Abe Vigoda @ Bardens Boudoir May 12 2009

Why?
It’s been a while. I’ve been doing all sorts. But I never said this would be a frequent experience. This blog will roll like thunder: occasional bursts of noise that might make you a bit wet after a short delay. Or not. Anyway, my buddy Dan bought some tickets to see Abe Vigoda, and I’d never been to the venue. 2+2+blog guilt= yup, go on then.

The Venue
This is our first review in Dalston, east London’s hipster front line. Recently (and harrowingly) anointed by the Guardian as the coolest place in England, it’s on a collision course for bone fide Nathan Barleydom, but will be very fun in the meantime. Brief history: Shoreditch and Hoxton were cool, then the cool crowd got a bit peeved as the Bridge and Tunnel mob got wind of the whole thing, so the cool crowd moved up the road, and settled on the Kingsland Road. It’s still only pockets of interesting stuff (with Passing Clouds, The Haggerston and Visions forming the vanguard) in amongst a cloud of down-at-heel urban London (which provides the “grit” and “edge” and other words that are a bit jarring but will have to do until someone invents new ones). Nonetheless, something is going on over there. I’m fairly sure the burgeoning cooler-than-thou scene will start to infuriate me, but for now it’s exciting.

That said, Barden’s Boudoir really isn’t much to talk about. It’s a low-ceilinged basement with awkward square booths pitted into the walls. The entrance on the street is next to a pound store and a newsagents, signified by a bunch of post-modern musos loitering outside, probably smoking, probably on unicycles or something like that. Very Dalston. The programming seems to be pretty on-message, and its medium size promises a good atmosphere if the music is right.

What they looked like
Abe Vigoda look like your average American geeks. Pretty indistinct. They’ve probably been wailed on by a few jocks in their time. They will never be pin-ups. Juan Velazquez, the most vocal, has a nerdy, camp voice. All of which makes them very likeable, and far from the maddening, European indie crowd.

What they sound like
At first I wasn’t immediately taken. It’s messy, discordant, and often directionless. But this is music to listen to carefully. Elements of their sound are startling- at times, the tinny, detuned chime of the guitars are a deliberately dissonant mimic of an African thumb piano; and occasionally, the drumming is a clattering mix of afrobeat and baile funk rythms. Dead City Waste Wilderness displays all of this; a brilliantly chaotic concoction of tropical punk. Imagine a disorganized, reverb-heavy version of Vampire Weekend. But at other times, they are just a stoner punk band. I was captivated by the former, and enjoyed the latter in a nostalgic, if not earth-moving way.

Conclusion
In these depressing, downward times, the re-emergence of punk it makes a lot of sense. Indeed, its cerebral cousin, grunge, is having a bit of a renaissance in the UK by all accounts. But this US-lead punk revival comes with a fascinating twist. The African influences mixed with punk (critics referred to Vampire Weekend’s preppy-cum-African sound as “Upper West Side Soweto”) are genuinely original, and represent the forging a wonderful, if unlikely, musical friendship. The band could do with putting a bit more into it, physically, but such is the trade-off when style is foregone in favour of substance. More please.

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