A proper old pals’ act here, as ace promoters Loose and their bandmates in The School curate the final day of Buffalo/10 Feet Tall’s month-long January cobweb-shaker and invite back a few past collaborators. Headliners ALLO DARLIN’ ably supported The School at their album launch last March with a set of breathless, crackling indiepop, a pleasantly surprising diversion and a cut above the dreary winsomeness affecting some of their peers. A joint tour followed, cementing inter-band friendships on beer-sticky provincial dancefloors across the UK. They’ve since released their own debut full-length (on Fortuna Pop!), winning some impressive plaudits; and while Elizabeth Morris’ phrasing strays a little too close to Tender Trap bandmate Amelia Fletcher than is strictly healthy, and the constant stream of pop culture references and retro product placement are a little too pat, there’s a winning charm and a lightness of touch that sees it skip unharmed through any genre minefields. Given their usual rollicking live treatment, this should be a proper winner.

SWEET BABOO can do no wrong around these parts, and his apparently boundless work ethic seems set to continue into 2011; no sooner had Stephen Black’s third album (and first for Shape) I’m A Dancer/Songs About Sleepin’ emerged than a new three-piece country-rock line-up of the band took souped-up, thrilllingly noisy versions of its songs on tour. An EP of collaborations with The Voluntary Butler Scheme’s Rob Jones (as Wickes) followed, and while Black continues to play with H. Hawkline, Cate Le Bon and Euros Childs he’s found time to deliver a new EP to Shape for release this year amongst other projects. The quality control stays dizzyingly high, the wit and onstage banter suggest impending shambles, and the Simon & Garfunkel cover gets ever closer to ending properly. Maybe it will tonight.

Opening, neatly, is The School’s lead guitar prodigy IVAN MOULT, himself having recently expanded his solo acoustic ditties with a live band comprised of Evening Chorus and Lucky Delucci members. It’s a smart move, expanding the promise of his The Mine Canary EP into something a little grander.

Loose presents – Hometown Heroes closing party featuring:

ALLO DARLIN’
SWEET BABOO
IVAN MOULT
& THE SCHOOL DJs

Monday 31st January 8pm
10 Feet Tall, Cardiff
Ages: 18+

http://www.10feettallcardiff.com

LOOSE/THE SCHOOL CHRISTMAS PARTY!

THE SCHOOL
THE LOVES (last Cardiff show ever)
LUCKY DELUCCI
BRONTOSAURUS CHORUS
TRWBADOR
& DRA COLLECTIVE 60s go-go dancing girls!
& DJs JOY COLLECTIVE vs CHICK HABIT

Mulled wine, Christmas lucky dip, cakes & sweets..

Sunday 5th December 5pm *starts early*
Buffalo Bar, Cardiff
Ages: 18+
£5 adv http://www.wegottickets.com/event/94148 / £6 doors
http://www.buffalocardiff.com/

THE SCHOOL will be performing an exclusive set of Christmas songs (originals & covers) and new tracks from their 2nd album, due for release next year.

THE LOVES are retiring in February, this is their last Cardiff show!

You can’t see Cardiff from space. All this is is one set in one gig in one venue on a Sunday night when the football’s on. Such is the power of small and perfect ideas though this one set cut to the centre of my stupid psyche and made me way giddier than these old bones should theoretically get. It’s The School! Playing Ramones covers! If you don’t understand it, I can’t explain it. Maybe it’s zen. Terminally boring reasons mean half the bands are over before I get there; the rest fly past my dull face at lightspeed. Goodbye Pagan Wanderer Lu, a blur of genuine intelligence and ace mangle guitar and electronics. See you later Kutosis, riotous doublequick garage greatness and fine company for alleyway World Cup viewing. And there goes Gindrinker, still Cardiff’s finest bilious observational screed merchants. One two three four.

(Should point out here I’m trampling over a charity alldayer organised by and filled with properly decent people. Over £300 raised for Headway. Even the lucky dip was exemplary.)

Course, the Ramones is a pretty logical choice for a Stars In Their Eyes moment in this case. Jonny and the boys always were in thrall to girl group perfection and gold standard pop streamlining; The School’s classic shimmying rests on songwriting so melodically strong that no amount of restyling can worry it. So it’s ‘Rock And Roll High School’ to start with, and half an hour of gently partying brilliance. ‘Sheena Is A Punk Rocker’ and ‘Judy Is A Punk’ tumble past, Liz dropping down the vocal register and somehow getting all the words out while those three chords chug playfully around her. ‘I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend’ coasts and yearns like a heartbreak. These covers get dosed by the School’s inbuilt vulnerability, hugged into sweet new shapes. It runs both ways too – School originals get a drum thump and extra layers of guitar fuzz: ‘All I Wanna Do’ is particularly zippy, all doublespeed guitar lines and toy-like bounce. The mixture of coolness and inclusive partydown, best illustrated by a string section mostly on handclaps and sass, is weirdly cheering: by the time ‘Baby, I Love You’s lap of honour struts out it’s clear how much pleasure can be wrung from simple things. A highlight of the year. Start a polite letter writing campaign to get them to do it again.

Sunday, 11th July 2010

Charity indie alldayer fundraiser for Headway Cardiff

The School (Ramones-style Set!) / Gindrinker / Kutosis / John Mouse / Pagan Wanderer Lu / Houdini Dax / Lucky Delucci / Last Partisan / Ivan Moult

An indie all dayer with South Wales’s best bands in attendance, all for raising money for Headway Cardiff.

4:00pm | £5/£6 | buy tickets

• www.headwaycardiff.org
• www.myspace.com/gindrinker
• www.myspace.com/kutosis
• www.myspace.com/johnmousemusic

Buffalo & Loose present:

THE SCHOOL
HEXICON
RED SHOE DIARIES
& Joy Collective Girl Group Special DJ set!

Sunday 6th June
7.30pm-3am
£5 adv WeGotTickets / £6 doors

Cardiff 8-piece indiepop band THE SCHOOL have just released debut album ‘Loveless Unbeliever’ on legendary Spanish independent label Elefant, for fans of CAMERA OBSCURA, THE PIPETTES, THE SHANGRI-LAS and THE BEACH BOYS.

The female-fronted mini-orchestra are only playing a handful of UK dates in June before touring Europe, Asia and the USA later this year.

“I would like to state that Loveless Unbeliever by The School is my favourite Welsh pop album of all time” – Adam Walton, BBC Radio Wales.

“a swaying, winsome tune with some of the Phil Spector lushness of LUCKY SOUL, the BELLE & SEBASTIAN-style modesty of Camera Obscura, and the airy, girl-group vocals of both” – Pitchfork

The School MySpace
Hexicon MySpace
Red Shoe Diaries MySpace

Although surrounded by band members rocking such looks as wolfy graphic designer, foxy military librarian and at least one benevolent priest, it’s hard to tear eyes from Hidden Cameras leader Joel Gibb. Buff and erect like Superman, he contorts his face around every syllable, mouth and eyebrows twisting like some muscular exercise regime. And, oh yeah, there’s music involved too. While the Cameras have always struggled to top the awesome hymnal thunderbolt of debut album ‘The Smell Of Our Own’, a subsequent merch splurge will reveal new LP ‘Origin:Orphan’ to be almost as good, and that’s very good indeed. Stripped of some of the more lush ornamentation, tonight’s set still twists fingers into your heart, Gibb’s knack with a strange, baroque melody cocooned by his earnest, instrument swapping, harmony swathing, good looking show off talented bastard bandmates. So: the skittering earworm of ‘Awoo’, the chugging nagging beauty ‘Colour Of A Man’, and a ragged, double pace ‘Ban Marriage’. On and on, until, brilliantly, the venue cuts the PA halfway through their last song, leaving musicians in the crowd and vocals sung up to the ceiling. Great stuff.

THE HIDDEN CAMERAS @ THE GATE – Mon 22nd March

Full Fat (the lovely people behind Buffalo/10 Feet Tall/Mr Smiths) are very excited to be bringing this very special performance to Cardiff in a CHURCH!!

THE HIDDEN CAMERAS
& supports tba

Monday 22nd March 7.30pm
The Gate, Cardiff
All ages welcome
£10 adv – WeGotTickets
& Bristol Ticket Shop instore/online Bristol Ticket Shop
+ from The Gate / Spillers / Diverse Newport

THE HIDDEN CAMERAS return to Cardiff with an 11-12 piece mini-orchestral performance at former church The Gate.

Joining them will be 1-2 other labelmates from ARTS & CRAFTS tba shortly.

THE GATE – Keppoch Street, Roath, Cardiff CF24 3JW (off City Road)

The Hidden Cameras MySpace

How many goddamn cool people are here in a heaving Clwb tonight? Well, none, but then this is an evening celebratory of music that will always remain uncool; what you may call twee and I might call heartfelt or beautifully awkward. Pagan Wanderer Lu, or Andy as he’s also called, could theoretically be some sort of nerd leader, essaying wry lines and chopped guitar over the chunky, fidgety hometronica coming from his iTunes. He might be too fatalistic though; a lot of these tunes dwell on failure and insignificance, though with enough wit and Duplo beats to banish any danger of navel gazing. Indeed, there seems to be a knotty heart to each song, circled by an esoteric braininess and some killer one-liners that I signally fail to write down. There’s also great dicking around with a mini Monome, but we’re getting into slash fiction now.

Allo Darlin’ could take even the blackest, coal-ridden cynic’s heart and squeeze a diamond smile out of it, such is their ridiculously firm grip on grinning pop dynamics. Their bassist, allegedly borrowed from a metal band (definitely the only Dischord T-shirt in the venue), grins hardest: it’s obviously a blast richocheting amongst the band’s ukelele bounce tunes. It’s perhaps music that shouldn’t work – januty, whirling, winsome indie – but there’s something about Allo Darlin’ that resembles pop scrubbed clean of all artifice or knowing, leaving dazzlingly pure music, played laughing, falling down a hill. Huge-footed singer Elizabeth Morris’s Aussie accent adds further clean-sheets appeal. File next to: trips to the zoo and films with happy endings.

But this is the School‘s night, and time for the underdog to dance around and bop you on the nose. After their last official Cardiff appearance, supporting Lisa Milburg to around eight scumbags, it’s weird and excellent to see them in front of people who are pressed up front and literally screaming for their favourite members. A new album, extra musicians and a stadiumful of guestlisters makes for a drunken group hug of a gig: strings and brass add chocolate to the School’s already classically lovelorn tunes, dropping into songs that already revolve around finely-crafted melodic charm. Strong songs with killer moments: the the bridge of ‘I Want You Back’, rushing up the keyboard; the staccato ending to ‘Valentine’ or ‘Let It Slip’s oblique second verse and high-register pinpricks. More soppiness in reviewers please.

THE SCHOOL (Album Launch)
ALLO, DARLIN’
PAGAN WANDERER LU
& Helen Love’s Bubblegum Killers djing between bands
followed by Bethan Elfyn’s Vinyl Vendettas until 3am!

Saturday 6th March 7.30pm
Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff (upstairs)
Ages: 18+
£5 adv from TicketWeb / Spillers / Diverse
**This event is also part of International Women’s Day celebrations**

THE SCHOOL are a female-fronted indiepop group from Cardiff for fans of Camera Obscura, Belle & Sebastian and 60s girl groups. The band are celebrating the release of debut album ‘Loveless Unbeliever’ on Elefant Records.

This event is also part of International Women’s Day celebrations.

“a swaying, winsome tune with some of the Phil Spector lushness of Lucky Soul, the Belle & Sebastian-style modesty of Camera Obscura, and the airy, girl-group vocals of both” – Pitchfork

“they do enough to at least light up (if not part) the greying clouds into blue sky as a musical and meteorological Moses with their floaty, shimmering and often clip-clapping tunes” – DrownedinSound

“indie pop sweetness blended with heart-lifting girl group harmonies, punchy Northern Soul beats and lush Brill Building strings” – AllMusic

“infectious, hyper-melodic pop you can simultaneously cry and dance to” – Rough Trade

“On bubblegum pink vinyl, the sixties-saturated sound of The School is indiepop par excellence. ‘All I Wanna Do’ conjures up the aching hearts of Mary Weiss and the Ganser sisters as Liz Hunt’s little-girl-lost voice pours on the passion to describe an angelic innocent’s first big crush. ‘Valentine’ is like a pixie-booted Eurovision entry with a stomping piano-led tune that’s swept aloft by heavenly strings. Douze points pour Le Pays de Galles: c’est magnifique!” – SoundsXP

“The joint best Welsh pop band EVER” – Adam Walton, Radio Wales

ALLO, DARLIN’ is singer-songwriter Elizabeth Darling, originally from Queensland, who plays beautiful songs on ukulele and guitar about subjects from Stephen Hawkin and Henry Rollins to the Grease Megamix and her Fugazi-loving boyfriend.

Her first EPs on cult CD-R label WeePop! sold out within weeks, and now ALLO, DARLIN’s debut LP will be released on Fortuna Pop! in March.

“the best indiepop song for years” – The Guardian

“like Hefner got a brass section and got cute too..” – Unpeeled

The School MySpace
Allo, Darlin’ MySpace
Pagan Wanderer Lu MySpace