Mojo - The Music Magazine

PUTTING TOGETHER a good bill is a dark art. Some look a bit mad on paper but the proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating.

But day 2 of MOJO’s residency at Brighton’s Old Market was looking like an incongruous kind of pudding, with the instinctive, Billie Holiday-plays-The Raincoats, DIY fabulousness of Peggy Sue & The Pirates kicking off an evening of relatively unreconstructed cro-magnon (in a good way) rocking, and a date with The Hold Steady’s (pictured) mixed-emotion, ecstatic Pabst-riffing oblivion at the end of the line.

But in fact, the distaff duo kicked the evening off in an aptly fun-charged way, oozing charm and charisma as they wailed away on their Blue Peter-style instrumentation (acoustic guitar, melodica, two drums, tambourine nailed to a desk) and though their singing styles are ever-so-fashionably vowelly, there’s a down-home poetry and conviction in their humble oeuvre that makes you think of Young Marble Giants, Throwing Muses and plenty of good things like that.

“We like to think we are a band,” they say on their Myspace page, “but in truth we are just two people.” They call themselves Rosa Rex and Katy Klaw and they are worth looking out for.

As are London-Scots quartet The New York Fund, not yet signed but already fond favourites of the Hold Steady, whose keyboard maestro Franz Nicolay could be seen stage right grinning like an idiot throughout their waistcoat-bedecked set. Classic songwriting in a country-rock vein is their poison, whilst bespectacled lead guitarist Adrian Woodward is surely the Stephen Merchant of blazing Tele-riffing, right down the expression of permanently beatific bemusement. Think the Travis of Good Feeling with lashings of Neil Young grime liberally applied. Visit their myspace for tunes.

Next, a mountainous man-Mongo hoved onto the stage, got behind the kit and played Tomorrow Never Knows drums with thrilling loudness. Mongo’s name is really Peter Rudolfsen, and he heralded the coming of The Lionheart Brothers, whereupon a good deal of wooshing ensued, as the feisty Norwegians indulged the full-on psychsludge portion of their late-’60s inspired pop palette. They made a sound-stew to lose yourself in, and how the heart leaps to see a young man playing a Burns bass.

With the audience in a heavily altered state, it was left to The Hold Steady to deliver the coup de grâce, which they summarily dispatched despite the unasked for beer-bath enjoyed my lead guitarist Tad Kubler’s pedalboard early on (the miscreants were dispatched – and then tried to get back in the venue by switching clothes, which worked… for a second. Nice try guys!).

The test for The Hold Steady was the integration of tunes from their excellent, soon-come fourth album, Stay Positive. But they are old hands, and not to be derailed. New single Sequestered In Memphis instantly graduated into the ranks of the Hold Steady’s now-bulging quiver of instant classics, a typical Craig Finn tale of a boozy liaison going instantly bad. Constructive Summer, the air-punching album opener, nestled happily in beside a crowd-pleasing Massive Nights and the title track Stay Positive – a song that sounded more emphatic here than the poignant and conflicted note of self-encouragement it hits on the album – gave their set perfect closure… Before – of course – they returned to set fire to a gloriously inevitable South Town Girls.

Repeated listens to Stay Positive have convinced this writer that, darker-hued and more variedly paced, it is The Hold Steady hitting a brilliant maturity, and while Finn’s characters grow older, they grow no wiser, and the holes they dig for themselves become only deeper. But tonight we were also reminded that the telepathic, swaying crunch of Kubler, Finn and bassist Galen Polivka is currently unmatched anywhere where guitar rock is revered. Their only fear must be that with Danny Federici’s chair in the E-Street Band now vacant, there may be a tapping-up call from The Boss for the extravagantly moustachioed Franz Nicolay. Stay put Franz, and stay away Bruce, if you know what’s good for you.

The Setlist:

Stuck Between Stations
Swish
Party Pit
Massive Nights
Constructive Summer
Hot Soft Light
You Can Make Him Like You
Sequestered In Memphis
Same Kooks
You Gotta Dance (With Who You Came To The Dance With)
Chips Ahoy
Your Little Hoodrat Friend
Stay Positive
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South Town Girls
Killer Parties

Writer: Danny Eccleston

Sequestered In Memphis is available on itunes (US) from May 20. Stay Positive comes out on July 15.