LONDON: The Lexington

Friday 22nd November, 2013

7:30pm

Event information

THE LOCAL is delighted to present BROKEBACK (USA) + ABOUT GROUP (UK) in conjuction with the EFG LONDON JAZZ FESTIVAL.

DOUGLAS McCOMBS' goal for his longstanding BROKEBACK project has always been to do service to those fleeting moments in life when everything seems clear and defined and beautiful and the hair stands up on the back of your neck. These moments are hard to describe and by their nature impossible to capture, but to try it is to be inspired. They're not always auditory, but for their musical expression, think Roy Orbison when he's sad and lonely, or alternately when he's feeling triumphant, a Tom Verlaine guitar solo, Stravinsky and Erik Satie, an Ennio Morricone crescendo. Or Billy Gibbons, in a lyric like "Ridin' 'top the floodway on a Friday night / The landscape's a fine and natural sight."

In the fall of 2010, when McCombs convened a new version of the band, Brokeback hadn't played a live show for more than two years and had not recorded any new music for eight. McCombs's idea was not to start over, exactly, but to start fresh, approaching similar harmonic content from a different direction, taking into consideration the perspectives of the three new guys, Pete Croke (Tight Phantomz, Head of Skulls!, Reds and Blue), Chris Hansen (Pinebender, Head of Skulls!), and James Elkington (the Zincs, the Horse's Ha). The idea was to make this new version of Brokeback as much like everyone's first band as possible.

ABOUT GROUP is the core trio of JOHN COXON, ALEXIS TAYLOR (HOT CHIP) and PAT THOMAS, whose third album BETWEEN THE WALLS is released through Domino in 2013.

Between The Walls captures the sound of a band 'playing' together, in both senses of the word - experimenting and trying things, being playful, as much as being a group performing as a unit together. Between The Walls is the sound of people pushing towards and pulling against one another simultaneously. It is the sound of buzzing amplifiers, sudden musical non-sequiturs, loud blasts of straight synth lines cutting through melody and structure. And it is also the sound of beautiful and odd electronic textures and brilliantly defined and deliberate drums, underpinning fragile but deliberate performances of sad songs and country ballads.