Aiden Moffat and RM Hubbert played their latest album called Here lies the Body released on Rock Action Records, in the gig room at Rough Trade Records in Bristol with support from Siobhan Wilson. I CANNOT FIND A REUSABLE PICTURE OF ROUGH TRADE OR THEIR LOGO. So, let me tell you a story, I couldn’t bear the gig room when the support was on so I sat outside and witnessed Aiden Moffat and RM Hubbert perusing Rough Trade after it had been closed off especially for them. Obviously, one to have a vivid AF imagination I superimposed my daydreams of them running around the shop in a diva-esque fashion a la Mariah or suchlike. I took a picture, you can’t even see Aiden running around in shorts picking out albums (Daphne and Celeste I am guessing, but just don’t ask) but I love it anyway.
I mean, I didn’t even know that there was a gig room. It’s not a venue I have visited due to it being so new. As gig rooms go, I bet this one would be awesome at any other gig. Big doors at the back shutting the sound in, dark, no pillars in the general viewing area…I know of Idles playing there, I bet their angry noise ricocheted from wall to wall to wall to wall, but Siobhan Wilson struggled against the door opening and closing and people talking throughout her slot.
Her music is wistful and cinematic, it sounds like the soundtrack to a series shown on Sky Atlantic by Wes Anderson. I was feeling a bit fragile so stepped outside for a cuppa and a sit-down.
I do love a good lyric and it is truly well known that I am dearly fond of Arab Strap from their days on Chemikal Underground records. It’s not as if I followed them around or anything. Aiden’s voice moves me, since the minute I heard Cherubs I was smitten. Shame on me for only really hearing Cockrow though, my former self would be angry.
IS IT THOUGH?
Part of me is really glad I didn’t know too much about the new album as I was entranced throughout. Most of me felt my spine tingle during She Runs and Mz. Locum. How can you not with such lyrics as: ‘Capricious contrarian…I’m her prurient proxy/Goodbye – good luck! – to my capricious contrarian, my blissoming* blonde, my wee louche libertarian’?
*blissoming means lustful even though Grammarly is shouting at me.
I can’t believe that this opus on sex and death and sex again took only three days to record. It is a masterful study on relationships, painfully accurate and using some copper speak-box that makes it sound like a train station announcer. I also discovered that the machine he was directing his wand at was an 808 machine. Let’s not get hung up on the technicalities of what the instrument was, it was amazing. I think my favourite has to be Mz Locum, I am a lyric girl after all.
Aiden and RM were beyond my expectations, exceptional even. The discourse, the music and the atmosphere were so conducive to bliss. I’m so glad that I managed to see these perform in such an intimate venue.
RM Hubbert was a great discovery, his website sounds just like him, I have included some of his solo stuff on the short playlist below, but obviously, if you like it then support your scene and seek them out on bandcamp or their record label.
… You can find the lyric book available as a PDF on the album’s website here… and what a beautiful piece of art it is, that is quite the effort that impressed me and my paper hating tendencies.
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All terrible photos by me and my iPhone 7+.
