Matthew Ryan, Dark Captain Light Captain, The Sound of Bailey

Event information

Let’s face it, red-blooded American music is made best by the god damn Americans. Case in point: Matthew Ryan (http://www.myspace.com/matthewryan). Ryan, originally signed to Interscope and now on London imprint One Little Indian, has earned his stripes touring in support of acts like Badly Drawn Boy, Steve Earle and Starsailor, and has seen his music set the mood for an awful lot of US TV Dramas. Ryan’s music comes ready-packaged with an collared shirt and a five o’clock shadow, his are startling immediate songs brimming with all the hopeless beauty and fatigue of a few hundred miles on a desert road and a broken hearted love somewhere over the dusty mountains. This is probably going to be your best chance to catch Ryan on British soil for a good long time, so don’t let this ship pass you by in the night.

“An enviable knack for elevating the everyday into the realm of the eternal distinguishes Matthew Ryan from the alt-country pack.” – Drowned In Sound

Here at Club Ugly we were hooked from the ‘B of the bang’ on first hearing Dark Captain Light Captain (http://www.myspace.com/darkcaptain), and we have been trying to convince them to come down and play ever since. So thank the good Lord that they finally consented! DCLC make music the way it is supposed to be made: epic and disorientating. Now expanded into a six-piece they represent a wall of live and processed beats, electronic loops, brass instruments, wind instruments, percussion, chimes, pounding bass and hidden under it all simple folk songs strummed gently on acoustic guitar and half-sung half-whispered into the ethereal flow. If you’re not lying on the floor by the end of these guy’s set then you’ve not been listening correctly.

“Dark Captain Light Captain are beautiful, dense, textured, slightly scary and constantly engaging.” – Drowned In Sound

The Sound of Bailey (http://www.myspace.com/thesoundofbailey) come to the stage with all the love and joy of Christmas mornings, children’s cartoons, and sugary breakfast cereals. These guys are just the perfect opening act because within a few minutes they will have melted away all the cares and concerns of your day with simple, catchy melodic, bouncy and heartfelt electro-folk strumming.

“I begin to wonder whether serendipity’s going to keep dropping superb two-pieces like this my way in the future.” – Drowned In Sound

Sometimes the world can be good to you, and all its love in the world just falls into your god damn hands. Booking this show was an instance of just that.