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