LIVE music photography

Despite being a band that essentially consists of one man, Neil Hannon has never actually toured solo before, or at least not since hitting the big time. Normally he’s seen on stage backed with anywhere up to 35 players.  But – for his latest tour Hannon has unexpectedly gone back to basics; it’s just him, his piano and his guitar.

Hannon often comes across quite uneasy at the beginnings of concerts, taking a few songs to really get into the swing of things, but despite the added pressure of performing solo, he seems completely at ease at London’s rather intimate Tabernacle in Notting Hill. Things begin with a new number from upcoming release Bang Goes the Knighthood; it’s a clever little ditty called The Complete Banker. No prizes for guessing what that one’s about.

By stripping down the songs down to their basic elements, Hannon has the opportunity to show off just how well constructed his compositions are. Songs such as The Frog Princess are hard to imagine without their indulgent orchestrations, but by stripping them down to the basics, he proves just what a smart and skilled writer he is; each song can stand on its own, stripped down, without the big budget arrangements.
If there is a fault with his work often it can be too deliberate. When choosing to write about a certain subject, his choices can be too obvious, and his lyrics too predictable. New single, At The Indie Disco, is very much in this vein. It distinctly lacks the spontaneity of old; certain lines you can guess, and references to popular songs and performers are too carefully chosen to give the songs cult credibility. It’s just too planned and strategically delivered.

Hannon is at his best when he’s being clever. Although this has put people off his music (there’s no denying he’s a smart arse) it’s what’s always separated him from his peers. The other new material fairs better; I Like is based on such as simple idea, it’s hard to believe no one’s come up with it before. Can I Stand Upon One Leg is a funny, music hall-esque ditty, that gives him the chance to show off his party trick – the ability to hold a single high note for a ridiculously long amount of time.

Tonight, Hannon proves himself to be a great entertainer, able to captivate through both his music and his banter. Of course it always helps when you have a select small audience of people who are extremely well disposed towards you. He manages to put in at least one track from every album, making room for a few lesser played singles, Everyone Knows (Except You) and The Pop Singers Fear Of The Pollen Count. He also makes room for Duckworth Lewis favourite Jiggery Pokery and a cover of MGMT’s Time To Pretend. He fluffs up a number of times, but makes a good joke of it, keeping the audience very much on his side, using them as a prompt during one big slip-up.

For hardcore fans like myself who’d seen Hannon perform quite a few times before, this evening provided something refreshingly different. And with him at his most charming, we couldn’t have really asked for much more.

The Somerset House festival shows have fast become a fixture in the London summer scene. This year’s line up of eclectic artists range from Florence & the Machine, Soul 2 Soul and The Divine Comedy demonstrated the diversity of the festival now in its fourth year.

I have long been a fan of Air’s records however until today had not seen them live. In my opinion most electronic bands tend to fail to recreate studio wizardry live which can sound two dimensional especially at an open air concert. However the duo from Versailles put on an impressive show in what is arguably London’s grandest concert setting.
Air arrive wearing the campest white trousers which are so tight they would have made Freddie Mercury blush thankfully as their performance is somewhat static they avoid any embarrassing situations. Jean-Benoît Dunckel the midget of the band performs the entire set playing two or three keyboards at a time looking like a latter day Jean Michelle Jare. Nicolas Bodin provides the rhythmic elements of the set playing bass as well as an array of other instruments. Interestingly enough there are no guest performances with Bodin and Dunckel providing all of the vocals.

Also most of the set is from their excellent latter albums such as “Love 2” and “Pocket Symphony” however they include a smattering of old favourites such as “Kelly Watch the Stars” and their best known song “Sexy Boy”.  However the most impressive track is “Tropical Disease” from their latest album. It’s a lush cinematic 60’s inspired track which could have been lifted from a Luis Buñuel film. Overall the show was surprisingly good and since then I have rediscovered some of their lesser known work.

Written by John Rahim

Probably the worst thing for a gig photographer is photographing artists in seated arenas without photo pits, and when you photograph older artists the problem gets worse. I’m wise to the issue now and avoid any AOP nutters however there is always some poor unassuming shooter who gets verbal abuse from the diehard fans.

This is the first time that Al Green and Michael McDonald have performed in the UK and whilst I normally don’t bother photographing the support bands I made an effort to see Michael McDonald who became one of the most distinctive singers to come out of the Californian Scene in the late 70’s. As he was only on for around 45 minutes he didn’t waste any time getting stuck into the classics such as “I keep Forgetting” and “No Looking Back” despite looking like a retired Father Christmas Michael McDonald still has the same fantastic baritone voice which sounds as soulful as he did 30 years ago.

Al Green, probably the finest soul singer of his generation, is showing no signs of slowing down.  At 64 the Reverend Al Green is still going strong with his well honed dance moves and showmanship. His set start off with him handing out bunches of roses a tradition which started in the 70’s. The only problem now is that doing this at the O2 required him to hurl the roses at the various women jumping up and down in the front rows!

As usual many of the crowd came for the classic tracks and they weren’t disappointed, with the likes of ‘Let’s stay together’ and ‘I’m so tired of being alone’ being played with such soul and heart. Despite a back catalogue spanning some 35 years he also played some newer songs. This tends to be the cue for the audience to take a comfort break, have a cigarette or check if the kids are ok. However the band was so blisteringly good that virtually no one left their seats. He ended the set with a medley from The Four Tops, Temptations and Otis Reading which delighted the audience.

Regular readers of my blog will have noticed that I have been neglecting it of late. Life has been very hectic for me and whilst the summer months tend to be quite quiet on the gig front I have been quietly beavering away with corporate and digital work.

One gig though that I went to a couple of months ago which is worthy of a mention is The Gaslight Anthem who sold out the Brixton Academy. Like many others I picked up on the band around a year ago shortly after releasing their album “59 Sound”. Although the references to early Springsteen are all too apparent the album carved a distinctive niche from the other American bands who have gained popularity over the past few years.
The Gaslight Anthem are part of a rich tradition of New Jersey punk bands.  And their new album American Slang is the band’s third album. On their two previous albums, Sink or Swim and The ‘59 Sound, they created their own world populated by low life and tramps who could be characters straight out of The Wire or Sopranos (although neither were shot in New Jersey). Bands from New Jersey have continually been the victims of jokes by their trendier New York rivals however the Gaslight Anthem’s success can be somewhat attributed to their blue collar roots and total lack of pretension.

The gig tonight was pretty lively and even though “American Slang” has just been released most of the audience seemed pretty well acquainted with most of the songs. The biggest cheers of the night came when they performed the hits from “59 Sound” however Brian Fallon the front man and main songwriter has real substance and many of the lesser known songs are just as good. Just like his hometown hero Stringsteen he writes what he knows about and plays the songs with passion.

The band are doing the festival circuit this summer and are playing Reading and Leeds festivals before heading back to the UK in October. For details of their forthcoming gigs check out http://www.myspace.com/thegaslightanthem

In a recent interview with Neil McCormick at the Daily Telegraph Charlotte Gainsbourg said “’I don’t think I’m an artist, I don’t have my guts to put out. I really feel that I’m under someone else’s command, willing to be manipulated, like a piece of clay, that’s what I like. To have, sorry, les barrier? To have restraints. And to find my own space inside all those barriers.”
The daughter of English actress Jane Birkin and provocative French  troubadour Serge Gainsbourg, she is, effectively, the love child of erotic Sixties disco classic, ’Je t’Aime…Mois Non Plus’. She has carved out an impressive acting career in left field European cinema, from an incestuous teenager in the 1993 film of Ian McEwan’s ’The Cement Garden’ to winning Best Actress at last year’s Cannes Film Festival for her portrayal of mental disintegration in Lars Von Trier’s sexually violent ’Antichrist’.

The very first time we ever saw of Charlotte was as a 13-year-old, semi-naked, by her shirtless father’s side, purring along to one of his most blatantly provocative pop songs, ’Lemon Incest’. “I don’t think I understood the provocation,” she said recently in a Daily Telegraph interview. “Because I knew my father, of course I sang on it, but I wasn’t shocked by it at all.”

At 15, her father wrote and produced her debut album of Lolita-esque pop, ’Charlotte For Ever’. “I went into the studio for five minutes and it was over. Of course, it was a wonderful experience for me to be directed by him but I had nothing to say.” She focused, instead, on her fledgling acting career, and didn’t return to making music until 2006, with ’5:55’, an album written for her by French duo Air with lyrics by Jarvis Cocker. The subject of music seems rather fraught, tied up with her complicated relationship with her father, who died in 1991, when she was nineteen. “I had a very weird relationship to music when he died – everything became very painful. Its because he’s not here anymore that its so difficult for me, because I have to deal with the loss, and he’s there all the time. I can hear his music, all the lyrics, I hear any word, it’s a reference to a song of his. I think that’s the main reason I chose to sing in English. I needed a little bit of distance.” Said Gainsbourg.

This year, she released an album written and produced by maverick American wizard Beck. The title, IRM refers to the French acronym for a Magnetic Resonance Imaging scanner. Gainsbourg underwent treatment for a brain haemorrhage in 2007, after a skiing accident, and fell in love with the noise inside the scanning machine. “The sound was driving me somewhere, it was some kind of an escape, there was more poetry inside that for me than just the clinical aspect.” She asked Beck to recreate that experience as music. The quite brilliant album, while contemplating matters of life and death, is not a morbid affair. “It wasn’t a pessimistic introspection, it was all ups and downs, and so we used everything. I didn’t try to camouflage my feelings.”

But then, since she is neither musician nor songwriter, the obvious question is whether this is really her album, or Beck’s? “It’s Beck’s,” she says, without hesitation. “I hope I inspired him. But he wrote everything.”

Her concert on the 22nd of June was Gainsbourg’s debut performance in London and when she walked onstage looked visibly nervous as if she was suffering from terrible stage fright. The audience were nothing less than totally attentive observing a hushed silence during her performance. During her concert she performed “Heaven can wait” “Master’s Hands” and “IRM”.

Written by Neil McCormick,