list.co.uk/music Reviews | MUSIC
POETIC ROCK NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS Barrowland, Glasgow, Thu 31 Oct ●●●●●
Hallowe’en feels like the perfect night to see Nick Cave – the self-styled dark prince of punk. These days, the Sussex-dwelling Cave is more a reluctant national treasure than the gutter poet of yore. But, as he and his band emphatically demonstrate tonight, he still packs a punch. Cave and the Bad Seeds stalk on stage,
opening with a couple of songs from new album, Push the Sky Away, ‘We No Who U R’ and ‘Jubilee Street’, two languid ballads led by Warren Ellis’ two- chord guitar patterns. But it’s not until the grinding gothic majesty of ‘Do You Love Me?’ that things really heat up. By the time the peel of thunder that ushers in
‘Tupelo’ breaks across the auditorium, the audience are in raptures. Other highlights include new tune ‘Higgs Boson Blues’, while a run of piano-led ballads from The Boatman’s Call (‘Into My Arms’ and ‘People Ain’t No Good’) are genuinely moving.
SOUND ART FESTIVAL SONICA Voice, Thu 31 Oct, Compositions for Involuntary Strings, Sat 2 Nov, Tramway, Glasgow; The Eye of the Duck, Thu 31 Oct– Sun 3 Nov, CCA, Glasgow ●●●●● ‘Sound Art’ is an eclectic genre, encompassing electro-acoustic composition and installation soundscapes. The Sonica festival’s intention, to provide ‘sonic art for the visually minded’, goes further, programming cross-platform opera (The Buffer Zone) alongside Voice and Compositions for Involuntary Strings, which are closer to a traditional concert.
In a week where the world lost one of rock music’s Raydale Dower’s The Eye of the Duck
truly great innovators in Lou Reed, Cave’s priapic and poetic rock is made all the more cherishable. (Alex Neilson)
PUNK ROCK PARQUET COURTS Mono, Glasgow, Thu 31 Oct ●●●●●
It’s Hallowe’en, and a costumed crowd lets Brooklyn’s Parquet Courts be the punk-stoner rock launchpads for their night. They take to the stage in smiley-face cardboard masks (with the exception of an obviously unhappy Austin Brown on guitar). Burning through their repertoire in combustive
bursts of three or four songs, it’s a setlist that appears to have been carefully devised to showcase their flashes of punk and hedonistic onstage improvisation. At times (eg ‘Descend’), they sound like a
domesticated, boyish Black Flag, at others (eg ‘Yr No Stoner’) like fellow New Yorkers Television. But Parquet Courts have forged their own brilliant, eccentric noise. ‘Largish/Dominant’ – from their debut American Specialities – is wholly in debt to the late Lou Reed, although the new ‘He’s Seeing Paths’, a wonderfully bizarre Beck / hip hop hybrid, is disappointingly omitted. The expected coda of ‘Stoned and Starving’ is not their best, but by far their best-known, and it sends the shuffling horde back out into the darkness of the drunken-guiser- filled Glasgow streets. (Harris Brine)
R E N Y A R N E B
D N A L E C Y R B N A C N U D
installation in the CCA is a cheeky remake of David Lynch’s famous ‘Cooper’s Dream’ scene from Twin Peaks, yet Voice and Involuntary Strings mean serious business. Voice is a duet for distorted vocals and light design, while Involuntary Strings is an experiment that examines what sounds can be made when musicians are wired to a machine controlling their playing. The Eye of a Duck is accessible, witty and concise; the two concerts are intriguing and challenging.
Close to a standard gig – HC Gilje’s dramatic light-score would not be out of place at a rock concert – Voice has moments of populist clarity. The finale, when singer and composer Maja SK Ratkje excavates the dusty poetry of old folk song, is moving and passionate. Ratkje coos and growls, hemmed in by Gilje’s screens. The atmosphere is claustrophobic, evocative of a ritual performed in a cave. Ratkje struggles to maintain the intensity,
though, and Gilje’s deliberate refusal to illustrate the music’s cadences prevents a fully immersive performance. Ratkje seems to be testing the possibilities of manipulated vocals rather than focusing them into something awesome.
Involuntary Strings has little visual appeal, aside from a string quartet connected to the mains: Michaela Davies sets ‘manipulated’ players against two ‘free’ players, comparing and contrasting the sounds of involuntary muscle movement against the trained precision of the conscious musician. Sadly, the idea is more fascinating than the result – Davies even refers to the involuntary music as ‘not playing properly’. Sonica’s programme is admirable for
sketching the boundaries of sound art, and offers glimpses into the outer edges of composition. While the main events at Tramway highlight musicians working toward new strategies, the installations, including Dower’s Duck and Sven Werner’s menacingly nostalgic The Escapement, offer more immediate impact. (Gareth K Vile)
14 Nov–11 Dec 2013 THE LIST 71
JAZZ / POP PALOMA FAITH Usher Hall, Edinburgh, Tue 29 Oct ●●●●● EXPERIMENTAL GUITAR BILL ORCUTT Glad Cafe, Glasgow, Fri 1 Nov ●●●●●
Of all her contemporaries (Winehouse, Adele, Sandé, etc), Paloma Faith’s vocals were always the most rooted in the classic big-band era, which makes this large-scale tour, backed by the 42-piece Guy Barker Orchestra, such a natural fit. Without the distraction of modern electronic production, on most tracks she soars. Dressed all in red, Faith dances and pirouettes across the stage in slo-mo, her big, belting delivery backed by a glorious wall of sound.
Her vocals do take on a brassy, Marge Simpson quality at times, but she’s such a warm, funny and charismatic performer that even with over 40 incredible musicians on stage you only have eyes for her. There’s a selection of classic jazz / blues covers that sound great, but Faith doesn’t make them her own – it’s more posh karaoke homage than genuine reinterpretation. However, Barker’s arrangements of Faith’s own music really shine: ‘Just Be’ is heartbreaking, the jazz-goes-disco of ‘Blood Sweat & Tears’ has the audience on their feet, and ‘Picking up the Pieces’ proves how great a retro pop song it really is. (Henry Northmore)
Given the wild electricity that coursed through his 90s noise-rock band, the magnificent Harry Pussy, Bill Orcutt was never going to approach the acoustic guitar gently. Buzzy and short on sustain, Orcutt’s four-string Kay acoustic is the perfect vehicle for his cracked, highly personal take on the blues. There’s no delicate fingerstyle here: Orcutt uses a heavy pick to strike at the strings with a boxer’s precision. Hard, metallic bass notes are the anchor for the spiky extended chords and spidery runs he makes across the treble strings. For all its technicality, his style is never uptight or mathy. It has the rawness of the great country blues players, combined with the ecstatic fret wizardry of a Zoot Horn Rollo or Sonny Sharrock. Playing material from his current History of Every One project, Orcutt tackles old pop, folk and blues standards with a mixture of tenderness and intensity, cradling the melodies in his rich vibrato, before slashing away at the strings as he howls and moans. These radical translations convey the transformative power of the source material. (Stewart Smith)