The Lathums - From Nothing To A Little Bit More
The Lathums’ long-awaited debut, How Beautiful Life Can Be, came as a pleasant surprise to Joe Public (reflected in its chart-topping status) upon its release 18 months ago. But for those who had been paying attention, namely their not-insignificant fanbase, it was merely an official release for songs that had been in their personal lexicons for a long time.
https://www.clashmusic.com/reviews/the-lathums-from-nothing-to-a-little-bit-more/
Italia 90 - Live at the Exchange, Bristol - 23rd February 2023
Here’s a question that hasn’t been answered in over 40 years: what is the next stage after post-punk? Post-post punk? Punk 2.0?
Of course technically the answer was ‘new wave’ back in the early 1980s, but what of the 21st century iteration?
Perhaps, as we live in a time of sequels, remakes and everything all at once, we are destined to have to manage with only a handful of genre titles. That’s your lot, music journalists (ahem). Work with it.
Which is just as well, because south Londoners Italia 90 have been drinking from the post-punk well for 7 years, releasing music at a snail’s pace until they finally unleashed their fine debut album Living Human Treasure back in January.
Indeed, it’s reflective of modern Britain: we aren’t evolving, we are stagnating, and the quartet successfully harness that through their intentionally repetitive lyrics (or message discipline, as they call it in politics).
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/02/review-italia-90-exchange-bristol/
Gorillaz - Cracker Island
Whither Song Machine Season Two? It should always have been obvious that a mind so relentlessly creative as Damon Albarn’s (for it is he in case you weren’t aware) was never likely to stick to one idea for long.
Over the last decade or so the orchestrator of the virtual band has tended to release two Gorillaz albums in quick succession (generally each side of a tour), with the second album being less considered and bombastic.
The scrappily experimental The Fall (2011) was recorded on Albarn’s iPad during the Escape To Plastic Beach world tour in 2010, while The Now Now (coming hot on the heels of the sprawling Humanz in 2018) was something of a ‘solo’ album also recorded largely on the road.
Therefore, Cracker Island prolongs the general pattern although it’s a much more rounded and coherent piece work than the its bedfellows.
Albarn frequently smothers his themes and observations in Gorillaz under oblique references (and there’s plenty to be found here) but, when announcing the album, guitarist Noodle claimed it is, ‘the sound of change and the chorus of the collective’.
Meaning: the latest adventure for our cartoon heroes is joining a cult in California as metaphor for our collective reliance on technology, a topic with which Albarn has dabbled before (on 2014 solo album Everyday Robots) but offers rich ploughs to furrow.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/02/review-gorillaz-cracker-island/
Reverend & The Makers - Live at Bristol Academy, 10th February 2023
As chilling as it may be, Jon McClure (The Reverend) and his comrades (the Makers) are perilously close to becoming veterans of the music industry. At least, by recognisable criteria.
The forthcoming Heatwave In The Cold North is Reverend And The Makers’ seventh studio album in sixteen years, which itself follows a 2019 Best Of. Sobering facts, to be sure.
However, experience has its demonstrable benefits in their live show; after a brace of support acts in the form of Supergrass drummer Danny Goffey (punchy pub-punk rock) and Ramona Flowers (80’s electro-pop), McClure and company utilise the best tricks of the trade from the off across a packed set, as the slow keyboard notes from the title-track of 2007 debut The State Of Things build the atmosphere succinctly before the Streets-meets-ska bop of the song truly kicks in.
Shortly afterwards McClure shrewdly gauges the capacity for crowd interaction by dividing them for some ‘nah-nah-nahs’ on the appropriately sun-kissed ‘18-30’ – not that much prompting is required because a) it’s Friday night and b) the love Reverend And The Makers get from their audience is unconditional.
Even so, no chances are taken, with the backbone of the set made up of tracks from the debut garnished with choice career cuts and a sprinkling of new material: the title-track is Marvin Gaye-inspired soul while ‘High’ (a self-professed B-side, the subject of which is unambiguous) is knowingly slovenly.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/02/review-reverend-and-the-makers-bristol/
James Wakefield - Little Jar OST
Listening to a film soundtrack is a tricky exercise to perfect.
It’s all down to timing: ordinarily, the music will be released before the movie itself and so the risk of spoilers is large, especially if the track names are titled with something ambiguous like ‘Lead Character Dies’.
No, the best soundtracks should give an indication of the beats of the movie by virtue of mood and tempo, which this collection of songs achieves with aplomb.
For those who haven’t taken the time to read about Dominic Lopez’s forthcoming indie flick Little Jar, it stars Kelsey Gunn as a misanthrope who hates people but finds herself in isolation with no-one to talk to apart from (logically) a dead mouse in a jar.
In just one sentence, the concept and mood of the film is clear, and the accompanying soundtrack by composer James Wakefield will surely complement it beautifully.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/02/review-james-wakefield-little-jar/
The Waeve - The Waeve
After mastering solo life, which arguably culminated in two fine albums in the mid-2000s (2004’s Happiness In Magazines and Love Travels At Illegal Speeds in 2006), erstwhile Blur guitarist Graham Coxon has since turned his hand to alternative projects.
Now, after providing the soundtrack to coming-of-age dramas (The End Of The F**king World) and, wonderfully, a graphic novel (Superstate), follows a formal collaborative album.
At least in principle that’s what The Waeve is, yet the simplification hugely understates the concept. Uniting with Rose Elinor Dougall (formerly of The Pipettes and a one-time foil to Mark Ronson), whose presence seems to have galvanized Coxon, the duo have produced a piece of work hugely ambitious in scale and expansive in scope.
Yet on first listen it’s quite overwhelming. Where last year’s standalone single ‘Something Pretty’ was easy to digest, the ten tracks on this self-titled album veer from one sound to another with little warning.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/02/review-the-waeve-the-waeve/
Hotel Lux - Hands Across The Creek
As unwelcome as they were, the lockdowns brought about the opportunity for intense self-reflection and, in some cases, the steely determination to enact those changes when the world reopened.
Yet for London-via-Portsmouth’s Hotel Lux, any changes were seemingly unnecessary. Entrenched in the hallowed South London music scene, back in early 2020 the group were on the crest of wave.
Their early clattering pub-rock singles had received widespread acclaim and their Barstool Preaching EP had gained patronage from the likes of Iggy Pop, while a maiden appearance at SXSW beckoned before everything went upside down.
For the band’s members however, the self-analysis went further than deciding banana bread was the answer to their prayers. By bassist Cam Sims’ own admission the quartet, ‘always cared too much about how we were going to be perceived’, and concluded that they had been pandering to their audience rather than harness their individuality.
So, after recruiting new guitarist Max from fellow South Londoners LEGSS, Hotel Lux underwent an overhaul of their sound, incorporating the likes of Neil Young and Brian Eno to their influences.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/01/review-hotel-lux-hands-creek/
The Murder Capital - Gigi’s Recovery
In the natural order of things, bands follow a standard timeline: Get to know each other, form a band (these two stages are interchangeable), hone your craft, write songs that will appeal, unleash on the public. A tried and tested method.
Not so much for The Murder Capital. Although the Dublin five-piece formed at college and found success and acclaim with 2019 debut When I Have Fears, the album was released within 9 months of their knowing each other and, by their own admission, they only became firm friends during the pandemic. In tandem, the tortuous months of isolation afforded the group the opportunity for merciless self-evaluation, while guitarists Cathal Roper and Damien Tuit invested in new FX pedals and synths to expand their sound.
Money well spent. While When I Have Fears was equally blistering and urgent, Gigi’s Recovery offers more varied textures and sonic experimentation. Comeback single ‘A Thousand Lives’, with its scratchy, trip-hop percussion, shimmering synths and arch guitar licks, set the standard last year, each instrument revealing itself slowly across the course of the song before a snarling outro. Likewise ‘Crying’, on which scaling and queasily dipping violas precede purposeful drums and a bruising bass, as the group work their way through the gears. Virtually all of the tracks follow this pattern of building as they go, almost a musical metaphor for the burgeoning relationships between the members of the group.
https://gigwise.com/reviews/3428453/album-review--the-murder-capital-gigi-s-recovery
Dave Rowntree - Radio Songs
Admit it, you didn’t see this one coming.
Before their uber-gigs at Wembley Stadium later in the year, it seems like the members of Blur are keen to remind us of their solo projects, or perhaps they are simply clearing their decks.
Within the next two months Damon Albarn’s Gorillaz release ‘their’ latest album, while Graham Coxon’s latest project (The Waeve) unleash their debut album in February. Indeed, the only idle member is Alex James but the state of the world is bad enough without adding new Fat Les music to the mix.
Which just leaves the band’s drummer Dave Rowntree, who is anything but idle. Most famously a former councillor for the Labour party, he also has strings of lawyer, composer (wonderfully, he composed the soundtrack 2018’s Bros documentary) and light aircraft instructor (among others) to his hefty bow, to which he can now add ‘singer’.
Singing drummers may be an acquired taste, but Rowntree has taken lessons in preparation and his weary sadness and exhaustion adds real emotion to these already-moving ten tracks.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/01/review-dave-rowntree-radio-songs/
Ocean Colour Scene - Bristol o2 Academy, December 15th
Gigs in the lead-up must be tricky for bands to negotiate.
It’s the party season, so punters (not unreasonably) want to hear the hits and have a good time. Fortunate then that Solihull’s finest are in town.
For a few years at least, Ocean Colour Scene were arguably Britain’s best singles band, and all from their imperial period (’96-’99) are present and correct within tonight’s setlist. Shrewd operators that they are, it makes for a rapturous final 40 minutes of the set as virtually all the singalongs come thick and fast.
The remaining hits are liberally sprinkled across the opening hour. The Motown stomp of ‘You’ve Got It Bad’ opens the main set, Steve Cradock’s vibrant funk complementing Oscar Harrison (surely one of rock’s under-rated drummers) who manages to contain himself until the outro.
Mid set, the three standout tracks from 1999’s One From The Modern keep things ticking over nicely: the low-key but lovelorn ‘So Low’ braces the audience for a snarling ‘July’ (with amended lyrics to reflect the time of year) while the marching ‘Profit In Peace’ provides the first singalong of the night.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2022/12/ocean-colour-scene-live-22/#gsc.tab=0
Live4Ever Tracks Of The Year - 2022
Do you want to know something scary? We’re more than a quarter of the way through this decade.
And we can all agree it’s been a belter so far. As the West continues to be in permanent Crisis Mode – from populism to COVID to Ukraine to the cost of living crisis (not forgetting the death of the planet) – there has been little respite from the horror. Apart from the sort that can be found in music.
That said, it’s becoming an annual tradition to bemoan the outside world in these roundups and sadly, the music industry isn’t entirely a safe haven.
Even if it’s been a marginal improvement on the preceding years (acts could actually tour, for one thing), there is still much cause for despair.
Compounding the fact that artists make negligible money from their output (because, y,know, streaming) are the increased bills, felt equally as keenly by venues, musicians, and stage crew. Inevitably, these price hikes must fall at the feet of the consumer who are being hit by huge jumps in their monthly bills…you see the problem?
So, at the risk of becoming repetitive in these end-of-year features, it’s been another scary year in which we also lost another tranche of musical heroes…
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2022/12/live4ever-tracks-22-feature/#gsc.tab=0
This Is Colorama! - Volume 1
Initially launched as a vehicle for Andy Crofts (lead songwriter with The Moons and bassist in Paul Weller’s band) to release his own music, Colorama Records have steadily built up an impressive portfolio over the last 18 months, with a host of releases showcasing the diversity of acts signed up to the Moons man’s boutique label.
However, some of their releases may have slipped through the cracks and not received the attention they deserved, so this compilation release, which collects the best cuts, is a handy starting point.
As is his right, Crofts bookends the record. Today, by his band, is a welcome bit of percussion-heavy sunshine as the nights draw in, his dreamy vocals recalling summers past and a reminder of how underrated The Moons are.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2022/11/this-is-colorama-volume-1/
Interview - Matt Everitt, BBC 6 Music
Back in 2007, BBC Radio 6 Music DJ Steve Lamacq launched a new initiative on his show: Wear Your Old Band T-Shirt To Work Day. Designed as an exercise in nostalgia, for one episode per year Lammo encourages his listeners to participate with tales of the gigs at which they bought the T-shirts, who they were with and any further conversations about the band or artist. As any listener to Lamacq’s show can testify, it was one of several features that resonated with his audience.
15 years on, the initiative has gone from strength to strength. Accordingly, this year’s event on Friday 4th November has a celebratory feel, with a wealth of treats including: a live set from indie darling Sports Team at Maida Vale; a panel of specially invited judges including Roisin Murphy, Orlando Weeks and all-round goddess Jo Whiley taking part in The Polyester Prize, where they will choose the best design from a shortlist of iconic T-Shirts, as well as the usual special guests and listener interactions.
While other features have come and gone, T-Shirt Day is now a huge tentpole in 6 Music’s calendar. But why is that? ‘I think Lammo really touched a nerve when he first did it,’ music news reporter Matt Everitt tells me when we speak. ‘It’s obviously a pretty potent thing, but it’s not just about T-shirts, is it? Like all the best ideas, it’s not just about the surface level of, ‘aren’t band t-shirts brilliant?’ It’s about what they represent and what they mean. Not just the relationship you’ve got with the band, but that moment in your life when you bought them, be that years ago or something really recent that’s quite visceral.’
https://gigwise.com/features/3427561/matt-everitt-on-6music-s-t-shirt-day--sustainability---merch
Kasabian - Live at Alexandra Palace, London - 29th October 2022
On the biggest party night of the year in old London town there are few bands better suited to provide the required soundtrack.
After The Lathums warm the crowd with a selection of cuts from both last year’s number 1 debut and their just-announced second album, Sergio Pizzorno and The Other Members ratchet up the excitement for an already well-lubricated Ally Pally.
We jest of course, as simply referring to them as The Others doesn’t do justice to the contributions of Pizzorno’s bandmates.
Long-time drummer Ian Matthews, never found wanting for enthusiasm, is a beast on the skins as he liberally peppers the electronics with thunderous percussion, while fellow veteran Chris Edwards provides either funk or rigidity on bass, depending on what the song requires.
Elsewhere, Tim Carter (recently promoted to full-time member) bolsters the sound on guitar, but Kasabian’s new secret weapon on the live stage is Robert Harvey.
It was an inspired move to bring in The Music frontman to step into Pizzorno’s shoes on guitar and backing vocals (and keys and occasional percussion) while the big man went up top.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2022/11/kasabian-live-alexandra-22/
Arctic Monkeys - The Car
‘Hurrah, Arctic Monkeys are back!’
‘This is rubbish, I want the previous version of Arctic Monkeys back.’
…has basically been the commentary of certain fans upon every release by the group, barring second album Favourite Worst Nightmare, which bore enough resemblance to their seminal debut to pass their muster.
Better still, there are now two generations of fans (those that were enthralled by Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not and the newer breed who jumped aboard for AM) who can rage together.
The clue was in the first album title, people.
Fortunately, Alex Turner and his friends don’t care, never have and nor should they; they are artists, and art by democracy isn’t a viable concept.
Yet there was some allowance made for the sci-fi lounge jazz of previous album Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino in the hope that it was a one-off and they’d soon come back to the rollicking R&B riffs of AM. Not a bit of it.
While they haven’t exactly doubled down (The Car is, if nothing else, more accessible than its predecessor), they’ve moved on yet again.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2022/10/review-arctic-monkeys-car/
Pastel - Isaiah EP
When your reviewer saw Pastel supporting Afflecks Palace in autumn last year it was clear they had the ambition and soundscapes to carve out their own niche, but the future was unclear.
One year on – with relentless touring, a clutch of singles and a prestigious opening slot on the bill at Knebworth with Liam Gallagher – much has changed.
Yes, Pastel sound undeniably like the 1990s, but they don’t try and hide it, therefore it feels churlish to admonish them for it.
Plus (and it’s not fashionable to say this) the 1990s were actually pretty good, and it depends on where you draw your influences from.
The five-piece have chosen wisely: rather than singing chirpily about fish and chips, Pastel have channeled something altogether more timeless, with this EP showcasing it comprehensively.
Isaish opens with wispy, dreamy strums of the guitar before singer Jack Yates enters with a vocal that sounds like a whisper across the ocean before bolstering his larynx to sound not dissimilar to Tom Meighan.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2022/10/future-pastel-isaiah-ep/
The Clockworks - Live at Rough Trade, Bristol - 14th October
Armed with an album’s worth of songs in the public domain (if not an actual album itself), The Clockworks are quietly but assuredly gathering an undeniable momentum.
It helps that the songs are good, of course. Better still that they actually have Something To Say and that singer and songwriter James McGregor can rhapsodise his thoughts on 21st century society with a watertight band backing his every line with whipcrack solidity.
Fittingly, the first song opens with the line, ‘And that’s another thing…’, as the foursome fly out of the traps with Endgame, all fizzing hi-hat and crisp guitar.
‘We’re post-punk, post-truth, post-Europe, post-youth, post-modern, post-faith and God and post-post too, as music with nothing to say plays on the radio’, McGregor opines, making an immediate grab for the crowd’s attention.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2022/10/review-the-clockworks-bristol/
Maximo Park - Bristol Academy, 10th October 2022
While their counterparts from the mid-2000s have either split up (then reformed), gone into semi-retirement with an album every five years, or moved on to other less successful musical styles, Maximo Park have remained steadfast.
A loyal fanbase has been treated to a heady catalogue of material largely of generally the same style, yet of a consistently high quality. As such, a Greatest Hits (or, more accurately, Singles) tour seems long overdue.
Paul Smith informs us from the stage that the idea for this tour came about because a new song, ‘Great Art’, had no album to call a home, yet the design for these shows (the Singular Tour) seems geared around the release of a compilation album, though none has been forthcoming.
Smith alludes to the fact that the cost of vinyl is prohibitive these days, which may go some way to explain the missing piece of the jigsaw.
Regardless, the shows are an excuse for Smith and his bandmates (Duncan Lloyd on lead guitar, Tom English on drums, plus touring members Jemma Freese and Andrew Lowther) to revel in nostalgia, and Smith makes reference to knowing Lloyd and English for 20 years.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2022/10/review-maximo-park-live-at-bristol-o2-academy/
The Enemy - Live at Bristol Academy, 1st October 2022
Although now unfairly maligned as ‘landfill indie’ – which inevitably led to them being lumped alongside the likes of The Fratellis and The Pigeon Detectives – Coventry’s The Enemy actually started life as social commentators in the vein of The Jam, Blur or The Clash.
Furthermore, their debut album – 2007’s We’ll Live And Die In These Towns – had quite the impact 15 years ago; UK Number 1 with a Thriller-esque seven singles were lifted from it, as well as impressive support slots and shows of their own.
Unfortunately, that debut proved to be a one-off, with no subsequent release coming anywhere near the quality or impact. Indeed, time has not been kind to The Enemy, and nowadays the trio (expanded to a quartet onstage) are regarded as little more than a ‘lad’s band’ which, based on the demographic of the crowd for this sold-out show, isn’t entirely unfair.
Yet this tour (billed as a reunion but based around playing the first album in full) offers the opportunity for reappraisal (as these things often do) even if we are now at the stage of reunion gigs for bands you didn’t know had broken up in the first place.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2022/10/review-the-enemy-bristol/
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Cool It Down
It’s been a duller world without the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
Despite their close association with the heralded New York rock scene at the turn of the century, Karen O, Nick Zinner and Brian Chase had very little in common with The Strokes et al in terms of attitude.
Where Casablancas and co. radiated traditional rock star cool (sunglasses, smoking etc), O and her bandmates found their natural home in exuberance and showpersonship.
Of course, with her trademark leather jackets and fingerless gloves O made her own version of cool, but the definition of what makes something ‘cool’ is for another time.
In the two decades since, Yeah Yeah Yeahs have kept that reputation and built on it. Despite a paucity of albums (Cool It Down is only their fifth and their first in nine years) they’ve largely delivered on that promising start, unlike many of their peers.
Even if the albums in that time haven’t been to everyone’s taste, they came with a cast-iron guarantee of at least one classic single – ‘Gold Lion’, ‘Zero’ and ‘Sacrilege’ (among others) will have to make room in their club for the latest entry: ‘Burning’.
Built upon the foundations of a Motown piano loop, impatient strings and snarling, intermittent chords from Zinner, it’s a wonderful piece of indie-gospel rock.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2022/09/review-yeah-yeah-yeahs-cool/