LIVE REVIEW : THE HIGH LLAMAS AT THE ISLINGTON 03/05/2014

I must admit that one was a bit of a blind buy. The Llamas are a band that I kept putting on the "I must check them out list" but other bands kept coming and they were being put back at the end of the queue. I had missed the tickets for the first show at The Islington but managed to grab one for the second night before it sold out. I went to the gig with no knowledge of the bands back catalogue (something I tried to avoid usually) but still managed to recognize a couple of tracks from their latest LP Talahomi Way that I had listened to on YouTube (shame on me). It wasn't my first time at The Islington as it was there that I saw Jason Falkner a couple of months ago. It's a nice little venue with a set-up similar to The Half Moon in Putney where the venue is separated from the bar area. The stage was a bit small for a band like The Llamas but they managed to squeeze everybody on it.

These two shows were the first in two years for the band and even though they did a spot on job, you could feel that a couple of extra days of rehearsals would have made them a little more comfortable on stage, especially with the number of chord changes and tricky time signatures that Sean O'Hagan seems to fit in every song. You could could see bass player Jon Fell cringing after  making mistakes on a couple of songs. Sean O'Hagan seemed to be enjoying the performance stopping at one point to shake an Italian's fan hand who came all the way from his home country to see the band's return to live performance. The show seemed to cover pretty much all their record with former guitarist John Bennett helping them out on a few numbers. I'm glad to have seen the gig but would gladly go and see them again with a few more gigs behind them (not that they tour much but hey...). Just bough Hawaii so at least attending the show finally triggered my discovery of their discography.

LIVE REVIEW : JASON FALKNER AT THE ISLINGTON 24/10/2013

This was quite an event for all London Power-pop fans. Organised by the Lojinx label (UK label of Brendan Benson and Ken Stringfellow and plenty of other interesting bands), this show was Jason Falkner's
first appearance in London since 2002. Announced just one month ahead of the gig, it sold out in 2 days. The venue was a new bar near Angel station called The Islington that has a separate room with a a small
stage. The room is nicely arranged with red curtains covering the walls. It provides is a nice setting for solo shows. A special poster was offered to every person who attented the gig and you could even order a limited edition T-shirt by subscription before the gig !!!

The room was full of middle aged bearded guys that probably know every lyric of the "Bliss Descending EP" by heart. Falkner announced after a couple of songs that he had no particular setlist which resulted in several members of the audience trying to request every single song he had ever put out. The set-list covered the different periods of his career. He even included a couple of songs from The Grays ("Very Best Years" and "Both Belong"). The audience member that yelled for "Both Belong" had a similar voice to Marlon Brando in The Godfather which prompted Falkner to say that was the coolest voice he had ever heard and that we would only answer requests from that guy from now on. The songs from this first couple of albums got the best response but the hardcore audience knew all the songs anyway so... I wasn't expecting Falkner to be as entertaining, the moment he yelled "What A wanker !!!" after he had just started playing the solo in "She Goes to Bed"  was priceless. He also quipped that his songs were big hits then adding "for all the people in this room". The gig went by in a blast and finished with a four song encore containing an excellent cover of "Wichita Lineman". All we can hope for now is that this association with Lojinx will mean more UK gigs and maybe a UK release of his latest record in this country (only available as an expensive Japanese Import at the time being).