James from Drunkenstein, photograph © Johnny Moto

Drunkenstein / Small Machine / Above Us The Waves @ The Wheatsheaf, Oxford, 17/09/2010

Painfully young quintet Above Us the Waves were the subject of a lengthy musicinoxford.co.uk dissection a few weeks back, so we’ll lay off them a bit, both for their sakes and our readership’s. They exhibit a quintessential Oxfordshire middle class vagueness that is both infuriating and endearing, exemplified by lead singer  Joe Harrison’s quivering announcement that  ‘this one’s a tribute to Top Gun….sort of…kind of…’ before launching into the sort of ubiquitous post-punk that runs from Editors through Interpol back to Joy Division and beyond. Some of it sounds a bit tired (how many ‘posts’ are we on at the moment? Last time I looked it was post-post-rock, but I may have missed the last post), but AUTW have a got a few good things going for them. Harrison’s alternation between rhythm guitar and violin is deftly handled, and the band, which has a tendency to generate mud, sounds much clearer when he plays the latter (beautifully, I should add).

Joseph Shuttleworth’s drumming is excellent too, especially his more minimalist figures, which allow further sorely-needed breathing room into the music. Harrison’s singing is a mixed bag; when he’s high and reedy and maxing on the vibrato he sounds rather fine; a lonely, romantic figure roaming Utah with his fiddle in his knapsack, but on too many sections he’s singing in his boots, with the instrumentation an undifferentiated wave of noise threatening to crash over the gunwales and send the vessel down with all hands. The songwriting too is a bit disjointed, with too many sections elbowing each other like rapacious housewives at a Primark sale. Still, this band has a fair bit of promise, which can’t honestly be said of either of the remaining bands on the bill. For proof, check the first two minutes of ‘Mind for Business, Body for Sin’ on their Myspace.

The best thing about Small Machine’s set is an increasingly unhinged countup by someone who sounds like a NASA engineer going insane in real time. This piece of sampling (a step down in artistic merit from The Count’s turn on Sesame Street) is certainly more arresting than the music, an unmemorable compound of the very loud and the very bland. Their songs seem to be a series of mostly random chords played loudly and intensely with the usual combination of bog-standard guitar/another guitar/bass/drums, and dominated by ridiculous amounts of barely-controlled reverb and terrible singing. Matey: just because you can scream dumbly into the mike does not make you Dave Grohl! And let’s face it, he just does that as a sop to those old Nirvana fans in denial.

Incontrovertibly, Drunkenstein main man James Serjeant is one of the Oxford scene’s good guys.  A spirited, generous promoter, a highly competent soundman, a more than useful guitarist, you’ll find few who don’t like and respect him. Except in one area. Why on earth do his bandmates let him sing?

As it’s the band’s last hurrah, it’s pointless to be too harsh- after all they did lay on Battenberg cakes for the hefty, mostly-engaged audience and the band certainly sounded pretty fair to me, doing their usual proggy-punky-rocky act thingy. Bassist Snuffy and drummer Tim Lovegrove are both excellent players and if you want to hear melodies at a Drunkenstein gig, you should drill down into the bass, ‘cause that’s where they’ll be. The group always look as if they are having a ball on stage; this came as a blessed relief after the dullness of Small Machine, and they know all the stops and starts of these awkward, twisty, and (being honest) pretty obscure songs. Serjeant’s singing started quite strongly, but then receded into that slightly camp, spidery mutter which many gig-goers can’t take in large doses. He always sings as if it’s Halloween, and he’s telling a tale of mutilation and murder to a troupe of twitchy Boy Scouts round the fireside in Tubney Wood;  in any event,  I didn’t have a clue what he was on about for 90% of the time, and though you don’t expect total clarity at any live gig, to endure whole songs in which you can’t pick up a single word suggests that singer and band are fundamentally mismatched. Still, they have made a decent record, have played some well-received gigs over the months and years, and boast players of verve and individuality, so they end their career in credit. And if you think I’m being a bit sentimental, remember what Dr Johnson said about lapidary judgements.

  • http://www.junkiebrush.co.uk Big Tim

    Thanks for the review Colin! Interestingly, I’d completely reverse the opinion on the support bands – I though Small Machine were great and that AUTW were somewhat derivative and obvious. I was particularly amused when their guitarist’s guitar failed before the first song and he immediately looked to Joal and waved his arms around as if it was Joal’s fault that his amp was making no noise! I’d also switch the comments around about the respective drummers – SM’s drummer was unfussy but rock solid, very very good and playing exactly what was needed, wheras AUTW’s drummer was the weak link in the band, lots of energy but sloppy.

  • leesmilex

    1. hahaha that description of jamesss sining made water come through my nose cos i read it while drinking! :-)
    2. why have record reviews and live reviews been combined on the page – i thought it was way better before!
    3. played with above us the waves recently – thought they were ok but a bit like a bunch of disorganized students trying to tick off every trendy box but not hitting much consistency. they also played way too long for the amount (or lack) of variation in the set of songs! the violin is far better than the guitar or singing! they played a good instrumental, though the only jstifiable reason for it being instrumental was the singer could not play and sing at same time. they struck me as quite unfriendly and full of themselves too!
    4. that comment about dave grohl rubs me up the wrong way…when he does scream (which is pitifully rare) it is certainly preferable to the soft fm rock he churns out most of the time – anyone with half a rock set knows that the best moments of foos career are on the first (very screamy) and second (damn near perfect) albums!
    not cos he’s appeasing nostalgic nirvana fans but because back then rage was expressed in popular music! :-)x

  • johnny moto

    your all missing the point,i have never been to any concert where the choice of cakes was so good and chocolatey.
    to stop even more being thrown at James and co i went around offering them to the crowd.

  • colinmackinnon

    Lee!

    1) Aim to please.
    2) If I can be Vince Cable for a minute (member of the coalition but given licence to grumble occasionally), I agree with you, I preferred the old arangement. Simon feels that consolidating the reviews makes for a more compact homepage which is certainyl true, and highlights the unique content on the site esp. the podcats etc.

    3) NO idea what AUTW are like personally. Jack was quite friendly when we corresopnded about the record review.
    4) Dave G is a bit of pub-rocker at heart isn’t he?

  • http://www.junkiebrush.co.uk Big Tim

    @Johnny – that was half the problem! You were assisting in the distribution of ammo! Although to be fair, Jamess deserved it.

  • jamess

    lovely comments about the singing – i can only plead guilty though the mitigating circumstances are that the rest of the band should have collectively men the fuck up(?) and wrestled the mike from my grasp. On at least caterwauled some backing vox. Anything that makes Lee snort can only be a good thing….
    Cake? falls under the category of Drunkenstein’s response to virtually everything. Eat it you mutha!
    To be fair to the Above guitarist, the problem with hi amp was that he’d used my 4×12 which had somehow got shoved against the wall, crimping the speaker leads. Not good, but i had spares.
    i’m biased – i really like Small Machine and their tunes.
    Tim & Snuffy have always been the power station behind Drunkenstein so thanks for recognising this -cheers Colin!

  • http://www.myspace.com/hearaboveusthewaves Jack

    Firstly I would like to say thanks for the review.
    Apologies to Lee if we seemed unfriendly, perhaps we are, but didn’t mean to be. Maybe we are just shy and we hide up ourselves for protection from internet comments…
    I think I agree with the comments about mud/lack of variation in our set. Some stuff needs to get the chop. but our instrumentals are intrumentals because we want them to be.
    Small machines countdown was super exciting, I was looking foward to some experimental noise rock, but didn’t get it. And for Drunkenstein I sat in the bass and watched cake fly. Lovely.

    thanks again Colin.

  • http://www.gappytooth.com gappy

    Anyone seen the Dr Who serial “Pirate Planet”? That photo of Jamess looks a *lot* like Mr Tibuli (sp?).

  • jamess

    “he’s telling a tale of mutilation and murder to a troupe of twitchy Boy Scouts round the fireside in Tubney Wood”

    ahh -that’s probably Walk in the Woods – substitute for Girl Guides, or waitresses and you’re nearer the mark. It’s all based upon a dream Planet Jones had of kidnapping one of his waitresses and hauling her off to a cottage in the middle of the woods. Thankfully he woke up. Disturbingly, that’s when his imagination really took a hold…..
    Don’tr blame me – they made me sing about it!

  • Matt S

    Gappy, it’s Mr Fibuli, I believe, in Pirate Planet (that one was written by Douglas Adams). And yes – he looks very similar!

  • http://www.gappytooth.com gappy
  • http://www.gappytooth.com gappy

    Err, sorry, biggest link ever! I didn’t notice. Pretty crap picture too. Here’s Jamess trying to get out of work to make it to soundcheck: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdFbPIoqG6A

  • leesmilex

    apologies accepted if u accept my rather unkind description of your band, re-reading it seemed without good points, of which there were plenty in the set, including the instrumental which i mentioned (i was told that reason for it being instrumental by your guitarist btw!) one of you seemed very friendly after our set when he came up and gave me a compliment which made it seem he had not watched, which i confirmed later he had not! there is an interesting aside on the metal discussion thread on nightshift at the mo about this kind of stuff!
    regarding the internet comment, i just say it as i see it, no more, no less! no grudge or beef here! besides you guys are still so young so i can imagine quite shy – apart from your keyboardist who maybe should be! ;-)x