Acoustic Ladyland is a great name for this infamous jazz-punk four-piece. It immediately summons up something familiar but different and it invokes a playfulness which suggests they don’t take themselves too seriously. And, as we all know, jazz is music which can take itself very seriously indeed.
Musical fusions are a bit like their food counterparts; some work but most don’t. Anyone can take a couple of styles they like and meld something unappetising. Anyone who remembers Tony Wilson’s awful acid-brass band concoction will surely recoil as if served up a curried haggis. But this works because it doesn’t simply stick two styles together and stand self-consciously ironic next to it. There is genuine passion on the stage. This is music they care about.
Of course, anyone who talks of marrying John Coltrane to John Lydon is going to be a target for ridicule. In Acoustic Ladyland’s case, there isn’t any need for it. It’s mainly instrumental, shards of industrial punk noise with blaring jazz saxophone over the top of it. It could well be a mess, but it isn’t. The thundering, clamouring riffs provide a backdrop for Pete Wareham to play over. But he’s not self-indulgent, and his discipline (in a situation which doesn’t demand it) is what retains the focus. It’s much more interesting than, say, Mogwai.
It’s intense and kaleidoscopic, and at times resembles watching a 70′s movie on acid. The title track from new album ‘Living With A Tiger’ sounds like Madness if they’d hated their parents. It’s genuinely thrilling in parts.
The crowd, for their part, contain as many kids in indie clobber as it does psueds with pointy beards, which is exactly what you’d want in a crossover band. They grow progressively more involved as the set rumbles on. It doesn’t always work, and indeed mid-set they appear to have played the same song twice , so similar are they. But they get going again, powered on by the drums of the fabulously-coiffured Seb Roachford (of Polar Bear fame.)
In the final analysis, they wouldn’t be everybody’s cup of tea, but they’d be a superb festival band to stumble upon. The fact that you neither need to be an avid jazz-lover or an avowed jazz-hater to appreciate them tells you about their worth. They may not have succeeded in launching their own musical genre, but they are an intriguing live band with a commitment to what they do that appeals. Certainly more palatable in this environment than any other.
Filed under: gigs Tagged: | acoustic ladyland, f-ire collective, Gigs in Glasgow, jazz, jazz-punk, Live music, live music in glasgow, live reviews, polar bear
