topic: reviews
Submitted by dash on Sat, 16/07/2005 - 01:53.
Big Joan, Charlottefield, OHRATGI, Papa Molasses and the Dane County Paragons
The Croft, 1st July
I hate country music. I mean really hate it. It makes me angry to hear it, and angry to hear other people talking about it like it's worth something. Mind you, I like English / Celtic folk music so I'm sure I could be ridiculed for this. Also I like acoustic country (girls singing) but the whole Dolly Parton / Garth Brooks rubbish makes me cross. So why go and see an alt-country grunge wrong noisey shouting Country band at all? Well I like a challenge. Papa Molasses and the Dane County Paragons certainly provide that! More metal-blues than country they have the aura of a drunken pub band with some unsettlingly good grooves and the singer's shouting really hammers home the emptiness, indeed the very soul of desolation that Country music is supposed to represent. Well I find it pretty funny anyway.
SJ Esau and Team Brick combine in an unsavoury fashion to bring us Onanist Homework Robot and the Guano Ignoramus, or OHRATGI for short. They mix Esau's trademark sampling beats mashups with TB's unparalleled genius of the bizarre and unusual. One song sees Brick hunched over a paperback, his voice too quick to follow, but full of expression and variation over the mess of beats. Their finale is more conventional, the (cursed) sound of Bristol-meets-early PJ Harvey and gets an enthusiastic reception from an otherwise confused but very entertained audience.
Charlottefield fail to hold my attention for very long. It is the consensus that their drummer is an absolute genius, coping with the strange stop-start punky-rock and hammering out an impressive display of complicated fills. Despite his best efforts, the rest of the band stare at their shoes with their backs to a diminishing audience and the music quickly becomes dull and lifeless.
But of course Big Joan are here to wake us up. It has been a while since they played in Bristol and the room is packed with large grins and nodding heads as Annette leads the band through a storming set of hard-edged punk rock.
The Croft, 1st July
I hate country music. I mean really hate it. It makes me angry to hear it, and angry to hear other people talking about it like it's worth something. Mind you, I like English / Celtic folk music so I'm sure I could be ridiculed for this. Also I like acoustic country (girls singing) but the whole Dolly Parton / Garth Brooks rubbish makes me cross. So why go and see an alt-country grunge wrong noisey shouting Country band at all? Well I like a challenge. Papa Molasses and the Dane County Paragons certainly provide that! More metal-blues than country they have the aura of a drunken pub band with some unsettlingly good grooves and the singer's shouting really hammers home the emptiness, indeed the very soul of desolation that Country music is supposed to represent. Well I find it pretty funny anyway.
SJ Esau and Team Brick combine in an unsavoury fashion to bring us Onanist Homework Robot and the Guano Ignoramus, or OHRATGI for short. They mix Esau's trademark sampling beats mashups with TB's unparalleled genius of the bizarre and unusual. One song sees Brick hunched over a paperback, his voice too quick to follow, but full of expression and variation over the mess of beats. Their finale is more conventional, the (cursed) sound of Bristol-meets-early PJ Harvey and gets an enthusiastic reception from an otherwise confused but very entertained audience.
Charlottefield fail to hold my attention for very long. It is the consensus that their drummer is an absolute genius, coping with the strange stop-start punky-rock and hammering out an impressive display of complicated fills. Despite his best efforts, the rest of the band stare at their shoes with their backs to a diminishing audience and the music quickly becomes dull and lifeless.
But of course Big Joan are here to wake us up. It has been a while since they played in Bristol and the room is packed with large grins and nodding heads as Annette leads the band through a storming set of hard-edged punk rock.
