Trip to New York City, USA - 12th to 13th December 2009

Work trip to Philadelphia, USA - 7th to 11th December 2009

After a long period of not being able to travel for work (thanks partly to my daughter being born, but mostly to the recession), the credit card tentatively came back out again for a pre Christmas trip to Philadelphia. My office is right opposite City Hall with its statue of William Penn on top, so I snapped this picture as I was heading from one floor to another. Despite the cold starting to arrive for winter, my stay there had nice clear days - and even a day where the temperature got up to 15 degrees, which was a nice surprise.

After almost a year of not going to the US (after a while of going there very regularly), I was surprised at how easily I got back into the swing of things. I made an early visit to Old Navy to stock up on some cheap jeans, and generally found it very easy to slip back into eating burgers and drinking Vitamin Water all day long. A couple of nice meals (complete with over attentive and falsely "happy" service), and it all seemed very familiar again.

The highlight of the trip (not difficult, since the rest of the time in Philly was spent either in meetings, sleeping or eating) was my office Christmas party (or "holiday" party as they insist on calling it. A free bar for 4 hours was certainly as good as you get anywhere else - and by 9pm when the bar ran out, an impromptu pub crawl broke out. I got to see an excellent selection of Philadelphia bars, and luckily managed to remember it all too.

Arctic Monkeys, Screaming Females - Terminal 5, New York, USA - Thursday 10th December 2009

Whilst I was on a work trip in Philadelphia, Arctic Monkeys were due to play a club gig in nearby New York. I wasn't really a big fan of their latest album, and had also spurned the opportunity to see them in London the previous month (I didn't fancy a trip out to Wembley Arena). But, with the excuse of an evening in New York thrown in, I bailed out of work an hour early, and headed up to New York on the train, taking in some of New Jersey's highlights on the way. On arriving in New York, the temperature seemed to have dropped by 10 degrees from Philadelphia, making it a memorable trip as the wind blew through my coat like it weren't there. VERY cold indeed.

We eventually made our way up to 56th street, to Teminal 5. There were a good number of touts outside and in the nearby streets, suggesting that an Arctic Monkeys gig was a bit of a big deal at least. After an obligatory ID check, we got into the venue, a large hall with a couple of levels of balcony around the edges. The crowd was pretty young, with lots of New York high school kids, college students, and a fair number of English voices around also. There were also lots of the kind of people you expect to see at a gig like this in New York - people who thought they were ultra cool, but in reality came across as a bit self absorbed and/or coked up.

The support band were a three piece called Screaming Females, who came from New Brunswick, New Jersey. They had a strange looking woman on lead guitar and vocals, who was the only female in the band. Their guitars sounded pretty fantastic (I would expect you need to see them live to appreciate this, as I doubt their recorded stuff is as good), but sadly the same couldn't be said of the vocals. For the vast majority of the songs I heard, I found myself wishing that the singer would concentrate on just playing the guitar as well as she was, and would get somebody else to do the vocals. Despite that, the songs were good, and the quality of that lead guitar made you willing to forgive quite a bit.

After a short break, Arctic Monkeys appeared, looking very different to the last time I saw them. Longer hair, more rock star looking, and generally looking the part much more. Their first few songs drew quite heavily from Humbug, featuring quite a few false song endings which drew applause, only for the song to kick back in again with more noise than before. Throughout the set, I thought the sound was fantastic - both from a technical point of view inside the venue, but also the way the band set themselves up to play live. When they played some of the older songs, they sounded very accomplished indeed, with some excellent new twists on the way they were played. Despite not having really liked the new album before this evening, the songs they played from it sounded really very good - forcing me to go back for another listen to the album.

As well as the new songs, there were obviously some of the old favourites - I thought that Still Take You Home was amazing in particular. The best audience reactions seemed to be for Brianstorm and I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor, the latter of which featured some very enthusiastic crowd surfing. The band ended their main set with a reworked and brilliant sounding version of Fluorescent Adolescent, which also featured an interlude where the drummer sang Last Christmas. Great stuff. Throughout the show, the crowd were roaring their appreciation between songs, and Alexa Chung was busy dancing on the balcony. All in all, the band went down a storm.

Despite the very late night, I was really glad I went to this. Arctic Monkeys had been getting muted reviews for their latest album and live shows, so I wasn't sure whether I would enjoy it. But, the gig was so much better than expectations, and confirmed just what a good band they are. I also feel lucky to have seen them in such a small venue (rarely possible these days in the UK), which is how they come across best. A fantastic band, playing a set that sounded really special.

The Cribs, Los Campesinos, Sky Larkin - Brixton Academy, London - Thursday 3rd December 2009

This was the night when Wichita Records took over Brixton Academy. Having seen The Cribs recently in Kentish Town and been very impressed, I took the plunge and bought tickets for this gig, part of a tour of some bigger venues. I was then delighted to see that they had pulled off their "lets get great support acts" trick again. After Adam Green at the Forum, this time it was the amazing Los Campesinos!, and Sky Larkin.

Sky Larkin were up first, playing songs drawn mainly from their criminally underrated album The Golden Spike (and the BBC seem to agree about it being underrated too). The songs were catchy, and the band managed to not get completely lost in the largeness and emptiness of Brixton Academy (when you are on first and playing to an empty venue) - their sound filled the venue nicely, and their set was well received.

Next on were Los Campesinos!, a band I'd seen before in the most amazing circumstances, and have loved ever since. They kicked their set off with Death To Los Campesinos!, which ensured the audience were right into what they were doing from the word go. As well as a selection of the best tracks from their first two albums, they also played a clutch of new songs from their forthcoming album, Romance Is Boring. These sounded excellent, quite a bit rockier than some of their older stuff, but very good. All in all, I was gutted when their set ended, so good it was.

But obviously The Cribs soon made up for any disappointment caused by the loss of Los Camp - their set was once again full of power and energy, and never dipped below being fantastic. Again they dropped pleasant surprises (in the form of older songs) into the set at various points, my highlights of this set were Emasculate Me, the obvious Be Safe, and City Of Bugs which is becoming one of those awesome set closing songs. A brilliant set (again) from a band who, if there is any justice in the world, will be getting bigger and bigger as they continue to get better and better.