This promoting business is a doddle. Hundred and fifteen payers through the door on a wet January evening, nae probs. What is everyone moaning about?
That, at least, must be the attitude of the promoter of Reading’s ‘Monkeysuit’ night, making his debut in Oxford at the Jericho. The room filled slowly and then explosively throughout the evening and must have brought a healthy profit for all concerned. As I left the venue, I warned him not to expect the same results in August.
Kicking off the evening were acoustic ultra-miserablists Ute, who have moved from a guitar and harp duo to a more classifiable but less distinctive guitar-bass-drums trio. At first, the consensus among my group was that they were terrible, offering nothing but sludgy sub-Hail to the Thief rock dirges and oceans of self-pity. The low point was the intro to the third or fourth song, which featured the bass player clapping away arrhythmically, as the singer caterwauled his way through some tortured vocal formulation-my mate described it as ‘Ryan Adams locked in a seal enclosure’. To be fair, the band picked up in the second half and showed some gift for close harmony, particularly on a couple of wordless choruses, but the set as a whole was a chore.
Far better were Peerless Pirates, another guitar trio, but one with little in common with the previous act. The first song sounded like the Muppets theme tune played by The Smiths, and it got even better after that. Suddenly, the audience realised that they may be allowed to have a good time after all.
The Pirates’ sound is a mixture of Johnny Marr jangle-pop with dashes of rockabilly and classic rock (Their excellent ‘Bring Out Your Dead’ sounds initially like a hidden gem from Bob Dylan’s ‘Bringing it All Back Home’ album and ‘High Seas Love Affair’ could have been the product of Long John Silver fronting The Stooges). Blackbearded vocalist Cliff clearly knows his Morrissey, and has a bit of the poseurish drawl, but jettisons the ennui and the foghorn delivery (Truly was it spoken that Morrisey “has the voice that saved a thousand ships”) and occasionally sounds closer to Neil Tennant. The band were on effervescent form and even had the earnest post-rockers jigging along at the end. Above all, their songs were laden with killer hooks, which is appropriate, given their profession.
Closing the evening were Reading post-rock collective, A Genuine Freakshow. It took a while to figure even that little bit out, as they had quite important parts for male vocals, and featured a string section as well as sporting a trumpeter. The Arcade Fire are a convenient starting point for their sound, with four-to-the-floor drums, high, reedy vocals and wintry, romantic violins. It’s all very accomplished, with care being taken to find space for the brass and strings among the dense guitar textures. What is missing is the odd genuinely memorable singalong tune which would crown all that obvious musical intelligence and the set began to plod in the last third.
Still, another brilliant, profitable night for the Jericho: the catastrophic, indefensible decision to abandon live music at the end of the nineties is now a distant memory and hopefully it will sail on indefatigably through the coming choppy waters. A bit like the Peerless Pirates.
By Colin MacKinnon
