine-grained chaos and observing a sleeping town from a neutral, god-like perspective. “From where you are, you can hear their dreams… or something like that,” the speaker concludes, tossing away his profound musings behind a protective barrier of laughter and irony. Yes, Hall is a sharp humourist, but Big In the Suburbs leaves you wishing Welly stopped shying away from all those ‘serious bits’.

Sam Fender: People Watching review – the Geordie Springsteen delivers a classic
3
Mar

Valorised Geordie hero Sam Fender paints a vivid picture of ordinary working-class life in this extraordinary third record. Never has Fender’s trademark brand of melancholic beauty sounded so potent.

Icount myself lucky to be living in Newcastle during a Sam Fender album rollout. No other release this year will compare. Spend enough time in the city centre and you’ll notice it. Fender-branded scarves adorn the windows of souvenir shops. Fender’s image literally lights up Grey’s Monument from a dazzling LED billboard. Fender melodies are duly pumped through the Tannoy at St James’ Park after every match, the entire city singing to the same hymn sheet. Indeed, in this part of the world only the local football club is more universally adored than this former barman from North Shields.

If his 2019 debut announced Fender as a promising indie hopeful, the follow-up, Seventeen Going Under, confirmed his status as one of British rock’s leading lights. It was a record powered by a career-defining title track, a deeply moving reflection on a working-class upbringing in the North East destined to go down as one of the great rock hits of the 2020s (and it was Undertone‘s Song of the Year 2021, no less). It remains just about the closest thing Tyneside has to its own national anthem.

How could Fender possibly follow a track like Seventeen Going Under? The lead single and title track to People Watching suggested he was hoping for lightning to strike twice with another sequence of sonorous, hypnotic chord changes and more poetic lyrics about the everyday struggles many Tynesiders face. This time the chirpy guitar hook sounds perilously close to a mid-ranking 1975 hit, but Fender’s knack for bleakly beautiful depictions of his hometown would be enough to make even Matty Healy jealous. The bridge’s “Above the rain-soaked Garden of Remembrance / Kittiwakes etched your initials in the sky” is sublime even by Fender’s high standards.

It’s a relief, then, that the subsequent album doesn’t merely attempt to recreate Seventeen Going Under, but expands on its themes of deprivation in the North East and the distant politicians responsible for it. Chin Up is one of many songs that devotes much of its time to painting deft character portraits of ordinary Geordies. “The cold permeates the neonatal baby”, he sings starkly, before finding parallels between Detroit’s urban decay and Byker Bridge in Crumbling Empire. It might all sound rather doom and gloom on paper, but warm beds of layered guitars and a steady tide of lush strings sections drench this record in a delicate beauty. The people Fender describes are suffering, yes, but in those soaring melodies there’s a sense that their hope is unextinguishable.

Complicating this album about poverty is Fender’s own unescapable wealth and fame. “I won’t take this world for granted”, he assures us at one point, whilst devastating closer Remember My Name – which poignantly features the Easington Colliery Brass Band – reminisces Fender’s own council house upbringing. Most fascinating is TV Dinner with its sinister piano manoeuvres that evoke Radiohead’s other-worldly classic Everything in Its Right Place. “Grass-fed little cash cow”, Fender calls himself in a blistering vocal performance, as a fog of electronics and strings steadily engulf him. It’s a thrillingly dark composition which, for once, defies Fender’s usual comparisons to Springsteen and hints at an intriguing possible direction for album four.

Massive, raspy sax solos and an atmosphere of nostalgia remain Fender’s biggest draw, however. Arm’s Length‘s harmonies may sound unadventurous, but they lend the song a muted, sepia sheen, playing out like a half-forgotten memory. Most of People Watching’s songs pick a timeless chord progression and blissfully wallow in it for an unhurried five minutes, a formula which Fender has now honed.

For all the lyricism about decay, regret and fear, the overriding quality of People Watching is staggering beauty. “These purple days left a violent mark on the oak tree hollow”, Fender offers on glorious standout Nostalgia’s Lie, nailing his trademark balance of piercing sorrow and dewy-eyed wistfulness. The melodies feel inevitable, and Fender’s honeyed vocal tone has never sounded sweeter. Equally remarkable is Little Bit Closer, an awe-inspiring stadium rock triumph about finding God, complete with one of the most nagging chorus hooks you’ll hear all year. “I can’t live under the notion that there’s no reason at all for all this beauty in motion,” the spine-tingling group vocals belt. After listening to an album as deeply beautiful as this one, you’d tend to agree.

Fat Dog live at Project House review – barking mad dance-rock is a treat
15
Nov

The much-hyped band crowned a breakout year with a bangers-only 45 minute blitz in Leeds, packed with mammoth riffs and thunderous bass lines. Even the band’s photographer couldn’t resist the pull of a vintage mosh pit.

Twilight on a moody November evening by the canal in Leeds, and the leaking locks are hissing harshly behind a gloomy row of trees. At 8 p.m. it’s still just about bright enough to make out the passing clouds, oddly glowing with light pollution against navy skies. I’ve only just arrived, but I already feel exhausted – with the murky recent weather, a cold going round and a certain election result, I can’t have been the only one approaching Project House feeling weighed down by November blues. I walked towards the reassuring thud of live music – the muffled sounds of what turned out to be a rather dreadful support slot from Truthpaste – hopeful the music might provide some catharsis.

As it happened, few bands do reckless, enthralling catharsis quite like Fat Dog. Like Black Country, New Road and Black Midi, they were borne out of the fertile left-field music scene centred on the legendary Windmill venue in Brixton, making a name for themselves in recent years solely through notoriously wild live shows. Fat Dog’s unique sound is charged with an impulsive energy that makes it easy for audiences to be swept away by it all even without prior exposure. Remarkably, one scant album into their career, Fat Dog have already carved out a distinct stylistic niche – aggressive industrial dance music with thunderous unisons riffs, scuzzy saxophone and yelped, barely coherent vocals about impending doom. Think somewhere between Madness and Daft Punk, but with more lyrical references to slug invasions. It’s unlike anything I’ve heard before.

You could forgive Fat Dog for being exhausted themselves – they’ve essentially been on tour for their entire career so far, including a marathon four performances on various small stages at this year’s Glastonbury. Emerging onto stage to a volley of drums and a tremble of deep synth bass, frontman Joe Love was a wonderfully enigmatic figure, his eyes barely open beneath a canopy of curly locks and a white Stetson. Vocally, he made no sense either, producing a manic yelp of “It’s Fat Dog baby!” at the start of the concert, sounding more menacingly deranged than comical.

Such is the unique appeal of Fat Dog, a band who on paper sound jokey – drummer Johnny ‘Doghead’ Hutch has a penchant for performing in a German shepherd mask, sadly not donned in Leeds – but in reality sound like credible harbingers of the apocalypse. It didn’t take long for the audience to start colliding with each other to the sounds of Vigilante, an album opener which brilliantly pairs a mammoth hook with a haunting, vaguely Eastern European folk melody. Gone were the intricate details of the studio recording – most notably a melodramatic spoken word passage, and a gigantic-sounding string orchestra carrying the hook – but in Leeds an additional percussionist was let loose on an arsenal of bongos and cymbals, more than plugging the gap. The result was an intoxicatingly heavy three minutes that had an instant, drug-like effect on the audience, who duly threw their arms – and beers – up in the air.

Joe Love’s performance was intimate for those in the front row.

It was enthralling – but then again I’m bound to say that, since Love spent a majority of this brief gig right next to me, close enough I could have nicked his hat. He leaned against the barriers for song after song, singing directly to his devotees like a young Nick Cave, only with less heartfelt hand-holding and more woofing into the microphone. It was a thrill to be in the mix of bodies with their arms reaching up towards him, but I doubt the people a little further back from me – spending most of the gig looking at a largely empty stage – would have agreed.

From my fortunate vantage point amidst the mosh, the only possible downside of Fat Dog’s set was that each song was almost too exhaustingly compelling. Seven-minute opus King of the Slugs was a marathon of industrial beats, particularly in its propulsive second half where the tempo was ruthlessly dialled up a notch. Wither similarly took off like a rocket, Jacqui Wheeler’s restless bass riff and Love’s oddball intonations of “You better wither, baby, before you die” whipping up a frenzy in the crowd. The bedlam was so irresistible that, in one exquisite moment of rock ‘n’ roll, even the hired photographer camped out beside the stage in front of me felt compelled to down tools and leap into the crowd, practically landing on top of me. A few seconds later I watched her drift off to the dim recesses at the back of the venue as Morgan Wallace’s saxophone squealed like a wounded pig.

Even I Am the King, the unconvincing ballad lodged in the middle of the band’s debut album, sounded gripping in Leeds, the shimmering backing of strings given new urgency by Hutch’s rapid hit-hats ticking away like a time bomb. “I am the king… and it means nothing at all,” Love repeated again and again with rising desperation, the swirl of synths rising around him like floodwaters. Yes, Love has penned plenty of silly lyrics (his first words in his debut album are “Granny’s tights on my head”), but this was a moment of genuine artistry and the evening’s only opportunity for pause and reflection.

It all came to ahead with an electrifying rendition Running, a stupendous single and one of the very best songs from any band this year. It’s a masterclass in tension and release, evident in Leeds when it triggered not one but three mosh circles (where fans clear an area of the floor then rush into the space when the chorus hits). The lengthy bridge in particular was excruciatingly tense, and by the time the eventual payoff came – a panoply of winning hooks, all neatly foreshadowed earlier in the song – bodies were circulating in the crowd as if swept up in a fast-moving lazy river.

An encore of noughties rave classic Satisfaction – a perfect riff for Wallace to attack on her saxophone – wrapped things up before the clocks struck 10 p.m.. Too early to call it a night perhaps, but I’m not sure if I had the physical fitness for much more, and the revellers around me looked like they’d been worked to exhaustion too. In the end, the crowd simply barked in unison instead of asking for one more song – if Fat Dog had indeed imbued their strange music with some sort of magic potion, it had worked a charm.

Cobra Spell: 666 review – kick-ass hair metal runs wild
16
Aug

An outrageously eye-catching album artwork marks the debut the of the brand new, all female lineup of Sonia Anubis’ Cobra Spell. Alex Walden checks out to their latest album to see if they could produce that rare magic: genuinely fresh-feeling music inspired by the 80s.

If turning 20 taught me one thing, it’s that all the stuff that you gave up as a teenager to “fit in” suddenly becomes really cool again. For me, it all hit after three months spent in New York to which I returned with the urge to swap my skateboard for a guitar. It was while browsing for a new axe that I came across an advertisement from Jackson Guitars which showed Cobra Spell founder and lead guitarist Sonia Anubis absolutely shredding her custom made “Warrior from Hell” to Cobra Spell’s leading single, The Devil Inside of Me.

Now I was impressed, but it was the next day when the magic hit as I found myself still thinking about that video over and over again. I couldn’t remember how the solo went, hell I couldn’t even remember Sonia Anubis’ name, but something about the brief build up to the solo before it all came crashing down in such a spectacular fashion was stuck in my head. After a few hours of not being able to shake it, I decided to bite the bullet and download Cobra Spell’s 666 to see if I could shake the brainworm from within my head. Yet as I delved deeper, I found myself feeling this sense of joy and excitement that I haven’t felt in a long time.

The 80’s are back! (sort of)

Ok so let’s start by addressing the elephant in the room. This album reeks of 80’s glam metal. Anytime I write about anything to do with classic or hard rock, I find myself always saying the same thing about how rock is well past it’s best by date and unfortunately the glory days of the genre are well and truly behind us. That being said, you can imagine the feeling of dread as I read “Heavy rock band stuck in the 80s” in Cobra Spell’s Instagram bio as any rock fan knows that if a band describes themselves as being “stuck in the 80s” then it’s highly likely that they’re extremely mediocre. But man did I eat my words… and man was I happy about it.

Cobra Spell have managed to capture that epic, badass, bedroom poster, no fucks given aspect of 80s glam metal that we all secretly love, even if we don’t acknowledge it yet. With brash song titles like S.E.X, Satan is a Woman and The Devil Inside of Me, you can’t help but feel the rawness behind the album purely from the titles alone. Yeah we all know someone who is going to question us for listening to songs with such vulgar titles, but that’s what makes it so good; It’s excitingly rebellious while also shamelessly fun.

It’s fast, it’s fun, but most importantly, it’s freeing

Despite it’s heavy metal lyrical roots, this project is not all about Devil worshipping and Satan, for it’s when you look into the lyrics of the album that you realise how the devilish themes are merely a front for the messages of female empowerment, as quoted by Sonia Anubis herself in an interview for Metal Remains.

“The album is about rebellion, it’s about women in power… it’s some kind of liberation of expression for women, liberation of sexuality and also a celebration as an all-female formation.”

And it’s that exact feeling that passes on through the music. Just from looking at lyrics such as “I am your drug, you’re addicted” ,“Don’t want to give you expectation, don’t be a fool to my sensations” from S.E.X. and “Why do you try on her, if you know, you know that she’s too much for you” from Bad Girl Crew we get this sense of empowerment for women. These songs aren’t about sex and Satan so it can annoy your grandparents, these are songs about women finally feeling liek the sexy queens that they are. In a music space where the stereotype is men touring the world bagging any groupie they want, Cobra Spell are flipping that narrative in a positive way.

An audial Pack-a-Punch

While it’s obvious from the first listen that 666 sounds fresh out of the 80s, I must admit that the quality of this album is far from anything to come out of that era. Even I am partial to dusting off the old Ratt, Metallica and Van Halen records from time to time but what bugs me most about them is how I’m instantly reminded that the remastered versions on my phone sound so much better; It makes you wonder why people obsess so much over original pressings of records in the first place.

While yes it’s obvious that due to 40 years of technological advancements it will obviously sound better, you can’t deny how rich this album sounds. From the soft synth backing, to the iconic chug from a down picked guitar string to the fierce nature of Kris Vega’s vocals – with 666, the crisp audio quality goes hand in hand with the clear talent of each member. Normally I love when an album sounds like they’ve just turned everything up to the max so it can wallop your eardrums, but this album sounds as if every specific instrument has been precisely refined so that it compliments everything else. Between the thud of the drums, the rumble of the bass, the squeals of the guitar and the ferocity of the vocals, your brain is left almost scrambled as you’re thrown around between such talented members.

We’ve reached a point in rock music where the kids inspired by the golden era of rock have collided with the technological prowess of the 21st century music industry, and it sounds thick and beautiful.

While I do love the fast-paced tracks within the album, it’s not all kick-ass and take names for the quintet. Songs like Love = Love and one of my personal favourites Fly Away pose as emotional ballads for when you’re not in the mood for rocking the house but still want to listen to something impactful. While the bread-and-butter elements of a rock ballad, such as a prominent singing voice and a slow but moving guitar solo, reign high on these songs. Their prominence is challenged by various hard-hitting backers such as synthesisers, vocal harmonies and even a saxophone solo. I mean come on, when was the last time you heard someone kill a sax solo on a rock ballad?

Cobra Spell has gone through a few lineup changes before, but it really feels like with this one Sonia’s got it right. This album is hot fresh glam metal and there’s no messing with it. It sounds as if this album was born to perform, to blow kids’ and adults’ minds all over the world. With an album this good, it’s a shame that they weren’t around in the 80s as I’m sure that they would’ve done huge numbers. What is certain though is that I know for a fact next time Cobra Spell play in England, I will be there.

SOFT PLAY: HEAVY JELLY review – redemptive riot delivers on all fronts
9
Aug

The Kent punk duo SOFT PLAY hold nothing back on their deafening fifth album. There are ample pulse-quickening riffs to whip up the mosh pit, but also plenty of nuance and introspection to reward repeat listens, not least a tender surprise at its climax.

It’s an unfair cliché that punk music—and loud rock music in general—is all about anger and hatred. Enter a mosh pit at some loud and sweaty bunker-like venue, as I did a few weeks ago in Leeds’ grungy Key Club, and the first thing you’ll notice is apparent violence: limbs flying, bodies separating and then converging at high speed, the occasional boot to the head from a crowd surfer. But the second thing will be the compassion lying just under the surface: the way the chaos stopped for a few seconds when my mosh-loving companion Ewan picked up a reveller who had dangerously ended up on the floor, the way the performers speak of gratitude and love, albeit so passionately they sound enraged. Ultimately, that’s what punk is about: not anger, but straightforward, extreme passion. Indeed, there’s often more camaraderie and mutual respect to be found at a heavy metal gig than at a pretentious jazz concert or your average pop gig where drunken fans bay for the hits. It’s in the lyrics too. IDLES, perhaps the biggest punk group in the country at the moment, recently released an album featuring choruses with savage lyrics like “I really, really love my brother,” and “the gratitude runs through my veins.” Listen too closely, and suddenly punk sounds like a rather schmaltzy love fest.

And yet, sometimes there are songs like the third track on SOFT PLAY’s superb new album, a song tellingly titled Act Violently. It’s a bruising three minutes squarely about vocalist Isaac Holman’s hatred towards reckless e-scooter riders, and he doesn’t hold back. “If I wasn’t such a loving bloke I’d kick your fucking head into the road, cunt,” he rages in the first verse over a tumult of scratchy guitars and swaggering drums. Perhaps Act Violently could be spun as a harmless outlet for rage, a way of safely transposing actual violence into song, but really this is a track all about unadulterated hatred. It’s also a fantastic piece of music. Laurie Vincent’s booming drums splash around the perfectly synced vocals and guitars in the verses, and Holman’s chant of “you make me wanna act violently” makes for one of the catchiest choruses of the year. It helps that Holman isn’t entirely serious in his message, allowing for some humor when a bandmate offers him a cup of tea mid-rant, before eventually getting his sweet revenge and sending that e-scooter rider flying over an uncovered drain hole in the middle eight. It’s a track indicative of HEAVY JELLY as a whole: propulsive and compelling on first listen, but not without its clever nuances and shrewd self-awareness.

The album’s flagship track is undoubtedly Punk’s Dead, a sure-footed lead single about the backlash the band received when they changed their name from Slaves to the ostensibly tame SOFT PLAY in 2022. It was a public response colored by today’s ‘culture wars’, the band being accused of over-the-top political correctness enforced by an apparent army of “liberal lefties.” Rather than simply defending their choice, Holman opts to simply present his opponents’ arguments back at them. “Are there any real men in Britain?” he bellows ironically, before a chorus that reads “I don’t like change / Why can’t you just stay the same?” Those might sound like unexciting lyrics, but a chorus about wanting to stay the same is sacrilege in the world of punk, a genre built on the relentless demand for social and political change. Rather than make his own argument, Holman lets his opponents join up the dots. If the spirit of punk is dead, as they claim, then could they be the ones that killed it? It works as a genius, comprehensive takedown of those who attacked the band for their name change, and what’s more, it’s the biggest hit of their career. For SOFT PLAY, surely Punk’s Dead feels like a perfect victory over their haters.

Holman employs a similar lyrical trick on Mirror Muscles, this time presenting the dangerous body-obsessed world of ‘gym lads’ with little direct criticism, although this time it’s harder to tell whether the band is commenting on the risks of tying your self-worth to your muscle mass, or whether, as they said in a recent interview with Rock Sound, they just really like to work out. Either way, the riffs are nothing short of titanic, and the oppressive world of the sweaty gym with its testosterone-pumped hulks is effectively conveyed.

It’s not the only moment on the album that seems to touch on masculinity in the modern world. Isaac Is Typing… is about Holman’s OCD but, as all male mental health struggles must be these days, the vulnerability is hidden under many layers of self-defense. The guitars almost drown out Holman’s confessions, and his screamed vocals make it easy to overlook the vulnerability that comes with admitting to going to therapy, or lines like “my brain is a battlefield, I’m struggling to hold.” It’s an honest, telling indication of how it feels to struggle with the supposedly fluffy, emasculating problem of ‘mental health’ as a man today. Give us some boyish heavy rock music and a heavy layer of vocal distortion and maybe, just maybe, we might be able to admit our vulnerabilities amidst the blanket of noise.

If it’s starting to sound like HEAVY JELLY is a cerebral commentary on modern society, it’s not. Isaac Is Typing… is swiftly followed by the up-tempo party starter Bin Juice Disaster, which is simply about the habit of pushing down rubbish into the bin instead of taking it out, albeit with its own connotations of self-destruction and neglect. There’s more obvious fun in John Wick (chorus: “I’m John Wick, bitch”) and the rapid, post-therapy rant The Mushroom and the Swan, which sports a relentless drum groove destined to ignite dozens of mosh pits when the duo goes on tour in October.

By far the boldest risk of the album comes with the closing track, Everything and Nothing, which starts, jarringly, with a mandolin, and later features a violin solo. Here, at last, Holman’s lyrics are given space to become their most heartfelt. “I see your smile in other people’s faces / Memories and traces / I wish you could’ve stayed,” Holman sings heartbreakingly. It’s not the catchiest song on the album, but it’s easily the most lyrically devastating, and a shockingly brave closer after such a loud and rowdy album. Aggression is easy, comfortable even, and SOFT PLAY are very good at writing aggressive music, but to close their album with a song about raw grief, with no gritty riffs or self-deprecating jokes to hide behind, takes real guts. “Setting sun and a starling murmuration / Amongst the devastation / I feel love,” Holman concludes beautifully at the end of this supposedly angry punk album. It makes you wonder: perhaps it really was about love all along.

Shannon & the Clams: The Moon Is In The Wrong Place review – wildly entertaining dive into the abyss
21
Jun

Raucous 60s rockabilly might sound like an unlikely match for an album unequivocally about grief, but Shannon & the Clams pull it off miraculously in this deeply personal record, which shifts from joy to despair – and often a complex mix of the two – with astonishing ease.

To the casual listener, the seventh album from Californian indie stalwarts Shannon and the Clams is a riot. The Moon Is In The Wrong Place is an endearingly fuzzy trip back to the wilder side of 60s pop: there’s sashaying doo-wop grooves, gloriously melodramatic vocals, a dollop of rockabilly barnstormers. Take the opening track, for instance, which ends theatrically with a flamenco-style coda over a long held note in the vocals, landing with an almighty stomp that’s only lacking a few castanets to bring the point home. It’s a sign of the up-tempo joys to come: The Moon Is In The Wrong Place is an album plenty interesting enough to entertain even before the lyrics can be fully understood.

It’s only by the closing song, Life Is Unfair, that the tight subject matter of The Moon becomes impossible to ignore. “How do you expect me to understand that the love of my life was taken away from me?” Shannon Shaw asks, an opening lyric so stark that even the chugging drums and cheery strummed guitar can’t hide its pain. It turns out The Moon Is In The Wrong Place is an album squarely about grief. The whole project is a result of Shaw’s personal tragedy, namely when Shaw’s fiancé died in a car accident just weeks before their wedding.

It doesn’t take much digging to find the emotional devastation left behind by that fateful day throughout this record. The Vow shuffles its way through an image of the wedding that never was, Shaw begging for the vows she’ll never hear. “First time in my life things fall into place,” she laments. It should sound dour and heavy, but the miracle of this album is Shaw’s knack of finding the light in the darkest of times. “It seems like it’s over, but forever you’re mine,” she concludes optimistically in that same song, letting all sorrow be forgotten with that raucous flamenco finale. It’s not just a satisfying surprise, but surely an act of Herculean bravery from Shaw, who seems willing to tease out whatever drops of hope she can find in such serious and personal subject matter.

Indeed, The Vow is just a taste of the twin themes of delight and misery weaving through Wrong Place. Big Wheel, for instance, is an electrifying piece of garage rock that I’m certain would have achieved world domination – probably alongside a wheel-themed dance move – had it been released sixty years ago. The chorus in particular, with its hulking bass riff and belted vocals, is an impulsive finger-snapper. Bean Fields provides the album’s sunniest moment, graced with almost irritatingly merry plonked piano and lyrics about a wild romance in the fields “where the bugs sing” – the fact that one of the lovers in question is no longer living is only the subtlest of dark undertones, easily lost in the uninhibited slide guitar solo and atmospheric hum of cicadas.

That’s not to say Wrong Place attempts to ignore the darker sides of grief. Oh So Close, Yet So Far is a deeply poignant doo-wop number that sets out Shaw’s conciliatory vision of her finance not being completely lost, but instead poetically subsumed into nature. “No I can’t touch you / Cause you are every star at night,” she rasps, reaching for a part of her lover – his soul, or perhaps literally his atoms – that will exist for eternity. She’s less certain on Real of Magic, a deceptively simple ballad about hallucination, complete with haunting call-and-response backing vocals that seems to mirror the conflicting voices in Shaw’s head.

The album’s title track and central triumph follows, a grippingly distorted descent into genuine terror. Guitars mimic an ‘SOS’ morse code call as Shaw jabs out a closely harmonised one-note melody to the words “The sun burned down when you left this world / Now there is some imposter in the sky”, surely about as epic as opening lyrics get. A furious pair of congas propel the ensuing torrent, evoking the deep-seated sense of cosmic ‘wrongness’ that comes with suddenly losing someone you had assumed would be around for your whole life. It’s the most exciting, darkly compelling piece of indie rock you’re likely to hear all year.

Perhaps inevitably, the less attention-grabbing corners of the album feel superfluous by comparison. The sharply focussed subject matter is briefly lost in the portion of the record where Cody Blanchard takes over vocals, and UFO’s psychedelic account of alien abduction feels slightly clichéd and melodically takes perhaps a little bit too much inspiration from House of the Rising Sun. Blanchard’s best contribution comes with In the Grass, a gentle acoustic guitar number which finds a pretty melody to match his country rasp.

Wrong Place is, undoubtedly, Shannon Shaw’s record, and it’s she who neatly wraps up proceedings with Life Is Unfair. It’s a short track that epitomises the album’s remarkable strength – the delicate balancing act between sorrow and optimism. The final words come in the form of a typically bouncy singalong hook in the major key which masks deep layers of a sadness that only feels partly quashed. “Life is unfair yet beautiful,” Shaw concludes, “only because you were here.”

Maggie Rogers: Don’t Forget Me review – assured third album brims with singalong choruses
24
Apr

The ballads are few and far between on Maggie Rogers’ brilliantly written third record, which delivers one singalong belter after another. Don’t Forget Me doesn’t reinvent the singer-songwriter wheel, but what a fabulous wheel this particular album is.

The origin story of Maryland singer-songwriter Maggie Rogers’ career is the stuff of pop legend these days. Rogers was 22 when she took a music production masterclass at the New York University Tisch School of the Arts, which involved the no doubt intimidating task of playing an original song to one of the most famous producers in the world, Pharrell Williams. The song, Alaska, floored Williams, who’s first response was “I have zero, zero notes for that.” The resulting clip went viral (a remarkable watch still available on YouTube), and the rest is history.

History, because Williams really had discovered a US megastar in that small New York recording studio. Just four years later, Rogers would be at the Grammys. This year, that shy music student has a 30-date US stadium tour in her diary, followed by a tour of Europe in support of a little-known British band by the name of Coldplay. Whilst Alaska remains one of her biggest hits, Rogers’ music these days sounds much removed from the crowd pleasing yet safe pop confections of her 2019 debut, Heard It In a Past Life. Don’t Forget Me feels like the completion of the gradual artistic progression that Rogers launched on that fateful day back in 2016, developing from cautious experimentalism to self-assured pop and country hits. That’s not to say Don’t Forget Me tries anything especially distinctive or unusual, but the bulletproof vocal performances and a string of anthemic choruses don’t put a foot wrong.

Spacey, mature opener It Was Coming All Along is an effective tone-setter, but it’s the moody follow up where the instant classics begin: Drunk is a thrilling ride with bluesy rock guitars and a relentless chorus that recalls Fleetwood Mac at their most dynamic. Best of all is the extraordinary vocal performance, which rattles along with so much pent-up rage there are moments when Rogers’ sounds on the verge of losing control completely. And yet, like a cowboy clinging onto to a raging bull’s leash, she just about lands every adventurous adlib, and the result is one of the most compelling pop-rock recordings of the year so far.

Drunk is just the beginning of Don’t Forget Me’s delights. Deeply lovely So Sick of Dreaming is graced with sparkling layered guitars and a stunningly harmonised chorus that paints Rogers’ lovesickness with a beautiful elongated sigh of a melody. The spoken recount of a failed first date during the bridge may strike some as corny, but the payoff is perfectly executed final chorus that epitomises Rogers’ general fatigue whilst hinting at an underlying hope. The Kill maintains that appealing concoction of pain with a dash of optimism, the latter provided by an winning mellotron hook and galloping groove. It’s a straightforward and arguably unambitious track – a smattering of horns could have been a more daring creative decision to take The Kill even further from bland country music charts fodder – but it’s hard to knock the sheer quality of Rogers’ songcraft.

There are only two ballads in the ten tracks – I Still Do and All the Same – both of which are competently written and necessary moments of quiet reflection, but it’s the stadium-ready up-tempo numbers that will have fans returning to Don’t Forget Me over and over again. Earwormy On & On & On, for instance, pairs a wobbling synth bass with snappy funk drums, a hark back to noughties which might have outdated had Rogers’ hooks not been so punchy. Most of Don’t Forget Me’s choruses seem tailormade for road trip singalongs, particularly the anthemic Never Going Home, as well as the poignant lead single and title track, which closes the album with a pained demand to be remembered. If she’s in any way trying to send a message to listeners at the end of her album, Rogers need not worry – no listener is forgetting this excellent record in a hurry.