MUSIC

Mike White tunes in to some of the best bands turning out for Music South West 2010.

Texas has got SXSW, Miami has its Winter Music Conference – and Bristol’s got Music South West, a full-tilt 48 hours of industry brain-exchange, taking in seminars, workshops, talks, education and networking. There are speakers including Conal Dodds of Metropolis Music and V Festivals, Invada Records boss Geoff Barrow, composer William Goodchild, Gorillaz manager Chris Morrison and a whole bunch more. As the sun sets each night, the MSW Live Fringe kicks off across 15 of Bristol’s better venues with a hundred or more acts – some homegrown and little-known, some proper-job global stars. A wristband’ll win you access to most of these (a snip at £7/£5 for one night, £12/£9 for both) – though capacity will be tight for some gigs and a few are ticketed too, so check in advance with individual venues to be on the safe side. We’ve picked out a few highlights below – keep an eye on the MSW website for the latest updates.

Beach House Wed 24, Trinity Centre, 8pm Balanced on the big-time cusp, this bittersweet Baltimore dreampop boy-girl twosome have spent the summer on the road with Vampire Weekend. Their third LP ‘Teen Dream’ is a comforting, sad and beautiful record produced by Chris Coady, whose production mastery’s already helped Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV on the Radio and Grizzly Bear. The album’s nostalgic, full of heartbreak and sepia-toned harmonies, garnering a slew of critical praise and flipping their once cult following fully mainstream – Jay-Z and Beyonce have been seen at recent gigs – though whether they’ll be queuing up outside the Trinity remains to be seen. NB This is a ticketed event. There will be very limited places available for MSWFringe wristband holders, but get yourself a ticket to be sure of getting in. FFI: WWW.MYSPACE.COM/BEACHHOUSEMUSIC

PatrickJamesPearson Band Thur 25, Start the Bus, 7.30pm Wowzers. This Plymouth trio only formed a few months ago, when bassist Mike Osbourne and sticksman Timmy Langsford joined the eponymous piano-thumping PJP, a prodigious youth already wrestling the grandiose melodrama and writerly reach of ‘Space Oddity’-era Bowie. Together they make songs full of ideas, delivered with a slow-building grandeur, frazzled horns, organ, layered choral backing. There’s a slice of Lennon in here too – the freely associating wordplay, the weary urgency – but they’ve got the thrust of At the Drive In too, a latent lust for rock ’n’ roll that never quite steam-rollers out the cerebral jaunt of the content. Debut album ‘Giddy Up’ is expected next March. FFI: WWW.MYSPACE.COM/PATRICKJAMESPEARSON

Anika FAG Studios, Thur 25, 8pm Ice-cool political journalist Anika was city-hopping between Berlin and Bristol when she chanced upon Geoff ‘Portishead’ Barrow and they bonded over a mutual fondness for punk, dub and 60s girl groups. As luck would have it, Barrow was looking for a singer to work with his jam-heavy trio BEAK>, and within a week they were in the studio together. Twelve days later they’d knocked out the nine tracks that make up Anika’s brief eponymous debut, in which her dispassionate delivery leads a pleasingly bewildering sleepwalk through sinister and paranoid covers, from Yoko Ono’s ‘Yang Yang’ to the Pretenders’ ‘I Go To Sleep’, and Bob Dylan’s ‘Masters of War’, plus a healthy slug of reverb-heavy dub. Odd never sounded so good. NB This gig will be in Invada/Croft mainman Fat Paul’s new gaff on King Square, with the capacity of your gran’s front room. Good luck getting in… FFI: WWW.MYSPACE.COM/ANIKAINVADA

Rebecca Mayes 51 Stokes Croft, Thur 25, 7.30pm Irresistibly likeable singer-songwriter whose self-regarding story-songs also all happen to be computer game reviews. She’s been commissioned to write one a fortnight for gamers’ site The Escapist, and has occasionally let her usual spring-heeled nu-folk style wander into metal, country and 80s synth silliness. Sometimes she dresses up like game characters, sometimes not, but her combination of knowing humour, pin-up looks and deft use of banjo, accordion, glockenspiel and zither have got national press foaming at the mouth and won a cult following amongst gamers – expect this gig to be packed with nimble-thumbed console junkies. FFI: WWW.REBECCAMAYES.COM

Emily & the Whispers 51 Stokes Croft, Thur 25, 7.30-12midnight It’s all about the voice with this lot: Emily Grist’s got a real heartmelter. She and her band have barely been together a year but as our own Music Ed noted, their “lilting electric guitar lines, string-laden undertow and breathily wistful vocals are all present and correct”, as is the perfectly polished production of Portishead’s Jim Barr. Look out for debut single ‘Keep it in the Dark’, out soon. FFI: WWW.MYSPACE.COM/EMILYGRIST

Green River Killers Mr Wolfs, Wed 24, 7.30pm As hypersexual head honcho of The Cramps, the late, great Lux Interior gave us shuddering rockabilly classics like ‘Human Fly’ and ‘Zombie Dance’. Now a clutch of Bristol’s rock aristocracy, namely Sean ‘Spiritualized’ Cook, Joe ‘Strangelove’ Allen and John ‘Blue Aeroplanes’ Langley unite with the pout and lurch of the new-breed – lip-curling rockabilly goddess Emily Breeze and careworn country rocker Howlin’ Lord – to frot the life out of the Cramps back catalogue. Fuzz-rock sleaze of the finest kind.

Kill It Kid The Fleece, Wed 24, 7.30pm-12midnight When early bluesman Blind Willie McTell headed on stage in a smoky New York Bar way back in the early part of the last century, the staff would shout ‘Kill it kid!’ The sentiment, like McTell’s instinctive fretwalking, struck a chord with young Bathonian Chris Turpin, who swiped it for a band name. Turpin now unleashes his huge, odd voice –  somewhere twixt Anthony ‘and the Johnsons’ Hegarty and Tracy Chapman – to gild KIK’s canyon-deep delta blues rock, born out of a lucky break back in 2008. While most fledgling bands cut their first tracks on a battered four-track in someone’s dad’s tool-cluttered garage, KIK chanced upon something a smidgeon better. PJ Harvey’s right-hand man John Parrish was invited to Bath Spa Uni to show off his recording prowess with a guinea-pig band (as in a band to try stuff out on, not a band of actual guinea pigs) whilst the other students listened in. That try-out band was Kill It Kid, and the experiment’s result was a debut EP that won them a deal with One Little Indian (home of Bjork, amongst others). Hook-laden, howling with passion, reeling with frenetic fiddle solos, their big blues sound is driven by the twin personalities of Turpin’s towering larynx and the velvety ministrations of co-vocalist Stephanie Ward. They jetted out to Bear Creek Studio, Seattle last year to cut their eponymous debut album, with fabled producer Ryan (Foo Fighters/Gossip/Strokes) Hadlock, and a torrent of critical gush followed soon after: “An outstanding British record, 9/10,” said Clash Magazine; “A hook-laden riot.... impressive stuff, 8/10,” said NME. Right and right again. Go get yourself killed. FFI: WWW.KILLITKID.COM

Kat Marsh 51 Stokes Croft, Wed 24, 7.30pm Delicious, dreadlocked one-woman-band Kat Marsh plays everything herself and sings over the top, like a gutsy Christina Aguilera with a loop pedal. Since she first smouldered on stage in 2001, she’s supported the Scissor Sisters (on their first ever UK tour), Regina Spektor and anti-folk queen Kimya Dawson, no less. It’s easy to be distracted by her looks, but tracks like the sultry late-night testimonial ‘Quit’ and sassy, Stefani-style r’n’b coo of ‘Turn Out the Light’ stand up on their own. See her in action here: tinyurl.com/katmarshvid FFI: WWW.MYSPACE.COM/KATMARSH

Ruth Royall Croft Front Room, Wed 24, 7.30pm-12midnight Lithe-larynxed singer, vaulting between folk, blues and jazz-dipped stuff – the last of which, like suitably smoky ‘Trail of Cigarettes’, nodding as it is with double bass and piano, is arguably best. She should be shifting units like Norah or Melua, but p’raps it’s best she isn’t, because it means we can still catch her close-up in intimate little gig spaces like the Croft’s front room. She’s also founder of ingenious bike-powered soundsystem Project Bicyclette, and an all-round good egg. FFI: WWW.MYSPACE.COM/RUTHROYALL

Ruarri Joseph Colston Hall, Wed 24, 7.30pm The sincere, guitar-toting singer-songwriter thing’s so ubiquitous now that it’s almost beyond parody – every two-bit venue you stumble into’s got an open mic night choked with ardent strummers anguishing over the same lazy clichés: rain on windows, autumn leaves, empty beds. So far, so yawn. Though self-deprecating troubadour Ruarri Joseph may look the part – shabby student clobber and shoulder-slung six-string all present and correct – there’s a deftness with turn of phrase and a lightness of touch that cuts through the cloy to leave something eminently easy-on-the-ears, delicate, careworn and ultimately moving. He sounds a bit like Willy Mason too, which is no bad thing. FFI: WWW.MYSPACE.COM/RUARRIJOSEPH

Howlin Lord Mr Wolfs, Wed 24, 7.30pm Bringing the Wild West to the South West, Mark Howlin’ Lord Legassick makes heartworn, on-the-lam cowboy floorboard stompers, either alone with his trusty acoustic or wired up with his posse – bassman Mark Furnevall and Thomas Elgie on the pots and pans. Much of last year was spent on the road showcasing their Blackheart Sessions EP – which swiftly sold out and had to be re-pressed to meet demand. His howlin’ wowed crowds at Dot to Dot and the Camden Crawl, and Mark, Mark and Tom are now laying down debut LP 'Gold Fury' with Phantom Limb’s Luke Cawthra on production duties. Keep your ear to the ground… FFI: WWW.MYSPACE.COM/HOWLINLORD

MUSIC SOUTH WEST TOOK PLACE AT VARIOUS VENUES IN BRISTOL ON WED 24 & THUR 25 NOV. FFI: WWW.MSW2010.MUSICINDUSTRYEDUCATION.NET FOR REVIEW, CLICK HERE.
 

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