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Soulwax
played "THe Other Stage" at Glastonbury on 24.6.2000
Pictures of Soulwax @ Glastonbury can be found here
A video of an interview with the band can be viewed here
(Real Video required). This comes from the ChannelFly
website
Review
from Playlouder.com.
Click here
for the original
Nice
suits! Belgian art rock crew Soulwax are playing the sharp
card. A sartorial yin to the festival hippy yang, the outfit
are freakin' the stage in cream seventies sharp cuts.
Too easily mixed up in the annoying post-They Might Be Giants
wackoid pop shite, Soulwax actually cut loose with a rock
'n' roll that is almost as sharp as their suits. Their songs
are crammed with ideas, explosive nimble riffs and a surprisingly
punchy amount of power.
The
jagged riffs and neat ideas coming machine-gun fast are similar
to the way fellow Belgian's Deus play around with rock song
form, messing with the old rules. Only Soulwax have cranked
up the adrenaline. Playing loose and mean they almost stray
into the Blues Explosion territory of foul cranked rock 'n'
roll, only without the demon rush that makes Spencer's Noo
Yawk City hustlers the permanent kings of this sharp dude
slicker scene.
Soulwax,
with only a minor hit card to play, grabbed a surprising amount
of attention from the crowd, their obvious pleasure at stalking
the festival stage helping to give the songs an extra energy
rush.
The
songs are good, too - there are some pretty mean tunes stretching
their limbs over the zig zag riffing. Another thing Soulwax
know about is tension: they know how to stretch the tunes
and explode into the choruses. It's an old trick - damn, The
Pixies were doing it years ago - but it's still so effective
even if it is becoming the equivalent of the 12-bar rock for
the new millennium.
They
even managed to end the set with the guitarist hitting the
mic for a bit of human beatbox, spitting out a hip hop beat
from the Bronx to Brussels, before the drummer stomped back
in and the band exploded into one of those post-Radiohead
crescendos on guitar that seems to dominate the outros of
all their tunes.
John
Robb
Copyright
Playlouder
2000
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