Music
pop NO WAVE KATE NASH BLURT King Tut’s, Glasgow, Sat 31 Mar; Optlmo at the Sub Club,
Henry’s, Edinburgh, Sun 1 Apr Glasgow, Sun 1 Apr
When Blurt play Optimo on April Fool’s Day, it will be vocalist/sax player Ted Milton's first Glasgow performance since supporting the late Ian Dury at the now demolished Apollo almost 30 years ago. That was in the guise of Mr Pugh’s Velvet Glove Show, an adult puppet act Milton fronted for 15 years prior to forming his No Wave-styled trio. Since an inspired appearance by Mr Pugh on Factory Records boss Tony Wilson's TV show So It Goes led to a brief tenure on the label, Blurt have released more than 20 under-the-radar albums. Highlights, including their magnificently titled
Providing further evidence that amateurism is the new professionalism, 19-year-old singer-songwriter Kate Nash makes music in her bedroom. The story goes that Nash fell down stairs and broke her foot after getting knocked back at an audition to be an actress. Laid up in bed. she began writing songs. Theatre’s loss was music’s gain, and the sweet-voiced star-in-the-making has been widely tipped as a hot talent to watch.
Besides the fact Lily Allen can't stop bigging her up, the comparisons to that other potty-mouthed, pretty Londoner were inevitable. Like Allen, she twists her London vowels (what-evah, bettah) around a confessional, slang-heavy collection of stories about dickhead boyfriends, girls who obsess over The Killers, watching CSI, eating cheese on toast, and generally stuff that occupies her teenage brain. But comparisons should probably end there. Musically, she is more lo-fi than Allen, turning her hand to gentle piano and acoustic guitar, as well as 80s flavoured synths and drums, courtesy of Apple’s Garageband beats. Her stoppy-
starty vocals and occasional beat-boxing sound more like Regina
Spektor, who she says is an influence. Nash does cheeky lyrics and dry wit very well, but her
disarmingly reflective moments prove she can also take a soaring melody and casually tug at her Iisteners’ heartstrings without resorting to poppy schmaltz. Her Moshi Moshi released single ‘Caroline's a Victim' was released in February but an album is still in the making. Judging by her MySpace output so far, it’s likely to
be a chart and press-pleasing banger. (Claire Sawers)
g v. u g ‘ ’. 17.1 ' _ ‘ \
ROCK MIDLAKE ABC, Glasgow, Mon 9 Apr
Last June, an album emerged that was so completely unlike anything else around that it seemed to arrive fully formed from another planet. And yet it was so accomplished, so confident, so self-contained in its own strange world, that it was utterly compelling. The title, The Trials of Van Occupanther, and lyrics were folksy and obscure, the artwork was bizarre, and nobody had heard of the band before.
And yet, by the end of last year, Midlake’s triumphant record was riding high in end-of-year polls, being heralded as a modern classic and generally drooled over by critics and music fans. That same album is currently shifting a thousand copies a week in the band’s US homeland, the band are being described as the new Arcade Fire, and are having to move forthcoming shows to larger venues to accommodate their newfound fanbase. So where did it all go right for Midlake? Guitarist Eric Pulido hasn’t a clue.
“When you’re making an album, you have no idea how
it’s going to be received, and the fact that it’s been so successful, well it’s just one of those things you can’t predict,’ he says, sounding bemused. ‘All you can do is be honest and make the music you feel is right, and if people like it, then so much the better.’
In fact, The Trials of Van Occupanther is the second album from the five-piece based in the small Texas town of Denton. Between its creation and the making of their debut, Bamnan and Slivercork, a very important thing happened - they went back in time.
‘We all got immersed in the 705 classic folk rock era, and this album was really just about having an honest affinity with that music,’ says Pulido. ‘That was the music that was moving us, that we felt passionate about, so it was inevitable it was going to come out in the music we were making.’
The result is a band who take the best bits of modern Americana and psychedelia (Flaming Lips, Grandaddy) and old-school rock (Fleetwood Mac, Neil Young) to create something utterly new and, to be honest, pretty amazing. Catch them now, before things go really nuts. (Doug Johnstone)
debut single, My Mother was a Friend of an Enemy of the People. can be found on two essential Let It Blurt best-ofs
It's some way from Milton’s original calling as a bookbinder and poet. whose work appeared in The Paris Review and seminal 19608 UK Beat compendium, Children of A/bion. Milton's subsequent saxophonic epiphany, however, proved too manically funky for the avant-garde from which he sprang.
‘They hated us,’ Deptford‘s 60- something answer to James Chance by way of Captain Beefheart says of a notoriously snobbish scene. ‘If they hear anything remotely danceable. they tear off their 8500 designer glasses and just go mad.’
Outwith Blurt, Milton will tour later this year with electronicist Sam Britton to tie in with the release of Odes, a hand-made book and album of Milton’s solo collaborations.
‘We’ve been very busy on the edge,’ is how Milton sees it. ‘Consistently so. We were always said to be ahead of our time, but now younger people seem very enthusiastic about it. Blurt is a constant work-in-progress.’
(Neil Cooper)
29 Mar—12 Apr 2007 THE LIST 59