Random Hand: Seething is Believing reviewed.
Posted by jamie on May 31, 2011
Random Hand
Seething is Believing – Bomber Music, 2011
31st May 2011
Jamie
Random Hand don’t really do hype. I have fond memories of watching Robin Leitch apologise, as his band nigh-on obliterated the Man on the Moon pub in Cambridge, for not being as articulate as Barney Boom. If it was a rare moment, during a relatively brief support set, that he found time to stop and talk, it was also typically and unsurprisingly candid. The no-nonsense cliché is usually just that: a cliché, and, ironically, mostly nonsense, yet for Random Hand it rings refreshingly true.
For what it’s worth, I felt, and still feel, that Robin did himself a disservice there. Not many of us are blessed with a wit as dry or as sharp as Barney’s, after all, and Random Hand were, as he spoke, just pausing to take one short breath as they laid waste not just to a pretty little olde-worlde pub, but to duck ponds and cricket greens for miles around. Perhaps it was a tribute to his mate, but Robin was actually talking himself down mid-carnage, and carnage it was.
It’s unusual, then, for Random Hand to beat their own proverbial drum, and, while the clamour for Seething is Believing wasn’t entirely of their own making, there was a risk, given the anticipation, that, were it to be anything less than enormous, the long-awaited follow-up to Inhale/Exhale could prove to be something of a damp squib.
In case you did, you needn’t have worried. From the first few seconds of the very first play, Seething is Believing is an absolute beast of a record, about as gentle as a punch around the ear from an angry grizzly bear. In a good way.
Seething is Believing is something of an assault on the senses: from the first movement first to last, it comes with a rush of pure adrenaline backed by the brutal power in the music, driving itself right in to your consciousness.
It’s only forty-something minutes later, well and truly breathless, that we’re able to take stock and marvel at the quality of the record. Beneath the speed and strength, the power of the drum beats and the unrelenting brutality of the monstrous riffs lies a magnificently album. The volume and power could easily have been enough on their own, but no need.
Despite his own claims, Robin’s lyrics are sharp in their analysis and merciless in their unflinching assessment of the establishment and the assorted other targets of the band’s wrath. The excellent Not a Number is possibly the best example, but the words are incisive and, you guessed it, articulate, throughout.
This is Random Hand just as you remember them, only better. It’s all here: the way that they fuse metal and skacore just so, the skank-friendly, foot-shuffling trombone lines, and the same sentiments to the same targets. Here, though, they’re bigger, angrier and scarier than ever before. That instant change of pace, the capacity for all-out assault, has grown even stronger than before. Everything’s here that we’ve ever loved about Random Hand, only now all of those qualities have grown. It can’t have been easy to fit them back together afterwards, but somehow they’ve managed it, and the result, inevitably, is a bigger and more powerful follow-up to the already excellent Inhale/Exhale.
There’s more there too: album closer 42 Days Off the Records is startlingly mature, almost epic. The scratches are an excellent little touch. Sons of Robots sounds almost - almost – dub, just for a second.
The songs of Seething is Believing become bona fide anthems time and time again because of this – they’re instantly honest and totally true, immediately engaging to the point of being catchy, and just huge: fists-in-the-air rabble-rousers to a song. Bones, of course, is another prime example, as is Start the Fans, but, for its lyrical content, its soaring choruses, its overpowering sense of unity through common identity, the stand-out anthem here must be Henchmen: it’s the Close Minded of its generation. The son of Scum Triumphant.
This is a wonderful record: instantly addictive, if only for its pure power. And then, once you’ve learned to handle that, there’s so much more. The gang vocals that keep on reappearing are infectious. The horn lines are excellent. Robin’s words are incisive, and every single chorus is irresistible as it is anthemic. Seething is Believing is peerless: an absolute monster.
Skints, Bedouin Soundclash and New Town Kings: live at Nambucca
Posted by jamie on May 29, 2011
The Skints, Bedouin Soundclash, New Town Kings
Nambucca, London
25th May 2011
Jamie
When getting one’s show reviewed, as any rock star or celeb will tell you, you’ll need to come up with something special if you want to steal the opening paragraph. That’s where the likes of me get our chance to show off how many adjectives we know and paint a lovely picture of the scene. True fact. It’s pretty tough to get us to give that up, but one man has made something of a habit of this: today he has waged war on my vocabulary and won, sparing us all from learning exactly how cafs and many kebab shops there are on Holloway Road or quite what the weather or the buses were like. Time and time again, he puts it better and more succinctly than should really be possible. That man is Joshua Waters Rudge.
The truth is, seemingly without effort, Josh hits the nail on the head every time. “people of Nambucca”, he urged us tonight, “you gotta recognise that we NEED to play NICE”. By now the bodies in Nambucca’s back room are packed together, arms pinned by our sides, coated in a thin layer of each other’s sweat, and moving around in a giant, queasy mass as if someone was stirring us, like honey that’s gone hard in the jar, in time with the music. The front few rows ended up on the stage more than once and I spent a while squashed inside the speaker stack by Josh’s toes. There wasn’t much any of us could do to slow that motion. It was worth it, though.
Given the chance, as we know, the man’s got plenty of wit, but tonight, what with the last minute addition of Bedouin Soundclash to the bill, there’s not really time to chat. So much has happened in here in this short space of time that for all the bands there’s scarce little time for anything but to play songs.
Presumably in a forlorn effort to nick my opening paragraph from Josh, one bouncer told us as we arrived that we needed to admire how well his colleague’s sex change had gone. They were both men, and, as far as I could tell, always had been. Either it was a very convincing transformation or not: I couldn’t tell which way he was implying it’d been done, but the guy had a beard as thick as a broom, and couldn’t pass for a lady even on Little Britain.
We squashed in to the very back of the room: the New Town Kings had packed the place out at only 8pm, so my back was up against the wall (no pun intended) as the basslines rolled out through the floor and continued up that wall behind me. It’s still early and we’re well and truly rocked already.
The New Town Kings play a sort of retro take on two-tone and ska. It’s instantly catchy and irresistibly danceable. Further forward those who can make room defy the conditions and manage to get a proper skank on. It’s an age since I’ve seen them – it later transpired that they’ve been quite for a while until now - but this lot are still irrepressibly energetic: their songs are outrageously and immediately catchy.
They’ve got new tunes as well, and have stayed faithful to all the things that made them successful before: catchy, danceable basslines that go all the way through the room and as many hooks as they can squeeze in to each tune: usually a lot. It’s all confidently performed super-fast and with giant smiles on all of their faces and is an absolute treat. They’ve clearly brought a decent crowd of their own down tonight, but doubtless made lots of new friends as well.
I steered clear of mentioning that resemblance between Chris, their singer, and William Gallas, the Tottenham centre-half. Two other lads didn’t, and rather nonplussed Stu, the New Town Kings’ guitarist, who wasn’t sure who Gallas was but was admirably certain that “there’s no-one in our band called William”.
The door price tonight has hopped up at the last minute, leaving a few unprepared folk forced to pay £10 while others had got in for £5. Despite that, the door staff had been forced to put up signs saying that they were completely sold out and were still surrounded by a few hopeful but ultimately disappointed souls lingering on the pavement. Perhaps our mate had another chance to try out his transsexual jokes. Perhaps not.
Anyway, we can confirm for you that the jump in ticket prices didn’t come from the last-minute guest appearance from Bedouin Soundclash, who had instead offered to play for free in honour of their mates The Skints.
Bedouin get a slightly shorter set, but, undeterred, set about it and quickly get a positive reaction. Being totally honest, I didn’t know any of their songs except the ubiquitous When the Night Feels My Song, and, I’d say, from looking around, I was far from the only one. It doesn’t matter, though. That song’s not really fully representative of their stuff in general, at least not in this set: they’re fully plugged in for starters, and there’s more emphasis on the guitars and generally a rockier feel to the music. When the Night Feels My Song appears mid-way through their short set, and, despite being slower and more mellow than the tunes they’ve already played, ironically moves us all from “bobbing gently” to “pogoing like mad things”. Clearly everyone in the room loves this track, then, and the place is in rapture – Jay only has to sing half of it: we’re all roaring the words back to the band as loud as we can. Finally, with just that crowd vocal, the song segues in to a cover of Billy Bragg’s A New England. There’s a wry comment about how risky it is for a Canadian to sing a Billy song in England, although, if you ask me, it’s probably riskier to have come dressed in this outfit. That might be a cheap Canadian joke, but he started it. We knew that one too. Bedouin wrap up with a song about money that borrows a few lines from White Man in Hammersmith Palais.
It’s dark by the time the Skints take the stage, and the room has emptied and then got more packed that’s been for the whole night. It shouldn’t have been possible, but, once again, that hasn’t stopped them. There’s a tiny bit of intro that, no joke, sounded, just for a second, like Lonely this Christmas before exploding in to Bright Girl. Of course, it sends the room absolutely delirious: as is now customary, we through the lyrics, and then sway pogo through the parts of it without them. It’s already sweaty in here, and the Skints, this song and its reaction turns the heat and the pressure on the floor up a couple of notches. I think I’ve described that already, right? Well, that bit about the honey, that’s what it was like. Swaying, spinning and occasionally getting clattered by somebody, at varying speeds and always in time with the rhythm. Just Can’t Take No More is the first of plenty of really promising new songs to get an airing tonight. It’s second, after Bright Girl and before Mindless. I always remember Asher Baker muttering in disbelief in the Underworld once: “they can’t mosh to Mindless, surely”. Tonight they, or we, can and do: it’s absolutely insane on the floor throughout, and just carries on getting hotter and hotter, quicker and quicker and more and more breathless. You’ll know about this by now if you’ve ever watched the Skints and, if you haven’t, it really needs to be experienced to be believed. Until you’ve seen them in London you haven’t seen a concert. I’m serious.
What’s really exciting about this is that a lot of this reaction comes to the performance of new material. For all that, Stir it Up and Still in Love With You (Boy) are in there, and that Roanna’s Song, Murderer and Change the Channel (just found that video) are bigger and better than ever, a significant part of this set – perhaps seven songs at a rough guess – is made up of material from their new record. That new album, when it turns up, should, on this evidence, be absolutely incredible.
It’d be unfair to judge the quality of the material on crowd response alone: one suspects that the Skints could play Bleeding Love in their live set here and still lift the proverbial roof of most venues, but, having stopped still and listened to what must be nearly half of it, I’m telling you you’re in for a treat. “Who likes reggae music?” is an introduction to one of the new tracks. Later, more are introduced with “who’s up for some ska?” and “who here likes a bit of rocksteady?”.
I’ve heard these songs played live now, standing inside the speaker, and I’m telling you’re they’re killer. These songs are more diverse than those on LiveBreathe.Build.Believe and the quality here is nothing short of amazing. The Skints perform them all sensationally well, from start to finish. By the end it’s like being in an oven and a washing machine at the same time. One that smells of herbs.
There’s room for a quick encore: Up Against the Wall, one more new song and Get Me! make up the very end of the set. It’s all over pretty quickly, and we’re all breathless, as ever, blinking, and bathed in so many other people’s sweat. It’s exhausting just thinking about it all: I fairly floated home.
SB6: new album update
Posted by jamie on May 27, 2011
Another (small) album update from the Sonic Boom Six.
So there you have it.
Drewvis: new album ahoy
Posted by jamie on May 26, 2011
Latest news on the recording of Drewvis’s new album. Very excited for this. Kevin from Do the Dog has given us this sneaky insight..
Drewvis have indeed completed the recording, mixing & mastering of their new CD titled “Disposable Pleasures & Meaningful Pursuits”.
The disc will feature the following 13 tunes, plus one hidden bonus track:
1. Liberate, Never Hate
2. It’s All Good
3. Short Measures
4. Let It Go
5. Drunken Words N Dub
6. Fortune Cookie
7. Estoy Esperando
8. iWant
9. One Moment
10. Compass
11. Purple
12. These 3 Words
13. Do One!
Combination 13, who did the art for Bananatown, as well as the likes of Sonic Boom Six, the Slackers and Catch-it Kebabs, are finishing off the art. Once that’s done the record will be released on Do the Dog Music.
Can’t wait? Grab Drevis’ last record, For the Win, on Do the Dog here.
Gecko: free London show
Posted by jamie on May 25, 2011
Lovable pigeon-fancying acoustic scally-wags Gecko have announced a London show with free entry . It’s happening on Tuesday 19th July at Brick Lane’s excellent Cafe 1001.
Here’s what they’ve told us..
we wanted to do a free entry show to say thanks to everyone for forking out cash to see us in expensive london venues over the past year or so! Also the show will be a warm up of sorts for an exciting show not announced yet, will keep you posted!
As soon as we know more of the exciting not-announced-yet-Gecko-show I promise we’ll tell you. Still a little bit hush-hush for the moment. But yay, free show!
Blink statement / Mark Hoppus supports Chelsea.
Posted by jamie on May 24, 2011
They’ve cancelled the whole of their UK tour, but Blink 182 have released dates for the US. The reason being that these were already booked at the same time as the UK ones, or something. Having just about explained it, he’s then made himself unpopular again by outing himself as a Chelsea fan. Chelsea. I died a little bit inside when I read that last bit.
Blink-182 co-headline a US tour with My Chemical Romance, supported on selected dates by Matt & Kim, Rancid and Manchester Orchestra. Unsurprisingly, the hasn’t gone down that well over here. Mark Hoppus has posted the following note on Facebook:
Hello fellow humans in the UK and Europe. I understand your confusion and frustration at hearing the US tour announcement tonight. Here’s what’s up. This tour was booked ALONGSIDE the UK/European dates, a long time ago. We did NOT book the US tour after deciding to postpone the UK/European dates. The plan was to finish the album, tour the UK/Europe, and then come back for the US tour. We ran late on when we thought we’d finish the album, and unfortunately the time we needed made the first leg impossible.
Hopefully it’s for the best, because some of the best work on the album is being done these past few weeks. Now there’s a hard deadline for the album to be turned in, and it will be released during our US tour.
That’s what’s up. I get and share your anger at the postponement of the first leg of the tour. As we’ve said before, it wasn’t a decision lightly made. At all. But don’t think for a second that we decided to tour the US instead of the UK. It’s not the case. For me personally, I can’t wait to get back across the pond. With new songs and a new show.
And lastly, Chelsea Football Club rules. Those who disagree are just jealous, or something.
We are Tottenham, super Tottenham, super Tottenham, from the Lane.
Blink’s UK dates for 2012 are on general sale here.
New Found Glory: UK tour dates released
Posted by jamie on May 24, 2011
They’ll be at Reading and Leeds anyway, but New Found Glory are going to play a few extra shows while they’re over here.
Despite the fact that it’s being a UK tour that actually makes this front-page news, we’ve gone with a picture that’s blatantly taken in the US. Why? Well, it looks sunny. And I like petrol stations.
August 2011:
21/08 - Birmingham O2 Academy 2
22/08 - Glasgow Garage [on sale]
23/08 - London Camden Electric Ballroom
24/08 - Brighton Concorde 2
Not got a Reading/Leeds ticket? Get one here.
Tickets for other dates (while they last) are here.
SB6: in the studio
Posted by jamie on May 23, 2011
CAN. NOT. WAIT. Big news from Sonic Boom Six. It’s only short, though.
We are going into the studio in just a fortnight to record our new album!
As we like them a lot, we’ll also include the self-confessed shameless plug that came with it.
Being an indepedent entity, we have to pay for the recording ourselves. Please go and have a look in our shop and see if there’s anything there you need. It would help us tremdendously at this time! Ta x
The shop in question is here.
Jake & the Jellyfish
Posted by jamie on May 23, 2011
Jake & the Jellyfishself-released, 2010
17th May 2011
Jamie
This has turned out to be something of a discovery: before they contacted us I knew next to nothing about Jake and the Jellyfish, and, sitting down at last to write about them I’m still by no means an expert. A cursory tour of the internet has taught me that Jake is Jake McAllister from Bristol, and the Jellyfish is a label that he loosely applies to the usual suspects with whom he usually works. It’s a little like Gecko in the old days, then, I guess, although there’s not too much common musical ground.
Folk You! is an EP of four short, sweet little songs that get better with every listen. It’s fairly simple stuff, presented in a way that’s sort of singer-songwriter, yet with songs themselves that, predictably, are sort of folkier than that.
In places these songs hint at the sort of spirit of protest that was prevalent when folk music gatecrashed the mainstream in the mid-to-late 1960s and, according to some learned older folk (no pun intended) who have spoken to me about folk music in the past, played a part in inspiring the first generation of punks, and Strummer in particular.
Anyway, if that’s of interest, England’s Dreaming tells the story better than I could.
Topically enough, Bob Dylan is probably the most obvious of the major influences, certainly as far as folk is concerned. Not just for his name-check in the excellent Same Old, Same Old, but also for the nasal twang that’s something of a recurring theme in Jake’s singing voice throughout the EP. Not having heard too many proper Bristolian accent
The afore-mentioned Same Old, Same Old is probably the song with the gentlest melody, and, lyrically, it’s a little more kitchen-sink. Think of this, but about being in a pub, and you’re most of the way there. The rest of the disc focuses more on those frustrations, though, and that sense of inequality. Jake’s vocal is snottier, a little more 70s punk, on those tracks, and they’re choppier, again, punkier, and edgier all around. Backing vocals pick out a few nice harmonies and highlight what he’s saying nicely, most notably on Amnesty. For the most part, those first three tracks are proper punk-folk. It’s all acoustic, but it’s angry, and it’s got balls. Balls and a big, angry, deep-throated growl, but just a growl that can sing.
It’s a throwback, then, in a few places, this one, but all the more enjoyable for that. The songs are neat and tidy and performed very well: the lyrics are excellent, bristling with anger and a deep-seated sense of frustration, and yet engaging, believable, and funny in places. It’s good for singing along to, as well, and it gets better the more you hear it.
I haven’t found out whether there’s a plugged in version of Folk You! but if there is I’d want to get that too.
Track Listing:
We’re Alright
Amnesty
Spare Change
Same Old, Same Old
Find Folk You! (the Acoustic Sessions) here.
New Mouthwash tour dates..
Posted by jamie on May 20, 2011
Mouthwash are super-organised, so they’ve sent us a little nudge about all of their dates for the rest of the year. Here we go..
JULY 2011
28th NEWCASTLE TRILLIANS
29th NOTTINGHAM MAZE
30th MANCHESTER MOHO LIVE w/Capdown
31st BRIGHTON CONCORDE 2 w/Capdown
AUGUST 2011
5th Rebellion, BLACKPOOL WINTER GARDENS
26th LEEDS FEST
28th READING FEST
OCTOBER 2011
24th LIVERPOOL O2 ACADEMY 2 w/Capdown
25th LEEDS COCKPIT w/Capdown
26th GLASGOW STEREO w/Capdown
27th NEWCASTLE NORTHUMBRIA UNI w/Capdown
NOVEMBER 2011
05th SOUTHAMPTON TALKING HEADS w/Capdown
06th LONDON KOKO w/Capdown
