Efterklang Shepherds Bush Empire 21 April 2010

I met this guy at a gig and apropos of not much, he said "You must go to see Efterklang, whatever you do, you have to go and see Efterklang". He told me that when he saw them last, it made him cry, that he suddenly found himself with tears running down his face. Slightly cynical, I went to see them of course, I had to check this one out.

To tell the story more fully, he and I were both at another music event in London, a couple of days before. We were strangers and were introduced to each other as we both 'review stuff'. Neither of us are exactly new to this music business, certainly to speak for myself, long in the tooth is a phrase you might apply. We found a bit to talk about, this and that, before that night's show. All of a sudden, and actually within a few sentences of our introduction, my new found friend came out with this insistence that I just had to go and see Efterklang. I'll be quite honest, they were a band I had heard of, read about, and considered probably worthy but I hadn't got round to them, never in fact heard a note they had produced. This claim about their power to induce to tears was the subject of some conversation that night. None of the rest of the little group of us could think of such an occasion, except maybe for other reasons, such as the night someone stage dived my glasses into my face at a punk gig about two years ago. That produced tears of a completely different kind.

So - Efterklang. As it happened, and the reason for the conversation, was that they were playing a couple of nights later. I'd missed the one where they performed with a full orchestra and that might have even put me off. Even better, at this one they supported by Esben and The Witch, a band I'd been wanting to catch up with. Arrangements were therefore made, railway journeys were undertaken, and I duly found myself three rows back in an audience intensely interested and polite in equal measure.

Esben were great in a minor way, drowning in theremin throb and the almost constant shimmering of a high hat beaten with a soft stick. There was yowl and howl, dreams fighting through the cotton wool clouds of sleeping tablets. Impressively, they chose to throw overboard much conventional song structure, the mood reflected in a stage which was mainly in darkness with shafts of even greater darkness. Esben and whoever your Witch might be, I'll be back for more soon.

And onto the main event.

Efterklang are Danish, three of them being childhood friends on an island somewhere before they made that transition to Copenhagen.The core of the band are Mads Brauer, Casper Clausen, Thomas Husmer and Rasmus Stolberg. On tour they are joined by what they describe as their 'beloved live-band members' - Peter Broderick, Frederik Teige, Heather Woods Broderick and Niklas Antonson. Efterklang have been going since 2000, garnering much critical acclaim along the way. They recently signed to 4AD and released their third album Magic Chairs through them in February this year.

That was about what I had managed to find out in between my conversation and tonight. That and they have a reputation for live shows. This didn't quite prepare for what I got tonight. They are a large and complex outfit, Casper and Rasmus firmly stage front. Casper leads on vocals, Rasmus was equipped only with a bass, a smile and not even the pretence of a mic stand. The rest of the band were arranged on rising staging towards the back but up at the front, it was a competition of natty cardigans and big grins from those two. They really looked like the most pleased people in music today - not smug, just immensely stoked to be up on stage in front of what was without doubt their people, few casual onlookers tonight.

The structure of the music became apparent, in that it is exceptionally cleverly and carefully assembled. They are sometimes lazily classified as indie, this was very definitely post-rock of the art house and art school persuasion. They are heavily steeped and assisted with wind instruments. By the time they were three tracks in, on Mirador, there was a flute and a recorder joining the trombone, and Casper's vocals were being augmented by keyboardist Heather Woods Broderick. It swooped and it soared and it climbed. Another track and the cardigans were shed to reveal preposterous braces and the grins on the two up front just got bigger. It might be explained by the cardigan and the 50's hair-cut but Casper seemed as comforting as a favourite uncle, while Rasmus with his grin beguiled and mesmerised like Kaa the snake in the Jungle Book.

They brought us throbbing undertow, more of that growing male / female vocalisation, and brass of the loveliest nature. At another point, in Step Aside, strobe lights dominated strobe music. Caravan progressed with tribal chants and complex rhythms into Harmonics, the band demanding fullest audience participation in finger clicking and clapping. By the time we got to Alike, there were 5 pieces of brass, even drummer Thomas Husmer equipped with a trumpet. Raincoats found me with my eyes closed, dancing somewhere inside my head.

We got to another track. There were rolling pianos which dropped into a duet between Casper and Heather. This somehow ground and wound to a moment of silence, and I mean SILENCE. Two thousand people in there and not a word or a cough or a titter. I have never seen anything quite like like it. Casper slowly looked up and grinned and eventually it broke. This feat was repeated not once but twice, you could have heard a gnat sneeze. As this held, a curious thing happened. I found myself slowly welling up and a slight tear escaped from the side of my eye. I cannot explain it except by intense shared experience. Did my friend set me up, plant the idea? Possibly, but this wasn't ersatz, instead some genuine force of emotion. Eventually this all broke down into tumultuous applause and the band left the stage with grins bigger than the Cheshire Cat.

Of course they came back for an encore, and even as I thought they couldn't recapture the moment, somehow they did and it all played out. I was half convinced that I had witnessed the end moment of rock and without any doubt at all this was the next thing. Astounding. Being the Efterklang newbie, as the lights came up I found myself asking random strangers just what was that track? Eventually I found a set list and answered the question - Cutting Ice To Snow

In the aftermath, I've listened to the records, which are lovely, but this is a band you simply have to see live

Also since then, I engaged in a bit of email correspondence with a record company person who asked me how I'd found the gig. I said that I'd found it ...emotional... I said no more than that. She immediately mailed me back to say that she could never see them play that particular track without shedding a tear. Spooky to some tune, what is going on?

The set list is mainly from the new album, a couple of older ones

Full Moon
I Was Playing Drums
Mirador
Me Me Me The Brick House
Step Aside
Caravan
Harmonics
Alike
Raincoats
Modern Drift
Cutting Ice To Snow

Mirror Mirror
The Soft Beating

The Efterklang tour continues in Europe but they are back in the UK in August for some festival dates; Standon Calling and the Green Man

First published at ALTSOUNDS

Emilie Simon, The Jazz Café, Camden, 20 April 2010

Emilie daintily tiptoed down the metal stairs to the stage and promptly kicked off her shoes. I had been waiting for some time, in the packed out Jazz Cafe in Camden, and had managed to worm myself down to the side of the stage, a feat in itself. On stage there was a considerable amount of kit, keyboards, the slightly famous 1980s re-built Casio, the gizmo'd to the heavens half keyboard half guitar, the acoustic. To be quite frank I was expecting something approaching a touring band, but no, what arrived was just a solo Emilie, looking bright eyed and demure, a stylish young French lady, wearing a hat that Audrey Hepburn would be jealous of, setting off a glittery dress with shoulder wings half way between Thunderbirds and the court of Elizabeth I. This is what Lady Gaga might sartorially aspire to, given sufficient time and development. Or perhaps not, there's already enough theft in showbiz.

There was a slight lead in, and Emilie opened up her set proper. The impact was dazzling, the effect stunning on every part that I could see of this hot sweating audience. We were launched into the electro percussive rush of The Devil at My Door. Machine produced brass sounds followed by Ms Simon's voice joining in, almost straightforward in intonation to start with until it started to fly with wo-ho-ho whoops. She has one impressive voice live, easily a soaring equal for the pounding noises coming out of her machines.
This audience was clearly heavily gallic tinged. As much as I noted the seemingly endless number of people speaking French, a friend was at the same moment expressing surprise at the amount of English accents down there. As we got into next track Dreamland, this audience behaved in two distinct ways. Many were simply staring in rapt attention, others were impelled to shiver and shake themselves into dance moves, and these I thought could otherwise be sweating it out in a boite de nuit on the outskirts of any Saturday night French ville. Fools Like Us is sung partly in French, and singing in her native language brought out a whole new intonation, helped by the accordion tones now sitting alongside the music.
..."First day in the city, no-one's waiting for me, all alone"... is a paean to her adopted home of New York and specifically that city's Chinatown, the title of the song. This resolutely euro sounding, dance driven piece is an ode to the alienation of the new and strange, doubly strange, the oriental in the new world twice removed from the known, waiting to hear a familiar voice on the phone. A travelogue in song.

As much as she is a singer, this is also a person who lives with and breathes amongst her electronic apparatus, wearing a body mounted controller on her left arm.

There was a really noticeable factor tonight, that being just how different Emilie sounded from song to song, but also I'm convinced by where in the audience you were standing. You could get all theoretical about the acoustic qualities of the venue, but it seemed something more than that. Difficult to explain, and to make sure, I checked it out, only to be more convinced of this phenomenum. This was never so marked as when Emilie moved across to the acoustic guitar for Flowers, simply accompanied on the acoustic, and a song that seemed made to be played in a pavement cafe somewhere.

In between songs Emilie for most part said a simple and polite 'Merci'. I was at some point standing at the bar, part of the auditorium and far too packed and the crowd too attentive to the stage to actually be serving drinks. I could hear a woman repeating, mimicking this polite 'Merci'. Spotting my little scribbling book, this woman decided to accost me, breaking into English for my benefit, asking if I was reviewing. A nod, a “don't want to be disturbed”, but she carried on. "She is superb, no? Kate Bush?" I'd been avoiding that all night, like the elephant in the room that no-one will mention. I shook my head "No, that's what I thought when I heard the record, but here, now, no." I've spoken already about the changes song to song, and in truth there were moments when she might have been channeling Kate, but not as some sort of sound alike. On reflection it might have some truth in it, more than the comparison that any 'quirky' female singer might get, as much as harkening back to Lena Lovich as to Kate Bush, then at times nothing like them, and at the same time always absolutely her own person. There was huge affection for her tonight from the crowd, this slightly noisy club suiting it down to the ground.

One of the moments of the night was I Wanna Be Your Dog - yes, the Stooges number. I couldn't quite believe it, and it had to be one of the most original interpretations, one of the most extraordinary covers I have ever heard. Totally deconstructed and re-built from the ground up

Excellent jangling keyboards took us to Ballad Of The Big Machine, title track from her new album, from which much of tonight's set was taken. During this, I had the sense of being in some eerie dream world before a massively strong finale to the strongest song of tonight's set. The play-out to this number felt as though it belonged is some classic 40's film noir. You might be getting the idea that an awful lot of tonight was about atmosphere from where I was standing. Last song of the main set was Rocket To The Moon, this time with Emilie all on her own recreating something of 60's girl group harmonies, with Stax like horn parping out of the cabs.

First song of the encore Fleur de Saison took us back to her second album. This had the audience singing along in a pretty loved up moment. The three song encore finished with Nothing To Do With You, Emilie accompanying herself on hammering piano, and once again that voice that just leaps and bounds.

Emilie was charming, a trifle shy maybe, and had the place completely riveted. Very 'not British', but that's an easy statement. But this kind of electro you'd never get out of most of the current crop of female electro artists. Hugely talented, a woman tour de force, and way outstripping in the flesh the already impressive recent album


Intro
The Devil at My Door
Dreamland
Fools Like Us
Opium
Chinatown
The way I see you
Closer
Flowers
I Wanna Be Your Dog
The Cycle
Rainbow
Ballad Of The Big Machine
Rocket To The Moon

Encore:
Fleur de Saison
Desert
Nothing To Do With You

One of the photos here got used in the Independent newspaper, a credit would have been nice

MORE PHOTOS

Sarah Blasko, Live, Islington Academy Thurs 15 April 2010

Sarah Blasko is huge in Australia, which made it a bit of a reality check stepping from the street into a packed house at Islington’s 800 standing capacity Academy. In fairness there were clues, what with the obligatory touts outside. Inside, well mannered 20 and 30 somethings, checking their Blackberries and iPhones. Well mannered, but desperately keen to press to the front, I’ve had more personal space at punk gigs.

Original support band The Tiny had to cancel at the last minute. That’s a real pity as I fancied seeing their purported Swedish strange-ness, but Icelandic volcanoes put paid to that. Instead, the audience gave a generous reception to Whitley, consisting of one man and guitar.

I could hear the accent twang all around me, and chatting to people in the crammed space up near the barrier, friendly people, they jokingly surmised that 80% of the crowd tonight was antipodean, likely from Melbourne and Sydney.I’ve never seen Blasko live before. Even on the opening number, tinkly piano’d “Down on Love”, what immediately struck me was just what a forceful presence this woman is on stage. I’ve really enjoyed the new album As Day Follows Night, but unless you play it loud, you miss the full effect of her voice, especially with that lush Björn Yttling production. With the band tonight consisting of two violins, double bass, drums, keyboards and the odd bit of acoustic guitar, there was a marked difference from the slightly popsicle inflections that come through just a teensy bit on parts of the album. Not that it’s a good or bad thing, just different.

Tonight in the nicest most pleasant way, she demanded and commanded with that voice. A remarkable thing it is, a huge gift if that’s how you see life. Even if I wanted, I can’t make any easy comparison to another artist. Girl-ish and lilting but pushing it out there powerfully, and with a huskiness you could only get by mixing corn flour and icing sugar. A couple of numbers in, and leading into anthemic and empowering We Won’t Run, Sarah dedicated the song to ‘anyone who’s not feeling so good, anyone going through any sort of difficulty’. This was a touching moment but was marked by having to lace the dedication with a suggestion that ‘keeping the talking down a bit would be good’.

On Sleeper Awake, possibly my favourite Sarah song, the backing band pushed their own up to 10, with the addition of a second keyboard, but still Sarah’s voice flew up there riding over the mix.In contrast Is My Baby Yours was just her and one of the band’s two Daves on piano. Having listened to this a few times on CD, here it finally made emotional sense with that melancholy rejoinder of “should have known he still loved another”. As it faded, there were ‘Woohoos’ coming from the audience, which delighted Sarah – a particularly Aussie thing and therefore making her feel more at home than mere applause. Here’s a bit of a litmus indicator of the night. You know those nice but tough security chaps given to hanging round stage front in yellow vests and earplugs? It was a glorious moment to see the slightly jaunty intro to I Never Knew get the biggest and toughest of these dancing at the side of the stage. Until his no. 2 reminded him that he wasn’t there to dance, but even so… I was impressed. A couple of songs, All I Want amongst them, demonstrate a particular additional gift that Ms Blasko has, that being to yodel and give us an almost Roy Orbison moment. It was disconcerting for a second I have to admit, but hey, she seems comfortable with it and the crowd loved it. A couple more songs and the rest of the band trooped off leaving just Sarah and ‘Dave the piano’ for what she said was going to be the cabaret section. “Just imagine you’re in a cabaret club”. By now I was standing a bit further back, not far from the bar, trying to achieve my new year’s resolution not to spend every moment of every gig on the front row. The clientele was just as jam packed and enthusiastic but possibly more lubricated, and this request from Sarah caused some confusion. Melbourne / London accents giving it “..but we are in a club” “A cabaret club” “Oh I see..I think…” Sarah told us she was going to do Seems Like Old Times from the film Annie Hall. “Oh my god, that’s my favourite film EVER” trilled the girls alongside me. The next song in the cabaret was Xanadu, from the film. ‘Love the song, don’t like the film’ said Sarah, and despite it being a nicely stripped back version, it inevitably produced the sort of dancing usually seen at wedding receptions. Just thank the lord it was a cover and there was no sign of the original ‘artistes’.

We were told that this count instead of an interval, and there would be more songs but not an encore. Hey, I can really respect such honesty of approach. I have to be honest, this was not the strongest part of the set, variety act rather than revelation via re-interpretation, but as an alternative to standing clapping and stamping and waiting, it got my vote. We then ran into three older songs to finish the set, Sarah feeling the need to apologise that everything up to the cabaret interval had been off the new album. No need to apologise to me, but I can see the need for a few older crowd pleasers. Finishing with Always Worth It, the band eventually trooped off at 10.30 having been on stage for an hour and half and true to promise, the house lights came straight up. Despite this fairly long set, there wasn’t any sense of flagging, on the contrary it just built all night. My enduring impressions and emotions were of Sarah’s voice, her all encompassing presence on stage, and, I have to say, the sheer quality of the songs.

By the time you read this, Sarah will be off for a few European dates before coming back to the UK to support the Temper Trap. If you’ve got tickets, do yourself a favour and get there early enough to see Ms Blasko. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Setlist

Down on Love

Bird on a Wire

Lost and Defeated

Hold On My Heart

Over and Over

We Won’t Run

Sleeper Awake

Is My Baby Yours

I Never Knew

All I Want

No Turning Back

Night and Day

Seems Like Old Times

Xanadu

All Coming Back

Amazing Things

Always Worth It

Links

Myspace

Official site

Interview

More photos here http://www.flickr.com/photos/38617244@N04/sets/72157623756151379/

Scary Mansion-Make Me Cry

Scary Mansion-Make Me Cry
Release Date: 29th March 2010
Label: Talitres Records

Coming from Brooklyn and fronted by Leah Hayes, the vocals on this album are for the most part truly yearning. It’s like sitting in the back room of a cafe in a climbing town somewhere, way after closing, drinking malt and being unexpectedly treated to some prodigious late night talent. Not just Leah’s vocals though, the whole album is redolent with brush snares, piano, banjo and other good things. It’s more than just an acoustic fest, there is plenty of use of reverb, even vocoder at times, layers of lovely noise like varnish and paint on an old door. You might be getting the idea that I’m slightly hooked and you would be entirely correct.
Speaking of reverb leads us back to the songs. Opener No Law belts in with layers of buzz, and is heavily and explosively guitar driven. It’s quite some feat to get Leah’s voice up to the top of the mix but it’s achieved with aplomb. “How can you say there’s no law” she asks as it builds from the chorus to the bridge. Is it an insult these days to say that shoes can be gazed upon as this rocks out to a crackling whining feedback finale? No insult at all in my book, this is just lovely.
It segues straight into second track Over The Weekend, sounding for a moment like a reprise of what went before. That tiny cry of “maybe you just don’t know what it’s like” and even more so “make myself cry every week” – that notion really gets under the skin of how this album feels, percussion and instrumentation grows and fades, leaving emotions in a minor key. The rest of the band – it’s a four piece – consist of Leah’s twin sister Vanessa on backing vocals, Bradley Banks on bass and Benjamin Shapiro on drums.



Yer Grif (sung as ‘your grief’) starts with upbeat drums, bells and banjo – like pretty cajun music with thumping rhythm. It works, especially with Leah’s words coming over like a cry. Fatal Flaw and 1% carry on almost like a single track, a story told in segments but holding together as one late night tale of life, one that you’d like to get to know more of. Scum Inside is anthemic and choral despite it’s worry about about all the, err, scum. Repeated guitar motif leading out into that comforting feedback. On My Mind is a change down in pace and mood, just Leah and piano, joined eventually by a tapped hi-hat. It stays wistful right through till the end. Curiously this track ends with 2 minutes and 18 seconds of silence, or was that just my review copy?
Closing track Look Through Your Eyes has a slightly syncopated feel and this is the one with vocoder. In normal circumstances I’d advise anyone to avoid such a device, but here it works to lovely effect, where Cher made it horrible, Leah makes it charming.
I’m usually a bit reluctant to make comparisons, too easy, too trite, but if you were to think of The XX with some occasional and righteous punch, soaked like a Christmas cake drowned in brandy, that might come somewhere near. I’ve listened to the album half a dozen times and it keeps getting better