The Borderline – a cramped basement located around the corner from London’s infamous Crobar – is the perfect venue for a night of unrelenting rock. This time out, it’s safe to say that every band on the bill delivered exactly that. Read more…
Although I was gutted at missing most of Cardboard Carousel‘s earlier-than-planned set, what I did catch was as wonderful as I’d anticipated. Cardboard Carousel are an incredibly talented husband-and-wife team whose precisely attuned vocals give their carefully-worded tunes the depth they deserve.
I was probably the only audience member who was completely new to Ezio (whose name my spellchecker wants to change to ‘Wazoo’), and it was cool to see a pair of artists receive so much enthusiastic appreciation. Whether bouncing between acoustic-based genres – taking in rock, folk, blues, country, flamenco, and gypsy jazz – or prefacing an encore with an in-depth discussion of the walk of shame, Ezio were consummate showmen and instrumentalists. Along the way were laughs, melancholic moments, and more than enough lilting serenity to ease my post-Marmozets bangover. Read more…
Although Bypolar and In Tyler We Trust gave decent showings and played their hearts out, this show was definitively all about Reeves Gabrels & His Imaginary Friends. Bypolar have improved significantly since their support slot under DZ Deathrays, and In Tyler We Trust offered a ton of hard-rocking energy twinned with the occasional flamboyant display – but it was clear from each support’s tentative and uncertain experimentations that both acts are still testing the water and building their confidence. Reeves and his über-solid band, on the other hand, are old pros at this sort of thing – and, as you’d expect, it really showed here. Read more…
Last night was a reset-hitting moment for a venue whose continued survival was confirmed just over 24 hours previously. Vintage swing music played in the background while earlycomers gathered around a table laden with instruments, effect boxes, microphones, an iPad, and even fairy lights to await the arrival of first act, A R T E L S. Read more…
Mondays are tough. We’re all intimately familiar with post-weekend fatigue, irritating co-workers, and red-faced bosses bearing down on us with endless lists of unreasonable demands. After all that crap, we just want to chill.
The Boileroom, for many ska and reggae fans, was the ideal place to do just that this past Monday night. Read more…
If you were to walk into The Boileroom today, you wouldn’t be able to tell that said widely loved and respected venue is currently under threat of closure from a couple of local residents. The staff and management are nothing if not professional, and last night’s show – the result of a collaboration between The Boileroom, promoters Noise Theory, and local music school ACM – went off without any externally obvious hitches. Read more…
Although it’s great that alternative culture exists, you have to ask how much it differs from the mainstream sometimes.
Standard-model society promotes segregation on increasingly arbitrary lines (watch an episode of Come Dine With Me for evidence) and “alternative” subcultures do much the same thing – think rock and metal subgenres and the constant bickering between them all. Infighting is frequently justified on the basis of appearance (“just look at him!“) by both mainstream and alternative groups. Competitive snobbery thrives in both worlds, based as they are on stereotypical male values – and yes, despite some progress both the mainstream and alternative worlds are still male-dominated. For instance, “alt girls” have been relegated to the status of fetishised objects featured in magazines that copy the topless-babes-and-articles-which-their-readers-will-say-are-the-real-reason-they-buy-the-magazine-in-the-first-place-but-for-some-reason-nobody-ever-seems-to-believe-them model adopted by their equally standardised shelfmates. For more evidence of objectification, go see a heavy female-fronted band play live, and pay attention to how the men in the audience behave. And the online side of things is, naturally, not much different. Overall, it can be argued that “alt” culture is definable today as “more or less the same as the mainstream at a fundamental level, only with different haircuts, a different soundtrack, different clothes, and more imaginative and visible tattoos”.
So let’s say we want to find something that really deserves to be called “alternative”. Where could we start? Read more…