Every day is like Sunday
Oct. 13th, 2004 01:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaOK, I think I might just about be ready to rejoin the human race now... a curse upon the common cold and its ability to eat two days of my life.
So, this review is a little past its sell-by date now, but all the same:
On Sunday, I got to do one of my favourite things - walking near the Thames in the dark, with all of London lit up for my delight. It is just lit up for my delight, you understand ? The rest of you are just lucky beneficiaries.
However. I was heading over to the Royal Festival Hall to see The Magnetic Fields. Despite being later than intended, and pausing to eat a really rather fine toasted sandiwch courtesy of the RFH's integral café, I still managed to hear a good chunk of the support act.
(The Real) Tuesday Weld were completely unknown to me. They turned out to be a quintessentially English-sounding band with an overall demeanour which I want to call café-jazz, but I have no idea what that term actually means, it just sounds right. Everything about the band seemed neat, tidy and precise - the suits, the arrangements, the songwriting, the singer's diction.
They're a definite contender for the coveted award of Support-Band-About-Whom-You-Know-Nothing-But-Who-Turn-Out-To-Be-Great. The combination of light, pretty jazz and lyrics delivered in the manner of Jarvis Cocker at his most whispery-menacing is a winner.
And they had an acoustic bass guitar. I'm very fond of them, and you don't see 'em often.
And they had a drummer who could look mean while playing a shaky-egg. That takes talent.
On the way out, I acquired a teeny-tiny free sampler CD of (The Real) Tuesday Weld. Unfortunately, I have yet to remember to take it out of my coat pocket and put it in a CD player.
Following a credibly quick complete-stage-change, The Magnetic Fields came on. Given that their albums appear to range over all sort of styles from full-blown orchestrated operetta to synthy-weirdness, and feature guest vocalists and fairly frequent multitracking, I had no idea what to expect live.
What I got was four people: vocalist/pianist, guitarist/banjoist, cellist and vocalist/ukeleleist. Don't give me any crap about banjoist and ukeleleist not existing as words, you know what I mean. And they played the entire set on them, adjusting the arrangements where necessary to suit the instruments.
Listening to The Magnetic Fields, the feeling of conscious precision that I'd noticed with The Real Tuesday Weld was missing. Their on-stage persona (bandona?) is of incompetence, almost gaucherie; some of their songs have a slight suggestion of an oddness in timing that one might attribute to under-reahearsedness. I'm not fooled, not for a minute. Like the clown on the tightrope, I suspect they practice all the harder to maintain that slightly unpractised edge.
Now, for those unaware, The Magnetic Fields have a fairly large back catalogue - just for starters, their first UK-release was called 69 Love Songs, and it did exactly what it said on the tin. So, although I'm fond of the five CDs of theirs I have, I'm not as thoroughly familiar with the material as might be expected. Although some sections of the audience could clearly recognise each song from the first few notes I was often at a loss, so just sat back and let the songs flow round me.
The songs are, to me, what makes this band. There are very few where you can't point to something - a lyric, a note, a key-change and say "that bit there. That's genius".
So, this review is a little past its sell-by date now, but all the same:
On Sunday, I got to do one of my favourite things - walking near the Thames in the dark, with all of London lit up for my delight. It is just lit up for my delight, you understand ? The rest of you are just lucky beneficiaries.
However. I was heading over to the Royal Festival Hall to see The Magnetic Fields. Despite being later than intended, and pausing to eat a really rather fine toasted sandiwch courtesy of the RFH's integral café, I still managed to hear a good chunk of the support act.
(The Real) Tuesday Weld were completely unknown to me. They turned out to be a quintessentially English-sounding band with an overall demeanour which I want to call café-jazz, but I have no idea what that term actually means, it just sounds right. Everything about the band seemed neat, tidy and precise - the suits, the arrangements, the songwriting, the singer's diction.
They're a definite contender for the coveted award of Support-Band-About-Whom-You-Know-Nothing-But-Who-Turn-Out-To-Be-Great. The combination of light, pretty jazz and lyrics delivered in the manner of Jarvis Cocker at his most whispery-menacing is a winner.
And they had an acoustic bass guitar. I'm very fond of them, and you don't see 'em often.
And they had a drummer who could look mean while playing a shaky-egg. That takes talent.
On the way out, I acquired a teeny-tiny free sampler CD of (The Real) Tuesday Weld. Unfortunately, I have yet to remember to take it out of my coat pocket and put it in a CD player.
Following a credibly quick complete-stage-change, The Magnetic Fields came on. Given that their albums appear to range over all sort of styles from full-blown orchestrated operetta to synthy-weirdness, and feature guest vocalists and fairly frequent multitracking, I had no idea what to expect live.
What I got was four people: vocalist/pianist, guitarist/banjoist, cellist and vocalist/ukeleleist. Don't give me any crap about banjoist and ukeleleist not existing as words, you know what I mean. And they played the entire set on them, adjusting the arrangements where necessary to suit the instruments.
Listening to The Magnetic Fields, the feeling of conscious precision that I'd noticed with The Real Tuesday Weld was missing. Their on-stage persona (bandona?) is of incompetence, almost gaucherie; some of their songs have a slight suggestion of an oddness in timing that one might attribute to under-reahearsedness. I'm not fooled, not for a minute. Like the clown on the tightrope, I suspect they practice all the harder to maintain that slightly unpractised edge.
Now, for those unaware, The Magnetic Fields have a fairly large back catalogue - just for starters, their first UK-release was called 69 Love Songs, and it did exactly what it said on the tin. So, although I'm fond of the five CDs of theirs I have, I'm not as thoroughly familiar with the material as might be expected. Although some sections of the audience could clearly recognise each song from the first few notes I was often at a loss, so just sat back and let the songs flow round me.
The songs are, to me, what makes this band. There are very few where you can't point to something - a lyric, a note, a key-change and say "that bit there. That's genius".
