That's right, fans: meaningless puns free of charge. Take them and use them yourselves in relevant contexts, thus promoting them to the status of 'joke'. Incidentally, I read Making Cocoa For Kingsley Amis on the bus yesterday. It was very good. I suggest you buy it. From a charity Shop.
Don't be put off by the irritating youthfulness of the crowd (or bands), this is the perfect way to begin your advent. FF are hotly tipped, possibly new rave until a different genre gets invented, unashamedly poppy electro-pop pop band. And they rock.
Mystery Jets are the band who released the best album of last year probably if you like that sort of thing: theirs is a set armed to the teeth with singable choruses and interesting lyrics: don't believe the lack of hype. Alas Agnes, Diamonds in the Dark and (unremarkable in albumland) Purple Prose are all setting the bar way higher than most people can jump (even those dudes on TV who jump backwards). Their self-styled (well, obviously) 'Christmas number one' Flakes is a slow-burning yet ultimately explosive campfire hymn to the heart, and the much demanded Zoo Time gets a raucous and refreshingly OldGreyWhistleTestesqueairing. And in all this it's when oddly-absent Henry joins the band for the length of Agnes that the crowd really goes wild.
Great! No bands, but loads of beer! (No Carling, unfortunately.)
A homely community-style affair with low low prices and free mulled wine and cake/pies thrown in; Some great comic sketches, the most notable two being that of a supposed meeting between Roger Hargreaves (of Mr. Men fame) and his agent, and a sketch called 'culture vultures' in which two chaps drinking non-builders' tea discuss (or rather, argue) the merits of their favourite avant-garde playwrights and disabled lesbian authors.
There's some shit too: notably a stand up whose final punchline is a joke about brazillians being shot in Stockwell. Hah. Hah?
Jay Jay (or 'JJ' as we will be hereafter typing) is a bewitching sound, simple but persuasive melodies and a voice that could melt sealing wax, but we don't see much of him from the balcony, so reposition ourselves in the centre of the town-hall-chic, plush-carpet, AGM of the Society for Being a Bit Posh, Smirnoff-driven, built by-humans for-humans venue, and open our ears to the barn-door-banging caterwauling USofA folk rollickery of Slow Club. (I think.) They split opinions, evidently, cos some other people are tapping their feet and smiling. I can't stand it. It's awful. She has a terrible voice and he looks like an extra from one of the less-enjoyable parties my arty friends invite me to in Hackney. I think I might have met him. Possibly.
Johnny Flynn is a funny one. I was pretty sure I hated his last single, after hearing the chorus (alone, severed) repeated indefinitely over the (paradoxically finite) period of the last month or so. But when I heard The Box in all its modest (but not inglorious) glory I found myself oddly inclined to shuffle around and lay down my cloak for a donkey to perform interpretative dance on. Live, Flynn is strong and convincing, the band are great, and at least one other track (I forget the name but am told it was a previous single) displays a gentler and more affecting manifestation of the many pop-folkish ingredients Mr. Flynn has plucked for this basket of his.
The support act is miserable, and it's not an encouraging sign, because Shine 5 also-rans My Life Story are fronted by half of said support act, who hillariously quips several times that he's 'not sure about the singer' of the headline act. He ain't the only one.
Odd then, after this dour non-spectacle that, MyLF (I think that's how they do it) are a big ridiculous orchestral pop machine with no instruction manual, and that the frontman himself is a joyous, insane, sometimes deluded but never disappointed, billboard-sized projection of himself. Christ. If uneathing britpop's zombies was usually this fun I'd spend more time at Shed Seven/Kula Shaker arena tours.
I can't claim to be blown away by his curiously formed lyrics, which are defeatist in the emotional and artistic sense, but if I gave marks for effort, My Life Story would be at the top of the class. 'An unexpected delight', I'd say if writing for the Guardian. And female. And unmarried. And not that into music.
Probably the most outstanding performance of this promising young rapper (nay - maverick)'s career so far. What will he do next? Invent time machines? Cure crabs?
The Crimea were pretty good too...
The Advent Colander was tagged with Slow Club by thesvenhunter