musicOMH is in need of a glass of something strong. We have recently seen Denise Van Outen's solo show, Blondes,at the Udderbelly Cow Barn (17.50). The show is a showcase for her singing skills which are decent enough, her voice is versatile, but it also requires her to speak between numbers, to banter with the audience, to exhibit a degree of warmth, something she seems to be entirely uncomfortable with.
She sings her way through Marilyn, Madonna and Kylie, all the time throwing in stilted quips care of script writer Jackie Clune that one can almost hear thudding to the ground.
The whole set up was so strange and awkward in tone that, towards the end, I began to wonder if it might be some kind of exercise in meta-theatricality and that I might be witnessing one of the most subtly subversive things on the Fringe. About five minutes towards the end the lights went out and the sound failed and I thought, ah, this is it, everything is about to twist around and reveal itself. But no it was just a power cut and sound was quickly restored. Van Outen strolled back on stage and did her last few minutes with the same uneasy film still over her face.
Tickets are selling healthily though and no doubt will continue to. musicOMH much preferred Wil Hodgson's Punk Folk Tales at the Pleasance Dome (20.20), more rambling yet almost lyrical tales about life in Chippenham from the pink-haired care bear collector.
In the space of two days musicOMH has seen two separate shows that make reference to Tycho Brahe, a sixteenth century astronomer who sported a gold nose after his own was sliced off in a duel.
The first was Lucy Porter’s new show, Fool’s Gold, at the Pleasance Coutyard (20.20). Porter is a charming and engaging performer, warm-spirited with a quick wit, but though she sets up a potentially interesting premise – the history and cultural significance of gold – she just skims it, throwing in a few entertaining facts and one lovely visual gag, even at one point feeding an audience member a piece of gold leaf, but there are very few really strong jokes and a lot of the time she seems to be coasting on her own likeability.
The second show was AL Kennedy’s Words at the Assembly Rooms (16.50). Kennedy is a novelist but she has been performing on the fringe for a few years. Her shows have been classified as stand-up in the past, but this year she’s listed under Theatre, when actually, what Words most closely resembles is in fact a lecture with laughs, an imaginative and ringing hymn to language. She’s not a natural performer like Porter, but there’s a strong sense she’s there because she needs to be, because she loves language so much and needs to communicate this love, that she can’t not to do it. There are some jokes – including a nice one about Wittgenstein – but it’s not ‘hilarious’ as the Fringe programme would have us believe, but it’s oddly uplifting and is fuelled by a love of words and where they can take you.
We would also recommend you see The Petty Concerns of Luke Wright at the Underbelly (18.00), the latest show from former Aisle 16 member and self appointed candidate for Laureate. A fusion of stand up and performance poetry, Petty Concerns is one of his strongest shows to date, very funny but also genuinely self-reflective and questioning.
For more information on this year's Edinburgh Fringe visit EdFringe.com.
musicOMH still hasn’t quite got to grips with the weather up here. It is entirely possible to go into a show when the sun is shining brightly only to emerge an hour later to find a great grey blanket has been spread across the sky. There hasn’t been a day yet when we haven’t had to return to our flat to aquire or discard items of clothing.
The heat in the venues can also be intense, especially the smaller ones. A woman even fainted during Hugh Hughes’ new show, 360, at the Pleasance Courtyard (19.05). The show had to be stopped and the woman attended to. Eventually the audience were allowed back in and Hughes was able, tentatively, to pick up where he left off and complete the show and to recreate, at least partially, the atmosphere that was lost.
Hughes, the charmingly childlike alter-ego of Hoi Polloi’s Shon Dale-Jones, is listed in the Comedy section of this year’s fringe programme, rather than under Theatre, and he’s performing solo, without the flip charts and musical accompaniment of his previous shows. It’s just him in front of a big, black curtain telling a story. Our full review is over here.
musicOMH has also seen their first naked man bits of the festival, though there will probably be more before August is out. This was during the utterly barking Or(f)unny at C Soco (21.35). Part of the Espresso! Teatro Italiano season, this seriously energetic piece of physical theatre features a brother and sister, seemingly parent-less, locked in a room together.
The two performers capture the recklessness and unselfconsciousness of childhood as they fling themselves about the room with seemingly little regard for their physical well being, dancing with abandon (to, amongst other, things, Muse), spinning until they were dizzy and hurling themselves to the floor with some force. These moments of mania were interspersed with calmer, more exposing moments, literally in one case, where the brother lay horizontally on a table top staring serenely at the audience with his genitals out in the open and ketchup smeared on his chest. There was something both silly and yet so completely vulnerable about this sight that it was rather moving. In terms of the sheer exuberance and physical commitment of the performers, this one is worth seeing.
We here at OMH Towers have had our first listen today to Humbug, the third album from those Sheffield tykes, Arctic Monkeys. A full review will follow in due course, but here are our initial thoughts, on first listen:
Humbug, like its predecessor, is a definite grower. In fact, casual Arctic fans may well scratch their head at the lack of spiky, sardonic little indie-pop songs with Alex Turner's trademark observational lyrics. Indeed, there's a fair few songs on here that may just feel like formless jams the first time you listen to them.
Yet, also like its predecessor, you'll keep coming back to it. And, after a few plays, it will all click into place, and you'll wonder why you ever doubted them in the first place.
Co-produced by regular collaborator James Ford and Josh Homme, Humbug has the latter's influence written all over it. Anyone who's heard Queens Of The Stone Age's Rated R will certainly hear a few familiar sounds.
The other big surprise is that Alex Turner has started to sing, rather than the half-spoken vocal of the early days. It's a sign of how much confidence the Last Shadow Puppets side-project instilled in him - the croon from that album has certainly been carried forward here.
Early highlights include Cornerstone (a sweet, swaying, tear-jerker that could well be the best thing Turner's ever written, and should be Christmas number one if there's any justice in the world), Potion Approaching (a frankly barmy mesh of desert metal, fairground music and swamp blues) and the adrenaline-fuelled thrill of Pretty Visitors, which has huge slabs of QOTSA guitar riffs and Turner sneering, for reasons unknown, "what came first, the chicken or the dickhead?"
Although this isn't an album with any obvious singles, the impression given is that each time you listen to it, you'll have a different favourite track - which is surely the mark of a successful album.
So far in 2009 we've had contenders for album of the year from the likes of The Horrors, Wild Beasts, Animal Collective and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Expect Humbug to also make a pretty high appearance.
musicOMH is properly in the swing of all things Edinburgh. We have received our first flyer from someone dressed as a zombie. We suspect this will not be the last.
We have even seen some theatre: Glyn Cannon’s Coffee at the Pleasance Courtyard (13.15), is a short, smart play about three advertising execs trying to shake from their brains a campaign for Donkey Coffee Company. Cannon’s writing takes some pleasing detours into the absurd and has a lovely rattling, rhythm. The cast capture the inanity of such ‘creative’ brainstorming perfectly and manage to encapsulate certain recognisable media types without resorting to outright caricature. It’s an amusing, if slight, piece probably not best served by the lunchtime slot – and I think they missed a trick by not handing out cups of coffee to the audience.
A bit later on I saw Janis at the Gilded Balloon (17.30), a play about the life of the iconic Janis Joplin. Set in the Landmark Motor Hotel where Joplin would OD at the age of 27, it’s a one woman show written by and starring Nicola Haydn as Joplin. The play itself is pretty stiff and conventional; Joplin sits alone and high, recounting her life, recalling her childhood in Port Arthur, Texas and describing her deep need to escape from a world where she never fitted in. Haydn captures her exterior toughness and inner vulnerabilities. It’s a rich, interesting performance that rises some way above the rather run-of-the-mill material. Through Haydn we grasp Joplin’s dogged insistence on living for the now and raising a finger to everything else; her deep belief that each new band, each attempt to get herself clean, will be the one that works for her; and while Haydn can replicate Joplin's trademark cackle, she really inhabits the role rather than just doing a good impersonation.
I ended the evening with Bourgeois and Maurice’s new show, Social Work, at the Pleasance Courtyard (21.45), a black, bitter cabaret type thing from a duo who are as epically-eyelashed as they are acid-tongued. Their songs, about fame and obession and a medicated age, are accompanied by a series of amusing projections and their outfits mainly revolve around lamé, Lycra and leather. Their material clearly wasn’t to everyone’s liking (there were a couple of walk-outs), but I rather enjoyed sitting in a sweaty Edinburgh attic room as a man in red glitter lederhosen bellowed “you are not important” at the audience through a loud-hailer. It was very, very funny in places, if at times a bit too scatological for my tastes, but there’s something very appealing about the pair’s hungry demon smiles and their swipes at modern life. Great voices too.
For more information on the festival visit EdFringe.com.
