Oh Great Britain and your esteemed decadence. How proud we are of our working men’s social clubs- you kick-started Morrissey and Marr, retain moth-ball cupboard culture and round up miserable men aging quicker than their (house)wives can lay the table. However tonight the lovingly despised neighbours from across the pond have rolled into town armed to the teeth with distorted euphoria to turn those frowns upside down.A wander through the YWCA down the road is the most paralleled situation I’ve ever wound up in but it got shut down a day or two after. And that was in the South. This is as Northern as it gets; sipping a dirt-cheap cider and watching the men play billiards like an enthused child, the surroundings are truly astounding, like a scene out of ‘Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em’ with the added surrealism brought about by alcohol and empty stomachs. The pool table’s oversized, the décor is tastelessly delightful and the toilets are composed uniquely of ancient urinals that splash back all over your shoes.
Woodhouse nestles within Hyde Park although this corner’s a far cry from the salubrious setting of its London namesake. Arriving just as the sun shies away behind TJ’s dated exterior, Dent May looks forlorn and absolutely shattered. 15 minutes later than planned, at the very least he’s profited from Woodhouse’s culinary potential having just devoured ‘pasta with spinach and ricotta’ as he explains enthusiastically, so he’s benefitting from a ‘conservative’ calorie boost. He may well need it.
At this moment in time, it’d be a fair presumption to assume that you’re yet to experience the wonder of Dent May and his Magnificent Ukulele (he’s received most exposure, bizarrely, in ‘France, Austria and Scandinavia’) but those times look set to be radically altered. Forever. Touring with label mates Animal Collective (it’s all fairly familiar- the ‘Collective own label Paw Tracks and share a tour bus with Dent), it’s a psychedelic match made inside John Lennon’s mushroom-mangled mind. They met at Dent’s house in Mississippi around a year ago whilst Animal Collective were recording their latest and most critically acclaimed record to date, ‘Merriweather Post Pavilion’ and have ‘kept in touch’ ever since. He denotes musical differences but affirms that their fans are ‘incredibly open culturally’ even though a fair few are into something slightly more experimental. Despite having his treasured ukulele in tow, that’s about as far as comparisons with Noah & the Whale and other trust-fund Londoners are going to stretch. Yet following a lengthy digestion of debut record 'The Good Feeling Music of Dent May and his Magnificent Ukulele', the only realistic pigeonholing is exactly what it says on the tin- ‘good feeling music’. Uplifting in every sense of the word, May’s endearing musical meanderings on unpopular college kids and conference boredom strung together with rich minimal orchestration could soundtrack the bleakest of British summers.
Having barely recuperated from SXSW jetlags and hangovers, a festival May brands as being full of ‘ups and downs’ as well as ‘aspiring bands vying desperately for endless attention’, he’s landed on British shores for the first time in his modest 23 years on this planet. He’s soldiering on even without his purple cape and ukulele lead, both unceremoniously forgotten and left in America. Predictably, ‘one was easier to replace than the other’. Despite playing venues ‘off the beaten path’ and being disappointed by the lack of salt and taste in our fish and chips despite being 'composed almost entirely from grease', he sounds upbeat when speaking of our ‘pretty cool country, a country in which he’s discovered an infatuation for ‘chicken and mushroom pies’ in place of his preferred U.S. Cinnabon cinnamon rolls, played his biggest show to date at London’s Kentish Town Forum and jammed to sixties and seventies Turkish psychedelia with kebab vendors in Bristol. A whirlwind few days to say the least.
Sporting his trademark ‘new-wave Elton John’ round-rimmed glasses he hopes don’t start fashion a trend ‘like those Urban Outfitters frames without lenses’ whilst strumming his trusted ukulele alongside the minimal percussion of a single tambourine and egg shaker, Dent May charms and enchants almost entirely single-handedly. And given the humble, kitsch shades within ‘You Can’t Force a Dance Party’ and ‘Oh Paris’, deprive him of his favoured cinnamon rolls at your peril when he returns triumphant, full band in tow come September for both Bestival and End of the Road festivals.
Whilst the evolution of Animal Collective over the past five years or so has veered away from motorway mainstream on B-roads and backstreets, ‘Merriweather Post Pavilion’ has given the trio a lease of life filled with jaded ecstasy and a backdrop of musical influences more unique than a card in a kaleidoscopic deck. Performing in the sort of vacuous hall usually reserved for bingo wings and inked crosses, the setting’s ideal for the chewed up vibrations reverberating from all four crumbling walls of TJ’s Woodhouse Club. 
Panda Bear’s squeals on the ephemeral ‘Grass’ tower alongside the anthemia brought about by fuzzy duo ‘Summertime Clothes’ and ‘In the Flowers’. Quite how they conjure up such part-stoned majestically picturesque sonic landscapes is testament to how essential they are to the Hype Machine generation. ‘Guys Eyes’ and 'Lion in a Coma' can only be pigeonholed as Friendly Fires sailing down the Amazon in a purple bottle kissing and cavorting with every panpipe they encounter along the way. Via didgeridoos. The evening’s highlight however is thrown away within 15 minutes of appearing amongst synths veiled in white cloaks illuminated fluorescently. Amidst such emphatically synthetic beauty the perfectly synchronised harmonics of ‘Leaf House’ stand resolute against the forever-changing musical trends we've come to menially await. Primitive, primal and paradisiacal, Animal Collective are peerless.Dent May- Oh Paris
However much I desperately attempt to avoid being swept by the ebbing of an NME tide, never before have Robert Smith and his troupe of miserablist outcasts featured so prevalently in my every waking thought. Having wished and hope to one day catch The Cure live, last Thursday one of the more realistic branches of the wish tree was set ablaze by Smith's sneering yet inherently tender and hopeless surrender to love, or lack, at NME's Big Gig. Picking holes in the corporate destruction that was smeared all over the event would be as elementary as reeling a list of 25 bands White Lies wish they were. Where The Cure succeed and White Lies fall, for me, is lyrically; the West London three-piece tend to focus somewhat allegorically on the fears that surround death and loss whereas Smith has the infintely enviable knack of impeccably expressing love. No other lyricist this side of Roy Orbison and Elvis Costello seems to have recognised the entirely fickle nature of love and the power it can hold over whoever it grasps. But The Cure could never slip into the clichéd powerballadry of Frankie Goes to Hollywood and other such 80s throw-away chancers cowering behind synths only found today on records from the likes of The Bravery and the Rev. John McClure. For 30-odd years Smith has addressed his fear and loathing of the most affecting and ultimately brutal of human emotions head on, recounting tales of the joys of finding and bitter disappointment at then losing seemingly every love interest he's ever encountered.
