May to September 2019
Earlier this year I penned a fulsome and thorough post waxing lyrical about the best gigular moments of the first part of the year that I had been lucky enough to attend. Now, with the summer reaching it's conclusion, it's time to take a stroll back through the hazy, lazy days of 2019's middle period and regale you - dear reader - with my fave live moments that were worthy enough for me to part with my hard-earned. The summer months are always usually packed to the rafters with huge outdoor gigs and festivals, and this year has been no exception. So, without further ado, eyes down for the best of the best....
We start at the beginning of May - which turned out to be an absolute humdinger of a month - with the 8th edition of DesertFest, which has been glueing Camden Town together with a heady brew of stoner rock, doom metal, psych, fuzz and heavy rock since 2012. Taking place over the three days of the May Day Bank Holiday weekend, over the years this gloriously grotty little festival has played host to bands such as Corrosion Of Conformity, Orange Goblin, Monster Magnet, Brant Bjork, Sleep, Electric Wizard, Hawkwind, Nebula and Snapped Ankles. Pitching it's tent at the finest Camden venues - The Underworld, The Devonshire Arms, The Electric Ballroom and The Black Heart - this year also saw The Roundhouse get in on the act with a full program on the Sunday.
Work commitments kept me away from the first two days of this year's festivities, so I missed out on the likes of Kadavar, Black Tusk, Om and Salem's Bend. However, I made up for it with a quite staggering day of the finest sludge-drenched psychedelic blues and out and out doom-filled heady rock grooves at the aforementioned Roundhouse where German trio Colour Haze, San Diego's riff-friendly Earthless, US stoner crew Witch (featuring J Mascis from Dinosaur Jr on drums), Nashville quintet All Them Witches and legendary California-bred desert rock behemoths Fu Manchu all put in sterling sets of the finest boogie-based, crunch-filled, stomach rattling heavy rock and roll this side of a early 70's Led Zep/Black Sabbath mash up. Thrilling stuff. There was just enough time before midnight on the Sunday to catch Norwegian stoner crew The Devil and The Almighty Blues kick up a storm at The Underworld. With Camden overrun with big, hairy, tattooed chaps and dames of every stripe and hue, this was real reminder of how deeply beloved the alternative rock scene still is. I for one am already saving for next year.
I was back in Camden a few days later at the Electric Ballroom to see the return to UK shores of cult Belgian indie-rock crew dEUS, who were touring Europe as part of their 'Ideal Crash 20' jaunt. Doing exactly what it says on the tin, the band rattled through the whole of their classic 'Ideal Crash' album before an encore of band favourites. Released as their third full-length album in 1999, 'Ideal Crash' was supposed to be the record that took the group into the mainstream and make them household names after their first two albums had come close to knocking on the door. Typically, the music-listening general public were looking the other way and the record slipped through the cracks. Their label dumped them and even though the band have carried on making excellent records since, nothing has come close to the majesty of this particular suite of songs.Performing it live, the band put on a real barnstormer of a show with vocalist Tom Barman and keyboard wiz Klaas Janzoons the stars of the show.
There's an occasional appearance from a spritely modern dance troupe to add some artiness to proceedings, but it's really all about the songs: Put The Freaks Up Front, Sister Dew, The Magic Hour, Everybody's Weird and the utter genius that is Instant Street which is the song that really should have been massive for them. If, as many people suggested at the time, dEUS were the Belgian Radiohead, then Instant Street was their Paranoid Android. A huge, thunderous cacophony of grunge-drenched guitars, pulverizing percussion, hollered vocals and mind-melting Sturm und Drang, it was - and still remains - a total monster of a tune that sounded suitably epic at this gig. To be fair, once the album had been performed, the energy levels dropped somewhat and the encores were a little bit flat, but the band - who still plan to carry on ploughing their own furrow - deserved the huge ovation they received for regaling us with such a classic bunch of songs.
The following week in May saw me touch base with a couple of No Static At All faves who I have waxed lyrical about many times before. My second Psychedelic Porn Crumpets gig of this year took in a road-trip down to my old stomping grounds of Guildford in Surrey to see the hairy, lairy Aussies take the fabled Boiler Room venue by storm and lay waste to the local fuzz fans in incendiary style. Doing pretty much exactly what they did in February at Dingwalls, the fresh-faced foursome barrelled their way through a careering set of acid-fried boogie and cerebellum chomping wig-outs that had many a Guilfordian drenched in sweat and crying out for more. Bloody marvellous. Next up was a quick jaunt to Hackney's Oslo Bar to see my all-time favourite grizzled rancheros of the rock and roll mesa, Endless Boogie, who once again showed the whippersnappers how to do this blues-infused, metronomic psych-rock thing properly. Stretching their setlist to an impressive 5 songs, the Boog spent a good fifty percent of the set growling and grooving their way through the classic Smoking Figs In The Back Yard before head honcho Paul Major realised he was going to have to wind down the gig at some point. I could quite happily watch this crew play for 24 hours straight, and I get the feeling the band feel the same way. I'm putting it out there: they're pretty close to being the best live band on the planet.
Within a week, I was back out on the gig trail and on my way to The Academy in Islington to catch up with the mighty Swervedriver, who have recently released their sixth album 'Future Ruins' to huge acclaim. I've been a fan of Oxford's psych-indebted shoegazers since their early forays into the reverb-drenched stratosphere back in the early 90's. There was a lengthy sabbatical through the early noughties, before core members Adam Franklin and Jimmy Hartridge reconvened and started touring again. After the usual 'album in full' gigs and fan favourite shindigs, the duo - helped by ex-Supergrass bassist Mick Quinn and drummer Mikey Jones - released the excellent 'I Wasn't Born To Lose You' opus in 2015. That record gained some real traction and reminded people what was so special about Swervedriver in the first place.
The new album solidifies that fact and I was really looking forward to hearing it live. I wasn't disappointed. With the band on terrific form and Franklin and Hartridge's guitars twisting and turning around each other with sublime style, the big tunes on the latest record such as the title track, Mary Winter and Drone Lover all stood toe to toe quite wonderfully with the earlier classics like Never Lose That Feeling, Rave Down and the still utterly magisterial Duel. Both Franklin and Hartridge - never usually known for their effusiveness - looked thoroughly overwhelmed and overjoyed with proceedings and the whole gig was an absolute joy from first to last.
Two more gigs to end with in May - I told you it was a humdinger - and one of the finest of the year took place at the tiny little Omeara club just round the back of London Bridge station. Timothy Showalter has been trading under the name Strand Of Oaks for a good few years now and releasing solid, if not spectacular, albums that have hovered around my radar and throwing up the odd gem like the gorgeous JM from 2014's 'Heal'. All that has changed though this year, with March's astonishing 'Eraserland' album shooting straight to the top of my own personal album of the year list. A wondrous collection of alt-country laments and psychedelic soul, it is without doubt the album of Showalter's life. To tour said record, Showalter has put together a crack unit of Americana stalwarts and, armed with his trusty guitar and a holdall full of heartbreak, big Tim was on magnificent form and enjoying himself immensely. Highlights were plentiful with most of the new album given an airing. However, if there is a better song written within this genre this year than Forever Chords, I'll be amazed. A transcendent, transformative and totally transporting thing of beauty, it filled the room with wonder and joy at the gig's climax and had Showalter straining every sinew to deliver his sermon of love and healing. Just stunning. The next gig that followed that one was always going to suffer a little, but when US art-rock inspired indie rockers Filthy Friends took to the stage at Islington's Garage a few days later, they did their very best to surpass it. Something of a alt-rock supergroup, the Friends are made up of ex-Fastbacks guitarist Kurt Bloch, Minus 5 stalwart Scott McCaughey, Baseball Project drummer Linda Pitmon, Sleater-Kinney vocalist Corin Tucker and - on lead guitar - one Peter Buck from R.E.M. Now, obviously I wasn't going to turn down the chance to see the mighty Mr Buck at such a compact venue and I'm so glad I didn't. The two Filthy Friends albums - 2016's 'Invitation' and this years 'Emerald Valley' - are perfectly serviceable collections of gnarly, politically aware rock tunes but, if I'm brutally honest, a little goes a long way.
Live on stage though, the collective are a different matter. With Pitmon holding down the beat in hugely impressive fashion, the grizzled old coots on six-string duties are a joy to behold with Bloch in particular having an absolute ball. Buck, fully aware that most patrons are there to see him and him alone, keeps himself to himself at the back of the stage and never says a word. His guitar playing though is as exemplary as you would wish it to be, full of strident riffing and jangle-infused cirlicues that harken back to that classic R.E.M. period of the late 80's. However, as joyful as it is to see Buck up close, the gig belongs to Tucker who - freed from her vocal sharing duties with Carrie Brownstein in Sleater-Kinney - is on tremendously thrilling form throughout, with her lung-busting vocal stylings raising the rafters and rattling the rooftops for miles around. Fantastically exciting.
After such a packed May, the following month was a quieter affair with only two events on the calendar to trouble my wallet. The first was a splendid evening in the heart of Bethnal Green with the venerable old Japanese psych-rock merchants Acid Mother's Temple, who have been plying their trade for over 25 years now never straying far from the path of prog-rock influenced and doom-laden instrumental works that cover similar territory to Krautrock bands from the 70's. Led by core members Higashi Hiroshi on all manner of keyboards and synths and wild-haired guitar virtuoso Kawabata Makoto, the band has seen a revolving door of other members come and go. On this particular evening, the duo were complemented by the spectacularly flamboyant Jyonson Tsu on extra guitar and all other manner of stringed instruments, mad as a box of frogs drum titan Satoshima Nani and the mysterious Wolf on bass. Settling down in front of a small crowd of AMT devotees - indeed, there was more middle-aged men in retina-burning tie-dye here than was strictly necessary - the band proceeded to bewitch and enthrall the gathered faithful with a thumping mix of universe straddling cosmica that saw many present grinning from ear to ear whilst at the same time looking for all the world as if their heads were about to explode. Magnificent, obviously.
And secondly in June, it was a return to the UK for the biggest metal band in the world and the Bay Area thrash kings - Metallica. After bagging the number one spot in No Static At All's Best Gigs Of 2017 for their astonishing O2 performance in October of that year, this time around it was a chance to show the Metallica family if they can still do the business outside of arenas - in this case, the pain in the arse to get to enormodome that is Twickenham Stadium. Like most huge outdoor venues, Twickenham is a soulless and hugely commercialised affair that depresses on almost every level. Fortunately though, the Four Horsemen of the Metal Militia - James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett and Rob Trujillo - who, even though they've been touring the 'Hardwired...' album for close to three years, were on phenomenal form yet again and helped to wash away the stain of the stadium's barn-like surroundings and the ridiculous state of affairs that was the total lack of cash-accepting food and drink concessions. All the big Metallica moments were present and correct of course: Sad But True, Seek And Destroy, Master Of Puppets, The Unforgiven, One, For Whom The Bell Tolls and a final big hit double whammy encore of Nothing Else Matters and Enter Sandman. The guys all looked hale and hearty and fit and healthy - although, with Hetfield recently re-admitting himself into rehab there was obviously more happening below the surface - and the stage set and huge visual backdrops were a godsend for those in the crowd who were perched way up in the gods. All in all, and despite the venue, Metallica once again proved why they are still top of the game and the yardstick that all metal bands should be measuring themselves against.
Into July then and first up was another trip to The Garage in Islington, this time to see a real legend in the flesh. Back in the late 60's, Arthur Lee and his band Love were a kaftan's hem away from becoming one of the biggest bands in America. Feted by luminaries like Jim Morrison and Brian Wilson, Love's third album - the deathless 'Forever Changes' - was, and remains to this day, a true classic of Summer Of love psychedelic wonder. Unfortunately, Lee discovered heroin and fell out with almost every other member of Love, the band disintegrated and Lee eventually wound up in prison. 15 years ago he returned to the fray, hooked up with Love-loving LA session band Baby Lemonade and toured the world for a time to massive acclaim before sadly passing away in 2006. Since then, Baby Lemonade - now christened The Love Band - have been touring solidly with the one sole surviving member of the original Love joining their ranks on lead guitar.
Later in July, there was a wonderfully splendid evening of the finest jangle in the known universe as my current favourite band Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever popped back to London and thrilled their ever-increasing fanbase at East London's sweaty little hotbox The Village Underground. I've written enough about this band over the last couple of years to fill a hefty tome, but suffice to say they were - as ever - utterly tremendous from minute one and the songs from last year's 'Hope Downs' album (my Album Of The Year for 2018) still sound as gloriously life-enriching as they did 12 months ago. Fantastic.
Next up was a scuzzy and fuzz-swamped evening of loud and raucous rock and roll from Southern Californian troupe Sacri Monti, who took over Camden's Black Heart and almost peeled the paint from the walls. Plugging themselves into a vibe-heavy melange of thumping drummage and teeth-flaying riffage, this quintet of long-hairs are set fair to do great things within the desert rock scene and it wouldn't surprise me at all to see them turning up on the bill of next year's DesertFest. Cracking stuff.
The last big outdoor gig of the year for me - bar the little matter of The Green Man Festival which I've written about elsewhere on this blog - was a huge coming together of two of the biggest legends in rock music and two of the finest songwriters alive. No, I don't mean the Ed Sheeran/Lewis Capaldi double-header, I'm talking about Neil Young and Bob Dylan performing on the same bill at Hyde Park. For many ageing hippies of a certain vintage, this lineup was manna from heaven. I'm not quite at that stage just yet, but I'll go and see Neil Young anywhere and the fact that Dylan was along for the ride as well was just a bonus really. Young, who has been touring with his current compadres The Promise Of The Real for a few years now, had no new product to promote (although, as is his contrary wont, he announced a brand new album with old sparring partners Crazy Horse two weeks after this gig), so was more than happy to just pump out the classics - which he did with the effervescence and zeal of a man half his age. Performing first, his entire set was in scorching daylight which, for an old school fan such as myself, was a little jarring as I'm so used to seeing him headline big outdoor gigs as the sun sets behind him. However, this odd state of affairs didn't detract from his playing and his singing as he powered through titanic renditions of Rockin' In The Free World, Like A Hurricane, Alabama, Words and Winterlong as well as a glorious little acoustic interlude containing Heart Of Gold, From Hank To Hendrix and the wonderful Old Man. With The Promise Of The Real - featuring Lukas Nelson front and center - backing Young up in eviscerating style, at one point it looked as if Young might perform all of 1990's era-defining grunge template 'Ragged Glory' in full. As it was, half of that album was aired before his allotted two hours fizzled out with a couple of throwaway songs in Roll Another Number and the pointless dirge of Piece Of Crap. An odd end to what had been a typically awesome Young set. As for Dylan? Well, as it was my first time witnessing the great man live, I'd like to say he was everything I wanted him to be. Unfortunately, all I can say is that he was everything I'd been warned he'd be like. He was never the greatest vocalist of all time but whatever he had back in the day, it worked. Not so much now. With the greatest of respect to one of - if not the - finest songwriter of all time, Dylan now sounds just like the old Vic Reeves pub singer sketch from early 90's UK quiz show Shooting Stars. He has also decided that some of his greatest songs need to be rearranged in such a manner as to be almost unrecognisable. Most of the crowd stuck it out for a good hour or so, wincing and shaking their heads as Dylan honked and howled his way through dirge after dirge but eventually - and way before curfew - huge swathes of the 60,000 strong throng started to make their way toward the exits. The whole affair was summed up brilliantly by one of my companions turning to me two-thirds of the way through one tuneless farrago and shouting incredulously "Bloody hell, this is Blowin In The Wind!" Embarrassing, really.
Finally, after my gargantuan and glory-filled long weekend of festival fun down at The Green Man, there was just time to squeeze in a couple more gigs in London before the leaves started to fall and the nights started to draw in. Mark E Everett and his current iteration of Eels sold out the Hammersmith Apollo at the end of August and put on an incredible show bursting with classic blues-dipped alt-pop and driving rock and roll shenanigans that just confirmed to me, and many others present, how hugely underrated he is as a songwriter and showman. I'd already seen them a week earlier at Green Man so I knew what to expect at the Apollo show but it was still just as exciting and viscerally thrilling as any modern-day rock show I've witnessed recently. Everett is a hugely entertaining presence, rattling off stories and anecdotes and riffing with his brilliant band to hilarious effect. And the tunes! Prizefighter, I Like Birds, Flyswatter, Dog Faced Boy, Novocaine For The Soul. All absolute classics. There was a hefty proliferation of covers - their rendition of Prince's Raspberry Beret was particularly fine - and some spine-tingling softer moments such as the sparkling version of Brian Wilson's Love And Mercy that segued into one of Everett's finest songs in Blinking Lights. A splendid evening from a consummate entertainer and a kick-ass band. What more could you want?
And finally in this rather extensive look back at this summer's brightest and best gigular activity, we have another London appearance from the Bostonian kings of indie-rock and the godfathers of the whole alternative explosion of the early 90's. Yep, the magnificently mighty Pixies popped over a couple of weeks ago and - on the back of the recently released 'Beneath The Eyrie' album - sold out the cavernous hangar that is Alexandra Palace. I promised myself a few years ago that I wouldn't return to the fabled Ally Pally ever again, but when it comes to the Pixies, all bets are off. And I'm so glad I made the hefty old trek. If I'm honest, the new album isn't pulling up too many trees for me - it's fine and it does the job if you want a straightforward collection of dark and moody indie - but considering it's the Pixies, I was hoping for more. Live though, it's a different proposition. Every track from the new record gets an airing and each track sounds beefier and more direct than it does at home. The 20,000 strong faithful are rapt and completely into the new tunes from the off as well, and there's little evidence of a mad rush to the bar when anything brand new is played. All the big hitters get a splendid airing too with Debaser, Monkey Gone To Heaven and Where Is My Mind still sounding brilliant and predictably bringing the house down and causing mass singalongs. Vocally, Frank Black is on coruscating form with that banshee wail of his during Tame, Dead and Brick Is Red still causing frissons of excitement and hairs to rise on the back of my neck 30 odd years after I first heard it. On guitar, Joey Santiago is still doing his thing, quite incredibly, bending and stretching his strings and filling the room with his eye-watering riffs on Bone Machine and Vamos. With David Lovering thundering away happily on drums - although missing out this time on vocal duties on the sadly absent La La Love You - and new girl Paz Lenchantin doing a sterling job in the 'Kim Deal Replacement' spot, the foursome put on a commanding performance over two hours and almost 40 songs. There really has never been a band like them. Long may they continue.
