Why would anyone play Bath and not Bristol?
I admit to never having heard of Kiran Leonard until an
e-mail from BD arrived a couple of months back, inviting me to a gig. BD plays in KL’s band, you see. I had a listen and knew it would be well
worth a look – as well as a chance to catch up with BD himself, which is always
welcome.
Besides,
“The moaning
of the masses will ascend into an uproar of infinite grace;
Everything
you ever worried for is only empty space”
is great lyrics, by anyone’s standards.
It would be the ruddy week the bloody trains are off though,
wouldn’t it? The bastards.
Anyway, I rock up and the support are already on. And there’s BD – aha, playin in both bands,
well played fella. Hang on, that
guitarist looks familiar – it’s only KL, isn’t it? Yes.
It is.
It’s busy but not heaving; I reflect that this act would
probably sell out a decent small/mid-size Bristol venue on a Saturday night and
then I let it go. Honest, I do. Even after the hour-long bus ride to get
here. (It was good, I listened to my moody
music on my Walkman and looked out the window just like when I used to get the
bus to school.)
I also clock BG in the crowd, as one almost always
does. His presence is a sign of Interesting
Music, and as such is most welcome. It
turns out I’ve missed the first support, The Evil Usses. I’d’ve got here earlier if I’d realised BD was
in the support band as well, and even earlier if I’d known there was another
support band worth watching.
LT spots me. He’s
here with a couple of others so I go over to say Hello. If I knew you were coming I’d’ve baked a
cake, I almost say. If I knew you were
comin, I’d’ve give you a shout, I actually say.
I bet they’re all about twenty-three, he actually says. I reckon BD is a bit older than that, and
then remember that he told me KL is, in fact, twenty-one. LT tells me The Evil Usses were brilliant and
again I regret my slackness.
The opening is classic pub gig stuff: there is absolutely no
fanfare or showbiz of any kind. The
first song could be one very long song or two three long songs with no gaps or
several short songs with no gaps. It’s
hard to tell. It’s an intense start
though, and sets an appropriate pace for the set. LT leans over and says, looking at his
watch, That was twenty-nine minutes. Not
bad for an opener.
KL has a brand new album out (hence the tour), which I don’t
realise until later, after I’ve already said to LT, We’re half an hour in and I
still haven’t recognised anything yet.
Eventually, The Hits appear, songs from the debut album
(which most reviews would tell you the name of here), including my personal
favourite, referenced above. (That song
is called Port Aine, in case you’re wondering.
There’s an accent over the e that I can’t find on this vintage
typewriter. Also, I have no idea how to
pronounce it either.)
Later, I sort of recognise one or two songs from said debut
album (oh, alright, it’s called Bowler Hat Soup, if you must know). (I don’t know what the new one is
called. If this review was for a
broadsheet, I’d know what it was called, but would probably also refer to it as
a “sophomoric effort”, as if that’s a phrase anyone wants to read.)
KL has a kind of fractured relationship with his vocal mic:
he sings around it and near as much as into it.
This means some of the lyrics are a bit lost, but there’s me sounding
old, wanting to hear the lyrics. It
doesn’t really detract from the performance, it’s just an observation. (And what is a review but a series of
subjective observations and tiresome, convoluted, genre-hyphenating attempts at
categorisation, preceded by a slightly edited version of the artists’ press
release biography, punctuated by an incomplete list of the songs played and
topped off with a quote that can be edited down to a few words for a poster? It’s weird that so many of them make no
mention of how the performance is received, or what the atmosphere is
like. I read a review of the first ever
gig I went to, when I was fourteen, and thought it was absolute bollocks. It was like the reviewer had been to a
completely different gig. Never forgot
that.) It fits with KL’s awkward stage
presence; he’s also stood side-on to the front of the stage. At one point LT observes, It doesn’t make any
difference if we’re here or not. He’s
right as well. (He should probably be
writing this review, it would be more insightful. But he can’t even be bothered to write my
blog for me. Lazy.)
Someone
behind us says, to no one in particular, I bet he doesn’t like ketchup on his
chips – I’m confident. In the same spirit, LT and I have the
following exchange,
Do you
reckon he’s ever talked to a girl?
- No, he’s never even seen one…
Or a picture
of one.
- God, can you imagine when he does? It’ll be like Roxy Music.
(It’s obviously a wee bit (playfully) disrespectful, so I’d
never repeat it in any kind of public forum.
(Fortunately, nobody will ever read this, so it doesn’t really matter).)
It’s a
strangely quiet gig. Not like it would
be in, say….oh, I don’t know – to pick an example from the clear blue sky –
Bristol? The crowd are into it, they
just don’t really know how to react. KL
mentions Bristol, near the end, and says, We are actually playing in Bristol,
The Louisiana, on …um, the 23rd of August.
22nd,
corrects BG, from the front of the audience.
Oh, is
it? Ask that guy, he knows.
Classic BG. He
knows. He knows. (And he knows
that he knows. You know? No?
Oh.)
Anyway, the point is, the performance really blows us away. It’s heavy, it’s quiet, professional
reviewers would need a minimum of three hyphens and two obscure musician
references and searching guesses at influences to get near to describing it – and
it’s very entertaining. In that punk,
see-if-I-care sort of way. (I think
he/they probably do/es care, but it looks a bit like he/they don’t, and a
conventional review would probably take the idea seriously.)
BD is on top
form, on violin, guitar and keys. There’s
so much going on sonically, and the overall effect is pretty intense. To the extent that one of us says, I’m away
home to re-assess everything.
And one of us says, I’m away home to burn my guitar. And my hands.
Just as
everyone starts to file out to the horror of 11.30 on a Saturday night in any
town in Britain, KL steps back up – a few hardy souls at the front had
half-heartedly called for an encore and one or two more joined in and a few
more waited around to see how it would turn out (that’s how these things go,
isn’t it?). As KL plugs his guitar back
in (seems it’s a genuinely unplanned encore), the promoter affects a look of
mild consternation and tells the sound engineer, We’re already over time.
Presumably,
someone is waiting to start a club night in the room, which will probably be
brilliant and ideally suited to the gig we’ve just seen and we’ll all stay here
until kicking out time.
Nevertheless,
KL steps up and plays a song I’ve never heard, which he introduces as His
Actions Speak Louder Than Words by The Tammys.
(I think that’s what it’s called.
It’s hard to understand what he’s saying sometimes, because of his
strained relationship with the microphone, and because he mumbles a bit.)
Turns out it’s a blissfully and gently strange version of an
early Motown-style bubblegum classic, and a good way to end the set
(“reminiscent of Jeff Buckley’s famously better-than-the-original version of Leonard
Cohen’s Hallelujah”, is what most broadsheet newspaper website reviews would
say about it. In that knowing way. You know
the one. As if they know something. You don’t know? Oh...)
Afterwards, BD tells me the kind of stuff about KL that
would make it in to a normal review, and I briefly meet The Man Himself. I tell him it was Astonishing, and he thanks
me. It really was, however much we took
the piss out of his age. (Pure jealousy
on my part – in fact, it reminded me of being in a band as a teenager and
seeing even younger teenagers who were much better than us, and wondering how
we’d managed to waste so much time and here were these kids not old enough to
have a fake ID to get a pint in the venue we were all playing in, and they
really knew what they were doing, and we were just arsing about, not really
sure of ourselves and sounding just a little bit like all the bands we
liked. Good times.)
In a strange
twist, it turns out a few of the PFR crew are playing in the same venue later
on. I would like to see them, but am
knackered (and, it seems, old – or so I think, until BD texts me later to say
that although it is always A buzz to see the crew, the place is awful after
hours. And he’s younger than me. I think.
Perhaps KL
is some kind of messianic figure, come to shine a light in the dark place,
never shunning the sinners (you know, people who like Normal Music, or whatever),
sending not the little children away, but declaring the earth belongs to
them. And the meek, of course.
Or perhaps he or his booking agent know a promoter in Bath.)
On the bus ride home (#bloodybastardtrains), I listen to a
rapper tell me about his personal problems over a nice piano riff and a crispy
beat. Normal service will be resumed.
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