Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip - The Button Factory, Deerhunter - Whelan's, Jonathan Richman - ibid

Wow, 2 hip hop gigs in a couple of weeks is some sort of new record for me. Though when the MC's are a diminutive Jewish dude from Cincinnati and a guy from Essex with a gigantic beard
I must concede that I'm probably dipping my toe into safe waters. No angry black men for me, no sir (but my non-attendance at Saul Williams last night had more to do with the fact that from last Saturday until Tuesday week, the 20th, that night was the only one where I won't be at a gig and I think I'll need a night off at some point) and certainly none that focus on "guns, bitches and bling," which as Pip points out on his and Dan Le Sac's best known song, "were never part of the four elements, and never will be".

The pair of them can put on a show but; plenty of live laptop music types are conscious of the fact that 1 or 2 dudes hunched over computers for 30 minutes isn't much of a performance and bring video projections into the mix but Le Sac and Pip favour a much more low tech approach and deck the stage out like it's a grotty student flat. A ratty armchair, a shitty, flickering TV, the sort of carriage-clock you might expect to see sitting on your gran's mantelpiece and other similar paraphernalia make up a their stage set and the pair make copius use of their props throughout. During "Angles" Scroobius Pip dresses up as the various characters in his tale of diligent students, beaten kids and bastard security guards (sorry, hero security guards) and midway through the gig Le Sac slumps into the armchair for a rest as Pip goes back to his roots and recites a spoken word piece. It's something that I might have been interested in seeing more of but aside from that interlude and an encore featuring a cover of "Nightclub" by The Specials the pair stuck to material from Angles (which is out this week and which I like very much), every song off the album gets an airing with the room as expected going bananas for "Thou Shalt Always Kill," but I'm not quite sure about the logic of in one part of the song slamming call and response sections of songs and then throwing yourself right into it during the "Just A Band," part of the song.

Deerhunter on the other hand take a much different approach to setlist construction. They've got a brand new third album recorded and they're obviously really excited by it. So much so that they only play a couple of songs from Cryptograms in Whelan's on Thursday night. It's a risky strategy to dump so much completely fresh material on an audience and a tactic that apparently has already sent the hate mail flying when they tried it in the US recently. And one that for the first couple of songs I thought wasn't going to work out, the new material sees the band move away from the droney, looping stuff that featured so heavily on the band's last album and EP and towards more "proper" songs and it wasn't quite what I was expecting. However once I got used to the change of pace I came to realise that where the band was going was a really good place. There's one epicly long song that wasn't one of Bradford Cox's but was in fact written by bassist Josh Fauver that's astonishingly good. That being said nothing can match the behemoth that is the closing song, "Strange Lights" which culminates in 5-6 minutes of riotous noise, instrument swapping, piggybacks and disturbing bodily fluid exchanges. I can't wait to see them In Vicar street again next month.

Pride of gigging place however goes to Jonathan Richman. I'm not hugely familiar with his post-Modern Lovers work but my adoration for their first record is such that I had no compunction about taking a chance on him. With just a classical guitar in hand and a shit hot drummer backing him he had me, and most of the rest of the crowd in the palm of his hand from the off. Playing material mostly drawn from his latest album I couldn't give a damn that the only song I knew the whole night was "Pablo Picasso". He's just so incredibly charming and unendlessly charismatic, and there's a constant twinkle in his eye. People were giggling like kids in the back of a classroom at seemingly random points throughout the set and it was only midway through it did I realise that it was because he'd caught their eye and was giving them a funny luck. And boy can he dance.

Oh if anyone knows where that song about being 14 years old and walking through the New England winter with a girl a couple of years older than him might be found on record please let me know.