missing dust jacket

hard-fi @ camden electric ballroom

minifig and i went to see hard-fi at the camden electric ballroom today. because minifig and i are such seasoned gig-goers, we’ve becoming increasingly blasé about seeing the latest quick bright things, so although we always arrive early, if at all possible, we go and bag a seat at the back near the bar and the loos. what a pair of old farts. leccy ballroom has a handy balcony above the stage, with its own bar and easy access to the bathroom, with bar stools and a table-football thingy that directly faces the stage. you can see the crowd mosh away whilst sipping your lager on a bar stool like lady muck, and after a long day at work I LOVE IT!

support from director and distophia (pronounced dystopia -what a stupid spelling, anyone trying to look up the band will have immensetrouble). director were actually very good, but fit too well into the militant art-rock style of editors and franz ferdinand – and familiarity breeds contempt, or at the very least, boredom. distophia were like poor-man’s brummie nine black alps mixed with a flavouring of old-school grunge. they were okay – better perfomers than director, but overall, i don’t think we made any great discoveries.

Boasting section

Bands I have seen in support slots:

Franz Ferdinand (genius – you knew they were going to be HUGE)
Bloc Party (okay-ish, very student garage band)
The Magic Numbers (sublime – again….it was only a matter if time)
Beck & DJ Shadow (supporting The Verve at Haigh Hall – class gig - with fireworks!)
Tom Vek (dull, supporting Graham Coxon, who was also later joined on stage by Pete Doherty)
Kid Carpet (bloody genius – go see him Friday 28th at the Barfly)
Antony from A & Johnsons performing with Lou Reed – wondrous strange
The Subways – aw, they’re so cute
The Mystery Jets / Eastern Lane – ubiquitous support bands of whom I am very fond

Dude, I am cooooooool.
(I am blatantly not)

as minifig points out on his blog, the dj between sets was boogie-licious! i appreciate a proper live dj, mixing up music properly, as opposed to just the same old CD repeated. the set was carefully chosen - the clash, the specials, nice dub beats, all very fitting for a hard-fi gig. the band did their time coming onstage though – it was nearly an hour between distophia and hard-fi, and when they did, middle eastern holiday wasn’t that good – bit rushed, bit slurred – but thankfully, things improved quickly from there.

when i first heard hard-fi’s album stars of cctv i thought it was brilliant. then I listened to it some more and found it flawed. but returning to it, the things i disliked about hard-fi are the things that make them great. their music is deceptively simple. they sing about crap jobs, all-night drinking, young offender’s institutes, drug addiction, mischief-making and all-round laddish bhevaiour. the album at times feels like a daily-mail front-page headline [i hate the f**king daily mail], at other times a slightly ridiculous exaggeration of urban estate-life. but its also incredibly genuine – it hits the nerve of anyone under the age of 30, living in britian, working 9am-5pm, with a penchant for pubs and flashes of behaviour that are two steps away from an ASBO (anti-social behaviour order for those outside the UK). Anyone young with half a heartbeat and a fluctuating bank balance will - or should - stick this CD on and feel a little bit more awake and smile heartily.

watching a crowd of people, screaming the “No! No!” chorus in cash machine, followed by the gloriously punk music-hall chorus “There’s a hole in my pocket, my pocket, my pocket!” made me feel more connected to the gangs of miserable whey-faced commuters i join each day on my way to and from work. i felt happy to be young, despite the fact i was shattered from work. i had spent the train journey to camden locked in a southwest train carriage full of boozed-up teenagers in ben sherman shirts and mini-skirts, drinking neat vodka and screaming joyously. it was slightly irritating at the time, but by the end of the gig, i couldn’t help but think the state of youth today isn’t so bad – it’s riotously awake and stupid and exactly how it should be. hard-fi are rambunctious, noisy and boisterous. young, dumb and full of .... it’s a privileged position to be in.

hard-fi’s d.i.y. quality is impressive – the entire album was produced by the boys themselves and its arguably one of the best produced albums all year - little bit dirty, quite flashy at times, but has escaped the death-kiss of over-production. unlike kt tunstall, who might be okay, i can't tell, because a vampire appears to have sucked the life-blood out of her radio-friendly dribble.

hard-fi's oh-so-english, nostalgic dub and reggae tinges snatched from the clash and the specials gives the music a real edge - it's the music your cooler older brother listened to, the music hanging around when you were a kid. This, matched with the slightly cheesy, sweaty disco jubilance of tracks like gotta reason and hard to beat all help to take you from your seat on the commuter train to a trashy club on vodka and red-bull. this is truly uplifting head-space to be in.

plus, these hard-fi boys are mini-street poets. okay, so it doesn't always work, but each song has a little narrative running through it – broken relationships with nasty girls, an amazing one-night stand transformed into a glorious love affair, the pop-opera of drugs to self destruction that is feltham is singing out, money issues exacerbated by an unplanned pregnancy – stars of CCTV is a garish comic-strip of youth that makes you want to drink, dance and brawl. like a gorgeous overblown episode of ibiza uncovered mixed with a spaghetti western hard-fi fulfill all your saturday night needs.

we need bands like hard-fi – stop all the interior musing, the “clever” samples and “ironic” lyrics for just five minutes and have a right rare knees-up people! even if you are an old fart, like me and minifig...

and i still maintain, living for the weekend is the worst song on the entire album. but the cheeky little piano solo on stars of cctv makes up for it

posted by raspberry beret @ 11:20:00 PM