New Pornographers / Spoon @ Koko, London, 09.05.2006.

James Berry wraps shades around his ginger face, sucks on a silver spoon and takes in an evening of new pornography, in public, in Camden. Whatever turns you on...

30/05/2006

Tonight is not your night if you’re colour-blind. From the raging nuclear reds of Koko’s interior, to the beaming ginger beacon that is A C Newman of the New Pornographers’ head through to the awesomely vivid primary-colour patchwork of all the music on offer, it would certainly be preferable to have all your senses available and on high alert. So the Matador bus has rolled into town on the rarest of events these days, a label double header that glows with camaraderie, shuffles around confidently above the benchmark and could be turned on its head and still make complete sense. They’ve got the market cornered here when it comes to retro geek indie pop, and while that doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a negligible quota of style in the house tonight, it does mean that it’s never going to be the focus, which could be seen as a welcome relief.

Spoon are so sturdy we presume they must be at least partially made of stainless steel. They’re impressively faithful to their recorded output, a chewy Beatles core with a shiny shrapnel coating of discord, but not to the point where it seems like a pointless exercise. In a live setting these classic sounding songs draw passionately deep breaths and are delivered with the skewed gait of Pavement and Wilco’s optimistically hopeful sense of yearning. This is stuff that a CD just can’t contain. ‘The Beast And Dragon, Adored’ is dramatically potent piano pop balancing thrillingly on the precipice of schizophrenia and ‘Sister Jack’ is like a champagne cork popping through an air full of innocent 60’s beat streamers with the vague threat of doing some damage. They’re sharp, surefooted and just unpredictable enough. Captivating like a preacher man leaning over the pulpit brandishing a broken bottle.

Following which, The New Pornographers – as laden with chunky harmonic suss as they might be – seem up against it, perhaps they’re too straight forward we think, perhaps lacking in the drama that made Spoon so compelling. And temporarily they are. Until ‘The Jessica Numbers’ and ‘The Bleeding Heart Show’, songs so valuable and sparking they probably have their own exchange rate, light a touch paper and it’s Catherine wheels all the way to the finish line. This is cocky music, look at my drum rolls music, admire my melodic girth music, look how high we can pile our swaggering harmonies and how often we can twist our drumsticks and smoke mid-tune music. And it’s obvious that it has to be, because it isn’t glamorous in any other effortless way.

Touring keyboardist Kathryn Calder for instance looks about as frisky as Father Ted’s Mrs Doyle, but then she does sing like a Corr and play her keys with her nose at one point, making up for the lack of Neko Case on vocals this time around. And bassist John Collins looks like REM’s geography teacher, avoiding the gaze of his class. But it’s all about playing particularly to their strengths, putting a traction device behind them and watching them fly. Song after song the pace is furious, and immaculate, with pristine Beach Boy harmonies, chords that cut like a sickle through corn on a balmy summer’s eve. And the spirit is, as well as cocky, vibrant, light-hearted and expectant. In fact, so bright and colourful are their continuous successes that you’d be forgiven for getting behind a cliché of cool and throwing on your shades, even in tonight’s company.

Relevant sites:
http://www.thenewpornographers.com/



James Berry for Crud Magazine 2006©

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