LOW
St. George's Church, Brighton,
Sat 3rd Dec
Now flying below the radar for something like
twenty-three years, the constant core of Low is the couple of Alan
Sparhawk and Mimi Parker (guitar and drums respectively). Their
signature sound is sparse (Parker's drum kit barely breaking into the
plural) and yet expansive. Despite being dubbed with the slowcore tag,
they can fall so quiet you'd hear a pin drop but can also crank up
the noise as soon as it it suits them.
Though there's post-rock and sometimes
even minimalist elements to their sound, their strong melodic sense
sense means even the extended numbers never quite give up on being
songs. They're particularly effective at double vocals, perhaps
suggesting there's harmonies and then there's husband-and-wife
harmonies. None less than Robert Plant covered two of their tracks on
his 'Band of Joy' album.
If they don't actually sound much like Slint,
both have the sense that their element is moonlight, less at odds
with the workaday world than belonging in some parallel reality to
it. I was particularly pleased they were returning to St. George's
Church, as they work best outside of regular rock venues.
Though I've now seen the band live a
few times, there was always one piece of the puzzle which never
seemed to fit. I am not, I hope you know, so blinkered as to not
listen to music made by Christians. In fact this time last year I
saw Josh T Pearson at a similar Church in Hove, singing Pentecostal hymns, and commented “what a great songbook the hymn book
really is”.
But Sparhawk and Parker are Mormons.
And, with no disrespect to their good selves, I cannot help but
regard Mormonism as crankery. Yet their music seems a far cry from
happy-clappy feelgood or proselyting platitudes. Their signature mood
is sombre, their songs taking place in a strange and ultimately
unknowable world. Sparhawk has said of them "It's about not having answers.” As Drowned in Sound's Euan McLean has commented, it’s
“not what you’d expect from a band containing a pair of married
Mormon parents.”
And what could bring all that to the
fore more than a concert of Christmas songs? (Based on a 1999 EP. While their website sells limited edition Christmas socks. And no, I'm
not making any of this up.) Over the years the Christmas show seems
to have become a Low staple, though with not always even results. The
interweb mentions a London show of some years back which was met with
heckles. While the only Christmas song Humbug head here can normally
cope with is the Pogues' 'Fairy Tale of New York',
and only that because it speaks the word like a curse.
The set's a mixture of originals,
covers (such as Elvis' 'Blue Christmas') and
Christmas classics. Yes, genuine Christmas classics, such as
'Little Drummer Boy' and 'Silent
Night'. Which, however unlikely that sounds, went down like
mulled wine, and the songs I'd normally never ask to hear became a
gig highlight! Their versions reminded me, of all things, of Jeffrey
Lewis' album of Crass covers. (Well Crass themselves did a Christmas single so perhaps there's some
sort of a link.) Both sing the songs their own way but with absolute
conviction, without smartypants reworkings and not a note of hipster
irony. Can christmas carols be as great as the hymn book, or is it
just what Low bring to them? I don't suppose there's any telling.
Certainly they're kitted out for such
material. They sing simply and undemonstratively, with little
inflection, like all the vocal is there to do is to serve the song.
An attitude which always reminds me of folk music, but perhaps
religious music is similar in that way.
Strangely, rather than shackling the
band to the theme the result was quite possibly the most varied set
I've seen from them. Precisely one track went for undermining the
Christmas spirit,'Santa’s Coming Over', infusing
the line “will he see the cookies?” with more menace than most
death metal bands manage in a career. (A great track, but not
something you could sustain for a set.) One number was so full of
Christmas cheer it prompts an audience clap-along, a first for any
Low gig I've been to.
Actually from the gig (no really)...
GIRL BAND
The Haunt, Brighton, Wed 7th
Dec
This young Irish four-piece are, as the
name might suggest, an all male band. (In the tradition of Girl and Girls Against Boys. Though apparently one of the Theoretical Girls was genuinely a girl!)
The opening track sets out their stall,
over almost insanely metronomic guitar sounds the singer screams a
single line over and over - “Why they hide their bodies under my
garage?” It seems simultaneously a nonsense mantra and buried
trauma recalled through the power of primal scream. While the guitars
don't sound much like guitars, yet never quite not
like guitars. It sounds like the scarier side of techno, somehow
transcribed onto rock instruments. (And I learn later it's a cover of
the electronic dance outfit Blawan.)
Instruments can sound like they're
howling and shrieking with mistreatment, or as abrasive as a key
dragging down the paintwork. It's often the sheer audacious act of
repeating them which turns the sounds into riffs. They'll hold to a
line for near-absurd lengths, then suddenly blow it wide open. (There
were no Christmas numbers that night. Unless they did a delayed
encore of ’Rocking Around The Christmas Tree’
after I’d left the venue.) Yet there's just about enough melody to
keep things this side of outright noise rock.
They have a style but never anything so
predictable as a formula. Tracks can stretch, or deliver their blow
and get out. One, which sounds like a rock version of gabba, is done
in thirty seconds. Surprisingly, however good they are at internal
dynamics, about their only weakness is endings – some songs just
crash out.
As a rough and ready guide, imagine
'Idiot'-era Iggy, with it's recipe of
rock-meets-electronic-dance. The vocals in particular have his mix of
arch and frenzied. Yet instead of being produced by Bowie with proper
musicians, imagine it was kicked into life in a Detroit basement by
the original Stooges. It harnesses the relentlessness of dance music,
while keeping the animal abandon of punk.
Phil Harrison wrote in the Quietus: “These are cranky,
abstracted journeys through texture, noise and rhythm with howling,
gibbering singer Dara Kiely as our unreliable spirit guide. At their
best, Girl Band manage to locate a sweet spot between chaos and
precision, poise and frenzy, hysteria and logic.” Which sums it up
so well I don't know why I don't just pack up and leave things to the
pros.
The venue's packed, with the audience
raging from photogenic indie kids to other old codgers like me. Much
like the original Stooges, there's no telling how much they're
working by animal instinct and how much by smarts. Which makes it
hard to predict how much longevity the band might have. But let's
hope they can keep this thing up...
Not from an indoor venue in Brighton
during the winter. You may have guessed that by yourself…
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