An evening celebrating the four-and-a-half-decade, shapeshifting career of Alex Novak gets underway with the man himself exploring his early work alongside guitarist Alaric Neville. Living life at 45 r.p.m. (that’s revolutions per minute), Alex’s first forays into music came via punk (and then the post variety) and that’s precisely what’s served up here. However, typical of a chameleon-like artist who has never stood still, these songs are framed in a whole new way. We get ‘Standens’ (by original Northampton punks the Isaws), the more nuanced ‘Hazaal’ from Religious Overdose and ‘Montezuma’ by The Tempest, and the result is a set that stitches together cuts from three very different bands in a unique way. With plenty of reverb and echoplex on Alaric’s guitar, and Alex’s trademark drawl, I’m reminded of Rough Trade-era The Fall (only less abrasive) and the whole thing has a strange otherworldly vibe. Psychedelic punk? You heard it here first!
Nothing ages as fast as an architect’s folly, and when Coventry was irrevocably scarred with brutalist monstrosities in the 1960’s, it didn’t take long for the rot to set in. A sea of concrete quickly crumbled, cavernous car parks became a criminal underworld, while unlit alleyways, where the sun never reached, stank permanently of piss (and if you want to know why The Specials wrote ‘Concrete Jungle’, there’s your answer). Thankfully, such environments can be fertile ground for great music and case in point are Attrition. They’ve been painting the world black with their dark sound since 1980, and their live shows are more black magic ritual than regular gig. Martin Bowes hangs off the microphone as if in a trance, while co-vocalist Julia Niblock, a singer at a séance, seems to channel a departed spirit to deliver a ghostly wail, and when floating atop discombobulating electronica, certainly casts a spell on the venue. After leading from the front with his previous bands, Alex Novak became part of Attrition in 1985 (appearing on their Smiling, At The Hypogonder Club album) and he joins the band for their final two tracks, acknowledging that era with ‘Adam and Eva’ and ‘Shrink-Wrap’.
Mirroring Alex Novak’s career, Venus Fly Trap have been a band in constant flux. From their early incarnation as post-punk pioneers to their current formulation as darkwave duo, they’ve been evolving and revolving like some strange alien life form for well over three decades. However, it is a piece of musical cannibalism that opens the set and finds them covering Religious Overdose’s ‘Control Addicts’ (recently recorded for the Glass Records compilation). There is no time wasted between songs, the band preferring to hit us with rapid punches and what follows is a career-spanning set with the addictive ‘Morphine’ spiking our interest, ‘Gemini Lounge’ crashing like James Dean’s Porsche 550 Spyder, and ‘Mercury’ raising the temperature a few degrees. Throughout, Alex moves with the grace of an android and throws some faux karate moves while Andy Denton pulls robotic riffs from his guitar and delivers them with mechanical precision. The band tackle Suicide’s ‘Rocket USA’ head on and reshape it in their own image and win hand’s down (it’s bold, and how covers should be handled) before, as we near the end of the set, they catch another cover in their sticky jaws, this time The Cramps’ ‘Human Fly’.
It’s rumoured that time will be called on Venus Fly Trap next year, so tonight feels both celebration and summation. It’s an evening that’s tinged with sadness at the thought the Venus Fly Trap won’t be bringing their cinematic sound to venues much longer, if so the world will be a darker place, but in whatever guise Alex Novak appears next, it’s sure to be interesting.
