Newspaper Joe, Brown Brogues, Rae Morris, Mazes - The Mad Ferret, Preston

Posted in SHOFT on Friday 12th August 2011 at 11:08pm

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The reasons I ended up in Preston today are complicated - suffice to say it was never my intention to be at a loose end in Lancashire, and searching for something to do on a Friday night. Having wandered around town a little earlier, and experienced the usual sense of menace and desperation that the weekend in reasonably sized towns seems to bring I almost wasn't looking forward to heading out this evening. But taking the break in the almost week-long shower of rain as a sign, I decided to shuffle out into the humid evening in search of tonight's venue. True to form on this odd evening, The Mad Ferret is indeed a curious spot. On a corner opposite the University sits an old fashioned boozer, a single awkwardly shaped room with a fairly spacious stage tucked away at the back. In a neat touch each window blind has a classic album cover screen printed onto it - so as the room switches from pub to venue, with a bunch of punters complaining bitterly at being asked to part with the fairly reasonable sum of four pounds to remain in their seats, the 'Screamadelica' and 'Unknown Pleasures' blinds nearest to me are drawn down and things get underway.

Events begin with Newspaper Joe - also known as Andrew Lewis - a songwriter with a guitar, in what could easily be a noisy room. He starts to play gentle, strummed chords and begins to sing in a voice with plenty of rough, Lancashire charm. To be fair, some of the lyrics feel a little overworked, but it's evident that the guy is sincere. Amazingly, the audience are rapt - he clearly has a few friends in tonight, but there is a degree of respect here just for getting up and hammering out his tunes like this. Place seems to be important to Newspaper Joe, as strong geographical threads link their way through the lyrics, and to a soft southerner like me there's a little amusing local colour in songs which coin sayings like "there's more than one way to skin a cat". It's of course more than possible with his voice and acoustic guitar that comparisons could be drawn with those Oasis b-sides which always bored me to apoplexy. But just to ensure his influences are clearly laid out he turns in a surprising and very neatly managed cover of the epic "Opus 40" by Mercury Rev. As cover choices go, this one shows a breadth of influence and awareness that takes Newspaper Joe way beyond local comparisons, and sits comfortably alongside the other reference points he touches on. Andrew has a humble and often amusing stage presence too, which keeps the audience hooked during the between song silences. All in all, this is a fine set from a clearly popular local gent. I'd love to hear more, particularly as I understand he plays with a band too on occasion.

I'd heard whispers about Manchester's Brown Brogues before this evening, and having had no time to even grab a swift listen on the web today, wasn't entirely sure what I was getting - except that it was likely to be pretty noisy. As purveyors of sonic terror go, the self-effacing pair who took the stage didn't look the part at all. Terrifyingly young and a little nervous maybe, they launched directly into their first song. It was a swampy mess of distorted guitar and vocals swallowed almost entirely by reverb, all delivered over a primal, thunderous drumbeat. The audience, who'd drifted away a little after the remarkably polite attention they'd showed Newspaper Joe were suddenly back in front of the stage. This felt very much like the strain of punk rock which tumbled out of Olympia and Seattle in the late 1980s, largely inspiring the advent of grunge. At times it was perhaps a little too relentless, and for me there was an inevitable comparison with noisy duo Bronto Skylift, but without the tricksy jazz rhythms and solidly embedded tunes they provide. However, on the whole this was rough, filthy and excellent stuff. The Sub Pop and K Records back catalogues were unconsciously plundered and reinvigorated for an audience too young to remember - let alone the band, who introduced songs by yelping incoherently into the wildly distorting microphone. The short but packed set was full of sometimes incomplete, often vicious bursts of noise, occasional blasts of impromptu blues and lots of whooping and howling. Incredibly good fun, and a band who are going to do just fine among the current slew of bands who are making an unexpected splash by playing low-fidelity, noisy pop.

With my ears ringing and the crowd now filling the awkwardly shaped Mad Ferret almost completely, what followed was an odd bit of scheduling, as the hyped throng tried to adjust to Rae Morris's much quieter and more considered set. A simple enough proposition, just a girl and her keyboard - albeit someone with an incredibly powerful and character filled voice which occasionally hinted at the strange vocal antics of Rickie Lee Jones. Through a short but assured set of original material, Rae stunned an excitable room full of people into respectful, hushed appreciation of just what she could achieve with her vocals and piano playing. It's a terrible cliche in one sense to describe the quality of a voice by it's range, but Rae manages to shift from alluring whisper to outright howl within the space of a note or two, whilst producing intricate accompaniment on the piano. She clearly had a lot of fans in the audience too, hailing from nearby Blackpool and playing regularly in the area seeming to have built something of a following, alongside various recent radio and festival appearances over the summer. Between songs and cutting a slight figure on the stage, Rae was quiet, enthusiastic and somewhat humbled by the turnout and the warm reception - she also seemed somewhat impressed by the racket Brown Brogues had just made too, and I couldn't help but imagine what fun a collaboration might be! I still think it was an odd choice to put Rae Morris on between two noisy, more energetic bands - but despite the disadvantage this put her at in some senses, she was a consummate professional and turned in a very well received set which hugely pleased the local audience.

So much appreciated was the local talent tonight, along with the clock ticking past club opening time, that the room seemed to be emptying a little when Mazes finally took to the stage. A geeky looking three-piece which some wag compared to "three quarters of a University Challenge team", Mazes origins include London, New Zealand and Lancashire - making this as much of a hometown gig as any other might be for them I suppose. There's something appealing about the format of the trio too - guitar, bass and drums are pretty much the least you can get away with - though Brown Brogues might argue otherwise of course. Mazes use this basic set up to startlingly good effect, ripping directly into a set of hazy, summery pop tunes drenched in distortion and fuzz. Showcasing material from the recent album "A Thousand Heys" and just back from a US tour, the band were pretty slick and rattled out the songs, one after another in tight, choppy bursts with a minimum of banter. I'd almost shied away from Mazes and a number of other bands of their ilk because of the inevitable Pavement comparisons - and while I can hear them in there somewhere, there is certainly something more going on here - brusque blasts of noisy pop are shot through with sinuous, eastern sounding, wheedling melodies - recalling Pond or maybe Polvo if we're going to insist on "p" bands from the 90s here. Yes, it's all very lo-fi but it's almost stupidly catchy, linking good old fashioned 1950s pop songs to the fuzzy indie-pop of the 1990s - missing out all that unnecessary psychadelia and prog nonsense along the way. Sometimes Mazes sound like Dinosaur Jr but at other times they become a distorted skiffle band. It's a shame that more of the Mad Ferret audience didn't stick around for this because it turned out to be a set full of unashamedly noisy, distinctly unpolished pop gems which sometimes threatened to disintegrate before changing tack entirely and heading off in different directions.

Shuffling out of the sweaty atmosphere of The Mad Ferret into the chilly, damp evening I was struck by how quiet this part of the city was at night. It felt like quite a long walk back to town too, despite hearing the screaming, yelling and thudding beats from some local club in the distance. Nursing my foolish prejudices, I confess I thought Preston was the last place I expected to find much of a local music scene, and certainly I was surprised just how strong the support for the local acts was tonight. A strange venue, a strange town and a strange mixture of acts - but ultimately a night of interesting revelations.

Mazes debut album "A Thousand Heys" is available now on Fat Cat. You can read more about Rae Morris at her website. Brown Brogues are a little more elusive, but have a Myspace page and will be appearing at The Electric Circus in Edinburgh on 26th August courtesy of Song, by Toad.