Four's a bore at NME Awards Tour

The NME's Awards Tour rolled into Helmet-ville as a bustling Brixton Academy hosted four bands that couldn't fill the venue on their own.

First up were The Drums, who thankfully sound much better than they look. Rocking the oh-so-hard-to-achieve 'gay hairdresser having a tantrum' look, singer Jonathan Pierce minces around the stage as his bandmates (combined weight: 12 stone) stand rooted to the spot, their upper-halves contorting like flid-controlled puppets. Taking the best of breezy 1950s surf-pop and pitting it against a gale of Factory Records-fuelled atmospherics, The Drums create songs that on the surface sounds instantaneous and poppy, but contain a depth which belies their cartoon delivery.

Jonathan Pierce: 'Will dance for food'... no wonder he's all bones

It's worth noting at this point that Sonic Mouth has a lot of prejudices, but before this gig, Ageism wasn't one of them. However, after witnessing The Big Pink shitting their muddy dirge through its ears, the words 'Fuck off' and 'Grandad hipsters' now reside on the tip of the Sonic Mouth tongue. On record The Big Pink are exemplary. Their enormous sound, their low-frequency bass, and their soundtrack-ish grandeur all come together in perfect synergy. However live, The Big Pink generate as much punk energy as Pan's People doing the hustle on Top of The Pops. Throwing textbook rockstar shapes, frontman Robbie Furze can't hide the fact that the music is coming - not from the beating heart of his creative being - but from the expensive looking piece of equipment manned by fellow band-leader Milo Cordell. This is laid bare for all to see when Akiko Matsuura [drumming for the Big Pink as part of their live set-up] stops for a few seconds while the beat continues unbroken. There's no denying the Big Pink's prodigious talent, but perhaps the live arena is best left to the young 'uns.

 The Big Pink:... oh shit, no that's Pan's People

Speaking of which, with a combined age of six, Bombay Bicycle Club have done well to hone their skillset to this level. Looking like a gang of lost paperboys, their intelligent and intricate pop songs represent the brightest future on show tonight. 'Evening/Morning' is the song that Trail of Dead threatened to write on Source Tags & Codes, whilst 'Always Like This' contains more ideas than most bands can fit into an album. Jack Steadman's voice - which tonight sounds like tearful Brian Molko with a sponge in his mouth - ensures sing-a-longs are an entertaining affair, as the crowd ape his unique vocalisations. The one criticism of the Club would be that whilst there's a huge amount of energy generated by the band, they're missing a bit of presence, something to really believe in - or at least perv over. They'll surely have plenty of practice on bigger stages over the coming years.

BBC: Indie embryos

Tonight's headliners The Maccabees are the cockroach of indie, having managed to survive the awful scene that shat out blood-sodden stools such as the Rumble Strips and Mystery Jets. And with the first two singles from Wall of Arms, it seemed like they had the potential to be a frightfully posh Talk Talk. Taking the stage to an emphatically positive reception from the assembled lumberjacks (lots of checked shirts), the crowd lap up every plate of stodgy indie as quickly as the Maccabees can serve it up, with the main course of trumpet-infused wank proving especially popular. Perhaps it's because the bands before them toyed with so many influences, but the Maccabees set seems entirely two-dimensional. Rarely shifting in pace (bar a frenetic rendition of debut single 'X-Ray'), the addition of brass serves only to emphasise the shortcomings of their craft, with the tooting and blowing becoming crushingly monotonous.

As the band come onstage for the encore, the crowd has thinned considerably. The buzz* that followed them a few years ago has got noticeably quieter, and on this evidence the Maccabees lack sting*.

* Calm down honey, it's a bee pun, as in MaccaBEEs.

The Maccabbees: All horns no balls

From Dalston with love

Sonic Mouth chews through pretentious shit like there's no tomorrow. Only there is a fucking tomorrow, and guess what? Yeah, Sonic Mouth is chewing through more pretentious shit so leave a message after the beep.

When a band is billed as 'sounding like the future' Sonic Mouth gets very excited. Not because it buys into such tittle tattle, but because it means smashing them off their lofty perch will be even more satisfying than usual. And it's usually very satisfying.

So Three Trapped Tigers were said band - billed as 'sounding like the future' - and in a warped nod to Hunter S. Thompson I got royally tanked up and waltzed on down to Barden's Boudoir for the Different Class Radio club night.

Now if you want a wafty feature filled with anecdotal platitudes, scene-setting asides and jizzy soft-focus pictures you can fuck off and read the Sunday Times supplement. Here's the bands and what they made my ears feel like.

Chik Budo

The night of 'wanting to knock bands off perches' couldn't have started much worse as this foursome were pretty spectacular, which is something I never thought I would say about a band crafted around a lead saxophone.

But like the NASDAQ and self-raising flour, I don't understand or care how it works, but it bloody well did. Hooked mainly around a grimy thumping drum and bass synth, the real bass and drums did well to keep up - only breaking down sporadically to be built up and thumped in the gut by some mind-blowing saxophony (it is a word, dick).

Their style left a bit to be desired - I find those 'Who's afraid of the ginger beard' t-shirts have a similar effect to a tramp stabbing me in the eyes, but I'm not going to hold that against them. At least he was actually ginger and it wasn't some post-ironic stunt.

Three Trapped Tigers

Beginning to contemplate the unsavoury thought of actually liking both bands, I waited with sharpened knives (not literally, although 'When in Rome' and all that) as Three Trapped Tigers took to the sweaty, space-restricted stage.

It wasn't long before they had dashed all hopes I had of knocking them from any fucking perch, as they launched into some sublime mind-altering electronica.

Their songs jolted unapologetically from twinkling solar melodies to raw synthy filth while still managing to feel seamless. They held the attention for exactly the right amount of time, gave you a chance to begin to think about heading to the bar and then hit you with the next wave of aural pleasure.

But because Sonic Mouth feels wrong being entirely positive about a band, we did manage to find a negative. They really need to sort out some song titles - the track list on their innovatively titled 'EP2' reads '6', '7', '8' and '9'. That's not edgy, it's fucking annoying. Especially when trying to remember which song you liked.

So, I began the night with a hideously low opinion of instrumental music (I also began the night by drinking enough rum to kill a dwarf, but that's neither here nor there). I thought music like that was for pretentious helmets and that even those jerk-offs were only pretending to like it to look good in front of Jonny Art Student. But these two bands have convinced me that if you look hard enough, there's some diamonds hidden amid the dirge. I'm off to find something to hate now....

...Oh hi Paloma Faith.

Clearing out the cobwebs

As you will know as a regular reader of this life-changing blog, Sonic Mouth has hardly been 'sonic' in the last few months. So in an attempt to heave ourselves from this sweaty slump, we decided to give our email account a little spring clean; separate the wheat from the chaff, the spam from the porn etc.

Needless to say, Sonic Mouth is now the lucky inheritor of 859,000,000 Ghanian rupees and with our new-found fortune we no longer need to worry about shooting our load too early with our non-erect tiny cocks, thanks to the SUPER PENIS PILL we can have for only $100 a month.

But amid all the usual electronic excrement, there was one interesting email. There, nestled among the spam, was perhaps the worst example of product placement advertising Sonic Mouth had ever seen. Now you’re all intelligent people, so we’re just going to let you read the email, and then read our measured response. We don’t want these idiots to get any more publicity than they deserve so we’ve taken out their real web address (and replaced it with a humourous alternative… guffaw!).

Please revel in their stupidity and our sharp wit. We’ll be sure to post any further correspondence…

Dear owner of http://sonicmouth.blogspot.com,

I'm the webmaster of http://bunchoffuckingnumbnuts.com

We came across your blog today and thought that you might want to
know about a cycling jersey we are selling that is stirring up quite a
buzz. The new jerseys at www.bunchoffuckingnumbnuts.com send a message to aggressive drivers.

If you decide you want to write a little something about us for your
blog, let us know and we will reciprocate a link back to you!!

Best regards,

Jonathan

Hi,

We’re not surprised you came across Sonic Mouth today, it really is fucking arousing. It’s also a bloody kooky coincidence that you got in touch because it was only the other day when we were sat around chatting about whether our music blog could do with an advert for cycling jerseys on it.

But while we all decided that the Holy Grail of our blogging existence would be to one day feature an advert for cycling jerseys, we couldn't really justify doing it at the moment as there are simply so many cycling jerseys out there. How would we decide which one to feature? If only there was one which was 'stirring up quite a buzz'. OMG. What are the chances!

I can see you must have a GCSE in Business Studies as it must take a highly astute marketing brain to identify the link between our music blog and the exciting realm of cycling jerseys. Maybe you got the idea from all our cycle jersey-related posts.

I mean, we’re often woken from our sleep by hoards of cyclists hammering on our door, screaming like deranged banshees: “SONIC MOUTH, WE LOVE YOUR BLOG BUT WHERE CAN WE GET SOME JERSEYS WE CAN WEAR WHEN WE’RE CYCLING WHICH WILL SEND MESSAGES TO AGGRESSIVE DRIVERS!”…

…Oh no, hang on. None of this actually happened. In fact, the closest we’ve probably ever got to whispering the word ‘bike’ is when we were deciding whether to devote any space to a review of Bombay Bicycle Club’s latest offering. And we didn’t even bother to do that.

If you’re even still reading this, we assume you probably know our response to your little poorly-researched marketing gambit, but just in case you were in some doubt – please kindly shove your cycling jersey.

Yours forever,

Sonic Mouth

'Hidden' is hidden!

Hmmmmm... These New Puritans have hidden 'Hidden' from Spotify. Could they be scared that people are going to realise it's not a face-tearing soul-munching masterpiece, but instead possesses the epic qualities of a mousetrap or a shoelace?

Probably not. It's much more likely some copyright issue.

But Sonic Mouth is worried, it loves These New Puritans first-offering, and had to change its underpants when white sticky stuff punctuated the first listen of We Want War; but the 'Hidden' is just a few poor ideas, clumsily stapled together with sub-contracted talent. Jack Barnett can theorise as much as he wants about 'Hidden' and its concepts, but any claims he makes about the ethos behind the music are surely formulated retrospectively and cannot be credited as 'vision'.

And why do These New Puritans insist on being abbreviated to TNPS? I noticed the NME couldn't make their mind up whether it was TNP or TNPS in their feature last week, choosing to use both. Nice editing Krissi Murison. [But Sonic Mouth still loves you]

We're still here. Be patient.

Sonic Mouth has been away earning wads of cash, blagging freebies on the strength of our last post and writing for other publications.

But fear not. Our ears are bigger(!?) and our wit sharper. And we're getting ready to cut through the steaming brown PR shit-cloud surrounding Delphic, These New Puritans, Hadouken! and plenty more besides.

But to save your ears until then, Hadouken!'s new album sounds like a collection of Pendulum b-sides being voiced-over by a middle-class prick talking to his horse.

Laters,

Sonic Mouth

Hop Farm or Shite Farm?

Can you be bought? Can you?

I've got a wallet full of dirty, fucking rusty, stinky, valuable money for you.

Do you want it? Will you do what I say?

Sonic Mouth won't. Fuck you.

Sonic Mouth got free tickets to the Hop Farm Festival for writing a review that had to be 'positive'. Sonic Mouth ain't proud of this. One arm was taking the free shit, the other was strangling us, making us beg for mercy. We begged, and begged and begged. But it was fruitless. We're half dead.

The half that still lives is sick to the back teeth of dragging this semi-corpse around like some fricking Weekend At Bernie's tribute, so it's cutting it off. Getting the saw out ... Slicing the skin, severing the flesh and snapping the bone.

What's the point of being half dead? What bleeds heals yeah? Let's see what comes out.

Dead half said: On Independence Day it was fitting to get the train out of the commercialised hubbub of London and head to an independent music festival in Kent.

Live half says: No it wasn't. I nicked the Independence Day line off 6Music. It was a pain in the arse. I didn't want to get out of bed at all until I came all over my leg and it started to run onto the bed.

Dead half said: Jumping on the train at London Bridge, the fun spent guessing the place names as we whizzed past the stations would normally be the highlight of any jaunt, although we knew there was cause for excitement elsewhere.

Live half says: This is a blatant lie. We didn't 'jump' on the train at London Bridge. We waited for ages and had to get one from Forest Hill to get there in the first place. And the train cost £15 which is more than I earn in a week.

Dead half said: Arriving at Paddock Wood station, we had a short wait in the sun before an old Routemaster came along to take us to the site. Whilst not quite living up to the phrase ‘shuttle bus’, in the absence of a tractor it was a fitting way to travel to Hop Farm.

Live half says: This is bullshit. We were waiting there for ages with loads of middle class fuckers in urban camouflage drinking weak fucking lager and smoking shit cigarettes like a pretend gay. The Routemaster looked like a big red rust bucket and was about as fast as that special kid out of Hollyoaks.

Dead half said: It was apt to arrive on site to the sound of Noah and the Whale, their summer pop fizzing with feel-good vibes.

Live half says: It was apt. As Noah and the Whale are shit. And Hop Farm was shit. The only thing fizzy about Noah and the Whale is their bath water. Fuck off back to your ark you wet hippies.

Dead half said: After applying sunscreen and donning our shades, we headed over to the front of the main stage to see Florence and the Machine. Resplendent in flowing attire, spinning, dancing, wailing, gesturing, emoting … Florence was every great pop icon rolled into one ginger star. As she closed her set with Rabbit Heart (Raise it Up), everyone in the audience cried. Or maybe that was just me.

Live half says: This bit was true. She was brilliant and we did wear sunglasses.

Dead Half said: Ian McCulloch and his Bunnymen did their best to follow, although their back catalogue was far too detailed for the hot crowd to decipher, more Littlewoods than Argos – if you can permit that analogy.

Live half says: Really? I didn't think we even really bothered to watch them?

Dead half said: On the opposite side of the equation lay Ash, flexing their addition signs with glorious new tunes, all sitting comfortably alongside classics from their debut 1977, and a brief sojourn into their ‘metal’ days. Tim Wheeler looked as good as their songs sounded, like the Peter Pan of indie his performance was both charming and exhilarating.

Live half says: Kind of true. Although the rest of Ash looked dead, and I bet Michael Jackson would be better on the drums than Rick McMurray and we know how alive Michael Jackson is, and even when he was alive he only banged kids.

Dead half said: After enjoying the flow of the mainstream, we headed over to the third stage to catch The Joy Formidable’s clatter pop. Much more aggressive than their recorded material, they managed to pump vitriol into their songs, as they bled rock and roll.

Live half says: Lies. We saw two songs and they were shit. I could wank a better band.

Dead half said: Unfortunately we then saw The View, whose indecipherable Dundee accents were equal to their musical output. An absolute shambles, and an unfortunate end to the day, leaving us no option but to flee London-wards to escape their sub-Libertines shite.

Live half says: The View were shit, but I knew that before I started watching them. In truth we were listening to them as we were running from the site. The Pigeon fucking Detectives and The Fratellis were following them. Would you stick around for that? Unlikely.

Dead half said: Thankfully on Sunday we arrived on site to the Rifles who were firing (arf arf) on all cylinders with their Jam-lite pop.

Live half says: We didn't even really want to go on Sunday. We do quite like The Rifles, but on the main stage? Really? I was surprised they had any fans.

Dead half said: Obviously popular with the assembled mods, it was hard not to feel a little sorry for the following act Ladyhawke as she had her wings clipped after her voice didn’t join her on stage.

Live half says: You'd still shag her though wouldn't you? Although she was wearing this awful outfit that made her look like a bit of a prat. A Nirvana t-shirt? Did you not see Florence yesterday? Pull your finger out and turn your mic up you nobber.

Dead half said: After struggling through a set seemingly lasting an age, Ladyhawke finally made way for the Mystery Jets, whose 80s-tinged pop will have taught Pip Brown a valuable lesson.

Live half says: I didn't even watch them, but Mrs Sonic Mouth did, and she liked them, but she likes lamps.

Dead half said: We then injected some baggy-testosterone courtesy of The Twang, before sitting down for some Indonesian Nasi Gorin. Yum yum.

Live half says: Are you bored reading this yet? Basically dead half is talking shite, Live half is saying the truth. Do you really think the food was good? Do you really think THE TWANG were good?

Dead half said: After exploring the site and busting some truly chaotic moves in the Dance Tent, we took our shame to the third stage to see the phenomenal 65 Days of Static. After picking our jaws up from the floor it proved impossible not to immerse oneself in their techno-scented noisecore.

Live half says: I didn't realise this review was so long. There were only about twelve people watching 65dos, and I don't think they played 'Dance Parties ...' but I was well pissed at this point. My colleague who had been sick just a few minutes prior to arriving in the vicinity of 65dos turned and walked away. All the way back to London.

Dead half said: [Bad segway alert] As they threw themselves around the stage as though they were dodging bullets, we went to go and see Editors who played a song called Bullets. As Tom Smith’s epic tones spilled out life-affirming gloom anthems, it was time to travel back to big smoke, so we did.

Live half says: Editors were okay, but I've seen them loads of times before and they were better than this. I think Edith Bowman might have started writing their choruses though. They smelt like chips.

Dead half said: Farewell Hop Farm. We loved you.

Live half says: We didn't. You were shit and free.

LA SHARK swim where others sank

O. Children / LA SHARK / The Ghost Frequency at The Lexington (04/04/09)

I first saw The Ghost Frequency supporting The Rakes at an SE1 collective club night/gig a couple of years ago. They were brilliant. I was tanked up on San Miguel and Cobra but they were definitely brilliant. Sharp in look and sound, their rousing anthems of electro-punk secured themselves a place in my ‘to watch’ file. Two years on and I hadn’t watched them. Typical. But headlining a bill at The Lexington gave me a chance for a progress check. It seems given two choices in which direction to head, they picked the wrong one. Dirtying up their sound with some more electronica would have been the way to go, but their new material smacks of two guitarists desperate to prove their masculinity by duelling through each song with more and more unnecessarily complicated metal guitar licks. No need boys. Their new material is heavier but not better, and provoking some over-beered teen to start throwing his weight around by the stage (when no one else was acting in a similar way) reminded me far too much of wandering into a festival tent where Amen were playing circa 2001. Maybe it’s their experimental phase. Maybe they’ll return to what they can undoubtedly do fantastically well. I do hope so.

Now show me the chase because I’m cutting to it. My fellow Sonic Mouth contributor failed to summarise O. Children (through no fault of bad writing, I hasten to add as I see him eyeing up my balls for a kicking) and I don’t want to fall into the same literary bear trap, winding up 500 words down the track no fucking wiser as to what the hell I think of this band. It’s time for air rifle journalism with pellets of fact and targets of truth…hideously shit metaphor but deal with it because I have.

O. Children played first on the bill.
Their frontman Tobias is simply the tallest musician I’ve ever seen live, not helped by the fact his fellow his fellow bandmates seem to be rather small in stature.
His height is only matched in extremity by the hauntingly low pitch of his vocals which threaten regularly to drop off the bottom of the scale (you could be singing Edith Piaf, but if you sing the notes that low and mumble over the microphone it will forever sound like the voiceover intro to Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Put it into a few songs, and everyone is going to say you sound like Joy Division, like it or not.)
They ARE a good band who have written good songs, admittedly not brilliantly received by the thin-on-the-ground crowd at The Lexington.
They THINK they’re a much better band who have written much better songs. Which they aren't and haven’t. Yet.
These are all facts.
O. Children. O. ver and o. ut.

Next up, sandwiched between openers and headliners, LA SHARK. Cue entry for a band of merry troubadours who look like a costume shop has just thrown up on them; the lead singer and guitarist sporting matching Clockwork Orange eye make up, with the frontman’s jacket sequinned to the hilt (although it was later removed – either it got too hot or the sequins were refracting the mirror ball lights and arbitrarily blinding audience members). The bassist looked like Robinson Crusoe at a B*Witched party, dressed in a double-denim combo (although he admitted to my girlfriend while smoking outside he had in fact dared to don quadruple denim previously. Respect).
Their appearance providing the visual equivalent of what their music did aurally – give the gig a much needed shot in the arm. Scuttling through their songs which rose and fell effortlessly, spanning the sub-genres of electro, indie, folk and psychedelia; the quintet warmed the crowd up excellently for what eventually turned out to be a disappointing climax.