Slowyear: Camden Enterprise
Posted by jamie on Jan 23, 2012
Slowyear, Rivalries, Burn Daylight
w/ Ill Murray, the Hics, We Were Grownups
Enterprise
, Chalk Farm
20th January, 2012
Jamie
Another weekend, another new DIY punk promoter putting on their first show in North London. On this evidence alone, independent music is alive and well here, and that’s to say nothing of the excellent bands we’ve seen.
Tonight, we attend No Good Promotions’ six band bill at the Enterprise, opposite Chalk Farm tube. By the end, the ancient floorboards to their first-floor room are rolling like the sea in a storm, bending up and then down like a trampoline under pressure from a pogo-ing pit, but it starts sedately enough: once inside, you go around a tiny corner, up an old narrow staircase, around another corner, back on yourself and through a tiny black door marked “pull”, as if it were a tiny bottle in Alice in Wonderland.
Stepping inside, we’re in what used to be the bedroom of some Victorian aristocrat’s spoiled* daughter, in which one corner has a low stage and bright red velvet curtains over their chipped, black-painted walls and railings of disco lights and Christmas tree stars and spirals.
Amongst all this, We Were Grownups have just played the first few chords of their live career to a room of gently hushed, stock-still punters intent on taking in their seeringly emotional take on lo-fi, acoustic proto-emo/punk. This is a side-project for Miz out of Failure By Design, designed** to showcase a different side of his songwriting. This is strikingly different: reflective, emotionally urgent and driven, it seems by restlessness on the inside. Miz and Scott perch on high stools, Miz in a little bobble-hat in the near dark. We’d all been looking forward to this, and it didn’t disappoint.Next up, the Hics are also playing their first ever show. It’s a six band bill, remember, so they only get three songs. They’re good, though, a three-piece band of guitar, bass and drums, with samples coming from a Macbook to embellish their indulgent, drawn-out melodies. They’re clearly enjoying themselves, and with good reason. Well worth watching now, and one to keep an eye on.
Cambridge’s Ill Murray are different altogether: racing boisterously through short, sharp garage rock songs at Ramones speed, and with similarly clipped, staccato vocals. Their chords are more like the Undertones if they’d decided they hated pop instead of embracing it: this is a short, stabby little set, and Ill Murray, for the most part, charge through it, but then surprise us with a couple of more considered, almost-indie tunes based around the two guitars, and yet, pleasingly, deliver those with the same cocksure, sneering swagger.
After some only-just-inappropriate banter at the urinals that scared the other guy more than it ought to have done, if you ask me, it’s time for Burn Daylight. Perhaps despite his best intentions, this is a set that’s noticeable for it’s quietly assured inner confidence and polish: in one look, you could tell this guy was a Springsteen fan, something he readily admits while announcing the title track to 2011’s It’s Alright, It’s Just Blues EP.
Burn Daylight plays an enjoyably upbeat mash of emo and folk-punk that, in its straighter moments, comes with just a suggestion of classic rock. His raspy, raw-around-the-edges vocal is gravelly when it wants and then, on occasion, soars off with a melody and lands gently among acoustic guitar and harmonica (nach). He’s enjoyably witty, as well, explaining:“this next song I’m going to play is off the EP I’m releasing after the next EP I’m releasing” and then wryly volunteering: “yeah, I tend to get them out in quick succession”. On this evidence, that’s no bad thing. There’s room for a few covers, as well,
the Wonder Years and the Gaslight Anthem’s Old White Lincoln among them in a set that’s engaging as well as entertaining, and impressive with it.
the Wonder Years and the Gaslight Anthem’s Old White Lincoln among them in a set that’s engaging as well as entertaining, and impressive with it.
Rivalries are down to business pretty quickly. They’ve brought a big crew with them, who all know all the words to all of their songs. All the same, they’re new to me, but decent: a regular four-piece playing melodic punk rock, but with pop-punk hooks and song structures, delivered with energy and plenty of whoah-whoahs. Their riffs go on getting bigger throughout their set, and they’ve got some funny jokes as well. It’s midway through the set that they attempt, but don’t finish, building a human pyramid during one of their songs, and end up with a “human trapezium” (their words), but, undeterred, attempt it again in their last song and succeed.
And so to Slowyear. Still a very new band, they’re immediately dangerous and exciting, playing dirty, aggressive melodic punk at speed and with lots of swearing. There’s energy coursing through them from the off, and giant, dirty great big riffs dropping around Adam’s vocal that’s raw, and yet still sharp enough to cut you. Unsurprisingly, every song from their stunning debut EP appears in this set, with Dice a particular favourite. There are plenty of new songs in there as well, though, and they go down equally well, eventually sparking the first of four separate circle pits that eventually evolves in to that lurching, pogoing, fist-pumping shouty knot that bends the wooden floor up and down like it’s a trampoline and leaves you feeling like you’re about to land, screaming, on the floor of the pub below, still flecked with sweat and coated, probably in sawdust.In real life, Slowyear continue and the night builds to its climax, Baby Arms appearing in between brand new songs, all of which are roared back on to the stage with glee. It’s a giant performance, and a fitting one to bring what became an exhilarating night’s watching to a blinking, battered conclusion.
*Probably. We can’t prove that without a historian
**Sorry.
Slowyear: ST/EP
Posted by jamie on Oct 30, 2011
Slowyear
ST/EP – Self-released, 2011
28th October 2011
Jamie
There’s something about Slowyear that’s tricky to put your finger on. They’re not reclusive people, but it took them a long time to play their first show, and then, when it happened, it was in their bassist’s house. They don’t make a fuss about much, but their songs fairly drip with heartfelt emotional sincerity.
I try my best not to jump to conclusions like this, but it’s tough not remember the wilfully self-deprecating manner of Hassan’s old band, Four Letter Cure, who took great pride in telling anyone who’d listen that they couldn’t play, didn’t care, and weren’t bothered about being on this stupid stage thank-you-very-much, but gave lie to it all by slaying shows with polished, confident, emotional punk rock, and doing it with speed and precision.
Curiosity having got the better of me, I downloaded Slowyear (from here), found that, while there are a few similarities in the way they approach their music, for the most part that’s where those similarities end.
Slowyear fairly shines: it’s polished enough to show off the quality off the songs and the guile that’s gone in to the arrangements, and yet raw enough to leave all the power in the riffs and the emotional immediacy in the vocals. The lyrics are immediately relatable and, like the arrangements, are strikingly mature, and delivered with sincerity and a punch.
Imagine My Vitriol having a nasty break-up argument with Atwood, and then rebounding messily with The Early November, and you’re most of the way there. Just crank the power chords up a bit.
It’s excellent, and impressively emotionally articulate and musically really mature. It’s easy to forget that these guys are a relatively new band and that this is the first record they’ve made together. It’s dark in places, and moodily atmospheric throughout. The solo in Doors and the wall of sound outro, which sounds enormous for a four-piece band, on Dice stand out even on a disc of this quality. That outro to Dice gradually becomes a group vocal, repeating its single refrain “just share this broken bed with me” as the instruments fade and eventually disappear, to be replaced by the bigger, more powerful intro to the final track Baby Arms, arguably the finest on the EP. Again the guitars here are excellent: impressively versatile and bigger, more powerful than should really be possible.
By incorporating the size and the complexity of progressive, epic rock and the power and emotional intensity of the best melodic punk and post-punk, Slowyear have created something strikingly unique, that’s immediately enjoyable and engaging and ultimately ever so fulfilling. Despite being a new and different sound, this deserves to, and almost certainly will, bring them a lot hype and attention. They won’t be playing house shows for long, and this, their first EP, won’t be a free download forever. Do yourself a favour and get a piece of them now.
Kids Can’t Fly, Four Letter Cure
Posted by jamie on Mar 26, 2010
Kids Can’t Fly, Four Letter Cure
Bridgehouse II, London
23rd March 2010
Jamie
Coming as it did so soon after the Skints headlined the Borderline, this show was something of a surprise and a proper treat. Right after work, a quick stroll on the Thames and then out eastwards on the Jubilee Line lands you in Canning Town. In fairness, the Jubilee Line is an experience in itself if you’re used to a packed, grimy and smelly tube and, like me, didn’t know there was another kind. Travelling under the river on this bad boy is like a quick stint in The Life Aquatic, or an octopus’s garden, or one getting one of those seaside mini-trains through a purpose-built underground chrome lair. Yeah, it was pretty much like that. It’s surely the king of tubes. Then, though, came a slightly more difficult adventure through a confusing and unfamiliar place in the dark. Chips decided to perform a brief, yet fretful disappearing act, and, all in all, we were delighted to bump in to Sham of Four Letter Cure. Until we found out they were lost too.
Eventually we arrived just before the guys were due to play. The Bridgehouse 2 is a tidy little upstairs venue near an industrial estate. They have good cider on tap and they stamp your hand through one of those little hatch things in the wall, so it’s pretty good fun all around.
Four Letter Cure open up with Alex the Pothead and Kids on the Street. You really should see these guys if you haven’t already: they play an edgy, rough-and-ready show, a throwback to everything that was good about the first wave of punk rock, a chaotic, largely unplanned set that, at first glance, is charmingly shambolic, in a good way, but is basically just them having fun and doing what they want with the set.
The guys can play, and their three vocalists can all sing, but I just can’t shake the feeling that they don’t want you to know that, that they want you to think that they’re making it up as they go along, or that they just don’t give. Hassan’s guitar strap and Raz’s lead both cause problems, though, and you have to suspect that that’s real. Underneath all that, though, they’re genuinely good fun, and they’ve got songs and they can play them. After Darling, Ive Got News For You, and so much chat, they race through Op Ivy’s Unity and then, after a chat and a decision between themselves that they discuss on stage, Rancid’s Ruby Soho. After that, Hassan announces that “we always just play Rancid because we can’t be bothered to wrote songs”. And then they do Roots Radicals. “We werent supposed to, but we did it anyway”, I’m told later.
This is such good singalong fun, and the guys deliver it well. Another quick debate follows before they wrap up a short but really enjoyable set with My Back Your Knife and scurry off.
Panning For Gold are local and have brought a massive entourage, so Kids Can’t Fly play next. Double treat. Robin looks fetching, by the way, in his pink Cancer Research t-shirt. As usual, they open with The Vicious Circle and, as usual, bodies star to bend and move around a bit. It’s pretty quiet on the floor, though, and various entreaties to us all to come forward don’t have the full effect on a nervous crowd on a Tuesday night. That’s not to knock the delightful mix of melodies and the tremendous amount of energy that Kids Can’t Fly, as always, deliver in their live show. Just before they cover Less Than Jake’s ASAOK, Robin points out “this is a song we usually play to start a circle pit in the middle of the room, but I think that might be a bit optimistic tonight”. Not so. The guys pick on Raz out of Four Letter Cure, largely because he’s got a Mohawk, and before the song is in full swing bodies scatter both in, and a few out, of the room and the circle’s in motion. I sort of half flew and half rolled through the middle of it all before actually joining in, and it’s all good fun. The spirit among everyone here tonight is superb and you can tell that everyone on that floor is desperate to go all out and enjoy it, if a little self-conscious of the straight-faced rows sitting behind them. No matter, it’s started. KCF stomp through oldies Fire in the Hole and 15th Time and Writing Letters and the gorgeous Tune In from last year’s Strength in Numbers, which they’ve released again with a whole set of new fan photos all over the front. It’s worth a peek, serious. Vocally, musically, and as a presence on stage, they’re excellent, one of the best bands you can see. The tiny stage is packed with the six of them, constantly moving, and Mark and Drew always scooching past to take turns on the last mic. As usual, they finish with the wonderfully epic She Called Shotgun, everything, all the vocals, all the horns, bass, drums, in full swing, riffs rolling out in waves, before it’s over. Just like that.
Panning For Gold were good, though in truth a lot of us were out of it by then. I sort of stared at my feet for a bit and then had to get cold air. Their sound’s good, though, really smooth, with one guy who sings and another with loads of rhymes.
It’s much easier to find the way home than it was getting to the show, and the Jubilee Line still feels like a treat. I guess that’s down to the Olympics or something. Anyway, it’s good for sleeping on.
