In any event, they needn’t have bothered, as their new EP deserves measured praise, independent of irregular perquisites. Everything about this record is bold, hearty and ruggerish, whether it is the sweaty, satisfyingly thumpy rhythm section, the testosterone-charged Paul Rodgers-fights-John Fogerty vocals or the joyously uncool guitar riffing. This is a band that time forgot.

Opener ‘Blood on the Streets’ exemplifies all this, with a guitar riff possibly half-inched from Lenny Kravitz (I did say ‘joyously uncool’, didn’t I?), over which Matt Greenham sings with lusty enthusiasm about some approaching barney, riot or ruck. Whatever it is, The Empty Vessels seem to be up for it. If they ever remake ‘Minder’, (and I mean properly, not the unwatched Channel Five embarrassment.  I mean with ‘Gawd ‘elp us, it’s the filth’ and Dennis Waterman singing the theme tune), this song should be a shoo-in for the scratch track.

‘Take a hard look’ boasts equally old-fashioned virtues, coming over like a slightly modified version of one of those really cooking, slow-swinging Free songs. ‘Ride on Pony’ springs to mind. OK, it’s probably a remake of a remake, but it’s swarthily stylish and it sounds like the musicians were having a blast playing it. Greenham is beyond doubt a great rock singer. He has no time for nuance: he is a brontosaurus-bashing caveman and every office-bound, angst-ridden modern male should be cheering him on in his reconstruction of unapologetic masculinity. Jeremy Clarkson sometimes seems to be a parody of that possibly-mythical beast: Greenham is the real deal.

On the later songs, the template is tweaked just a little. ‘It Moves Me’ shows some environmental concerns, not unlike those expressed on MGMT’s ‘Kids’, though the music could hardly be more different.’If All in the World’ shows a bit more rhythmic flexibility than the others, with some prime ‘Mars: the Bringer of War’ drums hammering out below a rather sinister chorus worthy of local indie heroes Spring Offensive. But at no time on the record is the duty to rock like a bastard neglected.

The Empty Vessels seem to perceive the rock of 1969 as marine biologists do the shark. It’s perfect as it is, so why bother with evolution? I think they even rejoice in their out-of-time incongruity, describing their sound on Myspace as “as solid as BA Baracus”. But I for one am glad they’re around. You can’t listen to Grizzly Bear every day.

Empty Vessels Myspace

By Colin Mackinnon

It’s not that Nick Breakspear’s ever more accomplished trio sound an awful lot like the New Jersey stadium rockers-they are too punky, too rough around the edges and haven’t been airbrushed into massive-sounding studio perfection. Nevertheless, there is in the swagger of Breakspear’s major-key working class anthems an echoing response to the confident blue collar affirmation purveyed for years numberless by the Tri-State eighties stalwarts.

Their current EP, Magnets, sees the band at their terse, disciplined best, in contrast to their patchy and sometimes repetitive album ‘What’s Not to Understand?’. The eponymous track sets the tone pretty well, with Ian Budd’s jaunty bass line underpinning Breakspear’s genially yobbish rhetoric. He might claim that he is a ‘magnet for trouble’, but you know the sort of trouble he’s referring to is a cuff on the chin by Fozzy Bear, rather than anything more distressing or permanent. Unusually for the Hats, there’s a bit of understated synthesizer squelch in the mix, and in general the record feels bigger, brasher and a bit less garage-bound than previous recordings. Producer Lee Christian is no Bob Rock, but he’s successfully coaxed a more substantial sound from the three, and I think their style of music could do with that.

‘Getaway’ represents prime danceable classic rock, combining swedging beats, Breakspear’s ardent, raspy tenor and some simple but effective harmonies. Better yet is the urgent, angular ‘Just Fall’, my favourite Black Hats song, and featuring one of Breakspear’s finest vocal performances. In the past he’s sometimes sacrificed tone for attitude, but here he is just a great rock singer, with no reservations.

‘Magnets’ is the sound of a band growing in confidence and ambition. After the rather cramped, snappy feel of the album, this is grand, energetic and tune-filled rock, made by musicians who are supremely committed and are finding both their voice and their space.

Clearly, they were not born to follow.

The Black Hats Myspace

By Colin MacKinnon.

Whilst cabaret pop hasn’t precisely taken over the world, Borderville’s gloriously over-reaching debut album seems a perfect zeitgeist Polaroid, a record so theatrical it should come with a glossy programme and an unfeasibly overpriced ice cream. And it’s an incredible piece of work, welding Bowie’s cracked actor dramatics to off-Broadway torch songs, with crescendos direct from Queen’s halcyon days. Joe Swarbrick may not have the most agile – or even tuneful – voice in town, but he may well have the most expressive, alternating between stage whisper and Christ-pose rock howl to wring every ounce of emotion from elaborate rock opera opuses. The wonderful “Short Sharp Shock” is a prime example, capturing the whiff of deflated expectations as a band packs up after a show, offsetting some emotive, barely pitched yelps with massed Original Cast Recording backing vocals. Everything about this surprisingly varied LP is overdone to a T, and Borderville have clearly realised that, whilst sincerity and chest-bashing might do the trick, emotions can be far more powerfully expressed if we all realise they’re artificial. The mask is always more frightening once you know it’s a mask.

The rest of the band is also superb, dealing in the wild dynamic variations that can only be achieved with sensitively controlled ensemble playing. Keyboard player “Woody” Woodhouse deserves especial praise for his improbably fluent runs across the ivories, the synth whoops of live favourite “Glambulance”, the tipsy stumbling solo of “Lover, I’m Finally Through” and the jerky mazurka of “Short Sharp Shock” particularly standing out. What’s most impressive about the record is how much variation the band achieves with a relatively sparse sonic palette: it would have been all too easy to drench everything in swooning strings and ersatz effects, but Borderville have retained the sound of a simple rock quartet and pushed it into some intriguing places

No matter how unfair we find it, most of the world considers every damn person in Oxford to be a limp-wristed, pretentious, teddy-clutching silver spoon sucker, honking away about Byron and ponies. A review of Winnebago Deal some years ago in the NME said something like, “What are you lot so grumpy about? Was your 15th century quad not properly manicured this morning?” Yes, even the whiskey-soaked death-grunge hollers of two hairy creatures from darkest Eynsham brought forth plummy images from Uncle Monty’s most rose-tinted recollections. We feel that, if this is how the world sees us, we should embrace it. We’ve already given the world the preppy Bowdlerised art-funk of Foals and Stornoway’s warm-jumpered folk poetry, let’s complete the picture with Borderville’s greasepainted bombast. Cherish them.

Borderville Myspace

By David Murphy

Contributors: David Murphy, Colin MacKinnon, Mark Wilden and Alex Lloyd.

Alphabet Backwards: Alphabet Backwards
Gr8 bnd v g pop lol [Send to entire address book] (DM)

A Scholar & A Physician: She’s A Witch
The funnest ball of funny electro fun anywhere in the world this year, from Truck’s production go-to boys. (DM)

Borderville: Joy Through Work
“A band’s reach should exceed its grasp/ Or what’s a heaven for?” – Robert Browning (nearly).(DM)

Les Clochards: Sweet Tableaux
Oxford’s wry Gallic café indie children deliver a blinder.  Sounds like fat Elvis twatted on crème de menthe and blearily stumbling about the Postcard Records’ bordello.(DM)

Grumpily romantic Anglo-French chansons with dazzling accordion flourishes and spookily sweet two-part harmony. (CHM)

Hretha:  Minnows/ Dead Horses
Orthographically frustrating upstarts produce clinical post-rock excellence.(DM)

Jessie Grace: Demo
Silky, sensuous, lounge bar pop from ukulele-wielding Buckinghamshire lass-massive voice, bigger tunes . Paloma Who? (CHM)

The Gullivers: Legerdemain
Bleakly stylish post-punk minimalism, now with added singing. A band to revisit. (CHM)

Mephisto Grande: Seahorse Vs The Shrew
A revivalist hymn meeting seen through Lewis Carrol’s mescaline kaleidoscope.(DM)

Message to Bears: Departures
If the Oxfordshire countryside ever needs a soundtrack, this is it. Resplendent beauty everywhere, with beats, samples and strings expertly combined with pianos and Jerome Alexander’s diamantine guitar. Why isn’t this guy huge? (CHM and AL)

Misfit Mod: Islands and Islands
Sleepily lovely electronica from the talented Miss Kelleher. Dan Mitchell’s review captured her voice in one word: pellucid. (CHM)

Peerless Pirates: Demo
Swaggering, timber-shivering, Smithy indie pop. Smell the rum and smash  the tavern. (CHM)

PRDCTV: It’s Never Too Late To Have A Happy Childhood

Promising folktronic EP from OxfordBands scribe and recent Ninja Tune signing who’s clearly heard a Four Tet record or two and knows how to put his own stamp on it. (MW)

The Relationships: Space
Beautiful chiming indie pop coupled with the most articulate lyricist ever to have flâneured the Cowley Road; think R.E.M.’s Reckoning crossed with Betjeman’s Banana Blush, record collectors! (DM)

Mr Shaodow: “RU Stoopid”
Serious messages, approachable humour, lyrical dexterity.  His best yet, and that’s some benchmark.(DM)

Spring Offensive: EP
Everyone’s favourite band at the moment, but you heard it here first. Five lads from a rather good South Oxon school, playing highly inventive angular rock- where have we heard that before? (CHM)

Stornoway: Unfaithful
The startled bunnies of lit-pop had a meteoric year.  Let’s be honest, you won’t get long odds on their debut LP featuring in the list next year…(DM)

Tiger Mendoza:The Hope Sick

Vocal-led electronica from former Toy #1 guitarist gone solo and recent winner of the 2009 DJ Shadow Remix Project.  Glitchy and twitchy, warm and chunky – this is an artist worth keeping an eye on. (MW)

To Liesel: Dear Jane
The Fleet Foxes of Oxford? Not now, but later. Ardent musical love letter wrapped in heart-breaking harmony. (CHM)

Vileswarm: Sun Swallows The Stars
An experimental dreamteam of Frampton and Euhedral, offering “doom drone”: does exactly what it says on the tombstone. (DM)

Richard Walters: The Animal

Finally!  The debut Richard Walters album.  Kept us waiting long enough.  Worth the wait, though – delicate and precise, and full of heart.  There’s not a single thing I’d want to change about this record; it’s beautiful from start to finish. (MW)

Kicking things off in the marginally-less-arctic conditions was James Bell, brother of the aforementioned Mark, playing his unusual brand of updated traditional folk. Now, most people will rightly recoil in horror at the thought of trad. folk, however James has a canny knack of picking very obscure, often violent and/or wildly romantic songs and belting the crap out of them in his own unique, histrionic way. His revamped and almost unrecognisable “Scarborough Fair” was a highlight, and you cannot fail to admire a man who, standing alone and spot lit on a cold stage in front of just a few early punters, sings a full-blooded a capella piece, accompanying himself by beating and slapping his chest and legs for a rhythm. Although that was possibly just to keep warm.

Local singer/songmeister Trev Williams was up next, accompanied by a fellow named PJ who slaps and thumps a cajon and bongo along with Trev’s guitar. Despite his purportedly downbeat feeling about the gig and his song choices, Trev actually plays some pretty energetic and upbeat tunes, albeit while tackling some pretty heavy topics. It doesn’t drag at all though, and Trev’s compositions are interesting and well-structured enough that he avoids most of the pitfalls so common in this kind of music. He certainly doesn’t come across as the archetypically dour purveyor of self-loathing and doom that so many of this ilk aspire to.

The Fox and the Bramble didn’t make it, so next up is Charlie Baxter, a frankly mental young lad from out of town (did I hear mention of Cheltenham?). Armed with a memory bank full of pre-programmed cheesy keyboard songs (not unlike how I imagine the work of The Electric Six to have been before they really worked it out), a Squier Strat and a fuzzbox, he yelps, leaps, mumbles, spaz-dances and squawks his way through a rapid fire set of scattergun fuzz-dance-pop tunes about wanting to become a rock star, cats (possibly) and other such random topics. He’s a funny, gawky fella and sadly his between-song banter is so blurted, out of breath and mumbled that it’s hard to work out what he’s on about. But the gist is that he doesn’t take it too seriously, hates MySpace and has some pretty catchy tunes in his arsenal. It’s a bit like a cleaned-up, teeny-pop, keyboard-led Beaver Fuel in many respects.

Charlie is followed by a solo performance not by the billed Vileswarm, but by a solo Euhedral (who also makes up part of Vileswarm, the other part of whom is feeling a bit peaky. Still with me?). A simple array of delay and distortion pedals, a single-stringed guitar on its side and an amp humming away. The lights dim. A violin bow. Static. The hushed, huddled audience shuffle closer. You expect huge ear-bursting swathes of violent noise but it’s quieter and more subtle than you might think. No drums, beats or rhythms. Drawing you in. Drones. Apparently there’s four pieces in the twenty minute performance, though I’m damned if I could spot where one started and the other ended. It’s dark and dense, like the theme music to a particularly spooky section of a Resident Evil game. Perhaps a little strangely, the audience loves it, sitting and standing in hushed reverence until the explosion of applause at the end. Gripping, hypnotic stuff.

With a typically Gappy Tooth-esque crunching gear change, Euhedral is swiftly followed by a young chap called Matt Winkworth, whose solo piano ruffles a few burlesque, jazzy, music hall feathers with songs in memory of Lolo Ferrari (her of the enormous knockers. No, not Jordan, the other one from a few years ago), people who have killed themselves and also, possibly, cats. He’s lovably camp, delicately gentle in his delivery and hates the set list he’s chosen for being too morbid when it should be happy. But he’s good fun, self deprecating and a nice end to the first half of the day.

Picking things up are the first band of the day Able Archer. There’s a fairly predictable faff because no-one brought a drum kit and assumed someone else would (assumption proving again to be the mother of all cock-ups), but once the bones of a kit appear from the back of someone’s car they’re quick to get going and although it’s not groundbreaking stuff they knock out some fun dad-pop tunes. It’s a little bit like U2 and Crowded House having a jam together – some nice melodies, some soaring moments, performed well, but it’s all a bit predictable, fluffy and lightweight in a totally inoffensive way. It’s probably the Oxford Snob in me demanding something difficult and left-field, when in fact there’s really nothing wrong with Able Archer as long as you don’t want anything, well, difficult or left-field.

The drum kit faff suffers a repeat at the hands of Baby Gravy, who convince Able Archer to leave their decrepit shells in return for Baby Gravy swapping places in the running order with Mr Shaodow. At this point I had to dive off for some well-earned chips, so I only caught the first couple of songs before handing over the mixing desk briefly to Skeletor. The Gravy were, as always, full of energy and Iona seemed in particularly fine voice, far from the off-key yelping I remember from the last time I saw them. She was dressed like my Grandma though, which I found odd. It’s possibly retro-chic, or some other fashion thing I am blissfully unaware of. After hearing a fine rendition of “Did it again” I buggered off to Posh Fish for a banger & chips, which was very tasty thank you, if slightly rushed.

Arriving back in time for Mr Shaodow was slightly surreal. A rapper without the “gangsta” and with a strong grip on social issues seemed to gently stun the growing crowd, even though there were clearly a number of folks specifically there to see him. Describing how he’d been up and down the country working his socks off trying to further his music career, Shaodow seemed to baffle the crowd, who in return frustrated the rapper with their dad-dancing and muted responses to his requests for participation. It’s one of those strange situations where a bunch of people who don’t quite understand rap are trying desperately to enjoy a rapper, not really getting it but trying anyway, while the rapper himself struggles to connect to an unfamiliar audience that isn’t quite with him. Nothing wrong with the performance, he did his best bless him, just a case of wrong place, wrong crowd.

The best act of the day was undoubtedly Spring Offensive. Perfectly crafted power pop/rock songs, delivered with aplomb and character. Fresh out of the studio, these guys are definitely ones to watch in the coming months, and an assault on the charts and wider public would seem inevitable. Dominating the stage with their 9ft tall frontman they simply piled out cracking tune after cracking tune, and you quickly realise why their MySpace page has got a list of plaudits as long as your arm. Check them out now before they make the cover of Nightshift every single month this year!

Thumbs up to the Gappy Tooth & Swiss Concrete guys for another excellent weekend, despite the freezing conditions. Same time next year? You bet. Just find somewhere with heating next time, eh?

By Tim Lovegrove

Postscript: My own thoughts on the Drunkenstein set. Normally Colin edits out my reviews of my own bands, but hopefully he’ll keep this one in: we were rubbish. Truly one of our worst gigs, and that’s saying something. Both Skeletor (guitar/frontman) and I (drums) were knackered from the preceding two days ruining, sorry, running the sound, Snuffy (bass) had worked all day and Planet Jones (guitar) had a nice lie in and a restful day. Git. Excuses excuses. We started with “Sickorski”, which is difficult to play in places and predictably we largely screwed it up. As it went on the set got marginally better but eventually we gave up, dropped a load of songs and wound the set down with “A Walk in the Woods/Misery Waltz”, which was deemed acceptable as a finale to the day but was also, frankly, a bit ropey. At that point we moved quickly to the side of the stage and collapsed for a bit, whilst the Right Honourable Sir Mark of Evenings played some very silly mashup tunes to the sound of pint glasses being cleared and people moving swiftly downstairs for some well-deserved heat.