LONDON CITY NIGHTS

Saturday, May 9, 2015

Super Furry Animals at Brixton Academy, 8th May 2015

Saturday, May 9, 2015 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

The eighth of May 2015 was a shitty day in almost all respects. At 6am the sun slithered over the horizon to greet the full horror of a Conservative Party majority government. On television, newspapers, the internet - even video displays on bus shelters - David Cameron beamed, the man turgid with excitement at the prospect of realising his darkest free market fantasies. I was coming off all an all nighter for the election; the experience hurling me through the Kübler-Ross stages of grief.

Having spent most of the day nakedly quivering in fear and disappointment underneath a duvet, I walked into the Brixton Academy with a heavy heart. But c'mon, if any band are going to cheer me up it's going to be the Super Furry Animals. 

Led by affable polymath Gruff Rhys, the band are, for my money, the finest band to come out of Wales in the last 20 years (maybe longer!). Though they successfully rode the Britpop wave to success, they never quite rose to the heights of a Blur, Oasis or Pulp. Nonetheless, their unique combination of pop, psychedelia, surreal lyrics and experimentalism has aged beautifully. Now, this 'reunion' tour functions as a tour through Super Furry history, pulling dusty old costumes and props out of storage, running through the best tunes and reminding everyone just how damn good this band is.

The setlist draws from the first half of the career, with only one song from 2005's Lovekraft and nothing from Hey Venus! (2007) or Dark Days/Light Years (2009). Those albums are certainly no slouches, but this is essentially a greatest hits show, so damn near every single and famous album song from their early career is jammed into an extensive and well-curated two hours. 

Obvious highlights are the electro surf-rock of (Drawing) Rings Around the World, with scratchy garage band riffs competing with ascending synth lines in the background as Gruff Rhys authoritatively sings "Earth will become Saturn II!" and references Shin'ya Tsukamoto's excellent freak-horror flick Tetsuo II: Body Hammer. Similar fun comes in the stupidly fun Golden Retriever, sending the crowd into a happy, sweaty, bouncy fit of pleasure, as does Something 4 the Weekend from their debut album.

Things take a turn towards low-fi pastoral in a lengthy segue through Mwng, their recently r-released 2000 Welsh language album. This marks the one point in the show where the audience calms down a bit. Mwng is an excellent album, but four peaceful sunset songs in a row drains a little energy from the audience. Plus, it's hard to sing along in Welsh. Even so, there's a perverse thrill in being at a sold out Brixton Academy gig watching a London audience enjoying a series of Welsh language songs.

But it's Receptacle for the Respectable, Slow Life, Mountain People and Run Christian Run! that left me most dazzled. These songs are epic musical adventures, switching up genres mid-song, willing to have extensive techno interludes and building to gargantuan, sensory overloading, maelstroms of sound and light. A gigantic projection screen playing snatches of blurred archive footage, remixes of their videos and what looks like recreations of the 'Beyond the Infinite' sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey. On top of that, a tiny spherical robot positioned at stage rear emits hypnotic laser rainbow loops. Slices of light revolve above us, transforming the slowly evaporating sweat of the crowd into shimmering, dancing fractal patterns. It's pretty far out.

My highlight of highlights was Hello Sunshine. This gentle Beatles-y number is one of their best songs and contains the immortally romantic couplet "I'm a minger. You're a minger too. So come on minger, I want to ming with you." It's touching, humble, sweet and funny all at once - the cherry on top of a perfectly happy pop song. But last night something weird happened. Midway through the song, the band paused before those famous lines and the crowd spontaneously went completely fucking bananas. This wasn't an ordinary cheer, more like some psychic release valve being opened. For me, after an incredibly shitty day it was the first time I felt a glimmer of hope pierce the misery. For the only point that night the band looked perplexed, looking over at each other and shrugging. With no sign of it abating, Gruff Rhys smiled and gave us a confused thumbs-up, allowing him to get on with the song.

With that, and the climactic mass mosh pit of The Man Don't Give a Fuck, I left the place cheered up. Unless you're a rich man the next five years are going to be a grim era of ashes and tears, but even in the midst of that there's still precious moments that we need to cling onto as tightly as we can. 

It was a truly excellent gig, underlining the this band's place in the British musical canon and reminding us of the sheer wealth of pleasures contained in the band's songbook. Though Gruff Rhys, with his solo albums, side projects and documentaries, is far from a distant presence, I hope the Super Furry Animals project remains a going concern. There's an abundance of life, good cheer and joy in the Super Furry Animals - who're capable of putting a silver lining on even the most threateningly grey and gigantic of clouds.

Super Furry Animals play the Brixton Academy again tonight

All pictures used courtesy of Jason Williamson. www.jasonwilliamsonphotography.co.uk

Monday, May 12, 2014

Janelle Monáe at Brixton Academy, 9th May 2014

Monday, May 12, 2014 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

Janelle Monáe would be a superstar at any point in human history.  She'd have rocked the rock and roll stages of the 1950s, been a disco queen of the 1970s, probably been worshipped as some kind of minor deity by ancient Egyptians - hell - if she were around in prehistoric times you'd be finding cave paintings of a razor sharp dancer clad in black and white furs with adoring neanderthals gathered around her.  She's the whole package: all-dancing, all-singing, all-stylish, smart as a damn whip and supported by the one of the tightest backing bands about.

Monáe is a woman of many names; Cyndi Mayweather, the Electric Lady, ArchAndroid - yet this isn't a woman playing a series of roles, rather different aspects of personality filtered through prisms of style.  Dressed from top-to-toe in her trademark monochrome she arrives on stage to the cabaret nightmare beat of her Suite IV Electric Overture before launching straight into the insistent stomp beat of Givin Em What They Love - the first ten minutes of her set reaching the heights most big bands save for the finale. Having opened in the stratosphere, Monáe proceeds to shoot for the stars.

For two hours she rattles through hit after hit, an astonishingly strong setlist given that she's only on her second album (and an EP).  Standouts are the incredibly fun Dance Apocalyptic and Tightrope, two songs that it's impossible to resist wiggling your ass too - a smiling audience pulling their own shapes on miniature dancefloors carved out from the crowd.  Occasionally she'll pull out a cover, the best an astonishingly accomplished ABC by the Jackson 5 - Monáe conjuring up the ghost of the dead King of Pop with a tremendous moonwalk across to an swell of amazed applause.

It's all pretty damn great stuff, but the undisputed highlight for me was Cold War. Sobering up for a moment, Monáe stops and decries the kind of horrible world where 200 Nigerian schoolgirls can be sold into slavery and no-one lifts a damn finger.  This is tricky ground for a pop musician to tread on, and I had a tingle of worry that things were going to collapse into mawkish sentimentality.  But as the coolly synthetic 80s electronica of Cold War kicks in, her comments give her gravitas, transforming what's already a virtuoso performance into something with social relevance.  Midway through the song the lyrics devolve into a series of tortured, tuneful howls, a tiny moment that's easily one of the most powerful things I've seen a live singer do of late.

Throughout the show I couldn't help but compare and contrast it to Miley Cyrus' Bangerz show, which I'd seen a few days earlier.  Though both solo female pop artists, the two occupy opposite ends of the aesthetic spectrum.  Whereas Miley wraps herself in flashy, intense videos and an ADHD influenced momentum, Monáe strips things down to the bone.  Her backdrop is simply a large blank white sheet that wraps around the stage, lit by various coloured lights, our eyes drawn down to the musicians rather than distracted by any maximalist frippery.

Both gigs were hugely entertaining, their aesthetic differences serving to amplify each artist's strengths.  But if I was absolutely forced to choose between them I'd go with Janelle Monáe - though it's the kind of show that relies on a truly exceptional artist at the centre of it all, one able to shoulder the burden of carrying the whole show on her shoulders. She's more than up to the task - a performance suffused with crazy amounts of confidence, at times while watching her you begin to believe she's capable of anything.

Watching her twist, spin and moonwalk across the stage, every molecule of her body geared to the rhythm, all the while singing in perfect tune made me feel like a complete turnip.  I can 'dance' - anyone can 'dance' - but I this is dancing dammit.  She moves with tireless energy, executing whipcrack precise motions, moving like a black and white flickering zoetrope.  She's a musical Bruce Lee, a complete pop package that, quite frankly, diminishes her musical contemporaries purely by occupying the same industry.

Janelle Monáe obviously has a long career ahead of her, and when she's treading stages in the 2050s she'll still be a hot ticket.  But she'll be echoing the performances she's doing right now.  Seeing her now is like seeing Michael Jackson in his Off the Wall phase, a young and hungry Prince or Elvis before he joined the army.  These are the gigs that people will one day look back on and wish they'd had the chance to attend.  I suspect Monáe's biggest days are still ahead of her, one really big hit single and she'll be deservedly packing out arenas around the world.  

For now though, seeing up close in a packed out Brixton Academy makes me feel privileged.  She is barnstormingly amazing at everything she does; destined to one day take her place in the pantheon of iconic artists.  I can't really imagine anyone not enjoying her gigs - so beg, borrow and steal tickets wherever you can!  

All pictures (c) Jason Williamson

Monday, June 24, 2013

'Die Antwoord' at the Brixton Academy, 24th June 2013

Monday, June 24, 2013 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

The first thing you have to realise about Die Antwoord is that they're simultaneously the realest thing ever and utterly, totally artificial.  The second thing you have to realise is that that distinction means absolutely nothing.  Die Antwoord (Afrikaans for "The Answer") are a rap/rave group from South Africa.  The primary members are; Ninja, a tattooed, wirily muscled aggressive rap gangster/superhero; Yo-landi Vi$$er, a screeching, foul mouthed machine-gun spitting, jailbait trash-princess; and DJ Hi-Tek, master of beats, prone to wearing freakish masks and angrily yelling about sodomy.

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