Chamfer + Alanga + Film Noir @ The Wheatsheaf, 02.04.04
OK, confessions: this was a last minute decision and if I�d gone along with the guys who convinced me to go, I�d have missed half of Chamfer as well as all the support bands. As it is, I arrived somewhere near the start of Alanga�s set, completely missing Film Noir. Sorry guys, nothing personal.
Mind you, I did think for a few minutes I�d walked into a strange parallel universe, with free popcorn for all and a sunny, jangly sound filling a room lit by strange light refractions. Agular are definitely sunny and jangly, but sadly a little repetitive. The highlight was between songs, when they described the next track as being �about all the little towns and villages around Reading. Because no one ever writes songs about them�. Quite. Certainly no one has ever written a ten-minute African dance tune about them before, probably for a good reason. �Phone in Well� (�call your boss - tell him you feel fine, but it�s a nice day so you�re not coming in�) has a great sentiment and some nice lyrics, but sounds identical to the one about little towns around Reading. Hmm... Thing improve during the penultimate track, when they put down the guitars and bass and start to jam a little tribal rhythm with some congas and assorted hand drums which just happen to be lying around. It�s a great little interlude with a great groove, but then it�s back into the song about little towns around Reading. Or was it a reprise of �Phone in Well�? But hey, there�s a bunch of folk dancing like loons around the front and if I�d had a couple more pints in me I�d have joined them. Just a shame they only have one song and it�s 30 minutes long...
Another handful of popcorn later and Chamfer amble onstage. I hadn�t seen them before, but I�d seen Nick playing with Smilex doing their acoustic slot at the Verbal Kink/AllYouMiss gig a week or two ago, so it was nice to hear a familiar track to start the night. �Eyes and Everything� kicks in with an insistently repetitive guitar riff and launches into a huge chorus, with sweet harmonies and everything. To start with, though, the band seemed to be running in only second or third gear and it took a few more songs before they really perked up and the gig took off. By halfway through the set they were really hitting their stride.
It�s an interesting combination of instruments: relatively normal - guitar, bass, keys, drums - but the tablas and assorted shakey Indian instruments are a great addition to the sound and there is undoubtedly a huge Indian influence coursing through their music. Someone said to me before they started that they sounded the way Kula Shaker should have done. I�m sure Chamfer would hunt down and kill that person if they only had their address, but it�s not a million miles from the truth, were it not for the fact that I�d pay for Chamfer over Kula Shaker any day. Kula Shaker did lumpen, psychedelic pastiches of Indian music and picked the bits that sounded trendy, whereas Chamfer have fully intertwined the melodic structures into the music to the point where half the time you wouldn�t know they were there. The execution leaves you in no doubt that this is not just the bastard offspring of Led Zeppelin, too much cheap hash and a night down the Dehli Brasserie. Really good stuff, even if they did run out of songs and had to play several again by way of an encore - which was great, because �Eyes and Everything� was even better the second time round.
By Tim Lovegrove.
|