It’s always worth looking at the listings when arranging gigs to make sure that you don’t clash with anything big, and this time round it couldn’t have been with anything musically bigger in Birmingham – as Capsule’s annual Supersonic Festival was taking place just down the road.
It is a bit of a shame as this gig is the closest that the Autumn Store has come to pushing the boundaries of indiepop towards what you might consider Capsule territory - but these things happen. I was mainly glad to finally be able to get Japanese band Andersens to Birmingham, with their co-headliners The Starlets and give The Sunflower Lounge a little night of diverse and lovable music of it’s own.
Local duo Bavarian Country Singers & Comrades kicked off the live music of the night in a perfect fashion. They play their own brand of lo-fi-country-pop using guitars and the occasional banjo and toy accordion.
They also did a great and unexpected cover of Jay-Z’s 99 Problems, which reminded me of the good old days when Autumn Stores Discos used to finish with the Ben Folds cover of Bitches Ain’t Shit.
One of the great things about BCS&C is that they both have really lovely singing voices that made the harmonies utterly spellbinding, and you just can’t help smiling at it all. There will always be a home at The Autumn Store for slightly shy and thoughtful acoustic pop duos like this.
The Starlets on the other hand have a more expansive sound gained from both the clever use of guitar pedals to enhance the arrangements (rather than for the sake of it) and by adding a violin and trumpet to the indie band 4-4-2 of drums, bass and two guitars.
The last few days of gigs left them sharp and definitely on form when they played the Autumn Store and the diversity of the song writing really did come through in the set – switching between quiet and hushed songs with whispered vocals to louder songs with good use of dynamics.
There were four members of Andersens who had come over from Japan for the tour, and at the start of the set they were joined by a saxophonist and the trumpet player from The Starlets to give the songs the type of depth that they achieve on record.
You could never accuse Andersens of not having a bold and unique songwriting vision. The songs often take in the gentler and relaxing elements of pop bands such as Architecture In Helsinki but always surprise you by pushing them in interesting directions.
They also have a very good way of filling their musical landscapes with snippets of melody that remain firmly with you for the day. Christmas Eve in particular has been following me round since the gig, just popping in to my head every so often to remind me that complex and quirky arrangements can be mixed with a sense of tunefulness.
At times Andersens pass through transitional jazzy moments, as a way of changing their songs but they always retaining that playful touch that prevents the songs from ever becoming as tedious as the word ‘jazz’ would usually suggest in a review. Towards the end of the gig, the brass section left the stage and the Andersens were left as a four piece, their last song featuring some clever guitar work over a flute led rhythm section.
It was also pretty exciting to find out afterwards that Andersens were responsible for Jens Lekman’s third favourite gig ever.
The night ended with some DJing and dancing. Remembering my love of acoustic covers of non-acoustic songs from earlier the Jeffrey Lewis version of Punk is Dead had to finish things off!
