Wasted Little DJs

The View
Koko, Camden, February 10

The View (not the TV show, as I had to tell literally everyone that I mentioned the gig to) last night at indie institution Koko. It's an old theater that's been revamped as a club/venue, so there are about four stories that look down on the stage, a pretty decent sized venue for a band that hasn't seen too much hype for its second album. We got in too late to get a space along the rails in the upper floors, so we headed downstairs during the unremarkable and sometimes outrightly bad openers. I didn't bother to remember their names since I really had no interest in listening again.

The crowd was completely chill until The View came on (in spite of an odd assortment of hipsters, old people, 14 year olds starting chants, and a group of women inexplicably sporting light up bunny ears), but when the band started playing they went insane. The unfortunate sort of drink-throwing, uncontrollable need for unnecessary crowd surfing kind of insane. It was great to see an audience really excited for a gig, but after about the sixteenth cup of beer was flung over the crowd, I found myself wishing they would be just a little bit less excited. Did explain why the floor in Koko always looks faintly sticky, even at the beginning of the night.

The View themselves put on a good show, playing a lot of the better known tracks from debut Hats Off to Buskers and mixing in songs from brand new album Which Bitch? I hadn't picked up the second record yet, but they were good enough that I'm planning on getting it. They kicked off the set with some classics like Wasteland (the crowd went nuts for the super-fast rendition), Five Rebeccas, Skag Trendy, and Wasted Little DJs, then broke in the middle with super short, harmonica tinged tune Typical Time, which segued into a short acoustic set. The end of the gig saw Superstar Tradesman and Same Jeans, then an acoustic encore of Oasis' Don't Look Back in Anger (confirming the frequent opinion that The View are Libs impostors--Pete and Carl performed the track at their latest reunion gig).

The View do have a little bit of Libs in them in that they can get a crowd going, and seem to have a fanbase with a high percentage of belligerent young guys. Their music also has the kind of underproduced, loose sound (live and recorded) that the Libs and their various coattail riders prefer.

As for Albion? Maybe a little bit in the atmosphere of the gig. People seemed to be having a genuinely good time, despite the fact that Koko is a relatively corporate venue. (A little too well organized, actual tickets, plastered with NME endorsements). The View seem to encourage this, from what I could understand of their banter. (Being from Dundee, their accents were virtually unintelligible). Lyrically, The View get into class a little bit with tracks like Superstar Tradesman and Posh Boys Can't Play (which was sadly omitted from the set), and the album title "Hats Off to Buskers" suggests something about value for the shambolic, itinerant lifestyle that this movement of bands admires. Not quite the height of Albionesque romanticism, but on the edges. And overwhelmingly influenced by the movement of bands that does revere Albion (Oasis, The Libs, a touch of contemporaries Arctic Monkeys in the snippets of modern nightlife spewed out in fast lyrics).

The verdict? Crazy but enthusiastic crowd, solid playing, a dash of Albion. Great to see a band I've been listening to since I downloaded an elusive live recording about two years ago of Posh Boys.

I'd say pictures are to come, but they didn't turn out especially well. Might toss the Oasis cover video up here if youtube cooperates.

Twilight Omens

Franz Ferdinand
HMV Oxford, January 26

Got up incredibly early (in line around 645) to get wristbands for the Franz instore, then returned later in the day for the gig itself, and even though we showed up much later, somehow got a far better place in the crowd than we had at White Lies. At least we were in front of the stage this time.

Franz themselves sounded great, but I can't wait to see them in an actual gig. Their new album has much heavier, slicker production than either the debut or YCHISMB, but Tonight is about a night out in clubs, so the music feels like it needs to be heard in that situation. Somewhere a little seedy would be best; there's a dark, dirty sound to the weird percussion and whispered vocals on tracks like No You Girls and Bite Hard that just isn't meant for somewhere as corporate as a brightly lit HMV. That combined with the giant mob of press (on stepstools, no less) that blocked the stage for about the first half of the set, left something to be desired atmospherically. The band seemed to agree, Alex chirping "Bye photographers!" when security ushered them out.

Lack of atmosphere didn't mean that the band itself wasn't technically strong. As an instore, it was a fairly abbreviated set of around 8 songs, all from the new album with the exception of Tell Her Tonight mid-set, when Nick took over the vocals. The addition of keyboard to their live setup creates a somewhat different sound than the hard, angular guitar hooks from Franz Ferdinand, but also makes the sound more complex. Sadly there was no drumming with human bones on the live version of No You Girls. I've got my fingers crossed for the next gig.

The set list was something like:
No You Girls
Bite Hard
Ulysses
Live Alone
Tell Her Tonight
Turn It On

Bite Hard and Ulysses were my favorite tracks, particularly Bite Hard. It's very dynamic live, transitioning from whispered intro up to the fast paced guitar break at the end. Ulysses comes across well for similar reasons, although it's another track I think will play better in a more appropriate venue (especially since it's the most Albion-influenced track, it deserves a little more seedy romance). Lyrically it just didn't translate to the atmosphere. When you hear "I'm bored, I'm bored, C'mon let's get high" in an HMV, you're sort of like, "What, over in the Jazz vinyls section?" It wasn't really a fault on Franz's part though, and they sounded great. Plus it was fun to see them in such a small venue (only 300 people) at a point when most of their gigs have crowds in the thousands.

Anyway, they also did a signing, so I got the album signed. Alex Kapranos touched my hand. If this were some sort of lame Gossip Girl style blog I would put OMG here, but it's not so you'll just have to imagine that it was quite a moment.

The verdict? Franz, awesome. HMV, not so much. Can't wait to see them at Apollo Hammersmith in March for a better perspective on the new album and the chance to hear some old tracks.

Pictures TBC

Don't Look Back in Anger

Oasis
The Forum, Copenhagen, January 24

I'll admit I didn't have the highest expectations for this gig. An open floor with 9,000 people, a band that can barely get on stage with out fighting, and a back catalogue that I had no hope of learning before the gig. I was just keeping my fingers crossed that I would know enough songs to make the steep ticket price worth it. However, Val and I somehow got front row spaces (a little off to the left, but that ended up being fortuitous later) and the crowd was incredibly relaxed. Another nice break after Pete.

Opener The Floor Is Made of Lava was decent live, and remarkably prompt. Their sound left something to be desired, since the bass was loud enough that it actually made my scalp vibrate, which detracted from my ability to understand/enjoy the music especially well. However, what I could make out of their songs suggested that they had catchy hooks, and I checked them out later on last.fm. Decent.

Oasis came on, again, really promptly. Val told me the Danes are very offended by lateness; maybe I should just go to concerts in Denmark from now on. They opened with Rock and Roll Star, played a few tracks off their new album including lead single Shock of Lightning, then mixed in some classics like Morning Glory, Supersonic, and Live Forever, and of course Wonderwall, which Liam taunted the crowd with by announcing the song before as Wonderwall. The actual version was just okay; needed more weird pronunciation. Liam, oddly, left the stage for about half the set (whenever Noel sang), but otherwise a fairly normal gig. No fighting on stage, which was almost disappointing. Cigarettes and Alcohol was introduced as "for anyone here from England"-- a little Albionesque dissatisfaction with the world, I guess.

The encore was the high point of the gig, with Champagne Supernova and a great acoustic version of Don't Look Back in Anger. They closed with a cover of I Am the Walrus, which went off well but should have been shuffled with Supernova. It seemed like a strange choice to close with a song from another band. However, Walrus was a personal high point in the gig, since Val and I appeared on the giant on-stage screens for about a minute. Everyone asked if it was awkward/embarrassing, but actually it was just really fun.

The verdict? All in all a strong set. They played for almost an hour and a half and got in most of the classics, which were an obvious high point.

Pictures later when I get over my uploading apathy.

Ulysses

Went to Whitechapel Market today. The market itself was fairly unremarkable-- about a mile of stalls selling pashminas and fruit and bootleg Bollywood dvds. But I did see a set of promo posters for the new Franz Ferdinand single, Ulysses, lurking on a piece of construction-site plywood about 100 feet from a building called Albion Health Center. A surprising reminder of how present both indie music culture and the Albion ideal in England are in everyday life. It seems that both are much more prevalent than their counterparts in America-- can you imagine a building called "Manifest Destiny Health Center?" I guess we have something similar in our fixation on freedom and related ideals, but those are more abstract while Albion seems to be a much more concrete notion of the nation as a whole. The adoption of the Albion concept is also really interesting to see in everyday contexts because it leads to the assumption that it is present in the national psyche, which explains why it appears so often in the nation's musical output.

The Franz posters, and the sheer amount of underground music advertising here, is also quite different from America. There's something much less industrial about music in Britain; it seems more organic and artists outside the Top 40 market flourish in ways that acts in America never quite do. I don't know if this is a result of the alternative media, like NME and club scene here, being so much more present, just a cultural difference in musical preference, or something about the types of social issues that these bands tend to address that connects with the population. At any rate, it made me happy to see ads for a band I actually like, rather than endless, blaring MTV promotion for Rihanna's ten thousandth single in six months.