This month we are going to play The Generation Game, if only to unravel some tangled musical context in our sweetly bewilderfuddled brains. True fact: there are have never been so many bands rocking out on planet earth at this moment in time. Seemingly every minute a shiny new act forms out of the blue, or West Yorkshire at least. Older bands meanwhile re-form, even older bands re-re-reform. Even when the lights go out the music sales continue to shine on upon the likes of Freddie, Amy, Presley, Bowie…Lennon’s on sale yet again, as is Kurt Cobain’s Fender Mustang guitar and thoroughly flummoxed flannel shirt. The eye-catching Abbatars and eye-watering catalogue deals for the likes of Bobby Dylan, Broooce and now Genesis shows how the industry is boldly preparing to milk its own sagging nostalgic bosoms for generations to come.
If any night this month sums up the generational gameness of the whole palaver it’s THE WEDDING PRESENT, primarily because we actually see them in the middle of August but didn’t have space to mention them last time out. Back in the middle of the ’80s they were part of the wide-eyed wave of C86 dreamers and rattling through John Peel-endorsed indiepop nuggets at Walthamstow Assembly Halls. Nigh on 40 years later they are visiting The Apex at Bury St Edmunds, itself not but 30 minutes away from Peel Acres, and where we find David Gedge has gone totally Pip Schofield with his hair shading.
To add to the timeline confusionings, the Weddoes are supported by their own bass player, Melanie Howard, who performs as Such Small Hands and goads the middle aged masses with a furious set of fragile introspection. Even more time-warpingly, the guitarist is Jon Stewart from Sleeper. And yet more dimension-jiggering is the fact that half the set is given over to a playthrough – or a ‘Dalliance’ with, if you will – the ‘Seamonsters’ album from 1991. For sure, we guestimate this means there isn’t time for our five favourite Weddoes tracks – and doesn’t everyone think we look daft – but there is a vigour and a vibrancy to the present line-up, emboldened by another throwback which is them just releasing 12 singles in one year, just as they did 30 years ago. Some of them sound smashing. Just like they were from the olden days, in fact.
From Suffolk to Norfolk, where the lunging, grunging SPIELBERGS are sweating out Voodoo Daddy’s, ably supported by raucous alt.rock locals THE OTHER HALF. The fact that the Spielbergs are from Norway and the support is from Norwich is only the mad tip of a crazy pan-cultural autumnal fatberg, as this month alone we are artily entertained by the myriad likes of WINNX at Dalston Victoria (charmingly furious indiefroth sassiness), BAELY at Hackney Paper Dress (sultry soulman grooviness), TEETH MACHINE at Shoreditch Dream Bags Jaguar Shoes (alarmingly mature introspective sonic gloomings) and HUMOUR at the 100 Club (suitably deadpan post-punk punchings – help the raged indeed). At times it feels like you can’t move for all the new talent tearing through the underground, let alone keep on top of it and remember everything you’ve witnessed and where the heck you’ve witnessed it.
Perhaps that’s why the real September standouts are the acts standing on the cusp of the edge of the precipice of being propelled onwards and upwards, the performers who’ve left performing in back rooms glaring balefully at them in the rear view mirror. Enter Mancunian quarter PORIJ, who are headlining a heaving Heaven in Charing Cross on a Friday night. Having shared a 6 Music Roundtable panel with endearingly eloquent singer Eggy recently we can safely say that Porij know their sonic onions, and those onions are frying in a fruity oil of charming leftfield electro-poppery which kicks on into a rave-tastic finale – no mean feat at 9.30pm, and a suitably celebratory climax to a major career stepping stone.
No less lively are DEADLETTER at the 100 Club on Oxford Street, the Yorkshire refugees rolling up from South London for their own breakthrough show. Singer Zac plays the frienzied crowd like a pie-carrying pied piper, all sinew and sass and stalking the stage like Dr John Cooper Clarke reborn in Iggy’s teenage rampage physique. The guitars gnarl away, the saxophone honks up front, the political causticness pours out all over the place. The sky, or at least the main stage at Reading Festival, is the limit.
PANDAMAN’S 2022 TOTAL: 254
Image credit: Pexels
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