March 2019

LIVE REVIEW: Tashi Wada Group with Man Forever, Alice, 27.03.2019

Published on March 29, 2019 in Live Reviews by Here Today

Tashi Wada Group with Julia Holter and Corey Fogel, live at Alice Copenhagen

There is a level of unpredictability when going to see any performance that could be described as “avant garde” or fall into the category of drone. And while Tashi Wada is a composer and his group are playing the songs of his latest album, Nue, there is still a healthy amount of the unexpected throughout the evening.

The evening opens with the fortuitous last-minute addition of Man Forever. Kid Millions — also of Oneida and myriad other projects — uses his solo outing to tell the story of the car accident he was in a year ago. The spoken word portion of the set is fitted between drum fills and leads into his song “A Clear Realization.” For someone who sustained two broken ribs, a chipped vertebra in his neck, and an impact injury to his lower back, his playing is not only as mesmerizing as ever, it’s absolutely extraordinary.

Wada is joined by the powerhouse backing band of Julia Holter on piano, synths, and vocals and Corey Fogel on drums and an assortment of bells, gongs, and chimes. Fogel is a master of restraint throughout the set; most of the drums and gongs are hit with mallets, sending a muffled rumble coursing through the songs.

Holter is also more subdued than we are accustomed to seeing her as a solo performer. Her piano lines are often a whisper and her vocals are muted and wordless, mostly there to soften the mechanical whine they float over. It isn’t a wonder that, with such reserve from the band, the audience is dead quiet, not even daring to applaud between the abrupt shifts in songs.

It is surprising that, in a set in which personalities are withholding, Wada has become the dominant personality from his post in the shadows. Wada makes himself known in his haunted house synths and the way he makes bagpipes buzzy rather than whiny. The weird universe he has created around himself for the evening is peaceful and maybe a little camp, but it’s a step away from the familiar. It’s a recontextualization of familiar faces and familiar sounds. It’s lightness and stimulus tumbling over each other in between the silences.

LIVE REVIEW: Steve Gunn, Loppen, 22.03.2019

Published on March 26, 2019 in Blog/Live Reviews by Here Today

Steve Gunn is an incredibly prolific singer-songwriter and guitarist who straddles a hazy dividing line between indie rock and the American primitivism of John Fahey, Robbie Basho and Sandy Bull.

He first came to my attention in 2016 with Eyes on the Lines, particularly in the driving opener “Ancient Jules”, which has that rare mix of rock instrumentation with folk riffs in the vein of Richard Thompson’s “Roll Over Vaughan Williams”. But Gunn has been producing a steady album per year since 2007. This last one though, The Unseen in Between, comes with a delay of almost three years, which might account for the crowd and air of anticipation in Loppen tonight.

Known mainly for his fingerpicking style, Gunn is joined on stage by a full band, including a lead guitarist with a deep attachment to his fuzz pedal, which brings out the more psych-rock elements of the music, particularly in their closing jam.

“New Moon” has a dreamy, 60s shimmer to it, although its resemblance to Them’s cover of “It’s All Over, Baby Blue” ends up reminding me much more of Beck’s “Jackass”. There is less overt post-modernism to Steve Gunn’s approach to Americana, but he is equally unconcerned with sounding overtly “vintage”.

That being said, the standout moment will probably remain Gunn’s solo acoustic piece that opens his encore, a moment of fingerpicking mastery that will more than suffice for those of us far too young to have heard the masters on anything other than mp3s.

LIVE REVIEW: This Is Not This Heat, Alice, 06.03.2019

Published on March 8, 2019 in Blog/Live Reviews by Here Today

This is Not This Heat live at Alice Copenhagen for CPH:DOX

Over the years the years we’ve seen a few bands we never expected to be able to see live, but few have been quite as unexpected as This Heat. But that’s not quite right, as the poster proudly proclaims: this, in fact, is This Is Not This Heat. Or is it? Of the six people crammed together on stage, only two represent the original line-up, bassist (and, according to his obituary, Rough Guide author) Gareth Williams having passed away in 2001.

This is the first of two nights at Alice, the first dedicated to the recordings of This Heat, and the second to soundtrack work. Tonight guitarist Charles Bullen and drummer Charles Hayward are joined by Daniel O’Sullivan (of Grumbling Fur, Laniakea, Guapo, Æthenor, etc. etc) on bass and synths, looking remarkably youthful next to his gaunt elders, as well as an extra drummer, guitarist and a distorted clarinet (for Roxy Music kudos).

The first portion of the set is pretty much the exact tracklist from their self-titled debut, full of sparse, cold instrumentation and plaintive chants. It almost makes you wonder for a while why two drumkits are necessary. But the songs from Deceit answer that question with proto-industrial fervour. At the first frantic chord of “SPQR” a group of teenagers in the first row cheer and do shots, which is as baffling as it is cute.

Although This Heat are often lumped together with post-punk, you can clearly hear a lot of Robert Wyatt in the plaintive vocals of “Not Waving” and “The Fall of Siam”, a certain weird Englishness that reveals in the influence of The Soft Machine and Gabriel-era Genesis under the obvious Krautrock and musique-concrete references.

It is these moments of detached weirdness, more than the guitar-driven noise, that make This Heat a band still worth listening to and seeing after all these years.

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