Jeniferever & Underground Railroad – Luminaire, London 12/12/08

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It’s a chilly night in North West London, but what better way to warm up than a evening put on by those fabulous Club AC30 folk, with a bill including Jeniferever and Underground Railroad, it promises to be a goodie.

I thankfully arrived at the Luminaire just as the London based French post-punk band Underground Railroad took to the stage. Newly signed to independent label champions, One Little Indian Records, they’ve already released two albums, Twisted Trees in 2005 and their current release Sticks and Stones. I’ve heard many good things about their most recent album and, tonight, I wasn’t to be disappointed.

I was initially worried that they were to be yet another style-over-substance band churned out on the seamlessly never-ending conveyor belt of the quirky indie coolness brand. Sure, they dress in check shirts and one of them sports a joan-of-arc haircut – but their musicianship shone through all pretension this evening. On ‘Sticks and Stones’ drummer Raphael Muraooze and guitarist Marion Andrau chant in unison with a focused and yet frantic passion and it’s held together with such tight precision that you can’t help but feel affected and impressed by just how well honed their material is. Later on ’25′ is held together by Muraooze’s clinical but intricately timed beats, and finds Andrau riding ontop of it with her fuzzy layered guitars and cool, sophisticated lyrics. Ones to watch for 2009 me thinks.

When Uppsala, Sweden’s Jeniferever take to the stage, the crowd are already in place in a lulled, sweet sense of calm, with the front row of people already sitting down, one even lying horizontally on the wooden floor… The band wanders on stage, tuning their guitars meekly and whispering to one another in-between. It becomes very apparent that it would seem absolutely criminal to even raise your voice above a certain level to disturb the ambience.

They drift through new material from their Nangijala EP (the brand new 10″ released by tonight’s promoters Club AC30) with the tracks ‘When Our Hands Clasped’ and ‘Openings To Stories’. Both show off their competence for creating ambient indie rock/post-rock/whatever, with its slow-paced, melodic, and frequent building to orchestral-like climaxes. It’s safe to say that they’re fully immersed in the music they make. Their heads rooted to the floor. The music a warm and atmospheric wash which combines the sparse beauty of Mogwai, GYBE and yep, you guessed it, Sigur Ros. However, I can’t help but feel I’ve heard this all before and it was so much better back then. The genre seems so saturated now and even the current forerunners, Explosions in the Sky, look to be making up the numbers with their delay friendly and saccharine flavoured instrumental songs which follow the same pattern again and again.

Not to finish on a down note though. Jeniferever do make music that looks effortless and natural. I’m grateful they don’t seem to have an ounce of pretension about them (although I did occasionally worry about how thin the lead guitarist was) and looking around tonight’s crowd, there’s definitely still an audience out there for this kind of music. However, I do feel that the genre needs a strong shake up or for some kind of evolution to take it to the next level and to, once again, push the envelope, so to speak. On tonight’s evidence, I’m certainly intrigued to see their next move.

Club AC30 on the web
Underground Railroad on Myspace
Jeniferever on Myspace