My 20 best gigs of 2018

What? I'm posting my best of 2018 already, with 23 gig-going days of the year still to come? Madness. Yeah, true, but I've had this list on the go all year long and I'm itching to get rid of it. I've seen a ridiculous number of gigs during 2018 and I've had near-riots on my hands as best gig selections have been included then excluded from the final 20. Can you imagine how bands react if they hear rumours of their exclusion? It ain't pretty. No, I'm telling you. I can't stand the stress of waiting any longer. It's time to put it up. Put it up and shut (it) up. So here's my 20 best gigs of 2018 (or at least 342 days of it). It's been as good (at least) a year as any I've done the list for previously (see the lists for 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011 and 2010 if you care to) and I'm firmly expecting 2019 to be even better. So, forget Brexit, forget Trump, forget everything - just read on ...

Paul Jacobs: Shacklewell Arms, London, 15 January

A crazee performance from Paul Jacobs and band. A kind of psych-garage extravaganza, with the hyperactive Jacobs bouncing around in the audience. Whirling keyboards provided a nice texture to the drums-and-guitar stomp, while PJ's vocals, buried deep in low-fi murk, yelped and proclaimed away. One song was essentially The Fall's Hit The North with different lyrics and arrangement. Mark E Smith, who died nine days after this gig, would probably have enjoyed this music.

Socket: Windmill, London, 18 January

Enjoyably whiney (sometimes shouty) female vocals. Some grinding, gathering, chiming-guitar rhythms. Also some fast songs. Overall, Socket definitely wrenched me out of my musical complacency. One of the band had - Woody Guthrie/Joe Strummer-like - "Not a guitar. Not a revolution" emblazoned on their guitar. Cici n'est pas un pipe. Also good at this gig: Great Dad and Bo Gritz.

This is not a guitar with not a guitar written on it.

(It's a photo of a guitar with not a guitar written on it)

Treehouse: Flashback Records, London, 27 January

Emo-cum-grunge stuff from a likeable two-piece who could have been just like dozens of other bands and ... were, but we're still good. Their main distinction seem to be the way the drummer-vocalist switched instantly from croak-voiced singing to something quite tender, sometimes in the same passage. Some nice lyrics too, eg: "Put my arms around you like a sweater". And from their apparently very new Smoking Green Apple Roll-ups song ("we just finished it on Wednesday"): "Did you always never love me?"

Birdskulls: Shacklewell Arms, London, 15 March

Audience member heckle at this pretty good garage-rockin' gig: "I don't give a fuck about anything". Band member: "What, anything? You don't give a fuck about music? No? [...] Nor do I". So: do you, dear reader, give a fuck why I thought Birdskulls should be in my top 20 gigs of 2018? No? Nor do I ...

Wooden Indian Burial Ground: Shacklewell Arms, London, 20 March

Excellent name, pretty decent band. A bunch of US dudes firing out some fast, dense psych-rock stuff. Interesting arrangements (you couldn't really tell where songs were going), a Jello Biafra-type warble on some of the vocals, and what seemed to be looping on some of the guitar parts. Merch-wise, they apparently had all sorts. "A lot of records. Cassette tapes. A lot of problems ... we got a lot of problems". Haven't we all.

Chicago Chamber Musicians: Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, 2 April

Chamber music for chamber people! Two pieces - Jasmine Lin & Paul Kosower doing Gliere violin/cello duos, plus Bradley Opland and Joseph Genualdi doing Rossini stuff - at a free lunchtime recital in a rather ornate room in the excellent CCC. What's not to like? Entertainingly, Lin kept kicking out her legs as she played violin, while Opland, on double bass, wore a black Homberg hat as he delivered his atmospheric rumble: a gangsterish touch in Al Capone's home city.

Absolutely Not: The Empty Bottle, Chicago, 2 April

Were these a slow, folky foursome treating us to some mellow sounds? Absolutely Not! This was unrelentingly fast hardcore. Whatever tunes AN had were pleasingly blasted into inaudability as they sped through 20 breathless minutes. Things of note: a bare-chested drummer who wore (for no discernible reason) a huge, gaudy prize-fighter's belt, and a bassist with DEATH in white lettering on his black guitar. In front of a crowd of 40 or so, AN chucked out their speedcore stuff to ... minimal acclaim. After each song no more than about three people clapped. My kind of crowd.

Absolutely Not hanging around

Reid Karris & Corey Lyons/Alex Maerbach: Slate Art, Chicago, 3 April

Fiddly, glitchy, noodly improv alert! Two sets of completely absorbing, complexly-wired-up weirdness, with Karris's stuff involving a Frankenstein's monster guitar contraption and slow-moving washes of sound, and Lyons/Maerbach doing semi-ambient whispery lo-fi which would periodically cohere into pulses of rhythm and melody. Excellent throughout. Plus: the setting added to the vibe - a disused shop (I think) in a large building which had been only very lightly repurposed with a few rope lights threaded into the broken ceiling tiles.

Gunther Prague/Duke: CET, Coventry, 21 April

At one point in the proceedings Gunther Prague's singer stopped a song dead in its tracks and told off someone in the audience for apparently interfering with a speaker. Awkward! But ... probably fair enough. When they weren't admonishing the audience, GP were a decent noise-rock band playing in the dank (there were pools of water) and wonderfully cavernous CET art space. Earlier we'd had some pleasingly taut and well-arranged/well-sung soul from Duke, while an excellent projection of Cold War-era newsreels (and other stuff) played up above us on a concrete parapet. Do you believe in the Westworld ...?

Duke at Coventry's gone-but-not-forgotten CET building

Lost Harbours: Centrala, Birmingham, 19 May

"Dreary regions of the dead", sang the singer at this excellent gig, presumably channelling the worker-spirits of canal-side Digbeth - coal shovellers, wharf men and other long-extinguished phantoms. Playing in front of a screen showing a black-hooded figure making his way through snowy woods in sinister slo-mo, Lost Harbours was a nice slice of death-folkery. Electronics, guitar, songs reminding us that "Black is the colour of my true love's hair". An audience of about 20 people were left stranded, a long way from home. The inky blackness of the Digbeth Branch Canal beckoned ...

The hooded monk in the woods will find you in the end

Mystic Peach: Shacklewell Arms, London, 9 June

Interesting indie-ish outfit whose rather wired-and borderline-angry singer gave them a distinct edge. This not-exactly-mellow bloke repeatedly spat out "thank you" after their songs, sounding more contemptuous than grateful for the meagre smattering of applause. Or was it just nervy over-emphasis? Either way, interesting. Meanwhile, the bassist sache-d through most of their stuff mouthing the lyrics off-mic, apparently the group's biggest fan. Strange fruit!

The Rebel: Windmill, London, 6, 13, 20 and 27 June

Already blogged about it, ain't it? Just as good as his summer residency the previous year, I'm already looking forward to 2019's. Yeah, get the fucking Tories out! Meanwhile, also good at these gigs: Dairy Classics, The Glugg and The Sleep Eaters.

The Rebel: music for arachnids

Voulez Vous: Blondies, London, 6 September

Apparently on their first-ever outing, Voulez-Vous were two oddballs doing a tongue-in-cheek quirk-pop thing - almost cabaret rock. A few songs had dashes of blues-rock guitar reminiscent of a restrained She Keeps Bees, but it was mostly outright drolery, some really good. The drummer, using brushes, also delivered surreal spoken-word passages in a quaintly posh voice, while the French dude - apparently wearing his great aunt's second-best frock - threw out casually sarcastic remarks of a kind you hardly ever get with today's over-polite bands. Divertissant.

Voulez Vous: la première fois

Oof: JT Soar, Nottingham, 8 September

Oof!, as John Shuttleworth would say, this was Oof's last-ever gig apparently. If you're going to have a swansong show, the convivial surroundings of JT Soar are as good a place as any to have it. And it was nice stuff - minimalist funk rhythms, a nice interplay of vocals, two sets of keyboards, a loose, laid-back vibe. Sort of punk-funk done in a low-key style. Beforehand, the venue's sound guy/promoter described them to me as "like Stereolab" which was, I reckon, approximately only 15% true. RIP Oof.

Hamer/Sleep Terminal: Chunk, Leeds, 21 September

Another helping of this power-pairing (I also caught them in Sheffield in August, itself an excellent gig), and I'm not satiated yet! Hamer are a faster-miles-an-hour psych-punk band who occasionally sound like Hawkwind doing Damned songs. Dementedly good, with the hyper-active drummer and singer-guitarist using up more energy in one gig than I do in an entire year. ST, also impressive, are specialists in noise-murk, creating a wall of sound that still has discernible rhythms buried deep (very deep) within it all. A great gig and well worth the stressful cutting-it-far-too-fine drive from London (via Sheffield) to get there.

Hamer: too fast for squares

Witching Waves: Victoria, London, 25 September

One of a number of WW gigs I've seen in recent years, this was possibly the best. Why? Drive! They positively piled into their garage-punk stuff on this slack-as-hell Tuesday evening, especially the drummer-vocalist who was energy personified. Enjoyably shouty/punky in places (sounding, believe it or not, a bit like a 2018 reincarnation of The Ruts), they had excellent guitar lines and urgent, insistent vocals. Waves of mutilation ...

Dark Thoughts/Great Shame/Nazi Killer/Sammartino: Delicious Clam, Sheffield, 13 October

Hey ho, let's go: Dark Thoughts burst out of the traps with their impossibly Ramones-esque, melodic thug-punk and ... didn't slow down once. Exhilarating, joyful stuff. Also at this gig (in a reclaimed space in the semi-derelict Castle Market): Nazi Killer with their hyper-fast grindcore blasts, Great Shame with their sludgier grindcore, and the rather amazing Sammartino, doing a weird electro-soul thing wearing a Mexican wrestling mask and talking about how if you "don't move" you're inert matter and might as well be dead.

Dark Thoughts in darkest Sheffield

epic45: Centrala, Birmingham, 3 November

Epic by name, epic by nature. This impressive three-piece played for what for seemed like 17 hours (alright, 70 minutes), doing understated but pulsating pastoral pop stuff. Some of the percussion (a mix of programmed beats and live drumming) put me in mind of New Order/Durutti Column, while their soft-voiced vocals were in Diamond Family Archive/Robert Wyatt territory. Excellent visuals as well. A rapid-fire collage of unsettling countryside weirdness (like an outtake from Paul Wright's Arcadia), as well as Cocteau-esque reverse-motion shots of water and fire.

Rattle/Cat Apostrophe/Hyperculte: JT Soar, Nottingham, 19 November

Three for the price of one! A trio of excellent performances in front of about 25 people on a cold, rainy night in Nottingham. Dig it! Hypnotic double-drum grooves from the slightly kraut-rocky Rattle, a kind of power-twee from Cat Apostrophe, and complex No Wave-style punk-funk from Hyperculte, with songs about Shakespeare and Italian anarchists. Siamo tutti black bloc.

Any Other: Flashback Records, London, 4 December

Ultra-stripped-down solo guitar/vocal stuff at this in-store from Any Other’s Adele Nigro. Hushed, tense songs delivered with great control (“This is the case / This is the … [huh] … case”). There was scatting, some genuinely lovely guitar parts, and lines like “If they don’t see me I am nothing / But if they notice me I am nothing at all”. All in all, a great gig. It started out with four people in attendance. It ended with 12. What do people want? To be one among 20,000 at the O2? They’re welcome to it.

Most people in London would rather go to any other gig

than a free in-store from Any Other

And that, dear reader, is that. Don't you wish you'd been at these 20 gigs too? Course you do!