It’s a fantastic time to be a citizen of Leicester.
I’ve lived here more than a dozen years now and have always raved about its wonders. When Kasabian headlined at Glastonbury, I wore my retro-foxes top all day even though their brand of indie swagger is not exactly my thing.
When King Richard was buried, I was in Yorkshire but should have been on our fab streets.
Now, we have the football. An amazing thing is happening across this beautiful city. A place so used to not really singing from the rooftops about its wonder now finds itself thrust onto the back pages of national newsprint. I was on a train heading back to Leicester yesterday with tourists who thought they’d visit because ‘it seemed like a vibrant place’.
These are great times.
It’s a common theme that I keep coming back to both in my blog and in my live reviews for the Mercury. When I went to see the Brandy Thieves (and reviewed it here), I had to state that there was a movement occurring. Earlier this year when I featured Plaudits on this blog (here), I sensed that this was a city dancing to a different drum.
Now, we have the new single from French Leave. ‘Tourist’ is an absolute belter. Occupying a similar space to Plaudits, French Leave appear to revel in a hard-edged electro-pop thing. I deny you to not think this is brilliant. When they sing ‘Come see me in my town’, it’s an invite to head here and party with us all. Yes, this is a tune that might well become a soundtrack to my summer, blasting from the speakers when the team are transported in their open top bus.
French Leave are playing at the painstakingly curated Handmade Festival in a couple of weeks. It’s a great festival for this great city and it’s not escaped my attention that this might be the weekend when we’re really under the glare of worldwide media.
In a couple of weeks, I plan to nip along to The Cookie,one of my favourite venues in Leicester, to see The Big Moon. I’ll pull together 350 words or so about the night that’ll hopefully be published within the Leicester Mercury. In terms of content, it’ll be more concise than this waffling piece.
On Wednesday night, I had opportunity for a dry run; on the first night of their first ever headline tour, the London based four piece are playing in Nottingham at the fab Bodega Social. By chance, I’m here with my day job so a sneak preview beckons. It’d be rude not to.
First impressions of a fuzzed-up Bangles fade slightly as the set progresses. It feels lame to draw comparisons with another all female band but I think the likeness just about holds. And at least I haven’t mentioned Throwing Muses, Belly or L7 as yet. As it is, this is a band not afraid to throw a Madonna cover into their mix (an exuberant Brilliant Stranger) so I’m sure they’re aware of their antecedents.
I’m a bit fed up of seeing up and coming touring bands who play so hard at being ‘cool’ that they seem unable to enjoy the experience. Such accusation cannot be levelled at The Big Moon. Indeed, bassist Celia Archer, who does much of the between song jabber, is positively skipping with happiness. This adds to the charm. Tight and blissful, summer-fuelled harmonies tingle and shimmer through your core. Here we have a thoroughly modern Motown girl troupe, bounced through a scuzzed-up indie blender.
There’s a smell of wet dog in the air amidst the crowd. Lads with pudding bowl haircuts stare on with such awkward, spectrum-rubbing focus that I wonder if deodorant has been forgotten from their routine. It’s either that or somebody has wet themselves. I move towards the front just in time to catch the opening strains of new single, Cupid.
It’s undeniably one of the set highlights. The quality of this and a song (potentially called Pull The Other One) so new that this Nottingham crowd are the first to hear it suggests that there’s some longevity in The Big Moon story. They’re clearly growing in stature and confidence with each song they write.
The same might also be true for the main support of the night, Virgin Kids, although so tall and gangly is their hair bun-wearing bass player that he definitely doesn’t need any more height on him. Unaware of his personal space, he auditions for a role in the ‘guild of incredibly tall men who make it their business to stand right in front of you thus blocking your view’.
Minor quibbles aside, they do the business on stage with workmanlike skill. They give us a dynamic and punkish London thing. At times, the three piece almost veer towards the pre-punk, sweaty bar-room blues rock of Dr Feelgood but then project us forward into a more Libertine-like swagger. I mark them as ones I’ll see again and, given that they’re supporting The Big Moon throughout this tour, that chance will come again soon.
Wishing both bands the best for the next couple of weeks and I’ll definitely look forward to hearing about the touring adventures when they arrive in Leicester on the 8th April. You should catch them on this tour if you can.
I’ve been submitting lots of reviews to the Leicester Mercury recently. Mostly, they seem to appreciate my efforts and to publish my thoughts within the paper. Sometimes, they’ll post my reviews on line as well. I’m doing this with one main aim in mind. I think that supporting live music, especially gigs that are happening locally, is a really important thing to do. If people are more aware of the quality and vibrancy that occurs every night in our fair city, perhaps they’ll be more inclined to venture out themselves.
Last week, I reviewed an old friend of Sonic Breakfast, Guy Jones, at the Cookie. The Mercury might have printed this but I didn’t spot it so I’ll copy here instead.
Guy Jones, the travelling troubadour, has made the relatively short trip from Halesowen, to charm us at the Cookie on a Thursday night. His special brand of Americana-fuelled songwriting is amplified and electrified by a tight and talented quad of musicians. Guy grew up in West Brom so this is Country music formed in the Black Country streets. We respond by lapping it up, albeit politely.
It’s by and large a gentle affair. The room, laid out in a cabaret seating style, allows us to relax as the weekend approaches. Guy has a laidback, natural manner and does his best to draw us in with pleasant singalongs and simple handclaps. Guy sings about real love; he has a song about friends who grew up bullied; a song about people he’s met whilst touring the States and a song about how he’s grown from a spurned, chubby teenager to a young man able to capture his girl’s heart.
These tunes (and others) will all be found on Guy’s forthcoming album that’s due for release in May. It’s a sign of the high regard that Guy’s fans hold him in that this was fully funded through a Pledge campaign. Recorded in New York, it’s going to be crammed full of the melodies and harmonies that Whispering Bob Harris and other Radio 2 sorts are likely to praise highly.
Credit for the harmonies at this gig needs to go to Guy’s keyboard player, Kerry Smyth. Their voices weld together with such robustness that it’s very easy to get drawn into this world. Earlier in the evening, Kerry had given us a set of her own songs and covers. She’s a younger Beverley Craven but entertaining enough. Local lad, Reuben Wisner, opened the show with considerable craft and skill. Acoustic pickings, polite audience singalongs and occasional tracks with loops and layering are Reuben’s thing. It sets the mood for the evening well.
But the night belongs to Guy. Confident without being cocky, this is optimistic and cleansing. Affable and tender, good-natured and nice, we drift away into the night hoping that Guy made enough on the Merch desk to get home to Halesowen.
It’s been quite a week. Some regular readers of Sonic Breakfast will know that the lack of blog posts over the past week has not been due to laziness on my part.
Dave’s Leicester Comedy Festival is running and I’ve committed to a pretty hefty amount of show reviews for the Leicester Mercury. To date, 5 of my comedy reviews have gone to print. There’s links to them here..
On Sunday night, I took a break from the laughs to go and see Fickle Friends and Clean Cut Kid at the O2 academy (Mercury review here). I last saw Fickle Friends at Liverpool Sound City a couple of years back. That was towards the end of a long, crazy day of live music and I might have been a bit jaded then. They were better on Sunday.
Clean Cut Kid clearly have quite a bit of backing behind them. I think I could see why. But my motivation for wanting to see them was a bit different. My younger brother, James, told me recently that him and his wife, Saf, had once had members of Clean Cut Kid around to their house for dinner. James and Saf are fine, sensible people and the thought of them having a rock n’roll band around for dinner felt a little odd.
It still does feels odd. Clean Cut Kid swore on stage, had masses of facial hair and wanted us to dance like our lives depended upon it.
Sometimes though (and this is a theme that’s been repeated time and time again in the comedy shows I’ve seen), things aren’t always worth trying to understand too much.
I’m pretty sure that I’d never want to be a gig promoter. It’s all a bit easy sitting behind this keypad saying that ‘I love X’ and ‘I want to be Y’ but these promoter types are the sort that really put their livelihoods on the line.
The best promoter that we have in Leicester is Ian Magic Teapot. I’m not entirely sure how he still does it. For the ten years plus that I’ve been in this ‘top of the league’ city, Ian has worked incredibly hard to bring some of the best to our venues.
Sometimes, he has a win. I think that all who know Ian don’t begrudge him those paydays when he sells enough tickets to break even.. Because, so often, for a reason I don’t really understand, we try our damnedest to avoid supporting live music.
Tonight Magic Teapot put on a show by Sweet Baboo. Here’s an act that I’ve barely been able to see in some festival tents, such is the push and the popularity. Tonight, it was hard to keep a low profile at the Musician. The room was perhaps half full. If this was a gig in Nottingham, thirty miles up the road, I doubt that I would have been able to swing my cat whilst I danced yet here I could.
Stephen Black is his usual self-deprecating self. This is the first night of the tour and he plays with us that his band might be a tad under-rehearsed. Epic and long, indulgent prog-rock endings to bouncy pop tunes are threatened but hardly materialise. Instead, this show stays on the right side of sweet. Sometimes, there are dips further back into the Sweet Baboo catalogue and sometimes we’re thrust bang up to date with notes from the recent ‘Dennis’ EP but mostly this is a setlist made up with tunes from last years fabulous Boombox Ballads record.
Charles from Slow Club plays guitar tonight in Stephen’s band. The last time that Slow Club were in Leicester I wrote about it here. It’s fair to say that was a much busier gig.
But, in terms of quality, both were on a par. Both were excellent nights out. I wish you were there to see this one for yourself.
But not half as much as Ian Magic Teapot probably does.
We are Plaudits, an original band from Leicester and have been together for around six months.”
So went the opening words of an E-mail that I received a couple of weeks ago.
If ever a band wants to grab my attention then this is a pretty good way to go about it. Appeal to my sense of local pride by revealing that we have place in common.
But, I’ve been let down in such exchanges before now. I maintained caution. This is a city very good at fostering the spirit of sub-standard Kasabian tribute acts. And whilst those acts invariably will go on to headline the Shed on a Tuesday night, my thing on Sonic Breakfast is to pick out the wheat from the chaff.
Plaudits are building up towards the time when their first EP, Hinterland, is released in April. Before that, they’re releasing individual tracks from it, beginning with this tune ‘Honest’. When I first heard it, I could barely conceal my excitement. Here’s a band that are clearly giving thought to their craft and approach. This is a project with ambition akin to an experiment by Tony Wilson rather than a shambolic, haphazard, ‘let’s see where it takes us’ thing. Plaudits are two steps ahead of this game.
‘Honest’ is truthfully very great indeed. A soaring piece of electronica – a harder edged Two Door Cinema Club – a track that wouldn’t look out of place on the new New Order record.
I cannot wait to find out more about this band. Plaudits – they will take them..
Last Friday night, I nipped along to the fab Leicester venue, The Cookie, to review a gig. I was hoping that this review would get featured in the Leicester Mercury (as per my review of Drenge the following night).. For some reason, I can’t see that it’s been published.. Never mind – I’ll feature it here….
The last time that I saw Lisbon in Leicester, a crisis had just beset the band. They’d had guitars and instruments stolen in Birmingham and so needed to beg and borrow temporary equipment to play. I was struck by how decent and calm this young band appeared in the midst of disaster.
Fortunately, on Friday night at the Cookie, no such predicament was in play. Lisbon had a full kit through which they could inflict their funky radio-friendly indie swagger on a half full but wholly appreciative audience. “It’s Friday night, let’s go crazy yeah?” urged lead singer, Matthew Varty, with genuine, Geordie exuberance. “Keep your dancing going”, he maintained as the band launched into new single, ‘Vice’. Varty worked the crowd hard and, as a result, we bopped to their beat.
“This is a song that’s very close to our hearts. It’s about the town we were born in; a place very far from here.” announced Varty by way of introduction to one of Lisbon’s minor hits, ‘Native’. These young lads are clearly not in a rush to forget their Whitley Bay roots even though headline tours and radio airplay are inevitably pushing them away from home comforts.
Despite still having youth on their side, Lisbon must feel like senior citizens in contrast to their support act on this tour, Declan McKenna. No more than 17 years old, it’s Declan who, arguably, the crowd had flocked to see. Winning the Glastonbury emerging talent competition last year thrust this young man into the limelight. It’s fair to say that he’s still honing his live craft.
Almost apologetically, Declan introduced songs that “you probably don’t know”. Assisted by an equally young band (two boys and two girls), this is awkward, angular, art pop. The plonk from the Korgs and the Casio mesh with the strum from the sticker-covered, beaten and bruised guitar to give us a very 2016 version of new wave post punk. Stand-out tracks, ‘Paracetamol’ and ‘Brazil’ lead the way as Declan slyly and shyly engages with those gathered to watch. It’s possibly heaping a bit too much praise to say that this Declan Mc reminds me of the early years of another Declan Mc (Elvis Costello) but they certainly walk in similar water.
Opening the night was the local Ali Clinton Band. This powerhouse,blues-rock trio, led by the sickeningly brilliant guitar playing of Ali, appeared, on the surface at least, to have little in common with either Lisbon or Declan McKenna. But, tonight has all been about precocious (in a positive sense), young talent. The three acts on this bill can all be filed in that particular cabinet.
I first met Stevie Jones at one of the Oysterband’s Big Session festivals at De Montfort Hall. I blagged a compering slot in the beer tent, despite having very little qualities to fulfil such a role. I suppose I was, at least, energetic, friendly and a good advert for how drunk the ale in the tent might get you.
Stevie (along with his long term musical collaborator, Mark Gill) was one of the acts that I introduced. I remember that he was so enthused about this experience. It was easy to banter and joke with Stevie. He seemed to have an encyclopaedic knowledge about music and conveyed that with charm and good grace.
When he played on stage, there was a definite ‘Americana’ angle to his art. This was a time when magazines such as ‘Uncut’ were piling praise on the likes of Ryan Adams and Stevie was clearly drawing influence from that.
Since that introduction, I’ve got to know Stevie a little better. It’s mostly true that the music scene here in Leicester and its immediate beyond is one where we all try our best to encourage and support each other. It’s a broad church, not always devoid of schisms, but for the most part we all get on. There’s very few who do more to achieve that than Stevie. A tireless promoter, performer and supporter of live music, it’s always a joy to randomly turn up at one of my local pubs to be entertained by his acoustic performance.
Following a successful pledger’s ‘soft release’ last autumn, Stevie will launch his new album nationally this spring. Recorded with his full band, The Wildfires, ‘Stratigraphic Heart’ is a collection of very personal songs. The title track of the album brings his love of archaeology to the fore; the forthcoming digital single, ‘This Is My Church’ gives insights into Stevie’s life via glimpses of the music he’s loved and the experiences he’s had.
He’ll be playing shows across the East Midlands and further afield to support this launch. In a world where karma should rule, it’s well worth giving something back to Stevie.
Ever since I moved to Leicester a dozen or more years ago, I’d spend three or four nights each week being a consumer of local music. I’d go to cold, flea bitten holes (all of which have now closed down of course) on Tuesday evenings to watch bands who were just starting out and often not very good. Sometimes, I’d watch these bands grow in confidence as they developed their stagecraft. Often, bands would split up after their opening gig.
I can’t put my finger on a time when the magic went. But it did last year. I’m now enjoying staying in and only venturing out to gigs where there’s a purpose; typically, this means going to larger venues to produce ‘fucking shit’ reviews of touring bands.
Who knows if I’ll get my love of the local fleapit back?
On one of my rare forays out in 2015, I came across Ladies (that’s not as crude as it sounds). Here was a band who were clearly still finding their feet and developing their stagecraft. But already I could tell that this three-piece had the seed of something special. More than anything, I could tell they had songs. They were both derivative and utterly modern at the same time. They had a slightly shambolic swagger and yet were captivating to watch. I got to know their lead singer and songwriter, Chas, who impressed with his general approach and attitude.
A couple of months ago, I received an E-mail from ‘Ladies’. They’ve relocated to Liverpool. In many ways, this is a move that makes entire sense. From the Beatles to the La’s (and beyond), Liverpool strikes me as the sort of city that appreciates jangle and melody. That’s the space that Ladies sit within and I’m not at all surprised that, a few months after moving, their gig calendar seems to be full and bursting.
Ladies are a band to keep an eye on. How knock-out is the chorus in this tune ‘Pretty In My Heart’?
As 2015 draws to a close, I’m reminded that I’ve kept regular readers of Sonic Breakfast hanging. It’s been over a week since I let people know what was ten through to six in my posts of the year that I was keen to revisit. I’m still to do my top 5.
Hoping that turkey was loved and Santa bought you everything you wanted… Without further ado…
Steve is still a legend in Leicester. Unlike others in this top ten, he’s released nothing since I did my blog post about him in January and appeared in no videos promoting new tracks. I expect the same level of minimal marketing intent to carry him into 2016 as well. He’s played gigs around this fine city, just his unassuming, slightly world-weary, warm voice and guitar picking. Everybody who knows him knows how great he is. Sometimes, people who have never seen Steve live before catch him playing a tune or two at pubs and festivals around town. They might even try to buy his latest CD. He rarely has anything to sell. A true gent. Younger musicians could learn much from this man.
I wrote about Steve on the back of a set I saw him play as part of the OBS unplugged showcases at Leicester’s Musician. We’re not far from another series of these fine January gigs – a fab way to begin the year and these nights never fail to unearth some pretty special talents.
The weekly listening post over at Fresh On The Net often reveals new acts that I can’t help but fall in love with. When Norwich’s Rope Store apparently came out of nowhere with their fine track ‘Get Me Out’ back at the start of the year, it was clear that 2015 was going to be an interesting one for Gemma and Jason. That certainly seems to have been the case.
Gigs in London and growing popularity in Norfolk see them end 2015 with BBC Introducing videos and a Christmas single release which again was featured on the Listening Post. ‘What’s Life All About’ is a belter of a track. I’d recommend watching Rope Store closely in 2016.
I’m not bragging about this in the slightest but I think that Sonic Breakfast was the first blog to feature Peaness. I sent this ace track across to a well connected friend in North Wales and since that point, Peaness have been taking the indie-pop scene in Wales by storm.
Sold out shows at Cardiff’s SWN festival and a review from Huw Stephens suggesting that Peaness were one of his highlights bode exceptionally well for 2016. With a knack for writing seemingly simple songs that surge under your skin, Peaness’s size will surely grow.
Lucy’s one of the most captivating artists I have ever seen play at an OBS unplugged night. She played her first ever show at one of these nights. Her performance at Leicester’s Musician back in January was simply sublime.
She’s now studying at University in Nashville and, by all accounts, wowing her fellow students and those slightly wider afield with her gentle, sweet soul. I dare say it’s been a term of settling into American life. As Lucy gets more familiar with her surroundings, Tennessee will be wanting to claim her as one of their own.
It all makes me most excited about OBS unplugged 2016 and what talent will be on offer to see.
There was never any doubt in my mind what would be the Sonic Breakfast number one post for 2015. We need to go right back to the first day of the year and the very first video premiere that we ever had. The wonderfully deranged alt-country act from Roskilde, Workers In Songs gave me the opportunity to launch their video for ‘Sorry Marie’. I still love watching it and hearing that anguished vocal.
Over 2015, Workers In Songs have released a new EP, Scrapbook. It’s another impressive stunner. Here’s a one-take video with a song from that EP, Big Ol’ River.
Thanks for the support for Sonic Breakfast across 2015. I’ve been lucky enough to hear some great music and to go along to some fine gigs and festivals. Looking forward to sharing more of my life in music with you next year.
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