I Can't Hate Lark

In terms of popular culture, watching the audience at Burn, watching Lark, is the same kind of fascination I feel driving past a car crash. Lark and the Audience are two different things though. “She’s creepy in a hot kinda, I mean, Hot in a creepy kinda way” says my temporary sidekick, but I can’t hear her, I’m being hit by successive shockwaves of clean treble, curving bass riffs, thinking “Why won’t Inge look at me?”

There are three words I have sworn to avoid when talking about Lark. Aural, Cinematic, Operatic. Also I have sworn to not use any puns on the word ear, like eargasm. Can you tell, building up to this gig, I have been silently prejudging them?

All of these ideas are over used in this context and not entirely accurate about the battering ram force of them live. On your sound system, in your car, at home, in the garden, in the Goth crack den, Lark can get a backgroundy, a bit, sorta, progressive electronic rock, Lark Live are a total experience. Greater than the sum of its parts. One of those parts is Inge throwing hand shapes, so very Elizabeth Frazer, in a Slayer t-shirt. Another part is Fuzzy rocking out the bass, the guy with the long hands flipping switches, flipping to percussion. Another part is drums under the force of the sounds, Inge rocking her hips as she holds gently her hands on her chest, forcing out operatic scatting, making the emo boys stop questioning their sexuality, to backing tracks. There is something cinematic in the experience. Scanning the full crowd, sweat is dripping down from the ceiling under the low beams. Crisp sound you can feel driving through you make for a more physical than aural performance. If only Lark had melodies, they would be the water shed in electronic Goth, and who would want that.

It’s easy to maintain an Ironic distance. The crowd takes four songs to warm up to them; most of the pre-gig chatter has been on Inge’s hotness. But Lark take no prisoners, you either join or you die (well, leave the room, really). Sure enough there are many takers on the join option and the force of Lark moves through the crowd, moving the crowd. I am standing on the side, close at the speakers, feeling it physically, watching the performance, somehow thinking this is more like a play than a live band, so into it, yet some how not drawn totally in, overtaken by the blast and complexity of pure sounds, standing outside the fourth wall. And then it breaks. Lark leave the stage and the crowd, distant, are now asking, shouting, actually breaking their Goth personas and screaming for more. It makes you wonder why Lark are not reforming permanently. Almost shyly they re-take the stage, the performance it seems is over and Lark relax into just rocking out and they proceed to tear me a new ear hole.

Apples and Oranges

This is not a review on Gazelle's performance in Durban over the weekend. This is a query into the nature of whether Gazelle qualify to be reviewed in this space. Unfortunately, mentioning them merely gives them credence, but they have found their way into this code and must be discussed.

I have often been told that the purpose of this forum, Levi's Original Live Music, is to build up (not to tear down) new and evolving live music in our country. Discussing the nature of anyone's motives in writing, however questionable or self congratulatory they sometimes are, or even why some forms of music are more successful than others, is moot. The point about Levi's Original Live music mag is to write and inform about exciting and original live music. Point stated.

This is why I wonder why Gazelle has even come up in this context. Their instruments are cheap Idi Amin dictator suits, a laptop, djembes and repetitive shouting. I have no problem with electronica, don't misunderstand me. Fifteen years ago I was very into manufactured house music - computer beats, like Gazelle do now. But as a medium I feel it has become lazy and, confined to a solid listenership of white people with no rhythm. I might be wrong. But again I digress.

Before Gazelle come on, an hour and a half late (maybe instrument problems), the venue is filled with banging top-twenty house music, and the crowd is dressed up for a birthday party and bouncing up and down on the dance-floor. When Gazelle start, the only difference is that there is now a guy on stage looking like a b-grade P-Funk cast off, at least thirty years late.

Gazelle are fun, they are jokey and they entertain like the clown at a children's party. Sure, they are fun. I don't even notice when they finish, can't tell the difference
between their music and the repetitive beats that follow.

People I speak to afterward tell me they really liked that middle set from that DJ who was wearing a suit. My compadre that evening says, "This kind of music does nothing to quell the anger in my heart". I think, "I have to get another review in to get paid."

We all have different motives and different tastes. I know, that to my mind, whatever you want to say about the fun factor, the bounce in Gazelle's step, they just don't qualify as original. Come back Felix Laband, all is forgiven.


> from > http://www.levi.co.za/musicmag/Category/Detail/Detail.aspx?ID=1072

Goths are sneaky, man.

Josie Field is not the packaged pop phenom her management want you to think she is. She should be in a death metal band. She should be a founding member of Massive Attack. As she sings and strums Josie Field
betrays an inner life that is way beyond the material she performs.

She starts her set in a sort of deep blues voice, which you realise is not her own once she speaks. Maybe she's tired of this material, of travelling, disappointed in the small turnout at Zulu Lounge. Sad for an excellent venue and sad for Josie, but she warms up anyway, her true voice coming through, a couple of songs in.

Josie is an acoustic pop princess with an average pseudo blues band backing her up. Only half of that sentence is true. Josie reveals herself in choice of her only two covers within a range of materials. Josie is a frustrated goth: the mad kind, the kind that obsesses, the kind you wish would obsess over you.

To see Josie Field stage-diving would be rewarding. To see Josie stuck on a stage with four average musicians who lean on her, not support her, is sad. Maybe they're attached sentimentally, but it must be stated plainly: Josie is much better than her band allows her to be.

The chorus to one of her songs is something like "you've got a hundred and fifty-five crazy ideas coming at you, why'd you always go with the safest one?" Does she realise she's singing to herself.

Don't misunderstand me, Josie even diluted is an awesome night out. But Josie concentrated seems like a more dangerous proposition.