Author: birminghamreview

Kicking off a worldwide tour, Fuck Buttons will be performing at the Birmingham Institute on Sunday Sept 8^th.

On the road with their third album, Slow Focus – released in July 2013, the Bristolian (it’s a word) button bashers will be moving up through England to Glasgow, over to Dublin and then back to Blighty for their final gig at Camden’s Electric Ballroom on Sept 17^th. Oddly, a Bristol date has not been confirmed.

Fuck Buttons will then play 15 dates across Europe and 10 dates across North America, before finishing their album tour at the Release the Bats festival in Melbourne on Oct 26^th.

Fuck Buttons formed in 2004, after Andrew Hung met Benjamin John Power at art school in Bristol.

After signing to ATP Recordings in 2007, Fuck Buttons released their first single through the label later that year – a tough wall of sound 7” titled ‘Bright Tomorrow’.

Starting with a standard 4 beat pentametre, and building into a synthesised cacophony with tortured screams underpinning the penultimate minute, ‘Bright Tomorrow’ set a precedent.  Fuck Buttons followed their debut single with ‘Colours Move’, an equally aggressive electronic assault – released on 12” and digital in early 2008.

Fuck Button’s debut album, a six track LP titled Street Horrrsing, was released in March the same year – with Mogwai guitarist, John Cummings, as producer.

The duo recruited Andrew Weatherall to work on their next album, Tarot Sport, which was released through ATP in October 2009.

Slow Focus, Fuck Button’s third album, was produced by Hung and Power themselves – and was released in July 2013. Slow Focus maintains the pneumatic beat driven backbone, behind fierce layers of sound, which have defined Fuck Buttons since their inception.

Fuck Buttons begin their worldwide tour, to promote Slow Focus, at the Birmingham Institute on Sunday Sept 8^th, with support from The Haxan Cloak. Matthew Osborne will be there for a Birmingham Review.

For more on Fuck Buttons at the Institute on Sept 8th, including info and tickets, visit http://mamacolive.com/theinstitute/listings/upcoming-events/15631/fck-buttons-special-guests/

For further gig listings at the Institute, visit http://mamacolive.com/theinstitute/listings/

For more on Fuck Buttons, visit http://fuckbuttons.com/

Words by John Noblet

Abie’s Miracle Tonic are a three piece band with way more instruments than members – their arsenal includes various types of guitar, several kazoos and a souped up washboard.

The stage they grace tonight is situated outside the Midlands Arts Centre, and although the MAC might not be the best possible backdrop for their eccentric, ragtime whimsy, it seems like the right choice; kids run around happily, the odd passerby stops for a quick dance, casual observers dip in and out of conversation whilst the hardcore musos gape in awe at how quick the guy on the washboard can move his hands.

I find their easy going charm very difficult to resist. Yes, many modern bands who are influenced by 1940s/1950s music can come across as gimmicky, wheeling out the ‘vintage’ outfits as if that makes up for the screamingly obvious lack of content. But Abie’s Miracle Tonic come across as capable, talented musicians who have found the right tools to express themselves. In fact, they’re the direct opposite of gimmicky, given that their stage presentation involves the three of them sat on chairs, passing instruments back and forth, making music and enjoying themselves.

The kazoo solos function as just another cool sound to play around with, an acidic contrast to the lush vocal harmonies. Although the approach is undoubtedly lighthearted throughout, the arrangements and instrumentation are varied enough to prevent them from ever becoming merely pleasant background music; time and tempo changes creeping up on you just when you’ve been lulled into a false sense of security.

Whilst their humility is refreshing, you wonder if it works against Abie’s Miracle Tonic in the modern self-promotion = oxygen music scene. I want them to make videos just to see what crazy visions they’d conjure. They may well be a hard sell to anyone who completely dislikes their genre, but I think there’s a lot of floating voters out there who could be easily converted, given the right opportunity. And anyone who’s got a fetish for that kind of thing should check them out immediately.

The same is true for tonight’s headliners, Mellow Peaches, who take to the stage as the first few stars appear in the sky. The Peaches (as probably nobody but me calls them) have been around for a while now, slowly treading a determined path with twin bluegrass acoustic guitars. Amit Dattani’s rich, warm vocals sound particularly good tonight, despite some of the details of the rest of the mix getting lost in the breeze.

Their set tonight draws heavily from their debut album, I’ll Go Down with This Ship, released late last year. My lone criticism was that, having seen them a few times before, I’d have liked to have heard some new material. However, this doesn’t spoil my enjoyment of the show – the one new song goes down a treat, and augmenting much of the set with guest musicians is a great idea.

Dan-the-washboard-man’s (from Abie’s Miracle Tonic) intricate skiffle style percussion adds rhythm without over powering the guitar interplay, and ‘Mayflower’ rolls out like a great lost classic you haven’t heard in years. It reminds me of the time I once drunkenly described Mellow Peaches as “the good Mumford & Sons”.

An odd thing about the Mellow Peaches is how easily songs written by Amit sit alongside those from the nineteen twenties. Someone should lock that boy in a cage with a guitar, some whiskey and enough steak to stop him from starving, and only let him out when he’s written some more timeless classics.

It’ll happen eventually anyway, and I’m sure more than a few ears will be keen to hear them.

For more on Abie’s Miracle Tonic, visit http://www.abiesmiracletonic.co.uk/

For more on Mellow Peaches, visit http://www.mellowpeaches.co.uk/

For more music at MAC, visit http://www.macarts.co.uk/events/performances/music

Words and thumbnails pics by Matthew Osborne

As a media assassin you can become a little blasé about killing off celebrities these days, with so many boasting very good reasons to take them out.

I’ve become almost too used to it. I don’t see what I do as wrong; taking out artists who have crossed boundaries of taste and decency to make the world a better place. And not all artists start off that way, but some of their careers take such unfortunate turns it becomes my job to “preserve their legacy”.

However, every once in a while I pick up the phone find myself charged with the job of potentially killing one of my heroes.

David Byrne has been in my life for as long as I can remember, and over the last four years has collaborated with a number of musicians, including Fat Boy Slim, which was awful. But most recently Byrne teamed up with Annie Clarke (aka St Vincent) whom he is now touring the world with despite their album, Love This Giant, being fair to middling at best.

With a solo career seemingly drying up, David Byrne looked like an obvious contender for the musical scrap heap. This is when I get the call; so armed with poison pen and spy (neé Instamatic) camera, I made my way to Birmingham’s Symphony Hall.

Some of my earliest memories involve going somewhere in a car listening to Stop Making Sense, and as time rolled along I’ve taken Talking Heads to my heart; they remain to this day one of my favourite acts. Taking a clean shot at their founder and leader was not going to be easy, and would probably take a few days of pretty serious drinking to get over. Particularly as I had brought my Dad, the man who introduced me to David Byrne, along for support.

But my job was made even more difficult, due to a number of unforeseen factors.

Firstly, when the house lights went down I was hit by the realisation that I’d be mere metres away from a man I had idolised for decades. Added to that, he was not alone. Not only were there six players of various beguiling wind instruments, a drummer and a keyboardist, but also a strikingly blonde young woman – Annie Clarke.

If I was going to make a clean kill now I would have to take all ten of them out, and that would be very messy indeed; so I screwed the top back onto my pen and watched patiently, hoping for a better chance later in the evening.

The concert began with ‘Who’ from Love This Giant, the album and reason that had given me this job. However, it is easy to forget that Byrne is as interested in visual arts as he is in music, and from the first brassy parp of the sousaphone something more than a music recital began to take place.

Byrne and St. Vincent’s ten piece band never stood still for more than a few seconds, with each player guided by some loose choreography that tied everything together whilst giving the illusion of delightfully spontaneous randomness. Byrne’s jerky stage moves have long been revered and aped, but Clarke added a beautiful counterpoint to his gesticulations, gliding to and from her microphone as if she were a figurine on an elaborate Swedish cuckoo clock.

Dance routines were not intricate; one of them involved everyone except Clarke lying down, another involved the band splitting in two, moving to either side of the stage and slowly stepping towards each other. Some moves just involved raising their hands in the air on a queue from the tenor saxophonist. All of this was recreated in elongated shadows which flickered against the simple backdrop, a nod back to Talking Heads’ classic Stop Making Sense film.

As this theatre continued my pen stopped burning a hole in my pocket and my mind strayed away from any assassination attempt. Whether or not I liked Love This Giant did not matter. The songs were played so well, and performed with such imagination and ironic comedy, that they became something more than their album equivalents.

Besides, the set was littered with a fairly healthy dose of both artists’ other material. From St Vincent we were treated to ‘Cheerleader’ and ‘Northern Lights’, both of which benefited from the brassier instrumentation available on this tour.

And from Byrne’s hefty back catalogue came the real delights. His surprising late nineties/early noughties comeback song, ‘Lazy’ worked brilliantly with the brass set up; whilst ‘Wild Wild Life’ from True Stories was an absolute riot, with the band forming a conga line and each member singing a line from the song as they passed by the microphone.

Talking Heads’ ‘This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)’ gave Byrne a chance to perform some of his trademark moves (which you might have seen on the video for ‘Once in a Lifetime’), albeit with an elderly slant. And whilst Clarke’s dramatic stage posturing seemed natural and well executed, Byrne, with his pencil thin frame filled out in later life, occasionally looked older and tired.

After the band left the stage and the audience thundered for more, the big hitters really came out. Clarke returned and performed her beautiful ‘Cruel’ and then Byrne brought the house down with the appropriately titled ‘Burning Down the House’, which saw many of us leave our civilised seating to race to the front and dance.

The finale came in the form of ‘Road to Nowhere’, a fantastic chance to sing along with the band and get a face full of brass as the various players formed another conga line which intimidated the crowd whenever they swung by stage front.

For me the night was a welcome reminder that Byrne is an artist on every level, and his commitment to an enthralling stage production has not diminished since Talking Heads’ hey-day. I lost my pen, probably during the finale, and didn’t inquire at lost and found. This is one assassination that won’t be taking place.

And Annie Clarke is a perfect foil to Byrne’s eccentricities, finding herself a new fan in me that night. I just hope I don’t get a phone call in five years about her.

For more on Love This Giant, visit http://lovethisgiant.com

For more on David Byrne, visit http://journal.davidbyrne.com/

For more on St Vincent, visit http://www.ilovestvincent.com/

For further information on the Town Hall and Symphony Hall, including full event listings, visit http://www.thsh.co.uk/