|
|
 |
 |
|
 |
| |
|
| |
Truck Preview: Thomas Truax / The Piney Gir Country Roadshow / Y / Shimura Curves / September Gurls / Manic Cough
London, Windmill
|
Article
written by Ged M
Jul 22, 2006.
|
Truck Nine’s a week away and this year there seem to be even more pre- and post-Truck events, including the traditional Windmill bash. Turnout’s a bit disappointing, probably because the weather’s hot enough for – to use Robin Williams’ classic line – “a little crotch-pot cooking”, but for those prepared to stew their reproductive organs, it’s a great taster for Steventon in six days’ time.
Four-piece Manic Cough are dressed on a trucking theme; the caps work though few truckers have the legs for hotpants. They combine riot grrl sass with garage rock rhythms and play hymns to shopping (the forthcoming single ‘Hips & Lips’) plus the first Delia ‘rap’ I’ve ever seen in the middle of ‘Huff and Puff'. They’re the perfect punky shake-up for heat-befuddled heads. The September Gurls should be in the singular today as it’s just Daniel Black and acoustic guitar. Temperatures drop noticeably when Daniel starts singing; for a sunbaked Californian, he’s got his fair share of dark tales of losers and boozers, with a Jeff Tweedy or (to take a cue from his band name) Big Star third album feel. It’s like the burn you feel after suddenly taking a draught of a really cold brew.
With a name like Shimura Curves you might have expected math-rock (you knew it was the solution to Fermat’s Last Theorem, didn’t you, number geeks?). It’s actually laptop pop with a big dose of Jesus and Mary Chain distortion pedal which confuses the senses in a good way. Normally a fourpiece but today three girls and a pepper plant (don’t ask…) they sing and dance to the electro rhythms of ‘I Capture the Castle’ and have probably penned the only paean to asparagus in ‘Sticky and Brown’ (I heard it as 'asparagus' though it seems about chocolate and may have been announced in a chocoholic's denial moment). I have a personal prejudice about songs about horrible Hoxton (‘Mother’) but equilibrium is more than reestablished with the Strokes-meet-synths metronymic mash of ‘My Friend’. Their forthcoming single on Brainlove Records will definitely be worth hearing.
There’s no why to Y – he’s some force of nature, in your face, believing so hard in rock’n’roll behaviours that they’re no longer clichés. He’s collaborated with Joseph Arthur but reminds me of the Brian Jonestown Massacre – he has a skewed perception of a visionary like Anton: check out his ‘Gotta Pay The Tab For Rehab’ – and his one chord wonders like ‘Gypsy Trails’ remind you of Tom Petty, and Iggy, and Ramones and…If you could bottle him, you’d solve the world’s energy crisis.
The Piney Gir Country Roadshow – so good that we (i.e. SoundsXP) are going to release their first single on glorious 7” in August. So all I can say is that they’re brilliant – a bit loose after coming from another festival but still throwing themselves into it like a Saturday night hootenanny. The ghost of Nashville walks through ‘Little Doggie’ but the songs have an urban grit, especially in the lyrics to songs like ‘Great Divide’. There’s a wickedly barbed new song about stalkers and bad boyfriends - “I’m better off without a piece of a shell of a man” - and they finish on the secular gospel of the hoedown-hymn ‘I Was Born In A Thunderstorm’. Making Sunday a funday…
Thomas Truax is technically solo but his stage space is shared – or rather haunted – by his homemade (from ex-bicycles and Homebase stock, it appears) instruments - Sister Spinster, the Hornicator, Cadillac Beatspinner Wheel who add percussion, loops and samples to Thomas’s electric guitar. He’s a romantically dark figure in the Lux Interior mode but with a desert-dry sense of humour, seen in the way he goes walkabout through the Windmill for ‘Full Moon in Wowtown’. He plays an urban gothic blues and knocking you off-kilter with an eldritch version of ‘Summertime’, quite unlike any of the many covers you’re heard before. His records are intriguing but for full effect you need to see him live and get as close to the stage as possible (more likely now he’s relocated to London Town). A one-off.
I had to leave before Goldrush, sadly, for train reasons but it’s the perfect taster for Truck – either in a whistle-wetting or here’s-what-you’re-missing way. If you’re going, see you at the organic beer van!
Untitled Document
What's your view?
Comment on the Forum
Other
discussions on the SoundsXP forums right now...
Spread the word: Email this article
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
RSS |
Calling
all music fans based in the UK... Do you want your views to be read
by 5000 people a day? Contact 
