Lightyear: on tour in 2012
Posted by jamie on Mar 23, 2012
Yes, really. Lightyear are off on another last ever tour, which, of course, we have to hope isn’t actually their last ever “last ever” tour. They’ll be playing with Anti-Vigilante, New Town Kings, Above Them and Tyrannosaurus Alan.
Here’s what they’ve said:
In their time, LIGHTYEAR terrorized the European skapunk scene….. If you weren’t there but heard about it, it was probably all true.
They returning briefly for a hot sweaty, mostly naked Summer tour a few years back where they made friends with the rich and famous, Ice Motherfuckin T amongst others, if you weren’t there but heard about it, it was probably all true.
And now LIGHTYEAR are back, for just 5 shows. If they’re not in your town, carpool, hitch, get the megabus, bunk the train, but be there. You will hear about it, and it’ll probably all be true!!
“We know this might raise a few chuckles. It’s been 15 years since Lightyear began. We started it to simply to have fun. We stopped it because it became not fun. We wanted to stay friends. But we ended up not even seeing each other really. We want to hang out with each other again. Soooo…… we are doing 5 dates in June. It would be wicked to see old and new friends. (we haven’t played our instruments in 6 years, So we might have improved)”
JUNE
23rd DERBY OLD BELL w Anti Vigilante, Above Them
25th NEWCASTLE TRILLIANS w New Town Kings, Above Them
26th MANCHESTER MOHO LIVE w New Town Kings, Above Them
27th BRIGHTON THE HAUNT w New Town Kings, Tyrannosaurus Alan
28th LONDON ISLINGTON O2 ACADEMY w New Town Kings, Anti Vigilante, Tyrannosaurus Alan
enter at your own risk…..
See it on facebook here.
Like Bananatown on facebook here.
New Town Kings: new video online
Posted by jamie on Mar 23, 2012
A little newsflash from our mates the New Town Kings: they’ve released their first ever music video, for News Stand. You can see it here.
News Stand is taken from the album M.O.J.O - reviewed in full on Bananatown here.
New Town Kings: Purple Turtle
Posted by jamie on Jan 30, 2012
New Town Kings, Anti Vigilante
Tyrannosaurus Alan, Upbeat Allstars
Purple Turtle, Camden
28th January, 2012
Jamie
A four-band bill of this quality, in central London on a Saturday night, needs scarce little introduction. All the same, it was amusing to see the show’s facebook page suggest that we “expect involuntary dancing from metallers who’ve come in by mistake”.
You do get a few at the Purple Turtle, of course, and the tunes in this place tonight are unrelentingly infectious, so there are decent odds on a flippant comment on facebook coming true for the first time ever.
As Upbeat Allstars get the party started, a few of us early punters are eyeing the last of the open spaces and itching to get our moves on. The sun’s still going down, and their infectious melodies quickly win over the last vestiges of self-consciousness: legs and then arms start to move to in time with the upstrokes in their vintage ska-punk sound.
There’s no horns, but, make no mistake, Upbeat Allstars are defiantly old-school ska-punk: Nick bangs seven shades out of his snare drums to the point where I actually winced for them, and there’s plenty of super-skankable upstrokes. It all comes together to make for some great, no-nonsense peppy little party tunes and they go down well.
Sure enough, it’s not long in to their short set before a few awkward long-haired metallers start to shuffle about their little space like scarecrows doing martial arts in slow motion. Mission accomplished, and with three bands still to go.
Medway’s Tyrannosaurus Alan, up next, are at their boisterous, surreal best. They’re almost bursting out of the small stage, over the front and at both sides, as they shift sheepishly between the ratatat-tat of their dirty, grime-core rap/punk/ska sounds and some brilliantly surreal stories about using a screwdriver to fail to fix a van’s cigarette lighter, getting splinters in your thumb, and “pubecising”, which, basically means going through puberty at speed. Or your voice breaking on stage. Poor Ollie only said it once, about Ben’s voice breaking, but the hilarity carries on for ages.If you’ve not seen Tyrannosaurus Alan play live yet, you really must: it’s almost always like this, funny, aggressive, and booty-shaking in equal measure. They put plenty of effort in, and they get it back from an appreciative room.
Anti Vigilante are in equally fine form: a flurry of shorts and muscly, sinewy little legs from start to finish, they’re forever buzzing around the little stage. They’re bang up for this, and their raw, uncompromising approach to skacore, and the speed at which they play it, mean they’re immediately a big hit in this room. There are a few stray moshers in, and they gleefully start circle pit after circle pit, each one sabotaged by rogue skankers sneaking in, or, at one point, someone just running through the middle. All of this, like the band’s set, is chaotic, but performed with fervour and huge smiles.
The chaos comes to an abrupt end, though, when the New Town Kings file on to perform. They’re here to get people dancing, but there’s a knowingly mischievous way to Chris’s teacher-style lectures on the subject, almost like he’s half telling us off, but at the same time enjoying it and finds the whole thing just a tiny bit silly.
By now the place is absolutely rammed, and everybody’s on the dancefloor. The New Town Kings glide through the gears like a well-oiled party machine, rolling out hit after hit with practised ease, while, in front of them, a packed floor try to move our feet in time, which is fine, and then our arms, which are for ever banging in to everyone else’s arms, and then, eventually, all the hips and bums down here are grinding in time.
It’s got hot down here, and their rich, smooth, soulful take on two-tone, uniquely movable at the best of times, is especially sexy this evening. A quick look around shows a few pairs who definitely didn’t arrive together and are now getting personal with each other, and there are surely a few more. All of a sudden, there’s a lot of love in here and a more than a few people eager to get it on.
Dynamite and then News Stand get them off to a bang, and, by the time they’re playing La La World, everybody’s joyously shouting, singing and swaying along. They wrap up with Take Hold of Me, my favourite, and Stay on Your Feet, and then encore the brilliant Fire in the Hole.
We’re breathless, by the end of it. I’ve managed to swap hats with someone, but dotted around, there are other sorts of swapping going on. Even ignoring all of that, it has become one of those shows where everyone loves each other: the atmosphere’s incredible: dog tired, deliriously happy, and everyone rushing around just to say nice things to each other. Wonderful.
Slackers: 2012 dates and tickets
Posted by jamie on Dec 13, 2011
Our mates, the ever dapper New Town Kings will take their swing-core two-tone sound on tour with The Slackers next Spring.
The brilliantly chaotic Tyrannosaurus Alan replace Broken Nose, and join in on all dates EXCEPT Bristol.
See it on facebook here.
Get tickets here.
APRIL 2012
13th LONDON ISLINGTON O2 ACADEMY *early show*
14th BRISTOL FLEECE
15th MANCHESTER MOHO LIVE
16th NEWCASTLE TRILLIANS
17th LEEDS COCKPIT
18th SOUTHAMPTON CELLAR
There will be more dates to come in August 2012
Jaya the Cat/ New Town Kings: London show announced
Posted by jamie on Sep 13, 2011
The New Town Kings have been confirmed as support for Jaya the Cat’s at the Academy in Islington on Sunday 20th November.
Tickets are here.
New Town Kings: M.O.J.O
Posted by jamie on Jul 14, 2011
13th July 2011
Jamie
It’s fairly subtle, this, in a lot of ways, and musically, while it’s not exactly ground-breaking, it’s certainly distinctive in today’s musical landscape: it’s unashamedly smooth, easy going, almost easy-listening, even. Where its lead vocals are effortlessly smooth and so soothing, it’s also embellished, throughout, by some delightful group backing vocals giving pitch-perfect harmonies, catchy little question-and-answer hooks, or, in some places, both. There’s plenty of that vintage classic-pop song writing in here, and, in general, it’s fairly faithful to those rules. The songs are an absolute joy, and the performances here are excellent. It already feels like a well-worn and much loved pair of slippers, and I’ve only had it a week. Careful, though: your feet might be hankering for those slippers if you let them skank as hard as they’ll want to.
M.O.JO. is released 18th July on Bomber Music.
Stand-out tracks:
Dynamite
Stringalong
Newstand
Star of the Show
Brighter Days
New Town Kings: M.O.J.O (pre-order)
Posted by jamie on Jul 1, 2011
The New Town Kings are all ready to release their second album, M.O.J.O. on 18th July, on Bomber Music. I’ve already heard it and it absolutely kills. Expect a full review soon.
You can download a free track here, or pre-order the album here.
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.
Skints & New Town Kings: Nambucca 25th May
Posted by jamie on May 18, 2011
I’m pretty sure I drooled a little bit when I saw this. The Skints are playing Nambucca on Holloway Road on 25th May, and support comes from the New Town Kings. Yup, just had to lick my lips: it’s tastier than the doughnuts I’ve been looking at.
See it on facebook here.
Tickets are here.
