Booking Ahead

By londonist_mark Last edited 226 months ago
Booking Ahead
22-20s.jpg

At the time of writing the grand folk of this fine island nation are still deciding which venerable party is going to be responsible for late running trains and broken tube lines so as you read this you could be weeping for joy or arranging your residents visa for Chad. But as my venerable Ma says: "it doesn't matter who you vote for because the government always gets in."

So dry your eyes mate and break out the credit cards because there's something for everyone out there in gig land.

If you're wondering how a bunch of 20-something Lincolnshire lads can play late 60s blues rock with the power and passion of a hardcore band then you want to be at preferred Londonist venue the Islington Academy on the 19th August to cath the 22-20s.

Londonist is also rather excited about being able to finally catch up with Mastodon at the Astoria on the 11th July. Think prog rock concept thrash metal band with John Bonham's satanic bastard offspring drumming and you'll get why Leviathan was named Kerrang!'s album of 2004. It might be worth mentioning that Londonist likes the Astoria too.

Sounding almost nothing like Mastodon and everything like Athlete, Athlete take to the stage of the Hammersmith Apollo on the 1st of September. We do like their fly poster styled site. If you don't know what Athlete sound like then you've been hiding from tv, radio, the internet and anywhere that plays music because it's been hard to avoid them in this pre Coldplay new album void of tuneful anthemic pop.

Sounding nothing like Athlete, Richmond Fontaine bring their alt.country tales of the disposesed to the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith on the 19th May. That's really soon but tickets are still available from the Lyric site. Their new album The Fitzgerald is being compared to Springsteen's Nebraska through its bleak character studies but come back on Monday to find out what the people who really matter think about it - us! Clue - it's very good.

OK time for more noisy (but don't worry we'll throw some mellow in there too).

Londonist readers might have noticed that there's been a steady resurgence of reformations, returns and post-recrimination cash cow reunions from America's indie fraternity who soundtracked a generation that began way back with the MC5 and ended with a bloodied shirt on April 5, 1994. LA based Bad Religion, founders of Epitaph records (and therefore responsible for The Offspring), are one of the few bands that survived the tests of time and will be very noisy at the Astoria on the 29th August.

Londonist understands that some of our readers consider being able to hear more than a high pitched ringing in their later years to be desirable and who are we to argue? If you're in Brixton on Thursday you can catch the jazzy folky funk mellow stylings (look just listen for yourself here) of the Forestbrook Folkestra at the Ritzy Cafe.

More smooth stylings, this time from Saint Etiene (site under construction) at Kokos on the 16th June ahead of a new LP: Tales From Turnpike House

And just in case it was all getting a little to quiet for you Seattle's These Arms Are Snakes are at the Underworld on 6th June and the DiS message boards are all a flurry. The band we are told mines post-hardcore's glory days to get a sound that mixes grisly, needling guitars with ambient background sounds, keyboards and no-frills emo tempos. Sounds good to us, see you in the queue.

For completists sake there are also tours for Sum 41, Maroon 5, UB40 and Rooster but we're going to make a personal call on this one and tell you to look them up for yourselves. We'd rather be listening to Boom Bip Blue Eyed In The Red Room.

Last Updated 06 May 2005