Monday, February 25, 2008

'Oh no, I almost stepped in me cake!'

Gwilym Simcock @ The Vortex, London 24/2/08

The sedate, candlelit, table-and-chairs set up at London’s Vortex Jazz Club provides an appropriate ambience for Gwilym Simcock’s performance, which veers between the playful and the richly emotive. Simcock has had an intriguing career so far, establishing himself as a pianist of international standing through his contributions to collaborative projects (Acoustic Triangle, Neon) and as a band member for other composers. It’s taken him a good five years to produce an album under his own name, but ‘Perception’ is as audacious and inspired a record as anyone could hope for.

It’s Gwilym’s birthday tonight, which lightens the mood somewhat and makes for an entertaining evening. It’s conceivable that he’s a musician who could come across as too intense, perhaps even po-faced – a prodigious talent who appears to have devoted every waking hour to practising. Yet tonight’s gig is genuinely a lot of fun, with Vortex manager Ollie Weindling presenting Gwilym with a rather meagre-looking birthday cake.

Simcock adheres to the two set jazz club formula tonight, but keeps matters interesting by playing the first set in a trio set-up and the second set with his full sextet (featuring legends Stan Sulzman and John Parricelli). The first set reveals Simcock’s formidable technique and improvisational flair (he threatens that his birthday allows him to take extra long solos). There’s also plenty of evidence of his extraordinary polyrhythmic invention, from ‘Spring Step’ and its tetchy shifting between half time, double time, swung and straight rhythms to his arrangement of ‘The Way You Look Tonight’ which is truly fearsome in its audacity. Luckily Phil Donkin and Martin France are equals in this regard, France particularly revelling in the opportunity to display his dexterous daring behind the kit. Sometimes he plays a little too frantically, and certainly too loudly, but his constant risk-taking is admirable.

The first set also displays a side of Simcock’s writing and playing that might be too easily ignored. First of all, there’s a strong celebratory streak, much of it seemingly drawn from African harmony and rhythm. There’s also a clear playful quality too, and even in the midst of his most questing solos, Simcock is unafraid to strip things back down to their bare essentials, concentrating on developing simple ideas and motifs to their logical conclusions. There are plenty of teasing suggestions and subtle understatements too. He’s also keen to exploit the full range of sounds from the piano, frequently muting notes or plucking the strings directly.

Such predilections and themes are extended in the sextet set, which benefits greatly from the addition of the excellent young percussionist Ben Bryant, who, surreptitiously hidden behind a pillar at the back of the stage, creates constantly fascinating sheets of sound from an entire plethora of instruments. For much of this set, Simcock weaves tunes together, to make the most of the contrast between languid poignancy and joyful exuberance. The latter is most clearly evidenced on the intricate ‘Snakey’, but the two moods combine to intoxicating effect on a splendid ‘Time and Tide’. It takes Stan Sulzman a disconcertingly long time to realise he’s painfully out of tune, but once this is corrected, the music becomes thrillingly alive. With gleeful irreverence, Simcock promises to end the set with a ‘little country number’. He’s not too far from the truth, as the piece which follows hinted so strongly towards Lynyrd Skynyrd’s ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ that I wondered whether it might be a bold re-arrangement of that very tune. It certainly grooved as righteously as anything I’ve heard in some time.

In Praise of Robyn

I know I’m a few years behind the times with this piece, but one of the joys of blogging is that you can openly admit when you’ve been a little slow to latch on to something hyped or hip. I enjoyed Robyn’s album when it finally emerged in the UK last year as a clever pop record, but somehow neglected it when it came to compiling my albums of the year list. This was a huge mistake – a nakedly commercial pop record it may be, but it just might be the best pure pop album of the whole decade. It has certainly set a standard that the likes of Kylie, Girls Aloud, even Britney, will surely struggle to match. ‘Robyn’ is proof that just because something is market driven, infectious and broadly accessible does not mean it has to be vacuous or dispensable.

Bloggers everywhere have been sent into mind-blowing ecstasies over Britney’s ‘Blackout’. It’s an extraordinary record from an extraordinary person – an unforgiving and candid document of a young woman’s descent into psychological meltdown and an accompanying obsession with anonymous sex. It’s unpleasant and voyeuristic to admit it – but this makes for compelling listening. What ‘Blackout’ lacks though, is the genuine broad emotional depth of this album from Robyn, the entrepreneurial and self-motivating ambition behind it, and the intelligence, wit and insight of her lyrics. Whilst there’s something ironically conventional and predictable about Britney’s public torment, there’s something palpably unconventional and exciting about Robyn. She looks and sounds unusual, free-spirited and confident within herself, but all this cleverly conceals the inherent vulnerability of this album’s greatest songs.

The unapologetic, brash and refreshingly hilarious intro sequence might be poking fun at the self-aggrandising tendencies of pop stars, or it might be entirely serious. Either way, it’s completely masterful. Introducing Robyn as the ‘undefeated, undisputed featherweight champion on all five continents’, the sequence then audaciously claims that she split the atom, discovered a cure for AIDS and, perhaps most worryingly, even ‘outsuperfreaked Rick James’! Apparently she also has the world’s highest Tetris score. Clearly, she’s not a woman to be messed with.

The crisp electro of ‘Konichiwa Bitches’ continues the theme, playfully emphasising Robyn’s frustrations with the music industry and independent determination to succeed on her own terms. Rather brilliantly, it also features a quite superb boast about her breasts: ‘One left, one right, that’s how I organise ‘em/You know I fill my cups, no need to supersize em’. Somehow, it’s all far more interesting than, say, R Kelly tediously bragging about his sexual prowess. The following two or three tracks continue in this style, mixing defiant individuality with enticing production values. How refreshing it is to hear a female pop star delivering the style of lyrics more usually associated with the male dominated world of hip hop.

Having said this, the album’s success chiefly rests on its more sensitive moments. ‘Be Mine!’ and ‘With Every Heartbeat’, both successful singles, provide the emotional core of the set. The former is one of the strongest pop songs of recent years – a devastating and overwhelming lyric of unrequited affection set to a party beat and a deceptively jaunty melody. The impact is staggering – it’s an outrageously enjoyable and infectious listen that only reveals its underlying pain on closer inspection. ‘With Every Heartbeat’ makes virtues of repetition and relentlessness, creating a touching atmosphere through its cumulative impact.

There’s also the album’s sole ballad, a delicate flower of a song called ‘Eclipse’. A lesser artist would have used this as an opportunity to demonstrate technical prowess, range or virtuosity. Whether Robyn has any of these qualities is rather unimportant given the convincing nature of her vulnerability here. This is the most conventional song here – in essence a somewhat corny piano ballad – but she turns into something believable and touching.

‘Robyn’ is everything a pop record should be – unconventional, entertaining and inspiring, whilst simultaneously playful and lightweight. The production, some of which comes from Swedish electro legends The Knife, is as biting and intelligent as the lyrics. Resistance is futile.