May's WagonWheelMedia Night @ West Street Live will be another International affair. Following April's Anglo-Italian action, this month we play host to Sweden's The Flaming Moes. Joining them will be label mates Buswell from Swindon, and local boys Plush & Plastix plus Dave Sleney complete the line up. Doors open at 7pm and entry is free.
***THE FLAMING MOES***
The original Moes constellation got together for the first time in late spring 2002 to perform at a local event in Skara, Sweden. The rehearsals were sporadic and were executed the day before the actual performance, but since it was far from being the first time the band-members had played together the show went on without any major problems. The first set-list included mostly low tempo, country influenced songs. Only one of them, "loveletters", made it to the first e.p. recording sessions a little than a year later.
The rest of the first e.p. was mostly constituted of more up-tempo songs, like the joyous and harmonica-tinged live favourite "donkey", the fast and furious country outing "some other day" and the rolling piano-beatlesque minor radio hit "hard to get". Then there was the more gospel-influensed ballad "simple ghost" to show just how great the bands’ vocal abilities were. The e.p. was well-received by the Swedish press and got a decent amount of radio time for being a CD released by the band themselves.
The band went on the road with the songs from the e.p. and from the upcoming album that was about to be recorded, dropped a member, and continued touring extensively during the recordings of what was going to be a small disappointment for the band, their first album-release "The Ride". Though the record encapsulated many of the live favourites that the band had been playing with great success, the album fell short on production. Released on newly started Swedish independent record company AKIVAB in June 2004, it sold fairly poor, and did not yield nearly as much air-play and strikingly positive reviews as the previous record had done.
Not disillusioned by this mishap, the band went straight into the studio again, with the somewhat stupid goal of recording as much music as possible. Recording over 20 songs and building almost every one of them completely in the studio, not even rehearsing them beforehand, the project crashed in a cloud of disappointment when the band found both the songs and the production too slight and unsatisfactory.
Playing mostly local gigs for a couple of years, the band decided to try to make a record once again, and in January 2007 they started recording what was to be the second e.p. "We'll Never Forget Where Our Hearts Lie – Love, The Flaming Moes", a six song record, with ambitiously produced soul-pop-rock music, filled with roaring vocal exercises, horn sections, synthesizers and gorgeous band interplay. A bright and up-lifting record, overtly happy on the outside, but at the same time with a lot of underlying content (thus the somewhat ambiguous title...). Hopefully a record that will grow on people. That won’t stop haunting them. A record for everyone.
http://www.myspace.com/theflamingmoes
http://www.theflamingmoes.net
***BUSWELL***
Having performed as a two piece at our July Americana Night last year, Buswell return in full band form as part of their tour with label mates The Flaming Moes. Summing Buswell’s musical style is an enigma in itself. Al Bridges from The Attica Seasons put it best. He said they were like The Magic Numbers, but sadder. And that made them The Tragic Numbers.
In the last year or so, they’ve supported Foals, Amy MacDonald, Frank Turner, Baxter Dury and The Sweeney, whilst completing two full UK tours, have been playlisted on MTV’s “This is Americana”, reached number 1 on the Amazon Hot 100 CD singles chart, and have been heard on XFM and BBC’s radiowaves.
And that goes a little way to showing some of the diversity that’s hidden with what can sometimes appear to be “nice” music. Yet the edge is there. It’s just sometimes sugar coated. Maybe because the reality is that it’s more bitter and intense than a lot of seemingly edgier stuff.
Coming from post-rock, indie & hip-hop backgrounds, Shaun Buswell had been making music in many guises before deciding to settle into a solo project. Content with making music away from the live circuit, the aim was to just record music with heart, and enjoy the freshness and freedom to do whatever he wanted. Samples, beats, breaks and live instruments were all mashed together and singles and albums were made. Then a phone call from a girl working for Sony in the States changed all that, and within a month Buswell was on a plane to LA, looking to put music into movies for Trimark.
When happened over the next year is not a secret, but there’s no real space to properly explain it in print either. Let’s just say everything you can imagine that’s crazy in Hollywood happened to Shaun. Highlife, lowlifes, strippers, engagements, drug abuse, breakups, jailtime, homelessness.
Returning to the UK in 2003, he set about writing an album to document this, and with the assistance of some of the finest musicians from his hometown, Buy Me New Shoes was created, and the band Buswell was reformed, stronger and fuller. And the album is testament to this. It’s a folk album with a rock’n’roll tale, but with the bravado stripped away. Told through the eyes of an intelligently funny but sensitive man who has a free-spirited approach to a unique compositional style.
Since the first single (Let Me Love)’s release, Buswell have been busy touring twice, recording two new albums and have generally made a nuisance of themselves. They’re touring again in 2008 and we look forward to them visiting Sheffield again.
http://www.myspace.com/buswell
http://www.buswellmusic.com
***PLUSH & PLASTIX***
"Plush and Plastix were originally a club curcuit double act.Famous locally only inside their heads, they toured the fair lands of south yorkshire in search of warm cyder with ice on top and cheap mobile discohalls, hawking their lush skiffle to any muther lover who was suppin ale at the local working man's club.
Many minutes passed into the past and the P+P boys grew weary of their escapades, fat with lager and wrinkled with fags they crept and crawled up to the attic and slept for a thousand seconds. Whilst asleep the two visionaries dreamed a shared dream of a land where no one was held by the shackles of supermarkets and everyone lived a fair ol' life of ease.....
...When they awoke the room was dark, except for the glow of a single green LED eminating from the corner of the room. Once pressed, like a little green on/off button, a shard of light 3000 times the size of your average shard exploded into vision. The room was aglow with a billion different colours and noises and when the static finally hummed to a halt there it was...the majesticaly stanced monolith otherwise known as "Paul", who played the bass upside down with his left hand and all that, emerged from the fuzz.
With months of training and physical movement the amazing "Paul" soon whipped the boys into shape and into a frenzy! They honored him with the title..."The Earl"..and worshipped him with secret strongbow showers, star jumps and late night karaoke sessions in Joe's front room.
One sunny sunday afternoon a knock came at the attic door and a strange sound could be heard through the smoke and fumes rising above the dirge in the room."What could it be?" thought the gang"What is this sound monster?where did i put my can?" A dark silhouette, as they tend to be dark, swayed before them..."I am Mr Jiggs"the sound said,.."I have been sent from my house to save you all from the depths of this status quo style boogie woogie and into the light of the future."
The fray of giggles and analogue farts could be heard meters and meters afar for years and years to come and the lads shone with a sheen never before gained by any oils previously known to mankind upon application.
And so it was ,..And so it shall be"
A Psychedelic mish mash of indie guitar and pop sounds. No historical inaccuracies were harmed in the compilation of this preview.
http://www.myspace.com/plushandplastix
***DAVE SLENEY***
Formally frontman of The Enquiry Dave Sleney has returned to his acoustic roots and mellowed out the country tinged indie pop sound of his former band just a little. You can still expect to hear some of the old favourites such as Black Velvet Day and Delicate Eyes, which you can hear as recorded by The Enquiry at
www.myspace.com/enquiry. New material has since been written, and you can probably expect the odd cover in his own unique style such as Bruce Springsteen's 'The River' which he performed at our Bruce Springsteen Tribute Night last year. Solo recordings are in the pipeline with more new songs on the way too.
http://www.myspace.com/davesleney
Facebook event page:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=12192468538