Vox Von Braun at Bar and Boos

Jimmy’s first gig review since “Biffy Clyro at the Plug, Sheffield, UK. 19 Feb 2006” for the ‘Steel Press’

I started that gig review with: “The Action was literally On Fire for Biffy Clyro last Sunday evening, where a small electrical blaze temporarily delayed what would inevitably be a typically whirlwind performance”. That’s cute – using one of the Band’s song-titles to open the review. I bet that made me feel smug all day.

Because I was pissed for the entirety of Vox Von Braun’s set, I will provide two reviews. The first is entitled “Vox Von Braun and beer” (at the Bar and Boos, 14 Nov 2009). The second is entitled “Vox Von Braun and coffee” (midday 18 Nov 2009, my apartment).

“Vox Von Braun and beer”

Equipment: two nice Fenders, both sun-kissed. I thought both were Jaguars. Ben told me one was a Jazzmaster and the other a Mustang (I think…). A nice amount of trebly gain and modulation from a Phaser. A girl bassist with nice hair.

Sound: I thought they covered a Cramps song, but upon questioning the singer, they didn’t. They played psychobilly stuff: a mix of blues, garage rock, rhythm and blues, punk rock, rockabilly and rock ‘n’ roll. Think The Cramps, The Meteors, The Damned’s slower output, The Trashmen, Dick Dale, etc. It was like Neil Young’s 1983 album ‘Everybody’s Rocking’, but with distortion.

Songs: A constant tempo, sound, discourse and inter-song structure. Very little variation. I told Ben I thought this was an advantage. I believed they were more into ‘mood’ than individual songs. We should, I implored, look at the bigger picture. This picture sounded cool. Cool like the song in that scene in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me where Donna gets her baps out.

Performance: For the most part, pretty static. Very little crowd interaction during songs. Some banter between songs, which was appreciated. My eye was drawn from the men in the band (one of which looks like Viggo Mortensen: which is irrelevant) by the female bassist, whose face I couldn’t see. However, she played bass really well, and she was a girl, and therefore worthy of adoration. As Tim says “sometimes girls can be good musicians too”. True that… true that.

Overall: As I retired to the bar, my thoughts were thus:

“VVB are one of the better bands I’ve seen in Leiden. They have a good sound, and they are tight. They are interested in their own music and not some emerging scene. They are a little taciturn, but that’s cool – they are letting the music speak for itself. Their bassist must have big hands and long fingers.”

“Vox Von Braun and coffee”

Someone has put some effort into their website. Looks prof. They are signed to an Indie Label, and have a debut album called “Something Ain't Wrong", which plays about with the relation of semantic scope between the quantifier and negative particle. It can be interpreted as “Something is Right” or “Everything is Right”. Both are boring statements for different reasons.

Their myspace songs are sludgier and slower than I remember. Still nice and noisy: some great guitar sounds on “Julia”. It drones too much though: dangerously close to Shoegaze: which I fucking hate. The songs are very basically structured. Singer is whack. The bass sounds good though. “When did you become so popular?” is their best track. I would probably play this whilst reading a paper on Long-Distance wh-movement in current syntactic theory. Why? Because both pretend to be more complicated than they actually are.

I still think the ‘Bowl could learn something from their sound though.

3 Wobbly Eggs.

J. E. Griffiths