The Wraiths

The Wraiths
Originally uploaded by fred pipes.

A new venue! New to me, anyway. The West Hill Village Hall is tucked away behind a residential street, not far from Seven Dials. The lady organisers had decked out this delightful urban hall with tablecloths, tea and cakes (so had to pop out to the Co-op to get some BYO booze). They also have a nice line in posters.

Supporting acts were both miserablists, however, and had Lisa and Peter crying into their drinks. The Diamond Family Archive was beardy bloke being miserable on an electro-acoustic guitar and sampler, and Jason Pegg of Clearlake was being miserable on piano. We crave cheery chiaroscuro in the set list: light and shade, light and shade... Spirits were lifted by The Wraiths, a boy girl duo from Bristol who 'put old poems to music' according to their MySpace site. Bought their lovely CD 'This is Charing Cross' for 8 quid. Was drunk in charge of a bicycle on the way home.

Much the same serious crowd were at a Quietcore gig at the Freebutt last Tuesday, which was also mainly slow and miserablist, quite the opposite of a Pog gig. Using my Sherlock Holmes powers of deduction (he was the subject of one of the Catalyst Club talks last Thursday), I deduced that the opener was Andrew Clare from Pine Forest who played a single instrumental ('Tumbling through ne...') that reminds me of a free-form jazz classic I can't remember. He was followed by Davidd Winter singing self-depracating ditties to a guitar so out of tune it sounded like that of a 78rpm delta blues artiste. Peter Moyse was a joy to listen to, but Ginger Lee and her rendition of 'My old man' made it well worth the wait. Only four songs, but it was a free gig after all and the beer was cheap.

If you need cheering up after all this angst, the funniest TV programme at the moment has to be Aardman's Shaun the Sheep with its catchy signature tune, sung in his Northern club crooner voice by Vic Reeves. My favourite episode so far is the one about pizzas, featuring a red double decker bus. I love the farmer's voice and can understand every word he says!