As sure as Christmas, if Christmas were a marketing campaign driven away from its central spirit by commerce and from its original source like a vial of smallpox cracked open in the morning rush hour (ahhh, so this metaphor could have legs after all), it’s that time of year again. Harsh? Probably a little. Shall we crack on anyway? The NME Awards Shows, formerly The Brats in apparently more unruly times, have been a bastion of quality in London’s annual gig calendar for as long as Crud can remember, regardless of the wavering certainty of the orchestrating publication, and that shows no sign of abating so long as there are icky hair-grooming products seeking yoof events to sponsor and said orchestrating publication clings onto its opinion-former mantle (i.e. the rest of the media form theirs around it, because that’s just easier). Readership figures are seemingly less important – though the forced spore-like growth of the NME brand into other areas is an interesting progression and which could be worth studying if we had the time or inclination. But perhaps this was the year the whole ‘Awards’ shebang crossed a line and lost its focus. Where once there was a fortnight in February at a single venue with a heavily and often thrillingly weighted quality threshold of 4 band line-ups that you dared not dream of for the rest of the year, it’s hard to get a grip on 2008’s festivities; 44 shows over 12 venues in 3 cities in a variety of 2, 3 and 4 band bills, and that’s not taking into account a further 19 shows on the annual tour. The suggestion might be that this expansion amounts to little more than multiplied opportunities to sell advertising space to E4’s Skins in-between acts and to push their own website repeatedly. Either way the implication is that they’ve spread themselves too thinly, in terms of excitement, sense of event and indeed quality, no matter what the motivation. You can’t avoid that feeling tonight an under-capacity Astoria. Unfortunately such down-pondering is only exacerbated by Los Campesinos!. Their inclusion on tonight’s bill was presumably a gesture to musical diversity (well, diversity with guitars anyway), but no matter which way you squint at their Belle & Sebastian on Sunny Delight brawn, even in numbers (they are seven), they were never going to size up next to the sonic-brick-shithouses that follow them. Besides, they are a shambles tonight – not the baby sort, but juvenile, which might not be worse but is definitely huffier and thus quite irritating. The impression we’re left with as they all paw individually, but rarely together, at loose melodic ends is stereotypical adolescent petulance; a group of teenagers who have to get through something rather than wanting to. Which is quite to the contrary of the landslide of sunshine and excitement we’d heard on singles. Oh well; comparatively, they made Future Of The Left sound like a petrol tanker towing a trailer of fireworks into an electricity sub station, or rather they throw a few more rockets on the pyre as FOTL already make a fine go of that by themselves. The band, formed by Andy Falkous out of the ashes of much missed Welsh post-grunge punks-with-IQ Mclusky are – beneath bassist Kelson’s contorting limbs and campaigning aggression and Falkous’ razor-rugged jabs and winding black humour – prove themselves to be a leaner, meaner, more versatile version 2.0 of the old band. An impressive debut album sounds more punishing up close, much like watching a war report on television is clearly not comparable to crouching behind a wall ducking incendiaries. The intriguing synth input on a fraction of album tracks looks set to pervade their future sound too, as one fresh tune sounds like a fire alarm in Hell (only more panicky). “Enjoy Les Savy Fav – it’s an honour,” gestures Kelson at the end, inserting a pause and wry grin, “… for them”. And while we’re hardly about to argue such a valid point, the cult post-hardcore/indie crossover Yanks know do how to make an entrance, and that at least you can’t take away from them. A pair of moccasins are hurled into the centre of an otherwise empty, harshly-lit, dry-ice swamped stage, followed by the big guy (that’s oversized and misshapen frontman Tim Harrington) in a mask, overcoat and boots, brandishing a small handheld stereo which held up to the microphone reveals something akin to the theme to Midnight Cowboy. The band chime up piercingly with the runaway riff of the incandescent ‘Patty Lee’, the coat and boots come off, a repulsive car-crash tie-dye t-shirt goes on, along with the moccasins that landed earlier, the belly comes out and he’s off to meet his baying mob, making loud, righteous gestures about the crowd barrier separating the throng from the band – it might be worth noting though that we’re at the Astoria, not Knebworth. He doth protest too much? Actually, that’s just part of the problem. This is essentially the “Tim Harrington – Anarchic Harlequin” revue. Most of the interesting idiosyncrasies of their recorded work (and there are many) are diluted by a band who are simply too anodyne in their efficiency to stir interest and instead the focus shifts to Harrington’s general buffoonery – raiding his dressing up bag, simulating sexual acts on security guards, pulling a willing fan-boy from the crowd to ‘ride’ suggestively around the stage, and so on. At best it’s a little kooky, while at worst we’re entrenched in deepest Beavis and Butthead territory. We’re in an age of enlightenment, anything can pretty much pass for entertainment, but if a man acts like an arse you need not applaud him. Really, it’s ok not to. And yet a thousand people do. By the time he appears in a ridiculous lycra devil outfit for an admittedly faithful jukebox-version of The Pixies ‘Debaser’, returning moments later in the angel equivalent, we’ve had enough and are off before we’ve even had time to wrap up this review properly…
Relevant sites:
http://www.nme.com/awards
Report by James Berry for Crud Magazine 2008©
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