Monday, January 30, 2006  3:15 am 

A broken song and a broken heart

Nascent have been putting great gigs in Brighton since the good lordy knows when, last night it was Pheromones (non musical band which features James Nascent, James from the Sticks, Russel who sadly moved to london and a guy I don’t know, the style is a bit the Shaggs meets NEU! meets Fall or sth like that, they played for an hour and were awesome) Yeborobo (up and coming noise no wave stalwarts, you might have read about them at Vice, generating some heavy ruckus in the floor) and the topic of today, Shimmy Rivers and and Canal (nice website btw).

You’ll say, yeah.

I say yeah, fucking Shimmy Rivers and and Canal fucking yeah. They do the punk funk thing the way it was meant to be done, it’s like the Pop Group and James Chance in No New York and even, I thought, a bit of early Nation of Ulysses at some point, a sweatfest of stop and go martial rythms (some drummer), trumpet and saxophone, and a frontman ready to kill like a young version of the eternal Mark E. Smith, strangling the microphone and, yelling that, to begin with, he is a potato.

Your loyal 20jfglosers did the right thing and bought a copy of the cd they had for sale (10 copies limited edition w00t!), ands this is what we’re bringing you, it sounds fantastic, all jerky percussions, broken teeth and sweaty blitzkrieg funk, James Murphy doses the whole town on kerosene, he’s produced a match now…

WOOSH

Shimmy Rivers and and Canal- Workitout

Live this sounds even better, so yeah, promoters, get in touch with them and have them play at your night cos it’d make for a proper sick dance party.

I think I remember Liars saying Young People were the most intelligent band in the USA some time ago, hope my mind is not playing tricks on me after so much abuse and struggle (blame Thomas Pynchon), hell, this is like when Bertrand Russell said that meeting Wittgenstein was one of the most exciting intellectual adventures in his life, some compliment.

They have been doing their thing for a while and their two previous albums, especially War Prayers show why even today, especially today, a band can be your life. There is a tension, a mistery and a politeness to them, it’s as if, when they played they were staring very intensely at you, honest strangers who don’t demand anything like maybe Scout Niblett does, you can’t but avoid inviting them to your room, they will sit in your bed and browse through your books and not say much, their presence changing everything, it remains there like a ghost after they are gone.

The new album, ‘turned loose’ (out in march in Too Pure) is sparser and even more subdued than the previous ones, a masterpiece of effortless restraint and formal beauty, of which the track we are posting today is but an example.

Young People- Forget

Turned Loose is such a magical, seamless detour from the drudgery of this house full of dust and the outside world full of noise that taking a track from it like this feels a bit cruel, like breaking a beautiful bird’s wing, the song lies here naked and lonely, away from home, still if we manage to turn even one of you people into Young People we will go to bed happy boys.

Good night and thanks to Charlotte for introducing me to them.

labels >> xxjfg