The Charlatans at The Tramshed

Never mind the case of “the dog that didn’t bark”, this was the case of the tickets that never were. I mentioned to my brother back in September that I had booked to see The Charlatans so he did the same and we planned to go together. Come the night, come the email search and guess what – no tickets. No mention of tickets. Nothing. Nada. Tumbleweed.

God only knows what happened but I can only think I must not have “hit the tit” to complete the sale. But we jumped in a cab anyway and (thank God for Twitter) managed to pick up spare face value tickets.  The night was back on track.

This was the second gig for us at the new Tramshed venue and already it’s turning into a favorite. It’s big enough to get some class bookings (as evidenced by Public Enemy and The Charlatans) and small enough to easily get up close to the stage for a bit of a mosh. Two bars and short queues. A good sound system. Top hole old boy.

The night started with a very Welsh sounding “Yukatan” who make great, fuzzy, dreamy shoe-gazey sounds – excellent stuff

Next up were Frankie and the Heartstrings.

They make what I would call Steve Lamaque music – if you ever listen to the evergreen DJ’s late afternoon show on 6 Music you’ll know what I mean,  foot-stomping indie, great for a party if a bit bloke-ish. It took a few tracks but I warmed to them and by the end of their set they had the audience firmly on their side

Then, running a little late by my reckoning (if rumours of a ten thirty curfew for the Tramshed due to it being in a residential area are to be believed) it was time for The Charlatans.

I’ve always liked the Charlatans but mainly for their singles output – I was never a big follower of their albums. The growth of streaming however means I listen to a lot more albums in the full as it were. The Charlatans’ new album “Modern Nature” was an eye-opener for me. In all the Tramshed set included five tracks from Modern Nature and they more than stand up for themselves against the older more well known tracks. This is a band who after a couple of decades in the business and after a couple of tragedies that would stop must in their tracks are still making great vibrant music and not retreading old sounds.

Tickets for the gig became a must buy for me based on their new work just as much as their older hits

For all his years fronting the band, Tim Burgess looked a little uncertain to begin, mumbling “getting there, getting there” after the first couple of songs. But the audience were with them all the way and the hall was soon jumping – particularly when “North Country Boy” was rolled out.

From the new album they played Talking in Tones which Burgess has described as being about the sad passing of their drummer Jon Brookes of a brain tumor and of how they still feel his presence.

One of my favorite tracks So Oh – a song that’s a dream of summer written in the winter came next.
Driven on by the tremendous throbbing bass playing of Martin Blunt this set was all killer and no filler. It played out in waves, peak followed by calm followed by peak.
One definite crescendo was the gospel tinged “Come  Home Baby”, a song which highlights the beautiful keyboard playing of Tony Rogers

My missus was thrilled that the set included her current favorite “Emilie” – a song inspired by Tim presenting an award to Dionne Warwick and written as a response to “Walk On By”  

The Charlatans are one of those bands where you don’t realise the outstanding back catalog until they start banging them out. So of course the new crowd pleaser “Let the good times never end” had to be included. But so too did the classic anthems “Only One I Know”, “Just when you’re thinking it over” and “One To Another”

By now obviously the crowd was at quite a pitch of moshing and the band seemed to be thoroughly enjoying themselves with Burgess even pausing to capture the bouncing crowd during the epic encore of “Sproston Green”

A fantastic gig and a memorable night – that’s two from two for the Tramshed. I only hope they can keep this up as we’re back there for New Year’s Eve – let’s hope that’s as good a party!

Public Enemy – Tramshed

You’re sat on your comfy couch on a Sunday night and it’s absolutely lashing it down outside. You’re halfway through a good boxset on Netflix and your Sunday lunch is settling like the Titanic at the bottom of the North Atlantic. You’re thinking “why in the name of all that’s holy have I booked tickets to see a hip hop gig?”

Then when your alarm wakes you up at 5am for work the next morning and you’re so tired you turn the radio on instead of turning the alarm off and every inch of you aches because you’ve been bouncing around and you didn’t get enough sleep BUT you still have a stupid grin on your face and a Public Enemy shaped ear-worm ringing in your head – then you’ll have your answer and you’ll know you’ve been at a great gig the night before.

Sunday night was our first visit to the new Cardiff venue The Tramshed

I think it may just what The ‘ Diff needed in terms of music venue. Just the right size between the smaller Globe and Clwb Ifor, and the horrible ginormous aircraft hanger that is the Motorpoint.

Fully equipped with a cloakroom, viewing balcony, bars up and downstairs and a cracking sound system is a little gem. The only issue I can see is parking – and then only when it’s raining. Like it was on Sunday. Boy did it rain. Il pleut comme une vache qui pisse. On a corregated roof.

So as the steam rose off us like a Pontypool scrummage on a wet Friday night we waited for the band and hoped they could raise our spirits from the near dead.

Take a moment and think what you might get from a live hip hop gig?

Did you think of a hooded dreadlocked Flava Flav doing circuits of the stage on a hover board?

Did you imagine marines guarding the stage

and getting down to do press ups

Or of rock hard rastas leaping into the audience (followed reluctantly by the security staff) to eject beer throwing morons (for that is indeed what happened)

Of Chuck D’ belting it out

Of fist-bumps and high-fives

Of hip-hop congas around Hendrix style guitar moves

Of audience participation and a bouncing mosh-pit

Of the best scratching DJ you’ve ever seen

And of a venue so damn hot in every sense that Flava Flav started to dish out water

Well – I can tell you that we got all that and more. This was more than a gig – it was a show.

If anyone ever says hip hop is boring just point them in the direction of Public Enemy. These boys know how to party.

A fantastic set by a brilliant band – do catch them if you get a chance.  Highly recommended

Day of the Depot

After seeing Spectre last week and being very taken with the opening Mexico City set “Day of the Dead” scene we decided to make an effort to get out to a Halloween party. A quick scan of what was on in Cardiff and we decided to give The Depot’s “Day of the Depot” a bash:

As it was a last minute call we had nothing in the way of Halloween cozzies to wear so there followed a mad dash into town on Saturday morning and a tour around every charity shop the ‘diff had to offer, trying to find something suitable to make Spectre-themed outfits.

We were aiming for this:

And I have to admit a certain chuffed-ness that with just a few hours to do it and by rummaging in charity shops and pound shops we got quite close:

Now the tickets for the “Day of the Depot” event included big screen coverage of the Rugby World Cup Final but we wimped out of that as a whole afternoon and a whole night on the alcho-pops is beyond me these days – although the Mrs could probably manage it.

We got there at around 8 pm by which time things had morphed into a full-blown Halloween party:

We arrived stone-cold sober and in our own gang of two to find that the party was slowly getting started again after the rugby and the Depot, being a big, pretty cavernous space, was just beginning to fill up with the evening crowd looking for a bit of spooky fun. So we were a little trepidatious to be honest. It looked like it could easily be a luke warm affair (Luke Warmaffair? wasn’t he in Star Wars?) and we could be set for an early night after all.

We needn’t have worried as, far from being the only fancy-dressers in the village, fancy dress was the norm for the night (the night norm? the evening standard?) and from the first zombie attack (actually a very nice squaddie who spotted our awkwardness and started chatting to us to break the ice) everything rattled along at a great clip. My theory is that fancy-dress makes people feel incognito and strips them somewhat of their inhibitions. That and alcohol. Alcohol definitely helps.

The place was abuzz with people having a great time. There were zombie congas and table-top dancing. The DJ was hitting just the right groove of floor-filling music and everyone was in a party mood.
So we chatted and chatted with loads of dead celebs and off-kilter movie characters. We met the teams from Dodgeball:

We had a hug from a bunch of zombie
Tele-tubbies:

We met Lilo and Stitch with Daenerys Targaryen and her leetle dragons :

The gang from “The Wizard of Oz” were there (poor Dorothy has let herself go):

There were cuddly werewolves:

And Daphne and the rest of Scooby-Doo’s pesky gang turned up:

We even meet Johnny Rotten and Vivienne Westwood (although maybe that’s just what I wanted them to be – I’m not sure it’s what they came as):

You might have noticed that at some point in the evening Her Wifeness ditched the mask and went for a full face-paint job:

which was done (totally gratis!) by the lovely ladies at Shelly Drew-it-on who had been on the go all day and were pretty knackered by the time we to them.

But they still managed to do a fab job:

It kind of lost the Spectre look but it did mean wifee had a fabulous full-on Mexican-stylee day-of-the-dead look going on which was appreciated by the passing Mariachi:

There was food on offer from various vendors including the lush Meat the Greek, A Lot of Waffle, Goodfillas and fabulous wood-fired pizza from Doughboys. We went for the latter and loved both their Margarita and their hot (I mean Hot!) Chilli Americano:

And then to top it all they had a live band who also played a great bunch of floor-fillers:

After that it was on to town for a night-cap of the living dead. St Mary street looked full of zombies:

But then we realised that was just the usual Saturday night crowd!

All in all a fantastic night’s fun and another great night out in the ‘diff.

It’s a big well done from me to The Depot for getting Halloween spot on.

Green Man

We bit the bullet and headed off to the Green Man festival for the first time this year. A great line-up in the rolling Brecon hills in glorious August. What could possibly go wrong?
Our girls, not at all happy that the ‘rents were gate-crashing their festival, needed to be sorted out first so I dropped them off on the Wednesday.

The weather was not looking too promising. In fact, as they say in France, “Il pleut comme vache qui pisse“.

We headed up on the Thursday and the rain had eased off a bit even giving us a rainbow – a sign? Or false hope for dry weather?

We rented ourselves a trolley named James (a trolley with a name – how middle class is that? My school mates would kick lumps out of me) and bundled our gear into the glamping tents provided (at eye watering cost) by Hotel Bell Tent.

We hit the food stalls and had a fab tartiflet and sausage washed down with an american IPA and a german wheatbeer from the beer festival tent

As we wandered past the Rough Trade tent the sounds of Scritti Politti on vinyl  drew us in and we spent an enjoyable hour browsing the records and books of that and the other sales tents

Later that evening we caught Leftfield in Far Out tent – they struck me at first as very Kraftwerk-lite but as the set moved on I realised they were so much more than that – a brilliant set full of dub trance  reggae.

After the brilliant Leftfield party we gathered outside around a huge wood fire

and checked out the wishes posted by the giant Green Man sculpture, soaking up the festival vibes

My favorite wish: “I wish James would behave better” “I wish you’d shut up”

Suitably chilled we dropped into the Chai-Wallah tent to indulge in a couple of whiskey coffees and refuelled, we danced till the early hours

Totally knackered we got a surprisingly good night’s sleep in our little bell tent. All in all a pretty brilliant start to the weekend.

Even though this glamping lark sounds posh it’s still just sleeping in a tent so we were up with the dawn to the smell of muddy grass and had a quick trot across the wet field to the showers (luxury!) Human again after a hot shower we set off in search of breakfast and discovered bacon and chorizo baps, churros and fabulous coffee. Heaven!
Later in the day reinforcements arrived in the shape of my browd and his missus and we collected their wristbands from Steve Buscemi (I’m sure it was him)

Then we found a spot and sat sipping Bloody Marys and smuggled Vodka and Tonics.  Even the cheapest smuggled Vodka tastes like Grey Goose. We kicked back and watched the Zephyr Wolves on the main stage.

We bought hats and headresses (almost) and spotted the daughters wandering about looking glitterified and fab.

Later we scarfed some excellent wood fired pizzas (as recommended by our friends at Ffwrnes Pizza) and handmade by genuine Neapolitan Italians in a huge oven mounted inside a landrover (“if you find this Landie please return to Naples”) then we headed off to watch the lovely lovely Rozi Plain play in the Walled Garden.

Did I mention how lovely she is? Lovely.

In the Walled Garden it felt like every one else was smoking weed and whatever – while our group was mainlining Ibuprofen. Old age and bad connections are a bitch. I’m waiting for my man. Or a delivery from Boots.

Every festival throws up at least one unexpected pleasure and this time it was Tom Robinson band – his new stuff is bloody excellent corruscating rock – doing the job god put him here for!
War Baby is such an outstanding song
and we all joined in on the chorus of Glad to be Gay
And bless him we were all in tears at the end – not just him

Best set of the day I think went to the wonderful Villagers (the tight walk rope walking fool) accompanied by Brecon thunder and glowering skies. There’s a moment in “So Naive” when the voice, trumpet and keyboard hit the same note that is truly transcendental. Or the fragrant smoke wafting around may have affected my thinking. Whatever – it was a moment.

The weather turned nasty and the rain came in with a vengeance

The headliners Hot Chip produced a fab set finishing off with a cover of Brooce’s “Dancing in the Dark” together with giant bouncing balloons and we headed off to out tents blissed out and loved up

Saturday arrived, the sun came out for a while and it all became a blur, Colorama did a set, this guy was wandering around:

Greg Davis segued into Marika Hackman segued into Markie Mark. Wait… I mean Mark E Smith.

I caught the interview with the Fallmeister in the “Spoken Word” tent and he was just as funny, caustic, abrasive and difficult as expected
Treading a fine line between truth and friction. Stewart Lee’s celebrity question about writing postcards as Edward Bear pushed him over the edge and he walked out, mercifully cutting the interview short. Then there was rain, rain and more rain

We caught some bluegrass and a set from the Bat for Lashes and Toy collaboration called….. not Sex BaBomb but Sex Witch in the Far Out tent who created a good loud shoe-gazey noise

Then it was back to the Mountain Stage for Charles Bradley who was totally irresistible and got me up and dancing to his infectious James Brownesque chunes

A quick change for dry clothes and it was back out to watch Television doing the whole Mark E Smith album – err I mean Marquee Moon album. As we watched, smoke filled bubbles drifted over the Mountain Stage  recreating our blissed out experience of seeing the same live set at Primavera in Barcelona just over a year ago – the weather was a bit shinier there though.

It was wild wet and windy by the time Super Furry Animals came on for the headline set. As Gruff sang the words “Hello Sunshine” I swear the heavens responded with a flash of lightening and a crack of thunder. Mother Nature was having none of it and the rain came down heavier and heavier. The Furrys were as wonderful as ever performing a giant set in front of an adoring home crowd

At the end of the set we trudged off to find some after hours fun but it was so muddy the Chai Wallah tent was almost impossible to get in to – especially in my dancing shoes.
The light-weights with me all went back to their respective tents but I plowed on,  catching the James Blake DJ set in the Far Out tent where I  had one of the funniest moment of the weekend as I spotted my daughters in the crowd. The initial friendly wave from them followed by the look of horror as they thought I was about to join them was priceless. Remember Dad – don’t cramp our style!

Soaked to the bone I made it back to the tent at about 2:30am only to be woken again at 5am by the rain deciding to dial it up to eleven. To call it torrential doesn’t even come close.

Sunday morning came and more rain and we decided that was enough fun for one weekend so loaded up the car and – with apologies to our co-campers we decided to make a run for it back to Cardiff

A few hours in a centrally-heated house, a warm shower and a hot meal later we realised what a schoolboy error we had made. Sunday evening was the night for Matthew E White, Father John Misty and St Vincent! What in the name of holy God had we done. Suddenly starkly aware we had committed the crime of cowardice on the face of a bit of wet weather we jumped back into the car and headed back into the storm.

The sun came out briefly for the wonderful Matthew E White.

But it was Father John Misty we were there for. And then, to the strains of J’Taime and the scent of sex in the air Father John was on stage. Larger than life, bantering with the crowd and every inch the love-God both the female and male fans hoped he would be, he was magnificent. I can honestly say it was one of the best sets I have ever seen. Charismatic, charming, funny, brilliant lyrics, great voice. Just awesome. To think the world almost only knew him as a folk drummer. A stark and sobering thought

And that was that. We never made St Vincent but by all accounts she was brilliant. And picking the girls up the following day was like extracting the troops from ‘nam

But Jim Morrissey was wrong – we did make it out alive

Glee Club – Rob Delaney

Daughter 2 is finally through the school grinder with her last exam firmly in the rear view mirror so we decided to celebrate with a night at The Glee watching Rob Delaney.

We always enjoy a night it at The Glee Club. It invariably feels warm and friendly, totally unlike similar clubs I’ve visited in Manchester or London which have been harsher or more hipster in turn. The fact it feels a lot like the image I conjured up as a kid from my mum and dad’s description of the cabaret nights at the old “Double Diamond” club in Caerphilly if anything makes it feel even more cosy and enjoyable.
On arrival we were led to allocated seats at the back of the room which initially had me fearing the worst but as it turned out the seats weren’t too bad – a bit of a side-on aspect but we were close enough to have a great view of the stage so it didn’t affect the evening at all.
As the doors close at 7:30 and show ends at 10pm they pretty much have a captive audience for food. Who wants to eat at 10:30pm? I mean we’re not Spanish for goodness sake.
Anyway – we duly ordered our food together with a bucket of beer from the bar. The food menu is basic but pretty good. So classic pizzas & burgers all round were the order of the day and very enjoyable it all was too.

The support and main act were fab – the following contains a couple of spoilers so if you’re intending to catch them on tour suffice to say it’s probably the best act I’ve seen at The Glee so highly recommended.

First up for the evening was Hailey Ellis – a comic from Manchester who was very funny with a good line in scatological humor. I particularly liked the image of her hiding in the attic like the “Anne Frank of love”.
Considering that she seemed to be suffering from a heavy cold she did a great job of warming the crowd up for the main act.

Rob Delaney took to the stage as to the manor born, totally confident he gave the impression that he was skillfully weaving comedy gold out of the first thoughts entering his head from the stratosphere. My daughter assured me this wasn’t the case and that the show was carefully stitched together but I guess that’s the skill of it all.

Having an architecture student with us we particularly appreciated his rant about architects, “I choreograph space, am I an artist? am I a mathematician?” Very funny in the circumstances.
He was playfully crude but never to the point of being offensive (well – I’m thick skinned) and has that amazing knack of getting your innermost thoughts down into bite sized phrases. His riff on the brilliance of the NHS for example “if the NHS had a dick I’d suck it” was spot on.

To me this was jazz comedy riffing on funny lines – seeing how close to the edge he could get without tumbling off.
The image of his toddler fixing him with a gimlet-eyed gaze as he filled his nappy to the thought of “all day long, buddy” will stay with me.
All in all  it was a billowing ham blanket of fun.
Highly recommended.

Gaz Coombes

We saw Gaz Coombes at The Gate last night , the second time we’d seen him and at the same venue. The first occasion was to promote his first solo album “Here Come The Bombs” and during that gig he treated us to a medley of Supergrass hits – thrown in to please the crowd.

This time around on the tour to promote the new album “Matador”, Gaz is obviously more confident in his newer material so there was no mention of his former band let alone any playing of past glories and the set was none the weaker for it.

Both Gaz’s albums are outstanding but the new work especially so. To me he’s one of the outstanding talents making music at the moment.Of his solo works I particularly love the monumental “Hurricane” off “Matador” but “Break the Silence” off “Bombs” runs it a close second. Coombes manages the tricky balancing act of combining intimate lyrics with huge vocals. If you haven’t caught his solo stuff yet or are avoiding it because of his previous form with Supergrass then you’re missing out on some great music.

I’ve only ever seen him in small venues (long may that continue) but I’m sure his songs would not be any the worst for sign arena venue. We’ll be at Green Man this year where Gaz is also playing  I wouldn’t miss his set there for the world.
Highly recommended.

Super Furry Animals

SFAOK!!!
Back together again after a six year hiatus the Furrys are on tour and this weekend they played a Kate Bush-ish three night residency at Cardiff Uni Great Hall. So glad they did that instead of one night at the monstrous soulless air-craft hanger that is the Motorpoint Arena. The Great Hall is a great venue, bang on the cusp of big enough to get a huge party going but small enough to retain an illusion of intimacy.

The night started with a great set by The Magic Numbers, the double-sibling-boasting band famous for “This Is A Song”. Lead Romeo Stodart plays a purrrrtty Gibson guitar and he really does play it – the whole band displaying great musicality and some great wigging out. They have a fab sound and got a great rapport going with the warm loved-up crowd, to the point where a few thousand of us sang happy birthday to drummer Sean.

After the shortest of breaks the SFAs arrived, looking lovably grizzledly-grey and sporting fashionable Breaking-Bad style white chemical jumpsuits.

They were joined on stage by a brass section to deliver a mariachi-style Northern Lights

The audience adoration was obvious in the reaction to every track but especially to “Hello Sunshine” where Gruff’s huge twinkly-eyed pause before the immortal line “I’m a minger! You’re a minger too, c’mon minger I want to ming with you” was met with a roof-raising roar.

With the Great Hall stage pimped out like an Esmeralda bus the show was delivered with a spanking seventies-style laser light show and a video backdrop showing a plethora of suitably psychedelic imagery.

Gruff had his full set of prompter cards on display unnecessarily urging us to go Ape Shit – we already were Gruff, we already were!

A truly epic career spanning two hour set took in songs from all the SFAs albums in their bleeping, blooping, psycadelic, vocoder dripping glory.

Pausing to chomp through a packet of crisps on “Receptacle for the Respectable” Gruff ploughed on into “Golden Retriever”  taking the levels of rapture even higher.

The band are obviously Steely Dan fans and their chorus of “he don’t give a fuck about anybody else” turned the Great Hall into the biggest bounciest mosh-pit this side of a Pogues gig.

By the end the band were decked out in full Yeti suits and were going as ape-shit as the crowd.

And then it was over and the lights were up. And there we were, lost on the bypass – would we ever get home?

Who cares – we’d just seen the second coming of the SFAs – at least it’s not the end of the world – roll on Green Man!!

Zervas and Pepper

After their recent tour supporting Deacon Blue, this weekend Zervas and Pepper’s own headline tour reached their hometown of Cardiff with a packed gig at The Globe.
Looking a little worse for wear but as loveable as ever the traditional Cigar Store Indians were present and correct :

The set list for the gig focused on the new album Abstract Heart with a few favorites from Lifebringer and a couple of excellent covers.
The group is undeniably influenced by the “Laurel Canyon” movement and if they ever cast a Joni Mitchell film biog then Katherine Pepper is a dead ringer and has the voice to match while Paul Zervas could pass for a young James Taylor

Abstract Heart brings a “fatter” sound while retaining that glorious sunny laid back California vibe. “Reach Out” for example has the sound of a Joni Mitchell song backed by the Almann Brothers. The track that opened the set,
Miller, has a Desperado-era Eagles feel to it.

The band have grown in confidence since we first saw them at a free gig in Newport and were patently loving the positive feedback they were getting from the crowd. 

They included great covers of Joni Mitchell’s “Don’t Interrupt The Sorrow” and Neil Young’s “Ohio” and the highest praise I can give is that they didn’t feel out of place.
My personal favorite of the night was “Lookout Mountain” but I also loved the
great guitar playing on “King of the Skies”.

The sound is very retro in the best meaning of the phrase and it was really
great to see a band clearly enjoying themselves

They finished with a banging cover of “Born to be Wild” with the full Paul Zervas paisley shirt on display

It was a night to just let the Cardiffonian Sun sound wash over us from such a lovely bunch of musicians who show no affectation at all and are obviously enjoying every minute of the music and the vibe.

A great night.

Villagers

We were out this weekend to catch a couple of gigs as part of a celebration for the wife’s birthday, firstly at The Gate and then a day later at Buffalo Bar.

The Gate Arts Centre in Kepock Street is a lovely old venue that on the inside feels more like a Dutch barn than it does its previous incarnation as a Presbyterian church with its vaulted wooden ceiling and wooden floors.

A glance around the room showed that there was a mixed age audience – and that the venue was set up to be all seated – not something I’m usually a fan of but as it turned out for this particular gig it was perfect.

Luke Sital-Singh
We arrived a touch late to the venue to find Luke Sital-Singh’s support set already underway.  Sital-Singh has such a great voice and a collection of excellent songs that seeing him as support to Villagers was a very enjoyable

Villagers

Connor O’ Brien’s Villagers were the main act of the night and they came on without fanfare. The stage with rose-shaped wall-mounted speakers and turquoise lighting had a very fifties feel that was emphasised by an old-fashioned standard-lamp placed centre stage, an atmosphere which seemed pretty apt for Villagers with their huge double-bass and full-sized harp which was put to excellent use on the opening song “Darling Arithmetic” with beautiful pizzicato

Conor O’ Brien has an amazing voice which he used to thrilling effect throughout the set, allowing it to swoop and soar and holding notes to the point where we were holding our breath. He filled the auditorium with his wonderful vocals.

His lyrics are witty and amusing but also poetic and often challenging and confessional. He doesn’t just wear his heart on his sleeve – this is lyrical open-heart surgery,  baring the soul to stunning effect.

At times his sad yearning words reminded me of the great Jimmy Webb-penned hits of Glenn Campbell like “Witchita Linesman”, the more acerbic tunes like Elvis Costello in his pomp.
The newer work such as “Dawning on me” are wistful and ethereal and scandi-drama cool.

Songs like “So Naive” build from simple hammer-on guitar riffs and ghostly keys to big movie-soundtrack sized epics then fade back to stillness.

Throughout it all it seemed that O’Brien is incapable of singing a bad note key alone a bad song. When I first saw him years ago on “Later” singing “Becoming a Jackal” I didn’t recognise his genius.
In the words of his song “Courage” – “it took a little time”
But tonight I saw it and like the astronauts first sight of the Earthrise it was – “Beautiful. Just beautiful”.

Dim Sŵn

So Saturday evening we all jumped into the old jalopy and headed into town for the latest incarnation of the Sŵn festival – Cardiff’s own city-centre music festival (imagine Barcelona’s PrimaVera with less tapas and more Clarke’s Pies). Actually this was Dim Sŵn, the smaller but perfectly formed little sister of Sŵn – a one-day event with forty bands playing across seven venues.
We intended to base our evening around Cardiff’s hipster central area of Womanby Street, ping-ponging between Clwb Ifor Bach and The Moon Club.

Rozi Plain
First up for us was the wonderfully idiosyncratic Rozi Plain. I hadn’t realised beforehand that Rozi is also a member of “This is the Kit” , a band we loved when we saw them at The Glee Club in Mermaid Quay last year so it was a joy to catch her again tonight.
From the off it was obvious that the band were enjoying themselves with smiles all around. The bassist later told us they were afraid it might be a heavy-rock fest so maybe it was a sign of relief on their part.
Rozi plays (on what appears to be a home-crafted guitar) an almost uncategorisable brand of shoe-gazy pop with nods to Fleetwood Mac’s Albatross-era ambiance. I particularly loved the swooping, swirling keyboard playing of Yoshino Shigihara.
Rozi and the band have a new album “Friends” out next week which I can’t wait to catch on Spotify

Denim Snakes
Next we crossed the alley to catch the set by Denim Snakes – a name so bad that the lead singer apologised for it.
These guys are so loveably naff that my wife asked if they were Australian. Where Rozi Plain’s music was difficult to categorise Denim Snake’s positively rattled with a closet full of musical skeletons. I caught whiffs of The Ramones, Pistols, Clash, Stiff Little Fingers…. you get the point.
They play high-energy garage rock with some great story telling lyrics and typical foot-on-the-monitor rock stylings. I’d hate to live next door to their practice room but I’d definitely book them for a party.
Derivative then but loud and fun – the antithesis of cool, I watched with a big grin on my face.

East India Youth
We crossed back once again to Clwb Ifor Bach for one of the festival headliners – East India Youth. One of those acts which sounds like a band but is actually a single person, in this case the wonder-kid William Doyle.
At first glance, as he set up his stage rig, with his booted, suited, buttoned-down style he reminded me of a Michael Fassbender lookalike auditioning for a Kraftwerk biopic

With enough buttons and dials to look like the control panel for CERN this modern one-man-band generates a massive sound with a low register bass-thrum that rumbles thorough the nether regions. The tone of his music reminds me of Berlin-Era Bowie crossed with Eno and Kraftwerk. His strong voice was as clear as a bell above the electronica in the fashion of Vienna-era Ultravox. He gives good drum-machine and wigs out fantastically whilst paying his bass guitar

But for all the electronica he also plays some wonderfully melodic songs such as “Carousel” and “Heaven, How Long”

And don’t get the idea this is static, boring stuff – Doyle is a ball of fizzing energy and by the end he was stood in the corner, drenched in sweat with a towel round his neck like a prize-fighter. We went all twelve rounds with him and enjoyed every minute of it.

Keys
And so we crossed back once again to the Moon Club for our last set of the night from Keys. With impressive beardage and full-on Welsh accents I was instantly taken with them.

Driven on by the percussion of the ubiquitous Dave Newington, these twin Gretch-toting psych-rockers have their musical influences plainly on display.

A bit of blues, some psycho-billy, plenty of Nick Cave and lots of Americana, as we arrived they were already blasting through a Doorsy gospel-tinged belter and they didn’t let up the pace until there was steam rising from the audience. At the close, to cries from the crowd of “One more song!” it was “Right you fuckers!” and they launched into an impromptu encore and blasted through one last tune.
Easily my favorite band of the night.

The festival played on into the early hours but, satisfied with what we’d had, we staggered out, ears happily abuzz, past the young lad playing ragtime sax to dancing refugees from “10 Feet Tall”, to make our way home

Another great Sŵn event then – roll-on the full fest later in the year.