Thanks to the lovely chaps at Eurostar, DT were able to check out Carl Barat’s debut gig down in King’s cross on the 27th, and it has to be said that the Chavvily-Chic former Libertines man is just as at home at the front of the stage as his old boss Pete Doherty – if somewhat less generally shambolic. Carl’s hitting the road to promote tracks from his new, eponymous album and you and a friend could be lucky enough to catch him playing in glamorous Paris on November 5th, with free luxury Eurostar travel and a signed album thrown in for good luck.
Everything Everything are the best British band you haven’t heard of, until now. With the release of debut album Man Alive here is a band everyone can be proud of and they don’t sound anything like Oasis.
Foals and the recent onslaught of bands that lure us in with their charming indie awkwardness and pop hooks is exactly where Everything Everything should sit on your shelf. Yet just as Foals swallowed themselves up in a pseudo-intellectual nightmare along came Everything Everything to make you dance.
The boys were sad to find that their vanishing cream was a little too effective...
Not to tarnish them with cool art-rock expectations too soon, but quirky is a word that comes to mind. ‘Photoshop Handsome’ starts off with 8-bit Nintendo sounds and morphs into all four band members melodically singing about being airbrushed in schoolboy style rounds.
The album opener and re-released single ‘My Kz Ur BF’ is a sure-fire club hit demonstrating the bands penchant for dark lyrics “and I haven’t seen the body-count lately but looking at your faces it must have been bad” and sing along choruses.
Everything Everything’s sound is at odds with itself, they are a definite product of the digital age and yet somehow it all manages to sound very natural. Any song would sound at home on Radio One and ‘Come Alive Diana’ could be an Interpol song if half way through it didn’t have a laptop induced breakdown. The production brings a clean, layered, almost angular sound to the album which is reminiscent of Minus The Bear’s icy math-rock.
Just as your giddiness has peaked out come the ballads ‘Nasa is On Your Side’ and ‘Tin (The Manhole).’ While the sentiment is a good addition to a great album, at four minutes plus the return to sharp electro for finale ‘Weights’ is welcoming.
Everything Everything and Man Alive are insatiable. If you don’t tap your feet or attempt to sing to nearly every song on this album then you’re probably dead.
This is a music blog. So reviewing comedy is a bit weird. We wouldn’t usually do this, but both Brian and Andrew’s comedy is very much based in the world of music, specifically metal, so we’ll make an exception.
But just this once.
Andrew O’Neil is a heavy metal fan and cross dresser. He is quick to point out that he is not a goth, but I do not believe him, as his cross dressing involves a pair of those black and white stripy tights that can only be worn by goths. I hear you need a special license issued by Robert Smith to even buy them. He’s a goth. But we won’t hold that against him.
His comedy seems to draw on alt type culture observations, bizzare flights of fancy and puns so bad/good the front page of the Sun would be embarrassed. He may be a little too clever for his own good, a few jokes despite their merits fly rirectly overe the heads of many of the audience. His delivery is also a little unsure, he doesn’t seem to have the confidence to back up his humor. But hey, this is a guy I’ve only just heard of, so I’m fairly sure he’s finding his own way of doing things. He certainly has the material, and a nicely targeted audience, so he’s pretty much on his way – just needs a bit more oomph.
Brian on the other hand is a man made of good natured oomph. It’s hand not look at him without smiling, he looks like a muppet – albiet one that smokes a shitload of pot and listens to Entombed. And he knows this. He’s wonderfully self depricating – describing himself as ‘farts wearing a man costume’
His comedy fuses really, REALLY low brow humour (”Fart and Dick Jokes” is his new CD after all) with wordplay and observations. He may be telling a story about wanking, actually most of his stories are about wanking, but it never feels like gross-out humour or shock for the sake of it.
He really nails a sort of slacker mindset. People who are clever, but lazy and they know it. (Clearly he’s not lazy, but hey, y’know what I mean.) Finding the humour in the ridiculousness that is modern life for a functioning nerd.
Plus the man is so damn likeable that even when you’ve heard the joke before, or it doesn’t quite work, hey, we’ll let it slide, because goddamn, you’re just so nice!
Cider usually means festivals in the Westcountry, teenagers on park benches and tramps on street corners. Not the best in new music. New music usually means self consciously cheap and crappy beers.
Not so any more. Kopparberg, purveys of a whole variety of tasty ciders, have got in on the game . Kopparberg Klash is the latest hunt for the nation’s best new band (among other creative type things). usually these involve a bunch of watered down pub rock bands and cookie cutter versions of whatever is currently in the top ten.
Lucky for us that Vice magazine is involved to make sure a well needed injection of skinny jeans, asymmetrical haircuts and keyboards that sound like NES games.
The final (because who really wants to sit through the local also rans) is THIS WEDNESDAY, so if you’re about the Shoreditch area (where else?) get on down to The Old Blue Last to check out Plus Ultra, Dead Wolf Club and Filthy Boy along with MC Charlie Partridge of the East End comedy duo Robin & Partridge, DJs and a whole load of cider.
