They say only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun in the middle of the festival season when all the live focus is on intense action in big tents. Even the Pandaman’s August is bookended by trips to the ravey wilds of Wilderness and the endlessly entertaining End of the Road. Luckily for this here gigging diary nobody seems to have explained the summertime touring rules to Music Venue Trust, who promote a pawful of national tours with the National Lottery, or indeed the good musical people of Scotland, who happily participate in those murderous midsummer roadtrips.
A Monday night in Norwich sees HAMISH HAWK fly into the Arts Centre to start one such MVT on-the-road romp: a man, a band and an exercise in intellectual melody cruising, our lithe-limbed eponymous hero is sufficiently rich in lyrical detail to warrant comparisons to Morrissey and Jarvis Cocker as well as much closer intention. His last two louche album excursions – ‘Heavy Elevator’ and ‘Angel Numbers’ – have enthralled the 6music crowd, and the new material is said to be ready to test that playlist support by upping the filthy ante. For now however, a positively genuine version of ‘Disco 2000’ keeps tonight’s vibe on the side of sweet, if wryly knowing, innocence.
The Hamish support on this tour is from fellow countrypeople REDOLENT, last spotted playing on Brighton Pier at The Great Escape. Theirs is an ever-intriguing take on electronic music, flipping the floor-pumpingly obvious in favour of a nervy, introverted soundtrack. Their profanity-strewn matrix screens still pump out the Edinburgh colloquialisms but there’ll be no murder on the Norwich dancefloor tonight.
Another manic Monday, this time in Leeds, where another MVT tour stars another bunch of Scots in the headline slot. This time it’s the turn of VLURE to sail into The Oporto venue. If Redolent spend much of their set looking inwardly VLURE are intent on bringing the party to the masses: giant of chorus, gargantuan of attitude, they enlighten the venue with a crash course in hysterical rave history, with special attention paid to Faithless and The KLF.
They might look like they want to punch your lights out, all cropped bleached hair, leather trousers and onstage glares, but you’ll be pinching yourself when you’re caught in the headlights of their heroically welcoming party lazerbeams. Glowsticking two fingers up at the mainstream? Perhaps. Essentially a full-on festival show in a tiny Yorkshire boozer in the middle of the festival season, best thing is the new VLURE material is even more shiny and pop-tastic than before.
The following night in the same city, where THE WALKMEN headline the Leeds Project House, a cavernous warehouse rave-style venue opened by a collective of local promoters which is so new you almost feel sorry to sully the shiny urinals. Continuing the tenuous Caledonian theme their support for the tour is ALMOST NOTHING, who consist of Roddy and Andrew from old Walkmen buddies Idlewild and who we last saw doing this in Diss a few sunsets ago. Quite how many audience members realise their musical provenance is tricky to calculate, and certainly the duo’s slinkily subtle keyboard-led soulpop – Roddy’s yearning vocals and heroically humble demeanour aside – doesn’t give too many pointers toward their other project home.
If Almost Nothing are virtually just starting out The Walkmen are New York City boys back after a ten year hiatus. Their gnarly, sneery sound was never going to lend itself to comeback sentimentality but you get the feeling the five piece are having a blast, not least when singer Hamilton regales us with a tale about the worst soundman they ever had, a drug-addled Venezuelan at The Cockpit in the olden Leeds days.
What’s truly compelling about The Walkmen sound is that if divided into separate entities – the clanging guitar, the ice-cream-van-on-mars keyboards, the skittering drums, the howling yowling vocals – and then thrown together it should sound bloody awful. But somehow at some point in each and every tune those entities come together with a sense of exquisite chaos. Best Song Ever ‘The Rat’ gets a respectable mid-set pounding and they keep the circle round by proudly finishing with the dainty lurchings of ‘We’ve Been Had’, the first song they ever wrote in 2000.
One would presume that Vermont trio THUS LOVE weren’t too far out of diapers when The Walkmen were starting their journey, but you get the sense they are already becoming as important to punters as their forebears have been. A self-proclaimed queer post-punk outfit, the trans trio are playing a second show at the 100 Club in London Village, having sold out the previous night. If the immaculately-named singing guitarist Echo Marshall vibrates with casually excitable echoes of Brian Molko and Billie Joe Armstrong then the Thus Love power-punking trio vibes are a perfect musical fit, with a modern take on the same chunky DIY ethics and enthusiasm Placebo and Green Day both displayed in the ‘90s.
The crowd is half teenage girls and half 6 music dads (Steve Lamacq is looking on approvingly from the Oxford Street shadows) with a smattering of Desperate Journalists across the two nights, and you can see why: Thus Love is pop, but dark; damaged goods, but all-embracing – it’s their party and Thus Love will climb on the amps if they want to. Who says summer gigging love is dead?
PANDAMAN’S 2023 PERFORMANCE TOTAL: 275
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