JJULIUS/LOOPSEL

JJULIUS/LOOPSEL/CATE KENNAN AT MOTH CLUB, HACKNEY – 27/10/23

So, it turns out I’m the kind of guy who stops in a layby on the dual carriageway to take pictures of a rainbow. I tell myself it’s the most vivid rainbow I have ever seen. I am quite taken by it. I feel like it is emanating from me, like I am the beating heart of rainbow land.

Nice rainbow

Sometimes, I think, it seems that everything is inevitable, that everything that is happening was always going to happen, so there’s no point trying to influence the course of events. It’s better just to be swept along by it all and look about you as much as you can whilst.

One thing I’ve learned from my kids is that nothing has to be perfect.

CATE KENNAN makes the kind of music that makes you feel silly just standing there watching it. “What are you looking at?” it seems to be saying. “There ain’t nothing to see here.” OK, I think, fair enough. I close my eyes a bit. I look around. There’s a guy nodding off by the stage. A_____, my friend from T______, thinks she should be doing this in a fancy restaurant while people eat fancy dinners, and I think he’s absolutely right. 

Nothing to see here

I’ve not really connected with any new music over the last few years like I have with the sounds coming out of Gothenburg recently, and watching LOOPSEL create her spidery webs of sound it’s clear to see why: it’s otherworldly, dark, dreamy and downbeat, which is what I think I’m just like. At times her music reminds me of undergrowth. On top of Engström’s soundscapes another woman tells stories in Swedish and English that are impossible to follow but still sound nice. In a slightly sinister way, of course.

There’s a moment before JJULIUS take the stage where it seems that Julius Pierstorff has gone missing. There are whispered conversations, shrugged shoulders and phone calls that go unanswered, before he finally appears, tall, dressed in a cheap-looking suit, overcoat and hairstyle, bristling with nervous energy. There were supposed to be four of them, he explains, but the lead guitarist broke his wrist so they’re muddling through and it will just be a little more awkward than usual. It’s a kind of fidgety, uptight sound with moments of rainy melancholy. Their party song is called “Grief in Gothenburg”, or Sorg I Göteborg to give it its proper title. It’s gloomy as fuck, just the way I like it.

Gloomy

IRONIC HILL WAS HERE

ME LOST ME

ME LOST ME/GWFAA/VELOUR AT THE RAILWAY INN, WINCHESTER - 19/10/23

Winchester used to be the capital of England, and it still seems to think itself quite important. It seems like a place where rich people belong, cushioned from the world beyond, living in a sort of fantasy. Outside it’s raining, but inside it’s cosy as can be.

Fantasy

VELOUR make exactly the kind of music that I really don’t like. It’s a kind of anthemic, melodramatic eighties-style soft pop, accompanied by torso dancing and miming synthetic drum fills with index fingers. It reminds me of Spandau Ballet, to my mind one of the worst bands to have ever shat upon planet Earth. Sorry, I don’t want to be mean. I mean, if the goal is to sound like Spandau Ballet then it’s a big success. Towards the end of the set I am disliking it so acutely that I start to feel quite uncomfortable. During the last song I actually feel nauseous. Sorry. I would like it if I could.

Feeling sick

GWFAA consist of two men with lots of gear. There’s something about men with gear that is so completely serious. It’s a solemn sort of play, as if solemnness justifies the amount of gear, and, anyway, they’re not really playing at all, but working. This gear, their solemnness suggests, is not going to use itself. So someone’s got to do it. So it’s justified. I start to feel sleepy, which I think is the idea. I may even doze off once or twice. I can’t be sure I don’t.  

Solemn

ME LOST ME has her fair share of gear too, or “tech” as she calls it, but without the accompanying solemnity. She’s a strange combination of the ancient and modern, with her mix of old English style folk singing and fancy modern gizmos. One minute she’s talking about monks hiding things in bibles and the next about staying up all night playing video games. And there’s a smoke machine that always seems to know the right moment to let itself off, as if it's connected to something, somehow. That’s the kind of vibe, I guess. It shouldn’t work but it does, or maybe it doesn’t work but it should. Maybe it’s the weather, but I’m not really sure about anything this evening.

Something, somehow

EARLY LUNCH

The sense of humour of other ages has always seemed bad. 

David Berman

We stopped for lunch at twelve. We’d been smoking weed since six and were burnt out. I don’t remember eating much, maybe some chips. Our boss drank four pints of lager and then feasted wantonly on a packet of beef flavoured crisps. We never did much work in the afternoon.

On rainy days we would sit in the break room watching daytime TV and smoking fags. It was a small room and there were five or six of us. We drank tea. No one drank coffee in those days, apart from my parents who drank Nescafe out of a jar. Our boss was a racist and every time Trisha came on the screen would refer to her racistly as “That black cow”. The room would slowly fill with smoke, and somehow we used to think that was better than being outside in the rain.

Our boss had a boss. He was called Angus. I always thought he was Scottish but I don’t think he was. I don’t remember him having a Scottish accent, and Scottish accents were things I remembered in those days. His occasional visits would send our boss into a panic. “Angus is coming down!” he would say in a strangled voice. It was always unclear, however, exactly what we were supposed to do with this information, and without specific instructions to guide us we would just sit up a bit straighter wearing expressions of readiness like an ill-fitting coat.

It was in the days when a group of friends could all get the same job together. I don’t remember any process being involved. You just had to go to an office - which was above one of those shops where everything was really cheap because it was useless and badly made - tell them your name and where you lived, and you were in.

Sometimes our boss would stay out all night and turn up to work in his evening wear. On those mornings when he inhaled on his cigarette his whole face would scrunch up until it looked like an arsehole, and he would carry on drinking from imported cans of lager that he’d bought off a guy in a car park. I’ve never seen anyone drink lager before breakfast and was secretly quite impressed.

The pub where we used to spend our lunch breaks is a Tesco now. Oh, how the times have changed.

My cousin Tom had worked there longer than the rest of us. “Tom’ll tell ya,” our boss used to say whenever the past came up in conversation.

One of our tasks was to keep the prom clear of sand. Our boss used a petrol blower, but all we had were brooms and we would sweep in neat little rows. The pointlessness of it was immensely soothing. “That’s a job for life,” passing wits would comment. But no, it wasn’t. It was seasonal work. In the winter months, much to our dismay, they just let the sand pile up.

The last I heard our boss was working in a bar in Spain. Tom told us that he’d died there. His name was Paul.

BEYOND THE PALE

 

John was glad when the queen died. He thought it was about time. He had this idea that people shouldn’t hang around too long, becoming a burden to others, and preventing the younger generation from receiving their rightful inheritance, and thought generally that people should just let themselves die when the time came. Medical treatment, he believed, should be denied to those over eighty, maybe even over seventy-five. He – he was sure – would deny any treatment offered to him once he reached old age. “Just let me die,” he imagined himself saying when the time came. And, besides, he was taking steps to ensure that he wasn’t even around to receive such offers. He smoked heavily at every opportunity, and, though he ate rather healthily (only because he wasn’t a child and preferred healthy food, not because he wanted to be healthy), never exercised. On the day of the funeral, distressed by the wall-to-wall coverage on the television, he went for a walk. Breathless after walking for ten minutes or so, he stopped at a bench outside one of the supermarkets for a cigarette. From where he sat he couldn’t see another living soul. “Fucking morons,” he said to himself, thinking of all those stuck inside, glued to this pantomime, this fairy tale of national history. He sat there for a few minutes smoking and wondering what was wrong with everyone. Then, his cigarette exhausted, he crushed it underfoot, immediately lit another, inhaled deeply, and coughed.