I don't want to be a member of any club that would have me as a member

Neil Jones on a month of gigs in Cardiff, including The Jaynes, The Screenbeats, Lucky Delucci, Strange News From Another Star, Mr Duke and Bec and Beth

So I was naturally curious as to whether running promotions at a bona fide city centre club would be good for my health or not, and yes, I’ve started to collect string and tie it in balls in my room. But really, has it been all that bad? Well, the answer has probably been yes, but there’s been good parts on the way, as described below.

The Screenbeats and The Jaynes at Tabu, Cardiff, November 10th, 2008

The Jaynes confused me at first when I saw them at Clwb Ifor Bach, a dapperly dressed foursome that looked like they were waiting to carry Meic Stevens' coffin out. Hadn’t I seen them downstairs at this venue a few weeks back, laying waste to the complacent masses with a brand of adrenalin-fuelled music that sounded like The Undertones doing The Ramones?

Yes, I had, but this turns out to have been their other band, Kutosis, and this one, The Jaynes, is the "indiepop" one, the one in which they sound like Darren Hayman doing The Kinks. Only The Undertones doing The Ramones doesn’t quite add up, and neither does Darren Hayman doing The Kinks. Because The Jaynes are to journalistic clich・s what good Pop is to bad pop, a kick in the balls from the snarling god of poetry.

There are two other bands around that create an atmosphere like this at the moment in Cardiff, Silence at Sea and Lucky Delucci (maybe four if you count the dual indiepop monarchy of The Loves and The School),  where you feel your insides have been sucked out and your heart is all that’s left. Listening to The Jaynes is like watching a ship sail in on a moonlit night with all your dreams on it, and Topman going bankrupt while everyone watches.

The Screenbeats come from a more pronouncedly retro lineage, but their melodies and raw energy is a thing that holds one’s attention fixed from the start, and their dream of creating a '60s girl group wicker girl and setting it to flames is not one that’s hard to buy into. The Screenbeats could be the kind of hipsters we need, the kind that would stand outside Topman and cause a stir, before getting the shit kicked out of them, instead of hanging around in Buffalo Bar getting stoned.  They seem to have come straight out of Andy Warhol’s garage via Mars and landed in here tonight through the roof, and the way they smoke cigarettes outside is enough to intimidate the hardest of pedestrians and city thugs who drift past to use the Pelican Crossing. The truly individual ‘60s Pop lineage beats on in the 'Screens in slithering style.

Lucky Delucci and Strange News From Another Star at Tabu, Cardiff, November 17th, 2008

They sound like White Stripes soundtracking Tom and Jerry at first listen, but it doesn’t take too long standing in front of Strange News From Another Star to see that they’re White Stripes soundtracking Tom and Jerry, as written by Bratmobile, having just read Siddhartha.  Because oh yes, there’s a touch of the riot grrl about Strange News From Another Star, even though they have no girls, and a touch of poetry, even though they shout and scream. And Brakes would be a reference point as to where they're heading.

Contradictions... The way the sweat drips off frontman Jimmy Watkins as he sings the lines “they said she was a unicorn, it was a cow with a nice hat” like a stabbed samurai. The way the duo interact in a frenzy with a sound as jagged as rocks, before settling into a good-natured between-song routine. The way they feed off an impulse to rock excess and head off on subtle tangents that still scream “fuck off” to anyone who wants to hear it, yet have an air of blues redemption for anyone who wants to hear that. The way most of all, they play with a bedevilment that goes beyond pretention and ambition and embraces the god of music, clever, humble and poetically grand. They’re named Strange News From Another Star, and it’s not for no reason.

All this fiddling about with tweepop, what’s the point? It becomes another escape. An escape into smiles as grating as the snarls of commercial indie kids and wannabee rock’n’rollers. A glockenspiel or melodica at the moment is often a sign of the times, which true music can never be. The glockenspiel forms an integral part of Lucky Delucci's sound, stroked with care and twee authority by drummer Rich Chitty, but rather than speak in a baby voice as most glockenspiels do, it plays like kids in the sand, while the songs sweep in like warm waves.

Lucky Delucci have a collection of the sweetest, most lyrically profound Pop songs you’ll have heard in a while, all affectionate couplets and intriguing asides, take “pretty as can be, fell out of a dream” as blinding lyric number one of the year, from ‘Fire’. And it’s the intimacy they create that marks them out as foremost wonders of the current underground Pop world. Lucky Delucci are the soundtrack to lonesome moments and hopeful dreams, a vintage concoction of modern Pop soul.

Mr Duke at Tabu, Cardiff, November 24th, 2008

The rumour is that Mr Duke was born in a surrealist dream of Dali, and has been in hibernation since, until three rubs on the anti-folk lamp woke him up. And judging by tonight, this is perfectly correct. The Duke has a hardcore following of around ten fans, who lap up his repertoire, which features fragments of folk music fed through guitars with a taste for dreamy distortion, and after a while you think, this is brilliant, a bit like what you thought was a bad dream coming good. Mr Duke plays with your brain by taking familiar textures and making of them rebel manna, shards of melodies and noise fit to lead a new, unnamed rebellion against tired notions. The Duke’s a sensitive guy, how couldn’t he be? In between the avant-garde anti-folk soul, we get a track called ‘The Great Gatsby’, which is immediately graspable and sublime, and when he does ‘Fairytale of New York’ as a last hurrah tonight, it all clicks. The Duke is a king amongst slightly affected men. And his drummer is possibly the most insane musician alive. 

Bec and Beth at Tabu, Cardiff, December 9th, 2008

They look like three girls sent out of Kamala's pleasure garden, the types that would have floated about in Hermann Hesse landscape paintings, if he had allowed humans in them. And they play like the sun has just set over the blue lagoon. Bec and Beth have songs that have a chilling beauty, beauty of the kind that wraps one in silence and warmth, by which I mean when listening the mind tends to shut up and stay still, it's like the affect of opening a music-box as kid. There’s something classical about Bec Wood's voice, it’s where classical grace and passion meets tender folk beauty, and floating through tonight’s venue with subtle strains of cello and keyboard, it’s like the eighth wonder of the world.  Bec and Beth are enchantresses sent to haunt the nights of indie dreamers and whisper wisdom in their ears.

It was a mad month of good music with no-one watching, two fingers up to capitalist society from an empty venue. No good for the owners, but good for the kids no doubt.

© 2008 Neil Jones

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