Does It Offend You, Yeah? + South Central @ The Wedgewood Rooms, Portsmouth, 21/10/08

Some lazy journalists would refer to the current musical climate, at least in terms of British Indie-dance crossover groups, as “post-new-rave”. Ridiculous as this sounds, it is almost true to say that gone are the day-glo colours, garish sirens and hideous large-print shirts. Gone is the faux retro noise barely hiding the post-modern Franz-Ferdinand art-rock beneath, and gone too, thankfully, are the kids reminiscing about a decade they viewed from the glint in their fathers’ eyes.

Instead what is left are bands like South Central, pure tunesmiths who manage the dance-rock balancing act to a fault by being a duo by day in the studio and a band at night on stage. This distinction gives them the edge in terms of a live show over such artists as Simian Mobile Disco or even Justice, both of whom South Central almost match musically, but with much more energy than watching two guys push play on their drum machines. Instead they bring an infectious energy that quickly spreads throughout the crowd, especially during their extended cover of slightly more recent rave classic, Josh Wink’s “HHHhHigher State Of Consciousness”, which caps an impressive, if unfamiliar, set to a close.

Does It Offend You, Yeah?, the band literally named after David Brentism, hit the stage soon after, and long before the crowd has a chance to recover from South Central, and begin a short set based largely from their eponymous debut. Even with a set featuring singles “Let’s Make Out” and “We Are Rockstars”, it’s soon clear that the band, shrouded in smoke and with lead singer James sitting near the back with a crocked leg, aren’t as energetic as they would usually be, and seem somewhat jaded with touring and promotion already. The crowd is yet to sense this, however, and are vociferous as ever in their request for their favourite band to play their favourite song, screaming as one for “Epic Last Song” as a suitable, if not necessarily apt, encore. After a hurried apology about “not doing that one live”, they instead treat the crowd to a slightly drowsy version of Devo’s classic “Whip It”. While the irony isn’t lost on some of the crowd, its still good enough to bring the night to a close.

South Central are touring throughout the UK and Europe and release the Owl Of Minerva EP on November 3rd. DIOYY?'s tour continues until the 30th in Leeds and is their last tour before working on their second album

Late Night Crap: Bands that I want to see live

Okay, this is a fairly generic list, but I have some rules, because without rules, people would be beating each other up and defecating everywhere. Maybe.

Rule #1: Band must still be active (i.e. alive and still with their "classic line-up", unless stated)
Rule #2: The assumption is that they will be at theiw own gig, playing their "hits".

List:
Minus The Bear
Seem like they would be a laugh, and have been heavily recommended as a great live band.

Sonic Youth
My friend saw them play Daydream Nation in its entirety. Arsehole.

Animal Collective
Said friend also saw these guys. Twice.

Beck

Daft Punk
I saw Muse at Wembley on the last date that Daft Punk played England. After listening to Alive 2007, I soon realised that this was big mistake.

Sigur Ros
Especially at an outdoor gig in the middle of nowhere, with the band playing on a homemade stage during Iceland's neverending summer just like on that documentary of theirs.


Wow, I need to listen to some more music.

Goodnight.

Glorious Return -ish?

Okay, okay.

Basically I've had a bit of an unforeseen blogging hiatus over the summer due to real life getting in the way. Some things had to get put on the backburner and this blog ended up being one of them. To those of you who are still here (apparently) thankyou for your patience, normal service will be resumed shortly.

I've bought a few albums over the summer, although not as many as I would like (again - real life issues - this time crippling student poverty) and you may see some retrospective reviews. During the summer I also went to the Reading Festival and I all I can really remember is Rage Against the Machine and, for some reason XX Teens. Not because the rest was bad or that I was wasted, but just that my memory really is that shit.

Plus I went from loving Kings Of Leon to hating them during my job which forced me to constantly listen to Radio 1 "Daytime" (AKA hey, we haven't played that song in the last quarter of an hour, let's play it again until our listeners want to burn their ears off with matches) to that tripe they call a "comeback single". Never went away etc. etc. My (i.e. someone elses) opinion on their album (which I haven't even listened to.... very lazy) is summed up by a fantastic review on the music website that appears to hate music, Pitchfork.

Enjoy, until I have a chance to catch up properly myself.