...the seabear diet...
Seabear, Starving Weirdos.
Tufnell Park Dome. 12sep08.
California’s Starving Weirdo’s begin their debut UK show all in a state of genuflection, all at their knees tinkering with their scattered instruments. It starts ornately, a gentle clang and jangle of bells, before it ramps up to scarg atmospherics, the tones abrasive up-top but oscillating down below, yet on an ambient keel around the middle. It is not a one-note post-rock performance however, as beats come in and crag, as though chiselling at headstones. Violins scrape and slalom, sax and bugle open like imploding chasms as it grows haka-like with rumbling intensity. Their half and hour is like peace and chaos undertaking an epic arm-wrestle, with peace putting up an untypically stoic resistance.
Seabear (above) are far less stark a prospect, their occasional interchange of instruments largely more conventional even with a child’s glockenspiel and an autoharp on their inventory. From Reykjavik they might be, but their folkish-bent spreads it arms beyond their immediate locale, even having a Gram Parsons-like swagger despite their obvious humility. Even their tattoos seem unpretentiously non-sequital and gleeful. When someone heckles that a previous tune had been “too depressing”, singer and guitarist Sindri Mar Sigfusson looks both baffled and concerned that they may have negatively tilted someone’s spirit with their songs. They needn’t worry as, in the most part, while the brass might add a little melancholy, and the overall effect is that of country music for a winterscape, the combination of their instruments act as a big blanket of warmth and charm to protect us from any chill.
Seabear @ MySpace
Starving Weirdos @ MySpace
Tufnell Park Dome. 12sep08.
California’s Starving Weirdo’s begin their debut UK show all in a state of genuflection, all at their knees tinkering with their scattered instruments. It starts ornately, a gentle clang and jangle of bells, before it ramps up to scarg atmospherics, the tones abrasive up-top but oscillating down below, yet on an ambient keel around the middle. It is not a one-note post-rock performance however, as beats come in and crag, as though chiselling at headstones. Violins scrape and slalom, sax and bugle open like imploding chasms as it grows haka-like with rumbling intensity. Their half and hour is like peace and chaos undertaking an epic arm-wrestle, with peace putting up an untypically stoic resistance.
Seabear (above) are far less stark a prospect, their occasional interchange of instruments largely more conventional even with a child’s glockenspiel and an autoharp on their inventory. From Reykjavik they might be, but their folkish-bent spreads it arms beyond their immediate locale, even having a Gram Parsons-like swagger despite their obvious humility. Even their tattoos seem unpretentiously non-sequital and gleeful. When someone heckles that a previous tune had been “too depressing”, singer and guitarist Sindri Mar Sigfusson looks both baffled and concerned that they may have negatively tilted someone’s spirit with their songs. They needn’t worry as, in the most part, while the brass might add a little melancholy, and the overall effect is that of country music for a winterscape, the combination of their instruments act as a big blanket of warmth and charm to protect us from any chill.
Seabear @ MySpace
Starving Weirdos @ MySpace
Labels: review
posted by skif at 12:56 pm
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