Gigwise: Blood Red Shoes (live)

Wednesday 10/10/07 Blood Red Shoes @ Bush Hall

For a band whose debut album is still a fair way off yet to sell out a small-to-mid-sized venue suggests Blood Red Shoes may just have some be destined for more than the average, unlike their two distinctly below-par supports Tinseltown and Elle Milano. Okay, said venue is in a trendier-than-thou area of West London and was open to all those 14 and over but still, anything your mate may have told you about this band (or you told your mates) could just be true.

Walking into a venue that doesn’t look like a converted warehouse with the walls and floor painted black is always going to be a pleasant start. Bush Hall is a quirkily luxurious venue. Its high, chandeliered ceiling does nothing to spoil its intimacy and even the carpeted floors are an agreeable addition. In its 100 year history Bush Hall has existed as a dance hall, a soup kitchen, a bingo hall and a snooker den. Thankfully it looks much more charming as an event venue than a smoke-filled bingo hall with toothless women cackling over who won the stuffed toy.

Despite being over-subscribed the organisers had thankfully decided not to squash every last body in so those who wanted to had plenty room to move, dance and actually see something of the talented twosome onstage. Blood Red Shoes comprise of drummer/singer Steven Ansell and guitarist/singer Laura-Mary Carter, both hailing from Brighton. Both possess the skinny, indie demureness that is so common among today’s music scene and Carter is not adverse to a nice jump-on-the-spot-style of indie-cool dancing. They do, however, have a hefty helping of charisma between them so it doesn’t quite feel like you’re watching just another indie band. Plus, they don’t feel the need to sing in a local accent for the purposes of catching the attention of the press so bonus points to them.

Swooping straight into the stomping ‘It’s Getting Boring by the Sea’, BRS make sure from the beginning that you know they ain’t one of those stand there and murmur into the mic types. Much like how you don’t expect a newborn baby to be able to produce its shrieking racket at such an ungodly volume, the frantic room-filling pop-rock that comes from these two small indie kids is quite startling too.

Carter, a kind of talented version of Alexa Chung, happily shouts her way through the faster tracks; something many fail to pull off, but somehow she does. Certainly, for a good-looking pair, they’ve got the unrefined, aural brilliance to match the promises. Singles ‘I Wish I Was Someone Better’ and ‘You Bring Me Down’ are flawlessly delivered and the pre-encore ending of ‘ADHD’ left the crowd literally crying out for more. The traditional return for one last song is not normally a part of their repertoire but tonight they had little choice but to give the crowd what they wanted. And the sweaty, smiling faces that came pouring out at the end certainly seemed to agree.

Published on gigwise.com 17th October 2007

Gigwise: Cardiff Student Guide 2007

For those who haven’t heard yet, you most likely only need 40% to pass your first year and it contributes precisely nothing to your final degree mark. Good, eh? Now you can concentrate on making as many dodgy friends, seeing as many dodgy bands and eating as many dodgy foods as you possibly can. Luckily Cardiff is a super city to university in with a nice blend of small town and big city, mostly friendly locals and other perks such as free prescriptions for when you’ve gotten too pissed, snogged too many randoms and caught tonsillitis yet again.

Pubs
Starting off in studentville – aka Cathays and Roath – Bar En Route was a well kept secret for such a long time. Not your average pub golfing venue, more a quiet, civilized bar which is roughly the size of your parent’s living room and does an impressive selection of beers which, last I looked, can top off at the 11% vol. mark. Closer to town, the Pen and Wig is a common favourite for those who like their pubs to look like pubs and not like Ikea came up and shit its current catalogue all over the interior. It has a cracking beer garden which is always filled with merry drinkers on a hot summer’s day. Down in town you’re best heading to Dempsey’s, an Irish-themed pub which is commonly frequented by both music fans and sports fans on match days. If Arcade Fire-type indie is your thing then don’t miss Twisted by Design upstairs on alternate Saturdays. Finally we can’t leave out Buffalo which landed a couple of years ago and has kicked the bottoms of every other bar in town. It does an impressive range of nights and is where the trendy types of Cardiff prefer to be seen.

Clubs
The permanent favourite among the students will always be Clwb Ifor Bach, more colloquially known as the Welsh Club. It traditionally attracts those with asymmetrical haircuts and vintage dresses but Popscene on a Wednesday caters for all with Motown/cheese, indie and electronica across three floors. Playing almost the same music but in a much smaller venue round the corner is Barfly. Best described as intimate, although, both places will make you sweat in places you didn’t know had glands. For those who think that they could get a bit chilly in Barfly and prefer to gawp at interestingly shaped hairdos and piercings then Metros is where you’ll be headed. If nothing else the exceedingly cheap vodka will tempt you.

Venues
Well of course there’s Barfly, the queen of the indie venue, hosting all the bands that Barfly’s tend to host. Clwb Ifor Bach also has many music acts passing through its doors, with a tendency towards those who are Welsh.

The Students’ Union as a mid-sized venue is very popular with bands and chances are if acts the size of Bloc Party and the like come to Cardiff they will play here. Down the Bay there’s the double fun of the Coal Exchange and The Point, both are housed in impressive buildings that used to be something else, and attract some great acts thanks to the work of local promoters Plug Two and Forecast.

St Mary’s Street. Avoid it like you may catch AIDS every time you walk down it. And if you do please make sure you’re so hammered you can’t remember. Every time pissed-up idiots are on telly as an example of society being flushed down the toilet they always always feature St Mary’s Street. On weekends the inhabitants of the Welsh Valleys spill down into Cardiff and spend the evening drinking as many pints of flat Carling/Smirnoff Ice as humanly possible, whipping their arses out for public viewing and then attempting to smash each other in the face with an empty drinking receptacle.

Long hailed and loved by every music fan who passes through Cardiff is Spillers. According to local myth, legend, and the shop’s website, it’s been around since 1894 and is now the mecca of independent music. Its crumpled-looking staff know more about your favourite obscure band than you will ever do and it is also a nice haven for those hard to find music mags as well. Not far down the road you’ll also find Catapult for the dance lovers among you where every local DJ likes to say they shop. Other cosy music shopping opportunities can be found in upstairs in Cardiff Market and in D’Vinyl in Roath.

You all know about the Lostprophets, Manics, Stereophonics, Shirley Bassey, Tom Jones, The Automatic and, the ones the Cardiff trendy scene is still most proud of, the Super Furry Animals. As far as newbies go there’s a fair bit of buzz surrounding Los Campesinos! who all met at Cardiff Uni and were snapped up by Wichita before they had even graduated. Others pushing their way forward are Kids in Glass Houses, Gethin Pearson and the Scenery, Viva Machine, Attack and Defend and Victorian English Gentlemen’s Club.

Cardiff is Europe’s youngest capital city, taking over the mantle from Swansea in 1955. It’s also Europe’s fastest growing city and regularly comes top of best places to live polls.

One hundred different languages are spoken here; it has Britain’s largest Somalian population outside of London and, is the UK’s only bilingual city. The workers who passed through Cardiff Docks from the mid 19th to mid 20th centuries came from all over the world and many settled here and married local girls. As a result Cardiff was one of the first British cities to truly embrace multiculturalism.

Roald Dahl was born here when his family moved over from Scandinavia and they used to visit the Norwegian Church in Cardiff Bay.

The Welsh have rarely been more excited than when Doctor Who was filmed here. As the promos said: “Filmed in Wales by BBC Wales”.

Cardiff Mardi Gras is the UK’s third largest lesbian and gay event, behind London and Brighton. The city also has more green space per capita than any other in the UK.

Published on gigwise.com on 16th August 2007.

Gigwise (singles)

Christmas My Arse
Ricky Tomlinson (Liberty)
Your family are already treating the holiday like it’s a military operation, the Sky box has broken and of all the many presents nestling at the base of the Christmas tree only a handful are for you. There are many reasons to hate this time of year, not least because you have to fight with rampant, over-eager shoppers just to get in the doors of Boots, and the pressure of what to buy people is enough to cause asphyxiation. Well, you could buy them this gem of a tune. So cheesy it could have been produced by Jim Royle’s feet but where would Christmas be without the latest rubbish novelty single? Well, in a much happier place, one would wager. We recommend you give this to your teenage brother going through his My Chemical Romance phase. He’ll love it.
1/5

Behave EP
Charlotte Hatherley (Little Sister Records)
With Ash firmly behind her, Charlotte’s quest for the title of Queen Indie continues. One can be without doubt that Miss H will always have her core gaggle of lovesick teenage boys and admiring girls as her fanbase and she will probably always turn out a-bit-more-than-okay songs. Behave is the first release from Hatherley’s own label, Little Sister Records, and is a bit less poppy than her debut, Kim Wilde, released back in 2004. It seems she’s had a think about her own sound and taken some well-devised steps away from Ash. Twangy guitars, some interesting sounding synths and a plodding rhythm add up to a memorable offering which suggests our Charlotte’s not had her day just yet.
3.5/5

The Mighty Roars
Sellotape (One Little Indian)
It’s yet another angry ‘punk’ indie trio of kids who, despite giving off an air of not giving a fuck about following the crowd, dress exactly the same as every other ‘trendy’ band out there and imitate the noisy guitars and Sleeper/Elastica-esq vocal style of decades past. No doubt they’ll spawn some minions to follow them about the country and get all sweaty at the front of their gigs but this is the same turgid dross that’s been batting around for far too long now. The tracks themselves are standard ‘we’re pissed off at the world’ fare including a B-side swipe at A-list stars. In a moment of truly uninspired songwriting, this ditty of celebrity superficiality is illustrated by a chorus that merely repeats “Jude and Sienna” over and over again. Surely if they’re that pissed off they can dream something a bit more vitriolic than that?
1/5

Gigwise

The Automatic
Recover
B-Unique Records
Released 18/9/06
Admittedly the pressure on modern bands, or more precisely the record companies behind them, is immense. The Automatic have been widely tipped/massively hyped but the whisperings of the curse of the One Hit Wonder has clearly been keeping the record company big wigs up at night. Safe in the knowledge that their fanbase consists mainly of teenagers they grabbed at a perfectly good song and sent their poor producer into the studio with the instruction ‘twiddle every knob you can reach’. The album version ‘Recover’ is still in there, but now there’s a Euro-Pop ‘beat’ slung lazily over it. Still, I wouldn’t forget about these chaps just yet.
3.5/5

Papa Roach
…To Be Loved
Geffen Records
Released 18/9/06
Cast aside your ‘proper’ music tendencies, ignore the pull of outside opinion and, for the next three minutes at least, bin your Thom Yorke album. No matter who you are, what you’re into or how trendy it’s become to stamp on this band, should you happen to be in a drunken, sweaty disco, we defy you not to dance and shout to this track. It’s one big adrenaline rush of a rock-not-nu-metal-thanks request to just be loved and designed to be cranked to the highest. And no doubt we can all identify with that at some time or another.
4/5

The Black Neon
Ralph & Barbara
Memphis Industries
Released 18/9/06
As upbeat and bouncing as this psychedelic little ditty may sound, Mr Black Neon is singing about running off with another man’s lady. Now this kind of behaviour should not be encouraged regardless of the melodically satisfying package it may come in. Steve Webster, formally of Fort Lauderdale, lets his alter-ego run free with German scenery and idealist imagery. Idealist, at least, in the sense of the exhilaration of trotting off with another man’s loved one to the exotic climes of Mexico. But we aren’t here to judge. Besides, he’s only thinking about it.
3/5

Doloroso
Godless
Trial and Error Recordings
Released 18/9/06
Well they have a godawful name and aren’t anything like as ‘different’ as they think they are but Doloroso are still a reasonably nifty band who are write some lyrically strong songs. And it’s pretty damn hard to do anything different these days, anyway. Frequently described as ‘cinematic’ and likened to David Lynch and other dreamlike creators of cultural entities, these chaps do sound like they recorded their stuff during those dying minutes of consciousness at 3am before drifting off into a world of floating preachers and meandering LSD trips. Back down on earth, it won’t blow your grandma’s socks off or any of that indie nonsense but it’s worth lending a lughole to.
4/5

Scott Matthews
Elusive
Island Records
Released 18/9/06
Courtesy of James Blunt, Jack Johnson and Paulo Nuntini high-pitched singer-songwriters have been branded ‘bad news’. They’ve been discarded as introverted self-satisfying cry-babies to the point where to describe oneself as a singer-songwriter will result in the kiss of credible career death. Each one may insist until they’ve facially turned a shade of the sky that they’re the new Nick Drake; usually they’re not. But we would like to offer up Scott Matthews as a possibility for consideration. He’s about as Jeff Buckley/Elliot Smith/Rufus Wainwright as they come but has managed to be more than just a weak imitation. And for that he should be commended. ‘Elusive’ is a beautiful track.
4/5

The Bronx
The Bronx
Witchita
Released 11/9/06
For all the hardcore punk kids out there this album may well be considered a fall from grace. The often unpopular decision to allow a tad more melody into their music can be considered selling out. Or they may just be maturing; it’s up to the fans to decide whether to abandon their favourite LA boys. Clearly The Bronx consider themselves rather well given their disregard of the need to give their latest album a title; instead settling for a simple self-title for a second time.

Screaming until your lungs start to look like the testicles of a rabid dog is all well and good but continue to do that for the entirety of your career and you run the risk of getting stuck in the same rut you were in ten years ago. Decide to mature or develop your sound and risk alienating your core fans and being called ‘lame’ and other such dynamic insults. Of course there’s always option C which is do like Henry Rollins and use your wit and intelligence to write books and have people come to shows just to hear you speak. But few can wish for that kind of progression and that includes the heavily Black Flag-influenced boys from The Bronx.

Well, diluted or not Matt Caughthran still has plenty enough time to scream such irate musings as “Motherfucker…I want your BLOOD!” and “Breaking through your window, stabbing through your ribcage!” in ‘History’s Stranglers’ so who can say he’s not still a bit angry? Though that particular track is easily the most vitriolic on the album. Swear words are kept to a minimum for most songs and tend to be more introspective than outward rage. Though whether he’s singing about breaking the mould or the coke-addicted LA tarts Caughthran’s trademark sandpapery voice is always there.

The slower, more sensitive lonely-driven ‘Dirty Leaves’ nestles between the more energetic ‘Oceans of Glass’ and ‘Transsexual Blackout’. One can quite imagine a crestfallen punk singing his little heart out to this. Yet the lyrics let it down. Bouncing from inadvertantly funny with lines such as “Before I fell apart, like a drug infected heart” to the just plain lazy “I replaced your tears, your loneliness, with cigarettes and wine, but you needed more, and we ran outta time.” It’s entirely possible that these chaps are connoisseurs who care not for the archetypal punk beverages of beer and JD. Or it could just be because wine rhymes with time.

If the idea of putting a reasonable amount of tune to some of your songs is like a betrayal of the gods of punk then you may well turn your nose sneeringly up at The Bronx’s latest release. But, despite the often woefully shallow lyrics, The Bronx still know how to bang out a good tune.
3.5/5