Review: The Babies and The Jesus Loves Heroin Band, Brudenell Social Club, Leeds 18/03/11

Transporting us back to the heyday of 60’s garage and the badlands of rock and roll The Jesus Loves Heroin Band emerge from the gloom. Hiding a Dylanesque drawl under headily distorted guitars it’s a sound that belongs in dive bars and gun toting Tarantino films. Interspersing county tinged psychedelica like ‘Don’t Wait For Me’ with brooding instrumental interludes they slowly captivate the crowd. Jesus Loves… are a band worthy of your affections.

The Jesus Loves…

On stage nearly an hour late The Babies literally just turn up, plug in and play. Made up of Vivian Girls front woman Cassie Ramone and members of fellow Brooklyn bands, Woods and Bossy, they are so free and easy together they look like family. Casually swigging beers proffered by helpful fans they shamble round to the bouncing strains of ‘Breaking The Law’ (sadly not a Judas Priest cover) like a latter day Bonnie and Clyde. Suffering slightly from their lack of sound-check their voices are held momentarily captive under sprawling feedback.

The Babies

Once loosened up though, if you close your eyes during ‘Somebody Else’ it could be an early Pixies strutting on stage. Perfectly capturing a spirit of pure, distilled summer The Babies are one of the stealth hits of the year.

Kate Parkin

You’ve no doubt read the reviews of the latest release from Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti Before Today scoring high ratings across the board. And probably about how their London show on this tour sold out before the press could get their names on the door, which explains the line of scribes across the back the the Brudenell Social Club when I went to see them, and him, on a Monday evening.

So everyone is expecting big things. The range of people is wide, the record store kids have crawled out for a rare evening, the hipsters are down front, other musicians are nestled amongst the rare dash of students and as I said earlier, the photographers and reviewers are out to play. But there is something worth noting about Before Today ahead of talking about this gig – this record, is a music fans record. It jumps around and with skill the record dips, twists and turns and has invented something entirely new in pop music. But it is technical and the thing is that this won’t, and doesn’t, always hang together quite as well as you would hope when they are playing live. This is made worse perhaps be the odd scenester attempting to dance along to the many grooves they put out and then melting their moves slickly away as the band have launched into an entirely new time signature. But then no one really cares about the hip kids looking a bit awkward occasionally because it’s clear the band can write some seriously catchy pockets of music that you wish would last, just a little, longer and leave you wondering how many songs you can fairly squeeze into one. Every song has movements and this is indie pop for listening listening. Not just hearing.

Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti

A fine attribute to the band has to be the slap twang base brought out as even fatter when coupled up along a tickling and tinkling keyboard that runs through the tracks. An even finer attribute is Ariel Pink himself. He’s a front man who can howl, and whisper throughout a song. His slight figure teeters on the edge of the stage, twirling is long bushy black hair. Through out the set he embodies the best of rock. He can swagger like Mick Jagger, be intergalactic like David Bowie and show off as much as Iggy Pop, all whilst twirling his hair.

Despite the exhaustive-ness of the tracks, they climb the guitar riffs led by contrast by monotone vocals, which at times disperse into 4 part harmonies and then break off into ethereal otherworldly lines time after time and could not get boring.