Elks & s.k.g: New Cross Inn, 19 July 2008

When I started writing for DrunkenWerewolf magazine last year, one of my inaugural duties was to review a sampler by Elks that contained their first two singles. I was impressed. I played it a lot and eagerly awaited new material. The band released their self-titled debut album a few weeks ago and my copy arrived just in time for the deadline for submissions for the next issue of DW. I managed to write something overwhelmingly positive and get it across to editor Tiff with a few hours to spare. Four weeks later, I’d probably write it completely differently, but that’s one of the many joys of music: the way your relationship with specific songs, albums and artists changes over time.
The review will be posted here a respectable interval after DrunkenWerewolf 5 has been published and you’ve all rushed to buy your copy. In the meantime, having now seen the band play live for the first time at the New Cross Inn on Saturday night, I’ve got the opportunity to write about them again. But first, a word about the venue itself. When I moved to London in autumn 1986 at the tender age of eighteen, this was the first pub that I drank in, about an hour after registering for my college course. I still remember it well: Johnny and I, two “northerners” sitting in a tiny little snug with a gas fire and serving hatch, scoffing peanuts and moaning about crap southern beer.
The snug is long gone and the place is now almost completely open-plan. Elks were first on, opening their set with the album’s initial track, Sorry For The Inconvenience. I knew beforehand that they had two singer-guitarists, but seeing them live definitely made more sense of that. It’s a bit simplistic to say that Rob is the screamer and Dan’s the more reflective one, but it’s a good starting point. Bi-vocal bands work best, in my experience, when the two singers interact, but nevertheless maintain their own space. As an audience member, you want them to be singing to you rather than each other. These two have that down to a fine art: together, but separate.
When I first came across Elks, their record label set them in a math-rock context. I’ve been very dubious about math- and post-rock for many years. It’s always seemed rather… well, mathematical. I want soul and passion from my music; vocals and melodies, tales and narratives, not formulae and statistics. It’s no exaggeration to say that getting to know Elks’ songs over the past few months has helped me to take a different view. They’ve got passion, stories and melodies in bucketfuls, but also marvellous complexity and intricacy, tangential shifts and switches that make every song sound vibrant and fresh. Most importantly, they look and sound like they’re having fun.

They gave a relaxed yet tight performance: intense at the peaks, punctuated by easy-going singalongs and hand claps. I couldn’t fault it in any respect other than the fact that it was disappointingly short. Was it really only six songs, or did it just feel like that? I learned afterwards that they nearly hadn’t gone ahead at all, due to some kind of instrument-related fuck-up. That just made it even more special: the conjuring of something magic from potential silence. Which, at best, is what music’s all about. As you’ve probably gathered, I have a huge amount of enthusiasm and respect for Elks. They’re a fine example of what post-post-rock music can be in 2008.
I came across s.k.g, the artistic identity of Sebastian Konrad Gach, earlier this year when Stuart James (who I enjoyed at the Electric Gardens festival last year) remixed his Needles And Suspenders track. Its refrain of “the fire in her heart burns her lover’s hands” got under my skin and I hoped that one day I’d get the chance to see him play live, despite the fact that he mainly divides his time between Reading and Exeter. Having spent rather a lot of time and money on live music already this month, I was dithering about going to see Elks (though in all honesty I’d probably have ended up going anyway), but when I saw s.k.g on the same bill my mind was made up.
Musically he’s at almost totally the opposite end of the scale to Elks. An eclectic list of influences on his MySpace page includes Jamie T – probably the most obvious pointer – but also Bright Eyes, The Cure, Jeffrey Lewis and Laura Marling, amongst others. What struck me most strongly was how much his observational material resembles all kinds of music that I loved as a teenager. New Order’s Low-Life and Brotherhood albums sprang immediately to mind, but also the occasional hint of Blancmange and maybe even Erasure at times. To put this into context, Mr Gach was born three years after I first set foot in the New Cross Inn and is thus about the same age now that I was then.

s.k.g’s output doesn’t sit particularly naturally alongside much of the stuff that I like these days, yet having seen his live set I’m becoming more intrigued. It has a distinct sense of personality – less flamboyant and technicolor than Patrick Wolf’s recent material, but with a similarly strong maverick streak. He plays to his strengths, using a laptop backing track to allow him to focus on his keyboard and vocals. Of great appeal to my ongoing pursuit of authenticity in music is the fact that he sings exactly as he speaks, which contributes to a strong impression that his over-riding concern is to focus and channel exactly who he is into his songs.
That’s always my primary advice to musicians and artists (not that it’s sought particularly often): be yourself. Let the world come to you, don’t chase it. Art first, recognition later. Write songs, not singles. In this sense, s.k.g is already streets ahead of many more “successful” musicians and there’s potential for much more. With darker material like Don’t Stop Loving Me adding depth to his powerpop breadth, I suspect he won’t be resting on his laurels. To quote his MySpace tagline, most young kings get their head cut off. Here’s hoping that the only regal executions he encounters in the immediate future will be those of his own stage performances.
s.k.g plays on 15 August at the Lumiere, Kilburn. Elks’ next scheduled gig is on 25 October at Clockwork, Islington, but no doubt something else will be arranged in the meantime. Hopefully the occasional slight audio distortion in the Elks YouTube clip above doesn’t detract too much from your enjoyment.