Fear of Men live at The Haunt / live in America

Posted on 07/03/2013 by brightonmusicblog

Last year’s eponymous album by Melody’s Echo Chamber was a bit of a favourite of ours, so we jumped at the chance to go and see them when tickets went on sale a few months ago. When we found out later that Fear of Men would be supporting, we were even happier.

When we previewed the gig before the weekend, we were thinking that with Fear of Men’s new album nearly ready this would be a showcase for their new material. In the end, the band only played one new track, instead focussing on their released material so far (recently collected on the fine Early Fragments compilation). Speaking to the band after the gig, the reason for this was that they wanted to be as good as they possibly could for their performances at SXSW festival next week and you can’t blame them for that. Their hard work is paying off, and they’ve never sounded better. You wouldn’t know that Jess was once happy to have her vocals low in the mix, nor would you know that this is one of the band’s first gigs with their new bass player. Where the band’s older material wouldn’t have sounded out of place on legendary 90s indie-pop label Sarah Records the one new song they played sounded bigger, louder, faster and more confident. Recording of their debut album is still taking place so who knows how representative this will be of what we have to expect later this year.

As I type, Fear of Men are on a plane on their way to America. They’re kicking things off with Festival NRML in Mexico, heading to Austin, Texas where they’ll be playing NINE shows at this year’s SXSW festival. Then they’re heading off to New York for another couple of shows there. Here’s the full list:

SXSW
3/12 – 2.45pm – Red7 (Terrorbird SXSW day party)
3/13 – 1pm – Hype Hotel 301 Brazos (Gorilla vs Bear x Yours Truly)
3/14 – 1.15pm – Hotel Vegas (Austin Psych Fest)
3/14 – 3pm – Flat Top Burger Shop (Music for Listeners)
3/14 – 9pm – Valhalla (Kanine/Fat Cat Records showcase)
3/15 – 3.30pm – End of an Ear (Instore)
3/16 – 1.30pm – Fader Fort (Fader)
3/16 – 3.15pm – inside House of Vans @ The Mohawk (AV Club/Flower)
3/16 – 4.40pm- Latitude 30 (British Music Embassy)

New York
3/19 – 8.30pm – Glasslands Gallery, Brooklyn (Headline show)
3/20 – 8pm – Pianos, New York (w/Field Mouse)

And if you didn’t make it to the gig last weekend, and aren’t in America, then here’s a new video for Seer, which was the previously unreleased track from Early Fragments:

Weekend Gig Picks

Posted on 07/03/2013 by brightonmusicblog

It’s a bumper weekend for gigs as ever in Brighton with loads of local talent getting out there and playing live.

Late night on Thursday is the third Night Sweats even – a gig where the doors don’t open until 9pm and the headliner isn’t onstage until after midnight. It’s on at Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar, and Royal Blood headline supported by Broker, She Crazy, Eager Teeth and Light Parade.

Friday Night is the Tiny Dragons single launch at Latest Music Bar that we mentioned in a post earlier this week. There’s also a Brighton Rocks night being held at Sticky Mike’s headlined by Jipsy Magic, and we’ve also spotted that Luo are going to be supporting Easter Island Head at The Hope.

On Saturday, we’ve got a rare afternoon gig to plug. The Blind Tiger has an afternoon of music featuring A-M-I, Southpaw, The Cotard Delusion, Grasshopper and Crisis Warning. If you’re after something to do in the evening you could do a lot worse than head down to the Physics House Band’s free monthly club night Kaleidoscope at at Sticky Mike’s, where Caveman Genius are playing live.

Sunday is all about the local support slots – Jennifer Left is supporting Polly and the Billets Doux at the Hope, meanwhile Calico and Dog in the Snow will be supporting the Hidden Orchestra at the Blind Tiger.

Bent Cousin / Bentpaperboy video

Posted on 05/03/2013 by brightonmusicblog

A few weeks ago we raved about the Bent Cousin Everybody’s Got One EP. It’s still getting lots of plays at Brighton Music Blog towers, and now the band have released a video for lead track Bentpaperboy. MTV got the exclusive premiere but that was only a few hours ago, so it’s not like we’ve been caught napping. They haven’t even posted it onto their Facebook yet. Here it is:

With any luck, Bent Cousin will be playing live soon to make up for the fact that they had to cancel their single launch. As soon as we find out more, we’ll let you know.

Us Baby Bear Bones / What Starts with a U, Ends with an I

Posted on 05/03/2013 by brightonmusicblog

Us Baby Bear Bones have announced details of their debut EP. “What Starts with a U, Ends with an I” is being released on 10th June on Brighton Based label Love Thy Neighbour (who have also put out Abi Wade’s releases so far, as well as putting on countless great gigs around town).

The EP will be limited to 216 copies, the covers of which are a segment of a massive picture painted by band member Puff Gandolfo (have we mentioned how much we love the revival of proper rock star pseudonyms?).

The band gave us a taster last year uploading You to YouTube, and the EP will also include Rain which was previously available on the Sea Monsters 2 compilation. For now, you can grab Rain as a free download over on bandcamp:

Us Baby Bear Bones next gig is supporting Fiction at the Green Door Store on 19th March.

Tiny Dragons / Come Alive

Posted on 04/03/2013 by brightonmusicblog

About a year ago, we went along to see Tiny Dragons launching a single at the Prince Albert. So we were a bit confused by their press people sending us an email about their upcoming “debut single”. It turns out that this is their first single being run through the industry machine rather than being a home baked DIY affair. No matter – Come Alive is great. A bit more rock and a bit less funk than last time we saw them, but still as tight as they come.

It’s been a great year since we first spotted them. In that time they’ve supported Bastille, The Blockheads and the Fun Loving Criminals, and there’s a Stranglers support slot coming up too. They’re launching the EP this friday at Latest Music Bar. Tiny Dragons are a fantastic live band – it should be a great gig!

Clowns supported by Frank Melena Band at Green Door Store

Posted on 01/03/2013 by brightonmusicblog

We truly are spoiled in Brighton. Not just because of the massive choice of music that’s on offer, but because so much is so cheap. Last weekend we went to Brighton Electric – It was three pound on the door which worked out at a pound a band. Last night Clowns played at the Green Door Store and it was free!

Frank Melena Band

We missed Victorian Hunter – because of a club night being held later on it was an early gig. We arrived at the bar to see a few members of the band still wearing animal heads. Probably a band worth going to see for the visual spectacle if nothing else. We grabbed a pint and headed in to see Frank Melena Band, who are also notable for their outfits – The bulk of the band sported wrestling masks, some wore ladies fur coats, and the bassist wore shorts with matching fur boots and had fairy lights taped around his mask. Musically, the band performed a reasonable set of angry garage punk, at times trying out a bit of politics in the banter between songs to a largely indifferent crowd. A punk band needs a punk audience, which isn’t the audience that were at Green Door Store last night but with the right crowd they raise the roof. Oh and one last thing, don’t go googling Frank Melena to find out who the band are named, because it’s not a who, it’s a what

Clowns

One of the main reasons I’ll keep going to see Clowns is that every time I see them they outshine all the other bands on the bill. As a unit the band are tighter, the songs have better hooks, and main man Miles Heathfield not only looks like he believes every single word that he sings, but that he wants you to believe it too. Clowns rock hard, but they’re also accessible. There’s humour, but they’re also very dark. Miles’ suit could make him seem aloof, but he always gets in amongst the crowd while he’s performing. These contradictions are their strengths, and they’re what make them so compelling. One of last night’s highlight was upcoming single Love Vigilante, which the band had asked the audience to film on their phones to make the video. If I was in a band and wanted audience video, I’d have done it in a venue with much better lighting – Green Door Store is notoriously dark!

Clowns next gig is at the Con Club in Lewes on 12th April. See you there.

Jacko Hooper / New downloads

Posted on 01/03/2013 by brightonmusicblog

Jacko Hooper, who impressed us at Sea Monsters back in January, has put a couple of tracks up on Bandcamp. Not an official release, just a free taster while he works on his debut ep. 21, Promises is gentle and fragile, while These Echoes is more upbeat and jaunty. It doesn’t show on Bandcamp, but when you make the download, you also get his cover of Cat Power’s Keep On Running too.

If you’re enjoying Jacko’s voice, and were wondering what it might sound like accompanying electronic music rather than acoustic guitar, then we recommend Luo’s recent Antidote EP (which we wrote about a few weeks back and haven’t stopped listening to since). Jacko features on track three Mistakes.

Curxes at the Green Door Store / Milk & Biscuits at the Blind Tiger

Posted on 21/02/2013 by brightonmusicblog

As you may have gathered from our posts, we’re big fans of live music here at Brighton Music Blog. In Brighton, we’re incredibly lucky that there are so many great gigs and so much choice. Last night was no exception, so much so that we decided to go to two gigs. We headed to the Green Door Store where Curxes were first on the bill at Danger De Mort’s monthly night, and then moved on to the Blind Tiger where Milk and Biscuits were headlining.

Curxes

Danger De Mort first came to our attention in October last year when they put on a show that Nordic Giants headlined. Since then they’ve been putting on a gig every month with a mix of local and national bands, all with great line ups. Last night Brighton Music Blog approved Curxes opened the show. Where their first few releases had been very much in an industrial electro vein (they opened with Souxsie Sioux fronts Depeche Mode style single Spectre) they showed a new side with their Christmas cover of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, and it was this that we were hoping to get get a glimpse of last night. The first part of the set was filled with the early singles – big belting synth epics which only went slightly awry when a lead fell out of the back of the laptop providing the visuals. Because it was cold, because it was midweek, because it was early – for whatever reason – it was a bit quiet, so Roberta took to the middle of the room as her stage, losing herself in the space, giving us an impression of the what the Curxes live show might be like when they’re playing bigger venues. Their new more reflective side was shown at the end of the set, when they closed on quieter aggressive song, showing off Roberta’s voice and showing the band’s newfound versatility.

Milk & Biscuits

While I had heard good reports of the rest of the bands on the bill they weren’t from Brighton, and there was another band playing in town who I was also looking forward to. I had only seen Milk and Biscuits once before, playing a low-key support slow at the Green Door Store around the time of their Balcony Times mini-album back at the tail end of 2011. That it’s taken until now for me to see them again isn’t to say the eight-piece took 2012 off – half of them are also in Restlesslist, whose concept album Coral Island Girl was one of our highlights last year. By the time I arrived at the Blind Tiger, the place was getting busy and I spotted quite a few local musicians amongst the crowd – Mary Hampton, Jennifer Left, Nick Hudson, Adam from Fragile Creatures, and probably a whole load more that I didn’t recognise. The Milk and Biscuits onstage yesterday were far more performance based than the band I saw over a year ago – they’ve transformed from a bunch of great musicians playing amongst each other to a fully fledged band who looked out towards the audience in a formation which showed them off well. Musically things had changed too and their set didn’t feature any tracks from their first release. To these ears their new sound isn’t quite so introspective as before. Last year’s single White Noise still sounds quite pastoral, but Milk and Biscuits rock harder than they used to. Local poet Gary Goodman joined them onstage for a few tracks, which added a different dimension to things, his sometimes-cutting observations showing that they’re more than just a band. Overall though, the gig was hampered with poor sound – there was a lot of feedback from the microphones, and the drummer seemed unhappy throughout, no doubt one of the issues of having such a large band. Let’s hope that next time there aren’t the same issues. Next time they’ve even promised an encore too!

Weekend Gig Picks

Posted on 20/02/2013 by brightonmusicblog

Normally our weekly post about which gigs we think you should go to to see some of our favourite local acts starts on a Thursday. Thursday has long replaced Friday as the start of the weekend in the Brighton Music Blog calendar. This week though, we’re starting things even earlier on Wednesday, because there’s two cracking gigs on tonight which we feel deserve a bit of a mention.

Tonight Milk & Biscuits play at the Blind Tiger. We loved last year’s epic White Noise single, and this is a great chance to see them playing their new material for their follow up to 2011’s Balcony Time’s mini-LP. Over at the Green Door Store, Danger De Mort are holding their third event. Their first night had Nordic Giants headlining, and we were gutted to miss last month’s event which had IYES and Us Baby Bear Bones supporting. This month’s local support are Curxes, who have promised to play the new tracks they they’ll be releasing later this year. I don’t know a great deal about the rest of the bill, headlined by a band called Cymbals, but we reckon it’ll be great just on the strength of their previous line ups.

Onto Thursday night, where we normally kick off our weekend. One Inch Badge are putting Doldrums at the Prince Albert. Doldrums are from Toronto, but the supports – Us Baby Bear Bones and Luo are two of our favourite local bands.

On Friday night we’ve spotted four gigs we like the look of. Written in Waters, IYES and Calico are playing at Brighton Electric, Speak Galactic and Cloud are supporting Antibang at the Prince Albert, Catherine Ireton is supporting Stu Larsen at Sticky Mike’s and Anneka is playing at live set at the Traumfrau night at the Haunt. We’re spoiled for choice!

Then on Saturday Professor Elemental is launching his new single at the Marlborough. The single’s called This is My Horse (Show Me Yours), and we’ll be writing a separate post about it sometime next week.

IYES – Glow

Posted on 18/02/2013 by brightonmusicblog

When we first wrote about IYES back in January, we tucked their track Lighthouse in amongst a whole bunch of other tunes by local bands that we wanted to share with you all. After we posted it, we couldn’t stop listening to it – it was that good. And then we went to go and see them live, and that was great too.

Fast forward to this weekend, and a brand new track has appeared on their soundcloud, and this time we’re going to give it the fanfare that it deserves. Glow starts off simply with an arpeggiated rhythm and Melis’ vocal, and then around thirty seconds in it explodes into technicolour with effervescent synths and the strength of Josh’s voice. Glow is a bit more uptempo than Lighthouse, but doesn’t lose anything for it. I always have a little bit of fear when I hear one track by a new band that the rest of their material won’t match it, but IYES have proved that this doesn’t have to be the case.