‘ILL’ with ‘Mold’ at the ‘Manchester Deaf Institute’, 16-6-2018.

‘ILL’s’ gig at the Manchester ‘Deaf Institute’ was a special event to mark the release of their debut album, ‘We Are ILL’ – and for this one night the usually four-piece band became five.  The album had been recorded in stages over quite a time, during which guitarist Tamsin Middleton replaced Sadie Noble.  As a result, both appeared on the record, and it was only fitting that both were on stage for the launch.  On the night Noble (introduced as the “Sadie Lady”) mostly provided vocals and even when she did play guitar she played Middleton’s – who took on a temporary role as drummers-mate whilst she did so.  The gig was at least as much a celebration as a straightforward rock concert – a feeling enhanced by the inclusion of drag queen Marilyn Misandry as compere (and gloriously incompetent karaoke-ist) – which resulted in a very special atmosphere.

Fig.2 Marilyn Misandry comperes (credit: Hera says Team)

Many people go to rock gigs but don’t bother with the support acts, preferring to arrive just in time for the headliner.  This has always struck us as a pity.  Fair enough, if you have heard the backing band(s) before and know you don’t like them – but otherwise, aside from the fact that you have paid to see the whole show and might as well get your money’s worth – and getting there early makes you sure of a good spot close to the stage – support acts are one of the passports to discovering new music.  Two of Hera’s favourite bands first came to our attention in support slots:  ‘Bloxx’ who we initially encountered backing ‘Pale Waves’ and ‘ILL‘ themselves, who we came across when they backed another all-time favourite, the ‘Screaming Females’.  Better still, just once in a while, you get a kind of chain reaction in which you go to see a band headline that you initially liked as a support act and they, in turn, introduce you to a support act of their own which you also fall for.  It may not happen often but it most definitely did at the ‘Deaf Institute gig.

Fig. 4 Mold (credit: Hera Says Team)

‘Mold’ are an all-male band and so really outside Hera’s scope, but hey, we’re not sexist.  This is another idiosyncratic outfit, and we can see why ‘ILL’ would want them on board (they have indeed opened for ‘Mold’ in the past).  Imagine what ‘Glam Rock’ might look like if you only had the negatives.  They perform heavily made up with black eyes and lips, and with their faces otherwise daubed with red lipstick, something in which Marilyn Misandry followed them.  They all wore black and had black hair.  The effect was a sort of dark camp, or perhaps it might be truer to say “reverse camp”.  In fact, they are not a million miles away visually from Arthur Brown, self-styled “god of hellfire” in his massive 1968 hit ‘Fire‘ – albeit without the flaming head-dress.  ‘Mold’ are very much about style, but by no means completely so.  The substance comes in the music itself.  It is heavily Captain Beefheart influenced, with jangly, discordant guitar, heavy thudding bass and often deep pitched vocals, intertwined with screams that can occasionally sound almost psychotic.  Songs appear to switch on and off and become almost random at times.  At others, they pulse with power.  There is a sense of heavy-duty Art-Rock, mixed with in-your-face-Punk, but at the same time, there is a background feeling that somewhere tongues are firmly in cheeks and that ‘Mold’ might also be sending either us or themselves (or quite possibly both) up more than a tiny bit.  Certainly, one thing they are not is precious, and nor can they be described for one second as ordinary.  They are (perhaps above all things) the antidote to pretentious Indie.  And yet at the end of their set, you realise that you have just witnessed something lifted straight out of classical music: the song cycle.  ‘Mold’ do not perform a conventional series of separate songs.  They play a suite.  There is no break between each piece and no announcement of titles, let alone banter with the audience.  They simply start their set, play the entire cycle, and leave.  It is a beautiful irony that uses a 19th-century musical form to subvert a modern one.  It is almost as though someone was using the songs of Martin Codax or John Dowland to send up Schumann.

Fig 5: Sadie Noble is ILLs guitarist one more time (credit: Hera Says Team)

And then came the headliners – ‘ILL’.  Oh we love this band.  First impressions are so often deceptive, but isn’t it great when a good first impression is reinforced, not contradicted, by future experience.  We were blown away by ‘ILL’ when we saw them supporting the ‘Screaming Females’ at the Soup Kitchen recently, but you never do know.  Was that magical performance a one-off fluke?  Would we find them on second acquaintance where (to misquote Browning) they never could recapture the first fine careless rapture?  No, is the short answer.  When freed from another band’s shadow and bathed in limelight that was truly their own, they just shone more brightly (and to make sure of that, their drum kit was festooned with fairy lights).  We gave a detailed account of their sound and overall mission in our review of the Soup Kitchen gig so we will not trespass on the reader’s patience by writing it all out again, but they were the same glorious genre defying mix of punk attitudes and shouty vocals, biting political comment and self-depreciating humour.  They can be funny, but they can also be witty, and the two are not the same thing.  We are all too often told that women cannot do witty.  Well, if anyone has told ‘ILL’, the reply was probably hilarious, but unprintable.  They can be relentless.  They can be darkly sinister to the point of menacing.  They can be anarchic, hypnotic, driving, gentle, brash, psychedelic, brooding, New Age and just plain Rock and Roll.  They can even occasionally be all this and more in the same song.  They are also consummate show-women who put on an exciting live performance which is as gripping to watch as to listen to.  And none of this would count for anything if it was not for one other thing: their standard of musicianship is superb.  They are thoroughly rehearsed, note perfect and rhythmically tight as a drum.  Try playing music that sometimes deliberately teeters on the edge of chaos when you have not got it timed to the millisecond and you will end up with a heap on the floor.  ‘ILL’, on the other hand, fly.  They almost make it look easy, but an awful lot of work must have gone into producing that illusion of nonchalance.

Fig.6 ILL (credit: Hera Says Team)

You can tell a lot about the professionalism of a band by how they cope with the technical glitches that are inevitable with temperamental instruments, amplifiers and other electronic equipment.  As someone who played in bands for years I can tell you that there are few things more gut wrenchingly embarrassing than having several hundred paying customers staring at you and muttering whilst you try to persuade some overpriced gadget to work.  Some bands panic and stand transfixed like the proverbial rabbit in the headlights – but when faced with a couple of what must have been deeply irritating issues, ‘ILL’ just got on with it.  There was a recurring feedback problem for the first few songs, but the band calmly played on (well as calmly as ‘ILL’ do anything) whilst it was tracked down and cured.  Noble broke a string when playing Middleton’s guitar.  No problem, it was handed off stage in exchange for another, with most of the audience barely noticing that a white Les Paul had turned into a black Strat.

As the gig was organised specifically to celebrate the release of ‘ILL’s’ album, ‘We Are ILL’, it came as no surprise that they performed the entire thing – including their majestic, 10 minute, near ‘Prog Rock’ masterpiece ‘Slithering Lizards’ (when you get the record, play this track loud on decent headphones – it is astonishing).  But the album was not the whole set.  They also found time for a few other songs, including new track ‘Kick Him Out the Disco’, and their older, anthemic ‘Kremlin’: a song in support of female Russian punk band ‘Pussy Riot’ who have been harassed, and in some cases imprisoned by the Putin regime.

As well as knowing how to put on a show, ‘ILL’ also know how to pace one so that it reaches its peak right at the end and duly “leaves them wanting more”.  The last track on the album is ‘Hysteria’, a dark and biting critique of the religious, political and social pressures that seek to control female fertility and sexuality.  It had also been the last song of their set the last time we saw them on stage and we had assumed that it would be again.  It certainly makes a storming finale.  That would have been too simple, though.  We did, indeed, get ‘Hysteria’ as the last of the album songs, but it turned out that that was not all.  There was one more new song still to come: ‘Drunk Fight’.  And with it all hell broke loose, with singer/keyboardist Harri Shanahan charging off into the audience, microphone in hand, still singing flat out, only to return to try and strangle bassist Whitney Bluzma (who played on regardless).  It was breathtaking.  “Always leave them wanting more” is one thing, but to leave them wanting more even when they have had more, you need to be a bit special.  It was great to see Sadie Noble play with ‘ILL’ one more time, but she has left the torch to be carried on by a great crew.  Bluzma and drummer Fiona Ledgard form a rhythm section that makes the ground shake.  Tasmin Middleton is a fine guitarist who has turned the plectrum slide into an art-form. Shanahan herself is mistress of a dark synth style, whilst forming a great vocal partnership with Bluzma.  She also provides the band with a wonderfully quixotic front-woman who is sometimes jokey, sometimes angry, sometimes extrovert and sometimes seems to be skating on the outer edge of sanity.

Fig. 7 Harri Shanahan strangles Whitney Bluzma (credit: Hery Says Team)

‘ILL’ are not a good band.  They are not even a great band in the making.  They are a great band already, period – and a great band who now have a great album to showcase what they can do.  They make you think, but they do it as great entertainers, not as po-faced preachers.  In the last few weeks they have started to get major media interest, with a double page spread locally in the ‘Manchester Evening News’, and nationally in ‘Q’ magazine.  Such attention is richly deserved, and hopefully, it is just the beginning.  Like ‘Glove’, ‘ILL’ might not appeal much to fans of plastic pop and ‘We Are ILL’ might not be your first choice of record to buy Grandma for her birthday.  On the other hand, if you are Grandma and you buy it for your rebellious teenage granddaughter, she is going to think you are the coolest Grandma ever.

Hera Says.

‘Hera Says’ also has a Facebook page at:   https://www.facebook.com/hera.saysso.3

Fig.8 “We are ill” cover

‘Lo Moon’, with ‘Boniface’ at the ‘Night and Day Cafe, Manchester, 19-5-2018.

‘Lo Moon’ began as something of a mystery band who had been on the public radar for some time, but took a year or so to properly emerge from the shadows.  Their gorgeous debut single ‘Loveless‘ came out in September 2016, and two more excellent singles, ‘This Is It‘ and ‘Thorns‘ emerged in 2017, but although it was well known that there was an album in the pipeline it was not until this February that it was finally released: titled simply ‘Lo Moon’, although it also has ‘LM1’ on the cover as if intended as the first of a ‘Led Zeppelin’ style numbered series.

Fig. 2 Crisanta Baker (Credit Hera Says Team)

The band was founded by singer/guitarist Matt Lowell, and also includes guitar/keyboardist Samuel Stewart, the son of former ‘Eurythmics’ guitar/keyboardist Dave Stewart, and Siobhan Fahey of ‘Bananarama’ and ‘Shakespear’s Sister’ fame.  However, it qualifies for attention from ‘Hera Says’ because of female bassist Crisanta Baker, who also provides keyboards and backing vocals, along with Stewart.  Officially that is all, since drummer Sterling Laws, does not seem to be regarded as a full member.  Nevertheless, as he has been a long-standing presence, they are in effect a three piece plus one.  Lowell does much of the songwriting, but the other two collaborate with him, and Baker is credited with co-writing three of the ten songs on the album.

The Night and Day Cafe gig – the first date on ‘Lo Moon’s’ British tour – was the first time we had seen them live, and given the amount of attention they have received during their rise, we were quite surprised to see them in such a small venue.  Certainly, the place was packed.  This was an unusually warm May, and it was soon very hot in the room, but the atmosphere was electric.  The audience was rather different from many of the Indie gigs around the city, consisting mostly of 30 to 40 something couples, but one can see how that would be a market to whom ‘Lo Moon’s’ gentle rock and beautiful romanticism would particularly appeal.

Fig. 3 Boniface (Credit: Hera Says Team)

The band were supported by ‘Boniface’, a four-piece from Winnipeg, Canada.  They are an all-male outfit and so outside Hera’s remit, but they were good, and matched ‘Lo Moon’ themselves very well, without in any way being clones.  Indeed, the only real similarity, was an air of slightly spacey gentleness, as seen, for example, in their song ‘I Will Not Return as a Tourist‘, albeit alternating with slightly heavier material, like ‘Phantom Limbs‘.  For reasons that pass understanding, the very word ‘gentle’ is sometimes seen as a criticism when talking about a rock act, but that is nonsense.  Indeed for music to show subtlety and beauty is a joy, not a failing and both bands are great exponents.

‘Lo Moon’ started off to great applause with ‘This Is It’ – which many would regard as their best song.  They then worked through the rest of the album, with at least one cover version thrown in.  Unlike some bands, though, they did not just slavishly follow the recorded versions of their songs, but put in enough variation to make each one fresh, however instantly recognisable.  The bulk of the audience were clearly familiar with the album, so each song got an enthusiastic cheer of recognition. And the performances were flawless, even though Baker, in particular, looked nervous when they first came on.

The band saved the best till last with a glorious two-song encore.  The first was an exquisite solo version of album closer ‘All In‘ – performed by Lowell sitting alone at a keyboard – and this was followed by the full band returning to the stage to play the hauntingly beautiful ‘Loveless‘.  It was magical and a perfect end to a lovely evening.

Matt Lowell has a delicate – at times almost feminine – singing voice, whilst Boniface’s Micah Visser’s voice is similarly gentle, with an air of yearning.  Both voices are vital to the two bands’ attractive sounds, but such voices are all too easily sabotaged by poor sound engineering.  ‘Hera Says’ has been running something of a quiet campaign on this issue since its foundation.  For there seems to be a tendency, especially in the smaller venues, to put quantity over quality in a big way.  In other words, there is a tendency to try to make a gig’s overall volume as loud as the P.A. will allow, at the expense of the detailed sound balance.  In such a battle, where a human voice is competing with electric instruments and amplified drums, it will always be the singer who looses, not least because vocal mikes feedback so easily if over amplified.  Worse still, in trying to compete at all, singers can strain their voices which, at best, will make them sound far less musical and, at worst, may actually cause physical damage, especially if repeated night after night.  Often, though, the degree to which the rest of a band needs to be mixed down to allow the vocals to shine is quite small, so that even the most volume-hungry crowd will hardly notice.  What they will spot, however, is the dramatic improvement in the performance, which is surely what they really came to see.  Whoever was on the mixing board for Lo Moon’s gig at the Night and Day Cafe understood this completely, and what a huge difference that made.  The sound quality they gave us was superb, with every nuance of Lowell, Baker and Stewart’s singing clearly audible, and yet with the band as a whole still perfectly loud enough to please a rock audience.  Well done; Hera applauds you and the gig was so much more enjoyable as a result.

Hera Says.

‘Hera Says’ also has a Facebook page at:   https://www.facebook.com/hera.saysso.3

Photo 3: The Lo Moon album cover

Courtney Barnett, with ‘Loose Tooth’ at the Albert Hall, Manchester, 4-6-2018.

Long ago in the mists of time (2012) in Melbourne, Australia, a talented 24-year-old singer/songwriter called Courtney Barnett decided it was time she made a record.  She had never made one before and did not have a record contract.  She had been in a number of bands since arriving in the city from Hobart sometime before, but this was to be a solo effort.  The result was a near album-length EP with the curious title: ‘I’ve Got A Friend Called Emily Ferris’.  The record started, as Barnett has continued, as a set of songs that often find their inspiration in the everyday.  They are shot through with deadpan humour and are often very direct.  Let’s face it, how many other budding rock stars would have the guts to have as the first lines of the first song (‘Lance Jr.’) on their first record, the words:

 

“I masturbated to the songs you wrote ……………………………….

“Doesn’t mean I like you, man.  It just helps me get to sleep

And it’s cheaper than temazepam”

 

Still no takers for a record deal offer then, but this was a woman with initiative.  She got 1,000 CD copies pressed with money borrowed from her grandmother and set out to market the thing herself.  Rather than writing personal letters, or hauling bags of CDs around record shops, however, she hit on the idea of creating a mythical record company to make herself look professionally backed.  She designed an almost childishly innocent looking logo of a bottle spilling its contents and Milk! Records was born.

Fig: The Milk! logo

The logo was all it did have at first.  It existed only in Barnett’s imagination and its base was her bedroom.  Even her girlfriend – now wife – fellow singer/songwriter Jen Cloher, was sceptical at first, but it worked and was soon handling her music as well as Barnett’s.  Cloher was already an established artist and Barnett’s career soon exploded (spotting their split-second cameos in each other’s videos is quite a good game), which meant that their imaginary record company became a real force.  They ran it together and to “share the love” began to take on other acts and turn Milk! into something of an artists’ co-operative.  As a result, Barnett and Cloher became the locomotives hauling other acts into the limelight, not least because as they toured, both at home and increasingly abroad, there was scope for other Milk! artists to go with them as support acts.  Naturally, the love flows both ways, not just giving these artists valuable exposure, but showing audiences music they might not otherwise have encountered, and some of the Milk! stable are truly wonderful.  We in Manchester have already been treated this year to Anika Ostendorf, who performs as “Hachiku“ and supported Cloher when she played the ‘Deaf Institute on Valentine’s Day, and Barnett’s own gig at the Albert Hall introduced labelmates ‘Loose Tooth’.

The latter are a three-piece: a man and two women.  Drummer Etta Curry doubles as lead singer for much of the time.  Nellie Jackson is guitarist and backing singer, whilst the Y chromosome belongs to bassist Luc Dawson, who also takes lead vocal slots.  Milk! aficionados will know them for their 7 song (2016) EP ‘Saturn Returns‘, but most of the Manchester audience had probably not heard of them before (and should be grateful that they now have).

Fig 3: Loose Tooth (Credit: Hera Says Team)

They are a fascinating band – partly straight rock, but with a tendency to minor keys which add a good deal of atmosphere.  They also run counter to gender stereotypes in their playing styles.  Good drummer/singers are rare, but there have been several over the years, with a disproportionate number being women.  We might cite cases from Karen Carpenter and Shelia E, to present day exponents such as Casey Sowa (Strange Relations) and Collette Williams (Rews).  In general, though, people expect women to have more gentle playing and singing styles than men and Sowa, for example, has a voice of almost chorister-like purity, even while drumming hard.

Curry, however, did not quite get the “gentle” memo.  To be sure, her voice tends to be heavily treated with reverb, but it still remains quite strident.  This is no criticism.  It adds power to the band’s sound – just don’t expect cute, and her drum sound is also quite brash.  Jackson’s guitar playing is still more so.  She plays relatively simple guitar parts, often just strumming bar chords, sometimes exclusively using down strokes of the plectrum.  Again, though, she has a hard-edged, jangling sound, much helped by distortion and her semi-hollow Rickenbacker 330.  She also provides backing vocals, again in quite a strident voice, but still in close harmony with Curry.  By contrast, the stereotype might assume that bassist Luc Dawson would be more strident still, but no.  He shares the lead vocal duties with Curry, but his voice is the epitome of gentleness and control.  His bass style is rapid-fire, but again strangely gentle.  Whilst Jackson’s guitar takes the direct line, Dawson’s bass orbits and weaves around it.  The result is extremely effective once you get the idea that they effectively have a rhythm guitarist paired to lead bass, not lead guitar.

‘Saturn Returns’ is a great record and the band played several of its best tracks at the Albert Hall, most notably ‘Everything Changes’ and ‘Bites will Bleed‘.  At first, there may have been a technical issue with Curry’s foldback, as she seemed to be struggling to stay on note.  It is next to impossible to sing well when you can’t hear your own voice.  But the problem was soon sorted and they played a great set.  Interspersed with the familiar there were a number of songs which were new to me.  Not all of the titles were announced, but ‘Loose Tooth’ have a full album, ‘Keep Up‘ coming out on 3rd August and these were presumably sneak previews.  If so the record should be good.  Certainly, their final song was the title track ‘Keep On‘, which was released as a single two days later  and is well worth a listen.  It is rather jollier than the EP tracks, but still more than just a happy pop tune.  Curry and Jackson provided fast-paced duet vocals which had something of a 1970s ‘Martha and the Muffins’ feel, whilst Dawson added softer interludes in a distinctly Peter Gabriel like voice.

Courtney Barnett has gone from obscure open mike nights to international star over just a few short years and the degree to which she has risen still takes people by surprise.  As a result, when her Manchester appearance was first announced it quickly sold out, and it had to be moved to the Albert Hall, to provide more capacity.  It sold out again and the audience was both enthusiastic and wonderfully varied – ranging in age from teens to people in their seventies.  Barnett is openly gay (her wife Jen Cloher was in the same row as us in the audience) and there was a loyal LBGTQ following present, but even the same-sex couples ranged from early twenties to late middle age, and there were a good many family groups.

 

Courtney Barnett. (Credit: Hera says Team)

The hall itself is a beautiful space, something Barnett acknowledged from the mike.  It was the city’s Edwardian Methodist Central Hall and, although it has now been restored as a concert venue, it retains much of the feel of a chapel, including its organ and stained glass windows.  The latter, of course, colour the light passing through them and this far north in June it was still full daylight when the gig began.  During Loose Tooth’s set, and on into Barnett’s, however, there was a gradual shift from tinted natural, to fully coloured electric light.  The effect was magical.  Barnett’s new album, ‘Tell Me How You Really Feel’ had come out the previous month and instead of the cheerful cartoons that she has usually drawn to serve as record covers, this one has a ghostly, metallic looking photographic self-portrait, tinted the blood red of a darkroom safe-light.  The gig light-show followed this minimalist approach.  There were no lasers and few flashing lights.  For the most part, there were just stark red floods, sometimes giving way to blue, purple or green.  In addition, most of the lights were behind the musicians and this backlighting often put their faces in darkness.  The effect could be positively eerie and the green lighting, in particular, left Barnett’s face the ghostly mask of a ‘Wizard of Oz’ style wicked witch – quite unlike her usual rather cuddly image.  It seems that less really can be more in such matters, at least when your lighting woman is a true artist.

 

Fig 05 Ding dong the witch is certainly not dead (Credit: Hera Says Team)

In the past Barnett has usually toured with a three-piece band – collectively known as the CB3 – with herself, bassist Bones (Andrew) Sloane and drummer Dave Mudie.  This time, however, three became four with the addition of Katie Harkin on guitar and keyboards.  Interestingly, Harkin had two distinct on-stage bases.  Her keyboards were set at the rear of the stage, but she also had a mike and her guitar pedals at the front, to Barnett’s right.  As she did not play guitar for the first few songs, audience members who had spotted Cloher began excited speculation that she might be going to join Barnett for a song or two.  Sadly, that was not to be, but Barnett still had a band that complimented her perfectly.  Sloane and Mudie, in particular, have been with her since the beginning and Sloane’s almost liquid, swinging bass is the perfect foil for Barnett’s often jagged guitar.  Her own playing style is fascinating.  She learnt on an acoustic and hated the rasping sound of a plectrum on strings.  As a result, she stuck to strumming and fingerpicking and has continued to do so even though she now plays an electric guitar most of the time.  Her strumming tends to be done with downward flicks of her fingers, rather than by rotating the whole hand from the wrist, but it is her fingerpicking technique that is most uniquely her own.  She braces her index finger against her thumb and then uses it as though the nail was a plectrum.  It looks odd to anyone who plays guitar, but my goodness it works for her.

Barnett has become a toweringly good guitarist and has a marvellous way with a solo.  A lot of her best solo work has actually been playing lead for Cloher, but she certainly doesn’t sell her own material short.  Her solo style might, perhaps, be described as “nerve-wracking”.  She gives the impression that she is playing the guitar equivalent of the stream of consciousness novel.  The notes sometimes seem almost random and give the tense feeling that the whole thing might collapse at any second.  Yet it never does.  She always gets it to a proper resolution and back to the main theme right on the beat.  It is just fascinating to watch how she does it.  In recent years she has joined the growing ranks of modern-day fans of Fender’s once much neglected ‘Jaguar’ guitar, and she played two different ones at the Manchester gig.  The ‘Jag’ gives her an even more jangly tone, but it also gives her a whammy bar and she has taken to it in a big way.  In the wrong hands, this can be a great way of making a guitar sound (and often actually be) out of tune.  But in Barnett’s, it can make the instrument sob, scream and howl.  She could sound deeply sinister at times but almost caressing at others.  She often played with her eyes shut, or completely covered by her long hair, and clearly became so engrossed in the music that she appeared quite surprised by the applause at the end of a song.  In fact, she never has been a great talker to audiences.  This was something that Nellie Jackson, who acts as front-woman for ‘Loose Tooth’, was better at, or more willing to do.  Over the years Barnett has become far more media savvy and shines in interviews where she was once rather bashful but, on stage, she will still come out of a blistering solo to a storm of applause and just give a rather startled sounding “oh, thanks’ before plunging into the next song.  From some that might look aloof, but somehow from Barnett it is charmingly modest.

Fig 5: Courtney Barnett in Manchester (Credit: Hera Says Team)

Her singing voice is less of a triumph than her guitar work, but frankly, it doesn’t matter.  Barnett stands in a long tradition of rock poets, which runs through the likes of Bob Dylan and Patti Smith (one of her personal heroines).  What matters with their songs is the lyrics, not the beauty of the delivery and whilst Barnett may not have the vocal flair of an Adele, she can certainly bury Dylan as a singer, having an emotional range running from the gentle lilt of her touching early song ‘Porcelain’, to the anger of ‘Nameless, Faceless‘ from the new album.  Even so what she does for much of the time is what is known in opera as “recitative”.  It is almost just speaking to music, but whilst sticking to the music’s rhythm and basic melody.  Opera uses the technique because it tends to make the words more audible and it is used to fill in narrative passages between arias.  In other words, it is there to tell stories, and so are most of Barnett’s best songs.  Unfortunately, there was something of a P.A. glitch at the Manchester gig which meant that although her voice was mixed sufficiently loud, it sounded too muffled in parts of the hall for the words to be clear.  Speaking to other audience members after the show it is clear that in much of the auditorium the sound was superb, and the issue only started to arise as you got a long way off the centre line of the P.A. speakers.  Sadly, we were well to the right (as seen from the stage), but I am very glad that the problems we experienced only affected a small minority of those present.

As it turned out, the P.A. trouble barely mattered, because although we could not really hear Barnett singing her lyrics, we could certainly hear everyone else doing so.  Bands with a new album face something of a dilemma.  They naturally want to move on and promote the new material.  Many fans, however, want to hear what they already know.  This, though, was an audience in love.  Barnett took what to many artists would have been a big risk.  She opened her set by playing ‘Tell Me How You Really Feel’ uninterrupted, in its entirety: all ten songs in the order they appear on the album.  This was a record that (barring a few singles) had only been available for 11 days, yet there were voices raised throughout who clearly knew every word.  And then she moved on to the old favourites and the audience engaged the afterburners.  An artist with so much good material can never please everyone, and I am sure that many present had a particular pet song they would have loved to hear, but that she did not do (mine would have been the haunting ‘Kim’s Caravan‘), but her final seven songs were a storm and included some of her biggest hits, notably ‘Avant Gardener‘ (the story of perhaps the world’s most famous asthma attack and still perhaps her best-known song), ‘Elevator Operator‘, ‘Depreston‘ (a house hunting nightmare) and that wondrous ode to drunkeness ‘History Eraser‘.  This was a venue built for Methodists, who always were great congregational hymn singers and whose founder famously asked why the Devil should have all the best tunes.  On this night it was Courtney Barnett who had the best tunes and the audience did their best to blow the doors out.  There may not have been many hymns, but for sheer gusto those old time Methodists would have been proud.

You can tell a lot about an artist’s confidence by how long they feel able to make the audience wait at the end of a show before coming back for an encore.  The old joke was that you ran off stage, touched the backstage wall and hoped like hell that you could get back on before the audience stopped applauding.  However, despite touring an album with song titles like ‘Crippling Self Doubt and a General Lack of Self Confidence’, Barnett had the self-assurance to make us wait … and wait.  A sell-out crowd of well over 2,000 were stamping their feet in unison, and chanting Court – ney – Bar – nett in time with the stamps, before she and the band finally re-emerged: a very long way from doing open mikes.  But what an encore it was:  two songs that could not be more different.  Firstly, ‘Anonymous Club‘, perhaps her most tender ballad, followed by hard edged rocker, ‘Pedestrian at Best‘, which contains my favourite Barnett line:

“Give me all your money and I’ll make some origami, honey.”

The contrast between the two could not be greater, yet somehow they fit together like a dream – the perfect ending to a great show.

Hera Says.

‘Hera Says’ also has a Facebook page at:   https://www.facebook.com/hera.saysso.3

Fig. Courtney Barnett and Loose Tooth album covers

‘The Screaming Females’, with ‘ILL’ and ‘The Hollow Bodies’, at The Soup Kitchen, Manchester, 21-5-2018.

Indie three-piece Punk band ‘The Screaming Females’ are one of Hera’s favourites.  They have been around for years, with seven studio albums (the first two self-released).  They also have a live album, a slightly eccentric EP called ‘Chalk Tape’ – initially released as a limited edition Cassette – and an EP of re-issued singles.  In addition, singer/guitarist Marissa Paternoster has a solo project called ‘Noun’ which also has records available.  Yet although we had copies of all this material, we had never managed to see them live.  In fairness, the ‘Screamales’, as they are affectionately known to fans, hail from New Jersey, USA, so a gig within a sensible distance of Manchester is not an everyday event.  Even so, we seem to have been playing hide and seek.  They only seemed to come here when work commitments took us elsewhere, so the 21st May gig was an opportunity not to be missed.

Fig. 2 The Hollow Bodies. Credit: Hera Says Team

 

Altogether there were three bands on the bill: the opening act being called ‘The Hollow Bodies’, although they should not be confused with the better known US band of the same name.  This incarnation are an all-male four piece and thus lie outside Hera’s remit, but it was in any way difficult to get a fair impression of them as the vocals did not come through the P.A. well.  They do not seem to have anything on YouTube as yet, but a number of clips on their Facebook page provide a better insight into their sound.

 

Fig. 3: ILL. Credit: Hera Says Team

Immediate support act, ‘ILL’, are a local band.  They are an all-female four-piece, and a very different animal to ‘The Hollow Bodies’.  That said, they are very different to virtually everything else as well.  Music fans love to fit artists into recognisable genres, but it doesn’t always work.  Some bands are a genre all by themselves, and ‘ILL’ are one such.  Their Facebook page contains a lengthy self-definition, from which this is only an extract:

“‘ILL’ is a genre-evading band which believes in the power of disobedient noise. With a repertoire of precarious pop songs and frequent improvised departures, ‘ILL’ revel in the right to be weird, exploring the borders between the funny and the sinister, the personal and the political, the mundane and the surreal.“

You start to get the idea, but not even this glorious mix really covers it.  People have called them ‘Punk’ or ‘Post Punk’ and certainly the first impression is of punk attitudes and shouty, often political vocals, mixed with unselfconscious humour.  So far so good then, but you soon realise the sheer standard of musicianship behind those voices.  This is no “change to the other chord mate” punk band.  This lot can really play.  They do indeed mix the funny with the sinister, and they are certainly both noisy and weird, but there is so much more.  As a bass player myself, I am perhaps more likely than most to listen to the bass parts, but bassist Whitney Bluzma is a joy to listen to and well matched with drummer Fiona Ledgard.  The bass can be surprisingly expressive in the right hands; it is just that to all too many it is little more than a metronome.  Not to Bluzma, though.  With her dynamic style and frequent use of distortion, it can indeed be sinister and brooding, but it can also be driving, mesmeric yet, at times, surprisingly gentle.

Guitar and keyboards complete the band.  At the time of the Soup Kitchen gig, the band were in the process of replacing guitarist, Sadie Noble, with Tamsin Middleton, but the latter already seemed to have her musical feet well under the table.  Her style suits the band well and she has a particular way with the plectrum slide: a technique that takes more artistry than you might think to be really effective.  Harri Shanahan is a versatile keyboardist whose synth work often carries a distinct hint of darkness.  She and Bluzma also took the lion’s share of the vocal work, where they were a lot more audible than ‘Hollow Bodies’, although we again got the impression that the P.A. was forcing both to strain their voices.  Shanahan filled the role of front-woman, introducing songs with a relaxed mix of self-deprecating humour and political sarcasm, all of which brings us back to what they are like

Imagine a classic punk singer like Poly Styrene (‘X-Ray Spex’) fronting psychedelic, ‘Saucer Full of Secrets’ era ‘Pink Floyd’, then combine the result with virtuoso 1970s Punk/New Age rockers ‘The Here & Now Band‘, or their spin-offs ‘Androids of Mu’.  Well, in fairness, they are not really much like any of those, but at the same time, they are a lot more like them than anything else.

The performance itself was breathtaking.  ‘ILL’ had released their debut album ‘We are ILL’ just days before the gig and not surprisingly all but three of their eight-song set came off it.  The record itself is very well worth buying.  We bought our copy on the band’s merch stall afterwards, and it has hardly been out of the player since.  Our particular favourite is ‘Slithering Lizards‘:  a Prog Rocky monster – almost 10 minutes long.  It is hypnotic, yet dynamic; up-tempo, but menacing.  It has something of the feel of ‘Trilogy’ period ‘Gong’ at times (albeit without Daevid Allen’s signature glissando guitar – which it would actually rather suit), mixed with traces of Near Eastern fusion towards the end.  It is a masterpiece that cannot be easy to play live, but my god they managed – and another highlight was ‘Bears’, which shows Bluzma’s bass at its most melodramatic.  Nevertheless, the album did not completely drive out older material and it was good to see the band’s anthemic ‘Kremlin’ still in the set: a song in support of Russian female punk rockers ‘Pussy Riot’ who have been harassed, arrested, and in some cases imprisoned by the Putin regime.

Fig. 4: “ILL” plays Hysteria. Credit Nigel Maitland

‘ILL’ cannot just play – they know how to put on a show: two very different skills which do not always go together.  They also know how to pace a show, to bring it to its peak right at the end.  There is never any sense of anti-climax: they just build and build.  As the old show-biz adage has it: “Always leave them wanting more”.  But that is a difficult feat for any support act to pull off because the “more” the audience wants is going to be the band they really came to see: the headliners.  ‘ILL’ came as close as is possible, though.  Their final song, ‘Hysteria’ (which is also the album finale) is a biting critique of the religious, political and social pressures that seek to control female fertility and sexuality.  It is a great song to begin with, but live it sees the band’s already energetic stagecraft fire up the after-burners – Shanahan in particular.

We have grown used to audience attempts to invade rock stages, often in attempts to crowd surf.  Shanahan turned the tables and invaded the audience for part of the song, clutching a radio mike and charging in, still singing flat out.  She then ran back on stage and made a spirited attempt to strangle Bluzma, who never missed a note even so.  In short, they really did leave us wanting more.  We are huge ‘Screamales’ fans and were longing to see them, but even we were sad when ‘ILL’ left the stage.  Put it this way: they are playing as headliners at the Manchester ‘Deaf Institute’ on 16th June, in a gig to celebrate their new album.  And for this one time only, both their incoming and out-going guitarists will be on stage.  We already have our tickets.

 

Fig. 5 Screaming Females at the Soup Kitchen. Credit: Hera Says Team

As for the headliners, what can you say about ‘The Screaming Females’ performance except that it was everything we had hoped it would be?  Rock fans whose musical tastes formed in the late 60s or 1970s often bemoan the state of guitar playing in today’s bands.  “What happened,” they ask “to the guitar hero?  Where are the current generation’s equivalent to the likes of Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck or David Gilmore ?”  The answer is that they have been replaced by a generation of phenomenal guitar heroines who are often strangely neglected but would be being praised to the heavens if they were men.  To name but a few, we have Courtney Barnett, Orianthi, Annie Clark (‘St. Vincent’) and most recently Sarah Longfield, but if we were to ask who the guitar heroines’ guitar heroine might be, the ‘Screamales’ Marissa Paternoster must be a leading candidate.  She can solo with the very best, but at the same time, her solos lack the self-indulgence of some of the guitar hero generation.  She keeps them shorter and tighter so that they serve the song, not her ego, and they can utterly make even an already great track, such as ‘Criminal Image‘ at the close of the ‘Rose Mountain’ album.  She has to be one of the top ten rock guitarists on Earth.  Some years ago, ‘Spin’ Magazine rated her as the 77th best guitarist of all time but, frankly, if she was a man it would be more like 7th.  If you ever want to see just what the guitar can do, watch her solo on ‘The Screaming Females’ joint performance with ‘Garbage’ of Patti Smith’s ‘Because the Night‘ (from 3:38).

Yet such has been the ‘Screamales’ commitment to the DIY music movement; their insistence on artistic independence and refusal to sell out to major label hype, that you can still see them in a smallish, intimate venue like the ‘Soup Kitchen’ and stand just feet from Paternoster whilst she plays, or indeed right next to all three band members in the audience as they came out to watch the backing bands with everyone else.  And how she plays.  This is not the record stripped down for ease of use live.  This is all-out Marissa Paternoster, blasted straight from her fretboard into your ears.  And of course, it is not just Paternoster.  Bassist Mike Abbate (generally known as King Mike) and drummer Jarrett Dougherty are both rocking players who form a perfect match for both Paternoster and each other.  This is a tight group who are so close they almost read each other’s thoughts, and it shows.

Abbate has a fascinating bass style.  He and Paternoster met at a music club in high-school, where she was two years above him.  At the time he too was a guitar player but he has told a number of interviewers that he saw her play and thought she was so cool that he just had to be in a band with her.  However, he also had no illusions that there was going to be much future for another guitarist in any band that contained her, and so promptly took up the bass.  He has become a virtuoso, but his style still has much of the guitarist about it.  He often plays melody lines, sometimes exactly following the guitar an octave below, and when Paternoster is soloing, he is known to fill out the sound by playing chords, thus making up for the absence of a rhythm guitarist.  Indeed, although Paternoster plays her own rhythm guitar parts on the record, it might be argued that Abbate fills both roles live.  Yet he is surprisingly retiring on stage, playing for much of the time with his long curly hair masking his face, or rocking with Dougherty, with his back to the audience.

But musicianship is only part of the story.  If Paternoster was simply the guitarist she would be marvel enough, but she is also lead singer and frontwoman, and she really can play complex guitar parts and sing at the same time live just like she does on the records by using multi-tracking.  She is famously tiny but her voice is definitely not.  She has a commanding mezzo-soprano and although this is a loud band to say the least, she cut through the Soup Kitchen P.A. set-up better than any other singer on the night even though, like everyone else, she was mixed too low, as (slightly) was her guitar.  Their musical styles are utterly different but, if anything, her voice is most reminiscent of the late-great Edith Piaf, including the latter’s signature vibrato and, of course, Piaf was even smaller at 4′ 8″.  Paternoster is actually not quite as petite as she first appears; she just shares a stage with Abbate: a positive giant who even makes his massive Rickenbacker 4003 bass look like a toy.  But whatever the case, she has the charisma to dominate a room.  Strangely, her speaking voice stands at odds with her extrovert singing and guitar style.  When announcing songs or chatting with the audience she can sound curiously shy, and some of her comments seem almost random until the penny drops that girlish as she may appear, some of her comebacks to shouted audience comments are like gentle whip cracks, often with self-effacing jokes attached.  Even compliments are not immune.  For example, at one point she was making the almost compulsory statement of how much she loved playing in Manchester.  Someone shouted out “We f*****g love you Marissa”, to which she feigned shock and squealed “So much swearing !”: this from someone who in interviews is by no means above fairly fulsome expletives.  Another wag shouted out “Love your dress”.  For those who don’t know the band, Paternoster has never signed up to the idea that female rock singers need to dress as sexily (for which read scantily) as possible.  She dresses extremely modestly, usually in plain dresses of dark brown, or more usually black.  Some have puritan style lacy bib fronts, which make them look like something that may have reached America on the ‘Mayflower’, but at the Soup Kitchen, she was in the plainest of plain black.  These dresses show precisely zero cleavage and her legs were covered with black tights.  Asexual though they are, though, these outfits look great on her and perfectly match her almost black dark hair.  But that was not what the sarcy male voice who shouted the comment meant.  Paternoster chose to believe otherwise, however, and shot back in her most disarming, little girl voice “Isn’t it cute?  And I can wear it for weddings and funerals, too”.  It was the gentlest of put-downs and got a cheer from her fans.

Fig.7 Marissa Paternoster and Jarett Dougherty of the Screaming Females. Credit: Hera Says Team

 

The audience itself showed an impressive age range, from teens to people in their seventies, but it was oddly differentiated, with the bulk of the men standing on the right-hand side of the room, as seen from the stage (Paternoster’s side) and the women more often on the left.  Paternoster is openly gay, and there was a sizeable LBGTQ contingent (mostly women) but not disproportionately so, and the average age of the women in the audience was markedly younger than the men.  In one thing, though, all were united: they were having a great time.

Like ‘ILL’, the ‘Screaming Females’ have a new album:  ‘All At Once’, which came out in February (as usual, Paternoster designed the artwork).  Not surprisingly, therefore, we were treated to five of its tracks, including their storming opening and closing numbers: ‘I’ll Make You Sorry‘ and ‘Glass House‘, which are amongst the best songs the band have ever produced.  This was less than half their 11 -song set, however.  This is a trio with a huge legacy, and older favourites were not neglected – going right back to ‘Boyfriend’ from their 2007 album ‘What If Someone Is Watching Their T.V?’ and coming closer to the present via ‘It all Means Nothing‘ (famous for its video, in which Paternoster is murdered by her bandmates) and ‘Tell Me No’ from ‘Ugly’, plus ‘Empty Head’ and ‘Hopeless’ from 2015’s ‘Rose Mountain’.  Only a few were announced from the mike, but every one got a cheer of recognition as it started, from an audience many of whom were then able to sing along apparently word perfect, despite the ‘Screamales’ notoriously obscure lyrics.  In short, this was an electrifying performance from one of the most exciting live band around.  They are back in Manchester at the ‘Band on the Wall’ on 7th September and, again, we already have our tickets.

 

Fig. 07 Paternoster’s guitar getting ready to crowd surf. Credit: Hera Says Team

At the end of the show, Paternoster made a moving gesture of trust towards her fans.  Her guitar is a G&L S-500, a refinement of the ‘Stratocaster’ that Leo Fender himself developed after selling the Fender company.  Some guitar enthusiasts regard this as the ‘Strat’ where Leo finally got it right.  They are not exactly a common sight and they are not cheap, but Paternoster learnt on one, which she still has.  She loves them and plays little else.  On the night she was playing a black model, rather than the natural wood example she is best known for and which she has had since childhood, but it is a precious thing nonetheless.  Yet at the end of the show, she pulled out its jack and literally set it adrift into the audience.  In effect, the guitar went crowd surfing by itself.  It made a tour of the room being passed hand over hand above the audience’s heads, before being dutifully passed back to her unscathed.  No one, but absolutely no one, made the slightest attempt to hold onto it or even play it.  It was a sight to see.

Hera Says

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Fig.8 The new Screaming Females and ILL album covers.