Middle Class Rut

Middle Class Rut are a great alternative rock (for lack of a better term) duo from California. The two guys (Zack on guitar/vox & Sean on drums/vox) formed after the break-up of a band called Leisure who I'd never heard of but apparently were quite big state-side. I heard MC RUT for the first time on a Rock Sound sampler maybe two or three years ago, the fucking amazing track Busy Being Born. At the time they'd only put out two EPs. They played The Louisiana here in Bristol and I went to see them. It was a fucking sweltering summer night and they cranked out a massive sound from just two instruments. I met them briefly after the show and Sean insinuated me and me friend were lovers - we're not, just platonic male life partners. It may have been because I said they reminded me of Death From Above 1979 - I dunno, whatever. Anyway, they're a really good band and you should listen to them.

The usual musical comparison made of them is Jane's Addiction, which I can hear in the vocals and the big reverby/echoey guitar sound. It really is a huge sound and they transfer it completely live as well which I think is quite a feat seeing as other duos like Black Keys and DFA1979 seem to fall flat when they play live.

Here's a selection of stuff to sample:

New Low

Busy Bein' Born

Dead Set (Live)

Download "No Name No Color" here

The Damned @ O2 Academy, Bristol (09/11/2011)

The Damned are currently enjoying their 35th anniversary, and are marking it with a tour playing both their seminal 1976 debut "Damned Damned Damned" & 1980's "The Black Album" in full. They're still on form, and although only Dave Vanian and Captain Sensible remain from the original line-up, it still feels like the definitive band.

Opening tonight was Viv Albertine, of Slits fame. She took to the stage with nothing but a rather beat-up telecaster and played through a set that was received an initially quite luke-warm reaction from the crowd. Her arty feminist punk didn't really fit in with The Damned, more renowned for the Captain's antics onstage and songs to pogo to but you can't fault her for trying. She did bring a warm presence though and it was hard not to like her even if the music was not to your taste.

Viv Albertine

The Damned took the stage to the Dambusters theme, and proceed to belt out their first album like they'd released it last week. Opening with "Neat Neat Neat" and even playing the Stooges cover "I Feel Alright", the band played as well as ever. Captain Sensible wore a large fluffy pink outfit for the first set, and Vanian was as ever dressed like Bela Lugosi. I felt a bit sorry for poor Monty who didn't really have anything to play for the first 45 minutes and had to stand at the back and be content with wiggling his hands every now and then, but the crowd didn't care about anything but the music. I'm sure a large percentage had probably been around to see the original tour and lagers were still pressed into friends' hands when some of the old punks wanted to go in the pit and pogo to "New Rose". Strangely, I don't think "Stab Your Back" was played.

Dave Vanian

After a short interval, the band returned to play The Black Album in full. The opening riff of "Wait For The Blackout" was enough to get the crowd straight back into the mood again. The band proceeded to roll through The Black Album, allowing Monty to get his fingers into the songs with his synths, and sometimes even the Captain got on a Nord. The band played all the songs with ease and showed how underrated their musicianship often is. I sometimes feel as if The Damned are the forgotten of the early punk bands. They got there first with everything while pushing punk into the 80's, and practically invented goth, but don't always get the recognition they deserve. However, I felt The Black Album doesn't entirely lend itself to being played in the live setting, while the crowd were definitely enjoying the show, the amount of tension leading up to the parts where they could actually mosh meant that a lot of the songs more intricate parts created lulls in the audience energy. That said, "Curtain Call" (all 17 minutes of it) was fucking brilliant. The Damned are an incredibly solid band, and always kill it live.

Throw stuff onstage and it's highly likely Sensible will either wear it or try to stick it up his arse. Sometimes both.

The band finished the play-through of The Black Album and retired briefly before returning for a short encore of some of their popular songs. They played "Eloise", "Love Song", "Melody Lee" and finished on the petulant and awesome "Anti-Pope" with an extended breakdown. Once the band had gone off the crowd expected another encore, but one was not forthcoming unfortunately. The problem with playing both Damned Damned Damned and The Black Album all the way through is that it left little time for the classics from fan favourite Machine Gun Etiquette (I would have liked to have heard "Smash It Up", nothing beats that live). However, no one left feeling like they hadn't got their money's worth.

"Are you wearing a blonde wig and a lei?"

The Damned are one of my favourite live bands and continue to deserve that title. The band are tight as a duck's arse, the Captain, Dave and Monty have great presence and the rhythm section of Pinch and Stu are great as well. They remarked that this iteration of the band had been around for the longest time in their history, and so I hope it continues. 

Long Live The Damned!

And long live the Captain being a silly sod.

Photo Set from the gig on flickr

Hot Chip - Over & Over (Live Video)

Holy shit, this is fucking amazing. Hot Chip fucking nail it live.

Branded Medicines

Cost of 24 Nuromol paracetamol/ibuprofen tablets: £6.99
Cost of 32 generic brand paracetamol tablets: 69p
Cost of 32 generic brand ibuprofen tablets: 74p

Cost per dose Nuromol: 29p
Cost per dose of generic un-branded equivalent: 4p

Agnostic Front - Victim in Pain

A nice bit of NYHC. I'm not as keen on the later stuff, but this album is classic.

Victim in Pain

Download

Doom - Police Bastard

The cover you've seen on every crusties backpatch, and with good reason. A fucking great EP too. Seminal crust/grind punk EP.

Download

Some punk I've been listening to recently

I downloaded a motherload of anarcho, crust and grind recently, here's some of the stuff I've been listening to.

The Varukers - "All Systems Fail"

Doom - "Police Bastard"

Fleas and Lice - "The War Will Never End"

Dirt - "Power Greed Glory"

Conflict - "A Piss in the Ocean"

Amebix - "The Church is For Sinners"

Antisect - "In Darkness There Is No Choice"

Discharge - "Ain't No Feeble Bastard"

Nausea - "Clutches"

Police Bastard - "Blasphemy Squad"

Some Records

OFF! - Four EPs

I picked this up at Rebellion Fest in Blackpool after they played (they were fucking ace). Unfortunately, when I actually opened it and took it out of the packaging there were duplicate EPs. I've been trying to get a hold of someone to sort out a replacement for about a month now, frustrating.

Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazelwood

Found this at a market stall in my city centre for £5 I think. I really love the dreamy psychedelic qualities of the Nancy/Lee songs and they sound all the better on vinyl.

Fugazi - Fugazi EP

Picked this up at the same stall for £8. It's one of my favourite punk EPs of all time (along with the Nervous Breakdown EP, Discharge's first, Multi Death Corporations etc.) and what an iconic cover. Pretty sure it's an original, no idea how many made it over the pond.

Frank Turner - England Keep My Bones (green vinyl)

This is Frank's latest album. It came with a CD too, rather than just a download slip which was nice. I've been a big fan of his for a few years, caught him live 5 times now (recommended, his shows are some of the best I've ever seen).

Ben Marwood @ The Louisiana, Bristol 07/10/2011

MUST REMEMBER TO TAKE OWN PHOTOS IN FUTURE

This Friday held a night of singer/songwriters at the Louisiana. First up was Suzy Condrad who layered soundscapes out of loops with a cacophony of different instruments from her guitar to an autoharp. Her sound reminded me of PJ Harvey, Beach House and KT Tunstall. When she got into her stride the songs spoke for themselves, she's well worth looking up, but a mix of setting up issues and the time it takes to layer the songs mar the whole experience slightly, though her charm kept the crowd interested. She might do well to recruit a full band for performing live, even if this would remove the one-woman-band aspect of her performance, but I think her songs could hold up without any gimmicks.

Next was Jay Newton whose sound was a little more akin to Ben's than the other two supports. He played some good songs, the second of which I particularly liked, though most of which were quite downbeat, which I find is a very easy hole for the singer/songwriter to fall into. He shows promise and he seems to be able to write more upbeat or at least whimsical songs (Ben later played a song by his former band which was about H.P. Lovecraft's zombie creating re-animator Herbert West).

Penultimate act was Bristol's own Barry Dolan A.K.A. Oxygen Thief. Barry peddles a muscular, riff-based acoustic offering reminiscent of a stripped down Helmet, more owing to 90's alt-metal than Bob Dylan. He opened with an instrumental, ostensibly to warm up the headbanging muscles of both himself and veritable gig-barometer Big Jeff. He played tracks from his recent album, single "Mestle and Porter" and my personal highlight "Disasterplan", and also some fun covers of "Gold" by Spandau Ballet and "Party Hard" by Andrew WK. Barry always strikes up a rapport with the crowd and there was definitely drunken shouting along to his songs.

Ben made his way through the crowd to come onstage, as ever an unassuming figure in his suit jacket and t-shirt, his frank and modest brand of acoustic folk/rock with an ability to poke fun at himself drags his songs above those of a sea of miserable blokes with guitars. It began well but unfortunately a instrument failure meant he had to swap guitars before the second song, so he performed the rest of his set with Barry's kindly lent guitar. He played a solid set, spanning most of his releases along with his now iconic cover of The Postal Service's "The District Sleeps Alone". Particular highlights were the ironic "Singalong" (everyone did) and "Tell Avril Lavigne I Never Wanted To Be Her Stupid Boyfriend Anyway" which featured some ad-libbing from the titular female's "Sk8r Boi". He engaged with the crowd by telling some of the backstories of his songs he played and of the strange feeling of staring at a poster of yourself while urinating. He finished the night well but didn't quite manage to recreate the atmosphere of the last time he played the Louisiana, which was particularly electric. It was still a good performance overall however and Ben is going from strength to strength.

Best Coast @ The Thekla, Bristol, UK 01/05/2011

Openers Parrington Jackson's brand of Fugazi meets Bloc Party post-punk (with a side order of post-rock) is received well by a thawing audience. Their 30 minute set is just enough to whet the appetite of the crowd, and didn't suffer too badly from support band bar syndrome. They sounded professional, just polished enough to sound tight, but not too much as to sound over-rehearsed and had a good presence onstage, with all members looking useful and fronted well. However, their music didn't really fit in with the dreamy surf pop of the headliners, but it seems they were a fill in for the touring support who had been left in London to play the famous Camden Crawl.

Parrington Jackson

Bristol's seafaring venue du jour for the hippest of the hip unsurprisingly finds lo-fi surf pop upstarts Best Coast serenading its packed hull. The band split opinion - some find the their brand of bubblegum pop too saccharine, while others revel in the breath of fresh air offered by the sun drenched tunes. When frontwoman/guitarist Beth Consentino, lead guitarist Bobb Bruno and drummer (and former Vivian Girl) Ali Koehler take to the stage however, the charm on offer is enough to melt hearts of the most cynical of listeners.

Best Coast: Beth Consentino, Bobb Bruno & Ali Koehler

While Consentino is naturally the focus of attention with her pin-up looks and unashamedly simple romantic lyrics, but the whole band is solid. Koehler's drumming provides a heavy set backbone and Bruno's surfy solos sound great in a live setting. On some songs however, Consentino struggles to transfer the vocals found in the studio versions of songs when playing live (a fate notably befalling Death From Above 1979), but this doesn't really detract from the show. The band obviously enjoy being onstage, cracking jokes (the frontwoman remarks about her fear of boats and ad libs 80's pop songs) and jamming on a few tracks. The band play their way through the entirety of "Crazy For You" (with Pitchfork approved single "Boyfriend" in early on, perhaps before the band hit their stride), a selection of older tracks (including the irrepressible "When I'm With You") and throw in a few promising sounding new songs.

Best Coast: In a boat.

The band's sugary repertoire lends them to the hour set afforded to them by the Sunday curfew in place, the old adage of having too much of a good thing holds sway. Whilst splitting the last few songs into a short encore may have been recommended, the crowd leave satisfied. On an uncharacteristically balmy early May evening, Best Coast are the perfect soundtrack.

The Thekla in green

Words/photos (c) Daniel Cove 2011