In which Weekender's popular Bands Start Up Each And Every Day feature gets uprooted - you weren't going to miss it stuck in there - so we can write about three newish bands all in one go:
There's a lot of post-goth doominess creeping in at the moment, from the Chapman Family at the indiefied end through O Children to Zola Jesus at the Hype Machine end. Somewhere in the middle lie Manchester's Golden Glow, a working name for one Pierre Hall and championed by Jacob from the Drums' free download label Holiday Records, who subsequently invited him/them to a London support slot. While many of his listed influences are from the indiepop end it's more in capsule description like like Chapel Club stripped of the desire to cross over, only really approaching Felt if you imagine Lawrence had been exposed to the Drums' Cure-for-the-modern-man approach. Although the track called The Cure sounds like the Chameleons with gated drums. Elsewhere the guitars are treated or reverbed, the vocal styling is doom-laden, being Manchester there's a little New Order sequencing and the haze is filled with a fug of Velvets narcotics.
Dark Dark Horse have serious Leicester Post-Rock Scene credentials, 50% of them being Jamie Ward, a founder member of Kyte and current touring bassist with Maybeshewill. This is not post-rock; if it's post-anything it's ambitious electro. Sometimes it's too easy to listen to vocal-led minimally glitchy electronics with pop leanings and wonder why Ben and Jimmy don't just have done with it and make a second album together, but these down-tempo delights ring more of Ulrich Schnauss on downers or the twisted electronic moments of the Notwist.
teamABC are at core Wulfrunian Stef Purenins, who starts his favourite bands influence list "Johnny Foreigner, Los Campesinos, Jetplane Landing". MOTHER! Over the three releases from the last year - Yesses, Noes & Volcanoes, Fire EP and Water EP, all of which are free downloads via Bandcamp - you can hear quite a bit of mainlining Hold On Now Youngster, but also a dose of Shrag-like boy-girl collapsible pop, a bit of Bearsuit's likeably quavering (a very apt word for Purenins' vocal range) keyboard sugar rush and the sort of half-hidden melodic spike Big Scary Monsters often fall for - think JoFo's briefly lauded mate Sam Isaac.
Showing posts with label myspace invaders. Show all posts
Showing posts with label myspace invaders. Show all posts
Thursday, November 18, 2010
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.
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)
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Dance party
If we pretend the Pigeon Detectives were an anomaly tax writeoff, Leeds' Dance To The Radio label is proving a pretty good testing ground for interesting and eclectic new music. Grammatics are their second biggest hitters, and they've also put out work in various forms by the likes of ¡Forward, Russia! (Whiskas co-founded the label, although he hasn't been directly involved for a while), Sky Larkin, Napoelon IIIrd, iLiKETRAiNS, This Et Al, The Lodger, Shut Your Eyes And You'll Burst Into Flames and so on and so forth.
The label turned five this month, and celebrates by putting out a special 12" for Record Store Day on April 17th. Still Occupied Though You Forget features thirteen friends, labelmates and countymen, and £2 of every purchase through the DTTR store goes to UNICEF.
We're telling you all this stuff you could read elsewhere were you arsed at all because they've also stuck the whole thing on Bandcamp for full streaming. There's quite a few new names, but some we know too. The very much southern Rose Elinor Dougall, for one. No, still no sign of her album despite nearly a year of promised imminent release - did she give it to the Avalanches to mix? - but she's putting out the latest in a long line of preview singles through DTTR in May and offers a 'version' of one of her other defiant slices of sophistipop. Whiskas' own Honour Before Glory offers up the wracked digital reverberations of Lions, still as intriguing as it was when we first wrote about him/it a couple of months ago. I Like Trains, as we must boringly refer to them now, are in the studio, When We Were Kings suggesting a less post-rock, more Chameleons-ish swirl of wiriness. The Sunshine Underground exist. Three Trapped Tigers name all their songs in numerical order, and this one goes up to 11:
Mmm.
Some fascinating new names to us, and hopefully you, too. Heavy on the electro keys as the collection is, we see things especially ahead for Club Smith, who do the sort of dark, nearly anthemic synth-laden Editors failed to pull off last year. NY's Bear In Heaven got an 8.4 for their album off you know who if it's an 8.4 mark we're quoting. This splashy, far reaching power-psych deserves further investigation. Just Handshakes (We're British) issue a playfully New Wave-derived indie-pop with a singer who is nearly the vocal spit of Young Marble Giants' Alison Statton and an air of Sky Larkin gone Labrador Records. Of the new names our standout is Paul Thomas Saunders, based in Leeds but seemingly originally from a Leicestershire village and recently supporting Blue Roses on tour. The Death Of A Sports Personality finds a desolate spot in the obtuse singer-songwriter category full of reverberating wrackedness, edging close to post-rock soundscapes in the backing.
Which is all very well, and shows that there'll always be someone to do the A&R legwork for you if this is the sort of thing they're still locating and facilitating half a decade down the line. Five more years! Five more years!
The label turned five this month, and celebrates by putting out a special 12" for Record Store Day on April 17th. Still Occupied Though You Forget features thirteen friends, labelmates and countymen, and £2 of every purchase through the DTTR store goes to UNICEF.
We're telling you all this stuff you could read elsewhere were you arsed at all because they've also stuck the whole thing on Bandcamp for full streaming. There's quite a few new names, but some we know too. The very much southern Rose Elinor Dougall, for one. No, still no sign of her album despite nearly a year of promised imminent release - did she give it to the Avalanches to mix? - but she's putting out the latest in a long line of preview singles through DTTR in May and offers a 'version' of one of her other defiant slices of sophistipop. Whiskas' own Honour Before Glory offers up the wracked digital reverberations of Lions, still as intriguing as it was when we first wrote about him/it a couple of months ago. I Like Trains, as we must boringly refer to them now, are in the studio, When We Were Kings suggesting a less post-rock, more Chameleons-ish swirl of wiriness. The Sunshine Underground exist. Three Trapped Tigers name all their songs in numerical order, and this one goes up to 11:
Mmm.
Some fascinating new names to us, and hopefully you, too. Heavy on the electro keys as the collection is, we see things especially ahead for Club Smith, who do the sort of dark, nearly anthemic synth-laden Editors failed to pull off last year. NY's Bear In Heaven got an 8.4 for their album off you know who if it's an 8.4 mark we're quoting. This splashy, far reaching power-psych deserves further investigation. Just Handshakes (We're British) issue a playfully New Wave-derived indie-pop with a singer who is nearly the vocal spit of Young Marble Giants' Alison Statton and an air of Sky Larkin gone Labrador Records. Of the new names our standout is Paul Thomas Saunders, based in Leeds but seemingly originally from a Leicestershire village and recently supporting Blue Roses on tour. The Death Of A Sports Personality finds a desolate spot in the obtuse singer-songwriter category full of reverberating wrackedness, edging close to post-rock soundscapes in the backing.
Which is all very well, and shows that there'll always be someone to do the A&R legwork for you if this is the sort of thing they're still locating and facilitating half a decade down the line. Five more years! Five more years!
Sunday, February 07, 2010
Twenty new names, five days: part five
Past Lives
From: Seattle
Blurb: This is what became of several members of post-hardcore quasi-legends The Blood Brothers after their 2007 breakup, chiefly vocalist Jodan Blilie (twin brother of the Gossip's drummer, fact fans) Debut album Tapestry Of Webs, out in America on February 23rd, finds them in more considered mood, musically if not entirely mentally, a darkly whirling, occasionally muscular take on the more cloudy ends of post-punk. No European dates booked yet, but they're touring with the Thermals in April.
RIYL: The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Liars
Black Cab Casino
From: Newcastle. Or Sunderland, depending on where you read it
Blurb: There's definitely something in the water up in the north east nowadays that's enabling bands to take much covered influences and put a fresh, able spin on it all. Formed just last summer at least in this formation, the trio have the jerky, melodic in broken pieces spin of your favourite post-punk revivalists, but streamline it into something ominous and shuddering with a certain early rock'n'roll edge. Retro and modern at the same time, just as it could be.
RIYL: Frankie & The Heartstrings, Bloc Party (Silent Alarm only), Black Kids
The Shitty Limits
From: Reading
Blurb: Darlings of the DIY scene, whatever that means these days, these are short songs of crashing snotty Nuggets garage rock, art-punk and hints of post-hardcore in a very loud lo-fi package. Apparently, obviously, they're a literal riot live. Oh, and they go only by initials and refuse to give interviews. OF COURSE.
RIYL: Wire, Ikara Colt, Male Bonding
Trash Kit
From: London
Blurb: And more artful DIY no-fi to conclude. An all-girl trio signed to Upset The Rhythm and featuring an ex-Electrelaner, their songs jerk about all over the place in seemingly uncultured at first but clearly very much so insidious whirlwinds of drumming frenzies, fractured riffs, Afrobeat rhythms and intertwined vocal shouts. All very early 80s Rough Trade, and all very intriguing. Album set for May.
RIYL: No Wave in general, The Raincoats, Fair Ohs
From: Seattle
Blurb: This is what became of several members of post-hardcore quasi-legends The Blood Brothers after their 2007 breakup, chiefly vocalist Jodan Blilie (twin brother of the Gossip's drummer, fact fans) Debut album Tapestry Of Webs, out in America on February 23rd, finds them in more considered mood, musically if not entirely mentally, a darkly whirling, occasionally muscular take on the more cloudy ends of post-punk. No European dates booked yet, but they're touring with the Thermals in April.
RIYL: The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Liars
Black Cab Casino
From: Newcastle. Or Sunderland, depending on where you read it
Blurb: There's definitely something in the water up in the north east nowadays that's enabling bands to take much covered influences and put a fresh, able spin on it all. Formed just last summer at least in this formation, the trio have the jerky, melodic in broken pieces spin of your favourite post-punk revivalists, but streamline it into something ominous and shuddering with a certain early rock'n'roll edge. Retro and modern at the same time, just as it could be.
RIYL: Frankie & The Heartstrings, Bloc Party (Silent Alarm only), Black Kids
The Shitty Limits
From: Reading
Blurb: Darlings of the DIY scene, whatever that means these days, these are short songs of crashing snotty Nuggets garage rock, art-punk and hints of post-hardcore in a very loud lo-fi package. Apparently, obviously, they're a literal riot live. Oh, and they go only by initials and refuse to give interviews. OF COURSE.
RIYL: Wire, Ikara Colt, Male Bonding
Trash Kit
From: London
Blurb: And more artful DIY no-fi to conclude. An all-girl trio signed to Upset The Rhythm and featuring an ex-Electrelaner, their songs jerk about all over the place in seemingly uncultured at first but clearly very much so insidious whirlwinds of drumming frenzies, fractured riffs, Afrobeat rhythms and intertwined vocal shouts. All very early 80s Rough Trade, and all very intriguing. Album set for May.
RIYL: No Wave in general, The Raincoats, Fair Ohs
Saturday, February 06, 2010
Twenty new names, five days: part four
This Many Boyfriends
From: Leeds
Blurb: A shambles is a shambles is a shambles, but sometimes it's an attractive shambles. Not unsurprisingly playing tonight with Internet Forever in Sheffield (and again in Derby on the 21st), they have a song called I Don't Like You (Cos You Don't Like The Pastels), a female stand-up drummer and fuzz pedals. Their biography defiantly ends 'WE ARE NOT TWEE'.
RIYL: The Pooh Sticks, Ballboy, Beat Happening
Is Tropical
From: South London
Blurb: Caution here, maybe - they're big in *those* capital circles, wear masks and are, like Yuck, touring with Egyptian Hip-Hop. However, hold hard, for these purvey fidgety post-electro full of fills too good for nu-rave, angularities too goggle eyed for post-punk revivalism and dark lo-fi electronics, all with a sense of the playful close to hand.
RIYL: Metronomy, Klaxons, Mystery Jets
Saturday's Kids
From: South Wales
Blurb: Named after a Jam song they may be, but their sound owes nothing to mod-punk and quite a bit to the fine art of the unholy racket. Fugazi tautness is splintered by post-hardcore guitars thrown into and across each other in restless shapes. They're 17. Yeah, that's the kind of detail that makes us feel that so much greyer.
RIYL: early Nirvana, Rites Of Spring, Lovvers
The Man From Another Place
From: Edinburgh
Blurb: This shares next to nothing in common with any of the above. Named after the oddly cadenced jazz dancing dwarf from Twin Peaks, it seems like the sort of unsettling chamber Brian Wilson-esque orchestration Lynch might use - indeed it's described by the mysterious self as "soundtrack music to a lost film". See, we've wasted all those other words.
RIYL: Burt Bacharach, Angelo Badalamenti, The High Llamas
From: Leeds
Blurb: A shambles is a shambles is a shambles, but sometimes it's an attractive shambles. Not unsurprisingly playing tonight with Internet Forever in Sheffield (and again in Derby on the 21st), they have a song called I Don't Like You (Cos You Don't Like The Pastels), a female stand-up drummer and fuzz pedals. Their biography defiantly ends 'WE ARE NOT TWEE'.
RIYL: The Pooh Sticks, Ballboy, Beat Happening
Is Tropical
From: South London
Blurb: Caution here, maybe - they're big in *those* capital circles, wear masks and are, like Yuck, touring with Egyptian Hip-Hop. However, hold hard, for these purvey fidgety post-electro full of fills too good for nu-rave, angularities too goggle eyed for post-punk revivalism and dark lo-fi electronics, all with a sense of the playful close to hand.
RIYL: Metronomy, Klaxons, Mystery Jets
Saturday's Kids
From: South Wales
Blurb: Named after a Jam song they may be, but their sound owes nothing to mod-punk and quite a bit to the fine art of the unholy racket. Fugazi tautness is splintered by post-hardcore guitars thrown into and across each other in restless shapes. They're 17. Yeah, that's the kind of detail that makes us feel that so much greyer.
RIYL: early Nirvana, Rites Of Spring, Lovvers
The Man From Another Place
From: Edinburgh
Blurb: This shares next to nothing in common with any of the above. Named after the oddly cadenced jazz dancing dwarf from Twin Peaks, it seems like the sort of unsettling chamber Brian Wilson-esque orchestration Lynch might use - indeed it's described by the mysterious self as "soundtrack music to a lost film". See, we've wasted all those other words.
RIYL: Burt Bacharach, Angelo Badalamenti, The High Llamas
Friday, February 05, 2010
Twenty new names, five days: part three
So Say So
From: London
Blurb: Fronted by Glenn Kerrigan, also to be found in Emmy The Great's backline, these sketch out a maxi-pop (we will get that phrase into common use, we assure you) of swooningly melodic and just occasionally direct multi-instrumentalism, optimist and heartaching in equal measure.
RIYL: Fanfarlo, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Neutral Milk Hotel
Pengilly's
From: London/Leeds
Blurb: Ric Hollingbery, also to be found in - oh, how do we find these people? - Emmy The Great's backline (and on Corinne Bailey Rae's new album), is in this guise what they used to call folktronica. That is to say, programmed glitches, hums and synths circle and subtle orchestrations build and fill in the gaps around Hollingbery's strong, yearning vocals. Then there's the track that goes all Balkan klezmer. Very odd and very intriguing.
RIYL: Patrick Wolf, Tunng, Jeremy Warmsley
Sarah Jaffe
From: Denton, Texas
Blurb: Currently over here in Europe supporting Midlake, Jaffe's Americana folk take is projected through a smoky, bluesy-soulful voice with honest, smart lyrics, selflessly to a fault unpicking her own desires and character against tastefully held back occasional orchestration.
RIYL: Laura Veirs, Joan As Policewoman, Joni Mitchell
Yuck
From: London
Blurb: Something of a blog buzz brewing here, not unreasonably as their first track delves into one of 2008-09's most profitable harvests, C86-influenced fuzzbomb pop with boy-girl vocals. The second track? Sparse, lonely slowcore. Touring with similarly hip(ster) names Egyptian Hip Hop and Dum Dum Girls, it's been about six weeks after their Myspace member registration, and it turns out that two of them were in a much hyped band from a couple of years ago (look it up yourselves) Anyway, you'll be hearing a hell of a lot about them.
RIYL: The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, Yo La Tengo, The Cure
From: London
Blurb: Fronted by Glenn Kerrigan, also to be found in Emmy The Great's backline, these sketch out a maxi-pop (we will get that phrase into common use, we assure you) of swooningly melodic and just occasionally direct multi-instrumentalism, optimist and heartaching in equal measure.
RIYL: Fanfarlo, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Neutral Milk Hotel
Pengilly's
From: London/Leeds
Blurb: Ric Hollingbery, also to be found in - oh, how do we find these people? - Emmy The Great's backline (and on Corinne Bailey Rae's new album), is in this guise what they used to call folktronica. That is to say, programmed glitches, hums and synths circle and subtle orchestrations build and fill in the gaps around Hollingbery's strong, yearning vocals. Then there's the track that goes all Balkan klezmer. Very odd and very intriguing.
RIYL: Patrick Wolf, Tunng, Jeremy Warmsley
Sarah Jaffe
From: Denton, Texas
Blurb: Currently over here in Europe supporting Midlake, Jaffe's Americana folk take is projected through a smoky, bluesy-soulful voice with honest, smart lyrics, selflessly to a fault unpicking her own desires and character against tastefully held back occasional orchestration.
RIYL: Laura Veirs, Joan As Policewoman, Joni Mitchell
Yuck
From: London
Blurb: Something of a blog buzz brewing here, not unreasonably as their first track delves into one of 2008-09's most profitable harvests, C86-influenced fuzzbomb pop with boy-girl vocals. The second track? Sparse, lonely slowcore. Touring with similarly hip(ster) names Egyptian Hip Hop and Dum Dum Girls, it's been about six weeks after their Myspace member registration, and it turns out that two of them were in a much hyped band from a couple of years ago (look it up yourselves) Anyway, you'll be hearing a hell of a lot about them.
RIYL: The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, Yo La Tengo, The Cure
Thursday, February 04, 2010
Twenty new names, five days: part two
Lily Rae
From: Brixton
Blurb: Nineteen years old, Rae has a big picture of a kitten as her Myspace wallpaper. Don't be taken in. Rae has a big expressive voice, a caustic way with a lyric and an absolute conviction without going anywhere near overbearing, and with her band the Saturday Girls achieves high levels of new wave spikiness. And her dad's in her backing band. For further observation: Rae, surrogate sister in sarcasti-pop Julia Indelicate, some fake moustaches and a Dylan chord book
RIYL: Kirsty Maccoll, The Indelicates, Blondie
Yahweh
From: Glasgow
Blurb: At the end of next month we're cementing our love for one set of laptop folk Scots by putting them on (see other outlets for information); here's another one. Essentially multi-instrumentalist Lewis Cook, his open hearted stories of dislocation and executive introspection are variously put up to fight against Boards Of Canada pastorialism, fucked-up beats and laptop glitches. He put out an album, Tug Of Love, last year, dedicated equally to his adopted home city and to Aidan Moffatt. And again, he's nineteen. Remember: you have comparatively achieved nothing. NOTHING.
RIYL: Meursault, Arab Strap, The Books
The Muscle Club
From: Cardiff
Blurb: Recent tourmates of 4 Or 5 Magicians, Muscle Club's restlessness manifests itself on debut EP Fragmented Ideas From Young Lungs in spiky, sliced and diced riffage, youthful and occasionally shouty vim and spectacular vaulting energy packaged in an untidy bundle of arcing across a different city.
RIYL: Johnny Foreigner, Tubelord, Les Savy Fav
Let’s Buy Happiness!
From: Newcastle
Blurb: Much of what press these have had so far has compared Sarah Hall's vocals to Elizabeth Fraser's, but to our barely trained ears she seems a ringer for Alessi Laurent-Marke, some say Alessi's Ark. Around her, yeah, it's around there, tenderly frail vocals matched with aereated delay-heavy guitar chimes and rhythms that stretch out in their own time while still seeming taut and vibrant. They're too earthy for dreampop categorisation, though, folky melodies and college rock-influenced structure playing as much of a role. Their second EP is imminent, judging by a tweet from yesterday.
RIYL: The Cocteau Twins, Engineers, The Shins
From: Brixton
Blurb: Nineteen years old, Rae has a big picture of a kitten as her Myspace wallpaper. Don't be taken in. Rae has a big expressive voice, a caustic way with a lyric and an absolute conviction without going anywhere near overbearing, and with her band the Saturday Girls achieves high levels of new wave spikiness. And her dad's in her backing band. For further observation: Rae, surrogate sister in sarcasti-pop Julia Indelicate, some fake moustaches and a Dylan chord book
RIYL: Kirsty Maccoll, The Indelicates, Blondie
Yahweh
From: Glasgow
Blurb: At the end of next month we're cementing our love for one set of laptop folk Scots by putting them on (see other outlets for information); here's another one. Essentially multi-instrumentalist Lewis Cook, his open hearted stories of dislocation and executive introspection are variously put up to fight against Boards Of Canada pastorialism, fucked-up beats and laptop glitches. He put out an album, Tug Of Love, last year, dedicated equally to his adopted home city and to Aidan Moffatt. And again, he's nineteen. Remember: you have comparatively achieved nothing. NOTHING.
RIYL: Meursault, Arab Strap, The Books
The Muscle Club
From: Cardiff
Blurb: Recent tourmates of 4 Or 5 Magicians, Muscle Club's restlessness manifests itself on debut EP Fragmented Ideas From Young Lungs in spiky, sliced and diced riffage, youthful and occasionally shouty vim and spectacular vaulting energy packaged in an untidy bundle of arcing across a different city.
RIYL: Johnny Foreigner, Tubelord, Les Savy Fav
Let’s Buy Happiness!
From: Newcastle
Blurb: Much of what press these have had so far has compared Sarah Hall's vocals to Elizabeth Fraser's, but to our barely trained ears she seems a ringer for Alessi Laurent-Marke, some say Alessi's Ark. Around her, yeah, it's around there, tenderly frail vocals matched with aereated delay-heavy guitar chimes and rhythms that stretch out in their own time while still seeming taut and vibrant. They're too earthy for dreampop categorisation, though, folky melodies and college rock-influenced structure playing as much of a role. Their second EP is imminent, judging by a tweet from yesterday.
RIYL: The Cocteau Twins, Engineers, The Shins
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Twenty new names, five days: part one
Consider this a clearing exercise for our backlog of bands to write about, as well as a one stop shop for some types that might be of further interest this year.
Burywood
From: Austin, Texas
Blurb: Pictures of Dan Bejar, Stephin Merritt and Bill Callahan (and Arcade Fire) are prominently positioned on this 'space, and like they Philip Woodbury would like you to think there's a full band at work. A 22 year old from Austin, Texas, he's released three albums, the latest of which, November 2009's There Exists An Abstraction Ladder, echoes with an auteur's attention to streamlined but still rough terrain detail, vaulting impressively around the place from distorted electronic crashing to acoustic laments to introspective songcraft with inventive production. You can pay what you want for There Exists An Abstraction Ladder, or just stream it, from Burywood's Bandcamp.
RIYL: Wolf Parade, The Unicorns, AC Newman
The Motifs
From: Melbourne
Blurb: The drum machine backed delicacy of this Australian quintet's morsels is less from the twee school than a more lounge, some say louche version of the skittering keyboardy electronic side of indiepop. Short songs, occasionally about odd subjects, coasting in on the breeze but leaving an impression.
RIYL: Au Revoir Simone, Pipas, early Camera Obscura, that Pastels/Tenniscoats collaboration
Lofty Heights
From: North London
Blurb: Who'd have thought the Duke Of Uke store would be such a game-changer? Lofty Heights are primarily one Gregory Griffin, a Californian whose folk pop bears the imprints of both dusty back porches and modern London lo-fi strumalong odd storytelling. He sounds a little like Zach Condon, actually. Even in the depths of winter it sounds like the most summery fun.
RIYL: Darren Hayman, Suburban Kids With Biblical Names, Dent May And His Magnificent Ukelele
Junkyard Choir
From: South London
Blurb: Good name. Led by Mark Woods, formerly of overstaffed cabaret-soul-metallers Do Me Bad Things, they bring the klezmer-influenced Beefheart warped blues to swampy rock'n'roll and pull the whole thing down into a crashing, shuddering mess of glory.
RIYL: SixNationState, The Dirty Backbeats, some bands people who don't carefully read every word of STN might recognise (80s Matchbox B-Line Disaster a bit)
Burywood
From: Austin, Texas
Blurb: Pictures of Dan Bejar, Stephin Merritt and Bill Callahan (and Arcade Fire) are prominently positioned on this 'space, and like they Philip Woodbury would like you to think there's a full band at work. A 22 year old from Austin, Texas, he's released three albums, the latest of which, November 2009's There Exists An Abstraction Ladder, echoes with an auteur's attention to streamlined but still rough terrain detail, vaulting impressively around the place from distorted electronic crashing to acoustic laments to introspective songcraft with inventive production. You can pay what you want for There Exists An Abstraction Ladder, or just stream it, from Burywood's Bandcamp.
RIYL: Wolf Parade, The Unicorns, AC Newman
The Motifs
From: Melbourne
Blurb: The drum machine backed delicacy of this Australian quintet's morsels is less from the twee school than a more lounge, some say louche version of the skittering keyboardy electronic side of indiepop. Short songs, occasionally about odd subjects, coasting in on the breeze but leaving an impression.
RIYL: Au Revoir Simone, Pipas, early Camera Obscura, that Pastels/Tenniscoats collaboration
Lofty Heights
From: North London
Blurb: Who'd have thought the Duke Of Uke store would be such a game-changer? Lofty Heights are primarily one Gregory Griffin, a Californian whose folk pop bears the imprints of both dusty back porches and modern London lo-fi strumalong odd storytelling. He sounds a little like Zach Condon, actually. Even in the depths of winter it sounds like the most summery fun.
RIYL: Darren Hayman, Suburban Kids With Biblical Names, Dent May And His Magnificent Ukelele
Junkyard Choir
From: South London
Blurb: Good name. Led by Mark Woods, formerly of overstaffed cabaret-soul-metallers Do Me Bad Things, they bring the klezmer-influenced Beefheart warped blues to swampy rock'n'roll and pull the whole thing down into a crashing, shuddering mess of glory.
RIYL: SixNationState, The Dirty Backbeats, some bands people who don't carefully read every word of STN might recognise (80s Matchbox B-Line Disaster a bit)
Friday, October 02, 2009
The new top ten
Not actually an ordered or definitive top ten of anything as such, just ten new bands we wanted to give some blog time to.
Wonderswan
Saw these supporting fellow Leodensians Sky Larkin the other night, and they've got a couple more days out with the guys/girl in the days ahead before a debut single, Furrpile, out on limited 7" the 5th. Ploughing through 'alternative' Myspaces at the rate we do, you get overused to seeing 'Influences: Sonic Youth, Pavement', but Wonderswan actually do sound like Daydream Nation played in the manner of Crooked Rain Crooked Rain, a not quite shabby enough pedal-happy post-slacker ball of contained scuzz. All of which makes their election into all the Dinosaur Pile-Up influenced articles about the 'Leeds grunge revival' scene the more puzzling. Hell, as any discerning STN reader will know there's plenty more than that going on in the fine city, with just this year excellent albums from ver Larkin and Grammatics, a forthcoming fine effort from I Concur, Napoleon IIIrd's still progressive EP and...
The Medusa Snare
In the wake of being namechecked as The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart's favourite British band The Manhattan Love Suicides went and split in July. The band's rhythm section Adam Miller and Rachel Barker immediately formed this band, and debut album Cinderella has already come out just this week. For the most part the MLS' J&MC feedback headlong charge is locked in a cupboard in favour of a more streamlined, almost but not quite approachable sound that retains the sprinting rhythmic pace but allies it to a swirling propulsiveness. They mention The Clean as an influence, we also hear Flying Nun colleagues The Chills, the Velvets and Yo La Tengo. And a whole load of potential greatness.
Kidnapper Bell
That these part-American Brummies have dates coming up with Therapy? and This Town Needs Guns demonstrates the duality of their sound, something they hold dearly in common with other STN pin-ups the beloved JoFo and the late Sunset Cinema Club. On the one hand, an unstable post-hardcore charge borrowing from emo - the proper emo, the emo of Sunny Day Real Estate and Braid, on the other a sound liable to change tack sharply on intricate guitar lines a la Minus The Bear or the Kinsellites. The Way It Goes even finds room for some rhythm track beatboxing. For the STN favoured full house, Tom Woodhead's producing their next single.
Switzerland
Tom from Mascot Fight - a band you'll be reminded about a lot on this blog over the next two months - reminded us of this band at the weekend, out of Derby's curiously crowded Cap'n Jazz acolyte scene (These Waves, You Animals, Beyond This Point Are Monsters). People who flee from the word 'angular' will need to tread carefully around these, as their popping guitars, lo-fi post-hardcore and jutting angles (think Tubelord or, really, half the Big Scary Monsters roster) are what that descriptive term was actually invented for. And they're tremendously young, it seems.
The Hi-Life Companion
Sound like: the latest Afrobeat bandwagoners. Are: a Bristol band including a couple of longstanding indiepop types. While there's a held back cleanness and almost sweetness to a lot of their approach, the harmonies and fizzy guitars suggest Felt's wrong-pop, while they're also comfortable with a porch country swoon. Aberfeldy, the Magnetic Fields and early Camera Obscura comes to mind. Oddly for a band with such an attitude they sound least comfortable in their most bubblegum moments, but time will kick that out of them.
Detox Cute & The Beauty Junkies
Enough of twee pop, let's talk about the duo of Paisley Play-Doh and Charlie Darling. (Oh, wait.) We've had plenty of offers down the months and years for gigs and events, sometimes even in Britain and outside London (rare, though), but these were the first band to offer us a visit to their video shoot. (We were otherwise engaged) It's been a long time, probably since Lamacq was on the Evening Session, that we've heard bedroom keyboard pop done like this. This, which they call E-Pop (like J-Pop, but very English) is their idea of pure pop, which Cowell would never understand, and with fragments in view of Helen Love, Saint Etienne and the Pet Shop Boys, not to mention the founding days of synth pop without going anywhere near La Roux misunderstanding, all dialogue samples and lovely, loving melody and melancholy. They're playing a packed night at the 100 Club on 22nd October with among others Gwenno, Theoretical Girl and...
The Understudies
Our good friends in Leicester promotions Twesta have put this London via Scotland outfit on twice now, so enamoured are they. Plenty of sophisticated not quite jangle going on here, from Felt's hidden depths to Postcard Records' understated pop with delusions of grandeur plus a Morrissey-esque literary diarising. Now we notice it, they're the first band we can recall to mention Jack as an influence, and while the the strings or textures have been swapped for something more direct and basic in set-up the sentiments are similar.
Pope Joan
Enough of wistfulness. Remember Tired Irie? They started really well then kind of gradually turned into Duran Duran and split a couple of months ago. Their early releases are what this Brighton outfit immediately remind us of, all scratchily agitated punk-funk very much in the Les Savy Fav mode with synth undertow and pop hooks. Full of danceable nervous energy and an elastic rhythm section, like how Bloc Party should have ended up, drive they could just reinstate the good name of art rock.
Gallops
Further adventures into math-rock come from these instrumentalists of rock hub Wrexham who plough the middle furrow on one side of which lies jagged No Waveries and the other Battles/Pivot arrythmic guitar/gizom trickery, all served on a bed of synth bass and post-rock structures. If this all sounds like no fun, well, you're wrong. Post-Foals, most will say as they do with their European touring partners Minnaars, but that's to take them down to the very lowest level - it's an intriguing, eardrum-burrowing mixture and one that you could well be hearing plenty about come the settling in period of 2010.
Revere
Something grand to finish on, a London octet who extract the little man behind the Emerald City curtain from Muse's sound and ally it to a grandly theatrical string-soaked sweep, intricately arranged and if we have to say post-Arcade Fire then a post-Arcade Fire that understand epic soundscapes. Maybe a little Waterboys too, but our best go is their being like a Wilkommen Collective band teaming with Grammatics to take on a Hollywood score overture. It'll divide opinion with its sonic ambition, we reckon, but at its best it builds and overwhelms with a very un-English controlled anthemic ambition.
Wonderswan
Saw these supporting fellow Leodensians Sky Larkin the other night, and they've got a couple more days out with the guys/girl in the days ahead before a debut single, Furrpile, out on limited 7" the 5th. Ploughing through 'alternative' Myspaces at the rate we do, you get overused to seeing 'Influences: Sonic Youth, Pavement', but Wonderswan actually do sound like Daydream Nation played in the manner of Crooked Rain Crooked Rain, a not quite shabby enough pedal-happy post-slacker ball of contained scuzz. All of which makes their election into all the Dinosaur Pile-Up influenced articles about the 'Leeds grunge revival' scene the more puzzling. Hell, as any discerning STN reader will know there's plenty more than that going on in the fine city, with just this year excellent albums from ver Larkin and Grammatics, a forthcoming fine effort from I Concur, Napoleon IIIrd's still progressive EP and...
The Medusa Snare
In the wake of being namechecked as The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart's favourite British band The Manhattan Love Suicides went and split in July. The band's rhythm section Adam Miller and Rachel Barker immediately formed this band, and debut album Cinderella has already come out just this week. For the most part the MLS' J&MC feedback headlong charge is locked in a cupboard in favour of a more streamlined, almost but not quite approachable sound that retains the sprinting rhythmic pace but allies it to a swirling propulsiveness. They mention The Clean as an influence, we also hear Flying Nun colleagues The Chills, the Velvets and Yo La Tengo. And a whole load of potential greatness.
Kidnapper Bell
That these part-American Brummies have dates coming up with Therapy? and This Town Needs Guns demonstrates the duality of their sound, something they hold dearly in common with other STN pin-ups the beloved JoFo and the late Sunset Cinema Club. On the one hand, an unstable post-hardcore charge borrowing from emo - the proper emo, the emo of Sunny Day Real Estate and Braid, on the other a sound liable to change tack sharply on intricate guitar lines a la Minus The Bear or the Kinsellites. The Way It Goes even finds room for some rhythm track beatboxing. For the STN favoured full house, Tom Woodhead's producing their next single.
Switzerland
Tom from Mascot Fight - a band you'll be reminded about a lot on this blog over the next two months - reminded us of this band at the weekend, out of Derby's curiously crowded Cap'n Jazz acolyte scene (These Waves, You Animals, Beyond This Point Are Monsters). People who flee from the word 'angular' will need to tread carefully around these, as their popping guitars, lo-fi post-hardcore and jutting angles (think Tubelord or, really, half the Big Scary Monsters roster) are what that descriptive term was actually invented for. And they're tremendously young, it seems.
The Hi-Life Companion
Sound like: the latest Afrobeat bandwagoners. Are: a Bristol band including a couple of longstanding indiepop types. While there's a held back cleanness and almost sweetness to a lot of their approach, the harmonies and fizzy guitars suggest Felt's wrong-pop, while they're also comfortable with a porch country swoon. Aberfeldy, the Magnetic Fields and early Camera Obscura comes to mind. Oddly for a band with such an attitude they sound least comfortable in their most bubblegum moments, but time will kick that out of them.
Detox Cute & The Beauty Junkies
Enough of twee pop, let's talk about the duo of Paisley Play-Doh and Charlie Darling. (Oh, wait.) We've had plenty of offers down the months and years for gigs and events, sometimes even in Britain and outside London (rare, though), but these were the first band to offer us a visit to their video shoot. (We were otherwise engaged) It's been a long time, probably since Lamacq was on the Evening Session, that we've heard bedroom keyboard pop done like this. This, which they call E-Pop (like J-Pop, but very English) is their idea of pure pop, which Cowell would never understand, and with fragments in view of Helen Love, Saint Etienne and the Pet Shop Boys, not to mention the founding days of synth pop without going anywhere near La Roux misunderstanding, all dialogue samples and lovely, loving melody and melancholy. They're playing a packed night at the 100 Club on 22nd October with among others Gwenno, Theoretical Girl and...
The Understudies
Our good friends in Leicester promotions Twesta have put this London via Scotland outfit on twice now, so enamoured are they. Plenty of sophisticated not quite jangle going on here, from Felt's hidden depths to Postcard Records' understated pop with delusions of grandeur plus a Morrissey-esque literary diarising. Now we notice it, they're the first band we can recall to mention Jack as an influence, and while the the strings or textures have been swapped for something more direct and basic in set-up the sentiments are similar.
Pope Joan
Enough of wistfulness. Remember Tired Irie? They started really well then kind of gradually turned into Duran Duran and split a couple of months ago. Their early releases are what this Brighton outfit immediately remind us of, all scratchily agitated punk-funk very much in the Les Savy Fav mode with synth undertow and pop hooks. Full of danceable nervous energy and an elastic rhythm section, like how Bloc Party should have ended up, drive they could just reinstate the good name of art rock.
Gallops
Further adventures into math-rock come from these instrumentalists of rock hub Wrexham who plough the middle furrow on one side of which lies jagged No Waveries and the other Battles/Pivot arrythmic guitar/gizom trickery, all served on a bed of synth bass and post-rock structures. If this all sounds like no fun, well, you're wrong. Post-Foals, most will say as they do with their European touring partners Minnaars, but that's to take them down to the very lowest level - it's an intriguing, eardrum-burrowing mixture and one that you could well be hearing plenty about come the settling in period of 2010.
Revere
Something grand to finish on, a London octet who extract the little man behind the Emerald City curtain from Muse's sound and ally it to a grandly theatrical string-soaked sweep, intricately arranged and if we have to say post-Arcade Fire then a post-Arcade Fire that understand epic soundscapes. Maybe a little Waterboys too, but our best go is their being like a Wilkommen Collective band teaming with Grammatics to take on a Hollywood score overture. It'll divide opinion with its sonic ambition, we reckon, but at its best it builds and overwhelms with a very un-English controlled anthemic ambition.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Monday's Newcomers II
When Loqui's press release dropped into the STN cubbyhole it declared them as "hailing from Leeds but a million miles away from the indie-rock plodders who have put that city on the map", which for a blog that's often hailed the great stuff coming out of that city in the last couple of years seemed a little forward. Still, we assumed they meant the Kaisers and Pigeons and pressed on, which was fortunate as they're one of those bands who seemed to have listened to a lot of uncool influences and sometimes threaten to resemble them but have a spark of genius/madness that sends them well away from the wrong targets. They mention the Cardiacs in their PR and share some of that jazzy, awkward sense that they themselves only have a vague idea of how to get from A to B and certainly aren't going to do so with the minimum of fuss. Then again, you can hear a certain theatricality in them, not so much West End or Brechtian but the low rent glamour of early B-52s and Sparks, and the odd slip into ska-punk mode. No, stay with us. They have a limited edition 7" called Hermes Pan out today on Sturdy Records.
We're having a summer, aren't we? Welcome, then, Bermondsey's Lion O'Brien, who make the kind of sunkissed, optimistic pop that's infectious to a fault with just the merest hint of jangle, sounding like a cut down Fanfarlo or a less West Coast harmony indebted Magic Numbers. Their forthcoming EP is called Raincloud Vs Sunshine, which sounds about right, and is out July 20th. Side note: they're a trio of two men and a woman, who drums. Guess who's furthest forward in their promo picture.
More music made for either lying back in the grass or pulling inappropriate shapes in public are provided by Apples - terrible band name, by the way - who are from Hereford, which seems to be delivering some interesting stuff on the quiet with old STN favourites Gossamer Albatross and the recently signed to Big Scary Monsters instrumental hardcore outfit Talons. The Apples aren't orchestral or math at all. In fact, they sound like Haircut 100, on one track sax and all. Luckily this is the Mystery Jets end of 80s references rather than the Ladyhawke end, and they've got a degree of punk-funk latitude about them too, and a hint of that Afrobeat indie thing you hear so much about. Second download single Theo is out this week.
We're having a summer, aren't we? Welcome, then, Bermondsey's Lion O'Brien, who make the kind of sunkissed, optimistic pop that's infectious to a fault with just the merest hint of jangle, sounding like a cut down Fanfarlo or a less West Coast harmony indebted Magic Numbers. Their forthcoming EP is called Raincloud Vs Sunshine, which sounds about right, and is out July 20th. Side note: they're a trio of two men and a woman, who drums. Guess who's furthest forward in their promo picture.
More music made for either lying back in the grass or pulling inappropriate shapes in public are provided by Apples - terrible band name, by the way - who are from Hereford, which seems to be delivering some interesting stuff on the quiet with old STN favourites Gossamer Albatross and the recently signed to Big Scary Monsters instrumental hardcore outfit Talons. The Apples aren't orchestral or math at all. In fact, they sound like Haircut 100, on one track sax and all. Luckily this is the Mystery Jets end of 80s references rather than the Ladyhawke end, and they've got a degree of punk-funk latitude about them too, and a hint of that Afrobeat indie thing you hear so much about. Second download single Theo is out this week.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Monday's newcomers
Stockholm's Moofish Catfish have been over in the UK for the last couple of weeks, spreading yet another ray of delightfulness-driven Swedish pop. Melodic old swoonsome yearning is pretty much the starting point here, not so delicate that they crumble upon touch but possessing that chiming, timeless quality, slightly woozily retro, occasionally pleasingly fuzzy and falling-over and imbued with much of Those Dancing Days' joie de vivre without sounding that much like them. There must be something in the Swedish air that makes their young bands tend to turn out like this.
Even if you overlooked the name, only one country would produce Full English Breakfast, which inevitably is one bloke with a grasp of odd pop and a spectacularly eccentric worldview. It veers all over the place in what sounds like a single-handed attempt to show Lawrence Hayward there were some gaps Felt, Denim and Go-Kart Mozart didn't quite manage to fill in. In places it accelerates through everyone from Edwyn Collins (forthcoming single Song For A Nut) to early 80s Sheffield electronics to Beck to lo-fi Babybird to Mark E Smith being a little more careful with his initial influences. Every so often we need a new injection of English art-pop off-kilteredness, and with an album out in a month's time here's a man well in position to provide it.
Since promoting A Classic Education and Magpie Wedding we've had quite a few Myspace friend requests from outfits based in Bologna. At least there's somewhere where we're popular. One such is Ofeliadorme, who like both of the aforementioned are clearly aware of post-rock and are taking its influence into quieter, more structured areas. There's elements of Low's slowcore disturbance allied to the minimal raw, otherworldly appealing of the first half of Cat Power's discography, Francesca Bono's vocals between that spooked intimacy and Polly Harvey's force of nature. Dark and mystical, almost spiritual were it not for the fact that there's some quite worrying things going on, it's lilting but not quite lulling anyone into false senses of security.
Enough of quiet subtlety. These Waves are another of that growing band of youngsters taking inspiration from Minus The Bear, the Seattle outfit for whom linear time signatures and straightforward strumming were for other people. You'll also hear At The Drive-In, Reuben and Glassjaw in their angular post-hardcore attack (much like previously featured Buenos Aires, actually, and like other STN favourites Minnaars Tom Woodhead has been producing them), which is all to the good. They're from Derby, for the record, which has always been the east Midlands' poor relation in terms of producing bands but with You Animals and Beyond This Point Are Monsters also making moves something's afoot.
How about some doleful electro? I Like Where I Live, essentially one bloke from Glasgow called Dave McAdams, takes up that thoughtful strain of soaring keyboards and beats from the Postal Service and Her Space Holiday, while not being that far away from the essence of the retro synths of your Passion Pits and Big Pinks and onto M83. Music to look out onto the sunset to.
Which is not the case with London duo Gentle Friendly. With a release behind them through No Pain In Pop and one forthcoming on Upset The Rhythm they've certainly got themselves into a good place with a sound that doesn't make for easy passing listening. Taking the drones of the Silver Apples' oscillators and Fuck Buttons' special knobs, the hallucinogenic counter-melodic euphoria of Animal Collective, Banjo Or Freakout and Health, and the noisy, bleeding alt-pop oddness of the Unicorns and No Age, their music takes a woozy ride through a kaleidoscope of Kraut rhythms, digital distortion, criss-crossing ideas and the joy of loud and vaguely uncomfortable, all done on reclaimed keyboards and rusting drumkits. We sense you'll be hearing a lot, lot more of them in such circles when their album is out in September.
Even if you overlooked the name, only one country would produce Full English Breakfast, which inevitably is one bloke with a grasp of odd pop and a spectacularly eccentric worldview. It veers all over the place in what sounds like a single-handed attempt to show Lawrence Hayward there were some gaps Felt, Denim and Go-Kart Mozart didn't quite manage to fill in. In places it accelerates through everyone from Edwyn Collins (forthcoming single Song For A Nut) to early 80s Sheffield electronics to Beck to lo-fi Babybird to Mark E Smith being a little more careful with his initial influences. Every so often we need a new injection of English art-pop off-kilteredness, and with an album out in a month's time here's a man well in position to provide it.
Since promoting A Classic Education and Magpie Wedding we've had quite a few Myspace friend requests from outfits based in Bologna. At least there's somewhere where we're popular. One such is Ofeliadorme, who like both of the aforementioned are clearly aware of post-rock and are taking its influence into quieter, more structured areas. There's elements of Low's slowcore disturbance allied to the minimal raw, otherworldly appealing of the first half of Cat Power's discography, Francesca Bono's vocals between that spooked intimacy and Polly Harvey's force of nature. Dark and mystical, almost spiritual were it not for the fact that there's some quite worrying things going on, it's lilting but not quite lulling anyone into false senses of security.
Enough of quiet subtlety. These Waves are another of that growing band of youngsters taking inspiration from Minus The Bear, the Seattle outfit for whom linear time signatures and straightforward strumming were for other people. You'll also hear At The Drive-In, Reuben and Glassjaw in their angular post-hardcore attack (much like previously featured Buenos Aires, actually, and like other STN favourites Minnaars Tom Woodhead has been producing them), which is all to the good. They're from Derby, for the record, which has always been the east Midlands' poor relation in terms of producing bands but with You Animals and Beyond This Point Are Monsters also making moves something's afoot.
How about some doleful electro? I Like Where I Live, essentially one bloke from Glasgow called Dave McAdams, takes up that thoughtful strain of soaring keyboards and beats from the Postal Service and Her Space Holiday, while not being that far away from the essence of the retro synths of your Passion Pits and Big Pinks and onto M83. Music to look out onto the sunset to.
Which is not the case with London duo Gentle Friendly. With a release behind them through No Pain In Pop and one forthcoming on Upset The Rhythm they've certainly got themselves into a good place with a sound that doesn't make for easy passing listening. Taking the drones of the Silver Apples' oscillators and Fuck Buttons' special knobs, the hallucinogenic counter-melodic euphoria of Animal Collective, Banjo Or Freakout and Health, and the noisy, bleeding alt-pop oddness of the Unicorns and No Age, their music takes a woozy ride through a kaleidoscope of Kraut rhythms, digital distortion, criss-crossing ideas and the joy of loud and vaguely uncomfortable, all done on reclaimed keyboards and rusting drumkits. We sense you'll be hearing a lot, lot more of them in such circles when their album is out in September.
Sunday, June 07, 2009
Some people
Over the last couple of months of stultifying ennui we've built up quite a backlog of Myspaces to write up and/or check out, so this week we'll get a lot of new bands out of the way that we think you might just like.
We'll start with one that was directly recommended to us by Jon from Love Ends Disaster! in a beer garden. The East Midlands does post-rock coated ephemeral anti-pop really well, and the typographically challenging SWIMMInG, while by no means another droning outfit, certainly know how to attach broken melodies, textures and soaring pedal work to a loosely pop frame. Featuring an ex-member of Amusement Parks On Fire and having played Glastonbury's Park stage at Emily Eavis' personal invitation last year, they're somewhat M83, a little Flaming Lips or Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, there's certainly a sense that they know their Anticon and their Boards Of Canada, but they're all in all a band who don't really want to be pinned down. They play Isle Of Wight and Lovebox festivals, they have it in them to paint the sky with their vibrant technicolours. Or something.
Southampton's Haunted Stereo aren't that easy to classify either, the area they work their wonders in being trapped between the nu-folk and the properly (ie not The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, broadsheets) twee-facing. Boasting a toybox full of instruments and able to arrange them in a way that suits the shifting sands of the tempos and structures while not overcrowding the sound or work by crescendos alone. We're reminded a little of The Boy Least Likely To, not with the faux-naivety but in the way these folky, expansive gems know the value of simple melodies about not yet putting away childhood things but are far too in love with the stylistic and kitchen sink dramatic possibilities to be easily written off.
There's something quite understated in an overstatement way about Stairs To Korea. Another pretend band name, it's the work of Will Vaughan, once of erstwhile Magic Numbers support Horsebox, recent Pagan Wanderer Lu one-off backing band member and special British rep of the celebrated Rock Paparazzi Andersen Ben-Hilliens. What he does is add lo-fi electronica backgrounds to textured, skilful guitar (plus synth pedals), over which he lays wry, socially cynical lyrics. Essentially it's just great, cracked, heartfelt interesting English guitar pop, bedroom XTC/Super Furries-like, with a mass of potential.
Also one person claiming to be many, Awesome Wells is Jonathan Palmer, sometime accomplice of The Voluntary Butler Scheme and man who spends a lot of time out and about recording stuff which he then works into his found sound symphonies. It's all quite Panda Bear or Banjo Or Freakout-like, mixing all sorts of dialled down beats and odd off-kilter instrumentation into pieces which seem more sonic exploration in the approachable sense, shimmeringly hypnotic at times, than proper songs. We're guessing Palmer owns quite a few BBC Radiophonic Workshop records, such is the evident painstaking joy in construction. (NB. It'd be quite dangerous to get this Awesome Wells mixed up with this Awesome Wells, who sound like the sort of youthful glitter-pop-punk explosion of a band who in Kenickie's wake made upstairs at The Garage their own in the late 90s. Which is no bad thing of itself, obviously)
The Woe Betides are Grundy le Zimbra and The Late Simon Mastrantone. Mmm. They have Jeremy Warmsley connections. Of course they do. What they do is mildly folky dark pop that could have come from Andy Partridge's shed, rich in lively acoustics, harmonies and roughed up around the edges charm. Quite Sixties in approach, but just as modern in the joy of it all.
We'll start with one that was directly recommended to us by Jon from Love Ends Disaster! in a beer garden. The East Midlands does post-rock coated ephemeral anti-pop really well, and the typographically challenging SWIMMInG, while by no means another droning outfit, certainly know how to attach broken melodies, textures and soaring pedal work to a loosely pop frame. Featuring an ex-member of Amusement Parks On Fire and having played Glastonbury's Park stage at Emily Eavis' personal invitation last year, they're somewhat M83, a little Flaming Lips or Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, there's certainly a sense that they know their Anticon and their Boards Of Canada, but they're all in all a band who don't really want to be pinned down. They play Isle Of Wight and Lovebox festivals, they have it in them to paint the sky with their vibrant technicolours. Or something.
Southampton's Haunted Stereo aren't that easy to classify either, the area they work their wonders in being trapped between the nu-folk and the properly (ie not The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, broadsheets) twee-facing. Boasting a toybox full of instruments and able to arrange them in a way that suits the shifting sands of the tempos and structures while not overcrowding the sound or work by crescendos alone. We're reminded a little of The Boy Least Likely To, not with the faux-naivety but in the way these folky, expansive gems know the value of simple melodies about not yet putting away childhood things but are far too in love with the stylistic and kitchen sink dramatic possibilities to be easily written off.
There's something quite understated in an overstatement way about Stairs To Korea. Another pretend band name, it's the work of Will Vaughan, once of erstwhile Magic Numbers support Horsebox, recent Pagan Wanderer Lu one-off backing band member and special British rep of the celebrated Rock Paparazzi Andersen Ben-Hilliens. What he does is add lo-fi electronica backgrounds to textured, skilful guitar (plus synth pedals), over which he lays wry, socially cynical lyrics. Essentially it's just great, cracked, heartfelt interesting English guitar pop, bedroom XTC/Super Furries-like, with a mass of potential.
Also one person claiming to be many, Awesome Wells is Jonathan Palmer, sometime accomplice of The Voluntary Butler Scheme and man who spends a lot of time out and about recording stuff which he then works into his found sound symphonies. It's all quite Panda Bear or Banjo Or Freakout-like, mixing all sorts of dialled down beats and odd off-kilter instrumentation into pieces which seem more sonic exploration in the approachable sense, shimmeringly hypnotic at times, than proper songs. We're guessing Palmer owns quite a few BBC Radiophonic Workshop records, such is the evident painstaking joy in construction. (NB. It'd be quite dangerous to get this Awesome Wells mixed up with this Awesome Wells, who sound like the sort of youthful glitter-pop-punk explosion of a band who in Kenickie's wake made upstairs at The Garage their own in the late 90s. Which is no bad thing of itself, obviously)
The Woe Betides are Grundy le Zimbra and The Late Simon Mastrantone. Mmm. They have Jeremy Warmsley connections. Of course they do. What they do is mildly folky dark pop that could have come from Andy Partridge's shed, rich in lively acoustics, harmonies and roughed up around the edges charm. Quite Sixties in approach, but just as modern in the joy of it all.
Monday, March 23, 2009
More Myspaces
No doubt you're still working your way through last week's list, which is why for this selection of notable new names we're going to keep things briefer.
Teenage Cool Kids: 90s quasi-slacker indie rock is coming back in a big way, and this Denton, Texas outfit are all over Slanted And Enchanted/Built To Spill collapsing alt-pop. You'll also hear the impassioned assault of The Thermals, the jagged sykyscraping urgency of Meneguar and Johnny Foreigner, and the lo-fi noise over technique of the garage.
Standard Fare: latest graduates of Thee Sheffield Phonographic Corporation, their press release describes them as "somewhere between the Lemonheads and Los Campesinos". In fact like many an SPC band they belie their DIY qualities through the power of simple melodies, guileless vocals, scab picking lyrics and a great deal of joie de vivre.
Motel Motel: on the bill for End Of The Road Festival and fresh from seven SXSW parties, so get some money down on a wider impact before much longer. The Brooklynites know their way round the Flying Burrito Brothers and the like but echo inside that the likes of Wilco, first album Gomez, Modest Mouse and a far less conceited Ryan Adams.
Frankie & The Heartstrings: Sunderland natives and recent Futureheads and The Week That Was support, they may be the first band for whom The Yummy Fur can be invoked as a noticeable influence. Spindly, awkward, Fall-ish anti-pop that constantly threatens to fall completely apart while never doing so.
Sicknote: We... just don't know. Sometimes you almost have to just post the nutsoid shouting-over-beats, generally as subtle as Alan Pardew being asked to comment on the Josef Fritzl case, and scarper before anyone asks you to expand on it.
Teenage Cool Kids: 90s quasi-slacker indie rock is coming back in a big way, and this Denton, Texas outfit are all over Slanted And Enchanted/Built To Spill collapsing alt-pop. You'll also hear the impassioned assault of The Thermals, the jagged sykyscraping urgency of Meneguar and Johnny Foreigner, and the lo-fi noise over technique of the garage.
Standard Fare: latest graduates of Thee Sheffield Phonographic Corporation, their press release describes them as "somewhere between the Lemonheads and Los Campesinos". In fact like many an SPC band they belie their DIY qualities through the power of simple melodies, guileless vocals, scab picking lyrics and a great deal of joie de vivre.
Motel Motel: on the bill for End Of The Road Festival and fresh from seven SXSW parties, so get some money down on a wider impact before much longer. The Brooklynites know their way round the Flying Burrito Brothers and the like but echo inside that the likes of Wilco, first album Gomez, Modest Mouse and a far less conceited Ryan Adams.
Frankie & The Heartstrings: Sunderland natives and recent Futureheads and The Week That Was support, they may be the first band for whom The Yummy Fur can be invoked as a noticeable influence. Spindly, awkward, Fall-ish anti-pop that constantly threatens to fall completely apart while never doing so.
Sicknote: We... just don't know. Sometimes you almost have to just post the nutsoid shouting-over-beats, generally as subtle as Alan Pardew being asked to comment on the Josef Fritzl case, and scarper before anyone asks you to expand on it.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
The shock of the new
We have this massive ongoing list of Myspace addresses that every so often we like to dip into and see if anything genuinely excites us. More often than not we just end up wondering why on earth we ever thought to put that on the list. Oh, quite a few of them this pruning around. Here's some more new names, or at least they were new when we listed them, to conjure with.
We thought we'd written about Penny Broadhurst before, but apparently not. Leeds based Broadhurst used to be, and sometimes still is, a performance poet and that tack-sharp social wryness and by turn darkness has been allied to a pop sensibility - not pop like we usually say about pop when it's vaguely melodic, although this is, but the newer songs here betray a far more sophisticated take on stuff that might sell in lesser forms. All over the place stylistically, though, which Polydor would immediately blanch at but works out just fine, from lilting country-tinged acoustic to laptop Xenomania-on-a-budget, especially now she's started gigging with a band, The Maffickers (including a guitarist on hire from those that used to be the Chiara L's and now, in a triumph of lexicography, are now The Kiara Elles) Recalling everyone from Billy Bragg to Bis, the only surprise is that the cult following isn't all encompassing already.
Awkward trios hotwiring Fugazi, Shellac and/or McLusky get a fast track into our Myspace roundups, and so it is with Southend's Fashoda Crisis. These are very much the children of Falkous, what with their love of a cutting aphorism, opaque lyrics with politicised undertow, bass that'd power a village for a fortnight and wall of distortion guitar. Their currently available mini-album Mischief Of One Kind And Another spits its righteous fury from inside a seal-packed environment of their own.
As are Triple School, except they're one fewer in number. There's a lot of two-pieces around at the moment but not so many that just pump the fuzz guitar up as far as it'll go and let the drums hammer away like they're banging on Valhalla's own door to SST via the Jesus Lizard. And they're giving away their debut EP for free. And we've not even mentioned yet that shouter Giles Bailey used to front Dananananaykroyd.
Celebrity Chimp are also a duo, but one whose output is, if no less committed, somewhat calmer. Not much less odd, though, not least as Andy McKay, also of Song By Toad Records Appalachian folk outfit Nightjar, specialises in banjo, making them essentially bluegrass punk, with their driving rhythms, wry lyrics and, well, banjo hammering. They have a five tracker called Celebrity Is The New Royalty and a load of London live dates, and we reckon that would be a pretty decent night out.
Something less immediately rollicking for a change of pace. With the whole Sonic Cathedral thing and return of dreampop - alright, shoegazing, then - to the scene hazy, droney soundscapes and half distinct vocals are the new black. Manchester's Young British Artists bring the whole thing - punchdrunk tremelo'd guitars, thick old basslines, claustrophobia to go - to the party, crossed with the odd Interpol/Chameleons flick and a Kyte-ish desire to plan out grandiose new soundscapes add up to impressively drowsy effect.
Bath's Kill It Kid are certainly worth memorising if only for Chris Turpin's, um, distinctive voice, like Wild Beasts' Hayden Thorpe shrugging off laryngitis for a night down the old timey Americana club night. Already signed to One Little Indian and with John Parish producing their demo, they come across like a post-Sufjan take on Delta blues, with strings swirling round and pounding drums as the driving force. That they can go from the melodrama of Send Me An Angel Down (a future single, apparently) to the Carter Family country hoedown of My Lips Won't Be Kept Clean to the rootsy without being that primal rock'n'roll pervasiveness, like Mumford & Sons deprived of their banjo and attached to a Standard rocket. You'll definitely be hearing a great deal about them soon enough.
We thought we'd written about Penny Broadhurst before, but apparently not. Leeds based Broadhurst used to be, and sometimes still is, a performance poet and that tack-sharp social wryness and by turn darkness has been allied to a pop sensibility - not pop like we usually say about pop when it's vaguely melodic, although this is, but the newer songs here betray a far more sophisticated take on stuff that might sell in lesser forms. All over the place stylistically, though, which Polydor would immediately blanch at but works out just fine, from lilting country-tinged acoustic to laptop Xenomania-on-a-budget, especially now she's started gigging with a band, The Maffickers (including a guitarist on hire from those that used to be the Chiara L's and now, in a triumph of lexicography, are now The Kiara Elles) Recalling everyone from Billy Bragg to Bis, the only surprise is that the cult following isn't all encompassing already.
Awkward trios hotwiring Fugazi, Shellac and/or McLusky get a fast track into our Myspace roundups, and so it is with Southend's Fashoda Crisis. These are very much the children of Falkous, what with their love of a cutting aphorism, opaque lyrics with politicised undertow, bass that'd power a village for a fortnight and wall of distortion guitar. Their currently available mini-album Mischief Of One Kind And Another spits its righteous fury from inside a seal-packed environment of their own.
As are Triple School, except they're one fewer in number. There's a lot of two-pieces around at the moment but not so many that just pump the fuzz guitar up as far as it'll go and let the drums hammer away like they're banging on Valhalla's own door to SST via the Jesus Lizard. And they're giving away their debut EP for free. And we've not even mentioned yet that shouter Giles Bailey used to front Dananananaykroyd.
Celebrity Chimp are also a duo, but one whose output is, if no less committed, somewhat calmer. Not much less odd, though, not least as Andy McKay, also of Song By Toad Records Appalachian folk outfit Nightjar, specialises in banjo, making them essentially bluegrass punk, with their driving rhythms, wry lyrics and, well, banjo hammering. They have a five tracker called Celebrity Is The New Royalty and a load of London live dates, and we reckon that would be a pretty decent night out.
Something less immediately rollicking for a change of pace. With the whole Sonic Cathedral thing and return of dreampop - alright, shoegazing, then - to the scene hazy, droney soundscapes and half distinct vocals are the new black. Manchester's Young British Artists bring the whole thing - punchdrunk tremelo'd guitars, thick old basslines, claustrophobia to go - to the party, crossed with the odd Interpol/Chameleons flick and a Kyte-ish desire to plan out grandiose new soundscapes add up to impressively drowsy effect.
Bath's Kill It Kid are certainly worth memorising if only for Chris Turpin's, um, distinctive voice, like Wild Beasts' Hayden Thorpe shrugging off laryngitis for a night down the old timey Americana club night. Already signed to One Little Indian and with John Parish producing their demo, they come across like a post-Sufjan take on Delta blues, with strings swirling round and pounding drums as the driving force. That they can go from the melodrama of Send Me An Angel Down (a future single, apparently) to the Carter Family country hoedown of My Lips Won't Be Kept Clean to the rootsy without being that primal rock'n'roll pervasiveness, like Mumford & Sons deprived of their banjo and attached to a Standard rocket. You'll definitely be hearing a great deal about them soon enough.
Sunday, February 08, 2009
The new breed
Time to delve back into the Myspace addresses we've been sent, happened across or just received through osmosis to pick out the best bands you might have heard of vaguely but really want to know how someone who has a talent for overdescription would make of them.
We've featured a lot of Glasgow bands recently; we've featured a few Edinburgh bands recently. A band who contain members from both, then surely, would be the greatest thing ever committed to tape. Boycotts don't manage that, damn their hides, but while we've learnt from experience to tread carefully around bands who have members called Stina Twee, Josef K and Hardcore Dave (on loan from Scooter, presumably) here is the Scottish answer to a question rarely asked but to which the answer is Sky Larkin, all wiry guitars and razor sharp interplay calling back the Throwing Muses and Breeders as pat comparisons. The main difference is Stina's certain vocal ballsiness and character while behind her is the sort of compressed control that might threaten to give angular indie dancefloor art-rock its good reputation back. While we're near Edinburgh, let's stop off and acknowledge Molly Wagger, an eight-piece who like compatriots Broken Records know their way round an explosively widescreen sonic window and like other compatriots Meursault make a point of integrating electronic noisescapes with traditional songsmithery. Of the songs currently up Bait is hypnotic, Weight woodily aerated and Molly builds itself up stealthily in a manner not too far from Beta Band territory, and there's comfortably enough about them all to justify keeping a close eye as after a little while labouring under 'best kept secrets' tags they could be about to leap the chasm into wider approval if they get their proper recordings just right.
From the far north to the very south and Superhet Receiver, another band who've thought long and hard about how to infuse post-punk's remnants with electronic elements. It does kind of sound like a lot of things done recently but there's something infectious and tunnel vision focused about these liquid riffs, syncopated beats and Korg abuse, in the same ballpark as Soulwax's first album or more contemporarily Post War Years. It could go either way from here as the saleability of the whole juddery guitar dance thing collapses around us but these should have enough to distance themselves from such dregs. Coming at it from a whole different angle, Nottingham based Alright The Captain are an instrumental outfit who switch-hit from Man...Or Astroman? on heat fuzzed out surf to twisted funk to stylised angular heaviness. Something for everyone who likes having their cerebral cortexes turned inside out while they wait.
Onto folk and suchlike. Ivan Campo are a Preston trio, big on well kept acoustics and shakers, whose take on the new New Acoustic Movement tends towards the modernities of Tunng and Adem rather than the more traditional end. The Coral also turn up on their influences list (mind you, so does David Soul) and there's more than a little of their amiable dialled down backwoods moments that they really don't exert too much of these days, against quietly charming minuets of love, loss and confusion. Plus they claim to be from 'Isle of Campodia', and bands who claim to be from made up places are always winners to us. While we're in a downhome frame, Bark Cat Bark is the nom de avant of Yorkshire born, Paris based Josh Todd, whose instruments played list includes albokas, banduras, bombardes, flumpets, gayageums, hydraulophones, kanteles, kavals, kemenches, khenes, kinnors, kokyus, phonofiddles, rebecs and xaphoons. Yeah, alright, we get the idea. His largely instrumental works are naggingly pretty works based largely around central piano or violin figures and the reedy woodwinds, wind instruments and who knows what else that slot in around it. There's Beirut, A Hawk And A Hacksaw and Final Fantasy here, also of course band names for multi-instrumentalist young sensations, but there's many classical aesthetic allusions upon which we wouldn't know where to start.
Italians do it better, so the label name claims, so let's finish this round-up with a couple. Vancouver might be shoegaze without the effects pedal play, or they might be a Europeanised Death Cab For Cutie, or on Jennifer they might be the Killers with the grandiosity and reaching for arena approval taken out and replaced with a very melancholic storytelling bent, an emotional reaction circling a melodic invention. Luca Oliveri meanwhile is in the business of imaginary instrumental soundtracks, building atmospheres from keyboard flourishes and stately waltzes partly aided by off-pop instrumentation. Someone is credited on the press release with 'breaths'. We hope that's not merely something lost in translation.
We've featured a lot of Glasgow bands recently; we've featured a few Edinburgh bands recently. A band who contain members from both, then surely, would be the greatest thing ever committed to tape. Boycotts don't manage that, damn their hides, but while we've learnt from experience to tread carefully around bands who have members called Stina Twee, Josef K and Hardcore Dave (on loan from Scooter, presumably) here is the Scottish answer to a question rarely asked but to which the answer is Sky Larkin, all wiry guitars and razor sharp interplay calling back the Throwing Muses and Breeders as pat comparisons. The main difference is Stina's certain vocal ballsiness and character while behind her is the sort of compressed control that might threaten to give angular indie dancefloor art-rock its good reputation back. While we're near Edinburgh, let's stop off and acknowledge Molly Wagger, an eight-piece who like compatriots Broken Records know their way round an explosively widescreen sonic window and like other compatriots Meursault make a point of integrating electronic noisescapes with traditional songsmithery. Of the songs currently up Bait is hypnotic, Weight woodily aerated and Molly builds itself up stealthily in a manner not too far from Beta Band territory, and there's comfortably enough about them all to justify keeping a close eye as after a little while labouring under 'best kept secrets' tags they could be about to leap the chasm into wider approval if they get their proper recordings just right.
From the far north to the very south and Superhet Receiver, another band who've thought long and hard about how to infuse post-punk's remnants with electronic elements. It does kind of sound like a lot of things done recently but there's something infectious and tunnel vision focused about these liquid riffs, syncopated beats and Korg abuse, in the same ballpark as Soulwax's first album or more contemporarily Post War Years. It could go either way from here as the saleability of the whole juddery guitar dance thing collapses around us but these should have enough to distance themselves from such dregs. Coming at it from a whole different angle, Nottingham based Alright The Captain are an instrumental outfit who switch-hit from Man...Or Astroman? on heat fuzzed out surf to twisted funk to stylised angular heaviness. Something for everyone who likes having their cerebral cortexes turned inside out while they wait.
Onto folk and suchlike. Ivan Campo are a Preston trio, big on well kept acoustics and shakers, whose take on the new New Acoustic Movement tends towards the modernities of Tunng and Adem rather than the more traditional end. The Coral also turn up on their influences list (mind you, so does David Soul) and there's more than a little of their amiable dialled down backwoods moments that they really don't exert too much of these days, against quietly charming minuets of love, loss and confusion. Plus they claim to be from 'Isle of Campodia', and bands who claim to be from made up places are always winners to us. While we're in a downhome frame, Bark Cat Bark is the nom de avant of Yorkshire born, Paris based Josh Todd, whose instruments played list includes albokas, banduras, bombardes, flumpets, gayageums, hydraulophones, kanteles, kavals, kemenches, khenes, kinnors, kokyus, phonofiddles, rebecs and xaphoons. Yeah, alright, we get the idea. His largely instrumental works are naggingly pretty works based largely around central piano or violin figures and the reedy woodwinds, wind instruments and who knows what else that slot in around it. There's Beirut, A Hawk And A Hacksaw and Final Fantasy here, also of course band names for multi-instrumentalist young sensations, but there's many classical aesthetic allusions upon which we wouldn't know where to start.
Italians do it better, so the label name claims, so let's finish this round-up with a couple. Vancouver might be shoegaze without the effects pedal play, or they might be a Europeanised Death Cab For Cutie, or on Jennifer they might be the Killers with the grandiosity and reaching for arena approval taken out and replaced with a very melancholic storytelling bent, an emotional reaction circling a melodic invention. Luca Oliveri meanwhile is in the business of imaginary instrumental soundtracks, building atmospheres from keyboard flourishes and stately waltzes partly aided by off-pop instrumentation. Someone is credited on the press release with 'breaths'. We hope that's not merely something lost in translation.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Brand new Second Hand
See, this is why we keep blathering on and doing this thing to death - because we know lurking somewhere out there is the next great, or at least potentially great, new band.
Presenting, then, The Second Hand Marching Band.
You're intrigued already, we can tell. Based in Glasgow and formed in December 2007 to "play songs with many instruments that could be danced to" they number between 16 and 22, but don't go thinking this is mere Polyphonic Spree gimmickry. Including members of many other bands, including Dananananaykroyd (drummer Paul Carlin), Eagleowl, Q Without U, The Just Joans and The Occasional Flickers (and, it suggests here, soon ex-Teenage Fanclub/Mogwai drummer Brendan O'Hare), their number includes mandolinists, ukeleleists, glockenspiel (two!), accordion, flute, clarinet, melodica and a three piece internal brass section, we're dealing with sprawling folk of the Sufjan/Beirut end at heart, but with a cheerfully ramshackle chorality pitched somewhere between revivalist joy and huddling together for warmth and safety and an admitted post-rock influence in the way the layers of instruments slowly build and crescendo. You'd imagine they're something special live, although they're only playing across Scotland at the moment. Fair enough, as despite the whole Balkan/Americana reference points it is ultimately a very Scottish sounding thing. They released a limited edition EP, A Dance To Half Death, last week, available from their Myspace and through Chaffinch Records. Watch them, because if we're any judge - pause for readers to make faces and odd noises behind hands - they're building up to something very interesting. Lostmusic has an mp3 up. So do we.
The Second Hand Marching Band - We Walk In The Room (via Sendspace while our server plays silly buggers)
Presenting, then, The Second Hand Marching Band.
You're intrigued already, we can tell. Based in Glasgow and formed in December 2007 to "play songs with many instruments that could be danced to" they number between 16 and 22, but don't go thinking this is mere Polyphonic Spree gimmickry. Including members of many other bands, including Dananananaykroyd (drummer Paul Carlin), Eagleowl, Q Without U, The Just Joans and The Occasional Flickers (and, it suggests here, soon ex-Teenage Fanclub/Mogwai drummer Brendan O'Hare), their number includes mandolinists, ukeleleists, glockenspiel (two!), accordion, flute, clarinet, melodica and a three piece internal brass section, we're dealing with sprawling folk of the Sufjan/Beirut end at heart, but with a cheerfully ramshackle chorality pitched somewhere between revivalist joy and huddling together for warmth and safety and an admitted post-rock influence in the way the layers of instruments slowly build and crescendo. You'd imagine they're something special live, although they're only playing across Scotland at the moment. Fair enough, as despite the whole Balkan/Americana reference points it is ultimately a very Scottish sounding thing. They released a limited edition EP, A Dance To Half Death, last week, available from their Myspace and through Chaffinch Records. Watch them, because if we're any judge - pause for readers to make faces and odd noises behind hands - they're building up to something very interesting. Lostmusic has an mp3 up. So do we.
The Second Hand Marching Band - We Walk In The Room (via Sendspace while our server plays silly buggers)
Friday, January 16, 2009
New sensations
With the end of a weekly Weekender it at least means we don't have to desperately trawl every week for something half-decent to give undue prominence too. It also means we've been able to go through our backlog of Myspaces we've been advised to check out with a calmer ear and eye and only bring up the most promising artists you may not yet know but may well grow to love.
You almost don't want to mention how Wintermitts make prominent use of glockenspiel and accordion just in case. Maybe it'd help if we said they're from Vancouver, because they do sound very Canadian with their tumbling instruments yet keeping wide open spaces in the music, ability to vary their style and a communal spirit which gives it that extra joy. Plus singer Lise Monique sings bilingually in French as well as English, which always impresses us dunces. They're a little Broken Social Scene, a little Delgados, something that reminds us of Cardiff's retro girl-pop heroes The School, handclaps, trumpets, melodicas... there's plenty to come past the recently released domestically album Heirloom, certainly.
God knows what we were doing at the time - sitting in the tea tent wondering why nothing was happening on the outside stage, probably - but we didn't see The Good Natured at Indietracks last year. Perhaps it was the description that left us cold, being as it is 17 year old Sarah McIntosh of Newbury armed with merely an old Yamaha keyboard rescued from her grandmother's house. It seems to be de rigeur on the blogosphere to label her "Kate Nash meets the Postal Service", but balls to descriptive orthodoxy. Often her songs involve lo-fi homemade dance beats and yearning lyrics like The Research gone disco-pop, sometimes shimmering keyboards and quietly affecting while unaffected, effortless seeming vocals, accomplished at creating a subtle melodic pop hook that sticks. Sometimes it's tempting to review the age rather than the output and with age and gigging experience, at which she's putting in the hours, she has plenty of room to develop this sound into something fuller and more mature, but as long as she doesn't dump too much on top of the jewels therein she's in good stead. RIYL: Au Revoir Simone, Rose Elinor Dougall, the idea of a bedroom recorded Ladytron. Speaking of that sort of thing, Burning Hearts are a Finnish duo, the instrumental side also being drummer with the great Cats On Fire. Their warm female vocal over layered keyboards and indie-pop melodies with sophisticated arrangements is in the lineage of fellow Scandinavian adventurers such as Club 8 or Sambassadeur, with hints of Broadcast retro-futurist electronics.
Favours For Sailors have been talked about as being in the JoFo/Danan mould - indeed they've played with the latter recently. Much as their biography references Pavement, Gang Of Four and Television they're not as much of an explosion in a pedals factory as that would suggest, being more in thrall to classic power-pop in the Raspberries/Badfinger/Rubinoos/Records/Cars lineage (which Malkmus has been known to dabble in in his solo career, of course). It's looking a little like we could have a revival on the underground of this kind of straight up three minute hook, power chord and harmony heavy, verse/chorus/verse/chorus/solo/chorus arrangement on our hands in 2009, and F4S seem well placed with the odd nod to - witness the tricksy Kinsellacore guitars of Shy Times and the Modest Mouseish noodling round the perimeter of melody of Connoisseur Of Sunsets. If you wish the Wombats could have worked on the off-kilter pop alchemy from their early singles instead of chasing the commercial dollar, or want to witness a British version of the Apples In Stereo in development, step this way.
Enough frivolity. Shield Your Eyes are a trio chiefly notable to date for featuring Toby Hayes, formerly singer with much-loved complicated post-hardcore heroes Meet Me In St Louis. On bass, mind. Noisy and awkward like a bastard, it's one more graduating from the schools of Don Caballero and Dischord Records, all cross-threaded shouting, math precision colliding with post-rock searching for its own thoroughly diced Higgs boson particle, shifting time sigs and stop-start turning on a sixpence, a trio featuring needling, acrobatic guitar, heavy driving bass and implausible drumming. Despite not featuring a synth, it also reminds us of Three Trapped Tigers' passive-aggressive avant-gardeisms. They're touring forever. With the rest of his time Hayes is Shoes And Socks Off, just him and an acoustic guitar, oblique observations and driven by a necessarily more compressed form of the energy that pulsed through his two other bands. An album, From The Muddy Waters Of Melitzer, came out at the end of the year on Big Scary Monsters, while Shield Your Eyes self-released a self-titled album last autumn.
Also restricting himself to the basic blocks of voice and acoustic is Nicholas Stevenson, originally from Cambridge, now resident in Hereford. Iron & Wine and Elliott Smith are among his suggested influences which is a very good place to start, but we're also detecting Daniel Johnston fragility, Andrew Bird's obtuse storytelling and a certain gothic folkiness at times that could if developed, especially now he has a band around him, lead into very interesting places.
You almost don't want to mention how Wintermitts make prominent use of glockenspiel and accordion just in case. Maybe it'd help if we said they're from Vancouver, because they do sound very Canadian with their tumbling instruments yet keeping wide open spaces in the music, ability to vary their style and a communal spirit which gives it that extra joy. Plus singer Lise Monique sings bilingually in French as well as English, which always impresses us dunces. They're a little Broken Social Scene, a little Delgados, something that reminds us of Cardiff's retro girl-pop heroes The School, handclaps, trumpets, melodicas... there's plenty to come past the recently released domestically album Heirloom, certainly.
God knows what we were doing at the time - sitting in the tea tent wondering why nothing was happening on the outside stage, probably - but we didn't see The Good Natured at Indietracks last year. Perhaps it was the description that left us cold, being as it is 17 year old Sarah McIntosh of Newbury armed with merely an old Yamaha keyboard rescued from her grandmother's house. It seems to be de rigeur on the blogosphere to label her "Kate Nash meets the Postal Service", but balls to descriptive orthodoxy. Often her songs involve lo-fi homemade dance beats and yearning lyrics like The Research gone disco-pop, sometimes shimmering keyboards and quietly affecting while unaffected, effortless seeming vocals, accomplished at creating a subtle melodic pop hook that sticks. Sometimes it's tempting to review the age rather than the output and with age and gigging experience, at which she's putting in the hours, she has plenty of room to develop this sound into something fuller and more mature, but as long as she doesn't dump too much on top of the jewels therein she's in good stead. RIYL: Au Revoir Simone, Rose Elinor Dougall, the idea of a bedroom recorded Ladytron. Speaking of that sort of thing, Burning Hearts are a Finnish duo, the instrumental side also being drummer with the great Cats On Fire. Their warm female vocal over layered keyboards and indie-pop melodies with sophisticated arrangements is in the lineage of fellow Scandinavian adventurers such as Club 8 or Sambassadeur, with hints of Broadcast retro-futurist electronics.
Favours For Sailors have been talked about as being in the JoFo/Danan mould - indeed they've played with the latter recently. Much as their biography references Pavement, Gang Of Four and Television they're not as much of an explosion in a pedals factory as that would suggest, being more in thrall to classic power-pop in the Raspberries/Badfinger/Rubinoos/Records/Cars lineage (which Malkmus has been known to dabble in in his solo career, of course). It's looking a little like we could have a revival on the underground of this kind of straight up three minute hook, power chord and harmony heavy, verse/chorus/verse/chorus/solo/chorus arrangement on our hands in 2009, and F4S seem well placed with the odd nod to - witness the tricksy Kinsellacore guitars of Shy Times and the Modest Mouseish noodling round the perimeter of melody of Connoisseur Of Sunsets. If you wish the Wombats could have worked on the off-kilter pop alchemy from their early singles instead of chasing the commercial dollar, or want to witness a British version of the Apples In Stereo in development, step this way.
Enough frivolity. Shield Your Eyes are a trio chiefly notable to date for featuring Toby Hayes, formerly singer with much-loved complicated post-hardcore heroes Meet Me In St Louis. On bass, mind. Noisy and awkward like a bastard, it's one more graduating from the schools of Don Caballero and Dischord Records, all cross-threaded shouting, math precision colliding with post-rock searching for its own thoroughly diced Higgs boson particle, shifting time sigs and stop-start turning on a sixpence, a trio featuring needling, acrobatic guitar, heavy driving bass and implausible drumming. Despite not featuring a synth, it also reminds us of Three Trapped Tigers' passive-aggressive avant-gardeisms. They're touring forever. With the rest of his time Hayes is Shoes And Socks Off, just him and an acoustic guitar, oblique observations and driven by a necessarily more compressed form of the energy that pulsed through his two other bands. An album, From The Muddy Waters Of Melitzer, came out at the end of the year on Big Scary Monsters, while Shield Your Eyes self-released a self-titled album last autumn.
Also restricting himself to the basic blocks of voice and acoustic is Nicholas Stevenson, originally from Cambridge, now resident in Hereford. Iron & Wine and Elliott Smith are among his suggested influences which is a very good place to start, but we're also detecting Daniel Johnston fragility, Andrew Bird's obtuse storytelling and a certain gothic folkiness at times that could if developed, especially now he has a band around him, lead into very interesting places.
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