Live Review: Trailer Trash Tracys, It Hugs Back, Papercuts @ The Legion, 16/4/09

Band names, like it or not, pigeonhole the groups that possess them. You could almost envisage the staid blonde pout of Trailer Trash Tracys’s Suzanne Aztoria before it appeared onstage at Sonic Cathedral. Empowered by all the frosty charisma it is possible to muster over woozy, drifting pop, Suzanne nonetheless draws the eye in what could otherwise be described as a band in the springtime of their career. All that Cocteau Twins-sounding lo-fi noise is convincing, but samey, and it’ll take more than a pretty frontwoman to set them apart as the year advances.

Meanwhile, It Hugs Back manage to so perfectly convey the wet geekery their name suggests, that everyone here feels instantly satisfied. Well, almost. This awkward four-piece appear to have been spat from the bowels of darkest Kent, etiolated and shifty-looking, all elbows and furtive glances. Their set comprises largely of material from their recently released ‘Inside Your Guitar’ LP, their first on 4AD, although there’s a good few songs here, notably ‘Other Cars Go’, that have been doing the setlist circuit for a good while longer. It’s difficult to sit either side of the fence with It Hugs Back – they are clearly an informed and innovative musical outfit with no sickening image-preoccupations, yet there’s just something about them so infuriatingly pathetic, it’s difficult to fully grasp their angle. Are we supposed to feel sorry for them?

After these humble British offerings, San Franciscan outfit Papercuts take to the stage with a kind of marked professionalism. The four-piece headed by full-time recording engineer Jason Quever are older and wiser than their line-up predecessors, and they purvey music of a markedly different class. Imbued with heady organ that pushes melodically through each track, Quever’s achievement is in rendering sixties pop songs of succinct and simple elements raw and richly-hued. He looks like a more timid Jack Black, and sings in a kind of pitch-perfect, high whine, but it all works, and the reason for this is that it comes back to solid, pop-sensible constructions and sharp, polished musical components.

The set comprises of the best of recent album ‘You Can Have What You Want’, and goes down a storm with the sparse onlookers. The rest of his band scarpers after some panicked conversation over the rapturous applause at the end – they clearly haven’t planned the encore the audience want. Eventually, Quever stands in alone, singing a rich, confident guitar-ballad that captivates all present. Their chosen name, Papercuts, might suggest the tiniest of imprints in a swamped musical pond, but it’s precisely this kind of acutely fascinating pop that makes a lasting impression among a swill of mediocrity, as tonight suggests.

Singles Reviews: March 2008

Look See Proof – Do You Think It’s Right released 24th March 2008
The promising likely lads from Look See Proof are warming up to the release of their debut album in June with this single taken from it. As a sign of things to come, it could be worse for the Hertfordshire four-piece. Riding the crest of the fashionable uptempo indie wave, Look See Proof blend the fast pace of dance floor fillers from Bloc Party with the colloquial guitar-pop vocal stabs of the Pigeon Detectives. Though this might sound like a nightmarish combination, the result is an inoffensive, polished kind of chaos. ‘Do You Think It’s Right’ opens with an angular guitar riff that spills into unpredictable, skittering high hat and cheerful bassline, overlaid with well-placed, melodic guitar work and infectiously repetitive lyrics that that will stick in the heads of indie-kids like their favourite hair product. There’s a good few chorus yells and an unwinding drum build up mid-track for good measure, too. Though the outfit is perhaps best boxed with the commercially popular likes of The Wombats than the melodic inventiveness of The Maccabees or Mystery Jets, this comfortable middle-ground gives Look See Proof both indie credibility and a more universal appeal that shows promise for the forthcoming album.


Clinic – The Witch released 24th March 2008
Anyone who has ever witnessed the surgically costumed strangeness of Clinic live will be aware that chart success have never been particularly high on this Liverpudlian four-piece’s list of priorities. Things are no different with new single ‘The Witch’, which also announces the release of Clinic’s fifth studio album next month. Describing the escape from a modern-day witch-hunt in search of a new future, the single has a sixties-sensible dance floor chug about it, carried through with lingering trade-mark organ backing and lisping, swing-like percussion. Ade Blackburn’s distinctive acid vocals are beguiling, making for a mesmerically psychedelic track that practically defies named comparisons. Clinic have long established themselves as rather fashionably commercially elusive, yet always critically adored, and their latest single shows little signs of any swing to the mainstream.


It Hugs Back – Other Cars Go released 31st March 2008
Seductively murmuring vocals over layered barely-moving guitar melodies that strum seamlessly into an ethereal dreamland, ‘Other Cars Go’ is the kind of caramelised post-shoegaze indie-pop that manages to express cosy Sundays in sound. Too soft and pleasantly sparse to approach My Bloody Valentine’s sound-drenched nineties cacophony, It Hugs Back still manage to incorporate a good build up of senseless guitar-noise and strange organ tones into this single, taken from their forthcoming debut album. Vocals merely act as another layer of melodious weave for It Hugs Back, who concentrate attention on filling their music with finely pitched fuzz to create an aural blanket that is warmly numb, like frozen fingers curled under the duvet.