Downdime seem like the sort of band who would almost be hidden away to open proceedings on on the first full day of a festival like this. They're not actively bad, but then they're not immensely memorable, a flattened out jangle that in the end reminds us of nobody so much as Cajun Dance Party, as well as the impulse that it's too warm to stay with this for too long.
Little My are something entirely different. A collective made up of members of assorted Cardiff bands primarily including Silence At Sea, who played a fine set here last year, stretching to the lurking spectre of Gareth from the very un-twee Gindrinker, twelve strong today even before Liz from The School joins for a song, and all in varying degrees of animal costume from plastic ears to full suit. The numbers are filled out by all manner of keyboards, glocks, violin, shaky things direct from the classroom box and what may well be a bowed saw at the back. There's a heart to their impacted songs, though, never just sounding like a bull in a toy shop department. They've covered the Shins on one of their self-released EPs and it's their sunshine pop moments to which Little My aspire.
Strange thing, this Indietracks. Inside the famed corrugated iron church - for one of the few times all weekend, it getting crowded so quickly - is Ray Rumours & The No Eyed Dears, the current project of Ros Murray, formerly bassist in Electrelane. When she turns up behind the merch table later on in the day you're tempted to ask whether the days since that band went on hiatus aren't feeling a little longer. That, though, would be to overlook the captivatingly personal nature of her solo songs, deceptively simple lo-fi singer-songwriter constructions influenced by ramshackle folk. So ramshackle, in fact, that Murray apologises for the band not having properly rehearsed the songs, which accounts for the long pauses between them. Even so, the floating atmosphere they create allows their uplifting nature to wash over you.
Elefant's bill for the main stage starts, belatedly, with Japanese duo Sucrette, who sound like you might imagine J-Pop sounds like - kitschily playful keyboards, soft voiced singer (in Japanese, reading English language announcements off a piece of paper), sugar sweet like featherbed Europop. It passes the time in a gainful way. Tender Trap, not to be confused with any similarly named Australian electro zeitgeist jumpers, were always going to be part of the Indietracks constituency fronted as they are by Amelia Fletcher of Talulah Gosh, who pretty much trademarked a lot of all this, and later Heavenly and Marine Research (any other takers for the latter being her best band?) The patterned dress and tambourine, plus stand-up drummer at the back, scream jangle pop, but Fletcher and long time musical associate Rob Pursey know this stuff inside out. Not all that demanding on a mid-afternoon audience lazing in the sun, full of melodies and thoughtful lyrics on love, and with Fletcher's daughter Dora giving out stickers during the set. Can't say fairer. We will return to Fletcher later in the retelling.
Bostonians One Happy Island are, if anything, even more gleeful and infectious. Like their fellow American joyful indiepop exponents The Smittens, who were all over the place despite oru not getting to see their proper set this year, bittersweetness is something that occurred to them briefly and is hinted at lyrically but the music is so ridiculously likeable, with kazoos, electric ukulele and harmonicas to go with the furious clip of the drumming, the shared out lead vocals and the odd shot at harmony that the weaknesses are camouflaged in a coating of just going with it.
We're not quite sure what to make of the multihanded Fitness Forever, a rush of almost cartoonish in delivery summery lounge-Italo-pop, featuring members in judo gear and a captain's hat, that's virtually too much to take in. What, then, of The Frank And Walters? A band who, while never having actually split up, seem to exist in that pre-Britpop hinterland where bands like Kingmaker had big hits, it doesn't start well when the PA blows roughly three seconds in. Luckily it's a mere power cut that lasts five minutes rather than something terminal, at least it came before any momentum had been built up, and most importantly they'd brought a football with them. When power is restored, as much as their banter sounds like someone imagining what Frank And Walters banter might be like and the songs not from their commercial heyday pass most people by, and even some of those now come across with a James-like stadium ambition that seems out of place in this company, people are going mad for After All and This Is Not A Song, and that's the least you can ask. It does mean, though, that we miss the Specific Heats in the church, a set many go on to talk about not least for their reverb machine literally blowing up on the first chord. It's still hot in there, clearly.
Butcher Boy are, along with Pocketbooks, pretty much at the forefront of the UK leg of this whole indiepop 'thing' at the moment, at least in being those with the greatest capacity to break out. Fronted by John Blain Hunt, who ran Glasgow’s genre defining National Pop League club night for seven years, they Stuart Murdoch’s studied sophistication - maybe a little too close in truth, with the lush arrangements and Motown nods suggesting that If You're Feeling Sinister period - and add a dash of post-Arcade Fire headlong march for a result packed with drama and poetry. Hunt almost has a missionary zeal, and there's plenty who'd go along with him.
Here's an exercise in mixed aggregates. On Elefant's stage Speedmarket Avenue, peppy on record, are dragging horribly. In the church, The Lovely Eggs are nuts. In the nicest possible way, obviously, but just in case the songs about olives as part of the cosmos, carving insults into melons and the not at all self-explanatory Have You Ever Heard A Digital Accordion? weren't signposts that this may not be the most hinged band ever, Holly Ross' wide eyed enthusiasm bordering on quasi-insanity settles it. Songs are based around playgroundish non-sequiturs before devolving from gentle sing-song to noise freakout, all with singalong bits and actual hooks somewhere in the stew. They cover the song from Mike Leigh's Nuts In May, Ross wanders into the packed audience to relay Oh The Stars and then tells us how to differentiate between differently sexed peppers. It's a bit like the Moldy Peaches, yes, but only if relocated to Lancaster and dumped in a vat of children's books about animals with spiked drinks and only Metal Machine Music to listen to. In a very, very odd way, it's fabulous.
A hog roast! And they're stripping the whole sodding thing in front of you! It's like some sort of Viking offering.
Suddenly, there is soul dancing afoot. Cats On Fire's first album saw them, if in thrall to the Smiths and Belle & Sebastian, only such in a hugely likeable and danceable way. Their second earlier this year leant too heavily on the Smiths and was somewhat ropey as a result. None of that seems to matter here, partly because of what we saw the set was heavy on The Province Complains anyway, and partly because it's so joyous, both in a giving and receiving sense. At their best - I Am The White Manteled King, Higher Grounds - they just have it, and people are responding in kind. Singer Mattais Björkas dresses smartly, looks slightly foppish and has the full whack of Morrissey expressions, but then you kind of expect that. And then they go and cover Your Woman by White Town, whose Jyoti Mishra is here and has been a long term supporter of suchlike. An absolute highlight and proof that one bad turn can in no way derail an entire career.
If anything, Camera Obscura seem understandably more in their element watched by a crowd willing them on to greater things. They repay in kind, simultaneously looser and more confident than in recent showings - Tracyanne Campbell cracks a smile on a couple of occasions - and given the leeway to do a couple of slow ones for gentle swaying purposes mid-set, the payoff for the big numbers, Lloyd I'm Ready To Be Heartbroken followed by If Looks Could Kill a particular winner, is well worth the effort. Coming just as the sun starts setting behind the stage, it disproves this theory that they're a lacklustre live band while peaking with a kind of gorgeous epiphany.
Although an overrun briefly threatened and then avoided an awkward clash between all three, the church was too full for Wake The President, and attempting to listen through the wall, while successful to some extent in relaying their current confidence, was a mug's game ultimately. Oddly, though, even though the stage time had already been put back half an hour to accommodate Camera Obscura, the line check for Emmy The Great didn't start until after everyone had piled into the tramshed expectantly. By the time she comes on it's not quite right either - rumoured to have had a car breakdown en route Emma-Lee seems not to be in the right frame of mind and isn't getting into the spirit of things, the band are a keyboard player down and the wait, plus the fact she's technically following two defining sets of the weekend, means she's lost the vast majority of the crowd already. She doesn't seem to be sparking musically either, which might be partly because of how far back we end up but means we come away for the second successive weekend disappointed, albeit for different reasons, with expectations dashed. We don't bother stopping for La Caza Azul, but apparently it was a riot of very un-Indietracks music. Still, a day left.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Indietracks 2009: Friday
In just its third year, Indietracks has found a great big niche right at the heart of what we must by law refer to as the crowded festival summer. This year it's the same weekend as Truck, Camp Bestival, Secret Garden Party and any number of potential competitors, yet the fact the attendance numbers are exponentially growing is testament to many things: the idea, the reputation of its clientele, the fortunes of the music it covers at base level, and above all else the experience. Far away from 'boutique' labels, Skins kids or fashionista column inches, Indietracks exists in and of itself, so much so you almost don't want to give the game away.
So here's the first of three lengthy, detailed blog posts about it.
Truth be told, there was some foreboding on arrival at the Ripley end of the Midland Railway Museum. Indietracks, running as it does on a whole lot of communal spirit and togetherness, has always seen warm weather before, but the Friday had seen showers in the East Midlands, and indeed a couple of small rain flurries hit before the music - commencing half an hour after advertised without explanation, as would become a pattern with the stage throughout the weekend - coincided with things drying out. Still, any fears were allayed with some recce of the site, as while attendance numbers were understandably much smaller than the rest of the weekend there were still people catching up, exploring the site, band members taking in their surroundings etc. The indiepop community, clearly, won't let inclement conditions come between them and comradeship in the name of indiepop's extending tentacles. As we would see.
Elefant Records, in the year of its twentieth anniversary, had been invited to curate the main stage, moved to the bigger/proper outdoor area, and they'd decided the three band Friday was for showing off their more electronically minded catalogue. Or, in the case of Argentina's Modular, echoing the kitsch lounge music the presumably Elefant-sourced DJ played between bands for most of the first two days. The duo's parping keyboards, synthesized vocal interjections and callbacks to Jean-Jacques Perrey's experiments in musique concrète and Walter/Wendy Carlos' electrifying the classics are reminiscent of Stereolab's space age bachelor pad era, an easy listening retro-futurism that put here in a wide open festival setting doesn't really go anywhere but works as easy listening background. Which sounds like a bit of a wasted trip, coming all that way to provide mood music, but it fits somehow.
Not so long ago Rose Elinor Dougall was in a band who could play big shows in New York and Tokyo and sell out Shepherd's Bush Empire sized UK venues. Pleasingly, she doesn't seem bothered that her post-Pipettes career sees her pretty much starting from scratch, commenting "it's like I've been miniaturised into a toy railway set" as she surveys the rolling stock and steam train lines. While the coquettish glances and endearingly shabby dancing that made her the people's favourite in the band remain - you'll go a long way to find someone who looks cooler at handclaps - her music has moved away from the knowingly kitsch end. While still pop music of a sort, taking Stereolab's awkward retro-melodic nous and Broadcast's kaleidoscopic drone as a starter, you can also hear Sundays-esque wracked sunshine pop, Cocteau Twins textures and the darker end of the Smiths. The key extra ingredient is Dougall's voice, one that in this context seems unsuited to three-part girl group harmony; very English, deep and lushly powerful but also melancholically reflective in tone a la Siouxsie or Bridget St John. Her band the Distractions add something almost akin to turned down shoegazing textures (and special mention to bassist Georgia Lee for rocking a leopardprint all-in-one), but there's something at these songs' wistful, self-doubting heart that suggests relatively big things ahead.
Dougall's top Myspace friend is the night's headliners Au Revoir Simone, and it's easy to see the musical connection. The three Brooklynites don't have a great deal of stagecraft bar Annie Hart, who gets into some spectacular headshaking at times and takes to the drumkit for one song but encourages us to clap along so that she can keep the rhythm as much as our lending a percussive hand; what they do have is a way of humanising the ethereal elements of their sound. Current album Still Night, Still Light is almost skeletal in its vintage drum machine plus keyboard drone plus airy harmony template, more so than the more flesh and blood-cushioned The Bird Of Music, and while they don't really deviate in the live sound - Erika Forster brings out a bass for a couple of songs, Hart has to change the battery on one of her keyboards after the first song having forgotten during the line check, there's what seems a genuine appeal to invite them back next year at the end (you can't imagine many American bands play this sort of location) and that's about it for interaction - and some songs drift by on the breeze, there are equally moments, Sad Song of particular note, when the various keyboard sounds mesh together and envelop all in enchantment. And every so often they get to crank up a disco beat or throbbing pulse rhythm for some particularly awkward shape throwing. It doesn't all work in an outdoor environment, but it works much better than you'd expect.
So here's the first of three lengthy, detailed blog posts about it.
Truth be told, there was some foreboding on arrival at the Ripley end of the Midland Railway Museum. Indietracks, running as it does on a whole lot of communal spirit and togetherness, has always seen warm weather before, but the Friday had seen showers in the East Midlands, and indeed a couple of small rain flurries hit before the music - commencing half an hour after advertised without explanation, as would become a pattern with the stage throughout the weekend - coincided with things drying out. Still, any fears were allayed with some recce of the site, as while attendance numbers were understandably much smaller than the rest of the weekend there were still people catching up, exploring the site, band members taking in their surroundings etc. The indiepop community, clearly, won't let inclement conditions come between them and comradeship in the name of indiepop's extending tentacles. As we would see.
Elefant Records, in the year of its twentieth anniversary, had been invited to curate the main stage, moved to the bigger/proper outdoor area, and they'd decided the three band Friday was for showing off their more electronically minded catalogue. Or, in the case of Argentina's Modular, echoing the kitsch lounge music the presumably Elefant-sourced DJ played between bands for most of the first two days. The duo's parping keyboards, synthesized vocal interjections and callbacks to Jean-Jacques Perrey's experiments in musique concrète and Walter/Wendy Carlos' electrifying the classics are reminiscent of Stereolab's space age bachelor pad era, an easy listening retro-futurism that put here in a wide open festival setting doesn't really go anywhere but works as easy listening background. Which sounds like a bit of a wasted trip, coming all that way to provide mood music, but it fits somehow.
Not so long ago Rose Elinor Dougall was in a band who could play big shows in New York and Tokyo and sell out Shepherd's Bush Empire sized UK venues. Pleasingly, she doesn't seem bothered that her post-Pipettes career sees her pretty much starting from scratch, commenting "it's like I've been miniaturised into a toy railway set" as she surveys the rolling stock and steam train lines. While the coquettish glances and endearingly shabby dancing that made her the people's favourite in the band remain - you'll go a long way to find someone who looks cooler at handclaps - her music has moved away from the knowingly kitsch end. While still pop music of a sort, taking Stereolab's awkward retro-melodic nous and Broadcast's kaleidoscopic drone as a starter, you can also hear Sundays-esque wracked sunshine pop, Cocteau Twins textures and the darker end of the Smiths. The key extra ingredient is Dougall's voice, one that in this context seems unsuited to three-part girl group harmony; very English, deep and lushly powerful but also melancholically reflective in tone a la Siouxsie or Bridget St John. Her band the Distractions add something almost akin to turned down shoegazing textures (and special mention to bassist Georgia Lee for rocking a leopardprint all-in-one), but there's something at these songs' wistful, self-doubting heart that suggests relatively big things ahead.
Dougall's top Myspace friend is the night's headliners Au Revoir Simone, and it's easy to see the musical connection. The three Brooklynites don't have a great deal of stagecraft bar Annie Hart, who gets into some spectacular headshaking at times and takes to the drumkit for one song but encourages us to clap along so that she can keep the rhythm as much as our lending a percussive hand; what they do have is a way of humanising the ethereal elements of their sound. Current album Still Night, Still Light is almost skeletal in its vintage drum machine plus keyboard drone plus airy harmony template, more so than the more flesh and blood-cushioned The Bird Of Music, and while they don't really deviate in the live sound - Erika Forster brings out a bass for a couple of songs, Hart has to change the battery on one of her keyboards after the first song having forgotten during the line check, there's what seems a genuine appeal to invite them back next year at the end (you can't imagine many American bands play this sort of location) and that's about it for interaction - and some songs drift by on the breeze, there are equally moments, Sad Song of particular note, when the various keyboard sounds mesh together and envelop all in enchantment. And every so often they get to crank up a disco beat or throbbing pulse rhythm for some particularly awkward shape throwing. It doesn't all work in an outdoor environment, but it works much better than you'd expect.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
In case you're wondering
we're not sure what to do with the extensive Latitude review, as we've just done the TLOBF version which hopefully will be up in the coming days and will have Indietracks to write up next week. What do you think?
Regardless, you can have a look at our photos.
Regardless, you can have a look at our photos.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Gig news
We're doing a gig in a couple of weeks, you remember? Right.
Anyway, unfortunately Project Notion have had to pull out, but we're pleased to say we've been able to replace them with Death, No Less. They're a guitar/drums duo for whom this will be their third gig, the first two supporting the Bellrays and Shonen Knife. They cite as influences Shellac, Archie Bronson Outfit, Led Zep and PJ Harvey, and we're assured they're very, very good. And they're on with Love Ends Disaster! and Pagan Wanderer Lu, and full details are here.
Anyway, unfortunately Project Notion have had to pull out, but we're pleased to say we've been able to replace them with Death, No Less. They're a guitar/drums duo for whom this will be their third gig, the first two supporting the Bellrays and Shonen Knife. They cite as influences Shellac, Archie Bronson Outfit, Led Zep and PJ Harvey, and we're assured they're very, very good. And they're on with Love Ends Disaster! and Pagan Wanderer Lu, and full details are here.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Sunday, July 19, 2009
The annual STN Predicts The Mercury Prize Nominees post
Hello there. Still at Latitude, but with recovery and review writing/posting we might not get time to keep up this futile but filling diversion otherwise. On Tuesday at midday or so we decree these artists will be declared in the running:
Bat For Lashes
The Bug
Camera Obscura
Doves
Florence And The Machine
Friendly Fires
The Horrors
Jack Penate
Led Bib
Micachu & The Shapes
The Phantom Band
White Lies
You'll see we're right.
Bat For Lashes
The Bug
Camera Obscura
Doves
Florence And The Machine
Friendly Fires
The Horrors
Jack Penate
Led Bib
Micachu & The Shapes
The Phantom Band
White Lies
You'll see we're right.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
The Weekly Sweep
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Suffolk-ated
So we're off imminently to Latitude Festival for the weekend, which due to the magic of scheduled posting you won't really notice until early next week when Latitude Festival reviews start being posted. You've got the rest of today to tell us anything we should be aware of or any little things that could make our experience the more amenable. (Not who to see, we think we can cover that bit for ourselves)
What this does leave us time to do is plug our gig directly for the first time in a couple of days. If you're within range on 6th August it's a three line whip of attendance. In fact, even if you're not in direct range we'll be expecting you. Even those readers in Australia. Especially those readers in Australia. (And, to extend the hand of plugging friendship, if you can't make it that Thursday to Leicester, try the following Thursday, 13th August, for the Summer Sundae Fringe8 Thursday warm-up parties for the festival, nine simultaneous gigs across the city centre for £4. In fact our gig is part of two weeks' worth of special events, as outlined via that last link)
And next weekend, Indietracks. Summer here, kids!
What this does leave us time to do is plug our gig directly for the first time in a couple of days. If you're within range on 6th August it's a three line whip of attendance. In fact, even if you're not in direct range we'll be expecting you. Even those readers in Australia. Especially those readers in Australia. (And, to extend the hand of plugging friendship, if you can't make it that Thursday to Leicester, try the following Thursday, 13th August, for the Summer Sundae Fringe8 Thursday warm-up parties for the festival, nine simultaneous gigs across the city centre for £4. In fact our gig is part of two weeks' worth of special events, as outlined via that last link)
And next weekend, Indietracks. Summer here, kids!
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Invites ridicule - the latest collection of Spotify oddities
100 Greatest Sports Moments
'Sports' rather than 'Sporting', so already you know it's an American product. There's a few newsreel based albums we could go into over time, but this one is set out by its mix of radio commentaries and a wayward musical showreel. Nobody needs a percussively double time remix of Ballroom Blitz, especially when flanked by two clips from at least a decade earlier, or Quiet Riot re-recording their cover of Cum On Feel The Noize, not least as those aren't actually sports moments no matter where you plan the line to be drawn. For a compilation deeming itself the arbiter of sports' greatest moments, moreover, we're not sure the 1972 Olympic terrorist tragedy, Dale Earnhardt's death, Olympic boycotts, baseball strikes, steroid trials or - and we're not making this up, although we suspect it's in to make up the numbers - David Beckham resigning as England captain quite counts. Also, nobody ever needs to hear a cover of Let's Get It Started.
Superhits prasentiert vom Palast Orchester mit seinem sanger Max Raabe
"Max Raabe is a German singer and band leader of the Palast Orchester. He and his orchestra specialise in recreating the sound of German dance and film music of the 1920s and 1930s, especially by performing songs of the Comedian Harmonists." So yeah, it's a post-ironic covers album, but crucially done by a German so you're never quite sure how much comedy is intended, with the result We Will Rock You just sounds uncomfortably odd, Eiffel 65's Blue (Da Ba Dee) has some sort of King's Singers arrangement that hopes you don't notice the copout dance beats behind - they should speak to Mike Flowers, he ended up teaming up with Stock Aitken Waterman and somehow forgetting the point of his act - and we're not sure replacing Kiss' guitar with a banjo under the treacle-thick carousing of the very un-Prince vocal is entirely in the spirit of reversioning. They also have a crack at Manu Chao's already fairly odd King Of The Bongo, and that'll blow your sinuses clear away.
Sounds Of London
Recorded in 1961, exactly what it says it is. What situation would you play this in, even if you were a subscriber? Even a day pass purchaser. We're not sure the arguments about atheism and war on the track recorded at Speaker's Corner would unduly tax Richard Dawkins or George Galloway.
Funny In The Head - The Best Of The Barron Knights
And when all else fails, the late Duke D'Mond and colleagues will always come up with the goods. We've already had a Barron Knights compilation in one of these round-ups, but this one is more contemporary - where the hell is that audience? - and features entirely different tracks throughout. What that means is up for streaming is their surprise number 3 single of Christmas 1978 A Taste Of Aggro, relocating Rivers Of Babylon and The Smurf Song in dental and criminal situations. The fun neverstarts stops after that for eighteen further tracks of country laments to Shep and Barbara Woodhouse, an impression of Lene Lovich, Supertramp versus the three day week and songs called Heavin' On A Jet Plane and Little White Bum. Farewell To Punk ("welcome new wave!") certainly opens up old arguments.
'Sports' rather than 'Sporting', so already you know it's an American product. There's a few newsreel based albums we could go into over time, but this one is set out by its mix of radio commentaries and a wayward musical showreel. Nobody needs a percussively double time remix of Ballroom Blitz, especially when flanked by two clips from at least a decade earlier, or Quiet Riot re-recording their cover of Cum On Feel The Noize, not least as those aren't actually sports moments no matter where you plan the line to be drawn. For a compilation deeming itself the arbiter of sports' greatest moments, moreover, we're not sure the 1972 Olympic terrorist tragedy, Dale Earnhardt's death, Olympic boycotts, baseball strikes, steroid trials or - and we're not making this up, although we suspect it's in to make up the numbers - David Beckham resigning as England captain quite counts. Also, nobody ever needs to hear a cover of Let's Get It Started.
Superhits prasentiert vom Palast Orchester mit seinem sanger Max Raabe
"Max Raabe is a German singer and band leader of the Palast Orchester. He and his orchestra specialise in recreating the sound of German dance and film music of the 1920s and 1930s, especially by performing songs of the Comedian Harmonists." So yeah, it's a post-ironic covers album, but crucially done by a German so you're never quite sure how much comedy is intended, with the result We Will Rock You just sounds uncomfortably odd, Eiffel 65's Blue (Da Ba Dee) has some sort of King's Singers arrangement that hopes you don't notice the copout dance beats behind - they should speak to Mike Flowers, he ended up teaming up with Stock Aitken Waterman and somehow forgetting the point of his act - and we're not sure replacing Kiss' guitar with a banjo under the treacle-thick carousing of the very un-Prince vocal is entirely in the spirit of reversioning. They also have a crack at Manu Chao's already fairly odd King Of The Bongo, and that'll blow your sinuses clear away.
Sounds Of London
Recorded in 1961, exactly what it says it is. What situation would you play this in, even if you were a subscriber? Even a day pass purchaser. We're not sure the arguments about atheism and war on the track recorded at Speaker's Corner would unduly tax Richard Dawkins or George Galloway.
Funny In The Head - The Best Of The Barron Knights
And when all else fails, the late Duke D'Mond and colleagues will always come up with the goods. We've already had a Barron Knights compilation in one of these round-ups, but this one is more contemporary - where the hell is that audience? - and features entirely different tracks throughout. What that means is up for streaming is their surprise number 3 single of Christmas 1978 A Taste Of Aggro, relocating Rivers Of Babylon and The Smurf Song in dental and criminal situations. The fun never
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Did we mention this at all?
Behold the weapons grade charm of our gig poster
The Voluntary Butler Scheme gig is Twesta's rather than ours but we'd recommend that one too, as Actionforce are a hugely promising live band (and LED! worked on their recordings) and Silent Devices are favourites of Bethan Elfyn.
The Voluntary Butler Scheme gig is Twesta's rather than ours but we'd recommend that one too, as Actionforce are a hugely promising live band (and LED! worked on their recordings) and Silent Devices are favourites of Bethan Elfyn.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Monday's Newcomers II
When Loqui's press release dropped into the STN cubbyhole it declared them as "hailing from Leeds but a million miles away from the indie-rock plodders who have put that city on the map", which for a blog that's often hailed the great stuff coming out of that city in the last couple of years seemed a little forward. Still, we assumed they meant the Kaisers and Pigeons and pressed on, which was fortunate as they're one of those bands who seemed to have listened to a lot of uncool influences and sometimes threaten to resemble them but have a spark of genius/madness that sends them well away from the wrong targets. They mention the Cardiacs in their PR and share some of that jazzy, awkward sense that they themselves only have a vague idea of how to get from A to B and certainly aren't going to do so with the minimum of fuss. Then again, you can hear a certain theatricality in them, not so much West End or Brechtian but the low rent glamour of early B-52s and Sparks, and the odd slip into ska-punk mode. No, stay with us. They have a limited edition 7" called Hermes Pan out today on Sturdy Records.
We're having a summer, aren't we? Welcome, then, Bermondsey's Lion O'Brien, who make the kind of sunkissed, optimistic pop that's infectious to a fault with just the merest hint of jangle, sounding like a cut down Fanfarlo or a less West Coast harmony indebted Magic Numbers. Their forthcoming EP is called Raincloud Vs Sunshine, which sounds about right, and is out July 20th. Side note: they're a trio of two men and a woman, who drums. Guess who's furthest forward in their promo picture.
More music made for either lying back in the grass or pulling inappropriate shapes in public are provided by Apples - terrible band name, by the way - who are from Hereford, which seems to be delivering some interesting stuff on the quiet with old STN favourites Gossamer Albatross and the recently signed to Big Scary Monsters instrumental hardcore outfit Talons. The Apples aren't orchestral or math at all. In fact, they sound like Haircut 100, on one track sax and all. Luckily this is the Mystery Jets end of 80s references rather than the Ladyhawke end, and they've got a degree of punk-funk latitude about them too, and a hint of that Afrobeat indie thing you hear so much about. Second download single Theo is out this week.
We're having a summer, aren't we? Welcome, then, Bermondsey's Lion O'Brien, who make the kind of sunkissed, optimistic pop that's infectious to a fault with just the merest hint of jangle, sounding like a cut down Fanfarlo or a less West Coast harmony indebted Magic Numbers. Their forthcoming EP is called Raincloud Vs Sunshine, which sounds about right, and is out July 20th. Side note: they're a trio of two men and a woman, who drums. Guess who's furthest forward in their promo picture.
More music made for either lying back in the grass or pulling inappropriate shapes in public are provided by Apples - terrible band name, by the way - who are from Hereford, which seems to be delivering some interesting stuff on the quiet with old STN favourites Gossamer Albatross and the recently signed to Big Scary Monsters instrumental hardcore outfit Talons. The Apples aren't orchestral or math at all. In fact, they sound like Haircut 100, on one track sax and all. Luckily this is the Mystery Jets end of 80s references rather than the Ladyhawke end, and they've got a degree of punk-funk latitude about them too, and a hint of that Afrobeat indie thing you hear so much about. Second download single Theo is out this week.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Maybe I should get a proper hobby
Hello. Do you like those books and written outlets that attempt to explain why a certain number of songs are so great (Pitchfork 500, This Is Uncool, Popular)? Reckon you could contribute to something in that style, but online? Contact us if so.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
The Weekly Sweep
Thursday, July 09, 2009
The Music That Made... Slow Club
You know Slow Club, right? Bloke and girl from Sheffield, not quite folk, not quite twee, all really rather engaging and joyous in a vaguely piecemeal way. Yes? Well, Yeah, So?, out now on Moshi Moshi, is even better than that, as this fine chap reinforces. Masculine half Charles Taylor gives us a few minutes:
First single bought: Cher - Believe - it was a present for my sister
First album bought: I think it might have been Rated R by Queens Of The Stone Age.
First gig voluntarily attended: Bowling For Soup at the Leadmill, Sheffield
The record that most made you want to get into music: I don't know about getting into music. I can't really put that down to one album. The Shins' first two records played a large part in getting Slow Club off the ground.
The three headliners at a festival you were curating: Phillip Glass conducting Koyaanisqatsi score/Yann Tiersen/Grinderman
A song not enough people know about but everyone should hear: Clank Clank by Saffron Set
A song you'd play to get people dancing: A Postcard To Nina by Jens Lekman
The last great thing you heard: Neil Young at Glastonbury
Your key non-musical influences: Rob Ryan, Guy J Jackson
Your favourite new artist: Viking Moses
First single bought: Cher - Believe - it was a present for my sister
First album bought: I think it might have been Rated R by Queens Of The Stone Age.
First gig voluntarily attended: Bowling For Soup at the Leadmill, Sheffield
The record that most made you want to get into music: I don't know about getting into music. I can't really put that down to one album. The Shins' first two records played a large part in getting Slow Club off the ground.
The three headliners at a festival you were curating: Phillip Glass conducting Koyaanisqatsi score/Yann Tiersen/Grinderman
A song not enough people know about but everyone should hear: Clank Clank by Saffron Set
A song you'd play to get people dancing: A Postcard To Nina by Jens Lekman
The last great thing you heard: Neil Young at Glastonbury
Your key non-musical influences: Rob Ryan, Guy J Jackson
Your favourite new artist: Viking Moses
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Girls at their worst
You'd think it'd be a difficult time for a chart watcher, what with the swathe of Jacksoneria clogging up space in both top tens at the moment. In fact, no, over these last two or three weeks it's been the very opposite. Even right at the top, where we saw the benefit of the late sales run - in the singles chart Man In The Mirror (and why that song in particular? The BBC News site gave explanation a go but seemed to get no further elucidation than "well, just because". "It wasn't a hit first time round so it feels fresh"? Well, where's Liberian Girl or Cry gone?) held an 8,000 sales lead over Cascada in midweek but went backwards, actually only holding off La Roux for number two by, sir, one single copy. Oddly, it was the other way round in the album chart, Ellie and her imaginary friend actually losing a lead of 12,800 copies to one of three best ofs. Somehow, and it can't merely be a promotional change or new stock arriving, The Essential Michael Jackson sold 34k on Friday and Saturday to La Roux's 18.6k. Curiouser and curiouser.
Incidentally, Ellie Jackson explains Ben Langmaid's complete absence from all forms of La Roux-based communication - unwise, frankly, given some of the head-slapping quotes she's given recently - by comparing it to how Will Gregory is an invisible hand behind Alison Goldfrapp so you might never know Goldfrapp is a duo.
Anonymous, publicity shy invisible band member Will Gregory with the winner of this year's Nina Persson As Off-Duty Burlesque Boho Lookalike Contest
Anyway, this isn't a post about La Roux. In fact, the crux of it is to point up two albums that have done interesting things in the chart of late.
Three weeks ago two albums that had entered in the previous week's top ten fell a great distance. Placebo's Battle For The Sun slipped from 8 to 41, but you expect that - at this stage Placebo are a fan-only proposition and they know nobody is going to be introduced to this hot new talent through new record means. The other fell from 5 to 40. It was Little Boots' Hands.
Let's think about this. Little Boots is not being aimed at a specific audience in any way. She's been given a good amount of crossover radio play, there's been significant poster coverage, she's been in every bit of press that'd have her. In fact, that may be the problem - after winning the BBC Sound Of 2009 poll she was given the cover of Guardian Weekend and a significant amount of space in the Times in the second week of January, five months before the frankly Natasha Bedingfield-esque (listen to that chorus again) New In Town single. As such we already know her parameters, a shot at 'sophisticated', 'DIY' (she has her own YouTube channel, see) post-Kylie POP!!! practitioner with a Tenori-On (market price: £919. Dead Disco surely didn't recoup that much) It's almost nostalgia for 1990s pop, and even in our accelerating culture that seems a rough pill to swallow. You can't help wondering how much of that single, which itself peaked at number 13, is the dead hand of Greg Kurstin not quite getting what 679 wanted. It may pick up, and indeed is only just under the top 40 two weeks later with next single Remedy's promotion starting very early, but it'll have to go some to match up to what was openly expected of it.
You could imagine it's some sort of general backlash against the Girls With Synths thing, because only the music industry and its PR handmaidens could engender a backlash against a whole sex, but Florence is midweek number one and La Roux we've just dealt with. That said, it's a female front and centre of the other major new album news piece, one so little remarked upon that you'd think there was some sort of conspiracy. Which, in a way, there may have been.
Gossip's Music For Men entered at number 18 and then fell to 53. Take out the Jacksii and it's still 14 to 45.
Brace Paine recently commented that they thought about marketing T-shirts reading 'Gossip Is A Group', after the famed 'Blondie Is A Band' merchandise. Too late, we suspect. Beth Ditto actually seems to exist outside Gossip, as if the cult of celebrity has overtaken them to such an extent that there's Beth The Fashion Icon Of Our Times and they have to mention the band through some sort of imagined honour system. Why else would the TV advert start like this?
Maybe it's just that Ditto hasn't taken well to suddenly being this fashionista avatar when in America she's still the singer with a cult concern. All their press runs "fat naked Deep South squirrels lesbian Top Shop Kate Moss, oh, and she's in a band", and you begin to wonder why you bother when such a complexity is reduced to a trailer trash Beryl Cook painting. And while again the campaign opened weakly with the nondescript Heavy Cross - peaking at 37! - everyone seems to agree that that's as good as the album gets. But hey, why have album sales when Gordon Smart runs your picture.
Incidentally, Ellie Jackson explains Ben Langmaid's complete absence from all forms of La Roux-based communication - unwise, frankly, given some of the head-slapping quotes she's given recently - by comparing it to how Will Gregory is an invisible hand behind Alison Goldfrapp so you might never know Goldfrapp is a duo.
Anonymous, publicity shy invisible band member Will Gregory with the winner of this year's Nina Persson As Off-Duty Burlesque Boho Lookalike Contest
Anyway, this isn't a post about La Roux. In fact, the crux of it is to point up two albums that have done interesting things in the chart of late.
Three weeks ago two albums that had entered in the previous week's top ten fell a great distance. Placebo's Battle For The Sun slipped from 8 to 41, but you expect that - at this stage Placebo are a fan-only proposition and they know nobody is going to be introduced to this hot new talent through new record means. The other fell from 5 to 40. It was Little Boots' Hands.
Let's think about this. Little Boots is not being aimed at a specific audience in any way. She's been given a good amount of crossover radio play, there's been significant poster coverage, she's been in every bit of press that'd have her. In fact, that may be the problem - after winning the BBC Sound Of 2009 poll she was given the cover of Guardian Weekend and a significant amount of space in the Times in the second week of January, five months before the frankly Natasha Bedingfield-esque (listen to that chorus again) New In Town single. As such we already know her parameters, a shot at 'sophisticated', 'DIY' (she has her own YouTube channel, see) post-Kylie POP!!! practitioner with a Tenori-On (market price: £919. Dead Disco surely didn't recoup that much) It's almost nostalgia for 1990s pop, and even in our accelerating culture that seems a rough pill to swallow. You can't help wondering how much of that single, which itself peaked at number 13, is the dead hand of Greg Kurstin not quite getting what 679 wanted. It may pick up, and indeed is only just under the top 40 two weeks later with next single Remedy's promotion starting very early, but it'll have to go some to match up to what was openly expected of it.
You could imagine it's some sort of general backlash against the Girls With Synths thing, because only the music industry and its PR handmaidens could engender a backlash against a whole sex, but Florence is midweek number one and La Roux we've just dealt with. That said, it's a female front and centre of the other major new album news piece, one so little remarked upon that you'd think there was some sort of conspiracy. Which, in a way, there may have been.
Gossip's Music For Men entered at number 18 and then fell to 53. Take out the Jacksii and it's still 14 to 45.
Brace Paine recently commented that they thought about marketing T-shirts reading 'Gossip Is A Group', after the famed 'Blondie Is A Band' merchandise. Too late, we suspect. Beth Ditto actually seems to exist outside Gossip, as if the cult of celebrity has overtaken them to such an extent that there's Beth The Fashion Icon Of Our Times and they have to mention the band through some sort of imagined honour system. Why else would the TV advert start like this?
Maybe it's just that Ditto hasn't taken well to suddenly being this fashionista avatar when in America she's still the singer with a cult concern. All their press runs "fat naked Deep South squirrels lesbian Top Shop Kate Moss, oh, and she's in a band", and you begin to wonder why you bother when such a complexity is reduced to a trailer trash Beryl Cook painting. And while again the campaign opened weakly with the nondescript Heavy Cross - peaking at 37! - everyone seems to agree that that's as good as the album gets. But hey, why have album sales when Gordon Smart runs your picture.
Monday, July 06, 2009
Embassy number one
Sweden isn't just about mildly fey Smithsian indiepop. The Göteborg scene is of a more pastel-coloured digital hue, housing the critically acclaimed Tough Alliance, Studio and Air France. Leaders of said scene are The Embassy, a duo whose debut album, 2005's Futile Crimes, was named the third best of the century so far in a localised poll and whose recent single was released in a limited edition 12". That's a limited edition of... three. It's somewhat Mediterranean in feel, like a Balearic non-Cracknell Saint Etienne meets Service labelmate Jens Lekman and an odd dash of Laid Back, the Danish outfit whose mid 80s near-hit Bakerman, the skydiving video (directed by Lars von Trier!) for which was on the Chart Show every week for what seemed like months. They call it "underclass disco". The press release compares it to "ecstasy-fuelled jewel stealing on the Riviera." Oh, now you say it...
The Embassy - You Tend To Forget
The Embassy - You Tend To Forget
Sunday, July 05, 2009
Visual aid
Filler embeds, we're afraid. We do try and keep a steady hand on the tiller via the Sweep when it comes to STN-approved videos, but just recently labels and artists have been issuing clips for songs long released. Let's use this opportunity to rein some of that back in.
Dirty Projectors, for instance. How to approach the avant-something collective's throwing together of Amber Coffman's Mariah vocal cadences, one of those mad productions Aaliyah and Brandy used to get, and half a Talking Heads mix played backwards and looped? With Dave Longstreth herding a llama and the girls in jumpsuits exerting some hidden memory of a collective dance step. Obviously.
Owner of a place in the Sweep for about six straight years with this single, Rose Elinor Dougall sings of loneliness in the face of other people's love, of being the third and hence unwanted wheel in a once loving relationship. The director of her video pitches her a long, unspoken walk to the beach and images of bearing up or otherwise to a new singularity. She brings the rest of her band along to the shoot. Don't quite understand that logic.
It's all (well, two out of three so far) newly solo'd artists this week. Lord Cut-Glass is Alun Woodward, formerly the grit to Emma Pollock's half of this doomed simile in the Delgados. What we've heard of his same-titled debut on his own is highly interesting quirkpop fest. Somewhere in here is the dark heart that complemented Pollock's piano reveries.
Incidentally, there's a good number of Delgados videos on ver 'Tube. Even this one, which we didn't even know was a single.
What else? Well, this lot have a new video and it's not made it to 200 views in its first nine days up so...
Dirty Projectors, for instance. How to approach the avant-something collective's throwing together of Amber Coffman's Mariah vocal cadences, one of those mad productions Aaliyah and Brandy used to get, and half a Talking Heads mix played backwards and looped? With Dave Longstreth herding a llama and the girls in jumpsuits exerting some hidden memory of a collective dance step. Obviously.
Owner of a place in the Sweep for about six straight years with this single, Rose Elinor Dougall sings of loneliness in the face of other people's love, of being the third and hence unwanted wheel in a once loving relationship. The director of her video pitches her a long, unspoken walk to the beach and images of bearing up or otherwise to a new singularity. She brings the rest of her band along to the shoot. Don't quite understand that logic.
It's all (well, two out of three so far) newly solo'd artists this week. Lord Cut-Glass is Alun Woodward, formerly the grit to Emma Pollock's half of this doomed simile in the Delgados. What we've heard of his same-titled debut on his own is highly interesting quirkpop fest. Somewhere in here is the dark heart that complemented Pollock's piano reveries.
Incidentally, there's a good number of Delgados videos on ver 'Tube. Even this one, which we didn't even know was a single.
What else? Well, this lot have a new video and it's not made it to 200 views in its first nine days up so...
Saturday, July 04, 2009
The Weekly Sweep
Thursday, July 02, 2009
Young lovers
It's too warm for lots of typing, so a quick heads up for The Young Playthings. Those with long memories may recall they released one of our favourite under the radar albums of 2007, Who Invented Love? At the time we described them as "a Weezer/Superchunk-esque power-pop outfit reimagining a David Lynch soundtrack". Their new album Back To The Future is definitely their Pinkerton in that case, less of the power end of the spectrum, darker and more lyrically poetically awkward, grown up and trying to work out the work-life balance if still imbued with the electric (and a couple on acoustic) sound of joy. It sounds like they've been listening to a lot of modern R&B for one thing, judging by a couple of tracks; at other times you'll think of Modest Mouse or a hungover Replacements. The press release calls it "a pop album with a punk rock heart". Yeah, that'll do.
The Young Playthings - Kiss Yr Voice
The Young Playthings - Kiss Yr Voice
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
The minor form
Quick heads-up for Spotify users that two new releases of great import have sneaked on in the last couple of days. Mew's monumentally titled new album is being previewed by the, erm, uneven No More Stories EP, while Spoon have surprised everyone with a digital only three tracker, Got Nuffin'. Really worthwhile, that second track, thanks everyone.
In more aerated climes, you might have missed this in yesterday's massive update - Spotify seemed to, certainly - but lurking among the huge intake from CDBaby was a 2004 Welsh language three track eponymous EP by Aimee Duffy. Yep, the self same. Curiosity only, let's say.
In more aerated climes, you might have missed this in yesterday's massive update - Spotify seemed to, certainly - but lurking among the huge intake from CDBaby was a 2004 Welsh language three track eponymous EP by Aimee Duffy. Yep, the self same. Curiosity only, let's say.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Halfway there
Well, we've hit the halfway point of 2009 and so far it's as if the music world has bucked its ideas up and decided to see this most flatulent of decades out with a load of really interesting albums. Strong debuts from Blue Roses, Broken Records, Dananananaykroyd, Emmy The Great, Fanfarlo, Grammatics, Joe Gideon And The Shark, Micachu & The Shapes, The Phantom Band, Sky Larkin, Wake The President and We Were Promised Jetpacks. Stellar North Americans: Andrew Bird, Animal Collective, Au Revoir Simone, The Decemberists, Grizzly Bear, Papercuts. Brits singular in their various ways: Bat For Lashes, Brakes, Camera Obscura, Doves, Future Of The Left, Pagan Wanderer Lu. Hell, even style bunnies The Horrors put out a really good record.
And the fun doesn't stop there. The second half of 2009 is littered with good things afoot, not to mention ll the surprises. Well, obviously, they wouldn't be surprises then.
Just next week there's the amazingly tearful/joyous Slow Club album Yeah, So? August 3rd sees Wild Beasts deliver on their promise of a lightning quick follow-up to Limbo Panto, Two Dancers apparently even more elegaic and odd. Two words which very much describe Mew, a band who have chosen to call their album No More Stories Are Told Today I'm Sorry They Washed Away No More Stories The World Is Grey I'm Tired Let's Wash Away. (But it seems to be fine to refer to it just as No More Stories.) Out on 24th August, they're reunited with Frengers producer Rich Costey and promise a work that's more upbeat and nearly straightforward.
That Owen Pallett's a one. Back in late 2006 he said the third Final Fantasy album Heartland would be out in mid-2007. In mid-2007 he amended it to mid-2008. We're now in mid-2009 and he's still working on it, although he's found time to do string arrangements for the Rumble Strips (Welcome To The Walk Alone, July 13th). He promises it'll definitely be out this year, with a Prague orchestra. We'll believe it when we see it. Also imminently approaching studio finality, Lucky Soul's follow-up to theretro timelessly classic girl-pop drenched glory of The Great Unwanted. Like the advance single it's titled Woah Billy! and includes the string section that played on Brian Wilson's re-recorded version of Smile. Hints dropped on their blog about song structures include "Sam Cooke meets Edith Piaf", "Carole King sings Neil Young's Birds", "exactly halfway between The Smiths and Motown", "a weird mix of Stax, Talking Heads, Dolly Parton and The Specials" and "I still haven't finished the lyrics. It deserves brilliance."
A rather more forceful brilliance manifests itself in the gentlemen and lady of Digbeth that are Johnny Foreigner. "A year ago we were kinda smartarsed and told everyone it'd be a concept album about a band, yeh, who go on tour a lot and go round the world and then go and make their second album. And thats pretty much what we've gone and made." So says Alexei of Grace And The Bigger Picture, out 26th October, produced by Alex Newport (At The Drive-In, Two Gallants, Death Cab For Cutie, Polysics, The Melvins, Sepultura, System Of A Down) and featuring guest appearances by members of Dananananaykroyd, Sky Larkin, Fight Like Apes and Meneguar. Also quoth Berrow: "one of the songs features a title mostly designed to make Tubelord go "aaaaaaww"". Unfortunately Tubelord might be a little busy, the disorientatingly fearsome Kingston trio releasing their own debut album in October. There's a narrative, it says here. If you want noise on 7th September, you've got it in the shape pf two new releases, Yo La Tengo's twelth album Popular Songs seemingly their most eclectic, while The Victorian English Gentlemens Club, slightly reconfigured and definitely pinging off the wires of their nerves, issue the curiously titled Love On An Oil Rig.
And if we're talking inventive, often ear piercing regions, we must as we so often do look to our friends at Smalltown America Records. The Young Playthings have just released their second album, more of which later in the week, and in a Hot Press interview there's the promise of new albums afoot from lo-fi electro-bedroom pop whizzkid Alan MX and hard shell explosives Ice Sea Dead People. Excitingly, there's definite news of a 4 Or 5 Magicians album, 12th October being the landing date for the very much misleadingly titled Empty, Derivative Pop Songs. And... is that a new Jetplane Landing album emerging in the middle distance?
What else? Well, a lot of known knowns and known unknowns. Yoni Wolf excelled himself with Why?'s Alopecia last year; the offcuts are being released as Eskimo Snow, "really the least hip-hop out of anything I've ever been involved with". Monsters Of Folk (21st September) is really the least hip-hop thing Conor Oberst, Jim James and M Ward will ever be involved with, but there's plenty of suss just there to get excited about. People who don't really understand what twee is call Noah & The Whale twee; still, early indications are that they're stung enough by post-5 Years Time associations to ensure The First Days Of Spring (31st August) is a darker, more grandiose offering. It too has a running narrative, and Charlie Fink has made an animation to cover it that will be shown at Latitude in full for the first time. Tyondai Braxton is one quarter of Battles, so Central Market (14th September)'s "orchestral music re-imagined" definitely won't be one to have on in the background ust in case. The Noughties Shop Assistants that are Vivian Girls release quickfire sophomore album Everything Goes Wrong in September. Charlotte Hatherley, currently part of the Bat For Lashes live band, has always done really interesting guitar-pop stuff solo, continued with New Worlds (October). Then there's the Flaming Lips, who get out the costumes and big ball for double album Embryonic (14th September). Word is that Karen O and MGMT are in there somewhere, as is something, thank goodness, a lot more strange than At War With The Mystics.
And then there's all the albums that might come out this year but we half suspect might fall into 2010. Rose Elinor Dougall, for instance, whose particular psych-pop kaleidoscope of a solo debut will be called Without Why - a quote from 17th century German mystical poet Angelus Silesius, for the record - but might now be held up until after her exes The Pipettes have released their disco-flavoured return, produced by Martin Rushent for that full turn of the 80s flavour. Luke Haines, whose fourth solo album is titled Achtung Mother, which he describes as "two song suites. One is about being a man from southern England and the other is a homage to people like Klaus Kinski and Peter Hamill". Distorted piano-drums duo Quasi are back in action, now beefed up with a bassist third member, Joanna Bolme of Stephen Malkmus' Jicks (and wife of Gary Jarman off the Cribs, pop kids). And lest we forget, the Wave Pictures' David Tattersall suggested last year they had two albums ready to roll in 2009, acoustic and electric. The former is presumably If You Leave It Alone; no word of a follow-up just yet.
So there's plenty to be going on with. Let's all try not to die of swine flu, eh?
And the fun doesn't stop there. The second half of 2009 is littered with good things afoot, not to mention ll the surprises. Well, obviously, they wouldn't be surprises then.
Just next week there's the amazingly tearful/joyous Slow Club album Yeah, So? August 3rd sees Wild Beasts deliver on their promise of a lightning quick follow-up to Limbo Panto, Two Dancers apparently even more elegaic and odd. Two words which very much describe Mew, a band who have chosen to call their album No More Stories Are Told Today I'm Sorry They Washed Away No More Stories The World Is Grey I'm Tired Let's Wash Away. (But it seems to be fine to refer to it just as No More Stories.) Out on 24th August, they're reunited with Frengers producer Rich Costey and promise a work that's more upbeat and nearly straightforward.
That Owen Pallett's a one. Back in late 2006 he said the third Final Fantasy album Heartland would be out in mid-2007. In mid-2007 he amended it to mid-2008. We're now in mid-2009 and he's still working on it, although he's found time to do string arrangements for the Rumble Strips (Welcome To The Walk Alone, July 13th). He promises it'll definitely be out this year, with a Prague orchestra. We'll believe it when we see it. Also imminently approaching studio finality, Lucky Soul's follow-up to the
A rather more forceful brilliance manifests itself in the gentlemen and lady of Digbeth that are Johnny Foreigner. "A year ago we were kinda smartarsed and told everyone it'd be a concept album about a band, yeh, who go on tour a lot and go round the world and then go and make their second album. And thats pretty much what we've gone and made." So says Alexei of Grace And The Bigger Picture, out 26th October, produced by Alex Newport (At The Drive-In, Two Gallants, Death Cab For Cutie, Polysics, The Melvins, Sepultura, System Of A Down) and featuring guest appearances by members of Dananananaykroyd, Sky Larkin, Fight Like Apes and Meneguar. Also quoth Berrow: "one of the songs features a title mostly designed to make Tubelord go "aaaaaaww"". Unfortunately Tubelord might be a little busy, the disorientatingly fearsome Kingston trio releasing their own debut album in October. There's a narrative, it says here. If you want noise on 7th September, you've got it in the shape pf two new releases, Yo La Tengo's twelth album Popular Songs seemingly their most eclectic, while The Victorian English Gentlemens Club, slightly reconfigured and definitely pinging off the wires of their nerves, issue the curiously titled Love On An Oil Rig.
And if we're talking inventive, often ear piercing regions, we must as we so often do look to our friends at Smalltown America Records. The Young Playthings have just released their second album, more of which later in the week, and in a Hot Press interview there's the promise of new albums afoot from lo-fi electro-bedroom pop whizzkid Alan MX and hard shell explosives Ice Sea Dead People. Excitingly, there's definite news of a 4 Or 5 Magicians album, 12th October being the landing date for the very much misleadingly titled Empty, Derivative Pop Songs. And... is that a new Jetplane Landing album emerging in the middle distance?
What else? Well, a lot of known knowns and known unknowns. Yoni Wolf excelled himself with Why?'s Alopecia last year; the offcuts are being released as Eskimo Snow, "really the least hip-hop out of anything I've ever been involved with". Monsters Of Folk (21st September) is really the least hip-hop thing Conor Oberst, Jim James and M Ward will ever be involved with, but there's plenty of suss just there to get excited about. People who don't really understand what twee is call Noah & The Whale twee; still, early indications are that they're stung enough by post-5 Years Time associations to ensure The First Days Of Spring (31st August) is a darker, more grandiose offering. It too has a running narrative, and Charlie Fink has made an animation to cover it that will be shown at Latitude in full for the first time. Tyondai Braxton is one quarter of Battles, so Central Market (14th September)'s "orchestral music re-imagined" definitely won't be one to have on in the background ust in case. The Noughties Shop Assistants that are Vivian Girls release quickfire sophomore album Everything Goes Wrong in September. Charlotte Hatherley, currently part of the Bat For Lashes live band, has always done really interesting guitar-pop stuff solo, continued with New Worlds (October). Then there's the Flaming Lips, who get out the costumes and big ball for double album Embryonic (14th September). Word is that Karen O and MGMT are in there somewhere, as is something, thank goodness, a lot more strange than At War With The Mystics.
And then there's all the albums that might come out this year but we half suspect might fall into 2010. Rose Elinor Dougall, for instance, whose particular psych-pop kaleidoscope of a solo debut will be called Without Why - a quote from 17th century German mystical poet Angelus Silesius, for the record - but might now be held up until after her exes The Pipettes have released their disco-flavoured return, produced by Martin Rushent for that full turn of the 80s flavour. Luke Haines, whose fourth solo album is titled Achtung Mother, which he describes as "two song suites. One is about being a man from southern England and the other is a homage to people like Klaus Kinski and Peter Hamill". Distorted piano-drums duo Quasi are back in action, now beefed up with a bassist third member, Joanna Bolme of Stephen Malkmus' Jicks (and wife of Gary Jarman off the Cribs, pop kids). And lest we forget, the Wave Pictures' David Tattersall suggested last year they had two albums ready to roll in 2009, acoustic and electric. The former is presumably If You Leave It Alone; no word of a follow-up just yet.
So there's plenty to be going on with. Let's all try not to die of swine flu, eh?
Monday, June 29, 2009
Monday's newcomers
Stockholm's Moofish Catfish have been over in the UK for the last couple of weeks, spreading yet another ray of delightfulness-driven Swedish pop. Melodic old swoonsome yearning is pretty much the starting point here, not so delicate that they crumble upon touch but possessing that chiming, timeless quality, slightly woozily retro, occasionally pleasingly fuzzy and falling-over and imbued with much of Those Dancing Days' joie de vivre without sounding that much like them. There must be something in the Swedish air that makes their young bands tend to turn out like this.
Even if you overlooked the name, only one country would produce Full English Breakfast, which inevitably is one bloke with a grasp of odd pop and a spectacularly eccentric worldview. It veers all over the place in what sounds like a single-handed attempt to show Lawrence Hayward there were some gaps Felt, Denim and Go-Kart Mozart didn't quite manage to fill in. In places it accelerates through everyone from Edwyn Collins (forthcoming single Song For A Nut) to early 80s Sheffield electronics to Beck to lo-fi Babybird to Mark E Smith being a little more careful with his initial influences. Every so often we need a new injection of English art-pop off-kilteredness, and with an album out in a month's time here's a man well in position to provide it.
Since promoting A Classic Education and Magpie Wedding we've had quite a few Myspace friend requests from outfits based in Bologna. At least there's somewhere where we're popular. One such is Ofeliadorme, who like both of the aforementioned are clearly aware of post-rock and are taking its influence into quieter, more structured areas. There's elements of Low's slowcore disturbance allied to the minimal raw, otherworldly appealing of the first half of Cat Power's discography, Francesca Bono's vocals between that spooked intimacy and Polly Harvey's force of nature. Dark and mystical, almost spiritual were it not for the fact that there's some quite worrying things going on, it's lilting but not quite lulling anyone into false senses of security.
Enough of quiet subtlety. These Waves are another of that growing band of youngsters taking inspiration from Minus The Bear, the Seattle outfit for whom linear time signatures and straightforward strumming were for other people. You'll also hear At The Drive-In, Reuben and Glassjaw in their angular post-hardcore attack (much like previously featured Buenos Aires, actually, and like other STN favourites Minnaars Tom Woodhead has been producing them), which is all to the good. They're from Derby, for the record, which has always been the east Midlands' poor relation in terms of producing bands but with You Animals and Beyond This Point Are Monsters also making moves something's afoot.
How about some doleful electro? I Like Where I Live, essentially one bloke from Glasgow called Dave McAdams, takes up that thoughtful strain of soaring keyboards and beats from the Postal Service and Her Space Holiday, while not being that far away from the essence of the retro synths of your Passion Pits and Big Pinks and onto M83. Music to look out onto the sunset to.
Which is not the case with London duo Gentle Friendly. With a release behind them through No Pain In Pop and one forthcoming on Upset The Rhythm they've certainly got themselves into a good place with a sound that doesn't make for easy passing listening. Taking the drones of the Silver Apples' oscillators and Fuck Buttons' special knobs, the hallucinogenic counter-melodic euphoria of Animal Collective, Banjo Or Freakout and Health, and the noisy, bleeding alt-pop oddness of the Unicorns and No Age, their music takes a woozy ride through a kaleidoscope of Kraut rhythms, digital distortion, criss-crossing ideas and the joy of loud and vaguely uncomfortable, all done on reclaimed keyboards and rusting drumkits. We sense you'll be hearing a lot, lot more of them in such circles when their album is out in September.
Even if you overlooked the name, only one country would produce Full English Breakfast, which inevitably is one bloke with a grasp of odd pop and a spectacularly eccentric worldview. It veers all over the place in what sounds like a single-handed attempt to show Lawrence Hayward there were some gaps Felt, Denim and Go-Kart Mozart didn't quite manage to fill in. In places it accelerates through everyone from Edwyn Collins (forthcoming single Song For A Nut) to early 80s Sheffield electronics to Beck to lo-fi Babybird to Mark E Smith being a little more careful with his initial influences. Every so often we need a new injection of English art-pop off-kilteredness, and with an album out in a month's time here's a man well in position to provide it.
Since promoting A Classic Education and Magpie Wedding we've had quite a few Myspace friend requests from outfits based in Bologna. At least there's somewhere where we're popular. One such is Ofeliadorme, who like both of the aforementioned are clearly aware of post-rock and are taking its influence into quieter, more structured areas. There's elements of Low's slowcore disturbance allied to the minimal raw, otherworldly appealing of the first half of Cat Power's discography, Francesca Bono's vocals between that spooked intimacy and Polly Harvey's force of nature. Dark and mystical, almost spiritual were it not for the fact that there's some quite worrying things going on, it's lilting but not quite lulling anyone into false senses of security.
Enough of quiet subtlety. These Waves are another of that growing band of youngsters taking inspiration from Minus The Bear, the Seattle outfit for whom linear time signatures and straightforward strumming were for other people. You'll also hear At The Drive-In, Reuben and Glassjaw in their angular post-hardcore attack (much like previously featured Buenos Aires, actually, and like other STN favourites Minnaars Tom Woodhead has been producing them), which is all to the good. They're from Derby, for the record, which has always been the east Midlands' poor relation in terms of producing bands but with You Animals and Beyond This Point Are Monsters also making moves something's afoot.
How about some doleful electro? I Like Where I Live, essentially one bloke from Glasgow called Dave McAdams, takes up that thoughtful strain of soaring keyboards and beats from the Postal Service and Her Space Holiday, while not being that far away from the essence of the retro synths of your Passion Pits and Big Pinks and onto M83. Music to look out onto the sunset to.
Which is not the case with London duo Gentle Friendly. With a release behind them through No Pain In Pop and one forthcoming on Upset The Rhythm they've certainly got themselves into a good place with a sound that doesn't make for easy passing listening. Taking the drones of the Silver Apples' oscillators and Fuck Buttons' special knobs, the hallucinogenic counter-melodic euphoria of Animal Collective, Banjo Or Freakout and Health, and the noisy, bleeding alt-pop oddness of the Unicorns and No Age, their music takes a woozy ride through a kaleidoscope of Kraut rhythms, digital distortion, criss-crossing ideas and the joy of loud and vaguely uncomfortable, all done on reclaimed keyboards and rusting drumkits. We sense you'll be hearing a lot, lot more of them in such circles when their album is out in September.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
One day in his life
How, then, to fitfully add to the welter of tribute, point and counterpoint surrounding Michael Jackson's demise? The only way we know how - by analysing the chart the week he first reached number one on his own, 27th June 1981:
40 Kirsty MacColl - There's A Guy Works Down The Chip Shop Swears He's Elvis
Chart debut, her only top twenty single to feature the great songwriter's own words and considered a one-off novelty hitmaker for a few years afterwards, such was her one hit every four years or so career. Stiff Records, countrified, see. This, however, is unbeatable.
39 Coast To Coast - Let's Jump The Broomstick
They'd had a top five single with Do The Hucklebuck, a very odd record that landed somewhere between the rockabilly revival and Black Lace. We can't imagine this was much of an advancement.
38 Tenpole Tudor - Swords Of A Thousand Men
37 George Harrison - All Those Years Ago
There was a sizeable fuss made about Paul and Ringo 'reuniting' in New York in April, their first public collaborating since the hazy, free spirited days of 2002. Before that was the Threetles, and Free As A Bird came out of that. What gets overlooked is this single was George's tribute to John, featuring Paul on BVs and Ringo on drums. And we doubt that much of a fuss was made about all that. It only made number 13!
36 Starsound - Stars On 45
Hit after hit after hit. A Dutch collective re-recorded eight Beatles songs of varying notability, from We Can Work It Out to I'll Be Back, as a pumping disco medley. Four top 20 hits using the same idea followed. What greatest hits albums are for.
35 Bruce Springsteen - The River
34 Dave Edmunds And The Stray Cats - The Race Is On
33 The Beat - Doors Of Your Heart
Tell you what, wish we'd been able to go with the chart the week this entered the top 75, which features Ossie's Dream at number five, Madness' Grey Day at eight and at 9 Ennio Morricone's Chi Mai (Theme From 'Life And Times Of David Lloyd George'). You'd never get a series with that name made now. The Sound Of The Crowd, Treason (It's Just A Story), The Nolans' Attention To Me... glorious days, just five weeks too early. Or too late, given the following few weeks would see top 40 new entries for Stars On 45 (Volume 2), Motorhead Live, Kid Creole And The Coconuts Present Coati Mundi, Gidea Park's Beach Boy Gold, Stevie Wonder's Happy Birthday and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra - Hooked On Classics.
32 Gillan - No Laughing In Heaven
31 The Evasions - Wikka Wrap
We've marvelled at this in the past, but new people are always joining in so... Wikka Wrap was a record that sampled Good Times and Tom Browne's Thigh's High, over which a man impersonating Alan Whicker recited early rap hipster speak in the style of the besuited playboy high life adventurer. Curiously, it was a hit on US rap radio and Coolio later sampled it, just to bring the oddness scale full circle.
30 Tom Tom Club - Wordy Rappinghood
"Panty, toilet, dirty devil!"
29 Rainbow - Can't Happen Here
Ah, the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal. Most awkward acronym ever.
28 Randy Crawford - You Might Need Somebody
One of the great dual-adaptable first names (Randy Newman) recorded three stone cold soul classics and now seemingly can't get arrested outside David Gilmour's studio. It hardly seems fair.
27 Third World - Dancing On The Floor (Hooked On Love)
Commercial reggae - it didn't arrive with Big Mountain.
26 Quincy Jones - Razzmatazz
A foretaste of what was to come, of course, Quincy Delight Jones (excellent!) had a long career as as a recorder only to be comprehensively trumped by his career as a producer. Here he pays touching tribute to Alistair Pirrie.
25 UB40 - Don't Let It Pass You By/Don't Slow Down
Still political dub merchants at this point. Maxi Priest's with them now. Maybe proving a point.
24 The Jam - Funeral Pyre
Remixed for Snap! as "nobody was completely happy with the original mix". This was the same compilation that used the inferior electried demo of That's Entertainment, the reason why there's a new Jam best of every so often.
23 Linx - Throw Away The Key
Brit-funk ahoy, full-on fretless bass from the band featuring David Grant off Fame Academy and a future member of 23 Skidoo.
22 Siouxsie And The Banshees - Spellbound
Actually throwing your parents down the stairs is not advised.
21 Vangelis - Chariots Of Fire
Getting ready to blight all sporting coverage for the next decade and a half.
20 Bob Marley & The Wailers - No Woman No Cry
Credited to a mate of Marley's who ran a soup kitchen. Bob had just died, obviously. Even more obviously, the baying live version.
19 Enigma - Ain't No Stopping
Not the Gregorian chant people of nine years later but another motley disco medley project.
18 Bad Manners - Can Can
2-Tone wasn't all political, of course.
17 Phil Collins - If Leaving Me Is Easy
16 Shakin' Stevens - You Drive Me Crazy
15 Kool And The Gang - Take It To The Top
14 Toyah - I Want To Be Free
And to think just five years after Year Zero someone like Toyah could be marketed as a quasi-punk.
13 Adam & The Ants - Stand And Deliver
White line fever, full on "insect nation" gubbins was go. Amanda Donohoe in the video there.
12 Bucks Fizz - Piece Of The Action
11 Imagination - Body Talk
One of the most complained about TOTP performances ever, described as "highly pornographic". Looking at it now, it seems to describe some swaying. Leee John etc.
10 Hazel O'Connor - Will You
9 Elaine Paige - Memory
8 Ultravox - All Stood Still
7 Champaign - How 'Bout Us
There must be something to say about any of these people...
6 The Specials - Ghost Town
Ah, here's one to discuss. This replaced Jackson two weeks later, and in the two weeks around that chart Handsworth, Toxteth and Chapeltown did indeed break out in civil disobedience. No word on Vauxhall Crestas stopped for having too many passengers.
5 Odyssey - Going Back To My Roots
Like some sort of disco-soul We Are Scientists, they were a New York outfit who had far more success in the UK. Thus, zipped boots or no, not quite going back to any roots here.
4 Red Sovine - Teddy Bear
Here's an oddity. Recorded in 1976 by a trucker-centric country singer to cash in on the CB radio craze, it's a ridiculous spoken weepie about a paraplegic boy in a poor household whose only dream is to get a ride in a semitractor trailer truck. Presumably Simon Bates or someone was to blame for this.
3 Kate Robbins And Beyond - More Than In Love
Macca's cousin, hardworking impressionist and Crossroads cast member, on which she 'recorded' this gloop.
2 Smokey Robinson - Being With You
Just deposed from the top, Miraclesless lover's soul of a high calibre.
1 Michael Jackson - One Day In Your Life
What happened was Jackson had moved from Motown to Epic, so after Off The Wall was done Motown rather chivalrously put this out. Throw in that the brothers' Can You Feel It had only just vacated the chart after a long, number 6 peaking run and the world-straddling colossus - with Thriller and all that still to come, don't forget - was in place.
40 Kirsty MacColl - There's A Guy Works Down The Chip Shop Swears He's Elvis
Chart debut, her only top twenty single to feature the great songwriter's own words and considered a one-off novelty hitmaker for a few years afterwards, such was her one hit every four years or so career. Stiff Records, countrified, see. This, however, is unbeatable.
39 Coast To Coast - Let's Jump The Broomstick
They'd had a top five single with Do The Hucklebuck, a very odd record that landed somewhere between the rockabilly revival and Black Lace. We can't imagine this was much of an advancement.
38 Tenpole Tudor - Swords Of A Thousand Men
37 George Harrison - All Those Years Ago
There was a sizeable fuss made about Paul and Ringo 'reuniting' in New York in April, their first public collaborating since the hazy, free spirited days of 2002. Before that was the Threetles, and Free As A Bird came out of that. What gets overlooked is this single was George's tribute to John, featuring Paul on BVs and Ringo on drums. And we doubt that much of a fuss was made about all that. It only made number 13!
36 Starsound - Stars On 45
Hit after hit after hit. A Dutch collective re-recorded eight Beatles songs of varying notability, from We Can Work It Out to I'll Be Back, as a pumping disco medley. Four top 20 hits using the same idea followed. What greatest hits albums are for.
35 Bruce Springsteen - The River
34 Dave Edmunds And The Stray Cats - The Race Is On
33 The Beat - Doors Of Your Heart
Tell you what, wish we'd been able to go with the chart the week this entered the top 75, which features Ossie's Dream at number five, Madness' Grey Day at eight and at 9 Ennio Morricone's Chi Mai (Theme From 'Life And Times Of David Lloyd George'). You'd never get a series with that name made now. The Sound Of The Crowd, Treason (It's Just A Story), The Nolans' Attention To Me... glorious days, just five weeks too early. Or too late, given the following few weeks would see top 40 new entries for Stars On 45 (Volume 2), Motorhead Live, Kid Creole And The Coconuts Present Coati Mundi, Gidea Park's Beach Boy Gold, Stevie Wonder's Happy Birthday and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra - Hooked On Classics.
32 Gillan - No Laughing In Heaven
31 The Evasions - Wikka Wrap
We've marvelled at this in the past, but new people are always joining in so... Wikka Wrap was a record that sampled Good Times and Tom Browne's Thigh's High, over which a man impersonating Alan Whicker recited early rap hipster speak in the style of the besuited playboy high life adventurer. Curiously, it was a hit on US rap radio and Coolio later sampled it, just to bring the oddness scale full circle.
30 Tom Tom Club - Wordy Rappinghood
"Panty, toilet, dirty devil!"
29 Rainbow - Can't Happen Here
Ah, the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal. Most awkward acronym ever.
28 Randy Crawford - You Might Need Somebody
One of the great dual-adaptable first names (Randy Newman) recorded three stone cold soul classics and now seemingly can't get arrested outside David Gilmour's studio. It hardly seems fair.
27 Third World - Dancing On The Floor (Hooked On Love)
Commercial reggae - it didn't arrive with Big Mountain.
26 Quincy Jones - Razzmatazz
A foretaste of what was to come, of course, Quincy Delight Jones (excellent!) had a long career as as a recorder only to be comprehensively trumped by his career as a producer. Here he pays touching tribute to Alistair Pirrie.
25 UB40 - Don't Let It Pass You By/Don't Slow Down
Still political dub merchants at this point. Maxi Priest's with them now. Maybe proving a point.
24 The Jam - Funeral Pyre
Remixed for Snap! as "nobody was completely happy with the original mix". This was the same compilation that used the inferior electried demo of That's Entertainment, the reason why there's a new Jam best of every so often.
23 Linx - Throw Away The Key
Brit-funk ahoy, full-on fretless bass from the band featuring David Grant off Fame Academy and a future member of 23 Skidoo.
22 Siouxsie And The Banshees - Spellbound
Actually throwing your parents down the stairs is not advised.
21 Vangelis - Chariots Of Fire
Getting ready to blight all sporting coverage for the next decade and a half.
20 Bob Marley & The Wailers - No Woman No Cry
Credited to a mate of Marley's who ran a soup kitchen. Bob had just died, obviously. Even more obviously, the baying live version.
19 Enigma - Ain't No Stopping
Not the Gregorian chant people of nine years later but another motley disco medley project.
18 Bad Manners - Can Can
2-Tone wasn't all political, of course.
17 Phil Collins - If Leaving Me Is Easy
16 Shakin' Stevens - You Drive Me Crazy
15 Kool And The Gang - Take It To The Top
14 Toyah - I Want To Be Free
And to think just five years after Year Zero someone like Toyah could be marketed as a quasi-punk.
13 Adam & The Ants - Stand And Deliver
White line fever, full on "insect nation" gubbins was go. Amanda Donohoe in the video there.
12 Bucks Fizz - Piece Of The Action
11 Imagination - Body Talk
One of the most complained about TOTP performances ever, described as "highly pornographic". Looking at it now, it seems to describe some swaying. Leee John etc.
10 Hazel O'Connor - Will You
9 Elaine Paige - Memory
8 Ultravox - All Stood Still
7 Champaign - How 'Bout Us
There must be something to say about any of these people...
6 The Specials - Ghost Town
Ah, here's one to discuss. This replaced Jackson two weeks later, and in the two weeks around that chart Handsworth, Toxteth and Chapeltown did indeed break out in civil disobedience. No word on Vauxhall Crestas stopped for having too many passengers.
5 Odyssey - Going Back To My Roots
Like some sort of disco-soul We Are Scientists, they were a New York outfit who had far more success in the UK. Thus, zipped boots or no, not quite going back to any roots here.
4 Red Sovine - Teddy Bear
Here's an oddity. Recorded in 1976 by a trucker-centric country singer to cash in on the CB radio craze, it's a ridiculous spoken weepie about a paraplegic boy in a poor household whose only dream is to get a ride in a semitractor trailer truck. Presumably Simon Bates or someone was to blame for this.
3 Kate Robbins And Beyond - More Than In Love
Macca's cousin, hardworking impressionist and Crossroads cast member, on which she 'recorded' this gloop.
2 Smokey Robinson - Being With You
Just deposed from the top, Miraclesless lover's soul of a high calibre.
1 Michael Jackson - One Day In Your Life
What happened was Jackson had moved from Motown to Epic, so after Off The Wall was done Motown rather chivalrously put this out. Throw in that the brothers' Can You Feel It had only just vacated the chart after a long, number 6 peaking run and the world-straddling colossus - with Thriller and all that still to come, don't forget - was in place.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
The Weekly Sweep
Friday, June 26, 2009
Suitopia Parkway
We're aware that someone's started a whole proper blog picking out odd albums on Spotify, but the person who runs it has written that the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band have "no redeeming features" and so can fuck right, right off. Instead, here's some more of the oddities we've excavated and summarised for little benefit.
The Very Best Of The Wombles
The Very Best Of Windsor Davies & Don Estelle
Witness the two sides of the novelty 1970s coin. On the one hand the Wombles, a successful transition from not overly song-based stopmotion series of no little charm to glam hitmakers. Mike Batt, of course, the story being that deep in debt from a failed musical venture he was invited to write the theme and instead of straight payment asked if he could have the character rights for musical production, which he was granted as the estate of Elisabeth Beresford didn't think they'd be worth anything. Four gold albums and four top ten singles later, with a studio band featuring the astonishingly prolific drummer Clem Cattini and hard sessioning rock'n'roll guitarist Chris Spedding (he produced the Sex Pistols' demos) the clean up campaigners who must have seen their fair share of cruising on their travels nearly became worldwide stars. Writing Bright Eyes and pretty much being front centre of the rise of pop-classical never comes into it now biography-wise. Cuh. Fair to say Batt and co had real fun playing with various genres from classical to folk to Beatles, the absolute standout being The Myths And Legends Of King Merton Womble And His Journey To The Centre Of The Earth, which ploughs the rarely visited furrow between kid-friendly dayglo pop and taking the piss out of Rick Wakeman. And it really does.
On the other hand, the two stars of It Ain't Half Hot Mum were pretty much left at the mercy of producers with doo-wop and bobbysoxer obsessions once their treble/baritone cover of The Ink Spots' Whispering Grass had hit number one in 1975. Pretty much the rest of it is hotel piano-heavy slung out covers of standards with a slim panacea of light crosstalk comedy, apart from the slightly odd Davies in character monologue A Message From Battery Sgt-Major Williams. The version of Nagasaki (from a spinoff of a WWII comedy?) isn't as good as the one from Jeeves & Wooster, by the way.
The Best Of Arthur Askey - The Bee Song
Well, it's answered its own discussion point already. More music hall shenanigans with no 'side' as it was being done at the time when everything was straight up and all-round entertainers could get by on a limited catalogue of song ideas. He liked his playful songs about sprites (The Bee Song, The Pixie, Ev'ry Little Piggy's Got A Curly Tail, Chirrup!), he did. Then there's things like I Want A Banana that make you wonder what 1995 Damon Albarn really saw in all this, then there's the routines straight off the stage. Big And Stinker's Parlour Games has the least repossessing title ever, and is a seven minute routine about deciding on a board game. 1940's More Chestnut Corner, on the other hand, is the sort of routine that was still playing well on BBC radio into the 1970s. Best bit: Sarah! Sarah!, which begins not only with high grade self-deprecation but the suggestion "don't play this first, this is the other side". Not like double sided records to be superceded. Aythangyou.
The Wedding Album
So is the idea here cutting costs by playing a CD of organs and choirs playing and singing appropriate songs meaning you don't have to hire the church organist? Graham Jackson's our man on the pipes attempting to imbue Sheep May Safely Graze with some sort of pastoral longing that surely wouldn't work in a cathedral setting.
Celebrity Commercials Of The 1950s & 1960s
And that's exactly what it is, American radio adverts with figures of the day, some even broadcast. Pat 'county bassoon' Boone, pre-Metal Mood, eulogises both the Chevrolet and the country in acapella. Ray Charles gets all emotional over Coca-Cola. Nat King Cole "doesn't pretend to be a wine expert" but he seems to know Italian Swiss Colony California Pale Dry Sherry inside out. Bill Haley shills for government schemes, while Frank Sinatra avers "communism will destroy our way of life just before he suggests haircuts are the way forward and well before reworking High Hopes in campaigning for JFK. Dusty Springfield, Tom Jones, Wilson Pickett, the Spencer Davis Group and Martha & the Vandellas are among those taking part in the cola wars with judicious rewording of their hits. BB King and Kenny Rogers put the case for credit card debt. There's plenty to feed off in these 73 tracks of all someone's yesterdays. The track that really makes this our pick of the week? Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, when not plugging marching for the poor, attempting to plug their 1953 film The Caddy without breaking down into wanton and unbroadcastable swearing. They fail miserably.
The Very Best Of The Wombles
The Very Best Of Windsor Davies & Don Estelle
Witness the two sides of the novelty 1970s coin. On the one hand the Wombles, a successful transition from not overly song-based stopmotion series of no little charm to glam hitmakers. Mike Batt, of course, the story being that deep in debt from a failed musical venture he was invited to write the theme and instead of straight payment asked if he could have the character rights for musical production, which he was granted as the estate of Elisabeth Beresford didn't think they'd be worth anything. Four gold albums and four top ten singles later, with a studio band featuring the astonishingly prolific drummer Clem Cattini and hard sessioning rock'n'roll guitarist Chris Spedding (he produced the Sex Pistols' demos) the clean up campaigners who must have seen their fair share of cruising on their travels nearly became worldwide stars. Writing Bright Eyes and pretty much being front centre of the rise of pop-classical never comes into it now biography-wise. Cuh. Fair to say Batt and co had real fun playing with various genres from classical to folk to Beatles, the absolute standout being The Myths And Legends Of King Merton Womble And His Journey To The Centre Of The Earth, which ploughs the rarely visited furrow between kid-friendly dayglo pop and taking the piss out of Rick Wakeman. And it really does.
On the other hand, the two stars of It Ain't Half Hot Mum were pretty much left at the mercy of producers with doo-wop and bobbysoxer obsessions once their treble/baritone cover of The Ink Spots' Whispering Grass had hit number one in 1975. Pretty much the rest of it is hotel piano-heavy slung out covers of standards with a slim panacea of light crosstalk comedy, apart from the slightly odd Davies in character monologue A Message From Battery Sgt-Major Williams. The version of Nagasaki (from a spinoff of a WWII comedy?) isn't as good as the one from Jeeves & Wooster, by the way.
The Best Of Arthur Askey - The Bee Song
Well, it's answered its own discussion point already. More music hall shenanigans with no 'side' as it was being done at the time when everything was straight up and all-round entertainers could get by on a limited catalogue of song ideas. He liked his playful songs about sprites (The Bee Song, The Pixie, Ev'ry Little Piggy's Got A Curly Tail, Chirrup!), he did. Then there's things like I Want A Banana that make you wonder what 1995 Damon Albarn really saw in all this, then there's the routines straight off the stage. Big And Stinker's Parlour Games has the least repossessing title ever, and is a seven minute routine about deciding on a board game. 1940's More Chestnut Corner, on the other hand, is the sort of routine that was still playing well on BBC radio into the 1970s. Best bit: Sarah! Sarah!, which begins not only with high grade self-deprecation but the suggestion "don't play this first, this is the other side". Not like double sided records to be superceded. Aythangyou.
The Wedding Album
So is the idea here cutting costs by playing a CD of organs and choirs playing and singing appropriate songs meaning you don't have to hire the church organist? Graham Jackson's our man on the pipes attempting to imbue Sheep May Safely Graze with some sort of pastoral longing that surely wouldn't work in a cathedral setting.
Celebrity Commercials Of The 1950s & 1960s
And that's exactly what it is, American radio adverts with figures of the day, some even broadcast. Pat 'county bassoon' Boone, pre-Metal Mood, eulogises both the Chevrolet and the country in acapella. Ray Charles gets all emotional over Coca-Cola. Nat King Cole "doesn't pretend to be a wine expert" but he seems to know Italian Swiss Colony California Pale Dry Sherry inside out. Bill Haley shills for government schemes, while Frank Sinatra avers "communism will destroy our way of life just before he suggests haircuts are the way forward and well before reworking High Hopes in campaigning for JFK. Dusty Springfield, Tom Jones, Wilson Pickett, the Spencer Davis Group and Martha & the Vandellas are among those taking part in the cola wars with judicious rewording of their hits. BB King and Kenny Rogers put the case for credit card debt. There's plenty to feed off in these 73 tracks of all someone's yesterdays. The track that really makes this our pick of the week? Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, when not plugging marching for the poor, attempting to plug their 1953 film The Caddy without breaking down into wanton and unbroadcastable swearing. They fail miserably.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Washington monumental
Recommendation! Always good to hear from the feveredly eclectic mind of Pete Gofton every once in a while. Recently he's been out moonlighting with the live version of The Week That Was, remixing Sky Larkin for their recent cassette release and producing Internet Forever as much as Internet Forever can ever be termed 'produced' (and Frankie & The Heartstrings, who we mentioned in a Myspace roundup three months ago). Now his own George Washington Brown finally follows up the splendid On The Night Plain album of a couple of years ago with a six-track EP, called, um, EP on Catbird Records (order online). Still his love of impressively scattershot expansive indie pop pervades, gorgeous bedroom psychedelia that comes in multicolours with its welcoming arms spread. It's like an offchunk of Olivia Tremor Control mated with Elliott Smith and abandoned the result of the liaison in Peter and David Brewis' practice space to fend for itself. There's a free track downloadable from that sale link, which kind of means without an mp3 to call our own this entry would kind of peter out had GWB not helpfully made a video for It Still Rains off the aforementioned album.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
You'd never guess we've lost a third of our readership in the last three months
Don't worry, this isn't another fit of pique related blank, there'll be stuff up before the weekend.
What we should post about is the news that broke while we were out tonight of Good Books' split. They play their final gig opening the John Peel Stage at Glastonbury on Sunday, and then they all go off to do their own things, keyboard whiz JP Duncan first out of the blocks as Jocks. In the short history of STN we think ver 'Books, as nobody called them, have become the first band we've watched from demo, the still tremendous Passchendaele, to deal (a major, who promptly seemed to forget about them), to the rite of passage that is playing to twelve people in Leicester, to our interviewing Max Cooke and putting Control in our top twenty of 2007, to... well... the wait, and now the dissolvement. They were very decent remixers too, and for a brief period you may recall we exclusively had up two special mixes they did for fans only. If we could find one, we'd stick it back up. As it is, here's what they did arguably best.
What we should post about is the news that broke while we were out tonight of Good Books' split. They play their final gig opening the John Peel Stage at Glastonbury on Sunday, and then they all go off to do their own things, keyboard whiz JP Duncan first out of the blocks as Jocks. In the short history of STN we think ver 'Books, as nobody called them, have become the first band we've watched from demo, the still tremendous Passchendaele, to deal (a major, who promptly seemed to forget about them), to the rite of passage that is playing to twelve people in Leicester, to our interviewing Max Cooke and putting Control in our top twenty of 2007, to... well... the wait, and now the dissolvement. They were very decent remixers too, and for a brief period you may recall we exclusively had up two special mixes they did for fans only. If we could find one, we'd stick it back up. As it is, here's what they did arguably best.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
The Weekly Sweep
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Sweeping The Nation Covermount 18: STN vs Johnny Foreigner
Yeah, we're branching out. Rather than do our own background work to a downloadable theme, every so often we're going to pin down someone we openly like and browbeat them until they give us a list of songs they'd put on a mixtape to explain their influences, background etc. First cab off the rank, please welcome the selections of Alexei Berrow, artful shouter and guitar mangler at the front of Johnny Foreigner. They have a new single out next week, which sounds a little like this:
All opinions are those of Alexei Berrow and do not necessarily reflect those of Sweeping The Nation or Blogger.
STN vs Johnny Foreigner
Urusei Yatsura - Thank You
I got into Urusei approx. a day after they split. Then I heard this, and the sheer emotional POW! of hearing someone telling you they're giving up over such a perfect song made me first wonder if I should be dancing or weeping, and then buy everything i could find. And there was a lot, most of it glittery and superltd, and it was all amazing.
From Everybody Loves Urusei Yatsura
Pavement - Grounded
Pavement, Pixies, Sonic Youth are year zero to us. and, as such, even their greatest songs tend to atrophy with a million repeated plays. Not this song tho. To the extent of, we used to play it ourselves for ages and it's still not been ruined.
From Wowee Zowee
Bright Eyes - The City Has Sex
Before he was THE ONE for all my female friends circa 2003, Bright Eyes was these little angsty country songs I used to annoy my friend Jim by playing constantly when he was round my flat. Perfect lyrics, amazing arrangments, crying over girls had never been so catchy or cathartic. Of course, it was too perfect to stay ours. Now I hear he has people to pick girls from the crowd each night for him to fuck. He's not my hero no more, sir.
From Letting Off The Happiness
Idlewild - Everyone Says You're So Fragile
Idlewild were like our gods. Watching them go from playing our shitty locals to filling out the Wulfrun, with an ever increasing list of AMAZING melody bomb singles, was the first time I ever felt righteous about the music I love. American English ruined everything forever, obviously, but I went Pavlov-mental last time I saw them and they played this. WAH!
From Hope Is Important
Broken Social Scene - Ibi Dreams Of Pavement (A Better Day)
Was so so nervous the first time heard this. I feel like I lived inside You Forgot It In People for about a year. Please dont have gone rubbish, Broken Social Scene, yr teetering so precariously over so many pretentious/prog/production mines. And then this song comes on and I was like FUCCCCCCCCCCK YEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSS!!!!!
From Broken Social Scene
Smashing Pumpkins - Today
Cos when I was a 6th form, me and Craig Middleton would get in extra early to secure the common room ghetto blaster. And this is what we'd play, allthefuckingtime. and it was like, a small chunk of awesomeness in two years of shit.
From Siamese Dream
Los Campesinos! - Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks
Dananananaykroyd - Some Dresses
Probably the only time these two songs should be listed together, hearing them a couple of years ago when we were broke and almost broken and altogether all less acclaimed, thinking WOW there are others like us out there! was super reassuring.
These are the original demo and original single versions: check against the re-records on Hold On Now, Youngster... and Hey Everyone! respectively
Distophia - Thug Passion
Local band that should have been less local. Beat Dyslexia, the last, unreleased album, is the sound of my friends taking ideas from every bit of music we love and shoving them into these fucking incredible tight pop songs. I've met London Industry types and ended up speaking to them about how great this band was. And they go, oh yeh, Distophia, they had no image, that was their problem. And I go, no, you dumb fuck THAT WAS THE POINT. Then I end them. And I'd like to think the amount of posthumous love this band gets on DiS proves me right. Love live Calories.
The Starries - Feature 85
Another local band, slighter older than me and mine, constantly drunk and out of tune and under-rehearsed and long split up, but with the most perfect discordant indie rock songs ever. The greatest Birmingham band ever, IMO. I still don't think they had any idea how amazingly great they where.
Cap'n Jazz - Little League
Modest Mouse - Dukes Up
Rapider Than Horsepower - Autumn Season
Not the greatest songs on their parent albums, but the first I heard through mix CDs and Epitonic (aaaaaaaaah, Epitonic) I judge people I meet on their reactions to these albums. Those that go: but, its so out of tune, they can't even play properly, I arrange to be shot, and those that are left with big happy faces from the sheer JOY they have just heard, and have goosebumps because they didn't know one could receive such JOY from a bunch of noises in the ear, I love and hold and cherish forever.
From, respectively, Analphabetapolothology, Sad Sappy Sucker and What's Our Visibility?, which we can't find a sale link for.
Sleeper - What Do I Do Now?
Is the greatest British guitar song of the 20th century. I'm not in the slightest upset that people will snort over this, they are idiots and I pity them.
From The It Girl
Rainer Maria - The Contents Of Lincoln's Pockets
I always feel faintly embarrassed when people complement our vocal arrangments. Thanks, I should say, make sure you never listen to early Rainer Maria! I dont care about the contents of Lincoln's pockets, but this song is actually PERFECT.
From A Better Version Of Me
Owls - Holy Fucking Ghost
I could put any Owls song on really, the album should be listened to whole, but this is like a thematic summary of all the other songs so serves purpose well. I once spent a whole summer doing nothing but taking pills and lazing around my house with these True Metal Girls. Mutual Kinsella loving was our only musical common ground, and this record is the ultimate comedown saver (and still my default answer when anyone asks me, whats the best album ever made)
From Owls
AC Acoustics - B2
I know it's not their best song, I know it's a dEUS steal, I listened to it just now and I don't even know if it's a good song anymore. but nothing else will ever remind me of going to Helen Elwood's house for Christmas 2001, which is a beautiful memory.
From Understanding Music
Radiohead - Vegetable
I am a fat depressive teenage mess alone on a bus crowded full of idiots from my school who DON'T UNDERSTAND ME, and I have a tape with Pablo Honey on and as soon as I put my headphones on everything is alright forever. And it was.
From Pablo Honey
Stapleton - Chez Chef
THE ORIGINAL VERSION YEH? thx. Not their best song by quite a way (tho, the worst Stapleton is better than 99.9% of other songs) but it totally reminds me of going to see them, shakily passing tickets over barriers for them to awkwardly sign. If I'm allowed a hidden track I'd like it to be the whole of On The Enjoyment Of Unpleasant Places, the mini album that preceded these EPs. Best car journey album ever.
From Chez Chef EP
All opinions are those of Alexei Berrow and do not necessarily reflect those of Sweeping The Nation or Blogger.
STN vs Johnny Foreigner
Urusei Yatsura - Thank You
I got into Urusei approx. a day after they split. Then I heard this, and the sheer emotional POW! of hearing someone telling you they're giving up over such a perfect song made me first wonder if I should be dancing or weeping, and then buy everything i could find. And there was a lot, most of it glittery and superltd, and it was all amazing.
From Everybody Loves Urusei Yatsura
Pavement - Grounded
Pavement, Pixies, Sonic Youth are year zero to us. and, as such, even their greatest songs tend to atrophy with a million repeated plays. Not this song tho. To the extent of, we used to play it ourselves for ages and it's still not been ruined.
From Wowee Zowee
Bright Eyes - The City Has Sex
Before he was THE ONE for all my female friends circa 2003, Bright Eyes was these little angsty country songs I used to annoy my friend Jim by playing constantly when he was round my flat. Perfect lyrics, amazing arrangments, crying over girls had never been so catchy or cathartic. Of course, it was too perfect to stay ours. Now I hear he has people to pick girls from the crowd each night for him to fuck. He's not my hero no more, sir.
From Letting Off The Happiness
Idlewild - Everyone Says You're So Fragile
Idlewild were like our gods. Watching them go from playing our shitty locals to filling out the Wulfrun, with an ever increasing list of AMAZING melody bomb singles, was the first time I ever felt righteous about the music I love. American English ruined everything forever, obviously, but I went Pavlov-mental last time I saw them and they played this. WAH!
From Hope Is Important
Broken Social Scene - Ibi Dreams Of Pavement (A Better Day)
Was so so nervous the first time heard this. I feel like I lived inside You Forgot It In People for about a year. Please dont have gone rubbish, Broken Social Scene, yr teetering so precariously over so many pretentious/prog/production mines. And then this song comes on and I was like FUCCCCCCCCCCK YEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSS!!!!!
From Broken Social Scene
Smashing Pumpkins - Today
Cos when I was a 6th form, me and Craig Middleton would get in extra early to secure the common room ghetto blaster. And this is what we'd play, allthefuckingtime. and it was like, a small chunk of awesomeness in two years of shit.
From Siamese Dream
Los Campesinos! - Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks
Dananananaykroyd - Some Dresses
Probably the only time these two songs should be listed together, hearing them a couple of years ago when we were broke and almost broken and altogether all less acclaimed, thinking WOW there are others like us out there! was super reassuring.
These are the original demo and original single versions: check against the re-records on Hold On Now, Youngster... and Hey Everyone! respectively
Distophia - Thug Passion
Local band that should have been less local. Beat Dyslexia, the last, unreleased album, is the sound of my friends taking ideas from every bit of music we love and shoving them into these fucking incredible tight pop songs. I've met London Industry types and ended up speaking to them about how great this band was. And they go, oh yeh, Distophia, they had no image, that was their problem. And I go, no, you dumb fuck THAT WAS THE POINT. Then I end them. And I'd like to think the amount of posthumous love this band gets on DiS proves me right. Love live Calories.
The Starries - Feature 85
Another local band, slighter older than me and mine, constantly drunk and out of tune and under-rehearsed and long split up, but with the most perfect discordant indie rock songs ever. The greatest Birmingham band ever, IMO. I still don't think they had any idea how amazingly great they where.
Cap'n Jazz - Little League
Modest Mouse - Dukes Up
Rapider Than Horsepower - Autumn Season
Not the greatest songs on their parent albums, but the first I heard through mix CDs and Epitonic (aaaaaaaaah, Epitonic) I judge people I meet on their reactions to these albums. Those that go: but, its so out of tune, they can't even play properly, I arrange to be shot, and those that are left with big happy faces from the sheer JOY they have just heard, and have goosebumps because they didn't know one could receive such JOY from a bunch of noises in the ear, I love and hold and cherish forever.
From, respectively, Analphabetapolothology, Sad Sappy Sucker and What's Our Visibility?, which we can't find a sale link for.
Sleeper - What Do I Do Now?
Is the greatest British guitar song of the 20th century. I'm not in the slightest upset that people will snort over this, they are idiots and I pity them.
From The It Girl
Rainer Maria - The Contents Of Lincoln's Pockets
I always feel faintly embarrassed when people complement our vocal arrangments. Thanks, I should say, make sure you never listen to early Rainer Maria! I dont care about the contents of Lincoln's pockets, but this song is actually PERFECT.
From A Better Version Of Me
Owls - Holy Fucking Ghost
I could put any Owls song on really, the album should be listened to whole, but this is like a thematic summary of all the other songs so serves purpose well. I once spent a whole summer doing nothing but taking pills and lazing around my house with these True Metal Girls. Mutual Kinsella loving was our only musical common ground, and this record is the ultimate comedown saver (and still my default answer when anyone asks me, whats the best album ever made)
From Owls
AC Acoustics - B2
I know it's not their best song, I know it's a dEUS steal, I listened to it just now and I don't even know if it's a good song anymore. but nothing else will ever remind me of going to Helen Elwood's house for Christmas 2001, which is a beautiful memory.
From Understanding Music
Radiohead - Vegetable
I am a fat depressive teenage mess alone on a bus crowded full of idiots from my school who DON'T UNDERSTAND ME, and I have a tape with Pablo Honey on and as soon as I put my headphones on everything is alright forever. And it was.
From Pablo Honey
Stapleton - Chez Chef
THE ORIGINAL VERSION YEH? thx. Not their best song by quite a way (tho, the worst Stapleton is better than 99.9% of other songs) but it totally reminds me of going to see them, shakily passing tickets over barriers for them to awkwardly sign. If I'm allowed a hidden track I'd like it to be the whole of On The Enjoyment Of Unpleasant Places, the mini album that preceded these EPs. Best car journey album ever.
From Chez Chef EP
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
The Music That Made... Stars And Sons
Alcopop! Records, who've been putting out little bundles of joy for a little bit now, have just released Alcopopular 3, as the name suggests their third selection of treats. The gimmick with this one is it comes in message in a bottle format. That'll be a bottle containing personalised information on how to download the compilation. You heard. Therein you'll find tracks by the likes of Pulled Apart By Horses, Tellison, Town Bike, Paul Steel, Arrows Of Love (the new band of some of Hush The Many)... and Stars And Sons, the name under which Mike Lord produces oddball off-kilter indie-pop and put out the excellent In The Ocean single last year. Lord took time out from recording an album to face our line of questioning:
First single bought: Billie Myers - Tell Me. I found this on Spotify the other day. Eurgh.
First album bought: The first All Saints album. I wanted to get the Spice Girls album but my cousin was raging on about manufactured pop and wouldn’t let me. I taped it off my friend in the end. A tape copy of a tape copy.. Nice and hissy..
First gig voluntarily attended: Ed Harcourt at Shepherds Bush Empire. Ben & Jason were supporting. It was awesome. Can’t remember when it was but I remember not being able to see very much so I guess I was quite little.
The record that most made you want to get into music: XO by Elliot Smith was played a lot by my older brothers when I was young. I couldn’t really understand why it was so good but I think I started practicing piano a bit more at that point though!
The three headliners at a festival you were curating: Deerhoof, Cornelius, and Spinal Tap.
A song not enough people know about but everyone should hear: Wild Beasts - Assembly
A song you'd play to get people dancing: Morris Day and the Time - Jungle Love. Tune!
The last great thing you heard: I’ve just got into Scott Walker. I started with Scott 4 and now I’m going back through the old albums. I’ll move on to Tilt when I’m feeling brave!
Your key non-musical influences: UKTV Food. Food porn in general.
Your favourite new artist: Aaron King. The piano playing whizz kid not the gay porn star.
First single bought: Billie Myers - Tell Me. I found this on Spotify the other day. Eurgh.
First album bought: The first All Saints album. I wanted to get the Spice Girls album but my cousin was raging on about manufactured pop and wouldn’t let me. I taped it off my friend in the end. A tape copy of a tape copy.. Nice and hissy..
First gig voluntarily attended: Ed Harcourt at Shepherds Bush Empire. Ben & Jason were supporting. It was awesome. Can’t remember when it was but I remember not being able to see very much so I guess I was quite little.
The record that most made you want to get into music: XO by Elliot Smith was played a lot by my older brothers when I was young. I couldn’t really understand why it was so good but I think I started practicing piano a bit more at that point though!
The three headliners at a festival you were curating: Deerhoof, Cornelius, and Spinal Tap.
A song not enough people know about but everyone should hear: Wild Beasts - Assembly
A song you'd play to get people dancing: Morris Day and the Time - Jungle Love. Tune!
The last great thing you heard: I’ve just got into Scott Walker. I started with Scott 4 and now I’m going back through the old albums. I’ll move on to Tilt when I’m feeling brave!
Your key non-musical influences: UKTV Food. Food porn in general.
Your favourite new artist: Aaron King. The piano playing whizz kid not the gay porn star.
Monday, June 15, 2009
One foot in the grave
Part-psychobilly, part-garage rock, even a hint of primeval Nashville, The Humms are an Atlanta, Georgia trio who, it says here, "loud music about murder, drugs, drunks, ghost, hippies, colors and of course...love." Their lysergic graveyard take on rock'n'roll seems equally inspired by rockabilly, Big Star and Nuggets, and is one of those fascinatingly out of time melodic three minutes at a time bands you come across every so often. Odd Box Records, from the people who brought London the recently finished Lostmusic nights, are putting out a limited edition run of their Are You Dead? EP.
The Humms - Do The Graverobber!
The Humms - Do The Graverobber!
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Wise words
Just a quick note to mention that below the slightly smaller list o'blogs on the sidebar is now a small selection of blogs run by bands and labels we've supported. We're kind of guessing we've missed a few out, which you're welcome to tell us about.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
The Weekly Sweep
album Reservoir, as promoted here the other day, from their official site for one dollar)
Friday, June 12, 2009
The ten best bits of Future Of The Left's Travels With Myself And Another
In chronological order:
- The explosion from pensive introductory noodling to huge, dirty sounding guitar at the kickoff of Arming Eritrea
- Falco literally screaming himself hoarse at the end of the second verse of Chin Music
- The pub sea shanty singalong of our dreams: "come join, come join our hopeless cause/Come join, come join our lost cause"
- "Though no-one must know it, I am at fault - I introduced Reginald J Trotsfield To his lieutenant, the fearsome Brown"
- "If I eat what I fuck and I fuck what I eat, am I worth it?"
- Kelson Mathias riding the bumpiest of low down and dirty basslines throughout the Jesus Lizard backwards rush of Land Of My Formers
- You Need Satan More Than He Needs You: Bass like tectonic plate movements, actively disturbing Falco delivery, occult parentage subject matter
- Stand By Your Manatee invents the surrealist Shellac
- The Murdoch-baiting, Robbins-mistaking monologue at the start of Lapsed Catholics gradually giving way to a wall of everything. "Be aware! Be alert!"
- The inevitable conclusion - this is an astonishing album, raging, melodically savage, cauterisingly dry and ferociously played. Do not miss it. It's out on 22nd June, or now through their site.
Falco gives the best interviews in the world, doesn't he?
- The explosion from pensive introductory noodling to huge, dirty sounding guitar at the kickoff of Arming Eritrea
- Falco literally screaming himself hoarse at the end of the second verse of Chin Music
- The pub sea shanty singalong of our dreams: "come join, come join our hopeless cause/Come join, come join our lost cause"
- "Though no-one must know it, I am at fault - I introduced Reginald J Trotsfield To his lieutenant, the fearsome Brown"
- "If I eat what I fuck and I fuck what I eat, am I worth it?"
- Kelson Mathias riding the bumpiest of low down and dirty basslines throughout the Jesus Lizard backwards rush of Land Of My Formers
- You Need Satan More Than He Needs You: Bass like tectonic plate movements, actively disturbing Falco delivery, occult parentage subject matter
- Stand By Your Manatee invents the surrealist Shellac
- The Murdoch-baiting, Robbins-mistaking monologue at the start of Lapsed Catholics gradually giving way to a wall of everything. "Be aware! Be alert!"
- The inevitable conclusion - this is an astonishing album, raging, melodically savage, cauterisingly dry and ferociously played. Do not miss it. It's out on 22nd June, or now through their site.
Falco gives the best interviews in the world, doesn't he?
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Apropos of nothing
This was released a full year before Funeral's US release, but it sounds exactly like something that if released now would be dismissed as "Arcade Fire wannabes". Especially with the military jackets.
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
Don't think we're going to start regurgitating press releases every day
It's just these two were very kind to us and are very useful.
Songkick! You may have chanced across this plan for a crossover social networking site through the medium of millions of gig listings, but today it went fully live, but it's far more than just cross-referenced lists - you can add videos, photos, setlists and comments, follow other users (hello!), track bands and venues, complete a full lifetime's gigography, cross-pollinate with your last.fm account... plenty to go at.
And yeah, alright, our gig's there too.
The other piece of news regards the amazing looking (Animal Collective! Andrew Bird! Grizzly sodding Bear!*) Green Man festival in August in the picturesquely wet Brecon Beacons. They're running their Green Poll again, finding the people's choice to open the main stage. Well, strictly the top six go through to a, gulp, battle of the bands where, oh lord, "a panel of top music industry boffins" pick their favourite, so in our pessimistic state we'd guess Picture Books In Winter, Jonquil and Mitchell Museum have little to no chance. Still, one can but promote. This first phase of voting closes at midnight on June 28th.
* We love how pretty much every week Ed Droste receives a Twitter message from someone telling him - not asking, telling - to play End Of The Road. Sometimes we're tempted to join in.
Songkick! You may have chanced across this plan for a crossover social networking site through the medium of millions of gig listings, but today it went fully live, but it's far more than just cross-referenced lists - you can add videos, photos, setlists and comments, follow other users (hello!), track bands and venues, complete a full lifetime's gigography, cross-pollinate with your last.fm account... plenty to go at.
And yeah, alright, our gig's there too.
The other piece of news regards the amazing looking (Animal Collective! Andrew Bird! Grizzly sodding Bear!*) Green Man festival in August in the picturesquely wet Brecon Beacons. They're running their Green Poll again, finding the people's choice to open the main stage. Well, strictly the top six go through to a, gulp, battle of the bands where, oh lord, "a panel of top music industry boffins" pick their favourite, so in our pessimistic state we'd guess Picture Books In Winter, Jonquil and Mitchell Museum have little to no chance. Still, one can but promote. This first phase of voting closes at midnight on June 28th.
* We love how pretty much every week Ed Droste receives a Twitter message from someone telling him - not asking, telling - to play End Of The Road. Sometimes we're tempted to join in.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)