Warpaint – London – 26 August 2010
It’s shows like this which give birth to the very nature of rock and roll. The hip-swaying sounds of a band as they rock back and forth, eyes closed, mouths pressed against the microphone with their feet marking the beat. It’s an undeniably sexual thing. This isn't news. It’s why they tried to ban Elvis in the 50’s. He turned young girls on, and it wasn’t so much the man, but the music, the stage, the sweat, the motion -- the rock and roll of it all. Wedged together in this barely ventilated Old Street basement, Los Angeles' Warpaint are presiding over something that had this been the 50's, would've gotten them banned too.
Ramona – London – 17 April 2011
It's easy to love Ramona, even though everything about them is so flawless and en pointe, unheard for a scruffy bunch of Brighton by-way-of-New-York rockers. Picks in hand, they transform a handful of chords into polished punk perfection, fronted by the coquettish bleach-blonde tomboy Karen Anne, a second generation Edie and Debbie who knows how to hang from a mic stand like she was hanging from your shoulder. Absent from the stage this year so far, they cycle through their set in a brisk half hour, including encore, and you're crying out for a flubbed note, an unrehearsed run through a song they just wrote in the van, or general indifference to whether anybody is listening.
Shearwater – The Golden Archipelago
Shearwater seem to have run aground on The Golden Archipelago. Not quite paradise, nor a place you'll likely return to soon.
The Dodos – Time to Die
There's a time to be born and, as The Dodos, given their extinct namesake should know, a Time to Die. But man, what a way to go.
Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion
Animal Collective shake the sand from their fur as they take Merriweather Post Pavillion down to the Beach, Boys.
M.I.A. – MAYA
Send out the search parties -- Missing in action on the latest album from M.I.A. -- "melody, listenability, and some semblance of a point".