Guacamole.

3:03am - Most people when they can't sleep decide to lie around in bed trying unsuccessfully to sleep and getting frustrated. Tonight I have decided it would be much better to write about it while listening to Moderat. Basically, for some reason my bedroom is unpleasantly warm, like your feet get when you forget that those shoes you put on today are very nice in winter for keeping your feet warm but become little smelly saunas in the summer and you end up walking around with slightly damp socks and feet. Well this is like that but without the wetness or the smell. It's warm and unpleasant.

It's like when you walk in on a parent who is engaged in a passionate kiss. It's not so bad that you're permanently mortified, but it's bad enough for you to wish it wasn't real.

Anyway, enough of the fornicating relatives, I'm going to write about a gig I went to today/technically yesterday. Cellar - Oxford - Vacuous Pop night - Joan Of Arc. Supported by This Town Needs Guns, Love Of Everything & Elephants.

First up were Elephants. Ady gave me a copy of their cd a couple of weeks ago, and I am pretty taken with it. It's really good. Elephants are a band who play the music that comes after post-rock. You know, it's kind of coming back to indie-pop, but it's being played thru post-rock spectacles. Anyway, Elephants play like they've been together for a while, such is their confidence and tightness (aside from a false start with a new song, but we'll forgive them that), and their songs are very strong. all of which makes for a pretty thrilling set. My only criticism is that their name is kind of inappropriate. They don't sound like elephants. If I were to place an animal on them, I would say they sound like giraffes. But 'Giraffes' isn't as good a band name. See, that's what's so great about Manatees. They play the kind of sludgy, scuzzy, downtempo rock you can associate with the animal, and it's a pretty cool name for a band. I guess not all animal named acts can be as blessed. Take Panda Bear. He sounds like a chameleon threesome. Not a single panda bear, but imagine calling yourself 'Chameleon Threesome'. Actually that's a pretty fucking cool name. Why isn't he called 'Chameleon Threesome'? Maybe I'll write to him and suggest it. Anyway, I've gone off on a tangent there. The point is that Elephants are very good on cd and very good live. Elephants are a very good band.

Next up, Love Of Everything. A two piece of nice summery pop with a slight folk and drone edge. It's delicious. It's like listening to an ice lolly. One that's layered, like a Fab, or a Twister. More like a Twister actually. They looped a disposable camera charging it's flash on one song which could've been really gimmicky and lame, but was actually ace and added to the song rather than detract from it. Not everyone liked Love Of Everything, but I did.

Oh my God, why has no-one made a poseable disposable camera? A sort of combination of camera and Transformer? Too late for that idea now Axl, everything's gone digital. Shucks. Do people still buy disposable cameras?

Anyway, after them came This Town Needs Guns. I haven't seen them for quite a while. Mostly because whenever I had seen them previously I didn't like them. I was pretty close to just sort of going somewhere else while they were on, but I decided to stick around and give them another go, and I'm glad I did because they were really good. I was very pleasantly surprised. A band I had previously written off as mathy/emo also-rans (probably somewhere on this blog knowing me), have in the last year, or however long it is since I last saw them, gotten really good. I was surprised how good they were. They played a really strong set of indie/math/post/whatever-rock songs, which they rocked very well. Rock.

So. Headliners. Joan Of Arc. Joan Of Arc are one of those bands that you go "Nah, they'll never play in Oxford." But here they are. At the Cellar. I was pretty excited about seeing these guys, and they did not disappoint. A superbly played set of their take on American indie with something really interesting going on. Joan Of Arc are a band that are pretty hard to describe because every blanket genre-name label you could give them leaves something important about their sound out of the assumption of what that genre is, so conveying their sound on this blog is going to be virtually impossible. Just trust me on this. They were pretty amazing and you should check them out.

4:01am - I was gonna write about something else but I can't remember what it was now. I'm getting quite tired now. I might try and go to sleep. See how that works for me.

Bye now! Hope you're all well. Hope you're taking care of yourselves and eating well. Aw, I love you guys.