The cool kids will be down at the Cellar in Oxford on Monday 13 May – Oxford label Alcopop! Records signings Stagecoach will be playing their peculiar brand of ‘slacker pop full of hooks, harmonies and heroic melody’, and in support there’ll be the weirdo murder-blues-indie-pop of Salvation Bill.
What with the Nightshift Punt last week and, over the weekend of Friday 17 May to Sunday 19 May, Wood festival at Braziers Park near Ipsden, it seems that the festival season is beginning to grind into life. The eco-friendly Wood – ‘a festival of music and nature’ – includes a huge line-up of talent including Syd Arthur, Mary Epworth and Natureboy, and an equally huge selection of Oxford’s finest, including Flights Of Helios, Co-pilgrim, Nick Cope and Jess Hall.
The excellent math-pop-with-an-African-feel Oxford band Nairobi are playing The Wheatsheaf in Oxford on Friday 17 May, along with the Foals-go-Arctic-Monkeys tuneage of Very Nice Harry and the quirky-folk-indie-ness of Sweet William. Who knows, pop along and maybe the bands can come up with some better strings-of-words-to-describe-their-sounds than those used above…
Candy Says, the band formed by members of Little Fish, launch their single ‘Favourite Flavour’ with their first Oxford headline show on Tuesday 21 May. They’ll play in the warm and welcoming surroundings of St Barnabas Church in Oxford, and they’ll be supported by alt-folk troubadour Huck.
More record launch action with an in-store from The Epstein on Friday 24 May. They’ll be at Truck Store in Oxford from 6.00 pm to play some songs from their soon-to-be-released new album, Murmurations.
The promoters at Gappy Tooth Industries always put together eclectic line-ups for their gigs, and so it will be for their Saturday 25 May show. Get down to the Wheatsheaf in Oxford and check out the complex math rock of Masiro, the Hawkwind-goes-Krautrock electro rock of Parastatic (coming all the way from Newcastle!) and the odd psychedelic folk of Sweet Bread.
Full details of these and loads more gigs can be found in the events calendar.