Rose Kemp LIVE @ PUB POP - 29.11.08

Plug LIVE @ PUB POP - 29.11.08

Plug PUB POP - Soundcheck!


 

Organ Magazine - Edition: 11.12.08 - Live review.

ROSE KEMP / HANDS ON HEADS / PLUG – Pub Pop @ The Miller, London Bridge, 29th Nov

– A Dexter Bentley Pub Pop (rather than Sub Pop) night, brought to you by the Dexter Bentley radio show at Resonance FM. The Miller in a rather unpretentiously friendly pub venue just off Borough High Street - just south of the River at London Bridge, nicely relaxing band/audience friendly room above a pub down a side-street, a welcome alternative to the hyperbol look at me self-importance of Hoxton or the stale fly infested industry stench of dying Camden.

Plug are on when we get there, a drum and bass two piece - no, not that kind of drum and bass... Two girls, one called Sian and one called Georgie, one playing rather forceful drums while singing, the other playing bass with her hands and lo-fi keyboards with her bare feet while adding vocal lines. They’re kind of feisty and spiky in a new wave way, kind of life-saving if you were to be a small animal - no traps or anything. Hypnotic and stripped right back, almost tribal in a locked on punky new wave way, massively watchable despite the sparse set up and the lack of central focal point – though you could argue the drummer was just that. Kind of lo-fi riot grrl undercurrent, a post punk feel that could almost be 1979 all over again, fresh pleasure nonchalantly played, attention demand start to the night...

Hands On Hands next, decent DJ in between, Hands On Heads are infectious, they’re abrupt, they’re bright and sunny, pin-point sharp. Hands on heads is what happened when you misbehaved at the primary school I went to - paint spilt on the floor, squalor alive once more, stand in the corner, hands on head. Sunshine punk is there explanation, you’d get dizzy with your hands on your head while Hands On Heads played, they’re frantic and hyper in an uplifting bright poppy hello-little-doggy hand-on-heart way. Unrepetitively repetitive cardiac arrests and lines and words that keep jumping out in the maelstrom of pop and the sharpness and the jagged pointed bits that sound hardboiled and poppy - and you are not alone, brightness is real and here, keep up, keep up, nothing feels out of place. Four of them, organ, bass, guitar and drums. Rhythms that can’t be upset, and really unlike anything we’ve encountered recently, maybe bits of Ring or Gag or knowing where the manhole vandal lives, we haven’t encountered any of them recently though (especially that manhole vandal). Four of them infectious and combusting and frantic and no wave new wave and tying perfect bows in the middle of what sounds like chaos but really isn’t. Mid 90’s TV themes? And no one ever intended to run away and a new fiction is what they are – sharp notes, ringing notes, new fiction - tunes that jingle, new wave surf, happy sounds, a band with personality, too much orange juice, hyperactive - it really is ok, they know nothing’s wrong. Infectious no wave sharp-pop otherness, they paint frantic musical brainbows...

Two good bands and we like gigs like this where someone has taken time to put an inspired bill together and cross pollinate... Rose Kemp is why we’re really here though, tonight Rose and her band are a three piece – Joe Garcia on bass, James King on drums and Rose herself on guitar and extremely rich vocals. A heady blend of exhilarating old school heavy rock and folk-edged English prog. She has us mesmerised from the off, entranced in her musical seduction, her darkness when the day is done in her brooding riffs anchored down by that really strong and rather compelling, rather visual, rhythm section – colourful old school prog drumming, powerfully atmospheric, a drummer who’s entertaining to watch - hand over the top of neck inch-thick-strings bass playing holding it all in place. The three of them are conjuring some serious English sounding spot-hitting heavy rock alchemy tonight, this wouldn’t be lost sharing the same stage as Electric Wizard, Cathedral or even bands like Kayo Dot. Brooding riffs, slowly uncoiling, swooping grace, powerfully carrying all before them. None of the keyboard that’s to be found on the new album here tonight - she does sometimes play with a keyboard player in a five piece line up, she sometimes plays completely alone – there’s a sense of freedom within her structure, she does pretty much hold to the frame of the tracks as found on the albums, it would not surprise if she was to gallop off somewhere different though. You get the feeling no two Rose Kemp gigs will ever be quite the same – no automatic pilot here. Her British rock heritage is glowing up there on the stage tonight, heritage well documented - daughter of Steeleye Span’s Maddy Prior and Rick Kemp - brought up on the stage she now commands; swaying there, chewing her gum, hair and guitar swaying, all in black, lost in her zone, witchy, pagan – powerfully heavy songs, epic songs that pull you and her in until she can’t remember who she is or where we are. Innocence shrouds the gaze of the Dirty Glow - lost in it all until she gets to the end, rubs her eyes and politely thanks everyone before taking time to tune up, grab breath and head us out there again... out in to a wholeness of sounds. Exhilarating gig, stimulating night....
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