Polar Bear @ The Stables

Well I was going to use this post today as a space of catharsis to vent my inutterable fury at the absolute blind incompetence and arrogant pomposity of those cretinous bureaucrats at the job centre, which, given that as soon as I think about it I become consumed with outrage, could only have resulted in long inarticulate ramblings with the words ' fucking twats' interspersed at frequent intervals. But since then, two nice things have happened to me. First, a lovely young man at the bank (he was probably new) gave me an extension to my overdraft with Minimal Fuss. I just went in and asked for some money and he gave it to me. I got the bus home instead of having to walk in the freezing rain. Then tonight, by way of celebration, I went to The Stables MK, where I haven't been for a very long time, to go and watch Polar Bear. Who were quite wonderful. So I have now pocketed my rage and can instead write about the gig.

Despite the relative emptiness of the tiered auditorium (anything to do with the £15 ticket price I wonder?), a common air of unpretentious appreciation managed to join the crowd across all the empty seats to give the gig a good sense of intimacy. They started off quietly, with several more ambient numbers, blending quite beautiful fluid saxophone melodies with soft-spoken melancholy bass lines, underpinned by a depth of assorted noises, echoes and intensifying resonances coming from Leafcutter John's laptop and other surrounding instruments, including a howling cymbal channeled through the coaxing threads of a violin bow. As the pace started to pick up, proceedings were kept laid back by the soothing voice of the quite lovely and strikingly hirsute Seb Rochford, linking the set together with clearly entirely unpremeditated explanations of songs. The second half (a gig with an interval!) was altogether a little more hectic, with the chaos pad whipped out in the corner. Obviously the cue for someone up in the lighting department to start swirling the spotlights around excitedly around as though someone might mistake them for strobes. At times the artifice of the noise did seem a little mismatched with the unembellished raw chaos of the other instrumentation, particularly when it went all out on the final enlivening 'King of Aberdeen', although elsewhere sampled loops and feedback echoes added a touch of brilliant madness to tortured saxophone solos and shadowy bass lines. The polite persistence of the crowd's encore request seemed to encapsulate the demure enthusisam of the occasion, and the upbeat eccentricites of 'Beartown' left everyone feeling happliy worn out.