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7.6.05 Emo Must Die

Out again, Saturday night. The Twisted Folk Tour at Lyric Hammersmith, a baroque music hall encased inside a concrete box on King Street. Opening duo vaguely forgettable noodly acoustic rock. Then Vetiver, which occupy a space on the musical landscape somewhere between CSN&Y and Pet Sounds. This is a good space. Three beardy guitarists, a Girl Of Many Uses (flute, electric bass, double-bass, and other assorted instruments) and a drummer. They had me hooked from the lovely harmonics of "Farther On" and the deep double-bass thrum of "Ooh Papa".

Music like this is always better live, when you can feel the vibrations of the strings in your sinews. It also helps that band member Devendra Banhart is a great improviser, giving "Los Pajaros del Rio" an entire orchestration of background noises and extra verses, carried away and gesturing, then suddenly remembering he had to play the guitar AND sing, and his naughty truant hand stops doing Hindu dance moves and dashes back to the strings before anybody misses it. The only duff song is "Amour Fou", because watching an earnest beardy male do the mouth movements required to sing "Lovelovelovelovelovelovelove" brings to mind attempts of enthusiastic yet clueless college boys to go down on a woman for the first time.

Then came Micah P Hinson, Headliner. Mr Brown and Mr Carey like Hinson; I regard him as the speedbump before the Earlies (Hinson usually opens for them). I thought I would be charitable and give him a try as a headliner. Never again. Hinson is Emo Boy incarnate: pudgy; cult 80s rock shirt (Sonic Youth); baggy-arse jeans; black-rimmed glasses and a collection of small buttons and badges scattered over his person. He putters around stage in a faux-naif unprofessionalism, trying to gain our pity but instead putting me to sleep. Hinson is tolerable when drowned out by his band; but unfortunately his new style is to plink a few strings on his guitar and then bray, unaccompanied, a song's opening verse, with passion, brio and a complete lack of respect for commonly-accepted practices of tunefulness. It did my head in. I left after four songs.

Forthcoming attractions: The Broken Family Band at Cargo on the 14th. Flipron and Misty's Big Adventure in Hoxton Square on the 16th. Both should be cracking gigs, although the combined madness of Flipron and Misty's together in the same room might actually endanger the space-time continuum. Also, delight of delights, I have been given two prime tickets to the great jazz pianist Oscar Peterson at the Royal Albert Hall on 1 July. Now comes the hard part: finding someone to go with, who understands the sublime beauty of this sort of thing. (If you're interested in this Peterson fellow, him playing the Gershwin Songbook remains the most perfect late-night CD ever created.)

For cinephiles, the NFT's July season is going to be... expensive. A Crime season, a Robert Mitchum season, and a Carole Lombard season. Not to miss: Lombard and William Powell (one of the greatest comedic actors ever to grace the screen) in My Man Godfrey. Mitchum in Night Of The Hunter (you ever wonder where 'Love' and 'Hate' across the backs of fingers came from? This film); Cape Fear ("counsilluh"); Angel Face (of which I have already spoken); and Out Of The Past. Lastly, Point Blank on the big screen on 30 June, followed by a Q&A with director John Boorman. I may just expire from joy.

( 9:14 AM )

1 Comments:

I had to be selective for the Mitchum season, so:
Sunday 10 July
Farewell My Lovely
NFT1
6.10pm

Monday 18 July
Thunder Road
NFT2
8.45pm

Sunday 31 July
Mitchum Interviewed
NFT2
6.20pm

Might yet go see Night of the Hunter on BIG SCREEN tho'

Ade

By Anonymous, at 11:42 PM