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Music LIVE REVIEWS
M O C Y. H P A R G O T C P O T U A I
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INDIE ROCK GRANDADDY 02 ABC, Thu 30 Aug, Glasgow ●●●●● ELECTRONIC POP GRIMES Liquid Room, Edinburgh, Tue 28 Aug ●●●●●
Newly reformed lo-fi rock heroes Grandaddy have played their cards close to their chest so far about their reunion plans, aside from a current string of tour dates. However, based on tonight’s perfor- mance, frontman/ songwriter Jason Lytle and co proved that this is not a reunion to be met with any cynicism. Not enough time has elapsed in their absence to dismiss their brand of indie pop as nostalgic fodder either. Instead the Californian outfit’s six-year hiatus has allowed a period of reflection and a second wind this time around. Lytle appears in his trademark trucker hat and a t-shirt bearing the words ‘Over the Hill’ – a sense of irony and self-awareness that has been ever present in his music. From the opening ‘El Caminos in the West’ straight into slacker anthem ‘Now it’s On’, the guys are back in full swing. The playful tinkering of analogue synth on ‘AM 180’ coupled with Daniel Johnston-esque melodies on closing track ‘He’s Simple, He’s Dumb, He’s the Pilot’ confirm suspicions that Grandaddy may still have another creative spurt up their sleeve. With nothing to prove yet so much more to give, the guys are anything but ‘Over the Hill’. (Jack Taylor)
Having played her last Scottish date in Glasgow’s Berkeley Suite earlier this year as a solo artist, Vancouver’s Claire Boucher (aka Grimes, even though there wasn’t a note of grime played here) seems to have decided the best way to go full-band is to appear onstage as a tribute to the Top of the Pops style of the early 1990s. To her right stood a man with long blond hair and a black jumpsuit dancing as if he’d been beamed in from a field off the M25 circa 1992, to her left a bald guy with small black shades channelling the twin spirits of Vin Diesel and Right Said Fred’s Richard Fairbrass as he limply bashed a drum pad. In the midst of it all, the silken-voiced Boucher looked overjoyed. Her music is understated but wonderful, a lo-fi electronic reimagining of the same era that her style (bottle-blonde hair, black headband) and accomplices are from, with trippy visuals to match over her stunning signature track ‘Oblivion’ and much added bass in the build-up to ‘Vanessa’. These are rich and textured party sounds, tracks for listening alone or in a crowd as loud and receptive as the one she faced here. (David Pollock)
WEEKEND FESTIVAL MUSIC LANGUAGE Various Venues, Glasgow, Sat 1–Sun 2 Sep ●●●●● ROCK PATTI SMITH O2 ABC, Glasgow, Wed 5 Sep ●●●●●
The all-dayer festival has had mixed fortunes; in Glasgow at least. Fortunately, sometimes folks get it right. Launched last year by celebrated Glasgow promoters Cry Parrot and Tracer Trails, Music Language has been ambitious in its attempts to gather a varied cross-section of the city’s music but the efforts to produce something all- encompassing, challenging and uniquely entertaining have once more paid off. Spanning two days, artists were housed in unusual venues – homely vegan café The 78; nearby art space SWG3; the school hall Kinning Park Complex and tacky but loveable line-dance haven, The Grand Ole Opry. There was a uni- fied sense of honesty in expression throughout, whether weird and wonderful or jarring and practically unlistenable. From outdoor genera- tor gigs too intense for walls (Phat Trophies, The Downs, World Peace, Muscletusk); Conquering Animal Sound’s sublime Sunday serenade; Hector Bizerk’s commanding rap party; Sacred Paws tearing it up in socks and the downbeat beauty of Happy Particles and Remember Remember, ML’s eclecticism was a welcome source of endless fas- cination. More please. (Ryan Drever)
Patti Smith is one of rock’s great romantic radicals, with an ecstatic vision of poetry and rock’n’roll as a liberating force. It’s easy to sneer, but in these cynical times we need committed art- ists like Smith. One of the beautiful things about her is that for all her charisma and talent, she never comes across as some messianic rock star, but as a fan, as in love with art and life as the rest of us. When she dances during the instrumental breaks in songs, her unselfconscious joy is clear to all. The big songs – ‘Gloria’, ‘Because The Night’, ‘Dancing Barefoot’ – become communal experiences, but deeper cuts like ‘April Fool’, a giddy evocation of young love, and the slow- burning trance-rock of ‘Beneath the Southern Cross’ are just as affecting. An intense encore has her band, led by long-term guitarist Lenny Kaye, cranking up the volume and energy, beginning with the feral howl of ‘Banga’ and ending in a ferocious ‘Babelogue/Rock’n’Roll Nigger’, which sees Smith break all her guitar strings, deliver an impassioned defence of Pussy Riot, and tell the audience they can change the world. Wow! The sea of possibilities is out there. (Stewart Smith) 20 Sep–18 Oct 2012 THE LIST 79
Y H P A R G O T O H P W O L G N O S M R C T A D R A W D O O W X E L A
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MINIMAL POP THE XX Usher Hall, Edinburgh, Wed 12 Sep ●●●●●
Spare, dreamy, devotional music as under-the-covers intimate as The xx’s shouldn’t logically work in a venue this ornate and cavernous. But the gifted young London trio pull off a game-raising performance with deceptive ease at one of their biggest headline shows to date – the finale of a release-week mini-tour of UK concert halls in support of solid second album Coexist, the much-anticipated follow-up to their self-titled 2009 Mercury prize-winning debut. A blockbusting light and visuals display is yet another
relatively shy and static indie band’s ally, allowing the young London trio – vocalists and guitarists Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim, backed by percussionist and electronics man Jamie Smith, who busily cooks up a storm of beats and drones surrounded by a veritable kitchen of equipment – to maintain their default pose of slow-moving silhouettes against all the dry ice and strobes, and let the tunes speak for them for the most part. The indistinguishability of The xx’s new album from its predecessor has been widely noted, by the band included, and they’re right to make no apologies for it – why rush to develop a sound already so distinguished from everything else surrounding in contemporary British indie? They do a fine job live of crafting a set with unexpectedly dramatic and dynamic variation in temperament, volume and pace, when it could be a relatively monolithic affair. A delicate, breathy ‘Angels’ starts things with quiet intensity, but by ‘Missing’ five songs later – which is preceded by a pretty shower of strobe-lit silver glitter dropped from the rafters, the kind of thing most other bands would save for a finish- ing flourish – they’ve built up a shimmering, imposingly noisy wall of sound. Come the pumping, hypnotic cli- max of ‘Reunion’ the atmosphere is practically clubby; it’s only during their most identifiable number, ‘VCR’, that the mysterious gloom breaks and lifts to the point where we can actually see the band clearly.
Slowly revealed with almost pseudo-religious cer- emony from behind a curtain during main set closer ‘Infinity’, a giant dry-ice-filled, LED-illuminated ‘X’ at the rear of the stage – which hangs eerily behind the band during a well-judged encore of portentous instru- mental ‘Intro’ (so beloved of TV directors in need of a soundtrack to a moody montage sequence) and the waifish melancholy of ‘Stars’ – seals this cosy love-in on a grand scale how else but with a great big kiss. (Malcolm Jack)