The Hermit Crabs, Blood Music, Older and Faraway - Drunk at the Pulpit - RAFA

I need to be clear, first and foremost in this review, I did not go to the gig.

Sure, I intended to, and intent is important. I'd been plied for weeks with flyers, both in real life and on my various MySpace profiles. There was no way I could not know about or miss this gig.

First up were Older and Faraway, they've been reviewed on this site once or twice before. They probably sounded similar to other performances, but a bit tighter and better rehearsed, maybe caught off-guard and giving each other nervous looks as the realise, that latecomers to the gig will miss them and their magic.

Blood Music, travellers from Sweden, I know nothing of how their performance was, other than it might have sounded a little like the songs on their MySpace page. They're playing Anstruther tonight.

The Hermit Crabs, a band with a long heritage in this town, as previously reviewed here, sound a little like Camera Obscura, they're twee. At the gig they probably sounded much the same. But due to the large and willing crowd, there was probably better banter than last time. Starting off nervous, but then growing more relaxed. A friend who did make it to the gig sez "iit was ok"

I left the flat in plenty of time to get to the venue, its seventeen minutes walk away, I just had to meet a friend on the way. She hadn't eaten so we stopped off in a small cafe. Bjorn from Say Dirty was in with some friends and a selection of acoustic guitars. It was really relaxed, and nice.

On flyers it always says things like doors 8:30, but when you arrive on time, nothing really happens until an hour later, so I was chilling over my coffee and the music. It wasn't even a gig, just folk playing guitars together.

What's the difference between ethics and morality. I think morals are a personal thing, framed within one's own context, one's own frame of reference, the difference between right and wrong based on your own judgement. Whilst ethics is on a higher level, the analysis of morals from a broader context, and can compare different morals. Ethics aren't judgemental. In "The road to hell is paved by good intentions" the good intentions are moral choices, but only ethics can see the road leads to hell, but can't judge whether this is a good thing, judging whether one should take the road to hell is a moral choice again.

So what does unethical mean? If ethics had no sense of judgement. Does it just mean that the ethics haven't been considered or have been disregarded. Or is ethics just a cop out anyhow.

I was going to draw two pie charts, one showing gig of my lot (The Just Joans, The Plimptons, the Deep Fried Wolfknuckles) that members of the Hermit Crabs and Older and Faraway have attended, and one showing Hermit Crab and Older and Faraway gigs that my lot have attended. For the purposes of comparison. But I'm questioning the ethics of that.

So Bjorn was playing songs with other accompanying, and the girl wore this look of mortification, whispering to me, "My god doesn't he know he can't sing" and "How can he be so bad?" I thought it sounded okay myself. I've heard worse, I've heard warmer. Everyone in the room seemed to enjoy it, and the guy's record label who's currently stocking up shoping in Stockholm must have liked it too. The girl, she didn't. She has strange tastes, she'd love the Deep Fried Wolfknuckles if she ever made it to their gig. On the other had I'm pretty sure she'd hate the Drunk at the Pulpit gig.

The guys who ran the cafe were trying to close up, putting some Miles Davis on the muzak system and turning the lights down, but Bjorns mob just played louder and more raucously, venturing outside to busk and entertain passersby, before return to freshly cooked meatballs.

We needed to eascape and find a dictionary definition of morals and ethics.

Other reviews
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Photies
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Hey Princess, Older and Far Away, Feel like Falling - 13th Note

I'm standing in a pub, stone-cold sober, and watching 3 men who appear to be pushing 30 playing like trio of gawky teenagers who just learned how to play the chords D and G. Their drummer resembles a young(ish) John Peel and the singer is trying too hard not to look like a car salesman by wearing a (homemade?) Richey Manic t-shirt, but it doesn't take away from the fact that this band are totally devoid of ideas. Lyrics addressed to someone who doesn't seem to know how great they are or what they could achieve in life, backed-up by the aforementioned major guitar chords just didn't do it for me, so I retreated upstairs to read about Norn Irn for the latter half of their set. Feel like Falling asleep, more like...sorry guys.

Older and Far Away look like a more interesting prospect from the off, they have a cello for a start, and a lap steel. Last time I saw marie on a stage she was playing guitar for riot grrl band Cheetaras, performing a rocking cover of Madonna's 'Like a Prayer'...this time she's sitting at the drumkit for what appear to be a country band. The music starts, and my suspicions are confirmed, these guys like their Americana. For the majority of the set they manage to make it pretty interesting though. So many of these laid-back country bands are content to go through the motions and play safe, but OAFA blend a bit of Pavementesque trickery with good old-fashioned blues emotion to make a very pleasant racket for the fair-sized crowd in attendance.

Despite their obvious talents as a band, they let themselves down on the togetherness front a bit. A couple of songs require a few false starts before they get going, and there appears to be some tension between band members and the soundman (who I thought coped pretty well in the circumstances). The lead singer/cellist and Marie appear particularly affected by any setbacks, which eventually made me feel a bit uncomfortable watching. As they fluff the beginning of the song 'Peter Parker', cello woman snaps at the rest of the band. Luckily their delightfully goofy-looking guitarist (who bears more than a slight resemblance to the webslinging wonderspider) keeps it all together, acting out the Mark Ibold demeanour to a tee. definitely worth watching again, if only to see if they split up on stage...

After a short break (after all, it is a school night), the band I've dragged my sober ass out to see tonight shuffle onto the stage - I can hardly hear Anji's vocals during the opening number as the continuing sound problems make their life just that little bit harder. Luckily, this band are not for throwing the towel in, and by the second song they have taken control of the stage with a quiet confidence that enables the music to shine though.

Their sound is soft and gentle but with an underlying strengh, a bit like Throwing Muses but with a hint of something else in the mix. It's quite difficult to pin down, but very engaging. Hey Princess are unusual in that they feature 2 sets of married couples in the line-up, and unsurprisingly have a lot more comaraderie emanating from the stage than the other 2 bands. The songs also offer something different, their sound is a throwback to the American college rock sound but incorporating the idiosyncracies of the British indie scene in its early 90's heyday. Think of Kim Deal meeting Talk Talk (in a Morris Minor on PCP, of course) and you're on the right track. This band make an effort to be different lyrically too, with numerous references to large cats and historical figures replacing the usual boy-meets-girl-meets-drugs sixth-form poetry we've come to expect from Scottish bands. Hats off to Supermiffy for managing to look so darned cool while playing a cabasa!

HP certainly left an imprint on my mind that night, their songs are now inked into my very soul. I know I'll get a ribbon for writing that down...

Photies:-
here

Magnetic Fields Tribute Night - MacSorleys

I play guitar for the Deep Fried Wolfknuckles.

It was noon when the first messages started coming through from folk who couldn't make it to the gig, Holly washing her hair, Steff having drinks with Lisa Marie.

Kinda soul-crushing that the audience was dropping away before we hit the stage or even arrived at the venue.

Shortly before the show I was checking out a friend's photography exhibition, nice style and narative to the shots, but after saving her bacon and cooking her chicken countless times, she too has a prior engagement and is also shunning the show.

Luckily Stacy and Richard from Sounds of Sweden are here, I am not alone.

For years I remember this place being an old man's pub with the occasional pub rock bands, but its under new management and the band booker chap, Teamie, is a guy I worked with on the university newspaper years ago.

The Deep Fried Wolfknuckles play garage rock, or "ol' time rockabilly like yer pappy used to play" as we once decided. Not quite what you'd expect at a twee-lord indie-pop tribute night, but hey ho.

Drumkit resourcing isses meant that it was acoustic acts on first. JC on stage, acoustic guitar. Unshaven, he mis-starts, changes mics and fires off again, kind of warm, tentative but confident. I don't recognise the song.

Time passes, the next band up, I don't catch the name, but they kind of look familiar, the cute girl in a red dress, the cello player, the wee baldy bloke from countless other bands, he sings. Alan Wolfknuckles is livid cos they're doing 'Underwear', which we'd bagsied. For six people on stage, it was pretty stripped down, they too lacked drums. From where I'm sat down, it sounds a bit bass heavy. The girl vocals would sound great if I were sat elsewhere.

Lizzie Piper from uni is here.

Older and Faraway, sound nicer than the last mob and Mark's half-forgotten some of the lines adds a refreshing delicacy to the set. Actually the girls sure could holler, flawlessly too, compared with the lads. Marie on drums reminiscent of Dolly Parton's vocals.

So, of course the Deep Fried Wolfknuckles were great, hardly cocking up any of the chords. An emergency lyric change with 'Underwear', now in French, saved the day. Followed by a rather wholesom version of 'Punk Love', about three times the length of the original. We then duly punked up for a hi-speed 'Busby Berkley Dreams' and a slightly mellow 'Chicken with its head cut off'.

Our crowning moment was finishing on '100,000 Fireflies'. Power chord rocking out and Alan's hollering his heid off. Teamie had told us to stretch things out so Alan allowed me to indulge my guitar solo fantasies. Going through the Kinks's 'All Day and All Night' solo twice and extensive noodling. The change to the outro was a bit rough and during the chord cycles my zorro mask slipped and I missed a few 'B's adjusting it. So the rest of the band finished, one by one retiring to the bar and I kept on ploughing on. At some point I'd pinged the skin off my right index finger, blood was spraying from an small artery, but still I pounded on.

How much more could I rock on?

That much.

Some said "Rather excellent, actually surprising"

The mighty Dot to Dot followed, going under the alias of The Meritocracy as they played minus Wee Patrick and with 'Nick' doing vocals.

Compared to the Deep Fried Wolfknuckles, they were the second or third best band of the night. Nick's Morrissey-esque mincing kind of grated and the vocals sounded a little too much like "lads down the pub"

Aw man, I gotta do a runner, The Plimptons at Club NME across the Road.


Other reviews:-
here