tim bowness / henry fool at the borderline 11/07/14

What a wonderful evening. 

The Borderline holds perhaps 175 people so it was always going to be an intimate gig, but I was lucky enough to grab a spot leaning on Mike Bearpark's monitor. Couldn't be any closer. 

Matt Stevens opened the proceedings with some truly inventive and entertaining guitar work. Strumming and picking furiously, looping what he's played, and then playing more and more lines over the top of the loops. Terrific stuff. He seemed to enjoy himself and the crowd certainly did. 

Two of Italy's nosound were up next ('the best two', laughed Giancarlo at one point). With just washes of keyboards and Paolo's gentle acoustic guitar (plus a couple of instances of blindingly liquid electric guitar solos from Giancarlo) the duo cherrypicked a good half a dozen tracks from the excellent nosound catalogue. Well worth watching.

Then it was time for what Tim later called a sort of Frankenstein band - Tim Bowness and Henry Fool Featuring Colin Edwin - not a name that easily trips off the tongue! The tiny stage had to cope with Colin's monster bass, Myke Clifford's sax and flutes, Mike Bearpark's guitar and effects, Stephen Bennett's two tiered keyboards and Andrew Booker's supremely shiny drum kit (bass drum adorned with Henry Fool artwork - 'that's the stage set' laughed Tim). It was a bit of a squash. Tim Bowness was something like the still centre of the storm. He would easily draw the audience's attention when he was singing, his voice strong and deeply affecting, but during the musical passages and instrumentals I felt he seemed almost to melt into the background, something I suspect he'd be rather pleased about.

They opened with the thunderous tribal drumming of "The Warm Up Man Forever". I can't remember the exact set list but a storming "Time Travel In Texas" was somewhere near the start, and also quite early on in the set was one of many highlights, "Smiler At 50", one of the best tracks on Tim's new album Abandoned Dancehall Dreams and one of the very best songs I've heard in ages. The coda was immense, apocalyptic and extraordinary. The first Henry Fool album contained a song called "Judy's On The Brink" which was played tonight with the words altered to make it a prequel to the Smiler tracks. 'See how much more misery we can inflict on her', explained Tim. The band played a couple of superb pseudo jazz/rock pieces ('the Brand X revival starts here!') as well as a very unexpected and rocking "Housewives Hooked On Heroin" which Tim laughingly called the least loved No-Man song. Not tonight it wasn't!

For my money the best song of the evening was the gorgeous "Dancing For You" with a stunning guitar solo from Dr Bearpark, and some wonderful squally keyboards from Stephen Bennett. Throughout the gig Myke Clifford's sax and flutes frequently assisted where backing vocals would have been on the record and he did so here. "Dancing For You" is one of the prettiest saddest songs I've ever heard and this live version was just as good as I'd hoped it would be. 

"Mixtaped" closed the main set. Never my favourite No-Man song, but it seemed to work far better in a live setting being both broodingly intense and surprisingly loose and free. For an encore we had a blast through "Poppy Q" and the show ended with a beautiful "Songs Of Distant Summers", complete with an extended percussive coda. It was the perfect conclusion. 

Considering that some in the band have full time jobs (at some of the best Universities in the country!) they are a solidly coherent unit. But they've been playing together on and off for 25 years or so, so perhaps it's no surprise really. It's a shame, though, that they don't perform more in public as they are such a good band, with inventive, musical explorations, and superbly sensitive emotional backings for Tim Bowness' superb sensitive emotional songs.

All in all, a wonderful performance. More please!

neil young - a letter home

Neil Young has a 'new' album out. Sort of. There's been a lot of comment about this one, A Letter Home, as it's one of the oddest records Neil has ever put out.

Neil visited Jack White's record store in Nashville where White has a refurbished 1940s recording booth. This immediately presses the recording onto vinyl and many vintage folk and blues records were recorded in this way, back in the day. Neil apparently loved it - not so much low-fi as no-fi whatsoever - and, contrary old goat that he is, he's recorded his whole album via the booth!

Of course this means that the record is smothered in masses of surface noise, pops, crackles and clicks, and at times you can hear the wobbly nature of the vinyl, as the songs warble and flutter. It does really sound like an old 1940s record, thin, reedy, crackly, like a voice from beyond the grave. However, I'm not sure that this is such a good thing. Recording technology has moved on for a reason.

A Letter Home contains just covers of old folk / rock tracks (Dylan, Springsteen, Jansch, Lightfoot, Willie Nelson, the Everly Brothers are all represented) and all are lovely performances, first takes, just Neil the guitar and harmonica (and on a couple of songs, Jack White also pounding away on a piano). And whilst the old fashioned recording does have an undeniable, though weird, charm, I have a feeling that the antique sound will get very annoying after a couple of listens. Which is a shame, as Neil is on fine form and is clearly having a ball, and there's a jaunty, fun mood to many of the tracks. I'd argue that all of these songs deserve to be heard in a better recording.

But this is Neil Young. Inexplicable swerves are his speciality. He's been banging on recently about PONO - a new full fat, totally non-lossless, portable, digital music format. He wants it to rival iTunes, and reckons that the quality it delivers is second to none. Apparently, the next volume of The Archives will not include Blu-Ray (like the last set) but to get the really high-end stuff you'll have to get PONO. Then, just as he's pushing PONO and top sound quality as hard as he can, he releases the lowest-fi album made by anyone in the last 60 years!

Apparently there's also a box set version (though what on earth that includes is anyone's guess - a wax cylinder? An old banjo and a rocking chair so you can create your own version?)

Gotta love Neil, but out of all the weird things he's done (and that's not a short list either!) this has to be one the weirdest ever!

it's all one song

Whilst I've often heard Neil Young's semi-ironic comment about his music - "it's all one song" - today I had this proved to me once and for all.

With the iPod switched to shuffle it decided to treat me to three Neil Young and Crazy Horse songs in a row.

 

First up - "Love To Burn" from 1991's cracking live album Weld. 10 minutes of grunging Horse magic.

Then "Ramada Inn" live at the O2 when I was there last summer. Nearly 20 minutes of grunging Horse magic.

Finally, "Powderfinger" from 1978's Live Rust. 6 minutes of grunging Horse magic.

 

All three tracks are carved from the same massive Rock, all three tracks were clearly rehearsed in the same dusty ol' barn, all have the same old fashioned approach to songwriting, keeping it simple, getting some cool harmonies in there and letting the song rock itself out.

And all three could easily have come from the same concert, despite 35 years separating the earliest and the latest. There is frankly no difference in sound, in instrumentation, even in Neil's voice. Some singers lose a lot of their range as the get older, but, marvellously, Neil Young's voice remains exactly the same. And the Horse are a wonderfully consistent band. They know their sound, no-one else plays like them, so they'll doggedly stick to what they know and keep on playing. And playing. 

 

And playing.

 

It's all one song...