Mana Wind Howls

At Taey's opening night we were very happy to get a short performance from the brilliant Whang Bo Ryung (황보령), playing solo with only an acoustic guitar for accompaniment.

Her voice is a marvel just by itself- gravelly, heavily textured and full of gradient, accelerating from half-reflective dream-talk to full-throated aggro-punk yelp in the space of a bar.

The songs veered wildly across rapid, almost Celtic strumming, to rippling and unresolved arpeggiation, to sprawling, panoramic landscape.

With any luck, we will be able to see her play a big show on the 30th in Seoul in support of the vast and unpredictable "Mana Wind" record, which has been soundtracking our mornings here this last week.

Older and Angrier

Chris and I were at the Camden Underworld last week, sharing a warren of bad-tempered bars with an embarrassingly male crowd, many of whom were plainly mourning the passing of Sleazy Christopherson from TG the previous night.

The support band plainly had no awareness of this, as they were two fresh faced Canadian women on a rush from some greasy cross-channel ferry to make the show on time. The name "Pack A.D." didn't bode well, but they were a brilliant object lesson in using every ounce of capability and nerve they possess to exponential effect. The drummer was using her sticks like hammers, and barely played off the 1 and the 3 all gig. This didn't matter in the slightest as she was plainly the social and logistical lynchpin of the group; her compadre was a razor-blade slim guitarist who played deceptively simple chords and riffs, but never the same one for very long at a time. Her singing had the traumatic bawl of a Kristin Hersh and the urgency of Johnny Cash. None of their songs seemed the same, which is always a sign of a great group.

No Means No have a set of songs that don't even sound like songs, which is why we love them so much. A blizzard of contorted, compulsive gestures, tunes and rages, kicking off with a squall of frustration called "Old": 'The older I get/ the angrier I am'. Glorious stuff.