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Date : 2008 01 22, 22nd january 2008Location : Glasgow, 260 Clyde Street, G1 4JH Venue : The Barfly, downstairs club Support : The Secret Story.. Setlist: Make You Crumble, Frown Town, Bayonet, Pioneers Get Shot With Arrows, The Fool On The Pill, Color Me Archaic, Mannequin, Rebel Hiss, L.A., The Greatest Story Never Told, Fuzz Are Down. Glasgow ? We like Glasgow.. .. It always takes ages to get there (cross the Eden, pass the mountains, drive through the snow - if it's summer it's gonna be hail) and once you're here it gives that slightly unreal vibe of an uncharted territory at the edge of the map. A good place for Jubilee to play their fist ever concert, enough of a musical history to give it soul and background, not as overpowering though as if it was London, Liverpool, Manchester. Plus, it's got the gothiest cemetery in the world (the Necropolis), it's the hometown of the Jesus and Mary Chain (well East Kilbride's close enough) and the birthplace of the Munchy Box. 
The Barfly is part of a nationwide chain of clubs - set on the bank of the river Clyde, in an area that must have been a harbour
once - former warehouses around, a church that looks older than it is, it has the kind of surroundings venues often have,
slightly derelict, not too alive by day, tags on the walls, grass in the pavement cracks.. but hey, the pubs open at 9 am and you
can buy bait and tackle with your pint. It's the end of january, but it's not even cold, just a thin drizzle, enough to make the sidewalks wet and slippery, tricky when your legs are shaky and you're too tense not to run. Been looking forward to this day since months and now that the hour is near, the minutes drag. The venue has a big arched glass door and two levels, psychedelic oil lamp projections on the upper floor, but Jubilee is playing the cellar - must be nasty for carrying amps and drum kits. Dark, with a low ceiling and pillars here and there, merch to the left and stage to the right and mildly crowded; most people are clinging tightly to the bar. Judging by the average age, there's a lot of parents waiting for their offspring to hit the stage. The whole support band thing tonight is a blur to us (and a very dark one at that, there's practically no stage light and pictures tonight are going to turn shitty) ..some electro-poppy-gothy stuff.. something about getting their buddies in the audience to dance (a fairly painful sight to behold) and a remark from the lead singer who magnanimously asks the crowd to "be nice to the next guys (Jubilee), they're cool". And we wonder since when support acts are supposed to find such generous words for the main act. Then a curtain is drawn and hides the front of the stage while Jubilee set up their gear.. I count up to six people on stage, trying to figure out which shadow is who. We had learnt earlier that Jeff Lynn of Wires on Fire would be on board as well - but in which position ? And where is Loren Shane "Ted" Humphrey ? All the band pics featured him but we had noticed that the touring calendar of his other band The Willowz was somewhat coliding with Jubilee's. The crowd moves forward a bit, not too much though. The place is so small, the stage so low (one, two feet to the max) that if feels ridiculously naked to stand there without even a barricade to clutch onto. The house lights grow even dimmer, the curtain's drawn, and here we go.. 
It all starts with a mighty wavering synth drone, neverending, it seems, hypnotizing. A tangible
tension is bulding up in the air, like that last glimpse down into the pool from very high above, just before you
plunge - and there's no way back. A rippling drum rhythm kicks in, setting the pace for the song - which we'll later know
as "Make You Crumble" - and a few rounds later the sinuous bass line takes the lead. But suddenly, almost shaking off the
trance of the intro, Aaron's vocals cut in, together with both guitars - his own, a red Fender Cyclone, fuzzed-up and almost
buzz-saw like, steering the song dynamics and adding sparkles of feedback, Evan's SG throwing in some high notes, elegiac with delay.
While the song started out more like the Queens' "You Can't Quit Me Baby", by now i'm more reminded of the Verve's "A Man Called Sun".
Aaron's vocals, intertwining with the guitar around the bass line, are really ambitious and strong. It's hard to figure much of the
lyrics, but the music, speaking by itself, is eager and earnest, longing and conjuring, an invocation, a promise and a threat, as
reflected in the almost-mantra like repetitions of "make it somehow" when the song seems to reach its acme. But it's only to
soar even higher, before concluding with everyone singing in harmony the weary "make you crumble", then dropping away and leaving
Aaron as the last man standing. There's a suspended silence while the song still hangs in the air; it's a perfect opener,
spellbinding and powerful, and very trippy, and that takes you on unexpected emotional trajectories. "Frown Town" (which got later reworked as "In With The Out Crowd") is quite the opposite : poppy and lightfooted, playful, nearly chirpy, blindlingly sunny. If it was a color, it would be a bright yellow through and through, but after the introspective "Make You Crumble", it feels a bit like a glass of ice-cold orange juice thrown in your face while you're still in a dream. The verses have that percussive and choppy quality of The Lovin' Spoonful's "Summer In The City"; but more generally, there's an incredibly sixties-ish vibe over the whole song. Mike gets a special mention here, for his angelic falsetto, and, of course, that super cool bass wah freak out of his. While the crowd moves forward on Aaron's invitation ("we're not gonna bite you guys, you can move closer if you want"), Evan's achingly delayed guitar is already heralding the next song. "Bayonet" is a fast-paced number as well, but very intense emotionally. It has the stern drive and focus of a hunt or a fight (or flight ?), with one guitar constantly chasing the other and abrupt ruptures like twists of fate in a battle for life and death. With its breaks and interludes, and elusive motives, this song is a dazzling fireworks of musical ideas and colliding atmospheres. 
The audience is pretty into it and claps enthusiastically, with a solitary "Whoo!" here and there. Obviously
there's no singing along, since no one knows the tunes, much less the lyrics. Mike's bass needs to get swapped, and after some
tweaking a now guitarless Aaron dives head first into the next song, the frenzied rush of "Pioneers Get Shot With Arrows",
a song that carries on, the armourial theme of "Bayonet..",while reverting it at the same time. Backed by
the primal driving pulse of tribal drums and bass, what's so striking about this song is the strength of Aaron's vocals, the
conviction they're delivered with, and the sheer physical energy they convey. The band now assumes another configuration with Evan picking up an acoustic guitar, Aaron getting back his Cyclone, and Mike stepping up for his share of vocal duties. It's "The Fool On The Pill", and a completely different vibe and rhythm, nostalgic and detached at the same time. Against the chill backbone of Evan's acoustic strumming, and Mike's soulful vocals, Aaron's blissed-out lead guitar surfs in and out of distortion : alienation from the rest of the world never felt as seducing. 
Things get even more pared down and acoustic with "Color Me Archaic", for which, save at the end, Aaron's raspy vocals
are solely supported by Evan's acoustic guitar - there's something ancient and folky about the song, like one of those
traditionals, or those songs of Dylan, that feel centuries old even if they were written just one minute ago. This moment of the
set has a very intimate and introspective quality to itself with Aaron holding onto the microphone eyes closed, absorbed, at peace
with the desolation he's evoking. Evan keeps his acoustic, but it's Mike's turn to sing for "Mannequin", while Aaron, back on the electric, takes lead again. It's the same configuration of the band as in "The Fool.." but the comparison stops here : while "The Fool on The Pill" was all artificial paradises and laid-back melodies, this song has a forced high-energy feel to it, with its imperative guitar, fast tempo and angular drums. Pretty schizophrenic, cheery but violent, it moves in very abrupt shifts, between the pressure built in the verses, the deceptive sugar-sweet choruses and the brutal vocal outburst in the end. 
At that point of the set, a lot of tuning and mic checking takes place because Aaron is having trouble with his own vocal levels
in the monitors. After a while and pretty much out of the blue there's a loud "HEY!" calling back the room to attention and kicking
off "Rebel Hiss". Most people seem to recognize the song, but to us, it's by far the weakest moment of the set, musically
speaking; the energy is here alright, but it's as if no one was on the same page, pitch- or rhythm-wise, which makes sense if no
one can hear themselves or each other, with the fucked-up monitors and all.. The crowd loves it though and turns it into a big
singalong. The next song, the Neil Young cover "L.A.", works very well on the contrary, both technically and musically. Jubilee's version pushes the amplitudes of the original even further. I never really understood the weird ambivalence of Young's original, but all of a sudden it's perfectly clear : the song's narrator is a type of Cassandra, and his dream is finally come true, even if it means his destruction and the destruction of the city he loves. What he's rejoicing about in the verses is that everyone is finally forced by reality to share his apocalyptic obsession, while the longing of the choruses express his wish (granted in the verses) for everyone to see what he sees. A "Come Together" on doomsday, if you will.. Now, towards the end, even more than in the rest of the set so far, guitar lovers are bound to get huge kicks out of Aaron's soundscaping where he sonically recreates the terrible beauty of the city on fire plumetting to the center of earth.. not sure how it works, but, while the base note is falling lower and lower, a chaos of piercing harmonies arise, until only the higher and sharper frequencies remain and keep on fragmenting, like the cracks spreading on the surface, or the tongues of fire rising in the air.. anyway, it's very powerful stuff. 
The guitar keeps echoing, but Mike is already playing the first motive of
"The Greatest Story Never Told." Another introspective and somewhat solemn song, a bit in the line of "Make You Crumble",
it gives the impression the set has run full circle and is about to reach its end. For big parts, "The Greatest Story.." is
almost more a recitative than a song, with its slow pace, its narrowed-down melody and its defeated, anguished vocals,
reflecting on lost moments and opportunities bygone, and seems to fluctuate between the dull hopelessness of the verses and the
acute despair expressed during the choruses and the outro, foremost by the guitar. 
The final song of the evening (and the most popular one with the crowd it seems) is "Fuzz Are Down". The recorded
version was already having a very "live" feel to it, and the energy and the adrenaline are surely here tonight as well. It's a full-force
rock-out moment for everyone, including Jeff, who has climbed onto his keyboards ! Around us, everyone knows the song, and is very
happy to join into the "it's all the same to me" before the pause at the end - this one just perfectly delivered, everyone braking in
total sync to full stop from full speed. And then Jubilee's first gig ever is over, and a tiny piece of rock'n'roll history has been made. Admitted, there were a couple imprecisions and technical glitches, but, especially considering it was the first gig ever, it was amazingly intense and well achieved. Amazing too, how unrestrained (at least in appearance) and fully into it everyone was. Knowing the players and some of the songs, we had come with fairly high expectations already, but what we didn't see coming, was for the game to be that ambitious, complex, and spellbinding. While the guys wrap up their gear onstage, there's quite a cluster around the merch stand, but we're soon ushered out of the venue by security, and go get some pakoras for dinner in one of the back streets. Later even, having packed up in prevision of the drive down to Leeds tomorrow, we will leave the hotel and walk on the bridges around, with the river below, silent as always, the lights illuminating the arches from beneath, the drizzle that has turned into a mist; some passers-by, not friendly, not hostile, just passing. Struck by a serious case of post-gig buzz, we won't go to bed early that night. |
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Jubilee (ju.bi.lee), n. : 1. A rock'n'roll band from L.A., Ca., currently composed of Aaron North (vocals, guitar), Tony Bevilacqua (guitar, vocals), Jenni Tarma (bass), Troy Petrey (drums.)2. Jubilation; rejoicing. 3. A season or an occasion of joyful celebration. 4.a. A specially celebrated anniversary. b. The celebration of such an anniversary. |
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january 2008 UK tour 2008 01 22 Glasgow |
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