Êasy Life, Rough Trade East, London, January 16, 2020
It’s time for another Rough Trade East gig – a 1 pm lunchtime gig (‘the earliest Easy Life gig ever’) with quirky Leicester five-piece Easy Life, followed by a signing of their album, Junk Food.
They are playing again this evening so they could take the easy way out and treat this afternoon show as a rehearsal for the concert they’ll be playing in about six hours. But it certainly doesn’t feel like it. The band treats us to 11 songs played with great spirit and full engagement by the band members, not least of all frontman Murray Matravers, who has dressed like a hotdog for the occasion.
I don’t know any of the songs, so everything is new to me. I certainly didn’t expect to witness a hotdog singing a song about how we misuse the natural resources of our planet (Earth) but what I soon find out is that an hour in the company of Easy Life is an entirely positive and life-affirming experience.
They play a set of catchy songs with entertaining lyrics, and they sound great – a mix of hip hop, r&b and indie-synth. Some of the songs remind me of Rex Orange County and that’s not a bad thing. But more than anything, they’ve latched on to their unique tiny island, and their warm and sunny disposition betray their Midlands roots. No sign of rain or grey skies around this band.
Many of the songs have dark themes lyrically, but the music’s lightness balances out the darkness of the words. The audience is on point as backing vocalists on most songs, and the festive atmosphere increases whenever Matravers picks up a trumpet and joins in with keyboard player Sam Hewitt, who doubles on saxophone. These brief horn-section passages bring a jazzy feel to the set, and it would suit the band if they did that even more. The very mobile drummer, Oliver ‘Cass’ Cassidy, uses every opportunity he gets to walk to the front of the stage to survey the audience. He also goes behind the keyboard for one song while Sam is on saxophone duty.
Easy Life looks like a band with an overload of ‘pinch me to check if it’s just a dream’ moments. Towards the end of the set, Matravers exclaims proudly, and a little bit confused, ‘Junk Food is in the fucking top ten – how did that happen?’ The band finishes the set with their debut song, Pockets, which features the line, ‘I’m tryna to unlock doors with these musical keys.’ The answer to Matravers’ question is clear, this band’s ‘musical keys’ are opening doors all over the place, and their audience is receptive with open arms.
Easy Life setlist 1. Earth 2. Sunday 3. 7 Magpies 4. Nice Guys 5. Sangria 6. Temporary Love Part 2 7. OJPL 8. Dead Celebrities 9. Spiders 10. Nightmares 11. Pockets
Patrick Wolf, St Pancras Old Church, London, January 16, 2020
Patrick Wolf is a sick man. Braving the flu and a fever sweating through his pores, it’s a wonder he’s even here tonight. Employees have called in sick for less. But here he is, intent on getting on with the show – after all, as he says, the only gig he has ever called off was once, when a cancelled plane prevented him from travelling.
We arrive early, as we know from a previous gig at this venue (with Erland Cooper) that the venue is small and there’ll only be seats for the first-comers. We wait in the rain for 30 minutes; then, we sit in our seats for about an hour before the gig begins. I prefer concerts with numbered seats to avoid these kinds of queuing-waiting situations, but sometimes a concert-goer must grin it and bear it.
It’s not only the performer on stage who’s ill tonight. So is one of his audience members. Me. I am at the tail-end of a cold from hell and luckily the cough I’ve endured in the last few days has magically gone away in time for the concert and at this point, I’m just completely exhausted. Illness aside, this turns out to be a great concert. This is the fourth time I’ve seen Wolf live and the first time since 2012 at the Old Vic.
Has anything changed since then? Well, his physical appearance is different. I used to think of him as lean and lanky, but he’s beefed up since I last saw a picture of him. His hair hangs down like straggly threads that he repeatedly curls and pulls at during the concert. He’s dressed in a dark, kind-of-toga outfit, and his appearance instantly makes me think of Anhoni (formerly Antony of Antony and the Johnsons) – the resemblance, at least from the fifth row, is uncanny.
He pulls at his long, wiry hair throughout the concert. I usually wouldn’t write a whole paragraph about someone’s hair, but it gets to a point where I wish he would brush it behind his ears and just be done with it. It gets distracting after a while and makes you wonder if it’s all a studied pose or just hair hanging down inconveniently. Maybe it’s a nervous tick or some kind of ‘good luck’ ritual, like tennis player Rafael Nadal, who adjusts his hair before every ball of tennis he plays. But enough about hair.
My friend and I sit behind what we believe to be members of Patrick Wolf’s family, which results in him looking in our direction several times as if he’s singing to and smiling at us. Though it’s obviously his family members he’s looking at, it adds an extra sense of intimacy to some of the songs that he sings them seemingly aimed at us.
The concert begins with the overwhelming sound of a church organ playing on the level above and behind us. Everyone turns towards the sound, and moments later, Patrick Wolf enters the church from the entrance through which we all entered the venue earlier – let’s call it fashionably late. He walks towards the stage and sings with his dramatic baritone voice. Once safely on stage, he picks up his viola and starts playing and plucking away.
Despite a few technical problems here and there, some instruments that need tuning, and Wolf leaving the stage for ten minutes because he’s unwell, he sings and plays like a trouper. He’s so talented that a few hiccups won’t present too much of an obstacle. Though some songs sound unfocused, Wolf’s singing is mostly brilliant, and he plays his chosen instruments (guitar, autoharp, viola, piano) splendidly. It also seems to help him that his sidekick, Jack, is there. Aside from playing the piano, bass and organ, his mere presence seems to support Wolf enough to get him through the show.
Since Wolf doesn’t have a new album to promote, the gig is a hearty blend of old(er) songs. Tristan is played early in the set, but it isn’t the best version I’ve heard of this song, just played on viola. I think this song works best with the strong backbeat that tonight’s version lacks and not just plucking away on a stringed instrument. Having said that, I understand a musician’s urge to experiment with different ways of performing their songs.
Other songs, like Bluebells and Bermondsey Street (one of my favourites), are spot on in their beautiful execution. Wolf plays a moving and fragile Pigeon Song with romantic lines about going alone to the cinema and stealing food from Electric Avenue (in Brixton, South London).
Wolf gets emotional when he introduces a song that he associates with his mother, who passed away not so long ago. He strums the chords of a song by Sandy Denny, Who Knows Where the Time Goes?, and manages to sing a couple of verses before he stops himself. At first, it looks like the song is too emotional for him to sing, but he says he’ll have to leave the stage for a few minutes because he’s unwell and will be back to play some more songs. No one could fault him for stopping the concert at this time. Still, about ten minutes later, Jack returns to the stage and starts playing an introductory piano piece before announcing Patrick Wolf back to the stage to very appreciative applause.
The duo plays a few more songs, including one with Jack back on the organ. Patrick plays the last couple of songs solo on his viola. An alternative version of one of his dancier, more commercial songs, The Magic Position. This is not a song I like very much in the recorded version, but stripped down like this, the song has more depth. The clapping along from the audience doesn’t add much value to this song, but if clapping along feels supportive for the performer on stage, who am I to complain? The fact that Wolf’s voice has gotten croakier during the concert adds to the song’s urgency. After finishing The Magic Position, Wolf tells us, ‘That’s what that song sounds like when you have the flu.’
I don’t know how Patrick Wolf felt about tonight’s gig. It can’t be fun singing and playing and performing while ill. Maybe he got through on adrenaline (and Lucozade). Perhaps his love of playing music and being on stage is a comforting remedy in itself. Regardless, by the look of it, St Pancras Old Church was full of satisfied customers after tonight’s concert.
Patrick Wolf setlist (Note: This is the setlist as intended but some of the songs were played in a different order and a couple may not have been played) 1. Ghost Song 2. Teignmouth 3. Tristan 4. Jacob’s Ladder 5. Watcher 6. Blackdown 7. Hard Times 8. Bluebells 9. Bermondsey Street 10. The Days 11. Wind in the Wires 12. Damaris 13. Paris 14. Who Knows Where the Time Goes? (Sandy Denny cover – incomplete) 15. Theseus 16. Wolf Song Encore 17. The Sun is Often Out 18. Augustine 19. The Magic Position
Fontaines D.C., Rough Trade East, London, December 2, 2019
I’m late for the party. But then again, I don’t follow the latest bands as much as I once did. But sometimes, word gets through about a ‘new sensation’ or upcoming potential legend in the making. I’d seen the name Fontaines D.C. here and there but hadn’t paid attention until I saw they were doing one of those performances at Rough Trade East that consists of a shortened gig and signing of the current record the band is promoting that time. In this case, Fontaines D.C. was promoting their debut album, Dogrel, and celebrating winning the title of Rough Trade’s Album of the Year.
As the group is still relatively new and only has one album’s worth of songs (plus a few extras) in their repertoire, their mini-gig at Rough Trade this evening, where they play eight tunes, is not that much shorter than their ‘real’ gigs, which seem to be only 3-4 songs longer, so it almost feels like we’re getting a whole gig. Nevertheless, it certainly made me want to check them out at a full concert in the future.
Fontaines D.C. is a unit of five young men from Ireland named after Johnny Fontaine from The Godfather. I don’t know if this implies they foresee themselves as failed entertainers, who have to use their mob connections and decapitated horse heads to try and revive their careers. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, and for now, at least, it certainly doesn’t look like it will.
The band is blessed with a charismatic frontman, Grian Chatten, who strikes a winning combination of studied pose and sincere quirkiness. He keeps staring at the bright light above him, sometimes hitting out at it as if feigning discomfort of being in the spotlight. His body movements alternate between an erratic boxer waiting for a fight and a bored child making faces and bouncing around. Perhaps this is how he gets himself in the ‘frontman zone’, by turning nervous energy into a confident swagger and staring out audience members with affected menace. Like any great frontman, he is intriguing to watch, and his extensive movements never happen at the expense of his expressive singing.
Fontaine D.C. have great songs. They are a part of a current crop of bands that have tapped into the sound and atmosphere (and look?) of bands like The Fall, Echo and the Bunnymen or Joy Division. It’s hard not to get the sense of having stepped into a soundscape of the alternative rock scene from the late seventies/early eighties.
Regardless, Fontaines D.C. comes across as current and new, as indeed the band is, and the band’s songs don’t feel like rip-offs. They got their own thing going on, and I’m sure the crowd agrees, from grey-haired Gen X’ers to fresh-faced Millennials.
Towards the end, there is some mild moshing going on, but nothing aggressive or violent. Is Polite Moshing a thing – ‘Poshing’ perhaps?
I am often not able to pick out lyrics from songs I don’t know (perhaps because of a lifelong reduced hearing on one ear), but when I look up the lyrics online afterwards, I can read what I couldn’t hear properly – these lyrics are excellent:
‘Dublin in the rain is mine, A pregnant city with a catholic mind, My childhood was small, But I’m gonna be big’ (Big).
‘A sell-out is someone who becomes a hypocrite in the name of money, An idiot is someone who lets their education do all their thinking… Charisma is exquisite manipulation, and money is a sandpit of the soul’ (Chequeless Reckless).
‘You’re so real, I’m a showreel, You work for money and the rest you steal’ (Sha Sha Sha).
The first line in the song, Too Real (‘The winter evening settles down’), references T.S. Eliot’s poem Preludes. On Boys in the Better Land, the band shout out to James Joyce, when Chatten belts out, ‘…and the radio is all about a runway model with a face like a sin and a heart like a James Joyce novel’.
The songs are like short tales with a Dublin backdrop, where raindrops of Romanticism pour down on the old town, only to disappear down the sewer of Realism. There’s a new song called Lucid Dream, in which Chatten appears to be rhyming ‘Voltaire’ with ‘Chair’ and ‘Despair’, but knowing my hearing, I might have got that wrong. I can only wait ’till the lyrics appear somewhere on the internet to find out. He could be rhyming ‘Robespierre’ with ‘Daycare’ and ‘Creme de la Mer’ for all I care.
In the first song of the set, Hurricane Laughter, Chatten informs the crowd repeatedly that there is ‘no connection available’, but he’s wrong; it’s clear that the connection between band and audience is loud and clear.
Fontaines D.C. setlist 1. Hurricane Laughter 2. Chequeless Reckless 3. Sha Sha Sha 4. Lucid Dream (new song) 5. Too Real 6. Liberty Belle 7. Boys in the Better Land 8. Big
Apre & Inhaler, Dingwalls, London, October 9, 2019
Tonight’s concert with Inhaler and Apre at Dingwalls is sold out, and there’s a long queue waiting to get in. As I get into the venue, expectant fans are already occupying the first few rows in front of the stage, but there’s plenty of room on the side on a raised platform, which is perfect for short people like me.
I saw Inhaler earlier this year supporting another band at the now-closed down Borderline, and they were quite good. Tonight they’re headlining. The support band, Apre, is great. A bit Happy Mondays, a bit Foals, funky guitars and electronic vibes and pedal effects. Standout track for me is the joyous Everybody Loves You. A band to explore further.
Apre
And then it’s time for headlining band, Inhaler. Singer Eli Hewson is more extroverted at this concert than at the last Inhaler-show I saw. I gather they’ve toured a lot since I saw them in the spring, and Hewson has gained confidence, which enhances his stage presence. His microphone is also louder at this gig than at the Borderline, where his singing almost disappeared among the instruments. This time his voice is loud and clear, and it’s evident what an expressive singer he is.
I’m only familiar with four songs of the 11-song set; opener It Won’t Always Be Like This, the closing song My Honest Face, current single Ice Cream Sundae and B-side Oklahoma.
At one point, Hewson and guitarist Josh Jenkinson are alone on stage performing an acoustic version of Oklahoma. It’s a bit faster than on the record, but still slow enough to show off another side of Inhaler, which I think suits them. I’m hoping for more quiet, atmospheric songs in the future. Hewson says it’s the first time they’ve done this, and after the song, he states, ‘We were nervous about that’, but any nervousness certainly didn’t show.
Hewson’s voice is very good, and yes, he does sound like his dad (that would be Bono) at times, but he has his own thing going on. It also doesn’t hurt that he bears a slight resemblance to Jeff Buckley. All members dress the part of rock and roll musicians, and those hairstyles didn’t happen effortlessly. Though many bands claim it’s all about the music, we all know that looks and image are ever crucial in Rock and Roll-land.
Speaking of Rock and Roll, Noel Gallagher is in the audience. Not surprising as he’s a friend of the Hewson family, and his daughter has been photographing Inhaler. Everything’s related.
My Honest Faceserves as good a closing song, just like It Won’t Always Be Like Thiswas the perfect opener. The crowd right in front of the stage go mad, pogoing and moshing and almost forcing their way to the stage. Hewson has to tell them to step back several times. Finally, bass player Robert Keating solves the problem by jumping into the crowd and pretty much forcing some more space, so people at the front don’t get crushed. Clearly, no one was in any danger, but the animated enthusiasm is infectious, and the affection for the band is evident.
Inhaler has been touring a lot in the last year, and they’ve grown and improved since I saw them in March. If they’ll get a proper breakthrough and become one of the big ones, remains to be seen. But for now, they pretty much check all the obligatory rockstar-in-waiting boxes: A strong connection to an enthusiastic crowd, a good set of songs executed perfectly, a confident stage presence, a stylishly downplayed but considered rock and roll attire, a frontman who is growing into himself and who can get the audience going. Based on tonight at Dingwalls, it looks like Inhaler could be going places much bigger than this.
Inhaler setlist 1. It Won’t Always Be Like This 2. I Have To Move On 3. Another Like You 4. A Night On the Floor 5. Ice Cream Sundae 6. Save Yourself 7. Oklahoma 8. My King Will Be Kind 9. When I’m With You 10. Cheer Up Baby 11. My Honest Face
Shilpa Ray & Ezra Furman, Bowery Ballroom, September 14, 2019
When I travel, I always look for a possible concert to go to, so I was happy to see that Ezra Furman was playing Bowery Ballroom while visiting New York. Tonight’s support artist, Shilpa Ray and her band are wonderful. Ray has been a fixture on the New York/East Coast scene for a few years now and has worked with Nick Cave, but the big break hasn’t quite happened, which is baffling considering how compelling a live performer is and intriguing songwriter she is. I don’t know any of the songs, but I like them all. Her voice is tremendous, from honey-sweet to sandpaper-coarse; she can whisper seductively and scream in anguish with the best of them. A bit of punk, a bit of cabaret, a bit of sea shanty – all done with heart and soul.
Shilpa Ray
And then it’s time for Ezra Furman, who enters the stage with his band, all dressed in blue jumpsuits as if they’re going to work on a construction site rather than playing music on a stage. Ezra, of course, is wearing a dress as he usually (always?) is. Ezra straps on his guitar and attacks the microphone with intense gusto, lots of spitting when he sneers the words with angry precision, shedding a ton of nervous energy that translates into a stage presence that is tense and cool in equal measures. He’s a bit of a paradox, wearing his dress and makeup, but with quite manly mannerisms, singing his old school style rock and roll and punk songs, smearing them with his twist, taking total ownership of a music genre that’s been done to death. However, somehow there are still sonic treasures to be found when someone like Ezra Furman digs in.
He plays one of my favourite songs, Haunted Head, with evocative lyrics like, ‘I take these aimless drives, from 2 am to 4 I live these secret lives, Identities that all die off not one survives, By morning there’s nobody at the wheel’.
Two of my favourite songs from Furman’s latest album, Trauma and My Teeth Hurt are played in succession before one of many highlights; Body Was Made. A song about body-shaming and the fact that our bodies are nobody’s business but our own. It’s a severe and poignant issue that nevertheless manages to be sexy and seductive.
After an energetic cover of The Equals’ Police on My Back, it’s time for the last song and the ultimate question: What Can You Do but Rock n Roll? In our current world, stuck in regression, we all have to do our bit to try and turn the tide. But when the weight of the world gets too overwhelming, perhaps the best thing to do is put on your dancing shoes and simply rock it and roll with it.
Ezra Furman setlist (Intro song – Street Hassle, Lou Reed) 1. Suck the Blood from My Wound 2. Calm Down aka I Should Not Be Alone 3. Rated R Crusaders 4. Haunted Head 5. Trauma 6. My Teeth Hurt 7. Body Was Made 8. Psalm 151 9. In America 10. Maraschino-Red Dress $8.99 at Goodwill 11. I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend 12. My Zero 13. Transition From Nowhere to Nowhere 14. No Place 15. Driving Down to LA 16. Love You So Bad 17. Evening Prayer aka Justice 18. Thermometer Encore 19. On Your Own 20. Police on My Back (The Equals cover) 21. What Can You Do but Rock n Roll
Scenic and Sonic 