list.co.uk/music Reviews | MUSIC
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SOLO ACOUSTIC RICK REDBEARD Electric Circus, Edinburgh, Tue 12 Mar ●●●●● POWER PUNK GARDEN OF ELKS Nice n Sleazy, Glasgow, Fri 7 Mar ●●●●●
’I don’t know if any of you have been to Glasgow before?’ asks Rick Anthony with tongue in cheek, having a laugh at the expense of his genteel east coast fans. But sometimes, when your other group the Phantom Band is known for a retro-futurist strain of space-noise and this is your first live show since unleashing a debut solo album which goes entirely in the opposite direction, what you need is a bit of peace and quiet. He was thanking us all for not making too much noise by the end.
As Rick Redbeard, Anthony has just brought out
No Selfish Heart on Chemikal Underground. Its bittersweet but occasionally very uplifting music just about passed the test of a stand-up venue, although the King Creosote-style shanty of ‘Now We’re Dancing’ or the James Taylor fragility of ‘Any Way I Can’ are more coffee shop classics, such is their rich but easy listening delicacy. Like Leonard Cohen gone folk – standard ‘Kelvin
Grove’ was a rustic nod to the hipster epicentre’s past – Anthony is both honest and traditional, a versatile artist whose solo work is a complement rather than an aside to his usual style. (Paul Little)
Concerns over the elite exclusiveness of a given musical ‘scene’ are easy to banish after witnessing the grandiose efforts of power trio Garden Of Elks, who are comprised of Niall Strachan from heavyweight duo Bronto Skylift, Ryan Drever from hardcore mentalists No Island and drummer Kirstin Lynn. Their recent single, ‘This Morning We Are
Astronauts’, has proved a hit on the blogosphere and tonight it’s not hard to grasp why. Wiry bass player Drever leaps daintily across the stage like the most surreal Gerald Scarfe animation imaginable, while Lynn has all the erratic and unpredictable chops of the Minutemen’s George Hurley to accompany her snarling backing vocals. While frontman Strachan brings a lot of his trademark Bronto flavour to the set with his abrasive freak-out guitar moments, which are plentiful throughout, the songs are largely bass-driven, providing a Pixies- esque backdrop that allows the arrangements enough space to sneak some lo-fi chaos in edgeways. It's a 30-minute barrage of post- apocalyptic power-punk. More please. (Jack Taylor)
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ELECTRONIC POP JONNIE COMMON, RIVER OF SLIME AND SHIFT-STATIC Henry’s Cellar Bar, Edinburgh, Sat 9 Mar ●●●●● CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL MINIMAL: STEVE REICH IN GLASGOW Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, Sat 8 Mar ●●●●●
Tonight’s edition of Edinburgh indie label Song, By Toad’s BAD FUN series serves as a showcase for the world of current alt.electronica. First up, Shift- Static do a nice line in off-kilter electro-pop, melodic yet unafraid of some forays into experimentalism. Second act River of Slime (aka sometime FOUND member Kev Sim) makes such experimenting his stock-in-trade, marshalling amorphous, often intolerable sounds and harsh, pre-programmed drum loops to challenge the listener before briefly rewarding us with some melodic hooks. Headliner Jonnie Common (above) has a new
album in the wings, so tonight’s set is a mix of oldies and new material. The newer stuff fits well with the overall Common sound, and his tendency to get bogged down in quirkiness is cancelled out by some incredibly punchy live drums. Combine this with some brusque, no-nonsense stage patter (the words ‘crack on!’ are uttered more than once) and it makes for an enjoyable if short-lived performance: the set flies by in just over 30 minutes, meaning some old favourites don’t make the cut. (Niki Boyle)
This celebration of a modern icon doesn’t start well: following technical difficulties, the first, electronically- oriented section is marred by dated and/or sterile synth sounds and awkwardly bolted-on digital effects and glitches.
Things improve in the second part, ‘Clapping
Music’: a technical rhythmic exercise that should be as dry as it gets, but handclaps are invariably irresistible. Guitarist Mats Bergström performs a nimble ‘Electric Counterpoint’, the fourth and best ‘. . . Counterpoint’ of the evening – but arguably one too many. The London Sinfonietta provide the climax: the Scottish première of ‘Radio Rewrite’, inspired by the music of Radiohead. ‘Jigsaw’ and ‘Everything in its Right Place’ are broken down into fragments and themes, infusing Reich’s always fascinating music with the emotional core it can sometimes appear to lack. A drifting, dreamlike mid-section is profoundly beautiful, and casts into sharp relief the keenly technical nature of the rest of the evening. (Matt Evans)
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INDIE ROCK FOALS Barrowland, Glasgow, Tue 5 Mar ●●●●●
Over the next horizon may lie arenas for Foals, and tonight they look like they well know it. Their epic entrance – members filtering on one by one, silhouetted against turquoise-tinted strobe lights as a bass drone rumbles, to progressively raise up the instrumental fury of ‘Prelude’ – is that of a band whose latest album has just crested close to the summit of the charts. They are now limbering up for a festival summer that could prove the making of them. Where 2010’s Total Life Forever transformed this Oxford five-piece from the so-so nu-ravers of their 2008 debut long-player Antidotes into suspenseful, sophisticated indie-rock subjects of serious critical acclaim, it also marked Foals out as a band often easier to admire than necessarily get excited about. If new album Holy Fire doesn’t quite make them the finished article, it certainly begins the process of a band growing that strength of goodwill into proper widespread passion.
Singles crash down like waves from the off
– the chiming, coursing post-punk of ‘Olympic Airwaves’ second, the loping white funk of ‘Miami’ third. By the time ‘Blue Blood’ fades away after its intensely rhythmic rush to finish, beardy frontman Yannis Philippakis has the crowd at his fingertips as they mimic his arms- outstretched-to-the-heavens pose en masse. But it’s the arrival of ‘My Number’ – Holy Fire’s best track by a stretch – where you get a real sense, while the stage backdrop glows an appropriately serious shade of blood red, of what Foals are capable of in terms of crafting intelligent, danceable tunes with knockout pop clout. A nimbly insistent guitar riff, a naggingly catchy wordless vocal spur, hooks hanging from hooks: it’s a terrific song. For all Philippakis’ skill as a second guitarist
– his fingers typically glued to the high frets, conjuring clipped repetitive phrases between which lead guitarist Jimmy Smith’s sinuous playing intuitively snakes in a distinctly David Byrne/Jerry Harrison Talking Heads-style – Foals’ live show may benefit from freeing him up more as an out-and-out frontman and the focal point their panoramic music sometimes needs.
He tries the role out for size while flinging himself (guitar and all) onto the front rows for a crowd-surf during the explosive end section to ‘Providence’, or hypnotically hammering a floor tom throughout the high-voltage delirium of ‘Electric Bloom’. As the set draws to a euphoric close (with support band The Invisible joining the party to bang drums on ‘Two Steps, Twice’), he clambers to the top of the tallest speaker stack, to gaze out across the crowd and admire a view that’s only going to get better by the time the next couple of seasons are out. (Bruce White)
21 Mar–18 Apr 2013 THE LIST 77