iLiKETRAiNS are busy writing new songs. Touring has paused as summer pauses, for feast days and holidays. So a one-off performance on home ground, with well- chosen support acts in a very nice venue with a large projection screen is too good to miss.
It's clear that the new songs are being guarded and nurtured. Maybe they're still being worked on? There's nothing like a room full of music people to scare the living daylights out of anyone who cares a lot about their music. And iLiKETRAiNS do care.
Just before going on Dave Martin smilingly admits trepidation. He says that the plan is to help audiences a bit less with the new songs. The telling, sparse lyrics of "Elegies For Lessons Learnt" (barely eight months old and still full of fresh delights) were set in context with a booklet of essays on the detailed historical realities that gave rise to the personal and emotional stories of the songs..
This time it seems that people will be left to create their own narratives.
We were treated to three new songs (accompanied by some of Ashley Dean's eerily flickering films). Sprinkled among them were three old favourites: "Terra Nova" "Rook House For Bobby" and Spencer Perceval (the encore); three more from single releases, "Joshua", "Victress", and "More Weight"; and just "Voice of Reason" from the début album. The instrumental "Joshua" was a tingling opener, with the large pa system effortlessly managing clarity and balance with an oceanic surge and fall of sound. This a band who never shout, and never thrash about. But they are fearsomely loud when they build it up.
Truth told, iLiKETRAiNS are at their best when the volume is stupendous and lyrics stay audible. Which is just what tonight achieves. The mettel of the new songs is revealed in the set's third item. No titles yet, but with lines like "Europe slips into the sea" and "the wind blows from the east" we can hear new interests in geopolitics. On the screen behind, a wobbly handmade world turns erratically and our concern for the planet replaces our empathy for plague victims, assassins and railway causalities. What's special about all this is that we are being royally entertained, even amused, while having those deep things stirred by clear, sinuous music with a serpent's steady gaze at big, scary demons.
Another of the new brood challenges our naive hopes in similar ways: "progress, stagnation and decay", "hope has gone away" he sings in that rich, confiding voice that is Martin's characteristic style. Basically, we're stuffed, so we might as well throw our last breaths at making and enjoying the best apocalyptic music we can find. The theme continues in the final new song: "some things are best forgotten" ... "I will leave it to the scarabs and the crows" ... "in a million years our bones will be your oil" ... "we're out of our depth here".
This is no longer looking back at the frailties and tragedies of past unheroes. This is a similar fatalism and sense of ruined destiny, but felt from within, and felt for the present. Or so I understood it on one (very exciting) first hearing. It will be fascinating to hear final versions of these songs and see if the thematic shift is as significant as it seemed tonight. One of them (the first) had the most rock and roll opening I've ever heard from iLiKETRAiNS. A lively drum pattern set me up to expect a bit of Chuck Berry riffage. It didn't actually arrive, but the confidence to branch out is clearly there.
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iLiKETRAiNS were immediately preceded by THESE MONSTERS' hugely entertaining blast of melodic noisemongering. Two guitars, bass, drums and percussion (no vocals) roar like monsters for three numbers with non-stop noise ululations between them. They were nicely loud, played facing each other as if in ritual combat. It was music that you could follow like an epic. Each instrument was audible, each idea was planned and executed with style and the whole audience had a damn good time. I really can't think why you would not love this stuff. It was my first encounter an I was hugely impressed. The best bits of METALLICA, KING CRIMSON, DARK STAR and THE BUTTHOLE SURFERS all thrown together, with a lot of style.
Opening the night's proceedings was THE BENJAMIN WETHERILL BAND. This fast-developing project has got me hooked. BENJAMIN WETHERILL himself produces his characteristically mannered songs, from English Tradition and from his own composition, sung in a slightly wavering tenor voice. So far so folk. But he has a blues-based drummer in Alastair Neilson, a free jazz/improv saxophonist in Karl D'Silva, a vocalist and Echopet manipulator in Laura Parsons and (for tonight) local impresario and general good egg James Brown on bass.
The end result is nothing like folk and a great deal like something arresting and rather marvelous in its own right. Songs like "The Cruel Sea Captain" and the magnificent "Lowlands" show up, but they come out as natural parts of something much more edgy, spontaneous and unpredictable. The creative excitement is palpable. The only comparison that makes sense to me is with the feeling I had when seeing DAVID THOMAS BROUGHTON when he started to develop his unique approach to (again) a kind of folk music that no one would recognise as folk music. I just hope that this material leads to a recording.
http://www.last.fm/music/iLiKETRAiNS
http://www.last.fm/music/These+Monsters
http://www.last.fm/music/Benjamin+Wetherill
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