Live Review: Avec Sans @ The Waterfront Studio, Norwich

Words originally for Outline Magazine

L-R: Jack St. James, Alice Fox

It’s been a bad week, hasn’t it? The weather’s been rubbish, Coldplay are headlining Glastonbury and I’m told there was some big political debate going on as well that people aren’t happy about. So for a much needed music fix, where better to head than The Waterfront Studio for a dash of electro-pop from Avec Sans, and a few local faces too.

A little too much Pyramid Stage iPlayer action meant that I missed Ginny Dix and Abigail Blake, but the solo pianist and harpist have both proven themselves mesmerising at past performances. Heading up the support bill, Maya Law brings her soulful blend of R&B guitar/vocals to a crowd made up of friends and fans. Original material and a signature Amy Winehouse cover flow smoothly from one to another, Law’s sultry vocals enticing the room with a beautiful simplicity throughout. If you haven’t caught this rising talent live yet, stick her on your list, she’s fab.

Tonight’s headliners Avec Sans are unmistakeably sleek in their image. Fronting the duo Alice Fox sports a classic pop star look, an impressive platinum bob serving as the focal point of her appearance. Jack St James flanks her on stage within a three-sided structure of cables, buttons, a laptop and a myriad of touch pads from which he produces the bulk of the band’s music. He wears all black including a baseball cap, in case he needs to swing a bat at any point during the show, I guess. As the pounding introduction to When You Go cuts through the smoke, the front row of his devices light up in an LED rainbow, like vintage video games. It’s an electro-pop performance at its purest, a modern take on 80s clichés running pristinely through the moody synths and the stage décor. An almost unrecognisable take on Bon Iver’s Perth comes second, replacing folky pomp with a striking flood of echoes and churning sequencers.

Original material sees the performance quickly lose its novelty, however. The mid-noughties pop sound that the group encapsulates – which would sit neatly next to the likes of Little Boots, Goldfrapp and Sophie Ellis-Bextor – is polished and professional, but simply ten years behind the curve. Furthermore, St James’ repeated slamming down on artificial instruments flushes out every sense of depth that the songs have on record. It’s the Jack Garratt paradigm – decent tunes, no performability. The sound is two-dimensional: loud and embracing yes, but flat and uninteresting in every other aspect. Poor crowd interaction from Fox, who stares blankly into the middle distance when she’s not singing, makes for a dull experience for those of us less familiar with the group’s material.

By the end of the set the audience are clearly losing interest. Shiver is a generic and soupy, hinting at great dance anthem potential but turning out more like a half-melted ice sculpture than a glitzy marble statue. Heartbreak Hi is a wispy copy of the studio version, but with weaker vocals. And another cover – this time Kate Bush’s unbeatable masterpiece Running Up that Hill – closes proceedings in a frankly blasphemous mess that points fully and unreservedly to the ‘one trick pony’ label.

I wouldn’t write Avec Sans off completely, but it’s a poor first Norwich show from these middle-of-the-road performers.

Twitter: Avec Sans / Maya Law

Soundcloud: Avec Sans / Maya Law

Album Review: Metronomy - 'Summer 08'

Words originally for Outline Magazine

Label:  Because Music

Release Date: July 1st, 2016

Being dad to two young children whilst writing and recording an entire pop record must be no easy feat yet electro connoisseur Joe Mount has done just that. On Summer 08, the Metronomy mastermind tackles the same themes of love and coming-of-age he always has, but with a fresh energy, a blissful funkability manifested in ten groovy, bass-led numbers. If the punchy drumming on Back Together sets the tone as playful then Miami Logic runs with it to the hills, mixing wobbles of bass into equally wavering vocals before dissolving into the instant-classic Old Skool. A guest appearance from Robyn injects a gutsy streak into the dreamy duet Hang Me Out to Dry and the woozy Mick Slow sprinkles glistening synths over guitars that point as much to motown as they do Daft Punk, like a hangover headache you can’t quite shake. Night Owl is this record’s ‘The Look’, 4-minutes-30 of sublime indie rumbles and buzzes with beautifully bittersweet lyrics as the cherry on top. A lazy fade-out tarnishes its slick deliciousness, but it’s a banger all the same. Summer Jam wraps up the record in a bitesize chunk of the effortlessly cool aesthetic it’s so steeply seeped in. Sound of the summer? Incontestably.

8/10

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Live Review: Let's Eat Grandma @ OPEN, Norwich

Words originally for Outline Magazine

Where have you been living if you don’t know Let’s Eat Grandma, the two Norwich teenagers with a passion for all things weird? Launching their debut album I, Gemini in style at Open, it’s plain to see that these two bright young things are on the cusp of something big.

Ginny Dix is our opening act. Her solo vocal/piano performance is delivered nervously, but a lathering of audio effects nudges the set from generic to intriguing. It’s downbeat and beautiful, for fans of Shura and Daughter. Up next is Birds of Hell, a wonderfully interesting character (a.k.a. Pete, as he introduces himself). Visually he could be Jesse Hughes portrayed by Noel Fielding, or something equally abstract yet dashing. And the music is just as whimsical. Snake noises, bells on shoes and samples of dead relatives are all twisted together in a pastiche of temperamental storytelling, made real through a dry voice and a dryer wit. Different tones and narratives accompany each song, but a downbeat, spoken-word drawl is present throughout. Leonard Cohen, John Cooper Clarke, and Kate Tempest are all valid comparisons, but in this reviewer’s opinion you’d really be best to catch him live and decide for yourself.

Headliner time can’t come soon enough for Let’s Eat Grandma’s first hometown performance in far too long. Tonight, Open brims with fans new and old, all united with anticipation for the show we’re about to see. As the unmistakeable drum clicks of Deep Six Textbook pound into the room, 16-year-old Rosa and 17-year-old Jenny fall into character with heads hung low and faces obscured by thick hair. They don matching outfits head to toe, the images of space splattered across their tops adding to the mystical ambience. A row of friends and fans are sat eagerly just in front of the stage, creating a wonderfully intimate atmosphere.

Eat Shiitake Mushrooms is led into seamlessly. The intricacy of the track feels muted slightly in a live setting; the synths and sequencers that bubble and mix organically on record have a much more 2D feel tonight, but this quality does add to the cosiness of tonight’s performance. And, with delightfully amusing stage personas coupled with astonishing musical skill, no one could say it’s not entertaining. Between the two of them, keyboards are played, recorders make an appearance, there’s a mandolin, a glockenspiel, guitars and a drum-kit, any of which can crop up at a moment’s notice. The girls run back and forth around the stage multiple times per song, sharing instruments and interacting in ways seen rarely in any popular bands today. There’s a little roughness around the edges in places, but the ornate control and choreography these two young performers hold is truly awe-inspiring.

Rapunzel closes act one with a bolder sound than on the album, courtesy of a little kick-drum action, before Sink leads into the second half of the show, with a more hip-hop feel compared to the ethereal flurry that we’ve experienced so far. It gets one of the best reactions as the most ‘pop’ sounding song in the set, as well as one of the more lyrically driven. The epic monster that is Donnie Darko closes the show in a thirteen-minute extravaganza of beeps and blips, layered gradually over one another with guitar murmurs and keyboard buzzes mixing in accordingly. The duo conduct their signature handclap routine, when they’re not lying perfectly still on the floor. Or twiddling with pedals and boxes sat cross-legged and seemingly oblivious to the audience, making for a bizarrely voyeuristic experience, as if we’re all sat together on a bedroom floor trying to make music together. It’s beautiful and fun and absolutely unlike anything else you’ll see in the pop scene today.

The show ends with a synchronised “thank you” – the pair’s only adlib in the whole performance – before rapturous hometown applause marks the end of a truly special evening. 

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