Wednesday 25 February 2009

Sad Day For Puppets/The Deer Tracks ~ Live at Somic Cathedral


It's not often these days that you can have a night out for a fiver. It is even rarer to get to see a decent band for a fiver either. Monday night was a treat then as there were two excellent bands to see at The Social a tiny venue situated off of Oxford Street in London.

The night was hosted by the rather excellent Sonic Cathedral who run nights with a distinctively Shoegazey feel to them. My mate Rob and I were extremely pleased to hear Loop being played by the DJ for example, which was the first time either of us had heard such a thing in a club.

The Deer Tracks and Sad Day For Puppets both hail from Sweden and had played the night before with The Deer Tracks headlining. Tonight it was the turn of Sad Day... to take the honours. The Deer Tracks play a lovely form of glitchy electronica with Elin Lindfors vocals floating above some truly gorgeous beats and music laid down by co-member David Lehnberg. The band are backed up by a keyboard player, bassist, trumpet and clarinet which although a tad unusual works extremely well. I bought there excellent album 'Aurora' after the show and can't recommend it highly enough. It is beautiful.

The reason we had gone along to Sonic Cathedral was to see Sad Day For Puppets. I fell in love with their music after hearing the wonderful 'Little Light' last year which turned out to be my favourite track of 2008. They are steeped in all the music that I love; as their Myspace page says "the music is all about shimmering layers of guitars, intertwined feedback melodies all dreamy and grand and sad, and ethereal harmony vocals" and in my view you that is just perfect.

Live (at least tonight) they were a little rockier. Vocalist Anna Eklund introduced several of the tracks as "a rock version" of the album. Stand out tracks for me were new single 'Marble Gods' which is as wonderful piece of jangly pop that you could wish to hear and the aforementioned 'Little Light'. I'm hoping that both of these excellent bands come back to the UK very soon as it would be a crime to miss either of them.


The Deer Tracks ~ Yes This Is my Broken Shield.



Sad Day For Puppets ~ Cherry Blossom.

Monday 9 February 2009

My New Favourite Band.

I came across Sad Day For Puppets via Myspace and they have capture my heart. They are whimiscal sure but hell what's wrong with a bit of whimsy now and them. I',m off to see them in London on February 23rd and if it is a lovely as this tune, which was recorded live in a Stockholm library it will be rather splendid.

Thursday 5 February 2009

Lux Interior 1946 - 2009

There have been quite a few tributes to Erick Lee Purkhiser aka Lux Interior since his death on 4 February but I feel that I should also add mine.

The Cramps were a great band and first captured my heart in about 1982. I loved to dance about to them at my local nightclub 'Crocs' in Rayleigh with my blogging mate over at Planet Mondo. I was a Psychobilly for a while and whilst a lot of my mates rated the more violent bands like The Meteors and the Guana Batz it was always the Cramps for me.

Lux was a great showman and he shall be sadly missed.