Chimpomatic

Gary Numan + Tubeway Army

Replicas (2008 Tour Edition)

Beggars

There can be no denying that Are Friends Electric? is a slice of pop genius. A gigantic buzzsaw synth riff set against a tune that even your granny could hum, and enough oomph to put a smile on the face of rockers everywhere - this was a hook-laden pop formula that turned Numan into the star he'd always imagined himself to be. This, and two or three other notable tracks are the cornerstones of the album, and without those solid foundations Replicas would sound a bit weedy. Opening with Me, I Disconnect From You and also containing the Numan classic Down In The Park, Replicas doesn't maintain the consistent standard set by these twinkling gems. At times it sounds like Gaz was having a crack at being (pre-commercial) Human League, or even something a bit more art-punk like, say, Magazine. But it struggles to convince and sometimes comes across like pub-rock with synths plastered on.

And for die-hard fans (sorry, 'Numanoids') this could disappoint on a couple of levels. Billed as a "Redux" release, there has been some fairly efficient tidying up done. Maybe a bit too much. The original tracks were still driven by the sound of a band at work - real drums throughout, with guitar and bass guitar in strong evidence. The redux downplays this part of the mix, and much of the guitar work is quieter or even removed completely. Bafflingly, We Are So Fragile is missing - the B-side to Friends - which was included on the previous CD release of Replicas. Instead we get early versions of nearly every track, some of which sound like they've got a bit more life in them than the newer redux versions.

#Music
#HarrisPilton

11th Feb 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Cadence Weapon

Afterparty Babies

Big Dada

Recently I was having Quite an animated conversation with a Quality journalist friend of mine who writes for a Quintessential music magasine, the name of which I shall not Quote. When I asked him what he was listening to at the moment he sighed and told me of his disillusionment with the current music scene and said he only listens to old stuff now. His point was that no one makes complete albums anymore, they just make collections of singles. "Quite the opposite" I replied but then struggled to think of any examples to back me up. Well now I have one and if you're reading my friend, you may Quote me on that.

"My Dad said I was an afterparty baby; this goes out to all the accidents out there; keep on making mistakes." And so goes the dedication featured on Do I Miss My Friends, the opening track on this followup to Cadence Weapon's critically acclaimed debut Breaking Kayfabe. " I wanted to make music that afterparty babies were created to," explains Cadence Weapon aka Rollie Pemberton. Acting as a testament to Rollie's first influence, his father, Teddy Pemberton, creator of the Black Sound Experience Radio show and introducer of hip-hop to Rollie's hometown of Edmonton, Alberta, Afterparty Babies is a hectic journey through the world of club nights and house parties. This theme is explored through stories of friends, crews, nightmare DJ nights, hometowns, heroes, media and fashion.

Musically this is quite different from its predecessor. Where Breaking Kayfabe led with swirling, back-breaking electronic hip hop this one opts for a more electro/techno pace that serves to remove this artist from the hip hop roots that he may have once planted. Having seen him slot in a Joy Division cover at his London warm-up show last year, it's no surprise this album has moved on considerably from the debut and is the product of an artist open to a healthy array of musical influences. Pemberton presents an interesting juxtaposition between this thoughtful 'Wonder Years' style reminiscing and the harsh electro sound clash that carries it.

In my review of Breaking Kayfabe I was compelled to compare Cadence Weapon to a rampaging Terminator hell bent on destruction. It was a tenuous link I admit and made partly out of boredom of review-writing and also because 30 Seconds had a chorus that sounded a bit like The Terminator chase music. So I can't help feeling a sense of irony when mid-way through Afterparty Babies the song Messages Matter features a sample from Kindergarten Cop. " Who is your Daddy and what does he do?" comes the line and with it some interesting questions. Is Afterparty Babies the Kindergarten Cop to Breaking Kayfabe's Terminator? Are we seeing the human side of the cyborg? In a sense yes. It's not as hard hitting or relentless as the debut, it definitely has a lighter feel to it, it's more enjoyable and while you're jumping along to the uncharacteristically housey beats you know he's undercover and at the start of the movie you saw him kick someone's ass.

This may differ from the debut in all the ways mentioned earlier, it may be more melodic, spacious and palatable but let it run its course and you'll see it's just as tough as Breaking Kayfabe. It plays out like a night out clubbing but in reverse. It starts off strangely downtempo with Do I Miss My Friends? and by the end it's full on techno. There's no wind down, no gentle walk home with a kebab, it leaves you at top tempo to find your own way out. At the live show songs like In Search Of The Youth Crew and Real Estate were instant crowd pleasers and they don't disappoint here but instead become repetitive anthemic chants to Pemberton's Afterparty generation. True Story and Getting Dumb are electro master-classes, chucking in vintage house techniques with cuts and scratches and all topped by the most intricately crafted rhymes. It's certainly an album of 2 halves with the final few tracks providing the weight to this extraordinary record. Pemberton exited the stage at the Amersham Arms to House Music. It had the crowd jumping like a bunch of idiots and it has the same effect here. It's a dirty, crazy five and a half minutes. It swirls and bleeps to clapping beats and air-raid style sirens and it rules. By the time we get to the album closer We Move Away the techno conversion is complete. The club is in full swing and after a while the music even overtakes the creator and rises to a life of its own ending the album in almost 2 minutes of banging beats and grinding synths that threaten to go on until first light.

This has the feel of an album released by a well established hip-hop name that suddenly breaks from tradition and goes out on a limb, thus alienating hardened fans. It's exciting to see an artist do this so early and I can't imagine Cadence Weapon ever settling into a style. With this album he joins the ranks of MC's like Aesop Rock and Buck 65 as creators of their own style of hip-hop, constantly evolving and gathering up every influence and experience in their path. I am already eager to hear what this guy's got up his sleeve next and I bet I can find a Schwarzenegger link in it somewhere.

#Music
#HHG

10th Feb 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

The Diableros

The Diableros Aren't Ready For The Country

The Diableros' first album You Can't Break The Strings On Our Olympic Hearts was made on a shoe string but was a musical rags to riches tale. It stood proud as one of the best albums of 2006 and 2 years on it still holds its place. Since its release the Toronto band have seen their success spread way beyond their Canadian borders but still remain a well kept secret over here. But some secrets are best unkept and their follow up, though not a massive progression only goes to confound this fact. If you got on at the ground floor with these guys you'll find the second floor has much the same decor but is more spacious.

Taken it's title from Neil Young's Ready For The Country, this record sticks to the script set by its predecessor. It's the slightly more grown-up older brother, more far reaching yet more mature, it's bigger and slightly more controlled but also lacks some of the spirited, wet-behind-the-ears passion of the earlier record. But when you set the bar as high as they did from the get-go then this is to be expected.

Some familiar elements remain firmly in place for this second installment but are refreshed with a more varied pallet of tempo, intensity and emotion. The wall-of-sound barrage that dominated the first album and drew comparisons to hey-day Wedding Present is still standing tall here but is often punctuated with rhythmic guitars like on Nothing Down In Hogtown. They also show a more melodic and sometimes easy-going side on songs like Any Other Time with its pedestrian tempo and understated instrumentation which provides more space around Pete Carmichael's strained vocals. But even when this does occur the melody is always supported in part by the frenzied guitars that come so rapidly that they end up merging into one all engrossing wash of sound. The talent of this band rests on their ability to control this sound and they rarely get it wrong. A misuse of this wall-of-sound technique would make every song blend into one but they are well aware of the power they hold in their hands and never abuse it. It can start off subtle like a gentle buzz then ever so gradually swell like a rising wave and before you know what's hit you it looms overhead, it's shadow swallowing up everything underneath including Carmichael's often distorted vocals.

The rising intensity of songs like Ever-Changing and No One Wants To Drive with its soaring guitars and tales of kids getting high are cut from the same cloth as earlier favorites like Golden Gates and the spectacular Push It To Monday and remind me what lit my fire about this band in the first place. These songs are created with urgency and grit but don't fall into the trap of taking themselves too seriously. This album all the reasons the first record was so great but also suffers as a result of this similarity. It doesn't reach the same lofty heights but stays on the lower ground and covers more of it. It shows The Diableros as a more well rounded band that thankfully are no one hit wonder. There's nothing more embarrassing than backing a band early on only to see them crash at the second hurdle. So thanks boys, I still have my job.

#Music
#BC

8th Feb 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

The Mars Volta

The Bedlam in Goliath

Whatever your views on the current state of the music industry, the very existence of The Mars Volta is proof-solid that something must be going right. This is a band with a manifesto so far outside of the mainstream and so removed from what's currently hip, that it's some kind of miracle that they even get to record, let alone tour, release lavishly packaged albums and sell a million records.

If you've never checked them out, this is their fourth full-length album and it adheres to their highly individual sound - there's no getting away from it - this is progressive rock. A musical form so utterly derided by the music press, and dismissed by the majority of listeners under the age of 40, that one might think that no-one would ever attempt to fly a Roger Dean flagpole up their mast ever again. And with good reason:- progressive rock from the 70's was predominantly British, a bit public school and generally a turgid plod through some half-arsed attempts at musical originality. Thankfully, the only real musical heritage from this era is the influence of King Crimson at their most densely harrowing. What the Mars Volta have is energy and pace - and the new album is demonically charged, travelling over jumpy time signatures with an unstoppable drive. I have heard them described as prog-punk - a tag so oxymoronic that I laughed when I heard it, and yet it is a punk attitude which gives the prog such a maniacal thrust.

This is a stronger album than last year's (also excellent) Amputechture by dint of the fact that it delivers more bite-sized nuggets of Volta madness in smaller digestible chunks. It's quite riff heavy, and generally played at a breakneck pace. New permament drummer Thomas Pridgen has his work cut out for him, and sounds like he's enjoying every sweaty minute of it. There's a lot of voice processing applied to Cedric Bixler-Zavala's voice, which could easily scare off the faint-hearted. Omar Rodriguez-Lopez's guitar playing burns red-hot, and where the band hit some big latino vamps for him to work-out over, he comes across like Frank Zappa rather than Carlos Santana.

Intense, spooky and totally mental. UK Live shows coming up in March.

#Music
#HarrisPilton

7th Feb 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Motor City's Burning: Detroit From Motown To The Stooges

BBC Four

Another great slice of rock history from BBC Four, this time running through Detroit's musical legacy.

It's only an hour, so there's a pretty snappy line drawn from the early Motown factory, via the MC5, George Clinton's Parliament/Funkadelic, Iggy and the Stooges and on to Alice Cooper. There's no time for Detroit's electronic pioneers - Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson, Jeff Mills, Richie Hawtin or Underground Resistance etc etc - so we end with the White Stripes and Eminem, which is a real shame as the techno side of things (esp UR) would have fitted the story of factory-inspired revolutionary music more than the Stripes.

That said, if you're in the mood for footage of Iggy smearing himself with peanut butter, or Stevie Wonder sitting in a control booth with the world's biggest synths, or George Clinton looking like Mr T (probably the other way round chronologically, thinking about it) then this is the show for you - there's even some FBI footage of the MC5 on stage.

#TV
#chimp71

7th Feb 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

There Will Be Blood

Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson

Paramount Vantage

Paul Thomas Anderson's latest film leaves behind his usual setting of a sprawling Los Angeles, starting off in the unfamiliar territory of 1890's oil county prospector Daniel Plainview silently, tirelessly digs for oil. An accident leaves Plainview with an adopted son and as 'partners' they build a small empire striking big in a remote Californian town, thanks to a tip-off from a local. The town prospers, but so does the church - and preacher Eli Sunday relentlessly pursues Plainview's apparent lack of faith.

The scenery is spectacular and Daniel Day Lewis is an undeniable tour de force, chewing his ways through the scenery and dominating most everyone in his path. Little Miss Sunshine's Paul Dano isn't bad as impassioned preacher Eli, youngster Dillon Freasier is impressive as Plainview Jnr and Ciaran Hinds puts in a good show in a seemingly cut-back role as right-hand man Fletcher Hamilton - and here lies the problem. For a film that's nearly three hours long it's surprising to feel like there's several reels missing.

After finding it's stride and building up a great confrontation between business and religion, the film seemed like it was shaping up as a thrilling analogy of the west's ever-present quest for oil at all costs - including religion. Three quarters of the way through however, things take an inexplicable turn for the worst. The story heads off-course, then jumps forward 20-odd years with no real justification - leaving us with the conclusion to a film we only feel we saw half of.

The score by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood deserves special mention - evocative and haunting, perhaps misleadingly building a brooding sense of menace that the film did not live up to. While Greenwood's score never stopped, the plot was deralied long before the finish line. Key moments were confusingly handled - and not in a deliberately oblique way, just in a badly edited way. The best acting in the world can't save a shoddy story and script - and while individual scenes had great merit, as a complete work it was sadly crippled.

#Film
#CSF

6th Feb 2008 - 8 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Son Of Rambow

(dir Garth Jennings 2008)

Paramount Vantage

Journey back to the 80s in this good-natured film, a world filled with bleached highlights, dodgy pirate videos and French exchange students with asymmetrical T-shirts.

Sheltered Will (Bill Milner) isn’t allowed to watch TV at school because of his family’s strict religious views. Bad boy Lee Carter (Will Poulter) is constantly being kicked out of class. They meet in the hall outside their classrooms, where Lee bullies Will into helping him make a film to enter in Screentest (an 80s BBC film competition for kids). When it transpires that Will’s TV-less imagination has been on full throttle while he’s supposed to have been studying the bible, Lee knows he’s onto a winner, and their reworking of Rambo, Son Of Rambow, is born. The English countryside is soon filled with pint-sized Nam vets exploding things and generally battling the forces of evil.

There’s lots to enjoy here: the 80s details all feel pretty accurate, it’s affectionate, and does a good job of bringing the two outsiders together. But it never quite kicks into full throttle – there are lots of scenes, like the 6th form common room, or the Adam Buxton cameo (he shot the recent Radiohead online stuff with them, fact fans), which feel like the Hammer & Tongs team  just wanted to include them, without really thinking about their place in the film’s narrative; it’s a lot looser than it might have been.

That said, it’s always good to see a British film that avoids the costume drama/romcom track, and it’s certainly not a waste of time – more that ultimately it doesn't fully deliver on the concept's promise.

Like Be Kind Rewind, this is a film dedicated to the spirit of the VHS age, when you could stick a tape into a giant portable camera and lug it around while you filmed your adventures. But that’s almost the problem – it’s a film that talks about that moment when you first discover the power of cinema, rather than giving a new generation that moment for itself; nostalgia rather than first-hand excitement. Funny it’s coming out just before the new Rambo too.

#Film
#chimp71

5th Feb 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Bob Mould

District Line

Beggars

I've got to give this a fair trial because Bob Mould deserves it - having been a founder member of the massively influential and raw Husker Du, and then exorcising his pop demons and songwriting chops with Sugar, Mould has plenty of credit in the bank of cool. However, just taking things at face value, this album is a collection of promising but ultimately dull rock songs for grown-ups. Take the first track for example - Stupid Now - it starts out all Nirvana-in-quiet-mode with that good ol' Seattle tuning on the guitar, it has a nice modern feel to the production and Bob's voice sounds great... then along comes the chorus and the whiff of cheese becomes overwhelming; it honestly sounds like Linda Perry wrote this for a P!nk's new rockin' rekkid - it's that anthemic.

By rights, of course, no-one should deny Mould his payday. This is every bit as good as the aforementioned crafted crowd-pleasers peddled by America's one-woman tin pan alley, but somehow I don't think our Bob will get as much MTV airtime as P!nk. I hope that the ever-strong influence of FM radio in the US will help make this a success as it reaches out to middle America at drive-time, but for me personally I feel that this is rather like Francis Bacon deciding to paint like Jack Vettriano in order to have a wider appeal.

#Music
#HarrisPilton

5th Feb 2008 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

The Superimposers

Harpsichord Treacle

Wonderfulsound

What do you look for in a new record?

The list might include a band's enthusiasm for the act of making music; being provoked by their lyrics; surprised by a sound, a riff, an unexpected instrument or chord. Anything that makes you sit up and think, 'I could never have done that, I wouldn't even know where to start'. Music making, though, has been liberated and people are no longer constrained by the mere inability to play an instrument. Who cares! Given a laptop, a vague rhythmic sense and the ability to sample a few bars played by someone else (possibly immeasurably more talented than you'll ever be) and you've got all you need. And thousands of you are at it.

The Superimposers are not musically incompetent in this way. They're just a little bit dull. There's no real surprise, no provocation, little of the unexpected. Sure, there's plenty of musical enthusiasm, but it's of the irritating kind for 'Fender Rhodes, harps and the mysterious Omnichord - a kidney-shaped Suzuki synthesiser played by strumming a touchplate'. I don't know about you but I don't think kidney-shaped synthesisers are a substitute for original sounding music and I'm tired of watching guys on stage hitting a multicoloured kid's xylophone or toy drum like they've just turned the music world on its head.

'Harpsichord Treacle' aspires to being the bastard child of The Beach Boys and Lemon Jelly. The music is determinately sun-shiny and warm, 'sound oozing from your i-Pod like treacle from a Harpsichord with plenty of peace, love and harmonies going on. Sounds delicious eh?' This is a direct quote from the band's promotional material and since Miles Copeland and Dan Warden, the duo behind Superimposers, released the album on their own record label: it's a direct quote from the band. Sounds delicious? Sounds sticky to me and just a little bit creepy. If someone turned and sold me their album on the strength of its 'peace love and harmonies', I'd run screaming for the Black Sabbath.

Miles and Dan are well intentioned, eager to be laid back and to grin inanely through a haze of good vibes. The first track on the album, 'Anymore' is apparently 'Glen Campbell-esque'. It sounds like the incidental music to a 1950's Western, which is no slight since I love 1950's Westerns. The rest of the album seems more unified, given direction by the band's self-posed query, 'How do they get that authentic 60's sound?’ A more pertinent question would appear to me to be, why would they bother?

It's not an unfamiliar problem, but listening to the eleven tracks on this album is like wandering through a sort of Musical Madame Tussaud's. They get the 'authentic 60's sound' by creating phonic waxworks which bear a questionable similarity to elements of the Byrds, through Serge Gainsbourg, the Kinks, the Mamas and Papas; all with added reverb and digital trickery. There's plenty of harmonising and humming. Miles and Dan 'met in an English seaside town', but they harmonise and hum like they're the Beach boys, goofing around at Baja. Then there's the sampling, every-so-often a few truncated bars of string instrumentals, looped and re-appearing as the tracks meander aimlessly. The ghost of Lemon-jelly drips off of many of these songs but there just isn't the same subtlety or eclectic humour. Dan and Miles may be musically proficient, talented even (unlike the lap-top crowd), but that doesn't stop many of the songs coming across as empty vehicles; showcases for the musical effects they have at their mixing-desk-fingertips.

The band's name was born apparently of their love for superimposing their music on other peoples and vice versa. They'd be better of spending less time 'plugging in space echoes' and instilling some conviction into the music. Some of the songs are brilliantly accomplished musical pastiche. 'Autumn falls' and 'Twilight' expertly mix musical tributes with seductive orchestration, rippling behind the vocals. But in hackneyed lyrics like 'I will make it all better' and 'no one said it was easy', I hear the band's own subconscious telling them to push a little harder at the musical coal-face.

If I were to pick one waxwork, this album would resemble Doris Day; remastered, re-looped, re-engineered by their 'way-back machine'. It's not a great resemblance but it's kind of freakishly there.

#Music
#LG

5th Feb 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Vampire Weekend

Vampire Weekend

XL

29 days into 2008 and it's here. Sound the horn to call in your spies, the search is over. We may be a week late, but the first second great record of this year is upon us and that's not just yet another NME prediction of greatness, this is the official Chimp opinion - and we're strict here. Cast your mind back to 2001 and your excitement at hearing The Strokes' debut Is This It. It wasn't an altogether new sound gracing your ears, it's musical reference points were unashamedly obvious but it represented a departure from the current music du jour that was gripping the scene. Well, Vampire Weekend is the self titled debut from this New York 4 piece and it sounds nothing like The Strokes but they are bedfellows for more profound reasons. It represents a similar departure and ironically enough this departure could be seen as the breakaway from the trend that Is This It started. The Strokes kick started a return to grimy indie bands belting out simple, well crafted guitar music and we've seen very little else ever since. Vampire Weekend do the opposite. Yes they're an indie 4 piece from New York but their sound reaches far wider and their references are refreshingly varied.

Gentle Afro-rhythms combine with cheap organs, jaunty drum beats and a vocal style so relaxed and unassuming it all makes for easy listening in the best possible way. Although Talking Heads does vaguely come to mind the rest of the reference points are rarely seen in today's indie scene. Paul Simon, The Police and Ski Sunday spring to mind and like someone who has drawn a head on a piece of paper, folded it over and passed it on for the next person to draw the body all these odd parts unfold into an astonishingly complete whole. If you're the type that needs genres to aid your musical appreciation fear not as the boys have done the work for you describing their sound as 'Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa,' and 'Upper West Side Soweto.' It's Paul Simon but with Chevy Chase at his side keeping things light.

The other reason The Strokes' debut has been twinned with this one is the ease by which it seems to have been born. Songs like Oxford Comma with it's lounge-act style keyboards or the pogoing funk guitars of A-Punk drip forth like melting wax, nothing seems forced and no one seems to give a shit if it works or not. With a varied choice of themes like English grammar, preferred bus routs or American preppie fashion this is not your average record about love and loss. M79 is where my Ski Sunday reference crops up. Starting off with courtly 18th century harpsichord then slipping into a chorus of chamber music, this really shouldn't work. M79 is named after a Manhattan bus route which only adds to the confusion as this song evokes more cultures than is healthy in just over 4 minutes. The hymnal-meets-tribal thunder of I Stand Corrected shows a slightly more serious string to the bow and it leads on brilliantly to Walcott, the figurehead of this record. It's a furious steel-drum carnival of a song. Crashing cymbals and soaring melodies carry the repeated 'don't you want to get out of Cape Cod' chorus to new heights. It's dazzling and a shame it doesn't finish the album.

Vampire Weekend is good because it isn't trying to be good and it's different for the same reason. Not once do you get the impression that these world-rhythms and mismatched instruments have been employed because no one else has done it recently. It's effortless and it's joyously unaware of itself. We'll have to wait and see how the ultimate judge of time treats this little gem. These are simple pop songs and it's hard to say whether some may fall by the wayside but right now their simplicity and charm is exactly what we need. Their creativity and wealth of ideas is such that one listen to Vampire Weekend will get your mouth watering for their next album. Bring it on. This world needs more Ski Sunday-Afro Pop.

#Music
#BC

4th Feb 2008 - 3 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Evangelicals

The Evening Descends

Dead Oceans

If you'd never heard the Evangelicals you might make the wrong assumption from their name that they were a reggae band - but after listening to their second album The Evening Descends, that is one musical style that never attempts to surface within the eleven tracks. The four piece are white boys from Oklahoma who produce a sound that could be roughly described as psychedelic pop - with some shouting thrown in for good measure. That shouldn't put you off however, because it is neither pompous or ever too intense.

With the endless amount of instruments used throughout the album the songs often seem to clash and batter against each other with little direction or emphasis. This left me initially a little dazed as there seemed too much or too little for me to be able to get my teeth into. Eventually the structure of the songs fell into place and I found myself enjoying a band's attempt to produce large scale music without the benefit of a large production. Attention is often drawn to a raking solo or a striking xylophone but it is the melodies that tie these songs together. The best example of this is Paperback Suicide, a sweet song which allows the instruments a little room to breath, leaving you with a memorable number. The pitch of the singing on a number of tracks could prevent them gaining mass appeal, but this added intensity is infectious.

The album does begin to lose it’s momentum towards the end, as with so many time changes and the limitations of the vocals it has the negative effect of wearing you down. But the future is certainly bright for the Evangelicals as they have the enthusiasm and inventiveness to lift them up with the many left-field bands that have incorporated a populist approach. If my descriptions are vague then to make reference to the Flaming lips would probably encourage more people to take a chance on this little gem.

#Music
#R.Hammerstein

1st Feb 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

kd lang

Hammersmith Apollo

k.d. lang kicked off a world tour to promote her new album Watershed with two nights at the Hammersmith Apollo. Watershed is lang’s first album of original material in 10 years. While 2004’s Hymns of the 49th Parallel (an homage to Canadian compatriots including Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, Jane Siberry and Joni Mitchell) is arguably one of her best crafted albums, Watershed sees a welcome return to the plaintive crooning style of Ingénue, performed last night with a hint of maverick country cheek which fans will remember from Absolute Torch And Twang and Shadowland.

Accompanied by a new five-piece backing band (who contributed some of the aforementioned county cheek by way of pedal steel, banjo and handmade organ), lang launched straight into the new material – for the most part a collection of thoughtful and self-reflective ballads – before turning her thrillingly measured vocal talent to some of my favourite songs from Hymns of the 49th Parallel including Neil Young’s Helpless, Jane Siberry’s The Valley and Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah.

Although lang has proved her song writing ability in the past with the multi-million selling Constant Craving and Grammy award winning Miss Chatelaine, for me her voice as an instrument seems to find its fullest and most poignant expression when performing other people’s songs. A disappointment last night was not to hear her version of Roy Orbison’s Crying but on every other level lang delivered. A raft of old favourites earned her more than one standing ovation and a barrage of cheering and wolf whistling that brought her out for three encores. Thankfully I won’t have to wait too long to see her again as she’ll be back this summer.

#Music
#Gig
#KaraokeCowgirl

31st Jan 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet