Category: Reviews

Fucked Up- Brudenell Social Club, Leeds

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I fucked up.

So I got fucked up and went to see Fucked Up with a load of other fuck-ups.

Brudenell Social Club, Leeds, May 2013.

The cosy confines of this inner-city social club seemed, at first, an odd place for Fucked Up to host their travelling punk rock spectacle. However, it turned out to be the perfect venue. Damien ‘Pink Eyes’ Abraham, their gargantuan, sweat-soaked vocalist, took full advantage of the low stage and the split-level lay-out, bounding into the crowd, going for a wander and standing atop the Brudenell’s red velvet upholstery, spouting his between-song rhetoric while holding onto the ceiling.

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This was my first taste of the Fucked Up live experience but most of the crowd already knew the drill. As the big man wades his way through them, screaming into the faces of those looking most ill-at-ease, he’s like the Pink-Eyed Pied Piper to agog local punkers who, treating him like some super-tame Russian circus bear, excitedly jump on his back and swing around his neck, partly as a ritualistic, macho kind of wrestle-dance and partly as a show of blatant PinkEyesMania. Around me, I heard fevered cries of:

‘‘I just touched him..!!” 

‘‘He let me shout into his mike..!!’’ 

“God, his back ain’t ‘alf ‘airy…!!”

Every major city has its local hardcore nutcase; unhinged, worldly-wise characters whose omnipresence at gigs guarantee it being more of an event. Toronto’s resident nutcase is just that bit more entertaining. He’s a scary-looking yet charming fella, playing the attention-grabbing ringleader, turning to a bit of impromptu comedy as the band take yonks to fine-tune their guitars, winning over and recruiting troops to join his creative energy collective.

As their frontman goes for a stompabout, the band plug away onstage without him and they’re a compellingly odd-looking bunch. One guitarist, Ben Cook appears to be aged about 12 (and is indeed variously known as; Bad Kid, Young Governor and Lil’ Bitey) while their bassist, Sandy Miranda (or Mustard Gas to you) sullenly sways her long dress and curtains of hair in time to the foot-stomping fury she’s helping to create.

Their thoughtful take on full-on rage-rock has the requisite level of Black Flag power, locking into metronomic Krautrock drone-outs on the rare occasion when they do slip out of 5th gear pace.  Drummer Jo Falco hammers away on his minimal kit like a hydraulic machine at full pelt, ensuring everyone else has to raise the intensity level of their big, fat familiar chord chains in order to match his power.

The NME may not have been made welcome in the D.I.Y punk scene but their recent voyeurism and gushing enthusiasm for all things Fucked Up is perfectly understandable.

Witnessing one of their shows is an exhilarating blast of total entertainment that teeters on teutonic and their inventive, far-sighted approach to creating punk rock, particular on record, make them a refreshingly exciting band worth treasuring.

And for all the precious hardcore scenesters who own all their early 7”s (still available at the gigs, recent converts!) and bemoan their growing popularity, surely their name alone will always ensure A-list playlist status on daytime Radio 1 will be as likely as ol’ Pink Eyes getting a hair weave and becoming the new face and body of Kellogg’s Special K.

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Regardless of whether or not you’re a fully paid-up Fucked Up devotee, you should take some time out to watch the brilliantly original video to ‘Queen Of Hearts’, the first single form their epic rock opera in four acts (oh yes!), ‘David Comes To Life’. It was made by the Canadian filmmaker duo responsible for some superbly arresting recent videos for Belle & Sebastian, Alt-J, New Pornographers and others, all worth watching, here.

You won’t come close to experiencing the energy and power they generate during one of their gigs but this is a more accurate glimpse of what they sounded like live:

Turin Brakes: way back then & round about now

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turin-lagoonI tottered along to see the undeniably fine Turin Brakes the other night and before setting off, I remembered I’d done a review of the first time I’d seen them, nearly a decade and a half ago (one day after their debut album was released). It was a harsh reminder of just how old and crusty I’m getting when I contemplated the scary possibility of there being some eager young teenage fans also in the audience who weren’t even born when I first caught them live.

Once inside the Brudenell, I shuffled my way to the front to secure a favourable vantage point (with the other keen fans) and, sure enough, the first clutch of adjacent attendees my aged eyes clocked were three bashfully excitable young lasses who couldn’t have been any older than 14 and, subsequently, were indeed very likely to have been swimming in their daddies’ plums when I cobbled together this wee write-up, that was published in some local gig listings mag:

TURIN BRAKES/ ED HARCOURT

Leeds Rocket, 6th March 2001

The current vogue for proper bands playing proper songs with proper instruments continued here tonight as Ed Harcourt and his accomplices coyly took the stage and bared their musical souls to the predominantly male, Caffrey’s-quaffing, balding throng.

During Harcourt’s half-hour, just as on his current mini album, ‘Maplewood’, Ed and his band make a pleasant enough sound which, despite the welcome embellishment of an intermittent trumpet parp here and there (surely employed in a vain attempt to make every song a clone of Love’s ‘Alone Again Or’), fails to be neither energising nor particularly memorable.

Later, our Ed deflects any potential vocal comparisons to Fran Healy by singing a line about burning all his Travis tapes and, ivory tinkler that he is, begins a frustratingly neck-straining ‘sit-down-&-play’ theme for the evening which is upheld when Olly Knights and Gale Paridjanian, the all-strummin’, all-singin’duo that conceived Turin Brakes, walk on stage to park their arses in their chairs.

As each track from the wonderfully luscious debut, ‘The Optimist LP’ is peeled  away, one can’t help but note that Knights’ voice and stage presence is, spookily, the closest anybody’s come to successfully working the late Jeff Buckley’s mojo for him, on his behalf. That’s no lazy association either; as the acoustic guitar interplay and the honeydew harmonies illustrate, their Radox bath-like body of work really is that good.

At the moment, the one thing more comforting than listening to Turin Brakes’ emotive handiwork is the thought that there might well be hundreds of other talented, David Gray-literate kids, busily beavering away in British bedrooms, determined to craft songs as warmly received as the ones laid bare here tonight. Am I being ‘The Optimist’ now? Let’s hope not.

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TurinOptimist

Well… not much has changed in fourteen years with regard to Turin Brakes still being prodigously talented and a wondrously engaging live prospect. The Brudenell show (on February Friday 13th!) was one of only two gigs the band have planned this year and, oddly enough for a London-based outfit, the other was also in West Yorkshire, at Hebden Bridge Trades Club the following night. Mmmmmm… Most queer.

Aside from their wonderful music, the most captivating thing about this 2015 gig was their bassist, Eddie Myer. I liked him as soon as he walked onstage. His excellent thick beard, his fantastically fulsome web of hair, his slim frame and well-toned arms (I’m guessing he does yoga!) and, not entirely in keeping with what you might associate da ‘Brakes with, he had some cool, tip-top rock god moves n’all: he wore skinny black jeans and Converse pumps, which did a leisurely jig you could really dig, on more than one occasion he had his FOOT ON THE MONITOR, PEOPLE..!!! and he was proudly sporting a Polymer Records t-shirt (which you must know is the fictional label Spinal Tap were signed to, who Artie Fufkin worked for)…

The band pulled out all the crowd-pleasing stops with stand-out tracks old & new, they did a corking, strung-out stoner version of ‘Chim Chim Cheree’ and, perhaps inspired by Myers’ Woodstock look, they often locked down into loose jamming mode, giving the term ‘southern rock’ a more London/Brighton meaning than a Georgian/Texan one. I reckon it’ll be one of the most prog gigs I’ll see this year (and I’m off to see Dutch legends Focus next month). I mean, listen… this song practically is Pink Floyd purity (particularly on the studio album version)… and there’s that bassist’s very same Polymer teesh:

One minor annoyance was the drummer inexplicably not unlocking the snare on his drum during the quieter parts, which caused it to rattle with the vibration, as if someone was pouring dried rice over every song. Overall though, my girlfriend and I had a cracking night and it was nice to see them in a venue as cosy as the Brudenell, witnessing how they’ve lost none of the wonder that had charmed me way back in 2001. Another night where it felt good to be able to proudly proclaim; ‘We Were Here’. TurinSleeve

Film Review: Birdman (or the unexpected virtue of ignorance)

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Watching this film, it’s difficult to accept it’s purely a coincidence that Michael Keaton, an ageing, off-the-radar actor best known for playing a comic book superhero, plays an ageing, off-the-radar actor best known for playing a comic book superhero.

Keaton’s character, Riggan Thomson, is lumbered with the burden of only being known for that one singular role and is literally haunted by Birdman. That big-beaked, be-winged bastard emerges intermittently to continually undermine and belittle Thomson’s attempt at making a comeback on Broadway, directing and starring in his own adaptation of a Raymond Carver short story.

Downcast at being typecast, Thomson is determined to conclusively cast off his cape and create something culturally credible but, like all superheroes, he also has a nemesis; a New York Times theatre critic who “looks like she just licked a homeless guy’s ass” and is hellbent on crushing his theatrical dreams.

Here’s the film’s trailer:

The film is set over three days leading up to the play’s opening night and grants us access into the grotty, unseen world of dilapidated theatre back areas; all rusty pipes, peeling paint and nicotine-stained dressing rooms and you get a genuine feel of ‘being there’, witnessing all the fucked-up thespian thunder for real.

It’s a movie about actors, their contrasting onstage/offstage personae and the screwed-up, dysfunctional lives they lead.

It’s supremely well shot and directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel, 21 Grams).  The whole film flows beautifully, almost like a fast-paced theatre production and the demonstrative camera work is breathless and fascinating, much like Times Square itself.

There are several scenes where the actors’ frenetic movements, their arguments and fiery dialogue are all captured up close by Steadicam and, thanks to the nimble editing skills of Emmanuel Lubezki, the cinematographer responsible for Gravity, most of the film plays out like it’s one long continuous take. In other scenes, some clever camera placement and/or the impressive special FX trickery allow us to view the characters as they sit in front of their bulb-lit backstage mirrors.

In one act, the camera follows Keaton, dutifully strutting his way along a corridor and scurrying down a staircase to push open a fire exit door opening out onto a bustling, brightly-lit Broadway, when you suddenly realise you’ve just been on a quick backstage tour of the St. James’ Theatre itself and those masses of people in the street can’t all be extras.

The film is boosted by a brilliantly original score featuring nothing but some groovy jazz drumming which, disappointingly and despite already winning ‘Best Soundtrack’ at the Venice Film Festival (and being nominated for similar Golden Globe and Critics’ Choice prizes), has been inexplicably disqualified from the ‘Best Original Score’ Oscar nominations, due to there also being 17 minutes of pre-recorded classical music… Something which I never really noticed, whereas the drum score I most definitely did, seeing as it accompanies the most climactic moments and helps to fuse certain scenes together, aiding the continuous-take effect.

The jazzy drum soundtrack makes an impact as soon as the film starts, partly due to the striking opening titles that (along with the closing credits) reminded me of the graphic visual work of the peerless Saul Bass but actually owe a greater debt to Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot Le Fou…

Great moments of subtle comedy abound, such as a fight that’s pathetically realistic; one unexpected punch, some clumsy retaliatory wrestling, concluding in a flip-flop being hurled in a pitiful coup de grâce. See it here in this excellent scene:

There are dozens of memorable lines but one that randomly stood out was uttered by Emma Stone’s character, Sam, unimpressed at Mike Shiner (Edward Norton) explaining why he thinks she’s beautiful and responding with; ‘I’m glad you’re not a writer because that was… Oprah, Hallmark, R. Kelly bad’. 

The sense of realism is enhanced by the various references to actual people: Sam was in rehab with ‘that guy from american Pie’, Robert Downey Jr’s acting skills are dissed, Michael Fassbender, Jeremy Renner and Ryan Gosling are all touted as possible replacement actors (but, ironically, are all committed to making comic-book superhero movies) and Thomson tells a tale of being on the same plane as George Clooney (and his massive chin).

The film serves as a pertinent statement on the tiresome vacuity of CGI’d Hollywood blockbuster bullcrap and the jobbing actor’s desire to be respected for creating something worthwhile and culturally significant.

The kind of films it pillories have almost led to my falling out with modern-day cinema, feeling that, evermore rarely, a trip to the flicks to be good value and resulting in me scouring around instead for forgotten gems from a prior age.

More films like this, one of a growing number with an likably offbeat indie charm, might help to further convince me that ‘orrible ‘ollywood is a place where artisans capable of producing truly great, original works of cinema are still able to flourish.