Best Coast at The Borderline

Best Coast
Fear Of Men
The Borderline, 18 September 2012

Apparently Best Coast are pretty cool right now: they've been on the cover of trendy magazines, the hipster blogs love them and singer Bethany Cosentino has even designed a range of clothes for the yawn-inducingly hip clothes chain Urban Outfitters. So by all rights I shouldn't be here, I feel worryingly out of place until I spot a bunch of older gentlemen who obviously have no clue who the band are and have been persuaded to come along by their younger friend who appears to be the only fan among them. Still, despite this I can't help enjoying Best Coast's sunny, feel-good surf-pop and I'm looking forward to seeing them play the tiny Borderline as part of a brief low-key tour of smaller venues.

Cat Power's Cherokee

Cat Power's new record, Sun, is quickly becoming my album of the year. The first video from it, Cherokee, is pretty badass too, full of post-apocalyptic, zombie shenanigans. Love Chan Marshall's new punky short hairdo too. Can't wait to see her live again in December!

Patti Smith at Troxy

Patti Smith & Her Band
Troxy, 13 September 2012

"There is so much energy here tonight, I actually can feel my blood going: buzzzzz..." Patti tells the audience grinning and I have to believe her. There must be something she's feeding off that enables her, at 65 years of age no less, to display such vivacity still. She continuously dances, theatrically throws out her arms as if preaching to the faithful while singing, often crouches down at the front of the stage to smile and wave to the audience and of course sings her heart out. When she hands over the reins to guitarist and longtime collaborator Lenny Kaye for a couple of numbers, she doesn't use the brief respite to go offstage to rest, she instead uses it as an opportunity to go down to the barrier and shake hands with every person (myself included) in the front row.

Norah Jones at the Roundhouse

Norah Jones
Beth Orton
Roundhouse, 10 September 2012

I have two confessions to make. First, I don't remember even applying for tickets for this free show, held as part of the month-long iTunes Festival at the Roundhouse (I unsuccessfully applied for Jack White tickets and must have clicked this show too). Secondly, I don't mind Norah Jones but have never been a big enough fan to want to see her live, I can only presume I was drawn to the presence of Beth Orton on the bill, who I did actually want to see live. Now that's out of the way, I must admit this was a pretty wonderful show all round so all-in-all a rather happy accident.