Music
EXPOSURE THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY Glasgow-based five-piece The Seventeenth Century are a folk rock band with a cornet player and an allergy to electric instruments. They’ve already hit Go North and Rock Ness, and drummer Andy Truscott tells us why we should make sure to watch C17’s gentle brand of literature-referencing, Beach Boys- esque pop when they play the T Break Stage this year. You’ve been to TITP before as a punter. What’s your fondest memory? T in the Park’s usually quite wild, it’ll probably be the same this year . . . a lot of staying up all night. In 2004 I waited all day to see Interpol, that was pretty special. I’m most looking forward to seeing Broken Social Scene this year. And Eminem! Congrats on making it to the T Break stage. What can we expect? Something different. No one’s got a line up like we do and the songs are accessible: we’ve been compared to Arcade Fire previously. We’re really energetic – so there’ll be lots of jumping about. We like to think we’ll grab the crowd’s attention straight away. Mainly we just play our songs; the music talks more than we do. (Rebecca Moore) ■ The Seventeenth Century play the T Break stage on Friday 9 July. www.myspace.com/theseventeenthcentury
REVIEW FESTIVAL ROCKNESS Dores, near Inverness, Fri 11–Sun 13 Jun. ●●●●● REVIEW ROCK SMACKVAN The Slow Club at Roxy Art House, Edinburgh, Sun 6 Jun ●●●●●
REVIEW POP SCISSOR SISTERS Barrowlands, Glasgow, Wed 16 Jun ●●●●● REVIEW MADGE TRIBUTE JD SET 2010 Thu 17 Jun, 02 ABC2, Glasgow ●●●●●
It speaks volumes for this fifth anniversary instalment of Scotland’s second biggest festival that the weekend wasn’t one long wait to see The Strokes (below) on Sunday night; the New York quintet having been ‘on hiatus’ for almost as long as Rock Ness has been on the go. No new tracks were played, but here’s hoping their in-preparation fourth album emulates the highlights of this electrifying set and by extension their attention-grabbing debut Is This It?, including ‘New York City Cops’, ‘Hard to Explain’ and ‘Last Nite’. Elsewhere there were plenty of
guitars during sets by Vampire Weekend, Doves and Ian Brown, but the big highlights were electronic. Fatboy Slim added a retro flavour on Friday, but Saturday’s visit from Leftfield was a pleasant surprise; a sonic discharge of monumental basslines and soulful live vocals. Other highlights included Soulwax, whose short, expertly composed live set complemented their earlier DJ slot as 2manyDJs, and the audio-visual majesty of Aphex Twin, making banks of lasers and men gurning into cameras into a much more sinister tableau than it sounds. (David Pollock)
When Michael Feeney sings the lines ‘The world closed down / When we hid inside’ his opening gambit to the inaugural Edinburgh edition of Smackvan’s monthly Sunday Slow Club soirette, he might well be commenting on his band’s own shy nature.
Having taken two decades to record two albums (a third remains unreleased), and a compilation on Edinburgh’s Benbecula label, Smackvan’s recent spate of activity is in danger of making them look prolific.
Not that they’ve come out of hibernation seeking puppy-dog approval though. Smackvan’s core trio of Feeney, guitarist Owen McAuley and drummer Gerry Elliot aren’t quite comfortable with this live thing yet. Even in this set of low-lit vignettes, however, the tantalising hallmarks of a slow-burning greatness are evident, in a consciously minimalist palette of preciously crafted pre-post-rock guitar patterns that work by stealth into the heart.
When Feeney’s beer bottle bubbles onto his guitar, it’s an accident that’s wiped away quickly, but looks like the quietest of celebrations anyway. (Neil Cooper)
This was the first night of the Scissor Sisters’ new tour and first live performance of most of their new album Night Work anywhere. And contrary to the pretty but hardly ball- grabbing comeback single ‘Fire With Fire’, the majority of it’s quite excellent. No wonder Ana Matronic, who considers this venue more than any other a ‘baptism of fire’ for the record, felt compelled to tell us things were going ‘pure dead brilliant’. There was synchronised robot- dancing to the sublime electro of ‘Something Like This’ and a Debbie Harry-like rap from Ana during the disco-funk ‘Any Which Way’, while Jake Shears delivered moments of amusing high camp, ripping his vest off during the overwrought ‘Harder You Get’ and pulling on a leather jacket to play James Dean for ‘Skin Tight’. Virtually the whole record was played, dotted with fan favourites like ‘Comfortably Numb’, ‘I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’, and ‘Filthy/Gorgeous’, although the most striking song of the night was the epic disco-house classic-in-waiting ‘Invisible Light’. Quite probably coming soon to a TV montage of festival highlights near you. (David Pollock)
What happens when you put a bunch of labelmates together in one room and throw in some whisky for good measure? Madonna covers, apparently. The JD Set 2010 comes to Glasgow this year with a smorgasbord of artistry from the Moshi Moshi label, including Silver Columns and Casiokids, throwing them together to reinterpret Madonna tracks. The night opens however in more
solitary fashion, with beats-meets-folk man James Yuill (below) tackling ‘Frozen’, morphing it into a downtrodden electronic lambast, but it’s with the collective efforts that this whole Jack Daniels sponsored venture begins to gain some credence. The Norwegian electropoppers Casiokids’ take on ‘Holiday’ is sprightly – and the Malcolm Middleton-led ‘Stay’ is a delightful dirge – but everything seems to come together for the encore, ‘Get Into the Groove’. Everyone’s onstage, lending blips and shakes to this bouncing electronic mash-up and it’s one of the few songs we hear tonight powered by the inimitable force of drums. It’s a smiling, bopping end to the night – and isn’t that what ol’ Madge is all about? (Chris Cope)
64 THE LIST 24 Jun–8 Jul 2010