Alela Diane - The Purcell Rooms 11/10/07

To read the published review, click here.

Alela Daine occupies a place in folk music entirely of her own. She’s alone on stage at The Purcell Rooms to scratch out her personable view of the world at large. She seems fresh from the dusty, arid plains of America and sings like not a drop of coarse liquor has tainted her vocal chords. And she stands so still.

Her guitar work is almost patronisingly simple, but her grace and charm sparkle above and beyond it. She taught herself, we think. On a rickety old chair on the front porch of the rural set wooden house her Granddad lives in, we think. We imagine her laughing on a hand built swing and eating home made pecan pie before nervously and self consciously practising her lines.

She’s ever so slightly hunched tonight, with skin like milk. Her hair is tied to one side and she’s wearing a skirt, a waistcoat with nothing underneath and yellow cowboy boots too big for her. We can imagine her playing with horses and cows with her older brothers on her father’s ranch, we think.

And then she sings with a voice so warm and shrill it melts the stuffy properness of the all-seated venue in the Southbank Centre. She plucks new song My Brambles before gliding her way through much of her only record, The Pirate’s Gospel.

Her style remains the same throughout: fragile, unshakeable, and poignant. But her subject matters are diverse, with only pirates and Jesus bestowed with repeat mentions. That makes sense, given the album title. She covers button collections, motherhood and new shoes.

She’s inspired by a plastic bag found in a dead ladies house with the label ‘pieces of string too short to use’ on it. “It’s funny how people only remember the weird stuff when you die,” she says.

She sings of fear and regret on album highlight The Rifle: “Papa get the rifle from its place above the French doors/They’re coming from the woods, they’re coming from the woods/Brother I’m so sorry you watched the paintings burn.”

She plucks and cheers along with imaginary shipmates on the albums self-titled morale booster. “While some folks row way up to heaven/I’m gonna sing the pirates gospel/I’m gonna sow these feet for dancing/I’m gonna keep my eyes wide open/Yo ho yo ho yo ho ho/We’re gonna sing the pirate’s gospel/We’re gonna chant the pirate’s gospel.”

And so it rolls on. Her apparent purity and authenticity is quite something. You don’t doubt her roots, you just hope she doesn’t fall in with the wrong crowd. Sure she might be pretending, but everyone pretends, and it’s the one’s we believe that are special. And fucking hell do we believe.

Alela Diane is the best thing to happen to female folk music in a long time. This is what it would’ve been like seeing Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez et al back in the sixties when folk still mattered to people. Only better.

Beirut - The Flying Cup Club (4AD)

Check out the published version here, on the Gigwise website.

Zach Condon is, already, a musical colossus. At 21, he’s surely the youngest man ever to completely dominate a genre. He owns Balkan pop. He arguably invented it, but he’s certainly the leader. You’ve got A Hawk And A Hacksaw, Gogol Bordello and Devotchka among others, but none have managed to capture the world’s imagination like Condon.

The Flying Cup Club, like The Gulag Orkestar before it, is a culturally significant romp through grief, goulash and gaiety. It’s fantastic, unstoppable and impossible not to be consumed whole. And it’s more of the same, to an extent. It’s stripped back a tad, but when you’ve power over spellbinding mirage of ideas and accordions, only a fool would change their direction.

Advancements from record number one include: more strings, piano and religious imagery, wiser lyrics, and a distinct nod to French-ness. (Many of the song titles are French – ‘Nantes’, ‘Un Dernier Verre (Pour La Route)’, ‘La Banlieue’).

‘Cliquot’, for example, asks of St Peter: “What melody will lead my lover from his bed/What melody will see him in my arms again?” It’s suggestive, for sure, and the co-vocals between Condon and Final Fantasy’s Owen Pallett are delectable. They sound like orphaned angels.

The plucked strings on ‘Forks And Knives (La Fete)’, meanwhile, sound understandably like that of Pallett, who’s an ever present on the record. The crispness of ‘Guyamas Sonora’ is potentially of his making, too. On this basis alone, he’s a valuable addition.

Despite clear differences, all of the eeriness and world-weariness of Orkestar remain. The projected misery is what gives Condon’s work its tint of fascination. It’s so aesthetically pleasing, orchestral and beautiful that his melancholy must almost be pleasant. Then again, he’s a maestro at expressing himself. And it’s perfectly reasonable to be aware of misery without being miserable yourself.

The last minute of In ‘The Mausoluem’ is perhaps the record’s most perfect moment. The strings ache with energetic, agitated solemnity. The backing (what sounds like) organ and basic drumming are so expressive that Condon doesn’t need too sing. It’s a powerful example of a more stripped down band. There’s less theatre and it prospers because of it. ‘Cherbourg’ boasts a simple accordion riff, a tentative three-drum rhythm and Condon’s directness: “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you smile.”

Beirut as a group manage to capture everything that Michael Palin hasn’t in his most recent beige-trousered Eastern European adventure. That might be unfair to Condon’s new found French influences – allegedly: Francois Hardy, Charles Aznavour, Jacques Brel and the country itself – but there’s a definite lineage from his journey from Orkestar to where we are now.

Maybe it’s just the smells, feelings, anxiety, excitement, joy and wonder that go hand in hand with sucking up the life of new places and people. Condon is this decades ramblin’ man. Totally apolitical and utterly in tune with the highs and lows of the human spirit, The Flying Cup Club is a terrifyingly good example of modern song-writing.

Blitzen Trapper - Koko, London - 12/11/07

Read the real version by clicking here, Kruger Magazine's website. If you like.

There’s always a band that people talk about and all your cool friends know about but you’ve still never heard of. Isn’t there? Yes there is. Blitzen Trapper are mine. Supporters of Two Gallants this time round, I’d never heard them. But three albums in – two self-released, one on Sub Pop – and some proper credibility have got them pockets of mockery that ‘cult’ bands seem to demand in a you-only-like-them-because-no-ones-ever-heard-of-them kind of way. They’ve also a devoted following.

This is fair. On occasion, they rock. On other occasions, they roll. Sometimes they drum out medium pace Americana, or just play some folk tunes. They are a living, breathing example of what happens when you’ve no-one piling pressure on your flow and tightening up your stuff. Their consistency is non-existent except in everything they do being ‘good’; and they are all the better for it.

It’s refreshing indeed to see them doing their thing. Having listened extensively to new record ‘Wild Mountain Nation’, you’d struggle to pin them down. They’ve got riffs, like Nirvana; quirky country numbers, like the softer White Stripes moments; and songs like ‘Devils A-Go-Go’, that are so funked up and rocked out in mangled time signatures that the Arctic Monkeys wouldn’t even understand.

More importantly tonight, they’re like a whirlwind in a desert, clearing the mess for Two Gallants, who became the calm after the storm. And Two Gallants rocked, so that tells its own story.