O season of mists and mellow fruitlessness. It's autumn, and the permanent crankiness that comes with perpetual cold and damp has set in. I'm feeling melancholic and broody so I'm in the mood for some haunting and beautiful mope-rock, please. I like seeing bands "in the round" at the Spitz; you can sit down to the side of the stage, candlelight sending shadows shooting up into the Victorian rafters so you feel like you're at an old fashioned barndance.
Horsebox, despite being two blokes with guitars, are not your average folk duo. For a start, one of them is playing a noisy electric guitar, and they make dark, melancholic music, somewhere between a spaghetti western and a demented Russian folksong. This is perfect for my sulk. Except when they try to be witty - songs about Superman and phone sex start to grate a bit.
I have this theory about the names of British bands. It's like those Celtic and Saxon placenames which mean the exact opposite what you'd expect, so "Downs" really go up. Clearly, in England, "Gold" is a synonym for DULL AS MILK. Lowgold. Goldrush. Goldplay. Golden Virgins are no exception to this rule. It's bog-standard indie roots rock by numbers for people who learned C&W from a Sparklehorse record. There's only one moment which raises my attention level above a snore, a new wave number called "I Am A Camera" that fuses squelchy Cars-style keyboards and a 'My Sharona' beat. But then they ruin it by turning into Sunderland's answer to Weezer, complete with ironic Madonna covers.
The stage is cleared for His Name Is Alive, all the equipment moved aside to provide a sparse, claustrophobic setting for HNIA's sparse, claustrophobic music.
I've been following HNIA with more than a detached interest for some time now. (Warning: some of the following may or may not be true. -ed.) See, about ten years ago, Warren DeFever - or Warn as he's calling himself now - shagged my sister, back when he played bass for a now-defunct cowpunk band called Elvis Hitler. Warren encouraged my sister and I to get a 4-track recording studio, and we started exchanging tapes. We recorded spooky teenage angst on my dad's 12-string guitar, which he laughingly called "Gothic Folk," and he sent us back haunting, textured soundscapes that sounded vaguely like a hypoglycaemic This Mortal Coil.
Flashback to the present, and more than a decade later, after experimenting with everything from dodgy goth and shoegazing to Beach Boys pastiche and cosmic free jazz, HNIA are still making Gothic Folk. Clearly uncomfortable onstage, Warn sits off to one side, perched on top of his amp, coaxing blues riffs from an acoustic guitar, tapping his feet and rocking his head to the music like the banjo player from Deliverance. On the other side of the stage lurks the dreaded free jazz saxophonist. And in the centre, is a tiny black woman with an enormous voice, tottering precariously on high heels.
Pippa comes from the Detroit gospel belter school of R&B: never sing one note where ten will suffice, until every syllable is stretched into a surreal gargle. It's a vocal style favoured by the Whitneys and Britneys of the world, usually smothered in over-produced cheese, but the effect, ringing out over HNIA's spooky, minimal, folk-gospel accompaniment, is striking. Whether she lends significance and soul to Warn's Southern Gothic psycho-social dissection of failed relationships, or whether this is another white, suburban indie-boy's coercion of black, urban authenticity is anyone's guess. But as her voice tremoloes "This world is not my home, I'm just passing through..." over the gentlest of weeping guitars, it sends a shiver down my spine.
