Looking back on it, I still can't believe how good it was. It's Sunday morning now, doing a Wordsworth kind of recollection in tranquillity, tapping away at the keyboard with a blackbird in the sunshine outside and the morning's electrical storms blowing away down the Wharfe Valley.
It was Leeds on Thursday night, with the students all gone away and streets round the University deserted. The Packhorse is an old fashioned corner pub with a famously small upstairs room where prodigiously artistic and sometimes very well know acts negotiate with the audience as to how much of the room they get to set up in. 60 people (half of whom could be in one night's bands) are enough to make it seem very full. There's no back stage area and nowhere to store gear.
And here I am, jumping off the bus in time to miss ADAM KNEW EVE who were added at short notice to upgrade the generous three band line-up into a Festival Scale four band event. For three quid. Apparently ADAM KNEW EVE did 20 fabulous one minute songs.
The advertised openers .LAURA AUDIO. (punctuation included) are singer/guitarist Kevin McGonnell of well-respected AND NONE OF THEM KNEW THEY WERE ROBOTS, bass player Jennifer Chubb and drummer Alvin Lee Ryan. Their tumbling stuttering guitar chords and audibly luscious bass lines are an absolute joy. There's a freshness and spontaneity in the three-piece sound, with inventive open drumming and lots of eye contact between the still excited members of this fresh as a daisy band. Jenn looks a bit like the orchestral cello player she seems to be, all neat and washed. Kev looks night-weary Lou Reed hound dog dangerous. Alvin plays the drums. Ecstatic moment (it's still only 9 o clock!) is "Hey Sailor" off their sraight-from-rehearsals demo CD. Kev is definitely a manic punk thrasher when he wants to be, but he seems to know about beautiful guitar changes, and he's found a foil in Jenn the Musician who just pours cream on the peaches. What a start.
The indomitable Whiskas (one of a cadre of behind-the-scenes apparatchiks on the burgeoning Leeds scene) is astonished to find that things are running on time, and we have one of those change-over moments where half the audience seems to move into the stage area. It's eight-piece ELLA GURU up next. You don't need to know where they come from, it'll take the rest of the review to clear away your preconceptions.
Let's see if I can set some conceptions. To start with, five of them are sitting down. Two of the chairless are bass players: Nik Kavanagh has a vocal mike and a bass guitar; Bob Picken has an acoustic double bass, with a bow in his hand and a harmonica in his pocket. Also in the performing area there's at least one music stand and, more shocking than anything else, they're all bloody well smiling. Personally I'm in a bit of a lather because there's also a PEDAL STEEL GUITAR.
So, with the thrill of discovering .LAURA AUDIO. at such an early stage still tingling, my expectations are racing ahead. This looks like it could be pretty good.
How wrong can you be? They weren't good at all. They were sublime. ELLA GURU are neither fast nor bulbous (go check Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica) they are blissfully and exuberantly musical.
John Yates does most of the introductions and carries the burden of each song in a richly gentle singing voice. He plays an antique looking f hole Epiphone, plucked finger style. But while he is a focus when needed, there's so much else to watch and hear in this band. At times through the set it's possible to spot up to four more voices in action, solo or in harmony.
Right next to John is the luminously beautiful Kate Walsh, whose singing voice outshines even the permanent smile that she's wearing tonight. Next along is Nick Kellington who does nervous energy on behalf of every else in the band. While they're all mellow and serene, Nick sits on the edge of his seat, leans forward and fidgets like the naughty kid at school. His cornet playing is like a ghost from the Mexican desert playing its last. He's also a singer and multi-instrumentalist. But the band forgot his ukulele tonight (I suspect this might not be the first time). So he has to do drinking beer at one stage. Scott Marmion quietly tends his exquisite pedal steel lines. Chris Burwood busies himself between guitar and keyboards and Bren Moore keeps it all together from the right back position (no drum riser tonight!)
The music is played to be heard. Eight people should be a problem, but it just isn't. ELLA GURU love the sounds they make, and they want to hear them as much as we do. It's like a chamber orchestra. No conductor is needed, nor sound engineer fighting with levels. They're using their ears so we can enjoy ours. The songs are reminiscent of the wide-open spaces of thoughful America. Calexico, Yo La Tengo, Lambchop (very Lambchop) are points for reference but not imitation. John is inclined to an American singing voice, and there's a great song about "Little Bobby Dylan" that also mentions the Velvet Underground and "On the Road". But American culture is what we live in, so why not? The gentleness of Reindeer Section's Celtic whispers are also evident. A song called (or just known as) "Wonderful" has a jazz like feel, edging towards Kurt Wagner soulboy resonance too. "August" (I'm plucking these names from notes written in a state of some excitement) has that archetypal Mexican cornet line and heart melting pedal steel phrases.
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So, with a rapturous audience insisting on and getting an encore, are LITTLE JAPANESE TOY upstaged? They are. "Thanks to Ella Guru. They were much better than us" says Jamie, and he means it. But, charmingly and typically he's wrong. ELLA GURU were great, but LITTLE JAPANESE TOY are unique and perfectly evolved for the world they are creating for themselves. Tonight they're a four piece, with a keyboard player wandering somewhere in Turkey. And they're a bit special.
The centre of gravity is baggy shorts and beards hyperactive Jamie Lockhart who spends most of his stage time in a squall of personal delight at the very thought of being up there making some great noises with really cool equipment. He even has a keyboard that he can take of the stand and whack against his generous thighs for the sonic hell of it (possibly because the owner is in Turkey?). As he counts in his parts his excited twitching and grooving about is entirely self generated, there's no way this is an act for the audience. He just loves it. And he kind apologises for not being as good as he wants to be. Which is a laugh. He's terrific.
And so it is with LITTLE JAPANESE TOY. Jamie's main instrument is the fiddle, and he manages to break two strings on the rock crescendo part of the penultimate number. But it just doesn't matter. The whole band play sizzling electro bleep tunes and lush chords with falsetto harmonies and total commitment. Being with them in the same room is a joyful experience. You might think "Grandaddy" or whoever else you've heard who are bit like this. But that's up to you. Little Japanese Toy are a one off bunch of supergeeks who have a terrific ear for the full range of musical bits and bobs – texture, dynamics, harmony, tone colour, rhythm, tempo, melody, dynamics – the whole kitchen sink full. And they give it all a good talking to. They are well worth their top of the bill spot – and with ELLA GURU (all eight) still grinning like loons as they sit on the carpet right at the front that is definitely saying something.
I loved their second CD on Star Harbour (I never heard the first), and they play it's opening track "Calling Disused Numbers" for us tonight. And they do play it with style and accomplishment. But them being here just lifts it all to another level. While Badly Drawn Boy and the Beta Band and Belle and Sebastian have mucked around with the idea of being gauche and inexpert in performance, LITTLE JAPANESE TOY give off the genuine raw state-of-shock on stage of people not quite ready to go, but they do it with a deep down musical competence that they just can't leave in the style lounge. They're good. Like drunken waiters rushing across the restaurant with a pile of teetering dishes, there's a mighty inward cheer of excitement when they never quite drop them.
LITTLE JAPANESE TOY are also James Mabbett on guitar and vocals, Bob McDougall on bass and Alex Wibrew on drums. If some bastard in the industry doesn't trip them up, they should be shouting "HELLO MUM!" from a TV screen near you in eighteen months or so. In the meantime, their latest recorded work is "Fingermouse", one half of a split 7 inch single with the preposterous les Flames!
So, on reflection Dorothy - £3 (not including bus fare) was money well spent. Sorry you couldn't make it.
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