MUSIC

The Croft, Bristol (Wed 15 Dec) • Invada Records is Bristol’s home of the weird and wonderful, and tonight’s Christmas show rounds off its strongest year to date. Beak> are effectively Invada’s house band, and they bring the evening to a close with a low-key but danceable set of driving, krautrocky grooves. The highlight is a shock-disco cover of a Kyuss song, and if that sounds obscure, it sums up their approach. Beak> are top-flight musos, with an encyclopaedic knowledge of rock’s outer reaches. Fortunately for us, they’re determined to have fun with it, and that’s infectious.

But tonight’s big news is Anika – one of 2010’s most intriguing new artists. If her album is startling – with its out-of-context cover versions and stark, dubby backing – seeing her in the flesh is downright disconcerting. Tall, blonde, psychopathically detached: she’s equal parts sullen teen and suicide bomber. The sound of her band, to which all of Beak> contribute in one way or another, is just as striking. Their queasy, bass-heavy cacophony grabs hold during second song ‘The End Of The World’, and doesn’t let go until the last number. On ‘Officer Officer’, they sound like PIL circa ‘Poptones’, while their take on Dylan’s ‘Masters At War’ recalls the accusatory sound-system punk of Mark Stewart.

Stripped of the album version’s Iraq reference, ‘Masters’ is a more ambiguous dig at the powerful, and it’s hard not to connect the extraordinary ‘Yang Yang’ with the student protests, as Anika gravely intones “we outnumber you in population… join the revolution”. As the bass pressure finally gives way to the doomy psychedelia of ‘Sadness Hides The Sun’ you’re left feeling decidedly off-kilter. Disturbing, thought-provoking, impossible to pin down: Anika might just be the perfect pop star for our disorientating times. (Adam Burrows; pics Ellen Doherty) 

Copyright Adam Burrows 2010; pics copyright Ellen Doherty 2010 www.duchessphotographic.com