Music FALKIRK TROUBADOUR AIDAN MOFFAT Oran Mor, Glasgow, Wed 16 Feb
‘Yeah. I might have personality issues,’ Aidan Moffat deadpans, while sipping on a tea. He’s explaining his knack for writing equally candid lyrics about ‘unemotional, nasty shaggers’, ‘lonely solipsists’, 60-year-old women, squaddie-shagging girls and, as on his upcoming album, doting fathers. Everything’s Getting Older is a beautiful, jazz-flecked collection of stories, recorded with avant-garde Falkirk musician Bill Wells, in which the vocalist and ex-Arab Strap member reflects on mortality, human conception and, on slightly more familiar ground, ‘pumping’. Some of the string arrangements would slay even the most stone-hearted, yet it is tender and coarse by turns.
‘If I hadnae done the one song
about sex. . . I mean, Bill did say after I did it, “Thank fuck for that. I’d be really disappointed if there wasn’t something completely filthy on the album”.’ So in ‘Ballad of The Bastard’, Moffat translates a German play from 1900, La Ronde into modern-day Glasgow, where sleazy bosses, groupies and married men hop between each other’s beds. But Moffat’s trademark inebriated
debauchery takes a relative back seat, replaced by poignant lines about daytime funerals or the arrival of his now two-year-old son, Samuel Batman. Moffat talks often about ‘the boy’, who can be heard sleeping soundly at the end of the record. He’s the reason Moffat’s not had time for many gigs recently, but he wants a busy touring schedule this year, including this three-pronged live gig featuring his solo material, plus his work with band The Best Ofs, and Bill Wells. ‘If you include the audience, it’s gonna be a bit like a foursome with Aidan Moffat.’ (Claire Sawers) ■ See page 7 for Aidan Moffat’s answers to The List’s sex survey. The single ‘(If You) Keep Me In Your Heart’, is released on Chemikal Underground on Valentine’s Day. Everything’s Getting Older will be released on Mon 9 May.
64 THE LIST 3–17 Feb 2011
ETHEREAL ELECTRONICA CONQUERING ANIMAL SOUND Captains Rest, Glasgow, Fri 11 Feb; Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh, Sat 12 Feb The first time you chance upon a Conquering Animal Sound live affair, you might well be forgiven for tip- toeing back outside again. As the Edinburgh-sired duo’s just-released debut album, Kammerspiel, should indicate at its Edinburgh launch, the CAS sound is a wilfully private affair involving Anneke Kampman’s uniquely hushed vocals looped into some ethereal multi-tracked chorale and tickled into melodious shape by Jamie Scott’s array of toy instruments, cheap keyboards and understated electronics. Together, they wash over each other with a warm, small-time sensuality designed for those wordless moments you can’t help but snuggle into, but which threaten to fall
apart any second.
Taking their name from the glories of 1980s Jamaican Dub sound system Conquering Lion Sound, the more inclusive CAS have come a long way since being thrown together on a university popular music course and forced to play a version of Stevie Wonder’s 1973 pop-funk smash, ‘Superstition’. Their sound, however, is as far away from funk and reggae as is possible. The real clue to CAS, though, comes from the album title. ‘Kammerspiel was a German silent film movement from the 1920s,’ Kampmam explains, ‘but the word translates as “intimate play”. For me, the most exciting thing about working with Jamie is that we can share musical intimacy. Our music is very . . . close, and that word encapsulates how we do that.’ (Neil Cooper) ■ Kammerspiel is out now on Gizeh Records and mini50 Records.
INDIE POP CHILLY GONZALES Oran Mor, Glasgow, Tue 8 Feb
Look out Muse and look out Jools: Chilly Gonzales is coming to get you. Following his infamous 2009 victory over Andrew WK in a New York piano battle, the man known as Chilly, Gonzales and Jason Charles Beck (he suggests we just call him ‘maestro’) has other conquests in mind. ‘That guy from Muse is asking for an ass kicking,’ he nods. ‘And Jools Holland should shut up – pianistically speaking. We are in the post-Boogie era.’
You can’t really argue with ‘maestro’. Here is a Canadian, after all, whose precocious musical talent is equalled only by his incandescent onstage tomfoolery; a man who has collaborated extensively with Peaches and Feist, and successfully turned his hand to rock, hip-hop, electronica, classical music, minimalism, euro-disco and all in between.
He also holds the world record for the longest-ever solo concert. (Paris, May 18 2009: 27 hours, 3 minutes, 44 seconds). That’s some stamina – did playing for so long, without sleep, have any long-term bearing on his creative mind-set? ‘Well, I proved to myself that the ego is stronger than the body,’ he says. Is it true he started teaching himself piano aged three? ‘Actually my grandfather showed me the piano. I had a lot of lessons, mentors and even have a musical theory degree,’ he says. ‘So I’m well trained and not self-taught at all.’ Gonzales is currently touring album, Ivory Tower, recorded with Berlin dance wunderkind Boys Noize, and brimming with disco-pop and chilled-out electro. Will we hear a lot of it at the show? ‘A full retrospective of my decade in this underground entertainment game’ is what’s on offer, he promises. Despite his fun-loving disposition, Gonzales is a serious musician, who embraces aural classifications. ‘Every genre has its rules and I try to follow them as closely as possible. I live by categories,’ he says. ‘Bring them on!’ (Nicola Meighan) ■ For details of how to win tickets to see Chilly Gonzales, see page 69.