They make me feel like I’m participating in another era of music… a time when it mattered what you did and what you created.
They make me feel like I’m participating in another era of music… a time when it mattered what you did and what you created.
Tall Poppies Tour (Appie Kim Hallo Venray The Sugarettes Vox Von Braun) – The Magnet Liverpool 28/09/07
I’d given very little thought as to how I was to get home from Liverpool. It didn’t seem important. The stars were shining brightly somewhere behind a bank of cloud. Destiny was screaming my name in repetitive, aurally discordant tones. There was a distinctive ‘buzz’ in the air. After all, I was winding my merry way towards a date with….YET ANOTHER FUCKING GIG.
Do I have to lay out the yawn or the groan in parentheses? So shoot me for being a cynic. I get tired of these things. The politics of it all. The rictus grins. The forced backslapping and the sheer, grinding inhumanity of artists pretending to like one another. My god, I’m doing these empty vessels an awesome service just by referring to them as ‘artists’ at all. In the main, most bands are propped in a state of discomfort somewhere between the Top Shop clotheshorse stool and the hard faced shoe salesman stool. At any rate there are definitely lots of stools. It’s the state of the game-board today. At least in merry auld England…a never-ending corporate circus act. But like, whatever, I was feeling pretty drunk and spinning from one amyl too many, so I followed my nose.It proved, UNBELIEVABLY to be one of the finest choices I have made in a long time, stoned, pissed or sober.
See, you knew there’d be a twist? The Magnet was the venue acting as host to an evening of Dutch bands travelling on the Incendiary/Sub-Routine ticket. It’s the kind of place used by the BBC to cheaply depict flashbacks to good times 40’s Britain…mucho tacky splendour and deep shadows aplenty. Kind of depressing on an average evening… but tonight somehow eminently appropriate. I settled down, not prepared for a moment to leave the relative comfort of my shadowy booth and began to watch.Appie Kim comes on and it’s all impossible dark glamour and the flash of steel-rim spectacles. There are only two of them but I feel a decisive impact and shift in my seat. Is that fucking poetry I’m hearing? Yes indeed, it is…and what on these shores has come to be considered a cliche and a pretension sounds absolutely, chillingly perfect. Then the songs begin and I’m mesmerised. This is beautiful in a way I just don’t encounter. Sure, this girl standing close to the edge of the stage is incredibly attractive, but, more importantly, there’s this kind of rough lake of sound…like a helicopter washing search lights over a choppy lake looking for the one that is hopelessly, irrevocably lost. And I’m dancing. I’m no longer in my seat and I’m ready for the utterly unexpected nature of the evening. Did I mention I loved Appie Kim?
My senses reeling, and along come The Sugarettes. I’m pumped for more of the same, but I don’t get that. Instead I’m confronted by a full group with a full band set up. Vox are shared by a girl/boy combo and I find myself being treated to what I can only describe as being a bit like Grease on Crystal Meth. It’s jarring at first but there’s something hooked just under my skin and though I want to dismiss this band (perhaps unfairly based upon the male lead looking a little like Richard Archer) but I simply cannot. They’re light-years better than the stuff I’m mostly confronted with week in week out and it’s a revelation. I’m forced to steady myself, such is my joy at encountering what appears to be, at long LAST true originality from a rock band. The Sugarettes stay with me long after the last note has sounded….
So by this point I’m sort of a sweating wreck. I mumble something to the DJ about the Zombies but it doesn’t make any sense…and then it’s time for Hallo Venray. Christ. Firstly, these men look the part. Secondly, they KNOW their parts. It’s slick without being cynical. This is the proverbial ghost in the machine. Owing much of their spirit to a distinctly fuzzy Americana, I find myself beginning to wonder how many American bands actually owe something to these maestros. I’m thoroughly taken by the whole thing, feeling like I’m learning a little more with each new song. My god, these fuckers ought to be massive, such is the primal monolith-esque nature of their sound. Maybe they don’t want that…maybe Holland doesn’t need that. I don’t know, I’m merely speculating… but I find myself trying to reconcile the success of much lesser acts with what Hallo Venray achieve here tonight.
So it’s finally the turn of Vox Von Braun and my use as a reviewer is running distinctly slim. I’m washed up, drunk and disorderly, dancing crookedly to my own ignited imagination. I perceive a distant, joyous Velvets like sound washing over me in waves and I can feel the sweat pouring from me. I know I like this band, but inwardly I’m cursing my lack of sharpness. I’m gripped by the sight of the group loving what they’re doing and I’m filled with good, violent spirit. They rock me and I dance unapologetically to their grooves. They make me feel like I’m participating in another era of music… a time when it mattered what you did and what you created. Vox Von Braun completes my evening’s therapy with a resounding sonic exclamation mark.
So out I stumble, bidding farewell to friends new and old. There is an encounter with a tramp and a nausea addled journey back to my Mancunian sanctuary. Within a few hours I’m looking out over the familiar landscape…and yet I see that landscape haunted by fresh, burning new lights. The good, clean people have come and the soul of a city is dying, whatever Tony Wilson’s dream was or was not. But I’m comforted. Tonight I saw and heard something which I had grown a stranger to. It came from the Netherlands and it had a sense of the other….foreignness.
I suppose it was hope.