VINYL Distraction

Summer 2023. By the time you read this another Latitude festival will have blasted away the cobwebs of sleepy ol’ Suffolk. August bank holiday sees Maui Waui festival, if you still fancy bopping in a field, helped along by Dub Pistols and Henge (the latter being a truly deranged spectacle!) Woodbridge Festival of Music & Art sees UK reggae gods Aswad bringing shuddering basslines to the town’s Community Hall in late August and Jazzie B headlining in Elmhurst Park in September. Also, in September, the legendary Dexys play the Ipswich Regent. Too Rye Ay, anybody?

A RISING TIDE LIFTS ALL BOATS…

Maybe it’s the promotion of Ipswich Town, or people ‘discovering’ Suffolk post-lockdown, or something in the water, but there does seem to be a buzz about. I’ve lived here ten years and there certainly seems to be more musical action going on. The Brighten The Corners Festival in June saw scores of people descend on our county town. St Stephen’s Church is the latest addition to its live music scene and has some great acts coming up. Avalanche Kaito, there in August is described as ‘Burkina Faso-raised urban griot and two Belgian noise rockers’. If that doesn’t grab you then I’m afraid you’re reading the wrong article, my friend. Indie rock band Friendship, from Philadelphia, also perform. Or why not try some cosmofunk with Takeshi’s Cashew (pictured) here as part of an eight-country tour. They explore the boundaries of club culture, world music and 70s psychedelia. Peace out.

ALBUM REVIEW: The Soft Boys, ‘Underwater Moonlight’ 1980

Robyn Hitchcock was the main songwriter in this groovy little beat combo. By 1980, punk had been and gone, synths were taking over from guitars, vacuous Eighties pop (Spandau, Duran and the like) was taking over the charts. Who could save us? This lot got a few toes tapping within the alternative music universe back then.

The Softies were a mix of power-pop, mid-Sixties melodies, driving riffs, a tinge of Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd, guitar freakouts, and a smidge of Dylan-esque wordplay. Whimsical, English psychedelia with a knowing edge and a tight rhythm section. Tunes like ‘I Wanna Destroy You’, ‘Kingdom of Love’, ‘Positive Vibrations’, ‘I Got The Hots’, ‘You’ll Have to Go Sideways’, ‘Old Pervert’ - all sound fresh and punchy, even now, (unlike most of what was ‘popular’ back then, ahem). The band XTC had the same influences but had ‘proper’ chart success. The Soft Boys never quite landed, but those who ‘got’ it loved them. Indeed, over decades, Hitchcock has played with members of REM and Led Zeppelin and carved his own idiosyncratic path, caring not a jot for the vagaries of ‘hip’ or ‘cool’. A true original.

Best of the bunch though IMHO is Robyn Hitchcock, coming in September. Why? Well, younger reader … Robyn is part of a dying breed. A man who’s been around the musical block, ploughed his own furrow for decades, made a living through music without ever really having hits. Hitchcock grew up in the 1960s and, although he liked the energy of punk, as he said himself, he couldn’t “pretend The Beatles hadn’t happened”. Thus, his music has bits of everything he absorbed over the years sprinkled liberally through his songs. He is English in a Syd Barret vein, but Bob Dylan has been his lodestar. He doesn’t sound anything like Dylan though and, armed with just a guitar, on paper he can ‘look’ like a folkie singer-songwriter. But, aha, he’s not! Twisted little vignettes, weird time signatures, an English voice by turns almost fey then snarling. Melancholy, dread, absurdist, laugh-out-loud silly, sometimes all in the same song. Go see him and witness a master storyteller.