Black Heart Procession/Shit and Shine/Scout Niblett/Todd/Dosh - The Scala 26/11/09

I really don't like the Scala right and I'll tell you why right it's a combination of two factors: firstly it's four quid for a drink right and a shit drink at that, you've got a choice of draught carling or grolsch or strongbow which all taste like the lines haven't been changed ever or you can plump for a can of red stripe. A fucking CAN, for four quid. All the drinks options give you the shits pretty much. This wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the security they have there. They only employ people who are at least five times as big as the Scala's biggest customer (usually some fey indie kid). All of the bouncers are absolute titans, it's insane, even the woman bouncer is built like a tank. And they always do a proper search so basically there's no sneaking any booze in because they'd find it and they'd kick you in.

So yeah, the Scala is always shit because you go there, you spend £15 to get in and you spend £12 on three drinks which make you ill instead of drunk.

All the bands were shit anyway and Big Alan was being a dick. Ok well Todd were alright I guess.

Electric Wizard - The Scala 07/09/09

The Scala was absolutely crammed for this show, a solid mass of black t-shirts, beards and hair. Leccy Wizard have clearly picked up a lot of new fans since they resuscitated themdelfs in recent times, and deservedly so for theirs is a distinct sound, truly heavy, truly metal, smattered with basic fuck the world/worship the occult vocals and seventies guitar solos. But this distinction can act against them. They seem to have a template for writing tracks which they rarely deviate from and when they do stray too far from it the songs are noticeably weaker and fail to retain the essence of the band's sound, becoming less like a generic Electric Wizard track and more like a generic heavy metal track. It's a catch they've apparently failed to find a workaround for. They seem to be a band who've already written their perfect track in tonight's closer, Funeralopolis, and everything else is either a slightly weaker version of that or an unsuccessful attempt at something else.

Still, there's no denying that the band is heavy, and yeah maybe they are limited in range but fuck me they're good at what they do within that and they do it with conviction. There's no irony in Jus Oborn's sleeveless denim jacket's patches, and when he sticks his middle finger up at God before shredding he really means it, and I can feel it, and I can nod my head to it for an hour quite happily.

Mark Kozelek w/ Sun Kil Moon - The Scala 17/09/08

I absolutely expected Mark Kozelek to be an intolerably depressed guy. I love a lot of his music but I understand that he can write it because he's had a lot of shit in his life like wife cancer and dead parents so I thought man I'm looking forward to this but I'm not looking forward to him being all sad and shit, moping around like a donkey. I was so wrong. So so wrong. The guy could have done stand up.

He comes out and he looks like Elvis and he says how y'all doin and people murmur and someone says how are you and he tells us about his uk tour, how he's spent the last two weeks travelling around really shitty places playing to small audiences consisting solely of fat guys with backpacks.

His set is so nice, like a wind-up toy perpetually winding down, everything slow and delicate and haunting, everything covered in dust, evoking nostalgia despite the absence of memories. He plays variations on recordings, extended tracks and complete reworkings. They have movements really, they have prologues and epilogues, musically and lyrically, and there's magic in the transitions. It's so damn sad and beautiful.

And he plays all night.

And it's perfect.