The Fierce & the Dead

10x10

Out Now

Rating: 4/5

 
Instantly more insistent than anything I've yet heard from the group, 10x10 kicks off on fine form with the lead track. '10x10' morphs through sections of post-progressive volume swells, harmony-math guitars and then electronics, never losing its way or the driving backbeat which pins the whole together. Not really motorik enough in execution to strictly be krautrock, it nevertheless reminds of the genre and its more modern exponents like Secret Machines. My only criticism would perhaps be its lack of a clear melody at some points, but then again with post-rock you kind of know what you're signing up for from the get go, so it's not a major concern.

The b-side, 'Foreign Languages' is to me the highlight of the pair. Trip-hop in feel with a solid bass hook, Gameboy sound effects duel with sparse guitar lines for the listener's attention, and though their drummer never quite commits to the ride cymbal, it's classily understated throughout. Again there's not a melody per se besides that of the bass riff, but the samples thrown in are pitch-specific enough to counterpoint the guitar figures and effect a pleasing sonic whole.

Possibly only one for the post-rock hardcore, but a pleasant deviation from identikit delay-abuse nonetheless. The track lengths do not permit a surplus of self-indulgence, and I hope this pair drum up an appropriate degree of support for the full album, due in May.

Vessels

with Stuart Warwick and Plank!
Deaf Institute, Manchester

14th November 2010
Rating: 4/5

Apparently I missed the first band on. My bad, really. Worse than that, I actually got chatting to them by accident at some point, and have since forgotten their band name and failed to look them up. I suck.

Right, so apologies out of the way, let's talk Plank! As luck would have it, they are actually about as essential as the exclamation mark that concludes their bandname; from an unconvincing start, their songs became gradually more and more interesting, until with a righteous guitar solo in their penultimate number, they'd completely won me over. They are great, and if you're into that kind of looping, math-meets-prog thing, they are definitely the band you've been waiting for. They even did a kind of stadium rock flourish in their last song that was distinctly Who-like. Excellent!

Now, when you go to a lot of gigs, you're eventually exposed to a little of pretty much every genre out there, and you quickly become very hard to be surprised by anything. The most pleasant surprises of all are when sheer musicianship wins through and somebody merely doing what they do incredibly well becomes the greatest virtue, ahead of originality, stagecraft or whatever.

That's not to say that Stuart Warwick doesn't have an original sound- he has, but at the same time it's definitely from that same bizarro-world of popular music from which Imogen Heap and Charlie Barnes have descended. Simply, it's one man and a piano (or, for one song, two men and one guitar) playing post-rock-pop, with a lot of loops. Stuart's voice is definitely of the Buckley school, and it's very compelling, to say the least. The songs themselves are occasionally bitter, occasionally sweet, and rather more often, bittersweet.

The crowd is finally won over when Stuart abandons an out of sync loop and cashiers a track, saying “I guess this is God's way of telling me I shouldn't play that song”. I think I speak for everyone present when I say we were sad to see him leave. If you're reading this, open up another tab and go and find him on teh internets. It's not hard (I managed to) and you will be rewarded.

Finally it was Vessels' time in the spotlight. I've actually had the good luck to see this band a surprisingly large number of times, both at festivals and in support slots, sober or too-drunk-to-remember, and everything in between. The thing I can't help thinking tonight as I sit in the strange theatre seat section of Deaf is how much better this band get every time I see them. My first impression, way back when, was of a band rather too mathy for my tastes, but today they are on fine form, sprawling and dramatic.

I'm not going to go into the nature metaphors; it's post-rock done well, and you should know what that sounds like (hint: Hammock or 65daysofstatic). Most encouragingly of all, the tracks I don't recognise (the newer ones) are much stronger than the ones I do, suggesting that their impending album is going to be a corker. Stuart obligingly hops back up to the stage to sing recent single, 'Meatman, Piano Tuner, Prostitute', and again reminds me of that little itch I felt when first hearing it and wishing that this collaboration would become more permanent. Oh well.

That dispensed with and the audience satisfied, Vessels cracked out a hammer-of-the-gods finish and then made their exit, but not before thanking the crowd for actually being arsed to come down. Nice. 

Dean McPhee

Brown Bear

Hood Faire

Rating: 4/5

Soon to be released on CD, this collection of tracks from virtuosic solo guitarist Dean McPhee builds upon his Chapters Split 7" ('Water Burial'), offering three new cuts, 'Sky Burial', 'Stony Ground' and 'Brown Bear'. It's much of the same really, both in terms of content and quality, which can only be a good thing. Recently I stylistically compared James Blackshaw's opus All is Falling to Dean's style, but for my money Dean's the more interesting player; for sure, Blackshaw has more layers to his compositions, but then he's working with other instruments and players.

McPhee's strength on the other hand is in simplicity and being able to carry the pieces on just his guitar work alone; moreover, both are quite different propositions musically, even if I have been spending far too much of this review comparing the two. Dean's playing is more indebted to classical guitar figures, filtered through some traces of the blues and obviously the given modern inflection that an obsession with tube amps and high-end effects will lend. If you sit still and pay careful attention, the myriad twists and turns will keep you engaged, but equally it's also great music to chill out to. Employ as you see fit.