HOOD'S new album on Domino is as accessible and as sweet as anything HOOD have done. So it’s not surprising that there's a bit of a fuss about it in the national prints and one hell of a crowd in the (threatened with closure?) Brudenell Social Club tonight. There are even glimpses of fandom among the floor squatters down the front. Hood-style woolly hats and the HOOD t-shirt are being worn with big smiles.
I mention this sense of excited anticipation because I first encountered HOOD on a live Radio 3 broadcast and there are those in the trade who think of them as "experimental" and a bit minority. So there is a dangerous frisson in seeing HOOD's current state of creativity meeting the possibility of a really big audience. The album has lovely tunes and plenty to listen to, but with electronic reconstructions and deconstructions and a powerful urge to keep variation to the foreground that could all be a bit fragile out on the open stage in a sweaty venue.
Could be. But it wasn't. They roared. Two guitars, bass and drums (such drumming, mother: it was angry, it was funky, it was loudly cheered!) took on the main work and the samples, hand bells, loops, flute, melodica and electric piano did the colour and subtlety with panache. The selection of songs from the new album were more or less remade for the live show and they worked so well it was having a new set of treats to go alongside the recordings. Just as it should be.
The pattern was two songs driven harder, ("Any Hopeful Thoughts Arrive" and "The Lost You" ), then a quieter interlude of exquisite melody and deep bass "You Show No Emotion At All", a build through "Branches Bare", then the big (and swirlingly tuneful) single "The Negatives" and on through funky, folky, dreamy, spacey and downright gorgeous songs "They Removed All Trace" and "Closure" and an eagerly received encore of " Home Is Where It Hurts". There was a hint the band had planned to play more (the finish time of eleven was mentioned, but presumably this was known in advance?). But what we got was the gamut and a strong desire to want to see them again very soon. It’s complex, mature and exhilarating music. Once can never be enough.
The heart and mind of HOOD are Christopher and Richard Adams, young men totally absorbed in music of all kinds, impervious to fashion, gleefully making new sounds on a daily basis with new friends and old friends for their own pleasure and for the delight of the people they are in the room with. They've been around for more than ten years, weaving in and out of dozens of projects. But always HOOD and now, perhaps, about to experiment with a much bigger audience and even longer world tours. Vancouver is going to love them.
|
The sense of community that HOOD weave around them is embodied in the support acts for tonight. Opener THE UNPLEASANTS is (should that be are?) current HOOD member Gareth in his solo project mode. Funkily eclectic DJ REMOTE VIEWER is a some-time HOOD member and main support "SEMI SQUARED" seems to fit right into the arrangements very nicely. THE UNPLEASANTS are a welcoming and lightly textured introduction to laptop land, and a great sound to hear on arrival at the gig . Minimalist and tuneful, the melodic parts are xylophonic blips and the beats are gentle. With a back projection and Gareth's serene involvement there's also just enough of a spectacle to feel that THE ENTERTAINMENT has really begun.
SEMI QUARED had started, then started over, but still at volume levels lower than the artistry demanded. Tweaking his nose like a demented elf he let loose some enormous beats in determinedly unpredictable bursts of pleasure and mischief. Despite the superficial laptopnia his visual stage show, the unpredictability and the charge of what was happening, or about to be happening, made it a real live show. The capacity of the venue's pa to supply those bigger bass sounds was unleashed, a little too late for SEMI SQUARED, in REMOTE VIEWER's second DJ set of the evening. But that was to the greater good because it set the adrenalin going at a nice steady rush ready for the scale and noisiness of HOOD's new set.
|
