Release The Bats – reviewed

Written for Clash. Read online HERE.

Release The Bats / London Forum / Oct 30, 2008

If punter costumes are rather thin on the ground tonight – Clash counts but a handful at ATP’s annual Halloween bash at the Forum (night one of two this year following huge demand for tickets) – on-stage thrills are in abundance. A six-band bill that’s the stuff of the more discerning rocker’s wet dreams, Release The Bats is a can’t-miss event that’s dragged your correspondent kicking and screaming from his sickbed for one evening of sonic indulgence.

Proceedings begin on the floor, in front of the stage, as Lightning Bolt typically set up their gear at audience eye level; the Rhode Island duo’s pulverising riot-rock is at its best when delivered at synapse-shredding volume, but equipment malfunctions see that the pair rarely strike any sort of flow. Intermittently brilliant, tonight’s not Lightning Bolt’s finest hour by a long shot – but try telling that to the faces packed tight about them, well and truly at ground zero, and expect to receive a thick ear for your cheek.

Pissed Jeans are the first act to mount The Forum’s sizeable stage, and vocalist Matt Korvette makes the most of the space, writhing and grinding in a manner wholly expected by acolytes of the Pennsylvania four-piece. Their Jesus Lizard-echoing squall – albeit a squall that’s the product of men fighting their instruments, rather than simply playing them – fills the cavernous venue with ease, and while their fractured punk songs might always be an acquired taste – discernable lyrics are in short supply, drama provided by the pure physicality of the performance – there’s no doubting the infectiousness of the Sub Pop-signed outfit’s raw energy.

While Pissed Jeans get the adrenaline glands working overtimes, San Francisco Kraut-stoners Wooden Shjips shift pulses down a beat or some, with a head-nodding set of songs taken from their self-titled of last year and this year’s singles collection compilation. Few in the limited front-and-centre throng truly get into their heady grooves, but slip into the fog they conjure and soon senses are hypnotized – there’s nothing revolutionary at work, quite deliberately so, and they certainly don’t mirror the explosiveness of their recordings live, but the in-your-face Wooden Shjips are certainly preferable to the off-you-face variety. Listen to this lot when out of your mind and you’ll never return from whatever hazy horizons you’ve wandered across.

The main event for many is the appearance of Les Savy Fav, and the Brooklyn five-piece don’t disappoint their growing fanbase. With the whole group decked out in corpse paint – four in hoodies and jeans, frontman Tim Harrington emerging in ghoulish vampire get-up – they’re into the spirit of the event like no preceding band, too (sorry Wooden Shjips – as nice as that gold turban is, it’s not winning any fancy dress prizes), and before long fists are punched into the air to the sounds of the band’s winning choruses. ‘Patty Lee’ is an early highlight, Harrington takes a tour of the venue, via the balcony, without missing too many words, and the likes of ‘We’ll Make A Lover Of You’ and ‘The Equestrian’ have many an onlooker wondering why this didn’t happen sooner for such a clearly fantastic band. They’re making up for their time spent languishing in relative obscurity though, and by the time ‘Who Rocks The Party’ thunders to a climax, after a brief sojourn for some amateur dramatics, it’s smiles and sweaty faces all round.

But Les Savy Fav are trumped, their should-be show-stealing set bettered by a three-piece whose sense of humour has rarely been worn so obviously. Taking the stage in full fancy dress, Shellac – Steve Albini as a mummy, Bob Weston as Frankenstein’s monster, and centrally placed drummer Todd Trainer as a wild-eyed Dracula – unleash a set that grips the audience tight and doesn’t let up ‘til the comedy gruntings of Weston, where there should have been lyrics, allow everyone to take a breathe while they’re laughing along. ‘Squirrel Song’ is vicious, ‘Steady As She Goes’ sensational, and before long the band’s attire is overlooked – the music consumes all. There are thousands, and it isn’t some kind of metaphor to suggest they’re all won over.

While doom titans Om close the show, Clash has to skip out early to make its train… which it misses anyway. Thanks, London Underground, for your brilliant service. Nightbus, street lights, ears ringing, Steve Albini’s nipples… Release The Bats proves (again) entirely worth shaking the covers off for.

Bands I will miss the last train for.

A reformed for one night only Botch.
AC/DC. Probably.
Enablers.

Two nights ago a band from San Francisco endured awful sound in a half-finished north London venue before a crowd that couldn’t be called entirely polite – background chatter did drown out certain nuances of said band’s singular sound. Yet this band, against the odds, delivered another memorable set, one to rank not among their personal best, but certainly among the best shows this soul shall witness this year.

I can’t truly express what it is about Enablers that gets to me; there’s a rawness to them, a transparent honesty, a fire-eyed desire for exorcism, for catharsis via contortion, musically and physically. There’s sinewy limbs and flared nostrils, broken strings and jaw-dropping percussion, precise and balanced, exquisitely accomplished. There’s a frontman with front, proper; a man whose performance goes beyond lungs to mouth to microphone. Exact words are lost in the fog, but the power. The power is the driver.

There’s age, too: these men are men, not boys playing at being men. They are tour-worn, road-tested, time-readied. Theirs is a sound that is out of step with all fashions, with all trends circular and standalone; theirs is a sound that rolls through my synapses with unnerving regularity, rhythms riding prose designed for paper as well as public address. Rhetoric meets rock and roll, poetry versus punk. Sound and vision blurred in one beautiful cacophonous wash of metallic angst and tender aggression. Each cut a chapter of a tale too wide to be fully realised, to ever have an end.

Night bus slides to the sound of ears ringing, and the 11.49 from London Bridge couldn’t be further from my mind.

Enablers on MySpace
Photography by Lucy Johnston

‘The fall’ does make sense, really.

So, apparently it’s the end of the summer – television stations are switching to their autumn afternoon schedules (I’m looking forward to all the episodes of A Touch Of Frost), leaves are falling from Tulse Hill’s tallest trees, and the wind’s getting up to the extent that the cats don’t want to go into the garden to do their business. To get me through the stinky next few months: five records I’m really rather looking forward to (four of which I’ve actually heard, natch).

Parts & Labor (pictured above), Receivers
(Jagjaguwar – released November 3)
Now a four-piece following the addition of guitarist Sarah Lipstate, Brooklyn-based Parts & Labor’s fourth album revives the more anthemic qualities of their last, Mapmaker, while balancing the record’s pace so that the jagged edges don’t cut quite so deep; typical, relatively speaking, songs are interlaced with snippets of sampled found sound, crackling static and misfiring receivers (title, d’uh), to create a seamless whole certain to appeal to hardcore and converts alike.

Windy & Carl, Songs For The Broken Hearted
(Kranky – released October 14)
Transcendental drone akin to Stars Of The Lid tackling Clear Horizon material… now that’s a Kranky love-in. Just gorgeously arranged ambient washes of textural sound, full of that unpronounceable ache that manifests itself within all of us when we mine emotional depths so familiar but rarely visited.

Eugene McGuinness, Eugene McGuinness
(Domino – released October 13)
Eugene makes the step up from Double Six to Domino proper for his debut album, the follow-up to last year’s The Early Learnings Of… EP; throughout the young singer-songwriter flexes creative muscles developed beyond his years, lyrically and melodically, and goes some way to delivering on all the promise he’s displayed on past recordings and a variety of solo and band-backed live appearances. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t taste mainstream success with this brilliantly instantaneous collection.

Fucked Up, The Chemistry Of Common Life
(Matador – released October 13)
Canada’s well-educated punk-rock marauders come out bawling lyrical complexities on their second full-length, and first for Matador, but conceptual frameworks aside this simply bites and snarls in the manner the initiated will be warmly expecting – transplanting their tumultuous live shows to the studio may have proved impossible, all six members rarely in the same room during Chemistry’s gestation, but the end result is a mesmerising achievement that’s going to see its makers explore audience avenues never before open to them.

Deftones, Eros
(Warner Bros – released TBC)
Oh man, I cannot wait for this one. When that release date’s confirmed: I am going to do a cartwheel.

Review: single-paragraph appraisals

Because sometimes it is nice to review things. Should anyone care for this opinion.

Constantines, Kensington Heights (Arts & Crafts, 22/09/08)
Canada’s Constantines’ fourth LP follows precedents set by their previous form – namely this is tears- and beers-stained rock and roll in a vaguely similar vein to The Hold Steady, but while Craig Finn and his cohorts play the blue-collar chords, here songs are streamlined for a more discerning listener. ‘Million Star Hotel’ cranks up the tension, Bryan Webb’s Springsteen-recalling vocals impassioned and pure of soul; ‘I Will Not Sing A Hateful Song’ is the eventual release, a kind of tenderness replacing the quintet’s twitchy rhythms as calmness cools their punk-infused cacophony. The band’s arrival on Arts & Crafts feels like something of a homecoming following a period on Sub Pop’s books, and the album title echoes this – Kensington Heights is the Toronto street on which you’ll find their rehearsal space.

Adventure, Adventure (Carpark, 15/09/08)
8-bit party glitch from North Carolina-raised Benny Boeldt, presently residing in Baltimore as he looks to make a name for himself this side of the Atlantic as Adventure. This self-titled album presses many of the same buttons as fellow townsman (and Wham City cohort) Dan Deacon’s Spiderman Of The Rings, but ultimately doesn’t possess the furiously powerful NRG of said potential peer. Occasional vocal samples are latched to Sonic-style beats and, while hardly original, the overall product’s a pleasantly distracting muddle of refined synths and coin-op arcade game FX. If your idea of tomorrow’s music today is Crystal Castles or, perhaps more preferably, Daedelus’ rave-chic retrogressions, this’ll fit into your collection sweetly enough. If the sight of neon clothing makes you barf, best steer your attentions well clear of this candy-coloured patchwork of ringtone-level hedonism.

Also on the stereo: Hey Colossus’ Happy Birthday. Sounds like a choir of feedback harpies being stepped on by fire-breathing dinosaurs with blame-the-Melvins tinnitus ringing in their why are you not extinct earholes. Brutes.