Music
CHRISTMAS BASHES A bit like photocopying your face, or over-sharing with colleagues on the office night-out, Christmas just isn’t Christmas without a few local bands throwing parties and singing festive cover versions. David Pollock helps you get merry
Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas in Scotland’s indie village without a bunch of our favourite bands getting together to chip in for mince pies and mulled wine and treat us to / inflict upon us their most diligently practised seasonal covers. Yes it’s the Christmas party season, and this year they seem more plentiful – and more inventive – than ever. Those of us with longer memories might recall the long-defunct Silver Pill’s party We Believe in Father Christmas. It was a Greg Lake-channelling home for the suspect but well-intentioned Chrimbo cover version, one incarnation of which saw a pre- fame Darkness perform. Well, this year it’s back with a slightly incongruous Americana theme (Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh, Thu 22 Dec), hosted by the partially reformed Pill as The FiREBUGS and featuring The Deadly Winters and The Dirt.
Since the demise of the notorious SL Records’ December bash, we’ve been crying out for a definitive label knees-up to take its place. Given that the Song, By Toad do will have happened by the time you read this, the next felt-tip circled date on the calendar is the Fence Records’ Secret Xmas Party (Saramango at CCA, Glasgow, Thu 15 Dec). Although if it’s secret, how come we all know about it, we hear your fingers itching to type on a comments thread somewhere? It’s the line-up that’s the secret part, you see. Expect choice Fence acts, DJs and surprises.
Continuing the label theme, worth checking out is the Manky Bastard Xmas Party (Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh, Thu 22 Dec), featuring Make Sparks, Sebastian Dangerfield, The Gold Lions and Sean Arnold. Or you might wish to consider the entertainments on offer at James Yorkston’s Christmas Jamboree (Wellington Church Hall, Glasgow, Sat 17 Dec), a BYOB affair in association with Tracer Trails which also features The Pictish Trail and Lisa O’Neill, or K i d C a n a v e r a l ’s Christmas Baubles II (Summerhall, Edinburgh, Sat 94 THE LIST 15 Dec 2011–5 Jan 2012
17 Dec, see page 101 to win tickets), an all-dayer featuring Slow Club, Standard Fare, Josie Long, eagleowl, Martin John Henry, Sweet Baboo and VERY SPECIAL guest carollers (capitals KC’s own, so they must be good). One institution that’s still going strong is the Elvis Shakespeare Annual Party (Elvis Shakespeare, Edinburgh, Sat 17 Dec), which this year reaches its seventh birthday. A low-key afternoon in the Leith Walk record and book store, you can bring your own bottle for sets by The Fnords, Blueflint, Rodney Relax, My Electric Love affair, Lord Rochester and more, and still be out in time to catch one an evening party, if you’re keen.
If bus fare is no option, you could even squeeze it in amidst the excellent-looking Phantom Band’s C h r i s t m a s P h a n t o m i m e (Stereo, Glasgow, Fri 16 & Sat 17 Dec), featuring local outfits Holy Mountain, Take a Worm For a Walk Week, Tut Vu Vu and Jacob Yates & the Pearly Gate Lock Pickers appearing alongside the Phantoms and some great DJs including Bobby Cleaver from Numbers.
Always fans of shying away from a conventional approach, the Phantom Band are working with art/performance collective 85A to make ‘the most freaky-ish panto you’re ever likely to witness’. The band will play live on both nights with special, secret guests (all-girl septet Muscles of Joy on Friday, and RM Hubbert for starters). There will be decor and visuals provided by Torsten Lauschmann, 85A and Rachel Maclean (who did their ‘Everybody Know’s It’s True’ video, see above), plus a weird and wonderful narrative to the panto. Or if none of the above appeal, maybe you might want to have a punkish little Christmas with The Rezillos at Xmas (ABC, Glasgow, Thu 22 Dec; Liquid Room, Edinburgh, Fri 23 Dec): showing all these young pretenders how a party should be held since 1976 and still going strong.
THE PHANTOM BAND WANT TO MAKE ‘THE MOST FREAKY-ISH PANTO EVER’
TRACER TRAILS CHRISTMAS PARTY THE NATIONAL JAZZ TRIO OF SCOTLAND Wells & Moffat, The Arches, Glasgow, Tue 20 Dec; National Jazz Trio of Scotland/Pianotapes/Stevie Jackson, Old St Paul’s Church, Edinburgh, Wed 21 Dec
The National Jazz Trio of Scotland has never really been a trio. Nor has Bill Wells’ cheekily-monikered combo ever played jazz in the conventional sense. With a first album of original
material – the waggishly christened Standards Volume Two – imminent, Wells and his reconvened NJT play DIY promoters Tracer Trails Christmas shindig to showcase a more vocal-based direction, courtesy of Golden Grrrls singer Lorna Gilfeather and Findo Gask/François and the Atlas Mountains vocalist Gerard Black. ‘It started off as one thing and became something else,’ Wells says of the NJT’s metamorphosis. ‘There’s never any definite idea of what we’re doing, and it becomes what it becomes.’
With his high-profile
collaboration with Aidan Moffat ongoing, the Tracer Trails bill will also feature Pianotapes – Wells’ collaboration with Stefan Schneider of German electronicists To Rococo Rot, and Belle & Sebastian guitarist Stevie Jackson, who Wells may also end up playing with. Wells’ prolific back-catalogue
has long straddled indie and jazz worlds to form a deliciously unclassifiable body of work. A new album, Lemondale, was recorded in Japan with the cream of the country’s underground alongside similarly versatile American émigré Jim O’Rourke. Live, a Celtic Connections show with Bridget St John and Lol Coxhill is pending.
‘I always wish I’d done more,’ says Wells, ‘mainly because I started late, but for me it feels like I’m still catching up. But if you’ve got all these ideas, then you’re going to be releasing more records than most people.’ (Neil Cooper)