birminghampromoters Archives

November 28, 2016

BREVIEW: Wolf People @ Sunflower Lounge 24.11.16

Live music is not the same today as it once was. It’s become unusual to see a Marshall stack truly used in anger; they’ve become more of a stage prop. Wolf People hark back to a time when titans walked the earth, their riffs shook the ground and their guitar solos were long and beautiful.

Throughout the set, Wolf People demonstrate incredible sensitivity and control over their sound. There is a lot of noise happening on stage. Drummer, Tom Watt, is head-down and focused as he thunders away on the skins, while Dan Davies sets the bass groove with a stoic expression.

The Sunflower Lounge barely has room for the band’s incredible backline of authentic vintage equipment. Wolf People’s set focuses on the heavier side of their repertoire but it’s filled with peaks and troughs within the extended tracks. Softer moments precede a pounding fuzzy riff or a squawky wah-wah solo.

Despite sounding ‘classic’, it’s impossible to accuse Wolf People of sounding quite like anybody else. Vocalist Jack Sharp, as well as being one half of a two-guitar assault, contributes to the band’s sonic identity with a softer lilting voice more common to the folk genre. A far cry from the Ozzy-esque wail one expects to accompany such heavy riffs, it’s nearer King Crimson’s Greg Lake.

The interplay of Sharp’s guitar with Joe Hollick’s is the source of the set’s most memorable moments. It’s like the jazz mastery of The Allman Brothers Band in their prime put to use on the intensely innovative folk rock fusion style of Rory Gallagher. If that sounds a bit beard-strokey and self-consciously clever then I’m not doing justice to how powerful, raw and utterly compelling it sounds in person. Wolf People are extremely intelligent songwriters and musicians – channeling various strains of folk and Anatolian rock into their playing – but they never self-indulge to the point of losing the crowd. Their mastery of their craft is obvious, yet they make it feel very spontaneous and alive. Rarely do you get the opportunity to go and see musicians this good up close and personal. It is a privilege.

The dreaded end draws near. Wolf People forgo the pageantry of an encore and announced their last song, inviting support act and solo instrumentalist Dean McPhee to join them. “Try and get it as atmospheric as possible” instructs Hollick. McPhee’s guitar style is the very definition; a gentle howling sound under waves of delay that sits alongside Wolf People surprisingly well. It’s not uncommon for the number of guitarists on a stage to be inversely proportional to the quality of the music they make together, but that’s not the case here.

You get the impression that Wolf People could have gone on stage completely unrehearsed, settled into a groove and just played an incredible off-the-cuff set. It cannot be overstated how seriously good they are live. While their records are equally impressive, the side of themselves that they showcase in the flesh needs to be heard to be believed.

For more on Wolf People, visit www.wolfpeople.co.uk

For more from The Sunflower Lounge, including full event listings and online ticket sales, visit www.thesunflowerlounge.com

For more from Birmingham Promoters, visit www.birminghampromoters.com

October 13, 2016

BREVIEW: Black Honey + Pleasure House, Dream Wife @ Mama Roux’s 10.10.16

Words by Billy Beale

Imagine going back in time and telling somebody that one day a band will win the title of ‘BBC Radio 6 Music Most Blogged About Band’. Even now, it sounds a bit nonsense – like ‘most relatable Tweet’ or whatever Vine is for.

Black Honey won that title from 6 Music in 2015, meaning that last year people were talking about these guys more than any other group, even much bigger names that had been all over the mainstream music press. Time to see if they live up to the hype – as Black Honey play Birmingham’s Mama Roux’s, at the tail end of their eight date UK tour.

Pleasure House, in a homecoming show that marks the end of an up-and-down tour of the nation, duly open tonight’s show. It is a sign of these post-DeMarco times that every band apparently needs at least one member to find the oldest baseball cap they can and never, ever remove it.

Their two opening songs, both on the topic of being “fucked up”, draw heavily on the sound of the slacker pop zeitgeist, but with heavier riffs and strong, prominent vocals from singer and guitarist Alex Heffernan. It is these vocals that prevent Pleasure House from sounding like every other tight and slick indie pop band. Their older songs are more typical 21st Century British indie disco than the openers but lack any real distinctive characteristics beyond a soulful voice and being undeniably well-executed.

Dream Wife look every part the riot grrrl group with the notable exception of singer Rakel Mjöll, who looks more like an 80’s horror movie blonde. In keeping with the movie-cheerleader image, her stage antics include a lot of jumping and chanting between delicate gesticulations from the Mick Jagger and Jarvis Cocker Book of Stagecraft. It’s not dissimilar to the mental image of a very small child on the stage of some awful televised talent competition, surprising everybody by doing a very energetic and enthusiastic rendition of a Blondie song but missing much of the cadence and rhythm. This image is not extinguished when Mjöll has a good go at shouting “I WANNA FUCK YOU UUUUUUP” later in the set.

A strong visual aesthetic is a great asset to a band, and Black Honey have honed and refined theirs to a degree not often seen at their level. The chosen font for the logo, the desert theme to their graphics, the video for ‘Hello Today’ (a three-minute homage to 60’s exploitation movies, much like Tarantino’s Death Proof or Kill Bill: Volume 2) is all very consciously American. Mods-and-rockers might be played out, particularly for a Brighton band like themselves, but Black Honey’s vintage US appearance doesn’t always match their songs.

For most of their set tonight, Black Honey sound like a British indie band with elements of 70’s US Southern rock stirred through. Singer Izzy B Phillips is reminiscent of Metric’s Emily Haines, with enough range to carry the darker, sparse, slower tracks as well as the bouncier pop. Unfazed by a rowdy crowd, Phillips relishes in reaching out over their heads and instructing them not to mosh and fight, but hug and sway. As far as crowd reactions go, Black Honey get nothing but unambiguous adoration from their Birmingham fans. Their music is often formulaic and predictable – verse, chorus, guitar solo with a Whammy effect, coda, repeat – but judging from the response, it seems to be working.

The latter half of Black Honey’s set sees less of the samey structures and more variation of dynamics and genre. ‘Spinning Wheel’ shows more of their American influence in the form of surf rock worthy of a Tarantino soundtrack, contrasting with the anthemic dreamy indie of ‘Corrine’.

There are a lot of sonic influences that make up Black Honey and, while they’re not always completely in balance, the end result is a professional show with flashes of genius. And whether they’re still the most blogged about band in late 2016, whatever’s left that stands between them and bigger things had better watch out because they’re coming.

For more on Black Honey, visit www.facebook.com/BlackHoneyUK

For more from Mama Roux’s, visit www.therainbowvenues.co.uk/venues/mama-rouxs

For more from Birmingham Promoters, visit www.birminghampromoters.com

May 4, 2016May 4, 2016

INTERVIEW: Benjamin Francis Leftwich

*Benjamin Francis Leftwich plays at The Rainbow Courtyard on Thursday 5^th May – as presented by Birmingham Promoters & Kilimanjaro Live. For direct info & tickets, click here.

Words by Ed King

I over play things. It’s a habit. And for one glorious summer Benjamin Francis Leftwich’s debut album – Last Smoke Before the Snowstorm, was the repetitive soundtrack to my earphone clad existence.

Alongside Like I Used To by Lucy Rose, and If You Leave by Daughter, these three debuts owned me for a solid six months – complicit and outright. And now with Leftwich’s follow up album poised to attack, the ‘eagerly awaited’ After the Rain set for release on 19^th August, I prepare for predictability once again.

“I really appreciate that,” responds Benjamin Francis Leftwich, as I try to retain any sense of detached cool, “those two artists (Lucy Rose, Daughter) are close friends of mine and I know they’d be incredibly humbled to hear that as well. I know what you mean though; so many records of that genre were coming out then and everyone was on the same gig circuit and festivals – it was a really beautiful time and one that I’ll always cherish.”

Ah the halcyon days… But such an immediate impact can be both a blessing and a curse, with the pressures to jump even higher, especially on ‘that difficult second album’, often the antithesis to a healthy creative development. And more often than not, with the aforementioned being a triptych example, the make or break in this scenario can come down to the label.

“They’re amazing; I consider them family,” explains Leftwich – talking about Dirty Hit, his label for nearly a decade. “It’s a great home, they’ve allowed me to make the record that I wanted and needed to make. They’re just very music focused; I was almost going to say ‘tolerant’, but the people who work there have an amazing ear and ultimately they’re just music lovers who know more about how to make things work (industry) than I do.”

You do get a sense of camaraderie from the Dirty Hit roster, even from the outside looking in – like it’s more a friendly faced 4AD than a suited and booted Sony. “I’m not just saying that because we’re talking,” confirms Leftwich, “but the level of dedication goes so much further than just the music and song writing than I think people realise – it’s everything. When you’re working with an independent label like that, and you go into an office and there are five people running the whole thing… out of necessity it has to be inclusive, and song focused. And of course ambitious.”

Good to know. When my kazoo career is ready for takeoff I know where to send my demo. But it’s not all a garrulous love in at Casa de la Leftwich, as the five year hiatus between albums was the result of the illness and subsequent death of Benjamin’s father – a man the After the Rain press release describes as both ‘a parent and his number one source of inspiration’.

“…feel free to ask me what you want to ask me,” says Leftwich, as I stumble around the foundations of his latest endeavour. “There’s no question of me being offended. By ‘aspects’ do you mean things as well as the death of dad?” I do. It’s a poor choice of words, but how driven by that particular sadness was the writing process for After the Rain?

“It was hugely impactful, massively so. I’ve run through the timeline of it so much; I was with dad back in York, living in the house, and I loved that I could be there. Then I went on tour to America, which in hindsight I regret, but you know, that’s life. Then I came back and was writing in my room; me and my sister were there, sharing time.” Again the press release mentions this, how After the Rain’s opening track was ‘written in the living room opposite his father’s old house.

“We had producers coming up and setting up in the living room recording music, we had a full mixing desk in the living room at one point.” I feel like I’ve left my shoes on where I shouldn’t. But was it all about your dad?

“When something like that happens it’s more than just about that initial thing,” continues Leftwich, “it affects everything else around it. So that album (After the Rain) is massively inspired by it, and everything that followed. Not every song is about that – they cover a massive geographical and emotional range, but of course it’s a theme that runs though, and probably, subconsciously, maybe, ties them all together.”

Luckily for the sake of this conversation (and the apparent label goodwill) the first teaser from Benjamin Francis Leftwich’s new album is a superb return to form – the delicate but visceral ‘Tilikum’, which has been out in the public domain since early this year.

“The name of the song came from the name of the whale in the film Blackfish,” explains Leftwich, “and it’s a name that I was once planning on calling my baby… but that didn’t happen.” I remember ‘Tilikum’s opening six lines and choose not to ask. “And I wrote a song kind of explaining my thoughts about that and for the future. The chorus is just full of love.” The verses aren’t bad either; with a crafted sensitivity and robust pen, ‘Tilikum’ is arguably a step up from its predecessors. And that’s hard for me to say.

But there’s something else in Benjamin Francis Leftwich’s first release in half a decade, something evolved. Maybe it’s the time spent in between albums, maybe it’s the tragedy and catalyst, maybe it’s the Charlie Andrew production, or the “wider range of music than I listened to five years ago” and “sounds and textures from different records” that Leftwich references in his follow up. I honestly couldn’t say. And part of me doesn’t want to.

But with a 27 date tour before the album’s release – traversing Europe, America and Canada, and a date at our own Moseley Folk Festival, I’ll probably have enough time to find a suitably verbose suggestion.

Now someone get me Elena Tonra on the phone…

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Benjamin Francis Leftwich plays at The Rainbow Courtyard on Thursday 5^th May – as presented by Birmingham Promoters & Kilimajaro Live. For direct info & tickets, click visit http://therainbowvenues.co.uk/events/benjamin-francis-leftwich/

For more on Benjamin Francis Leftwich, visit http://www.benjaminfrancisleftwich.com/

For more from The Rainbow Venues, visit http://therainbowvenues.co.uk/