The Fantastic Stolen Sparkle-Ship

Neil Jones on a night at the Brixton Windmill with Screaming Tea Party, Little Death, Artefacts for Space Travel, Ampersands and Kriss Foster

Friday 7th of March, 2008

I remember getting my first Stolen Recordings release quite a while back, about three years or so. Three years is a long time in life and Pop, and back then I was still clawing at the door to get an insight into a more creative indie world. The first Stolen CD I got, the first ever Stolen compilation (there’s since been one more), came not too long after the Death of Peel, and its biting variety and soulful “alt-ism” was the revolution I was looking for.

I’m not sure how many bands with songs on that first compilation are still active now, certainly there’s Pete and the Pirates giving Topman wankers what’s far too good for them. I see Pete and the Pirates as the captain of a fantastic Stolen sparkle-ship, leading it out to choppy seas with the glory and profundity of Pop in its innards. My relationship with Stolen Recordings has been fundamental in my education into the ways of the genuine aesthetic underground, and tonight, oh yes, after all this time, is my first ever pilgrimage inside its actual doors.

We walk into Brixton’s Windmill early enough. I’d pushed the pace on the way, led by the Stolen myspace page into thinking there were only two bands playing tonight's gig. I was desperate not to miss Artefacts for Space Travel, who’s track on the more recent Stolen compilation buzzes with sky-scraping emotional grace, but more fool me, I should have known…here’s the poster, and I’m counting FIVE bands on it. It’s going to be a long night, so we sit down with pints of decently-priced lager (Becks Viers, “for people who wish they could afford Hoegardden”), and wait for something to happen.

We put The Bobby McGee’s on in Cardiff a short while back, and as Kriss Foster hits the stage in a full leopard uniform he screams with their kind of cutting twee charm. But how will his music fare? Foster has a mouth of velvety filth, slinging out perversely affecting words between acoustic guitar melodies in enticing style. A lot of it passes me by, overtly clever Pop lyricism sometimes tends to do so, you know how it is, but there are certain moments in the pleasing ebb where I reach for my phone in laughing eagerness to jot down something or other he’s said. Oh for some words of wisdom, “penis in a jar, penis in your grandma”. Foster tonight is at times scandalously funny, a Northern English lad with a contrary glint in the eyes like a knob on the Angel of the North.

It goes quiet for a while, and I feel quite shit about taking a guestlist. I’ll never do it again for a night like this. I feel like a dirty industry sloth, like an outcast from NME or something sniffing round what’s cool and what’s of the now and what’s quite untouchable. I’m supposed to say hello to Paul, who helps run the label, but the damage has been done. I feel evil about taking a guestlist and I can’t put myself forward to say hello. I feel bad, but I'm a fickle guy, and the next band Ampersands make me feel a whole lot better.

Ampersands are four lads with an indie passion that tonight runs wild in grand, fulsome songs, countrified indie gems brilliantly distinguished by jagged hints of longings, hopes, dreams and ideas. Ampersands cry out a shy creative ambition. They sound like everything and nothing I’ve ever heard, ploughing poignant, poised furrows of noise with not a hint of trad complacency in sight, brave and wonderful. Fuck the whole Americana genre, Ampersands are the modern bollocks. Frontman Tom Peters has a skinny girly shirt covering a t-shirt who’s image I’m guessing he might not be entirely happy with, suggesting again a shy but fierce creative drive that you just have to love, and the rest of the band are a beyond Topman indie bunch to give your soul to without another thought. This is the genuine indie now, grand and individual, and Tom and Chris are sleeping on a roundabout tonight on their way to Basingstoke. That’s the way it has to be.

My god, it’s just not right, that sound that comes out of Artefacts for Space Travel, and I’m so glad we got here with two hours to spare! It’s just HUGE, and look, they’re not even trying that hard. It’s cool as fuck beyond capital letters. There’s only three of Artefacts, a guitarist/vocalist, bassist and drummer, but the songs scrape the stars and adopt 90% of their sheen, some of them even take 100%, like ‘Lucy’, which sounds like the anthem that someone like Editors would always aspire to but are too damn serious and pretentious and self-conscious to achieve. Artefacts for Space Travel leave all these considerations suffocating in the dust, instead pulsing with the pulse and the absolutely fundamental joy and redemptive spirit of noise and music and art. Were this to be the last performance I ever see, I’ll be going out in a blaze of glory.

Five bands I say? Well it might be harsh and I could be wrong, but I’m going to have to disqualify the next band Little Death from my review, because I just don’t get them in the Stolen context. It makes it a little worse that they share the name with the debut Pirates LP. The postures slowly overtake the occasional shards of affecting and visceral noise that decorate the opening of the set, and I soon take time out to survey the venue rather than pursue their hampered dreams. The Windmill really is a quaint little place, indie to its core without that forced kind of dirty veneer of the Barfly venues. It seems that everything here, all the Pop memorabilia and posters have just landed by chance, while those of the Barfly venues are studiously placed with careful commercial nous. This kicks its ass.

Never mind this, I love it when Stolen staples and tonight’s headliners Screaming Tea Party finally come on and smash it to us with crazy guitar action like you won’t believe. Like Clapton never happened, not even Hendrix, it’s like a big hurricane in the face right from the start. They don’t even say hello, haven’t got time for any such niceties, or maybe I just missed it. ‘Between Air and Air’ is a shot of intergalactic guitar play with the soul of gods that shimmers and shines in the loudest manner I’ve ever seen anything shimmer and shine, and then ‘Let’s Do Not Say Another Word’ is noise pop rock like you’ve never heard before, with the sweetest tinge of poignancy running through it like silk. ‘Death Egg’ is like a daydream or a fairytale in comparison, but here’s the beauty of Screaming Tea Party, never content with rock‘n’roll, though they play it like it never rotted in hell, they have this concomitant nursery rhyme edge that’s pure poetry in motion.

‘Holy Disaster’ is blindingly good, an anthem that shouts at the gods from a rock realm that Lewis Carroll wrote, the two front guys standing there in their dubious oriental chic of sun-visor and gas-mask like nothing special is happening when we're all in metaphorical tears. It’s the perfect anthem for my friend Paul’s leaving weekend, infuriatingly, brilliantly obscure and poignant, and it’s fantastic that this is our last gig together for a year. This is noise with poetry intact, in fact it’s noise that screams poetry like the world has to listen or die. Screaming Tea Party right now are a fundamental, apocalyptic thrill. I still haven’t met the Stolen guys in person, and there may be better Stolen nights, there may be worse, but tonight I feel like I’ll be wearing their stamp of indie soul for the rest of my life, and that's just all that's important..

© 2008 Neil Jones

Lead photos of Screaming Tea Party by Katie Coleslaw

FOOTNOTE: Actually I find out this wasn’t a full-on Stolen night but a co-promotion, lacking in the Stolen hand-made artwork, DJs and merch stand. Agh! The next Stolen gig is in May for the Artefacts for Space Travel EP launch, and I look forward to trying to get to that. I still then, after all that, haven’t had my first bona fide Stolen experience! All the above words are still true nonetheless.

© Miwsig