Monday 16 February 2004

Living Things - Wake The Fuck Up
--------------------
St Louis, Missouri isn't high on the list of desirable places to live in America - a predilection for right-wing politics, hard-line Christian fundamentalism and the resulting curfew-laden nanny state have combined to make life for young free-spirited people fairly unbearable. So when you and your brothers look like The Lost Boys compared to everyone else's Dawson's Creek, it's pretty certain sparks are going to fly in all directions.

It's in this environment that the three Berlin brothers who make up
Living Things - singer/guitarist Lillian, bassist Eve and drummer Bosh, the first two named after their grandmothers and all three under the age of 25 - grew up, with politically active parents, a basement full of books by the likes of Chomsky, Plath and Burroughs, collective juvenile rap sheets as long as their arms and a fierce conviction that Something Wasn't Right.

Starsandheroes meets
Living Things in London's semi-legendary (but in fact decidedly unglamorous) Columbia Hotel, and Lillian is trying to explain the St Louis mindset. "The Attorney General of America, this guy John Ashcroft, was the governor of Missouri - he's super-conservative. If you walk around the city saying anything other than 'I love Jesus and I respect my elders' they'll throw you in Juvenile Hall, so we had a lot of problems." He's being disingenuous, since he'll later confess to having once stabbed a schoolmate for stealing his cap gun - blameless they're not.

It seems you can't turn a corner without encountering another snarling, black-clad scuzzy garage rock band with nothing to say but the unquenchable desire to say it ear-perforatingly loudly. But if there's one aspect that separates Living Things from 99% of the current crop of angry young men, it's their tangible need to use their music as a catalyst to make people think clearly and act directly.

This is an attitude barely seen since
The Dead Kennedys and Fugazi spent the '80s doing their best to cut the powers that be down to size with noise and intelligence. It certainly makes England's overtly politically active musicians - stand up, Albarn, 3D, Yorke and Martin - look like a bunch of ineffectual moaning minnies by comparison.

"Our direct message is that there's floods of information and opinion on everything from guns and politicians to your rights as a citizen," Lillian explains, "All we're saying is that when you're at school, you're not gonna hear about it, so go on the Internet, go look for it in the library, go look for it with your friends, just develop your own idea. I don't care if people are pro-Bush or not, I just want them to think."

Their shows are frequently shambolic - Bullit witnessed a messy, sweaty outing at Alan McGee's Death Disco in London, where the whole band was virtually falling off the tiny stage and singer Lillian gleefully pissed on a newspaper picture of Dubya. Lillian: "Normally we play until the equipment stops - if it takes us 10 songs or six, we just keep playing 'til we can't fucking play anymore. We don't use setlists."

At a recent show in America, the band split the audience between pro- and anti-Bushites and asked both sides to come up onstage and explain why they wanted him to win or lose the next election. And while this may sound like Living Things are doing for politics in rock what Le Tigre gamely attempt for feminism, Lillian insists they're not preaching or hectoring their audiences. In fact, Living Things are the closest musical equivalent to Michael Moore in existence - they're "big fans", of course.

With an album called Black Skies In Broad Daylight (Loog/Dreamworks) hitting shops in 2004 - Lillian describes it as feeling like "the march of an army" and we're inclined to believe him - and more UK shows to come, Living Things are more likely than most to fill heads with ideas and then rip them off by sheer force of volume. As Eve attests, "People seem to listen when you're turned up real loud!" You have been warned.

Charlie Ivens

Originally published in Bullit Magazine February 2004 issue.

Madrugada - True Grit


--------------------

First, a little context. Until three years ago, Norwegian music had been nigh-on ignored in the UK. A-Ha hadn't been news since the Eighties, and the only time the country showed up in the UK press was when a feud between black metal bands got out of hand and somebody died. Then came Kings Of Convenience, swiftly followed by Royksopp, St Thomas and Turbonegro.

Now wipe the slate clean. It's time to introduce a band who, if
Bullit has anything to do with it, will eclipse all of the above and stand tall by the end of 2004, not only as Norway's biggest musical export in a decade, but as the UK's new favourite band. Enter Madrugada, four men who are already platinum-selling superstars in Norway but are only now trying to crack the perennially tough nut that is the UK market.

The name, since you ask, means "the hour before sunrise" in Spanish, or "dawn" if that sounds needlessly pretentious. The album which has so impressed Bullit is Grit, a Madrugada primer of sorts containing seven highlights from their identically-titled third domestic album (with
PJ Harvey producer Head at the controls) and four tracks from earlier in the band's 5-year recorded career. Despite this perhaps slightly unorthodox situation, the UK Grit, released through Music For Nations, grabs the jugular like a jaguar.

Sitting in an anonymous hotel lobby, nursing a hangover after the previous night's impressive London showcase gig, Madrugada singer
Sivert Hoyem is surprisingly level-headed for a man instantly recognisable in his adopted home of Oslo (they're originally from Stokmarknes, a tiny community far north of the Arctic Circle). Hoyem, he of the piercing eyes, razor cheeks and chocolatey baritone, says the band were "really surprised" when their 1999 debut album Industrial Silence elevated Madrugada quickly to the status of rock royalty.

"There was a lot of really crappy music in Norway at that time, and then suddenly people went out and bought our album which, at least to my ears, wasn't bad," he explains modestly. "It really sold loads and loads..." The move to Oslo was inevitable, and Madrugada now rehearse in a converted brewery, sharing space with the aforementioned Turbonegro and around 70 other bands: "I can actually say that I like some Norwegian bands as much as I like other stuff, which I couldn't say three years ago...there was nothing happening!"

Madrugada's outsider status in the Norwegian capital - Hoyem claims northern Norwegians are derided as "peasants" by the more sophisticated south - has doubtless fuelled the intensity of their music. But raised in the wilderness on an intoxicating diet of
The Cramps, The Jesus & Mary Chain, The Cure and The Velvets, it was almost inevitable that Madrugada's songs would turn out as emotionally evocative and melodically direct as they have.

From the outset, Hoyem has always sung in English for the simple reason that "we have always wanted to travel with our music - we don't want to stay in Norway forever!" Floppy-haired bassist
Frode Jacobsen joins our table, and he jumps to his bandmate's defence when Bullit suggests they're betraying their roots. "Most Norwegian bands sing in English - it's very natural." Certainly, the linguistic density of Hoyem's lyrics suggests a deeper understanding of the nuances of English than most Brit wordsmiths can manage.

Madrugada's stagecraft is impeccably cool: mercurial guitarist
Robert Buras ("the only guy who'd be found sleeping with his guitar," says Hoyem fondly) and Hoyem are hugely charismatic performers, the latter's captivating stare being particularly unavoidable. Although drummer Simen Vangen is otherwise engaged, a mildly dishevelled Buras finally arrives - fresh from buying, yes, a guitar. "We always try to play the things we really enjoy, to make the best concert," he chips in emphatically. Hardly a groundbreaking concept, admittedly, but it's obvious Buras lives and breathes music: he spends his non-Madrugada time in, er, another band...

Madrugada, then. A new dawn, a new day, a new life? Damn straight.

Charlie Ivens

Originally published in Bullit Magazine February 2004 issue.