Reviewathon: Schoolboy’s Explosions of Moulettes

NB: This review continues the long-established style of critical analysis of magazine reviews of live music, and also the more recent habit of lumping different gigs together in the same review.  (This reviewer saw a lot of gigs last week.)  It will also, disappointingly, continue with the trope of substituting “this review” (or the even more irritating “this reviewer”) for “I”.

Schoolboy’s Death Trio (Album Launch), Mr Wolf’s, 22/4/16

The Schoolboy is a local saxophone player and poet.  The Death Trio feature a bassist, drummer and percussionist.  In the manner of standard gig reviews, this review will tell you that he has been compared to Ian Dury and The Blockheads, but will also point out that the comparison does not work for this reviewer, even while conceding there is some logic to it.  (The kind of logic usually associated with reviews:  It’s got a vocalist like this – it’s like that band you’ve all heard of with vocals that are a little bit like that.  And yet obviously not particularly like that to anyone that’s actually heard them.  That’s how it works, you’ve all read reviews before.)

It’s at Mr Wolf’s, which has an echo chamber for a gig room and a clientele that tend to start arriving at around 11 and peak after midnight.  Which is good, because the band is finished and I can leave then, avoiding the big crowds of sweaty drunks. 

Support comes from Clayton Blizzard & The Boys From Marketing and Little Thief.  Regular readers will know of CB & The BfM, who had a laugh.  Little Thief are what your typical lazy review would call White Stripes-esque, (again, with some justification), because there are two of them, a female on drums and a male on guitar and vocals.  They hammer through a short but thoroughly absorbing set of blues-inspired stomp rock.  Remember the name, you will be seeing them around (which is good, maybe you can review them next time, yeah? Don’t forget to mention their hair.  It’s pretty curly.)

On to the main event: The Death Trio are funky, and include some pretty heavy bass with a fuzz pedal (or something like that.  I don’t know, I’m not up on these things).  There’s not a particularly large crowd, but there is dancing.  And there is vinyl – it’s an album launch, and the Trio, and especially the Schoolboy, have put a lot of creativity in to the whole thing. 

After a blazing set of funk and spoken word vocals, the band are joined by a four-piece of some of Bristol’s finest brass players for a Sun Ra cover that just about lifts the roof off.  Band, album, venue, spaceship: Launched.

Explosions In The Sky, Colston Hall, 23/4/16

The last time I visited everyone’s favourite slave-trade-funded concert venue, I promised not to make that joke again.  That was for a classical concert, a performance of some of the Finnish composer Sibelius’s best-known work.  It was stunning, epic and beautiful.

This time it’s for Explosions In The Sky, a post rock band from Texas.  For the uninitiated, post rock is like classical music played by a rock band; there’s little or no singing (none in this case), songs are rarely, or never, three and a half minutes long, there are a lot of crescendos and build-up-break-down sections and it can be quite intense. 

As it’s a concert venue, there is the five-minute warning for the start of the performance.  There’s been no mention of a support band, so we’re not sure who is starting in five minutes, but pile in anyway so as not to miss out on a gig we’ve all been looking forward to.  If it was in a normal gig venue, we would’ve gone an hour later.

An hour later, we’re glad we arrived an hour earlier.  We’ve just seen the support, We Were Promised Jetpacks.  (Shit name, good band.  Explosions In The Sky will later ask for “A round of applause for The Jetpacks”.  Maybe that’s rheir affectionately diminutive nickname, maybe they just think it’s a much better name.)  It’s an appropriate support, as always with these things.  (You don’t tend to get variety at big gigs these days, do you?  In the 80s, bands used to have comedians as support, which never happens now – except at cool small gigs, of course.  But the bigguns tend to have a label mate or similar band and/or maybe a local act of the same style…)

WWPJ are Scottish, and remind me a little bit of The Naturals.  Even though they don’t sound much like them at all.  Their songs have long instrumental sections with eventual vocals and a slightly more normal structure.

Explosions In The Sky are one of the more accessible exponents of post rock, not as dark, dense and esoteric as Godspeed You! Black Emperor, but also not as free and varied as Mogwai (who do sing sometimes).  Some reviewers, familiar with the genre might say something like, they’re kind of like a pop version of Godspeed.  But that would be as fatuous and stupid as saying Beethoven was a pop version of Bach.  And anyway, they’re much more like Mono.

I’m expecting it to be pretty epic…

…and it is.  Cacophony and chaos melt into harmonious order, without ever resolving into predictable song structures.  There are slight shifts of rhythm, which move pieces on, and repeated motifs and melodies.  Applause comes at the end of a movement, not just at the end of a piece. 

This is just like classical music – obviously not quite as complex as an orchestra, but like a smaller ensemble.  A string quartet or something.  It’s noisier, obviously.  There is ferocious noise at times, in fact – especially when two of them are playing bass at once.  Most of the band’s early stuff (most reviewers would say “output” or something) is all based around two or three guitars intertwining for more recent albums, there are bits of synth and even a theramin.  It’s a mix of new stuff and old classics.  Late in the set, they do the one that goes d-nn-nn-nn-nn-nn-nn-d-d-d-d-nn-nn – DUH-NUH-NUH-NUH-NUH-NUH DA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NANANANA, DAAAAAAAAAAAANAAAAAANAAAAAANAAAAAANAAAAAA-AAAAAAAAA-OOOOOOOOOOO-OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

There’s a pretty good light show that looks like a sheet of water at front of stage.  You wouldn’t get that at a classical concert. 

Live, EITS are probably as good as Mono or Mogwai (but probably not as good either on record….it’s debatable).

When it finishes, the house lights come up immediately and the band thank us and wish us goodnight.  It’s the first time any of them have spoken since the Hello at the beginning.  Clearly, there will be no encore.

And that’s what happened. 

Moulettes, Exchange, 24/4/16

Mike D is in support – regular readers may remember a review of Mike D from January.  So, suffice it to say this time that Mike plays a short set, and is right on it.  He’s also on the sound desk for headliners.  Hard working lad that he is.

Moulettes play a kind of prog-folk strangeness with a million influences, some recognisable, some presumably not.

Tonight, they play all of their new album, which is a bit of a departure from previous ones – a bit less folky for a start.  They’ve replaced a couple of strings players with an electric guitarist.  There are still three-part vocal harmonies, but they are now matched with less familiar sounds.  The songs are still angular and surprising – like before – but the sounds have moved on with more of an electronic feel.  And some kind of sampler.  (Or something like that.  I don’t know, I’m not up on these things.)

I like to learn and see new things, and the band are playing a few things I don’t recognise. 

I would probably go and see any band with a bassoon player. 

It’s brave to take a significant shift in artistic direction when you have a following that has sustained you.  (It’s fairly busy tonight, but I don’t think it’s sold out.)

The Artist is brave, if, though fearing change, changes anyway. 

The quiet and respectful audience is much like the one I was in at Cambridge Folk Festival a few years ago, when I saw this band last.  The applause is polite, rather than rapturous, and the atmosphere is very….restrained.  But people enjoy it.  I think.  I do, anyway.  Mike D is mixing live, it looks like he’s an offstage member of the band.

The singing is mostly shared between three, and there is no frontwoman as such, but the cellist (who also operates some pad trigger stuff) explains the songs.  They are mostly about science and nature – specifically, animal anatomy and behaviour.

The bassoon player, it turns out, is a junior doctor, and gives a speech about the upcoming strike. As might be expected of a GP, in this relatively genteel environment it’s most polite middle class political rant ever. Very Reasonable. The quiet crowd agrees quietly.  (Is this the silent majority we’ve heard so much about?)

(I’ve never thought of the Exchange as genteel, but it just seems that way tonight.)

After playing all of their new album, Moulettes encore with a couple of older songs, including the spellbindingly beautiful Songbird; a great end to a great weekend.

(Is anyone else bored of reviews?  Maybe just go and see some live music, it’s good for you.  And you deserve it.  (Write your own reviews, if you must.))