Gigs of the year 2003
/ home / reviews index

End-of-year best ofs are always a strange beast, so subjective and so easy to get wrong when there's so little of everything it's possible to hear; and half my musical memories of a year will be formed by back catalogue stuff I've just bought. This autumn's been a real Pixies-fest for me (and they're getting their own special article from me soon).

But I don't feel bad listing the best gigs I've been to, despite this being an even more personal article: dictated partly just by where I was at the time. At least this more personal approach makes it harder for people to dispute!

So without further ado:

Some of my favourite gigs this year

Lapsus Linguae @ Hull Adelphi
"we wrote this song after watching a romantic comedy film in which Meg Ryan falls in love with the transsexual living downstairs, which is called You've Got Shemale"

Lapsus Linguae deserve a mention. It's Musicians Night in August at the Hull Adelphi, the audience full of acoustic amateurs and their parents, when four men stride on stage with torn black T-shirts, a metal logo announcing their intent. One of them wields a spiked guitar to match his hair, and has no seat in his leather trousers. Yet more oddly, another of them then seats himself at an electric piano and starts to play a quasi-classical piece. Long piano introductions and comedy goth rock-ins - at times a slow Rock of Travolta, or a cross between Salako and System of a Down. They're so rock that the drummer seems to spend the entire night staring between his legs. It's not what the audience expected: and when the singer/shouter starts telling jokes, there are no laughs. Either the jokes are too harsh, or the crowd can't understand the Scottish accent. Boom boom.

Cayto a few weeks later have similar sounds, but with a more serious punk-politic side; they jump around (on the floor)as much, and I assume they're dead young til I buy an album from them and find the singer's got the most haggard face I've seen in a long time outside of on a tramp. That's what rock does to you I guess.

 

Olympic Lifts / The Misshapen Lodge @ Hull Adelphi
"Don't get too close to my skeleton. Skeleton, skeleton."

An eventful winter night with the Misshapen Lodge in support - Hull's improv supergroup, with members of Capra, Fonda 500, Salako and Baby Mammoth. The funk-styled organ and up-tempo drumming tonight gives almost an apt hip-hop feeling to their p*st-rock sound, which builds as ever on crescendo and dipping static, and as it's built to a most-impressive climax suddenly cuts out. The lights go out as well. It's a power cut. When power's restored and Olympic Lifts come on, it has to be time for a party! Two MCs snap around and over guitar, bass and a DJ: something a bit different but their original old-skool roots are not in groups like De La Soul but in the best-kept-secret indie band of the 90s, Tunic, from Belfast. The background gives their sound a rare feeling of effervescent fun. There is a snowball fight afterwards.

 

Squarepusher @ Sheffield Leadmill
"Squarepusher's the fucking daddy"

Bass-wank in excelsis! I hadn't really been to a more "dance"-music type of gig before, didn't really know what to look at. After he's punched in all the running beats, watch the guy's hand sprint jazzily over his guitar strings. Then jump around when the static kicks in.

 

Do Make Say Think / Berg Sans Nipple - Nottingham Rescue Rooms
"Some bands have fancy light shows, but I grew a mustache for you people!"

Friends of all those Godspeed-type bands. These bands always seem to be friends with each other, don't they? But you don't often see them seeming to have a great time together, which is what makes Do Make Say Think different: serious, tight instrumental music with shattering climaxes, played with enjoyment. The brass section is tremendous. The only irritation of the night is three stoners in front of me not just talking half the way through, but having a thumb war!?

 

Puerto Muerto - Hull Adelphi
"are you sure you want this CD, it's covered in lipstick?"

The first time Puerto Muerto played the Adelphi, it was following a play about homelessness; the second, preceding (alt?) country-band Noahjohn. They fit with both. Christina slags off her husband Tim the guitarist, and tells us her particulars. She's a chanteuse with a drum. When not wrapping her feet around the mic stand she'll be jumping in the air: mad as a pirate. And fantastic.

 

Jetplane Landing / Harvey Half Devoured / some other band I don't remember, but quite liked, despite them sounding quite generic- Hull Adelphi
"This is our last song, it's called 'There Is No Real Courage Without Real Danger'"

And of course the guy stops singing in the middle of it while the band carry on pumping angular active noise, grabs the mic with both hands and commands us to carry on supporting small venues like this. They may seem overearnest sometimes, but one look at their ads tells you Jetplane Landing know where they're coming from: - three months visiting all corners of the country, even this one. At least he didn't tell us to look at the moon.

You can't hear all he's saying but it doesn't matter now. With splayed hips and open mouths Jetplane Landing hardly let the pace up, the sound is chiseling. A crowd jumps around, and might even have punched the Adelphi air. "Fuck you and your opposite sex!"

A support of note from Harvey Half Devoured: some new tunes suggest they've been injecting themselves with pure rock.

 

Radiohead - Manchester MEN Arena
"Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon"

The big gig of the year: we planned getting tickets like a military operation, everyone was looking forward to it all summer and mouthing misremembered lyrics all the way home. Because everybody knows this band...

.. so I'm sure I don't need to review the whole thing, but I will say that it brought 'Hail to the Thief' to life: when the band muck around in a live setting, you can really hear the muck. 'The Gloaming', not one of my favourite songs, transformed by that mad-eyed old Jonny Greenwood taking Thom's live vocal, playing it back on a laptop and just fucking it up. The weird synths on 'Myxomatosis' so deep and loud it makes me feel like a mobile on silent alert. Wild guitar added to the end of 'Backdrifts' (if Jonny Greenwood and Tom Squarepusher were to colloborate, it would either be a marriage made in heaven or a very big wank!).

It must be weird being Radiohead. You get some fans who want to hear expressive noise as such, and others who want to shout all the lyrics at you. Very annoying during 'Exit Music'. But maybe their brand of self-obsessed moaning does breed selfish fuck-ups...! Of course, it was good to hear the ones everyone sings along to, just not to hear everyone singing it. And 'I Might Be Wrong' was rocking...

 

Jeffrey Lewis - Hull Adelphi
"I see a half-full /half-empty glass is half-full.. of nothingness"

Probably not a hugely ground-breaking gig, this one, but one of my favourites cos Jeff Lewis does a few of my favourite things. He's very funny, and also quite sad. In all senses of both words, probably. He plays guitar and he draws comics. His untrained singing accompanies both of these. I bought more of his stuff than I could afford, and it almost made me want to move to Austin, Texas with nothing but a sketchbook and make my living making labels for sauce bottles.

plus, a bit about Truck festival
- gig of the year, I suppose, cos it had so many bands... but the Rhythms of the World festival was almost as good!