Urban Landfill

Film: The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (Dir: Terry Gilliam)

I'm going to put my cards on the table straight away. I'm a bit of a pompous arse, a little bit verbose, vague and over-dramatic. Anyone who regularly reads Urban Landfill would probably agree This naturally has a knock-on effect when it comes to to the type of art I like – I'm generally a fan of the pretentious, the overblown and the smart-arsed (my affection for the likes of Frédéric Beigbeder, David Lynch and the Brian Jonestown Massacre all being cases in point).

You'd have thought that Terry Gilliam's latest film, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, would be bang up my street. It sounds like it should be – it critiques contemporary consumer culture, it deals with a fantastical world of unbridled imagination that transports people out of their humdrum lives, and it's directed/co-written by Terry Gilliam, the ex-Python genius behind such wonders as The Fisher King, Time Bandits, Brazil and the filmed version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. On paper, it ticks a lot of my boxes. What a shame, then, that this time Gilliam seems to have got it spectacularly wrong.

It's often mentioned that Gilliam is an unlucky film director, and this production clearly wasn't helped by the untimely death of Heath Ledger during the film's production. That said, you have to take the final product on it's own terms and Doctor Parnassus is, quite frankly, a shoddy, even flabby piece of film-making. It seems messy, disorganised and chaotic – not in a charming way but in a manner that makes the final product unfocussed, shambolic and difficult to follow. The movie's central symbol, the Imaginarium, a faded fairground sideshow, that gives passersby the chance to be 'cleansed' by the imagination of Dr Parnassus (played by Christopher Plummer) could have been a rich metaphor for the movie industry, for an examination of Gilliam's own position as a director, but it is poorly defined, even confusing.

Much has been made in the build-up to the films release about how the movie was 'saved' by Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell to complete Ledger's parts after he passed away. Now, I'm not a huge fan of the four of them (Depp has been brilliant, Law can't act, and Farrell is a joke), but they all manage to out-act the late Antipodean heartthrob. It's, quite frankly, a half-baked, shambolic, and even slightly embarrassingly unconvincing performance from Ledger as Tony Shepherd, one that almost comes over as under-rehearsed (his English accent keeps slipping ferchrissakes...) 

It's not just Ledger (God bless his little self), though. The majority of the cast of Imaginarium get it wrong – it's one of the most poorly acted films I've seen in a long while. Plummer comes over as a poor man's Ian McKellan, Lily Cole just isn't an actress, Andrew Garfield (Anton) is like something out of a sixth form drama production and Tom Waits (I can't actually believe I'm writing this) is a less than convincing Devil. The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus is a frustrating, ultimately disappointing, film. We know Terry Gilliam is capable of greatness, but this number just doesn't deliver. Should it have even have been completed? It's too self-indulgent, too pompous. Urban Landfill has taken note...

Vetiver, Beach House, Papercuts, Union Chapel London, August 21st, 2009

You can pander to band egos any way you want, but from a fans' perspective, the dreaded 'double headliner' tour never works; it always ends up disappointing. Whether you are talking about Guns N'Roses and Metallica on their legendary 1991 trawl through the US, or tonight's far more sombre, dare I say, grown-up affair, a fair proportion of the crowd will want, even expect, to see their favourite band, the one they've paid to see, go on last or actually headline the gig.

You can talk about bands having the same set lengths (neither of those being as long as you might expect from a traditional headliner), but psychologically at least, the one that goes on last is the star of the show, the daddy, the main attraction.

That's why I was a little peeved to find that the mighty new-folk troupe Vetiver were playing second-fiddle to the shoegazey Beach House at the Union Chapel tonight. Surely Vetiver – promoting their recent LP Tight Knit – are a friendly enough crowd proposition not to need another 'headliner? Their gentle 60s-infused folkie Americana should be a perfect match for the Union Chapel, surely with proper promotion they should have been able to fill the place on their own on a Friday night? And, relax... 

That said, as soon as frontman Andy Cabic and band stepped out onto stage tonight, they had the entire crowd captivvated. Last seen in London at the much-missed Spitz (aside from a support for Fleet Foxes at the Roundhouse), this was their most confident, commanding performance in the capital to date. The show's opening pairing of the beautiful Been So Long and Tight Knit's opener Rolling Sea, combined with the Chapel's wonderful acoustics and an impressive clarity of sound, were mesmerising.

Cabic, sporting the obligatory folk hat and beard combo (one predictably mirrored by many in the crowd) seemed to have a greater stage presence that he has previously, as well as an impressive control over his fragile voice, weaving it together with the sounds of the band, and his fingerpicked guitar. There was a self-assured element to Cabic tonight that we haven't seen before (maybe his extensive touring as part of Devendra Banhart's band as help this), and even a slightly rockier sound, as the band stepped up a gear with Everyday and You May Be Blue.

In short, Vetiver are a band on top of their game right now – something genuinely pleasing, inspiring and magical to see. Beach House, and their shoegaze, trippy, Mazzy Star-inspired jams, were only ever going to be a disappointment, and a disappointment they were. OK, I'm biased, but they seem to be doing what a million other bands are at the moment, so they were completely lost on me tonight. My mind was still lost in the Vetiverse. It was a shame for them to follow, and a shame for the crowd, mostly made up of Vetiver fans (based on a rough beard count...)

Tonight's show was opened by Papercuts, a band I've come late to and fronted by Vetiver collaborator Jason Quever . They've just released their third album, the gorgeous You Can Have What You Want and their music reminds me a little of a fuzz and reverb-drenched Daniel Johnson, there's even a little bit of early Brian Jonestown Massacre in there for good measure. Yes, they are that good. Watch this space...

Inglourious Basterds (Dir: Quentin Tarantino)

Brad Pitt has the movie's final line. I won't spoil the ending, but he looks deep into the camera and declares what he's just done to be his masterpiece. Cue the credits, and an immediate flash of the words 'Quentin Tarantinto'; the obvious inference being; “I am the artist, bow down peasants before my crowning glory”. Or somesuch. Anyone who knows Tarantino's work knows that the man has a sense of humour, but he's begging the question.

So, I'm not going to beat around the bush. No, Inglorious Basterds isn't Tarantino's masterpiece. It is, however, a fantastic film, a wonderfully entertaining romp through cinema and a satisfying return to form for the director. 

To be frank, Tarantino's had a bit of a squiffy period over the last few years. His last films have been, well, a little patchy. Kill Bill (parts one and two), was magnificent in parts but was ultimately much too long and got, quite frankly, a bit boring for long periods (particularly in the second installment). Not to mention Death Proof, which despite having one of the most fantastic opening hours out of any film I've ever seen, ends up a horrible, mangled abortion of a movie. Urgh.

That's part of the reason why Basterds is such a relief. Tarantino has gone on record as saying the film is closer to Pulp Fiction that anything he's done recently. I don't agree. Pulp Fiction, whilst a great film, came over as somewhat flabby, a little rambling in parts. Whilst that's what you get with Quentin, and that's part of the reason I love him so, Basterds feels a little more like Jackie Brown – a strong, satisfying narrative that all comes together in a pleasing way.

The film tells the story of a group of Nazi hunters in France in WW2, let by the renegade Aldo the Apache (Brad Pitt). They become embroiled in an Allied plan to end the war by massacring the senior German leadership in a plan called Operation Kino. Unbeknownst to them, there's a parallel plan, masterminded by Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent), a French-Jewish cinema owner.

As ever, Tarantino's character development leaves a lot to be desired. Pitt (as he often seems to be) is disappointing – he's all about funny accents and a worrying dead-eyed stare in this one, and Laurent's character is the only one that an audience can really emote with. That said, Christoph Waltz's charmingly vicious 'Jew Hunter', Hans Landa is a true triumph in comic book villany.

At its essence, the film is all about the plot. Even the Basterds themselves don't come across as a team, a group, that development is abandoned early on. The narrative is about the plots, the resolutions and the inevitable twists and turns along the way. 

That said, whilst the action hurtles towards a barnstorming finish, the film is full of showstopingly cinematic moments, the type of thing that Tarantino does so well, no matter how ropey the film (Butterfly's lapdance for Stuntman Mike in Death Proof being a case in point) and Inglorious Basterds is brimming with them: the first scene of the film introducing Landa, a magnificent set-piece in a beer cellar and the final denouement of Operation Kino. 

Whilst on one level, its a backslapping movie about the Allies (inevitably) bashing the Nazis, it also succeeds on a more thoughtful level, and for me at least, this is Tarantino's true triumph. As much as it is a WW2 western about good overcoming evil, it is (perhaps even in some small part in a way similar to Antichrist) it is a self-consciously postmodern tribute to the redemptive power of cinema.

The clues are there - Operation Kino is, at its very centre a plan to use film (the senior Nazis are in Paris for the premiere of a propaganda film) as the cover for a war-ending slaughter of the Fuhrer and his pals; the two main female leads are a French/Jewish cinema owner and a German film star; the explosives used to kick off the killing are flammable film reels themselves. The most telling clue to what Tarantino is really up to comes with a film-within-a-film, made by Dreyfus and hauntingly shown to the captive Nazis as the slaughter begins, which literally allows her to have the last laugh. In a nutshell, film is the force, despite having been corrupted for propaganda purposes by Goebbels and Leni Riefenstahl, that has the power to make a real, positive change. 

Without wanting to disappear into my polo neck, I'll leave it there. Inglorious Basterds is a glorious piece of cinema. Quentin, its nice to have you back.

Film: Antichrist (Dir Lars von Trier)

Some people really do enjoy getting their knickers in a twist when it comes to works of art. Sure, the usual suspects just can't stop themselves from getting hot under the collar about anything a little salacious, but its not just the Mail that's been getting all worked up about Lars von Trier's Antichrist.

Film Trailers by Filmtrailer.com

When I mentioned to friends, colleagues, and the Twitterverse that I was planning to use a day off work to see the film, I was surprised at the response. Some people rolled their eyes, some groaned, some regaled me with third-hand stories about friends of friends walking of the cinema in disgust, fainting or even vomiting uncontrollably in the aisles. Even Paul Morley (who I've got a huge amount of time for) went very silly on Newsnight Review, accosting the director at a Cannes press conference.

It used to be books that got people in a cultural flap Lady Chatterley's Lover and the Satanic Verses are two that most immediately spring to mind. Then, we all got culturally lazy, stopped reading books, and got angry about films instead. We could all just sit back, relax and let get worked up from the comfort of the local multiplex – Reservoir Dogs, The Blair Witch Project and 9 Songs nearly saw protests on Middle Enland street corners.

Von Trier, himself, is no stranger to scandal. He's got form, particularly in the guise of The Idiots, and his whole Dogme 95 collective, which seems deliberately constructed to outrage. Hence it was no surprise when Antichrist received such an outpouring of bile in response to its release.

In short, Antichrist tells the story of an unnamed man and woman, played by Willem Defoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg and their attempts to grieve, and eventually come to terms with the death of their infant child. Defoe's character, a psychoanalyst, starts treating Gainsbourg before they retreat to Eden, a log cabin, withdrawn from reality. That's when things really start going apeshit.

Yes, the film is uncomfortable to watch (and from someone who sat through Pasolini’s Salo, that's saying something), and I found my self resisting the urge to look away on more than one occasion. What a lot of the critics who have so far tackled Antichrist seem to have missed, is that von Trier hasn't produced a realist film. An audience who takes a talking fox, a penis spurting blood or a woman turned witch (they are all there) on face value is missing the point entirely. If you take the Daily Mail approach and get caught up in the first sight of gore, the first piece of sexual contact, then Antichrist really isn't for you.

Von Trier has produced something that we see all too rarely, a masterpiece of poetic cinema – one that functions as poetically on the visual level as it does on the narrative. To that end, it reminds me visually of Steve McQueen's recent Hunger. Time and again, von Trier presents with what seem like visual clues or motifs to be decoded – acorns, injured animals, a hidden room. These would actually seem to encourage a psychoanalytic reading of the film, perhaps encouraged by von Trier's own apparent treatment whilst making the film.

Such an interpretation of the film is, however, thrown into disarray by loads of other factors that von Trier has thrown into the mix. The film has all the conventional trappings of a horror movie (a couple trapped in a dark wood, lots of sexual activity, lots of screaming and bloody gore) as well as having lots of hints that you feel are in jokes, on film buff-only references (the shooting of the much talked-about female circumcision can only be  a nod to Bunuel's eye slashing scene in Un Chien Adalou).

In short, the film is an artistic masterpiece, one that can't be 'read' in any conventional sense of the word, one that will continually disappoint and offend anyone that tries to look for a straightforward meaning. May Lars von Trier long continue to wind up the Daily Mail. If you don’t like that, go and see the Bourne fucking Identity.

Blur, Hyde Park, London, July 2nd, 2009, Oasis, Wembley Stadium, London, July 11th, 2009

Who would've thought it? Almost a decade and a half after their very public mid-nineties spats, indie pop behemoths Blur and Oasis are still well and truly wowing crowds, grabbing headlines and flogging records. Sure, we've all grown slightly slower, wiser and fatter over the past fifteen years but, from a distance at least, both groups are looking, and sounding very much as they did back when they were to be found propping up the Good Mixer.

Image via maccosta 

The beauty of the Blur vs Oasis feuds – made perfectly for the pages of the NME – was the way in which they played up to Beano-esque British national stereotypes; working class Northerners into lager-fuelled fist pumping music for lads vs effette middle-class art school softies from the South East. Whether or not that's where the real roots of these bands lie, that's how it played out in the press, and didn't they lap it up. Time hasn't worn away the outlines of these caricatures, if anything, they've grown stronger over time, resulting in very different  gig-going experiences, showcasing totally different British mindsets, at the Blur and Oasis summer 2009 enormo-shows.

Whilst Oasis rolled their rock juggernaut  into the home of British football, accustomed to hosting the English football team and other events of religious national importance, Blur took up residence at Hyde Park – home of swans, afternoons spent on the Serpentine, bordered by the upwardly-mobile enclaves of Notting Hill, Knightsbridge and Chelsea. The former saw showers of warm lager, single blokes, piss-missiles thrown in and around the crowd with an underlying feeling that large-scale rioting could break out at any moment, the latter saw happy smiling couples enjoying picnics, chilled white wine and discarded copies of The Guardian blowing gently in the soft evening breeze.

Inevitably, perhaps, the two shows offered very different spectacles. Oasis, as ever, were full of the trade-marked brand Gallagher swagger; confrontational, aggressive, eternal chip on shoulder. They've never been the cheeriest of bands, but there seemed to be a dark cloud over the Mancunian brothers tonight – maybe something to do with The Enemy's late cancellation of their support slot (something that Noel seemed particularly pissed-off about). As expected, they pummelled through a fairly predictable setlist of stadium chuggers, greatest hits, and the bits where Liam is allowed to sing the songs that he wrote all on his own – all honed by years of working the global stadium circuit. Maybe it was the rain that drenched throughout the day (I was standing), maybe it was the booze (I was right-royally rat-arsed), but I left/staggered out of Wembley with the feeling that, whilst good and the vast majority of people would have gone home happy, Oasis were slightly tired, slightly sluggish, and slightly underwhelming.

Blur, on the other hand got it totally right. They had the magic, the little extra sparkle that Oasis lacked. Maybe it's down to the fact that Damon and gang have come back after their lengthy hiatus, maybe its all still a novelty to them, maybe it was the venue, maybe the crowd. Whatever the reason, Blur at Hyde Park was a great gig, one that will long remain in the memory.

They started slowly, even timidly, perhaps a few butterflies despite a headline set at Glastonbury the weekend before. Within the first ten minutes of them taking to the stage, you are reminded how great it is to have Blur back – truly outstanding songs such as Girls & Boys, She's So High and There's No Other Way - all gems and tossed off early. As the sun started to set, both band and crowd really started to warm up, and the evening became truly magical. The set was peppered with well and truly (note the capital) Great moments – the crowd taking over the singing for Tender, the obligatory appearance of Phil Daniels for Parklife, the stompathon that is Song 2,  the delicate beauty of This is A Low and set closer The Universal.

On leaving Wembley, the faces of my fellow gig goers were tired, hungry, bloated from beer and wet from rain, at Hyde Park, we left with beatific smiles, and filled with a warm, golden glow. That says it all.

The Ettes, 'Danger Is' EP

I've got a lot of time for Rolling Stone magazine. Over the years its produced some of the most spot-on rock writing around, and fostered the careers of Lester Bangs, and Greil Marcus, two of my all-time heroes. But sometimes they can get it very very wrong indeed. According to the blurb that I've been given along with the new Ettes EP 'Danger Is', they've apparently described the  LA-based garage trio as 'the new Cramps'; that's well wide of the mark, and not a little offensive coming in the light of Lux Interior's death. The new Cramps they are not. 

Hungover-ranting aside. It's worth letting The Ettes into your life. Don't be put off by the trappings that come with them - yes, they've got celebrity mates, yes, they've got an ironically amusing name, yes they do look a little too over-styled. But, amongst all the waffle, they've got some cracking songs. Coming in the slipstream of the White Stripes, which made it OK for mainstream music fans to  listen to garage bands, 'Danger Is' showcases The Ettes' short, catchy fuzz-blasted power-pop (they call it Beat Punk, but that doesn't really mean anything). Songs to drink beer, hug your mates, pump your fist in the air, snog a stranger and start a fight to. Apparently, a couple of tracks on the EP were produced by some dude from the Black Keys. 

There's nothing cerebral here, and nothing particularly original - they don't do anything that bands like The Cut In The Hill Gang and the Detroit Cobras don't do - but I guarantee that chucking tracks like No Home onto the stereo will improve your day. Check 'em. 

Chrome Hoof with Marcus Coates, 'Ritual For Elephant and Castle, The Coronet, London, June 5, 2009

There's been a lot of noise made recently about the regeneration of Elephant and Castle. Southwark Council is apparently working hard to turn the place round by 2020. As well as, hopefully, ridding the whole area of the faint smell of urine, there's an ambitious programme of building, the way being led by a monstrous tower-block (just what the area needs!), with the aim of turning the whole area into a sanitised car-free plaza of joy. Southwark has, astutely, been looking to win the cultural hearts and minds hence a blossoming of press articles over the last few months looking at the areas 'thriving cultural scene' (ummm The Coronet, Corsica Studios and the Ministry of Sound, by my reckoning). You know, kind of how they've been trying to do to New Cross since forever.

Despite my cynicism, tonight's show was refreshingly different. Billed as a 'Ritual for Elephant and Castle', the aim was to exorcise the area and provide a cultural platform for regeneration (casting out the demons of Southwark Council's previous failures, presumably). A product of artistic collective NOMAD, it saw rising performance/video art star Marcus Coates collaborate with doom, prog, disco stompers Chrome Hoof. According to the press release, its the latest fruits of their ongoing residency, but anything else they've done together seems to have passed me by. We were promised 'one hell of a rock'n'roll disco show and, by golly, they didn't disappoint.

A collaboration between an artist and  a rock band should be terrible, on paper at least. It gets me thinking of Neil Young having a live painter on stage with him at his last headlining London shows, and some of Yoko Ono's questionable happenings. But there's definitely a natural synergy between Coates and da Hoof. Both are credible artistic bodies in their own right - Coates has steadily been gaining plaudits over the last few years, most recently forming part of Tate Britain's Altermodern, with Chrome Hoof's brand of cross-genre space rock gaining them fans from right over the musical spectrum. Both also have a track record in surprising and subverting an audience's expectations; Coates with his exploration of the role of the shaman in contemporary culture, Hoof by radically re-imagining what we define a rock band to be (eleven people and two dancers on stage - no problem!). Both resist pigeonholing and both are producing some of the most exiting work in the UK at the moment.

After impressive support from  Wildbirds & Peacedrums, first up, were Chrome Hoof. I have to admit I was a massive fan of Leo Smee's first band, retro doom-mongers Cathedral back in the 1990s but this is the first time I got to see his new project. I'm an admirer of their debut Album - Pre-Emptive False Rapture, but it works so much more effectively live than it does in records. Sure, we got the stand-out tracks from their platter, but this band is about much more than the songs - its the sensual overload of the totality that the live experience is all about. It's not subtle, its certainly not fashionable but its not supposed to be. They've emerged from the land of an NME-stylist's nightmare and do exactly what you shouldn't do on stage - fusing everything from metal to jazz to Parliament funk. Hell, they've even got a couple of terrifyingly in-character dancers, looking like refugees from Blake's 7.

After a few songs, Coates makes his entrance. Wearing a giant horses head. Not a rubber mask, but what looks like a REAL horses head from a taxidermist. With scarily real eyes and everything. Coates' artistic method is based on taking journeys to the spirit netherworld, and reporting back his interpretations of what he sees. This, he combines tonight with an extension of his shaman persona. He starts gently, with a locally-relevant traditional folk song, then as he enters the animal world,  he becomes horse rock god. It's an explosion of sex, of nature, of dormant animalism. I could ramble on about Coates for hours, but I'll leave it there, for now.

In short, it works as an extension of Chrome Hoof's set. Importantly, and this is a crucial feature of the rest of Coates' work, it's done with a sense of humour. When Coates' time is up, he retreats back into the shadows from whence he came and its the back to the Hoof to round things off. 

As far as Friday nights out go, this one was life-affirmingly joyous - part performance art, part rock sure. Yes, the place was packed out by twatty art students, but, above all, it was good old-fashioned fun! 

Ed Harcourt & friends, Union Chapel, London, May 30th, 2009

Ed Harcourt once walked out of a gig by legendary US composer Van Dyke Parks because the sustain pedal on his keyboard wasn't working. A bit of an unfair way to treat Brian Wilson's chum? Probably. Whatever, the karmic wheel had turned into place this evening, as Harcourt's piano was similarly afflicted in the beautiful setting of the Union Chapel. Aside from that incidental setback, a beautiful summer's day a nearly full church and the gently fusty smell of Christianity meant that everything was in place for a triumphant evening.

 Picture credit - thanks to miss.drivel

And a glorious triumph it almost was. Everything was there - a carefully put together set list, featuring a splattering of well-loved old favourites (Hanging With The Wrong Crowd, Born In The 70s, Apple Of My Eye), a few numbers of his latest EP (Russian Roulette, Caterpillar) and a couple of great new songs (including the impressive Do As I Do), a cracking  band, and backing vocals from his wife and sisters-in-law in the form of The Langley Sisters. Whilst it was an impressive show from the consistently, excellent Harcourt, it fell just slightly short of being the magnificently magical evening it could have been.

Don't get me wrong, the were four or five moments of joyous sublimity - the suitably psalm-esque Something To Live For, eventually completed without use of a microphone after a couple of false starts, made the collective hairs on the back of the neck of most of the congregation stand up, Russian Roulette was a joy as was (as ever), This One's For You. The duet with outstanding support singer Josephine Oniyama too was memorable. As if he needed to remind us, Harcourt again proved he's one of the nation's greatest singer-songwriters (I hate that phrase, it makes me think of Joan Baez, but that is what he is. A singer-songwiter, he's not Joan Baez), but one that's shamefully overlooked by the majority of stay-at-home Susan Boyle fans.

For me, Harcourt seemed a little distracted tonight, as witnessed by him visibly ranting at his stage crew after the show outside the dressing rooms - the dodgy pedal clearly had a big effect. Harcourt's shows are always slightly shambolic affairs - in part due to his eclecticism, but tonight's suffered slightly for it - didn't make the move from the great, to the stratospheric. I did think I noticed Van Dyke Parks shuffle past me at one point, though...

Dead Confederate - Wrecking Ball

There's been a lot of keyboard-bashing recently about the boundaries of psychedelic music. Lot's of pretty fruitless umming and ahhing about claiming bands for a certain movement or other. Lots of beard stroking and cogitating about how certain bands are nu-gaze (urghh) or neo-psych (ouch). All pretty introspective, and pretty appropriate if you think about it. But without wanting to get into a Foucauldian analysis of the classification of differernt-types of music, it doesn't really get us anywhere.

Dead Confederate, a hairy bunch of chaps from Georgia in the US, have just pushed Wrecking Ball into this space (whatever we may call it). It's an album that should make the purists shit themselves and that can only be a good thing.

The band were most recently seen in the UK on a bill that featured both Darker My Love and A Place To Bury Strangers - two bands that are more easily assimilated into the psychedelic domain so it's pretty easy to see how they are being marketed this side of the pond. On a first listen, it seems as though Dead Confederate are suffering from a similar musical identity crisis to all the British shoegazers - do they actually have an idea of how they fit into the musical landscape, and are they relevant in 2009?

I mean - just take a look at them - all checked shirts and sideburns - at a first glance you could be looking at an early 90s picture of Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains or Mudhoney. On record, as well, a large part of their music does - initially at least - seem to borrow from the hard rock/grunge traditions. Hardy Morris' vocals are the first thing that strike you - the raspy, emotional strains that wouldn't seem out of place on a Nirvana record. The heavy, crunchy guitar chords, followed up with epic soloing not heard outside my angsty adolescent bedroom since around 1994. Songs such as 'Goner' sound could have fitted in nicely on the soundtrack to Clerks.  And the stadium rock drumming - let's not forget that. So, are we all ready for the great grunge revival? Or are we talking about the dawn of the great 2009 Grunge-Gaze ((c) Russell Williams, 2009) movement?

Just when you think you've got the measure of Dead Confederate, and are ready to dismiss them as grunge-revivalists (I know I was) - well, that's when things get really interesting. After a couple of listens, you start to move beyond the lumberjack look and start to really appreciate their sensitive, epic songs. For all the heavy rock trappings, Wrecking Ball is a remarkably mature, and restrained album. Though they flirt with them, they never actually spill over into naff rock cliché territory. Their intensity remains shackled, and ultimately their plaything - in a similar way to The Black Angels or even Dead Meadow - something particularly pertinent on tracks like The News Underneath. 

For me, Wrecking Ball was a pleasant surprise. At times, the album can feel a little one-paced, but the sheer joy of some of the songwriting on the album is its saving grace. All The Angels is worth the price of the album alone, it's certainly one of the best tracks I've heard all year. Definitely worth getting hold of, and worth sticking with.

Is it grunge? Maybe. Is it 'Psychedelic'? Possibly. Does it really matter?

A Place to Bury Strangers, London King's College, April 6th, 2009

There probably should be some kind of health warning associated with A Place To Bury Strangers. It's not just the fact their stage show apparently flies headlong into the face of the UK Health and Safety Executive's recommendations for the use of strobe lights, it's the sheer complex intensity of their music that's the issue. The fact that I've been listening to them a lot recently (hell, this is the third time I've written about them in the last few months), and a lot of that has been through headphones, there's probably something very wrong indeed happening where my brain used to be. As such, I make no apologies at all for writing entirely subjectively about the Kings College show.

Picture of the band via Nathan Wind as Cochese licensed under Creative Commons

This is the second time I've seen the band  in the space of a few months. At the risk of getting all leather elbow patchy, seeing a band like this twice in quick succession is pretty interesting from a critical perspective (and part of the reason I went to see My Bloody Valentine twice in a week not so long ago). I've already been blown away by the sheer visceral roar of their music; my mind corrupted, my eyes and eyes numbed into an ecstatic  trance. This time, I wasn't about to get my self caught up in the frenzy. It was a Monday night, after all.

Once you've been shocked, offended or stunned, once the limits of acceptability have been transgressed, its impossible to be corrupted a second time and whilst the set list was largely the same, tonight's gig had a hugely different dynamic to the band's last London show at the ICA before Christmas. Last time was about being beaten into submission by the bombast, being mesmerised by the light show, this time I was able to start making out the layers, seeing that there's much more at work than just loud noise.

Don't get me wrong, loud noise is still an important part of their sound - they play it as another instrument in a similar way to MBV - but there's more going on. For me, tonight was about a gradual build of intensity, a slow creeping annihilation rather than a blitzkrieg. It was about Oliver Ackerman's twisted guitar noises, about how he inhabits the music on stage, turning from retiring shoegaze/indie popster to dangerously-crazed shaman within the space of their 70 minute set.

A Place to Bury Strangers are about more than just playing songs, they move beyond performance and start getting really physical. The music articulates the angsty, silent inner roar that you feel when you wake at 3.30am. Wow. I'm going to be leaving them alone for a bit.