Camden Crawl 2011 – Day Two
So, Day 2, bleary eyed, but ready for action and an early run down to the main strip sees events already beginning to kick off big time, methinks there’s more people here today for some reason…
…Razorlight maybe?
And don’t forget to hit those band names for linkage to sound and vision…
Heathers: 14.30 – @ The Spread Eagle.
After a personally Tweeted appearance by Punk great Viv Albertine seems like a no go, I found that this small intimate Parkway based pub was being curated for the Crawl duration by one Mr. Andy Ross, Food label supremo and the man responsible for launching Camden demigods Blur on the world.
It seems like his ability to use his dogged nasal protrusion to entertain us is still working nicely, so instead of the mysterious Viv, we’re treated to the extremely likeable and friendly up and coming Dublin duo Ellie & Louise Macnamara AKA Heathers who’s clipped telepathic harmonies immediately transport me to the natural delights of their homeland with some rather melodic Folk.
The venue, bang in the middle of Sunday lunch, reacted like a fox as the twosome did a frantic set through their strongest tunes to wild applause, check them out if you’re a fan of acts like Feist, Boat Beam, Yael Naim and strangely one punter close by mentioned reasonably, late 70′s sister phenomena, The Roches.
Check Their Video for ‘Remember When‘ here
Cerebral Ballzy: 15.20 – @ The Bedroom Jam Outdoor Arena.
Popping away to see if I could get a handle on some more fringe events in the open, I went to the Crawl’s info point / main check-in only to find a mobbed outdoor stage.
Full of bodies, with drink flowing copiously, onstage were dubiously named Brooklyn skater scamps Cerebral Ballzy in full flight.
These guys are tearing the place up right now and I can understand why from their hardcore energy and spirit, but as far as tunes?…They’re rousing but unmemorable, but, more disappointing, needless posturing took the edge off even more, Hey-Ho.
Check Their Video for ‘Insufficient Fare‘ here
Nerina Pallot: 16.10 – @ The Spread Eagle.
Back to the place I’d begun in, I suddenly heard a familiar name mentioned as the next act.
Seconds later, an ever increasingly merry Andy Ross introduced Camden local Nerina Pallot to the stage, this was one of the mythical ‘surprise’ sets the Crawl tempts us with year in and year out and I just happened to be in the right place at the right time here, and people were still eating their Sunday lunch.
A softly strummed version of her own ‘Sophia’ silenced anyone within a mile, her pitch perfect voice cutting through and getting everyone on her side, humbly returning, she could have played for the rest of the day, refreshing everyone with her natural, un-stereotypical and un-styled musicianship.
One thing you may not be able to ascertain about her from just listening to her music is her blistering sense of humour, chatting about lie-ins and football as if she was in her own front room with a bunch of mates, she also has the comic timing of Noel Fielding & profanity levels to make Frankie Boyle blush, it was most surprising and most prevalent on a hugely enjoyable version of Beyonce’s ‘Crazy In Love’ where Nerina not only did the backing vocals almost simultaneously herself, she refused, and gave possibly libellous reasons why she wasn’t going to do the ‘Diva’ section at the song’s climax.
This lady’s too cool for school, make no mistake.
Check her Video for ‘Sophia‘ here
Matt Motte: 16.30 – @ The Spread Eagle.
Somewhere in his head, ex Mower frontman, Mat Motte is in a ghetto surrounded by crackheads and pimps, but looking round the stunned and extremely civilised Spread Eagle performance area, not a John or a user was in obvious evidence.
His infectious rabble rousing was hard to get a radar on at first, there’s a very British feel to his frantic acoustic strums, a Rapping John Otway for the new decade maybe?
His forays into ragged lo-fi Funk and quite dangerous hard hip-Hop beats, accompanied righteously on percussion by yet another Matt, recall an early and slightly more hyperactive Beck or Eels and the two styles really shouldn’t work in bed with each other, that he works his butt off 150% onstage to hammer them together successfully is extremely laudable, a really throat tearing version of Talking Heads ‘Psycho Killer’ being way better than you’d have ever thought it could be.
Finishing by rushing crazed round the audience and even hilariously going missing at one point to encourage an encore, this half Flavor Flav and half Louie Theroux hybrid made totally sure you wouldn’t forget who he is and made for one of the most spirited and genuinely happy sets of the whole weekend.
Check some barmy footage of his Crawl set here
Kinzli & The KiloWatts: 18.00 – @ Kilburn Good Ship.
Around this time of day, the Crawl takes something of a short break itself to get ready for the craziness of the evening, so where some people would have popped off for a nice hearty meal of just drowned their fatigue in a couple of cold ones, I figured I could easily extend the Crawl to take in nearby Kilburn as well, so it was at this point, for the sake of bringing new names to your attention, I was the sole participant and indeed, inventor, and it was here that the Camden Crawl became the Camden AND Kilburn Crawl.
Settling up a barstool in a sparsely attended but appreciative Good Ship, Immediately, Kinzli Coffman’s stunning trilling impresses. Strong but also strangely fragile and you can hear a little Antony Hegarty in her beautiful clarity, and her songs are as complicated and thoughtful as anything David Sylvian may have attempted in his acoustic phase.
Backed by just guitar and a superbly tackled violin (the bass was having trouble being heard) these rather distracting daytime pub surroundings were probably not the best place to catch this crew, but checking out superb recorded output online, the songs are sublime and I’ll definitely be heading for more.
Watch Kinzli’s video for ‘Don’t Shoot’ here
Jonny Abrams: 19.00 – @ Kilburn Good Ship.
Rather swimming against the tide with Sunday afternoon punters chatting their oblivious heads off, North London’s answer to Syd Barrett and ace combo Britpop Chipshop’s song writing machine extraordinaire takes to the stage to air some fresh off the belt tunes, his trademark antlers, sadly absent…
His amiable but deceptively odd song structures are sometimes easy to overlook as whimsy, but once the penny drops on this gent you realise just how lionhearted, intelligent and classic his music is, delivering hooks you never see coming with military precision under a friendly casual strum major league Psych Poppers like Gruff Rhys & Gaz Coombes would struggle to better.
Keep an eye out for his band lightly battering and frying your brain somewhere near you soon and check Britpop Chipshop‘s rather fun animal costume fetish on show in their debut single ‘Thoroughly Whipped‘ here
The History Of Apple Pie: 20.15 –@ The Dublin Castle.
So…Belting back into the thick of things to check a band that I’d been hearing great things about on the grapevine, the brilliantly named London based The History Of Apple Pie fronted by tiny orange haired Stephanie Min stir up a trailblazing storm in Garage based, Harmony fuelled old school Shoegaze.
There’s a hint of a slightly more punchy Joy Zipper, a taste of buzzsaw era Jesus & Mary Chain with a tipple of Belly’s Grunge here, while the twin assault of Jerome Watson & Aslam Ghauri’s guitars cook up some real Smashing Pumpkins style fireworks, all nicely held down by the cool quirky Bass plucking of Kelly Owens & James Thomas’ spot-on drumming.
The band as a whole also convey a very modern British look that’ll get picked up on and replicated I’m sure. There’s a flurry of future activity live, so catch them before they go stellar, because this WILL happen.
Check their track ‘Tug’ here.
The Guillemots: 20.45 – @ The Forum.
Having to pause momentarily for some of the freely provided sustenance in the empty Forum upper bar, I opened the door to the theatre and was overwhelmed by the single biggest crowd I’d seen so far on the 2011 Crawl.
Onstage, Fyfe Dangerfield’s surprisingly small band were doused in theatrical light and bashing through a set dangerously close to being the most epic of the weekend.
The notoriously detail crushing Forum PA did a fair job with the volume, although some of the fine detail, (and there’s a lot of that in Guillemots tunes), was a little lost.
Making up for this was Dangerfield himself, rushing round the stage, even when he was meant to be seated, and whipping the front rows into a whirl, even at one point rather charmingly jumping up and down on the spot like a cola crazed 6 year old, he knows full well the power this band are capable of.
Introducing ‘Love Song No. 43’, melodica in hand, as ‘This is a song from our first album, starts a bit quiet’ he got payback in spades from the excited crowd, this sophisticated; touching ‘Big Music’ really can’t fail to raise heartbeats, it’s not original by any large degree, but the craft that goes into songs such as ‘Walk The River’ & ‘I Must Be A Lover’, which they did really fine versions of this evening, skirt the stadium pomposity of some of their contemporaries with dignity, heart and panache.
Check Crawl footage of ‘I Must Be A Lover’ here.
Star Slinger: 21.25 – @ Camden Rock.
I’ve been a fan of Manchester resident Darren Williams’ Star Slinger Mash-Hop Wonk Soul Pop beats since the second it hit my ears, he’s been pulverising dancefloors with an output that would put a Japanese car factory to shame with remixes galore for some incredible names to boot, emptying second-hand record stores with time lapse effectiveness for their dissection by his new kind of funk, twisting bands like The Go! Team, Prefab Sprout & Cocteau Twins into new shapes completely, so he’s got to be doing something right.
Unfortunately, the Camden Rock isn’t the right place to see this working live, buried in the DJ booth behind his laptop and decks, with a puny PA to boot, Darren was barely visible and the stage taken up instead with loping bodies who could have been listening to a cd.
I’d say Williams needs to get himself atop a golden tower with a 10k rig in the middle of a Miami beach for this to truly work, not a barely lit backroom in Camden, so what had been one of the most highly anticipated sets of the day was actually something of a small disappointment, check the records though, they’re insanely good.
Star Slinger‘s ‘May I Walk With You’ here.
Cloud Control: 21.45 – @ Dingwalls.
Running full pelt into one of the busiest spots in central Camden, I spun into the Lock and had to fight through to get to Dingwalls’ entrance.
Once inside I immediately wished I’d got there sooner.
Aussie Soft-Rockers Cloud Control were thrilling the crowd with their lush Laurel Canyon close harmonies and beautifully natural and unstyled music.
They have their own sound for definite, but I’d imagine young fans of Fleet Foxes and Vampire Weekend getting their rocks off to them just as much as I imagine ‘more mature’ fans of Simon & Garfunkel, The Byrds & The Eagles, they’re classic, tuneful and rather delicious.
As ‘There’s Nothing In The Water We Can Fight’ & ‘Ghost Story’ are particular highlights from their superb debut LP ‘Bliss Release’, they went down even more of a storm live, frontman Alister Wright flanked by the rather fetching co-vocalist Heidi Lenffer being particularly effective in dealing with the front rows with typically Australian friendliness (Wright’s restringing of his guitar leading to it’s immediate bashing awkawrdly to the ground was not done for sympathy I’m sure).
Talk of a UK relocation could see this band win over a massive crowd here and could be the next phase of a long and great career, checking the Crawl forums a day or two later, their name kept on coming up with positive comments, and for me also, the highlight of the day.
Check their superb ‘There’s Nothing In The Water We Can’t Fight’ here.
Team Ghost: 22.30 – @ The Black Cap.
Now feeling a little like I was on an endurance test rather than a gig trail, I managed to secure a seated spot near the mixing desk for the duration of Paris Hyper-Pop foursome Team Ghost, and spotting Sonic Cathedral supremo / band label manager Nat Cramp in the crowd before they kicked off, I was given a clue to how this was going to pan out earwise.
Basically formed by Nicolas Fromageau, departing half of the rather fine BlusterGaze merchants M83, Team Ghost have a similar, but much sleeker and athletic, less bombastic version of the huge sound both bands share.
Offering up a Cure style psychedelic wall of sound with some typically French electronics in the style of bands like Air and Phoenix, underpinned by some stealthy rhythms and chiming guitars, they were loud and proud, even exclaiming before their epic closer, “this is the best song ever”.
If I had to offer one criticism of the bands Left-Field Psych Pop, it would be the brevity of some of the tracks. You could feel the band begin to take off and all of a sudden the songs were over. I’d dearly like to see what this band deliver over a ten minute time frame, I’m pretty sure they’d empty your brain onto the nearest surface.
Check their track ‘Colors In Time’ here.
Mornington Crescent Tube – 23.20
At this point I popped my head in to check last train times and was promptly told by an irritatingly smiling attendant that all trains had left as it was a Sunday and that I would basically face a near three hour trip back home, Fail!
As a result, I missed from my wish list, The Chapman Family, Simian Mobile Disco & the truly brilliant Hudson Mohawke (who I thought would be the weekend highlight) and I can only imagine what the 10 thousand or so punters already inside the venues thought of this when they emerged en masse later, but I reckon the Camden cabbies would have thought it was Christmas, hopefully something that can be remedied for next year, still…
…That was fun.
*Cue ‘24’ Closing Theme music*
cloud control – there’s nothing in the water we can’t fight by myshoestravel
Fantastic mate really enjoyed reading it I was pretty gutted to have missed Team Ghost as I love them