This Week's Live Picks: 5th - 12th December
Posted on: 05 Dec 2016It's a Glaswegian invasion this week as Frightened Rabbit and Primal Scream descend on the Trinity and O2 Academy respectively, with the latter also playing host to Kate Tempest and Gruff Rhys's Super Furry Animals. Fear not though tech-heads, as Berlin don Rødhåd (above) returns to Motion for a night curated by Crack Magazine. Feast your ears.
Super Furry Animals - O2 Academy, 06.12
Welsh odd-balls Super Furry Animals set themselves apart from the rest of the bands comprising the mid-90s post-alternative movement, through their eccentric appropriation of eclectic genres and their willingness to write songs in their native tongue. Fronted by the utterly peculiar Gruff Rhys, the band’s stance has swung wildly from the left-field techno outfit at their inception to the guitar-toting line-up which proffered the classic album Fuzzy Logic, whose twentieth birthday is celebrated by this tour. Whatever it is, it certainly won’t be dull.
Primal Scream - O2 Academy, 07.12
The progression of Primal Scream through the ‘80s and ‘90s is almost entirely attuned with the mainstream flow of contemporary popular music. Formed in Glasgow, 1982 when frontman Bobbie Gillespie was still drumming for The Jesus and Mary Chain, the group initially specialised in hard rock before turning coats after the dawn of the acid house revolution to create some of the happiest tunes of the following decade, à la The Happy Mondays. Indeed magnus opus Screamadelica has endured more keenly than any album in the canon of Shawn Ryder and co. Expect tracks from this and latest LP Chaosmosis on this tour.
Kate Tempest - O2 Academy, 08.12
Kate Tempest has whipped up a storm in recent years with the release of two albums of incendiary material which always teeters between rap and poetry. Sophomore effort Let Them Eat Chaos, unfurled this year, is a savage piece of social criticism, taking aim squarely at the injustices and discrepancies latent in 21st century London. Add to these the improvised rants with which she intersperses her poems and you have an enthralling live proposal, which is definitely worth catching at her O2 gig this week.
Frightened Rabbit - Trinity, 09.12
Their home city is pretty much all Frightened Rabbit share with their Glaswegian forebears Primal Scream. Altogether more melancholic than Gillespie et al, the five albums that they have released since 2006’s debut Sing The Greys has showcased a wealth of majestic indie, grand in its scale and sweeping in its grandeur. The latest of these records, this year’s Painting Of A Panic Attack, has been rabidly-received by critics and fans alike, with tracks from the record (happily) set to form the majority of the setlist for this UK tour.
Crack Magazine Curates - Motion, 10.12
Bristol’s coolest magazine curate a bill to befit their reputation, as they bring an exothermic tirade of techno to a chilly winter Bristol night. Flame-headed Serbian Tijana T will vie with the incendiary Avalon Emerson, before Daniel Avery cools things right down again. At the top of the bill is the returning Rødhåd (pictured), who comes back to Motion almost a year on from the Berliner’s triumphant closing of the skate-park’s New Year’s Day party - if that night was anything to go by, the beats will be deep, powerful and melancholic. Christmas come early.
Article by:
An ardent Geordie minus the accent, Sam seemingly strove to get as far away from the Toon as possible, as soon as university beckoned. Three undergraduate years at UoB were more than ample time for Bristol (as it inevitably does) to get under his skin, and so here he remains: reporting, as Assistant Editor, on the cultural happenings which so infatuated him with the city. Catch him at sam@365bristol.com.
