Orcutt Shelley Miller/EarthBall – Cafe Oto, London, 20th April 2026 – EarthBall on Monday night at Oto were a rather different thing to EarthBall at Cafe Oto on the Friday before, the Canadian avant noise band were back in town again on the fourth day of a UK tour that began with that show last Monday in London, in between they’d been to Bristol and Cambridge, I imagine each day as rather diferent. EarthBall shows are always rather different, not once has it felt like they were repeating themselves and tonight, after my own experiments with them on Friday, the painting with then while they played and such – painting live while EarthBall play in the dark of Cafe Oto, did it work? What have Stewart Lee, Robert Calvert, the owl and the pussycat and Hawkwind got to do with it? – Monday really needed to be about just standing there in the middle of the packed venue as one of the watching listening crowd.
Friday had been a headline show, tonight they’re on before Orcutt Shelley Miller and it seems like for a lot of the audience in here this is a first encounter with the force that is EarthBall. It feels like their set tonight is as long as their Friday night set, it doesn’t feel like a support slot as much as two bands sharing a bill and complimenting each other. A mostly new audience for EarthBall and yes, lots of overheard positive appreciation from what can often be a rather judgemental Oto crowd (overheard in the men’s loo on Friday: I’m finding it hard to pee in here, this is the most judgemental toilet in London).
Tonight the EarthBall set starts off surprisingly quietly, just a lone figure, Liam Murphy, a clarinet, a stark stage, a bright light above him, a silent audience and a very jazzy rather moody rather smouldering start, that’s diferent, it works. Sometimes they explode, erupt, tonight things are deliciously understated, it is a couple of minutes before the rest of the band wander on one by one, start to pick up instruments (or get behind their instruments) and quietly start to add layers that eventually after two or three minutes allow Isabella Ford to start teasing her bass and adding her voice as we all ease into what will be an almost timeless ride of a piece that I assume is mostly an improvised thing.
We’re off, they’re painting, I’m watching, we’re off once more on some kind of experimental freeform psychedelic jazz/noise/rock ride, a ride that this time maybe involves a three headed dog up on a hill and what sounds like a stream of consciousness flow of spoken word in there with the weaving of the sometimes very complex playing and the colours that night not have names yet…
Actually I was so (trying to get) into the zone last Friday evening with the painting while they played thing that I have no idea how different this set is to the body of Friday’s bookended by Stewart Lee, the Owl and The Pussycat and that wild version of Robert Calvert’s Ejection set? Without ever being anyone other than EarthBall, it does feel like they are somewhat different every time we see them, they we never quite know what we’re going to get. Not so many attacks of feedback tonight, not so many full-bodied saxophone screams, that boundary they walk between chaos and clarity is a lot more on the side of clarity tonight, although that sound, that thing, that whatever it is that propels them (and us) is very much there, they’re certainly holding everyone’s attention, no drifting off to the bar or for a breather out on the street tonight.
Oh I love this band, I do keep on saying it, I love the way I can’t quite work out what’s going on, that I can’t quite work out how their chemistry flows in the way it does and how I can’t see the joins, the nods or which one of them is leading this bit. How do they know? I love that their tangents are just a little different, that they know how to take me where I want to go, that they thought I wanted to know.
Truth is I really am not that into bands that jam, I like musical structure, I don’t generally like it freeform, it usually feels self indulgence and uninviting, like the musicians are having a great time and no one else really is but that never happens with EarthBall and although tonight they don’t get as forcefully noisy as they sometimes can this one long piece that makes up the entire set really does work; this one piece that does once again boil up several times in a rather thrilling way, this is just as rewarding as they always are. Now I don’t want to come over as some frothing fan here, truth is that is fast what I am becoming, and tonight I’m just standing in the middle of a packed room, oblivious in terms of everything and everybody else, just the band in front of me, their movements, their ups and downs, their colours, their colour, their subtle details and the attention paid to it all, the way it sometimes broods, sometimes rumbles and then boils. Oh this is good once again… Oh that was good once again…
Orcutt Shelley Miller follow, Orcutt Shelley Miller are a guitar, bass, drums power trio featuring “incendiary guitarist Bill Orcutt, psych-seer Ethan Miller (Comets on Fire, Howlin’ Rain), and dynamic powerhouse Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth). Despite rhythmic nods to the SoCal ’60s, the overall vibe of Orcutt Shelley Miller is angular, atonal slash piled on a mid-’80s SST punk-fusionoid substrate…”
Well yes, I get the SST references but I’m mostly hearing a slightly (more than slightly) old school instrumental classic three piece late 60s flavoured acid-ish psychedelic band who, as well as they play it, and yes it is very very much that classic power trio thing, I just find it a little one dimensional. I’ve seen and heard so many people raving about their debut album, I’ve gone back to it quite a number of times, it isn’t really sounding much like a “punk-fusionoid substrate” to me, they mostly make me want to reach for a Neil Young album, and whisper it in here in Cafe Oto where on any given night every other overheard sentence seems to involves what Thurston is doing this week or what Lee Ranaldo had for tea yesterday, and well, even though those powerful bass lines can be delicious and they clearly are three great players, and even though they clearly work really well as one fully formed thing rather than three individuals, I kind of find myself waiting for it to go somewhere when mostly it feels like we’re idling at the lights waiting to go. I don’t know, I’m probably the only one drifting away before they finish, this gig did sell out in minutes, the crowd are lapping it up, they clearly do their thing rather well, but I kind of feel like I’ve heard it before and well, maybe if someone to a step up to a mic or took it somewhere new or…
Previously
THE ORGAN 