So I’ve gone and drunk far too much tea for the second day in a row and am wide awake at half two in the morning. Yesterday I spent the early hours creating this mix, which I uploaded onto Soundcloud;
Last Friday I wandered along to a spectacular gig, this was to see The Miserable Rich at St Brides. I have meant to see The Miserable Rich for a long long time and whenever they come to Liverpool something seems to happen that means I don’t get to see them, so when the opportunity came along last Friday, I was free from work for a bit, one needs a break every-so-often, though actually over the last few weeks I’ve been very busy not doing work (that’s hit home this weekend, got a lot of work to get done for next week) anyway that’s beside the point. So I ambled up to the church on Percy Street, a couple of mini bottles of wine in my jacket pocket, it was bring your own, which I liked, you don’t have to pay extortionate prices for a pint like at the other venues in town, as I entered the church it occurred to me how good this place was as a venue. I’ve always liked churches as gig venues as the Arts Center back home is a church (according to local legend it is where the real Humpty Dumpty, a cannon in the English Civil War, fell from the church tower) and that places holds a lot of good gig memories for me. Anyway, as I walked in the support bands had started to play, I missed the first support, Fallen Leaf, and had walked in half way through the set of Married to the Sea, a local Liverpool band, their sort of Indie-twee folkiness is really interesting, it is quite refreshing to see this sort of indie around, its the sort that makes me remember why I like music, and why I am now so obsessed with it. Here is a short and sweet stop motion animation video for one of their songs ‘Quite a Spell’
You can listen to more of their music on their soundcloud and you can buy their music here Oh and one of the best bits of their set was when they did a cover of In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, one of my favourite songs ever, and it was a brilliant cover.
The next support were Sparkwood & 21, a Liverpool folk band, who are vaguely reminiscent of REM, but with a lot more mandolin. You can listen to their stuff on good old fashioned myspace here. The song of theirs that I really recommend is Shadows, the lilting mandolin, the floaty vocals, the way it grows, its great.
The final support prior to The Miserable Rich was the somewhat surreal Alabaster DePlume, during his first couple of songs I was wondering what on earth is this, it appeared to be a man with a guitar wailing into the microphone, but as the set went on I became more and more endeared to him, and that grew to a peak when he played a song called Sorry, and that grabbed me, the darkly amusing lyrics suited the gig very well. He also played a song that is a eulogy to shoes, funnily enough called Shoes. He intermingled songs with ghost stories and really got us in the mood for the gothic night ahead.
The latest album by The Miserable Rich was recorded in what is supposed to be one of the most haunted places in Britain, Blickling Hall, Norfolk, the ancestral home of Anne Boleyn, the album is filled with stories of ghosts and ghouls, and sex, the opening track Laid Up In Lavender is particularly raunchy. So on that Friday evening the band were introduced by Alabaster DePlume recounting a ghost story about Anne Boleyn with the band backing it up with monk-like harmonies before launching into their set. Throughout the set lead singer James de Malplaquet told the stories behind the songs, On a Certain Night, their current single is about de Malplaquet’s first love being possessed by an evil spirit, True Love is a tale he was told by his father about ghosts in a French house he was stationed in during the war. One night his father returned back to this house and thought he heard a knock on the door and footsteps on the roof, and then they stopped. Some of the men had been out drinking, thinking that this was one of them falling off the roof he ran outside and there was no-one there. Later he was told of the story that this house had been the house of a baron (or someone like that, I can’t remember exactly) and his daughter had fallen in love with a peasant, her father not letting this romance blossom, stopped it and now every night the peasant returns and the girl walks around the roof. Or so they say. At least the story went something like that, I think. All these ghostly yarns tinged with tragedy and lost loves.
The miserable rich – under glass from medienjargon on Vimeo.
My favourite of the songs on the new album, and played here, was Ringing the Changes, a truly beautiful track. The elegant piano, the subtle cello, and the amazing lyrics make this song. The lyrics make you feel warm inside, I know that’s a bit sentimental, but really they do, they remind you that you have to get on with things, go through ‘hell and bad weather,’ the layers build up and the song crescendos, nothing and then a sole guitar and de Malplaquet come in, soon joined by piano. If I dare to read far too much into this song, it is like he is carrying on after the crescendo, like weathering the storm. Too analytical? Maybe, but this song is just so good. I have already incorporated it into playlists and listened to it on repeat.
A particular highlight was when the band got off the stage and played in the aisle, the tinkling of a music box signaled that they were going to play Boat Song. I can’t really explain how it was, hairs-standing-up-on-the-back-of-the-neck good is how I would describe it. I couldn’t stop smiling by this point, so very happy. I left the gig new album and poster in hand almost skipping as I walked away from the church. I love a good gig, and that was not just good, it was bloody brilliant. You can get their music from their website here, and you should definitely do that, I promise, Cubs Honour!, that you will not be disappointed at all.
