Skip The Budgie

The Liftmen / Whalebone Polly,
The Folk House, 7th Sept

These gigs that start early, I don't know! So I miss a lot of good people because of having to go home and shower and eat and stuff. When I arrive, there is a man singing whimsical songs on an acoustic guitar. He says 'this is my last song' I go to buy some beer and sit outside.

The Liftmen have been getting some good press from my Choker friends lately. A few weeks past, I catch their last song at the Star and Garter's Bank Holiday bash and think 'meh, it's alright' as I run away from the upcoming avante jazz.

So I'm pretty interested to hear what the full set sounds like. It starts well, going for a psychedelic proggy amble with lush clean guitar sounds and hypnotic rhythm. When the songs 'proper' begin I quickly realise that these people can't really play jazz, they're doing that thing where people with no concept of the modes and techniques involved just play random notes in a forced way.

This is most obvious in one of the later songs where self-satisfied emphasis on deliberate avoidance of expected notes betrays hours spent in a room with a conventional major scale melody, carefully tweaking it and moving a semitone here, a semitone there. The set is too variable and I am concerned that the audience seem to be getting something that I don't, rapturous applause follows each track and I pray that they are just drunk, impatient for the main attraction or perhaps sympathetically embarrassed as I am.

What could be great modern psychedelic rock is ruined by much faux-jazz nonsense. Maybe after a few years they'll come together, maybe they'll give up on a bad idea, maybe I'm just plain wrong.

The main act wash away all my cynicism by doing what they do best, telling stories through folk-tinged acoustic music. Whalebone Polly are a woman down today, they explain that Verpi is off working on the new Wallace and Gromit film, so I guess we have to forgive here. They also like The Liftmen and Rachael flashes her Liftmen Y-fronts, much to the joy of all the boys in the front row.

I've seen WBP quite a few times and this set of theirs seems to stand out above the rest, possibly even more impassioned than the Glastonbury performance, which was great. It's just that I have my heart in my mouth and a lump in my throat from the sheer beauty of it all on more than one occasion, the place is packed and I know it's not just my who feels this. Even with just the two of them, the harmonies are tight, the songs gentle and passionate and the girly banter is just as coy and silly as always. Great gig.

Sadly, due to moving to France and other things, this is the last WBP gig for a long time. They promise it's not the last gig ever, but I buy the CD anyway, just to cover my cravings.