I wish the ape a lot of success.
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Other Place. // One Band. // Another Band. // Spooky Sounds. // MIXES. // Thanks for reading.
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
My long-standing indifference to Mr. Banhart remains unaltered, but it’s hard to deny the music (and films!) he scheduled for his ATP day provided an embarrassment of riches...
Before the riches though, let’s get the embarrassment of the way; Danielle Stech-Homsy opens proceedings downstairs, her obligatory elfin-folky-songtress outfit perfect to a tee. Unfortunately though, her songs prove unassuming and forgettable; a pleasant enough stroll through some second-hand Vashti-isms, but sadly not really destined to reach much further than filling up tracks 7 and 9 on some abhorrent MOR nu-folk compilation that I predict your mum will be rocking within the next few months.
Tarantula AD are quite a startling prospect. Through the dim lights we can see a couple of band members on the left hand side of the stage, heads down over instruments pulling together a bit of hesitant piano / cello melancholy…. but what’s this? Turn to the right and there’s a dude with a Metallica goatee striding forward wielding a double-necked guitar like he knows how to use it, and before we know it – POW! – one of the other guys has leapt behind the drums and now is the time for GIGANTIC ROCK ACTION! Whoa there! Enhanced by plentiful electrified cello, this is a shot at a majestic heartbreak riffola with a vast, distorted sound ala Boris’s more lovelorn moments on ‘Feedbacker’ and ‘Flood’, with meaty chops and sledgehammer light & shade transitions that suggest these dudes are still living life under the shadow of late-period Zeppelin (‘Kashmir’, natch). In stark contrast to the indie/punk aesthetic of most ATP-affiliated bands, Tarantula AD play with deadly seriousness, slick professionalism and a thunderous force that suggests they’re getting in shape to headline stadiums before the year is out (again, very Led Zep), and, well, when the three members get it on in the loud bits, only a fool would deny they’re pretty fucking awesome. They’re a frustrating band to watch however, and for every Herculean chop-fest we’re also treated to some dreary passages of faux-classical atmospherics complete with plinky-plonky minor-key piano and cringe-worthy ‘ooh.. intense’ goth vocalising. The latter elements may not be to my taste and probably never will be, but in a world where Tool, Radiohead, Isis et al reign supreme, better lock up your medium-sized sports arenas, cos these guys could be coming home.
Next, two dark-eyed Manson girls in vaguely bird-related apparel take the stage amid a haze of incense and crouch in devotion before Marshall stacks. Oh boy, I think I’m gonna like Metallic Falcons! One of them takes up an axe and starts picking out devastatingly whacked crystalline fuzz guitar heavily reminiscent of Bardo Pond. Oh, YEAH! The other switches between guitar and synth and sings in a deep, accented voice, dramatically and ever so slooowly. The drummer from Tarantula AD sticks around too, if anybody’s taking notes. Metallic Falcons’ hazy, formative songs rise out of nowhere, raise more questions than they answer and disappear into the depths of memory. Their sound is sparse, and everything bar the guitar is elusive, but its evocations are powerfully established; it speaks of psychotropic night-time desertscapes, and weird, isolated creative life taking place within them. Midnight in Death Valley, if you will, but everything is groovy. On the colour spectrum their noise is green, brown with a fade to purple. And there’s a surprising, possibly surrealistic, element creeping in around the edges helping transcend the clichés… do we see a zeppelin (not Led) drifting over the horizon? Nick begs to differ with my desert interpretation; instead he gets a windswept moors vibe – Wuthering Heights and all that. It’s only subsequently, after flipping out and buying a record and a one-off recycled t-shirt, that I discover Metallic Falcons are actually a side-project of Coco-Rosie, whom dedicated readers will remember me both dissing somewhat and comparing to Kate Bush... so score one for the moors. Their album is called ‘Desert Doughnuts’ though, so let’s call it a draw. Either way, a wilderness for sure, with sparks of life within it, and a strange, bewitching band taking shape.
Espers are pretty fine too, essentially sounding like a more spaced out take on early Fairport Convention. Conveniently, that’s kinda what they look like on stage too. Imagine if, instead of delving deeper into Albion folk sources as their career progressed, Fairport had followed on through the doors they momentarily opened on ‘A Sailor’s Life’, evolving a floating world of explorative, psychedelic electric folk that would have fitted in perfectly running down the jams alongside Quicksilver and the ‘Dead on the SF ballroom scene. Would have been great, wouldn’t it? Well that’s where Espers fit in. The line-up sees an excellent (if showy) lead guitarist tracing out a fine litany of Richard Thompson-esque ragas n’ reels alongside more familiar acid-rock moves, supported by a dense field of beautiful multi-layered strings provided by two finger-picked acoustics and some fine droning on the cello, sewed together with slow grace by the psyche-happy thudding rhythm section. With a 50/50 gender split amongst the six-piece band, there’s an unashamedly feminine slant to the group’s sound that I heartily approve of, and the primary singer has a voice clear and true enough to stop a charging bull. Sadly, I’m only able to catch about half of their set from an unfriendly vantage point (eg, at the back), so a more in-depth analysis might have to wait until I pick up their records, but the only thing that immediately disappoints me about Espers is that for all the glorious psychedelic haze, their songs seem kinda vague and fail the make much of an impression – a stark contrast to Fairport’s bold and anthemic fare. Otherwise though, an extremely promising and interesting band, and if you were to pick out one of the many dubious new-weird-folky troupes currently in operation to lavish your attention upon, you could do a lot worse.
Espers' cello lady
Ladies and gentlemen, give a big ATP welcome to Mr. Bert Jansch! Well the welcome is big indeed, embarrassingly so for Bert who, despite over forty years experience of playing live in every kind of situation imaginable, seems distinctly ill at ease with the rowdy enthusiasm afforded him by this young festival crowd. Grumpily shrugging off rapturous applause and constant song requests, he plays for barely forty minutes of his allotted hour time-slot, evidently deciding we’ve had our fill after six or seven songs and buggering off. From most celebrated performers this might constitute petulance or borderline rudeness, but god knows, Bert more than anyone has earned the right to be a crotchety old sod, and more to the point, his performance tonight is as breath-taking as could possibly be wished. His guitar-playing is as effortlessly elegant as it ever has been and his voice has lost nothing of its unique honesty and strength. He plays the inevitable ‘Strollin’ Down the Highway’ and ‘Black Waterside’, Jackson C. Frank’s ‘Blues Run the Game’ and ‘Carnival’, ‘Fresh as a Sweet Sunday Morning’ – a version so startlingly beautiful it brings a tear to my eye – and finishes, perhaps appropriate to his mood, with ‘Poison’. His playing is mesmerising; just as on-point, if not more so, than on his definitive ‘Live at the 12 Bar’ album, and it’s no disrespect to the other acts on the bill to say that on a scale of musical inspiration, there’s a sizeable chasm separating Bert from everyone else. He represents another level entirely – that shared by the few most significant and inimitable talents ever to turn their hands to popular music. You’ll have to take my word for it that when I say it’s a true privilege to watch him play whenever mood he happens to be in and for whatever amount of time he deems appropriate, that’s not so much toadying to the man himself as simply giving his music the respect it demands.
Mr Jansch
At entirely the other end of the dignified old folk dude scale, it’s also a goddamn delight to see Ramblin’ Jack Elliot on such good form. Presenting the idea of the travelling folk singer / song collector more as an easy-going, sentimental entertainer than as a reflection of grass-roots culture or a force for change, Ramblin’ Jack (and he’s never trusted anyone who put a G on the end of ramblin’, he’ll have you know!) represents very much the other side of the coin from more high-minded contemporaries such as Guthrie or Seeger. As is obvious tonight from his ten gallon hat and cowboy engraved guitar onwards, this is defiantly old fashioned, cornball stuff of the best possible kind, like a dewy-eyed elder regaling his rapt grandkids with fictional tales of the Old West cribbed from John Ford movies. Having said that though, Jack is still sharp and charismatic despite his advanced years, warming to the audience as we warm to him. Offering spiked come-backs between verses to anyone who dares heckle or take a photo with a flash, he also regales us with a well-practised anecdote about letting his dog drive him to a gig (he runs late due to only going at 12.5mph, “a good, steady speed for a dog”), and a slightly more touching, off the cuff reminiscence about his first trip to England in 1955 and touring Europe along with a banjo player (“we travelled on motor scooters.. he had a Lambretta, I had a Vespa..”). Song-wise, he runs through a few old chestnuts like ‘Old Shep’, kicks up a good hollering blues on 'San Francicso Bay' and ‘Rock Island Line’, and despite all his jokes and antics, reminds us how powerful a simple song can be in the right hands with beautifully pure renditions of Tim Hardin’s ‘If I Were a Carpenter’ and Dylan’s ‘Don’t Think Twice..’, the weight of his experience and a life-time’s dedication to song shining through. For the finale he calls a special guest star on stage and asks us to please welcome... some old guy nobody in the audience has ever heard of! But it doesn’t matter, cos he kicks ass too! Together they run through a pile of gleefully raunchy blues hoedown, good-naturedly throwing each other verses and solos, including a shout-out to “the girls of Hastings”, perhaps in the mistaken belief that the people attending ATP actually hail from the local area. Then they embrace like best pals who haven’t seen each other for decades – which is quite possibly the case I suppose – and the crowd sees them off with the most enthusiastic and good-natured bout of applause I’ve ever witnessed at ATP. “You’re not a bad bunch of photographers” says Jack, seeming genuinely touched to receive such adulation from a young audience, and all I can think is how awesome it must be to grow up with him as your granddad.
Ramblin' Jack in full effect
As well as bringing us the performances outlined above, Devendra Banhart also picked some excellent, weird movies to fill his ATP TV schedule (Sun Ra’s ‘Space is the Place’ in particular rocked my lunch-time), so much so that instead of giving the man himself another chance to win me over with his Charles Manson meets Michael Jackson meets Marc Bolan hippy goof-troop routine, returning to the chalet to crack open some wine and enjoy a double bill of Jodorofsky’s ‘El Topo’ and ‘The Holy Mountain’ seems like a far more enjoyable prospect. I wonder what Ramblin’ Jack would make of it all...
(Espers and Ramblin' Jack photos by Alex, Bert photo by me)
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