I had mixed opinions of The Orchestra (For Now), the default drain point of Black Country New Road fans still angry that Isaac Woods left, from listening to this year’s EP, and seeing them live hasn’t massively done much to swing me away from that. Technically proficient, but ultimately leaves me cold. Unlike similar post-Windmill acts like Man/Woman/Chainsaw, the instrumentation is complicated rather than complex, too focused on showing off how clever they are rather than containing any heart. A couple of songs, which checking setlist.fm appear to be new and hitherto unreleased, do actually start to get to me, so maybe there is hope yet that they’ll develop beyond the BCNR aping and give me some soul. I am at least spared the Disney villain stage whisper of “difficult stuff!” that sets my teeth on edge, so I count my blessings. Support from Ebbb, who are perfectly serviceable, the last song bearing superficial similarity to early Everything Everything but without the depth. Promise, though. A fun dissonance between the energetic stage craft of the frontman and the somewhat posh and taken aback “thank you”s after each song.
As if I would leave it at just one. Where last night’s tickets were puchased months ago, we scored these in the W.A.S.T.E last minute sale just last week, so a whole different energy in the excitement and anticipation. Back to back nights means we benefit from their A/B setlist set-up - there are only 9 shared songs across the two nights, meaning 41 songs total. What a divine treat this is. We’re a level up this time, on the other side of the arena, so plenty of Ed-watching. I get to cross off another few white whales: Nude is absolutely gorgeous, with Yorke nailing those long notes, and Reckoner is a tour de force, so much so that somehow the woman in front of me watching her dog-cam on full brightness for half the song (and the first half of The Bends) can’t ruin it. I get to hear my all time favourite song, Jigsaw Falling Into Place, one I genuinely thought I’d never get to hear them play. That’s song 3 of 25 and the rest of the night is a bonus. Separator still floats along beautifully, Myxomatosis still kicks you in the stomach, and Exit Music is as cathartic as ever. I tear up, again, in Street Spirit, just happy to be there. Present Tense and The Daily Mail boost the encore nicely, and we get to experience the treat of EEIRP being the final song of the night, the looped and contorted vocals and Rhodes echoing around the arena amongst rapturous cheers from a boisterous Italian audience. Alasdair describes it as healing, and while I appreciate it is moreso for him specifically, I’d be hard pushed to disagree. How lucky we are to be alive for these gigs. How privileged to be in the room.
Oh boy. I have been thinking about this gig pretty much every hour since we managed to get tickets in early September. We have booked a whole holiday around it. Alasdair’s first time seeing Radiohead, and my first time in eight years. I could spend an entire entry trying to explain just how much it means to me to be able to see Radiohead live again, but I won’t. The anticipation was sky high, but the expectations were reasonable. I had an idea of the broad shape of the setlist going in, but still managed to get some surprises in there. The one-two kick off of Planet Telex and 2+2=5 is a blistering start, followed by rearrangements of a sort of Sit Down Stand Up (its explosive climax bolstered by Chris V’s presence and a hefty modular synth kick from Jonny Greenwood) and Bloom (tempo lowered into a blissed out groove). They break out Kid A and Talk Show Host for the first time this tour, I finally get to hear Videotape and How To Disappear Completely and There There, and so many more. I tear up a little at Weird Fishes and There There, unashamedly so. The band are on top form, and playing in the round does suit them. We’re in front of Jonny Greenwood so get to witness all the radio and Ondes and Max/MSP of it all. We also get to check off the “Jonny messes up and Thom Yorke calls him out on it” bingo card square, which is always fun. The cage and lighting are spectacular, additive without being distracting. It’s weird to play “guess what’s coming next” when the old colour scheme is gone; I briefly identify a D minor chord strummed with some slapback and think “well that’s Subterranean Homesick Alien”, but wait, Thom Yorke isn’t at the Rhodes or the piano, and dismiss it before realising it must be A Wolf At The Door - Alasdair restrains himself. The fact that I cannot tell you with certainty that the Roundhouse 2016 gig was better is quite something. Oh boy. Oh boy.
I wasn’t expecting the loudest gig of the year to be Perfume Genius, to be quite honest. But - and to great effect - this is at times bone-rattingly loud, crunched distortion to beat straight into your soul. Michael Hadreas, with a permanently etched expression of worry on his face, makes the most of sinking, stretching, and dancing with the mic stand and a single chair on stage as he tries to break everyone’s heart. Slip Away is gorgeous, and Eye In The Wall is a triumph. Three covers in a 17 song set (including Fade Into You) is maybe a bit much, but it’s entrancing company. Support from Hand Habits, whom I mostly know from their collaboration with Matt Berninger on this year’s Get Sunk, and whose voice resembles that of Owen Evans in some sense. They’re pulling double duty as Hadreas’ backing band, and are good fun in both sets, with an acknowledgement of their burgeoning birdwatching lesbian fanbase.
Having “seen” the acoustic in-store at Rough Trade, it’s nice to be having the full-band electric Divine Comedy experience. In tonight’s case, though, “full-band” and “electric” are both doing some heavy lifting, with some technical problems throughout the show with both the piano and Neil Hannon’s amp. The result, though, is a bonus rendition of My Lovely Horse, so it’s all good fun, and Hannon is a consummate professional who patches over it. The new stuff slots in nicely with the old stuff, it’s a treat to hear Bang Goes The Knighthood, and even though I’ve never really got into the older classics, the run of Something For The Weekend, Becoming More Like Alfie, Absent Friends, and National Express at the end of the main set is properly fun. Everyone is buoyed by it being the end of the tour, not least me because they’re giving away surplus VIP merch packages, so thank you very much. Support from Studio Electrophonique was maybe the best support-headliner alignment I’ve seen this year, like an 80s British indie Beach House.
Every now and then, Present Sam - who has the time, location, and disposable income - indulges Past Sam in gigs that he would have wanted to go to when he was 14⁄15. So when Jason Mraz is playing an acoustic solo set at the Beacon the night before my birthday, well, what was I meant to do. Without wishing to be a stereotype, the early stuff is the more interesting stuff, and even though I’ve kept a vague eye on the proceedings after the first three albums, that’s really what I’m here for. Mraz is a charming stage presence (“this is a cover song”, as he introduces I’m Yours), with an opening song setting the scene for this being a journey through the discography. If you’d asked me before the show which songs I’d love to hear but knew I had minimal chance of hearing, I’d have told you Please Don’t Tell Her, A Beautiful Mess, and Song For A Friend. So when they get played about 10 minutes in, segueing into each other, I’ve already had my money’s worth. I get to hear at least small bits of a bunch more of Mr. A-Z, which is thrilling. It’s exactly what I want it to be. Support from Gregory Page, which is good fun, and has Mraz playing bass the whole way through, which is a hell of a power move from Page. (A bonus anecdote: I waited at stage door for 45 minutes to try to get my Mr. A-Z record signed. Despite a gaggle of people waiting by the tour bus, I am the only one at stage door. 20 minutes in, a security guard comes out to supervise load-out, and we get chatting about the worst band to be on duty for [Take That], and how he blagged his way into doing security for the Ozzy Osborne send-off gig. After another 25 mintues, he comes out to tell me, even though he knows I won’t believe him, Mraz has actually left, and slips me a setlist. And then, sotto voce, suggests that he’d recommend the Hatchet Inn, just round the corner, for a post-gig drink. Well now. I make my way down, and lo and behold, the after-party in full swing. Jason Mraz happily signs my album and has a chat, and is generally just lovely. I don’t outstay my welcome, and leave with a wonderful aura. It’s what he would have wanted.)
We’re back for night two! Notably less well sold, maybe 2/3rds full. I believe the common consensus is that 69 Love Songs is front-loaded, hence the disparity, but it does mean that the people in tonight are here for it. Whisper it, I think it was better than the first night. Experimental Music Love is very fun, The Night You Can’t Remember is gorgeous, and the whole thing just seems to take off in a celebratory air.
One of those gigs that, even despite the lack of deep familiarity with the source material, you know you kind of have to experience. I listened to the self-descriptive 69 Love Songs triple album only once in advance of this, a performance of the whole thing across two nights at the Bristol Beacon, but that was hardly necessary. That being said, I was vaguely aware of three of the songs from the album exclusively through cover versions (and one of them, admittedly and bafflingly, was my own), all of which feature within these first 35 songs (I’d love to know how much discussion went into whether they split it 35⁄34 or 34⁄35 and the respective merits of Promises Of Eternity as a closer or opener). Stephin Merritt deadpans his way through minimal stage banter but is a delight. The audience love the big ones, of course they do, but there’s a lot of fun in the less popular songs. There is, understandably, no support act.
A cheeky lunchtime matinee from The Divine Comedy, slightly let down for me personally by their decision to have the famously short Neil Hannon sit down in Rough Trade, meaning that for pretty much all of the gig I was taking their word for it that he was actually in the room, hidden as he was by the crowd in front of me. A rattle through some classics and some of the new album (including Mar-a-Lago By The Sea, which Neil Hannon has decided is a fan favourite), a sincere response to a sarcastic request from the crowd for Uptown Girl by Billy Joel, a shutting down of A Lady Of A Certain Age (“it’s too early in the morning for that”), and a surprise Bad Ambassador. Good form all, and looking forward to the full band gig in October.
Black Country, New Road seem to be weathering the wobbles of 2022 well, continuing to grow in venue sixe to the point that they’re now in the main hall at the Bristol Beacon (they note they played in the foyer something like six years ago, and Charlie Wayne recounts telling his mum they were playing here and her recalling her experience seeing bands here as a student: “big place, no one cool”). Musically, they remain on top form, clearly a sextet that knows each other intimately and can play on that. The new material is excellent, and slightly updated arrangements of Dancers and Turbines/Pigs are gorgeous. I just wish they’d act more like the headliners they are. They’re four albums deep, and whilst I absolutely respect why they’re not pulling from the first two any more, there’s no excuse to still be playing 1h15 sets. Still, they show no signs of slowing down and hopefully as the catalogue expands further, so too will their sets. Support from The New Eves, in good form and familiarity from their Rough Trade in-store earlier in the year.
Oh boy, what a treat. I was broadly expecting this to be just Brett Anderson, Richard Oakes, and Neil Codling, with some hastily thrown together acoustic arrangements of the big hits. Not so! The whole band are here, with Mat Osman on acoustic bass (and sat down, so minimal slinking, sadly), and Simon Gilbert on various bits of percussion (and occasionally just heading off stage for spells). They’ve clearly put so much thought and prepration into this (as evidenced by, after Codling and Oakes nail a parallel twiddly riff in one song, Osman going “yes!” under his breath), with detailed arrangements of a lot of deep cuts. I am thrilled to get For The Strangers and Tightrope (Anderson on the latter: “that’s how we should have done it, rather than turning it into Pantomime Horse). There’s a song from every album (“even the shit one”), and they can’t help but leave with an encore of Trash - well, they’ve earnt it. A lot of fun watching Brett Anderson not know quite what to do with himself sans mic and sweat. The nutjobs stay seated, thank god, and are broadly respectful of the signs asking them not to take photos or video. A very, very special gig.
To celebrate their new - tenth! - album, Suede have taken over the Southbank Centre for a run of different gigs. Later in the week, I’m going by myself to their unplugged show in a smaller room, but for tonight, I’m introducing Alasdair to the Suede experience live at a full band gig in the Royal Festival Hall, a hell of a room acoustically that lives up to its reputation. So too do Suede, for Alasdair’s first time and my countless-th (8th?). I’ll repeat the same things I always do - they absolutely put bands half their ages to shame in the energy department. Brett Anderson skulks across the stage, coiled like a snake ready to unfurl itself, before long leaping onto monitors and almost screaming at the crowd to make some noise, his shirt soaked through by the end of the night. Mat Osman is the slinkiest bassist known to man. They rattle through a hell of a set, encompassing the new stuff (which, to their absolute credit, easily slots in with their older stuff in terms of quality), the classics (I never tire of his speech before and during Trash), some rarities that even I don’t recognise (including a beautiful partially off mic This Time), and some that fit in the middle - a pleasure and a thrill to get Outsiders, still. Even stood in the seats, it’s a show that sweeps you up with it, the crowd at the front pawing at Anderson as if at a revival meet. It’s ritual at this point, which explains why I’ll take any opportunity to see them each cycle. Bloodworm supporting were solid, very much a product of their influences (The Smiths, Joy Division, The Cure) but I can happily imagine being something. I clock they’re playing a small pub in Bristol later in the year - I could be talked into that.
This is definitely the last time I’m going to be able to see CMAT in a venue this size. Surely this has been the blow-up summer to end all blow-up summers, with a barnstorming Glasto set and now selling out Ally Pally in less than half an hour. But, for some reason, she’s still doing this in-store at Rough Trade (the actual reason: Sabrina Carpenter is also releasing an album this week, so every sale counts for the charts). In 55 minutes, she manages to do 5 songs, in an impressive testament to her ability to gab. She learns a lot about a year 9 student near the front. A lot of time on her love of Sabby C. She simply cannot resist responding to someone shouting from the crowd and giving it full consideration. It is ultimately charming if not a little frustrating, but she is great company. The new songs are great, I’d Want U makes a rare appearance (complete with her reading the lyrics off a fan’s phone), and Stay For Something sees her ending the gig stood on a chair in the middle of a crowd fully rallied around her. It just wouldn’t be the same at Ally Pally.
Oh boy. This one has really sat with me. Or I have sat with it. On the surface, a lovely gig. Christopher Owens, of Girls - a firm favourite of mine back in the day, their Broken Dreams Club EP being on heavy rotation in sixth form - playing acoustic in a tiny room. I never thought I’d get to see the day. A mix of covers and his originals sees his voice eventually take the shape it once did, its recognisable twang coming to the fore. He throws in a cover of Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space during a medley, and ends with a heartwrenching rendition of Across The Universe. But. I don’t know. As Mahoney said to me after, the moment he heard the coke sniffs, he know it was going to be a short gig. Owens looks rougher than his 46 years, and he’s clearly lived a life. He managed a 45 minute set, that on paper looked like there was more to it than that. The gig had the pall of it being the last time we’re going to see him, and while I hope that’s not the case, it has to be acknowledged as a possibility. Other shows on the tour have seemingly had full sets, so maybe we were just unlucky. We’ll see. In the event, though, he happily signed my Broken Dreams Club vinyl and I got to tell him how much it meant to me, and he seemed touched. At least I got to say it this time. Support from Sorry Monks, a one-man act cutting a Jon Ronson-esque figure as if he were a singer songwriter, with a voice to match.
After years of seeing The National in venues like the Apollo and Ally Pally, it’s nice to see Matt Berninger absolutely fill a smaller room and make it look effortless. His solo work tends to be a lot gentler than his day job, with the latest stuff sounding very New Pornographers, but he makes the energy work. Nowhere Special is revelatory live, and the Serpentine Prison songs shine in a new way alongside the newer stuff. A couple of still developing songs get thrown into the mix, as do some judicious National songs (Terrible Love still an absolute phenomenom to witness live) and even a cover of Blue Monday. It’s a shame he’s got a wireless mic now, but probably for the best for all concerned. Ronboy is a sly choice for opening act, with a couple of stand out songs in Your Way and Oceans Of Emotion, and even cunningly bringing Berninger out for a duet towards the end.
Our friend Ellie is in a choir, and said choir is doing a benefit for Medical Aid For Palestinians at the Old Vic, and it’s a Saturday night, and it’s free, so why not. We’ve seen SHE Choir before for their annual Christmas concert, and Bristol Choir Brigade is new to us. They’re each doing a set per half, and it’s fair to say SHE Choir are the better of the two. The key (stylistic) difference is that Bristol Choir Brigade use backing tracks where SHE Choir don’t, which tends to lead to more interesting arrangements from the latter (or, indeed, less obvious timing and pitch issues). As someone who is generally suspicious of a capella arrangements of popular music, I did actually enjoy it! They join together for a pretty impressive finale of Lay All Your Love On Me, and off we go into the night.
In a comparative rarity for Rough Trade in-stores, this was actually free, no purchase of an LP required. The dream. That wasn’t - to be clear - the reason Mahoney and I went. Well, maybe Mahoney. For me, it was a combination of Alasdair being in Birmingham for the weekend, a gnawing feeling that I should be doing more, and mainly that The New Eves are the support act for Black Country New Road when we’re seeing them later in the year, and I do like a good bit of advance research. It’s a bit touch and go, from the promo pics. This could be a bit “long white garment” folk, and I’m not sure, even for free, that I could do 30-50 minutes. The opening spoken word is not the most encouraging sign, but it quickly gets into a groove that actually is quite enjoyable. Every song seems to swap a new instrument in (at one point, the drummer whips out a flute) with a base of drums, bass, electric violin, and cello, and some fun playing with modern post-punk tropes within that. I will happily enjoy seeing them again at BCNR, and should probably listen to the album at some point. Minus points for the weird pronunciation of “astrolabe”, though.
We Are Scientists have long been one of my favourite bands to see live, even beyond their musical chops - they are one of the best acts in terms of just fun stage banter, each gig building up its own little world of in-jokes. (This isn’t, I should point out, a requirement for me: I have fond memories of seeing the Pixies in 2019 and the only thing Frank Black said all night was “thank you” at the end, 34 songs and one encore later). In an in-store setting, they are a touch more restrained in order to fit more songs in, which is understandable, but they’re still a lot of fun. A good selection of new tracks and the old favourites. It is an absolute sweatbox in there and I am drenched. I’m fairly certain I have warped the the vinyl sleeve I am clinging onto. I edge towards the back when they start playing After Hours, knowing that that is surely the end (the delicious irony!) so we can hit the head of the signing queue and get over to Bristol Beer Factory in time for the second half of the Euros semi-final and before the kitchen closes.
I don’t think I can quite bring myself to count this towards my Radiohead and Radiohead-adjacent streak - just one step removed. Tom Skinner, drummer in The Smile, and Robert Stillman, frequent The Smile collaborator and opening act, are for some reason playing a somewhat last minute gig in Bristol, and is - with no disrespect to them - surprisingly undersold. Which makes for a lovely gig, to be honest! Stage eschewed, they played in the round on carpets in the centre of the room, and it was a wonderful vibe. Tom Skinner is up first, and is unfortunately slightly thrown when his looping set up stops working 5 minutes in. He seems to feel the frustration more than the audience, who are shouting words of encouragement as he vociferously apologises. A brief break and then a strong recovery of him and Stillman improvising beautifully together. I would describe some of the pieces, but I asked Skinner afterwards and they don’t otherwise exist, so there. Then, Stillman up for his solo set, an intricate blend of saxophone and tape loops. Nice to get to meet them each afterwards, and nice to have a comparatively short notice night out.
We have reached the point where the albums I first fell in love with when I started getting into music properly are all turning 20. Hooh boy. Anyway, the yearly seemingly personally targeted nostalgia-fest that is Bristol Sounds is back upon us, and the Kaiser Chiefs are playing through all of Employment, an album which 11 year old me remembers as being banger after banger, and to be fair, 31 year old me isn’t massively disagreeing. The crowd around us at the beginning are pricks, and that combined with some overstimulation causes Alasdair to have a panic attack, so a lot of the first three songs are a little bit lost in the context. After that, though, perched on the edge of the crowd, we’re back, and it’s wonderful. Ricky Wilson has clearly started taking care of his voice, and it’s all in good form. As with Busted last year, lyrics I would have told you I couldn’t name would come to the tip of my tongue a second before I needed them. The first set ends with a beautiful rendition of Caroline, Yes and Team Mate, maybe my two favourite album tracks on Employment. As the rain picks up, the crowd begins to thin out a bit, but we’re sticking it out for the rest of the hits - Never Miss A Beat sees Wilson in almost Brett Anderson form, and Ruby is a bona fide crowd singalong barnstormer. A frantic The Angry Mob finishes us off, and we stagger back towards the house with grins firmly plastered on our faces. Support from Lime Garden, suffering from the joint disadvantages of being on in the daylight, not being the Kaiser Chiefs, playing to an audience who are not massive gig goers and therefore not on board with a support act, and, in the nicest way, not quite having the songs or stage presence to overcome all that.
At the end of the hottest week of the year so far, Alasdair, Mahoney, and I find ourselves in the sweatbox that is the Brixton Academy - no air conditioning, no open doors, 30 degrees outside, let’s do this. We are none of us tall men, but knowing we will need access to water throughout the night decide to accept our fate and not attempt to get anywhere near the front. We park up in front of the sound desk (oh god, the ability to lean) and are soon pummelled for 2 hours by one of the best live bands going. There is a point about half way through that I genuinely think I might faint, but after that I rally. It is banger after banger, with all the expected main set songs (Tonite, Tribulations, Someone Great, Home), the two newer cuts New Body Rhumba and X-Ray Eyes that I’ve not had much before, and some nice treats thrown into the mix (45:33 parts 1 and 2! Starting with Oh Baby! American Dream! North American Scum!). This is my fifth time seeing LCD Soundsystem and I still haven’t got Us V. Them, but one day. Having sweated through the rest of it, when we get to the inevitable and beloved final triple of Dance Yrself Clean, New York I Love You, and All My Friends, all bets are off. The drop in Dance is still one of the best moments in a concert you’ll ever find. The extended outro of NY is so much more intense than on the album version. And the sweaty, joyous, emotional rapture of All My Friends (albeit at a noticeably slower tempo in their comparatively old age now), the backing vocals being screamed back at them, is everything. Sadly not everything is Working Men’s Club, a frontman too busy posing at being cool to actually manage anything of interest.
Despite having an absolutely stonking cold, I force myself out comparatively late at night to the Prospect building for what is billed as an intimate outstore performance from Little Simz in support of her (absolutely banging) new album Lotus. Now. In absolute terms, I absolutely do not think we can agree on “intimate” as being an appropriate adjective for even the second, smaller room in Prospect, the Crane Room, at a capacity of 1500. But, relatively, Simz is playing two nights at the O2 in London later in the year, so I suppose this as good as it’s ever going to get - after all, gone are the days she reminisces about on stage of playing Thekla years ago. Due to the aforementioned cold, I aim to get there not very long before on-stage time, which means I am stuck at the back of what is basically a concrete rectangle. I can’t see for shit, there’s pricks all around me, and I’m already not in a very awake mood. So I tell myself, even knowing she’ll be saving Gorilla for the last song, I can leave any time I like, and given most instores tend to only be like 30 minutes, if I leave at that point, I’ll have got my money’s worth. From the moment Simz is on stage, though, there isn’t a moment I would rather leave than stay for another song. Reeling through an 18 song setlist, having already done an early show, her enthusiasm and energy are infectious (hopefully moreso than my cold). Even only on a single listen, my favourites off Lotus (Thief, Young) hit hard live. The setlist is wide ranging, if sadly lacking in NO THANK YOU cuts, but as we ride the wave of a Gorilla finale, including an acapella version of the first verse before launching fully back into it, no one is arguing.
Mahoney insists that my birthday present for him this year is to buy myself a ticket to join him at Willi Carlisle’s gig at the Louisiana a few days before the big day itself. Who am I to say no? I run out of time to do any prep work for this, having never listened to Carlisle before, and looking at recent setlists, there’s be a lot of ground to cover first, so I decide to go in blind (deaf?). Mahoney tells me that I should expect something almost akin to an Edinburgh show, and that intrigues me. He’s not wrong. Carlisle is an affable performer, long motor-mouthed monologues between songs in a country drawl, amusing without trying too hard. He moves between traditional folk songs and his own material, from solo vocals to banjos and guitar. It’s a rallying cry for acceptance, of queer identities and the van life. His new album is out at the end of June, and I very much look forward to getting to listen back to Big Butt Billie, a song that manages to rhyme “great satan” and “never seen a finer they/them” on falling in love with a non-binary server at a diner. It’s good gear! Shame about the crowd, including the guy who decided that cheering wasn’t sufficient to express his enjoyment and instead alighted on barking. Support from Ags Connolly, a man from Oxfordshire with the voice of a proper honky tonk country singer. Enjoyable stuff.
Despite having tickets for the much larger, further away, seated, mid-week Cardiff gig as part of the main Scissor Sisters anniversary tour, I was thrilled to see a Bristol warm-up date announced for just after I got back from New York, in what was once SWX but is now apparently Electric Bristol. The fact that I was stuck in front of some real pricks who had clearly had too much coke and still enjoyed myself is testament to how good this gig was. Eschewing the “one set of the album, a second set of the greatest hits” approach, this is a happy jumble of the two. Starting with the imperial stomp of Laura, it’s an instant transportation back to my final year of primary school. The number of big, good singles they had from that album that I knew in 2004 is quite something. I am beyond thrilled to get I Can’t Decide thrown into the mix, along with She’s My Man and, of course, I Don’t Feel Like Dancing off, in my opinion, their superior follow-up Ta-Dah!, but that’s not this tour, so I take what I can get. The hits go down a storm, the album tracks still get a good response, and they end the main set with a heartbreaking Return To Oz. There’s a moment in Take Your Mama where Shears hits a slightly but noticeably bum note, and his amusement at noting and correcting it is contagious and a good sign of how live this really is. This is still the size of venue they should have been aiming for in the first time, considering that Cardiff still I don’t think is sold out, but here we are. Tom Rasmussen is a fine support act - “oysters for lunch, ass for dinner” is oddly catchy as a chorus, and it’s the right energy and vibe for this night.
My friend Mahoney introduced me to Man/Woman/Chainsaw with the statement/question of “I can’t tell whether they’re actually good or not?” before inviting me to go see them at Rough Trade last year. I understand the confusion - they are every young Windmill scene with overwrought vocals and a violin player, abominably young, and with the rich scent of privilege behind them. But they are very good indeed. I massively got into their EP after that gig, and have been very excited to see them again since. So I find myself coming to London for the occasion. Put it this way - this gig made me genuinely wonder whether it’s even worth going to shows any more, because I fundamentally hate modern gigging. The screeching teenage girls, the middle aged men trying to film the whole show from the front row, the kids trying to mosh to music that should not and indeed cannot be moshed to, the constant talking - it’s all awful. So that this gig is still an early highlight of the year says something. They play with such intensity and cohesion on stage, it’s quite something to behold. I hope that for their debut album they can afford the production values that songs like Grow A Tongue In Time and EZPZ deserved but didn’t quite receive on the EP. They lack, on record, a heft and an atmosphere that elevate them live. Get Up And Dance, a currently unreleased song, could be huge if done right, as could they as a whole. I can’t wait to be moaning about paying 40 quid to see them at SWX in five years time. First support act Expiry are fine if unremarkable, but Dog Race are a deceptive sight to behold. The lead singer’s voice and performance are not what you’d expect of her, but it’s quite arresting.
I swear I will be going to other gigs this year that are not the band Divorce. A quite last minute waitlist ticket from DICE means I’m going into this with a spring in my step, which is quickly unsprung by the crowd around me, most noticeably the guy who insistently filmed 2 minutes of every song, which… I’m not the guy who complains about how you should “put your phone away and live in the moment”, I take a few photos here and there, but this guy was whip-panning around the stage like he was Damien Chazelle, right in my eyeline the whole time. I genuinely had to move for the encore. This should nominally be about the gig itself, so let’s move on - they’re really great musicians, who are playing very well in sync, and clearly having fun with it. The whole of the new album, plus a few others, which means all the quiet bits are also nicely represented, harmonies and all. A big response to Checking Out as the final song of the encore, and the roof could have been taken off. DUG are exactly what they appear to be as a support act, leaning much more country, but are remarkably personable and I’d happily go see them again in the future.
We kick off 2025 in gigs quite late in the year! I first caught Divorce supporting Everything Everything last year, and was quietly captivated. They are back now with their debut album and here are a few songs from it, supposedly stripped down but it’s the whole band with all their real instruments - not even a reduced drum kit in sight! All My Freaks is the energy highlight of the thing, but it’s all good fun. A quick chat in the signing and I’m off home at a reasonable hour - god loves an in-store.