House of All: Oslo, London: Live Review

House of All | European Sun | English Garden
Oslo, London
Friday 1 May

The House of All have emerged from The Fall’s ashes with a head-expanding sound increasingly their own. Steve Morgan enjoyed a phoenix night with Martin Bramah and his band of drummers

It’s a brutal game at the best of times, this rock and roll business. In 2026, it can look like an endurance test. Venues making ends meet as multi-purpose affairs, with gigs, once front and centre, done and dusted by 10pm for a new wave of punters. ‘More cow bell’ ran the old studio gag – ironic in these cattle-market days. Fair play then to English Garden, who make light of a horrifically early 7.15 start – yes, 7.15 – with an eye-popping half-hour set. On Louder Than War’s radar a while now, this south London five-piece have enjoyed welcome recent exposure on 6 Music, with Marc Riley spinning single Famous Worldwide. Post-punk is the obvious hook on which to hang them, but it’s a tag they dispute. You can see why. There’s a serious genre-bending musical breadth and depth here, played with an uncanny, almost telepathic bond, explained by a friendship for four of the band that dates to childhood.

He’s Wearing a Wire! is tonight’s pick. Like a distant cousin of Golden Brown, it’s a jazzily seductive, off-kilter groove where Laurie Cobb’s cornet, treated with reverb and effects, really comes to the fore. Singer Will Hegarty, as entertaining and theatrical a stage presence as you could wish for, also has a knack for subversive and sly lyrical observation. Here, he is given full rein as the unlikely tale unfolds of a spy camera that ends up being recycled as a sex toy. It’s a short and sweet set tonight, but it’s a real rush, clearly enjoyed by the early onlookers – a crazy confection both dark and danceable from a band growing swiftly in stature.

European Sun – it’s still daylight outdoors – are up next, a veteran three-piece, whose down-home, straight-up three-chord pop template is the ideal canvas for misty-eyed ruminations from Steve Miles on anything from growing older but still wanting to be a pirate, losing your dad, or losing your mind over politics. Closing number Britain is a neat, side-eye sideswipe at the far right’s obsession with a mis-remembered past. Miles has an inventive wordsmith’s approach – “I wish I’d hung out more with people like Sylvia, and Emmeline Pankhurst, people who fill ya” he sings on My Friend Robin. Elsewhere, there are shades of Jonathan Richman, Art Brut – particularly on Losers – “we’ll talk about the oceans and the plastic in our brains, put Teenage Kicks on the jukebox, our theological remains”.

Finally, though, the witching hour arrives. Or 8.50 at least. As if by magic, the room is full, the House of Fall heads quietly assembled. To the sound of a glam-rock drum tattoo – start as you mean to go on – the band emerge to a hushed, expectant crowd. If thoughts of the ghost observing his old pals’ feast are inevitable, Martin Bramah and company have done much to dispel the spectre of MES across four palette-expanding albums.

The terrain is familiar enough on opener The Devil’s House, with its fidgety, shuffling rhythms and Bramah’s sprechgesang vocal, but there’s an energy and vitality to the proceedings of a band unburdened by baggage. Prince of This World takes us swiftly to the heart of the beast, where Bramah’s vignettes of mystery unfurl over Phil Lewis’ spectral guitar figures and a thumping twin drum and bass assault. Two drummers swiftly become three as Karl Burns joins the fray halfway through A Creature Came Slinking, a woozily compelling affair.

Rebel Duke, with its bawdy ‘la dih dah dah dah’ chorus, comes on like a deliciously drunken 70s football chant. The gears shift again with Ours Is The Fall, those early punk excavations visible via an atonal, compelling circular riff a la Magazine or early Banshees, while also a clear lyrical nod to the band’s shared past – “tyrannical power, tie me no more” exhorts Bramah. Burns’ arrival – a cult figure among cult figures – has upped the ante. The Batman theme-tinged Sweet Remembrancer is not far off yer actual pop, and perhaps the biggest cheer thus far heralds the end of The Good Englishman, with its loping rhythm exploited by the trio of drummers having the time of their lives. Simon Wolstoncroft cuts a particularly cheery figure throughout, grinning either at his bandmates or sometimes just to himself, tapping his ride cymbal, a benign silvery presence that neatly offsets Bramah’s simmering intensity.

Already a compelling spectacle, the last third of the set is where things really take off. Wrecked, with its garage-pop Kinks feel, is fabulous; an epic, spacey Time Out of Joint somehow weds the spirit of The Cramps to a dub reggae feel, Infamous Immoral Sister treads the kind of Fall ground later occupied by the much-missed New Fads, before things come to a head with a six-minute There’s More, a reverb-soaked vocal over a paranoid Motown stomp that would make a great horror movie soundtrack. “What are those footsteps on the stairs?” shouts Bramah. “What’s in the briefcase, parasite?”

“It’s a golden oldie for you,” announces Bramah during the encore to a couple of hopeful cheers. “No, not that old, don’t get your hopes up,” he says ahead of the closer, Cuckoo In The Nest, where a riff evoking I Heard It Through The Grapevine transforms into a stirring finale (ft cowbell) in which Bramah asks “I don’t work for them now, I suppose this is it, then?” On this evidence, this is far from it. And less cuckoo in the nest, more phoenix from the flames.

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All words by Steve Morgan. Steve is on Bskysocial  and Instagram

Photos by Robyn Skinner.  You can find more of her work on Instagram