Borderville + The Glamour

[sebastienne]

Saw Borderville at Cowley Road carnival on Sunday. The carnival itself sucked pretty badly (I remember when it was all acrobats and Victorian freakshow parodies - now it seems to be awful eardrum-splitting dance music and overpriced food) but Borderville were good fun. They've gone and gotten themselves a string trio (The Glamour) and have upped the orchestration on lots of their numbers. Particular highlights were "The Protesters" and "Stage Fright" (oh, it's even more of a torch song with a sudden, epic, string-heavy outro!), although I was sad not to hear "Blood on the Kitchen Floor" with the added richness. "Joy Through Work" didn't convince - the strings took away from the awful raw horror of it, and the band seemed less tight because of it.

Your next chance to see Borderville is at Truck. Truck is a local music festival, a short bus-ride from Oxford. They're on at noon on Sunday on the main stage. Buy reduced-price tickets here!

Love them as I do, the idea of them at a full-blown music festival, accompanied by "The Glamour", reminds me unavoidably of this scene from Velvet Goldmine:

(There's not much to transcript, really; he's singing this song and the audience are shouting abuse of the generic and homophobic variety.)

(And actually, Borderville will rock a hell of a lot more than the slightly whiny JRM-vocal in the clip.)

<3<3<3

"When you've been abused like that, you know you've touched the stars"