Not everybody gets it right all the time. A couple of days ago we considered the first time we wrote about bands we came to love and write about so often it borders on the self-parodic, or maybe self-defeating. But along the way we've come across plenty of diamonds in the rough who don't quite fit in, praised them to great heights and then watched the rest of the world, as we see it, fail to catch up and the band in question disappear, dissolve or just fade into the background. For maybe one last time - a couple of them are still together, after all - let us dredge those back up and not issue a mea culpa as much as harangue everyone else for their neglect. And down at the bottom of this post, something to remember them by.
GoodBooks
In many ways, this may have been the most so-near-yet-so-far of all. We can't say we were first to them, they'd already had a page of the NME by the time we first featured them, describing their sound as "yet more clever-clever post-post-punk, but with a wise head on young shoulders", but the Sevenoaks outfit were one of the first bands we found through demos who progressed through to being signed (to Transgressive, then Columbia) and onto an album. We have their first single on cassette - yeah, we know - and once slightly scared Max Cooke (who we later interviewed) by mouthing along to their jerky World War-themed calling card Passchendaele at a Sunday night gig promoting their first major label release attended by eighteen people. Seeing them at Truck 2006 in the midst of a proper storm we commented "here is one of the few new British guitar bands worth bothering about. The reason? They want you to think, they want you to dance, you feel compelled to go with them. Post-punk danceable drums, disco bass, DFA sequencers, properly used keyboards, vocal interplay and a lyrical approach at once personal and sociological in its own way adds up to something special and they're giving it everything to an equally appreciative hardy group of people who recognise that there's something special happening." Inevitably the major label didn't know what to do with them, threw out a couple of singles which got a little MTV2 play and nothing else, then sent album Control into the chasm. They were summarily dropped and split while working towards a second, more electronic album, playing their last gig last Glastonbury.
Picture Books In Winter
A good wave of bands came from Cardiff in 2007-08, from Los Campesinos! (one of them was in a side project of Neil's) and the briefly based there Wave Pictures to this group, who we first wrote about three months after they'd formed. They had in fairness made an immediate splash, eclectic without being all over the shop for the sake of it, committed but inscrutably smart and somehow both becalmed and melodramatic at the same time. It was something that caused us to hyperventilate that they were "the type of band that in the face of One Night Only promo campaigns make you feel so much better about the actual prospects for thoughtful, exciting new music in 2008." They played Glastonbury in 2008, The Fly called them the local standout of that year's Swn festival and they got on an ITV Wales show, but at the time of writing after a couple of self-released singles they haven't gigged for five months (and hadn't played for four months before that, blaming geographical issues) and have gone uncommonly quiet. Well, we're still rooting for them.
Gindrinker
Also from Cardiff they're somewhat more active than PBiW - in fact they have a gig on Thursday at Le Pub in Newport and then on 4th May at Cardiff Barfly supporting The Neat - but as we're still waiting for them to follow up their single of March 2008 they're clearly taking their own sweet time over things. 'Sweet' is about the most misleading word that could be used about them, given... well, let's quote our own writeup from the programme for Smalltown America's This Ain't No Picnic weekender. "Try and work this one out. A duo who tell - screech, actually - of bloodlusting bullfighters, errant greengrocers, private detectives, drunks, vengeful gods and Bullseye to the accompaniment of grinding guitar, thumping drum machine and the odd cornet. It's actually far better than even that sounds. Compared to everyone from Whitehouse to Suicide to the Fall to Big Black, DC Gates and Graf's black hearted not to mention black humoured screes and uber-jaundiced take on the character study have earned them a sizeable local cult following, but really a unique outfit such as this demand the wider audience to sit up and listen, maybe just before cowering. And if nothing else, let's put it this way: Future Of The Left and Los Campesinos! love them, The Automatic hate them. Which side are you on?"
Gossamer Albatross
No, we do actually get mildly embarrassed when bands put our untutored words on their Myspace as solemn testimonials. Especially if they read like this: "Instantly make a mockery of their peers' London press-powered Pull In Emergency/Bombay Bicycle Club teen scene's slavish post-Liberstrokesparty sound by claiming influence from Neutral Milk Hotel, The Magnetic Fields and Final Fantasy, and having the ability to back it up." Alright, maybe a touch hyperbolic, but the Hereford teenagers' dual violin, cello and guitar setup (later adding a boringly normal rhythm section) plus Lewis Gordon's expressive voice made them a baroque treasure, one that played End Of The Road and worked with Jeremy Warmsley. "If we’re any judges the next eighteen months will see them take off" our This Ain't No Picnic adjudication finished. Eighteen months later while they've not said as much, they've not gigged for nearly a year and the two violinists are in Talons.
Friends Of The Bride
Fair to assume from the references to 'were' in their biog that this SW20 collective have gone the way of all flesh. Partly the fault of ex-Theaudience songwriter and general man about town Billy Reeves, they melded unashamed swinging 1960s Brit-beat styling and south London indie with influences from soul, garage rock, Rat Pack, cabaret and Bobby Grindrod's jazz vocal style. Nobody knew what to quite make of it, so they invented terms like 'nu-croon' and 'swingdie' to cover it (neither our fault, we should add). They put out two singles on home of the 2006 hitmakers Young & Lost Club, one on a Brainlove split EP and then vanished, save for Grindrod's club night. Pop Fact: when we asked Bobby for his favourite album of 2008, he admitted he didn't think he'd heard anything released that year.
The Dirty Backbeats
Because we see no shame in promoting our local scene, which is particularly rosy at the moment, and also because, well, they were ace. Like Friends Of The Bride, the Dirty Backbeats could have stepped right out of the 1960s. Just a completely different bit. Their psychedelic garage-blues assault, equal parts Beefheart and Sonics, was complemented by a sweatily magnetic live show which saw Grant Decker twitch, gurn, tear across stages and up bits of framework. Mark Lamarr was a fan, long after they'd acted as their support the Cribs namechecked them the next time they played Leicester some time later, and they quoted us on their press release with a credit for Metro. Never quite understood that. Just as rumour had it they were about to be signed they split up at the end of 2008.
Proton Proton
While Andy Falkous was out of action post-Mclusky pre-FOTL, this Brooklyn trio seemed to both fill the gap and deliberately not fit in at all. With the razor edge of Shellac and the often danceable sonic adventurism of Les Savy Fav ("hard-edged guitars you can dance to. If you're a contortionist"), not to mention two adapted basses in place of guitars, when we discovered them in April 2006 a few months after their second EP release it seemed a worldwide following was a matter of time away. Of course, they never released anything else. There is an appendix, though: 'gass' player Aron Sanchez is now in Buke & Gass, who at the start of May will be supporting The National in London.
Johnny Boy
Unique among these ten in that they had an actual tangible hit that people still love to this day. That was of course You Are The Generation That Bought More Shoes And You Get What You Deserve, an extraordinary piece of Phil Spector-recalling anti-commoditisation produced by James Dean Bradfield and talked up by Johnny Marr and Mick Jones. Then they got dropped. Three years on their album emerged, still defined by that one moment of magic but also encompassing a kaleidoscope of samples, riffs, effects, Lolly Hayes' ice in veins vocals and a whole heap of genre jumping, Dave Eringa production piling on and the sort of lyrical commodification that would have made Malcolm McLaren proud. Since then, nothing. Wiki: "(You Are...) was recently revealed to be the journalist and writer Kieron Gillen's favourite song". OF COURSE IT IS.
Johnny Boy - You Are The Generation That Bought More Shoes And You Get What You Deserve on muzu.tv
Wake The President
Only just split*, as mentioned in a couple of recent posts, but what a band they made while together. We literally first stumbled upon them at the first Indietracks in 2007, knowing nothing about them proving all the better to take in their take on Orange Juice jangle and darkly debauched Glasgow lowlife tales with added twin brother bickering. In retrospect it seemed like they had nowhere to go in that format but down having issued such a completely immediately formed album, or as we put it "it may not be an album hell bent on reinventing guitar pop as we know it, but in the hands of operators skilled at the comparatively simple things, and with a fresh way to tell personal tales, it proves after everything is said and done, it can still sound enthralling and intriguing."
(* News just in: no they haven't, the brothers have got WTP together in a new formation)
Anathallo
Even more recently, two weeks ago officially, we lost Anathallo. The Michigan octet came in the wake of the Sufjan-led American indie-folk brigade with an expansive sound involving much percussion wrapped around delicately shifting arrangements and a lot of odd instrumentation. We really thought, especially after interviewing member Andrew Dost and having a lot of people thank us for the tip - we suspect only LC! match up to it on that score - their taking off was only a matter of time, but they couldn't get a UK release for the album Floating World and their blog buzz crashed on the rocks of a terrible Pitchfork review. The second album, Canopy Glow, made it this far but wasn't as good, maybe as Dost had left. Still, as with these all... what might have been.
A zip file containing a track from all ten of these can be downloaded from here.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Birthday presents III
Something slightly different today, perhaps to reflect our ongoing dips into the well offbeat. The Attery Squash are Ricardo Autobahn and Rev. Diva Schematic. One of them was in the Cuban Boys, of Peel/hamster bothering fame. They're best known for the single Devo Was Right About Everything, which Devo later voluntarily remixed, and its spinoff viral hit Charlie Brooker Is Right About Everything. Half of them now take MIA on a more earthly electronic bent.
Rev. Diva Schematic - Paper Planes
Rev. Diva Schematic - Paper Planes
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Birthday presents II
Second in our selection of exclusive covers is someone whose new album we appraised just the other day, the creeping dread of Paul Hawkins & Thee Awkward Silences. Here he and they tackle another overly literate writer, one that we've been banging on about for a couple of years now but who managed to gain his widest sweep of press popularity this year through his long defunct band Nosferatu D2, Ben Parker AKA Superman Revenge Squad. Bonus points, like Jimmy Saville used to suggest, for anyone who can name the source of the spoken bit at the start.
Paul Hawkins & Thee Awkward Silences - The Angriest Dog In The World
Paul Hawkins & Thee Awkward Silences - The Angriest Dog In The World
Saturday, April 24, 2010
First sight
One of our aims has always been to find, broadcast and heighten general awareness of new music through these basic but workable text interfaces. This is not done out of the stereotypical blogger's search for and elevation of The New above The Existing, but as we see it a tacit acceptance that bands are often at their most exciting just as they emerge from chrysalis and catching them early and watching them grow and develop their own sense of space and time is a wonderful thing. We've done a lot of this in the last five years, and while our hit rate has been the erring side of erratic (although you have to say pointing out a group called Kapowski, only for them to post a goodbye blog two days later, takes some beating), some of our praise recipients either having gone onto big things or been followed by us to the point of stalkerdom. This, then, is high time to pause and look back at those we jumped onto early, and what we initially made of them.
Sky Larkin
"Surely next cab off the New Yorkshire rank, sounding like the Breeders playing at being Bloc Party." (23/1/06)
We were a bit stinting on over-detailing in those days. Original bassist Lindsay was still in the band at this point and they'd issued a couple of demo EPs, our being led onto them by the support of early UK music blog hero to most Mike Smith, trading as Take Your Medicine and later Nothing But Green Lights, that unfortunately dormant for about a year. Ver Larkin have been one of our constants since, people we know are aware of our presence, and we're gladdened to hear a second album is in the early stages of mixing. For further reading, this local scene site interview from four months earlier, accompanied by a picture in which Katie looks a good decade older than she does now. God, New Yorkshire.
Jeremy Warmsley
"(His) laptop singer-songwriter thrown through a plate glass window style is winning him friends all the time, and a hookup with England's newest hitmakers Transgressive Records can't hinder. 5 Verses pitches its tent somewhere between the distinct fields of Jarvis Cocker, early solo Brian Eno and Four Tet's more accessible moments." (27/3/06)
Easy to forget J-Wo's first stirrings were more beats-based than much of what followed, although it certainly never totally lost him. He later became our first interview subject, then we think the first musician who knew us by blog name upon meeting at Truck one time, then put us in the acknowledgements list for How We Became and played our second ever promotion. And no, we still didn't know he was half of Summer Camp before the reveal. Says here this is his 126th namecheck on the blog. His own promotional materials probably don't mention him that often.
Lucky Soul
"blessed with a frontwoman in Ali Howard who sounds like Stina Nordenstam in the Supremes. We can't help thinking Bob Stanley is in hog heaven with all these bands emerging." (22/5/06)
Doesn't sound that much like Stina Nordenstam. We'd been tipped off repeatedly about Lucky Soul by a couple of people for some time before actually getting round to hearing them, and by the time it did things had swung that sort of thing's way far enough for us to really get it at first count. They're playing a handful of gigs in the next couple of months, including the enticingly named Basingstoke Live.
Los Campesinos!
"A septet who seem to be carrying on a small scale Cardiff obsession this section is accidentally developing, have already been around pretty much the entire mp3 blogosphere twice since Nothing But Green Lights picked up on them about a week ago, making them perhaps the fastest Internet sensation in history. Still, what's a little late bandwagon jumping between friends, because they're a band many will grow to adore. In the space of first track You! Me! Dancing! we noted down the names of Architecture In Helsinki, My Latest Novel, Ooberman, Thunderbirds Are Now!, Heavenly, Broken Social Scene, Orange Juice, Khaya and Les Incompetents. If that's not for you the other three tracks up, which are all downloadable, play in the fields of twisted guitar pop, early Delgados hidden lo-fi grandeur and the thought that they'd be fantastic live. So, maybe not for the Bolt-Thrower fans, but perfect for this summery feel that's come over us all of late." (10/7/06)
This particular story starts on 29th June 2006 when a bloke called Tom sent out a couple of messages about his band and their having uploaded some songs to the Myspace page they started a few months earlier (Y!M!D!, Sweet Dreams Sweet Cheeks, It Started With A Mixx and Death To Los Campesinos!, or as it was prosaically known at the time Song 1). Nothing But Green Lights actually jumped on them a day later (see Ellen in the comments) and reported more than 300 downloads of Y!M!D! within four days, spreading so quickly around the blogosphere that they were in Hype Machine's top five by 4th July, hence that latecomer qualifier. We don't know where some of those comparisons came from, although some were clearly more cock on than others (Thunderbirds Are Now! are a Michigan post-punk band who were blog next big things for about three days; Khaya were a Scottish duo who didn't so much as gain a cult following although Peel liked them) The rest you know. Gareth has one of our badges. He's probably lost it.
Emmy The Great
"Thoughtful largely acoustic singer-songwriter business, what they used to call anti-folk but now we're going to glibly say is our own Martha Wainwright." (19/7/06)
Foals
"Tipped for something significant, although the mainstream audience for interlocking guitars, disco drums, the odd cheap keyboard rhythm and excitable vocals could be difficult to find. Must be quite something to see, though." (19/7/06)
More truth in those, apart from the confident suggestion Foals would never cross over, then we'd ever admit to. These come from the same post, a foolhardy attempt to preview every band playing Truck Festival in 2006, a reflection of nothing more than how excited we were by it, and despite that we still managed to create a good 45 minute gap in our memories that coincided with Battles' set in the Barn. We saw Emmy, partly backed by Warmsley (and indeed unwittingly blanked her during the aforementioned meeting with him, something we've never truly made up for even when she told us she'd shown her mum our review of that set); we've conversely never managed to catch Foals, despite having a ticket for one of their gigs (illness) and being at two Trucks they've played. The second time, the famed 2007 September version, they were moved from the Trailer Park to the Barn at short notice due to overcrowding and we didn't find out until told the following day by, um, Katie from Sky Larkin.
The Wombats
"If anything's held the Liverpool scene back over the years it's the way it always seems to eventually come back to meat and potatoes guitar pop. You'd think all local musical efforts were overshadowed by one enormous band, perhaps from the 60s, or something. The Wombats could well fall into the same trap but expertly avoid it through harmonic guitars, crisp janglepop and trace elements of Lee Mavers' retro vision. You'll be hearing a lot more of them if they're not careful." (18/9/06)
They weren't careful. In either sense. We're telling you, those first couple of singles had something.
Dananananaykroyd
"A bloody stupid name for a band. We hope they appreciate our considered input. The Glaswegian double-drummer sextet call their throw-everything-at-the-wall-and-see-if-it-collapses melange of Fugazi, Jetplane Landing, Pavement, post-rock and Maximo Park on steroids 'fight pop'. We file it under noisily melodic goodness." (2/10/06)
Maybe "melodic" was a bit strong. "(They) have almost certainly listened to a lot of songs by The Thermals" reckons one commenter of our acquaintance. Giles Bailey was still singer at this point, Calum Gunn taking the drum-singer-loon position John Bailie Jnr would later make his own, with James Hamilton, now of Errors, alongside him at the back.
Pagan Wanderer Lu
"Omnichords, then. A few years ago Sean Dickson from the High Llamas was much given to touting his around as if it was this wonderous thing he'd discovered, now every second sonic adventurer has one as a matter of course. It's what you do with it that matters, and what Pagan Wanderer Lu does with his, and the rest of his one man band electronic boxes, very much matters. Wryly seething lyrics are married to lo-fi keyboards that smash up pop melodies and attempt to wire them back together in a skewiff fashion, reminding at times of the long lost Experimental Pop Band or at least making sense of the claimed influences from Pavement, Aphex Twin, the Fiery Furnaces and Magnetic Fields. Also, Our New Hospital Sucks is surely pop's first song about PFIs." (30/10/06)
Au Revoir Simone
"Are, inevitably, from Brooklyn. We say inevitable because the female trio sound like they've been piped directly from a faux-boho practice space, all singing and playing keyboards. Musically we're hearing influences from the Magnetic Fields' twee days, a blissed-out Ladytron, Cocteau Twins' ethereal synths and great swathes of warm Germanic electronica. Apparently they can be quite disco, but as there's only two tracks uploaded we'll have to take their word for it. The kings in waiting of Moshi Moshi Records have picked this up for the UK and they're currently hanging onto We Are Scientists' coattails around the country." (6/11/06)
The Indelicates
"There are two things everyone knows about (yes, score yet another Weekender selection down for the cultural hub of East Sussex) Brighton's The Indelicates: the title of the song about overeager press interest in a certain "rock bad boy", and the band female half (actually they're a five-piece, but only two of them do press and take the Indelicate surname so let's press on) Julia was a founder member of. Far more entertaining is the detail that male 'half' Simon has written and staged a musical about the book of Job. And more entertaining still is their music, kamikaze cabaret indiepop like the Dresden Dolls if they were svengali'd by Luke Haines and Jim Reid. Fans of Johnny Boy, Art Brut and great British curmudgeonliness, step this way." (15/1/07)
Course, Simon and Julia moved to Lewes just so they wouldn't be called a 'Brighton band'. We don't think we quite got the measure of their lyrical nous back then, although the Luke Haines and Art Brut comparisons stand up to facts.
Those Dancing Days
"Maybe there's a secret pop factory in Sweden that churns out bands who take lo-fi C86 twee as a starting point for modernist adventuring. Stockholm's latest buzz band are five teenage girls called Those Dancing Days, who bring to the fray the very essence of organ led '1997' (see posts passim) filtered through Northern Soul, Sarah Records and Blondie. They're all downloadable too - try Hitten, essentially Camera Obscura demoing Pull Shapes, or the eponymous track, which is reminiscent of Sophie Ellis-Bextor teaming up with the Duloks and the Stranglers' Dave Greenfield." (7/5/07)
All gone quiet over there after a good long period in the US last year, although they're playing Belle & Sebastian's ATP.
4 Or 5 Magicians
"There's been far too much girly Scandinavian twee around here recently, which is all very well in its own pop way but occasionally you feel the direct need to hear a band whose top line of Top Friends includes Pavement, Sonic Youth and Guided By Voices and can justify such in sound. And as we know from this section's past, if they're from Brighton they're virtually a shoo-in already. Hence 4 Or 5 Magicians, whose leader Dan Ormsby clearly knows his Slanted And Enchanted and Alien Lanes as well as Sebadoh, Built To Spill and Bearsuit. There's a single pencilled in for July and a bucketload of potential beyond, if probably not a better opening line than Forever On The Edge's "I wasted my youth playing cricket"." (14/5/07)
Wild Beasts
"One band that do come across better in this setting than records suggest are Wild Beasts, clearly of a post-punk revival bent but taking the limber, fractured funk of Orange Juice and their Postcard Records bretheren and adding touches of soul and avant-jazz rhythms and, most pertinently, Hayden Thorpe's extraordinary vocal style, akin to Billy Mackenzie in the process of his voice breaking. Former single Brave Bulging Buoyant Clairvoyants (right) gets people properly moving." (14/8/07)
Summer Sundae review, when they played in a less than quarter full tent because everyone else was watching Maps. Clearly a stirring set given they've returned to the festival for both of the last two years.
Slow Club
"...we find a more successful translation of joy-filled wistful whimsy in the scrappy acoustic pop of Slow Club - Charles on guitar, Rebecca standing up behind an occasionally employed drumkit, both singing and harmonising on their off-kilter stories and city shanties. Nobody dances despite Charles' invitation, although it's fairly hard not to be moved when they're at full pelt, but it's just what the occasion and the ambience required." (28/9/07)
Part of an End Of The Road Festival review, and we recall setting out especially to see them so are surprised this was the first actual mention of them. Also, we remember absolutely nothing of this set.
Johnny Foreigner
"Their debut EP Arcs Across The City may not be released until November 26th but Johnny Foreigner have been quietly stirring no small amount of interest in certain circles. Taking Chicago post-hardcore as their starting point, the Birmingham trio rocket through Sonic Youth, Pavement, Q And Not U and Prolapse and come out sounding like the most urgent math-scuzz possible. Keep a very close eye out." (10/10/07)
Meursault
"Many moons ago it was Song, By Toad (see sidebar) that put us onto the great Broken Records, and they've recently repeated the trick with another set of emotionally charged Edinburgh types. Meursault, who've just released an album called Pissing on Bonfires/Kissing with Tongues, available pretty much only through the usual PayPal link on their Myspace. Theirs is a possibly unique when deployed in this way combination of lo-fi but defiant electronica, modern folky standbys of accordions and ukeleles, and Neil Pennycook’s cracked howl at the world, a fearsome and fearful lyrical content to match. It comes across like Band Of Horses taking on the Postal Service only to do it wrongly, on purpose. Where does it fit in? Well, apart from the odd wade into Jonquil territory, it doesn't, and that's all you really want." (29/9/08)
Sky Larkin
"Surely next cab off the New Yorkshire rank, sounding like the Breeders playing at being Bloc Party." (23/1/06)
We were a bit stinting on over-detailing in those days. Original bassist Lindsay was still in the band at this point and they'd issued a couple of demo EPs, our being led onto them by the support of early UK music blog hero to most Mike Smith, trading as Take Your Medicine and later Nothing But Green Lights, that unfortunately dormant for about a year. Ver Larkin have been one of our constants since, people we know are aware of our presence, and we're gladdened to hear a second album is in the early stages of mixing. For further reading, this local scene site interview from four months earlier, accompanied by a picture in which Katie looks a good decade older than she does now. God, New Yorkshire.
Jeremy Warmsley
"(His) laptop singer-songwriter thrown through a plate glass window style is winning him friends all the time, and a hookup with England's newest hitmakers Transgressive Records can't hinder. 5 Verses pitches its tent somewhere between the distinct fields of Jarvis Cocker, early solo Brian Eno and Four Tet's more accessible moments." (27/3/06)
Easy to forget J-Wo's first stirrings were more beats-based than much of what followed, although it certainly never totally lost him. He later became our first interview subject, then we think the first musician who knew us by blog name upon meeting at Truck one time, then put us in the acknowledgements list for How We Became and played our second ever promotion. And no, we still didn't know he was half of Summer Camp before the reveal. Says here this is his 126th namecheck on the blog. His own promotional materials probably don't mention him that often.
Lucky Soul
"blessed with a frontwoman in Ali Howard who sounds like Stina Nordenstam in the Supremes. We can't help thinking Bob Stanley is in hog heaven with all these bands emerging." (22/5/06)
Doesn't sound that much like Stina Nordenstam. We'd been tipped off repeatedly about Lucky Soul by a couple of people for some time before actually getting round to hearing them, and by the time it did things had swung that sort of thing's way far enough for us to really get it at first count. They're playing a handful of gigs in the next couple of months, including the enticingly named Basingstoke Live.
Los Campesinos!
"A septet who seem to be carrying on a small scale Cardiff obsession this section is accidentally developing, have already been around pretty much the entire mp3 blogosphere twice since Nothing But Green Lights picked up on them about a week ago, making them perhaps the fastest Internet sensation in history. Still, what's a little late bandwagon jumping between friends, because they're a band many will grow to adore. In the space of first track You! Me! Dancing! we noted down the names of Architecture In Helsinki, My Latest Novel, Ooberman, Thunderbirds Are Now!, Heavenly, Broken Social Scene, Orange Juice, Khaya and Les Incompetents. If that's not for you the other three tracks up, which are all downloadable, play in the fields of twisted guitar pop, early Delgados hidden lo-fi grandeur and the thought that they'd be fantastic live. So, maybe not for the Bolt-Thrower fans, but perfect for this summery feel that's come over us all of late." (10/7/06)
This particular story starts on 29th June 2006 when a bloke called Tom sent out a couple of messages about his band and their having uploaded some songs to the Myspace page they started a few months earlier (Y!M!D!, Sweet Dreams Sweet Cheeks, It Started With A Mixx and Death To Los Campesinos!, or as it was prosaically known at the time Song 1). Nothing But Green Lights actually jumped on them a day later (see Ellen in the comments) and reported more than 300 downloads of Y!M!D! within four days, spreading so quickly around the blogosphere that they were in Hype Machine's top five by 4th July, hence that latecomer qualifier. We don't know where some of those comparisons came from, although some were clearly more cock on than others (Thunderbirds Are Now! are a Michigan post-punk band who were blog next big things for about three days; Khaya were a Scottish duo who didn't so much as gain a cult following although Peel liked them) The rest you know. Gareth has one of our badges. He's probably lost it.
Emmy The Great
"Thoughtful largely acoustic singer-songwriter business, what they used to call anti-folk but now we're going to glibly say is our own Martha Wainwright." (19/7/06)
Foals
"Tipped for something significant, although the mainstream audience for interlocking guitars, disco drums, the odd cheap keyboard rhythm and excitable vocals could be difficult to find. Must be quite something to see, though." (19/7/06)
More truth in those, apart from the confident suggestion Foals would never cross over, then we'd ever admit to. These come from the same post, a foolhardy attempt to preview every band playing Truck Festival in 2006, a reflection of nothing more than how excited we were by it, and despite that we still managed to create a good 45 minute gap in our memories that coincided with Battles' set in the Barn. We saw Emmy, partly backed by Warmsley (and indeed unwittingly blanked her during the aforementioned meeting with him, something we've never truly made up for even when she told us she'd shown her mum our review of that set); we've conversely never managed to catch Foals, despite having a ticket for one of their gigs (illness) and being at two Trucks they've played. The second time, the famed 2007 September version, they were moved from the Trailer Park to the Barn at short notice due to overcrowding and we didn't find out until told the following day by, um, Katie from Sky Larkin.
The Wombats
"If anything's held the Liverpool scene back over the years it's the way it always seems to eventually come back to meat and potatoes guitar pop. You'd think all local musical efforts were overshadowed by one enormous band, perhaps from the 60s, or something. The Wombats could well fall into the same trap but expertly avoid it through harmonic guitars, crisp janglepop and trace elements of Lee Mavers' retro vision. You'll be hearing a lot more of them if they're not careful." (18/9/06)
They weren't careful. In either sense. We're telling you, those first couple of singles had something.
Dananananaykroyd
"A bloody stupid name for a band. We hope they appreciate our considered input. The Glaswegian double-drummer sextet call their throw-everything-at-the-wall-and-see-if-it-collapses melange of Fugazi, Jetplane Landing, Pavement, post-rock and Maximo Park on steroids 'fight pop'. We file it under noisily melodic goodness." (2/10/06)
Maybe "melodic" was a bit strong. "(They) have almost certainly listened to a lot of songs by The Thermals" reckons one commenter of our acquaintance. Giles Bailey was still singer at this point, Calum Gunn taking the drum-singer-loon position John Bailie Jnr would later make his own, with James Hamilton, now of Errors, alongside him at the back.
Pagan Wanderer Lu
"Omnichords, then. A few years ago Sean Dickson from the High Llamas was much given to touting his around as if it was this wonderous thing he'd discovered, now every second sonic adventurer has one as a matter of course. It's what you do with it that matters, and what Pagan Wanderer Lu does with his, and the rest of his one man band electronic boxes, very much matters. Wryly seething lyrics are married to lo-fi keyboards that smash up pop melodies and attempt to wire them back together in a skewiff fashion, reminding at times of the long lost Experimental Pop Band or at least making sense of the claimed influences from Pavement, Aphex Twin, the Fiery Furnaces and Magnetic Fields. Also, Our New Hospital Sucks is surely pop's first song about PFIs." (30/10/06)
Au Revoir Simone
"Are, inevitably, from Brooklyn. We say inevitable because the female trio sound like they've been piped directly from a faux-boho practice space, all singing and playing keyboards. Musically we're hearing influences from the Magnetic Fields' twee days, a blissed-out Ladytron, Cocteau Twins' ethereal synths and great swathes of warm Germanic electronica. Apparently they can be quite disco, but as there's only two tracks uploaded we'll have to take their word for it. The kings in waiting of Moshi Moshi Records have picked this up for the UK and they're currently hanging onto We Are Scientists' coattails around the country." (6/11/06)
The Indelicates
"There are two things everyone knows about (yes, score yet another Weekender selection down for the cultural hub of East Sussex) Brighton's The Indelicates: the title of the song about overeager press interest in a certain "rock bad boy", and the band female half (actually they're a five-piece, but only two of them do press and take the Indelicate surname so let's press on) Julia was a founder member of. Far more entertaining is the detail that male 'half' Simon has written and staged a musical about the book of Job. And more entertaining still is their music, kamikaze cabaret indiepop like the Dresden Dolls if they were svengali'd by Luke Haines and Jim Reid. Fans of Johnny Boy, Art Brut and great British curmudgeonliness, step this way." (15/1/07)
Course, Simon and Julia moved to Lewes just so they wouldn't be called a 'Brighton band'. We don't think we quite got the measure of their lyrical nous back then, although the Luke Haines and Art Brut comparisons stand up to facts.
Those Dancing Days
"Maybe there's a secret pop factory in Sweden that churns out bands who take lo-fi C86 twee as a starting point for modernist adventuring. Stockholm's latest buzz band are five teenage girls called Those Dancing Days, who bring to the fray the very essence of organ led '1997' (see posts passim) filtered through Northern Soul, Sarah Records and Blondie. They're all downloadable too - try Hitten, essentially Camera Obscura demoing Pull Shapes, or the eponymous track, which is reminiscent of Sophie Ellis-Bextor teaming up with the Duloks and the Stranglers' Dave Greenfield." (7/5/07)
All gone quiet over there after a good long period in the US last year, although they're playing Belle & Sebastian's ATP.
4 Or 5 Magicians
"There's been far too much girly Scandinavian twee around here recently, which is all very well in its own pop way but occasionally you feel the direct need to hear a band whose top line of Top Friends includes Pavement, Sonic Youth and Guided By Voices and can justify such in sound. And as we know from this section's past, if they're from Brighton they're virtually a shoo-in already. Hence 4 Or 5 Magicians, whose leader Dan Ormsby clearly knows his Slanted And Enchanted and Alien Lanes as well as Sebadoh, Built To Spill and Bearsuit. There's a single pencilled in for July and a bucketload of potential beyond, if probably not a better opening line than Forever On The Edge's "I wasted my youth playing cricket"." (14/5/07)
Wild Beasts
"One band that do come across better in this setting than records suggest are Wild Beasts, clearly of a post-punk revival bent but taking the limber, fractured funk of Orange Juice and their Postcard Records bretheren and adding touches of soul and avant-jazz rhythms and, most pertinently, Hayden Thorpe's extraordinary vocal style, akin to Billy Mackenzie in the process of his voice breaking. Former single Brave Bulging Buoyant Clairvoyants (right) gets people properly moving." (14/8/07)
Summer Sundae review, when they played in a less than quarter full tent because everyone else was watching Maps. Clearly a stirring set given they've returned to the festival for both of the last two years.
Slow Club
"...we find a more successful translation of joy-filled wistful whimsy in the scrappy acoustic pop of Slow Club - Charles on guitar, Rebecca standing up behind an occasionally employed drumkit, both singing and harmonising on their off-kilter stories and city shanties. Nobody dances despite Charles' invitation, although it's fairly hard not to be moved when they're at full pelt, but it's just what the occasion and the ambience required." (28/9/07)
Part of an End Of The Road Festival review, and we recall setting out especially to see them so are surprised this was the first actual mention of them. Also, we remember absolutely nothing of this set.
Johnny Foreigner
"Their debut EP Arcs Across The City may not be released until November 26th but Johnny Foreigner have been quietly stirring no small amount of interest in certain circles. Taking Chicago post-hardcore as their starting point, the Birmingham trio rocket through Sonic Youth, Pavement, Q And Not U and Prolapse and come out sounding like the most urgent math-scuzz possible. Keep a very close eye out." (10/10/07)
Meursault
"Many moons ago it was Song, By Toad (see sidebar) that put us onto the great Broken Records, and they've recently repeated the trick with another set of emotionally charged Edinburgh types. Meursault, who've just released an album called Pissing on Bonfires/Kissing with Tongues, available pretty much only through the usual PayPal link on their Myspace. Theirs is a possibly unique when deployed in this way combination of lo-fi but defiant electronica, modern folky standbys of accordions and ukeleles, and Neil Pennycook’s cracked howl at the world, a fearsome and fearful lyrical content to match. It comes across like Band Of Horses taking on the Postal Service only to do it wrongly, on purpose. Where does it fit in? Well, apart from the odd wade into Jonquil territory, it doesn't, and that's all you really want." (29/9/08)
Birthday presents I
As mentioned, some people we've talked up and others who are at least aware of STN have recorded covers for us of the sort of people we've been talking about over the years, and over the next week/until they run out we'll be running them as exclusive downloads on here.
Internet Forever's noise-pop nuggets have put them high on our watch lists for quite a while now, ever since we curiously described them as "a Los Campesinos! affected by the credit crunch". Indeed LC! invited them into their curated day at Swn last year and they've toured with Johnny Foreigner; they play the 100 Club with Frankie & The Heartstrings on 3rd May. As you'll doubtless know the band are essentially a conglomeration of three bedroom projects, not least Craig Nunn's four-track alter ego Heartbeeps, which we wrote about five months before we tackled the band. For our purposes, he made this cover of a single by Brainlove's 8-bit batterer Mat Riviere (original here:
Heartbeeps - FYH
And as a bonus, a previously unreleased Internet Forever remix by someone we've been going on about for even longer, the wonky genius of Cardiff's Andy Regan, Pagan Wanderer Lu.
Internet Forever vs Pagan Wanderer Lu - Break Bones (chipped bones remix by PWL)
Internet Forever's noise-pop nuggets have put them high on our watch lists for quite a while now, ever since we curiously described them as "a Los Campesinos! affected by the credit crunch". Indeed LC! invited them into their curated day at Swn last year and they've toured with Johnny Foreigner; they play the 100 Club with Frankie & The Heartstrings on 3rd May. As you'll doubtless know the band are essentially a conglomeration of three bedroom projects, not least Craig Nunn's four-track alter ego Heartbeeps, which we wrote about five months before we tackled the band. For our purposes, he made this cover of a single by Brainlove's 8-bit batterer Mat Riviere (original here:
Heartbeeps - FYH
And as a bonus, a previously unreleased Internet Forever remix by someone we've been going on about for even longer, the wonky genius of Cardiff's Andy Regan, Pagan Wanderer Lu.
Internet Forever vs Pagan Wanderer Lu - Break Bones (chipped bones remix by PWL)
Friday, April 23, 2010
Leader debate
And as it's a special occasion, why not use the magic of Formspring and ask us anything about the blog, music or general chit-chat you like, within reason?
Sweeping The Nation Is 5: the party starts
On April 29th 2005 a very special and important event occurred, the likes of which the affected community never envisaged. Syria completed its withdrawal from the Lebanon, ending 29 years of occupation. Meanwhile - on a Friday, for some reason - Sweeping The Nation crept its way into the then stagnant UK music blog pool and proceeded to fail to shake it up, or else we'd have had more than 144 average visitors a day last week. Still, you take your celebratory moments where you can, so for the next week we'll be commemorating five years of this shit with lists, reflections, gubbins and downloads.
For the latter, we asked some of our favourite people to record special cover versions to give away gratis. They were all busy, so we grabbed some people where we could and corralled them into it instead, and they'll be going up throughout the week, or, as unsurprisingly seems to be the case as if just to carry on the grand STN tradition of commissioned group exercises, until they run out early.
In the meantime, heed that initial mission statement from all those years ago:
Actually, I'm not sure you can have a mission statement for a music blog. It's writing. About music. In a satirical style. With comment on the music news of the day, mentions of new and old songs, live and recorded reviews, audience participation, plus here a singles chart review on Sunday evenings*. There will be little beating around the bushes, but probably quite a bit of prevarication. We know our place. This isn't one of those blogs that pretends it likes Uniting Nations. However, The Paddingtons can equally bugger off. One thing this isn't is an mp3 blog.
As we say: this week, we're posting exclusive mp3s.
* This was based on the UK charts Usenet group and we thought would be a unique slanted angle on pop but turned out quite dull, both to read and write, so we quietly dropped it very quickly.
For the latter, we asked some of our favourite people to record special cover versions to give away gratis. They were all busy, so we grabbed some people where we could and corralled them into it instead, and they'll be going up throughout the week, or, as unsurprisingly seems to be the case as if just to carry on the grand STN tradition of commissioned group exercises, until they run out early.
In the meantime, heed that initial mission statement from all those years ago:
Actually, I'm not sure you can have a mission statement for a music blog. It's writing. About music. In a satirical style. With comment on the music news of the day, mentions of new and old songs, live and recorded reviews, audience participation, plus here a singles chart review on Sunday evenings*. There will be little beating around the bushes, but probably quite a bit of prevarication. We know our place. This isn't one of those blogs that pretends it likes Uniting Nations. However, The Paddingtons can equally bugger off. One thing this isn't is an mp3 blog.
As we say: this week, we're posting exclusive mp3s.
* This was based on the UK charts Usenet group and we thought would be a unique slanted angle on pop but turned out quite dull, both to read and write, so we quietly dropped it very quickly.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Enjoy the Trips
Although from Montreal, Trips And Falls are going through Edinburgh's Song By Toad (two mp3s via that link as well as purchase details), who seem like they're on the verge of a big year even if the gig-goers of Leicester don't know it yet (they handle Meursault, and one day we'll tell you how much we lost on that magnificent night when we put them on with Stairs To Korea. Anyway, Trips And Falls)
It's hard to put a handle on what it is they do - their chief listed influences are Sweep the Leg Johnny, The Smiths, Sonic Youth, Calexico and Charles Mingus, none of which are much help. The band they immediately remind us of, one we've written about a fair bit on here, are Mitchell Museum, taking apart pop melodies, slowing them down, generally screwing around with them, then soldering them back into place to see what might happen. This does make it sound we're fixating on the Scottish connection but there's elements of Ballboy in here too, the twinkling, misleadingly easygoing music backing Jacob Romero's forlorn tales of humanity going not so much wrong as just odd. "Creepy", the press release prefers, and the dense production detail ensures there's plenty going on in the background. And in the foreground on You Should Really Get Yours, which sounds like Stump played backwards.
It's hard to put a handle on what it is they do - their chief listed influences are Sweep the Leg Johnny, The Smiths, Sonic Youth, Calexico and Charles Mingus, none of which are much help. The band they immediately remind us of, one we've written about a fair bit on here, are Mitchell Museum, taking apart pop melodies, slowing them down, generally screwing around with them, then soldering them back into place to see what might happen. This does make it sound we're fixating on the Scottish connection but there's elements of Ballboy in here too, the twinkling, misleadingly easygoing music backing Jacob Romero's forlorn tales of humanity going not so much wrong as just odd. "Creepy", the press release prefers, and the dense production detail ensures there's plenty going on in the background. And in the foreground on You Should Really Get Yours, which sounds like Stump played backwards.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Always something new
"Slightly ahead of the zeitgeist", eh? Will have to keep living up to that, then. Here's six new bands that have crossed our path like counter-melodic urban foxes of homogenous indie rock.
Dog Is Dead
It's not entirely surprising that these Nottingham under-18s - under-18's! - have a quote from Charlie Waller of the Rumble Strips on their page, as they too have a big enunciating vocalist and staccato brass. This isn't a Young Soul Rebels rip, though, but something more slippery, taking in three part harmonies, sax solos, hints of Vampire Weekend, odd math/post-punk drop-ins (Hot Club de Paris get quoted too) and an assured tightness. They're playing Dot To Dot at the end of May and Summer Sundae in August, and thereafter the world.
Anarchist Cookbook
Birmingham - it's the new, we dunno, Cardiff or Edinburgh or Newcastle or whichever city it was that only we last noticed a load of interesting new bands, some with vague connections, coming out of. They invoke the increasingly checked name of Elle Milano, we're thinking echoes of #ladsontour Copy Haho to the power of restless math-punk dynamics. Kev BSM was bemoaning this tag recently, but if anyone is a 'Big Scary Monsters band' it's these. Their 'sounds like' description is by Miles Lookimakemusic. SCENE AS FUCK.
The Martial Arts
From Glasgow, and we think we're right in saying they have representation in The Second Hand Marching Band (leader Paul Kelly is also in the mildly better known The Plimptons), this reminds us of our other great failed genre, Neo-New Wave. You can imagine they were mod suits and skinny ties, and you can imagine them playing a part in the East Coast power-pop scene of the early 80s that in a roundabout way birthed REM. Throw in hints of the beat boom, glorious summer melodies, Big Star and the Violent Femmes, and you've got the Knack could have been, or something.
Beaks Of Eagles
Recommended to us by old new friend Dunc Autumn Store, new signings to the increasingly worth watching Odd Box, the Bristol based duo are but six months old but already have full aptitude at a very Americana/West Coast low key harmonically structured pop a la earlier Death Cab or Shins.
Slushy Guts
Lower than lo-fi bloke with acoustic spilling his, erm, guts out. Seems to be a quick way of getting mentioned round here. Like the recently lauded Benjamin Shaw there's tape noise and the odd drum machine acting as backing, against which Stephen Presumablyhasasurnamebuthe'snotabouttotellusit plays spidery guitar and darkly draws his intimate thoughts a la Lou Barlow's four-track recordings, Daniel Johnston if you really must. He plays Brainlove Festival at Brixton Windmill over the spring bank holiday weekend.
Sunset Song
As mentioned a handful of posts ago Wake The President have proved our anti-Midas touch is still in working order by splitting into halves. This half is the rhythm section, Mark Corrigan and Scott Sieczkowski, the jangle largely excised in favour of a folkier infused sound with echoes of the homespun dark charms of My Latest Novel and Frightened Rabbit. A little Phantom Band in their less electroKraut moments too. Scottish, basically, with plenty of promise. As we type they've had 397 profile views. With your help they can make it 500.
Six more to follow in due course.
Dog Is Dead
It's not entirely surprising that these Nottingham under-18s - under-18's! - have a quote from Charlie Waller of the Rumble Strips on their page, as they too have a big enunciating vocalist and staccato brass. This isn't a Young Soul Rebels rip, though, but something more slippery, taking in three part harmonies, sax solos, hints of Vampire Weekend, odd math/post-punk drop-ins (Hot Club de Paris get quoted too) and an assured tightness. They're playing Dot To Dot at the end of May and Summer Sundae in August, and thereafter the world.
Anarchist Cookbook
Birmingham - it's the new, we dunno, Cardiff or Edinburgh or Newcastle or whichever city it was that only we last noticed a load of interesting new bands, some with vague connections, coming out of. They invoke the increasingly checked name of Elle Milano, we're thinking echoes of #ladsontour Copy Haho to the power of restless math-punk dynamics. Kev BSM was bemoaning this tag recently, but if anyone is a 'Big Scary Monsters band' it's these. Their 'sounds like' description is by Miles Lookimakemusic. SCENE AS FUCK.
The Martial Arts
From Glasgow, and we think we're right in saying they have representation in The Second Hand Marching Band (leader Paul Kelly is also in the mildly better known The Plimptons), this reminds us of our other great failed genre, Neo-New Wave. You can imagine they were mod suits and skinny ties, and you can imagine them playing a part in the East Coast power-pop scene of the early 80s that in a roundabout way birthed REM. Throw in hints of the beat boom, glorious summer melodies, Big Star and the Violent Femmes, and you've got the Knack could have been, or something.
Beaks Of Eagles
Recommended to us by old new friend Dunc Autumn Store, new signings to the increasingly worth watching Odd Box, the Bristol based duo are but six months old but already have full aptitude at a very Americana/West Coast low key harmonically structured pop a la earlier Death Cab or Shins.
Slushy Guts
Lower than lo-fi bloke with acoustic spilling his, erm, guts out. Seems to be a quick way of getting mentioned round here. Like the recently lauded Benjamin Shaw there's tape noise and the odd drum machine acting as backing, against which Stephen Presumablyhasasurnamebuthe'snotabouttotellusit plays spidery guitar and darkly draws his intimate thoughts a la Lou Barlow's four-track recordings, Daniel Johnston if you really must. He plays Brainlove Festival at Brixton Windmill over the spring bank holiday weekend.
Sunset Song
As mentioned a handful of posts ago Wake The President have proved our anti-Midas touch is still in working order by splitting into halves. This half is the rhythm section, Mark Corrigan and Scott Sieczkowski, the jangle largely excised in favour of a folkier infused sound with echoes of the homespun dark charms of My Latest Novel and Frightened Rabbit. A little Phantom Band in their less electroKraut moments too. Scottish, basically, with plenty of promise. As we type they've had 397 profile views. With your help they can make it 500.
Six more to follow in due course.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Silences golden
Not everyone will have the inclination towards Apologies To The Enlightenment, the fourth album by Paul Hawkins & Thee Awkward Silences, and not just because it's 75 minutes long averaging nearly five and a half minutes per song. If you know sometime anti-folk hero Hawkins at all you'll know his voice is the one thing that everyone remarks on, a Marmite-worthy sometimes atonal rasp that here takes on positively demonic tones. Whereas previous releases have hinted at warped pub rock like Stiff might have once released (in fact, the first time we wrote about the band we envisaged them on the first Stiff tour), while there's definite hints in various songs of Ian Dury (Every Word I Say To You Today Will Be A Lie) and Madness (Seven Inches Tall) here they're mostly cast as a psychedelic nightmare of acidic guitars and unsourceable noises (The Beasts In The Upstairs Bedroom) or oddly melodic pop alchemists (I'm In Love With A Hospital Receptionist), all encircling Hawkins' ranting dark poetry, emotively angry and preacher-worthy committed to his own causes, alongside the odd lyrically derailed pop moment. Impressively eclectic and visionary, it's an album that doesn't so much grow on you as vice versa. The disturbingly bouncy Monkey Serum is downloadable from last.fm. Work, according to Hawkins, has already started on the follow-up, under the working title Fuckwit Bonanza. Before that, the small matter of a Christmas Number One Project.
This might be NSFW.
This might be NSFW.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Indelicates' sounds of thunder
The showy elephant in the die-hard muso room in all discussion of The Indelicates' Songs For Swinging Lovers is that it inaugurates their Corporate Records strategy with a pay-what-you-want scheme. This is the sort of new sales policy that tends to take up as much as half of reviews of any albums such sold, so for sake of the music we'll let you read up about it. Although you'd need the sales link first.
Let's talk about the Indelicates instead, because they need writing about, and written about is something that people manage well enough on their behalf. As we said when reviewing American Demo, they tend to cause bloggers to write in a high minded, intrinsically wordy way that rarely gets brought out for other people's music. It's as if people are trying to catch up. Fearsomely, fearlessly intelligent, musically opaque, bound to critical study and poetic darkness, proudly anti-mainstream mores and outlets, they are, it's fair to say, the most unlikely recipient of more than one page of tagged news articles on Digital Spy. The Indelicates are the whole package, every declaration, artwork and special edition of the album designed to set them apart.American Demo, in capsule, was the Auteurs, late on when Luke Haines really did have no kind words for those around him
in the firmament, produced by Jim Steinman. Songs For Swinging Lovers is more genre unspecific, from huge guitar anthems to Weill cabaret - Julia has mentioned that these songs were written more with musical cabaret in mind. Lyrically, though, it still focuses on much the same critical targets as the first album - personal politics, media, feminism, the music industry, class, irony, hypocrisy, doomed love. There'll always be that distinct lack of pandering to the greater commercial good or pulling punches, evident straight from the opening Europe, not only their attempt to write a song about every great land mass in the world (that's what Simon said at our gig, and you trust him, don't you?) but laden with heavy irony in its salutes to high society. Flesh is actively vicious underneath a lilting piano-led melody. It might be hard to believe from a song which opens "hey girls, let's see if we can bring out the rapists in the new man", but while a blood sister to Our Daughters Will Never Be Free in its degredation of modern ideas of female empowerment it's not as directly angry, more pitifully baleful before it gets to "take a knife to me, scar my snatch into a smile/strip me out, dissect me, milk my tears and tap my bile... beauty isn’t truth, it’s just youth, it’s adaptive and it’s elastic", ending in the world's most ironic torch song ballad ending. Ill returns to the cult of the damaged, crowing "You know you’re too clever to be mentally ill/You'll never fashion your damaged soul/Because you’re too clever to lose control". Roses shows they can do a proper murder ballad, and obviously they do it a lot more elegantly, graphically and with an undercurrent of disgust than most. (There's also a tremendous clanging bridge which includes the contents of actual abandoned tapes they found in the ex-East German radio station they recorded the album in) Be Afraid Of Your Parents is properly Threepenny Opera, Simon in full rolled-r's ravishing mode railing against the language of the far right "charming men in uniform". We Love You Tania follows Unity Mitford into the world of tribute songs to antiheroes, here Patty Hearst (and that sample photo will look familiar to anyone who saw their recent tour poster).
Only the Indelicates could nowadays write a song like Savages, another you and I against the world as we saw it song both celebrating their status outside the modern mainstream and simultaneously questioning whether there really is justification for it if that is the case, or Jerusalem, a jaunty almost Britpoppian evisceration on the youth scene that celebrates itself that pointedly, and far more timely then they could have expected, remarks on "how it seems rebellious to vote Conservative now", seeming to answer Blake's rhetorical question firmly in the negative.
Anthem For Doomed Youth goes on to centralise the ire, locating what happens when there's nothing worth fighting against and hence nothing worth fighting for. Maybe that's why the Indelicates exist and thrive, as something to hook on to in the lack of anything your Facebook group starting brethren are willing to get directly behind. If it's social satire in a vacuum, it's very well aimed as something to say for the few that will end up listening (no sales budget beyond word of mouth, remember), romantic and (more often than not) dark humouredly bileful at the same time, laying out their personal charter in a realist's world.
Their (Simon's, to be exact) long talked about next project, as mentioned in the last non-special track? David Koresh Superstar. Of course.
While you're over at Corporate Records, why not give a little time, possibly followed by money, to Indelicates full band member Lily Rae's Oh No...? She's a bolshy 19 year old from Brixton whose father fronted a band which featured Dave Allen (Gang Of Four, Shriekback), which tells you nothing about what she sounds like but fills out a sentence. What she sounds like is Kirsty Maccoll circa They Don't Know - right down to the Stiff Records new wave influence - with a heavy grudge and a good working knowledge of Morrissey, and this is all a very good thing. If she gets big, someone will compare her to Lily Allen. Someone will very shortly afterwards have to die. This is the Myspace, and this is thirty seconds of a song in that quite nice Corporate Records player.
Let's talk about the Indelicates instead, because they need writing about, and written about is something that people manage well enough on their behalf. As we said when reviewing American Demo, they tend to cause bloggers to write in a high minded, intrinsically wordy way that rarely gets brought out for other people's music. It's as if people are trying to catch up. Fearsomely, fearlessly intelligent, musically opaque, bound to critical study and poetic darkness, proudly anti-mainstream mores and outlets, they are, it's fair to say, the most unlikely recipient of more than one page of tagged news articles on Digital Spy. The Indelicates are the whole package, every declaration, artwork and special edition of the album designed to set them apart.American Demo, in capsule, was the Auteurs, late on when Luke Haines really did have no kind words for those around him
in the firmament, produced by Jim Steinman. Songs For Swinging Lovers is more genre unspecific, from huge guitar anthems to Weill cabaret - Julia has mentioned that these songs were written more with musical cabaret in mind. Lyrically, though, it still focuses on much the same critical targets as the first album - personal politics, media, feminism, the music industry, class, irony, hypocrisy, doomed love. There'll always be that distinct lack of pandering to the greater commercial good or pulling punches, evident straight from the opening Europe, not only their attempt to write a song about every great land mass in the world (that's what Simon said at our gig, and you trust him, don't you?) but laden with heavy irony in its salutes to high society. Flesh is actively vicious underneath a lilting piano-led melody. It might be hard to believe from a song which opens "hey girls, let's see if we can bring out the rapists in the new man", but while a blood sister to Our Daughters Will Never Be Free in its degredation of modern ideas of female empowerment it's not as directly angry, more pitifully baleful before it gets to "take a knife to me, scar my snatch into a smile/strip me out, dissect me, milk my tears and tap my bile... beauty isn’t truth, it’s just youth, it’s adaptive and it’s elastic", ending in the world's most ironic torch song ballad ending. Ill returns to the cult of the damaged, crowing "You know you’re too clever to be mentally ill/You'll never fashion your damaged soul/Because you’re too clever to lose control". Roses shows they can do a proper murder ballad, and obviously they do it a lot more elegantly, graphically and with an undercurrent of disgust than most. (There's also a tremendous clanging bridge which includes the contents of actual abandoned tapes they found in the ex-East German radio station they recorded the album in) Be Afraid Of Your Parents is properly Threepenny Opera, Simon in full rolled-r's ravishing mode railing against the language of the far right "charming men in uniform". We Love You Tania follows Unity Mitford into the world of tribute songs to antiheroes, here Patty Hearst (and that sample photo will look familiar to anyone who saw their recent tour poster).
Only the Indelicates could nowadays write a song like Savages, another you and I against the world as we saw it song both celebrating their status outside the modern mainstream and simultaneously questioning whether there really is justification for it if that is the case, or Jerusalem, a jaunty almost Britpoppian evisceration on the youth scene that celebrates itself that pointedly, and far more timely then they could have expected, remarks on "how it seems rebellious to vote Conservative now", seeming to answer Blake's rhetorical question firmly in the negative.
Anthem For Doomed Youth goes on to centralise the ire, locating what happens when there's nothing worth fighting against and hence nothing worth fighting for. Maybe that's why the Indelicates exist and thrive, as something to hook on to in the lack of anything your Facebook group starting brethren are willing to get directly behind. If it's social satire in a vacuum, it's very well aimed as something to say for the few that will end up listening (no sales budget beyond word of mouth, remember), romantic and (more often than not) dark humouredly bileful at the same time, laying out their personal charter in a realist's world.
Their (Simon's, to be exact) long talked about next project, as mentioned in the last non-special track? David Koresh Superstar. Of course.
While you're over at Corporate Records, why not give a little time, possibly followed by money, to Indelicates full band member Lily Rae's Oh No...? She's a bolshy 19 year old from Brixton whose father fronted a band which featured Dave Allen (Gang Of Four, Shriekback), which tells you nothing about what she sounds like but fills out a sentence. What she sounds like is Kirsty Maccoll circa They Don't Know - right down to the Stiff Records new wave influence - with a heavy grudge and a good working knowledge of Morrissey, and this is all a very good thing. If she gets big, someone will compare her to Lily Allen. Someone will very shortly afterwards have to die. This is the Myspace, and this is thirty seconds of a song in that quite nice Corporate Records player.
Harvey's rare bit
If we have any hope for this week, it's that this clip goes viral.
Playing a couple of gigs over the last year or so, PJ Harvey has been debuting a new song called Let England Shake. Over a looped sample of The Four Lads' original of Istanbul Not Constantinople it involves Polly thrashing away at an autoharp not entirely in standard tuning with cryptic but fairly politicised lyrics atop.
Where, do you think, would Polly choose to give this fairly eccentric song by her recent standard its first wider airing?
This morning's The Andrew Marr Show. Obviously. (Interviewed her, too) Which would be bizarre enough, were it not that watching intently on with Marr was Gordon Brown.
Playing a couple of gigs over the last year or so, PJ Harvey has been debuting a new song called Let England Shake. Over a looped sample of The Four Lads' original of Istanbul Not Constantinople it involves Polly thrashing away at an autoharp not entirely in standard tuning with cryptic but fairly politicised lyrics atop.
Where, do you think, would Polly choose to give this fairly eccentric song by her recent standard its first wider airing?
This morning's The Andrew Marr Show. Obviously. (Interviewed her, too) Which would be bizarre enough, were it not that watching intently on with Marr was Gordon Brown.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
We're not an mp3 blog any more, remember
On the other hand, some people send you mp3s you can't resist from posting. One such electronic missive came from Erik Sandberg, partly to bring news that the STN favourites he fronted, Wake The President, have joined the ever lengthening list of bands we went fully into battle for only to meet a wall of general apathy and watch die. Erik and brother Bjorn have though started a new band and are recording with Paul Savage with a view to a release next year.
Meanwhile the twins' Say Dirty label is releasing a split 7". On one side are The Sexual Objects, the appealingly falling apart current project of Fire Engines/Win/Nectarine No.9 frontman Davy Henderson. On the other, a Glasgow band who did a Marc Riley session on Tuesday, formed by a member of mid-90s post-riot grrl screamers Lung Leg, earning a bit of localised credit for their jangling, full bodied assault on new wave-y (circa Altered Images) guitar pop. And yeah, this is the Myspace.
Peter Parker - Pretty Living
Meanwhile the twins' Say Dirty label is releasing a split 7". On one side are The Sexual Objects, the appealingly falling apart current project of Fire Engines/Win/Nectarine No.9 frontman Davy Henderson. On the other, a Glasgow band who did a Marc Riley session on Tuesday, formed by a member of mid-90s post-riot grrl screamers Lung Leg, earning a bit of localised credit for their jangling, full bodied assault on new wave-y (circa Altered Images) guitar pop. And yeah, this is the Myspace.
Peter Parker - Pretty Living
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Ure in a bad way
More chartage. It got overshadowed by the Joy Division Oven Gloves farrago, but there was a rival and fantastically petty effort to get Ultravox's Vienna to somehow right twenty-nine years' wrong and send it to number one for some reason. As you may know it wasn't entirely successful, but it gives us an opportunity to dip into the relevant top 40 of 21st February 1981:
40 Adam & The Ants - Cartrouble
39 Adam & The Ants - Kings Of The Wild Frontier
We're right on the edge of the zenith of that odd period when a man singing about flamboyancy and imagined social takeover over Burundi derived drums and big glam guitars was the biggest thing in teen pop. As Miranda Sawyer once observed, two decades later the same age group was being pitched Westlife. The latter was the new single and set to become the start of a name making run of top 3 singles, the former a pleasingly jagged/jangly early single reissued by the old label, as old labels used to do, from before Talcy Malcy (RIP) stole most of the Ants for Bow Wow Wow.
38 Kelly Marie - Hot Love
No strutting sailors, no disco boo-boo, no future.
37 Barry Manilow - I Made It Through The Rain
Yeah. Plenty of passing interest just outside the 40, not least the Teardrop Explodes' unlickable Reward at 41 and the prosaically titled Four From Toyah EP at 42. The Freshies are at 54, and as Dale Winton says that was as high as they ever got, with I'm In Love With The Girl On A Certain Manchester Megastore Checkout Desk, notable for two reasons, a) last we knew it was the longest unbracketed song title ever to chart, and b) singer Chris Sievey created a character, played by himself, as the band's biggest fan and went on to concentrate on being that character full time on stage and record. You know he is. He really is.
Holly Willoughby included, how many people in that studio do you think genuinely know who he is?
36 Barbara Jones - Just When I Needed You Most
A few names here have headed down the collective memory plughole. Jones was a one small hit wonder reggae singer.
35 Talking Heads - Once In A Lifetime
And a few haven't. None of it was his, apparently.
34 Beggar And Co - Somebody (Help Me Out)
"Beggar and Co (also written Beggar & Co) are a UK male vocal/instrumental group" Wikipedia, seemingly via the Guinness Book Of British Hit Singles. They were a funk brass section who worked with Spandau Ballet. 15 weeks on chart.
33 Gillan - Mutually Assured Destruction
Ian Gillan. Meanwhile at 55 was an entry for Star by Kiki Dee, which as we all know went on to be the theme to Bob Says Opportunity Knocks. Rosser & Davies, we hardly knew ye.
32 The Boomtown Rats - The Elephant's Graveyard (Guilty)
Never one for politicising subtlety, Bob. As we would find out.
31 The Look - I Am The Beat
Mod revival also rans most famous for the locked groove at the end of this record which repeated the last word until you had to get up and take it off, or the stylus wore out.
30 Diana Ross - It's My Turn
Kids In America made its top 75 debut this week, at 62. Now that Gethin Jones has the Holland & Barrett constituency and gardening has moved away from prime time Kim Wilde is forever touring continental Europe and in 2006 released an album mostly of poor reworkings of her old songs, bar a circle-squaring recording of Kids In America with Charlotte Hatherley that was, future biographers take note, the first mp3 we ever uploaded for the blog.
29 The Gap Band - Burn Rubber On Me
Duran Duran's Planet Earth debuted too, at 67. Meanwhile, the funk.
28 Passions - I'm In Love With A German Film Star
Echoey, hairspray-friendly one hit wonder covered to no great effect by Sam Taylor-Wood a couple of years ago, because nobody said the Pet Shop Boys' radar was always perfect. Cicero, for example.
27 Heatwave - Gangsters Of The Groove
26 The Jam - That's Entertainment
Famously only on import, and an example of how compilers can get it so wrong when Snap! featured only a then-rare full band version that couldn't miss the point more.
25 Susan Fassbender - Twilight Cafe
Does anyone know her? The facts, such as they are, seem to get quite repetitive there.
24 Spandau Ballet - The Freeze
23 Freeez - Southern Freeez
Must have been something in the air. (Yeah, that works)
22 Adam & The Ants - Young Parisians
An even older song reissued by an even older label.
21 Roxy Music - Jealous Guy
New entry. Remember what had happened two months previously.
20 Cliff Richard - A Little In Love
19 Yarbrough & Peoples - Don't Stop The Music
Peoples! That really is a copout as far as naming your backing band goes.
18 Adam & The Ants - Antmusic
Don't worry, we've had a couple of generations since and ants treading on you has come no closer to realisation.
17 John Lennon - Imagine
No red wine round theirs.
16 XTC - Sgt Rock (Is Going To Help Me)
Andy Partridge's least favourite of anything he's recorded, and given how many volumes of Fuzzy Warbles he put out that's some claim.
15 Motorhead & Girlschool - St Valentine's Day Massacre EP
A lot of New Wave Of British Heavy Metal in the lower reaches, but a drop of the old stuff made it to the top five. We would write more, but we've just seen the sentence "The EP was recorded while Motörhead's drummer Phil "Philthy Animal" Taylor was recovering from a neck injury sustained playing "who can lift each other up the highest" with a large Irishman" and may be incapacitated in a very different way for some time.
14 Coast To Coast - (Do) The Hucklebuck
In the early 80, see, many were reviving the 50s.
13 Blondie - Rapture
Or making new stuff. Given nobody knew what rap was, Debbie could get away with rhyming like that then.
12 Visage - Fade To Grey
It's not an actual snake.
11 The Pretenders - Message Of Love
10 Slade - We'll Bring The House Down
First top ten single in five years, a period which it says here included a single called Sign O' The Times. "In Wolverhampton a hairy man died of a big disease with a little name..."
9 The Stray Cats - Rock This Town
No Stray Cat Strut, as longtime readers will know, but somehow cooler than, say, Matchbox.
8 Dire Straits - Romeo And Juliet
Lasts about three days, but gives us a chance to post something else Dire Straits related and brilliant in its own altruistic way. IATV's Peter Cook fronted punk-friendly music show Revolver gave ver Straits their TV debut with no warning as to what sort of music was to come. Down the front in the pit for Knopfler, now!
7 Madness - The Return Of The Los Palmas Seven
Dinner jazz oddity with one word lyric, printed in full in inside sleeve of Complete Madness compilation. Highly orchestrated TOTP appearance? But of course.
6 Fred Wedlock - The Oldest Swinger In Town
Last time we got to write about Keith Michell's Captain Beaky, now it's Fred Wedlock. The Music Magazine called us "slightly ahead of the zeitgeist", and we're repaying that one in spades. Bristol folkie Wedlock was in fact only 38 at the time, although if you count Madonna, Kylie and Steven Tyler as more gyrators it could still be true.
5 Phil Collins - In The Air Tonight
Paint pot, drowning, chocolate, you know all this by now.
4 Rainbow - I Surrender
Bigger than FM drivetime TV advertised compilation staple Since You've Been Gone, and somehow much more proof that everything's not AOR.
3 John Lennon - Woman
Knocked off the top, which is a fairly brutal way of the nation declaring that was enough mourning.
2 Ultravox - Vienna
Vic Reeves' version is of course the superior, given it junks all the lyrics bar the first line and chorus.
1 Joe Dolce Music Theatre - Shaddup You Face
Right, so Dolce was born in Ohio with Italian grandparents, moving to Melbourne in the late 70s, where he formed the Music Theatre as a touring musical production of folk, blues and general amusement. He applied for a grant to record it and was given enough for a test segment, for which he chose this. It got picked up by a local DJ, went national, then Polygram shoved it out to stop an in-character re-recording by Andrew Sachs. Can't help thinking that had that been the hit we wouldn't have looked so harshly on Brand and Ross. Perhaps knowing his audience, Dolce follow-ups included Pizza Pizza and You Toucha My Car I Breaka You Face. None of them charted.
40 Adam & The Ants - Cartrouble
39 Adam & The Ants - Kings Of The Wild Frontier
We're right on the edge of the zenith of that odd period when a man singing about flamboyancy and imagined social takeover over Burundi derived drums and big glam guitars was the biggest thing in teen pop. As Miranda Sawyer once observed, two decades later the same age group was being pitched Westlife. The latter was the new single and set to become the start of a name making run of top 3 singles, the former a pleasingly jagged/jangly early single reissued by the old label, as old labels used to do, from before Talcy Malcy (RIP) stole most of the Ants for Bow Wow Wow.
38 Kelly Marie - Hot Love
No strutting sailors, no disco boo-boo, no future.
37 Barry Manilow - I Made It Through The Rain
Yeah. Plenty of passing interest just outside the 40, not least the Teardrop Explodes' unlickable Reward at 41 and the prosaically titled Four From Toyah EP at 42. The Freshies are at 54, and as Dale Winton says that was as high as they ever got, with I'm In Love With The Girl On A Certain Manchester Megastore Checkout Desk, notable for two reasons, a) last we knew it was the longest unbracketed song title ever to chart, and b) singer Chris Sievey created a character, played by himself, as the band's biggest fan and went on to concentrate on being that character full time on stage and record. You know he is. He really is.
Holly Willoughby included, how many people in that studio do you think genuinely know who he is?
36 Barbara Jones - Just When I Needed You Most
A few names here have headed down the collective memory plughole. Jones was a one small hit wonder reggae singer.
35 Talking Heads - Once In A Lifetime
And a few haven't. None of it was his, apparently.
34 Beggar And Co - Somebody (Help Me Out)
"Beggar and Co (also written Beggar & Co) are a UK male vocal/instrumental group" Wikipedia, seemingly via the Guinness Book Of British Hit Singles. They were a funk brass section who worked with Spandau Ballet. 15 weeks on chart.
33 Gillan - Mutually Assured Destruction
Ian Gillan. Meanwhile at 55 was an entry for Star by Kiki Dee, which as we all know went on to be the theme to Bob Says Opportunity Knocks. Rosser & Davies, we hardly knew ye.
32 The Boomtown Rats - The Elephant's Graveyard (Guilty)
Never one for politicising subtlety, Bob. As we would find out.
31 The Look - I Am The Beat
Mod revival also rans most famous for the locked groove at the end of this record which repeated the last word until you had to get up and take it off, or the stylus wore out.
30 Diana Ross - It's My Turn
Kids In America made its top 75 debut this week, at 62. Now that Gethin Jones has the Holland & Barrett constituency and gardening has moved away from prime time Kim Wilde is forever touring continental Europe and in 2006 released an album mostly of poor reworkings of her old songs, bar a circle-squaring recording of Kids In America with Charlotte Hatherley that was, future biographers take note, the first mp3 we ever uploaded for the blog.
29 The Gap Band - Burn Rubber On Me
Duran Duran's Planet Earth debuted too, at 67. Meanwhile, the funk.
28 Passions - I'm In Love With A German Film Star
Echoey, hairspray-friendly one hit wonder covered to no great effect by Sam Taylor-Wood a couple of years ago, because nobody said the Pet Shop Boys' radar was always perfect. Cicero, for example.
27 Heatwave - Gangsters Of The Groove
26 The Jam - That's Entertainment
Famously only on import, and an example of how compilers can get it so wrong when Snap! featured only a then-rare full band version that couldn't miss the point more.
25 Susan Fassbender - Twilight Cafe
Does anyone know her? The facts, such as they are, seem to get quite repetitive there.
24 Spandau Ballet - The Freeze
23 Freeez - Southern Freeez
Must have been something in the air. (Yeah, that works)
22 Adam & The Ants - Young Parisians
An even older song reissued by an even older label.
21 Roxy Music - Jealous Guy
New entry. Remember what had happened two months previously.
20 Cliff Richard - A Little In Love
19 Yarbrough & Peoples - Don't Stop The Music
Peoples! That really is a copout as far as naming your backing band goes.
18 Adam & The Ants - Antmusic
Don't worry, we've had a couple of generations since and ants treading on you has come no closer to realisation.
17 John Lennon - Imagine
No red wine round theirs.
16 XTC - Sgt Rock (Is Going To Help Me)
Andy Partridge's least favourite of anything he's recorded, and given how many volumes of Fuzzy Warbles he put out that's some claim.
15 Motorhead & Girlschool - St Valentine's Day Massacre EP
A lot of New Wave Of British Heavy Metal in the lower reaches, but a drop of the old stuff made it to the top five. We would write more, but we've just seen the sentence "The EP was recorded while Motörhead's drummer Phil "Philthy Animal" Taylor was recovering from a neck injury sustained playing "who can lift each other up the highest" with a large Irishman" and may be incapacitated in a very different way for some time.
14 Coast To Coast - (Do) The Hucklebuck
In the early 80, see, many were reviving the 50s.
13 Blondie - Rapture
Or making new stuff. Given nobody knew what rap was, Debbie could get away with rhyming like that then.
12 Visage - Fade To Grey
It's not an actual snake.
11 The Pretenders - Message Of Love
10 Slade - We'll Bring The House Down
First top ten single in five years, a period which it says here included a single called Sign O' The Times. "In Wolverhampton a hairy man died of a big disease with a little name..."
9 The Stray Cats - Rock This Town
No Stray Cat Strut, as longtime readers will know, but somehow cooler than, say, Matchbox.
8 Dire Straits - Romeo And Juliet
Lasts about three days, but gives us a chance to post something else Dire Straits related and brilliant in its own altruistic way. IATV's Peter Cook fronted punk-friendly music show Revolver gave ver Straits their TV debut with no warning as to what sort of music was to come. Down the front in the pit for Knopfler, now!
7 Madness - The Return Of The Los Palmas Seven
Dinner jazz oddity with one word lyric, printed in full in inside sleeve of Complete Madness compilation. Highly orchestrated TOTP appearance? But of course.
6 Fred Wedlock - The Oldest Swinger In Town
Last time we got to write about Keith Michell's Captain Beaky, now it's Fred Wedlock. The Music Magazine called us "slightly ahead of the zeitgeist", and we're repaying that one in spades. Bristol folkie Wedlock was in fact only 38 at the time, although if you count Madonna, Kylie and Steven Tyler as more gyrators it could still be true.
5 Phil Collins - In The Air Tonight
Paint pot, drowning, chocolate, you know all this by now.
4 Rainbow - I Surrender
Bigger than FM drivetime TV advertised compilation staple Since You've Been Gone, and somehow much more proof that everything's not AOR.
3 John Lennon - Woman
Knocked off the top, which is a fairly brutal way of the nation declaring that was enough mourning.
2 Ultravox - Vienna
Vic Reeves' version is of course the superior, given it junks all the lyrics bar the first line and chorus.
1 Joe Dolce Music Theatre - Shaddup You Face
Right, so Dolce was born in Ohio with Italian grandparents, moving to Melbourne in the late 70s, where he formed the Music Theatre as a touring musical production of folk, blues and general amusement. He applied for a grant to record it and was given enough for a test segment, for which he chose this. It got picked up by a local DJ, went national, then Polygram shoved it out to stop an in-character re-recording by Andrew Sachs. Can't help thinking that had that been the hit we wouldn't have looked so harshly on Brand and Ross. Perhaps knowing his audience, Dolce follow-ups included Pizza Pizza and You Toucha My Car I Breaka You Face. None of them charted.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Swing time
The Indelicates - a band completely impervious to proper STN-trade punning headlines.
Their new album Songs For Swinging Lovers has been released in the past few minutes through their own newly minted Corporate Records auspices under a post-In Rainbows (but with PayPal) pay what you like scheme. If you need to catch up on Simon and Julia (and the rest of them)'s evil genius, American Demo, our eleventh favourite album of 2008, can also be downloaded for a flat fiver. There's a whole other ethos to the Corporate Records idea laid out therein involving signing yourself up to the 'label', but you can go and take that in yourselves.
They're planning to make a video for every track on the album, starting with the demonic skiffle-Pogues of Sympathy For The Devil. Your monetary input could make back the expense on those CGI effects and specialist dance classes.
Their new album Songs For Swinging Lovers has been released in the past few minutes through their own newly minted Corporate Records auspices under a post-In Rainbows (but with PayPal) pay what you like scheme. If you need to catch up on Simon and Julia (and the rest of them)'s evil genius, American Demo, our eleventh favourite album of 2008, can also be downloaded for a flat fiver. There's a whole other ethos to the Corporate Records idea laid out therein involving signing yourself up to the 'label', but you can go and take that in yourselves.
They're planning to make a video for every track on the album, starting with the demonic skiffle-Pogues of Sympathy For The Devil. Your monetary input could make back the expense on those CGI effects and specialist dance classes.
Try before you buy
We're trying to get away from just posting mp3s of stuff we write about, not for Digital Economy reasons but because it was never this blog's intentions and it's a very easy way of filling out a post when all else fails. But, in case you want further convincing about the last few records we've plugged:
Love Ends Disaster! - Killer Bombs
Lucky Soul - A Coming Of Age
The School - The One Who Left Me
Love Ends Disaster! - Killer Bombs
Lucky Soul - A Coming Of Age
The School - The One Who Left Me
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Let's hear it for the girls
Do you remember the Summer Of Spector? Well, no you don't, unless you recall all the minutiae and pointless order making of Sweeping The Nation history, and not even we do that. For what it's worth, Summer Of Spector was a title we gave to the summer of 2006, when a lot of our favourite records of the moment had deliberate hints of wall of sound production and girl group aesthetics. It was the summer of Camera Obscura's widescreen breakthrough Let's Get Out Of This Country, El Perro Del Mar dredging through heartbreak and melancholia in minor key romanticism based on huge dynamics and analogue-sounding production values and the Pipettes locating the molten spot between knowing kitsch nouveau (dress code, video based on Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls) and indie pop modernity. Meanwhile, although they wouldn't release their debut album until early the following year, a little band based in Greenwich with big plans was making a splash with 7" nuggets of kitchen sink melodrama. Lucky Soul looked the part, sounded the part on a self-financed budget and were taking the retro girl pop span of Dustys, Sandies and Ronnies and shoehorning into a modish (and mod-ish) pop frame.
Four years on Camera Obscura have taken huge steps to the precipice of wider acceptance, El Perro Del Mar is channelling Brian Wilson, the Pipettes are channelling Baccara and Lucky Soul... well, there's a tale. The self-financed The Great Unwanted, for all its critical acclaim, didn't become the expected sleeper sales hit even as those that came after them with much the same records to tout - Amy and Duffy and all points east - took the sound and made it easy money for major label A&Rs, nearly bringing the accidental irony to Andrew Laidlaw's declaration "We’re never going to be out of fashion, because we’ve never been in it". Meanwhile, Laidlaw ended up dossing in the band's rehearsal space. Still, such determination to prove their own ground in terms of pop melodies with a hint of Sixties pizzazz dragged through assorted stylistic nods and a great dollop of production gleam has led to A Coming Of Age, released April 19th. So confident are they that not only did they turn down a production offer from Tony Visconti, but it's a main bullet point in the press release.
Whether Visconti would have added much is moot - his most recent high profile work, the Manics' Lifeblood and Morrissey's Ringleader Of The Tormentors, could best be described as latter day discography filler - but having lived for so long with The Great Unwanted, our seventh favourite album of '07, which felt like its title, a me and occasionally you against the world clarion call, it can take time to get used to the glossier feel. The emotional troughs seem more obviously signposted, the interplay is more smoothed over and we're becoming overfed with jaunty melodies against downbeat words. It's not that difficult to do. Undeniably, however, it's an album designed as much for the dancefloor as the heart, more so than its predecessor. It's there with paper change in the two singles, the huge glam Stax and quadrillion hooks of Woah Billy! and the Smiths-in-Motown (and the Smiths themselves hinted at that a couple of times not as successfully as here) of White Russian Doll. Up In Flames is Wigan Casino dragged over some very rocky ground with clever strings and four to the floor stomp shrouding Ali Howard's bittersweet appeal. Following on from the earlier command of brittle but huge balladry, the title track and Could be I Don't Belong Anywhere pack a cinematic, grandstanding sway with Brian Wilson's favoured string section making Bond theme grandiose statements, the former in exactly three minutes.
What is new, at least to us outsiders, to the Lucky Soul palette is an autumnal sophistication which isn't so much post-modern pastiche as reshaping the influences that others might wear more openly. Howard's little young woman lost is pretty much spot on for this sort of thing, an audible shimmer even as what she brings to the lyrical darkness ("sentiments that make Leonard Cohen look like Miley Cyrus" says that same press release - now come on, you know that's not true) burrows into the core. While not everything comes off with her vocal style there's just as many moments where she seems born to vocalise, say, Love³, an approximation of Booker T & the MG's working the Grand Ol' Opry. That song and Upon Hilly Fields, a fine countrified vibrato on, yeah, heartache and regret with twanging guitar solo to go, suggest an interesting diversion from soul plan A. For now, though, it's clear this is no band restricting themselves to indie ambitions, which might wrongfoot with its renewed slickness at first but could ultimately never ride a bike through a supermarket swigging Diet Coke when it could be sitting with a Jack and Coke on the fire escape stairs of Studio 54.
They didn't cross our radar until the tail end of 2007, but by that summer of all our hearts The School were active if only as a Loves side project (Simon Love played with them for a while and makes the odd reappearance, not least as loose cannon utility member at Indietracks last year) Since then there's been an ever changing lineup, currently acting as an octet (and when you've seen all eight, two keyboards and all, fit onto Leicester Firebug's tiny stage as we did last month you've really seen teamwork in action), and their own debut, Loveless Unbeliever, has been on the way for what seems an age and still doesn't land, via Elefant, until 7th June. Their frontwoman and songwriter Liz Hunt is fascinatingly anti-archetype, relatively diffident on stage - she does have a keyboard to play, in fairness - but similarly blessed with an ability to spotweld hooks and harmonies that are at once timeless and modern sounding. Admittedly some of them sail close to being other people's - the lingua franca of the retrospective, Kirsty Maccoll's They Don't Know, is invoked at least twice - but the overall vibe is bulletproof in its fully admitted invocation of style, Ronettes by way of Heavenly, Camera Obscura were they the underachievers, a much better suggestion of a girl group than Stuart Murdoch ever came up with in that thing he did. Indie in the old form of the word used to be about this, where the sixties met the hairclipped and fanzined, coloured Sarah 7"s of airy female singers who believed in themselves with any air of apologia offset by the joy of the thing. Two tracks feature castanets prominently. Obviously joy isn't totally unconfined, there's more than a hint of the lovelorn and broken hearted self-pitying am-dram here too, but it's hard not to spend the 37 minutes swooning in reverie. It's guileless pop that insists on its own terms even when utilising someone else's.
Four years on Camera Obscura have taken huge steps to the precipice of wider acceptance, El Perro Del Mar is channelling Brian Wilson, the Pipettes are channelling Baccara and Lucky Soul... well, there's a tale. The self-financed The Great Unwanted, for all its critical acclaim, didn't become the expected sleeper sales hit even as those that came after them with much the same records to tout - Amy and Duffy and all points east - took the sound and made it easy money for major label A&Rs, nearly bringing the accidental irony to Andrew Laidlaw's declaration "We’re never going to be out of fashion, because we’ve never been in it". Meanwhile, Laidlaw ended up dossing in the band's rehearsal space. Still, such determination to prove their own ground in terms of pop melodies with a hint of Sixties pizzazz dragged through assorted stylistic nods and a great dollop of production gleam has led to A Coming Of Age, released April 19th. So confident are they that not only did they turn down a production offer from Tony Visconti, but it's a main bullet point in the press release.
Whether Visconti would have added much is moot - his most recent high profile work, the Manics' Lifeblood and Morrissey's Ringleader Of The Tormentors, could best be described as latter day discography filler - but having lived for so long with The Great Unwanted, our seventh favourite album of '07, which felt like its title, a me and occasionally you against the world clarion call, it can take time to get used to the glossier feel. The emotional troughs seem more obviously signposted, the interplay is more smoothed over and we're becoming overfed with jaunty melodies against downbeat words. It's not that difficult to do. Undeniably, however, it's an album designed as much for the dancefloor as the heart, more so than its predecessor. It's there with paper change in the two singles, the huge glam Stax and quadrillion hooks of Woah Billy! and the Smiths-in-Motown (and the Smiths themselves hinted at that a couple of times not as successfully as here) of White Russian Doll. Up In Flames is Wigan Casino dragged over some very rocky ground with clever strings and four to the floor stomp shrouding Ali Howard's bittersweet appeal. Following on from the earlier command of brittle but huge balladry, the title track and Could be I Don't Belong Anywhere pack a cinematic, grandstanding sway with Brian Wilson's favoured string section making Bond theme grandiose statements, the former in exactly three minutes.
What is new, at least to us outsiders, to the Lucky Soul palette is an autumnal sophistication which isn't so much post-modern pastiche as reshaping the influences that others might wear more openly. Howard's little young woman lost is pretty much spot on for this sort of thing, an audible shimmer even as what she brings to the lyrical darkness ("sentiments that make Leonard Cohen look like Miley Cyrus" says that same press release - now come on, you know that's not true) burrows into the core. While not everything comes off with her vocal style there's just as many moments where she seems born to vocalise, say, Love³, an approximation of Booker T & the MG's working the Grand Ol' Opry. That song and Upon Hilly Fields, a fine countrified vibrato on, yeah, heartache and regret with twanging guitar solo to go, suggest an interesting diversion from soul plan A. For now, though, it's clear this is no band restricting themselves to indie ambitions, which might wrongfoot with its renewed slickness at first but could ultimately never ride a bike through a supermarket swigging Diet Coke when it could be sitting with a Jack and Coke on the fire escape stairs of Studio 54.
Lucky Soul - Woah Billy! from Ruffa Lane on Vimeo.
They didn't cross our radar until the tail end of 2007, but by that summer of all our hearts The School were active if only as a Loves side project (Simon Love played with them for a while and makes the odd reappearance, not least as loose cannon utility member at Indietracks last year) Since then there's been an ever changing lineup, currently acting as an octet (and when you've seen all eight, two keyboards and all, fit onto Leicester Firebug's tiny stage as we did last month you've really seen teamwork in action), and their own debut, Loveless Unbeliever, has been on the way for what seems an age and still doesn't land, via Elefant, until 7th June. Their frontwoman and songwriter Liz Hunt is fascinatingly anti-archetype, relatively diffident on stage - she does have a keyboard to play, in fairness - but similarly blessed with an ability to spotweld hooks and harmonies that are at once timeless and modern sounding. Admittedly some of them sail close to being other people's - the lingua franca of the retrospective, Kirsty Maccoll's They Don't Know, is invoked at least twice - but the overall vibe is bulletproof in its fully admitted invocation of style, Ronettes by way of Heavenly, Camera Obscura were they the underachievers, a much better suggestion of a girl group than Stuart Murdoch ever came up with in that thing he did. Indie in the old form of the word used to be about this, where the sixties met the hairclipped and fanzined, coloured Sarah 7"s of airy female singers who believed in themselves with any air of apologia offset by the joy of the thing. Two tracks feature castanets prominently. Obviously joy isn't totally unconfined, there's more than a hint of the lovelorn and broken hearted self-pitying am-dram here too, but it's hard not to spend the 37 minutes swooning in reverie. It's guileless pop that insists on its own terms even when utilising someone else's.
Thursday, April 08, 2010
Love wars
We were talking to someone with a connection to our local music scene the other week, who reckoned - this may apply to other local scenes, we don't know, we've only ever been a part of one - that, from starting to make waves outside support slots with their mates, bands only really have an eighteen month period to make a proper national impact before it's too late and they end up swirling round the local circuit until deciding to go and do something less boring instead. (In our local music scene, this means joining a covers band. We work backwards.) It's a theory that's seen off any number of promising, hopeful, more than likely sallow cheeked local youths over the 00s.
Love Ends Disaster! were once on the very precipice of national acclaim. Bloc Party declared themselves fans, Colin Murray loved them and their Wiki is full of insane quotes from reliable sources: "Within the year this band will be massive. We've not been wrong before" (Rough Trade); "since Oasis' halcyon days not many artists can claim to have matched quantity with quality" (DiS); "If this isn’t their year then I’m a Chinaman" (Nottingham Rock City). Unfortunately, all these details are dated 2005-2007. Problems, chiefly with labels and finances, have prevented them from releasing anything off their own back since late '07 and last year they hit rock bottom when they were reduced to playing in front of less than twenty people at, to cap it all, a gig promoted by us. We genuinely tried to plug it to people and were met with confused looks from those who thought they'd long since split up. One of those people works for a label that put out one of their songs. Couple that with the general disgusted looks that now greet anyone foolish enough in 2010 to come forward with a sound that could be classified under "quite a bit post-punk".
Not the ideal circumstances, then, for an album to emerge. Nobody else seems to think so either, as they're having to sell City Of Glass themselves in limited numbers while they try and find an interested label, and while we hear rumours of some pretty large and on the face of it unlikely intrigued parties you wouldn't honestly fancy their chances once A&Rs, being what they are, spy the dates on those quotes. Which is a shame, as City Of Glass is a wonder in itself. Hell, we'd be willing to put it out ourselves. (DISCLAIMER: we are never, ever starting a label to put anything out)
Mention of Bloc Party up there: you know A Weekend In The City? You know how at first it seemed a natural, almost mature work, then the waves of overproduction, needless honesty and lyrical overwroughtness brought themselves to the fore (ah, the disdainful foie gras line, as we iconoclasts know it)? City Of Glass is what they should have done, with the added bonus that it won't be followed by pretending to be a dance outfit while forgetting you had a decent rhythm section (Jon Dix keeps that to his own ambient electronics side project Moscow Youth Cult) The family favourites from previous singles that have made the cut retain their knife edge wiry intensity, all Chameleons-meets-Cure staring into the new wave abyss with a wall of melodic noise backing them up. But that's not all they do, and it's most impressive how whether it be an ambient atmospheric sheen, spikiness underlaid and cut up with synthesised pulse, fuzzed out/washed out ethereality with pedals or in one case grandstanding piano ballad, it doesn't feel like it's executed for the sake of it. All these years and setbacks on they're still an eclectic, exciting band and we're glad they've stuck it out to create that elusive beast, a positive development on from the sound of 2005.
If you're near London NW6 on Friday night they play NoFiction's night at Power's on Kilburn High Road. It's free before 9, £2 thereafter, and you can get an early night if you so wish as they're supporting a band the blurb compares to The Enemy.
Love Ends Disaster! were once on the very precipice of national acclaim. Bloc Party declared themselves fans, Colin Murray loved them and their Wiki is full of insane quotes from reliable sources: "Within the year this band will be massive. We've not been wrong before" (Rough Trade); "since Oasis' halcyon days not many artists can claim to have matched quantity with quality" (DiS); "If this isn’t their year then I’m a Chinaman" (Nottingham Rock City). Unfortunately, all these details are dated 2005-2007. Problems, chiefly with labels and finances, have prevented them from releasing anything off their own back since late '07 and last year they hit rock bottom when they were reduced to playing in front of less than twenty people at, to cap it all, a gig promoted by us. We genuinely tried to plug it to people and were met with confused looks from those who thought they'd long since split up. One of those people works for a label that put out one of their songs. Couple that with the general disgusted looks that now greet anyone foolish enough in 2010 to come forward with a sound that could be classified under "quite a bit post-punk".
Not the ideal circumstances, then, for an album to emerge. Nobody else seems to think so either, as they're having to sell City Of Glass themselves in limited numbers while they try and find an interested label, and while we hear rumours of some pretty large and on the face of it unlikely intrigued parties you wouldn't honestly fancy their chances once A&Rs, being what they are, spy the dates on those quotes. Which is a shame, as City Of Glass is a wonder in itself. Hell, we'd be willing to put it out ourselves. (DISCLAIMER: we are never, ever starting a label to put anything out)
Mention of Bloc Party up there: you know A Weekend In The City? You know how at first it seemed a natural, almost mature work, then the waves of overproduction, needless honesty and lyrical overwroughtness brought themselves to the fore (ah, the disdainful foie gras line, as we iconoclasts know it)? City Of Glass is what they should have done, with the added bonus that it won't be followed by pretending to be a dance outfit while forgetting you had a decent rhythm section (Jon Dix keeps that to his own ambient electronics side project Moscow Youth Cult) The family favourites from previous singles that have made the cut retain their knife edge wiry intensity, all Chameleons-meets-Cure staring into the new wave abyss with a wall of melodic noise backing them up. But that's not all they do, and it's most impressive how whether it be an ambient atmospheric sheen, spikiness underlaid and cut up with synthesised pulse, fuzzed out/washed out ethereality with pedals or in one case grandstanding piano ballad, it doesn't feel like it's executed for the sake of it. All these years and setbacks on they're still an eclectic, exciting band and we're glad they've stuck it out to create that elusive beast, a positive development on from the sound of 2005.
If you're near London NW6 on Friday night they play NoFiction's night at Power's on Kilburn High Road. It's free before 9, £2 thereafter, and you can get an early night if you so wish as they're supporting a band the blurb compares to The Enemy.
Tuesday, April 06, 2010
Irk the purists
There's a fascinating parallel about the singles chart these days. It doesn't matter, taken out of the hands of REEL MUSIK FANZ and now controlled by young people alone with a disconnect to the wider audience, but a great number of people want to shape it for their own ends.
By which we mean Rage Against The Machine, obviously, because as we all know The X Factor has been cancelled and Simon Cowell has toned down his public availability as a result. We mean stadium Christian rockers, and oh how the heart bleeds at that one, Delirious? getting a number four single this week in order to demonstrate that Easter is a religious event, or something.
And of course, to prove that it's all a laugh until it happens to something you love, it's this week's big campaign, the pro-6 Music Half Man Half Biscuit Joy Division Oven Gloves chart rig.
Here's the problem. We're great fans of HMHB, but with the caveat that they're far more than the image now set by others for them of wacky Birkenhead funsters who sang (past tense) about kids' telly and minor sports stars. Nigel Blackwell's lyrics are world-weary flights of grounded fantasy, as capable of reuoting from old poets and sonnets as they are referencing people who used to be on the telly. And how do their fans choose to portray this to what will be a whole new audience? With that funny jangly song about the idea of Joy Division branded oven gloves. You'd never, ever be able to move on from that. They're now a novelty one hit wonder, and what's more a novelty one hit wonder chosen to represent a station that its defenders seek to highlight the new music and classic cuts content of. And what's in it for anyone? Having remained silent so far, Blackwell isn't going to give exclusive quotes to Gordon Smart. They're not going to play bigger venues than they already are, if through choice, and anyone who does come afresh on the back of this wouldn't have a hope of understanding the full range of it from that standing start. It's taking this quintessentially cult English concern and projecting entirely the wrong bit onto the wider pop world because a 69p download is easier in transaction than writing to Mark Thompson and/or the BBC Trust, or something else that might make a difference. And if it fails (it's not in the midweek top 40) then that suggests there's not the interest in keeping the station after all, so they're hoist by their own Dukla Prague-shaded petard.
Or are we being joyless arses?
By which we mean Rage Against The Machine, obviously, because as we all know The X Factor has been cancelled and Simon Cowell has toned down his public availability as a result. We mean stadium Christian rockers, and oh how the heart bleeds at that one, Delirious? getting a number four single this week in order to demonstrate that Easter is a religious event, or something.
And of course, to prove that it's all a laugh until it happens to something you love, it's this week's big campaign, the pro-6 Music Half Man Half Biscuit Joy Division Oven Gloves chart rig.
Here's the problem. We're great fans of HMHB, but with the caveat that they're far more than the image now set by others for them of wacky Birkenhead funsters who sang (past tense) about kids' telly and minor sports stars. Nigel Blackwell's lyrics are world-weary flights of grounded fantasy, as capable of reuoting from old poets and sonnets as they are referencing people who used to be on the telly. And how do their fans choose to portray this to what will be a whole new audience? With that funny jangly song about the idea of Joy Division branded oven gloves. You'd never, ever be able to move on from that. They're now a novelty one hit wonder, and what's more a novelty one hit wonder chosen to represent a station that its defenders seek to highlight the new music and classic cuts content of. And what's in it for anyone? Having remained silent so far, Blackwell isn't going to give exclusive quotes to Gordon Smart. They're not going to play bigger venues than they already are, if through choice, and anyone who does come afresh on the back of this wouldn't have a hope of understanding the full range of it from that standing start. It's taking this quintessentially cult English concern and projecting entirely the wrong bit onto the wider pop world because a 69p download is easier in transaction than writing to Mark Thompson and/or the BBC Trust, or something else that might make a difference. And if it fails (it's not in the midweek top 40) then that suggests there's not the interest in keeping the station after all, so they're hoist by their own Dukla Prague-shaded petard.
Or are we being joyless arses?
Monday, April 05, 2010
Looki here
We know it'd be inevitable that somewhere along the line we'd have some form of influence given how much we go on about certain bands, but from the four songs they've uploaded to SoundCloud something gnaws away at the back of our mind that LookiMakeMusic (who are on Myspace too) might have been formed for our benefit alone.
Well, listen. There's frantic, honest and ultra-introspective, some say overthought, spoken word vocals (Los Campesinos!, Why?, Ballboy, Art Brut), spasmodic rhythmic moments where the guitar goes nuts (Johnny Foreigner), off-key singing with sudden screaming, music/pop culture referencing, moans about the state of Birmingham clubs (Johnny Foreigner), the odd floating violin part (LC!, Picture Books In Winter - whither, by the way?)... we don't know what the wider audience of this is, but it's no wonder Kieron Gillen put in a good word for them given how much they sound like the quintessential post-Never On A Sunday* wallow listen. They even like inventing their own genres - 'postpop chattercore', 'spoken word post-rock apocalypse' (that's the sound of Meanwhile Back In Communist Russia missing a trick right there)... basically it's meta-meta-tweexcore, and little the bad for that.
Are you in Birmingham on May 15th? That afternoon, 3-7pm, LookiMakeMusic are headlining a Saturday Matinee (free, all ages) at Island Bar. A fortnight before then Kidnapper Bell are playing the same, as are Ace Bushy Striptease a fortnight later.
(* The club night in Phonogram: The Singles Club. Keep up. Yeah, we're thinking of that one which ends with Lloyd discovering We Throw Parties You Throw Knives in particular)
Well, listen. There's frantic, honest and ultra-introspective, some say overthought, spoken word vocals (Los Campesinos!, Why?, Ballboy, Art Brut), spasmodic rhythmic moments where the guitar goes nuts (Johnny Foreigner), off-key singing with sudden screaming, music/pop culture referencing, moans about the state of Birmingham clubs (Johnny Foreigner), the odd floating violin part (LC!, Picture Books In Winter - whither, by the way?)... we don't know what the wider audience of this is, but it's no wonder Kieron Gillen put in a good word for them given how much they sound like the quintessential post-Never On A Sunday* wallow listen. They even like inventing their own genres - 'postpop chattercore', 'spoken word post-rock apocalypse' (that's the sound of Meanwhile Back In Communist Russia missing a trick right there)... basically it's meta-meta-tweexcore, and little the bad for that.
Are you in Birmingham on May 15th? That afternoon, 3-7pm, LookiMakeMusic are headlining a Saturday Matinee (free, all ages) at Island Bar. A fortnight before then Kidnapper Bell are playing the same, as are Ace Bushy Striptease a fortnight later.
(* The club night in Phonogram: The Singles Club. Keep up. Yeah, we're thinking of that one which ends with Lloyd discovering We Throw Parties You Throw Knives in particular)
Sunday, April 04, 2010
Taking over the airwaves
A while ago we ran an irregular set of posts determining what we could learn about the state of pop and radio alike from a station's last.fm charts. That fell into disuse, but the natural buffer of the start of a new year gives us the opportunity to properly comment on and take the temperature of the mainstream in its various forms in 2010. So, up to the end of play on 31st March, and accepting that for whatever reason not everything played will be counted here, some three month artist and song charts...
Radio 1
1 Plan B 205
2 Ellie Goulding 187
3 Mumford & Sons 185
4 Vampire Weekend 182
5 Tinie Tempah 180
6 Biffy Clyro 171
7 Muse 162
8 Rihanna 159
9 Owl City 157
10 Black Eyed Peas 155
11 Kasabian 153
11 Marina & the Diamonds 153
13 You Me At Six 144
14 Lostprophets 139
15 JLS 138
16 Paolo Nutini 136
17 Gramophonedzie 131
18 Pixie Lott 129
19 Iyaz 126
20 Alicia Keys 125
21 Delphic 124
22 Cheryl Cole 121
22 Jason Derulo 121
24 Florence + The Machine 119
25 Lady GaGa 117
26 30 Seconds to Mars 116
27 Chiddy Bang 112
28 Example 105
28 Hot Chip 105
30 Sugababes 100
Here we see the ultimate aim, and hugely successful it is too, of the Plan B project, and we think we can call it a project given the disparity at work. Going from angry British rapper (with acoustic guitar, for the NME ticket) post-Eminem to soul man post-Amy... well, who's more cynical here, us, Ben Drew or 679/Atlantic? The irony, of course, is that only broadsheets seemed to take his SO REAL FROM THE STREETS approach seriously first time around, and yet on this reinvention it's all out for every last bit of commercial crossover hoo-hah. Interviewed in the Independent, Drew claimed recently he "just went out and did what I wanted to do" following the sales failure of his first record, and yet, commenting on how he wanted to include more hip-hop on this album, says his big major label "said, 'We can't get radio play with that, but we love this soul album, we want to push that.' At first I was a bit insulted, but then I thought, 'This is a major label, this is what's going to make money, the other one isn't, and they're trying to sell my music after four years, and they don't want to confuse people about the type of music Plan B makes.'" Yeah, and completely changing your style to, ooh, one absolutely of the commercial moment won't confuse anyone.
Does it also feel to anyone else as if Ellie Goulding isn't making an impact at all? Oh, the initial figures have been decent, but there's no hook there beyond 'won Brit; does electronic stuff'. Granted, the Gaga experience is blowing all other electronically inclined females over where they stand, because as we all know there is only room for one at any one time, and the aura of the music itself is fairly insubstantial, but it seems everything musical, because she was never going to figure highly on the Bizarre radar, is passing by without flinching with her, not least because her people keep going "she's folky! She's folky!" and confusing the issue even more.
1 Tinie Tempah – Pass Out 161
2 Ellie Goulding – Starry Eyed 158
3 Mumford & Sons – The Cave 154
4 Marina & the Diamonds – Hollywood 147
5 Plan B – Stay Too Long 136
6 Owl City – Fireflies 131
6 Gramophonedzie – Why Don't You 131
8 You Me At Six – Underdog 128
9 Muse – Resistance 119
10 JLS – One Shot 117
11 Black Eyed Peas – Rock That Body 116
12 Rihanna – Rude Boy 113
13 Paolo Nutini – 10/10 106
14 Iyaz – Replay 105
15 Vampire Weekend – Cousins 101
16 Chiddy Bang – Opposite Of Adults 100
17 Hot Chip – One Life Stand 96
18 Pixie Lott – Gravity 95
19 Example – Won't Go Quietly 93
20 Jason Derulo – In My Head 92
21 Lostprophets – Where We Belong 90
22 Kasabian – Vlad The Impaler 88
23 Gorillaz – Stylo 81
24 Alicia Keys – Empire State Of Mind (Part II) Broken Down 79
25 Inna – Hot 78
25 Sugababes – Wear My Kiss 78
27 Cheryl Cole – Parachute 75
28 Daisy Dares You / ChipMunk – Number One Enemy 72
29 Glee Cast – Don't Stop Believin' 71
30 Biffy Clyro – Many Of Horror 68
Tinie Tempah - the new Tinchy Stryder. That is to say, having huge singles chart success without any wider name recognition. At least N-Dubz have signifiers (hat, Never Mind The Buzzcocks, abuse texting, the other two) Did you know Lostprophets were still that popular? Can the newspaper bloggers of Britain get together and have a final decision on whether Glee should be approached as "something I hate but everyone else loves" or "something I love but everyone else hates"?
Radio 2
1 Robbie Williams 154
2 Amy Macdonald 145
3 Paolo Nutini 124
4 The Beatles 122
5 OneRepublic 115
6 Paloma Faith 112
7 Alicia Keys 109
8 Owl City 102
9 Mika 100
10 Little Big Town 99
11 Biffy Clyro 95
12 Goldfrapp 92
12 Michael Bublé 92
14 Rod Stewart 91
15 Timothy B. Schmit 89
16 Fyfe Dangerfield 88
16 Corinne Bailey Rae 88
18 Elvis Presley 83
19 Beth Nielsen Chapman 80
20 The Rolling Stones 79
20 Scouting for Girls 79
22 David Bowie 77
23 Nell Bryden 75
24 Rox 74
25 Take That 71
26 Leona Lewis 69
26 Gabriella Cilmi 69
26 Mary J. Blige 69
29 Stevie Wonder 68
30 Madonna 67
Ah, so that's what Fyfe was aiming at. Weird to see Owl City so high, ultimately for all the oppobrium still a youthful pop concept. Little Big Town are a harmonic country act from Nashville, just to prove Whispering Bob still has some sway in this era of Biffy Clyro. Biffy Clyro! Magnificently unthinkable a concept just a couple of years ago, perhaps even at the start of their current album campaign, that they'd be getting heavy Radio 2 daytime support.
1 Alicia Keys – Empire State Of Mind (Part II) Broken Down 107
2 Amy Macdonald – Don't Tell Me That It's Over 106
3 Little Big Town – Fine Line 99
4 Owl City – Fireflies 94
4 Biffy Clyro – Many Of Horror (Where We Collide) 94
6 Paolo Nutini – 10/10 93
7 Goldfrapp – Rocket 90
8 Mika – Blame It On The Girls 89
9 Robbie Williams – Morning Sun 87
10 Fyfe Dangerfield – She Needs Me 86
11 OneRepublic – All The Right Moves 81
12 Paloma Faith – Upside Down 78
13 Beth Nielsen Chapman – Even As It All Goes By 74
14 Rox – My Baby Left Me 73
15 Michael Bubl̩ РCry Me a River 70
16 Scouting for Girls – This Ain't A Love Song 68
17 Leona Lewis – I Got You 63
17 Mary J. Blige – I Am 63
17 Nell Bryden – Not Like Loving You 63
20 Corinne Bailey Rae – Paris Nights/New York Mornings 56
21 Timothy B. Schmit – Parachute 54
21 Rod Stewart – (Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher & Higher 54
23 Raul Malo – Moonlight Kiss 53
24 Gabriella Cilmi – On A Mission 52
25 Nerina Pallot – I Don't Want To Go Out 45
26 Ben montague – Haunted 44
26 Joshua Radin – I'd Rather Be With You 44
28 Emily Maguire – I'd Rather Be 43
29 Beverley Knight / Chaka Khan – Soul Survivor 42
30 Ocean Colour Scene – Magic Carpet Days 40
And the station has somewhere along the line played a song of the Biff's that wasn't Many Of Horror. Perhaps as a warning.
6 Music
1 Vampire Weekend 200
2 Yeasayer 154
3 Delphic 144
4 Hot Chip 141
5 The xx 119
6 Groove Armada 118
7 Beach House 114
8 Gorillaz / Bobby Womack / Mos Def 112
9 The Futureheads 109
10 Muse 105
11 Mumford & Sons 101
12 Jimi Hendrix 98
13 Jónsi 97
14 David Bowie 96
15 Cold War Kids 94
16 The Courteeners 91
17 The Big Pink 89
18 Friendly Fires 85
18 Goldheart Assembly 85
20 Goldfrapp 78
20 The Cure 78
22 Fyfe Dangerfield 77
23 The Strange Boys 76
23 Tunng 76
25 Broken Bells 74
26 Editors 71
26 Wild Beasts 71
28 Massive Attack / Hope Sandoval 68
29 Radiohead 67
30 Liam Frost / Martha Wainwright 66
Hendrix? Think there may have been a special somewhere along the line, but unless it was a week long that seems an anomaly.
1 Hot Chip – One Life Stand 112
1 Gorillaz / Bobby Womack / Mos Def – Stylo 112
3 Groove Armada – Paper Romance 105
4 Yeasayer – O.N.E. 102
5 Jónsi – Go Do 97
6 Vampire Weekend – Giving Up the Gun 90
7 Delphic – Halcyon 88
7 Mumford & Sons – The Cave 88
9 Cold War Kids – Audience 86
10 Muse – Resistance 85
11 The Big Pink – Velvet 82
12 Beach House – Norway 81
13 The Courteeners – You Overdid It Doll 80
14 Goldheart Assembly – King Of Rome 76
15 The xx – VCR 73
16 Tunng – Hustle 72
17 Broken Bells – The High Road 71
17 Wild Beasts – We Still Got The Taste Dancin' On Our Tongues 71
19 The Strange Boys – Be Brave 69
20 The Futureheads – Struck Dumb 68
20 Massive Attack / Hope Sandoval – Paradise Circus 68
22 Liam Frost / Martha Wainwright – Your Hand In Mine 66
23 Goldfrapp – Rocket 63
24 Jimi Hendrix – Bleeding Heart 60
25 Field Music – Them that do nothing 58
26 Fyfe Dangerfield – She Needs Me 56
26 Editors – You Don't Know Love 56
28 White Rabbits – Percussion Gun 55
29 Friendly Fires – Hold On 54
29 Jamie T – Emily's Heart 54
Somehow can't picture there still being expressed interest in Groove Armada.
The next two progress much as expected, and then there's a digital newcomer to our lists.
1Xtra
1 Alicia Keys 242
2 Mary J. Blige 195
3 Tinie Tempah 178
4 Rihanna 163
5 Young Money 160
6 Jay Sean / Sean Paul / Lil Jon 143
7 Jason Derulo 139
8 50 Cent 133
9 Iyaz 128
9 Skepta 128
9 Black Eyed Peas 128
9 Ill Blue / Shanique 128
13 Gucci Mane / Usher 118
14 Giggs / B.O.B 114
15 JLS 108
16 Chiddy Bang 102
17 Donae'o 95
18 nas / damian marley 94
19 Dennis Ferrer 93
20 Plan B 87
21 50 Cent / Ne-Yo 86
21 Jay-Z / Mr Hudson 86
23 Ludacris 80
23 Zinc / Ms Dynamite 80
25 Timbaland / So Shy / Nelly Furtado 79
25 Jay-Z 79
27 Naughty Boy / Wiley / Emeli Sande 77
28 McLean 76
28 So Solid Crew 76
30 Chipmunk 75
1 Tinie Tempah – Pass Out 169
2 Young Money – BedRock 157
3 Jay Sean / Sean Paul / Lil Jon – Do You Remember 143
4 Rihanna – Rude Boy 142
5 Mary J. Blige – I Am 140
6 Ill Blue / Shanique – Say Yes 128
7 50 Cent – Do You Think About Me 126
8 Gucci Mane / Usher – Spotlight 118
8 Iyaz – Replay 118
10 Giggs / B.O.B – Don't Go There 114
11 Skepta – Bad Boy 112
12 Jason Derulo – In My Head 102
13 Chiddy Bang – Chiddy Bang 98
14 nas / damian marley – As We Enter 94
15 Dennis Ferrer – Hey Hey 92
16 Jay-Z / Mr Hudson – Young Forever 86
16 50 Cent / Ne-Yo – Baby By Me 86
18 Alicia Keys – Empire State Of Mind (Part II) Broken Down 84
19 Zinc / Ms Dynamite – Wile Out 80
20 Timbaland / So Shy / Nelly Furtado – Morning After Dark 79
21 Black Eyed Peas – Rock That Body 78
22 Naughty Boy / Wiley / Emeli Sande – Never Be Your Woman (Shy FX Remix) 77
23 McLean – My Name 74
24 N Dubz / Mr Hudson – Playing With Fire 73
25 Jay Electronica – Exhibit C 70
26 Beyonce / Lady Gaga – Video Phone 69
27 JLS – One Shot 67
28 Lil Wayne / Eminem – Drop The World 66
29 So Solid Crew – Since You Went Away 65
30 Ludacris – How Low 64
Absolute
1 Muse 413
2 Snow Patrol 402
3 Paolo Nutini 401
4 Florence + The Machine 392
5 Biffy Clyro 356
6 U2 323
7 Coldplay 316
8 The Killers 306
9 Kings of Leon 302
9 Oasis 302
11 Queen 261
12 Owl City 258
13 Amy Macdonald 254
14 The Beatles 253
15 Stereophonics 249
16 R.E.M. 237
17 Mumford & Sons 234
18 The Temper Trap 233
19 David Bowie 223
20 Bon Jovi 208
21 Green Day 202
22 30 Seconds to Mars 198
22 The Rolling Stones 198
24 Kasabian 188
25 Bruce Springsteen 181
26 Red Hot Chili Peppers 179
27 The Police 177
28 Blur 172
29 Kaiser Chiefs 171
30 Journey 149
1 Snow Patrol – Just Say Yes 282
2 Paolo Nutini – 10/10 278
3 Owl City – Fireflies 258
4 Biffy Clyro – Many Of Horror (When We Collide) 257
5 Amy Macdonald – Don't Tell Me That It's Over 234
6 Muse – Uprising 204
7 The Temper Trap – Sweet Disposition 196
8 Florence + The Machine – Dog Days Are Over 184
9 30 Seconds to Mars – Kings and Queens 175
10 Mumford & Sons – The Cave 161
10 Florence + The Machine – You've Got The Love 161
12 Muse – Resistance 151
13 Journey – Don't Stop Believin' 149
14 Kings of Leon – Sex On Fire 131
15 Scouting for Girls – This Ain't A Love Song 111
16 Goldfrapp – Rocket 107
17 Kasabian – Fire 102
18 Marina and the Diamonds – Hollywood 101
19 The Killers – Mr. Brightside 98
19 United Nations of Sound – Are You Ready? 98
21 Paolo Nutini – Candy 96
21 Plan B – Stay Too Long 96
23 Ocean Colour Scene – Magic Carpet Days 93
24 Kings of Leon – Use Somebody 92
24 Stereophonics – Could You Be The One? 92
26 The Courteeners – You Overdid It Doll 88
27 Boston – More Than A Feeling 77
28 Biffy Clyro – Bubbles 72
29 Editors – You Don't Know Love 68
30 Elbow – One Day Like This 65
Boston? Is this ultimately your fault, Don't Stop bloody Believing?
NME Radio
1 Hot Chip 304
2 The Kissaway Trail 302
3 Groove Armada 289
4 Vampire Weekend 265
5 Miike Snow 246
6 Kasabian 235
6 Oasis 235
8 Depeche Mode 230
9 The xx 222
10 Doves 215
11 Muse 213
12 Chapel Club 211
13 Broken Bells 204
14 R.E.M. 202
14 The Strange Boys 202
16 U2 201
17 Radiohead 199
18 Delphic 198
19 Air Formation 191
19 Massive Attack 191
21 Yeasayer 190
22 The Cure 187
23 Gorillaz 184
24 Animal Collective 176
25 Biffy Clyro 172
26 Crookers 164
27 The Smiths 161
27 Nirvana 161
29 White Rabbits 159
30 The Courteeners 158
The... wh... The Kissaway Trail? Really? Miike Snow's continued presence in average playlists and style mags must be some sort of prank. One thing you can say for NME Radio, it's not exactly led by the cover of its parent magazine, as you'll see by a few here.
1 Vampire Weekend – Giving Up the Gun 225
2 Chapel Club – O Maybe I 192
3 Crookers – Remedy 164
4 Animal Collective – What Would I Want? Sky 161
5 Groove Armada – Paper Romance 160
6 White Rabbits – Percussion Gun 159
7 The Courteeners – You Overdid It Doll 158
8 Hot Chip – One Life Stand 156
9 The xx – VCR 153
9 The Kissaway Trail – SDP 153
11 Broken Bells – The High Road 150
12 Kasabian – Vlad The Impaler 149
13 Miike Snow – Silvia 144
14 Blood Red Shoes – Light It Up 141
15 The Kissaway Trail – Beat Your Heartbeat 137
15 The Postmarks – No One Said This Would Be Easy 137
17 Hot Chip – Alley Cats 127
18 The Radio Dept. – Heaven's On Fire 123
18 Caribou – Odessa 123
20 The Temper Trap – Fader 122
20 Delphic – Doubt 122
22 Gorillaz – Stylo 119
23 White Belt Yellow Tag – Always And Echoes 117
24 The Besnard Lakes – And This Is What We Call Progress 115
24 Jesca Hoop – Feast Of The Heart 115
26 School of Seven Bells – Half Asleep 114
27 The Strange Boys – Be Brave 108
28 Yeasayer – Ambling Alp 107
28 The Soft Pack – C'mon 107
28 The Boy Who Trapped The Sun – Home 107
Radio 1
1 Plan B 205
2 Ellie Goulding 187
3 Mumford & Sons 185
4 Vampire Weekend 182
5 Tinie Tempah 180
6 Biffy Clyro 171
7 Muse 162
8 Rihanna 159
9 Owl City 157
10 Black Eyed Peas 155
11 Kasabian 153
11 Marina & the Diamonds 153
13 You Me At Six 144
14 Lostprophets 139
15 JLS 138
16 Paolo Nutini 136
17 Gramophonedzie 131
18 Pixie Lott 129
19 Iyaz 126
20 Alicia Keys 125
21 Delphic 124
22 Cheryl Cole 121
22 Jason Derulo 121
24 Florence + The Machine 119
25 Lady GaGa 117
26 30 Seconds to Mars 116
27 Chiddy Bang 112
28 Example 105
28 Hot Chip 105
30 Sugababes 100
Here we see the ultimate aim, and hugely successful it is too, of the Plan B project, and we think we can call it a project given the disparity at work. Going from angry British rapper (with acoustic guitar, for the NME ticket) post-Eminem to soul man post-Amy... well, who's more cynical here, us, Ben Drew or 679/Atlantic? The irony, of course, is that only broadsheets seemed to take his SO REAL FROM THE STREETS approach seriously first time around, and yet on this reinvention it's all out for every last bit of commercial crossover hoo-hah. Interviewed in the Independent, Drew claimed recently he "just went out and did what I wanted to do" following the sales failure of his first record, and yet, commenting on how he wanted to include more hip-hop on this album, says his big major label "said, 'We can't get radio play with that, but we love this soul album, we want to push that.' At first I was a bit insulted, but then I thought, 'This is a major label, this is what's going to make money, the other one isn't, and they're trying to sell my music after four years, and they don't want to confuse people about the type of music Plan B makes.'" Yeah, and completely changing your style to, ooh, one absolutely of the commercial moment won't confuse anyone.
Does it also feel to anyone else as if Ellie Goulding isn't making an impact at all? Oh, the initial figures have been decent, but there's no hook there beyond 'won Brit; does electronic stuff'. Granted, the Gaga experience is blowing all other electronically inclined females over where they stand, because as we all know there is only room for one at any one time, and the aura of the music itself is fairly insubstantial, but it seems everything musical, because she was never going to figure highly on the Bizarre radar, is passing by without flinching with her, not least because her people keep going "she's folky! She's folky!" and confusing the issue even more.
1 Tinie Tempah – Pass Out 161
2 Ellie Goulding – Starry Eyed 158
3 Mumford & Sons – The Cave 154
4 Marina & the Diamonds – Hollywood 147
5 Plan B – Stay Too Long 136
6 Owl City – Fireflies 131
6 Gramophonedzie – Why Don't You 131
8 You Me At Six – Underdog 128
9 Muse – Resistance 119
10 JLS – One Shot 117
11 Black Eyed Peas – Rock That Body 116
12 Rihanna – Rude Boy 113
13 Paolo Nutini – 10/10 106
14 Iyaz – Replay 105
15 Vampire Weekend – Cousins 101
16 Chiddy Bang – Opposite Of Adults 100
17 Hot Chip – One Life Stand 96
18 Pixie Lott – Gravity 95
19 Example – Won't Go Quietly 93
20 Jason Derulo – In My Head 92
21 Lostprophets – Where We Belong 90
22 Kasabian – Vlad The Impaler 88
23 Gorillaz – Stylo 81
24 Alicia Keys – Empire State Of Mind (Part II) Broken Down 79
25 Inna – Hot 78
25 Sugababes – Wear My Kiss 78
27 Cheryl Cole – Parachute 75
28 Daisy Dares You / ChipMunk – Number One Enemy 72
29 Glee Cast – Don't Stop Believin' 71
30 Biffy Clyro – Many Of Horror 68
Tinie Tempah - the new Tinchy Stryder. That is to say, having huge singles chart success without any wider name recognition. At least N-Dubz have signifiers (hat, Never Mind The Buzzcocks, abuse texting, the other two) Did you know Lostprophets were still that popular? Can the newspaper bloggers of Britain get together and have a final decision on whether Glee should be approached as "something I hate but everyone else loves" or "something I love but everyone else hates"?
Radio 2
1 Robbie Williams 154
2 Amy Macdonald 145
3 Paolo Nutini 124
4 The Beatles 122
5 OneRepublic 115
6 Paloma Faith 112
7 Alicia Keys 109
8 Owl City 102
9 Mika 100
10 Little Big Town 99
11 Biffy Clyro 95
12 Goldfrapp 92
12 Michael Bublé 92
14 Rod Stewart 91
15 Timothy B. Schmit 89
16 Fyfe Dangerfield 88
16 Corinne Bailey Rae 88
18 Elvis Presley 83
19 Beth Nielsen Chapman 80
20 The Rolling Stones 79
20 Scouting for Girls 79
22 David Bowie 77
23 Nell Bryden 75
24 Rox 74
25 Take That 71
26 Leona Lewis 69
26 Gabriella Cilmi 69
26 Mary J. Blige 69
29 Stevie Wonder 68
30 Madonna 67
Ah, so that's what Fyfe was aiming at. Weird to see Owl City so high, ultimately for all the oppobrium still a youthful pop concept. Little Big Town are a harmonic country act from Nashville, just to prove Whispering Bob still has some sway in this era of Biffy Clyro. Biffy Clyro! Magnificently unthinkable a concept just a couple of years ago, perhaps even at the start of their current album campaign, that they'd be getting heavy Radio 2 daytime support.
1 Alicia Keys – Empire State Of Mind (Part II) Broken Down 107
2 Amy Macdonald – Don't Tell Me That It's Over 106
3 Little Big Town – Fine Line 99
4 Owl City – Fireflies 94
4 Biffy Clyro – Many Of Horror (Where We Collide) 94
6 Paolo Nutini – 10/10 93
7 Goldfrapp – Rocket 90
8 Mika – Blame It On The Girls 89
9 Robbie Williams – Morning Sun 87
10 Fyfe Dangerfield – She Needs Me 86
11 OneRepublic – All The Right Moves 81
12 Paloma Faith – Upside Down 78
13 Beth Nielsen Chapman – Even As It All Goes By 74
14 Rox – My Baby Left Me 73
15 Michael Bubl̩ РCry Me a River 70
16 Scouting for Girls – This Ain't A Love Song 68
17 Leona Lewis – I Got You 63
17 Mary J. Blige – I Am 63
17 Nell Bryden – Not Like Loving You 63
20 Corinne Bailey Rae – Paris Nights/New York Mornings 56
21 Timothy B. Schmit – Parachute 54
21 Rod Stewart – (Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher & Higher 54
23 Raul Malo – Moonlight Kiss 53
24 Gabriella Cilmi – On A Mission 52
25 Nerina Pallot – I Don't Want To Go Out 45
26 Ben montague – Haunted 44
26 Joshua Radin – I'd Rather Be With You 44
28 Emily Maguire – I'd Rather Be 43
29 Beverley Knight / Chaka Khan – Soul Survivor 42
30 Ocean Colour Scene – Magic Carpet Days 40
And the station has somewhere along the line played a song of the Biff's that wasn't Many Of Horror. Perhaps as a warning.
6 Music
1 Vampire Weekend 200
2 Yeasayer 154
3 Delphic 144
4 Hot Chip 141
5 The xx 119
6 Groove Armada 118
7 Beach House 114
8 Gorillaz / Bobby Womack / Mos Def 112
9 The Futureheads 109
10 Muse 105
11 Mumford & Sons 101
12 Jimi Hendrix 98
13 Jónsi 97
14 David Bowie 96
15 Cold War Kids 94
16 The Courteeners 91
17 The Big Pink 89
18 Friendly Fires 85
18 Goldheart Assembly 85
20 Goldfrapp 78
20 The Cure 78
22 Fyfe Dangerfield 77
23 The Strange Boys 76
23 Tunng 76
25 Broken Bells 74
26 Editors 71
26 Wild Beasts 71
28 Massive Attack / Hope Sandoval 68
29 Radiohead 67
30 Liam Frost / Martha Wainwright 66
Hendrix? Think there may have been a special somewhere along the line, but unless it was a week long that seems an anomaly.
1 Hot Chip – One Life Stand 112
1 Gorillaz / Bobby Womack / Mos Def – Stylo 112
3 Groove Armada – Paper Romance 105
4 Yeasayer – O.N.E. 102
5 Jónsi – Go Do 97
6 Vampire Weekend – Giving Up the Gun 90
7 Delphic – Halcyon 88
7 Mumford & Sons – The Cave 88
9 Cold War Kids – Audience 86
10 Muse – Resistance 85
11 The Big Pink – Velvet 82
12 Beach House – Norway 81
13 The Courteeners – You Overdid It Doll 80
14 Goldheart Assembly – King Of Rome 76
15 The xx – VCR 73
16 Tunng – Hustle 72
17 Broken Bells – The High Road 71
17 Wild Beasts – We Still Got The Taste Dancin' On Our Tongues 71
19 The Strange Boys – Be Brave 69
20 The Futureheads – Struck Dumb 68
20 Massive Attack / Hope Sandoval – Paradise Circus 68
22 Liam Frost / Martha Wainwright – Your Hand In Mine 66
23 Goldfrapp – Rocket 63
24 Jimi Hendrix – Bleeding Heart 60
25 Field Music – Them that do nothing 58
26 Fyfe Dangerfield – She Needs Me 56
26 Editors – You Don't Know Love 56
28 White Rabbits – Percussion Gun 55
29 Friendly Fires – Hold On 54
29 Jamie T – Emily's Heart 54
Somehow can't picture there still being expressed interest in Groove Armada.
The next two progress much as expected, and then there's a digital newcomer to our lists.
1Xtra
1 Alicia Keys 242
2 Mary J. Blige 195
3 Tinie Tempah 178
4 Rihanna 163
5 Young Money 160
6 Jay Sean / Sean Paul / Lil Jon 143
7 Jason Derulo 139
8 50 Cent 133
9 Iyaz 128
9 Skepta 128
9 Black Eyed Peas 128
9 Ill Blue / Shanique 128
13 Gucci Mane / Usher 118
14 Giggs / B.O.B 114
15 JLS 108
16 Chiddy Bang 102
17 Donae'o 95
18 nas / damian marley 94
19 Dennis Ferrer 93
20 Plan B 87
21 50 Cent / Ne-Yo 86
21 Jay-Z / Mr Hudson 86
23 Ludacris 80
23 Zinc / Ms Dynamite 80
25 Timbaland / So Shy / Nelly Furtado 79
25 Jay-Z 79
27 Naughty Boy / Wiley / Emeli Sande 77
28 McLean 76
28 So Solid Crew 76
30 Chipmunk 75
1 Tinie Tempah – Pass Out 169
2 Young Money – BedRock 157
3 Jay Sean / Sean Paul / Lil Jon – Do You Remember 143
4 Rihanna – Rude Boy 142
5 Mary J. Blige – I Am 140
6 Ill Blue / Shanique – Say Yes 128
7 50 Cent – Do You Think About Me 126
8 Gucci Mane / Usher – Spotlight 118
8 Iyaz – Replay 118
10 Giggs / B.O.B – Don't Go There 114
11 Skepta – Bad Boy 112
12 Jason Derulo – In My Head 102
13 Chiddy Bang – Chiddy Bang 98
14 nas / damian marley – As We Enter 94
15 Dennis Ferrer – Hey Hey 92
16 Jay-Z / Mr Hudson – Young Forever 86
16 50 Cent / Ne-Yo – Baby By Me 86
18 Alicia Keys – Empire State Of Mind (Part II) Broken Down 84
19 Zinc / Ms Dynamite – Wile Out 80
20 Timbaland / So Shy / Nelly Furtado – Morning After Dark 79
21 Black Eyed Peas – Rock That Body 78
22 Naughty Boy / Wiley / Emeli Sande – Never Be Your Woman (Shy FX Remix) 77
23 McLean – My Name 74
24 N Dubz / Mr Hudson – Playing With Fire 73
25 Jay Electronica – Exhibit C 70
26 Beyonce / Lady Gaga – Video Phone 69
27 JLS – One Shot 67
28 Lil Wayne / Eminem – Drop The World 66
29 So Solid Crew – Since You Went Away 65
30 Ludacris – How Low 64
Absolute
1 Muse 413
2 Snow Patrol 402
3 Paolo Nutini 401
4 Florence + The Machine 392
5 Biffy Clyro 356
6 U2 323
7 Coldplay 316
8 The Killers 306
9 Kings of Leon 302
9 Oasis 302
11 Queen 261
12 Owl City 258
13 Amy Macdonald 254
14 The Beatles 253
15 Stereophonics 249
16 R.E.M. 237
17 Mumford & Sons 234
18 The Temper Trap 233
19 David Bowie 223
20 Bon Jovi 208
21 Green Day 202
22 30 Seconds to Mars 198
22 The Rolling Stones 198
24 Kasabian 188
25 Bruce Springsteen 181
26 Red Hot Chili Peppers 179
27 The Police 177
28 Blur 172
29 Kaiser Chiefs 171
30 Journey 149
1 Snow Patrol – Just Say Yes 282
2 Paolo Nutini – 10/10 278
3 Owl City – Fireflies 258
4 Biffy Clyro – Many Of Horror (When We Collide) 257
5 Amy Macdonald – Don't Tell Me That It's Over 234
6 Muse – Uprising 204
7 The Temper Trap – Sweet Disposition 196
8 Florence + The Machine – Dog Days Are Over 184
9 30 Seconds to Mars – Kings and Queens 175
10 Mumford & Sons – The Cave 161
10 Florence + The Machine – You've Got The Love 161
12 Muse – Resistance 151
13 Journey – Don't Stop Believin' 149
14 Kings of Leon – Sex On Fire 131
15 Scouting for Girls – This Ain't A Love Song 111
16 Goldfrapp – Rocket 107
17 Kasabian – Fire 102
18 Marina and the Diamonds – Hollywood 101
19 The Killers – Mr. Brightside 98
19 United Nations of Sound – Are You Ready? 98
21 Paolo Nutini – Candy 96
21 Plan B – Stay Too Long 96
23 Ocean Colour Scene – Magic Carpet Days 93
24 Kings of Leon – Use Somebody 92
24 Stereophonics – Could You Be The One? 92
26 The Courteeners – You Overdid It Doll 88
27 Boston – More Than A Feeling 77
28 Biffy Clyro – Bubbles 72
29 Editors – You Don't Know Love 68
30 Elbow – One Day Like This 65
Boston? Is this ultimately your fault, Don't Stop bloody Believing?
NME Radio
1 Hot Chip 304
2 The Kissaway Trail 302
3 Groove Armada 289
4 Vampire Weekend 265
5 Miike Snow 246
6 Kasabian 235
6 Oasis 235
8 Depeche Mode 230
9 The xx 222
10 Doves 215
11 Muse 213
12 Chapel Club 211
13 Broken Bells 204
14 R.E.M. 202
14 The Strange Boys 202
16 U2 201
17 Radiohead 199
18 Delphic 198
19 Air Formation 191
19 Massive Attack 191
21 Yeasayer 190
22 The Cure 187
23 Gorillaz 184
24 Animal Collective 176
25 Biffy Clyro 172
26 Crookers 164
27 The Smiths 161
27 Nirvana 161
29 White Rabbits 159
30 The Courteeners 158
The... wh... The Kissaway Trail? Really? Miike Snow's continued presence in average playlists and style mags must be some sort of prank. One thing you can say for NME Radio, it's not exactly led by the cover of its parent magazine, as you'll see by a few here.
1 Vampire Weekend – Giving Up the Gun 225
2 Chapel Club – O Maybe I 192
3 Crookers – Remedy 164
4 Animal Collective – What Would I Want? Sky 161
5 Groove Armada – Paper Romance 160
6 White Rabbits – Percussion Gun 159
7 The Courteeners – You Overdid It Doll 158
8 Hot Chip – One Life Stand 156
9 The xx – VCR 153
9 The Kissaway Trail – SDP 153
11 Broken Bells – The High Road 150
12 Kasabian – Vlad The Impaler 149
13 Miike Snow – Silvia 144
14 Blood Red Shoes – Light It Up 141
15 The Kissaway Trail – Beat Your Heartbeat 137
15 The Postmarks – No One Said This Would Be Easy 137
17 Hot Chip – Alley Cats 127
18 The Radio Dept. – Heaven's On Fire 123
18 Caribou – Odessa 123
20 The Temper Trap – Fader 122
20 Delphic – Doubt 122
22 Gorillaz – Stylo 119
23 White Belt Yellow Tag – Always And Echoes 117
24 The Besnard Lakes – And This Is What We Call Progress 115
24 Jesca Hoop – Feast Of The Heart 115
26 School of Seven Bells – Half Asleep 114
27 The Strange Boys – Be Brave 108
28 Yeasayer – Ambling Alp 107
28 The Soft Pack – C'mon 107
28 The Boy Who Trapped The Sun – Home 107
Friday, April 02, 2010
Big iMac
Radio 1's Monday night documentary feature feels like a good idea reaching for something to fill it with, and sometimes it falls victim to planning circumstance.
Here's an idea of what we mean. In two shows, the first of which is a week on Monday, the station's ex-1Xtra early breakfast presenter Dev has taken up a challenge to make an experimental electronic track and have it played by Mary Anne Hobbs (which **SPOILER** it was, three weeks ago) Within this framework is a perfectly decent idea of plunging a knownothing into an alien musical environment and asking him to learn and take things from it, and it starts well enough - the first programme sees him meet the people behind Warp and Wrong Music, Starkey and various label bosses, record shop owners and producers. It's the second show on the 19th that we have issues with. The BBC Press Office takes up the story.
In part two, Dev, whose usual music taste includes R&B and hip-hop with some Barry White thrown in for good measure, explores the outer-fringes of the experimental live music scene, by making a trip to the Mecca of all alternative music festivals – All Tomorrow's Parties.
With his guitar on his back and his music theory revision in his bag, he spends the weekend in a chalet at Butlins in Minehead, in a bid discover what it is about the festival that brings fans from all over the world to a shabby seaside resort to watch extreme noise and weird sound experiments year after year.
Well, there's worse places. Now, remember that this is a documentary about the wilder shores of electronic music.
As the festival celebrates its 10th anniversary, Dev steps well out of his comfort zone to listen to bands like Porn, Shellac and Modest Mouse
Modest Mouse!
speaks to F**k Buttons and Battles, and tracks down the elusive Nirvana producer Steve Albini by doorstepping him in his chalet.
Good god, where to start on that last bit? With "elusive", with "Nirvana producer", or the idea that Dev is making an experimental electronic track, and for advice he's gone to Steve Albini. The man may have hidden depths, but he's been around for long enough for us to make assumptions. Not to mention that his having to moderate on the subject for a 9pm Radio 1 audience is an entirely different matter.
Here's an idea of what we mean. In two shows, the first of which is a week on Monday, the station's ex-1Xtra early breakfast presenter Dev has taken up a challenge to make an experimental electronic track and have it played by Mary Anne Hobbs (which **SPOILER** it was, three weeks ago) Within this framework is a perfectly decent idea of plunging a knownothing into an alien musical environment and asking him to learn and take things from it, and it starts well enough - the first programme sees him meet the people behind Warp and Wrong Music, Starkey and various label bosses, record shop owners and producers. It's the second show on the 19th that we have issues with. The BBC Press Office takes up the story.
In part two, Dev, whose usual music taste includes R&B and hip-hop with some Barry White thrown in for good measure, explores the outer-fringes of the experimental live music scene, by making a trip to the Mecca of all alternative music festivals – All Tomorrow's Parties.
With his guitar on his back and his music theory revision in his bag, he spends the weekend in a chalet at Butlins in Minehead, in a bid discover what it is about the festival that brings fans from all over the world to a shabby seaside resort to watch extreme noise and weird sound experiments year after year.
Well, there's worse places. Now, remember that this is a documentary about the wilder shores of electronic music.
As the festival celebrates its 10th anniversary, Dev steps well out of his comfort zone to listen to bands like Porn, Shellac and Modest Mouse
Modest Mouse!
speaks to F**k Buttons and Battles, and tracks down the elusive Nirvana producer Steve Albini by doorstepping him in his chalet.
Good god, where to start on that last bit? With "elusive", with "Nirvana producer", or the idea that Dev is making an experimental electronic track, and for advice he's gone to Steve Albini. The man may have hidden depths, but he's been around for long enough for us to make assumptions. Not to mention that his having to moderate on the subject for a 9pm Radio 1 audience is an entirely different matter.
Elles bells
As they've got their tour starting tonight, a official conclusive word for the Kiara Elles. They've already had a thousand namechecks on here - they did a Music That Made and were given an official Class Of 2010 badge (no actual badge) - but we've hit the album stage, Slide Over, released 10th May on Vandal Recordings, the startup label of former Black Star Liner frontman Choque Hosein, who also produces. Those seduced by the frantic post-punk wiriness of Odio should be wary that it's a far more slippery customer, often driven by big buzzing basslines and insidiously subtle guitar, rhythmically driven without ever overdoing it. You'll hear echoes of other Leodensians Girls at Our Best! and Delta 5, and we suspect Magazine and Comet Gain records were close at hand too. Actually, someone in The Fly claims "this sounds like something the characters from Skins would listen to", which used as a positive probably says more about them then it does about the record. Perhaps they've been taken in by the synth that emerges bubbling on top on a few tracks. Whatever, it's an album that sneaks further into your affections with every listen.
Apart from Odio, the song with the big chorus hook is The Bet, which is half of their new double A-side and that sounds like this.
As we say, they're about to go on a tour that lasts for just over a week, has a couple of weeks off, goes back out for two dates, then a fortnight later remembers it's got one date to go (supporting the Kabeedies, for what it's worth), something which could perhaps be best expressed not by a messy list but by an artfully stylish poster. Oh look, here's one now.
That Leeds date is their local album launch, and also an all-dayer on which they're third on the bill to the Paddingtons. No sense of their own worth, that band, you'd be forced to admit.
Apart from Odio, the song with the big chorus hook is The Bet, which is half of their new double A-side and that sounds like this.
As we say, they're about to go on a tour that lasts for just over a week, has a couple of weeks off, goes back out for two dates, then a fortnight later remembers it's got one date to go (supporting the Kabeedies, for what it's worth), something which could perhaps be best expressed not by a messy list but by an artfully stylish poster. Oh look, here's one now.
That Leeds date is their local album launch, and also an all-dayer on which they're third on the bill to the Paddingtons. No sense of their own worth, that band, you'd be forced to admit.
Thursday, April 01, 2010
Sweeping The Nation Presents... #6
Last one for two or three months while we recharge and work out how the hell we're going to actually get people to come to these fuckers.
And this, most definitely, is a fucker. Sunday 11th April, Leicester Firebug, 8pm onwards, this:
Ice, Sea, Dead People
"One of the loudest new bands I've seen in a long while... Properly forthright, in-your-face rock music." (Steve Lamacq)
Beyond This Point Are Monsters
"Tight, talented and thoroughly entertaining, fans of the Big Scary Monsters music scene would do wise to check these lads out." (Sandman Magazine)
Logfox
"One of the most intriguing bands to emerge in Leicester in recent years" (Rockfood)
As usual it's £4 online or £5 on the door. That's five English pounds, for everyone who intends to observe the poster and the sign on the door then ask me how much it is. Facebook, last.fm, Songkick.
And this, most definitely, is a fucker. Sunday 11th April, Leicester Firebug, 8pm onwards, this:
Ice, Sea, Dead People
"One of the loudest new bands I've seen in a long while... Properly forthright, in-your-face rock music." (Steve Lamacq)
Beyond This Point Are Monsters
"Tight, talented and thoroughly entertaining, fans of the Big Scary Monsters music scene would do wise to check these lads out." (Sandman Magazine)
Logfox
"One of the most intriguing bands to emerge in Leicester in recent years" (Rockfood)
As usual it's £4 online or £5 on the door. That's five English pounds, for everyone who intends to observe the poster and the sign on the door then ask me how much it is. Facebook, last.fm, Songkick.
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