Meltdown Festival
Southbank Centre London

...Well, two concerts from the ten-day season curated by folk-rock legend Richard Thompson, to be precise. After jazz titan Ornette Coleman’s experimentally-inclined Meltdown 2009, this year’s event presented a more accessible programme, albeit one characterised by the festival’s enduring emphasis on eclecticism and collaboration. TM-Online caught two shows, beginning with a melodically-fulsome double-header of the Leisure Society and the Duckworth Lewis Method. The former peaked with a gorgeous version of 2009’s seasonal gem, ‘Last of the Melting Snow’, but the DLM’s set was a complete triumph as Duckworth (Pugwash’s Thomas Walsh) and Lewis (Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon) led a five-piece band and guests through a warm and banter-laden rendition of their eponymous cricket-celebrating debut. One of those rare gigs that sends everyone out into the night with a smile playing ‘round their lips. Two nights later, Loudon Wainwright III also delivered his fair share of laughs in a joint concert with ‘Mr Meltdown’ himself, Richard Thompson. Both solo sets were good, but the brief combined run of old country/blues standards at the end was a joy and you wished they could have spent more time on stage together. Still, it’s a minor caveat about a week that clearly amounted to one of the finest Meltdowns ever staged.
David Davies

UNKLE + Heritage Orchestra
De la Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-On-Sea

Having been to the last of these little Heritage Orchestra collaborations at the De La Warr (a fascinating night with Beardyman, DJ Switch and Gabriel Prokofiev (see below - Ed )), I was expecting great things tonight - which turned out to be the hottest night of the year, something us portly folks find a little trying (I even had to take a walk around the De La Warr balcony half way through the two hour set to cool down, lovely sea view mind). We weren’t disappointed as UNKLE, fresh from the release of their fourth full-length album Where Did the Night Fall, and The Heritage Orchestra did some serious justice to their extensive back catalogue (having worked together previously on ‘Trouble in Paradise’, End Titles…Stories for Film, End Titles…Redux and four tracks on the new album). A mixture of new and old material kept the sweltering audience glued to their seats in more ways than one, and whilst it’s hard to pick any particular high point the take on ‘Lonely Soul’, after a false start, is particularly mesmerising. This sort of thing is a bugger to pull off, choreographing vocals, samples, orchestra, electronics and visuals, but UNKLE , conductor Jules Buckley and The Heritage Orchestra managed just that with no little aplomb tonight.
The Oracle

Scroobius Pip vs. Dan Le Sac
Concorde 2, Brighton

An article in a grown up music magazine recently ran a humorous article which posited the notion that artists with moustaches were experimental and interesting whilst those with beards were indulgent and dull (i.e. who wants to listen to bloated fat beardy Jim Morrison when you can instead cut a rug to handlebar sporting punk art terrorist Billy Childish). Obviously whoever wrote this particular fluff piece hasn’t seen hippity hoppity mouth monkey Beardyman doing his vocal aerobatics or tonight’s master of ceremonies Scroobius Pip in full flow (those who have yet to do so need to check the man’s stylish raps out here), and whilst Bin Laden beards are not exactly in full effect tonight – especially gratifying given that a large portion of the audience are lady people – everyone jammed into the Concorde’s Victorian environs are totally in step with Mr Le Sac’s bowel worrying bass and Mr Pip’s positive, socio-politically right-on vibe (people looking for bitches, gats and ho’s are shit out of luck). In all honesty there doesn’t seem to be an enormous amount more mileage to be had in their current direction but at the moment it is definitely a case of if it ain’t broke, and right now it ain’t!
Michael J Fitzgerald

Billy Childish
The Engine Room, Brighton

Stylistically pitched somewhere between the great war - when men were men, sporting handlebar soup-strainers you could hang shirts on, and ladies were nurses, housewives or not the sort you’d take home to your mother – and the great musical revolution of 1977, artist, musician, poet and gloriously awkward cuss Billy Childish ploughs a wayward furrow entirely of his own. A gentleman punk-rocker who positively delights in filching tunes and his more luddite flights of fancy – talking with pride about his, less than cutting edge, PA tonight he insists ‘if you can’t hear you are too far up the back, if it’s too loud you are too near the front’ - but who, and he won’t thank me for saying so, is in fact more musically proficient than he would lead us to believe, with the same sort of comfortable, easy-going rapport with his audience as that other notably raucous Billy, Mr Bragg. In fact the audience, who clearly view tonights Engine Room show as more of a happening than a ‘gig’, was the most eclectic I have encountered: punks, wasters, goths, mods, rockers, burlesque weirdoes, tramps, artisans, cowboys and really old people (hmm not sure about that particular sub-genre - Ed), dash it all there were even some people who dressed up for the occasion. Best night out most of us had experienced in a bloody age what!
Lord Kitchener Sink

Vessels
The Albert, Brighton

TotalMusic-Online favourites Vessels made a low-key appearance down our neck of the woods prompting an excellent turn out for a Monday evening and a surprisingly young audience – in fact I struggled to find one single beardy, balding, middle-aged muso 'type' in the whole building (that would just be you then Si? – Ed). Five band members and a multiplicity of instrumentation are barely wedged onto the stage, amps tops balanced on their sides to allow for the double drum kit set-up, various members carefully tip-toeing amongst the carnage to swap instruments and stage positions. Let’s not mince words here, these buggers can really play, they’re not only technically proficient but also exhibit great delicacy and a laudably cavalier attitude concerning how to play seemingly familiar instruments (a violin bow on the bass guitar being but one obvious example). This was a truly majestic performance balancing towering noise with hushed intimacy, the band at one point executing the best full stop to the end of a song ever, moving from ferocious cacophony to cavernous silence on a hydrogen proton. Needless to say this elicited enormous respect from the crowd (during one quiet passage orders at the bar were actually being delivered in whispers). It put me in mind of Talk Talk's more adventurous moments or Sigur Ros in full flow, whereby one is transported beyond the ordinary and it was all over far too soon due to licensing constraints. It’s only a matter of time before they are in your area, miss them at your peril
S Vieler

Heritage Orchestra + DJ Switch, Gabriel Prokofiev & Beardyman
De la Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-On-Sea

First up can we big up the venue? [oh go on then – Ed] ‘cos if you have yet to visit the modernist masterpiece that is the De La Warr Pavillion in Bexhill - the first welded steel frame building in this country fact fans – which for those of you not au fait with this end of the country is a bit like London’s south bank for the south coast, then do yourselves a favour and do so, because it’s not unfair to say that this sort of show would not exist in this neck of the woods without the patronage of a venue like the DLWP. Basically an evening of experimental ‘let’s see happenstance’ featuring the Heritage Orchestra and several guests which, let’s be honest hit the nail squarely on the head almost as often as it walloped its own collective thumb. Best of the bunch was the Beardyman link up (although there was certainly much to admire in the turntable trickery of DJ Switch), which was helped in no small part by the beardy ones charismatic performance and a willingness to really push at the possibilities, perhaps not surprising when his own live work consists almost entirely of improvised vocal beatboxery of the most jaw dropping kind. So, mixed results but an altogether worthwhile experiment, more like this please.
The Oracle

Deadstring Brothers
King Tut’s Glasgow

Detroit based Deadstring Brothers sent the knowledgeable Glasgow crowd wild when they burst into life with Masha Marjieh in full voice. The set was peppered with songs from their critically acclaimed 2006 album Starving Winter Report and their latest release, Silver Mountain. Sharing the lead vocal was main man Kurt Marschke and his easy going interaction with the crowd went down well although he shouldn’t really have tempted fate by stating that he hadn’t had any whisky thrown at him yet! Guitarist Spencer Cullum is a star in the making and adds that extra touch of class to Marschke’s alt.country songs. The rest of the band are Spencer’s brother Jeff, on bass, E. Travis Harrett on drums and keyboard wizard Pat Kenneally. Highlights for me were 'Lights Go Out', 'Moonlight Only Knows' and 'Meet Me Down At Heavy Load' but there wasn’t a bad one in the whole set.
David Blue

Joe Bonamassa
The Arches, Glasgow

Guitar wizard Joe Bonamassa rolled into Glasgow and filled The Arches with a wall of sound that not many could hope to equal. He said that his love affair with the city started two years ago at The Renfrew Ferry and I was one of the 125 fortunate souls to see him that night, having seen that I’m not surprised that this time around it was an 800 sell out. He has improved his rapport with the crowd although, as usual, some people couldn't staunch their inane chatter during some of the quieter periods, despite Joe pleading with them for silence. His guitar prowess has also improved and, for this reviewer at least, he has now reached the higher echelon of players, the highlight of the night being the title track from his current album, Sloe Gin although 'Don’t Burn Down That Bridge' and 'Another Kind Of Love' also rubber stamped the feeling that we were in the presence of something very special indeed. Throw in an incendiary version of ZZ Top’s 'Just Got Paid' and you can imagine the night we had.
David Blue