XOYO, London
There is a shadow hanging over music that never really goes away. It ebbs for a bit, then rolls back in, shape-shifting like a dank weather pattern. To call it goth would be disrespectfully reductive. Bandying about a phrase such as "the darkness" just rekindles the trauma associated with a long-forgotten comedy band of the early 00s.
You could just about say that, of late, music has been in thrall to a new witching hour. Last year, witch house was the hot American sub-genre name to drop. Its chief proponents were called Salem; its most blogged-about emerging talent in 2011 is called Balam Acab, a name just close enough to Balaam and the Angel to set eyes rolling. It should be noted that witch house ? a delightfully restless and doomy digital genre ? is actually a derivative of the more experimental fringes of hip-hop production, rather than anything to do with the euphoric dance genre from Chicago. Nowadays, you can affix "-house" to pretty much anything in music, no matter how distant from Chicago, much in the same way as "-gate" attaches itself to any public kerfuffle, however minor.
Overground, pop has witnessed the rise of female solo performers in recent years ? a trend mirrored outside the charts. One of the more startling newcomers last year was Zola Jesus, a recovering midwestern goth who now pens full-blooded love songs of exquisite desolation. The LA band Warpaint have to dodge accusations of coven-forming thanks to being an all-female concern, but there is a mantric, spell-like quality to their music that allies them with other artists of altered states. Closer to home, there's Anna Calvi, more of a classic temptress than a witch, but still a nocturnal operator.
But surely the UK's most haunted are a wafty art-rock band who actually have the word "witch" in their name. Esben and the Witch must have known this would bring them nothing but accusations. Their name is actually taken from a particularly convoluted and unforgiving Danish fairytale which ends very badly. Esben's music is similarly convoluted and unforgiving; they offer no easy resolution. Using great banks of effects pedals hooked up to guitars and electronics, this Brighton trio's sombre soundscapes are topped off by the aerated vocals of singer Rachel Davies. Stage left, guitarist Daniel Copeman looks like an indie wolfman, staggering around the stage in stockinged feet as he coaxes more and more layers of sound out of his instruments. Stage right, the bespectacled Thomas Fisher is a dishevelled professor wiring together an otherworldly creature.
Esben are emphatically not the kind of goths who sleep on crushed velvet sheets, but rather the kind who get excited about obscure medical conditions that turn people silvery blue ? that's "Argyria", their portentous opening track ? or cause them to flail uncontrollably. That's the affliction known as "Chorea", which lends its name to a mutating track anchoring both their set and their debut album, released two weeks ago. "And we watched them dance themselves to death," intones singer Davies implacably. It isn't some prudish critique of dance culture ? Esben are partial to flurries of programmed beats ? but a commentary on the Strasbourg dancing plague of 1518 (or possibly the Aachen one of 1374).
There is much to admire in Esben. They don't play encores, preferring to end their six-song ritual in the barrage of sub-bass that is "Eumenides". At one point, they gather round their one drum at the centre of the stage and bash it with rag-covered sticks, like Macbeth's witches chucking things at a cauldron. With these brutal beats comes a real connection, but it creates an unfortunate contrast to swathes of Esben's set, which are icy, but a little formless and unanchored.
They lack the aggressive conviction of proper nihilists, too, and the disciplined sonic brinkmanship of their influences ? bands such as the thunderous instrumental nonet Godspeed You Black Emperor, or Mogwai, who explore the contrasts between density and starkness with greater drama.
In this context, you might assume Trophy Wife were named after the practice of nailing pretty women's heads to walls like deer. It actually refers to "the balance between the kitsch and the desolate" that this Oxford three-piece (who expand to four live) strive for in their music, which they have wryly labelled "ambitionless office disco" (it's nothing of the sort).
Foals are their housemates, and Trophy Wife blatantly share that band's propulsive verve, especially on their final track, a punk-funk shakedown of Joanna Newsom's "The Book of Right On". There's a soupcon of Hot Chip and a smidgen of Vampire Weekend in their promising makeup. They share an incantatory quality with the headliners, but you get the feeling that Trophy Wife's grasp of desolation is an altogether different one from Esben and the Witch's: a modern malady, rather than an ancient ill.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/feb/13/esben-and-the-witch-trophy-wife-review
Katherine Heigl Lorri Bagley Leslie Bega Maria Sharapova Lindsay Price
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