Slow Club Homegame Cock-Up
Slow Club‘s performance at the Fence Collective’s Homegame Festival last month really shouldn’t have surprised me, but for some reason it did. I’ve seen them before, at another Fence event in Edinburgh’s Caves a couple of years ago, and I really like their Moshi Moshi singles, but for some reason I’d allowed them to drift somewhat from my consciousness; I really don’t know why.
When they played at the Anstruther Town Hall, however, I was reminded pretty sharpish. They were sharp, energetic and bags of fun to watch. It all just seemed incredibly natural, watching them perform, as if playing their songs was simply something they found as normal and everyday as brushing their teeth. Where other bands had laboured, for instance, under the appaling sound conditions, running the full gamut from quietly disconcerted to openly irritated, Charles and Rebecca just laughed it off, played through it and generally made it seem like it was the most insignificant thing in the world.
This attitude breezes through their music as well. Even their less lyrically perky songs are infected with a relaxed, bouncy enjoyment and they rattled through their set at a fair clip.
The band are from Sheffield, but where up until only very recently there was a fairly thriving alternative music scene, loosely based around entities like the Sheffield Phonographic Corporation label, now there is apparently something of a wasteland. Consequently, Slow Club seem to have been adopted by a number of other groups, whilst not necessarily being an obvious part of any of them. Their label, Moshi Moshi, brings something of a scene with them, and they also seem to have been somewhat co-opted by the posh-folk crowd which includes the likes of Johnny Flynn, Noah & the Whale and Laura Marling. Then there’s their relationship with Fence, which now stands at two Homegame Festivals and a Fence Club.
Their music also doesn’t seem to quite belong in any such easy niche, though. It thumps along, with plenty of rockabilly and old fashioned rock ‘n’ roll, but they seem to get lumped in with alt-folkies which, apart perhaps from some of the company they keep, makes no sense at all.
Their album, Yeah So, is basically finished though, and will be out in July so maybe then they will get the chance to make an impact on the UK music scene more in keeping with who they themselves are, rather than being pigeonholed by either the city of their provenance or the other bands who like them. After their superb performance at Homegame, I am really looking forward to this record, and so should you be.
***
The videos here are snippets from their Homegame set. I actually recorded a whole interview with them while they were in Anstruther and, in the mother of all IT disasters, lost the fucking lot. So my sincerest apologies to Charles and Rebecca, and to Debbie who set it up, but if you want to hear a proper interview with them then download DC’s podcast of his Waiting Room show for woxy.com, or alternatively go and check out Andy’s live Off the Beaten Tracks Session videos from the same day, as well as Dylan’s photos on Blueback Hotrod. This must be a significant annoyance for professional music people actually, having to deal with an increasingly amateur music press, so I really am sorry.
Oh man, that is a fucking disaster. Wha’appen?
(Can I just add, I think I have done the same with my Andrew Bird interview — I’m simply a little too chicken to check just yet…)
Also, re: TWR Slow Club interview, you can download/listen to it as a whole show here:
http://crack.podbean.com/2009/05/08/090509/
or as simply download just the interview/session/tracks, here:
http://drunkcountrygent.podbean.com/mf/web/943tpi/SlowClub.mp3
Didn’t plug in the external mic properly, so the sound is nothing but static.
man i love andrew bird.
I think I’ve just accidentally deleted my AB interview off the Tascam, by mistake, on the night, after the interview itself; Shit. Shit. Shit.
I simply don’t want to go & look because my stomach says I done gone screwed up.
That’s the trouble with re-usable digital media.
I was panicking the other day when I thought I’d lost all the photos from Broken Records and Rob St. John at The Bowery.
Turns out I’d just put the memory card in a “safe place” – then forgotten all about it.
Slow Club were one of the weekends real highlights for me, shame you lost a lot, must be gutting.
Slow Club………that’s fantastic thanks for posting it. You sold them another record now Matthew so alls not lost.
Weeks of only having Dylan’s incisive wit to keep me going and then you post Slow Club…mint.
What a poverty-stricken few weeks they must have been, Cogstar, my sincere apologies.
Dav – one of my major highlights as well – I thought they were really, really good. And there’s all sorts of stuff on the album as well, apparently, not just a two-piece setup, so that sounds really promising as well.
Eh?
That gig was quite superb, actually. I’ve said many times now, but I will reiterate: I was turning out all the grey matter to remember how/why I knew the name & even seeing them live (& blowing me away with how adept they were to shrugging off the on stage/sound chaos/their mastery of their 2-part vocals/instruments) it was still baffling. I knew them, I just couldn’t recall from where.
I grabbed Rebecca after the gig, with a bizarrely overly-serious intoned “Can I have a word with you, please?” (to which she, with a rabbit in headlight expression, replied “Have I done something wrong?”) & set up an interview with them, to piggy back Matthew’s interview & Off The Beaten Tracks’ session, the following day.
The morning of the interview I hit what appeared to be the only place in the whole town that had wi-fi access & dug about the web for a bit of research into them & why their name was nagging at me so.
After about an hour of trawling old TWR playlists I finally found them, back in 2007, & their first single ‘Me & You’. It suddenly all fell into place & everything I knew about them back then, when I first picked them up & played them, came back to me — but, like Matthew, I cannot explain why I didn’t follow them up & grab more tracks from them to play (we repeated airplay of Me & You’ in 2008, which was their only other outing on TWR up until that point).
The interview was really good indeed — after warming up in The Masonic Arms, after they’d frozen their fingers playing the session & being interviewed down at the end of Anstruther Pier/Lighthouse, they seeemd to come alive a little bit more than in the cold of the day & we chatted for a good 45minutes.
Not all of it made it onto the show because it as either ruined by the forever increasing background hubbub of the pub locals (who were taking a serious dislike to us city folk sat in their chairs by their fire & spilling drinks or not using coasters on the tables etc.), or the conversation descended into nerdy/wanky muso waffle between Charles & I — interesting to me (& Charles), perhaps not sparkling chat for anyone else.
Then we were very fortunate to stumble onto their secret gig the following Sunday morning in the Hew Scott Tea Room. I recorded the whole show, but I’ve not tinkered with it yet as there’re some very audible requests for scones, jam, milk, tea, coffee, the continuous tinkling of tea cups & spoons, & some twot who sat on our table constantly telling the people around him that I had a recording device & was recording the gig. Well done, you. The duet between Charles on piano/vocals one end of the room & Rebecca, o vocals, at the other was fairly ruined by your graduation from the University of The Fucking Obvious.
Still, the intimacy of the gig & their sweet, hungover harmonies, was a perfect start to the end of the weekend.
As for the album, they assure me that it’s multi-layered with a ton of new ‘toys’ & instruments thrown into the mix, with ‘loads & loads of singing’ from them a host of their mates screaming at to the top of their lungs in a wood panelled live sound room.
I can’t wait to hear it.
p.s. Toad, Dylan, & anyone else who happened to be at Toad Cottage on the night of the Meursault TWR session, did you pay respects to Baby Fence over on the TWR site? We just want him home…
I so nearly left those bits in the video, but ultimately this is Neil’s career we’re talking about, and I didn’t want some fuckwit having a strop and making life difficult for him just so me and my mates could have a laugh.
Aye, true. But, you know, I couldn’t let it lie — purely because of the telepathic gag Dylan & I shared, followed by the most satisfying across-the-room Hi-five’s I’ve ever shared; I nearly burst from laughing at that point & I really did my internal organs a disservice heaving & and contorting my hysterics to an emergency stop.
Brilliant laugh, that. & all because of some very, very suspect ornamentation.
apropos of fuck all: check yr tweets re: tonight’s playlist old bean.
‘Woohoo’ Slow Club playing Glastonbury, that’s at least two good things to see now.
But doesn’t Baby Fence deserve the chance for a career too? For a family, a life, babies of his own?!
How can you be so inhuman?!!
Who you calling chicken?
[...] Song, By Toad featuring Slow Club [...]
These songs are superb. Especially the second one.