Live At Leeds- May 2nd & 3rd

Gigwise 1+ 2

Taking on the multi-venue style of Camden Crawl or The Great Escape in Brighton Live at Leeds is a sprawling collection of the cities finest exports and a nice amount of up and coming indie bands playing in the cities myriad of pubs and clubs. Despite the fact they have played in Leeds every other week since forever both Wild Beasts 3pm slot at Joseph's Well and Sky Larkin's tea time performance at The Cockpit are full to capacity lock outs- our fault for not arriving in time 'spose. Not to worry however as the first act of the day we catch is The Joy Formidable. The Welsh trio put on an assured performance, showcasing tracks from their excellent album 'A Balloon Called Moaning'. The crowd gathered lap it up as 'Whirring' gives way to 'Austere' the band go from strength to strength. Some tracks fall away into anonymity but ultimately this set is a triumph.

Anonymity is one thing you can never accuse Pulled Apart By Horses of. By the third song ('The Crapsons') of their half-hour set a circle pit has begun spinning and flailing in front of the stage and the atmosphere never drops below jaw-dropping. Essentially playing thrash metal for indie kids their songs are brutal but come accompanied by huge pop hooks which regularly see the audience joining in and punching the air in celebration. By 'Meat Balloon' lead singer Tom Hudson has re-located his microphone to the middle of the mosh pit and leads the "We are so macho" refrain from the heart of the crowd. It's easy to forget you are in the back room of a pub at 6pm in the evening as the sheer sense of fun over takes you. 'E= MC Hammer' and 'I Punched A Lion In The Throat' burst out of the blocks and finish off a set that this reviewer feels will struggle to be beaten by anyone in 2009.

Annoyingly the most appealing line up of Dinosaur Pile Up and Grammatics supporting The Maccabees at the Metropolitan Union has led to a gridlocked que with no sign of entry forthcoming. The walk to The Faversham is soundtracked by the muffled sounds of 'No Kind Words' emitting from the venues walls. Still, in the week the band release their masterpiece 'Wall Of Arms' it can only be a good sign that people are willing to stand in the cold for a chance to see the band play live. At The Faversham Dan Black is finishing off his set with the single 'Yours'- it ticks all the boxes of a major label, watered down Hot Chip but seems dated and a bit cheesy. Nothing however could prepare these eyes for the epically terrible Ou Est Le Swimming Pool. Having seen the best gig if the year earlier in the night it was a nice symmetry to then see the worst. Sunglasses, hoodies with bare chests and frosted tips hair do's made this feel less like an alternative music festival and more like being on the set of Ibiza Uncovered. Their Lonely Island esque jock pop and terrace style chanting from the crowd contributed to a set to forget.

With Saturday's extravaganza over Sunday took a more low key turn with just the one show from the chart kings of cod-doom White Lies. In support were the divine School Of Seven Bells who beguiled the collected audience with their ethereal take on the so hot right now shoegaze. Unfortunately playing to blank stares and muted applause the likes of 'Half Asleep' and 'My Cabal' were both charming and show a great fission between the Deheza sisters vocals and Ben Curtis' expansive and intricate guitar work. With a better crowd to work with and a more focused set they will win the fans they deserve.

In front of a crowd reminiscent of a Top Gear focus group White Lies take to the softly lit stage and begin ploughing the hits. 'Fairwell To The Fairground' and 'Lose My Life' are seen off early with the latters refrain of "Let's grow old together and die at the same time" being met with blanket repetition from the fans. The band formerly known as Fear Of Flying have obviously been embraced by the commercially beneficial lad-rock market but quite how is a mystery. To all intents and purposes they are a very camp and humourless band. Kaiser Chiefs do well with that demographic as they are fun, The Enemy tap into the small town ennui, Kasabian are the sound of a beery Saturday night, so what are White Lies? Their songs are all ham-fisted odes to death and despair. Presumably people aren't listening to the lyrics and instead falling for the admittedly catchy hooks. It's probably for the best as you soon realise that not a single line in any White Lies songs means a thing. They do have the tunes though and as 'Death' brings the show and indeed the weekend to a close it would be churlish to deny the crowd and the fans their shallow moment.

Photo: Brendan Docherty.

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Foals- Titan Arum

So Neu!, y'know them right? They are currently du jour and being name checked in every 'Primary Colours' review around, so it's timely then that a compilation of the bands work is being released.

This is no ordinary Greatest Hits however, Neu! are so influential that the cream of todays crop have contributed cover versions to the forthcoming 'Brand Neu!' compilation and this means stuff from LCD Soundsystem, School Of Seven Bells and Foals amongst many others.

Below is a stream of Foals doing Titan Arum from 'Brand Neu!' which is available on May 11th. You can listen to more Neu! on Spotify here or go to the Brand Neu! Myspace here.

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Words With... School Of Seven Bells

Originally for This Is Fake DIY

School Of Seven Bells are the new band from ex Texan prog band Secret Machines man Benjamin Curtis and identical twins Alejandra and Claudia Deheza. Their fresh take on shoegaze electronica mixed with ethereal balladry has enchanted listeners and seen their album ‘Alpinisms’ met with blanket critical praise.

How did School Of Seven Bells meet and decide to make music together?

We were in two bands before, me and my sister (Claudia) were in a band called On! Air! Library! And Benjamin was in Secret Machines and we met in November 2004 when we were both on tour with Interpol. We didn’t actually start playing together until 2007 though. We had a shared sensibility, I really liked what he (Curtis) did and when you’re on tour together you have a lot of time to hang out. We made good friends pretty quickly and the idea for SVIIB’s kept coming up in conversation, as the tour ended Benjamin just said to us “Hey, next time you’re back in New York give me a call and we’ll go record something.” And we did and things went from there.

What was it that convinced Benjamin to leave Secret Machines?

They came to the end of a touring cycle for ‘Ten Silver Drops’ (Secret Machines 2006 LP) and I think he started wanting to make the kind of music we had recorded that time in New York. It was never the case of choosing one or the other he just came to that decision himself and decided to follow this band.

What was the first School Of Seven Bells gig like?

It was in New York at a place called Tonic which has shut down now. It was this amazing venue where you could to hear really experimental music, a lot of musicians you normally wouldn’t hear. It closed about a month after we played; we were one of the last shows. Back then we had a bass player and a drummer. It was such a fun show, I mean we hadn’t fully developed our sound back then but it was a lot of fun.

When did you record ‘Alpinisms’?

It was weird because when we first got together we were going on tour a lot with friends of ours so we played with Blonde Redhead and Prefuse 73. So we were basically writing the songs for how we wanted to record them as we played them live. W weren’t looking for a label or anything but it came to a point where we had a studio for three weeks to record. The way we were working though if we had started that record by the time the three weeks were up we’d have had a totally different album to what we wanted to we scrapped that idea altogether. It took more time but when we eventually finished the record we were happy because it was the album we wanted.

Do you feel your music is optimistic?

It wasn’t intentional because I think there’s a lot of bad memories tied up in the record for me. I wrote a song on the record called ‘For Kala Mari’ which is about a very good friend of mine who passed away, she took her own life and she was a very talented artist. I had lost contact with her because she had gotten to a really bad place in her life. That song is basically a letter to her telling her all the things I wish I could have said. That really helped me come to terms with things so even if it doesn’t sound like the most upbeat song it was a worthwhile process for me to write and record that track.

You have spoken about how dreams inform your music...

Yeah, basically I’m really interested in the way that situations and storylines present themselves to you in dreams. It’s all the same language that we speak in dreams, its all images. Things happen in such a lucid way that when you come to tell people or write it down things have to change to make sense. I wanted to try to avoid that whole thing of putting it down in the simple form we learn in school; I think people are smarter than that. I try to write songs that are not in a very grid like format so that people can understand on a more natural level.

Finally, School of Seven Bells is named after an ancient school for pick pockets?

Yeah there used to be a huge shoplifting ring on the East coast of America near Washington and North Carolina and they were just ransacking places. They were so organised and thorough, intelligent people and it got to the point where people were going into shops with nothing but a coat and a plastic bag and leaving with $10,000 worth of stuff. These people were trained at these academies and the final test was to steal seven items from seven pockets without ringing any of the seven bells attached to them.

And what’s the worst thing you stole when you were a child?

Oh yeah, everyone does that when they are young don’t they? It’s so funny. When I was really little me and my sister went into this store and decided that we would take whatever was on the floor. So we went in and all these earring were on the floor so we took them. We knew it was wrong but we didn’t know it was that wrong y’know? We were like three years old, when we got home though our Mum found out what we had done and we got in a lot of trouble! Those earrings went back to where they came from pretty quickly.

'Alpinisms' is available now

SVIIB's@ Myspace.

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For The Record: February

Albums:
The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart- The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart. (Album Of The Month)
Crystal Stilts- Alight Of The Night.
Lily Allen- It's Not Me, It's You.
Sky Larkin- The Golden Spike.
Morrissey- Years Of Refusal.
Empire Of The Sun- Walking On A Dream.
N.A.S.A- Spirit Of The Apollo.
The Joy Formidable- A Balloon Called Moaning.
Dark Was The Night- A Red Hot Compilation

Download These

The Pains... 'Young Adult Friction'
Lily Allen- 'The Fear'
Sky Larkin- 'Fossil Eye'
Morrissey- 'I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris'
Empire Of The Sun- 'Walking On A Dream'
N.A.S.A- 'Gifted'
The Joy Formidable- 'Whirring'

Tracks:
The Soft Pack- Nightlife. (Single Of The Month)
Little Comets- One Night In October.
School Of Seven Bells- Iamundernodisguise.
Telepathe- So Fine
Fever Ray- If I Had A Heart.
Eugene McGuinness- Fonz

Worst Release Of The Month:

U2- Get On Your Boots.

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New video round up

\\\ LA ROUX /// IN FOR THE KILL

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