The Treat’s ‘Phonography’ album is an extremely well-produced tribute album to just about every classic rock band you care to name. An accomplished three-piece dominated by singer/songwriter/guitarist/producer Mike Hyder, they have the chops to play everything from three chord AC/DC romps, via smooth jazz and through onto enormous Metallica-style epics. The band’s flexible approach is its greatest strength, but also its biggest weakness. Despite twelve impeccably-recorded tracks to choose from, I can’t say I liked any of them, and the source of my difficulties comes mostly from Hyder’s tin ear for language and inability to follow a good musical idea through to the end without ruining it.

Take the sole instrumental on the record, ‘Effervesence’. The first couple of minutes are heaven: laid-back jangly guitar meshing effortlessly with some wonderfully minimalist flute, but the idyll is shattered by Hyder bringing in a load of squalling guitars that reduce the remainder of the track to a load of empty bombast.

‘Make You Crawl’ and ‘Too Late’ are more rounded tunes, but AC/DC were doing this stuff perfectly serviceably in the eighties. Hyder’s voice, as nasal as Dave Evans’ but without that aura of gleeful malevolence, is solid but unappealing.

Still, these conservative tunes are preferable to the Treat’s attempt to be experimental, as on the dire ‘Black Cat Whites’ which welds Pink Floyd’s ‘Bike’ onto the Small Faces’ ‘Lazy Sunday Afternoon’ for no artistically defensible reason. Hyder’s journeys into fairytale as on the opening ‘Fanfare for the King’ or the eco-warrior anthem ‘Meadowland’ are unrewarding pieces of po-faced whimsy. ‘Bolivian Diary’, Hyder’s attempt to imagine himself into Ché Guevara’s army is just excruciating: try this for size:

‘I will take the first watch, even though I’ve had no sleep

Chino’s out of action, cause he’s slipped and broke his feet’

Priceless. Someone shoot me.

‘Clutching at Jagged Glass’ is perhaps the best song on the album, with a couple of top-class Zeppelin-style riffs driving the song along like some stentorian PT sergeant , but in the main this album is overblown, suffers from naïve and outdated songwriting and contains barely a trace of warmth or humour, although plenty of unintentional comedy. Like Chino, it’s lame.

The Treat Myspace

By Colin MacKinnon

Everyone else has had their say about the sad story of the now-closed Exeter Hall, so I felt I may as well add my bit as well. The X had many faults, but in my opinion it had become the most pleasant place to listen to live music in the city. If the refurbishment had given it a slightly over-genteel ambience, it was at least clean and you could get a seat. Parking was good and you didn’t need to brave the drunken yobs on Cornmarket Street when the gig finished.

      Musically, I heard some excellent bands there. Looking back over my reviews, I’ve enjoyed quality sets from Stornoway, Raggasaurus, Santa Dog, Wire Jesus, The Clochards and The Shaker Heights among many others, although Alison could perhaps have been slightly less dependent on old favourites and tried to attract an even wider pool of talent. This may be unfair, as I don’t know how hard she worked to do this.

       Alison’s manner wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but in my experience, she was tough but fair, removing people who had had too much to drink or that were behaving obnoxiously, in order to preserve a decent atmosphere for the rest. Her habit of introducing the acts bugged some people, but I rather liked it; it provided at least the impression of  an Event rather than a run-of-the-mill gig.

In the end, it seems as if the Exeter Hall closed because the numbers didn’t add up, and Alison compounded that problem by fighting a hopeless battle with the PRS. But the verdict on her tenure on the X must be that she worked like hell to promote local music, and for that she deserves every honour.

By Colin MacKinnon

An unusually intimate gig took place in the back room of The Gardener’s Arms last Thursday, organised by Jont as part of his ongoing series of Unlit shows hosted in friend’s houses and venues on the smaller side of cosy. Tonight featured Jont, Stornoway and Ben Walker.

More photos can be found over here.

Love it or loathe it, you really notice the effects of the smoking ban in the grotty toilet venues of this world. Where once a grimy, sweaty haze inhabited the room, there is now a clear view of all four walls, and the opportunity to take a deep breath without ingesting the recycled contents of 50 teenage lungs. Settle down, smokers - it’s just an observation!

It’s a bit unfair to refer to Oxford’s Wheatsheaf as a toilet venue, seeing as it plays host to some of Oxford’s finest entertainment on a regular basis. In particular, tonight is a monthly Quickfix Recordings night - that’s the label that has recently worked with Youthmovies, The Half Rabbits, and Smilex, amongst others, to produce some of the best sounds to come out of Oxford in recent years.

Tonight, Quickfix have brought us a mêlée of bands from near and far, and to kick things off local three-piece Savage Henry Is Dead take to the stage.

The Savage Henry sound is all about the noise they make when the stomp boxes kick in - it’s a meaty riff-fest that draws influence from Queens Of The Stone Age and System Of A Down, and mixes odd timings and instrumental breaks with more generic rock-out sections. There’s something about the vocals of Savage Henry’s frontman that prevents them blending seamlessly into the band’s sound, but it’s a minor problem in a set that wins over the scattered audience who have gathered at this early stage of the evening.

Next up, it’s Mary Bendy Toy. Now this is an odd one. I want you! I need you!” yelps the frontman, who looks a bit like Marilyn Manson half way through make-up, and I’m not sure that this audience would reciprocate the sentiment of those lyrics to the band, who appear to have plucked their members from different universes and placed them together on stage for the first time tonight. The highlight of a fairly dreary set is when a hand-propelled WW2 siren is employed during the final song. Man, those things rock! A moment of superb innovation in a set that otherwise failed to impress.

“Angular” is the word that instantly springs to mind as Striplight from London launch into their thirty-minute set. It’s mostly due the choppy guitar technique of Alex Mitchell, who looks and sounds like he’s been plucked straight out of Interpol. Vocalist Liz Tumber is Pink meets Annie Lennox, but with a very distinctive style of her own. She’s an energetic performer, girating around the stage and entangling herself in the mic cord from song to song. This is a class act, and with interest from renowned indie label Touch and Go, plus reworkings of their tracks by Roots Manuva and Tim ‘Love’ Lee under their belt, a step up to the next level mightn’t be too far off.

Headlining tonight are Oxford’s own The Courtesy Kill, a band who really look the part, it has to be said. With a lineup comprising three girls (vocals, guitar and bass) and two boys (lead guitar and drums), all good looking folk, The Courtesy Kill command the stage and look relaxed with it. Their sound is tight and accomplished, mixing memorable harmonies with attacky guitars, and bringing to mind No Doubt as the only obvious point of reference. Frontwoman Cat is simultaneously shy and confident, an act which endears the audience and causes a good deal of crowd participation, even if encouraging a bloke in the crowd to strip off takes up a little too much between-song banter time. The Courtesy Kill may need a little more time to perfect their sound, but they are without doubt one of the brightest musical prospects Oxford currently has to offer.

Good on Quickfix for putting together such a diverse and entertaining bill. It was a night with enough contrast and talent to be memorable, and to ensure this reviewer will be heading back to a Quickfix Recordings night in the near future to see what other treasures the label can dig up.

Faceometer, the alter ego of Birmingham troubadour Will Tattersdill, is a studiedly kooky inventor of songs of learned silliness. Think a combination of the sardonic jocularity of Cake’s John McCrea with the forlorn country rock of Grandaddy with a dash of old-timey Kentucky mountain music and you’re beginning to see it. This three-track demo is enormous fun, if ultimately perplexing, particularly in the lyrics.

The opening ‘Mellow Drama’ borrows heavily from an old folk song, perhaps best known to movie buffs as ‘The Big-Rock Candy Mountain’ from ‘O Brother Where Art Thou?’, but Tattersdill’s clever if abstract wordplay is a long way from the spirit of timeless artlessness of that tune. He is accompanied by attractive if conventional acoustic guitars and the vocal is doubled up the octave by the excellent Lizzie Parle. A pleasant confection but I’m damned if I know what the song is supposed to be about.

Much less obscure is the pioneer ballad ‘Cosmic Picaresque’, with the twist that the folks on the Oregon Trail are augmented by a troop of space-hopping aliens, who simply want to join in a good ol’ hoe-down, as opposed to harbouring the usual tedious motives- world domination, grabbing mineral deposits, the desire to freak out rednecks etc. etc. As country rock it’s first class, with lots of speeding banjos, ragged close-harmony and all carried off with plenty of humour and dash. Tattersdill’s wordiness is a positive good here, as his need to get all the lyrics out creates an urgent, exciting dynamic even without the excellent backing group’s taut contribution.

Thus, Tattersdill appears to be yet another of the Oxford music scene’s awkward talents- an intriguing lyricist and more-than-useful musician, although the rampant silliness of most of his material will leave the chin-strokers cold. More fool them.

Faceometer Myspace

By Colin MacKinnon

Here’s a clip of Smilex’s headline set from Equitruck yesterday - a fantastic showcase of what a diverse range of bands we’ve got in this town, with the added bonus of a rapturously-received singalong Frank Turner set, some Arcade Fire stylings from Danny and the Champions of the World, and the usual mindblowing, jaw-dropping Nought set. Anyone go along to this or the ‘rival’ Combofest all-dayer?

Was anyone else up and about at about 1am this morning and happened to catch the programme all about Electrelane on Channel 4? The interviews weren’t really up to much, but there was some incredible live footage that reminded me what an amazing band they were and how I’ll miss ‘em now they’re gone. I got the same feeling of having watched them ‘grow up’ as a band as I’ve had with many an Oxford band, from seeing them play in the Rising Sun in Reading years ago, on a bright and sunny afternoon on the main stage at Truck, through to having the privilege to help promote them at Audioscope in 2003, and then seeing them go on to support Arcade Fire and the Beastie Boys. And maybe that’s the most satisfying ‘relationship’ you can have with a band, seeing them develop from early days in pub backrooms into something amazing. On which note, good luck to Foals - it looks like it’s gonna be their year…

Chalgrove-based Decibel Studios are offering 2 hours free rehearsal to any bands or solo artists who visit their new website at http://www.decibelstudios.org/ and fill out the contact form. Phone David (Tel 01460 221541, mobile07885 211279) for more information.

Last month, your reviewer copped a bit of flak for espousing the fogeyish notion that the singer from This Town Needs Guns had a similar style to Crispin from Longpigs. Gawd knows what the boo-boys will make of this review then, because I swear to God that Robert Stevenson, the vocalist from local progressive rockers A Silent Film sounds rather like Peter Gabriel. Oh, and the band occasionally sound like Genesis.

Not all the time, I’ll freely admit, but there are undeniable echoes reverberating through the four songs that make up the band’s icily impressive EP, ‘The Projectionist’. Witness the minimalist but muscular drum figure at the start of ‘Chromatic Eyes’ or Stevenson’s spooky tenor on ‘The Lamplight’. Above all, the production throughout, giving  prominence to reverb and employing multiple synth textures  is highly redolent of eighties opulence. That said, a feature of the band’s style is that everything is subtle and controlled. Not something you could ever apply to the Eighties.

As for the songwriting, at first I thought there was barely a tune on the record-there are certainly no obvious radio hits, although the wonderful ‘Sleeping Pills’ really should be. In fact, the vocal and instrumental melodies are all there, but they need five or six plays before they issue forth, blinking into the sunlight.’The Lamplight’, for example, is an atmospheric, sophisticated love song which needed a few listens before iIcould shake off the shock of all those old synthesisers and minor sevenths. For some reason, the spirit of Seal’s ‘Crazy’ haunts the first half before a big guitar solo carries all before it. The song is unified by a deliberately diffident nervousness, which paradoxically, only extremely confident musicians can carry off.

More to my taste, but maintaining the feel is the highly original ‘Six feet of Rope and Revenge’, a sort of existentialist gallows ballad. The only precedent I can think of is the Band’s ‘Long Black Veil’, which also tells the tale of a condemned man, although the latter was ruined by a lack of seriousness. ‘Six feet’ feels more authentic, and nearly every detail seems to chill the blood, notably the uncanny, discordant vocal harmonies and the hushed economy of Stevenson’s singing, as if he himself has to weigh his words for fear of his life. The understated backdrop of anonymous synths, anxious, clicky drumming and urgent guitar is masterful.

Next, insinuating itself, python-like into the consciousness and below comes the insanely beautiful ‘Sleeping Pills’. Marvellous as the chorus is, I particularly like the originality of the instrumention. For example, the shimmering marimbas at the start are not just a clever introductory flourish, but form the backbone of the entire song, and their combination with the guitars is gorgeous. A facile comparison with early Coldplay could be made, but the audacity of that marimba banishes such tedious thoughts. Also, the song, in it’s own low-burning way, rocks: Chris Martin’s maudlin lot never rocked in their lives.

When I first heard  A Silent Film at the Punt a couple of years back, I thought they were a bunch of highly-talented poseurs who had all the chops to make cool, sophisticated rock music, but lacked the ability to write tunes. I take it all back guys. I’m sorry, I was wrong. But I was right about Stu and the fookin’ Longpigs.

How much fun was that? For anyone who didn’t witness Smilex’s incredible Guns ‘n’ Roses set, I’m only sorry I didn’t get any photos. Any band that can pull off a costume change during a guitar solo deserves maximum rock hero respect. Hey ho, I only had this picture of Witches doing ‘Starman’ in a fetching array of matching wigs - more photos can be found over here.

Happy new year!