western suburbs

well last night was nice.

down at the cockpit, we had the brilliantly titled Being 747, Western Suburbs and Shout Out Louds.

again, poor photography is to follow (as is a separate post about poor photography)

Being 747 were ace. songs included (i'm guessing at the titles here) 'she fell asleep while watching her life flash before her eyes' and 'use your friends' ("use them! chew them! spit them out!"). they were all dressed in lab coats and the singer or keyboard player (can't remember which) claimed they were all in the civil service...

amusingly different :)

i'm going to skip right ahead to Shout Out Louds.

i hadn't heard of them until wednesday. and all i know about them is that i googled and a lot of arcade fire comparisons came up.

this was them (above), kindly taken by Gigantic Dan, who was stood on a box or something at the back.

i was really enjoying them, but also wanted to catch up with a friend on a trip up from london so left the main room just as they burst into a pogues-a-like number, after having sounded very arcade firey (which i'm told is actually the term used when down with the kids. sorry, i mean da kidz. yes.)

now. lurching in a chaotic unchronological order to the middle band and headline of this post, Western Suburbs. remember the name. hopefully we'll be seeing more of them soon.

hailing from sleepy ripponden, they're a four piece playing honest, warm blooded gorgeousness. one of their reviews describes them as 'Like Dinosaur JR, Mercury Rev and Pavement mixed up at a jelly and ice cream party'. i think that's meant to be good.

they kicked off with Don't Cool Us Down, and then moved onto a polished Barbara Singleton Supersleuth. at this point, any questioning over how well they would transfer from record to live performance was blown out the water.

i wasted a lot of time trying to get a photo of the other guitarist in front of me, but there were two problems - my camera has no flash and i'm still working it out, so most of the time things came out as a black splodge. the other was that, when he did step into the light, he hardly stood still.. so the point where he knelt down and fiddled with Technical Things was a perfect opportunity..

a few new songs were rolled out, first Ride Pillion and then the achingly gorgeous Jesus Song. a bit of continental cosmopolitan titling with Le Hotel (shouldn't it be L'Hotel?) too. i'm absolutely shit at describing what music is like. i become lost for words, and acutely aware that 'sparkly' isn't really an adequate description. that's why the books and clogs music post hasn't been done properly - i just don't have the vocabulary for them.

heh posting pictures instead is probably not an adequate substitute. but hey.

the penultimate song was 'The Road', with a gripping hook and lyrics "smart kids, don't turn your back.. dumb kids don't turn your back... follow the road". it's one of my two favourite songs of theirs*. i've played it at all the all the wine a couple of times, and it hasn't failed to get people asking what it is (which doesn't happen *that* often).

they finished with 'Saddest Star', which is my other favourite. i shan't even attempt to describe it.

Western Suburbs website

The Road download
Saddest Star download
(links taken from their website.)

*ooh i've just noticed that they were both released as singles. how clever of me to like them the best :)