email: [email protected] website: nightshift.oxfordmusic.net Free every month. NIGHTSHIFT Issue 147 October Oxford’s Music Magazine 2007

YOUTHMOVIESYOUTHMOVIES

s inspirational musical Oxford’ interview inside chameleons -

PlusPlus TruckTruck FestivalFestival review;review; CarlingCarling AcademyAcademy openingopening nightnight andand sevenseven pagespages ofof locallocal gigsgigs NIGHTSHIFT: PO Box 312, Kidlington, OX5 1ZU. Phone: 01865 372255 TRUCK RECORDS launches THE BULLINGDON hosts a new two new regular live music club weekly live bands club night every NEWNEWSS nights this autumn. Starting from Thursday from 4th October. this month, on Thursday 11th, is Project:disco is run by the same Nightshift: PO Box 312, Kidlington, OX5 1ZU Champions Of The World at the team who currently run Coo Coo Phone: 01865 372255 email: [email protected] Gladiator Social Club on Iffley Club at the Jericho Tavern. Bands Road. As well as a live set from and DJs interested in playing recent Magic Numbers support should contact Autumn at through; he’s a tough cookie”. act Danny Champion Of The [email protected], Surgeons have operated to repair World, there’ll be bingo, a cheese including MySpace links where two broken vertebrae and are auction and a disco. Meanwhile, possible. treating a smashed heel. Mickey is after being forced to move much of expected to make a full recovery, this year’s Truck Festival bill up THE THIEVES have split up. The although this may take several to Brookes University Union at band formed by Oxfordshire months. Commenting on the the last minute following the bothers Hal and Sam Stokes have cancellation of the show, Alan Day, floods, Truck have decided to go been resident in Los Angeles for the promoter for TCT Music, added, back with a once-a-term gig and past few years, constantly touring “We were really looking forward to club night. around the States and last month this gig, being the local heroes that The first Uni-Truck show is on played their biggest gigs to date, they are. It’s such a shame they Tuesday 27th November with a appearing at the Milwaukee won’t be playing the first weekend selection of bands playing over Summerfest alongside Black at our new venue, but we wish two stages. American narcotic- Crowes and Tool, and at Monolith Mick a speedy recovery and we rockers The Warlocks headline. Festival with Flaming Lips and SUPERGRASS’ homecoming gig will reschedule another date with Tickets are £8 in advance (£5 for Kings of Leon. at the Carling Academy Oxford was the band once he’s well enough.” students). The band were due to release a cancelled after bassist Mickey Supergrass had been enjoying a Truck is also continuing to go record through Bam Margera’s Quinn broke two vertebrae in his summer break after completing from strength to strength with its label, Filthy Note, and spend the back. Mickey had apparently fallen recording of their sixth album, due in-house recording studios which end of 2007 touring the record. from a first-floor window in the for release later this year. All of the have recently hosted Foals, Unfortunately, Filthy Note decided holiday villa he was staying at in band’s current plans are now on Electric Soft Parade and Chicks to pull the plug at the last minute. the south of France. In a press hold. On Speed. Local bands can take The band’s drummer Jamie has also statement, Supergrass singer Gaz Nightshift wishes Mickey a full advantage of a special deal until decided to get married later this Coombes said, “I hope the crazy and speedy recovery. the end of 2007: £150 per day. year, and wants to spend more fool gets back on his feet as soon as Refunds on gig tickets are available Contact Stewart or Genevieve at time in LA, to become an actor. possible. I’m sure he’ll pull from point of purchase. Truck on 01235 821262. Sam spoke to Nightshift about the split: “it’s is a real shame. We were Nov) and Pigeon Detectives (Tue really starting to build momentum 20th Nov) are both now sold out. and get somewhere out here, so bad Meanwhile, the Academy are timing really, seeing as we’ve been looking for street team members to slogging it out for so many years. distribute flyers and suchlike. In I’ve had a blast though, and seen return street teamers can get free and done things I would have never entry to Academy gigs. Anyone been able to do if I hadn’t been in interested should email the band, so no regrets at all. We’ve [email protected]. also been able to finish on a high by playing a festival at Red Rocks in SHACK precede their show at the Colorado, with great bands like Academy with an in-store gig at Flaming Lips, and Kings of Leon - HMV in Cornmarket Street at 5pm it was an absolute blast! I guess all on Tuesday 16th October. The band things must pass, and as one door will also be signing copies of their closes, another one opens. I’m new Album, ‘Time Machine’. hoping we will do one last Oxford show. I’m back in November and PLANS ARE AFOOT to organise KRAUTROCK LEGENDS MICHAEL ROTHER AND DIETER Jamie and Hal should be back a Ladyfest in Oxford in 2008. MÖEBIUS have been confirmed as the headline act for this year’s around Christmas time, so should be Organiser Joanna Whitehead is Audioscope festival. Rother was previously a member of Neu! as well as able to make it happen. Bloody well keen to hear from bands or artists Kraftwerk and Harmonia; Möebius was a founder member of Cluster hope so.” interested in performing, or anyone before joining Rother in Harmonia. who has ideas that might help the Audioscope takes place at the Carling Academy Oxford on Saturday 10th IAN BROWN is the latest big- event. Email Joanna at November. Also on this year’s bill are New Jersey hip hop weirdoes Dälek name act to be confirmed for the ladyfestoxford08@hotmail. as well as post-rockers The Sea and Cake - featuring former-Tortoise new Carling Academy Oxford. The co.uk. man John McEntire - Shit and Shine, Rothko and Birmingham’s awesome former-Stone Roses singer plays on krautrockers Einstellung. Local bands Witches and Sunnyvale Noise Sub- Tuesday 27th November in the DON’T FORGET TO TUNE IN Element also appear. main Academy venue. to The Download every Saturday The annual Audioscope festival raises money for homeless charity Other acts confirmed for the next night between 6-7pm on BBC Shelter. Last year’s event, headlined by Clinic, raises £2,200; since it few months include Black Rebel Radio Oxford 95.2fm. The long- began in 2001 Audioscope has raised over £15,000 for the charity. Motorcycle Club (Wed 14th Nov); running local music show, An Audioscope warm-up gig, featuring Portland’s psychedelic folk Scratch Perverts (Fri 16th); Hot presented by Tim Bearder and rockers Jackie O Muthafucker, former-Loop people Pumajaw and Hot Heat (Fri 16th) and Minus The David Gillyeat, plays the best new Oxford’s Keyboard Choir takes place at the Wheatsheaf on Tuesday 6th Bear (Sat 15th December). Oxford releases as well as featuring November. Tickets for Adioscope are available now, priced £14, from Prog supergroups Asia’s planned interviews with local acts and a wegottickets.com Check out www.audioscope.co.uk for full details December show has now been regular demo vote. The show is moved to Wednesday 12th March. available to listen to online all week The gigs by The Twang (Fri 2nd at bbc.co.uk/oxford. thethe portport mmahonahon OXJAM kicks off again this month with Oxfam hoping to raise over £1million from music events organised around the UK. Live Music in October Running throughout October Oxjam could be considered the biggest live music festival in the country if taken as a whole, with around 40,000 4th Port Mayhem presents 18th Permanent Vacation musicians and an audience of 300,000 expected to take part in over 3,000 Eddy Thompson + presents Alexander Thomas + events over the month. Last year’s inaugural Oxjam raised over £500,000. Horizontalice + One Dollar Euhedral + Joey Chainsaw In Oxford – home city of Oxfam – there are gigs, concerts, jam sessions Peep Show 19th Oxford Folk Club and live music karaoke virtually every night, kicking off with a planned 5th Oxford Folk Club 20th Poor Girl Noise presents st musical flashmob in the city centre on October 1 and ending with a 6th Quickfix presents Ivy’s That Fucking Tank + Hreda + rd multicultural musical finale at the Oxford Castle on November 3 . Itch + Cuckoos Nest Capeman! + Shield Your Eyes Most local Oxjam gigs are listed in Nightshift’s gig guide but with many 7th Swiss Concrete presents 21st Swiss Concrete presents events still to be finalised, visit oxjamoxford.co.uk for full details. Blazing Zoos + The Sub Pop Sunday + Vestibule + Messengers + Naomi Hates 13th Gauge Humans 22nd Peacemakers 11th Dirty Boys 23rd My Analog presents 12th Oxford Folk Club Francois + The Atlas 14th Swiss Concrete presents Mountains + Glas Nost Butcher Boy + Les Clochards 24th The Jones Radio + Collese Fall 25th Johnny Sexual Kitchen 15th Poetry Night with Paul 26th Oxford Folk Club Wyton + Adana Horouitz 28th Pindrop Performance 16th Oxfordbands.com in aid 5pm - 8pm of Oxjam - The Half Rabbits + 29th The Young Playthings Eduard Sounding Block + The 30th Toad + David K Frampton Winchell Riots + Theo + more 17th Oxfordbands.com in aid of 31st Joe Allen Oxjam - Witches + Harry Angel + Richard Walters + Mewgatz

nightshift.oxfordmusic.net Book your band into play at Oxford’s best small music venue! a great place to start a fight 82 St Clements, Oxford. Tel: 01865 202067 A Quiet Word With YOUTHMOVIES THEY’LL DENY IT OF COURSE, those ideas hinted at. Our internal they’re too modest to accept workings changed a lot when Sam responsibility, but Youthmovies are joined, as he was immediately the now the most influential band in most musically minded of any of us. Oxford. His level of understanding had a big Look at the local scene and it’s impact on making our ideas ‘work’ in awash with young bands making a very literal sense. strange new sounds and shapes, Andrew: “‘Good Nature’ is basically mixing guitars and electronics, catchier but more complex. The combining elements of post-rock, record is a lot more concerned with jazz, prog, electronica and improv, melody and songwriting than whether it’s newcomers like Twat anything we’ve written in the past, Trot Tra La, Hreda or Flies Are Spies and for me personally it became From Hell, more established talents literary too. I’ve not been listening such as This Town Needs Guns and to a great deal of rock music; the Jonquil, or the current brightest star music that probably informed large in Oxford’s musical firmament, Foals, parts of ‘Hurrah!’ no longer holds my each owes some debt to Youthmovies, interest for that long. Once you be it a direct musical one or as from the rather more cumbersome pretty well to not fall out in any sort recognise the tricks it’s like the awe beneficiaries of the band’s Do It Youthmovie Soundtrack Strategies), of significant way I think. But it’s you once felt listening to them Yourself and Try And Help Others but because they have spent much of safe to say that the time apart was occupies less space in your head, so Along The Way ethos. that time making their name around definitely needed. Sam joining the there’s room for more awe from else And it’s not just in Oxford that the UK, it’s sometimes been easy to band was the single most influential where. I’ve also discovered that I Youthmovies are so highly regarded. overlook their very considerable thing in reconciling any difficulties or actually really, really enjoy singing! The band, who were initially signed achievements. disagreements. To welcome in this My confidence in my voice has up to the seminal Fierce Panda label, Last month Youthmovies showcased fresh-faced 18 year old, who arrived grown hugely, so there’s a lot of that have recently signed to Drowned In their new material with a low-key gig without any the debt, worries or going on now, a lot of my time was Sound’s record label, for whom they at the Cellar, supporting Dead personal issues that dogged the rest of spent writing words... hopefully will release a new album, ‘Good Meadow. The new songs still retain us, was a revelation. We felt people will stop mistaking us for an Nature’, in the New Year. much of their band’s trademark rejuvenated and Sam quickly relieved instrumental band.” Youthmovies have also performed at urgency, endeavour and almost any tension by instantly becoming What direction are the improvised the last three Carling Weekend proggy dedication to the butt of every joke…” shows taking you in? Where do you festivals as well as three appearances experimentalism, there’s a more Andrew: “There were no real see Youthmovies moving, in musical at All Tomorrow’s Parties. Almost prominent melodic edge to them now, arguments. Ham pretty much didn’t terms, in the coming years? Can you constant touring over the past few and some passages of spaced-out talk to me for a year, and Al and I imagine, for example, playing a gig or years has seen them play in virtually psychedelic rock, while the addition were differing fundamentally on a few making an album without guitars? every town and city in the UK, and of Sam’s trumpet playing has brought things, none of which I can remember Al: “We have actually played sign a record deal in Japan. in new jazz influences. What does now... He and I have basically been in improvised gigs without guitars What else? Oh yes, in between all remain the same, though, is the sheer each others pockets since day one, so before, and two thirds of the record that the band have found time to inventiveness of the band: the feeling a lot of it was needing time apart to that we just made with Adam Gnade collaborate with acts as diverse as that each and every song is searching come up with new shit to talk about. was entirely electronic… But we’re Adam Gnade, Saul Williams and for a new place to go. Currently it’s phasers.” not heading off to make our ‘Kid A’ Jonquil, run a record label and very You’ve left Fierce Panda and signed just yet! We do have a conscious plan nearly split up. This month they put FOR THE UNINITIATED, to Drowned in Sound. They’ve for where we’re headed next though, out two separate and very different Youthmovies are: Andrew Mears always been very supportive of and the focus is much less on the releases, a five-song EP, ‘Honey (guitar and vocals); Al English Youthmovies. guitars. All those people who seem Slides’, with Portland, Oregon’s (guitar and synths); Stephen ‘Ham’ Al: “The people at Drowned in aggrieved that we haven’t yet ‘weird-folk’ singer Adam Gnade and a Hammond (bass and synths) and Sound have been friends of ours for invented an entire new musical 7” single under the guise of Vertical Graeme Murray (drums and vocals) years now, so the idea of signing to a vocabulary need to calm down.” Montanas, a new band they have with newcomer Sam making it five. label run by people we knew Andrew: “Indeed. It’s hard for us to formed in conjunction with Jonquil. Nightshift spoke to the band as they personally was always going to be an say where we see ourselves going Did we mention that Jonquil prepared for a mammoth month-long attractive one. Fierce Panda had been musically, so much of it’s been trumpeter Sam Scott is also now a tour around the UK with Jonquil and good to us but we’d reached a point democratic or natural that any rigid permanent member of Youthmovies, Adam Gnade ahead of the new where we wanted to step up in a way ideas that may be there in the or that Youthmovies singer and album’s release. that wouldn’t have necessarily been beginning probably won’t be realised. guitarist Andrew Mears was a founding possible had we stayed with them. So The ideas for the next album are the member of Foals? Are you keeping up YOU SAY YOU ALL FELL OUT we had a look what else was out there, most solid thing that we’ve ever had, at the back? Are you? for a while – what was the story talked to two or three labels and went but we’ll just have to see if they go behind that and how was it resolved? with DiS. We knew that they ‘got us’, the way we want, it’ll be pretty IT’S ALMOST FIVE YEARS How close did you come to splitting? which was a pretty important factor.” uncharted territory for us.” since Youthmovies first made their Al: “We didn’t fall out as such, but Graeme: “Improvisation is just pure presence felt in Oxford (Nightshift we did take some much-needed time ‘GOOD NATURE’ IS OUT NEXT fun for me but I do think that you got their name wrong while awarding out from each other. I moved to year – how will it be different to the take a risk every time you take to the their first CD Demo Of The Month), London for a year and didn’t really last album? stage for an unrehearsed show. The and three years since we last put the come back to Oxford that often. Al: “To me, this album is the true first time we did it we all got a big band on the front cover and Given that some of us had lived culmination of everything we’ve rush and agreed that it was too much interviewed them. So much has together since university and then done until now. If ‘Hurrah…’ was a fun not to do more of these kind of happened to them in the interim spent a ridiculous amount of time record filled with ideas, then ‘Good shows. It has also bled into the (including shortening their name cooped up in the back of a van we did Nature’ is the realisation of what recording and entire sections of the new record are totally improvised.” I was too over-committed to carry on Ham: “Over the last year we’ve playing with them... other than that learnt how to better utilise computers it feels really good to watch their rise. and have started programming, so Youthmovies and The Edmund perhaps in the future there could be a Fitzgerald were definitely influenced more electronic record.” by each other back in the day, it’s good to see that the conclusion to WITH A FIVE-WEEK TOUR that is the start of something else.” ahead of them, do the band feel like Al: “Doing what we can for bands we Youthmovies is on the verge of wider believe in and keeping friends close is success, and what realistically can a definitely a big part of our ethos. band of their ilk hope for as far as We’ve come from a DIY background mass appeal is concerned? and that won’t ever leave us, Andrew: “It often feels like you’re irrespective of there being a booking on the verge of wider success; we used agent, management and a bigger label to let our naivety and enthusiasm get involved. We’re not a big band by any October us overly optimistic about it. We means, but even so, you don’t forget keep a lid on it nowadays. We’ve where you came from and you don’t Every Monday made a record that we’re all really forget the people who were there for THE FAMOUS MONDAY NIGHT BLUES proud of, it was a challenge for us and you when no one else was.” we succeeded in meeting our own Youthmovies seem to have become The best in UK, European and US blues. 8-12. £6 expectations.” very influential in Oxford over the 1st THE MATT SCHOFIELD TRIO (UK) Al: “Our hopes and aspirations have last couple of years – bands like 8th ROB TOGNONI (Australia) changed a lot over time and we’re Hreda, Twat Trot Tra La etc. seem to th currently pretty comfortable in our have their own take on your sound. 15 THE IAN PARKER BAND (UK) own skin. We’re never going to be the Andrew: “I don’t know about that, 22nd GILES HEDLEY & THE AVIATORS (UK) kind of band that appeals to the we’re into similar stuff I guess. It’s 29th THE ROBI ZONCA BAND (Italy) masses, but that’s not to say we can’t natural that we’d end up comparable. sustain what we’re doing at a certain We’re lucky, in Oxford, to have a lot level. Longevity is something that has of bands from a lot of backgrounds, Every Tuesday become important to us – we want to but there’s always going to be musical THE OXFORD JAZZ CLUB still be doing this in ten years time.” congruence, you see it in a lot of Free live jazz plus DJs playing r’n’b, funk and soul until 2am Certainly in Youthmovies’ case it’s towns to varying degrees. The most nd rd been a case of a reputation slowly and exciting thing to me that’s going on 2 / 23 THE HOWARD PEACOCK QUINTET steadily earned. They’ve played All in Oxford at the moment is the noise 9th THE NUMBERS RACKET Tomorrow’s Parties three times and movement. It’s sort of the antithesis 16th KATYA GORIE & DENNY ILETT Jr the Carling Weekend three years of what we are... I find it really th running – what have been the interesting, because it’s almost as if 30 THE OXFORD JAZZ ORCHESTRA highlights of those shows? it’s a response to the technical bands Ham: “The first two shows for ATP that preceded it, like punk was to Thursdays were ad-hoc gigs. Playing earlier this prog. These bands are making music year for ATP as an invited band, on that’s cerebral and free, it’s cool.” PROJECT DISCO – Live bands and DJs. one of the main stages was one of my Graeme: “The good thing about main highlights for 2007. The crowd Oxford music is that it is uninhibited Every Friday were really responsive to the new and the bands encourage each other material, and we had a lot of fun, as to take risks and sound different.” BACKROOM BOOGIE we do, on a big stage. Playing the Funk, soul and R&B. 10.30pm-2am; £4. Carling weekends are always fun, OF COURSE, WITH (last Friday of the month with guest DJ Aidan Larkin) especially playing this year with three Youthmovies’ reputation in the UK drummers swapping across two kits.” at an all-time high, and set to go higher still, the band can maybe start Fridays early shows PERHAPS YOUTHMOVIES’ to think beyond these shores and the 12th THE SKIES / NOT MY DAY / THE BLACKHATS. most significant influence has been recent offer of a record deal in Japan 7pm £5 their mentoring of bands like Foals has opened that door. 26th SAM KELLY’S STATION HOUSE (for lovers of and Jonquil in recent times; they were Ham: “The album released is getting funk). 8pm. £6 close spiritual compatriots of Yannis there and we’re hopefully going over when he fronted The Edmund to play a few shows in 2008 which Fitzgerald, while Al’s label, Try we’re all obviously really excited Saturdays Harder, released the first Foals single about. We’ve never even played 6th SIMPLE Funky House 9.30pm-4am and both of Jonquil’s albums. How outside the UK! The label is putting 13th OXJAM with JABERWOK / MR SHAODOW / important is this to the whole out a compilation of older RUBBER DUCK / THE SWAMIS. All proceeds to Youthmovies ethos; how do they feel Youthmovies stuff too, I think.” about Foals’ recent success? Andrew: “It’s weird to be asked to Oxfam. th Andrew: “Mentored is the wrong release our music there, it’s unreal 20 OX4 – Drum’n’Bass with Prolific / Madcap / Ben E / word I think. It’s just that I was in that there’s anyone in Japan that’s DJ Lax / Elements. 9-3am. £5.50 / £4.50 Foals, Sam is in Jonquil, and Al put heard of us let alone wants to release 27th GET MASHED – Mash-up of the biggest and best our their records... Al was probably us, it’s an honour, I can’t wait to go.” tunes from hip hop, funk and reggae to electro house, the most useful to them, aside from breaks and drum’n’bass. £5 (students £3 B4 11pm) putting out both bands’ stuff, he ‘Honey Slides’ with Adam Gnade helped Foals when it came to them and ‘Thick Mugs’ by Vertical having to meet with big shots and Montanas are both released this Sundays mediated as far as he could. He’s also month. ‘Good Nature’ is released 7th LIVE STAND-UP COMEDY 8-11pm £6/7 helped Foals and Jonquil book tours. early in 2008. The band headline the 14th SPIERS & BODEN live 8.30-11pm. £10 / £9 Of course I still write all of Yannis’ Zodiac at the Oxford Academy on 21st SIMPLE REASON / support guitar parts, but other than that their Saturday 27th October. Visit work is their own! The only drawback www.myspace.com/youthmovies for of Foals’ success is that it meant that full tour details, news and tracks. Sponsored RELEASED by THE EPSTEIN YOUNG KNIVES ‘Last Of The ‘Terra Firma’ Charanguistas’ (Transgressive) Young Knives can be forgiven for feeling (Own Label) aggrieved at being pipped by Klaxons of all Once a humble, workaday country-rock band, people for the Mercury Prize, but it seems The Epstein have grown into something special they’ve used their ire to positive effect, casting over the last year or so. Where once they could the definitive article from their name violently be dismissed as a competent Eagles tribute, this aside and penning this new single, their most debut album uncovers a far more romantic, militant three minutes to date. exotic character. One of the early signs of this A bombastic guitar flourish is quickly stamped transformation came with last year’s ‘Leave on by a propulsive, robotic post-punk groove, Your Light On’, a lovelorn, bucolic ramble that like the onward march of The People’s owed more to Neil Diamond’s emotionally-taut Revolutionary Army, Henry Dartnell’s high-set style than Don Henley. Indeed Diamond’s monotone set at stark odds with the machine-like influence – intended or not – hovers over much outlaw thrum of ‘Thunder River’, The Epstein insistency of the steely guitars and bass and of ‘Last Of The Charanguistas’ and his is an keep their horizons broad but always have the hectoring chorus. It’s like the band have taken a always welcome presence. It’s most notable on desert in their sights. baseball bat to any remaining vestiges of whimsy the album’s central highlight, ‘Dance The Night It’s only when they revert to more MOR in their canon (although lyrically they’re as Away’, a luxuriant lament replete with mariachi country rock type that they lose their idiosyncratic as ever) and parachuted down into horns. Olly Wills’ voice is equally plaintive and intimacy: album closer ‘NYC Blues’ is a soft- that precise moment of time when new wave honey-smooth, never detracting from the sweet, focus ballad that could have dropped off the clashed head on with the vanguard of synth-pop. simple melodies but not cowed by the eclectic back of an old Crosby Stills and Nash album. Perhaps not an unexpected turn for a band that range of instrumentation (banjo, fiddle, lap steel But that’s the exception rather than the rule used to cover Tubeway Army’s ‘Listen To the and bouzouki amongst them) that makes these and the melancholic intensity of ‘Just The Sirens’ back when they were first starting out. ten tracks a varied and engaging road trip. From Wind’, even with its guitar histrionics, is Out with the tweed and in with PVC jumpsuits the roadhouse country blues of ‘Charanga where The Epstein strike gold. and scarlet streaks through dyed black hair, then. Classic’ to the strident, flamenco-tinged Dale Kattack Futurism is the future once again. Dale Kattack THIS TOWN NEEDS their way into the limelight. Their last single, ‘And I’ll Tell You For Why’, was a marked THE FOCAL POINT GUNS improvement on past efforts and this new split album with Staines’ frantic, angsty post-hardcore ‘Shoreline Fire’ Split CD troupe Cats And Cats And Cats is another step up. Sometimes coming over like a composite of (Own label) (Big Scary Monsters) other Oxford bands – Dive Dive’s playful pop- Debut EP from local youngsters who claim to This Town Needs Guns have consistently punk, Youthmovies’ restless fretplay and have ditched their “predominantly standard indie seemed like a band that would forever be the deliberately obtuse song titles, and Fell City rock” in favour of a more ambitious and bridesmaid and never the bride on the local Girl’s plaintively epic rock – TTNG often sound approach to songwriting, which boils down to scene, cast in the shadow of more lauded like they can’t quite decide whether they want to listening to some jazz and electronica and getting neighbours. But perhaps slowly they’re making be headlining stadiums or tucked away on the bill hold of a violin bow to play the guitar with. at All Tomorrow’s Parties. ‘26 Is Dancier Than There’s little evidence of any great esoteric left- 4’ skips between the two poles, deft of touch but turn here, only the mostly incongruous uncertain where it’s headed, while ‘If I Sit Still interjection of banjos, into pretty standard Maybe I’ll Make It Out Of Here’ wrenches downbeat rock drones that amble amiably but every drop of angst out of its slightly morose with little purpose down ever gloomier corridors. daydream. Inklings of grunged-up guitar noise As an EP of ambient incidental gothic pop it start to scuff the varnish on ‘If It’s True Rufus, might just pass muster but the painful, Don’t Listen To The Hat’ before the songs pedestrian vocals spoil everything, substituting wander off at another tangent. They score points shouting for any kind of soul or range and the for avoiding the tried and tested verse/chorus/ melodies, such as they are, are pretty moribund. verse/chorus formula, ditching most of their old Lead track `Kinetic’ briefly promises to turn into histrionics and for letting Stuart’s vocals take a spooky new folksters Candidate, while backseat to the pretty guitar patterns at times. `Blueshine’ has an almost trippy feel to its Maybe, just maybe, those wedding bells aren’t random tremolo-heavy wandering, but beyond too far off now. that you’re struggling for any real signs of life. Sue Foreman Victoria Waterfield Selected Oxford releases are now available on the ground floor HMV Oxford supports local music Open Sundays 11-5pm & late Thursdays till 7pm. 10% student discount every day HEADCOUNT YOUTHMOVIES & ‘To The Point’ ADAM GNADE (Malicious Damage) ‘Honeyslides’ They vehemently deny it of course, and you have to admit they don’t look the part, but we (Try Harder) can’t help thinking there’s a serious gothic vein Not content with wearing a musical coat of running through Headcount. It runs through many colours within their own band the band’s third album like a black slick of compositions, Youthmovies regularly belligerence: from the rumbling, metallic bass collaborate with fellow underground artists, intro to first track ‘Enough Is Enough’, effortlessly showing off new dimensions. through the dark fuzz of the Killing Joke- On this five-track EP the band team up with inspired guitars, to Rob Moss’s lyrics: “There Portland, Oregon singer/poet Adam Gnade – is no blood left in my veins / You sucked me who is currently supporting them on tour – dry” on ‘Control’ (with its decidedly gothy their music sitting as an unsettling, ambient S&M suggestion). He even mentions vampires tirades and toilet humour will find that hard to backdrop to Adam’s dark-minded, often on ‘Gravy Train’. believe). paranoid, stream-of-consciousness words. Not that Headcount are a bunch of sullen The mighty industrial roar of Killing Joke is Delivering his words with a panicky intensity miserablists. They’re far too angry for that, still Headcount’s driving force, most notably Adam occasionally threatens to stray into whether raging against the system and all it on ‘Bleed’ and a re-recorded version of ‘Red teenage goth fantasy – there are black clouds entails like the proper punk rockers they are Mist’, but the spiky playfulness of early aplenty on his personal horizon: “they watch (you know, when punk was about fighting Adam & The Ants is equally to the fore as us from the trees” and “we live life in the back and not just trying to market your own ever, like the loping skank in the middle of crosshairs”. Behind him guitars, keys and horns range of designer skate shoes), or unleashing ‘It’s A Pleasure Doing Business With You’. flicker, undulate and wobble, at their best pent-up fury about child abuse as on ‘To The The Jesus Lizard’s sheet metal hardcore making you feel like you’re walking across an Point”s central track, ‘Daddy’, a song that further bolsters the bullish rock assault, while unsafe wooden floor as lightbulbs strobe could be trite but instead boils with helpless punks of the old school will smile fondly at unevenly above. The bleak, nervous intensity of hatred. Sung from a child’s point of view it’s the nods to Spizz Energi. Increasingly it all comes on like The Paperchase if they hardly poetry but exudes righteous fury. Headcount prefer melody to brute force. listened to more Steve Reich and John Zorn and The song is a step down in momentum from Maturity or not, there aren’t too many less Big Black, or perhaps a fidgety kid brother the rest of the album’s obstinate chugging, surprises on ‘To The Point’ but we wouldn’t to Meanwhile, Back In Communist Russia’s perhaps a symptom of Headcount’s self- want there to be if we’re honest. Headcount self-harming big sister. Ambient it may be, but confessed increasing maturity (although still say what they mean and say it mean. it’s far from easy listening. anyone who’s ever witnessed Rob’s onstage Ian Chesterton Dale Kattack

THE ANY DAYS CD single `MONDAY MORNING’ at Polar Bear Records, Cowley Road gig guide

MONDAY 1st Top 10 hits ‘So Much For The City’ and ‘Let’s THE MATT SCHOFIELD TRIO: The OCTOBER Bottle Bohemia’ and bringing some celtic charm Bullingdon – Young British blues guitarist who to Neil Young and The Beach Boys. MILE HIGH YOUNG TEAM + BACK started off playing with Lee Sankey and Dana HADOUKEN!: The Oxford Academy – Grime, POCKET PROPHET + HOUSE OF BLUE Gillespie as well as the Lester Butler Tribute hip hop, acid house, synth-pop and nu-metal DOLLS: The X, Cowley – Grinning Spider club Band, now going out with his own band, playing collide head-on in the not-so subtle world of night with expansive, rootsy rockers MHYT blues and funky jazz, inspired by BB King, Leeds’ Hadouken!, but then what do you expect headlining. Stevie Ray Vaughan and Albert Collins. from a band who name themselves after a special ONE-DOLLAR PEEPSHOW: The Port attack move in Street Fighter. A million-plus Mahon – Fuzzy, Cardigans-inspired guitar pop. st rd MySpace hits for nu-rave anthem `That Boy Monday 1 – Saturday 3 Nov SPIN JAZZ CLUB: The Wheatsheaf – That Girl’ don’t lie and tonight’ll be a glo-stick- Trumpeter Ben Cummings plays with the in- OXJAM lit celebration whatever the doubters think. house band. This year’s Oxfam-organised nationwide RALPH McTELL: Nettlebed Folk Club – PROJECT:DISCO: The Bullingdon – New Oxjam festival is more ambitious than last From the dark streets of London to the bright weekly club night with live bands and DJs year’s, with the aim being to raise over lights of Nettlebed, the well-travelled troubadour playing indie, alt.country, electro and rock. £1million for the charity. Involving continues his storytelling style of folk music. ROSIE ODDIE + RICHARD WALTERS + numerous local promoters, venues and bands nd TUESDAY 2 JOE ALLEN: The Cellar – Bill Oddie’s in Oxford it’s quite a nebulous affair but REVEREND & THE MAKERS: The Oxford daughter Rosie brings her 60s girl group and there’s plenty of entertainment to be had. Academy – Arctic Monkeys mentor Jon country-rock-influenced pop to tonight’s Big The event is due to kick off with a flashmob McClure brings his philosophical showmanship Hair Club. event somewhere in the city centre and to town – see main preview ANDENSUM + SAVAGE HENRY + VISIONS finishes with a multicultural musical finale at JAZZ CLUB with THE HOWARD FALL: The Hobgoblin – Bicester’s monthly the Castle. In between there are gigs at PEACKOCK QUINTET: The Bullingdon heavy rock night with assorted local metal and virtually every local venue. Highlights SHUSH OPEN MIC SESSION: The X, punk noise. include Oxfordbands.com’s two gigs at the Cowley OPEN MIC SESSION: The Half Moon Port Mahon with local stars Witches OPEN MIC SESSION: Far From The SKYLARKIN: The Brickworks – Ska, reggae, (pictured), Harry Angel, Richard Walters, Madding Crowd Afrobeat and soul from DJ Aidan Larkin and Half Rabbits, Eduard Soundingblock and The WEDNESDAY 3 rd guests. Winchell Riots, while over at the Bully HAROLD BUDD: Holywell Music Room – th Selectasound present a night of funk and hip FRIDAY 5 Legendary ambient and minimalist composer hop with Jaberwok, Mr Shaodow and HAPPY MONDAYS: The Oxford Academy – plays a rare solo show – see main preview Rubber Duck amongst others. Local bands Sean Ryder, Bez and the drummer attempt to KATE WALSH: The Jericho Tavern – Sweet also turn up at the Wheatsheaf, The X and remain conscious for an hour or so and perhaps sunny-day folk-pop from Brighton singer Kate the Jericho Tavern, while there’s a metal and even remember some of their old hits, which who beat Kaiser Chiefs and Take That to number punk night running between the Port Mahon should require some kind of superhuman effort 1 in the album download charts with her self- and the Duke on St Clement’s. There’s a since none of them were straight enough to know released ‘Tim’s House’. Back in town after an space-rock spectacular in Abingdon with a what the hell was going on first time round. Still, impressive showing at this year’s Cornbury guest appearance from Hawkwind’s Hugh ‘Wrote For Luck’, eh? Classic. Festival. Lloyd-Langton, plus assorted classical, slam THE BROKEN FAMILY BAND: The Zodiac THE TREAT + HANGMAN’S JOE: The poetry and open mic sessions. Some events @ The Oxford Academy – Joyously rootsy Wheatsheaf are still being confirmed so worth checking Cambridge folk-rockers and recent stars of ALLY CRAIG + BEAVER FUEL + SHIRLEY: out www.oxfam.org.uk/oxjam for full details. Cornbury Festival, mixing up country rock, 60s The X, Cowley – Shirley continue their monthly pop and full-blown metal club residency, with special guest tonight Ally KLUB KAKOFANNEY with THE EVENINGS Craig bridging the gap between Jeff Buckley and + BOTOX COWBOYS + CAINE + JAMES Sonic Youth. Lo-fi punkers Beaver Fuel support BELL: The Wheatsheaf – Electro-rockers The while Shirley bring their sunshiney 60s party Evenings headline tonight’s Klub Kak mixed bag. rock’n’roll. PEARL KITES + LITTLE FISH + DIAMOND HIT&RUN: The Cellar – Hip hop and LINES + FLUID LINE: The Jericho Tavern – drum&bass club night with a live set from the Harmony-heavy garage rocking from Pearl Kites UK’s leading female beatboxer, Bellatrix. with support from Nightshift’s current fave new OPEN MIC SESSION: Folly Bridge Inn local duo Little Fish coming in where Fiery OPEN MIC SESSION: Temple Bar Furnaces meet Sinead O’Connor. THURSDAY 4th SCRAMBLER + TOULOUSE + CHRIS ALABAMA 3: The Oxford Academy – Another BEARD: The X, Cowley – Oxjam event return to town for the enduringly entertaining featuring a one-off reunion gig for former-local acid-fried gospel rockers outta Brixton, Jam-inspired favourites Scrambler. Country- promoting new album ‘MOR’. Are you ready to tinged rockers Toulouse support with an acoustic testify once more, brothers and sisters? set, plus Harry Angel frontman Chris Beard THE THRILLS: The Zodiac @ The Oxford FRESH OUT OF THE BOX: The Cellar – Academy – Irish sunshine popsters with their House and breaks. hearts in 1960s California, back in action with THE BIG RIVER BAND: Fat Lil’s, Witney their third album, ‘Teenager’, following on from BACKROOM BOOGIE: The Bullingdon SATURDAY 6th OXFORD URBAN ARTZ FESTIVAL: EDITORS + RA RA RIOT: The Oxford Brookes University Union – Hip hop, dance, Academy – Darkest and best of the new wave of fashion and art all-dayer. new wave hitmakers celebrate being the first QUICKFIX presents IVY’S ITCH + band to sell out the new Academy – see main HELLSET ORCHESTRA + CUCKOO’S preview NEST + DECIBELLA: The Port Mahon – NINE-STONE COWBOY + LITTLE FISH + Goth-grunge virulence from Ivy’s Itch, plus AMBERSTATE: The Wheatsheaf – Wry Hammer Horror pop from Nottingham’s melancholic drinking songs from Mark Cope’s Hellset. Nine Stone Cowboy, coming on somewhere LES CLOCHARDS + THE MARMADUKES between Teenage Fanclub and Guided By Voices. + THE NEW MOON: The X, Cowley – Exotic Ace garage-blues rockers Little Fish support, mix of Parisian folk music, alt.country, old school alongside ambient electro-jazz pop types indie jangle and classic rock’n’roll from Les Amberstate. Clochards. SIMPLE: The Bullingdon – Funky house with Audiojack, Romanno Farrocco and resident DJs. Tuesday 2nd MELTING POT with HELIUM SOUND + VIB GYOR + JONNY RACE + REVEREND & THE NORDGARDEN: The Jericho Tavern – Bluesy heavy rock from headliners Helium Wednesday 3rd MAKERS: The Oxford Sound. MARK BOSLEY + DAN AUSTIN + HAROLD BUDD: Academy ALPHABET BACKWARDS + YORKSHIRE Fame by association is always a fragile thing LUKE: King’s Head & Bell, Abingdon – Holywell Music Room but Reverend & The Makers’ Jon McClure Sardonic songwriting from the south Oxfordshire Oxford Contemporary Music go from can hardly be accused of grasping The Arctic gothic troubadour Mark B at tonight’s Skittle strength to strength with their new Autumn Monkeys’ coattails, even if his band are now Alley acoustic club. season boasting a very rare solo live reaping the rewards of supporting their DUGOUT: The Cellar – The soul, rare groove appearance from legendary Californian avant Sheffield neighbours on tour. McClure is and funk club night celebrates its first birthday garde composer Harold Budd. From his widely credited as mentor and surrogate big with sets from Rob Life, Colour Climax and early 60s work, ranging from minimalist brother to Alex Turner, not least by the Indersition. drone pieces and extended gong solos, Arctics’ frontman himself, and is at least POWER TRAIN: Fat Lil’s, Witney through to his re-emergence in the early 70s partly responsible for introducing Turner to REDOX + PETE FRYER BAND: The as a full-time composer marrying the worlds the works of John Cooper-Clarke, from Crawley Inn, Witney of popular jazz and electronic whom both draw massive inspiration. As a SOULJACKER: Temple Bar experimentation, he’s always been above and rock star in his own right, McClure has SUNDAY 7th beyond the musical pack. If you could judge enough to stand on his own feet – self- THE DECEMBERISTS + THE LAND OF a musician on the strength of their confidence and swagger that borders on TALK: The Oxford Academy – Strangely exotic collaborations Budd would be near peerless, hubris and a stage presence that is never less downbeat folk-pop from the very lovely having work extensively with Brian Eno than pure entertainment. Musically The Decemberists – see main preview (notably on the classic ‘Plateaux of Mirror’), Makers hark back to Stone Roses, ROADSIDE POPPIES + MESSENGERS + as well as Cocteau Twins’ Robin Guthrie, Charlatans and Happy Mondays with their NAOMI HATES HUMANS: The Port synth-pop pioneer John Foxx, Can drummer lively mix of punk-funk, electro and reggae. Mahon – Winsome jangly indie pop from Jaki Liebezeit and Jah Wobble. His 2004 Talking of which, McClure reckons himself Cambridge’s Roadside Poppies at this evening’s album ‘Avalon Sutra’ was billed as his final to be the reincarnation of Bob Marley (his Swiss Concrete night. Lightweight alt.country recorded work, but he’s since gone back on mum was pregnant with him at the time of from The Messengers. Lo-fi acoustic singer- that announcement and tonight’s concert Marley’s death). Rabble-rousing anti-work songwriter Naomi Hates Humans will doubtless features Budd on piano and electronics. anthem ‘Heavyweight Champion Of The be bringing a little misanthropy to proceedings. Anyone whose initial inspiration to make World’ has hovered around the charts most PALLADIUM: The Jericho Tavern – music was inspired by hearing the sound of of the summer and if Jon does come out Hossanah! After last month’s visit of Ben’s wind blowing through telephone wires while with some crap sometimes, at least he Brother to the Tavern, here comes something growing up in the Mojave desert has got to always does it with righteous passion. even worse – jazz-rockers Palladium. Imagine a be worth an evening of anyone’ time. cross between Level 42, Toto and Zoot Woman. Now go and fetch your gun. JOHN SPIERS & JON BODEN: Nettlebed ELECTRIC JAM: The X, Cowley – Open jam Folk Club – Squeezeboxer Spiers and fiddler session with in-house band The X Men. and singer Boden return to their old stamping MONDAY 8th ground. th ROB TOGNONI: The Bullingdon – Driving TUESDAY 9 blues-rock from the Tasmanian guitarist and his LOS CAMPESINOS + YOU SAY PARTY, power trio band. WE SAY DIE!: The Oxford Academy – A little KING CREOSOTE: The Oxford Academy – bit of autumn sunshine courtesy of Wales’ cutesy Lovely, leftfield folkiness from Fife’s Kenny seven-piece indie sweeties Los Campesinos, Anderson, on the up and up with new album falling somewhere between Tilly & The Wall and ‘Bombshell’ and rousingly ace single ‘You’ve No Broken Social Scene. Clue Do You?’. TURIN BRAKES: The Zodiac @ The Oxford LAURA MARLING + NOAH & THE WHALE Academy – More earnest emoting from Olly + KING CHARLES: The Jericho Tavern – Knights and Gale Paridjanian, out on tour in Country-tinged folk-pop in the vein of Joni support of their fourth album ‘Dark On Fire’. Mitchell and Carole King from the Reading-based CHARLIE HAYWOOD: The Port Mahon – songstress who’s spent much of the past year Pioneering drummer with This Heat, Quiet Sun touring with Jamie T, Rufus Wainwright and Jack and Camberwell Now. Haywood is currently Penate. working as a solo artist whilst pursuing GREEN: The Cellar – New hip hop club THE SKIES + NOT MY DAY + THE night with live set from human beatbox star BLACK HATS: The Bullingdon – Reading Killa Kela. rockers The Skies headline. OPEN MIC SESSION: Folly Bridge Inn BOSSAPHONIK: The Cellar – Live jazz OPEN MIC SESSION: Temple Bar dance with guests Manteca. THURSDAY 11th THE RUINS + LIDDINGTON + NO TUNNG: The Oxford Academy – Spooky MACHINE: The Jericho Tavern – electro-folk and rural diabolism from the Shoegazey indie rocking from The Ruins, plus bleakly lovely Tunng, drawing on the darker downbeat guitar pop from Liddington side of traditional English and Scottish folk. REDOX + THE PETE FRYER BAND + JACK PENATE: The Oxford Academy – FILM NOIR: Magdalen Arms Intimate but geezerish mix of soul, jangle-pop, THE COOKIE MONSTERS: Fat Lil’s, Witney th ska and skiffle from young master Jack. Saturday 6 JOBY BURGESS: Modern Art Oxford – BACKROOM BOOGIE: The Bullingdon th EDITORS: The Special children’s and family show from the SATURDAY 13 renowned percussionist. THE CRIBS: The Oxford Academy – The Oxford Academy SPIN JAZZ CLUB: The Wheatsheaf – With brothers Jarman return with their third album Editors can now claim to be the first band guest Tim Whitehead on tenor sax. of simple, spiky, Strokes-y indie-punk, ever to sell out the new Oxford Academy – ELECTRICITY: The Cellar – New electro ‘Men’s Needs, Women’s Needs, Whatever’, just the latest milestone in a journey that, dance club night with Hannah Holland and produced by Franz Ferdinand’s Alex since sublime early singles ‘Bullets’ and Emily Williams. Kapranos. ‘Munich,’ has seen them rise and rise PROJECT:DISCO: The Bullingdon STEPHEN FRETWELL: The Zodiac @ The through the indie rock ranks with the ANTON BARBEAU + SCRIFT + Oxford Academy – Acoustic pop miserablism nonchalant ease of Ronaldinho dancing ENDGAME: The Jericho Tavern – and unlucky in love stories from the bard of through Macclesfield’s back four. Because Psychedelia-tinged folk-pop from Californian Scunthorpe. class speaks volumes and Editors have pop troubadour Anton and guests. JABERWOK + MR SHAODOW + RUBBER shown that class with new album, ‘An End CHAMPIONS OF THE WORLD: DUCK + THE SWAMIS: The Bullingdon – Has A Start’, already a number 1 hit and, Gladiators Social Club, Iffley Road – New More Oxjam action, this time promoted by the with its title track, spawning one of the club night from the Truck crew featuring live Selectasound crew with psychedelic funk and truly great singles of 2007. Editors’ skinny, music from recent Magic Numbers support rock from Jaberwok, plus excellent old skool soberly-dressed demeanour points to a love Danny & The Champions of the World. The rap from Mr Shaodow, and funk and ska from for all things Joy Division and Echo & The night also includes a cheese auction Rubber Duck. Bunnymen and that’s pretty much exactly apparently. Those crazy Truckers…. JOHNNY’S SEXUAL KITCHEN: The where you’ll find their music emanating OPEN MIC SESSION: The Half Moon Wheatsheaf from. But where their main inspirations SKYLARKIN: The Brickworks VON BRAUN + THE MARK BOSLEY found fulfilment in introspection, Editors FRIDAY 12th EXPERIENCE: The X, Cowley – Wittstock increasingly look outwards, with Chris HEADCOUNT + BEELZEBOZO + JUNKIE Festival fundraiser. Urbanowicz’s expansive, cascading guitar BRUSH + DEATH VALLEY RIDERS: The COO COO CLUB with MORRISON sound counterpointing as well as Wheatsheaf – Punky-metal party night as STEAM FAYRE + TRISTAN & THE complementing singer Tom Smith’s Headcount launch their new album, ‘To The TROUBADOURS + LITTLE FISH + romantic, poetic lyrics. With the new album Point’, getting angry about stuff in the style of ROXANNE: THE EARLY YEARS: The Editors could have taken the easy route and Killing Joke. Monolithic metallers Beelzebozo Jericho Tavern – West London’s roots simply replicated debut ‘The Back Room’; and old-school punkers Junkie Brush provide revivalists MSF return to town, mixing up instead they’ve moved on to a higher plain. suitably heavyweight artillery back-up. lively southern-friend rock, ska, skiffle and Two years ago they were tucked away on SLIDE: The Zodiac @ The Oxford Academy country. Local indie-ska youngsters Tristan the Barn stage at Truck Festival. Now, major – Electro-house stars Hot Chip play a special and the Troubadours support, alongside festival headline slots can’t be far off. guest DJ set at tonight’s Slide. utterly ace garage-rocking duo Little Fish. MR SCRUFF: The Oxford Academy – ABORT, RETRY, FAIL?: The Cellar - Another quirky, eclectic and doubtless Electro, grime and beats with live bands and collaborative projects with the likes of Bill marathon DJ set from Manchester’s tea- DJs. Laswell, Fred Frith & Hugh Hopper. Tonight guzzling, marine life-obsessed Andy Carthy THE INCREDIBLE EVOLUTION: Fat Lil’s, playing solo and with Oxford Improvisers Pat with a sometimes surreal selection of Witney Thomas, Pete McPhail & Viv Corringham. tunes. LEE DAVIES & NIKKI LLOYD: Temple JAZZ CLUB with THE NUMBERS THE UNDERTONES: The Zodiac @ The Bar th RACKET: The Bullingdon Oxford Academy – The punk-pop legends, SUNDAY 14 SHUSH OPEN MIC SESSION: The X, long-since reformed sans Feargal Sharkey but SPIERS & BODEN: The Bullingdon – Cowley instead led by someone who sounds uncannily Squeezeboxer Spiers and fiddler and singer DANIEL HAMMERSLEY + BEN GRIFFITH like him, make their first visit to town, Boden play their first Oxford gig since the + MARTHA ROWSELL: The Jericho Tavern showing off timeless classics, from ‘Teenage Oxford Folk Festival. INTRUSION: The Cellar – Goth and Kicks’ and ‘Jimmy Jimmy’ to ‘Here Comes 3 DAFT MONKEYS: The Oxford Academy industrial club night. The Summer’ and ‘True Confessions’ plus – Cornish folk-punks and regular support act OPEN MIC SESSION: Far From The plenty of new material. Gentlemen of a certain to good buddies The Levellers, drawing on Madding Crowd age can be forgiven for getting extremely traditional English and Celtic folk as well as WEDNESDAY 10th excited and trying to pogo like they’re still 14. Balkan, gypsy, reggae and punk music. JJ SOUL with THE PAUL JEFFERIES C’mon, give us a break, eh? BUTCHER BOY + LES CLOCHARDS + QUARTET: The X, Cowley – Jazz club night GAMMY LEG PROUCTIONS with THE COLLEGE FALL: The Port Mahon – at the X with guest JJ Soul joining Paul DRUGSQUAD + LOOPY + CYRUS: The Whimsical alt.country and jangly 80s-style Jefferies’ in-house band. X, Cowley – Ska-punk party sounds from guitar pop from Glasgow’s string-drenched STAFRAENN HAKON: The Wheatsheaf – local vets The Drug Squad headlining tonight’s cuties. Local Gallic country popstrels Les Delicate, ethereal effects-laden pop fro Iceland’s GLP session. 80s-styled jangle poppers Clochards support. Stafraenn Hakon at tonight’s Vacuous Pop Loopy support alongside acoustic pop The X, Cowley The X, Cowley – Acoustic promotion. chappie Cyrus. night. MONDAY 15th TUESDAY 16th FOALS: The Oxford Academy – Jerky SETH LAKEMAN: The Oxford Academy – versions of the dream from Oxford’s latest pop Poster boy for the new wave of English folk triumph – see main preview returns after a summer of festivals – see main FIGHTSTAR + THE SLEEPING + EMANUEL preview + YOU ME AT SIX: The Zodiac @ The SHACK: The Zodiac @ The Oxford Academy Oxford Academy – Charlie out of Busted – Strange to imagine that a band that almost seem continues his credibility-saving journey into rip- to bring bad luck and underachievement upon snorting punk-rock mayhem. Or, in the real themselves at every turn should just now be world, sounding a tiny, weeny bit faster than releasing a Best Of (not a Greatest Hits, Busted. obviously). Still, it’s an encouraging sign of their th IAN PARKER BAND: The Bullingdon – Blues resilience, gathering together songs from their 19- Monday 15 and roots guitarist with a serious reputation on year, five-album lifetime, including the sublime FOALS the European festival scene, mixing up standards ‘Streets Of Kenny’ from their masterpiece - th and originals in the style of Eric Clapton, Stevie ‘HMS Fable’. That the new collection is released Saturday 27 Ray Vaughan and John Mayall. on Sour Mash – the record label run by Noel YOUTHMOVIES: SHOW OF HANDS: Nettlebed Folk Club – Gallagher, who was initially inspired by the Virtuoso roots folk from Steve Knightly and Phil brothers Mick and John Head – is testament to The Oxford Academy Beer. the fact their influence and the loyalty it inspires, If Oxford has excelled at anything recently goes beyond mere trifles like commercial success. it’s in producing some of the best th THE HALF RABBITS + EDUARD Friday 7 experimental rock bands in the country. The SOUNDING BLOCK + WINCHELL RIOTS fate of Foals and Youthmovies have so often ACOUSTIC: The Port Mahon – Oxjam gig THE DECEMBERISTS: been closely tied, from the latter’s mentoring organised by Oxfordbands.com, featuring of the former in their early Edmund The Oxford Academy fizzbomb gothsters Half Rabbits, plus Fitzgerald incarnation, through to The current vogue in music may be for tales heavyweight math-rockers Eduard Sounding Youthmovies singer Andrew Mears being of cashpoint machines, visits to burger bars Block and former-Fell City Girl chaps Winchell part of Foals’ initial line-up. As things and watching girls in nightclubs, but Riots playing an acoustic set. currently stand it’s the apprentices who are Portland, Oregon’s Decemberists are rather ACID WAX: The Cellar – Electro, broken on the cusp of greatness at the moment, less prosaic in their songwriting. Creative beats, techno and more with South Africa’s The being the name to drop in cool musical writing graduate Colin Meloy’s lyrics deal Bulgarian and the Fresh Out Of Death System. circles – something compounded recently by with pirates, Spanish child monarchs, JAZZ CLUB with KATYA GORRIE & their live appearance at a party in the new soldiers fighting in the trenches of WW1, DENNY ILETT Jr: The Bullingdon series of Skins. Prodigious guitar talent sailors’ widows and on the band’s new SHUSH OPEN MIC SESSION: The X, Yannis Philippakis has had the makings of a album, ‘The Crane Wife’, ancient Japanese Cowley rock hero since he fronted local starlets folk tale tragedy, all delivered in baroque OPEN MIC SESSION: Far From The Elizabeth as a 15 year old but with Foals’ style over a soundtrack that marries Madding Crowd ditching of math-rock structures for a more antiquated instrumentation (hurdy gurdy, th WEDNESDAY 17 uptight disco-pop sound, they’ve really accordion, upright bass) with modern NIK TURNER’S SPACE RITUAL: The nailed something fresh and new. This electronics. So, they’re a quaint, bookish Oxford Academy – Founding member of month’s Nightshift cover stars Youthmovies, bunch, The Decemberists, but they’ve also Hawkwind and composer of classic tracks like meanwhile, remain a restless beast with their got one of the most fanatical cult followings ‘Master Of The Universe’ and ‘Brainstorm’, Nik next album steering into predictably in rock (famously when all their equipment Turner returns to Oxford for the first time in unpredictable territory, straight-down-the- was stolen after a gig in 2005 their fans many years (in fact for the first time since he line indie rock sweetness all messed up by quickly raised £8,000 to replace it all). ‘The played the Zodiac when it was still the Co-Op odd prog, jazz and psychedelic excursions. Crane Wife’ is The Decemberists’ fourth Hall) with his musical project of the last few Both bands have mastered the fine art of album and continues the band’s carefree years, Space Ritual, bringing some serious free balancing experimentalism with accessibility marriage of wonderfully catchy, folksy jazz into the space-rock party. Expect plenty of and are both now inspiration for a whole melodies, olde worlde psychedelia and old Hawkwind numbers amongst the new new wave of UK guitar bands. effusive rock. Here is where Robyn material. Hitchcock’s arcane vision and The Go- JIM WHITE: The Zodiac @ The Oxford Betweens’ joyous pop spirit meets 80s Academy – Forty years old before he released FOURTH CHAMBER: The Wheatsheaf college rock and 60s folk revivalism. They his debut alum (1999’s excellent ‘Wrong Eyed HIT & RUN: The Cellar – Hip hop with DJ make a great team. Jesus’) Florida’s Jim White has plenty of stories Nicky Blackmarket. to tell, mainly spooky, rambling tales of the ONE NIGHT STAND: Fat Lil’s, Witney Deep South, religion and drugs, all delivered in OPEN MIC SESSION: Folly Bridge Inn his hazy stream-of-consciousness style. A OPEN MIC SESSION: Temple Bar downbeat sense of humour infects his spiritual songs that have been variously described as hick-hop or ghost-funk. Labels, eh? Don’t we just love ‘em. WITCHES + HARRY ANGEL + RICHARD WALTERS + MEWGATZ: The Port Mahon – Oxjam action with recent Nightshift cover stars Witches plying their perfect country-tinged pop. Virulent goth-core noise from Harry Angel in support plus sublime acoustic pop from Richard Walters and electro experimentation from Mewgatz. BEAR IN THE AIR + TOY #1 + Vacation. Headliner Alexander Thomas creates SATURDAY 20th blissful orchestral noise using theremin, loops GRINNING SPIDERBALL: The X, Cowley and delays, while Shaggy Parasols make a ore (12pm) – Full day of live music from Grinning raggedy racket with just guitar and drums. Synth- Spider. drone minimalism from Euhedral, plus ambient ED HARCOURT + THE VEILS: The Oxford electro noise in an Aphex Twin from opener Academy – Ed’s been around long enough to be Stray Ghost. releasing a Best Of album this year, following on SPIN JAZZ CLUB: The Wheatsheaf – With from last year’s ‘The Beautiful Lie’, although guests The Kate Williams Band. since his 2001 high point – the Mercury- PROJECT:DISCO: The Bullingdon nominated ‘Here Be Monsters’ – he’s moved KING FURNACE + SAVAGE HENRY + DR from being the new Tom Waits to a more middle SLAGGLEBERRY: The Cellar – Heavy rock of the road terrain, still managing to spice things and funk night at Big Hair. up with the odd waltz, tango or music hall PORT ERIN + BLINDRIDE + RUBBER number. Glammy goth-pop support from The DUCK: The X, Cowley Veils. ALAN TYLER & THE LOST SONS OF MINDLESS SELF INDULGENCE: The LITTLEFIELD + THE MARMADUKES: The Zodiac @ The Oxford Academy – It is Jericho Tavern – The former-Rockingbirds categorically impossible to dislike any band frontman returns to town after a decade and a whose singer goes under the name of Little bit’s absence, the pioneering north London Jimmy Urine, and the fanatical reception given th Tuesday 16 alt.country songwriter back with a new band. MSI last time they played the Zodiac is OPEN MIC SESSION: The Half Moon – testament to their good taste-baiting iconoclasm. SETH LAKEMAN: Oxjam special. A messy mash-up of electro, hip hop and punk, SKYLARKIN: The Brickworks they’ve managed to support System Of A The Oxford Academy th FRIDAY 19 Down, Rammstein, Iggy Pop and Marilyn Even with competition from the likes of his GRINNING SPIDERBALL: The X, Cowley – Manson, although it’s Little Jimmy’s onstage old musical cohort Kate Rusby, Seth First night of Grinning Spider’s weekend mini- behaviour that’s as much of a pull as the music – Lakeman is the brightest star in the new festival. Set times to be confirmed but bands setting fire to his pubic hair, drinking his own English folk firmament. Like Pentangle in the performing over the weekend include The urine or simply inviting audience members on 60s and The Pogues in the 80s, Seth Cheesegraters, Space Heroes Of The People, stage to punch him in the face, it’s all part of the Lakeman brings such a freshness and Novakicks, The Dirty Royals, Kate Chadwick, routine. Wouldn’t it just be fantastic if Jay Kay attitude to traditional folk music that it’s The New Moon, Fork, Beaver Fuel, Script, Joe from Jamiroquai invited the audience to punch hard to believe what you’re hearing is Allen & Angharad Jenkins, Gwyn Ashton, him in the face? The queue for tickets would essentially music that’s hundreds of years Shirley and The Corvids. stretch for miles. old. His last two albums, the Mercury- SEASICK STEVE: The Oxford Academy – SMILEX + FIGMENT + THE FOURTH nominated ‘Kitty Jay’ and last year’s superb Three strings and an old wooden box – shouldn’t CHAMBER: The Cellar – Smilex should ‘Freedom Fields’, cover such long-lost make for this month’s most rockingest show, but probably be supporting Mindless Self Indulgence subject matter as ghost stories from it bleedin’ well will do – see main preview tonight but instead they’re headlining their own Dartmoor, tales of Civil War battles and OCEANSIZE: The Zodiac @ The Oxford evening of rock and roll mayhem, coming on handsome soldiers courting young maidens, Academy – Convoluted, grandiose prog rocking where The Stooges meet Motley Crue. continuing a generations-old storytelling from the occasionally awesome Glaswegian rock AN EMERGENCY + MEET ME IN St LOUIS tradition, but now with a 21st Century behemoth that is Oceansize. Either the unlikely + THIS TOWN NEEDS GUNS: The rocket up its backside. Given the West meeting point between Yes and Tool, or Black Wheatsheaf – All angles covered at tonight’s Country shares as much cultural history Sabbath infected by Tortoise, depending on your Vacuous Pop gig with Exeter’s sharp-elbowed with Scotland and Wales as it does England, point of view. punk rockers An Emergency making it hard and it’s no surprise that there’s a rich celtic vein REPUBLICA: The Oxford Academy – Hard spiky in the vein of Q & Not U, while Meet Me running through much of Seth’s material. house and trance club night featuring guest set In St Louis spazz out in their wiry At The Lakeman is a powerful, emotive singer and from Judge Jules. Drive-In way, plus local indie rockers TTNG. guitarist but it’s when he picks up his fiddle THE BLACK HATS + SEVEN YEARS ON + THAT FUCKING TANK + HREDA + that he really dazzles, with a style of DAVE CORRIGAN: The Wheatsheaf – 60s- CAPEMAN! + SHIELD YOUR EYES: The playing as close to Roy Williamson or even inspired indie rocking from The Black Hats, plus Port Mahon – Titanic sludge-metal onslaught John Cale as, say, Dave Swarbrick, Swindon rockers Seven Years On. Dave Corrigan, from Leeds’ monstrous duo That Fucking Tank emphasising its droning, psychedelic son of Manchester City goalkeeping legend Joe, at tonight’s Poor Girl Noise club. Math-rocking capabilities. A real star and a sure-fire bet to opens the show. support from local newcomers Hreda and be the first poster boy for the new folk NURU KANE & THE BAYEFALL GNAWA: Preston’s Capeman! revolution. Northwall Arts Centre, Summertown – Blues TIM BRADY: Modern Art Oxford – New York THURSDAY 18th fusion from the Senegalese guitarist and guimbri composer and songwriter (not to mention human PREFUSE 73: The Oxford Academy – Man of player. rights campaigner) mixing up classical, electronic, many faces Scott Herren brings his Prefuse 73 TAILFIN + NOVAKICKS + ATTIKA STATE jazz and world sounds into an edgy, eclectic project to Oxford for the first time, promoting + MICK WILSON DUO: The Jericho Tavern whole. new album ‘Preparations’, mixing up his – Epic indie jangle from Wycombe’s Tailfin, with SIDI GOMA & THE BLACK SUFIS OF trademark glitchy beats with various guest rap support from Slough-based emo crew Attika GUJARAT: Wesley Memorial Chapel – appearances. State. Exuberant devotional music and dance from the PANIC CELL: The Zodiac @ The Oxford GYPSY JAZZ: Woodcote Village Hall – With Sidi African-Indian band. Academy – Vengeful thrash metal from London’s rising UK gypsy jazz stars Robin Nolan and Ian MELTING POT with RAY + SHALLOW Panic Cell, promoting new album ‘What Doesn’t Cruickshank. CALL + TIM MATTHEWS: The Jericho Kill Us’. What doesn’t kill people probably FRESH OUT OF THE BOX: The Cellar – Tavern – Dark, sweeping indie rock influenced wouldn’t be allowed on their album to be honest. Rave special with a night of acid house tunes. by the Bunnymen and Chameleons from Ray at ALEXANDER THOMAS + SHAGGY GRIN CITY: Magdalen Arms – Funky blues tonight’s Melting Pot. Trashy indie noise from PARASOLS + EUHEDRAL + STRAY rock and pop. Shallow Call. GHOST: The Port Mahon – Another quality THE BIG BLUE: Fat Lil’s, Witney UNDERGROUND ZERO + DR HAS BEEN + bill of experimental noise from Permanent BACKROOM BOOGIE: The Bullingdon ASSASSINS OF SILENCE: Drayton Hall,

THE CORAL: The Oxford Academy – Mannequin State, plus jerky At The Drive-In Merseyside’s eccentric sons seem to have grown influenced noisemongers HPR and expansive up with their new, fourth, album, ‘Roots & indie rockers Kill The Arcade. Echoes’, taking a turn, as the title suggests, into JAZZ JAM: The X, Cowley – Jam along with classic 60s-styled songwriting. Possibly because Paul Jefferies’ in-house jazz band. it was recorded at Noel Gallagher’s studio with VINCENT VINCENT & THE VILLAINS + The Magic Numbers’ producer behind the desk. THE ANYDAYS: The Jericho Tavern – Fast- There are more ballads than before but tonight’s rising London cult stars, recently signed to EMI gig should still feature plenty of their old for whom they released ‘Johnny Two Bands’. psychedelic soul and sea shanties. Following in the footsteps of The Libertines et MR HUDSON & THE LIBRARY: The al. theirs is a more old-fashioned sound, with a Oxford Academy – Former Oxford University heavy 50s rock’n’roll twang and rolling surf graduate Mr Hudson returns to his old stamping rock rhythms. ground with his odd mix of lounge jazz, soul, hip CLUB DUB: The Cellar – Reggae club night. hop and showtunes. Like Cole Porter crossed OPEN MIC SESSION: Folly Bridge Inn with The Streets. OPEN MIC SESSION: Temple Bar Friday 19th SUB POP SUNDAY + VESTIBULE + 13 THURSDAY 25th SEASICK STEVE: GAUGE: The Port Mahon – Bishop’s Stortford KATE NASH: The Oxford Academy – She power-rock trio who don’t sound like a Sub Pop must eat so many lemons because she is so The Oxford Academy band at all. bitter, but she prefers your friends because they SIMPLE REASON: The Bullingdon are much fitter – cockney kitchen sink drama If you’re wondering why the Academy, nd having installed the best state-of-the-art PA MONDAY 22 from the MySpace queen – see main preview system available, are playing host to a sixty- GILES HEDLEY & THE AVIATORS: The something former-hobo armed only with a Bullingdon – Midlands-based guitarist, singer th three-string guitar and an old soapbox, you and harmonica player and UK blues veteran with Thursday 25 obviously didn’t catch any of Seasick a career going back to the 60s. Long-standing KATE NASH: The Steve’s incendiary performances at various favourite on the European blues festival circuit, festivals this summer – from the Carling Hedley’s rootsy slide and bottleneck guitar Oxford Academy Weekend to Green Man – or his astonishing playing, along with his simultaneous mouth and nose harp playing draws on traditional Delta and Love her or hate her – and some people appearance on Jools Holland’s last really, really seem to hate her – Kate Nash is Hootenanny show. Seasick Steve (real name Chicago blues, but given a funky edge by jazz- styled bassist Richard Sadler. now an unavoidable pop phenomenon and Steve Wold, so nicknamed because, “I it’s no surprise that tonight’s gig is already always get seasick”) left his Mississippi THE HOOSIERS: The Oxford Academy – Exuberant melodic post-punk pop in the vein of sold out. The temptation to call her this home at age 13 and travelled the States as a year’s Lily Allen (who initially championed hobo for years, in that time playing guitar Squeeze, Dexy’s and XTC from London’s Hoosiers. her) is difficult to resist and it’s been with the likes of Son House and Lightning mentioned several hundred dozen times Hopkins. In the 60s he lived in Haight- THESE NEW PURITANS: The Jericho Tavern – Fall-inspired pop weirdoes, coming on before but Kate is probably closer to The Ashbury; in the 70s he was resident on Streets or Jamie T in her oddly Paris’ Left Bank and in the 90s he lived in with an oblique fusion of electro-funk, post- punk and trance. That their debut album has been conversational style, tales of crap the flat below Kurt Cobain in Seattle. He’s boyfriends and whimsical observations been a session musician and a producer produced by Gareth Jones, who has previously worked with Liars, Wire and Einsturzende backdropped by pubs, kitchens and the top (including working with Bikini Kill and deck of the bus. Indeed, Kate’s celebration Modest Mouse) and, fifty years after Neubaten, should tell you plenty about their quality. of the humdrum makes Arctic Monkeys leaving home, he released his debut solo sound like Scott Walker. Her overt cockney album at the end of last year, having decided ALTAN: Nettlebed Folk Club – Gorgeous Scottish-Irish ballads and traditional jigs and accent (real or assumed depending on who to return to his “song and dance” roots. you believe, and heavily mocked on the Playing with various three and even one- reels. TUESDAY 23rd ‘LDN Is A Victim’ single) is probably what string customised guitars and what he dubs a divides opinion the most and will doubtless Mississippi drum machine, his raw, fiery, IAN HUNTER: The Oxford Academy – limit her shelf life, but here at Nightshift wonderfully emotion-packed blues Former-Mott The Hoople frontman Hunter we’re really rather fond of the ace nowadays sounds like a sound from another celebrates his longevity and enduring cult ‘Foundations’, although debut single planet. popularity, kicking out those old 70s glam-rock ‘Caroline’s A Victim’ was even better. Kate’s hits as well as songs from his extensive solo debut album, ‘Made Of Bricks’ was rush- Abingdon – A space-rock spectacular in aid of career, including his long-term collaboration with released by a record label obviously worried Oxjam, featuring local psych-rockers plus special the late, great Mick Ronson. she’d go out of fashion before the summer guest appearance from Hawkwind’s Hugh Lloyd JAZZ CLUB with THE HOWARD was out and 18 months from posting her Langton. PEACKOCK QUINTET: The Bullingdon first song on MySpace to topping the charts OX4: The Bullingdon – Drum&bass club night NIZLOPI: The Jericho Tavern – Low-key gig is some going. Maybe she’ll be forgotten as with Prolific, Madcap, Ben E, DJ Lax and from duo Luke Concannon and John Parker who quickly as a Big Brother evictee, but for now Elements. hit the number 1 spot a couple of Christmases she’s worth enjoying. GRIN CITY: Temple Bar ago with ‘The JCB Song’. Soulful folk-pop with TALC DEMONS + ADAM MATTHEWS + an odd array of instrumentation (including ALPHABET BACKWARDS + LEVERS + Parker’s human beatboxing and double bass). YORKSHIRE LUKE: British Legion, VERTIGO: The Cellar – Indie club night. Abingdon – Skittle Alley bands night. SHUSH OPEN MIC SESSION: The X, THE JOHN COUGHLAN BAND: Fat Lil’s, Cowley Witney – Blues rock from the former-Quo chap. OPEN MIC SESSION: Far From The REDOX + THE PETE FRYER BAND: The Madding Crowd Cavalier, Marston WEDNESDAY 24th st SUNDAY 21 MANNEQUIN WOODS + HPR + KILL THE GRINNING SPIDERBALL: The X, Cowley ARCADE: The Wheatsheaf – Oxjam gig with (12pm) Local classic 70s-styled heavy rockers CAPDOWN: The Zodiac @ The Oxford GAPPY TOOTH INDUSTRIES with THE Academy – Final ever Oxford show from the EVENINGS + LAST DAYS OF LORCA + south Wales combat punks, out on their farewell SPIDERWOODS: The Wheatsheaf - tour after a heroic decade trying to smash the Krautrock grooves and electro noise from The system with the power of punk rock. Evenings, now reduced to a three-piece. THEO: Modern Art Oxford – Inventive Angular, spiky guitar pop from Last Days Of loops’n’drones’noise post-rocking from Theo. Lorca, plus gothic trad folk from THE SIRENS CALL + TIM MATTHEWS + Spiderwoods. INDIGO JONES + THE OCTOBER GAME: OXJAM PUNK & METAL SPECIAL: The The X, Cowley – Oxjam event with local rockers Port Mahon / The Duke – St Clement’s erupts Sirens Call headlining. in rock and roll noise in aid of Oxfam’s Oxjam SPIN JAZZ CLUB: The Wheatsheaf – With festival with punk and metal bands playing Friday 26th The Paul Booth Band. across both venues. PROJECT:DISCO: The Bullingdon COO COO CLUB with THE LONG SUPER FURRY ELECTRICITY: The Cellar – Electro and INSIDERS + OX + THE RELATIONSHIPS: ANIMALS: breakbeats with Slide’s Lee Mortimer. The Jericho Tavern – Cinematic lounge pop NINE-STONE COWBOY + OWEN and country rocking from the brothers Kenny. The Oxford Academy TROMANS + CAT MATADOR: The Jericho Psychedelic 60s-styled pop from The What’s left to say about a band who have Tavern – More elegantly drunken rocking from Relationships. consistently been one of the most NSC. UNITING THE ELEMENTS: The X, Cowley innovative, inventive, eclectic and eccentric OPEN MIC SESSION: The Half Moon – Return of the ever-touring German Euro- in recent British pop? It’s perhaps ironic BLUEGRASS & APPALACHIAN JAM rockers. that the Welsh heroes were born into life at SESSION: Fox & Hounds, Abingdon Road – GET MASHED: The Bullingdon – Mash-up the same time as most of the Britpop crowd Oxford’s only monthly old time American music of hip hop, funk, reggae, electro house, breaks and have existed in uneasy parallel ever since jam session. and drum&bass. – similarly defined by their regional origins SKYLARKIN: The Brickworks DANIEL KAYE + SCELFIE: Temple Bar but never constrained by the retro musical th FRIDAY 26 HQ: The Cellar – Hip hop club night featuring traditions of those other bands. The band’s SUPER FURRY ANIMALS: The Oxford the Shogun Assassins tour with Alix Perez, Icicle oddly-compiled 2004 greatest hits, Academy – Still away with the rock and roll and Spectrasound. ‘Songbook Volume 1’, is probably only fairies, and thank goodness for that – see main SHAKER HEIGHTS + equalled by Supergrass’ ‘Is 10’ compilation preview SUPERDEADLYNINJABEES + in its buoyant celebration of everything a SHY CHILD: The Zodiac @ The Oxford BEELZEBOZO: Stocks Bar, Abingdon – great modern pop band should be about – Academy – New York duo who are leaders of Mixed bill at tonight’s Skittle Alley gig with always reinventing themselves and drawing the American branch of nu-rave, if we’re to Aylesbury’s melodic roots rockers Shaker on myriad influences to make for a genuinely believe what we’re told. What we know for sure Heights, funk from SDNB and riff-heavy metal original sound. Last month SFA released is they have a guitar synth. Which makes them from Beelzebozo. their eighth studio album, ‘Hey Venus!’, th retro-futuristic cool in our book. SUNDAY 28 having changed record labels, spent much of JEFFREY LEWIS BAND + PROFESSOR AGAINST ME!: The Oxford Academy – the previous couple of years involved in LOUIE: The X, Cowley – MyAnalog night Florida’s melodic anarcho-punk pranksters various solo projects (Candylion, Acid with New York anti-folk singer Jeffrey Lewis celebrate their major label debut, ‘New Wave’. Casuals, Y Peth and Neon Neon) and over in the UK to promote his new album, ‘12 ELECTRIC JAM: The X, Cowley working on an orchestral piece with Crass Songs’ on Rough Trade. Supporting him MONDAY 29th composer Charles Hazelwood. They also tonight is his uncle Louie, who’s been a spoken ROB ZONCA BAND: The Bullingdon – recorded another album in tandem with ‘Hey word and political rap cult favourite on the NY Italian blues singer and bassist now hitting out Venus!’ which will be released shortly. Busy scene for the past twenty years. with his own band after 25 years as a session chaps. So, psychedelia, melancholic acoustic EVAN PARKER & STEPHEN GREW: man. folk, pristine guitar pop, nosebleed techno, Jacqueline du Pre Building – Part of a UK SANCTITY: The Oxford Academy – punk and plenty of lateral lyrical thinking. tour by sax maestro Evan Parker with pianist Anthemic metalcore from North Carolina’s It’s all here if you want it. Along with stories Stephen Grew and the string trio of Philip Trivium-endorsed thrashers, over in the UK for about dogs, Newton’s theory of gravity, Wachsmann (violin), Dominic Lash (bass), Bruno a short tour in support of debut album ‘Road alien abductions, war and the weather. Some Guastalla (cello). To Bloodshed’. of it in Welsh, some in English. Whatever, THE WINCHELL RIOTS + 50ft PANDA + CUT OFF YOUR HANDS + THE ADS + they speak a universal language of brilliant VON BRAUN: The Cellar – Big Hair club THE PISTOLAS: The Jericho Tavern – New pop music. night with ex-Fell City Girl chaps Winchell Riots Zealand new wave and 80s indie-inspired pop headlining, plus rifftastic rocking from recent types, fresh from supporting Foals on tour and new depths of intensity, touching on such Nightshift Demo of the Monthers 50ft Panda. sporting a distinct Cure feel. FAIRPORT CONVENTION: Fat Lil’s, extreme bases as Swans, Sunn0))) and Carcass BRASS MONKEY: Nettlebed Folk Club along the way to total and utter oblivion. Witney – Special low-key show from the th English folk legends. TUESDAY 30 JAZZ CLUB with THE OXOFRD JAZZ CONTRACT + THE MOTION + THE BLUETONES: The Oxford Academy – ORCHESTRA: The Bullingdon PEACEMAKERS: The Jericho Tavern Once more into the Britpop breach, you noble SHUSH OPEN MIC SESSION: The X, SAM KELLY’S STATION HOUSE: The indie foot soldiers! Never let the world’s Cowley Bullingdon – Early show with lively funk rock apparent apathy steer you from the undeniable OPEN MIC SESSION: Far From The from the renowned jazz drummer and truth that people really don’t care. But, hey, Madding Crowd st band. that mortgage ain’t gonna pay itself now, is it? WEDNESDAY 31 BACKROOM BOOGIE: The Bullingdon – SEXTODECIMO: The Cellar – The mighty, HIT&RUN: The Cellar With guest DJ Aidan Larkin. monolithic Sextodecimo make a rare live showing, OPEN MIC SESSION: Folly Bridge Inn SATURDAY 27th taking stoner metal and sludge-core to OPEN MIC SESSION: Temple Bar YOUTHMOVIES: The Zodiac @ The Oxford Academy – Quick-witted guitar mangling from Nightshift listings are free. Deadline for inclusion in the gig guide is the 20th of each month - no the mighty Youthmovies, now angling in proggier exceptions. Call 01865 372255 (10am-6pm) or email listings to [email protected]. waters – see main preview All listings are copyright of Nightshift and may not be reproduced without permission TRUCK 10 The Cut Outs Paris Motel Hill Farm, Steveton

SATURDAY Arriving early for Truck on Saturday morning is usually a good idea; you get to beat the queues, pitch your tent somewhere that isn’t bristling with thistles, and you get a couple of minutes to relax before the marathon begins. This year it would appear that the idea of having a festival in September has put quite a few people off. Parking is a doddle, the campsite is nearly empty, and as for queuing, there’s no problem at all. After the literal wash-out of the festival’s original July dates, is it possible that this rescheduled Truck is going to turn Quarter Finals into a metaphorical one? There have been plenty of muttering pre-festival that this year’s line-up is a regression from past years, but the organisers have been talking about taking Truck back to its roots and, this being its Fuck Buttons tenth anniversary, apparently the aim is to bring back a good few ‘old friends’ from past festivals. While this does mean there’s precious little on show you haven’t already seen before, or have no desire to ever see, as ever with Truck, the joy is in seeking out, or simply chancing upon, neat little treats tucked away on the bill, below the radar of expectation.

Things don’t get off to the best of starts, though, with Actress Hands in the Lounge Tent. Having impressed us with a dimly remembered single some time ago our spirits are dashed as they churn out insipid indie that lacks charisma and decent vocals. Do we really want to hear sensitive post-grunge, means it’s mostly dumb, but you’d have to be a Actress Hands: thumbs down; pull your fingers out; fronted by a man whose voice cracks every other pretty miserable soul to actively dislike it. read the manual. Oh, somebody stop us! syllable? We don’t, which is why we shan’t be Meanwhile, we’re going to start a support group Another band who impress us only to fall at the seeking The Holy Orders out again. We for people like us who loved Piney Gir’s debut final hurdle are The Gog. Catching their sound preferred it when the Barn was full of metal bands electro album, and have become deeply check at the Market Stage they sound like a band - even if they were rubbish they were at least fun. disillusioned with her myriad novelty projects drowning. The vocalist is hacking at her neck to We promised ourselves we wouldn’t spend all ever since. Can this cod C&W Roadshow produce the kind of stuttering cacophony that Truck watching our favourite local bands, and yet malarkey and get back to the keyboards, woman! you’d only find in the worst kind of porn movies. somehow here we are before the mighty After that it seems only right that we go and see When we catch their actual set, they’ve taken to Stornoway once again. Maybe the main stage some properly apocalyptic, hellfire preacher wearing orange afros and descended into funk sucks a little intimacy from their winsome folk country. With the biggest beard at Truck, and the grooves, which is something of a let down. pop, but eco-jazz shuffle ‘The Good Fish Guide’ loudest acoustic guitar in the hemisphere, Josh T They’re like forgotten local oddballs Dog, but not still sounds gloriously like The Proclaimers played Pearson smashes out his Bible-black dirges with as good…until we see the programme and discover by The Grumbleweeds, via The Divine Comedy, arresting intensity. The cavernous sound is that they are Dog. But not as good. That’s a bit and we leave with a broad smile. strangely like Merle Haggard having a crack at sad, really. As Morrison Steam Fayre take to the stage the drone-core, and as such is the best act so far. sun is out. The Met Office, however, disagrees, Enemies of lispers the world over, Restlesslist suggesting rain. It’s as if they don’t have windows Some respite from the folk appears in the form of are an unusual bunch. Their first number is a limp, there and just make it all up. Sun is definitely Paris Motel. A nine-piece band featuring violas, tinny post-rock bounce, a sort of 65 Minutes Of needed for Morrison Steam Fayre, though, as cor anglais and a host of other instruments create Static, but then they suddenly throw in some big their country rock sounds as if it’s been plucked quite stunning orchestral rock. That might well band samples, drag on a trumpet player, and it all from the southern states of America. They then conjure up images of Meatloaf, but the reality is far sounds rather wonderfully like the incidental go on to cover a Creedence Clearwater Revival less contrived and infinitely more charming. music to Batman. Things taper off again, but tune and start a countrified folk theme that runs Just when we thought things were getting just a that’s probably because all the machines break, throughout the weekend. little too relaxed this year, Blood Red Shoes along with some of the guitar strings. On the Market Stage The Quarter Finals are come along and shake things up. Performing to a Country rock is really the lingua franca of kicking up something of a storm. Their Stooges- Trailerpark tent that simply can’t cope with the Truck, and Babel have a fair crack at it. There’s lite punk pop is slightly incongruous for a tent sheer number of people packed in to it, they some enticingly slurred fiddle, but they really take where the audience is normally sat down and rampage through their garage punk. It’s the first off when they get that floor to the floor hoe- possibly sleeping. No matter, they deliver a clutch time we’ve witnessed crowd surfing in the tent down groove going. Hey, look, we’re literally of pop-punk songs with plenty of attitude and and as the barriers threaten to buckle and break tapping our feet! Now we’re really in the festival grace. If you needed a sleep at this point, you’d things are starting to feel just a little bit chaotic. vibe. have been well served at the main stage watching A half hour of pandemonium later and it’s obvious Monkey Swallows the Universe, who are that we’ve probably seen the best performance of On the main stage the first highlight of the day nowhere near as exciting as their name suggested. the day, if not the weekend. belongs to The Cut Outs. Yes they look a bit To paraphrase a review of Waiting For Godot, at goth; yes the power punk/pop is a bit obvious, and When A Scholar And A Physician rap, it makes a Fuck Buttons show nothing happens, they are a little bit rough around the edges but they Morris Minor & The Majors look like Public perfectly. Huge distorted keyboard drones swirl do at least try to inject a bit of energy into Enemy. There are millions of them, and the around the tent, punctuated by occasional proceedings with a sound and look that is mere whole experience is akin to a techno revue percussion loops that all sound like the opening steps away from Joan Jett and The Blackhearts. performed by the cast of Why Don’t You? Which of ‘Iko Iko’ by The Dixie Cups, for some Glenn Tilbrook Foals

Piney Gir

inexplicable reason. It’s something like rave SUNDAY instead of a band. If Oliver Postgate had made Twin without the drums and something like death metal Sticking our heads out of the tent on Sunday we’re Peaks in his shed after The Clangers, it would without the songs. Ah, it’s just fucking great, go shocked to see a Police Forensic Unit van parked probably have sounded like this. find out for yourselves. Most people watching, up on the camp site. It appears these folk fans are Hurrah for Mules! And furthermore, yippee! though, seem to be in the tent to get in early to worse than we expected and Truck has turned into These are the kinds of things you’d be saying too, ensure they see Foals, who are on next. Arriving a lawless state overnight. This might explain the if you saw this implausibly awesome band. If early doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get to see loss of 24 cans of lager that we had yesterday, but inside of two minutes you don’t feel the urge to the band. With the tent swelling to bursting point are now inexplicably gone. That headache must be dance to their insane-o jittery beats, then it is a decision is made to evacuate and ultimately pull the result of a mugging. official: you are clinically dead. I’m sure this is the gig. Moving Foals to the Barn for a later slot Okay, what the fuck are Keyboard Choir doing what people in the States would be doing jazzercise still doesn’t help matters. Before ¡Forward, playing (a) at 11am; and (b) at the same time as to, if they only knew about it. Simply brilliant. Russia! have even taken to the stage people are Witches? It’s a disaster of barely manageable In the world of post rock, Hreda manage the queuing outside to see Foals, and ultimately will proportions. Anyway, it seems that the best cure for tricky art of being both pensive and cathartic. fail to get in. As Foals’ set kicks off with those a Boeing-sized hangover is to dance like your life Their guitars have obviously had a good massage spidery little guitar riffs that intertwine and wrap depends on it. So that’s what we do. And Keyboard by Steve Albini and they know how to work the round eminently danceable riffs the room seems Choir’s glitchy electronica provides the backdrop hypnotic angle to a tee. The slower sections of to breathe a sigh of relief that anticipation and for dancing like a loon. Their success lies in picking, their set give the odd feeling of being underwater, high expectations do sometimes go rewarded. If magpie style, from a wide range of samples and while the more textured blasts are akin to being the hysteria that seems to surround the band layering them, texture after texture, to create brought upwards to glide low over the ocean. No, today is anything to go by, Foals will be the something uniquely their own. Plus they have dancing scratch that: Hreda are the ocean: a large, biggest band in the country by this time next year. robots on stage, and what’s not to love about that? exquisite, glistening expanse that is all too easy to As usual Yannis is the centre of attention, full of On a more organic bent, Witches have also get carried away by. swagger and rock star poses. This seems to cherry-picked a richly varied plethora of influences The Winchell Riots, meanwhile is the band polarise his audience, but you can’t deny that he and the resultant music is, quite frankly, formed by halfof much missed locals boys Fell City looks like he was born to front a rock band. Tear astounding. Their ability to meld dark with light Girl. They pretty much pick up where FCG left your eyes away from him, and the stage is full of has rarely been done better and they have a strange off, but have swapped some of the epic guitar energy. Fingers cascade over fret boards and power to totally and utterly rock, without ever crescendos for stabbing snare rhythms. It’s guitars are pounded with fists and all of it is done sounding the least bit angry. Really, could there be a extremely promising stuff, with one drawback: it with an air of total nonchalance. Despite the better local band right now? Somehow we doubt it may be the hangar-like reverb of The Barn, but theatre of it all the best thing about Foals’ set is every song feels a tiny bit overly emotive. Stop that here is something we can finally dance to. Nostalgists that we are, it’s good to see a proper twisting our arms, and start leading us by the hands, old-fashioned backing tape, none of this laptop we’ll end up coming a lot further with you. Finally we make our way back to the tent, passing nonsense. Unfortunately, Napoleon III’s beautiful a young man being carted off in handcuffs. We vintage reel to reel overshadows his songs, which We feel bad that so few people investigate the ponder that after years of metal and punk acts are fine, but all sound a bit like Pink Floyd’s Theatre tent, so we make another foray into it. (including those supposedly notorious hell raisers ‘Corporal Clegg’ without the chorus. Biggest cunting error of the weekend. Sunshines Towers of London), whose fans are supposedly Maybe some of us stayed up last night, but is two drunk men, one of whom is wearing a dress. wild and irresponsible, it takes a day packed with Thomas Truax looks like he hasn’t slept in weeks. Think about that for a second – a man in a dress! acoustic folk acts for us to witness what might It doesn’t affect his fantastic performance any, Anything could happen! It’s all wild and well be the first arrest at Truck. though, which is a wobbly stroll through Tom improvised! Fuck Thatcher! And so on. After Waits’ notebooks with mechanical machines they’ve spent ten minutes making the sound of a A Silent Film Rolo Tomassi

Baby Gravy

Idlewild Rachelle Van Zanten

cyborg farting from a little machine, and giggling, playing along with a car alarm. We can’t get just saying the words would lead you to believe. we back swiftly away. enough of it, frankly. Imagine Melt Banana, The Locust, Mr Bungle as Ineptitude of a different sort in the Quilting Bee We weren’t expecting a lot from Glenn your starting points. Then think of every single tent as Seb from The Evenings and The Keyboard Tilbrook but he manages to surprise us. He plays other band you have ever heard of and pile them choir sings whilst Chris from Harry Angel and sings with an absolute passion. Obviously he on top of each other in a crazy mish-mash accompanies him inaudibly. It’s bloody awful, but at breaks out old Squeeze numbers, but there’s no of…craziness. Now you’re at least part way there. least it’s unpretentious. harm in that; after all Squeeze did have the odd This is like 1,000 years of teen angst condensed Having had their set rained off at last year’s truck good song or ten. He closes with a cover of ‘Funky into several short bursts of superhuman strength (well before being flooded out became trendy) A Town’ (which is unfortunately lacking anything in invective. Sublime stuff, if you can handle it. Silent Film are taking no chances, and are the funk department) and the old Squeeze classic, appearing in The Barn. Their epic pop benefits ‘Tempted’, which manages to soar dramatically. Over on the Main Stage headliners Idlewild keep from being on the big stage. It allows the songs to Tilbrook and his band inject some real energy into everyone waiting for far longer than is polite. breathe and in this room A Silent Film are bathed in a song that is normally quite sedate and laid back. After all, good things come to those who wait. grandeur. One of the great things about Truck is Performance wise it can’t be faulted, although it Idlewild, though, are far from inspiring, seemingly the way it can veer from such grand sounds to does make us start to feel quite old to think that going through the motions, Roddy Woomble in something more quirky almost instantly. Baby some bloke from Squeeze just played one of the particular seems totally disinterested. They do Gravy have had a line up change recently but it sets of the weekend. have some great tunes though, and as they launch has changed none of their charm. Vocalist Iona After a ‘severe weather warning’ we pack the tents into ‘You Held the World in Your Arms’ you exudes exuberance and attitude, pulling the band away only to discover the loss of all our Pringles and remember that Idlewild were always a great band through their set of barbed off-kilter pop songs. Haribo sweets. We vow to smash the next acoustic who somehow always got overlooked. As Nought You either love them or hate them; we assume the guitar we see, but decide we’d rather see Pull Tiger play to an almost empty Barn, the Main field is girl who runs out screaming doesn’t like them too Tail than Electric Soft Parade. Pull Tiger Tail sound heaving. It would appear that this year’s Truck was much; her loss. amazing, taking all the best bits from grunge and not the wash out it so easily could have been. We approach Rachelle Van Zanten with a little layering a post-rock delayed guitar all over the top. And then, finally, it’s nervous_testpilot who is caution. That is an acoustic guitar and a distinctive These are lush pop songs filled with just enough clout essentially just a funny little man playing country lilt we can hear after all. Just as we’re to make them irresistible. Winnebago Deal follow prerecorded music and doing a silly dance, but he’s deciding to move on, she breaks out some of the this polished sound with something that sounds like a still a cracking end to the festival. High points on most spine-tingling blues slide guitar we’ve ever meat grinder hurtling through a crowded train carriage. his hardcore odyssey are when he (ahem) “drops” heard. It’s guttural and primal and dripping in Raw and visceral as always, it almost doesn’t matter `Apache’, and the brilliantly original sound of a grime. We absolute love it. Unlike Piney Gir’s girl that the only time you can hear Ben #1’s vocals over squeaky toy making an acid house riff: all hail pop ensemble The Schla La Las, who are the wave of sonic brutality is when he’s screaming breakbeat Sweep! Standing at the back of the tent basically a joke, and like most jokes, they don’t like his lungs might escape through his twisted mouth. watching the weekend’s casualties trying to dance work a second time. Apparently this is their last In fact that only makes us like them more. Older to music that is officially too fast provides the ever gig – hark to the rustle of a thousand Truckers numbers like ‘Did It. Done It. Doing It Again’ get the most wonderful memory to take home from the shrugging. biggest reaction, which consists of a swirling mass of festival. It wasn’t the best lineup Truck’s ever had, The unwritten rule of Truck is that you’ll find sweaty teenagers. The desired effect, then, for one we’ll admit, but we’re still glad that the festival your favourite act when least expecting it. We were of Oxford’s hardest partying bands. managed to claw itself from the brink of its demise. thinking time was running out for this epiphany, And suitably, here come Rolo Tomassi to SCARE We wonder what next year shall bring. when we stumbled on Italy’s Disco Drive. There THE SHIT OUT OF EVERYONE. This is a band are three of them, but sometimes two of them play for which the word frenetic was invented. Their Words: Sam Shepherd, David Murphy, Matt drums. All their songs sound like Q And Not U material is so much more insane and complex than Bayliss. All photos by Sam Shepherd

YOUNG KNIVES / LITTLE FISH The Carling Academy And so Little Fish become the first Oxford band to play the new Academy. But that’s the least of the reasons to remember their name. If

Photo: rphimages Little Fish haven’t exactly come out of nowhere (singer/guitarist Julia Heslop and drummer Neil Greenaway both have local history with Dolly and Vade Mecum respectively) they’re one of the most fully-formed new bands to hit the scene in an age. Looking like The White Stripes in reverse, they make an almighty clatter for a two-piece, Neil thrashing his drums mercilessly even as he cradles his sticks like a lazy jazzman, while Julia’s voice is simply astounding – a raw but malleable mix of Janis Joplin and Sinead O’Connor that morphs to accommodate garage punk, gutter soul, strident folk and even Flamenco as the needs takes it. In a twenty-minute set there are at least three chill-down-the-spine moments. Most bands wouldn’t manage that in a lifetime. If we’d forgotten in any way, even for a few moments, just what a great band Young Knives are, tonight reaffirms everything we ever loved about them. Having taken a break from incessant touring to record their new album, they’ve regained that freshness and subtle lunacy that first made them local stars. Henry and House bicker and verbally joust throughout the set and seem, for the first time on a while, to really be enjoying themselves. Tonight is mostly about showcasing new material, and even on first hearing it stands up there with long-time favourites like ‘Here Comes The Rumour Mill’ and ‘The Decision’, both kicked out early: two near-perfect pop moments. Tonight’s opening track is dark and robotic, synths almost on an equal footing with the guitars, like Blur at their most experimental. New single ‘Terra Firma’ follows this trend, so militaristic you fully expect it to invade Poland before its three minutes are up. ‘Counters’ sounds like a frustrated bank clerk trashing the office in the middle of a nervous breakdown, while even the initially slight ‘Fit For You’ is deceptively hypnotic. It strikes you just how adept Young Knives are at cramming so much into consistently short, sharp hits, knocking you backwards with a killer hook or chorus even as they’re jittering around the fringes of post- punk’s confrontational awkwardness. ‘Coastguard’ is frenetic and cacophonous, while set closer ‘She’s Attracted To’ keeps a tight grasp on the handle of the mad-sane door. Fifty-five minutes, non-stop: short, sharp, sweet and not a little sublime. Dale Kattack

RUSSIAN CIRCLES JALI FILY CISSOKHO & THE The Wheatsheaf GRIOT GROVES BAND It’s hot in here. It’s really, really It’s 1972 again and Sabbath are damn hot in here. Sweat drips from reinventing hard rock. 1972? Burton Taylor Theatre foreheads into pint glasses coated Perhaps that’s also the temperature Part concert, part gig and even that his band utilises the bass guitar with condensation. Over to one side inside the Wheatsheaf in degrees part lecture this evening is a of Ame Diange rather than there’s a behemoth of a man, Fahrenheit. Listening to Russian triumph for Jali Fily’s virtuoso traditional West African covered in tattoos, topless, stripped Circles is like standing at an open kora playing and warm resonant instruments, alongside the djembe down to his shorts and sporting window listening to a storm. Like singing voice. Jali Fily is a Griot of Elhadji Seye. Ame and Jali Fily muscles more at home at the rugby the best storms they fall into praise singer and a keeper of his are sympathetic to each other’s World Cup. Compared to Russian pockets of calm, ponderous culture’s oral history from a playing, feeling each other out Circles’ riffs, however, he’s a four- contemplation. Now it’s like family of Griots in southern rather than clashing. I like the foot midget. staring at the ocean: there’s no set Senegal, and the evening shows contrast of kora and Ame’s low- Sometimes you don’t have to do flow, just hypnotic eddies and that for him music is a vocation. key jazz and rock-inflected lines anything too clever, just crank out swirls and waves lapping closer to His playing and singing doesn’t hit and, also, the sparks when he and those huge, all-consuming guitar the flood defences. you over the head but captures the excellent Elhadji improvise over riffs and let them wreak their Droplets of icy water trickle you by stealth, even though you Jali’s kora melody. For some the damage; folks will be too down your glass and through your haven’t understood a word unless bass guitar is too intrusive and they preoccupied trying to prise fingers. And then they’re lurching, you know a smattering of are thankful when feedback themselves from the back wall, or like an ugly roar of thunder, back Mandinka or Wolof. Suddenly you gremlins end Ame’s contribution simply too stoned, to care. Russian into the billowing black clouds forget that in the cramped seating early. Circles’ riffs come coated in soot that mass as far as the eye can of the sit-down, sold-out Burton While not at ease doing the, “are and volcanic ash; they’re black as see. Forty minutes and it’s over Taylor Theatre your knees are too you having a good time?” ritual, night and they cover you before you and the silence is deafening. The close to your chin and next door’s Fily is relaxed, totally at home and can run, like the hapless citizens of prickly heat slowly dissipates as elbows are in dangerous proximity smiling when playing and singing in Pompeii. people head for the exit. to your ribs. his captivating, deeply traditional The Chicago trio – over in the UK Outside the air is cool and crisp, Jali Fily has a very traditional kora style. We are lucky he is now supporting Tool and playing a as only the greatest storm can sound. Not for him adding extra resident in Witney and part of the handful of headline dates – match make it. strings, or playing the kora through local music scene. the oppressive heat at every step. Victoria Waterfield an electronic box. So it’s a curiosity Colin May ROLO TOMASSI / MEPHISTO GRANDE / THE GOLDEN WOK ABZTRAQT SIR Q / CLANKY ROBO Finest Chinese Cuisine Take-Away GOBJOBS 170 Cowley Road The Cellar (Opposite Tesco) Never mind Dawn Of The Dead, this parties and talks intensely and over- evening it’s Night Of The Mental Singers. earnestly to you about the cosmos and 01865 248158 One-man punch-up in an asylum Clanky chakras. As her band play an odd funkified Robo Gobjobs looks like a slightly sort of art-punk, all bizarre jazz timings Home Delivery Available chubby, extremely camp jogger, dressed and freeform jerkiness, she squeaks and in tracksuit pants and dinosaur hoodie makes breathless noises or recites poetry Open 7 days a week and is, incredibly, the meeting place or simply blows a balloon up and makes it between Anaal Nathrakh and the first deflate noisily. It’s fun at first but soon Depeche Mode album. Rinky-dink synth- becomes wearing – they’re just too self- pop is consumed by screaming and consciously weird and she thinks she’s hollering and nasty digital hardcore Bjork. beats. Liam Ings-Reeves has his work cut out to When he’s not stomping around the near- retain his crown as Oxford’s king of vocal deserted dancefloor, Mr Gobjobs is madness tonight then, but his Tom Waits- convulsed onstage like he’s about to vomit cum-Uruk-Hai bark is pretty peerless and up his colon. And if that ain’t great the band’s Parisian café band-kidnapped- entertainment, what is? Occasionally you by-Southern Baptist cannibals with a wonder if it’s all just a pastiche of 80s death metal fixation remains a wonderfully performance art, but we make a mental vile brew. note to put the lad on in Borders at the But tonight’s star is Eva Spence, petite, next Oxford Punt. No, strike that, we’re blonde teenage singer with Sheffield’s Rolo going to market him as a children’s party Tomassi, a girl who makes Linda Blair in entertainer. There’ll be tears on the big day The Exorcist sound like Judie Garland. but you can guarantee the little blighters The whole band look like they would be will be quiet as mice for the next six more at home sucking on lollipops than months. cranking out spazz-core mayhem and Abztraqt Sir Q are from Portugal and are vomiting invective but for us they’re this as unruly as their name suggests. They’re year’s most startling new discovery. A fronted by a strange woman in an ill-fitting genuine extremeophile’s pop dream. Love dress and crazy make-up, who looks like them. Fear them. the sort of person who collars you at Dale Kattack

FOR BARRY RAY / TRAW WITH DOMINIC LASH / DIVINE COILS The Port Mahon Pindrop Performance: what a fitting name directions when one’s eyes remain for late Sunday afternoon gigs. A lovely closed. Brilliant. earplugs-free affair, today’s gig is in Whoever Barry Ray is, (whether he collaboration with the experimental exists or not), he must be a happy Oxford/Wales label Fourier Transform. chappy having a band dedicated to him. Setting the norm for tonight’s ‘eerie’ The Australian/Swedish husband and electronic improv mode are Divine Coils, wife duo are eerie, yes, but enchanting at an Oxford based bunch who excel in the that. creepy factor and not much else. The wife wields her weapon of choice: Scratchy mosquito pulses are slightly not a bow or plectrum, but a handheld sadistic in their subtle affliction on the electronic fan. With this she flitters audience, and séance chimes put the around a snare drum, creating relentless listener on edge. Which leads to the engine noises that sound piercingly annoying nature of a lot of improvised industrial but captivating and unusual. live music: why does it all need to be so FBD sound like a workaholic’s flipping eerie? daydream: tireless clutter and shuffling Welsh laptop improvisers Traw put on a on a cold electronic desk, reverberations rather more novel and entertaining and warped splutters; it’s all very avant- performance. Dominic Lash of Oxford garde but definitely listenable. Improvisers is at the forefront with his Throughout their set a rather sweet double bass, scratching and rattling away toddler fearlessly traipses into the whilst the three Welshmen get to work stifling Port, indecipherably chanting. ROCK-POP-DANCE-GOLDEN OLDIES-INDIE- live-sampling him. The upshot is a Hats off to a bloke who gave the mother SOUL-TECHNO-HIP-HOP-JAZZ-LATIN-REGGAE- succulent radiation from the Port’s PA, a good telling off - and believe me you DRUM&BASS-GARAGE—R&B-DISCO-1950s- disorientating and feeding the imagination, need to have balls to do that nowadays. 2000s. Brand new back catalogue CDs £4 - £7 which flies off in all Pascal Ansell each. Brand new chart CDs £5 - £10 each NEW YOUNG PONYCLUB The Carling Academy First impressions? Shiny. Clean. Black. Tonight is the opening night of the new Carling Academy Oxford (to give it its official title) and it genuinely feels like the start of a new era. The main Photo: rphimages downstairs venue bears no resemblance to what went before and there are more subtle, but welcome, changes – you can get a drink without queuing, and visit the loo without contracting typhoid. Given the occasion New Young Ponyclub might simply be a sideshow, but they exceed all expectations. Perhaps they lack a bit of depth but they’re a class above the trendy Hoxton playthings they’re sometimes dismissed as. Singer Tahita Bulmer is the star of the show – a fabulously bored debutante with a streak of dirty, low-down blues siren running through her and the spirit of a young Debbie Harry in her veins. She’s as much a cheerleader as vocalist, pumping the crowd up as the band gradually up the tempo throughout the set, hitting rich, electro-rock grooves and mining them with steely, robotic precision. Initially NYPC come across as some sort of hybrid of New York New Wave and 80s synth-pop, Lou Hayter’s Numan- esque keyboard lines dominating angular funk bass and guitar, but as they crank up the party vibe, their disco edge comes more to the fore, while Sarah Jones’ drumming becomes more tribal and suddenly they’re the android Go! Team, infectious and irresistible. As Tahita herself points out, the Academy, whose stage they’re christening tonight, is shiny and new just like New Young Ponyclub. And she’s spot on. As the band kick out a messy but fun cover of Technotronic’s ‘Pump Up The Jam’, even those who’ve only popped into see what the new venue looks like are moving their feet. After all the waiting, it’s a near-perfect start to the modern age. Dale Kattack

ACTION BEAT / TRAKTORS / ELAPSE-O The Port Mahon There’s hardly been a shortage of bedroom, but should probably opportunities to see the avant stay there, involving as it does garde, the leftfield and the hitting guitars and playing around downright weird in Oxford over the with effects pedals to no great past few years, but an all-dayer of overall effect. Following the such wilfully outré delights is still clarity and vision of Elapse-O, something to treasure. there’s really nothing to see here. Dipping into this Permanent Headliners Action Beat are Vacation-promoted mini-festival’s fabulous – in essence, two evening’s programme, there’s an drummers and multiple guitarists early highlight with Elapse-O, who playing what Glenn Branca might manage to encapsulate all that’s have come up with if he’d been good about drone and still find time born in Bletchley. Taking their cue to enlist a member who spends from all things no wave and adding most of her time making some hardcore aggression into the portentous hand gestures and mix, they’re happy to build on a setting fire to things. There’s single motif until it becomes a feedback and noise, sure, but it’s moment of violence and joy at the controlled so tightly that there’s same time. In places it’s as if there substance, warmth and in places are two bands playing prime real beauty to be had. The whole early-80sSonic Youth affair is underpinned by simple, simultaneously, and where we subtle beats, lending them the come from, there are few higher urgency of Sunroof!’s explosive compliments. improv alongside the clinical A cause for double celebration, majesty of ‘Zuckerzeit’-era then: that such bands are out there Cluster. making wonderful music, and that By contrast, Traktors play the there are outlets in Oxford for us kind of music that is obviously to enjoy them. loads of fun to make in your Stuart Fowkes THIS CITY / DATA.SELECT.PARTY / CASIOKID & THE ULTIMATE SOUNDFUSE The Cellar Once again the best comes at us comments from the stage like “So first in the shape of Casiokid & the this is Oxford on a Saturday Ultimate Soundfuse, a low-fi synth night?”. This is a shame, because outfit from Northampton, barely ‘She’s An Eyeful In The Alley’ is a three months old. Impressively really great single and they’d have strong, clear vocals and catchy done better just playing us their tunes come courtesy of song-writer set. London bands typically Jack Sunasky, providing the human display a touch of arrogance, but counterpoint to the 8-bit it’s something that needs to be monophonic meanderings of Ben earned. This also reveals the Varnell. They cite computer games downside of MySpace in that as their main influence and write bands now quickly build up gems like ‘Crying Over Myspace’, thousands of ‘friends’, mostly a classic modern love song if a bit other bands, and turn up to a gig minimal to break the charts. Like a like this expecting to be greeted as low budget Daft Punk, they’re a heroes. genuinely charming alternative to Brighton boys This City continue the legion of similar bands with in a similar vein, only wilder and their heads stuck up the 80s. less studied. Plus they have the Data.Select.Party are into dancing, sense to keep their gobs shut and want us all to join in. Not a bad between songs. Not dissimilar to idea, as the songs are sharp and Biffy Clyro, who they’ve punchy in a Hard-Fi vein with a supported, they’re almost there pleasing disco backbeat, played with the catchy punk pop thing, with precision and vigour. but the songs let them down. They Unfortunately tonight’s typically also leave a nagging feeling that laid-back Oxford audience are they’re here for their own pleasure happy just to look on, supping more than ours. Our lesson tonight, their drinks. An uncomfortable brethren: turn up early. stand-off ensues, punctuated with Art Lagun

SO SO MODERN / CLANKY ROBO GOB JOBS The Cellar “I’m a fat guy in a blue hoodie,” it’s easy to carelessly classify says the hooded fat guy, aka them. Problem being, however, that Clanky Robo Gob Jobs, to the the most interesting music can’t be techno-threatened, painfully trendy planted in crass NME pigeonholes. crowd. By day, CRGJs is a film Seemingly bright-eyed and bushy production student, but once the tailed, even having come all the moon is up he’s often seen at the way from the other side of the Cellar. Albeit for some miracle of world, New Zealand’s fantastic genetic science he’s neither a twat four-piece So So Modern weigh in nor does he sit around adding half- at a terrific 600lbs of supreme met friends-of-friends on Facebook synth-endorsed math rock. SSM or perform that sacred Mighty immediately get a front-row dance Boosh ‘tasty soup’ sequence. The session started once they commit boy is hilarious, but is no fun if to the Cellar’s two feet of fame. taken seriously. Filthy slabs of ‘The New International’ is an techno, brilliant ‘I’m a troubled innocuous Battles romp, following videogame fanatic’ histrionics and the restless syncopated climax jittery screams. Puts to shame the ‘Fire Fights’. They’re like an dreadful Baby Gravy set that intelligent, hyperactive and very, precedes him. very good version of the Transgressive embarrassingly egregiously poor Klaxons. The describe So So Modern as ‘disco Kiwis’ sudden time signature emocore thrash’, but this is pure changes neither willingly mess with fawning over their latest signing. the listener’s head nor sound It’s understandable: So So Modern contrived. SSM only endeavour to are deceptively near looking so like get your noggin bobbing. And in any other dance-y guitar band that trying, they succeed tremendously. when they do whip out the tunes, Pascal Ansell JONQUIL ERASURE Jacqueline du Pré Music Building The New Theatre The brushed light wood surrounds mode - letting the multiplicity of We all know what Erasure sound The World’, out are Andy’s of the Jacqueline du Pré Music instruments on stage almost decide like, don’t we? This is, after all, flamboyant leotards and feathers, Building are extraordinarily apt for for themselves what’s going to one of the most successful bands of but in are glittery camouflage gear Jonquil: comfortable and safe, come next - than in ‘pro’ mode. On the late-80s / early-90s, with well and Jackson Pollock-inspired emanating a quintessentially record, Jonquil’s songs are great; over 20 chart hits to their name. suits. A sense of humour pervades Oxfordian air of refinement and running the gamut from quiet, Even though the arrangements and – Andy prances, struts, joins the quiet superiority. Tonight is no delicate Hood-style pastoral even instrumentation may change backing singers in cheesy arm seething mass of punk rock sketches to thick slabs of layered (they recorded an album of movements and even introduces a mayhem, nor is it a showcase of sound seemingly equally influenced acoustic country and western lamb puppet called Mint Sauce to cutting-edge experimental by Brian Wilson, Polyphonic Spree versions of some of their old songs ‘help’ him sing. The costume envelope-pushing. However, what and the folk music of Vashti last year), an Erasure song is still change interval is accompanied by Jonquil do well, at least as well as Bunyan and Incredible String Band. unmistakable – not least due to a pages-from-Ceefax ambient track many of their peers both locally They can certainly pull off this Andy Bell’s distinctive voice. He and a stream-of-consciousness and nationally, is to create a warm combination in a live context; and could sing the Chinese national monologue from screens on the cocoon of sound that’s as rich as it it’s a mightily impressive display anthem and make it sound like a stage, encouraging us to wave our is straightforward: an odd of arrangement and performance. It torch song of loss and redemption. hands like we’re on drugs, among combination of MOR coffee-table seems slightly lacking, however. It There was a point in the mid-90s other random thoughts. musicianship and lush, carefully- might be the bored look on the where Erasure became very So what about the new stuff? orchestrated instrumentation. faces of half of the band; perhaps unfashionable – and songs from Well, surrounded by the soaring Bookending the show tonight with it’s the relentlessly languorous pace that era are noticeably absent catchiness of songs like ‘Chorus’ firstly an improvised set recalling of their songs; but such private tonight. But the hardcore support and the anthemic ‘Love to Hate the swells of sound created by music seems to lose something (now far more the age for Radio 2 You’, it doesn’t fare too badly. ‘Meddle’-era Pink Floyd combined when played out in public. than Radio 1) meant they reached ‘Breathe’ – the only track from with the desolate nature of A very ‘Oxford’ band, then: a point where they could afford to 2005’s ‘Nightbird’ here – is easily Godspeed! You Black Emperor; literate, confident and knowing. put out whatever music they the best thing since their heyday, secondly a structured reading of But somehow slightly shallow. wanted without having to rely on but recent single ‘Sunday Girl’ tracks from their first and Perhaps that’s my own faux- commercial success – which meant isn’t too bad either. (launching tonight) second albums, Northern attitudes at play, perhaps they stuck around long enough to Nothing exciting enough to draw Jonquil prove that they can hold not. If nothing else, Jonquil are benefit from the 2000s’ synthpop in many new fans – but certainly their own in terms of musicianship. certainly thought-provoking, and resurgence. enough to keep the existing ones It’s somehow more refreshing, that’s got to count for a lot. On this tour, in support of their happy. though, to hear them in improvising Simon Minter new album, ‘Light At The End Of Kirsten Etheridge

Corner Cowley / Marsh Road 01865 776431 October

Every Monday - Poker Night 7pm Every Tuesday – Shush Open Mic – Come Sing / Play / Listen. 8pm FREE; All Welcome

Wed 3rd Ally Craig / Beaver Fuel / Shirley 8pm £3 Thu 4th Grinning Spider presents Mile High Young Team / Back Pocket Prophets / House of Blue Dolls 8.30pm £4 Fri 5th OXJAM with Scrambler / Toulouse / Augustus Turtle. £4 8:30pm Sat 6th New Moon / The Marmadukes / Les Clochards 8.30pm £4 Sun 7th Electric Jam - Come jam with the The X Men. 8pm FREE Wed 10th Jazz At The X presents J J Soul With The Paul Jefferies Quartet 8pm £5. Dinner Menu Available Fri 12th Gammy Leg Productions presents Cyrus / Loopy / The Drugsquad 8pm £4 Sat 13th Wittstock Fund Raiser withVon Braun / Mark Bosley & more 8pm £4 Sun 14th Heather Dale / Doug Hodge / Faceometer 8pm £4 Thu 18th Port Erin / Blindride / Rubber Duck 8.30pm £4 Fri 19th / Sat 20th / Sun 21st GRINNING SPIDER BALL 3 DAY BALL. Please check the website for the line up on each day nearer the time. £4 each day. Concessions for anyone wearing evening dress. In no particular order: Cheesegraters / Space Heroes of The People / Nova Kicks / Emerald Sky / Sam Pope & Elise / The Dirty Royals, Fork / Beaver Fuel / Kate Chadwick /Dan Austin / 100 Resolutions / The New Moon / Script / James Bell /Joe & Angharad / Gwyn Ashton / Shirley / Jeremy Hughes / City Lights Just Burn / The Corvids / Spokane & more! Wed 24th Jazz At The X Presents A Jazz Jam. Come and jam with the house band led by Paul Jefferies. 8pm FREE Thu 25th SelectaSound Presents - An OXJAM Fund Raiser with The Sirens Call / Tim Matthews Band & more TBC 8pm £4 Fri 26th MyAnalog presents The Jeffery Lewis Band / Professor Louie & More TBC 8pm £6 Sat 27th Uniting The Elements / The Spring Offensive 8.30pm £4 Sun 28th Electric Jam. 8pm FREE MyArse.com DR SHOTOVER Your essential guide to Oxford music Zodi-Ac-Ademy and the Love Reaction Never mind MySpace and all that “we sound like John Lennon rocking Yes, yes, it IS very exciting, I out with Hendrix as Johnny Cash looks on approvingly” self- know, it’s just opening up again... aggrandising bollocks. You want to know what all the local bands really but mind you, so is my old war sound like? Nightshift has the truth. We discovered it scribbled on the wound. Anyway, I’m sure you’ve back of a crumpled Campaign For Real Ale newsletter whilst picking all been trying to get on the ourselves off the pub floor one afternoon when we were meant to be interweb to buy tickets for the writing some proper reviews. Here’s the real lowdown on some of our Led Zeppelin reunion (personally local pop heroes. More next month if we can be bothered. I couldn’t care less - they were called the New Yardbirds last time BAND WHO THEY THINK WHO THEY ARE IN I looked). But here’s a bloody THEY ARE THE REAL WORLD extraordinary thing I heard from Tubby Marchington the other Ivy’s Itch Babes In Toyland No Doubt day.... Apparently the lead (or The Walk Off Rammstein Yazoo Led) singer chappie, Roger Plant Headcount Killing Joke The Toy Dolls or whatever his name is, has The Joff Winks Band Steely Dan Shakatak bought a house in Yarnton. You Jimmy Page is moving to Reading Borderville Ziggy Stardust Alvin Stardust know, the one with the Garden Smilex The Stooges The Macc Lads Centre... oh, hang on, I get it. This is a Plant joke isn’t it? Ve-ry fun- Radiohead Autechre Vangelis ny. I do not think. I suppose next you’ll be telling me George Bush Baby Gravy X-Ray Spex The Mini Pops has rented a cottage there too... Anyway, if by ANY chance it WERE Young Knives The Pixies The Weather Girls true about old Planty, perhaps he and the chaps could consider Winnebago Deal Black Flag Chas’n’Dave playing at the All-New Carling Academy... I mean it would be just Dive Dive Fugazi Fightstar down the road, wouldn’t it? I might even stir me stumps to get along Sunnyvale Noise Sub- Kraftwerk Trio myself, even if I can’t smoke in there any more... Meanwhile, I feel Element that this column should be sending its heartfelt sympathies to Mickey Goldrush Flaming Lips REO Speedwagon from Supergrass... I’ve had a few nasty sleep-walking accidents Foals Battles Kajagoogoo myself in my time, especially after a few brandies... my advice is, Mr Shaodow Bruce Lee Hong Kong Fuey always get some popsy to handcuff you to the bed if sleeping in a The Relationships The Relationships The Relationships room with a balcony. I learned that from a roadie (with the New Yardbirds). Ahem. (* - note to bands concerned - if you are offended in any way, it was all Next month: Snarling at the Carling. Mac’s idea, okay?)

Red Mosquito Events present…

Wednesday 24 October The Wheatsheaf, High Street, Oxford Doors open 7:30pm Tickets £6 on door

An Oxjam event for Oxfam registered charity number 202918 DEMOSDEMOSDEMOS Please read the conditions below before submitting a demo,or we won’t review it. DEMO OF MATT WINKWORTH Matt Winkworth claims that his demo is in a THE MONTH bit of a different genre to most of what gets reviewed in Nightshift, so we’re expecting a bit of Tuvan throat singing at the very least. XMAS LIGHTS Instead we get some piano-led pop with a Help! The ceiling is caving in! War has slightly fey indie-leaning feel to it. Which, broken out and you can hear the screams of unlike wide-mouthed frogs, you do tend to the dying. Tall buildings collapse and flights of see quite a lot of round here. Admittedly stairs fall down flights of stairs. It must be Matt’s got a bit of a theatrical thing going another Xmas Lights demo. No ballads yet, on, whether it’s seemingly practising his then. Thank the Lord for that. Instead it’s scales in the shower as on winsome demo maniacal spazz-metal, elegantly sombre opener ‘Infatuated’, or leading the chorus electronic drones and blast beats, all topped line in an apparent audition for Any Dream off with Marco Ruggiero’s alternately hellish Will Do on ‘Just Like The Movies’, that yelping and Gregorian chanting. ‘You’ll Grow oddly ends up sounding like an old Belle & Out Of Us In Ten Years’ is a shrieking and Sebastian demo. ‘Prologue’ is his growling contest over some bad-tempered overwrought show-stopper number with its doom-metal that discovers some previously call-and-response vocal with a female unnoticed proggy tendencies halfway through. backing vocal. Add in some hushed strings Four tracks clocking in at a mighty 45 and brass, self-consciously quirky lyrics and a minutes, Xmas Lights, as ever, give precious final number that could well be Gong little quarter, raging, screaming and performing a provincial amateur dramatic bludgeoning their way chaotically through the version of a Rodgers and Hammerstein rest of this month’s demo pack who can musical and you have to at least admire the merely cower in the corner wishing they had ambition in what is essentially a bedroom- sharp-edged weaponry like this. When they do bound project. Doesn’t stop it all getting on loosen their grip on the musical machete, on your tits a bit by the end, mind. the overlong industrial funk meander of the unnamed final track (including a narrative from someone who apparently “fucking hates AMV that band Xmas Lights”), they do themselves Now, if Mr Winkworth really wanted to send a disservice, sounding like a half-arsed us something beyond our normal musical rehearsal jam. At its best though, it’s like an remit, he could take a leaf out of AMV’s opera. Without the love story element. Or book. AMV stands for Articulus Mediae Vitae, the fat lady singing. Just the gory murder which is what OMD were called in the late scenes played out again and again and again 13th Century. Articulus Mediae Vitae actually until the audience vomits up its G&Ts. Which means Mid-Life Crisis and is the project Xmas Lights duly sample and spit back at the formed by local improv luminary and hapless onlookers at terrifying volume until Dubwiser keyboard player Malcolm Atkins their eyeballs pop. who here revisits and updates four pieces of music from the 13th and 14th Century, performing them on violin along with keyboards and tabla as well as vocals from UNSPOKEN Liz Hodgson. The end result is somewhere between chamber music, monastic chanting HEROES and north African devotional music; it’s Wahey! More screaming! Screaming is good. gently soporific in a not unpleasant way, Especially if it’s the screaming of rightwing although our knowledge of music 700 years American politicians on the receiving end of back is patchy to say the least, although rusty bayonets, but that’s just a jolly daydream apparently the must-have fashion accessory we indulge ourselves in occasionally. This amongst trendier members of Henry V’s screaming is of the nasty hardcore angry court was an early Circulus t-shirt sporting young man variety – a bit like Xmas Lights the legend Keep Music Med-Evil. but without the feeling they could actually do you some seriously bodily harm. Guitars churn, drums thunder and crash and voices cry TERMINAL STATE out for vengeance and everything scurries past Terminal State is the solo electronic project with great haste, like a completely batty bag of Wadham College student Gianni Vesuviano, lady running down the street warning of the which is a great cool name, since it makes him apocalypse whilst being chased by giant sound like a volcano. And he’s drawn a picture cartoon hammers. Doubtless Unspoken on the front of the CD sleeve which we’re not Heroes owe most of what they know to the quite sure about. It might be the mushroom likes of Dillinger Escape Plan, but if only a cloud from a nuclear explosion, which would few of the other bands on this page could be in keeping with the band name, but equally claim a similar debt, how the world would it could be a chef’s hat. Or perhaps a mend. malformed and rather rudimentary penis. All of which is as mixed up as the music on opening track ‘Static Rush’, a suitably frantic UXL buzz storm of breakbeats and swarming UXL’s album-length CD arrives in a keyboard squiggles that trip frantically over beautifully-presented package, complete with each other in their blind panic to get to the some full colour photos of the band, including exit door before the nasty spooky voice from one of the stylishly-coiffeured singer at the ‘A Force To Behold’ gets to them and cooks microphone in a moment of intense emotion. their livers for supper. The rabid gothic gabba And he’s praying! Possibly calling on God to assault continues through ‘I’m All Yours’ guide his lyrical arrows into the heart of some before lurching into metal-bashing industrial lucky, lucky lady. Or maybe he’s just praying dub for ‘Discharge’ which initially carries a that his daft manager won’t include any similarly distorted punch and refuses to settle embarrassing pictures of him when she sends it into a comfortable groove, preferring to dig off to Nightshift. Because then we might laugh itself an ever deeper, darker hole to sit and and point and call him a WANKER. And then scowl in. Good stuff. Especially if you want to we might laugh and point at his band’s upset the neighbours at 4 in the morning. billowing cloud of fart gas that passes for music and sneer at the “wide and eclectic” list THE COURTYARD STUDIO of influences that range from Led Zep and DOTS AND STOPS Pink Floyd to U2 and Muse (hey, that covers PROTOOLS HD2, MTA 980 CONSOLE 32/24/ Talking of 4 in the morning, we’ve a feeling everything from stadium rock to… er… 24, OTARI MTR90 MK2 24 TRACK TAPE that might have been the time Dots and Stops stadium rock! A-fucking-mazing). The reality MACHINE, 2 TRACKING ROOMS, SUPERB first turned on their tape recorder, the of course is that UXL bare no resemblance CONTROL ROOM WITH GOOD SELECTION assorted musicians here doubtless having spent whatsoever to any of the above, sounding OF MICS & OUTBOARD GEAR, + MIDI the previous few hours DRINKING! And more like Robbie Williams making a vain and FACILITIES (INC LOGIC AUDIO, AKAI TAKING DRUGS! And here is an album- ultimately teeth-grindingly awful stab at S1000, OLD SKOOL ROLAND ETC.) length demo of the ensuing semi-comatose lightweight emo. Check out those constipated chaos. At its best it sounds like a campfire jam power ballads, kids! Ooh, and what’s this? Residential facilities included. session by a group of Pavement fans, Some more power ballads! Lighters aloft: www.courtyardrecordingstudio.com doubtless revelling in its lo-fi ineptness while we’re gonna burn these fuckers alive. PHONE PIPPA FOR DETAILS assured of its left-leaning authenticity. In fact, ON 01235 845800 had the band spent more times, making the best two or three tracks here (the Velvets-y folk of ‘For All The People Who Wear Their THE DEMO Hair’ and the 60s garage rock-leaning ‘Do We Depreciate?’) sound less like something the DUMPER cat just mauled it might be less of a torture session than it soon becomes. In the end it’s little more than an exercise in over-indulgent INLIGHT whining and haphazard acoustic thrash, a Well here’s a turn up for the books: after private joke that gets lost in translation. UXL’s barrel-scraping careerist rock putrefaction has us frothing at the mouth in almost neanderthal rage, here comes THE ENDGAME something that is, unbelievably, even worse. It’s a brave band who send a demo into Treading a similarly soulless MOR rock path, Nightshift citing The Kooks as a major InLight might as well tattoo “Mature” and influence. Or perhaps a very stupid one. Why “Accomplished” on their foreheads, just so we not just write, “Hello Nightshift, we rubbed appreciate how, well, mature and accomplished our CD in some dog poo before we sent it in they are, as if it’s some kind of virtue and not so you would like us even more”. Of course we an affliction worthy of a lifetime of solitary make all sorts of enemies in these confinement and regular injections – just for circumstances since we’re faced with a band the hell of it, of course. Their CD collection who play well, sound like they could be obviously has no room for such giddy bothering the lower regions of the charts with pleasures as The Dickies or Shonen Knife and a bit of luck and could probably have a room is all the poorer for it. Instead we get an full of eager, if naïve, young people bouncing overly-earnest bloke repeating the line merrily up and down for forty five minutes. “Don’t you see that I’m fragile” over and But they sound like the bloody Kooks! bloody over again alongside a histrionic guitar Y’know, not just a little bit like The Kooks. A solo until you want to hurl him, like a twee whole big fat lot like The Kooks. It’s slick, porcelain ornament, across the room and daytime radio-friendly harmony pop that hope he breaks into tiny pieces. Of course would sit snugly in a Woolworth’s advert for there’s the inevitable piano-led ballad, one of a dozen or so recent identikit Britrock `Bridges’, all twinkling electric keys and sub- tryers whose injection of a few 60s vocal Elton John lamentation, that so desperately harmonies into some lightweight punk-pop is craves to be described as “soaring” but has now passed off as alternative by a music media cliché crawling over it like lice on a sickly desperate not to upset the corporate dog. “You’ll miss me when I’m gone” whines advertisers. And of course it’s completely out the singer on `Give It A Try’. Funny that of order to heap so much guilt on a group of since the CD has been in the bin for a good cheery young chaps from Headington who just half an hour now and we’ve felt no urge to want to play some pop songs and maybe get retrieve it. A rotting banana skin, however, some girls to love them. But, Christ, they has started to complain that the want to be The Kooks! Unforgivable. neighbourhood has gone down the pan.

Send demos for review to: Nightshift, PO Box 312, Kidlington, Oxford, OX5 1ZU. IMPORTANT: no review without a contact address and phone number (no email or mobile- only). No more than four tracks on a demo. If you can’t handle criticism, please don’t send us your demo. Nightshift accepts no responsibility for deflated egos.