It's been an uncomfortable and odd couple of weeks in the music arm of the blogosphere, even betting without Sasha bloody Frere-Jones and his Simon Reynolds-meets-iLX cat/pigeon juxtaposing. In the middle, of course, came the enforced closure of Oink, which you suspect will be more a torrent equivalent of Napster then a closure of one source of music downloads - plenty will spring up in its image, and perhaps already have.
Hitting closer to home, at the tail-end of the weekend before last came Marathon Packs' lengthy critique of the mp3 blogging scene. As the area gains a higher profile of course it'll be defiled to some extent by anyone and everyone with web space or a FileXoom account having a go (and of course this whole thing feeds back to Oink's raison d'etre, which will be interesting to keep an eye on in the immediate future). That the best and most worthwhile act as an inbuilt taste filter is their great strength, especially now every man-jack has a Myspace music account and fifty CDRs. Although we don't go a bundle on overt criticism, we like to think that whenever we post a Myspace link or an mp3 we get across what we like about it and how passionate we are for the music involved, and that establishes the Sweeping The Nation quality kitemark filter through which we sneak twenty random song links every Sunday. Blogs should always be about content.
For our own part, it becomes noticeable in writing up about new bands and releases every week by choice just how limited the language of music criticism is - there's only so many ways you can describe what a song sounds like before you have to distance yourself from musical theory detachment. Many a blog can pull off the music equivalent of New Journalism, with a soupcon of Gonzo, but we've always thought most punters don't want the big analogous pieces. By the same token, though, the best bloggers, your Fluxblogs and Said The Gramophones, achieve what they do not necessarily by openly engaging their prose with what the music sounds like, but after you've heard it the reaction if it's worked would be "right, I see now". Not to say the direct route doesn't equally work.
But what content? Idolator wondered whether herd mentality is making looking properly at new bands next to impossible, taking as its theme the Pitchfork-led wave surrounding the not especially outstanding (ACTUAL STN OPINION) Black Kids. This piece is flawed in that it's a reasonable argument welded to "hey kids, that band you like - they're shit!", but even so their CMJ set brought on a blogger backlash of sorts, on the basis that the still starting up band still without a record deal or any UK press bar a small bit on the Guardian website weren't the finished live article yet. Well spotted. Now broadband means you don't have to put in the work, the research and the Peel listening hours, the churn of new bands has been unsustainable for a while and has already seen off the commercial chances of a few bands held high early on (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Tapes N Tapes, Annuals - who'll care by album two, three in CYHSY's case?) Inevitably you can barely keep up with it as it is - we've got the Vampire Weekend single somewhere and haven't got round to listening to it yet. There's almost too much music to both love and be told to love - maybe it even heightens the thrill of the off-blog-Broadway fresh discovery. Conversely there's bands like Arcade Fire, the Gossip or We Are Scientists, who when they hit big had a few years of touring and the odd album in splendid isolation from Jo Whiley's Live Lounge (isn't it time the first two Gossip albums were reissued in the way Snow Patrol's were?) Blogs, frankly, aren't the world.
So, let us ask you. What do you want from an mp3 blog, or indeed just any old music blog like this? Are these the concerns merely of the hyperspeed music blogger? Does pointless lengthy scholarly discourse when all you want is self-regarding gubbins about new bands make you want to kill people? Why are we trying to justify ourselves? Why doesn't anybody leave comments here any more?
Friday, October 26, 2007
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Two nations divided by one common language
The internet is a strange and wonderful place, full of things to delight or repulse the average what isn't any more called surfer. Just when you think life online has inoculated you against anything surprising cropping up, something comes into browser view that makes you want to step away from the PC/Mac/laptop for a second, in the same way reading something surprising in a newspaper causes one to close the pages and open them again just in case the world has changed its mind in the interim. This is one such moment.
In a moment of Anglophiliac magnificence/stupidity, Tori Amos covered two Chas & Dave songs on the B-side of her 1996 single Caught A Lite Sneeze. Everybody knows this, and everybody has wondered just how namechecks in one of the songs thus covered, That's What I Like Mick (The Sandwich Song), of Glenn Hoddle, Cannon and Ball and "pie and mash and liquor" go down in Amos' southern American accent.
Right?
Well, what about how they translate to a choir of seventy New York fifth graders?
In a moment of Anglophiliac magnificence/stupidity, Tori Amos covered two Chas & Dave songs on the B-side of her 1996 single Caught A Lite Sneeze. Everybody knows this, and everybody has wondered just how namechecks in one of the songs thus covered, That's What I Like Mick (The Sandwich Song), of Glenn Hoddle, Cannon and Ball and "pie and mash and liquor" go down in Amos' southern American accent.
Right?
Well, what about how they translate to a choir of seventy New York fifth graders?
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Amelia rate
As mentioned previously Los Campesinos! release The International Tweexcore Underground this week with two concept B-sides, one of which is C Is The Heavenly Option, Heavenly's 1992 multiple choice love test of a song featuring International Pop Underground majordomo Calvin Johnson. You can probably see where they're coming from. To hear LC!'s gender swap cover you'll have to buy the single, but as for the original...
Heavenly - C Is The Heavenly Option
From Le Jardin de Heavenly
More up to date with two tracks we feel have been made by people more than likely to be across Heavenly's back catalogue. We mentioned Caz Mechanic on the Weekly Sweep just gone, and further investigation turned up her split EP on Tome Records with the not that promisingly named Ray Rumours And The No-Eyed Deers. In fact the mysterious Ray is the somewhat less exotic Ros Murray, in loads of bands by the look of it but best known as bassist with Electrelane, doing impressive stripped back lo-fi tweefolk.
Ray Rumours and the No-Eyed Deers - No Way To Know
From Caz Mechanic/Ray Rumours and the No Eyed Deers
Mimi. Yeah! is the recording nom de plume of artist Mimi Leung, who's been an auxiliary to the Warmsley/Flynn/The Great group we like to reference occasionally but is very much her own one-woman operation. The inevitable forcefully-minded woman with guitar touchstones of Patti Smith and PJ Harvey come to mind, as does Scout Niblett, if you really need parameters.
Mimi. Yeah! - Closer Than
Order Snowball from her website
Heavenly - C Is The Heavenly Option
From Le Jardin de Heavenly
More up to date with two tracks we feel have been made by people more than likely to be across Heavenly's back catalogue. We mentioned Caz Mechanic on the Weekly Sweep just gone, and further investigation turned up her split EP on Tome Records with the not that promisingly named Ray Rumours And The No-Eyed Deers. In fact the mysterious Ray is the somewhat less exotic Ros Murray, in loads of bands by the look of it but best known as bassist with Electrelane, doing impressive stripped back lo-fi tweefolk.
Ray Rumours and the No-Eyed Deers - No Way To Know
From Caz Mechanic/Ray Rumours and the No Eyed Deers
Mimi. Yeah! is the recording nom de plume of artist Mimi Leung, who's been an auxiliary to the Warmsley/Flynn/The Great group we like to reference occasionally but is very much her own one-woman operation. The inevitable forcefully-minded woman with guitar touchstones of Patti Smith and PJ Harvey come to mind, as does Scout Niblett, if you really need parameters.
Mimi. Yeah! - Closer Than
Order Snowball from her website
Monday, October 22, 2007
Weekender : tish ah, nay, hush and fourpence
FREE MUSIC: Fuck me, we're twee. Malmo duo A Smile And A Ribbon have it all going on, from floral print style to glockenspiels, referencing girl groups and glitter kids equally. The Boy I Wish I Never Met is the title track from their recent debut album, and we feel Amelia Fletcher can look down at her spiritual children in glee.
HEY YOU GET OFFA MYSPACE: If we're any judge of the way the indie hive mind works, Leeds' The Chiara L's could be your new favourite band soon enough. We've reviewed them before on the Myspace blog when introduced to them at Indietracks but now they have a single deal it's time to bring them to wider attention. That they're actually named after singer Chiara Lucchini might be seen as taking it a bit far but they're very definitely a band for the post-Long Blondes world, the sound starting in the mid-80s sphere of the Shop Assistants and taking notes along the way from the Raincoats, Peel-era Altered Images, riot grrl and the ten years ago era of glitter-encrusted girl indiepop, hugely infectious and which would in a slightly earlier era have been feted by all the fanzines.
VISUAL REPRESENTATION: In the days up to the 10th you couldn't move on the net for Radiohead embeds as people tried to second-guess what In Rainbows would sound like from muffled, red-tinged live cameraphone videos. The best Radiohead online video presence, naturally, has nothing to do with modernity and has more to do with the sheer incongruity of their surroundings. Observe Andi Peters 'amusingly' introducing "the new Bucks Fizz" at the Smash Hits Poll Winners Party of 1995 or indeed the blitzkrieg and surprise slapstick element at the end of Anyone Can Play Guitar at the MTV Beach House. As someone famously not an immense fan of world touring lipsynching doesn't seem to be Thom's greatest strength, as proved by this Spanish TV go at Just (note Johnny Greenwood suddenly discovering his lefthandedness). But, you know, no matter what animated hissy fits he throws at sound engineers or what not exactly Comedy Store compere levels of heckler response he deploys, Thom likes a laugh really.
VIRAL MARKETING: As November inevitably approaches the number of albums being held back for 2008 by the label increases, and as those details won't have been released yet there's not much we can yet do about them. Misty's Big Adventure have an album, Funny Times, out under their own auspices in a couple of weeks, though, and here's Serious Thing. And for the incongruous sake of it, here's their soundtracking an Irish anti-littering advert.
FALLING OFF A BLOG: Can You See The Sunset From The Southside? feels like one of those blogs everyone is supposed to know, so often does it turn up on blog rolls apart from ours. Let's rectify that: pop-punk slanted it may be at the moment, but it's doubtful you'll find it wanting.
EVERYBODY GET RANDOM: Something for those awaiting the Led Zep reunion - 23 John Bonham drum tracks recorded for In Through The Out Door in 1979. Feel the thunder.
IN OTHER NEWS: Craig Robinson, already noted for his Minipops pixellated pop stars and others, has now constructed One To A Hundred, every number in order ripped from a random selection of songs. Try it as a parlour game.
HEY YOU GET OFFA MYSPACE: If we're any judge of the way the indie hive mind works, Leeds' The Chiara L's could be your new favourite band soon enough. We've reviewed them before on the Myspace blog when introduced to them at Indietracks but now they have a single deal it's time to bring them to wider attention. That they're actually named after singer Chiara Lucchini might be seen as taking it a bit far but they're very definitely a band for the post-Long Blondes world, the sound starting in the mid-80s sphere of the Shop Assistants and taking notes along the way from the Raincoats, Peel-era Altered Images, riot grrl and the ten years ago era of glitter-encrusted girl indiepop, hugely infectious and which would in a slightly earlier era have been feted by all the fanzines.
VISUAL REPRESENTATION: In the days up to the 10th you couldn't move on the net for Radiohead embeds as people tried to second-guess what In Rainbows would sound like from muffled, red-tinged live cameraphone videos. The best Radiohead online video presence, naturally, has nothing to do with modernity and has more to do with the sheer incongruity of their surroundings. Observe Andi Peters 'amusingly' introducing "the new Bucks Fizz" at the Smash Hits Poll Winners Party of 1995 or indeed the blitzkrieg and surprise slapstick element at the end of Anyone Can Play Guitar at the MTV Beach House. As someone famously not an immense fan of world touring lipsynching doesn't seem to be Thom's greatest strength, as proved by this Spanish TV go at Just (note Johnny Greenwood suddenly discovering his lefthandedness). But, you know, no matter what animated hissy fits he throws at sound engineers or what not exactly Comedy Store compere levels of heckler response he deploys, Thom likes a laugh really.
VIRAL MARKETING: As November inevitably approaches the number of albums being held back for 2008 by the label increases, and as those details won't have been released yet there's not much we can yet do about them. Misty's Big Adventure have an album, Funny Times, out under their own auspices in a couple of weeks, though, and here's Serious Thing. And for the incongruous sake of it, here's their soundtracking an Irish anti-littering advert.
FALLING OFF A BLOG: Can You See The Sunset From The Southside? feels like one of those blogs everyone is supposed to know, so often does it turn up on blog rolls apart from ours. Let's rectify that: pop-punk slanted it may be at the moment, but it's doubtful you'll find it wanting.
EVERYBODY GET RANDOM: Something for those awaiting the Led Zep reunion - 23 John Bonham drum tracks recorded for In Through The Out Door in 1979. Feel the thunder.
IN OTHER NEWS: Craig Robinson, already noted for his Minipops pixellated pop stars and others, has now constructed One To A Hundred, every number in order ripped from a random selection of songs. Try it as a parlour game.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
In shops tomorrow: 22/10
Singles
Record industry lore has it that the third single is the one on which your act goes for broke, the release which determines whether the public will (be forced to) have an interest in your pet project. Essentially, single three shows whether you daytime radio and press lionisation crossover potential. Los Campesinos!' third single, The International Tweexcore Underground, resembles a Cardiff Scene Broken Social Scene with carried away glockenspiel and sawing violin, and is described by the band as "a story of a friendship of two opposites and how they are in the best band in the world" which namechecks Henry Rollins, Amelia Fletcher, Ian MacKaye, Calvin Johnson and Sarah Records. Scott Mills' producer has not yet put a call in. It is of course magnificent, which we would say because it's Los Campesinos! and if they released a cover of No Charge played entirely on hosepipe and accordion we'd go a bundle on it. No, instead they're releasing a "concept single", the B-sides being covers of Black Flag's Police Story and Heavenly's Calvinist classic C Is The Heavenly Option. Presumably Wichita couldn't afford to press up a CD2 with Out Of Step and Pristine Christine on. Incidentally, someone started a since deleted Wikipedia entry for 'tweecore' claiming this record invented the term, which when shown to him made Gareth go a neat shade of puce (or so we imagine, it was an online discussion), not unreasonably as not only has the phrase been in net use for years - the Bobby McGees used to probably ironically call themselves "the inventors of tweecore" - but we found we'd employed it to describe Suburban Kids With Biblical Names last end of year. Sorry. Battles will never, ever be referred to using the word 'twee'. Indeed, by now most have run out of epithets, genres and lexicographal epiphanies employed to describe exactly what they do sound like, with their pitch control and their finger tapping and their big cymbal stand and all that. Tonto comes with remixes including one from Four Tet, live tracks and a DVD featuring both videos and a behind the scenes. Mirrored will be at or near the top of just as many end of year lists as Sound Of Silver, both taking the principles of the groove in completely different directions as if to say "fuck you, Sasha Frere-Jones". Someone Great is probably the next closest it comes to what a single sounds like nowadays. Two years in Blood Red Shoes are still taking the scenic coastal route of limited edition 7"s building up to January's album. I Wish I Was Someone Better, their fifth such single release by our reckoning, gives Steven a lead vocal and ratches up the two-person tension bred on endless support touring yet again. The other way to get attention is to whore your image out to the fashion magazines, hence the brief spell around June where everyone seemed to be going on about The Teenagers, three Frenchmen based in London with rudeness aforethought. Even the most horribly contrived i-D band usually have one thing about them, though, and in their case it's the synth Velvets Strapisms of the not exactly coded Starlett Johansson. Either out last week or next, so we're going for the mean average, comes another one from the Brighton alt-diaspora, 4 Or 5 Magicians, essentially just one Dan Ormsby, and if their/his debut 7" Forever On The Edge bears hallmarks of not only being slanted but enchanted also (and of Guided By Voices, come to that) there are far, far worse things to be. It's also a song about being in a failing band that works. Popular Workshop called their first EP Stutter And Dance, which just about does the descriptive job for us - rhythms that break themselves down and start back up at will, energetic angular screes and a lot of post-Sonic Youth flailing about around the ring roads of melody. Double A'd 7" William, It Was Really Something/Radical attempts to leash their hyperkinecity to mastertape. There's no good reason for the two year old Destroy Everything You Touch by Ladytron to come back out, but such are the industry's wiles. The Maccabees' Toothpaste Kisses isn't a tremendously obvious single choice but at least it's not got high speed hi-hat and declamatory guitar like all their other songs. Adele has been talked about as the ace in the New London Kids pack for so long now it's hard to think Hometown Glory is her debut, a 7" on Jamie T's Pacemaker label. Frankly it doesn't need its synthetically produced string section, it's good enough in its raw form. It's a good ten to twelve years since Gallon Drunk made their name in the realm of seedy London underbelly swamp rock, and despite many a lineup change James Johnston is still sounding like Nick Cave's perma-sozzled mate (which, oddly...) on Grand Union Canal. Middlesbrough's energetic female frontline pop-punk if that wasn't such a debased term kids We Start Fires start to come of age at last on Let's Get Our Hands Dirty, while after what seems like years making a small inroad in America and Liela Moss adding vocals for basically everyone who asks the Duke Spirit return for unwarranted Duke Special confusion aplenty on EP Ex Voto.
Albums
Recently seen supporting on the curtailed Decemberists UK tour, Land Of Talk were described by us not long ago and understandably by nobody else anywhere ever as Montreal's Sky Larkin. It's based on more than their being a female-fronted trio, you'll be glad to hear, more their adding to the Throwing Muses/Breeders/Veruca Salt lineage of same and leaving their own personal stamp of ambition and ideas on it. Applause Cheer Boo Hiss has been extended from mini-album to full LP status by the addition of three extra tracks for the UK market, exhibiting much the same sort of streamlined post-cool and determination. Holy Fuck, having self-titled their first, get out of second album titling horror the easy way by calling it LP. Very Public Image Ltd. Unlike the record, which is very !!! in that they create faux-electronic dance-punk by analogue means, using percussion, antique synths and found sounds to create a soundscape to dance to and think about later. Every Monday night through late summer at London's Big Chill House The Mules curated a bill of favourite new bands, which they've now collated together on Pick Your Own. what could have been an exercise in nose-thumbing is averted by the realisation that if the whole market for synth-post-punk-country becomes sluggish they can come and write STN for a bit, given their favourites include Emmy The Great, Lightspeed Champion, Napoleon IIIrd, Noah And The Whale, Johnny Flynn and the Sussex Wit, Eugene McGuinness, Jonquil, Son Of Dave and Fireworks Night. Krautrock sampler the easy way with Can reissuing nearly their whole back catalogue. Tago Mago is the one the legend is built on, Ege Bamyasi is preferred by many, Future Days' four tracks in forty-odd minutes signpost ambient's way. The Wedding Present are heading off around the country from Tuesday on a George Best twentieth anniversary tour (Lucky Soul are doing some support dates in the latter end of the tour in November), and to coincide the first two of the official bootleg Live Tapes mail order cassettes are remastered for Live 1987. Now that David Longstreth is getting attention for his Dirty Projectors' Rise Above project its 2005 predecessor The Getty Address gets its first proper UK release. According to Longstreth's notes "The Getty Address is about the conflict of Hernan Cortes and the Aztecs in 1519-21, the virtualization of wilderness on a completely circumscribed globe, dirty projection, and love cerebral and spiritual... inspired by Aztec mythology, the Eagles, and the 9/11 aftermath". Right.
DVDs
A month ago Frank Turner's DVD was talked up by us as a document of his life as the gig-booked acoustic wanderer, comprising live footage, a documentary, videos and fan contributions. That was before the inevitable processing delays, but All About The Destination finally hits shelves this week.
Books
A year and a half after its ignominious and pop schedule-landmining exit seems a curious point at which to write a tribute to Top Of The Pops, but Ian Gittins has done just such in the form of Top Of The Pops: Mishaps, Miming and Music - True Adventures of TV's No.1 Pop Show. If it doesn't include the anecdote about the production team on the first show realising the floor manager was bald and convincing him to wear a wig so he didn't stand out it's not worth the recycle bin its paper was scrounged from. We imagine Damon Albarn: Blur, Gorillaz and Other Fables is the first unofficial biography of the inscrutable son of Soft Machine's lighting designer (and yet we can't remember the birthdays of relatives) is because Stuart Maconie's worthwhile if already well out of date 3862 Days authorised Blur biography did such a thorough job both in and between the lines. The usual slew of old acquaintances line up to reminisce.
Record industry lore has it that the third single is the one on which your act goes for broke, the release which determines whether the public will (be forced to) have an interest in your pet project. Essentially, single three shows whether you daytime radio and press lionisation crossover potential. Los Campesinos!' third single, The International Tweexcore Underground, resembles a Cardiff Scene Broken Social Scene with carried away glockenspiel and sawing violin, and is described by the band as "a story of a friendship of two opposites and how they are in the best band in the world" which namechecks Henry Rollins, Amelia Fletcher, Ian MacKaye, Calvin Johnson and Sarah Records. Scott Mills' producer has not yet put a call in. It is of course magnificent, which we would say because it's Los Campesinos! and if they released a cover of No Charge played entirely on hosepipe and accordion we'd go a bundle on it. No, instead they're releasing a "concept single", the B-sides being covers of Black Flag's Police Story and Heavenly's Calvinist classic C Is The Heavenly Option. Presumably Wichita couldn't afford to press up a CD2 with Out Of Step and Pristine Christine on. Incidentally, someone started a since deleted Wikipedia entry for 'tweecore' claiming this record invented the term, which when shown to him made Gareth go a neat shade of puce (or so we imagine, it was an online discussion), not unreasonably as not only has the phrase been in net use for years - the Bobby McGees used to probably ironically call themselves "the inventors of tweecore" - but we found we'd employed it to describe Suburban Kids With Biblical Names last end of year. Sorry. Battles will never, ever be referred to using the word 'twee'. Indeed, by now most have run out of epithets, genres and lexicographal epiphanies employed to describe exactly what they do sound like, with their pitch control and their finger tapping and their big cymbal stand and all that. Tonto comes with remixes including one from Four Tet, live tracks and a DVD featuring both videos and a behind the scenes. Mirrored will be at or near the top of just as many end of year lists as Sound Of Silver, both taking the principles of the groove in completely different directions as if to say "fuck you, Sasha Frere-Jones". Someone Great is probably the next closest it comes to what a single sounds like nowadays. Two years in Blood Red Shoes are still taking the scenic coastal route of limited edition 7"s building up to January's album. I Wish I Was Someone Better, their fifth such single release by our reckoning, gives Steven a lead vocal and ratches up the two-person tension bred on endless support touring yet again. The other way to get attention is to whore your image out to the fashion magazines, hence the brief spell around June where everyone seemed to be going on about The Teenagers, three Frenchmen based in London with rudeness aforethought. Even the most horribly contrived i-D band usually have one thing about them, though, and in their case it's the synth Velvets Strapisms of the not exactly coded Starlett Johansson. Either out last week or next, so we're going for the mean average, comes another one from the Brighton alt-diaspora, 4 Or 5 Magicians, essentially just one Dan Ormsby, and if their/his debut 7" Forever On The Edge bears hallmarks of not only being slanted but enchanted also (and of Guided By Voices, come to that) there are far, far worse things to be. It's also a song about being in a failing band that works. Popular Workshop called their first EP Stutter And Dance, which just about does the descriptive job for us - rhythms that break themselves down and start back up at will, energetic angular screes and a lot of post-Sonic Youth flailing about around the ring roads of melody. Double A'd 7" William, It Was Really Something/Radical attempts to leash their hyperkinecity to mastertape. There's no good reason for the two year old Destroy Everything You Touch by Ladytron to come back out, but such are the industry's wiles. The Maccabees' Toothpaste Kisses isn't a tremendously obvious single choice but at least it's not got high speed hi-hat and declamatory guitar like all their other songs. Adele has been talked about as the ace in the New London Kids pack for so long now it's hard to think Hometown Glory is her debut, a 7" on Jamie T's Pacemaker label. Frankly it doesn't need its synthetically produced string section, it's good enough in its raw form. It's a good ten to twelve years since Gallon Drunk made their name in the realm of seedy London underbelly swamp rock, and despite many a lineup change James Johnston is still sounding like Nick Cave's perma-sozzled mate (which, oddly...) on Grand Union Canal. Middlesbrough's energetic female frontline pop-punk if that wasn't such a debased term kids We Start Fires start to come of age at last on Let's Get Our Hands Dirty, while after what seems like years making a small inroad in America and Liela Moss adding vocals for basically everyone who asks the Duke Spirit return for unwarranted Duke Special confusion aplenty on EP Ex Voto.
Albums
Recently seen supporting on the curtailed Decemberists UK tour, Land Of Talk were described by us not long ago and understandably by nobody else anywhere ever as Montreal's Sky Larkin. It's based on more than their being a female-fronted trio, you'll be glad to hear, more their adding to the Throwing Muses/Breeders/Veruca Salt lineage of same and leaving their own personal stamp of ambition and ideas on it. Applause Cheer Boo Hiss has been extended from mini-album to full LP status by the addition of three extra tracks for the UK market, exhibiting much the same sort of streamlined post-cool and determination. Holy Fuck, having self-titled their first, get out of second album titling horror the easy way by calling it LP. Very Public Image Ltd. Unlike the record, which is very !!! in that they create faux-electronic dance-punk by analogue means, using percussion, antique synths and found sounds to create a soundscape to dance to and think about later. Every Monday night through late summer at London's Big Chill House The Mules curated a bill of favourite new bands, which they've now collated together on Pick Your Own. what could have been an exercise in nose-thumbing is averted by the realisation that if the whole market for synth-post-punk-country becomes sluggish they can come and write STN for a bit, given their favourites include Emmy The Great, Lightspeed Champion, Napoleon IIIrd, Noah And The Whale, Johnny Flynn and the Sussex Wit, Eugene McGuinness, Jonquil, Son Of Dave and Fireworks Night. Krautrock sampler the easy way with Can reissuing nearly their whole back catalogue. Tago Mago is the one the legend is built on, Ege Bamyasi is preferred by many, Future Days' four tracks in forty-odd minutes signpost ambient's way. The Wedding Present are heading off around the country from Tuesday on a George Best twentieth anniversary tour (Lucky Soul are doing some support dates in the latter end of the tour in November), and to coincide the first two of the official bootleg Live Tapes mail order cassettes are remastered for Live 1987. Now that David Longstreth is getting attention for his Dirty Projectors' Rise Above project its 2005 predecessor The Getty Address gets its first proper UK release. According to Longstreth's notes "The Getty Address is about the conflict of Hernan Cortes and the Aztecs in 1519-21, the virtualization of wilderness on a completely circumscribed globe, dirty projection, and love cerebral and spiritual... inspired by Aztec mythology, the Eagles, and the 9/11 aftermath". Right.
DVDs
A month ago Frank Turner's DVD was talked up by us as a document of his life as the gig-booked acoustic wanderer, comprising live footage, a documentary, videos and fan contributions. That was before the inevitable processing delays, but All About The Destination finally hits shelves this week.
Books
A year and a half after its ignominious and pop schedule-landmining exit seems a curious point at which to write a tribute to Top Of The Pops, but Ian Gittins has done just such in the form of Top Of The Pops: Mishaps, Miming and Music - True Adventures of TV's No.1 Pop Show. If it doesn't include the anecdote about the production team on the first show realising the floor manager was bald and convincing him to wear a wig so he didn't stand out it's not worth the recycle bin its paper was scrounged from. We imagine Damon Albarn: Blur, Gorillaz and Other Fables is the first unofficial biography of the inscrutable son of Soft Machine's lighting designer (and yet we can't remember the birthdays of relatives) is because Stuart Maconie's worthwhile if already well out of date 3862 Days authorised Blur biography did such a thorough job both in and between the lines. The usual slew of old acquaintances line up to reminisce.
The Weekly Sweep
Thursday, October 18, 2007
They're on the list
On the evidence of that covers album it hardly deserves it - pretty much every one of those songs is a note for note reproduction! What's wrong with bands now? Don't answer that - but we continue our tribute to forty years of Radio 1 by thinking you'd like to see the daytime playlist issued on this day ten years ago:
A List
All Saints - Never Ever
On its way to number one, with the video that suggested all four had been out with the same bloke. Which is entirely possible, of course. "A few questions that I need to know" indeed.
David Arnold/Propellerheads - On Her Majestys Secret Service
The least subtle CV placement in history, Arnold made an album of Bond theme reinterpretations and promptly got called up to do every Bond theme since. Propellerheads still going and with a Rufus Wainwright vocal in the can, it says here.
Ash - A Life Less Ordinary
Charlotte's first with the band. In light of her departure the ten years with the one band that can be relied upon to make Jamaica's Hedonism II resort want to pack up and all go home we saw her the other night - review on the Myspace blog tomorrow, hopefully - and she showed few outward signs of being worse off for the experience bar her onstage drink being Jack Daniels. In a plastic glass, mind.
Backstreet Boys - As Long As You Love Me
Beck - Deadweight
From the film A Life Less Ordinary, which set Ewan McGregor on the path from massive UK film star to where he is now (doing innumerable documentaries about motorbikes)
Black Grape - Get Higher
Shaun and Bez both seem to have written this bit out of their CVs, and probably lives. Disintegrated at the end of Britpop and all the drugs that implies, ie the same amount as usual for Shaun.
The Charlatans - Tellin’ Stories
Dannii - Everything I Wanted
And who knew Dannii would be having a career revival in 2007?
Double 99 - Ripgroove
Ah, speed garage. Later bastardised into UK Garage, then two-step, then about a million sub-genres like a Big Bang of dance genres that hit overground and promptly dissipated.
Embrace - All You Good Good People
Eternal - Angel of Mine
Faithless - Don’t Leave (Hard Mix)
The one that doesn't sound much like Faithless.
Hurricane # 1 - Step Into My World
Andy Bell, as we know, with a song that finished with the full three minutes of guitar solo. It was a British guitar band in 1997, what can we say.
Jay-Z feat. Babyface and Foxy Brown - Sunshine
The Lighthouse Family - Raincloud
LL Cool J - Phenomenon
Pulp - Help The Aged
Jimmy Ray - Are You Jimmy Ray?
1997 was a bloody odd year for the major label marketing machines, as stung by just how big the Spice Girls were becoming they threw everything at a wall in case some of it stuck. Jimmy Ray, for example, a Fullerfied rockabilly-influenced potential teen idol who made it to two singles. He ain't no window cleaner, apparently.
Revival 3000 - The Mighty High
Blame Oakenfold.
Rialto - Monday Morning 5:19
Double drummer widescreen melodrama from him off Kinky Machine, who famously contrived to be dropped twice by the same label
Sash! feat. La Trec - Stay
One of the DJ's five UK number twos without ever having a number one. And they say Westlife chart feats are forgettable.
Smash Mouth - Walkin’ On The Sun
The actual one hit by the All Star lot fronted by a man with an objectionable goatee. Kevin Greening's breakfast fill-in record of the week in Diana death week.
Spice Girls - Spice Up Your Life
This whole shite is drawing inexorably closer, isn't it? Especially with every single gossip magazine running some cover headline SPICE FEARS story, which makes a change from their usual POSH FEARS lead.
Byron Stingily - Sing A Song
Michelle Weeks - Don’t Give Up
Both have probably forgotten themselves who they were.
B List
911 - Party People Friday Night
With the boy bands starting to wane the weakest would be taken down first. At least it wasn't the secret weapon-proffering Bodyshakin'.
Jon Bon Jovi - Janie, Don’t Take Your Love To Town
Probably not a rewritten cover.
Brand New Heavies - You’ve Got A Friend
Probably not rewritten.
Cast - I’m So Lonely
Changing Faces - I Got Somebody Else
Roy Davis Jr. - Gabriel
The first big star of speed garage, 'they' said. 'They' are wrong more often than many would admit.
Death In Vegas - Rocco
Not on their proper Best Of, tellingly.
Deep Dish - Stranded
Dust Junkys - Non Stop Operation
Radio 1 saw big things for this lot, fronted by MC Tunes, but they should have hung out a few years for rap-rock to properly take hold.
Echo And The Bunnymen - Don’t Let It Get You Down
Echobelly - Here Comes The Big Rush
Fatboy Slim - Everybody Loves A Carnival
What was the difference between this and Everybody Needs A 303?
Hanson - I Will Come To You
The third single and already well on the wane from "one of them must be a girl?" heights.
Natalie Imbruglia - Torn
A playlist debut for the song that became a cause celebre when Chris Evans realised the writing credits weren't in Imbruglia's name, not that anybody else cared.
Lil’ Kim - Crush On You
Natural Born Chillers - Rock The Funky Beats
Ocean Colour Scene - Better Day
Puff Daddy - Been Around The World
Radish - Simple Sincerity
Ben Kweller's band, sold on the fact he was a 16 year old frontman. Tell that to music writers of today and they'd laugh. And then commission a lead feature for the Observer Music Monthly on them.
Stereophonics - Traffic
Ah, the good Stereophonics song.
Sundance - Sundance
Supergrass - Late In The Day
The Supernaturals - Prepare To Land
A band whose main fan page features a link to "similar artist Elliott Smith", singer James McColl is now the driving force in the Hussy's. Blonde keyboardist Ken's location is less certain.
Texas - Put Your Arms Around Me
Travis - Happy
From their driving Scotrock phase, not their big Coldplay-preceding hit balladry one.
C List
Peter Andre - Lonely
It's plastic, y'know.
Aqua - Barbie Girl
Insert own joke here.
Gary Barlow - Open Road
Toni Braxton - How Could An Angel Break My Heart
Celetia - Special
Ether - She Could Fly
See, this was the sort of thing post-Britpop glory days that Radio 1 put its faith in only to be instantly forgotten. Welsh trio, we think.
Goldie feat. KRS One - Digital
Lynden David Hall - Sexy Cinderella
Mandalay - This Life
North And South - Breathing
North And South! Had a Children's BBC series and a green-haired guitarist, neither of which endeared them much to ver kidz in the end.
Olive - Miracle
P F Project feat. Ewan McGregor - Choose Life
Just a sample of the Trainspotting speech over sub-Underworld beats.
Primal Scream - Burning Wheel
Roni Size - Brown Paper Bag
It's the sound of the future.
A List
All Saints - Never Ever
On its way to number one, with the video that suggested all four had been out with the same bloke. Which is entirely possible, of course. "A few questions that I need to know" indeed.
David Arnold/Propellerheads - On Her Majestys Secret Service
The least subtle CV placement in history, Arnold made an album of Bond theme reinterpretations and promptly got called up to do every Bond theme since. Propellerheads still going and with a Rufus Wainwright vocal in the can, it says here.
Ash - A Life Less Ordinary
Charlotte's first with the band. In light of her departure the ten years with the one band that can be relied upon to make Jamaica's Hedonism II resort want to pack up and all go home we saw her the other night - review on the Myspace blog tomorrow, hopefully - and she showed few outward signs of being worse off for the experience bar her onstage drink being Jack Daniels. In a plastic glass, mind.
Backstreet Boys - As Long As You Love Me
Beck - Deadweight
From the film A Life Less Ordinary, which set Ewan McGregor on the path from massive UK film star to where he is now (doing innumerable documentaries about motorbikes)
Black Grape - Get Higher
Shaun and Bez both seem to have written this bit out of their CVs, and probably lives. Disintegrated at the end of Britpop and all the drugs that implies, ie the same amount as usual for Shaun.
The Charlatans - Tellin’ Stories
Dannii - Everything I Wanted
And who knew Dannii would be having a career revival in 2007?
Double 99 - Ripgroove
Ah, speed garage. Later bastardised into UK Garage, then two-step, then about a million sub-genres like a Big Bang of dance genres that hit overground and promptly dissipated.
Embrace - All You Good Good People
Eternal - Angel of Mine
Faithless - Don’t Leave (Hard Mix)
The one that doesn't sound much like Faithless.
Hurricane # 1 - Step Into My World
Andy Bell, as we know, with a song that finished with the full three minutes of guitar solo. It was a British guitar band in 1997, what can we say.
Jay-Z feat. Babyface and Foxy Brown - Sunshine
The Lighthouse Family - Raincloud
LL Cool J - Phenomenon
Pulp - Help The Aged
Jimmy Ray - Are You Jimmy Ray?
1997 was a bloody odd year for the major label marketing machines, as stung by just how big the Spice Girls were becoming they threw everything at a wall in case some of it stuck. Jimmy Ray, for example, a Fullerfied rockabilly-influenced potential teen idol who made it to two singles. He ain't no window cleaner, apparently.
Revival 3000 - The Mighty High
Blame Oakenfold.
Rialto - Monday Morning 5:19
Double drummer widescreen melodrama from him off Kinky Machine, who famously contrived to be dropped twice by the same label
Sash! feat. La Trec - Stay
One of the DJ's five UK number twos without ever having a number one. And they say Westlife chart feats are forgettable.
Smash Mouth - Walkin’ On The Sun
The actual one hit by the All Star lot fronted by a man with an objectionable goatee. Kevin Greening's breakfast fill-in record of the week in Diana death week.
Spice Girls - Spice Up Your Life
This whole shite is drawing inexorably closer, isn't it? Especially with every single gossip magazine running some cover headline SPICE FEARS story, which makes a change from their usual POSH FEARS lead.
Byron Stingily - Sing A Song
Michelle Weeks - Don’t Give Up
Both have probably forgotten themselves who they were.
B List
911 - Party People Friday Night
With the boy bands starting to wane the weakest would be taken down first. At least it wasn't the secret weapon-proffering Bodyshakin'.
Jon Bon Jovi - Janie, Don’t Take Your Love To Town
Probably not a rewritten cover.
Brand New Heavies - You’ve Got A Friend
Probably not rewritten.
Cast - I’m So Lonely
Changing Faces - I Got Somebody Else
Roy Davis Jr. - Gabriel
The first big star of speed garage, 'they' said. 'They' are wrong more often than many would admit.
Death In Vegas - Rocco
Not on their proper Best Of, tellingly.
Deep Dish - Stranded
Dust Junkys - Non Stop Operation
Radio 1 saw big things for this lot, fronted by MC Tunes, but they should have hung out a few years for rap-rock to properly take hold.
Echo And The Bunnymen - Don’t Let It Get You Down
Echobelly - Here Comes The Big Rush
Fatboy Slim - Everybody Loves A Carnival
What was the difference between this and Everybody Needs A 303?
Hanson - I Will Come To You
The third single and already well on the wane from "one of them must be a girl?" heights.
Natalie Imbruglia - Torn
A playlist debut for the song that became a cause celebre when Chris Evans realised the writing credits weren't in Imbruglia's name, not that anybody else cared.
Lil’ Kim - Crush On You
Natural Born Chillers - Rock The Funky Beats
Ocean Colour Scene - Better Day
Puff Daddy - Been Around The World
Radish - Simple Sincerity
Ben Kweller's band, sold on the fact he was a 16 year old frontman. Tell that to music writers of today and they'd laugh. And then commission a lead feature for the Observer Music Monthly on them.
Stereophonics - Traffic
Ah, the good Stereophonics song.
Sundance - Sundance
Supergrass - Late In The Day
The Supernaturals - Prepare To Land
A band whose main fan page features a link to "similar artist Elliott Smith", singer James McColl is now the driving force in the Hussy's. Blonde keyboardist Ken's location is less certain.
Texas - Put Your Arms Around Me
Travis - Happy
From their driving Scotrock phase, not their big Coldplay-preceding hit balladry one.
C List
Peter Andre - Lonely
It's plastic, y'know.
Aqua - Barbie Girl
Insert own joke here.
Gary Barlow - Open Road
Toni Braxton - How Could An Angel Break My Heart
Celetia - Special
Ether - She Could Fly
See, this was the sort of thing post-Britpop glory days that Radio 1 put its faith in only to be instantly forgotten. Welsh trio, we think.
Goldie feat. KRS One - Digital
Lynden David Hall - Sexy Cinderella
Mandalay - This Life
North And South - Breathing
North And South! Had a Children's BBC series and a green-haired guitarist, neither of which endeared them much to ver kidz in the end.
Olive - Miracle
P F Project feat. Ewan McGregor - Choose Life
Just a sample of the Trainspotting speech over sub-Underworld beats.
Primal Scream - Burning Wheel
Roni Size - Brown Paper Bag
It's the sound of the future.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
A gentle shove in the right direction
Join our Facebook group!
In no way is this appeal related to the ever growing and far more than us numbers on we like to think comparable British music blog Facebook groups, you understand.
It's Wyclef Jean's 35th birthday today (as it is Eminem's, but someone else can deal with that) We're risking all sorts of eyebrow raising from our readership here, but wasn't this a fantastic record?
In no way is this appeal related to the ever growing and far more than us numbers on we like to think comparable British music blog Facebook groups, you understand.
It's Wyclef Jean's 35th birthday today (as it is Eminem's, but someone else can deal with that) We're risking all sorts of eyebrow raising from our readership here, but wasn't this a fantastic record?
Monday, October 15, 2007
Weekender : we never cared about Ian McCaskill
FREE MUSIC: It seems to us that Nada Surf have been searching for an identity since Popular accidentally became a quasi-novelty hit in America eleven years ago. They've been heading down a road marked If Wet Death Cab For Cutie recently, cemented by Chris Walla producing their last album The Proximity Effect, and you can make your own mind up about their current direction with See These Bones from next February's fifth album Lucky.
HEY YOU GET OFFA MYSPACE: Team Waterpolo may have only formed in July - their Myspace account says it was registered in August 2005, but best not to pick holes at this early stage - but there's already something building up around the Roy Lichtenstein-admiring Preston foursome. They've recently been playing with The Whip, which makes a kind of sense in that they're a more organic version of that 808-driven thing. Shame it's come about so late, as this would be perfect summer convertible listening.
VISUAL REPRESENTATION: You may have seen the mad story this weekend about the Georgian president enacting the only way of controlling the sporadic border area civil war, a free gig by Boney M. And not even the proper Boney M at that, but one of the three breakaway touring groups featuring a single original member each. Ohhh, those Russian breakaway states.
FALLING OFF A BLOG: Field Records is only two proper posts old but it's already setting its unique stall out - live reviews and interviews, yes, but also specially recorded live tracks from those covered. Field recordings, see. Adam Gnade and Gossamer Albatross (oh, we know, we know) are first and second up.
IN OTHER NEWS: Department S were Stiff Records New Wavers who appeared on the cover of Smash Hits in May 1981 following the number 22 success of the great Is Vic There? 25 years after splitting and despite the death of singer Vaughan Toulouse (yes) in 1991 they've not just brought out a new single today with a line-up featuring the keyboardist on vocals, Madness' Mark Bedford on bass and sax for hire Terry Edwards, but it's a cover of Alvin Stardust's My Coo-Ca-Choo which is much the same as the original were it recorded with Adam And The Ants backing up. Hear it for yourself.
HEY YOU GET OFFA MYSPACE: Team Waterpolo may have only formed in July - their Myspace account says it was registered in August 2005, but best not to pick holes at this early stage - but there's already something building up around the Roy Lichtenstein-admiring Preston foursome. They've recently been playing with The Whip, which makes a kind of sense in that they're a more organic version of that 808-driven thing. Shame it's come about so late, as this would be perfect summer convertible listening.
VISUAL REPRESENTATION: You may have seen the mad story this weekend about the Georgian president enacting the only way of controlling the sporadic border area civil war, a free gig by Boney M. And not even the proper Boney M at that, but one of the three breakaway touring groups featuring a single original member each. Ohhh, those Russian breakaway states.
FALLING OFF A BLOG: Field Records is only two proper posts old but it's already setting its unique stall out - live reviews and interviews, yes, but also specially recorded live tracks from those covered. Field recordings, see. Adam Gnade and Gossamer Albatross (oh, we know, we know) are first and second up.
IN OTHER NEWS: Department S were Stiff Records New Wavers who appeared on the cover of Smash Hits in May 1981 following the number 22 success of the great Is Vic There? 25 years after splitting and despite the death of singer Vaughan Toulouse (yes) in 1991 they've not just brought out a new single today with a line-up featuring the keyboardist on vocals, Madness' Mark Bedford on bass and sax for hire Terry Edwards, but it's a cover of Alvin Stardust's My Coo-Ca-Choo which is much the same as the original were it recorded with Adam And The Ants backing up. Hear it for yourself.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
In shops tomorrow: 15/10
Singles
We didn't discover Sky Larkin, of course - they were doing local media two years ago - but we can't help feel an element of paternal pride now more people are starting to wake up to their serrated melodies and Leeds Breeders/Muses come-ons since we first highlghted them last January following Nothing But Green Lights' enthusiasm. Currently, and perhaps forever doomed to be, on the road with Los Campesinos!, single two Molten, again on Dance To The Radio, is a scratchy, vaulting thing that cements Katie Harkin's place among our most nonchalant frontwomen. And while great, its quality is at the very least equalled by unsettling organ-led longstanding demo favourite Keepsakes on the B-side, a Weekly Sweep inductee last June. Von Sudenfed recently played a handful of dates, most notable for how Mark E Smith didn't even dare touch Jan St Werner and Andi Toma's equipment. The celebrations continue with 12" double A side The Rhinohead/Slow Down Ronnie, the most poppy moment from Tromatic Reflexxions allied to a new Mark E appeal to Ronnie O'Sullivan. Mixer of the moment Pilooski contributes a remix too. Forget that band he used to be in, Dev Hynes is very much his own man following his folk-pop heart, literally, as Lightspeed Champion. If the slide guitar at the start of 10" Midnight Surprise - ten minutes long, which for a second single proves he's brave too - suggests George Harrison, the rest reminds you that he recorded it at Saddle Creek HQ. Emmy The Great and assorted Tilly & The Wallers provide backup. Try Harder Recordings are a label we're all going to have to keep a close eye on - already home of Jonquil and Youthmovies and with two early Blood Red Shoes singles and Foals' debut release in the back catalogue, they now bring us another set of Leicester emigres, Tired Irie, who sound adjacent to Foals if they really did sound like being a new Q And Not U some lazy types claim them to be. Tired Irie EP is your first taste of something that could be quite impressive. If Lily Allen's presence proves the former conscious rapper Common has come well in from the cold - album Finding Forever is his first Billboard number one - the commodity cauterising and marching drum hook of Drivin' Me Wild make it the best big hit the genre has produced in a while.
Albums
With nine release Mondays left in 2007 we're coming towards the end of the contenders for people's varying lists of the best albums of the year, what with Best Of, compilation and cash-in season pretty much upon us. Someone who might make an appearance on a few is Emma Louise Niblett, Scout Niblett to you. The Nottingham raised, Albini trusting, wig sporting, grunge inspired occasional corporeal form of The Goddess could on fourth album This Fool Can Die Now surely easily be set to make the leap from small scale cult to uncomfortable critical darling. Will Oldham turns up on four tracks but it's all about Niblett's minimal guitar, maximum drums and raw nerve emotions, not easily shrugging off the Chan'n'Polly comparisons but proving that she can sit easily next to them in terms of going against the grain under cover of hoping the mainstream comes to her rather than the traditional vice versa. Uneasy listening, but spellbinding. David Longsterth of the Dirty Projectors supposedly hadn't heard Black Flag's Damaged since college when he decided to make a tribute album to its visceral power, Rise Above, which replaces the barrack-rousing hardcore with eclectic psych-folk, like world music era Talking Heads recontextualising with Grizzly Bear, whose Chris Taylor produces. It really doesn't help to be acquainted with the original, except to explain what the source of the juxtaposition of lyrical theme and pastoral backing is about. we nearly just wrote that one day Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger will find out how to coalesce their overflow of ideas and melodic steals and quirks into a fluid album whole, except it then occurred to us that by this fifth full-length Widow City they would have done so if they wanted to. It does however feature fewer wild tangents and no unifying theme for once, but with more of an overt 70s influence. The Hives have moved on from their overt Detroit 60s influence very, very slightly on The Black And White Album, their fat-free garage augmented by two tracks produced by Pharrell Williams, and not in his N.E.R.D. mindset either. Hundred Reasons have spent too many recent years hanging around the periphery not quite getting it right, and now they've got closer to their original fire on Quick The Word, Sharp The Action the zeitgeist seems to have drifted off. Shame. Anyone who has space for No Wave in their lives, listen up for K Records' Old Time Relijun, whose Catharsis In Crisis redirects Beefheart through Lydia Lunch and James Chance's studios and into the Birthday Party's back alley. We didn't get round to mentioning last week that Robert Wyatt has a new album out, Comicopera the twelth of the ever individual jazz-folk-worldly best beard wearer in, erm, jazz-folk-worldly music. Semi-regular contributors Eno, Weller and Phil Manzanera are back, but this is as ever his perspective only, on war, love, spirituality and globalisation from the view of the cultural dispossessed, apparently signified by Wyatt singing in Spanish and Italian in protest against the English speaking culture. It's also his first release on Domino Recordings, who got Alexis Taylor of Hot Chip to write the press release. Those Arctic Monkeys albums funded this, and that is why we must all have shrines to Laurence Bell in the most sacred parts of our homes.
And so to those compilations, Best Ofs and cash-ins. REM have got this far without a live album, but those revenue streams won't manage themselves. REM Live is a 2 CD and one DVD set recorded at the end of their Around The Sun world tour at the Point Theatre in Dublin in 2005. Luckily its 22-strong setlist is not heavily drawn from that album, which at least one band member now dismisses. There doesn't seem to be much Plus about The Teardrop Explodes' Peel Sessions Plus, just three sessions' worth of fried psychpop gold often reworked from the recorded version, here with Cope sleevenotes. Australia's The Lucksmiths continue that country's grand tradition of assuredly crafted alterna-pop and have enough left over for a third rarities and offcuts compilation, the double disc Spring A Leak. Ed Harcourt's piano-based inventive melodicism could and should have made him big on numerous occasions, and Until Tomorrow Then is full of songs you barely remember hearing on the radio and recognising that their intelligence made them stand out some distance. This claim was rarely made for Carter USM, and surely in the commercial indie sphere nothing marks out the early 90s post-baggy pre-Suede better than their puns, shorts and haircuts. You Fat Bastard is a 2CD round-up of a music that will surely never happen again. Non-chronological order is one thing, but leaving Sherrif Fatman until Disc 2 Track 14 is just silly. A Cellarful Of Motown Volume 3 is a third crate-digging exercise into the mounds of stuff the Hit Factory churned out that was for whatever reason deemed by Berry Gordy not worth the single journey at the time for the likes of Stevie Wonder, the Temptations, Mervin Gaye, (Detroit) Spinners, the Four Tops, Gladys Knight and the Pips and Edwin Starr. Norman Cook loves this sort of thing and when in the queue he'll be trying not to look directly at his Late Night Tales series contribution, which features a duff cover of Kraftwerk's Radioactivity but also Jonathan Richman, Sly and the Family Stone, Bootsy Collins, Dave and Ansil Collins, Mink Deville's Spanish Stroll and attempts to repatriate Willie Nelson and Kenny Rogers.
DVDs
Bob Mould has always had an ambivalent attitude to his past, putting out an album every three years - just signed to Anti, LP expected February 2008 - accompanied by some grand statement about not making an electrified album any more or putting out a dance album next. Luckily, then, Circle Of Friends - Live At The 9.30 Club acquiesces to take from all over his career, a fully fired-up band taking on Husker Du, Sugar and solo pickings. Any Mould set that starts with The Act We Act and A Good Idea and closes with Celebrated Summer (set proper) and Man On The Moon (encore) is worth the wait. Not quite sure there's the same demand for Lene Lovich - Live From New York At Studio 54, but who knows when it comes to Stiff's most oddball performer in a coterie of them. Lovich's guitarist, co-writer and partner Les Chappell always used to scare us.
Books
Two for bathroom reading this week, or as stocking fillers if such a concept still exists. LA documentary producer turned writer Tom Reynolds, whose last list book I Hate Myself and Want to Die: The 52 Most Depressing Songs You've Ever Heard caused many a broadsheet thinkpiece, returns with Touch Me, I'm Sick: The 52 Creepiest Love Songs You've Ever Heard. In a more caring bent, Little Black Book of Setlists: The Songs Behind Rock 'n' Roll's Most Famous Gigs is just that, the setlists and information about 150 legendary shows from Altamont to the Lesser Free Trade Hall to Live 8 to the roof of the Apple Building to, good lord, the Stone Roses at Reading.
We didn't discover Sky Larkin, of course - they were doing local media two years ago - but we can't help feel an element of paternal pride now more people are starting to wake up to their serrated melodies and Leeds Breeders/Muses come-ons since we first highlghted them last January following Nothing But Green Lights' enthusiasm. Currently, and perhaps forever doomed to be, on the road with Los Campesinos!, single two Molten, again on Dance To The Radio, is a scratchy, vaulting thing that cements Katie Harkin's place among our most nonchalant frontwomen. And while great, its quality is at the very least equalled by unsettling organ-led longstanding demo favourite Keepsakes on the B-side, a Weekly Sweep inductee last June. Von Sudenfed recently played a handful of dates, most notable for how Mark E Smith didn't even dare touch Jan St Werner and Andi Toma's equipment. The celebrations continue with 12" double A side The Rhinohead/Slow Down Ronnie, the most poppy moment from Tromatic Reflexxions allied to a new Mark E appeal to Ronnie O'Sullivan. Mixer of the moment Pilooski contributes a remix too. Forget that band he used to be in, Dev Hynes is very much his own man following his folk-pop heart, literally, as Lightspeed Champion. If the slide guitar at the start of 10" Midnight Surprise - ten minutes long, which for a second single proves he's brave too - suggests George Harrison, the rest reminds you that he recorded it at Saddle Creek HQ. Emmy The Great and assorted Tilly & The Wallers provide backup. Try Harder Recordings are a label we're all going to have to keep a close eye on - already home of Jonquil and Youthmovies and with two early Blood Red Shoes singles and Foals' debut release in the back catalogue, they now bring us another set of Leicester emigres, Tired Irie, who sound adjacent to Foals if they really did sound like being a new Q And Not U some lazy types claim them to be. Tired Irie EP is your first taste of something that could be quite impressive. If Lily Allen's presence proves the former conscious rapper Common has come well in from the cold - album Finding Forever is his first Billboard number one - the commodity cauterising and marching drum hook of Drivin' Me Wild make it the best big hit the genre has produced in a while.
Albums
With nine release Mondays left in 2007 we're coming towards the end of the contenders for people's varying lists of the best albums of the year, what with Best Of, compilation and cash-in season pretty much upon us. Someone who might make an appearance on a few is Emma Louise Niblett, Scout Niblett to you. The Nottingham raised, Albini trusting, wig sporting, grunge inspired occasional corporeal form of The Goddess could on fourth album This Fool Can Die Now surely easily be set to make the leap from small scale cult to uncomfortable critical darling. Will Oldham turns up on four tracks but it's all about Niblett's minimal guitar, maximum drums and raw nerve emotions, not easily shrugging off the Chan'n'Polly comparisons but proving that she can sit easily next to them in terms of going against the grain under cover of hoping the mainstream comes to her rather than the traditional vice versa. Uneasy listening, but spellbinding. David Longsterth of the Dirty Projectors supposedly hadn't heard Black Flag's Damaged since college when he decided to make a tribute album to its visceral power, Rise Above, which replaces the barrack-rousing hardcore with eclectic psych-folk, like world music era Talking Heads recontextualising with Grizzly Bear, whose Chris Taylor produces. It really doesn't help to be acquainted with the original, except to explain what the source of the juxtaposition of lyrical theme and pastoral backing is about. we nearly just wrote that one day Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger will find out how to coalesce their overflow of ideas and melodic steals and quirks into a fluid album whole, except it then occurred to us that by this fifth full-length Widow City they would have done so if they wanted to. It does however feature fewer wild tangents and no unifying theme for once, but with more of an overt 70s influence. The Hives have moved on from their overt Detroit 60s influence very, very slightly on The Black And White Album, their fat-free garage augmented by two tracks produced by Pharrell Williams, and not in his N.E.R.D. mindset either. Hundred Reasons have spent too many recent years hanging around the periphery not quite getting it right, and now they've got closer to their original fire on Quick The Word, Sharp The Action the zeitgeist seems to have drifted off. Shame. Anyone who has space for No Wave in their lives, listen up for K Records' Old Time Relijun, whose Catharsis In Crisis redirects Beefheart through Lydia Lunch and James Chance's studios and into the Birthday Party's back alley. We didn't get round to mentioning last week that Robert Wyatt has a new album out, Comicopera the twelth of the ever individual jazz-folk-worldly best beard wearer in, erm, jazz-folk-worldly music. Semi-regular contributors Eno, Weller and Phil Manzanera are back, but this is as ever his perspective only, on war, love, spirituality and globalisation from the view of the cultural dispossessed, apparently signified by Wyatt singing in Spanish and Italian in protest against the English speaking culture. It's also his first release on Domino Recordings, who got Alexis Taylor of Hot Chip to write the press release. Those Arctic Monkeys albums funded this, and that is why we must all have shrines to Laurence Bell in the most sacred parts of our homes.
And so to those compilations, Best Ofs and cash-ins. REM have got this far without a live album, but those revenue streams won't manage themselves. REM Live is a 2 CD and one DVD set recorded at the end of their Around The Sun world tour at the Point Theatre in Dublin in 2005. Luckily its 22-strong setlist is not heavily drawn from that album, which at least one band member now dismisses. There doesn't seem to be much Plus about The Teardrop Explodes' Peel Sessions Plus, just three sessions' worth of fried psychpop gold often reworked from the recorded version, here with Cope sleevenotes. Australia's The Lucksmiths continue that country's grand tradition of assuredly crafted alterna-pop and have enough left over for a third rarities and offcuts compilation, the double disc Spring A Leak. Ed Harcourt's piano-based inventive melodicism could and should have made him big on numerous occasions, and Until Tomorrow Then is full of songs you barely remember hearing on the radio and recognising that their intelligence made them stand out some distance. This claim was rarely made for Carter USM, and surely in the commercial indie sphere nothing marks out the early 90s post-baggy pre-Suede better than their puns, shorts and haircuts. You Fat Bastard is a 2CD round-up of a music that will surely never happen again. Non-chronological order is one thing, but leaving Sherrif Fatman until Disc 2 Track 14 is just silly. A Cellarful Of Motown Volume 3 is a third crate-digging exercise into the mounds of stuff the Hit Factory churned out that was for whatever reason deemed by Berry Gordy not worth the single journey at the time for the likes of Stevie Wonder, the Temptations, Mervin Gaye, (Detroit) Spinners, the Four Tops, Gladys Knight and the Pips and Edwin Starr. Norman Cook loves this sort of thing and when in the queue he'll be trying not to look directly at his Late Night Tales series contribution, which features a duff cover of Kraftwerk's Radioactivity but also Jonathan Richman, Sly and the Family Stone, Bootsy Collins, Dave and Ansil Collins, Mink Deville's Spanish Stroll and attempts to repatriate Willie Nelson and Kenny Rogers.
DVDs
Bob Mould has always had an ambivalent attitude to his past, putting out an album every three years - just signed to Anti, LP expected February 2008 - accompanied by some grand statement about not making an electrified album any more or putting out a dance album next. Luckily, then, Circle Of Friends - Live At The 9.30 Club acquiesces to take from all over his career, a fully fired-up band taking on Husker Du, Sugar and solo pickings. Any Mould set that starts with The Act We Act and A Good Idea and closes with Celebrated Summer (set proper) and Man On The Moon (encore) is worth the wait. Not quite sure there's the same demand for Lene Lovich - Live From New York At Studio 54, but who knows when it comes to Stiff's most oddball performer in a coterie of them. Lovich's guitarist, co-writer and partner Les Chappell always used to scare us.
Books
Two for bathroom reading this week, or as stocking fillers if such a concept still exists. LA documentary producer turned writer Tom Reynolds, whose last list book I Hate Myself and Want to Die: The 52 Most Depressing Songs You've Ever Heard caused many a broadsheet thinkpiece, returns with Touch Me, I'm Sick: The 52 Creepiest Love Songs You've Ever Heard. In a more caring bent, Little Black Book of Setlists: The Songs Behind Rock 'n' Roll's Most Famous Gigs is just that, the setlists and information about 150 legendary shows from Altamont to the Lesser Free Trade Hall to Live 8 to the roof of the Apple Building to, good lord, the Stone Roses at Reading.
The Weekly Sweep
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Ignorance is bliss
Alright, so we're now starting topics based on private discussion moments of clarity, but hear us out here.
Musical blind spots. We like to believe many people have areas of music that have just passed them by but nobody really admits it. As regular readers will know all too well we can bore for our nation about most things, but ask us, for example, what we think of Neil Young, Nick Drake, John Martyn, The Band, Fairport Convention, post-sixties Bob Dylan, Deep Purple or AC/DC and we'll pause for a crucial few seconds before offering "yeah, I think what they say is right" and hoping something distracting happens. We're fully aware that we could now go and download their entire back catalogues given a couple of hours and friendly birates but, oh, stuff happens in life.
So, are we right? Tell us via the comments box whether you have lauded artists that just slip your neural net, and make us feel better about ourselves.
Musical blind spots. We like to believe many people have areas of music that have just passed them by but nobody really admits it. As regular readers will know all too well we can bore for our nation about most things, but ask us, for example, what we think of Neil Young, Nick Drake, John Martyn, The Band, Fairport Convention, post-sixties Bob Dylan, Deep Purple or AC/DC and we'll pause for a crucial few seconds before offering "yeah, I think what they say is right" and hoping something distracting happens. We're fully aware that we could now go and download their entire back catalogues given a couple of hours and friendly birates but, oh, stuff happens in life.
So, are we right? Tell us via the comments box whether you have lauded artists that just slip your neural net, and make us feel better about ourselves.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Seventy-first?!?
We finished 34th last year even though we only found out about it four days before polling closed!
David Gilmour won, and our man at the event reveals he wasn't even there to accept his gong, the miserable swine. Lots of pretend blogs and not actually blogs ('ukdynasty Music forums'?) are up the top end, and in terms of those we like to think as compadres the suspiciously Facebook group member-avalanched Song, By Toad was a very good 22nd, The Daily Growl was 26th, Indie mp3 and Headphone Sex sneaked into the top 30, Fucking Dance was top 40 and Keep Hope Inside top 50 (beating Westlife Fans Worldwide) while Music Like Dirt, funfunfun and Nothing But Green Lights are all officially inferior to us.
But it's official, because BT say so - The Best Russian Fan Club about SYSTEM OF A DOWN (not even British), findingjesustoday and My Robbie Williams Journey all own our asses. Be reassured, gentle readers, that we are already planning our advance for BT DMA 2008, wherein once A Space For Music Liberation, Strefa Miszcza and The Von Pip Musical Express have fallen like drunken toddlers*, we will make lebensraum around How to Be Like Colin Greenwood - In Ten Easy Steps and eventually achieve our domination aim.
(* They might just be better than us anyway, of course. We haven't checked.)
David Gilmour won, and our man at the event reveals he wasn't even there to accept his gong, the miserable swine. Lots of pretend blogs and not actually blogs ('ukdynasty Music forums'?) are up the top end, and in terms of those we like to think as compadres the suspiciously Facebook group member-avalanched Song, By Toad was a very good 22nd, The Daily Growl was 26th, Indie mp3 and Headphone Sex sneaked into the top 30, Fucking Dance was top 40 and Keep Hope Inside top 50 (beating Westlife Fans Worldwide) while Music Like Dirt, funfunfun and Nothing But Green Lights are all officially inferior to us.
But it's official, because BT say so - The Best Russian Fan Club about SYSTEM OF A DOWN (not even British), findingjesustoday and My Robbie Williams Journey all own our asses. Be reassured, gentle readers, that we are already planning our advance for BT DMA 2008, wherein once A Space For Music Liberation, Strefa Miszcza and The Von Pip Musical Express have fallen like drunken toddlers*, we will make lebensraum around How to Be Like Colin Greenwood - In Ten Easy Steps and eventually achieve our domination aim.
(* They might just be better than us anyway, of course. We haven't checked.)
Let's make air and listen to Grizzly Bear
Grizzly Bear - Knife
From Yellow House
Should you be requisitely hipster, you will know this tune by the exploratory harmonic freak-folk of Brooklyn esquires, from our number four rated album of 2006. Since its release it has taken small areas of the nation, as while the band have performed it acapella in the streets of Paris for La Blogotheque's Take Away Show, as has possibly not entirely sober Zach Condon of Beirut, the Carleton Singing Knights of a Minnesotan college gave it some proper doo-wop barbershop.
Already a song with a varied cover history, then. And here's another one, taken from the Friend EP, released on November 5th, which comprises alternate versions, a finally committed to mastertape version of their live staple Crystals cover He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss) currently being shared by You Ain't No Picasso, and covers by Atlas Sound, Band Of Horses and, taking time away from their eighteen months' endless circumnavigating Europe and America...
CSS - Knife
From Yellow House
Should you be requisitely hipster, you will know this tune by the exploratory harmonic freak-folk of Brooklyn esquires, from our number four rated album of 2006. Since its release it has taken small areas of the nation, as while the band have performed it acapella in the streets of Paris for La Blogotheque's Take Away Show, as has possibly not entirely sober Zach Condon of Beirut, the Carleton Singing Knights of a Minnesotan college gave it some proper doo-wop barbershop.
Already a song with a varied cover history, then. And here's another one, taken from the Friend EP, released on November 5th, which comprises alternate versions, a finally committed to mastertape version of their live staple Crystals cover He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss) currently being shared by You Ain't No Picasso, and covers by Atlas Sound, Band Of Horses and, taking time away from their eighteen months' endless circumnavigating Europe and America...
CSS - Knife
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
The death of the music industry
Time for another of our irregular posts where we sort through the pile of CDs and folders of mp3s passed on to or sourced by us and dig out the stuff that stands out and we imagine you'd like to hear...
Broken Records appeared on the Weekly Sweep a while back, following a tip by Song, By Toad who chanced across them at the T In The Park T-Break heats in their native Edinburgh in May. Although at least on here we neglected to immediately go any further with them even though we were still listening to their mp3s, they're starting to build some low level interest, including a recent Marc Riley 6 Music session. A seven piece who include a cellist and violinist/accordionist in their number, they claim understandable influences from Bright Eyes, the Waterboys and Calexico, allied to a very post-Arcade Fire choral determination and a more Americana'd take on Zach Condon's small-scale folk-orchestral charging ambition. Given this is just how their demo sounds and they're less than a year old, you'll be hearing a lot more from them in the months to come.
Broken Records - A Good Reason
Their debut EP Arcs Across The City may not be released until November 26th but Johnny Foreigner have been quietly stirring no small amount of interest in certain circles. Taking Chicago post-hardcore as their starting point, the Birmingham trio rocket through Sonic Youth, Pavement, Q And Not U and Prolapse and come out sounding like the most urgent math-scuzz possible. Keep a very close eye out.
Johnny Foreigner - The End And Everything After
The Somnambulants are a duo, formed in Brooklyn, now based in San Francisco, who set out to be an electro act without actually bowing to electro writing orthodoxy, working off pop or blues constructions instead. After supports for Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and Au Revoir Simone among others debut album Paper Trail, released in America in August, comes out retro but not deliberately so, taking as much from David Byrne as there is of the definite New Order and Ladytron in the mix.
The Somnambulants - Take It On
Finally, pop, and we're honoured to discover that we're now a fact citation source on Wikipedia. The catalyst is our interview last year with Gwenno of the Pipettes, whose low-key solo side project, which she describes as "Ace Of Base produced by The Postal Service", we've brought up a couple of times before. With time off band business she bought a cheap keyboard from a charity shop, recorded seven tracks with it and put them on YouSendIt as a mini-album called U & I, which despite the reduced setting retains a charm and elan of its own and again demonstrates that quite apart from her band's big concept she has something going for herself.
Gwenno - On TV
Tomorrow, another music post which might well lead to our first ever polite request for a mp3 removal because we can't check and aren't sure the US label are allowing the track to go online yet. Excitement!
Broken Records appeared on the Weekly Sweep a while back, following a tip by Song, By Toad who chanced across them at the T In The Park T-Break heats in their native Edinburgh in May. Although at least on here we neglected to immediately go any further with them even though we were still listening to their mp3s, they're starting to build some low level interest, including a recent Marc Riley 6 Music session. A seven piece who include a cellist and violinist/accordionist in their number, they claim understandable influences from Bright Eyes, the Waterboys and Calexico, allied to a very post-Arcade Fire choral determination and a more Americana'd take on Zach Condon's small-scale folk-orchestral charging ambition. Given this is just how their demo sounds and they're less than a year old, you'll be hearing a lot more from them in the months to come.
Broken Records - A Good Reason
Their debut EP Arcs Across The City may not be released until November 26th but Johnny Foreigner have been quietly stirring no small amount of interest in certain circles. Taking Chicago post-hardcore as their starting point, the Birmingham trio rocket through Sonic Youth, Pavement, Q And Not U and Prolapse and come out sounding like the most urgent math-scuzz possible. Keep a very close eye out.
Johnny Foreigner - The End And Everything After
The Somnambulants are a duo, formed in Brooklyn, now based in San Francisco, who set out to be an electro act without actually bowing to electro writing orthodoxy, working off pop or blues constructions instead. After supports for Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and Au Revoir Simone among others debut album Paper Trail, released in America in August, comes out retro but not deliberately so, taking as much from David Byrne as there is of the definite New Order and Ladytron in the mix.
The Somnambulants - Take It On
Finally, pop, and we're honoured to discover that we're now a fact citation source on Wikipedia. The catalyst is our interview last year with Gwenno of the Pipettes, whose low-key solo side project, which she describes as "Ace Of Base produced by The Postal Service", we've brought up a couple of times before. With time off band business she bought a cheap keyboard from a charity shop, recorded seven tracks with it and put them on YouSendIt as a mini-album called U & I, which despite the reduced setting retains a charm and elan of its own and again demonstrates that quite apart from her band's big concept she has something going for herself.
Gwenno - On TV
Tomorrow, another music post which might well lead to our first ever polite request for a mp3 removal because we can't check and aren't sure the US label are allowing the track to go online yet. Excitement!
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Rainbows around our shoulders
Radiohead’s In Rainbows is digitally released within 24 hours from this point. Let’s hope it’s not in 64kbps mono format. The last thing the blogosphere needs right now is another clueless outsider blundering in with their personal opinions, but waste not want not.
Since Johnny Greenwood passed on his cheery note at the start of the month the release has been used for anything but musical worth, coming to represent a cipher for the death of something, anything – of the compact disc, of the major label, of download pricing, of the entire infrastructure of the recording industry as we know it. Or just of calm, coherent debate, whichever. For people more excited about the sound then how it’s presented – an alien concept, we know - the greater thing, especially if you’ve grown up in the last ten years of leaking music, record industry panic and consequent advance giveaways and expansion of promo mailing lists, is that here we are one day away from the release of a new album by one of Britain’s most successful band, and more concretely Britain’s most cussedly admired, and outside their inner circle nobody knows what it sounds like bar a few old demos and live performances on YouTube that for all we know could have been reworked as songs the band have previewed live before have been. No press reviews, no stray mp3s, no blogger smugness, nothing. It’s going to be the great shared experience resuscitated, no matter what it supposedly kills off in the interim.
We know plenty of people who have proudly never bought a download. We’re not in that category, but we still value our physical record collection well above our digital one – the permanence, the resonance, the sense that you’ve made the extra effort to support your band/label, the fact your CD collection cannot wipe itself or have a memory to crash. Perhaps this is why it was reported that the discbox was outselling the downloads on day one, if helped by the box’s extra CD and the download site’s inevitable crash, as their official site did when it sold tickets for their last UK tour.
Radiohead, on the other hand, are openly keen on all forms of new technology. When Kid A leaked Johnny Greenwood stopped just short of condoning advance downloading, and that didn’t seem to stop anyone buying the CD on either side of the Atlantic. Radiohead are a special case, though. They have a larger than most army of followers keen to get their hands on anything, and while the sales will be understandably bumped by the publicity and ease of use it’ll be interesting to see by how much, especially if album chatter has it as a less superior product. The Charlatans’ Alan McGee-guided decision to give away their own new album, announced on the same day, is slightly difference - the Charlatans, you’d guess, have said all they’re likely to say musically, and given they sell out large venue tours as a matter of course you have to wonder where McGee got the idea in his statement from that they can make up the shortfall from increased ticket and merchandise sales. Also, Radiohead, the Charlatans, Prince… these are all well off bands (the Charlatans signed a new deal and had their greatest sustained success during the advance-friendly mid-90s) with well established fervent fanbases. By contrast The Crimea, a band who had a small amount of deserved press hype a couple of years ago but most had probably forgotten about by the time they made their second album downloadable for free, didn’t seem to get the same push out of it, failing to come close to selling out the next time they played by us. And there’s another rub - all this hinges on the miracle economy of the live scene, which is already quietly pricing itself out at the top level as much in merchandise (Bat For Lashes’ T-shirts were £12 at the start of the year, after the critical reception but well before the commercial push started) as in ticket price – the press attitude to Led Zeppelin’s £140 tickets seems to be that this is fair enough in The New Musical Climate - and surely cannot continue forever. If venues fall, as they’re starting to in the way of independent record shops due to increased rent from gold nugget-citing landlords, then we’re all in trouble. Radiohead, by the way, have no current touring plans.
What we do wonder is how this squares with the development that’s been going on for the last few years where bands have made their demos freely available and then stood back and waited for fans and labels to pick up. The Arctic Monkeys, yes, but they only started picking up a hardcore fanbase outside Sheffield when the self-funded Five Minutes With… single received airplay and belated NME attention. They still needed a label and records to pay for (they underachieve in the download-only sales chart). Independent markets outside the big four have only one real case study to show they can commercially survive at the moment, and we doubt Enter Shikari managed to fund a widely distributed number four album and a number of national tours on their own solely through word of mouth.
Incidentally, Radiohead’s management told Radio 4 last week that they are now looking for an established label to issue the single CD version of In Rainbows, possibly before the end of the year, when no doubt a decent number of downloaders will upgrade. The cosmic ballet goes on.
Since Johnny Greenwood passed on his cheery note at the start of the month the release has been used for anything but musical worth, coming to represent a cipher for the death of something, anything – of the compact disc, of the major label, of download pricing, of the entire infrastructure of the recording industry as we know it. Or just of calm, coherent debate, whichever. For people more excited about the sound then how it’s presented – an alien concept, we know - the greater thing, especially if you’ve grown up in the last ten years of leaking music, record industry panic and consequent advance giveaways and expansion of promo mailing lists, is that here we are one day away from the release of a new album by one of Britain’s most successful band, and more concretely Britain’s most cussedly admired, and outside their inner circle nobody knows what it sounds like bar a few old demos and live performances on YouTube that for all we know could have been reworked as songs the band have previewed live before have been. No press reviews, no stray mp3s, no blogger smugness, nothing. It’s going to be the great shared experience resuscitated, no matter what it supposedly kills off in the interim.
We know plenty of people who have proudly never bought a download. We’re not in that category, but we still value our physical record collection well above our digital one – the permanence, the resonance, the sense that you’ve made the extra effort to support your band/label, the fact your CD collection cannot wipe itself or have a memory to crash. Perhaps this is why it was reported that the discbox was outselling the downloads on day one, if helped by the box’s extra CD and the download site’s inevitable crash, as their official site did when it sold tickets for their last UK tour.
Radiohead, on the other hand, are openly keen on all forms of new technology. When Kid A leaked Johnny Greenwood stopped just short of condoning advance downloading, and that didn’t seem to stop anyone buying the CD on either side of the Atlantic. Radiohead are a special case, though. They have a larger than most army of followers keen to get their hands on anything, and while the sales will be understandably bumped by the publicity and ease of use it’ll be interesting to see by how much, especially if album chatter has it as a less superior product. The Charlatans’ Alan McGee-guided decision to give away their own new album, announced on the same day, is slightly difference - the Charlatans, you’d guess, have said all they’re likely to say musically, and given they sell out large venue tours as a matter of course you have to wonder where McGee got the idea in his statement from that they can make up the shortfall from increased ticket and merchandise sales. Also, Radiohead, the Charlatans, Prince… these are all well off bands (the Charlatans signed a new deal and had their greatest sustained success during the advance-friendly mid-90s) with well established fervent fanbases. By contrast The Crimea, a band who had a small amount of deserved press hype a couple of years ago but most had probably forgotten about by the time they made their second album downloadable for free, didn’t seem to get the same push out of it, failing to come close to selling out the next time they played by us. And there’s another rub - all this hinges on the miracle economy of the live scene, which is already quietly pricing itself out at the top level as much in merchandise (Bat For Lashes’ T-shirts were £12 at the start of the year, after the critical reception but well before the commercial push started) as in ticket price – the press attitude to Led Zeppelin’s £140 tickets seems to be that this is fair enough in The New Musical Climate - and surely cannot continue forever. If venues fall, as they’re starting to in the way of independent record shops due to increased rent from gold nugget-citing landlords, then we’re all in trouble. Radiohead, by the way, have no current touring plans.
What we do wonder is how this squares with the development that’s been going on for the last few years where bands have made their demos freely available and then stood back and waited for fans and labels to pick up. The Arctic Monkeys, yes, but they only started picking up a hardcore fanbase outside Sheffield when the self-funded Five Minutes With… single received airplay and belated NME attention. They still needed a label and records to pay for (they underachieve in the download-only sales chart). Independent markets outside the big four have only one real case study to show they can commercially survive at the moment, and we doubt Enter Shikari managed to fund a widely distributed number four album and a number of national tours on their own solely through word of mouth.
Incidentally, Radiohead’s management told Radio 4 last week that they are now looking for an established label to issue the single CD version of In Rainbows, possibly before the end of the year, when no doubt a decent number of downloaders will upgrade. The cosmic ballet goes on.
Monday, October 08, 2007
Isn't there a war on?
It wasn't so long ago that the Times' heavyweight leader columns would be expressly for disseminating political and social thinkpieces of great import, setting the standard for the nation and providing knowledgeable comment on the events that shape our agendas day to day. You couldn't come away from reading the Thunderer's point of view without it somehow shaping your own worldview.
This morning, the Times ran a leader on bands with bad names.
This, should you need to know, was a follow up to the page five lead (page five! Bloody hell, Gordon, you could have called that election and saved us from this), which however it's dressed up - and by the way, there is no band we can find called Jing Jings, and neither GoodBooks nor Good Shoes are really Radio 1 supported - frankly amounts to using 800 words of the land's most august broadsheet's news pages to take the piss out of Joe Lean & The Jing Jang Jong. Good work.
This morning, the Times ran a leader on bands with bad names.
This, should you need to know, was a follow up to the page five lead (page five! Bloody hell, Gordon, you could have called that election and saved us from this), which however it's dressed up - and by the way, there is no band we can find called Jing Jings, and neither GoodBooks nor Good Shoes are really Radio 1 supported - frankly amounts to using 800 words of the land's most august broadsheet's news pages to take the piss out of Joe Lean & The Jing Jang Jong. Good work.
Weekender : now officially a Wikipedia source
FREE MUSIC: Chicago's Office started off as a spinoff of a conceptual art project of frontman and producer Scott Masson on the subject of office and city life and working/enjoyment environments. Luckily little of this is in evidence on his band's debut album proper A Night At The Ritz, released two weeks ago in the US on Scratchie Records, the label co-owned by ex-Smashing Pumpkin James Iha and Fountains Of Wayne's Adam Schlessinger. Think the latter rather than the former, with a good deal of danceable new wave and power pop of the XTC/Posies type, like a less Curey Editors. The Ritz is, according to Masson, "loosely based on a dream I had in the summer of 2006. I was stuck at some fancy party at The Ritz... I was making out with my lover near the fountain, and diamonds were raining down upon us in slow motion from the chandeliers. All the men in tuxedos, and all the women wearing frocks vanished into thin air around my lover and I as we embraced, and this nightmare quickly became a wonderful dream. The goal was to create this experience within the confines of a pop song."
HEY YOU GET OFFA MYSPACE: Sheffield's Navvy came to our attention as their drummer is also in the lo-fi Long Blondes (who they've supported) disco party of formerly Myspaced Slow Down Tallahassee. Their sound tells you very little about Navvy's stripped back garage punk-funk, heavy on the rhythm section and not sounding so much like all the other obvious jerky influences of today but the more leftfield falling apart at the seams likes of Swell Maps, the Fire Engines, Stump and the Yummy Fur.
VISUAL REPRESENTATION: Bow down and kiss the cake icing, as it was Tim Westwood's fiftieth birthday last Wednesday. We've always thought that, as opposed to what any number of loosely aware pundits will tell you, he's fully aware of what he says and how he comes across, and certainly although there were plenty of explosions and shouting going on ten years ago when he started at Radio 1 it's only as his profile has increased that he's ramped all that up. None of which has much to do with this clip from August 1987 of BBC2's open access series Open Space and the self-produced documentary on early UK hip-hop culture Bad Meaning Good, featuring not only a handful of old-skool British scene faces but also Trevor Nelson seemingly popping into the then pirate Kiss FM on his way back from auditioning for Musical Youth.
VIRAL MARKETING: Darren Hayman has his second proper solo album, The Secondary Modern, coming out on 5th November, but this isn't that at all. In fact this is something you may recall we saw at End Of The Road Festival, a semi-secret outing for his bluegrass project Hayman Watkins Trout & Lee featuring two of Hayman's band plus Dave Tattersall of the Wave Pictures. A couple of their own (at least we think they are) were followed by a trio of covers, only two of which are recorded in full here, and no, you can't see us in any of the crowd panning shots.
FALLING OFF A BLOG: And Please, No Techno is primarily a dance blog, but not with the head-screwing technical talk many fall into regardless of who might be reading. They're also pleasingly cavalier with where their beats originate from, recently featuring uploads of Sparks, a Pointer Sisters remix, the Hellacopters, Etienne De Crecy's Super Discount work and XTC.
EVERYBODY GET RANDOM: Because presumably it seemed like a good idea at the time, critically acclaimed poet and former Mark Radcliffe regular Simon Armitage, 44, has formed a band. Not just a covers band with mates, though, but a proper studio band with a mate, The Scaremongers. "The Sound of Mature Huddersfield" have released a double A side of more than passing Orange Juice acquaintance but not a bad thing for that, and both sides are downloadable from the Myspace. Also, do have a look at their last.fm page, where somebody has taken it upon themselves to offer a critical overview and detailed career advice.
IN OTHER NEWS: In case you haven't seen it, play around with your own Win Butler.
IN OTHER OTHER NEWS: Michael Parkinson was bellyaching to the press the other week about how he has to fight tooth and nail to get Jamie Cullum and Diana Krall on his show because the massive selling artists aren't popular enough, so he says. With that in mind, why not watch Animal Collective on Late Night With Conan O'Brien.
HEY YOU GET OFFA MYSPACE: Sheffield's Navvy came to our attention as their drummer is also in the lo-fi Long Blondes (who they've supported) disco party of formerly Myspaced Slow Down Tallahassee. Their sound tells you very little about Navvy's stripped back garage punk-funk, heavy on the rhythm section and not sounding so much like all the other obvious jerky influences of today but the more leftfield falling apart at the seams likes of Swell Maps, the Fire Engines, Stump and the Yummy Fur.
VISUAL REPRESENTATION: Bow down and kiss the cake icing, as it was Tim Westwood's fiftieth birthday last Wednesday. We've always thought that, as opposed to what any number of loosely aware pundits will tell you, he's fully aware of what he says and how he comes across, and certainly although there were plenty of explosions and shouting going on ten years ago when he started at Radio 1 it's only as his profile has increased that he's ramped all that up. None of which has much to do with this clip from August 1987 of BBC2's open access series Open Space and the self-produced documentary on early UK hip-hop culture Bad Meaning Good, featuring not only a handful of old-skool British scene faces but also Trevor Nelson seemingly popping into the then pirate Kiss FM on his way back from auditioning for Musical Youth.
VIRAL MARKETING: Darren Hayman has his second proper solo album, The Secondary Modern, coming out on 5th November, but this isn't that at all. In fact this is something you may recall we saw at End Of The Road Festival, a semi-secret outing for his bluegrass project Hayman Watkins Trout & Lee featuring two of Hayman's band plus Dave Tattersall of the Wave Pictures. A couple of their own (at least we think they are) were followed by a trio of covers, only two of which are recorded in full here, and no, you can't see us in any of the crowd panning shots.
FALLING OFF A BLOG: And Please, No Techno is primarily a dance blog, but not with the head-screwing technical talk many fall into regardless of who might be reading. They're also pleasingly cavalier with where their beats originate from, recently featuring uploads of Sparks, a Pointer Sisters remix, the Hellacopters, Etienne De Crecy's Super Discount work and XTC.
EVERYBODY GET RANDOM: Because presumably it seemed like a good idea at the time, critically acclaimed poet and former Mark Radcliffe regular Simon Armitage, 44, has formed a band. Not just a covers band with mates, though, but a proper studio band with a mate, The Scaremongers. "The Sound of Mature Huddersfield" have released a double A side of more than passing Orange Juice acquaintance but not a bad thing for that, and both sides are downloadable from the Myspace. Also, do have a look at their last.fm page, where somebody has taken it upon themselves to offer a critical overview and detailed career advice.
IN OTHER NEWS: In case you haven't seen it, play around with your own Win Butler.
IN OTHER OTHER NEWS: Michael Parkinson was bellyaching to the press the other week about how he has to fight tooth and nail to get Jamie Cullum and Diana Krall on his show because the massive selling artists aren't popular enough, so he says. With that in mind, why not watch Animal Collective on Late Night With Conan O'Brien.
Sunday, October 07, 2007
In shops tomorrow: 8/10
Singles
We've talked in the past about the twee resurgence, bands who aren't afraid to sound like the days when indie didn't mean anything with a guitar but instead anything with pop ambitions and lemonade bottle returns recording budget. For such things we often have to cast aside the no further than scenester ambitions of us Brits and look to Scandinavia, where they're less uptight about how such things will play in the market and produce great songs for the hell of it. With that in mind, Those Dancing Days could be about to become a band to cherish for many people. Five seventeen and eighteen year old girls from the not at all child-amusingly named Stockholm suburb of Nacka, they take the usual influences - 60s garage/R&B, Motown, Northern Soul, ska, C86, girl groups, Belle & Sebastian - plus their self-admitted love of the Cure and Strokes and weave it all into something floor-fillingly magical. While you can tell they're from the same ballpark as Suburban Kids With Biblical Names, Shout Out Louds, I'm From Barcelona and other Swedish bretheren, their opening UK shot 7" on Wichita, Those Dancing Days/1000 Words, has a confidence and a hip-swinging louche greatness that belies their age and experience, and going on their recent domestic EP they've got even better to come. That they're actually named in honour of Dancing Days from Led Zeppelin's Houses Of The Holy makes them even more inscrutable. Another seventeen year old in a different milieu is Laura Marling, an inhabitant of Eversley, a village situated just about where Berkshire becomes Hampshire, who started playing live at the start of last year and quickly picked up a following, to the extent that she was barred from one of her own gigs last week because it was an 18+ venue. More Laura Nyro than Joni or Sandy, coming from a parental upbringing of the blues, she's already been labelled a New Lily, but only in the way KT Tunstall was originally the New Dido; the My Manic And I EP is far more well heeled late night introspection and promises much. Montreal's New Metric - nobody's really termed them that, but it's never too early to give a band a crutch - Land Of Talk finally release their acclaimed Applause Cheer Boo Hiss EP in the UK in a couple of weeks on the back of their Decemberists support dates, preceded by the not exactly widely approved these days move of releasing an entirely different track as a single, Young Bridge. Does knowing exactly what you're getting from a band make them any less easy to promote? The Hives will never have the weight of commercial tailwind they had between Hate To Say I Told You So and the end of the following festival season again but they're still doing what is very much their thing on Tick Tick Boom. As Klaxons are to nu-rave Maps are to nu-gaze in that we're not entirely sure what it means but we know what it's supposed to indicate in that context. we weren't as taken by James Chapman's album as many but To The Sky is a highlight.
Digital EPs
It's the future! Two of high quality deserves a mini-section, we feel. British Sea Power seem to have been about to release a new album all year, having gone to ingest some of that Hotel2Tango immutable magic at the start of the year. The result, sadly, isn't called Now That's What I Call A First World War Joy Division, as suggested by one of their ever quotable if the writer is in a rush Newsboosts, but Do You Like Rock Music?, and it's out two Mondays into 2008. In the meantime comes Krankenhaus?, a five track EP described as "a pre-school understanding of atomic theory with ancient wisdom in amplified rock music" which basically means it sounds much like their usual Psychedelic Furs/Bunnymen/Pixies/Cold War meld, featuring two re-edited tracks from the album, three fresh songs, a live Spirit Of St Louis video ("filmed at London Forum in November 2005 and is the work of five camera operatives. See it and wonder why") and Water Tower, a short experimental film made at a derelict Suffolk tower near their recording base for part of the album; "it features compelling footage of BSP sweeping up, cleaning their teeth and walking around. The soundtrack is a mesmeric agro-ambient instrumental composed of traditional Fenland drumming and guitar styled after a drunk eel who's lost his ticket to the Sargasso Sea." One more? "The title of the EP is Krankenhaus?, which is German for hospital. This could equally allude to the healing and/or life-saving qualities of indie rock music, or perhaps the vast quantities of pharmaceuticals associated with both of these. The green cross adorning the front could be the one used to locate a chemist's, or maybe a symbol of a new ecological religion. The answer is up to you." Less agragarian but no less conceptual are the Decemberists, who've stuck together a The Perfect Crime EP featuring a single edit of the album track (The Perfect Crime #2.51? What happened to 2.5?) and remixes by Junior Boys, Diplo and A Touch Of Class.
Albums
Every time Stereogum refer to Jens Lekman, which given his blog popularity is quite often, someone in the comments box always responds "isn't he the Arsenal goalkeeper?", never caring that the target audience probably have no idea of the concepts of Arsenal Football Club or goalkeeping. While the Swedish pop writing genius will probably never see the end of that one, more widespread recognition on his own terms is deserved on the back of Night Falls Over Kortedala (Kortedala being a district of Gothenburg), only his second proper album (Oh You're So Silent Jens was a compilation of early EPs) and one that nearly didn't happen after, feeling the pressure and with his personal life in turmoil, he scrapped an album's worth of songs in 2005 and briefly went to work in a bingo hall. Out of it has come a collection of songs more openly personally rooted than before and not so reliant on samples but still with expansive chamber ambition, deadpan cleverness out of circumstance and the ordinary and ability to make something melodically special out of base indiepop materials, following in the footsteps of obvious influences Morrissey and Stephin Merritt. If it's the little things that matter, this album will change musical lives. We don't know whether Oxford's Jonquil are still just Hugo Manuel in the studio or the fruition of the live six-piece version, but Lions is a step on from their chamber folk origins, aiming towards Montreal-style chorality and widescreen dynamics. Back to Scandinavians influenced by proper indie, except this time it's Finland's Cats On Fire pulling directly from the Mozza'n'Murdoch source, but obviously with an organ, for the enjoyable The Province Complains. Busiest man in the American obtusely detailed alternative scene Spencer Krug has found time for a new Sunset Rubdown record, Random Spirit Lover; Levy made a small splash a couple of years ago and return with the bitter theatrics of Glorious; and Celebration's broken kaleidoscope of David Sitek-produced pulsing psychedelics are refined on The Modern Tribe. The latest in the well on form All Back To Mine series lands with Guillemots, currently on a writing break, which being Guillemots means Fyfe's on a commission to pen a piece for the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra which is being performed at Thursday's reopening of the Birmingham Town Hall. As for this compilation it's as eclectic and magnificent as expected, including Sonic Youth, Bjork, the Supremes, Daniel Johnston, Sandy Denny, Liars, Joan As Police Woman, Roots Manuva, Four Tet, Amon Tobin, Charles Mingus and Buffalo Springfield. Oh, and according to the press release "Lauren Laverne even makes an appearance under her Kenickie guise". Her guise? Did Marie and Emmy-Kate die for this? It's I Would Fix You, as you need to know. It's taken a while for the entire recorded output of the Fire Engines to make it to one CD for the first time, Hungry Beat showcasing the Franz-namechecked Sound Of Young Scotland key workers' dissonant Velvetsisms and help in inventing angular punk-funk. Nobody has ever named Stump as an influence, landing as it does somewhere in the not exactly Gary Davies-charming field between the Cardiacs and Beefheart. A Fierce Pancake And Before is a reissue of their key work and assorted add-ons.
We've talked in the past about the twee resurgence, bands who aren't afraid to sound like the days when indie didn't mean anything with a guitar but instead anything with pop ambitions and lemonade bottle returns recording budget. For such things we often have to cast aside the no further than scenester ambitions of us Brits and look to Scandinavia, where they're less uptight about how such things will play in the market and produce great songs for the hell of it. With that in mind, Those Dancing Days could be about to become a band to cherish for many people. Five seventeen and eighteen year old girls from the not at all child-amusingly named Stockholm suburb of Nacka, they take the usual influences - 60s garage/R&B, Motown, Northern Soul, ska, C86, girl groups, Belle & Sebastian - plus their self-admitted love of the Cure and Strokes and weave it all into something floor-fillingly magical. While you can tell they're from the same ballpark as Suburban Kids With Biblical Names, Shout Out Louds, I'm From Barcelona and other Swedish bretheren, their opening UK shot 7" on Wichita, Those Dancing Days/1000 Words, has a confidence and a hip-swinging louche greatness that belies their age and experience, and going on their recent domestic EP they've got even better to come. That they're actually named in honour of Dancing Days from Led Zeppelin's Houses Of The Holy makes them even more inscrutable. Another seventeen year old in a different milieu is Laura Marling, an inhabitant of Eversley, a village situated just about where Berkshire becomes Hampshire, who started playing live at the start of last year and quickly picked up a following, to the extent that she was barred from one of her own gigs last week because it was an 18+ venue. More Laura Nyro than Joni or Sandy, coming from a parental upbringing of the blues, she's already been labelled a New Lily, but only in the way KT Tunstall was originally the New Dido; the My Manic And I EP is far more well heeled late night introspection and promises much. Montreal's New Metric - nobody's really termed them that, but it's never too early to give a band a crutch - Land Of Talk finally release their acclaimed Applause Cheer Boo Hiss EP in the UK in a couple of weeks on the back of their Decemberists support dates, preceded by the not exactly widely approved these days move of releasing an entirely different track as a single, Young Bridge. Does knowing exactly what you're getting from a band make them any less easy to promote? The Hives will never have the weight of commercial tailwind they had between Hate To Say I Told You So and the end of the following festival season again but they're still doing what is very much their thing on Tick Tick Boom. As Klaxons are to nu-rave Maps are to nu-gaze in that we're not entirely sure what it means but we know what it's supposed to indicate in that context. we weren't as taken by James Chapman's album as many but To The Sky is a highlight.
Digital EPs
It's the future! Two of high quality deserves a mini-section, we feel. British Sea Power seem to have been about to release a new album all year, having gone to ingest some of that Hotel2Tango immutable magic at the start of the year. The result, sadly, isn't called Now That's What I Call A First World War Joy Division, as suggested by one of their ever quotable if the writer is in a rush Newsboosts, but Do You Like Rock Music?, and it's out two Mondays into 2008. In the meantime comes Krankenhaus?, a five track EP described as "a pre-school understanding of atomic theory with ancient wisdom in amplified rock music" which basically means it sounds much like their usual Psychedelic Furs/Bunnymen/Pixies/Cold War meld, featuring two re-edited tracks from the album, three fresh songs, a live Spirit Of St Louis video ("filmed at London Forum in November 2005 and is the work of five camera operatives. See it and wonder why") and Water Tower, a short experimental film made at a derelict Suffolk tower near their recording base for part of the album; "it features compelling footage of BSP sweeping up, cleaning their teeth and walking around. The soundtrack is a mesmeric agro-ambient instrumental composed of traditional Fenland drumming and guitar styled after a drunk eel who's lost his ticket to the Sargasso Sea." One more? "The title of the EP is Krankenhaus?, which is German for hospital. This could equally allude to the healing and/or life-saving qualities of indie rock music, or perhaps the vast quantities of pharmaceuticals associated with both of these. The green cross adorning the front could be the one used to locate a chemist's, or maybe a symbol of a new ecological religion. The answer is up to you." Less agragarian but no less conceptual are the Decemberists, who've stuck together a The Perfect Crime EP featuring a single edit of the album track (The Perfect Crime #2.51? What happened to 2.5?) and remixes by Junior Boys, Diplo and A Touch Of Class.
Albums
Every time Stereogum refer to Jens Lekman, which given his blog popularity is quite often, someone in the comments box always responds "isn't he the Arsenal goalkeeper?", never caring that the target audience probably have no idea of the concepts of Arsenal Football Club or goalkeeping. While the Swedish pop writing genius will probably never see the end of that one, more widespread recognition on his own terms is deserved on the back of Night Falls Over Kortedala (Kortedala being a district of Gothenburg), only his second proper album (Oh You're So Silent Jens was a compilation of early EPs) and one that nearly didn't happen after, feeling the pressure and with his personal life in turmoil, he scrapped an album's worth of songs in 2005 and briefly went to work in a bingo hall. Out of it has come a collection of songs more openly personally rooted than before and not so reliant on samples but still with expansive chamber ambition, deadpan cleverness out of circumstance and the ordinary and ability to make something melodically special out of base indiepop materials, following in the footsteps of obvious influences Morrissey and Stephin Merritt. If it's the little things that matter, this album will change musical lives. We don't know whether Oxford's Jonquil are still just Hugo Manuel in the studio or the fruition of the live six-piece version, but Lions is a step on from their chamber folk origins, aiming towards Montreal-style chorality and widescreen dynamics. Back to Scandinavians influenced by proper indie, except this time it's Finland's Cats On Fire pulling directly from the Mozza'n'Murdoch source, but obviously with an organ, for the enjoyable The Province Complains. Busiest man in the American obtusely detailed alternative scene Spencer Krug has found time for a new Sunset Rubdown record, Random Spirit Lover; Levy made a small splash a couple of years ago and return with the bitter theatrics of Glorious; and Celebration's broken kaleidoscope of David Sitek-produced pulsing psychedelics are refined on The Modern Tribe. The latest in the well on form All Back To Mine series lands with Guillemots, currently on a writing break, which being Guillemots means Fyfe's on a commission to pen a piece for the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra which is being performed at Thursday's reopening of the Birmingham Town Hall. As for this compilation it's as eclectic and magnificent as expected, including Sonic Youth, Bjork, the Supremes, Daniel Johnston, Sandy Denny, Liars, Joan As Police Woman, Roots Manuva, Four Tet, Amon Tobin, Charles Mingus and Buffalo Springfield. Oh, and according to the press release "Lauren Laverne even makes an appearance under her Kenickie guise". Her guise? Did Marie and Emmy-Kate die for this? It's I Would Fix You, as you need to know. It's taken a while for the entire recorded output of the Fire Engines to make it to one CD for the first time, Hungry Beat showcasing the Franz-namechecked Sound Of Young Scotland key workers' dissonant Velvetsisms and help in inventing angular punk-funk. Nobody has ever named Stump as an influence, landing as it does somewhere in the not exactly Gary Davies-charming field between the Cardiacs and Beefheart. A Fierce Pancake And Before is a reissue of their key work and assorted add-ons.
The Weekly Sweep
Saturday, October 06, 2007
Punk's still dead
As we type, showing on Smash Hits TV is Donny Tourette's Top 20 Hair-Don'ts.
This if anything throws into sharp context this NME campaign to get the 7" reissue of God Save The Queen to number one, today supported by Ryan 'death to mainstream indie' Jarman, a man so completely against the major label alternative junta that he's dating Kate Nash. (And incidentally, next time you accidentally watch Transmission, keep this in mind - Steve Jones interviewed Nash on T4 a couple of weeks ago and teased out of her that yes, she is squiring of late, and her boyfriend is called Ryan. Jones, whose job it is to be across all showbiz gossip and musical manoevurings, had clearly never heard of him.)
And yet, for a magazine that claims to only look for the next big thing, this is a depressingly retrograde step to take. The fact it was 'only' number two is so entrenched in the fabric of the British punk story of 1976-77, almost Magna Carta in its detail of really outselling Rod Stewart's I Don't Want To Talk About It (a claim, incidentally, for which there is no supporting evidence beyond hearsay and supposition, let alone discussion of why a record banned from the BBC, IBA and almost all chain record stores should have outsold Stewart at the peak of his singles popularity). It doesn't need pointless further promotion to line the pockets of realtor agent John Lydon just because of what he supposedly represents. There is no 'wrong' to be 'righted'.
This if anything throws into sharp context this NME campaign to get the 7" reissue of God Save The Queen to number one, today supported by Ryan 'death to mainstream indie' Jarman, a man so completely against the major label alternative junta that he's dating Kate Nash. (And incidentally, next time you accidentally watch Transmission, keep this in mind - Steve Jones interviewed Nash on T4 a couple of weeks ago and teased out of her that yes, she is squiring of late, and her boyfriend is called Ryan. Jones, whose job it is to be across all showbiz gossip and musical manoevurings, had clearly never heard of him.)
And yet, for a magazine that claims to only look for the next big thing, this is a depressingly retrograde step to take. The fact it was 'only' number two is so entrenched in the fabric of the British punk story of 1976-77, almost Magna Carta in its detail of really outselling Rod Stewart's I Don't Want To Talk About It (a claim, incidentally, for which there is no supporting evidence beyond hearsay and supposition, let alone discussion of why a record banned from the BBC, IBA and almost all chain record stores should have outsold Stewart at the peak of his singles popularity). It doesn't need pointless further promotion to line the pockets of realtor agent John Lydon just because of what he supposedly represents. There is no 'wrong' to be 'righted'.
Friday, October 05, 2007
Amy, do you think you could express extreme public embarrassment at the end there?
We meant to edit and upload this ages ago but our video editing software was acting the giddy goat, so while we embark upon our now biweekly battle against the lurgy (Vitamin C, that's what we need) it's 1996 and the Fast Show production team have scoured the Sylvia Young Theatre School for thirteen year old speaking extras for a Competitive Dad sketch. Far right, and credited at the end of the episode as an Also Starring, Winehouse, A...
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
A modern way of letting go: Truck Festival Sunday review
A disturbed night's sleep later, Sunday kicks off in the Lounge at 11am with Witches, a six piece on so small a stage the trumpeter is hidden behind the PA. For the early start they're in a confident mood, playing expansive, twisted folkpop somewhere between Sparklehorse and pre-Yankee Hotel Foxtrot Wilco in a highly promising vein. In a completely different vein on the main stage, The Walk Off's industrial drum'n'bass with punk shouting over the top sounded like a mess at this early stage, and on reflection would at any stage. More promising was Truck regulars Keyboard Choir, literally an instrumental collective entirely on analogue keyboards, producing sounds that add up to somewhere between first album Hot Chip and Future Sound Of London trance, the inevitable lack of immediate stage action furnished no end when some people in home-made robot costumes appear towards the end and proceed to get down with their good cardboard, tinfoil and sellotape selves.
Napoleon IIIrd starts well, as ever he does with an opening assault of Hit Schmooze For Me and This Is My Call To Arms. Then he introduces Guys In Bands, and it all goes a teensy bit wrong as his reel to reel tape player refuses to find anything to play. Some tampering and crossed fingers ("anything might be on this - bit of Radio 4, we could have a debate about it") later and it comes up with, er, Defibrillator, requiring a very hasty band changearound. We leave him wondering where it's taking him next as we have Sky Larkin in the curiously small for them confines of the Market Stage, where everyone is sitting down, Katie Harkin likening the experience to displaying her work to school assembly. It's obviously far more accomplished than that despite a bass drum intent on escape from Nestor's thunderous drumming and facial expressions as if his stool is sending ten thousand volts through him every time he plays the bass drum or cymbal, which calls into stabilising action the stagehand's leg, then a fire extinguisher, then a packing case, then packing case plus stagehand's foot, and finally packing case with bassist Douglas Adams standing on it. Musically they're on top form, deceptively and hugely smart indiepop shapes that recall a skyscraping Breeders or a Long Blondes deRimmeled and plugged into the mains, frantic but controlled. They'll go places fast if the right people are listening.
The Mules are a post-punk band, but not one people who follow the surface of that much-maligned term would recognise, warping melodies like a kindergarten Pere Ubu and playing around with the genre's standards. And they have a singing drummer. And a song that sounds exactly the same as Madness' version of the song they named themselves after. It's not quite happening in full today, the highlight ending up being their cover of Life During Wartime, but you suspect more through off-day than paucity. Someone who could just show up and not fail to become a showstopper is Thomas Truax, doing his annual trick of packing out the Market stage. The mad scientist of antifolk brings the Hornicator (gramophone horn plus varied loops and odd effects) and Sister Spinster (detailed semi-drum machine) plus who knows what else from this crowd distance to bear on his genuinely one-off sound, like a mad DIY Tom Waits. No wonder there was such attention.
On the main stage Fonda 500's Casio disco-funk grounding takes many a turn inwards but again something indefinable's not clicking that's not making it all work today. In the Trailer Park Gravenhurst's Nick Talbot has a greater immediate issue in that none of his bandmates are available so he's playing solo. It could easily have gone west; that it doesn't is due to the sole guitar approach, aided by loops and pedals, bringing out the intricacies of the folk-influenced melodies and by turns yearning and direct lyrics, ensuring a low-key triumph after all.
Pagan Wanderer Lu has cancelled his Market/Quilting (don't ask) tent set, which was impromptu to begin with, which leaves us at the mercy of George Pringle, part-performance poet, part-stream of consciousness lo-fi electro from an iPod backing. We suspect we're not really in the mood for this. Alone on the main stage with just an acoustic guitar for company, Chris T-T has popped by mid-tour, which shows quite a few others up. He's still largely plugging away at 2005's 9 Red Songs political scree and the best of what we can ascertain are the new songs is the one he makes up on the spot after a curious heckle about wasps killing bears, but he's got a presence alright and leaves enough room to keep us trusting that next year's third in the prolonged London trilogy of albums will be fine enough. Back down the field, a good crowd is gathering to watch through a fence as backstage a roadie is taped to a table in plain view and left to fend for himself.
Something interesting then happens. A special guest is advertised for the main stage, to go up against Truck favourites The Schla La Las in the Trailer Park. The Trailer stage time comes and goes with no activity. Ten minutes later, the tent still fairly full, the Schlas start on the main stage. Now that's a surprise. (Whispers have it that Robin Gibb, of all people, was booked but didn't show up, and the band will mention that they were only informed of the upgrade at a very late stage) Roped into last year's hugely specious New Girl Groups 'scene', the Schlas are a goodtime fuzzy glitter-garage rock fivesome containing Piney Gir among others and today sporting - quiet at the back for this - matching retro-styled polka-dotted dresses. Chatty between songs - Katrin, soldiering on with a broken bass string, revealing she'd been dumped by text message two nights earlier - they make for as pleasingly raucous a diversion as they ever have, and as the Panther Girls join them for their last two songs George reveals this is their final gig. No backup word on their website or Myspace a week later, but if so at least we got in there at the death.
The Rock Of Travolta were feared gone long ago, but they returned last year to a main stage welcome. In the reverberating Barn this time around their instrumental huge rock riffage as constructed by MC Escher chimes with the strobes and, to a lesser extent, the ironic points skyward to seem all the heavier. Somewhat less wilder are much touted locals Jonquil boast a sound that takes folk in a progressive direction without being prog, a more trad take on the freak-folkers. We've loved what we've heard of their new album Lions, so why can't we get into this set as much as a lot of people down the front are? There's nothing wrong with the sound or their loose enough musical interlocking, it's not that different from the recorded approach, but we still come away thinking it could have been magical but was instead slightly pedestrian.
As for large parts was Glenn Tilbrook on the main stage. We saw Tilbrook solo last year and he was endlessly entertaining. With his solo band The Fluffers today his effect and charm is dimmed, and for some reason he's playing more songs now from his sole solo album than he did playing essentially to his people. He eventually breaks out a few Squeeze hits for the keen types at the front but the die for us has been cast by circumstance. Seeing Gerry from SixNationState in a large pink fluffy hat with a plastic airhorn hung round his neck - someone bought him those drinks, then - outside the Barn is more entertaining than Pull Tiger Tail therein, the energy of their first couple of songs dissipating into A N Other artrock.
The Electric Soft Parade have probably never had the sort of distraction onstage before as here with the festival secretary having his head shaved for the cause. Alex White has to ask for the sound of the trimmer to be turned down at one stage. No Need To Be Downhearted gave them a career high this year but even factoring out the sideshow it's not taking off tonight, the worsening weather not helping a set that seems drained of most of its life, a disappointment after last year's restating of their psych-pop claims here. Meanwhile Metronomy's stripped back electropop has never really convinced, unsure whether it wants to be DFA IDM or chase down the dance revival of the day. The chest-mounted lights turned on and off by means of complex choreography look impressive but like the band's sound are mere paste pearls when put into context.
After a prolonged set-up that threatens to send most of the huge audience elsewhere should it have lasted much longer, Idlewild emerge with a point to prove, you feel as much to the audience as through themselves. It's been hard for them to reconcile their famed "flight of stairs falling down a flight of stairs" excitable origins with their streamlined Scotpop REM middle phase and the inevitable grown-up phase, and Make Another World's attempt to become punky again seemed a lost cause. Live, though, they still have plenty to give, dynamic and focused, even if it does slightly seem like Roddy and co haven't quite grasped what makes a Truck audience so subtly different. Satan Polaroid is dropped in for the Chandelier kids but a surfeit of tracks from the last album dampens the Sunday headliner atmosphere somewhat, so that like the Futureheads last year it's a perfectly fine set that never reaches the heights it could have. Not that it really matters by this stage - Truck is and remains its own beast, completely seperate from the day's big things, and that's what gives it its charm. Let's just see if we can't manage Truck Eleven at the proper time of July next year, god of meterology.
Napoleon IIIrd starts well, as ever he does with an opening assault of Hit Schmooze For Me and This Is My Call To Arms. Then he introduces Guys In Bands, and it all goes a teensy bit wrong as his reel to reel tape player refuses to find anything to play. Some tampering and crossed fingers ("anything might be on this - bit of Radio 4, we could have a debate about it") later and it comes up with, er, Defibrillator, requiring a very hasty band changearound. We leave him wondering where it's taking him next as we have Sky Larkin in the curiously small for them confines of the Market Stage, where everyone is sitting down, Katie Harkin likening the experience to displaying her work to school assembly. It's obviously far more accomplished than that despite a bass drum intent on escape from Nestor's thunderous drumming and facial expressions as if his stool is sending ten thousand volts through him every time he plays the bass drum or cymbal, which calls into stabilising action the stagehand's leg, then a fire extinguisher, then a packing case, then packing case plus stagehand's foot, and finally packing case with bassist Douglas Adams standing on it. Musically they're on top form, deceptively and hugely smart indiepop shapes that recall a skyscraping Breeders or a Long Blondes deRimmeled and plugged into the mains, frantic but controlled. They'll go places fast if the right people are listening.
The Mules are a post-punk band, but not one people who follow the surface of that much-maligned term would recognise, warping melodies like a kindergarten Pere Ubu and playing around with the genre's standards. And they have a singing drummer. And a song that sounds exactly the same as Madness' version of the song they named themselves after. It's not quite happening in full today, the highlight ending up being their cover of Life During Wartime, but you suspect more through off-day than paucity. Someone who could just show up and not fail to become a showstopper is Thomas Truax, doing his annual trick of packing out the Market stage. The mad scientist of antifolk brings the Hornicator (gramophone horn plus varied loops and odd effects) and Sister Spinster (detailed semi-drum machine) plus who knows what else from this crowd distance to bear on his genuinely one-off sound, like a mad DIY Tom Waits. No wonder there was such attention.
On the main stage Fonda 500's Casio disco-funk grounding takes many a turn inwards but again something indefinable's not clicking that's not making it all work today. In the Trailer Park Gravenhurst's Nick Talbot has a greater immediate issue in that none of his bandmates are available so he's playing solo. It could easily have gone west; that it doesn't is due to the sole guitar approach, aided by loops and pedals, bringing out the intricacies of the folk-influenced melodies and by turns yearning and direct lyrics, ensuring a low-key triumph after all.
Pagan Wanderer Lu has cancelled his Market/Quilting (don't ask) tent set, which was impromptu to begin with, which leaves us at the mercy of George Pringle, part-performance poet, part-stream of consciousness lo-fi electro from an iPod backing. We suspect we're not really in the mood for this. Alone on the main stage with just an acoustic guitar for company, Chris T-T has popped by mid-tour, which shows quite a few others up. He's still largely plugging away at 2005's 9 Red Songs political scree and the best of what we can ascertain are the new songs is the one he makes up on the spot after a curious heckle about wasps killing bears, but he's got a presence alright and leaves enough room to keep us trusting that next year's third in the prolonged London trilogy of albums will be fine enough. Back down the field, a good crowd is gathering to watch through a fence as backstage a roadie is taped to a table in plain view and left to fend for himself.
Something interesting then happens. A special guest is advertised for the main stage, to go up against Truck favourites The Schla La Las in the Trailer Park. The Trailer stage time comes and goes with no activity. Ten minutes later, the tent still fairly full, the Schlas start on the main stage. Now that's a surprise. (Whispers have it that Robin Gibb, of all people, was booked but didn't show up, and the band will mention that they were only informed of the upgrade at a very late stage) Roped into last year's hugely specious New Girl Groups 'scene', the Schlas are a goodtime fuzzy glitter-garage rock fivesome containing Piney Gir among others and today sporting - quiet at the back for this - matching retro-styled polka-dotted dresses. Chatty between songs - Katrin, soldiering on with a broken bass string, revealing she'd been dumped by text message two nights earlier - they make for as pleasingly raucous a diversion as they ever have, and as the Panther Girls join them for their last two songs George reveals this is their final gig. No backup word on their website or Myspace a week later, but if so at least we got in there at the death.
The Rock Of Travolta were feared gone long ago, but they returned last year to a main stage welcome. In the reverberating Barn this time around their instrumental huge rock riffage as constructed by MC Escher chimes with the strobes and, to a lesser extent, the ironic points skyward to seem all the heavier. Somewhat less wilder are much touted locals Jonquil boast a sound that takes folk in a progressive direction without being prog, a more trad take on the freak-folkers. We've loved what we've heard of their new album Lions, so why can't we get into this set as much as a lot of people down the front are? There's nothing wrong with the sound or their loose enough musical interlocking, it's not that different from the recorded approach, but we still come away thinking it could have been magical but was instead slightly pedestrian.
As for large parts was Glenn Tilbrook on the main stage. We saw Tilbrook solo last year and he was endlessly entertaining. With his solo band The Fluffers today his effect and charm is dimmed, and for some reason he's playing more songs now from his sole solo album than he did playing essentially to his people. He eventually breaks out a few Squeeze hits for the keen types at the front but the die for us has been cast by circumstance. Seeing Gerry from SixNationState in a large pink fluffy hat with a plastic airhorn hung round his neck - someone bought him those drinks, then - outside the Barn is more entertaining than Pull Tiger Tail therein, the energy of their first couple of songs dissipating into A N Other artrock.
The Electric Soft Parade have probably never had the sort of distraction onstage before as here with the festival secretary having his head shaved for the cause. Alex White has to ask for the sound of the trimmer to be turned down at one stage. No Need To Be Downhearted gave them a career high this year but even factoring out the sideshow it's not taking off tonight, the worsening weather not helping a set that seems drained of most of its life, a disappointment after last year's restating of their psych-pop claims here. Meanwhile Metronomy's stripped back electropop has never really convinced, unsure whether it wants to be DFA IDM or chase down the dance revival of the day. The chest-mounted lights turned on and off by means of complex choreography look impressive but like the band's sound are mere paste pearls when put into context.
After a prolonged set-up that threatens to send most of the huge audience elsewhere should it have lasted much longer, Idlewild emerge with a point to prove, you feel as much to the audience as through themselves. It's been hard for them to reconcile their famed "flight of stairs falling down a flight of stairs" excitable origins with their streamlined Scotpop REM middle phase and the inevitable grown-up phase, and Make Another World's attempt to become punky again seemed a lost cause. Live, though, they still have plenty to give, dynamic and focused, even if it does slightly seem like Roddy and co haven't quite grasped what makes a Truck audience so subtly different. Satan Polaroid is dropped in for the Chandelier kids but a surfeit of tracks from the last album dampens the Sunday headliner atmosphere somewhat, so that like the Futureheads last year it's a perfectly fine set that never reaches the heights it could have. Not that it really matters by this stage - Truck is and remains its own beast, completely seperate from the day's big things, and that's what gives it its charm. Let's just see if we can't manage Truck Eleven at the proper time of July next year, god of meterology.
Monday, October 01, 2007
Weekender : not a tweecore blog, and never will be
FREE MUSIC: Where were we? Ah, Scandinavia. Stavanager, Norway, to be precise, where Jeremy is the unrepossessing name for a duo who take influence from Big Star, the Zombies and Simon & Garfunkel, all harmonies and just off-poppy arrangements. Make Love Not War bounces along like a sugarier version of Sondre Lerche loosely disguising lyrics about "the hippy mentality".
HEY YOU GET OFFA MYSPACE: Let's antifolk! Paul Hawkins & Thee Awkward Silences are a leading part of that scene now it seems to have been redefined from proper kooky singer-songwriters to refer to offbeat poets influenced by Daniel Johnston with a yen for something completely out of the ordinary. They'd have been on the first Stiff Records tour in 1977; instead they're plundering wonky garage and darker than dark fantasy lyrics. Apparently possessing a highly theatric, loud and prop-laden live show, they're playing at the Good Ship, Kilburn with Pagan Wanderer Lu and Gindrinker this Wednesday, which were we in range would be an unmissable night out.
VISUAL REPRESENTATION: "Himalayan under the tunnel!" A couple of varying clips of youth and young womanhood this week. You're almost certainly aware that Britney, Christina and Justin were all on the Mickey Mouse Club simultaneously, but what you don't see often is Spears and Timberlake together, well before they were, well, 'together', manfully facing up to a sketch about crazy golf. Clearly this is just what the producers of Alpha Dog had in mind. Somewhat slower paced and intelligent, if no more likely to make your head spin, is this undated but clearly Sugarcubes-era instructional electronics festive message from Bjork. Boom mic in shot, director!
VIRAL MARKETING: Jens Lekman's lovers' indie-rock continues to charm many and can only grow with next week's release of Night Falls Over Kotedala. There's a video for Sipping On The Sweet Nectar, but superior cuts include A Postcard To Nina and Friday Night At The Drive-In Bingo.
FALLING OFF A BLOG: Back to the mp3s, and apparently put together by five people, Off The Record fields an understandably eclectic approach from Ewan Pearson to Blood Red Shoes.
EVERYBODY GET RANDOM: Every so often you get forwarded a YouTube clip of something so quite extraordinary mere words feel insufficient. Case in point, Reg Kehoe And His Marimba Queens, a Pennsylvanian act filmed here in 1950. Ignore the one bloke, five girls and massed vibraphonic orchestra, watch the double bass player unencumbered by the lack of any bass on the soundtrack and frankly going for it.
IN OTHER NEWS: The Ladies Bras' chart success, which at least keeps the world in Trunk Records reissues of obscure film soundtracks and exotica for a few more years, is all Scott Mills' doing, is it, Radio 1? Even when Danny Baker's podcast was launching it to number 70 last month?
HEY YOU GET OFFA MYSPACE: Let's antifolk! Paul Hawkins & Thee Awkward Silences are a leading part of that scene now it seems to have been redefined from proper kooky singer-songwriters to refer to offbeat poets influenced by Daniel Johnston with a yen for something completely out of the ordinary. They'd have been on the first Stiff Records tour in 1977; instead they're plundering wonky garage and darker than dark fantasy lyrics. Apparently possessing a highly theatric, loud and prop-laden live show, they're playing at the Good Ship, Kilburn with Pagan Wanderer Lu and Gindrinker this Wednesday, which were we in range would be an unmissable night out.
VISUAL REPRESENTATION: "Himalayan under the tunnel!" A couple of varying clips of youth and young womanhood this week. You're almost certainly aware that Britney, Christina and Justin were all on the Mickey Mouse Club simultaneously, but what you don't see often is Spears and Timberlake together, well before they were, well, 'together', manfully facing up to a sketch about crazy golf. Clearly this is just what the producers of Alpha Dog had in mind. Somewhat slower paced and intelligent, if no more likely to make your head spin, is this undated but clearly Sugarcubes-era instructional electronics festive message from Bjork. Boom mic in shot, director!
VIRAL MARKETING: Jens Lekman's lovers' indie-rock continues to charm many and can only grow with next week's release of Night Falls Over Kotedala. There's a video for Sipping On The Sweet Nectar, but superior cuts include A Postcard To Nina and Friday Night At The Drive-In Bingo.
FALLING OFF A BLOG: Back to the mp3s, and apparently put together by five people, Off The Record fields an understandably eclectic approach from Ewan Pearson to Blood Red Shoes.
EVERYBODY GET RANDOM: Every so often you get forwarded a YouTube clip of something so quite extraordinary mere words feel insufficient. Case in point, Reg Kehoe And His Marimba Queens, a Pennsylvanian act filmed here in 1950. Ignore the one bloke, five girls and massed vibraphonic orchestra, watch the double bass player unencumbered by the lack of any bass on the soundtrack and frankly going for it.
IN OTHER NEWS: The Ladies Bras' chart success, which at least keeps the world in Trunk Records reissues of obscure film soundtracks and exotica for a few more years, is all Scott Mills' doing, is it, Radio 1? Even when Danny Baker's podcast was launching it to number 70 last month?
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