We Are Scientists - Portsmouth Pyramids 15/11/10

Morrisey has been known to ask his crowd not to sing along in the past, so as not to spoil it, and it’s somehow ok for him, because underneath all that pompous titting around, he’s a genius. However, very few others could get away with it. Except perhaps, for We Are Scientists.

When bassist, Chris Cain pleads to the crowd not to sing along as ‘this one has quite a sensitive harmony, and if even just one of you fuckers hits a bum not, the whole thing will turn to shit’, he could easily come across as a complete arse, but there isn’t a hint of pomposity about it. Chris and Keith’s tongues stay firmly in their cheeks between songs, with comparisons to Lord Byron and a dedication to Lord Nelson, but as always they keep the music serious. Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt makes an early appearance in the set, as well as a surprising proportion of songs from their debut, With Love and Squalor, which receive the best response. The crowd has to warm up pretty quickly for the headliner though, as the support didn’t quite manage it. First support, Rewards didn’t provide any more than a lesser version of The XX, about eighteen months late to catch the band wagon. Goldheart Assembly showed a lot more potential and the intensity picked up towards the end of their set, but it wasn’t quite enough to prepare the crowd for the energy of the main act.

While We Are Scientists showed that they can put on a good show, regardless of whether they have a permanent drummer (or whether they borrow one from Razorlight), the crowd did struggle to keep up after a while. The first half of the set had both the kids and the obligatory balding middle-aged men of Portsmouth moshing together, to tracks from Barbara, as well as older songs and even History Repeats, a B-side from 2005. However, as the set draws on you can’t help thinking that they could quite easily have got away with playing a few less songs and kept the crowd going. It’s not that the quality of the songs declined, and they still played them with just as much vigour, the problem is that the crowd just can’t keep up with it for such a long set. Saying that, it’d be hard to pick any song to take out of the setlist, and when they leave stage following After Hours, the crowd are still hungry for an encore, and Cash Cow makes for a fittingly lively conclusion.

Foals - Southampton Guildhall, 7/11/10

Set against a hazy backdrop of smoke and soft lighting, Foals look as though they’re playing to the Guildhall from somewhere inside the screensaver of a Macbook, without being anywhere near as pretentious. Proclaimed as ‘Math-Rock’ in their early days, they’ve since matured into something more refined and less nonsensical. The bleeping, chirping lead guitar parts are still there, along with the insanely tight, complex drum rhythms, but now they’re all set to an underlying, atmospheric whirring that floats around, filtering in and out of prominence. This progression was hinted at in the transition from demos to the first album, and has been finalized by Total Life Forever. It’s not to say it’s a better or worse record; in fact it makes for a pleasingly varied set. Recent single, Blue Blood features elements from old and new and leaves some of the crowd in two minds as to what to do with themselves. With the age restriction of fourteen plus, you’re left with a crowd of teenagers half trying to look like they’re ‘going mental’ and half making sure they don’t break they’re glasses as it’s the last pair they get on free prescription.

Those in the crowd who have got the jist of what Foals do, choose to avoid the unnecessary, yet massive attempt at a moshpit, and are happy to stand back and appreciate the quieter bits and let their bodies do what they like in the dancier bits. It seems almost rude to talk during Spanish Sahara, so as not to disturb the eerie, encapsulating effect it has on anyone listening to it. Yannis’ vocals on this and many of the other newer songs embody the change to a softer sound, but the addition of Two Steps Twice as an encore shows that neither the band or Yannis have lost their balls. He explores every corner of the stage, physically as well as sonically, from the front of the crowd to the top of the speaker stacks. They’ve become experts in changes of intensity, to an extent that surprises even long term fans into not quite knowing what to expect. It becomes apparent that their earlier material was clearly not written for a big room with a big crowd; even the colossal Cassius comes across as lacking slightly, but only when compared to the immensity of the likes of Miami and Total Life Forever. Foals are a band that are by no means afraid of outdoing themselves.

NME Radar Tour (The Joy Formidable, Chapel Club, Flats) - Wedgewood Rooms, 13th October

A spot on any of the NME tours is pretty much guaranteed to give any band a massive boost into popularity, whether interesting or not. There’s usually a pretty standard formula for the line-ups when the magazine are picking them, but the openers this year make quite a change. Nutter-punk outfit, Flats start the night off by pissing all over the trend of hushed indie bands that the NME has been whoring out over the last couple of years. It’s only a momentary shock though, as the arrival of Chapel Club brings all the terrified trendy haircuts away from the back wall of the Wedge and up to the front of the stage. The young band, and drummer possess the rare quality of restraint, and resist any urge to speed their songs up live. For a band like Flats, the faster the songs are played the better, but Chapel Club’s impact comes from their steady, simple beats driving along an indecipherable whirl of guitars and synths. With soothing vocals and guitars concealed by a wall effects, the band join the list of new artists pointing towards a change in direction for indie music. The sharp, stabbing guitars of the ‘noughties’ (sorry) are gradually being replaced with a soft, but far from boring, new sound.

While Flats may have made Chapel Club appear tamer than usual, The Joy Formidable definitely kicked things up another notch as headliners. At a glance of the stage, you could easily underestimate the band, led by fairly meek looking frontwoman, Ritzy and surrounded by birdcages filled with fairy lights. However, the three-piece’s intentions are made clear not long after as more pounding drums fill the room, this time accompanied by similarly intense guitars and vocals, and any timidity vanishes from Ritzy’s demeanour. While it would be it would be slightly stereotypical to compare them to the only female fronted guitar bands I can think of at this point in time, Blood Red Shoes and The Subways do spring to mind. Even so, there’s something about The Joy Formidable that could see them faring a little better in the mainstream (if that kind of thing floats your boat). They combine interesting rhythms with uncomplicated riffs and hooky vocals in a way that’s easy to listen to too but still keeps you thinking and leaves you guessing. The Radar Tour has seen the likes of Friendly Fires, La Roux and Marina and The Diamonds into large-scale success, and there’s no reason why any of these bands shouldn’t have the same outcome. Except Flats, they might struggle on daytime Radio 1.

Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly - Wedgewood Rooms, 12 October

Since the days of strolling onto stage with an acoustic guitar, a laptop and a mass of hair threatening to engulf his entire head, Sam Duckworth’s stage presence has changed drastically. Instead of a one-man outfit, he now plays front-man of a full band that gives life and power to all of the ideas that used to be chirped out by his computer. The laptop may have been replaced by human equivalents, but the guitar and the continuous threat that his hair poses still remain integral to his live performances.

The quality of the songs on the twenty-four year old’s 2006 debut album come to light early in his set when the majority of the crowd wail the lyrics of ‘I Spy’ back at him before he has a chance to start them himself. When Duckworth and his band do kick in, the compositional intricacies are accentuated by a supremely talented line-up that fills out the sound with extra live percussion and backing-vocals. The full band adds a versatility to snap from full on choruses to quiet breakdowns, with the synthesisers supplying as many eerie sound effects as the laptop ever could have and occasional bursts of trumpet piercing through the soundscape.

After such an energetic opening to the set from an artist with acoustic roots, a few songs worth of bean-bag time were to be expected. However, with the band off stage and Duckworth left alone, the fidgeting from the crowd did become audible after two or three songs; though not enough to dampen his charm or likeability on stage. This quiet mid-section oddly acted as a segway into a political, anti-fascist rant, set to an oddly jazzy accompaniment. Despite any valid message, this could have come across as a Bono-esque display of arseholery if it had come from anyone else and not been delivered quite so articulately. In fact pretty much everything he said made sense. The set ended on a more energetic, cheerful note with a cover of Daft Punk’s ‘Digital Love’, which (unlike most attempts) did the original justice and a flourish of brass utilising ‘Call Me Ishmael’ and the whole group’s full potential.

Good Shoes - Wedgewood Rooms, 24th April

It must be hard for bands to pick a set-list when they’ve just released their second album. However for Good Shoes I’d imagine it would be quite easy.

Their first album was brilliant. It wasn’t particularly clever or groundbreaking but that didn’t matter in the slightest. It just danced right up to your face, jigged around a bit and then ran off to do the same to someone else, and that was fine. You didn’t really have to think about it much, but it was still a good album. At a point where so many bands were making mediocre, simple, uninteresting indie, Good Shoes turned up with something that wasn’t that much more complicated, but somehow stood out.

While it must have been tricky trying to figure out what direction to go in after a debut like theirs, ‘No Hope No Future’ is quite a heavy come-down (the title itself isn’t particularly optimistic). All the urgent, excitement of their earlier tracks has been replaced by an impotent, unnecessary grumpiness. When you slow Good Shoes down, their lack of individuality as a band comes to light and they just blend back into the hazy, colourless pool of average guitar bands, leaving yet more filler for the innovative few to swim through. As you might expect, this puts their live show in jeopardy.

The only songs that stand out from the first half of their set are ‘Ice Age’ (the only old track) and ‘The Way My Heart Beats’ which, to be fair to them, is up to the standard of their debut. Despite only being released this year, live, it sounds like you’ve heard it hundreds of times before. Now that either makes it hugely unoriginal, or something close to a perfect pop song. Luckily for them I think it might be the latter. Aside from these two, the crowd stays fairly motionless for the first twenty minutes, clearly disenchanted by the new material. However, when the old songs start turning up, the crowd sees a new lease of life. Albeit like recently woken coma patients making their first movements in twelve years after ‘No Hope No Future’, but nonetheless, the old songs still have the power to animate an audience. Final track, ‘Under Control’ keeps the energy alive and lies in the same category as ‘The Way My Heart Beats’. Pointing towards an interesting new direction for the band.

We might just have to wait till the next album to hear the complete product though.

NME Awards Tour 2010

On seeing this year’s tour line-up I was a little confused. The Maccabees deserve to be there after two great albums, Bombay Bicycle Club fit in well too, it was the other two I couldn’t work out.

From The Drums I had previously heard a lot of hype and not much music, and from The Big Pink I’d heard that song about dominoes. After listening to both beforehand I wasn’t exactly enthralled. Unfortunately after now having seen them both live, my opinion is much the same. Openers, The Drums are clearly aware that their music is nothing special. When playing live they had the fundamental issue of not being able to play it all themselves. To make up for this deficit they play along to a backing track and dance around like lunatics in an attempt to distract us from the lack of live music. Regrettably, their dance of choice looks like a cross between the locomotion and a slow motion Ian Curtis, both of which are unadvisable.

The Big Pink initially seemed more promising, through a complex combination of pedals and effects, they filled the Pyramid Centre electronic bleeps and feedback. However after that, the band didn’t appear to have hooks, choruses, or anything of interest. Obviously people enjoyed Dominoes but other than it just sound like a bad version of Placebo being brutally arse-raped by a gang of daleks

After a fairly static start to the evening, the running order of the bands began to make sense. Bombay Bicycle Club immediately had a bigger impact on the crowd, despite barely saying a word for the whole set. The band seemed a lot more accomplished than their support acts despite only one full-length album and they provided a much more balanced set with intricate riffs as well as noisy choruses.

As the night drew on it was clear that the majority of people were here for the headliners. The Maccabees looked quietly confident, with the recent addition of a well deserved (and well utilised) brass-section. They showcased a faultless set of old and new material, but they’re attitude on stage makes them a great live band. In contrast to The Drums arrogant arsing around, The Maccabees seem genuinely happy to play and grateful to the crowd. Frontman Orlando ended the night by thanking pretty much everyone in the world. You’re very welcome Orlando.

Funnily enough, NME gave it a glittering review.