They may have been nominated for a 2010 MK award in the Skinny Jeans category, but Ashtray Electric are not your average indie-rock fashion victims.
■ Although the influence of bipolar balladeers ranging from the Cure to Interpol is audible beneath their self-styled sleazy slow-motion sexiness, it is the psychological bite lurking in their moody minor-chord humalongs that is the most alluring. As lead serenader Andre Gideon Montgomery Pienaar says about their new album: ‘Measured in Falls is a dictation of fears, trusts and other internal questions, but more importantly, as its name suggests, it tries to bring across the message that we all fuck up. It’s okay. You can always get up, go on and fall again.” Existential Rock 101? Perhaps. But if you listen beyond your own pretence you’ll soon be shaking your hips to the brighter side of sombre.
The Assembly, Harrington Street, June 11, 10pm. Tickets are R40 presold or R50 at the door.
■ Does struggle activism still have any creative currency in a liberated South Africa? This is just one of the questions singer-songwriter Robin Levetan ponders at the launch of his new solo album, A Far Country, on Youth Day. The founder member of Bright Blue was so inspired by his band’s once-off reunion gig at the End Conscription Campaign’s 25th anniversary celebrations in 2009 that he wrote new songs to make sense of his own journey from anti-apartheid activist to architect, property developer and entrepreneur. The result is a ‘sometimes poignant, always compelling song suite about ideas weathered but unbowed”. Levetan’s VIP band include Roger Bashew (bass), Paul Tizzard (drums), Willem Möller (guitar), Selwyn Schneider (guitar and vocals) and Tonia Selley (vocals, guitar and percussion).
June 16 at 6pm. Marimba, Cape Town International Convention Centre, corner of Heerengracht Street and Coen Steytler Avenue, Cape Town. Entrance is R100. Book at www.webtickets.co.za.