St Vincent / Glasgow ABC / 28/8/2014

“I’m trying to live at the intersection of accessible and lunatic,” pronounced Annie Clark prior to the release of St Vincent’s critically acclaimed eponymous album and on the evidence of tonight’s sold out Glasgow show she is doing exactly that. Over 90 minutes, Clark reimagines the entire St Vincent mythology by executing a brilliant, at times mesmerising, symbiosis of coolly precise robotic choreography and virtuoso guitar craft.

Clark likes to see how far she can get to the edge without falling off - “controlled chaos” the guiding principal behind her latest song writing process. Opening with the album’s title track, “Rattlesnake”, a sparse, Kraftwerky riff germinates into a rip-roaring Pollockian guitar shred which sounds like Kevin Shields channelling Max/MSP era Jonny Greenwood. Prior to the show the crowd are asked not to use their phones and in keeping with the technophobic theme, “Digital Witness”, sees Clark lament the nature of social media hyperculture, pondering “what’s the point of even sleeping? If I can’t show it you can’t see it” to a soundscape of horns and chicken grease funk.

Visually, the Strange Mercy era (2011) seems far removed from the current production (she has since hired a creative director in WilloPerron, the brains behind Kanye West’s “Yeezus” tour), but musically it still more than holds its own. “Surgeon”, a track inspired by a line found in one of Marilyn Monroe’s journals (“best, finest surgeon, Lee Strasberg, come cut me open”) sees Clark illustrate her mystifying dexterity to play and sing at the same time, while she assumes a numinous quality as she scales the stage steps to deliver the thunderous stomp of “Cheerleader”. Such stage rig can sometimes appear showy and redundant, but the mantis-framed Clark cuts a haunting figure as she stands tall delivering the plaintive yodel of “Prince Jonny” - her note perfect falsetto completely enveloping the room. The show ends with her lying prostrate on the steps having died a stage death.

Kate Bush, the Queen of art-pop, played her first gig in 35 years this week and wowed fans with her gesamtkunstwerk. Among current artists, there is a reticence to foray into such pop drama territory, yet St Vincent cannot stand accused of that. The show is a syncopation of visual and sonic artistry which teeters on the brink but never loses itself in its own ambition. It was Friedrich Nietzsche who said that, “one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star”, and never has anyone embodied the phrase quite as literally as Annie Clark. St Vincent is chaos, but the chaos is all so beautiful. 

Some miscellanious MOJO clippings

Twilight Sad feature interview

“I don't think we performed anything off Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters at our first two gigs, we just played some instrumental songs and a Daniel Johnston cover,” says The Twilight Sad frontman James Graham. It’s been just over 10 years since the band played their inaugural shows at the 13th Note and so he can be forgiven for being slightly hazy on the night’s finer details. “I'm trying to think what I actually did at those first two gigs as I only had one song to sing in the set. I probably went to the bar or played about with a pedal or something. I remember after those two gigs we wrote four songs and they made up the demo CD that we sent down to Fatcat Records. Fatcat wanted to see us play and asked if we had an upcoming gig, we didn't, so we arranged one at The Barfly. I think we played ‘That Summer at Home, I Had Become the Invisible Boy’ and ‘And She Would Darken The Memory’ at that gig, they signed us soon after that and we went into the studio to record Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters.”

In the time that’s followed the band has released four albums, navigated several line-up changes, played with the likes of the Smashing Pumpkins and found success on both an international and domestic front. Along with the likes of Frightened Rabbit and Admiral Fallow, they are viewed as one of the cornerstones of contemporary Scottish indie – the boys from the tiny town of Kilsyth who took on the world and done good. When groups get caught up in the maelstrom of travelling and playing shows, recording new material and entertaining seemingly endless PR, the actual band experience itself can be in danger of passing them by, but with a re-issue of their debut album, Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters imminent, as well as a special series of live shows where they will perform it in its entirety to mark Record Store Day 2014, The Twilight Sad find themselves at a reflective juncture.

“If I could go back to that time and give myself some advice I'd tell myself to enjoy it more and not be so worried about things,” says Graham. “I'm a worrier. Don't get me wrong, we enjoyed ourselves, just ask anyone who was around us or was on tour with us at that time. We perhaps enjoyed ourselves a little but too much but we were young. We didn't have a lot of money and were living off the £10 or $10 we got each day on tour (we still are to be honest). I think that’s what made it fun and a great experience.

“The part I wish I had enjoyed more was playing live. I wasn't too comfortable onstage as I hadn't spent a lot of time being a singer in a band or playing gigs before we went on tour to support the record. Now I love it and miss it when we're not on tour.”

So what was the most exciting thing about that period? It’s the veritable stuff of dreams to go from living in a sleepy town with a populous of just over 10,000 to travelling the world and playing sold out UK dates with the likes of the Manic Street Preachers.

“Everything was so exciting and new to us at that time,” continues James. “We got to visit and play in countries we'd never been to before, we got to meet musicians that we grew up listening to and really respected. We got to meet new people around the world. We worked really hard the year the record came out on a shoe string budget. I think we played 160-180 gigs in 360 days over two continents. It was all amazing.”

What is interesting is the evident fondness Graham still harbours for that nascent period. With some bands there is a tendency to dismiss (in some cases even disown) the labour of their early days which is borne from a sort of deprecating candour where there is regret at the naivety of how they approached their new found status both from a lifestyle as well as a musical perspective. Tastes and influences become more nuanced and the incendiary album cover that may have seemed edgy at first may now just look lame – likewise, a more refined ear may find the key change that at the time seemed ambitious nothing less than horridly bombastic. Bands such as The Horrors abstain from playing any of their early material in a live environment, whereas Damon Albarn of Blur went as far as calling their debut record, Leisure, “awful”. Graham, however, still harbors a fondness for Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters, despite the band’s obvious maturity.

“We are still proud of [the album] but to be honest we're proud of everything we've released,” Graham declares. “Otherwise we wouldn't have put it out there. You only get one chance at making your debut record and we were very young and naive but at the same time knew what kind of record we wanted to make.

“We were just friends who wanted to make a record that we liked and didn't know or care about what anyone else thought about it. I think that ultimately benefited the record. The songs on our debut were the first I ever wrote so they'll always be special to me, I think it is a special record and I'm very proud of it.”

FAFW seems to not only serve as the band’s debut album, but almost as a timestamp for their younger days when they stood between Kilsyth and the rest of the world wrought feral with excitement at the adventure they were standing on the cusp of. “I actually really enjoyed revisiting it,” adds Graham. “I made a rule with myself that I would never listen to one of our records after it was released. I basically want to move on to the next thing once we are all happy with any record we make. So playing FAFW in full forced me to go back and listen to the record - I'd forgotten some of the songs we haven't played for a long time.”

“As soon as I pressed play and started listening to it, I was pretty much transported back to the time when I was writing and living out these songs. It made me realise I'm not too different from that 21 year old who wrote those songs, and how proud of us I am that we were able to document that period of our lives and get it down on record. It brought back both sad and happy memories.

“We spent five or six days tracking it in Scotland and then a week or so mixing it in America with Peter Katis.I might be wrong about that actually, it might have been a shorter period of time - my memory is a bit hazy. We basically just went into the studio and rattled it out. We had no previous experience of working in a recording studio. We have Paul Savage to thank for that, he made us feel at home as soon as we got into the studio and he was a pleasure to work with.”

Serving as proof of how far the band has come, not least musically, was last year’s extraordinary show at the Paisley Abbey where they were accompanied by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Early favourites like “That Summer, At Home I Had Become The Invisible Boy” were taken to new heights with the addition of Herculean violin and double bass crescendos; a fearsome sound allied to the church acoustics as they intensified and lent an even darker tone to Graham’s plaintive, soi dissant vocal. The gig felt like the zenith of the bands journey thus far; seeing them confidently stood to such a monolithic backdrop - their songs gilded by the orchestra and exalted by the gravitas of the surrounding. Graham, however, maintains that despite such elevated technicalities, not much has changed from their original process of song-writing.

“The way we do it is not too different now. The only difference is with technology. For example, being able to send each other ideas over the internet speeds up the songwriting process a lot. Andy sends me some music and then I record vocal/lyrical ideas and send them over to him. Then we build up the song from there. The only real difference I'd say is that I can record all my parts at my house instead of having to go over to Andy's to record, which would be pretty hard as he now lives in London.” Again reiterating their desire to stay true to the original source material, he dismisses any notion of tweaking. “We will just perform the songs the way we usually would, to be honest. Actually we probably arranged the songs to be closer to the original version on the record.

“We didn't have a keyboard player when we first started and now that Brendan plays keys with us he can now play all the piano and accordion parts when we play live. For example we never used to play the repetitive piano note at the start of the ‘Cold Days from the Birdhouse’ before, but now we’ll probably perform it with keys from now on.”

Currently holed up recording at Mogwai’s mysterious “Castle of Doom” studios, the reissue business is proving a lighter bookend to the more serious issue of recording the latest, 4th LP. Recording is done and the album is just waiting to be mixed. It’s clear Graham still hasn’t lost any of the elan that went into the process of FAFW.

“We went into The Castle of Doom at the start of the year, for three weeks and tracked the record. At this point the record is just waiting to be mixed. It’s been good to have a wee break between recording and mixing. We had to wait until the person we wanted to mix the record was available and in the meantime Andy and I have been working on some of the little special things within the record. We're going to record a couple of those wee things soon before the record gets mixed. I'm excited about our new songs, just as excited as I was we when recorded FAFW. It’s a massive record for us, you never know how long you’re going to last in this industry and we've put everything into these new songs, so we want to prove to everyone that there's a reason we're still here and hopefully we can break through all the shite that's out there and be given the chance to introduce these songs to as many people as possible. This band means everything to me. These songs, old and new, mean everything to me.”

The old aphorism of having to look back before you can look forward maybe best sums up the position that the band find themselves at the moment, with them caught between the old and new. After a quiet 2013, it’s a period Graham is embracing, starting with Record Store Day 2014, an endeavour that is clearly close to his heart. “I love it. As far as Scotland goes I like Mono, Love Music, Avalanche and Vox Box in Edinburgh and Europa Music in Stirling. I was gutted when 1Up in Aberdeen shut. I loved that record store. England has some great record shops as well, Rough Trade in London, Jumbo Records in Leeds, Pie & Vinyl in Portsmouth, Sound it Out in the North East, Resident in Brighton, Spillars in Cardiff, Rise in Bristol. I try to go to the local record shop every time we're in a town with a local record store.” And his favourite purchases? I got the 10th Anniversary Edition of Interpol's "Turn on the bright lights" which is one of my favourite records. Bill Wells & Aidan Moffat's "Everythings Getting Older" sounds beautiful on Vinyl, I've got every Smith's record on Vinyl and I've got the original pressing of "Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters" by us.”   

Todd Rundgren - Glasgow ABC

Todd Rundgren is a man of constant reinvention and his latest volte face has seen him eschew rock almost completely in favour of electronica. Rundgren has been a long term exponent of multimedia technology and his fascination with it can be traced as far back to his 1993 pop meets electronic meets rap misadventure,“No World Order”. His influence in the current day remains omniscient and new acts including the likes of Tame Impala (Rungren remixed the bands mammoth psych rock track ‘Elephant’ into a thumping house banger) and rapper Tyler the Creator (“Whoa, I Just Listened To This Dude Named Todd Rundgren Or Something, And Fucking Got Damn. This Is Amazing. Reminds Me Of NERD. Wow.”) have voiced their on-going appreciation. State, Rundgren’s latest album, however, feels less of an experimental artistic foray and more of an intentionally constructed, balls out attempt at cracking this apparently new-fangled thing called "EDM". Rundgren has said that he “researched” acts as disparate as Frank Ocean and Skrillex prior to recording.

 Rundgren bounces onto stage in skinny jeans and trainers while sporting bug eye glasses that can only be described as Phil Oakey-esque. In fact, if you marry his appearance to the stage set up –it is drowning in digital equipment and lights – you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d wandered into a New Wave show. Opening with “Imagination”, State’s 8 minute opening track and the most guitar prominent, he ponders “every day is the same old song over and over, no imagination” in a vocal that is bulked by heavy lashings of delay. Opening with this track is indicative of the angst still felt by Rundgren - the restless innovator - and an insight into the justification for this 'phase'. As the setlist progresses, with an unrelenting performance of ‘Time’ a particular highlight, Rundgren gets looser and looser in his dancing and at one point resembles a sort of slightly more rigid Hail to the Thief era Thom Yorke (it would all be so ridiculous if it wasn't for the fact he is 65 years old). With the dancing, bright lights and swamp of 50-somethings dancing carefree, you can’t help but get caught up in it all and this is perfectly surmised in the preposterous “angry bird”, a song which sees Rundgren bark the chorus of “she’s an angry bird!” while his guitarist points his headstock to the heavens and pretends to shoot at an imagined fowl. 

The fun stops when Rundgren comes out for the encore alone. Lost in the mirth and oddity of the State material it’s easy to forget that this man is responsible for some of the most beautiful pieces of rock music ever written. Mounting the stage, he gives the classics “Can We Still Be Friends/I Saw The Light/Hello It’s Me” an electronic makeover which feels part karaoke, part the nearest imaginable thing to a Todd Rundgren/DJ Tieso collaboration. The whole medley feels bizarre and slightly ham-fisted, the tracks crow barred to sound this way not on merit but purely to acquiesce with the rest of the set. As an album “State” works and is one of his best post 2000, but as an overall live show it lacks gravitas and feels too novelty all too often. That these tracks are reprised this way at the expense of the classic formula is ashame, but going to a Todd Rundgren show and holding such a cavil is a bit like going to an Italian restaurant and being disappointed when they serve up pasta - you know this attempt at boundary pushing comes with the territory, however right or wrong it may be. 

Chvrches - Gun

Criticism and the yardstick used for judging musical sapience has been debated long and hard for probably as long as the art-form itself has existed, but nothing shows craftsmanship quite like the ability to write a song in the major key without it being cheesy and on “Gun”, the au-courant Glasgow 4 piece CHVRCHES do just that. Brilliantly accessible yet not formulaic; “Gun” manages to be energetic but not in your face, maintaining a masterful level of subtlety throughout for a track that is so energized. As hyperactive synths bounce off each other like clattering lightsabres and 808 handclaps pound relentlessly, singer Lauren Mayberry desolately ponders “did you see another lifetime where I was not a part so far entwined?” in her sugary kawaii vocal. Taking into account the imminent summer festival circuit, a series of upcoming support slots with Depeche Mode and the antecedent success of electropop heavyweights such as La Roux and Little Boots in recent years, you can’t help but get the impression CHVRCHES are standing on the cusp of something big.

Tame Impala, Hammersmith Apollo, June 25th.

Tame Impala’s conquest of Britain has been more evolution than revolution. Prior to tonight’s sold out Hammersmith Apollo show, Kevin Parker and his cohorts have filtered through London’s smaller venues with a sort of blissful acquiescence, quietly assured that bigger and better venues would inevitably fall to their soaring, modernist take on psych rock.

Despite having recently conquered the Brixton Academy, tonight’s venue is a marked step-up and even Parker sounds slightly overwhelmed (if not abashed) as he thanks fans ‘‘all the way up in the back’’.The leap in crowd numbers apart, little has changed in the last 12 months, with new bassist Cam Avery’s arrival the only notable exception. Opening with an abridged version of Lonerism bonus track, Led Zeppelin, the band quickly storm into Innerspeak favourite Solitude is Bliss, in which Parker’s lyrical astral projections are only slightly marred by some volume issues. A new track, Auto-Prog, organ-heavy and reminiscent of the ’60s-inspired outings of Lonerism, sounds unrealized and nascent.


Despite the frenzy of sounds and effects, one of the most fascinating aspects of Tame Impala’s live show is their use of the oscilloscope, a box hooked up to the band’s instruments that translates the sound into a back-projected 90’s rave visuals. When paired with phased-out monoliths such as Enders Toi and Alter Ego, the end result is a quite stunning congruity of sound and vision.


Parker, pleading apathy, claims to have spared little thought to Lonerism’s follow up, far less what it might sound like, but on this evidence it can be whatever he wants it to be. On the ascent to a venue of this size, Tame Impala prove they can still prog out (Nothing That has Happened So Far Has Been Anything We Could Control), make crowds dance (Elephant/Half Full Glass of Wine) and sing along (Feels like We Only Go Backwards). Roundhouse, Brixton, Hammersmith, Glastonbury... Arenas next, for better or for worse? Tame Impala’s march to the top is seemingly inexorable.

Time is short. Japan can ill afford any further delay in preparing for the inevitable. In the next year or two, Japan will enter a phase of irreversible population decline. The time to act is now. (Matsutani)

Outside Tokyo and its other metropolises, Japan is dying a strange death. It's due to demographics. First: advances in medicine and a diet high in raw squid have helped to make Japan the oldest society that has ever existed in the long history of human societies. Second, because of its ridiculously low birth rate and frosty attitude to immigrants, Japan is now the first large industrialised country to experience a population decrease as a result of natural causes. In short, as its oldsters get even older, and its youngsters spend all their time commuting on packed trains in identical black suits instead of having wild unprotected sex, Japan's population is shrinking.

Richard Hendy was based in Tokyo for 10 years before deciding to up sticks into the Japanese hinterland to fulfill his 'lust for rust'. He documents and photographs the derelict and neglected sights of the country, offering up a blog that is a deeply melancholic yet wry read that gives a sometimes sad, sometimes eerie and sometimes hilarious insight into real life, contemporary Japan. His economically informed commentary married to his images turns the journal into a procrastinators best friend. I've killed hours on it already. Check it out below.

http://spikejapan.wordpress.com/