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Waiting for the number that clicks on the wall
Well, I'm sure everyone would be pleased to hear that I wasn't doing housework on Thursday.
Instead, I had plans to head to Club 333 in Hoxton to hear the Indelicates. I was plugging the band on here a while back - if anyone was foolish enough to ignore my wisdom then, they should make good this time by downloading some mp3s from the band's website.
However, at the 11th hour Club 333 changed its mind and cancelled. Thanks to some quick scrounging on the part of the Indeliates themselves, they managed to shoehorn themselves onto the bottom of the bill at a completely different gig, and my plans varied accordingly. So, on Thursday I went to Nambucca, in Archway, instead.
I can report the following:
However, despite its unpromising surroundings, Nambucca (ten minutes walk down the Holloway Road) is lovely. It has a sort of relaxed scruffiness, but a thorougly pleasant atmostphere. It has beaten-up leather button-back sofas and chairs, it has pinball and table footy. It has a large bar and standing-about area, and a separate back room in which to put its bands. It has interesting posters, random oddities like badges and home-recorded CDs lying about for grabs and strange leftover-from-an-earlier-life plaster moulding on its ceilings. It has lurid art in the toilets, and proper indie-venue graffiti on the walls (in the ladies', anyway. As I understand it you don't get the same sort of chatty, informative graffiti in the gents'). Oh, and it has reasonable intra-band music too. Adam Green, Gang of Four, Violent Femmes... enough to make me Boogie On My Sideboard (there being no spare sofas, we were sitting on a sort of low cupboardy thing, which looked solid enough and seemed to cope).
And, almost as an afterthought, the Indelicates were even better than the clutch of downloaded-mp3s had led me to expect. There's five of them (though frankly I think you could probably dispense with the rhythm guitarist and his art-rock hair without too much disappointment), two of whom sing. Yay, two vocalists. And a keyboard as a lead instrument. Woohoo.
Their songs roll about all over styles, one minute a ferocious, burning rock and the next a haunting, nearly empty prettiness - at one point even cod-opera interspersed with fantastically cheesy 80's hair guitar. (That was deliberately cheesy, wasn't it ? I really, really hope so.)
And they can write songs. Vicious, cynical and sardonic songs - I did want to ask them if they were Luke Haines fans, actually. People who produce such cynical, world-weary songs have a habit of coming across so jaded on stage that you want to slap them and ask them why they bother. The Indelicates are at least wholeheartedly cynical - they might sneer at something, but they'll do it with a snarl and a kick to the shin.
I'd happily have bought a CD, but sadly it seems they're too download-generation to have such mundane things for sale. So instead, I shall say to you that you should go and download some songs, and pop along to a gig.
The next band were fairly ignorable - I'm not even sure who they were. The final band, Cardboard Radio, really should have been good. The guitarist/singer was good, the bassist was really good, the drummer was great. They played about with tempos, put unexpected stops and hitches in the songs, were tightly together all the time. The whole, however, was sadly less than the sum of the parts. I have no idea if they can write songs, because I couldn't hear the words at all.
Incidentally, just in case anyone else wondered this (as I immediately on hearing the club's name): yes, Nambucca does sell Sambucca.
On the way back I noticed a newsboard for (I think) the London Evening Standard which read:
"Holloway Tube Stabbings - Entrails"
I was impressed at the blunt approach, but disappointingly it turned out (on closer inspection) to read " - Details".
Instead, I had plans to head to Club 333 in Hoxton to hear the Indelicates. I was plugging the band on here a while back - if anyone was foolish enough to ignore my wisdom then, they should make good this time by downloading some mp3s from the band's website.
However, at the 11th hour Club 333 changed its mind and cancelled. Thanks to some quick scrounging on the part of the Indeliates themselves, they managed to shoehorn themselves onto the bottom of the bill at a completely different gig, and my plans varied accordingly. So, on Thursday I went to Nambucca, in Archway, instead.
I can report the following:
- They don't appear to have street-sweeping people in the Archway area. I've not seen anywhere quite so litter-strewn since, er, well actually since last Glastonbury. But in a town, I've not seen that level of crap for years.
- Archway Tower itself is a scary, scary building. I was aware of the name, and vaguely aware that the tower was above the tube station. Walking away from the tube, I turned back to look and found the baleful monster of the Tower looming over me. Against a grubby, black sky the grubby, black-brown tower was barely distinguishable. Which made it all the more baleful.
- Archway doesn't seem to have any archways to speak of.
However, despite its unpromising surroundings, Nambucca (ten minutes walk down the Holloway Road) is lovely. It has a sort of relaxed scruffiness, but a thorougly pleasant atmostphere. It has beaten-up leather button-back sofas and chairs, it has pinball and table footy. It has a large bar and standing-about area, and a separate back room in which to put its bands. It has interesting posters, random oddities like badges and home-recorded CDs lying about for grabs and strange leftover-from-an-earlier-life plaster moulding on its ceilings. It has lurid art in the toilets, and proper indie-venue graffiti on the walls (in the ladies', anyway. As I understand it you don't get the same sort of chatty, informative graffiti in the gents'). Oh, and it has reasonable intra-band music too. Adam Green, Gang of Four, Violent Femmes... enough to make me Boogie On My Sideboard (there being no spare sofas, we were sitting on a sort of low cupboardy thing, which looked solid enough and seemed to cope).
And, almost as an afterthought, the Indelicates were even better than the clutch of downloaded-mp3s had led me to expect. There's five of them (though frankly I think you could probably dispense with the rhythm guitarist and his art-rock hair without too much disappointment), two of whom sing. Yay, two vocalists. And a keyboard as a lead instrument. Woohoo.
Their songs roll about all over styles, one minute a ferocious, burning rock and the next a haunting, nearly empty prettiness - at one point even cod-opera interspersed with fantastically cheesy 80's hair guitar. (That was deliberately cheesy, wasn't it ? I really, really hope so.)
And they can write songs. Vicious, cynical and sardonic songs - I did want to ask them if they were Luke Haines fans, actually. People who produce such cynical, world-weary songs have a habit of coming across so jaded on stage that you want to slap them and ask them why they bother. The Indelicates are at least wholeheartedly cynical - they might sneer at something, but they'll do it with a snarl and a kick to the shin.
I'd happily have bought a CD, but sadly it seems they're too download-generation to have such mundane things for sale. So instead, I shall say to you that you should go and download some songs, and pop along to a gig.
The next band were fairly ignorable - I'm not even sure who they were. The final band, Cardboard Radio, really should have been good. The guitarist/singer was good, the bassist was really good, the drummer was great. They played about with tempos, put unexpected stops and hitches in the songs, were tightly together all the time. The whole, however, was sadly less than the sum of the parts. I have no idea if they can write songs, because I couldn't hear the words at all.
Incidentally, just in case anyone else wondered this (as I immediately on hearing the club's name): yes, Nambucca does sell Sambucca.
On the way back I noticed a newsboard for (I think) the London Evening Standard which read:
"Holloway Tube Stabbings - Entrails"
I was impressed at the blunt approach, but disappointingly it turned out (on closer inspection) to read " - Details".
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