in dub with these times, in spite of these times

Mayflower

2011-12-20T10:47:00.000-08:00

In the summer of 1990 I had the good fortune to spend a day with Tim Alborn, editor of the rather excellent "Incite!" fanzine, who was over in the UK at the time. Back then, his Harriet Records label was a fledgling, a mere three releases old: even now I still have - and treasure - the 7"s by High Risk Group, Fertile Virgin and Linda Smith that I got from Tim that day.

Being a green English boy half way through his A-levels who had never even met a real life American before, I was very impressed not only by these accomplishments but that he had been to school with the likes of Galaxie 500 and Big Dipper; that while in England he'd met the Field Mice and the Carousel; that he liked the Darling Buds, too; that he shared my deep suspicion of what was then the burgeoning "Madchester" scene (believe me, at the time that was teenage heresy). My diary also records rather sweetly that, recently married, he was very much in love.

Anyway, back then none of us could have truly known of the quality that Harriet would continue to deliver over forty-plus releases, and some of the bands it would help introduce to the world (the Magnetic Fields, Tullycraft, the Cannanes, Hulaboy, the Extra Glenns, Crayon, Wimp Factor 14, My Favorite and so many others were to put out singles on Harriet in the 1990s).

Nor could we have dreamed that one day, we would be able to access every single issue of the fabulous Incite! at the click of a button. But technology has *achieved*, meaning that if you scoot over here you can, like us, rediscover and re-read a host of stuff about bands great and good from both sides of the Atlantic, and reflect on the heyday of a nearly-lost art.

Catching up with Tim's current profile, I note that he's had two books published on commerce in nineteenth-century England. I could have done with his impressive knowledge of the Victorian era when it came to those A-levels...

And one day, I fully intend to say more about Harriet Records' greatest hits. But given the speed at which I get round to things (of which Tim is all-too aware), you may well want to start with a summary from the venerable pages of Incite! itself.

A Love Supreme

2010-12-21T12:01:00.000-08:00

[picture: dorset, summer 2010]

And you thought we'd been thorough in our archive raid when we dug out about 30 MR reviews, and the Kosmonaut one. Not to mention our most recent hymn of praise to the label. Well, here are another seventeen snapshots of our Matinée idolatory. Starting with a *gem* (the record, not the review)...

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razorcuts "r is for razorcuts" (matinée recordings)

banda favorita ? probablemente los razorcuts...

on the boy's sixteenth birthday, when he lived sufficiently far from autogeddon to be able to find himself in tidily mown fields within five minutes' walk of home, he took his fragile person, beige anorak and chunky walkperson out west of mountnessing road and spent a cool but bright winter's afternoon listening to his favourite band - luton's razorcuts - music that more than any other seemed to dovetail with his discovery, at that age, of the sheer wonder of nature - torn inside by the notion that the "beauty they're busy killing" all around us had to be savoured, enjoyed, when he still could, and somewhat presciently realising that there was a lifetime beyond it to spend dodging accusations of "are you looking at my pint ?" in smoky pubs. razorcuts (they seemed to hate the "the" with a passion) were the soundtrack to those tender moments of self-discovery, as twelve string guitars strummed out the passion and wonder of the wide world beyond our schools and shops and factories.

slightly scuffed copies of the razorcuts' two albums, "storyteller" and "the world keeps turning", both released to a cavalcade of critical indifference (from the mainstream press) and fawning, sincere empathy (from the fanzine massive) are as we write sat in record & tape exchange notting hill for the best part of twenty quid each. this, combined with the fact that the creation retrospective cd "patterns on the water" missed off many of their best loved tunes (including the gorgeous "sorry to embarrass you" from which its title came), means that matinée recordings are, not for the first time, providing an important public service in tenderly crafting this "tru" greatest hits package and better balancing the early, scrawny, bambino indie pop songs with the later, more refined, pseudo-anthemic releases. in doing so they roll back the years to when every time you did a compilation tape you would put on buzzcocks' "love you more" ("and after this love there'll be no other / until the razor cuts" - stop dead) and then you would just shoehorn in whichever webster / vass composition was giving you goose pimples at that particular time. if you were particularly deft with the pause and rec buttons, it was as if pete shelley was introducing those magnificent first few bars of "sorry to embarrass you" or whatever other poison you'd selected.

as you'll have gathered, it's so difficult listening to this record not to personalise the review - getting "summer in your heart" on to the tape deck at the youth club, being in a band that tried an extremely noisy version of the sublime "mary day" in a vain effort to recapture its very real anger, having a fellow napalm death / joy division obsessive proclaiming that "across the meadow" was "f***ing brilliant", spending a holiday in sunny minehead marvelling at "the world keeps turning" itself, confusing a bloke from down the football by insisting on taping him "i heard you the first time", getting worked up as sounds' ron rom, who harboured an almost pathological hatred of the band, laid into everything they ever did, reserving special opprobrium for "brighter now"... well as you'll have guessed, each of those tunes surface here. the point is that every razorcuts fan from that first time round harbours their own memories, that will be rekindled by the fabulously titled, and it must be added, beautifully packaged, "r is for razorcuts".

the key to whether or not they unlock your heart will, for all the chiming minor chords and roving, melody-led bass, probably be gregory webster's distinctive voice, usually high in the mix (although sportique arrivistes will be disappointed to know that "r is for razorcuts" is free of situationist hollering). his singing seemed so often to fit the sentiments like a glove - phrases like "don't search the sky for rain" delivered in a quivering voice that SO meant it, and that's what put all imitators in their shade. theirs was a noise bred of growing up in an english town, but that sought its ultimate inspiration from the countryside with its endless vistas and possibilities.

and save for some tweaking to ensure that the track listing proper kicks off with razor anthem "i'll still be there" and closes with john a. rivers' flow (sorry) of hammond organ on "the last picture show", things are chronological, neatly following the subway 7" and EP, the single on flying nun and then the two creation albums (with the emphasis very heavily on their full-length début "storyteller" at the expense of swansong "the world keeps turning" ). we want to start with the fresh-faced 1st subway single "big pink cake", which judging from everett true's contribution to the copious sleeve notes, is hugely underrated now; in this should-be karaoke staple, the way that tim vass's effervescent bass and david swift's as ever impressive drums gambol and then brake and then crash in again make it power pop at its very best, guaranteed to make you smile inside, gregory's unrestrainable vocal being the inevitable icing on top. while bona fide classic "sorry to embarrass you", although less rough and more focused, also takes no prisoners with its unabashed sentiments and unapologetic melodies - a fair stab at eighties alternative pop perfection (perhaps this is the place to mention that "indie top 20 volume 1" - 1986, obv - via which it also featured on a nation's cassette players, along with the likes of "throwaway" and "i could be in heaven", was the album that "NME C86" probably should have been....)

while in the earlier songs, the pace means that the interaction of bass and drums invariably shape the sound, later on - by the time that they were spending alan mcgee's money on being produced by the aforesaid mr rivers at leamington spa - the 12-string takes centre place and a variety of other variables - strings, trumpet, female backing vocals - are fed into the equation. sometimes the lyrics get a little too rustic even for our tastes ("sitting by the fireside / strumming my guitar", sings gregory on "jade") but they soon redeem themselves ("as we talked about someone we knew / the way friends do"). if we do have a whispered criticism of the track listing it's that the mere 3 selections from "t.w.k.t." are not perhaps the best ones. while ten of these tracks also appeared on "patterns on the water", many of the omissions recur - so it seems that "mile high towers" (it's about us! not in a good way!), the feral "steps to the sea", and the organtastic "flowers for abigail" are destined not to be released on cd again (well, except in the case of the original version of the latter by the television personalities). on the other hand, to be fair our only genuine gripe is aimed at the evil forces of industry, for having invented a format that only fits 70 odd minutes.

for once the coyly entitled "bonus tracks" are a genuine bonus. "sad kaleidoscope" is a bustling, buzzing capture from a fizzing flexi shared with talulah gosh in '86, a song that cartwheels along to those frantic bass and drums before morphing into a pure POP chorus prolonged to the point of delight. we still think there's a case for it being the best song here. "the horror of party beach", meanwhile, is the 'previously unreleased' titbit so beloved of greatest hits compilers: it shows that in 1985 the razorcuts were plying a creation-heavy melange of slaughter joe / meat whiplash / early mary chain (the latter especially when gregory sings "gonna get my gun" (!)). while it may not bear sustained rotation, it's a genuinely intriguing catch. finally, to bring us full circle, we are treated to "i'll still be there" (the version that graced the b-side of "big pink cake", rather than the "remix" that appeared on "take the subway to your suburb"). again, it shimmers with the glory of the young razorcuts at their best, preserving the fearless "ba ba ba's" in particular that were excised from the later re-recording.

when we think of the razorcuts at their brilliant best, we always felt they were somehow part of the reaction against the complacency that crept through every aspect of our cultural lives under thatcherism, and that they owed at least as much to the buzzocks than the byrds. it doesn't matter whether that perception was right, or even forgivable - though it tells you the angle we're coming from - what matters is that's the feeling their records gave us. we do really think you might find them just as enchanting.

(r is for razorcuts, we wrote the words ourselves)

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razorcuts "a is for alphabet ep" (matinée recordings)

we honestly meant to start with something else this month, but it's impossible to look past this ep. there is of course as always a debate to be had about randomly re-releasing 5 classic tracks on a cd single (although to be fair old gold used to do it all the time), especially as we would have had all of them on the recent and humblingly great compilation "r is for razorcuts" anyway. but still we go weak-kneed and swoony again, oddly enough not so much for the re-released john a. rivers-produced jewels "a is for alphabet" (alone of these songs taken from "r is for"), "first day" (which accompanied "alphabet" on their guest ep for new zealand's flying nun label) and "snowbound" (the helplessly romantic wilderness cry from their second and last creation album), but for the two final tracks, "sometimes i worry about you" and "for always" which are unbelievably fragile and beautiful, and which although pre-dating their subway days we believe were premièred courtesy of bob stanley's caff corporation as recently as a mere 10 years ago. "sometimes i worry" is the kind of the thing the bmx bandits were doing a couple of years later, if with less finesse - nervous, perfect, feydom: and "for always" is a soft, restrained, plaintive ballad of winsome force, a lost galleon raised from the ocean bed. when, in the latter gregory webster sings "i think i like you", it's the kind of cuteness that crumples you to tears of joy, and set against the sleeve art of bare branches in the winter forest it's all a reminder of why you fell in love with this band in the first place.

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simpatico "postal museum" ep (matinee); slipslide "four day weekend" ep (matinee); melodie group "raincoat" ep (matinee); the windmills "when it was winter" ep (matinee)

four new four-track cd-eps from matinee recordings, the current home of softly strummed guitars and unashamed melodies, which between them go a little further towards cementing its reputation as the best of the north american post-sarah labels. pick of the 16 songs neatly arrayed within these is simpatico's "union station", which uses to best effect the field mice-ish stylings of sequencer, rolling, humming bass, charmingly obvious drum machine, and sweet guitars as jason sweeney hangs his moral - "life is cruel to boys like [us]" - on a single tale of lost love. the other tracks aren't too bad either, even if they don't exactly mess with the template: especially "pheromone stars" as it annexes a sweet belle & sebastian stream of consciousness to the drum pattern from the field mice's "sensitive".

the windmills next. roy thirlwall's vocal is a joy - a kind of syphon which sprinkles wry, deep lyrics to taste over the group's neat, stylish (think milan '94) backing in four more inoffensive, gently affecting pop constructions. "when it was winter", to me, benefits from sounding more like [his alter ego the] melodie group's laid back, laconic songwriting rather than the shallower glaze of the windmills' last effort, the "drug autumn" ep, on the same label. most suited to thirlwall's almost casually acerbic tone is the final song "good riddance to bad rubbish", a hymn of hate which, like the best such paeans, relies not on distortion or noise but guitars melodic and timid enough that even lines as hackneyed as "i never really liked you anyway" can emerge with unusual clarity.

after this, four new tracks from melodie group themselves may seem like overload; and it's true that the aforesaid laid back style makes for some very syrupy stuff, the pattern being of repeated lyrics cutting a swathe through more chiming guitars. ironically, lead tune "you've got the whole of the world in your mouth" probably suffers most from being a little too kitsch - in doing so it shares the problems of the windmills' "everything is new each day" (see january review). nevertheless, each track is petite enough not to outstay its welcome, and i grow particularly fond of "raincoat", a delicate homily to effective outdoor wear, perfect for when you've locked yourself out (on the other hand i may have misread the metaphors here).

last, and probably least, although in this company that's not a 100% dis, are slipslide, the latest band persona of graeme elston (quick career resume: the love parade were jangly / ok, pure a brief but compelling pop diversion, eva luna acceptable on both the ballad and rocking out fronts, astronaut pretty terrible and over-wrought). it's best to skip tracks 1 and 3 and head instead to the more promising "unlucky charm" (sort of the lightning seeds doing new order) and "waiting for the call" which, while they would actually profit from slightly less production and instrumentation, show graeme hasn't totally lost his knack of producing effortless, 2:1 level indie pop (the latter features verse chords which confusingly recall billy bragg's "waiting for the great leap forward"). in the company of labelmates as super soaraway as harper lee, "four day weekend" is a game showing and an encouraging start.

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pipas "a cat escaped" (matinée recordings)

"all i see is grey / makes me want to emigrate"

out the same day [as napalm death's "order of the leech"] and similarly good and also in a digipak sleeve, "a cat escaped" is ten songs, twenty minutes of coy lovable pop which could as easily have come from the sultry southern european likes of elefant records as the recently-relocated west coast american matinée recordings. pipas are confounding and perplexing critters - the duo fire, in short bursts, droplets of wryness wrapped in cute basslines and drum machine dynamics and laconic strumming. these purr shyly, emitting fragments of lyric but never quite enough to surmise precisely what they're singing about. they also do that "pink flag" thing of being economical and concise in their expression to a tee, so much so that two of the songs ("the conversation" and "a cat escaped" itself) barely make sixty seconds. which is always a recommendation.

mostly the vocal is handled by lupe, a star of recent would-be-goods live sets, in a stupendously offhand way (which stops the likes of the hint-of-cranberry "old kent road" sounding too mainstreamish) - only towards the end, on "emblematic" does mark's voice (presumably) make a lead appearance following his slots on previous releases. but what we'd really like to hear is some proper duetting: we think they could bounce off each other in a way that hasn't been seen since sonny and cher, or at least since carolyn and caesar on the wake's "crush the flowers"... now onto the ilwtt picks. well, "the witches" features some of the greatest down-to-earth 'street' lyrics we can imagine hearing - "looking for the coffee shop / i couldn't find it / you said it was on the corner, next to the iceland / it was a lie". and "cruel and unusual" shone out from the matinée summer splash lo-price cd sampler (and yes, you should buy that compilation). but for us the stand-out tracks here are "rock and / or roll", which just screams "single!" with its spangly keyboards, and "old kent road" itself, which is so cleverly put together and documents the exigencies of a relationship (er, we think) in a really original way. mind you, there are also enough hooks in both "what nobody does" and "run run run", which bookend this petite treat, to drive you to distraction.

"you forgot so very fast / that you owed me twenty quid"

though there is a subtle "dance" influence throughout, it complements rather than defines the sound: pipas' music doesn't so much make you want to dance as, like the sugargliders sang, "just sway" (and actually, the sugargliders do come to mind at times - it's something about the easy rhythms and the plucked guitar lines). although the cat may have escaped (try looking on strathblaine road, sw11 - there are loads of them there), this is very feline music - bright, knowing, independent and graceful.

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melodie group "updownaround" (matinée): the guild league "private transport" (matinée)

"and they say a solo project makes you blind" - the wake, "solo project"

essex's "melodie group", as you will know by now, are the solo nom de plume of the windmills' honey and gravel voiced singer / guitarist, roy thirlwall, while the guild league are none other than the lucksmiths' tali white and a number of associès. while solo projects are too often urban disasters, as listeners to professor griff or eazy-e's efforts will testify, both da group and ver league have unleashed their own first full-length albums on the matinée roster, so we weren't overly worried that any overpretentious twaddle would have made it through their quality control department in santa barbara.melodie group announced themselves to us with the über-wry "seven songs" set in 2000, and have since seduced small corners of our nation with the "raincoat" cd-ep and last 7" "summerness" (which we had down as one of our singles of 2002 in the rose & crown the other day until a passing fanzine editor reminded us that, along with "sugar mummy" and "emmanuelle béart", it had actually come out in 2001 - we later duffed him up). never mind if you missed it, though, because "summerness" is on "updownaround" too, as its last, and still probably best track. nothing to do with summer but everything to do with autumn, "summerness" follows the melodie group's m.o. fairly well, which particularly from "raincoat" has been to concentrate on repeated musical and lyrical phrases rather than the fuller arrangements of the windmills, and to taper the guitars with a drum machine, usually resulting in shorter and more pared-down tunes. the rest of the album also reflects this pattern.

introducing itself with the slight trinkets of "everybody loves you" and the simpático-esque "hold", which ease us in to the melodie brew of sparse drum machine, dutiful semi-electric strumming and are-they-sarky vocals, it is with "bathtub full of water" that we start to revisit the picturesque territory of "summerness", guided by a curling guitar motif, a so-gentle rhythmic sway, a sudden sincerity and a certain sadness as thirlwall relays his "lonely thoughts" of "killed" love and a "silenced" heart. to follow it, he does a mike flowers and knocks out matt monro's distinctly un-sinister waltz "when love comes along", sadly only proving that being tongue-in-cheek does not equal being good. luckily, returning to his own compositions with "xiao", the situation is rescued as a bass-led tune, lightly caressed by a few electric guitar cries and thirlwall's deep voice, assembles a beautiful melodic darkness, even managing to detour into a swirling, spangly fairground attraction halfway through without losing its place. marvellous.

"tv is broken / i'll get another / to throw at the wall..." - "inner space 1971"

the second half of "updownaround" begins with what we were going to call a cover of music seen's "hairdresser in the sky" (last seen on a waaah! compilation cd of unremembered vintage), save that a glance at the songwriting credit suggests - and we should have known, really - that thirlwall was apparently behind that anyway, with erstwhile songwriting partner in crime abigail pain. the 2002 take is actually even better, being slightly sparklier (the spangly keyboard topping is almost harper lee) while still measured, and it remains a stately, maudlin modern folk tune which by rights should be much more of a standard than "when love comes along"... humph... next comes the louche wah-guitar spread of "inner space 1971", before "i do not not love you", premiered on the "summer splash!" various artists comp. it is a great mix of handclaps and paranoia, double negatives and a false ending (what more could one want) which would also seem rather short if it wasn't for the fact that it's followed by the 49 seconds of "butterfly: tart", which to be fair doesn't justify much longer. and then it's on to "summerness" to close and remind us why there is still a definite place for melodie group in their own right even as the windmills follow a separate yellow brick road to success. hopefully.

the guild league's album is very different in style from thirlwall's lower-key experimentation, featuring a cast of thousands creating a uniformly outward-looking concept album about international travel which immaculately blends strings, brass and a number of styles. in this respect, taster 45 "jet... set... go!", an uptempo indie-popper which attempts to circumnavigate the globe in three minutes and starts the album is not necessarily representative: elsewhere there is ample demonstration of tali white refining his talent for the blissed-out ballad (the handily breathy "dangerous safety", the kettle-led softness of "balham rise" or the lachrymose "what adults do"), a chance for a choral piece arranged for several mouths and strings ("a faraway place"), and even a tentative venture into the world of rapping - admittedly more mc john barnes than 2pac - in "siamese couplets", which delightfully seeks to capture the flavour of travelling in asia and tali's weakness for the "liquid horizon". but if you are going to force us to pick a special best favourite, well we mustn't look further than the fabulous "cosmetropolis (london swings)". not only is it a 24 carat jewel of bounding guitars, brass parts and piano, but it is a perfect example of white's lyrical dexterity - dozens of episodes, places and themes crammed into a song without interrupting the flow at all - and as good a summary of the city we all bore you about as we can imagine. the way he sang "hard voices ring out along tenement streets / that are harsher than hail and sharper than sleet" as we ventured east out of london bridge's dungeon station on a freezing night seemed to fit our surrounds perfectly... indeed the lyrics throughout are sleeping bag-snug to the songs, and are especially evocative when they deal with the cold of railway platforms or the unfulfilled dreams of autumn, as in the sublime (if cringingly entitled!) "a maze of greys"...

even aside from the words, we also need to mention that craig pilkington's trumpet on "balham rise", pete cohen's double bass on the luscious "the photographer" or tali's own piano playing amidst the strings on the terrific instrumental "baggage handling" (as cultured but somehow vulnerable as some of those fine blueboy instrumentals) are all pieces of art in themselves. an admirable way to start the new year.

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various artists "matinée 50" (matinée recordings): airport girl "do you dream in colour ?" ep (matinée recordings)

ooh, it's all good this month. although not wishing to reopen fruitless "is matinée the new sarah ?" debates, it is at least worth leaving the door ajar, for despite all the palpable differences between the labels (not least the fact that sarah was a punk label) one of the "givens" with sarah was demonstrable strength in depth, almost a kitemark of quality (in contrast to subway or creation where the sublime and ridiculous mingled without shame). matinée 50, a maxi-compilation of 20 matinée bands covering 20 others, brings home that in this respect they are treading similar ground to sarah - more or less every song, and artist, are gratifyingly recognisable, and if the idea is for listeners to this compilation, perhaps new to the territory, to become intrigued both with the covering artist and the original song, then the conceit works marvellously.

we are not exaggerating when we say that one in love with these times in spite of these times contributor fell off his chair when disclosed the tantalising tracklist to this record. suffice it to say that you will collectively be toppling from your bar stools no later than track one, for it is gregory webster giving the "razorcuts" treatment to the lucksmiths' mighty "untidy towns", and trust us it virtually justifies the admission alone. and yet there is more. of the bands that shed the kid gloves and decide to playfully duff the originals up a bit, the highlights are the snowdrops' deconstruction of melodie group's gorgeous "summerness" single, pale sunday's surprisingly convincing shoegaze reworking of sportique's jolly "just friends", the liberty ship's electro cover of kosmonaut's recent 45 "desert song" and kosmonaut returning the favour by taking the liberty ship's last single "northern angel" (btw please ignore the insane review of this record in the otherwise true-to-da-game tasty) and giving it a treatment equal parts my bloody valentine, revolving paint dream and big beat. if they could persuade dennis bovell or someone to turn up an orchestrate a dub version, we would all be rocking - perhaps a matinée dub album can be the next label project ?

on the other hand, there are tracks that are just, hey, great bands doing great songs - slipslide take melodie group's first ever number for the label, the irradescent "wildest dream" and enhance its classic credentials further, while just the sound of keris howard's voice leads harper lee into a near-perfect and slightly simpático (in all possible senses) rendition of monterey's old skool delight "motorway". it is a compliment to matinée that many of the bands find themselves taking on originals so stormin' that matching them is virtually impossible - sportique's skanked up "goldmining" could never compete with the visitors' sublime mesh of pop yearning (although when gregory shouts "version!" as if he thinks he's u-roy, that's entertainment), simpático's tender take of "train not stopping" could never be more than a valiant attempt to re-style harper lee's original and the visitors, no strangers to classic flexi-discs, confront themselves with an all-time generational classic in the razorcuts' "sad kaleidoscope". to whet your appetite further, we think we've just time to mention the fairways doing edson's "sunday lovely sunday" in the style of beaumont, the pines doing the fairways' "darling, don't you think" almost as a field mice song, which is intriguing in itself, and the would be goods come out smelling of roses too - both on the receiving end of melodie group's unabashedly glammed-up "emmanuelle béart" (another chance to savour the "salade niçoise" / "gauloises" rhyme) and in performing their own pulchitrudinous revival of the lucksmiths' "southernmost". if you have liked anything you've heard on the matinee roster, this release is absolutely compulsory.

after all that, the latest single release from matinée is airport girl's much-delayed "do you dream in colour" ep , memorable chiefly for the first two tunes - the title track, which acknowledges johann pachelbel's canon in D (despite its overexposure, still a triumph of classical arrangement) but which with rob price's homely voice comes across as a beauteous post-cinerama late night classic and one of the best modern treatments bestowed upon johann, and "when you fall" which mixes moments of high-octane motown homily with go-betweens hooks and, at times, almost bodines-like shimmering guitars, plus a terrific lyric which soars towards each chorus before landing with a telling "promises are things you keep". note also that the windmills do airport girl's "striking out on your own" on matinée 50, too, in a swap deal for the airportsters bravely embarking on the windmills' own "360º" - it's been too long since we last heard from airport girl, but perhaps the renaissance can start here.

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the liberty ship "tide" (matinée recordings): various artists "romantic and square is hip and aware" (matinée recordings)

another band we fondly fête are the liberty ship of nottingham england, one-half (alongside kosmonaut) of matinée's post-bulldozer crash phalanx. "tide" is their first full album, following a 7", a cd single and a mini-lp over the last couple of years, the latter on their former b.c. home of sunday records. while nobody in the sane world is going to doubt the liberty ship's songwriting abilities, the one worry we did have was whether over twelve tracks the dogged pursuit of melodic highs could transpire to make the record too one-dimensional. yet happily, despite its rather modest sleeve, "tide" has soundwaves of every description crashing against pure shores, from the great, powering swathes of guitars that wrap around "precious time" through the unabashed semi-acoustic eden of "chords drag you down" (a torch song cast around flickering electro beats which takes us back to the campfire analogies we drew about earlier tunes back in the day) to the bubbles of reverb that appropriately ensconce the final tune "yuri gagarin" - another "kosmonaut" link and best yuri-tune since saturn v's "red star" - as it serenely orbits our respective bachelor / spinster pads. plus, to be fair we had already been vastly encouraged by the preview of "baseball caps and novas", a cracking popsong that premièred on the increasingly seminal "matinée autumn assortment" collection and justifiably pours scorn on "right-on" snobs like us (we're afraid that lines like "thinking of all the times / you feared assault and petty crime" are a fairly accurate description of when we lived in the liberty ship's home town, but we are more than prepared to accept that was probably just horribly unrepresentative...) the other thing that strikes you very quickly is some superb arrangements. as revealed in this interview with a downmarket e-zine, the liberty ship are willing students of hallowed names from the beatles through to xtc and the smiths (see below!), and songs here like "finer feelings" and "cabin fever" have really developed from their initial demo versions, "finer feelings" transformed from being "just" an extra-strength jangler into a luscious and more layered confection (harmonica and extra melody in the chorus, great backing vocals from rachel eyres, guitars set at just the right level of mild distortion, and marc's voice racing away towards the end as the 'ship do their old trick of kite-chasing: then it all hits the three minute mark and graciously implodes). similarly, "cabin fever" assumes new proportions, with plenty of strata of guitar, the pulse rate quickening as drummer steve mietlinski ups the bpm for the chorus and in doing so completes its transition from amenable folk song into indie-pop classic. and you'll recognise "final kick" from the last ep: a chime-ridden janglethon led by rachel's warm voice: she also takes the lead elsewhere, markedly with the splendorous "stars above". so, while the production throughout is not always exactly dre, and there are a couple of songs we don't feel too guilty about skipping, the quality on show here means that "tide" can not only withstand the absence of that last tour de force single "northern angel" but also the non-appearance of the great "don't react", which you will need to buy matinée's "summer splash!" sampler to get hold of, but don't worry this should not prove to be too much of an ordeal. ooh, and one last thing - while it is hopefully not accidental, the last minute or so of this album is a ringer for joy division's "incubation". somewhat inevitably therefore, the liberty ship tear us apart.

...but still leading us nicely into our final item 2night, matinée records' "romantic and square is hip and aware" smiths tribute compilation. the title, we think, was morrissey's (deliberate) misappropriation of a john lennon quote, immortalised for our purposes by being scratched into the run-out groove of "william, it was really nothing" (god how we miss vinyl). and herein, matinée recordings ups the levels of heresy displayed by previous releases (the "a smile took over" sarah tribute and the cosily incestuous but indubitably toppermost "matinée 50" compilation) and decides to give us a cd of cover versions of what they rightly acknowledge as the greatest band of all time - for a tiny signal of our agreement check out our title page photo - more than twenty years after "hand in glove" first ran up and down our spines, giving us first-kiss shivers and tingles like no other group could. now nobody in this particular bitch is going to pretend that any of these songs are up to the originals. but but but those are not the standards by which albums like this should be judged (if they were, there would have been approximately no albums worth hearing since 1987) - any more than when you listen to discharge tribute albums (come on, we all do) any of the contributors can really hold a candle to the originals. inevitably some play it straight - the lucksmiths, after their own "there is a boy that never goes out" on last year's "naturaliste" lp, see fit to reinterpret "there is a light", fairly smoothly and with a helping hand on vocals from karen morcombe; slipslide unimpeachably crown "please please please let me get what i want" as the most uncynically bounteous of pop ballads; and the liberty ship's lively rendition of morrissey's comment on crime and punishment, "sweet and tender hooligan" is the rockiest effort on here, although there would still have been room for a little more feedback and perhaps turning the amps up to eleven: indeed, a shame that sportique weren't up for this particular jamboree, as they would no doubt have added a dash of abrasiveness and a little less reverence. in bravery corner, meanwhile, pale sunday open themselves up to all sorts of obloquy from smiths devotees by even daring to perform "i know it's over", but with luiz gustavo's cute almost-vocoder vocal, some snug bursts of shoegaze guitar and inexpensive drum machine bossanova, they just end up cuddling the song and taking you with them. and tali white's the guild league bound through a jovial, reasonably heretic and not unannoying "panic" as hopes continue to spiral up through the grasmeres. however, where things get really great for us is the hat-trick of tracks that starts with pipas subverting "this night has opened my eyes" and lovejoy taking on "girlfriend in a coma" (both rourke-tastically dub up the bass - perhaps reggae isn't so vile after all, eh, stephen ?) and then in not inconsiderable contrast sees the would-be-goods' jessica griffin delicately re-decorate "back to the old house": not far behind is the way that the pines rearrange "ask" to make it a delicately arranged mini symphony that is both less compact but also less cloying than the original, and in doing so create a strong companion piece to the would-be-goods' gentle prompting. it is in these tracks that the raison d'être of this particular vanity project becomes most apparent and its success most complete. this record is a present. it has been put together with love (unlike all those discharge tributes, they haven't just lobbed on any fourth-rate band that's ever sent them a track!) and yes it will also send you scurrying back to your smiths records and if you think that's a bad thing then there is little we can do for you. with valentine's day fast approaching, you may find once again that these songs will save your life.

* * * * *

simpático "club life" (matinée recordings): the liberty ship "northern angel" (matinée recordings)

so it's a single of the month face-off, with santa barbara's matinée providing the head to head: even at our age there is a joy in getting hold of records and then wanting to ensure you can listen to them without any distraction: unplug the phone, disable the doorbell and let focused melancholy wash over you...

ex-sweet william geezah jason sweeney reappears for the first time since "the difference between alone and lonely" album with a new ep detailing dysfunctional romance on the streets of melbourne, and whereas the album concentrated on the hanging thoughts and claustrophobia of the sweetest ache, "club life" owes its greatest debt to the field mice: meaning that while the depictions of the betrayal and fear that surround the heart of human relationships remain clinging and powerful, the music is dancier, even bouncier, if still lacking the echoing desperation of his magnificent matinée debut "postal museum". so there's the title track (scientific demonstration that emptiness inside translates well to simple major to minor guitar over sparse but paced beats, as jason asks "couldn't he see that i was upset ?" of a past amour); then "inseparable" spins a web of drum machine and sarah guitars halfway between "let's kiss and make up" and "white" before a spoken word segment, which may or may not be your jump-off, gives way to an unutterably field micey soundclash of tinny drum machine and swirling woolworths guitars - quite brilliant; "garden greene" again works up to a swirl of keyboards, echo and drum machine with the field mice (in "here comes everybody"-time wake tribute mode) as its nearest reference point; "your first and last warning" showcases more sweet aches and soft radiance as lines like "this kind of dream is not easy / for the likes of you and me" almost reprise the "life is cruel to boys like me...and you" of "union station"; and the last song, "self-conscious" takes its indubitable field miceness from the latter's "triangle", even down to the hummed "aa-aah" sounds that hover amidst the sequenced delays towards the back of the mix. over the twenty minutes of "club life", even though there are elements of electro frippery (carefully sequenced sounds flying in and out) it is still identifiably heartrending indie-pop. but the best thing about this ep is that, like the album, there is no padding whatsoever - if you like the sweeney thing, then every song will merit being put on yr headphones and listened to in bed while the night sky tries to fight off the street lamps and car headlights.

back in t' other hemisphere, "northern angel" is obviously not about london's deepest tube line or the islington station with unfeasibly broad platforms that stands upon it, but a hymn of sorts to antony gormley's imposing motorway-side sculpture "the angel of the north", which stands on a former colliery site acting as a gateway to gateshead, england. while it's true that the liberty ship are influenced by rubbish bands like the byrds, and the beatles (yet only ourselves and the magnificent tasty zine, much to singer marc elston's chagrin, appear to have the guts to point out that most bands on matinée would walk all over the beatles) "northern angel" is simply a great A side, full of shambling drums, harmonica and, in its chorus, warm go-betweens guitars: wide-eyed in admiration for its subject, packed with hooks that make it the natural successor to last year's freewheeling "don't react", and ending with a delicious coda, introduced by the subtlest touch of feedback. it is without doubt the standout track on the cd-ep, but if that wasn't enough, "final kick" sees rachel eyres lead a smiths-like, beautifully sung jangler that glows like the softer tunes off comet gain's "casino classics" before rounding off with a very bulldozer crash-style guitar line towards the end. and the closing "small lives" is unbearably sad, its lyrics and longing respectively reminding us of b.c. (again) and hood, but as the rain tracks the tear stains there is, one trusts, some hope somewhere. of course the liberty ship don't sound anything like simpático - since when did that have relevance to a joint review on in love with these times in spite of these times ? - so when it comes down to it, we find it hard to choose between these records. but at a few euros a throw, and with us still quite content after fifteen to twenty listens, isn't it worth taking the chance ?

* * * * *

the windmills - drug autumn ep (matinée)

the latest offering from the unlikely jangle-pop breeding ground of yes, southend, this kicks off with "everything is new each day", a faithful stab at the 'perfect pop song' which falls down on that front by being a little too cloying and a little too clinical. they've selected all the usual items from the "perfect pop song" drop-down menu - "la la la's", lyrical wide eyed wonderment and a soft landing after two minutes; the end result is very palatable but strangely unsatisfying. a neat little tiramisu of a song, then."drug autumn" itself swells into four and a half minutes of reminiscence - even though singing about drugs is usually even more boring than talking about drugs, the tone is nicely unspecific and self-conscious. "are we still where we were ? " chimes sweetly to no particular effect, so it falls on closer "want" to provide my favourite slice of the ep: apparently from the last album, it jangles and oozes a warm, laconic charm, much more in the mould of singer roy thirlwall's melodie group project.

* * * * *

pale sunday "a weekend with jane ep" (matinée recordings)

pale sunday's fatal but understandable faux pas is being from brazil in 2003 rather than bristol in 1986, but they overcome this gamely with our joint favourite single from this mass of 45s. their first outing for matinée is actually tight, focused, jangly indie, drawing much from the pristine international tradition of compatriots brincando de deus as well as the european likes of brideshead and aerospace, and bookended with the two best tunes, a title song that skips tunefully and daintily through sunlit streets before one of those great two-note closing guitar lines, and the final track "the girl with sunny smile" which is a storming indie pop number, made by the second guitar part which curves into the chorus and smilingly deployed "sha-la-las", turning this reviewer for its duration into the boy with sunny smile. if you're looking for something with a bit of edge, pale sunday may be unable to provide it, but otherwise you are unlikely to have any complaints to the management.

* * * * *

We still know - for sure - that there are other ancient in love with these times, in spite of these times reviews of this splendid little label out there. We'll post them up in due c., should we ever find them.

Gang Starr: One Of The Best Yet

2010-08-19T12:10:00.000-07:00

[we love g.s: here's the proof]

"Poetry comes from within / and will always win" - Gang Starr, "Beyond Comprehension"

"I'm ready to lose my mind / But instead I use my mind / Put down the knife / And take the bullets out my 9" - Gang Starr, "Moment Of Truth"

Earlier this year saw the death of Guru, from cancer, aged 43: all the more saddening given that we'd been spending a fair bit of time with our Gang Starr records even in the few months before that. And that we'd slept on the opportunity of seeing the man play in London, an opportunity that of course has now slipped away forever.

When Keith Elam (aka Keithy E the Guru and then, much more sensibly, just the Guru) hooked up with one Christopher Martin (no, not that one, but the artist also known as DJ Premier) it really took the hitherto unknown Gang Starr up the league table. Strange, in so many ways, that we like GS so much: after all, many describe or dismiss them as "jazz rap", and we are not renowned as jazzateers. But, in the same way (a few of you might want to close your ears here) that the most vital hip-hop took templates created by Parliament and James Brown and frankly improved on them, Premier's careful picking of jazz instrumentals, a genre beloved by both men, was the platform for original and high quality new music. As for Guru, while sadly better known for the unhinged lyric to "DWYCK" rather than the acres of fine rhymes that he did come up with, his style was measured, laid back (surely Rakim-influenced) but normally authoritative, his only overplayed thematic trait a seeming obsession with his height (5'8 or '9, depending on the tune), a penchant which Royce Da 5'9" of course continues to this day.

The first album featuring Premier, "No More Mr Nice Guy", is a little dated, we'll admit, and it's p'raps surprising that "Jazz Thing", for example, was a very minor UK hit at the time (er, 66 with a bullet). Mind you, it's an elpee worth copping for "Words I Manifest", "Knowledge" and especially the single "Positivity". (Early B-side "Here's The Proof", a bonus track on the CD, also well merits yr aural attention, being the most obvious bridge between their first and second LPs). But it was that second album, "Step In The Arena", which saw Gang Starr take off almost vertically, suddenly delivering track after track of single quality including, but hardly limited to, the actual singles. "Just To Get A Rep" is a lyrical idea that's been stolen a thousand times, but Guru plays it just right as he recounts with ultra-realism (and, refreshingly, a touch of analysis, rather than the old "jus' holding a mirror up to society" get-out) the sheer pointlessness of gang violence in the projects: and "Who's Gonna Take The Weight ?", also on the "Rep" 12", was astonishing, musically a PE-style killer with their signature brass / kettle mash-up thing going full pelt. It starts with a sample saying "KNOWLEDGE IS POWER" and finishes with a "kettle" solo to fade: matchless. The cutesy "Lovesick" was sadly not an Orange Juice cover, but *was* a relatively unclumsy crossover tune, with Guru even coming over as straightforward and sensitive, in bleak contrast to the depressing, testosterone sexism that counts for "romantic" hip-hop in the current capitalist rap free-for-all. In reaching a paltry no. 50 over here, it was to be their biggest UK "hit".

While "Step" proved perhaps to be the peak, the albums that followed in the 1990s, "Daily Operation", "Hard to Earn" and "Moment of Truth" are all pretty solid, flecked with prime cuts. Even many of the guest spots stand up to scrutiny today, such as the Wu's Inspectah Deck on "Above The Clouds", M.O.P assisting with "B.I. vs Friendship" and, especially, Scarface's turn on the maudlin but menacing "Betrayal". Great tracks like "Daily Operation"'s "Now You're Mine" - taken from the soundtrack of "White Men Can't Jump" - and the legendary "Soliloquoy of Chaos" found themselves somehow relegated to B-sides, but you couldn't gainsay their class, nor that of pointed political commentaries like "Hardcore Composer" and "Conspiracy". "Daily Operation" (its title taken from a line in "Just To Get A Rep") also gave us the excellent "2 Deep" single, which included Guru shedding more light on the memorable opening lyric ("I was raised like a Muslim") of "Take The Weight".

For its part "Hard To Earn" spawned "Mass Appeal", another of our favourite 45s: a fruitful 1994 saw the duo roll out that, "2 Deep" and the "Code To The Street" EP as singles. And even the maligned "Moment Of Truth" long player boasted not just an uplifting, thoughtful, title track but also "You Know My Steez", a song to come back to time after time, another 12" we can hardly bear to leave out of our sight, when Guru stormed out of the blocks and dropped effortless flow over Premo's luxuriously underplayed, rolling beats. (Guru also references PE's "Welcome To The Terrodome" early on, making this a great track to follow "Terrordome" on a mixtape). Our copy of the 12" was nearly physically wrestled from us once by a burly geezah who was convincingly deadpan in only letting us keep it because "it shows you got taste". And only the other day we managed to get hold of the Lady of Rage-featuring remix, tucked away on the B-side of another top single from the LP, "The Militia" (you know, "one of us / equals any of us / disrespect any of us / and you'll see plenty of us"... ooh, and the "Part 2" remix of that, which featured Rakim, no less, alongside our fellow Westside Connection member WC, was even better than the orig).

The double-album "Full Clip: A Decade Of Gang Starr" compilation in 1999 joined most of the hits with a few new tracks, such as the club-friendlier but still born-from-golden-era "Discipline", which was released as a single at the same time and in which Guru, this time abetted by sleek R&Bsters Total, continued to rhyme about the importance of keeping your head while all about you are wilding. It was only really with 2003's final suite, "The Ownerz", that Gang Starr dented their own reputation a little, for while it was easy to put Eminem and co in the shade - as they most assuredly did - we were judging them by their own rather higher standards, and aside from the title track it was a comeback they didn't quite nail despite appearances from Jadakiss, Fat Joe and Snoop Dogg, and the ever-durable "The Militia" franchise getting a Part 3.

In a way, the fact that "The Ownerz" was merely a very good hip-hop album was a sign that Gang Starr's moment had passed, and the OK but not-all-that "Skills" 12", the first single off it, would be the last of theirs that we rushed out to buy within nanoseconds of release. After "The Ownerz", Premo and Guru began to get all that post-break up stuff out of their systems, Morrissey / Marr style, with DJ P. cementing a reputation as producer of choice, Guru launching his "Jazzmatazz" sets and shows that fully indulged his love of those records he'd grown up with at home. And we'd found, thanks to our fanzine, that we were dipping our toes back into indie-pop more often, and after a while we stopped paying the pair the attention we'd once lavished on them.

But, just like the Smiths, a truly worthwhile legacy had already been created, one which we will always cherish. So believe this. There won't be any time soon when Guru's flow isn't bursting out of our speakers.

Peace.

* * * * *

postscript #1: in love with these times, in spite of these times recommended Gang Starr listening (with impressive restraint, we've narrowed this down to a mere thirty-three tracks from their 100+, although tunes from the first and last albums are included really so you can listen to their musical progression, while the second to fourth albums in particular probably deserve wall-to-wall attention):

from No More Mr Nice Guy: Words I Manifest, Positivity (remix), DJ Premier In Deep Concentration (old-school DJ cut a la Eric B's solo turns on early EB&R albums: also on the B side of the "Manifest" 12"), Knowledge, Here's The Proof (bonus track on the CD, and again on that "Manifest" 12");

from Step In The Arena: Step In The Arena, Execution Of A Chump, Who's Gonna Take The Weight ?, Check The Technique (there's a remix of this on the 12" version of the title track), Beyond Comprehension, Just To Get A Rep, As I Read My S-A, Precisely The Right Rhymes. We're well aware that's half of the whole record;

from Daily Operation: Soliloquoy of Chaos, Take It Personal, 2 Deep, Conspiracy, Hardcore Composer;

from Hard To Earn: Code Of The Streets, Tonz O'Gunz, Mass Appeal, Now You're Mine, Blowin' Up The Spot;

from Moment Of Truth: You Know My Steez, Moment Of Truth, Betrayal;

from Full Clip: Full Clip, Discipline, Gotta Get Over (Taking Loot) (an excellent single, also on the soundtrack to "Trespass", fondly remembered by us for the mere fact of 2 of our all time heroes and "wish they were uncles" Ice-T and Ice Cube teaming up on celluloid and, in retrospect, probably only for that);

from The Ownerz: "Sabotage", "Rite Where U Stand", "PLAYTAWIN", "The Ownerz".

postscript #2: in love with these times, in spite of these times [essential] essential Gang Starr listening (i.e. as an alternative, if you've only got seven minutes to live):

"Who's Gonna Take The Weight ?", "You Know My Steez".

555, you helped us get more alive

2010-08-02T07:31:00.000-07:00

If you were a City lawyer with underground indiepop leanings in the late 1990s and early 2000s (in our experience not a terrifically oversubscribed club) then Tower Records on Piccadilly Circus was your new best friend (replacing all your conventional human friends, who still had lives but who you never saw any more). Not only did the store open until midnight - meaning that you could wander in there even if you didn't get out of the office until 10 or 11 in the evening, which was hardly uncommon then (as those of you who often saw us wander into gigs in full whistle and flute, usually just as the last chord rang out, will testify), or allowing you to salvage a corporate night out in the West End (usually full of unbearable private school braying and showboating in extremely terrible bars) by ducking out at closing time and sneaking down Regent Street to said record mecca - but it also had a comprehensive and up-to-date selection of v. obscure indieness. In particular, Tower Records seemed to have everything released on 555 Recordings. Many an otherwise unsatisfactory evening for this downcast, downtrodden twentysomething was therefore leavened mightily by being able to pounce on a new 7" or CD on the way home, and play them within the hour. Remember, this was in the days before you could just pay for and download music at will: indeed, purchasing records outside of office hours still felt both a privilege and a novelty. (The privilege now denied us, of course, is buying great records on small indie labels from actual shops, let alone chainstore megastores like Tower).

This mattered even more because 555 Recordings (first of Leeds, then Philadelphia, and late of Arizona) is one of the best labels of the last twenty years: as they themselves have it, they've been "banging our heads against the wall with conviction and style since 1995". You would have struggled to find enough love for them in the inkies, but 555 had a terrific roster and doled out a generous acreage of compilations, one-offs and genuinely classic singles / albums that spanned indiepop, experimental, electronica and ambient (often all at once). The factor that united all of these things was the talentspotting nous of all-round hero of ours Stewart Anderson, a man who always had an uncanny gift of being friends with most of the people in the world who were making great music at any particular time.

It did no harm that 555 could therefore call on the services of Stewart himself, including post-Sarah incarnations of the peerless Boyracer (see the opening archive reviews below) and his massively underrated solo work as Steward (*so* much you should check of that, but how about Cex's remix of "This Land Is Nervous" or the brilliant "The Last Wasps Of Summer", a single not actually on 555 but on kindred spirit Orgasm Records of France, frequent collaborators with several of our favourite Leeds-connection artists). Mr Anderson's schooldays links with fellow Spofforth Hill galacticos Hood - later documented in the marvellous Wetherbeat Scene package on 555 - also meant that that band, and glorious Hood-related projects such as the wonderful Famous Boyfriend, featured prominently on the release schedule.

555 continued to furnish some wonderful records in more recent, post-Tower Records years - "Your Cassette Pet" was a typical compilation flourish, while "Flickering B&W" was one of many examples of Boyracer's unfading charms.

But this post is really about an earlier phase of 555's history, and of our own history. As we approach retirement from this game, we wish that we had time to say more about all the ways that 555 touched us in those often difficult years, beyond inspiring us to write about many of their records at the time. But all we can do now is say that this post - and some extracts below from what we did write, tired but happy and at home, after those forays to Piccadilly Circus - are here to pay tribute to a label, and a label boss, who inspired us and helped us and made us stay young and angry and aware when the world was trying to make us old and jaded and complacent.

* * * * *

boyracer "boyfuckingracer" (555)

well at last. in terms of wall to wall quality, a compilation that is up there with the field mice's "where'd you kiss that way", big flame's "rigour", "this is heavenly" or even the smiths' "singles": full of songs we have loved to and lost to and drunk to and sung along to.

kicking off with "he gets me so hard" is not really fair on any other records released this year as that song, in 2 1/2 minutes, uses the medium of pop (hard, fast and beautiful and noisy but pop all the same) to storm every possible barricade. it was the moment that sarah records finally completed the journey to the punk ethic that they had always not-so-secretly coveted... the whole song is like riding a massive wave, from the taut bass intro through the boy/girl vocal collision to the last 20 or seconds of pure chaos, in which the cumulative effect of the frantic drumming and the earsplitting guitars is to stab you through the heart, not unlike the wonderful feedback romance of "you trip me up". definitely one of the most compelling love songs of the 20th century.

we'll all play the game of tracks we would have included that they haven't... my choices are "jesus suzanne christ", "no fuel", "david byrne", "doorframe" (a particularly gaping omission), "your dark secrets", "michael", "boyracer" (gaping to the point of unforgivable), "two", "boxing day"... but the whole point of that game is to demonstrate how brilliant boyracer were, in that 33 great tracks merely scratches the surface of their prolific, unstable, erratic and above all magnificent back catalogue. to prove the point, consider a mere handful of the tracks featured: "i've got it and it's not worth having", the top tune from the splendid "B is for Boyracer" set on sarah; "your secret desires", best of the superb "Racer 100" five-tracker; "west riding house" and "meadowhall", breakneck joyrides through the streets of west yorkshire; "friend", the acoustic tearjerking dalliance ("situations that suck... everything is shit... but when you need a friend, i'll be there") with even as we speak (but really, what's with the banjo ?) and tucked away as track 28 and justifying even the length of this sentence, the behemoth of a cover version that takes even as we speak's classic pop-pourri "one step forward" and transforms it into a massive, massive lo-fi distortion festival without losing any of the original's playful charm. godlike.

being able to cram verses, choruses and instrumentals galore into songs that frequently only just make the one minute mark is a gift that we haven't witnessed since the more one dimensional days of the rosehips. as with most truly great bands, the thing that lifts boyracer into the top drawer, however, is lyrics that were both original and easy to identify with, combining the ache of distant romance with the immediacy of english angst.

and to close ? a short, romantic interlude, recorded on a dictaphone. it's called "in love with these times". and it, not any other work of the same name, is why we are called what we are.

* * * * *

boyracer "to get a better hold you've got to loosen yr grip" (555)

ok. now the reformation of any once-quality combo is beset with dangers. symptoms in reviewers include wary expectation, eager anticipation, and in the case of returns of original punk icons, something akin to primal fear (mixed with a soupçon of cringing embarrassment). however, boyracer's new album is their most coherent work: they had after all been getting pretty close to the modern epitome of punk/pop fusion in the non-experimental half of their "in full colour" set before they kind of fizzled out with the unobtrusive "perfect tense" 7" in 1997. now that's been exposed as a false ending, the boy racer (stewart anderson aka steward) has decided to resurrect the group, with wife jen turrell on bass, and ara hacopian (lately the 5th member of the saturday people, we seem to recall) providing the extra layer of guitar on more raucous numbers.

to those of you who never really bought into the boyracer thing - possibly you remember their early flexis, and recall wondering what the hell they were doing signing to sarah, before you kind of got distracted by britpop or something - well for us, boyracer cemented their reputation with the sarah a sides "i've got it and it's not worth having" and "he gets me so hard", but their main attraction to us has always been that they had something to say (largely on the personal / political level), and they were prepared to say it with feedback. we guess it was possibly wire who first realised, with "pink flag", that there wasn't much point in playing songs that lasted 3 minutes unless you had 3 minutes' worth to say - best just dive in, say what you gotta say and wind proceedings up pretty smartly, and if you do that in 70 or 80 seconds, as boyracer often do, so much the better. it's a market in which boyracer have traded admirably with past classix like "small consolation", "west riding house" and "your secret desires", and there are plenty of golden nods to that tradition here in standouts like "sarah and sarah", "temper" (the alternate take at #21 being even better), "tell me where my hands should go" (an exemplary lust song) and "nostalgic for a time i hardly remember", during which not only does the phone appear to ring, but i'm damn sure that this time the screech at the end isn't feedback, but the sound of a kettle boiling. there's also a new and improved version of "razor", originally previewed on "boyfuckingracer". all the songs gleefully run into each other, too, one scratchy thrash bumper-to-bumper pranging into the next - no respectful radio 3 silences here.

"i lost a day / but gained so much more..."

there are a few necessary deviations from the boyracer formula, although none of the famous boyfriend collaborative experiments that perhaps unsettled the flow of "in full colour". of these, track 10 is the best answer phone track since the beatnik filmstars' "phone kids": let's just say it has the desired effect. and former b.f. andrew jarrett is indeed in the area, responsible for recording some of these tiny gems onto 8-track. occasional guitarist and "classic line up" member matt green also plays on his own composition, "matty's untitled song" (shades of "billy's third" ?) which does enough in its 45 seconds to keep his forthcoming solo album (as "the tall boy", in which guise he's already impressed us) firmly in mind. and there are a trio of covers to provide (a little) tone and contrast - the primitives' "nothing left" is done in fine style, with jen turrell's vocal recalling the cuteness of early tracy tracy; the marine girls' "in love" (such a shame when you think of tracey thorn now that aberration "missing" always sees to lodge in mind) is charmingly rendered, the best part being in the chorus with stewart saying "i hear you're..." and then as the guitar really kickstarts he adds / yelps "IN LOVE!!" - it's faithful to the childlike allure of the original. "come out 2 nite" is more an affectionate interpretation, not really being a patch on the original but at least reminding us how kenickie's potential was never realised... these cover versions, tending as they do to (gasp!) exceed the two-minute mark, seem quite epic, surrounded as they are by boyracer's homegrown short sharp shocks.

it's always a factor that stewart's lovelife - or at least certain episodes from it - is now an open canvas thanks to previous recorded confessionals. while this doesn't put boyracer quite in the league of j-lo, cris judd and puff daddy - thank goodness - like so many of those field mice and trembling blue stars songs, it adds an extra edge in listening to the records as you try and guess who they're about. listening to "priorities" (another office recommendation), following some of the harrowing revelations of steward's "horselaugh on my ex", you're in no doubt as to who the song is about; equally one would assume that "every day is christmas with you" ("don't let me become immune to such beauty ...") is aimed at jen: like any decent romantic cadeau, stewart is responsible for putting the whole thing together. you can almost imagine him presenting her the master tape, gift wrapped, with boyish pride. my favourite lyrics on the album are actually "grand rapids", but whenever boyracer slow down these days, comparisons with steward's solo material are bound to surface, and they can't always be flattering. you wonder what such touching, homely phrases ("sat outside in the freezing snow / in the dead of night / my coat on / my hood up / all alone...") could do to you if they were part of the steward montage of samples and fluffy electronica.

still relevant, then.

* * * * *

various artists "knowing we was right from da start" (555)

i know arrogance isn't becoming, but 555 records (now relocated from leeds, yorkshire, to philadelphia) have got much to be arrogant about and this summary of their roster is the usual tour of all that is innovative and meaningful in lo-fi pop and electronica, showing that they were indeed correct from da start - my own baptism was hood's fine "biochemistry revision can wait", which is included here and which i tracked down in my otherwise barren time in nottingham about '94/95. top tunes of many for me here are the other hood contribution, the single "(the) weight"; the aislers' set's "fire engine" - a fantastic, crackling homage to the shirelles as played by the mary chain; empress' "skills unknown", which I don't remember from their albums but which is the pick of their three cuts herein; hulaboy's kitchen sink drama "river of honey and mud"; beachbuggy's tempered fall tribute "ya just a little punk"; huon's utterly disarming and shambly "thunder"... as you'll have gathered, popular music pickers, 555 have what we premiership-haters enviously know as "strength in depth". more power to their cute electronica and lo-fi obsessed elbow.

* * * * *

Various Artists “These Are Testing Times” (555)
Various Artists “You Gotta Get More Alive” (555)

Two 20-track budget samplers packed with lo-fi; sometimes ideas and titles are more successful than the finished products; but the Empress and Steward compilation LPs which came out this year demonstrated that 4-track is still capable of evoking far from humdrum worlds. The CDs, too, showcase a fair breadth of talent. Famous Boyfriend have mutated from perfect post-Brighter indie (“We’re All Pretty Much Failures”) through basic skewed Steward-by-numbers (“The Last Drink Makes Me”) to their instrumental reincarnation as the Remote Viewer (witness the breakbeat-with-a-heart of “We Do What We Can”). Meanwhile, Kyoko continue to seep almost unnoticed out of speakers (the mysterious quiet-fi “t.a.m.s.”); Halkyn shine a flickery flame for bedroom acoustic angst, post-homework no doubt, with “Local Summit” and the superbly titled “I Tried So Hard, But I Was Already Mistaken”; Kid 606 transports his nervy mantras across the pond via the medium of beats n’ bleeps (“Nobody Wants To Be A Star Any More”); Clohydris Diepholz (track title unpronounceable) messes around with loops in a most satisfying manner (imagine the Third Eye Foundation’s remix of the Pastels' “On The Way” but on a very austere Weimar-style low-deutschmark budget). And then from around the world there are more traditional takes on indie from Amber#2 (a Belgian REM, except good), Ashland (stilted Amero-pop drawl) and Huon (scuzzy southern-hemispherettes who have a track on their album called “C86” which makes you want to buy it just for that, until you remember that the song “C86” by the BMX Bandits was one of their worst songs ever, not even counting the fiddle).

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that 555 are much closer to my own musical credo, “if you can’t be good, be different”; in fact, they are frequently good too, which is a bonus. Shinkansen, on the other hand, is producing sub-Sarah indie from the days of, well, before Sarah, which makes you think the Sea Urchins died in vain (let me reiterate: I do like Cody and Monograph – but not with “every fibre of my being”)… and it is no coincidence, I am sure, that there was some comment on the Shinkansen website earlier this year appearing to “celebrate” the carnage of 26 May 1999. Despite now claiming to be an Orient fan, Mr Haynes clearly has no conception of the things that are actually helping to drive the O’s into the Conference this season. Man Utd are killing football, as usual, and in the same way that the Beatles ruined music (i.e. with mass public backing). The great Preston side of 1889 won the Double without losing a game (didn’t concede a goal in the FA Cup) and it’s fair to say they would have won the League Cup, Auto Windscreens, European Cup, World Club Championship, Super Cup and Intercontinental Cup in the same year if only some marketing persona [non grata] had thought of them at that stage. Same with Huddersfield in the 1920s, Arsenal in the 1930s, etc, etc, etc.

While I’m on this topic, you will have noticed that the FA are killing football, too. They get paid for killing football. I’m all for people getting paid to kill rugby, or cricket – I’d do it myself for free – but the FA’s twisted minds get their kicks from frying the small fry and letting the paper idols I mentioned above get away with anything. Just imagine if Robbie Fowler or Patrick Vieira had kicked Neil Lennon in the head – it would have been a ban some way into the third millennium, at least (and, incidentally, un-English as it might be, I’d rather be spat at than suffer the sort of two-footed leg-breaking challenges that Michael Owen and his mates from the diving club are coming up with). The FA enjoy it most of course when they’re destroying the FA Cup – letting games be played at every time possible, except 3 p.m. on a Saturday; moving the 3rd round to December (Please never let this experiment be repeated) for their mates at MUFC and then allowing them to jack in defending the trophy anyway (instead of expelling them) so that for the rest of all time their fans can claim they “would have won it” (in fact, they’d have played a bunch of kids and got pasted fair and square, like they did in the League Cup). I suppose hopeless optimism would also suggest we could go back to calling the top division the “First division”, etc, even numbering the players on the field with 1 to 11, but I’ve fair given up on this. Perhaps there’s a kill the FA website we could link to…

Difficult to link this article back to 555 after such a fantastic digression (that’s fantastic in its true sense, rather than the received wisdom that it means “really good”, I hasten to add), but I think I’ve found a way. I remember Boyracer’s “I’ve Got It And It’s Not Worth Having” (as do all fans of, well, pop music, I would hope); and Matt Rowson's comment that, although not quite up his particular street, it was pretty enjoyable all the same – ramshackle, energetic and (I always remember this) “like a non-league side getting through to the third round of the FA Cup”. That might have been damning with faint praise – I think Alexander Pope predated Boyracer – but what chance analogies like that even existing if the FA had their way ? (I should also mention that subsequent single “He Gets Me So Hard”, if I can extrapolate further – can I ? Many thanks – was like a non-league side getting to the final of the FA Cup and hammering Liverpool 5-0). Anyway, a few years on, the leading lights of the former Boyracer are now driving 555 forward, and to me that’s enough to restore daylight to my darkened mind.

* * * * *

the famous boyfriend (555 / orgasm)

a compilation of the two albums before famous boyfriend hatched into the remote viewer, and one which confuses by reversing the chronological order so that tracks 1-13 (the "making love all night wrong" outing on 555) showcase the evolution to near-instrumental samples and beats, while 14-25 (the eponymous debut lp on orgasm records of france) are much more melodic, with a strong lyrical thread - more in the vein of the fantastic, scratchy earlier pop moment "we're all pretty much failures".

although i prefer the second half of this cd then, it would have been a crime not to reissue "making love", of which only a painfully austere 120 copies were ever released. the grave, warm tones of loops like "it's not the way you kiss" and "septembernovember" are worth a far wider audience, and on one occasion ("your hearts not in it") there is even a discernible and world-weary vocal, aided and abetted by pretty keyboards, harking back to the early stuff.

nevertheless, i commend this cd to you chiefly for "the famous boyfriend" album, which despite being remastered from one of the 400 vinyl copies ever issued stands up well as a morose pop anthology rooted, as you would expect, in the pop vs. experimentation ideologies of (earlier) hood and steward. the famous boyfriend wrote songs about being sorry for oneself, messing up relationships and opportunities, often through saying the wrong things and drinking too much of the right things (think hood's "dismissed army brought us knives", but channelled into an arrangement and even some kind of - albeit lo-fi - production values). these graceful indie tunes impart a fairly deep-etched melancholy without departing too strongly from the home-recording blueprint, and the demise of the famous boyfriend, as this cd now evidences, is a tragedy at least on a par with the commissioning of big brother. a record to look after.

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steward "bang! there goes my youth" (555)

and talking of steward, a chance to appraise "bang! goes my youth", originally released in the states on blackbean & placenta, not that we ever got hold of it, but which now appears to have found its way to these shores on reissue - rather charmingly, our copy in fact reuses the cardboard sleeve from kyoko's "co-incidental music" set, turning it inside out and handprinting the steward moniker on the reverse - perhaps stewart had a load of unsold copies left over ?

the 8 tracks of the cd proper are a mixture of new vignettes and alt. takes from the "horselaugh on my ex" set that so impressed us in 2000... they start with "bad" (no relation to the fab flatmates number) which apes the formula of "horselaugh" opener "you can't fuck with nature" (beatbox thud, angular guitar riffs interspersed with breakbeats, although this time sans any jam sample) and then there's a boy/girl vocal thrash through "he is a genius with his hands", more in the vein of steward's collaborations with amy linton, though this time the girl vocal is a lot more in the punky, english mould...

"surely you know i'm trying my best... when your voice breaks up i'm half-relieved"

with such words, "dial tone collective" heralds a switch of pace to light percussion and bass keyboard tones, half-whispered voice and slices of acoustic guitar: for once, the absence of feedback is apt, suddenly ushering stewart's usual lovelorn selfconsciousness into the harsh light of the listener's concentration: the transformation smoothed by the subsequent near -instrumental "8.30 yr looking great".

it's back to indie junglist sampledom excess after that, as "i am the magnificent" mixes a treasure trove of loops, sounds and piano before crescending on the back of more guitar feedback to another plateau of white noise - but the prize in this respect is taken by a cover of the buzzcocks' "you say you don't love me" - which was a little plain in its original form. here it is given the full anderson makeover namely morse code-like cut-up bleeps, white feedback like breaking glass, shambling guitar buzz and a vocal that illiberally dollops large doses of angst all over the shop.

but it is "happy new years", the original of which jerked tears worldwide in its "horselaugh" incarnation, which remains the most sincere, affecting, heart-on-sleeve exposition of hurt that even steward has committed to public consumption: in this brittle and less noise-ridden take, fear and sexual jealousy congeal into 2m 51s of hurt, bitterness, melancholy, betrayal and resentment. it's a tranche of real-life, conveying open wounds with all the familiarity of kitchen sink drama, and is in itself the perfect closer.

however as this is steward there are then a host of hidden / "extra" cuts and, steward being steward, several of them actually bear critical analysis in their own right... they include, after the "netball" remix album's parting shot "bonus beatz", more copyright-defying escapades including a kid 606 / v/vm-ish take on "i feel love", aswell as a sumptuously-weighted acoustic plus violin sixty-second rendition of "something to crave". finally, if you mentioned to us the phrase "world weary and wise", it would strike us as rather encapsulating the timbre of the emotions which steward's lyrics have been exhibiting for the last ten years. it would also of course bring to mind yet another completely underrated janglethon from the undisputed kings of el records (depending on who you ask, of course) the james dean driving experience who, as coincidence have it, we were mentioning earlier. so you can appreciate our happiness on hearing steward's rather cheap keyboard cover of that very song. and he even whistles the violin part. how cool is that ? oh - and claire - it was recorded in melbourne.

so while there may be nothing here quite on the level of our past eulogies to "hey! leopard" or "the last wasps of summer", and the untitled nigh-on faultless closing track on "goodbye to everything you love", there remains much to admire in the ex-sarah records hearthrob, now prolific globetrotter and record label mogul, stewart anderson. word 2 his mother.

* * * * *

halkyn "winterhill" ep (555)

finally, well, more of a public service announcement than a review. according to the 555 site, the excellent "winterhill" single by the honey-scented welsh minimalists halkyn has sold less than a 100 copies to date. if so that is a national disgrace, hence this cri de coeur. worst of all this very british apathy is prompting 555 to "review" its policy of releasing 7" vinyl at all... that would mean joining shinkansen and others in just giving up... and the thing that really cuts is that you can hardly blame the labels, it's our fault for not bothering to go out and support the format... always remember that when you don't exercise your choices, they just get taken away. um, yes... for the record, while there's nothing quite up to the brilliance of "norway" from the "behind the snow" ep, "winterhill" is a spindly, echoey, ssshhh-fi ten-track delight - albeit so subtle at times as to be almost invisible - and "through snow" in particular is a top example of the genre.

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kyoko “co-incidental music” (555)

....shhhh. quiet-fi.

a fine band, probably the best from bristol at the moment, with their eventually-pressed outing for 555. if you listen attentively to later beatnik filmstars outings, I swear you can hear in the evocative, quieter passages strong echoes of the fine band they were about to become.

“boats” kicks off proceedings proper, a warm and soft soliloquoy leading into the more drawn out, feeling-sorry-for-itself “reality dawns on a second rate sit-com actor”: though the show is then enlivened by a faithful take on the steward standard “he dispenses with timid afterthoughts” my own favourite, on which “co-incidental music” pivots, is the gangly, late night “P.E.T.S” – the sugargliders lounging at 33 rpm. after that, things scale down, with the flow of dark but beautiful songs interrupted by a space-age and unconvincing remix of “yellow” (the pick of debut album “mini: one”). “better days! coming now!” is also far from the happyfest its unlikely title promises, but another near-fatal dose of mellow introspection before closer “ex-filmstar” nods knowingly back to the halcyon days of the beatniks, in the days when they ruled the off-kilter indie-punk ridiculous-song title world. Apparently there is another album ready for release on mobstar: we will bring you news, soon.

* * * * *

fog and ocean "fog and ocean" (555 / red square)

while some may say that every record on 555 appears to feature special guest appearances from most of the other artists on the diverse roster, fog and ocean are pretty much the epitome of this being billed as a combo including personnel recruited from the likes of the cat's miaow, huon, hydroplane and new waver (so a few more heavyweights there from the fecund musical breeding ground of melbourne!!) as well as the more traditionally ubiquitous 555 head honchos jen turrell and steward.

nevertheless, it's probably fair to say that when listening to it, you do not detect a cast of thousands at work. indeed, the opposite: the main component parts are clean keyboards and kellie's butter-wouldn't-melt voice, supplemented at times by other vocal chords both male and female but never venturing from the f&o style, which appears to be a guitar-free, and, er, new wavey trip through the clouds - the pattern is set by casiotone keyboards (you know, the sort of thing where the bass notes sound like they're being played on a stylophone), with brisk electronic percussion lifting f&o from the realms of mere empty dreamers. imagine the sound of leaves swaying in a gentle breeze, soft ocean currents lapping on the foreshore, you know the kind of thing, but kind of duffed up by shyly def beats (f&o's weapon of choice being the trusty 808, rather than their neighbours the berzerker's 909). as such it is terrific, rewarding listening - cleanly produced, simply arranged, free of padding and more accessible for 555 virgins than much on the imprint. oh, and in the style of the first remote viewer album, the songs - none of which outstay their welcome nor stray into over-experimentation - don't have anything as earthbound as names. and to round off the effect, the record itself is coolly packaged, in a very pretty sleeve that gives nothing away - as well as no song titles, there is, we presume, no album title, hence the attribution of an eponymous one which we've settled for. eponymous and anonymous, ha.

the f&o tune billed as "wave and a sigh" on the recent 555 australian pop sampler (and also included as the sixth track here), will give you an idea of the affectionate and careful homage to all past forms of sweet, winsome electronic pop that you are being pampered with. much of the lyrics touch on pastoral or geographic themes or features too, especially the opening song (which for the purposes of this review we have radically christened "song 1": to make things easier for ourselves and to achieve vague consistency, we will apply numerical order to the track listing throughout this prose, in the absence of anything more tangible to use). at its poppiest, the album is vaguely reminiscent of retro-futurist US labelmates kanda (e.g. song 2) or perhaps even the real deal of visage or ultravox (songs 3 and 4): but we are most taken with song 7 - very huon, with we assume bloke from huon on vocals; song 5 - simply divine and unspeakably cute, eespecially the stuff about pelicans nesting which is thoroughly in keeping with its delightful gorgeousness; and song 8, which should be in the charts. now.

* * * * *

STEWARD: I Was The Only Boy In The Netball Team (Blackbean & Placenta)
STEWARD: Horselaugh On My Ex (555)

“Netball” is a sweet remix album the highlights of which are Steward’s own take on Japanese experimentalists Stadium, Downpour’s incendiary rampaging of “The Last Wasps” and Figurine’s incredibly slick construct on “Bit Part Actor Made Good”, which like all the best creative remixes, creates beauty and tone that wasn’t so evident in the original.

But “Horselaugh On My Ex” is the real McCoy. Six months in the making, a 20 song concept album – the concept being a whole CD about the dramatic end of a five-year relationship, in the haze of New Year. In its own way, it is just as moving as the Trembling Blue Stars’ impossibly brittle and beautiful “Her Handwriting” album on that same horrible theme – the knowing that for once, these songs were written about real events. Steward, of course, goes further lyrically – naming names and much more – but it’s the essential vulnerability of the lines we can all relate to - “While I was sleeping, seemingly so much happened” - that really tug on our unsuspecting heart strings. Opener “You Can’t F*** With Nature” even manages to make an amateurish sample of “This Is The Modern World” fit smoothly into the sombre mood of the album – but elsewhere, in amongst the insanity, the bleeps, the bizarre guest appearances and covers - and the odd barrages of screaming feedback – the highlight is the stunning “Hey! Leopard” which sounds like prime-era Pacific (former Creation artistes and occasional purveyors of shimmering majestic beauty), courtesy of the guitars, trumpet and vocals of labelmates the Cannanes. Stunning.

* * * * *

printed circuit "acrobotics" (555)

to continue this sequence of bamboozling and arguably recent albums there's printed circuit, aka claire broadley. you'll be sufficiently au fait here if you heard her take of "sex dwarf" on 555's "a tribute to soft cell" compilation: in a sense, that gave the game away, because hearing printed circuit resembles listening to a young dave ball doing a solo jam session, full of synth pulls, twisted melody curves and occasional vocoder vocals: an unholy 1982 mishmash of soft cell vs. the sinclair zx spectrum. "sex dwarf" remains the epitome of this, although it's run close by the hidden track 6 here, a sweet bootleg in which a ragga narcissist faces the wrath of ms broadley's full armoury of circuitry. as for the five tracks actually listed, we take maximum solace in "hard drive soft drink" and "robophobic", both of which are sufficiently bright and melodic that one feels that soft cell would gladly have written them circa "memorabilia". not profound, but could still likely have you dancing like your day depended on it.

* * * * *

cex "starship galactica" (555)

while not achieving the joy of "balls out" with its hip hop beats on orange vinyl, "starship" (surely battlestar?) is a joyous bundle of electronica, energised with humour as most electronica sorely needs to be. although the obvious reference points would be fellow 555ers lesser and ver mighty kid 606, cex often roams in nightmares on wax territory, and spins some mellow vibes on "get in your squads" (most n.o.w.-ish) and "your handwriting when you were a child in the winter" - wow. what's my favourite ? probably "cal and brady style", which mops up all the relevant reference points with aplomb. close second is the mighty title track, which is - really - one of the greatest pop songs of 2001, because it's fun and soooo easy to dig. yep, this music may yet be the future, which means we're in pretty capable hands.

* * * * *

Some other highs / heights of 555 included Sisterhood of Convoluted Thinkers' "Lunchdate EP": "kitchen pop which mixes scuzzy indie lo-fi guitars and female “ba-bas” with common or garden breakbeats and lackadaisical male vocals"; Kanda's "Dormitory Heartbreaks": "on the truly maverick 555 label, kanda revisit c96 - the flickery electro pop revival and all - with the curt "dormitory heartbreaks" - the boy / girl interface is not a million miles from pipas, but just a few years too early. sugar sugar kanda pop, natch"; Kid 606 and the Remote Viewer's split picture disc: "a gorgeous platter aesthetically; between the grooves a little more mundane although the Kid’s “When I Want A Gun, Yeah” is up there with most of the techno dabbling on his 2000 long players. The Remote Viewer, so recently the near-perfect Famous Boyfriend, continue to refine their dark breakbeat vision with “A Fielder""; Cex's "Get Your Badass On": "“Balls Out” is the pick, a hip-hop style backbone shot through with skewed beats and breaks. On violent yellow vinyl, too"; and Downpour's "Don’t Go Breaking My Art": "A world away from the apocalyptic remix of Steward’s “The Last Wasps Of Summer”, here we have four slices of electronica that rotate little ripples of noise in (ever decreasing) concentric circles."

And don't worry, we still have them all.

That Sunderland Sound

2010-07-01T13:01:00.000-07:00

Scrabbling around on our hands and knees in the basement dungeon we've retrieved a few more Matinée bits and pieces, following the fairly exhausting post not too long ago: they will all appear in this joint once we've fully scrubbed away the cobwebs. Anyway, while dusting off one such review - of Kosmonaut's undersung single - on said label supreme, we finally found a copy of the interview we did with yer man Stephen Maughan, which makes this post something of a Kosmonaut tribute. Rightly. (Since, of course, Stephen has set "This Almighty Pop!" on a revival tip: check it).

* * * * *

kosmonaut "desert song / bee song" (matinée)

the lucksmiths' labelmates kosmonaut are from the north east of england, as under represented in this fanzine as everywhere else, so we can but attempt to redress the balance by observing that following the anthemic firestation tower debut "days of ourlives", the spunky cd-r "in my head" and the welcome resurrection of "was it you ?" on the matinee summer sampler, "desert song" is a serene pop gem which laments how the years flow past with the same inevitability and indecent haste as the sandy landscape flies by the driver's near-side window. subtle and building carefully until the keyboards propel it into a particularly cracking fourth minute, it is probably their strongest outing yet. on the other side "bee song", again careful not to move too fast, sucks the listener in from its opening chords, again with keyboards that seem to slowly emerge, shimmering with longing, and an arrangement which recalls "life goes on"-era bmx bandits (not the first band to do so this month, we know) until it is slightly disfigured by an overbearing guitar line towards the end. like some of that bandits' stuff, the vocals on this two-track 7" occasionally give little hint of being british rather than american, but this is still road music at its finest, and the lingering sentiments of "desert song" in particular hang long in the mind.

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Kosmonaut. Spring 2003.

"the less said about Sunderland at the moment the better, thank you..."

once upon a time there was a band called bulldozer crash. now there are two bands, called the liberty ship and kosmonaut. find out more about the former here and the latter below, because stephen kosmonaut generously answered our questionnaire about the band whose last release "desert song" was their clearest realisation yet of indie pop with a real "epic" sensibility. to explain our rather odd slant of questioning, we should mention that stephen in a previous incarnation was the author of a proper, readable paper zine called "this almighty pop!" in the days before charlatans like us came along... to check out their discography sensibly or fill in any gaps, it's probably worth checking out their website for the latest - and very excitingly you will read that there appear to be 2 or 3 projects in the pipeline (and an upcoming release of some bulldozer crash tunes...)

if you'll permit us to go deep into history, a few words on "this almighty pop!" - in terms of mixing enthusiasm with erudition (even now so many zines often seem more one or the other) it was certainly an inspiration to what we try and do... was starting the fanzine simply down to being inspired by the music of the time and wanting to evangelise ? and how do you look back on that venture now ?

I just wanted to do my own version of Are You Scared To Get Happy [best fanzine ever - ed.], it really inspired me the most, I used to love getting a new issue falling through the letter box with all those new songs to try and find and listen to. I look back on it with fondness, I made a lot of friends through the fanzine which was probably the best part, the worst part was all the bad records I got sent to review but I could never see the point in writing about songs I didn't like.

for our uninitiated readers, what is the kosmonaut line-up ?

Up until now in the studio it has just been me and Geoff Suggett, sharing all the recording duties, but since we've played live with Richard Patterson on drums, Karl Whitfield on lead guitar and Jonathan Whitfield on bass we would ideally like to exploit their skill and expertise in the studio aswell. So far though only Richard's dulcet tones have been utilised on our cover of the Liberty Ship's "Northern Angel" [slated hopefullly for a soon-ish matinée coverfest].

are you prepared to list your "previous convictions" i.e. former bands and / or other crimes ?

I was in Bulldozer Crash and Denver. My only other crime was stealing a 3 pack of Fox's Glacier Mints from the RedHouse when I was about 10 , I got caught and have lived with the shame of it until now, I feel like a weight has been lifted. Geoff was in the Lavender Faction and Montana Hood.

the 2 of you (stephen and geoff) known each other a long time ? when did you start properly recording / writing songs together ?

We've know each other for about 14- 15 years now, we met at work ... it went something like this... Geoff: What sort of music are you into ? Stephen: You probably won't have heard of them...the Jesus and Mary Chain, the Primitives ? That was it really. We first recorded a song together in about 1990 on an old Fostex X-15 4-track, it was called "She Walks Away", it was very Mary Chain-ish. I released it on a compilation tape I was putting together at the time called "Positively Teenage", we called ourselves Bulldozer Clarts, I'm going to stick it up on our website soon for anyone who might want to hear it. We then got together again in 2000 to have a go at writing and recording some new songs, everything went well and we are still at it.

is there any great significance to the name "kosmonaut" that we should be aware of ?

Not really no, we were going to call ourselves NovaScotia but then we were informed that there was already a band called that in the US, I was using the name Kosmonaut for my electronic side project so we just hi-jacked it. [nb stephen is too modest to mention his electronic side project is now northern_electrix - there is talk of an n_e release in the offing and the cd-r that we managed to get off a dealer in brixton last month isn't bad at all, you know...]

how did the first (fine) release ["was it you ?"] end up on a japanese label [Motorway] ?

We were quite out of touch with the "scene" at the time that we were ready to send out our first demos, so a friend gave us a list of possible labels and Motorway was at the top of the list, the same friend also told us not to bother with Matinée because we probably weren't polished enough for them! Charming. [Indeed, "Was it you ?" did eventually get a release on Matinée, on the "Summer splash!" cd which you probably need to buy]

next we think came "days of your lives", an anthem which we presume you still must be very proud of. this time the label was german... how did that end up coming out on firestation tower ?

A guy called Christian Steiner loved the Motorway 7" and recommended us to them, we sent them some demos which they liked and offered to stick out a single. Everyone at FST is incredibly patient, they asked us to record an L.P. over a year ago and we still haven't finished it, we will deliver it eventually, honest Uwe!

and you made the decision to put the latest tunes out on the rather esteemed (not least by us as you may have noticed) matinée label. how are people reacting to the new 7" ? is it helping you to reach a wider audience now ?

People seem to be enjoying the single, we've had some really nice reviews. People tell us they like to listen to it in the car. There does seem to be a lot of people signing up to our mailing list since the single came out on Matinée so maybe we are reaching a wider audience than before.

so as you have a full band together now for playing live, does that extend to any future studio projects ?

Yes, but we've only played two gigs so far, if all goes according to plan this will hopefully transfer over into the studio, although I don't know how I'm going to fit a full drum kit in my spare bedroom to record that.

can we assume from the name "porterfield 73" for your studio / cd-r label that you are sunderland fans (if so, here's to a significant upturn in their fortunes for 2003...)

Yes, me and Geoff are both Sunderland fans, the less said about them at the moment the better, thank you.

are there plans to release the likes of "superman", or to follow other more 'experimental' routes further, aswell as the classic pop lineage of the singles releases ?

I really like "Superman" but we are struggling to find anyone else who does! It is in fact just a slowed down loop from Was It You. I'd like to take a trip down that experimental avenue every now and again, but we might have to save that kind of thing for the one off projects that we do like the recent cover version of the Liberty Ship's Northern Angel, which sounds nothing at all like the original.

the ilwttisott take on kosmonaut is a kind of modern road music, full of longing... and with space to "let the music breathe", as they say. if you could had to choose one record to accompany you on a long drive, what would it be ?

At the moment it would be the new Go-Betweens l.p. "Bright Yellow, Bright Orange" or the Russian Futurists "Let's Get Ready To Crumble"...

and what do you think of that band called... the liberty ship ? is there any friendly rivalry in the grand pop tradition ? and who blew who offstage ?

;)Bunch of amateurs. They are not bad actually, some rather nice tunes that I often find breezing through my brain unexpectedly. It was our first gig when we played with them so I guess I have to say they blew us offstage, we really should have spent more time rehearsing.

resolutions and plans for the year ahead ?

Because we've taken so long to answer these questions it might seem a little late but the answer is still the same... to finish the L.P. for Firestation Tower Records.

and before you go, what is your FAVOURITE piece of pop trivia ?

My sister in law 's boyfriend's auntie's stepson used to go out with Zoe from Pop Idol!

thank you to stephen for taking time out to run through kosmonaut's recording career so far... one is hopeful that it is only the beginning. we s'pose that the first album will give us as good an idea as ever as to the directions in which kosmonaut choose to move... and guess what, we'll try and keep you "all" up to date. as for sunderland, let's just hope they can discover some self-respect next season. ILWTTISOTT

And if you want to read a more recent Stephen inter view from a more august source, may we commend this...

If I Should Die Before I See The Wake...

2010-04-14T12:54:00.000-07:00

[photo from ltmrecordings.com]

...then there is going to be upset. "If I Should Die Before I Wake", of course, being probably Biggie's best posthumous tune, and also one of Beanie Siegel's greatest moments. Can't remember if we got round to telling you that we finally established last year exactly who killed Biggie, but we did (it was the same night we found out in an impromptu, rather "axe"-related lock-in at the Sutton Arms - the one on Carthusian Street, not the nearby but rubbish one a little further north, possibly on Great Sutton Street - that the landlord christened his daughter Iommi after his guitar hero, and then his punter mate nominated Billy Gibbons as his, and then we were forced to volunteer the view that David Gedge bossed both of them, at which point things became a bit fractious: we should really have said Pete Salowka). Anyway, on the Biggie murder thing, we'll tell you face to face who it was, but not here. We're still working on solving Pac's.

Aie. The point of this post was to mark our moping, in that we found out waaaay too late, as "in the loop" as ever, that none other than the truly very mighty Wake were playing at the London Popfest. Missing them is the most galling thing that's happened to us in years, frankly - the last time we got so upset was probably when Ronnie Maugé got his leg broken in the Gold Cup - but as we tried to pick up the pieces we remembered this, our 2002 attempt to cobble together all our warmth of feelings for the many incarnations of the group in one fell swoop. It didn't quite get there, but it's brought us back to some of our favourite Wake numbers again and hopefully it at least shows that we're serious in our admiration for them. Buy everything they've ever done.

* * * * *

"the wake "harmony and singles", "here comes everybody and singles", "holy heads", "assembly" (ltm)

you wait for years for a wake reissue, and then four come along at once. not that we're complaining - we've always rated them, the terminal unfashionability of the wake never having bothered (i mean, we got laughed out at school for liking mccarthy instead of thousand yard stare) nor even remotely surprised us: being ignored is a constant corollary of bands being ahead of their time. in alternative pop's accepted wisdom, the wake only seem to merit a couple of trite epithets - "that gloomy 80s factory band" and "that sarky band on sarah" - in fact, in the capacity of their stint on the latter, they suffered the double whammy of (a) losing credibility with factory-types ("wot no peter saville associates sleeves ?") for being on the same label as the poppyheads, golden dawn etc and (b) being spurned by many sarah recs fans (hello colette) despite contributing, in our hackneyed view, some of that label's greatest tunes and certainly lyrical moments ("carbrain" being a glowing example on both counts).

but as strangely befits a band who were always out of time, a slew of compact disc thingies are, in this palindromic yr 2002, brought to you by the artful james nice's les temps modernes label.the "harmony" set from 1982, their first album, mixes "movement"-era new order tributes like "heartburn" with proto-goth ("judas"), proto-sarah ("testament") and sterling early-80s alt-pop ("an immaculate conception"). history watchers observe - it's the second best lp that bobby gillespie (iffy bass duties) has ever played on (see ? even in having gillespie as a member, the wake were ahead of their time - the only band who never managed to capitalise on their association with the press darling).

top music journalist (remember them, nme ?) dave mccullough infamously described one-riff opener "favour" as better than new order and potential top 40, which although not his most eccentric pronouncement, must rank close - "favour" is insistent and dripping with promise, but lest we forget, new order had just unleashed "procession", arguably their best ever single. bonus tracks on the cd include a contemporaneous john peel session in which they joined the new wave obsession with "the drill" as song title - theirs being an affectionate eulogy to new order's "everything gone green" as if played by josef k - and two other singles, including their rather cute pre-factory debut, "on our honeymoon", which fair prickles with the bashful ingenuousness of a fledgling pop band.

"have you heard the good news / everybody works so hard"

next set, "here comes everybody" received a poor reception when it came out in 1985. a reception which effectively stalled the wake at the time when their star had seemed to be in the ascendant. sadly, it's not too difficult to see why, as it is an album which is horribly cleanly produced, all eight songs being drowned in unsubtle new musik-style keyboards and spluttering in their sameness - despite some obviously affecting lyrics and attractive melodies struggling to get out, the effect is of eight rather lesser versions of the preceding singles ("talk about the past" - a treasured 12" here at in love with these times in spite of these times towers and a worthy companion piece in 1984 to new order's similarly melodic, electronic and sprawling "thieves like us": and "of the matter", a much more pint-sized pseudo-pop creation - both bonus tracks on this cd reissue) messily coagulating. so "here comes everybody" itself, "world of her own" and "sail through", for example, all sound lame compared to their incarnations in radio one session form.

oddly, however, the main historical import of the album - apart from it being the soundtrack to the denouement of the wake's critical acclaim - seems to be the fact that it is a record without which the field mice circa "for keeps" simply could not have existed. in their normal prescient way, the whole album, especially the basslines later purloined by michael hiscock, sounds like mid to late period - i.e. post-peak - 'mice, or early northern picture library. "melancholy man" in particular is a frighteningly accurate premonition of field mice '91.

this cd also features four other tracks - the "something that no-one else could bring" ep - later famously referred to on their sarah records cut "joke shop" ("when we released our 4 track EP / it could not be found in the Megastore"). one is tempted to say, especially after hearing "plastic flowers", that must be because all the copies had been bought up by a young and obviously hugely impressionable bobby wratten. nevertheless, the ep - their factory recs swansong - was a real step up, leading with the swoonsome "gruesome castle" (can it really be 15 years since we first heard it, courtesy of the usual source, one j. peel, esq, of peel acres ?) on the evidence of which you can see why sarah records would have had no obvious qualms about in saving the wake from their increasingly loveless relationship with tony wilson et al.

"and he's so proud of the club, but it's just a glorified pub"

the sarah days were great days because the wake appeared to have been freed from the shackles of caring any more. and the "holyheads" cd combines the wake's third and fourth albums, both issued to critical whimper. no. 3 was the "make it loud" mini-lp: 8 tracks of offhand sniping, including "joke shop" and the commuter portrait "henry's work" ("you're the kind of person who used to be a laugh / now you're the kind who reads the daily telegraph"). no. 4, their last recorded work, was "tidal wave of hype", built upon the orchids' rhythm section and belting out to a grotesquely uninterested world great songs like "i told you so", in which caesar rails about ex-labelmate mike pickering (of quando quango non-fame and later m people notoriety, though he may also require a ceremonial kicking for introducing the happy mondays to tony w's attention) and no-one should ever even think of doing a sarah compilation tape to try and impress a beau - come on, we all have - without putting on "provincial disco": "i know everyone has to have an interest / but i draw the line at white soul". even if you then find out (s)he's a level 42 fan and that's the last time you get to walk them home, at least you've done yourself a favour in the long run. oh, and "crasher", which is adorable as its subject, er, isn't.

"of all the crashing bores i've had the pleasure to know, he takes first prize"

finally, the body of the "assembly" cd is a live set from ayr in 1983 which flames into life with the unreleased tune "recovery" and the definitive version of "uniform" (from the peel session), which respectively ooze the anger and the sadness that new order were also trying to achieve at that time. the bills the two bands shared that year must have been towering indie face-offs. the cd also includes a surprisingly poppy 1984 kid jensen session (the first three tracks of which, including a truncated first go at "talk about the past" and 2 of those songs that later got smothered by the production of "here comes everybody" are excellent): best of all though, because they didn't quite fit on "holyheads", you get the two sarah 45s. first is the impeccable sarah debut, the bittersweet duet "crush the flowers" c/w "carbrain", an adorable pop rumble which apart from anything else knowingly incorporated the previous sarah fanzine titles "cold" / "lemonade" into its wonderful lyric. the second sarah single, released between the albums that make up "holyheads", saw two musical variations on "henry's work": "major john" for once was not ahead of its time, over-optimistically celebrating the imminent departure from office of a certain prime minister (as we know from 1992, that didn't actually happen and in fact, he actually outlasted them): on the flip, "lousy pop group", whilst musically indistinguishable from the a-side, continued the sequence of music industry hate songs which the wake are, frankly, as entitled as anyone to market.

2 conclude. we would have to say that if you've ever had a soft spot for new order or the field mice, it would be a crime not to reserve one for the wake. especially when you now have, at last, the perfect opportunity."

Stars Of Cinema

2010-02-13T09:12:00.000-08:00

Indie-pop is MASSIVE now, isn't it ? With London Popfest and Indietracks, the UK scene even now has its own Aldeburgh and Glyndebourne. But it wasn't always like this.

Back in day, you had to hunt hard for labels that were true to the game. The amazing Matinée Recordings was one, and the extracts below are some (OK then, thirty) glimpses of our delight on uncovering various Matinée releases, bands and gigs in the early 2000s. Scarily this is by no means complete, but is all we've found so far whilst rummaging around...

Part one: singles

HARPER LEE: Dry Land

Single of the year, this or any other year. [It was 2000!]

Keris is still keeping a tight rein on the mournful picked-out guitar tones, trim 4/4 basslines and lyrics that lurch from sadness to anger and back again whilst the melodies rain down in traditional Brighter style. Musical support now comes from Laura Bridge of Kicker (and ex-Hood/Boyracer apparently) although for the avoidance of doubt "Dry Land" showcases none of Kicker's bushy-tailed bright-eyed joie de vivre nor the more shambolic beauty of Hood's erstwhile lo-fi ramblings.

Brighter are back, with swearing. Memo to all other bands: give up now.

SPORTIQUE: Don't Believe A Word I Say

Lighter and scrummier than most of their debut album last year, "Don't Believe" has Gregory yelping like a man possessed (by his younger self) while Amelia Fletcher lends backing vocals and guitars and keyboards gambol playfully in the fields of indiedom. The sort of record that 7" singles were designed for - one that seems over all too soon and you can just flick the stylus back for another go straightaway.

harper lee - bug

in case the superlative police are in town, i have to be very careful with this review. it's just knowing there are people out there who make such perfect music - for listening to on your headphones as you walk over the bridge at night and the mist descends and you look down the railway line and london seems near perfect - and so it's such a privilege to be able to listen to this unassumingly-packaged 7", which only makes its way to england on import, despite being recorded in brighton.

"bug" is a minimal meander, wreathed in warm, plucked guitar tones and pivoting on a single brighteresque chord change. the lyrics are desolate and wonderful as he ponders the trapped-relationship protagonist - "you've walked away so many times in your mind" - hence it is everything an "a" side shouldn't be according to the sort of people who run the record industry.

"you kill me" picks up the tempo ever-so-slightly by virtue of the trusty drum machine, but the lyrical mood is very similar: "don't bear me", keris pleads - and the handkerchiefs are out by the time he sings "this was never going to work out", the continuing autumnal swirl of faint keyboards and semi-acoustic guitars punctuated by a simple and brittle melody line.

two songs of impossible beauty.

the windmills - drug autumn ep

the latest offering from the unlikely jangle-pop breeding ground of yes, southend, this kicks off with "everything is new each day", a faithful stab at the 'perfect pop song' which falls down on that front by being a little too cloying and a little too clinical. they've selected all the usual items from the "perfect pop song" drop-down menu - "la la la's", lyrical wide eyed wonderment and a soft landing after two minutes; the end result is very palatable but strangely unsatisfying. a neat little tiramisu of a song, then.

"drug autumn" itself swells into four and a half minutes of reminiscence - even though singing about drugs is usually even more boring than talking about drugs, the tone is nicely unspecific and self-conscious. "are we still where we were ? " chimes sweetly to no particular effect, so it falls on closer "want" to provide my favourite slice of the ep: apparently from the last album, it jangles and oozes a warm, laconic charm, much more in the mould of singer roy thirlwall's melodie group project.

the would-be goods "emannuelle béart"

it is probably time to confess that for 12 yrs we have laboured under the perhaps understandable impression that the would-be's and the would-be-goods were the same band, compounded rather by having heard nothing from either group apart from (back in about '89) the former's "i'm hardly ever wrong", a promo 7" of which i remember knocking about in the 'offices' of the fanzine i was attempting to help my mate out with at the time. as great rock misapprehensions go, it is up there with the time i rather optimistically went to the camden monarch to see a band called "cub" in the vain hope that they were the pop-plus canadian power trio, only to find that they were an appalling bunch of more local chancers (indeed, the camden monarch has been an oft-unlucky venue for the in love with these times in spite of these times mafia - remember when we arrived for a monograph gig only to find a sign pinned up saying "gig cancelled... monograph can be found in the lock tavern" ?) it is also up to the sadness i felt in having to explain to our mate si that the band called "witness" who he had spotted in the gig listings were some way off - in every respect - being the near perfect a witness... and, come to think of it, the fact that the utterly ephemeral hal and blueboy who had chart hits with iffy dance records were not the hal and blueboy who ought to have had chart hits with totally precious, intelligent independent pop songs.

anyway. in fact the would-be-goods, aka jessica griffin and - we speculate - various like-minded cappuccino-bar haunting cohorts, had been on the el label most of the intervening time; a label that we have never really been able to get into because of its overweaning foppishness, despite our laboured mike alway appropriation on the "about" page. in fact, my favourite record ever on that label was james dean driving experience's indietastic "sean connery" 12", which i gather from this book (er, p. 296) was regarded by alway et al at the time as a fairly vulgar and downmarket affair compared to the swooning jazziness of el's own "pet" bands. anyway, on the assumption that you might even want some kind of comment on the record, "emmanuelle béart" and "words" are catchy, driven pop numbers, with griffin's cultured vocal lending proceedings a bourgeois, ski-chalet air. we weren't so taken with the other tracks, which shun the drums and bass for a tangle of acoustic whimsy, but that's often the way when the lead track on a single is so bloody addictive... it casts a shadow over the succeeding numbers. but with an album on the way soon, we'll be able to analyse the would-be-goods (especially now the penny has dropped!) more closely in future.

remember fun "train journeys"

continuing our tradition of reviewing things many years after they came out. this was always going to be (once we ambled upon it) an essential purchase, remembering as we did the slick strum of "hey hey hate", so long ago we hardly dare to remember. in the interregnum, they have lost the punctuation mark (i'm sure they used to be called remember fun?) but all else remains thankfully intact.

"train journeys" is, i think, the killer track, attacking from the start. perhaps unsurprisingly, it reminds me of the awe i felt when i first uncovered new groups on demos and flexis back in the (c.1987) day - or when harvesting the wheat that was hidden away on every compilation tape amongst all the chaff. it's more conventionally jangly than "hey hey hate", recalling early hellfire sermons, and yes, the church grims (who were always the june brides doing the close lobsters) but without the brass. like second song "doze off them", which is musically slightly more pedestrian, it seeks to rail (sorry) against the monotony of daily commuterdom, but without sacrificing any of the de rigeur capricious wit ("time on my hands, i'll dig myself a moat") in describing the singer's attempts to escape "this routine life".

after "three chers" (sic), a morrissey-style paean of hate (i'm guessing to the ever-deserving target of mrs. t) the closing "car" also doesn't do badly - again, revelling in the jangle of the smiths but with a more sardonic vocal and (i trust) the tongue-in-cheek exhortation "convenience is my number one concern... it's better killing the earth than killing myself": again, the mix of black humour in the lyrics helps raise the song above many of the po-faced indie bands of yore.

sadly, it appears that remember fun(?) are indeed no more - this sparkling cd-s being a one-off exhumation of the kind of talent that once seemed two-a-penny, and in doing so serving to remind us of the state we're in now.

singles round-up: lovejoy "plays biff bang pow!": melodie group "summerness": slipslide "sleeptalk": pipas "troublesome"

Reporter: "but i don't FEEL what you guys are doing"
Ice-T: "ok dude. feel this"... [gunshot]

unflappable and perverse romantics that we are, we savour not just the crackle of the needle on plastic but also every warp, scratch or whimsical stylus - it's all part of the listening experience. good music is tactile and textured - and why shouldn't that apply to the medium as well as the message ?

lovejoy!'s "play biff bang pow!" does what it says on the tin and blueboys-up those hardy alan mcgee perennials "hug me honey" and "the beat hotel", oddly two of the lesser tracks from two of the better bbp! lps: it's a tender tribute, but hardly groundbreaking. better is the latest offering from windmills splinter, the melodie group, which proudly parades the songwriting skillz of roy thirlwall - "summerness" is a nervous petal of a tune, which wraps itself invitingly around a single drum machine pattern. completing this particular matinée triumvirate, slipslide chart vaguely darker waters with the studied cool of "sleeptalk"..

but the winners of this particular singles round-up are... pipas! "a short form about sleeping" is a... modern sound, which manages to be both subtle and bloody brilliant - a bit like michel platini circa 1982 - maybe it's how dubstar would play if they'd been forced to rough it with sarah-types before being rescued by matinée (which does, incidentally, rather appear to be where all the top tunes are coming from this year). and "troublesome", while not quite living up to its title, is certainly endearingly pesky.

the guild league "jet-set... go!": the liberty ship "i guess you didn't see her"

the guild league are a bold and beautiful aggregation of talents led by the lucksmiths' tali white. "jet-set... go!" just does enough to distinguish itself from the sunny strum of his other band, and is all the better for it; a kooky travelogue, or a polo-playing contemporary of beaumont's recent recorded endeavours, perhaps, that combines a slightly off-kilter bass with a great jangling guitar. if it's true there are only 1,000 copies, then it's worth hurrying back from yorkshire, andalucia, londres or any other of the jet-set locations mentioned within these super-suave grooves to secure your copy.

the liberty ship's much anticipated début on the same label, meanwhile, is a natural and endearing pop folk song - daring to travel at medium pace so as not to sacrifice the melody. we've now established that the liberty ship suit both the bleak chill of january and the heady flavour of summer - rich and laid-back, this is pop for all seasons. and armed with the knowledge that marc elston has been recently extolling the virtues of gems like the rain parade, east village and the railway children, it all seems tremendously natural. (postscript, for 'frozen tundra' lyric fans - we acknowledge that our original review of "i guess..." was factually inaccurate, as slumber's "wasteland" should of course have been joined by ice cube's "pushin' weight" in the list of top-qual songs featuring said metaphor. we apologise to ya for any inconvenience caused.)

the windmills "walking around the world" ep

imagine it - an early promenade in south east england, the mists seamlessly rising over the sludge of the shoeburyness shoreline, the first trace of a timid sun on the horizon. md player at the ready, you press "play" in search of the perfect soundtrack, and as your muddy trainers strike out on the pavement, roy thirlwall begins to croon into your ears - "i walk a line / of my own design"...

"walking around the world" is the title, and closing track on the new ep from the southenders, and it's ample demonstration, as if more were required, that progression need not be dramatic, or sudden, or seismic: instead, like the great evolvers hood, it's the refinement of the traits and talents that a band have already hinted at, a constant reassessment of musical goals. after those opening lines, a statement of independence, the song unfolds precisely, with taut guitars and drums at the culmination of each verse skilfully counterpointing the eloquent, minimalist lyrics - as songs from their second album "sunlight" showed, it's all in the delivery, and mr. thirlwall has craft and panache enough to get away with knowing lines like "all the roads seem to lead to me... what a funny place to be". by the end, the guitar sound is the sort of timeless, imperial spiral that ties you in little knots, and yes, there is something of the house of love's first album in the clarity and intensity wrung from such simple words and song structures while rob clarke's brisk drumming pilots the music through the wash. the proof that these manifold ingredients gel is that despite being five minutes long, it all seems over too quickly...

of course, the first song of the three, "what was it for ?" ain't half bad either - east village with a spring in their step - and it's already been scientifically proven that you can hardly go wrong with any lyric of "i tried a thousand times..." the ep is completed by "amelia", a rare composition of bassist dan pankhurst that treads its way via two recurring notes towards some of pop's more leafy glades, in the tradition of those percussively-weighted weather prophets ballads like "sleep" and "frankie lymon".

but as the sun finally peeps up beyond the breakwaters and we spin the cd again, just enough time to tell you that the package is also accompanied by a video cut of "what was it for ?", which along with the more fire crew and mark b and blade edits, is a favourite spot of office viewing on the PC right now. god bless technology.

harper lee "train not stopping"

the press release from matinee was disturbing: "introducing a new soulful influence" it said. no need to fear, though - that was a blatant lie and we are still talking brighter rather than berry gordy. keris howard's genius is a consistent, stable comfort and it is exhibited to usual stunning effect on the title track, which interpolates a winningly hummable chorus into another delicious vehicle of melancholy and regret. "this is the last song, because I'm bored of being ignored", sighs keris, as the failure of the world outside to recognise the class of this kind of tune moves into its second decade. underpinned by a brisk strumming pattern, then decorated with precise picked-out guitars, "train not stopping" moves harper lee further ahead of the chasing pack. and in such an effortless way.

"i could be there for you" is nearly as good: there are unconscious hints, i think, of the smiths in some of the phrasing, aswell as conscious ones, probably, of the sentiment of the field mice's "if you need someone", which keris did after all play bass on at the spitz last month. the final track, "the sea gently lifting", has a very hood-like title, but despite being the most atmospheric of the bunch, it lacks the irresistibility of the other songs. still, it seems so simple right now. i could happily do nothing but listen to these songs til christmas, and harper lee are still in charge.

Part two: albums (and minis)

MELODIE GROUP: Seven Songs

So, by comparison [to Napalm Death, one suspects], this is an epic album - a good twenty minutes long - but an unexpected and delicious treat as the bloke out of the Windmills decamps to a Clapham studio and regales us with six (sic) indie/pop nuggets delivered in dulcet, low and oh-so-wry tones. This is, I can't help thinking, the sort of quality that Shinkansen should be coming up with rather more regularly than "occasionally", but I'd better not put that in writing. Ook.

LOVEJOY: Songs In The Key Of Lovejoy

Once there was a band called Blueboy. They were destined, surely, to be stars. In the event they settled for having punctured the mediocrity of the 90s with some fantastic singles and albums - as they immodestly sang themselves, they were "positive, political and too good to be true" - before signing off with the unimpeachable "Bank Of England" album a couple of years back.

Blueboy's main men have come up this year with a concept album on the Spanish Siesta label: an acoustic indie/jazz aberration about the campus jet set mixing with viscounts and dilettantes at society fetes. This being (almost) Blueboy, there are amidst all this some tender and wonderful songs; my favourite is closer "Cross-Country", delicate and glistening until it slowly fades away. But really, it seems a little bit of a waste.

Hang on though - Keith and Paul are also involved with Lovejoy, labelmates to such supernovae as Sportique and Harper Lee. And Lovejoy's album is much more in the Blueboy template, although the vocals from Dick Preece - which recall the half-punky, half-wimpy mould of Dan Treacy - work best on "Thank Your Lucky Stars" and "Butter Wouldn't Melt", where the guitars are turned up and the immaculate pop sensibilities are allowed to subside briefly. Mind you, in the crystal sheen of "Live Alone Forever" and the majestic "Radio" Lovejoy have two soundscapes that would have graced any Blueboy album.

ego "la main devant la bouche"

this is rather wonderful. ego, so you know, are from montpellier, france (as opposed to montpelier, bristol). the history of french smiths-type pop is not littered with famous names, and i would only pick out chelsea (the mid-90s indiesters rather than the comedy blokes who gave us "right to work") before this. but ego have the craft.

throughout, the playing and production are polished without being merely a sheen - and where the volume goes up, or the rhythm changes, or the strings gently intrude, it is to enhance the song, rather than pointless illumination. "drew barrymore" is a cute number which epitomises europop indie-style with its pace, guitars and dark lyrics; and "under a tree" is one of those songs that you don't want to finish, finding the perfect formula where the wedding present meet sarah records. i could have done with a couple more songs sung in french to counter the nagging worry that when they sing in english they're somehow having to labour the words, or fear phrases lost in the translation. those songs in francais work really well, including jaunty opener "oriane", which is propelled by an accordionish two-note keyboard, and two excellent songs to finish, too.

harper lee "go back to bed"

"brighter are back, with swearing. Memo to all other bands - give up now" - tryhappiness, last year.

that still applies. after crawling around london for some weeks we have finally managed to get our hands on the holy grail - the debut album by keris and laura, in its graffiti sleeve headed with the words "urban guerrilla tactic". who do they think they are ? comet gain ?

no, becomes evident from the opening moments of the effortlessly perfect "seem so right", which after a few seconds of teasing breaks out into the trademark brighter guitar picking we so know and love, two and a half minutes on a single four-bar axis. fey pop in a sparkling new order-stlyee, and, like the violin-driven "doing nothing" which follows it, over far too quickly. while "deep dark ocean" (a happy marriage of two brighter songs' guitarlines, namely "christmas" and "around the world in 80 days"), is straight outta the old-skool keris howard textbook.

the singles "dry land" and "bug" are both here too: prime slices of self-sorrow and (of course) amongst the highlights. the studied pop of "only connect", which at one time i seem to remember was destined to be the title track, is the obvious (so far) missed single opportunity, with its repeated, optimistic-sounding guitar motif over a strumming pattern reminiscent of the likes of the post-"laurel" era cuts "poppy day" and "hope springs eternal". glorious.

the other tunes i would isolate are the fantastic, bitter "brooklyn bridge" - this time resplendent in a guitar line less than a million miles from the mary chain's "darklands" - and "your life", which consists of a single repeated four bar musical phrase, overlaid by prominent bass and tranches of guitar. in these moments "go back to bed" more closely echoes the final brighter EP and their subsequent Hal incarnation; elsewhere, the plucked chords and keyboard bells are closer in tone to some of the stuff on sarah. lyrically, there are (apart from the swearing) few progressions from days of yore... although the dual meanings in songs (political / emotional, sexual / political) continue the fantastic tradition of sweetly poisonous polemics "tinsel heart", "hope springs" and "election day".

the closing song is "low", which surrounds keris' voice with the drum rhythm off the mary chain's "just like honey" and, more disturbingly, a very cheap, overpowering synth line which recalls the cure, "pornography" era, or perhaps new order's fledgling "movement". enough guitars come in at the end to rescue affairs, but it's a close run thing. i'm also not too sure about "clifton street passage" which sounds a bit like it should be a cover of an american grunge-folk song, except for the fact it has brighter guitar on it.

really, there's not too much more i can say save that this record is everything you would expect, and in this context that is the atlantic away from being a criticism. keris is older and a little unhappier, but the songs are still a perfect escape from the blur of the city and a perfect tonic for those cosy romantic evenings, one on one with your sound system. there is an "eighties" subtext throughout - those of us who have seen brighter's live take on depeche mode's "i just can't get enough" will understand this - but this album is a long way from the kitsch post-80s stylings of left-field luminaries like figurine, laptop, barcelona or my favorite. this is one of the few remotely recent albums that might just find its way into my all time list, only challenged in the last decade by the more coherent wholes of "her handwriting" and perhaps east river pipe's "mel".

so. no hype, no remixes, no capital letters. but if you can find it, please buy it.

sportique "modern museums"

"it's been a long time" - eric b and rakim

it's been bloody ages, in fact. but the so-long trailed second sportique album has finally arrived.

after saturn v, authors of the sadly underrated "skycycle" album, had seemingly imploded, sportique emerged from the relative slumber of gregory webster's solo album with popsongs so endearing and beautiful that "early razorcuts" was really the only soubriquet you could throw at them. and so we loved and enjoyed epoch-defining, timeless songs like "the kids are solid gold" and the glistening "don't believe a word i say".

but now, gregory and his bands' choice of headgear having gone all the way from bowl haircuts in razorcuts days to bowler hats today (strangely via the early 90s baseball caps of saturn v), sportique have carried on developing. and we know - because we can hear them chattering away now in oh-so trendy north londinium - there will be murmurs of discontent from disaffected indie snobs as to the fact that on the evidence of "modern museums", sportique are rocking a bit, shouting a lot, they even sound like they're enjoying it, and how dare they do an album that's only 24 minutes long, and has no ballads on it ? it's not worth dignifying them with an answer.

the tate-tastic title track "modern museums" combines (warning: here comes the obligatory mention in a sportique review of the w-word) a very, yes, wire-like one-chord rumble with the driving guitars of magazine... and then the bass which kicks off and then propels second song "cerebral vortex" is so insistent it reminds me of the buzzcocks' sparkling peel session take of "fast cars", before the song prangs itself into a passing organ sound that could have been played by john rivers back at wsrs leamington spa in the late 80s... yes that good.

"let's try some cultural respite" - art & shopping

and cultural references abound throughout. much has been said about gregory's ability to wring inspiration from every decade in which he has lived, but it's all true - "i want to be totally wired" he tells us (remember the fall-esque "sport for all" ?) on the utterly flawless live favourite "definition seventy-nine" in which he so-rightly laments "it's just like '74 again... were we wasting our time ?" (before a guitar break which so-cheekily recalls magazine's "shot by both sides"), while the spirit of '76 / '77 is further invoked by the first bars of "the dying fly" (more top wire-lite) that faithfully reconstruct the opening rumble to the sex pistols' greatest recorded moment. we've said before that the chrysalis of punk is part of the whole raison d'etre of this site, and you can't tell me that the razorcuts at their "sad kaleidoscope" best - the enthusiasm, the shamble, the infectiousness - weren't somehow rooted in punk... you can't, it would break my heart.... meanwhile, tuneless yelling hasn't really been in vogue since the days of the shrubs, but in the marvellous "how many times ?" it works perfectly over the staccato guitars, until the whole song lifts off into a blinding last 30. and on the title track, gregory screams "I AM A REAL ARTIST!" before the song really snowballs into an echo chamber of guitars while he hollers the cruel rejoinder "IN YOUR HEAD!"... and all in estuary english, although i could swear that last time i looked his native luton was not quite on the thames-side...

as you'll have guessed, despite the acquisition of amelia fletcher as fourth member - though it appears from the inner sleeve that she is at least excused from having to sport the aforesaid bowler hats - there are no real concessions to the patented marine research brand of hook-laden "pure" pop: indeed, not even any obvious evidence of her backing vocals that helped cement the fabulousness of "don't believe a word" (and, of course "anyone can make a mistake", but that's giving my age away)... although there is a faintly-discernible, disembodied voice on "icestorm" that may be her, or it may just be the voice of a passing angel... instead, amelia (we imagine at least from the last gig we saw) is supplying the keyboard lines. and there's a real a hint of the stranglers where the keyboard "gets a grip" (sorry) - on the brilliant "suture". on other tracks, the effect of the keyboards varies from jaunty ("obsessive") to spooky early-80s ("how many times...") through to earnest (that'll be "cerebral vortex"). fans of sportique's "early stuff" will have their cockles most cheered, we suspect, by the shamblier "art & shopping" and "icestorm", which both would have fitted snugly onto "black is a very popular colour". while it is the playfully acerbic lyrics, rather than the music, to the "the dying fly" (the fact that wire's "i am the fly" is irresistibly brought to mind can be no coincidence) that imbue it with "new" sportique's punky irreverence. the last track is the re-working of "obsessive", which i think last surfaced on the flip to the amazing "love & remains": its pace and power (think emile heskey) bringing the album to a suitably positive conclusion.

it's obvious from many of the lyrics that these 9 cuts continue to indulge gregory's own obsession - with art (in the tradition of the "appropriations" on their record sleeves). the songs pinprick the pomposity of the contemporary auteur ("if i was an artist, i'd collaborate in group shows / i'd eschew creating the object") or indeed the modern (riverbank) museum - "stick in the [B]ourgeois: fill that space"): in essence, "modern museums" is, ultimately, a concept album about art. but, believe us, it's much more challenging and enjoyable than that might sound. did u know that more people go to art galleries and museums every week than football matches ? god, you'd hardly guess it from the tabloids.

anyway. south londoners we may be. we don't know much about art, but we know what we like. record of the month.

the windmills "sunlight"

the windmills are from southend. that might not mean that much to you (as the groove farm once sang) but trust me (as the flatmates sang), as a kid i used to go and visit the relatives there all the time, freeze on the pier (when it was the world's longest and all that), paddle in the sludge, dodge jellyfish on the beach, and when i got a bit older we'd drive out there and fail to get into any pubs (in retrospect, probably just as well as we would have got pulped). and when i'm 60 i'm going to retire there, with my beer on the sideboard, knocking out chas n' dave classics on the old joanna. fact.

"you're secret, first of all, and secondly, you're beautiful" - unkiss

southend is therefore one of the last places - much as i love it - that you expect witty, wry, cultured indie-pop songs to be born. so three cheers for the windmills then. "sunlight" is an album of intelligent, breathy half-jangle which in any tolerable universe would be gleefully outstaying its welcome in the top 5 album charts. in our own, however, it just shrugs knowingly and gets on with the job, a bit like the ice cream vans that have to traipse up and down the front at southend for the 10 months of the year that it's winter in essex. it's a shame that half the songs are not new; versions of the respectful east village tribute "when it was winter", the previous single "drug autumn" (and its flip "pounds, shillings and pence") we have all heard before - while the decidedly great "unkiss" featured on "the wedding cd" compilation (and "untouch" is merely, grrr, a "reprise" of the same song - an abominable tactic, sirs). this does however enable us to turn our attention to some of the unheard numbers, as they are undoubtedly wonderful (nearly as much so as southend united and that legendary "roots hall roar". ahem).

"boxing glove" is a remarkable hymn, subverting the traditional pop twang a la the field mice's "coach station reunion" and pivoting on a lovely change of pace when old drummer rob clarke, assisted by some fieldmicey bass, just ups the tempo into each verse. its lyrics follow an ill-disguised theme on this album of submitting to a female protagonist's (i hope) metaphorical punches. "cloud five" on the other hand, is lighter and airier, an unprepossessing 2 1/2 minutes of trad-indie cirrocumulus. while the fabulous "taxi fare" kicks off with a perfect, tremulous guitar line before roy thirlwall's deep soothing tones are belatedly coaxed out to marshal things - in such mellifluous company, even the harmonica that seeps in towards the end is forgivable. "be groovy or leave" (how many times have we heard that sentiment....) is also a fine song, again relying on subtlety and understatement to just hit home that bit harder: it also acts as the perfect showcase for the guy's resigned, sardonic intonation as he repeats the title in amongst the closing bars. the other previously unheard number is "she's so hard", a mildly sugary concoction the chorus to which ("[her] bare fists punching") unfortunately grates rather. and for those of you (to be fair, the entire population of the world, minus a pressing of 1,000) who hadn't heard it before, "unkiss" is another song that envelops you in its warmth, with the drums and bass combining in the chorus in a way reminiscent of the brilliant corners' "anticipation". as such, it does make a great lead track.

peace out to the windmills, then: evidence that southend is more than just the place at the end of billy bragg's "A13". they'll succeed without our patronage, but at least we can say we were there.

the would-be goods "brief lives"

after the digression masquerading as a review that we supplied last month, it seems only fair to concentrate on the music this time round. we will allow ourselves merely the observation that all the analogies you will hear to parisian cafes when describing the would-be-goods' appealing european whimsy seem to us be flawed - in our happily not-unextensive experieence of parisienne cafe society, the key ingredients are omelettes, café americain, bière blanche and virtua striker machines - none of which truly exude the elegance of jessica griffin's writing.

despite what you have heard, the musical journey, if any, is often back in time, rather than across la manche - being transported to different epochs by the ageless delicacy of the near-acoustic. so while, admittedly, tunes like "butterfly kiss" would perfectly soundtrack a stroll across the seine to la rive gauche, songs like "esperanza" - musically, at least - or "whitsun bride", with its plucked mandolin, could equally have been b-sides to henry viii's alleged debut single "greensleeves". the arrangements and the chord progressions through this album are often so simple, strums softly beating like the wings of angels, that many a familiar song from history's more recent popular canon is also brought to mind. so "bad lord byron" (another period effortlessly recalled) disturbingly apes "magical mystery tour", while "a season in hell" reminds us, at least, of a regency-era "she's not there"...

though there's nothing maybe quite as instant as "emmanuelle béart" or even the delightful "sugar mummy", the guitars do get turned up on numbers like "vivre sa vie" and "dilettante", while the six strings deployed with more restraint on "fancy man" etch melodies tellement sympa in the honeyed style of those chilled shop assistants songs like "somewhere in china". (yes, the sleigh-bells help). "elegant rascal" is a brattishly decanted spoken word punk prayer set in the eternal ugliness of the elephant and castle - one of many songs set in and depicting our home city - with the coolly-pseudonymed "orson presence" on organ clearly particularly enjoying proceedings. the fine "1999" - a graceful nursery rhyme which sounds like the softies singing a thesaurus - ensures things end with a flourish (remember when that title was so moderne, even futuristic ?) in fact the only downside is that "flashman", seemingly, isn't actually about stan.

we caught the WBGs live in highbury last month and they shook off a nervous start to charm us all rather. coming from someone who, it seems, became a pop star almost by accident, "brief lives", being both romantic with a capital R, and tender to a T, is pretty impressive stuff. the sound of serendipity at work.

simpático "the difference between alone and lonely"

this lush artwork surrounds the first full-length release from now-melburnian former sweet william singer jason sweeney, refining his romantic half-pop vision following on from the strong début "postal museum". simpático conceive careful, studied, post-sarah pop: a mesh of 4/4, throughout which a house-trained drum machine acts as an anchor, the guitars able to sketch a cat's cradle around the lovelorn lyrics. this combination gives the music a strange kind of elasticity, echoing the understated yet immensely moving plainness of late lamented bands like romford's own catapult...

in constructs like "drove it down", "street talk" or "preciously inside" jason sweeney is, indeed, more lonely than merely alone. in the way he sings lines like "trying my best... and i'm trying too hard", or "no-one said you had to be happy", there is much of the longing of the sweetest ache, and the cool welsh mists which surrounded their sarah album "jaguar". jason keeps saying "and i feel fine because i see him", and the more he says it, the less you believe him - this is the hallmark of affecting music. in "school life", on the other hand, though we are aware mr. sweeney wouldn't relish the comparison, there is something of the smiths in there.... admittedly we see something of the smiths in every thing of beauty, from the clouds to the stars, but the recanting of playground cruelty in "school life" and its "drive me anywhere" outro - "don't stop the car" are so s.p.m. (the cascading chord cadences as jason sings "sometimes children can be so cruel" are even a bit johnny m.) indeed, there are many references to driving on this rich, sensuous album: like east river pipe, with their endless tales of lonely motoring, simpático have the luxury of coming from a nation of wide open spaces and endless vistas - not like our own "stinking little country"...

getting back to the music, another pinnacle for us is the quite brilliant "urgency", which joins a very strong field mice / wake influence with segments of spoken word that again bring to mind the narrations of early sweetest ache songs like "climbing". the song brutally depicts the sexual exigencies of a relationship and how love can hurt so much. perhaps because of this authenticity, when listened to on the inter-city the other week, the wiltshire fields flashing by, this and subsequent track "his goodbye echoes" (let's just say it resembles something trembling and blue, albeit decorated with lyrical go-betweenisms like "a letter only half-completed, i never signed my name") made for such formidable listening - maybe, as the train hurtled westwards and dissected the cotswold countryside, at last we were getting a flavour of the effect of distance, and those journeys long enough to give you time to think, to reflect... to worry.

over the twelve songs constituting "the difference between..." jason certainly does all of these things, and in virtually every song, his partner in crime is the dr. rhythm, faithfully chronicling every outpouring of his soul (when in "carrying photographs", the drum machine is removed, suddenly all is as quiet and static as a sleepy sunday afternoon in a sunny surrey suburb). indeed, even aside from the percussion, simpático trademarks start to emerge across the album: the echoey guitars throw aberdeen and blueboy into the "influences" mix, whilst jason has a distinctive way of drawing out his vowel sounds - usually upping the angst and adding to the er, urgency (it helps songs like the more triffids-inspired opener "let him go" carry that little more punch): though on "spin", helped by the boy/boy spiral of words like "he'd still sit around, and i'd still spin around", his vocals evince a real brighter vibe.

by the time last track "cold season" has dissipated into the evening sky with its slow fade, you are in no doubt. we believe the phrase is "all killer, no filler". and if you're still not sure whether to invest in this album, please buy the excellent ep. because we guarantee that if that shakes your tree, this will reverberate yr whole forest.

the lucksmiths "where were we ?"

"where were we ?" is a compilation of "non-album" lucksmiths moments from the past year or two - there have been a few. for the uninitiated (like us, we're ashamed to say) the 'smiths are a melbourne trio who adhere to the australian tradition of melding impeccable musicianship with arch lyricism, cramming songs full of one-liners yet still somehow maintaining an affecting outlook over the three minute heroics in which they specialise.

we can but dwell on our own favourites - "the cassingle revival", a killer a-side on the bristling fortuna pop!: "can't believe my eyes" - a spanking pop journey powered by the briskest of strums: and of course "even stevens", the ladybug transistor collaboration, from the superb east timor benefit cd put together by library and drive-in. but the top tunes don't end there: both sides of that super matinée 7" "t-shirt weather" are here, as well as the kooky "i prefer the twentieth century", the first tune to really encapsulate new-aeon ennui. and in the same way that we've never heard a bad song on which mark e. smith provides vocals, we've never heard a bad song on which vocals were provided down a phone line (admittedly, we've only heard two: daniel johnston and yo la tengo, and now "mars", a beautiful song to close in which tali white's voice just sounds perfect).

this summary is cursory merely because most of u will already be aware of the artistry of this band, and preaching to the converted has always seemed a relative waste of energy in these environmentally conscious times. for us, the lucksmiths could yet claim the sugargliders' crown: we know that some of you think they have already, but hey! let's not argue, especially as we were introduced so recently...

harper lee "everything's going to be ok"

the only time you ever doubt harper lee, even subconsciously, is when the disc starts to turn for the first time; the musty air heavy with expectation and the sudden panic - what if the drug doesn't work this time ? what if the effects have worn off and you are left clutching at past memories of their melancholy excellence ? "everything's going to be ok" starts with a drum machine-only intro. the suspense therefore lingers for all of... ooh, 20 seconds. "miserable town" then ushers us into an un-named municipality, painting a scene of darkness and precipitation, laced in the cold that edges through a town's streets and glazes the bus shelters, lets lamplight throw shadows over its roads, frames silhouettes in its windows and whispers sweet rainsoaked nothings through the elements. when the first sparkling chorus arrives, its sadness offset by absurdly joyful sounding keyboard layers which really rub the sentiments in, you know everything really is going to be ok.

"thought that maybe things will work out fine ... given time"

we are not going to lie and say that this album is spectacularly innovative. one of our ilwtt mottos, as we've said before, "is if you can't be good, be different"; but equally dear to us is its corollary, "if you can be good, don't ever change". so much of the record seems familiar - not just gentle reminders of past harper lee or even brighter guitar lines, but melodies lifted wholesale from "power corruption and lies" or unintended echoes of moments of greatness like "darklands" or "disintegration". this record is an organic development in terms of the shape of laura and keris' overall sound: although "go back to bed" shone with some wonderful and deserving, heartrending songs, not least its gorgeous singles, with the sophomore album it's harder to see any breach to the pattern.

elsewhere on side one (yeah, we know, but in our world, ok ?) "unreciprocated" skilfully updates brighter's "never ever" into the new century, detailing the sting of indifference through the hypnosis of keris' maudlin vocalising, aided and abetted by a beautiful keyboard trumpet part. hot on its heels, the next song that dutifully arrives (perhaps the early evening special from miserable town central, though that's speculation) is the taster single "train not stopping", one of the three best songs ever released on matinée recordings (that's not to rank it third, it's just that trying to play it off against "walking around the world" and "modern museums" is such a récipe for bloodletting.) and then there's the majestic centrepiece "the thought of you and him", in which all hell breaks loose - not musically, of course, but emotionally. the whole song is built on an undertow that sounds like xmal deutschland trading melodies with long weekend, but keris' "little boy lost" vocal, and the echo on his voice, perfectly frame the longing and uncertainty betrayed by the barbs of lyrics like "the thought of what is best for you / i think i was capable of it / of liking him". but as with so much of the cd, it's really made by those baby guitar lines that run over the top of everything, recalling great bands like ooh... early brighter, and late brighter, and hal, and mid-period brighter... it's like being a chocaholic locked in a cadbury's factory.

the fifth of the nine tracks, "a forest alone", with its quiet mood, is almost an interlude between two halves of the album - its title, prominent keyboards and sparse percussion reminding us tentatively, (not least given keris' own recent pronouncements about the greatness of joy division) of jd's "atmosphere" and its bleak, brilliant sleeve. and then, to our delight, it's back to the train references, with "city station"'s trim guitar motifs, which apart from troubling new order's lawyers, will be messing with your head in splendid ways all day, before "fine bones" picks up the theme of "unreciprocated" and "you and him", again hovering thematically around a passion unrequited, unambiguous in its depiction of human jealousy. after "i can bear this no longer" turns the feyness to max - taking off when keris' plaintive "i want things back / to when they weren't so complicated" dovetails into another of those snaking little guitar curves sweeping blissfully skyward, it all ends with "this better life", which effortlessly melds a vortex of keyboard swoons with guitars that sound close to brighter's sublime "disney" ep and as such rounds things off perfectly - ending the album, like trembling blue stars' "little gunshots", with unexpected abruptness, almost in mid-vocal: cut dead.

so though the title might suggest the optimism absent from harper lee's past outings, you'll have sussed that this is actually no happyfest. most truly rewarding things aren't, if you think about it. each song is like a slide show of pictures shot from a train window, reproduced in grainy black and white, the passing fields and branches beautifully pixellated. we hate ourselves for even saying that if you like the trembling blue stars and aberdeen albums, you'll love this - "yes it's true", but for us harper lee have something more. we would no more contemplate switching our ultimate allegiance from them to another band than keris would dream of switching his predilection away from brighton & hove albion... we guess harper lee are just our home team.

lovejoy "who wants to be a millionaire ?"

this is lovejoy's follow-up to their "songs in the key of lovejoy". richard preece fronts the south coast band, who also house (ex) members of blueboy / beaumont.

what we seem to have here is a soundtrack to lives that have become lost and confused, an elegy from outside and above. the more or less instrumental title track sets up the theme with its single flatlining refrain "who wants to be a millionaire...". this record seems to scan the yawning miles between birth and death, where all the distance travelled appears nothing compared to the distance yet to go. in "nothing happens here", "weeks roll into years". it is a slow-motion of life as shot from a cannon; its trajectory false, and now fired, doomed; not even brought down by events, but simply as the fulfilment of its given destiny.

"you fell from grace", probably the best song on the album, is the strongest expression of the mood. it watches a struggle, not to stay the course but to change tack, to change back, putting desperate faith in mere props; "a glass of wine", "a sunday magazine". the chorus is lovely, tracing a line of tears on the face of a fading friend. you can ask for little more.

"night on earth" seeks to pull pathos from the painful gulf between human potential and human reality, much as blueboy's "meet johnny rave" did before it, but this time with a soft sequencer undertow. when the night fades, the dawn reveals "broken glass, lipstick stains on shirts ... camouflage for years of pain and hurt" in the crepuscular half-light. "there must be more to life than this". as we've seen, their label kindred harper lee still express similar sentiments.

what else is there? what could save a body in motion from its destiny, if not another body? "the beat hotel" provides probably the warmest moment of the album; a fuller cover of the biff bang pow! song than premiered on their earlier bbp! tribute single. whilst still far from upbeat, with ally board's vocal high in the mix and in the chorus, it nonetheless contains the implicit subtext of all duets - the shy and slender hope that a problem shared is one that could be dealt with.

"who wants to be a millionaire?" hardly pretends to be a celebration, and the pace often drags. (and as a public service announcement we should clarify that "plastic flowers" is no more a wake cover than the new sugababes album "angels with dirty faces" is a tribute to sham 69...) it is however a coherent record, and not merely a compilation of colliding unreleased tracks. taken for its best, it achieves the grace of sympathy, not undermined but carried by the so-dan treacy vocals (though there appears to be a lawrence-from-felt impression in the spoken word break on "nothing happens here"), and this sympathy is perhaps the key to the album, and arguably differentiates it from the work of others such as the trembling blue stars. indeed, one wonders, who, if anyone, was the muse? perhaps you should listen for yourselves.

Part three: live

live review: sportique / airport girl @ notting hill arts centre, 31 march 2001

word to the dj on a saturday afternoon - he's spinning smudge, pencil tin, girls at our best, and james dean driving experience - if i'd paid any admission fee, it would have been worth it just to have heard j.d.d.e. hang on though, there's some bands on, too.

airport girl, then. several of them on the stage, as far as i can make out from behind one of the NHAC's conspicuous pillars, and they look beatifically young. mumbled acknowledgements between songs, which are pleasantly feral (the tunes, not the mumbled acknowledgements). early in the set, tunes like wiaiwya single "power yr trip" are almost spraydog, as the singer strains above the guitar amplifiers to shout the lyrics through. mid-set, though, they perform an incongruous number called "love runs clean" which sticks out as a beautifully crafted, go-betweensesque song, pitched somewhere in the clouds and certainly some way up from the hurly-burly of indie pop in 2001. its reflective lyrics and mournful delivery give it the ring of a soon-to-be-cherished pop standard. they also end with a pretty fine song, called "the foolishness that we create through love is the closest we come to greatness" (although the title comes pretty close itself) which trundles a long at a happy velocity on that chord sequence which is known as "romeo and juliet" or "next summer" depending on whether your chosen poison is respectively dire straits, or brighter. i've not been too enamoured with airport girl on record to now, but on this evidence i'll at least keep the door open for them.

"you found the on switch, then", remarks gregory webster laconically two songs into sportique's rockin' set, as former marine researchster amelia fletcher manages to spark the previously unemployed keyboard into life. to be fair, the keyboard has little role tonight as sportique are playing hard, fast and guitarry, like saturn 5 facing off against black sabbath, with rob pursey's upfront bass playing shepherding each dynamic newie along. there's little in this set - i presume mostly tasters from the forthcoming second full-length - which suggests a return to the power pop of songs like "if you ever change your mind": even the super syrupy pop whirl of last matinee single "don't believe a word i say", also insensitively unplayed tonight, seems half a world away. only "P58" and a fairly awful version of "anatomy of a fool" pop up from their "black is a popular colour" cd, although the latter is sweetly improved by gregory playing the middle eight guitar line in a razorcutsy type of way, an emotional contrast to the "riffs" and "licks" sprouting up everywhere else in the set. indeed, one song is introduced as "cerebral vortex". enough!

sportique, live at the betsey trotwood, 17 february 2002

it was a good day - didn't even have to use the AK

the indie glitterati help themselves to cookies and cakes as sportique kick off their set with "suture", "definition 79", "modern museums" and "cerebral vortex": four songs from the minimum opus "modern museums" (which this blitzkrieg "intimate" gig is celebrating the launch of) that would make an excellent hardcore ep if matinée ever wanted to go that way. in the surreal setting of london's square mile on a sunday lunchtime in winter, sportique rock the house in a room so small that there is no p.a. and the amps do all the work.

during the snappy, throbbing set, which also includes a high-tensile, gleeful bashing out of "how many times...?" and a sprightly prance through "the dying fly", amelia fletcher (smiles are infectious) has ample opportunity to display her keyboard technique, which consists seemingly of permanently crossed hands, while despite the handicap of no mics, both her and rob shout along to every chorus. the couple of new songs (one intriguingly titled "the edgware kickback" which suggests perhaps a low-rent gangster movie soundtrack ?) seem happily in step with sportique's patented new punk formula. the cosy set ends with both sides of the great "p58" / "tiny clues", both of which also turned up on the first sportique full-length.

we'll leave it there, partly because they did, but also because we didn't learn anything new about sportique today. sportique are not so much on the verge of greatness as having already ploughed a ten-ton truck across that verge; having left their tyremarks on greatness, "modern museums" is heading them full speed towards alt-pop sainthood.

the would-be-goods / the windmills / pipas / lovejoy, notting hill arts centre, 24 august 2002

you may think of this as a subterranean warm-up act to the notting hill carnival (but without the police presence). richard preece kicked off for us with a solo acoustic set to represent brighton's lovejoy (q.v), plucking sorrow from the dark, dark room with interpretations of songs from the new record. pipas followed, lupe and mark playing the cute couple and the cats that got the cream, with the occasional and able assistance of the backing track. no fear, lupe rattling shy and sly lines all the while. as delicacies like "cruel and unusual" amply demonstrate, we do not know enough.

the windmills gave us the sweeping early dawn vista of "walking around the world", a song which is frankly slumming it in the environment of a dark basement and yet not incongruous; sparse, economical drums peppering like the first spattering drops of long-needed rain. that, two of the highlights from "sunlight" ("when it was the winter" and "unkiss"), and above all the wonderful single "360ª", were part of a seamless performance. we could do with more of the windmills. and their double-encore demanding friends.

the would-be-goods followed with an expanded though makeshift four-piece line-up, the nucleus of jessica and pete supported (more than ably we might add) by lupe pipas on bass and debbie on drums. this was the would-be-goods playing their way back into the limelight, swift, smart and poised, and better than when we last saw them as a three piece. if we have just one motto at ilwtt.org (and we have several, as you'll have read already this month, not just "i'll do it tomorrow") it must surely be something along the lines of "hating the obvious" and it's as good to know that this band can play great pop ("vivre sa vie") in their own image and not ours. this is one of those bands that leave you wanting to know much more. WBGs gave us a tour of the "brief lives" album ("vivre", "dilettante"), recent singles ("sugar mummy", "emmanuelle béart"), and "dream lover" from 1993's "mondo" album. liked them before. love them now.

the fades / slipslide, the dublin castle, camden, 27 august 2002

ok. compare and contrast.

the fades are the new strokes, in the same way that iwan roberts is the new john charles. they've got most of the right moves and they shake it right down now for the girls up front. their bass player is one of those that holds his guitar somewhere between diagonal and vertical throughout. and they give themselves a most healthy cardiovascular workout, and us a mild but insistent headache.

slipslide, on the other hand, are the new eva luna / pure / love parade, the latest chapter in graeme elston's expanding volume of indie pop history. the four-piece - two guitars, no keyboards - cranked through not enough songs including tracks from their last coupla matinée singles "unlucky charm" and "sleeptalk", a decidely non-heretic version of bob forster's "rock n' roll friend" and culminating in a newer delicacy, an energetic "x supplies the answer". it will be interesting to see how their promised first album, when it comes, reflects their intended move away to a rawer, more guitar-based sound: at least on the evidence of tonight that seems like the natural progression.

the would-be-goods at the spitz, 29 august 2002

... as for the mighty would-be-goods, we draw a modest veil over their slot only because the equatorial temperature, lackadaisical soundman and me being very nervous about a meeting the next morning slightly overshadowed their set... jessica did not seem to be exuding happiness, and with "emmanuelle béart" also being absent, there was less chance to appreciate the artistry that lights up their "brief lives" lp.

there seem to be quite a few gigs now where there's more chatter than music - fosca upstairs at the garage, hood at the ocean, and the geezer whose banter largely drowned out pipas at RoTa (yep, we did identify him but have decided to hold fire from describing him because he's bound to be in a band or run a label or something or be best mates with someone who does)... we're not sure whether you can blame the venues for the fact that there are lots of people choosing to socialise loudly at trendy gigs. however what you can blame the spitz for is being hotter than a sauna in the sahara and having such a tiny bar - neither on their own would be fatal flaws, but it's the combination of them which is unbearable.

sportique, live at the spitz, east london, 7 september 2002

"don't believe a word i say / 'cos i'll say anything to make you stay"

and just like otis redding or jackie wilson or the lord high morrissey (above) it's the way he sings it...

oh yes oh yes. sportique are on fire tonight in the feebly air-cooled spitz. the rhythm section alone, sir mark flunder on drums and bass god rob pursey, are thrashing away with enough energy to power several generators, while stage left amelia fletcher is as energetic as ever behind the keyboards that power sportique's super-duper new wave melodies. and then there's gregory webster, in cool black shirt and tie, raining chords from his guitar whilst shouting out sportique's irony-laden art-fi manifesto to a more appreciative crowd than usual (apparently the "maidenhead" lot were in). the four of them choose to regale us with a shockingly good set list that encompasses each of those classic A sides from their early days, as well as barnstorming tracks from the current "modern museums" set. how could a set list including "if you ever change your mind", "cerebral vortex", "love & remains", "don't believe a word i say", "modern museums", "P58", "tiny clues" and all-time ilwtt anthem "the kids are solid gold" be anything other than, er, solid gold ?

this time, only a couple of newies trespassed on a rounded ten song set, but as our previous reviews suggest, there is no obvious evidence from the fresh crop of webster compositions that sportique's indie pre-eminence is likely to be threatened in the nearish future. one of the tunes, which inquiringly asked "why are all my best friends other people's girlfriends", was two minutes of prime bristling, bustling melody; the other, apparently to be the next single, at least ensured that the sportique hit parade show came to a tidily forward-looking conclusion.

sometimes sportique are just the colour of our dreams.

UNA CANCIÓN: "MIRACLELAND"

2010-01-10T07:51:00.000-08:00

For reasons we would never get close to working out, a kind stranger once went to the trouble of translating our brief early-00s 'review' of East River's Pipe's "Shining Hours In A Can" (in reality, as they recognised, more a delayed celebration of Shinkansen single marvel "Miracleland") into Spanish. Somehow, it seems so much more poetic than our original, typically stumbling English...

"Acaba de reeditarse la recopilación de los primeros trabajos de EAST RIVER PIPE, titulada "Shining hours in a can" (en Merge Records). Pero, antes que nada, quisiera centrarme en una de las tres canciones inéditas en esta recopilación. Se trata de la canción número 17, el single editado por Shikansen llamado "Miracleland", el cual en su portada original tenía una foto perfecta del horizonte de Nueva York, quizás tomada desde el ferry de Long Island. Hay millones de tranquilos, solitarios lugares donde puedes escuchar esa canción, QUE CAMBIARÁ TU VIDA. Nosotros lo recordamos bien. Las luces encima de nuestras cabezas bañaban el muelle y la luz de las estrellas emitían supercostelaciones en el oscuro cielo. Con el museo industrial y la más hermosa iglesia parroquial de Inglaterra alrededor nuestro, el momento merecía una única canción. "Miracleland" es esa canción. Y si enlazas eso con la conocida historia de que FM Cornog (East River Pipe) fue rescatado de un lamentable estado en Nueva York por su guru y manager Barbara Powers, la canción toma incluso un más profundo, oscuro, significado. Nunca una letra tan simple revestida en una tan delicada y honrada melodía, ha causado una huella tan profunda. Simplemente magnífica."

Which provides a lovely excuse to listen to the song again. We could provide a link to it or something, but you know that's not how we do. Some things are worth searching out, and "Miracleland" is most certainly one.

Three Men. Two Names. One Vision. No Quarter Given.

2009-10-22T06:12:00.000-07:00

A mere one post on Chas and Dave was never enough for any self-respecting blog, but it's so sad that this second love letter to the Peacock / Hodges songwriting gold standard and the Burt beat factory has had to wait until after Dave Peacock quit the band to mark the formal end of the C n' D production line.

Here's the comp that we cobbled together in tribute.

1. "One Fing N' Annuvver". Title track of their first album proper, a typical tale of family dysfunction with Chas's throaty tones of woe ("I carry the can / 'cos my old man / ain't bothered a damn") offset by upbeat brass arrangements of the sort that Elbow would kill for, were they not such thoroughly nice people.

2. "The Sideboard Song". Or, to give it its full title, "The Sideboard Song (Got My Beer In the Sideboard Here)". One of the greatest British singles of all time, one which invented Sham 69, Madness and Britpop / cockney Blur, amongst many others. Mick Burt strikes up a steady rhythm on the skins before the joanna weaves her usual magic and the boys narrate a tale of a riven, disfigured household from the point of view of its uncomprehending paterfamilias.

3. "Rabbit". Another hit, top ten at that, remembered for its freestyle scat chorus as well as for provoking feminist rile with its description of a henpecked suitor. Whereas the original recording of this was slow and jazz-lounge funky, with Dave's bass grindingly low, the single version rattles through at punk velocity, stopping dead at 2'15 (as many of their songs did!) to leave you very much wanting more.

4. "Gertcha". The hits rain down: this, according to Chas on the Abbey Road sessions, was the first ever punk single, and he's probably right. Again, the original version ("Woortcha") was mid-paced, deliberate, dimly funky: but by the time the Rockney hit factory was ratcheting up the chart-troublers, it had become "Gertcha": another frenetic, piano-driven joyride about a family man driven to distraction by life's daily vicissitudes. When they appeared on Top Of The Pops, the BBC (round about the same time they were giving Gang Of Four grief for "At Home He's A Tourist's lyrics) forced them to remove the references in the chorus to that well-known term of abuse, "cowson". But really, it's only half the song without them.

5. "Love And Days Gone By". A change of gear: if you want proof of how ahead of their time Chas and Dave were, check this ballad, which would have fitted snugly on the most recent Orchids album.

6. "Edmonton Green". A pearler, the best track on their "Rockney" album of '77. Another slowie, it trades "Love and Days'" faint hints of MOR for lush, warm rhythms and the soothing Hodges baritone. A simply beautiful tale of one man's memories of his local community (and, as such, a companion piece to "One Fing n' Annuvver"'s magisterial opener, "Ponders End Allotments Club").

7. "Poor Old Mr. Woogie". For every hit, there's one that should have been, but unaccountably wasn't. Over decades, Chas and Dave were pretty much unsurpassed at rattling piano-led rock n'roll, as Hodges admirers from Jerry Lee Lewis to Jack Clement would testify, and no C&D collection can be complete without this, their lament for the disco craze ("Mr Boogie") having seemingly left Mr Woogie behind to face an uncertain future in penury (actually, this might explain why it didn't sell enough copies). A record fashioned with love, and it shows.

8. "Turn That Noise Down". Frivolous ? A little. But with its early-80s sub-Shakatak / Level 42 vibe giving Dave a chance to show Mark King who his daddy was, this song about (yet another) put-upon dad being narked by ungrateful offspring ("You call that music ?... I can't stand that 'orrible row") is mucho entertaining, as well as musically nifty.

9. "I Am A Rocker". Self-explanatory: another uptempo back-to-my-roots belter. Eschewing "hippy hippy tunes" (just as they would later blast the er, de-woogieing of boogie-woogie), C&D show how pub rock could - should - have taken over the world, given half a chance and a fair wind.

10. "Ballad Of The Rich". Lummee. Another classic, kinda mournful, well-rounded song from "One Fing..." (a set which could, in an admittedly narrow field, officially be the best ever non-classical, pre-Pistols album). You're certainly unlikely to find more sweetly-plucked strings this side of your favourite adagios.

11. "Margate". Relentlessly territorial, as ever (Margate was London by the seaside, so "you can keep your Costa Brava") and still concentrating on songs about the family rather than boy / girl dead-ends, the accordion-garnished "Margate" (pronounced authentically to rhyme with "target") would later be co-opted as the theme tune for Only Fools and Horses' "Jolly Boys Outing", replacing the seminal "behave yerself, Grandad" reference with "behave yerself, Uncle Albert".

12. "In Sickness And In Health". Whereas this one was an original BBC TV theme tune commission, for Johnny Speight's sequel to "'Til Death Do Us Part". Slightly dumbed down by its Wedding March segues, this is musically more end-of-the-pier, bangers n' mash fare, but again the lyrics remind you that no-one does *true* (warts-and-all) romance more tellingly than Chas & Dave.

13. "I Wish I Could Write A Love Song". Oh, but you can. Interesting fact: when Tears for Fears wrote "Mad World", later to be liltingly caressed by the Snowdrops and then soundly smothered by Gary Jules, they were thinking of the fact that Chas and Dave could release a song like this as a single and that it wouldn't even graze the top 75. This kitchen sink gem, which invented Billy Bragg, is 100% *love*: stripped down, awkward, Chas's tribute to his wife that hits all the right buttons for useless romantics like us.

14. "London Girls". Potentially cloying, hopelessly old-fashioned, from the days when even "parochial" records cast their nets wider than Bow E3 (or Barnet, if you believe Wiley's Skepta dis). But try as we might we can't shake our soft spot for the trio's tribute to the ladies of London who, we are reminded, easily out-lovely "Deutscher girls, or girls from California".

15. "Flying". Hardly their only gorgeous instrumental, but we had to get at least one of them in here, and this is one of their most gorgeous: serene, verging on meditational.

16. "Lazy Cow". Back to the straight-down-the-line rock n' roll, boogie piano and all.

17. "I Wonder In Whose Arms". The only non-C&D penned song here, as their own compositions are so generally sterling. Included because they bring to it such a dropdead affecting depth of feeling.

18. "That Old Piano". Now. With these last three songs, we are going for a roaring hat-trick finish, starting with this mournful stroll down memory lane that bulges the back of the net with more power even than C&D collaborators Ardiles and Villa. Possibly our second favourite C&D number...

19. "Ain't No Pleasing You" ...behind THIS. Cast from the same mould as "That Old Piano", this blockbuster, this barnstormer sold more copies than anyone in the current top 40 could dream of, all by dint of writing such a rollicking SONG that for once people forgot that Chas n' Dave weren't cool and just bought it (yes, actually paying money for well-crafted songs seems so old-fashioned and uncool now, too). If you've ever been in a relationship, "Ain't No Pleasing You" should still knock your little socks clean OFF.

20. "Old Time Song". Regrets, they've had a few, but oddly this is one of their earliest, pre-fame singles, and it's a platinum tear-jerker. With a string arrangement so decadently beautiful that even Elbow probably would kill for it, it hits right between the eyes. One of Chas's greatest vocal performances: you can feel the lump in his throat at the start of each verse.

There are many more tracks that we could have more than happily included, indeed probably would have done were we to make this mixtape again now: "Harry Was A Champion", "Give It Some Stick, Mick", "Ponders End...", oh, "Back In The Soul Days"... what a band, what a band.

Oh, and tracking down copies of C&D albums isn't as hard as you might fear, even though we could do with less of the revisionist / jokey / blokey sleevenotes making out that Pete Doherty having heard of them was the best thing that could ever have happened to Chas and Dave. "One Fing" has got a proper re-release; "Mustn't Grumble" and "Job Lot" have been compiled on to a single CD. "Well Pleased" and "Flying" (originally on Rockney and Bunce Records respectively - how brilliant are those label names ?) are compiled as the second half of the "From Tottenham To Tennessee" 'compilation' (with a greatest hits of sorts on CD1), while the EMI "Greatest Hits" includes the "Rockney" and "Don't Give A Monkeys" albums in full, plus the Live At Abbey Road sessions. Plenty of these can be found for a fiver or so, meaning that for twenty odd quid you can treat yourself to the best part of a hundred C&D tunes.

And life goes on: Chas And His Band will be playing a venue near you soon, no doubt. Rightly. Legends.

Make It Loud

2009-10-01T11:22:00.000-07:00

Below, verbatim and unexpurgated, a post we wrote for last Xmas and, as usual, never got round to putting up, probably because it was a bit rubbish, but then we were writing as we were listening, no doubt high on yuletide sherry, the hint of glinting December frost and the promise of a home win on Boxing Day (which predictably enough didn't happen). We resurrect the post in this forum now because most of the music deserves drawing attention to, even if it also deserves rather more poised and fluid prose.

Since this was written: (1) a number of the bands referred to have come up with full-length albums, in some cases allowing us to plunder liberally from the text below in the other place; (2) the best band have (definitely) split up, albeit leaving a transcedent swansong; (3) it turns out that the band we thought were called "the Rotators" are actually just called plain Rot (the research dept have been disciplined accordingly); and (4) Paulo Sousa was sacked by QPR, and is now strolling the touchline at the Teen Anthems' own beloved Swansea City.

"This Christmas Kills Fascists

'Tis the season of good cheer, which means the Christmas card from us here at le palais d'in love with these times in spite of these times to thank you for your patience and online friendship this year is a much-delayed scribble on what you lot would call metal, but to be honest, it's all just music. We therefore give you, ladies and gentlemen, Relapse's "This Comp Kills Fascists" and "Slimewave: Goregrind Series" assortments, respectively a 51-track "power violence" collection and a 44-track goregrind primer, both compiled by Scott Hull off of Pig Destroyer and featuring in total 26 bands of varying fi levels never exceeding low-to-middling. "Comp" clocks in at a worryingly long 56 minutes and "Slime" at waaaay over an hour, meaning according to our basic GCSE maths skillz that each artist gets a generous four-minute slab of time in which to make an impression. The summaries below aim to keep things equally brief. Marks out of 10.

Record One: This Comp Kills Fascists

Agents of Satan (tracks 1-4)

Interesting aperitif, this: "Doomryder" is kinda singalonga-grindcore, suggesting that these guys don't take themselves too seriously - mebbe a kind of Casio-free Trencher from over the water: "Let God Sort 'Em Out" is both the shortest and best example of their frazzled noisecore ingenuity, a frantic landgrab of careering guitar. A solid start. 6.5

Weekend Nachos (tracks 5-8)

Ooh, much more NYHCish, these, even though the Nachos hail from Illinois - but if it turned out that they hadn't been listening to Cro-Mags or Youth of Today, we'd feel able to pronounce ourselves surprised. What's even better, they also sound like they might have been influenced by the slightly thrashier sort of bands that were on the US 12" on North Atlantic Noise Attack - you know, Desecration, Fear Itself, Emily's Sassy Lime (only joking on the last one). The guitars jump, dive, and from time to time *chug*, in all the right places. Nice lyrics, too. Excellent. 9.5

Kill The Client (tracks 9-11)

Much heavier and more metallic than Weekend Nachos, KTC have a name that those of us working in the service industry will fully identify with ("clients" being the inescapable modern term for those invariably needy short-fuse upstart members of the human race formerly known as "customers" or, indeed, "punters"). "False Flag Attack" starts things off with energy and aggression aplenty: they finish with "Shithouse Lawyer", a song we would like to dedicate to the legal profession generally for its dedication to killing music (sample clearance, pirate radio, delaying the "R Is For Razorcuts" by about a million years, making Firestation Tower change their name, you know the sort of thing). 6

Spoonful of Vicodin (tracks 12-17)

Ouch. Very little messing here from the Rochester boy / girl duo - there's happily nil that's self-regarding about the unlovin' Spoonful's messed up, lo-fi shoutcore, average track length 25 secs and sample title "Our Explanations Are Longer Than Our Songs", but they're more tuneful (nota bene, a relative term!) than other short-form shoutcoresters like A.C. These six tunes amply demonstrate that SoV have learned the essential secret of fine songcraft: a number should never outstay its welcome: so, 7

Maruta (tracks 18 & 19)

Hmm. A bit too serious, in this company, with structured albeit fairly detuned songs that are almost epically long in this context (erm, approaching three minutes), yet unable to achieve the dizzy heights that Skinless et al have managed in the past with similar raw materials). No disgrace, but just doesn't quite fit with the rampant - borderline insane - pace of much of the rest of the record. 5.5

Insect Warfare (tracks 20-23)

Fucking hell, these are amazing. This is grind of the late-80s school, a bewitching blast midway between the first Napalm Peel Sessions and some of Nasum's turn-of-century hommages to the "golden era" grindcore, um, outfits. "Information Economy" goes first, catching the touchpaper immediately before "Cellgraft" jumps aboard and fans the flames. And "Disassembler" is utterly astonishing - a touch of Terrorizer's "Fear of Napalm" simply in the sense that it's impossible not to dance to the rhythmic bursts of riffage (before they're mercilessly torpedoed by curt, brutal barrages of noise and vocals). In all truthfulness, the single best song of 2008. Finally, "Cancer of Oppression" sees the Texans mash it up a little, a towering, tottering groove before the blastbeats re-emerge. Sublime stuff, really. There seems to be a suggestion that the band have now split up, but that's too depressing for us to contemplate right now - America (and the world) need Insect Warfare. 10, and even that's a bit harsh.

Shitstorm (tracks 24-29)

Very impressive, this lot, following on from their refreshing split LP with Magrudergrind last year: the first five ditties, lovably brutish mini-anthems all, clock in at under 30 seconds each, the opening "Paranoid Existence" and "Burning Alive" being especially bracing, before the 'Storm conclude with piece de resistance, "Mince Meat Human", a fully-fledged 57 seconds' worth of rock. 9.5

Man Will Destroy Himself (tracks 30 & 31)

"Fuse", as it would need to be following all that, is bright as a button, the sort of song that might be ripe for "Leaders Not Followers 3", if ever we were granted that audio fantasy. 6.5

Total Fucking Destruction (tracks 32-34)

We spat a few words out on Brutal Truth spin-off TFD last year, so you know what to expect here: rather than straight-down-the-line noise power, TFD like to mess things up *a lot*, meaning these 3 tracks provide a soupcon of light and shade in what is otherwise a procession of super-bpm power. The titles - "Human Is the Bastard", "In the Process of Correcting Thinking Errors" and "Welcome to the Fascist Corporate Wastelands of America, Pt. 1" - perfectly reflect the content. 7

Chainsaw To The Face (tracks 35-38)

More unreconstructed, choppy shortcore grind. "Hating Life" and "Skewered" are like being tackled by Norman Hunter and punched by Billy Bremner at the same time as Peter Lorimer lines up a 20-yarder straight into your crown jewels. If we had to choose a favourite it would be "Burnt to Death", although "Ripped In Half" gets close with its moshworthy intro. 9

Magrudergrind (tracks 39-41)

Ooh yes. As we're coming to expect with this bunch from DC, a trio of very high quality numbers. "Heavy Bombing" tops the lot, joyful grindcore stylings whose meandering riffola culminates in a quickly-barked tribute to the many joys of graffiti. Absolutely belting. 9.5

Brutal Truth (tracks 42-45)

And talking of Brutal Truth, they're *back*, notwithstanding band member dalliances with TFD or the awesome - we use this word advisedly and in its correct sense - Venomous Concept. "Turmoil" is the pick of these Noo York gems, a kick up the Rs that could teach Paolo Sousa a thing or two. 7.5

ASRA (tracks 46-48)

Blokes with a bit of a thing about disease: "Chytridiomycosis" and "Cancer" refer. "Pig Squealer" is better, but only really because its title reminds us of the end of the first episode of Porridge. All fair enough then, but a little joyless compared to the swirly impishness of Agents of Satan or the Vicodin guys. 6

Wasteoid (tracks 49-51)

Not precisely a whimper, but nothing classic to end on. Their inspiration tends to end with the song titles ("Drink N Hand", "Bangover" and "Handcuffed and Fucked"): our inspiration dries up here. 5.5

Record Two: Slimewave

Straight alphabetical tracklist this time... thought occurs that if they'd done this on C86 it would have started with A Witness, biG*fLAME and Bogshed. Probably. Which would have been sheer heaven.

Antigama (tracks 1-3)

Mmm, more shouty blokes, apparently from Warsaw. "I Know You Want Something", they coo. And "Softer" isn't. 5

Bathtub Shitter (track 4)

Just the one track from the Japanese veterans, which seems very decadent in the circs, a bit like Civilised Society only having one on North Atlantic Noise Attack. This one's called "World Dune Hole" and it ambles along to a crusty groove, a bit like Unsane heard through a thick wall. 5.5.

Cripple Bastards (tracks 5-9)

We reckon all these tracks are on their FETO LP, "Variante Alla Morte", anyway, which is actually a pretty good LP, even if the longer tracks are actually much more disposable than the ten or so sub-five second ones - the band tend to get lost in the rather unappealing fantasies that they reflect in the drawn-out songs, while the short bursts often seem remarkably poetic aswell as recalling, yep, Napalm Death's first Peel Session, the template on which all radio sessions ever should properly be based. The Bastards have come a long way since those early demos of theirs that you can hear on "Grind Your Mind": compared to those, these productions might as well be Eno and Lanois. Of the five merry melodies on display, "Implaceabile Verso Il Suo Buio" is pretty much the highlight. In summary: slightly short of cigar, get the album instead. 6.5

Inhume (tracks 10-11)

Ooh, this is pretty neat. Very neat. Kind of lo-fi crustgrind from Holland which chugs along oddly serenely, well as serenely as lo-fi crustgrind can without overstretching the boundaris of language. The singing reminds us a bit of Mortician: it certainly isn't human, sounding more like a dog, or possibly a dinosaur. Actually, the chilling 'vocal' bit at the end of the mighty "Moulding The Deformed" doesn't sound like any creature that's ever inhabited God's earth. Hear it, believe it. 8.5

Japanische Kampfhorspiele (tracks 12 to 16)

Clean, angular, if slightly unhinged grind-type nuggets as we leap twixt borders again, this time to Germany (you'd probably guessed that much). "Der Westen Ist Geschockt" and "Das Metalcore Konzert" are the pick, probably just for having the best titles. There's also a rather pointless instrumental before things round off with the obligatory 30-second number, "Mann Dreht Mann Durch Fleischwolf". 6

Machetazo (tracks 17 to 19)

There are a lot of excellent Spanish bands out there, but we're not sure Machetazo are quite amongst them: they seem a little too fond of rubbishy horror-flick samples. We'll stick with the pure grindcore of Looking For An Answer et al. Oh, and the joyous pop of Zipper, of course. 5.5

Mumakil (tracks 20 to 22)

These are alright, and who'd have known that Geneva has been sheltering a proto-grindcore band. "Cloning The Pope" wins the war of the titles, although "Hide The Jerk" is probably the best tune to sample first. 6.5

The Rotators (tracks 23 to 27)

Off to Sao Paulo now, after all that grinding around the European continent, for some not-so-samba beach metal. The name doesn't seem to fit them - it makes them sounds more like some kind of new wave band, or maybe Riot City-style semi-crusty punkers - but this is more perfectly serviceable, slightly growling grind. "Fairytales", in particular, is as charming a way as any to spend fifteen seconds of your life. 7

Sublime Cadaveric Decomposition (tracks 28 to 30)

Oh *yes*. At last - another "find"! No prizes for guessing who inspired the band name, but these groovy three concertos from this French combo are actually pretty dynamic rather than simply sludgey - identifiable hooks etc, and a keen cantering pace, even if the vocalist sounds like he's wallowing around in a swamp of his own making. Very good indeed. 9

Throat Plunger (tracks 31 to 35)

Whereas this... isn't. Despite promising Spoonful of Vicodin-like titles, "Genre Ruiner" and "Jacked Up On China White / Steroids While Driving A Bomb Into..." are just a bit too pointless, while the other three songs live down to their charmless porno-gore titles. We do admire the Plunger's wider manifesto, which is something about ruining music, or similar. But it's not enough. 3

Total Fucking Destruction (tracks 36 to 39)

TFD obviously are sufficiently "in" with Mr. Hull to get on both these comps, which at least is another opportunity for us to witness their increasingly unrestrained aural madness, this time via "Necroanarchist", "Hammer Smashed Gore Fan" (we think they mean the genre rather than the more-than-mighty and recently recompiled Dutch Peel band) and the sweetly-titled "Fuckwound". As with their "Zen" album, we also get a bit of 'acoustic' TFD (in this case, inevitably, it's "Hammer Smashed Acoustic Gore Fan") which provides perhaps the most 'relaxed' minute or two on the whole CD. 6.5

XXX Maniak (tracks 40 to 44)

Pretty juvenile stuff, again, and not in a good way, although the sledgehammer-subtle 35 seconds of "Attending The Graduation Of Someone You Fucked 10 Years Ago" holds a certain shouty minimalist charm, aswell as an uncomfortable sprinkling of inner truth. 5.5

The Verdict

You know what all the best compilations do ? They send you scurrying in several directions at once trying to catch up with the bands that you've just been introduced to. So on that measure alone, both these CDs merit eager praise.

But it's clear from the average scores (GCSE maths again: 7.5 to 6.2083 with a recurring 3, and mathematics doesn't lie) that the US-centric "This Comp", in the end, defeats the rather more international "Slimewave" relatively easily, proving the morally incontrovertible FACT that when the day of judgment draws upon us grindcore will ultimately triumph over goregrind, despite our welcome introduction to Sublime Cadaveric Decomposition and Inhume courtesy of the latter disc.

More importantly, though, for anyone who reads this, thanks for bearing with us. Again. Happy Christmas one and all."

Ain't No Pleasing You

2009-03-14T07:31:00.000-07:00

I must confess to a little discomfort living in a world where it seems socially acceptable to like Abba both ironically and unironically, yet we reviewed a Chas n' Dave record positively, and this was construed as somehow odd. Anyway, this review, from July 2001 (hence the general election reference) touched on the reasons why CnD are a band who deserve much - unironic - love.

"chas 'n' dave "the best of chas 'n' dave" (music club)

well here's a quiz question for you. which combo successfully straddled pre and post-punk years ? who first adopted the mockney "kids are alright" tone later adopted by shameless plagiarists ranging from sham 69 to blur ? who managed to mix elements of pop, twelve bar blues, hip-hop, rock and funk into their goodtime showcase yet dilute this with a touch of the "we don't care" anarchy of the pistols? well now it's 2001 and here comes the definitive collection.

from the dextrous freestyling of "rabbit" to the unreconstructed avant-funk of "turn that noise down", chas 'n' dave had a mastery of the pop canon, which in my eyes peaks with the unsurpassed "blank generation" strum of "the sideboard song", in which our cheery bearded protagonists, pre-empting the 42% of the electorate on june 7, announce that "they've got their beers... and [they] don't care". and yet even in the face of this thom yorke can eulogise george monbiot without acknowledging his greater debt to charles, dave and, lest we forget, "mick", the most forgotten and under-rated of sticksmen.

shorn of the mystery of the early deaths of hendrix or curtis or the self-serving populism of brett anderson or the gallaghers, music like this has been dismissed simply for standing the test of generations. yet from the mcalmont and butler-style string arrangements on "ain't no pleasing you" to the folk groove of "gertcha", chas 'n' dave were setting aural standards. the beautiful "wish i could write a love song" is the ballad that billy bragg was always about to write but never got round to, even down to the melodramatic narrative. you want sex ? try "massage parlour". you want violence ? try "wallop!" you want drug references (in which case you are probably the nme) - how about "miserable saturday night" - itself a smithsian nomenclature - in which chas laments how their mates are out smoking dope and generally enjoying themselves ?

there are many tunes on this 24-tracker which overdo the formula and end up falling into the self-congratulatory pearly king whimsy of blur's "country house" or sham's unselfconscious "the cockney kids are innocent". the medley of "when i'm cleaning windows", "any old iron", "run rabbit run", "the laughing policeman" and "knees up mother brown" probably goes too far towards the awkwardness inherent in the cockney rejects' otherwise impassioned take on "i'm forever blowing bubbles". but with chas 'n' dave still going, this is a welcome overview of their ouevre. it's not art, but it's several times better than anything the nme is listening to this week."

Remember that this was written before the last few years' semi-ironic (agh that word again) C&D renaissance, before the Libertines et al decided to rehabilitate them and the trio (remember they haven't been a duo since the 1970s!) ended up rocking 30,000 at Glastonbury... but trust us, Chas Hodges and Dave Peacock will be remembered long after Pete Doherty's name is ground into dust and powder. Since the review above, we've had the immense pleasure and privilege of witnessing the band live, too - hence our comments on the swoonsome yet two fingered salute to journous and sceptics alike, "Ain't No Pleasing You", thus:

"The second greatest chart conspiracy of all time was when the BBC and the forces of law conspired to keep "God Save The Queen" off the top spot in silver jubilee '77. The greatest, however, was when MI5 and other agents of darkness and anti-Rockney agitators saw fit to relegate this particular crowdpleaser to no. 2, when everybody knows it was flying out of record shops left right and centre. And, as anyone who saw them play this at the 100 Club last month knows, they've still got it..."

- and of developing a wider love of their back catalogue. Check out the delectable "Edmonton Green" and then tell us they don't deserve respect: check out the "Mother's Sorted Out" remix of "The Sideboard Song" and tell us you can't dance to them. They even manage to be the only band in history to boast backing vocals from both Ossie Ardiles and Willie Thorne. The *only* thing impeachable about CnD - then and now - is their love for the chancer and waistrel denizens of White Hart Lane.

Oh, and Chas has recently released his / their autobiography, "All About Us". It's a ghostwriter-free zone, a WINNING book, most obviously because of something that absolutely *shines* through it, which is that the guy is just a worshipper of *music*... so much so, that when he says "It makes you feel so good that you wonder why it ain't illegal" you can only agree entirely, because that's the whole reason you've battled on forever writing blogs that no-one reads. And kudos untold for the fact the book reveals that they refused to do a Coldplay cover version...

My Hood (3)

2009-02-13T06:27:00.000-08:00

Only one review to complete our three part trip down memory avenue, but it's a long one, of two comps that came out on Misplaced Music. Indeed, a onetime member of Hood popped up on our messageboard at the time to describe the descriptions below as "worringly" in-depth, which was probably the right adverb. What it does do though, is set out my fairly undying affection for the band in minute detail, and make crystal how we'd obsessed over so many Adams Brothers incarnations over the years. It also returns to a theme we haven't given up on yet, my unrepentant fetishisation of both obscure 7"s and the thrill of the(ir) chase.

"hood "singles compiled" (misplaced music): hood "compilations 1995-2002" (misplaced music)

"sometimes your arms... are like a weight around my neck"

on one of the early hood releases that we plucked from a cobwebbed existence in a local indie store's 7" rack a half-decade ago, a good old-fashioned paper insert noted wryly, "there's plenty more where this came from". as we well know now, that wasn't the half of it. but then again, wetherby's most adaptable combo have fashioned a career (of sorts) from understatement in all its forms. while we lament once more the lack of pylons on the sleeves of these timely reissues (the band choosing to spurn the traditional telegraph poles and wire stacks, leaving these two rekkids bedecked only in images of northern fields blinking in early-day sunlight) everything else about "singles compiled" and "compilations", from the unassuming typewriter track list to the comforting chunky band logo, is 100% authentik h-o-o-d: the real thing, the hood that this website remains obsessed with. what more could a boy or a girl need than two new compilations showcasing three more glorious hours of hood's sonic fumblings over 79 (listen to 'em) trax ? don't answer - it's a rhetorical question.

so let's tuck in to the banquet properly, picking from the feast of thought-fragments that constitute blissful mid-period hood, "singles compiled" first. the chinstroking arrivistes who have only just latched onto west yorkshire's finest rustic-altpop quartet (on the merely trifling grounds that "cold house" happens to be potentially a landmark english "rock" album) will be maxi-flummoxed. cd1 especially will send these fairweathers scurrying back to their post-rock primers - it is rough and tumble not very-fi of some class as a host of demos and 4-track segments collide drunkenly, reversing into each other constantly like the time we went down the fair at la condamine and blew 200F on an insane number of jetons for the dodgems. if you're not going to like this album you will know within seconds of the opening "a harbour of thoughts" as a no-fi hidden vocal cowers behind an epileptic strum but pours out as much tangible human emotion as one should ever need. in and around the scuffed, self-conscious half-songs there are still a few palpable steps forward towards the modern all-conquering, genre-straddling hood - the title track of the 555 ep "(the) weight" nicely hid a charming pop song inamongst a stop-start, glitch-influenced arrhythm, and its companion piece "impossible calm" suggests in its fifty-odd seconds the electronic direction that the band would move to in places on future albums.

"i swear i'll finish the bottle / i'll stumble outside..."

tasty morsels like "biochemistry revision can wait", "forehead" and "dismissed army brought us knives" between them sum up every teenage feeling we ever had: and the first "accessible" a-side ("i've forgotten how to live", which got compared to the wedding present by the papers of the day) is included too, together with its preview in rougher form on the "lee faust's million piece orchestra" ep (oh, if only reissues could translate the joy of buying a record whose sleeve was a scrap of photocopied paper pritt-sticked on to a brown paper bag). meanwhile, pristine tunes like "clues to our past and future existence" profit from an outing on digital simply because their pressing plant-challenging use of quiet / loud dynamics asked an awful lot of the 7" format [having said that, this cd has been mastered from vinyl, so perhaps the problem was really our pre-jurassic hardware]. then there's "the year of occasional lull", a whispered near-instrumental single that shepherded them yet more forcefully into the promised land of indie-dub, like "(the) weight" revisited in mellower climes - and do you remember the single "filmed initiative", every copy of which came with its own photograph, still so fresh from prontaprint that you could still smudge it with your icky fingers ? well it's here in full effect too. (it is probably redundant to point out that our copy has a photograph of the sun breaking over a few telegraph poles...)

"singles compiled" also documents how in longer, spaced-out songs like "as evening changed the day" (the b side and alter-ego of "filmed initiative", later remixed for a 555 compilation) hood laid down, as we may have mentioned before, a prototype for much of what came later, including the songs that made up the spine of "cold house". on "i know what to squander" we also hear an early use of the single-note violin sound that crops up on their later albums. and this double-cd set is finished off with no less than 15 unreleaseds (yaay!), many of which are as good as their back catalogue: take "innocence of brittle days" whose focus is "to rid myself of the city" (reprising the "oh how the city gets me down" sentiment of "70s manual worker") or the halkyn-like fragility of "leaves across the road". and in all of these songs there is also a real mindset that only exceptionally is there any need to go too far above the one-minute mark: so even though on their two lower-fi albums "cabled linear traction" and "silent 88" there were plenty of strong 3 or 4 minute indie guitar tunes ("british radars", "the field is cut") inamidst the short songs, here we are very much in the realm of minimalism. witness "crow blown west" (almost a single, repeated thought, "i don't know why i bother with you") à la "silent 88"'s "i hate you now". it seems very adolescent but for that, all the more affecting.

inevitably and despite all the joys packed in, things are still frustratingly incomplete - we accept that the canadian label happy-go-lucky's "structured disasters" cd homed in on the "sirens" and "opening into enclosure: a disused post-mill" eps and some choice out-takes, so those omissions are justifiable (even though, by the same token, a clutch of those tracks reappear here). but then the definitive version of "silo crash" (from the "harbour of thoughts" ep) is missing, while "i've forgotten how to live"'s dramatic flipside "dimensions t.b.a." is wrongly reduced, apparently at the band's insistence rather than just for time purposes: in its full form, it was a wonderful song, 3/4 of which was down to the magical, haphazard, intro that starts with random single notes and works up imperfectly but imperiously to emotional implosion - the edit here gives us the implosion but excises the intro, and thus sacrifices so much of the power of the song. it's perhaps also a shame, although we're confident it will be addressed at some future date, that their debut 7" for domino recordings, "useless" isn't exhumed, as it was a top shambler, perhaps this time vaguely justifying wedding present comparisons with warm-guitar sincerity, and far removed from the ambient patterns of album "rustic houses, forlorn valleys" that soon followed it and emphasised their versatility.

and then there's "compilations (1995-2002)". this has a little bit more variation overall - it's a free-range curate's egg in which, par exemple, "sound the cliché klaxons" is simply a beautiful should-have-been single despite its jokey title, "i have it in my heart to jump into the ocean" is one of those many sublime variations on "as evening changed the day", "a shot across the bow" with its church organ and dub echo is a sinking companion for squarepusher's "our underwater torch", and "cross the land" is just one of those brilliant tracks that starts as a moving, heartbreaking soliloquoy but eventually transmutes into the sound of a grand piano being pushed down the stairs while meat whiplash tune up on the adjacent balcony.

all those good old recurring hood lyrical themes are here - memories of childhood, deep insecurity, the passing of time (or as they would later have it, "the cycle of days and seasons") - and they were never without some self-mocking humour, either - a.c. would be proud of titles like "we'll never live up to the first l.p." (a tongue-in-cheek j&mc tribute ? the backing is "just like honey" and there's a hell of a lot of feedback, man), "rocck ? i can't even spell the word" (a slurred rehash of "disappointed" from the "harbour of thoughts" ep) or "killing the band" (knee deep in the realm of ambienteca, but a reference to prolapse, presumably, unless we are rather overestimating prolapse's importance in the scheme of things).

these records sum up the appeal to many of us of "indie" music and what it really is. there's not a song here that isn't warm, honest and refreshing and the fact that many of the earlier songs could have been recorded by any bright, earnest teenagers on to a 2-track is neither here nor there. yeah, the tunesmiths will listen to the frailer stuff and say "oh, anyone could do that" (as if that was actually a reason for not liking something, and the thought hadn't occurred to them that if they were that bothered they could ac.tually have located the courage of their convictions and gone out and done it themselves), but the reality is that most labels that hood recorded for (and there are approx 6000) will never have released anything better."

My Hood (2)

2009-02-06T06:16:00.000-08:00

What followed the records mentioned in the last post was pretty amazing. It was "Cold House".

"first thing is that although this album was described by splendid e-zine as being "as subtle as a former subtlety lecturer and head of the Subtlety Department at Oxford University that has left the subtle world of academic subtlety for a lucrative career in private-sector subtlety" it is in fact much more commercially accessible than more or less any of their previous works consisting as they did either of sub-weddoes lo-fi indie mixed with white noise and spoken words or piano or junglist excerpts ("cabled linear traction" and "silent 88") or neo-classical swathes of flute, clarinet and guitar ("rustic houses, forlorn valleys" and "the cycle of days and seasons"). after all, this time there are a round 10 tracks; no instrumentals; no odd interludes between songs; no sub-one minute or supra-ten minute numbers. commer-cial!

and notwithstanding that virtually all the songs here are, at least when stripped down, 'standard' hood compositions (rustic indie pop with a little bit of depth - oh, and violins - exemplified by the perfect a-side "home is where it hurts" earlier this year) "cold house" is still an astonishing album. for the reasons below.

first track "they removed all trace that anything had happened here", a lament(possibly) for a lost way of life, builds as carefully as any other hood morsel, and really takes off when the quick fire rap checks-in. it is followed by the immaculate "you show no emotion at all ", a remote viewer-style arsenal of clicks which slowly builds into a more traditional guitar construct, the words washing over ("will we survive ? i know we will"). really modern and really effective. judging by the lyrics, i think that "branches bare" is the pseudo-title track; this time driven by a huge loop of bass, it again comes into its own when the rapping, this time a slow mantra, picks up the slack and starts to echo low in the mix. "the winter hit hard", underpinned by crackle, builds from a murmur and as claire pointed out (after 3 glasses of red), it's an almost doorsy kind of thing - drums and bass refracting upwards into a musical storm.

"i can't find my brittle youth" is the intro to side two - a straightforward-ish indie tune, beefed up from the version on the otherwise ropey "jonathon whiskey" compilation cd and ending in a haze of percussion so dense it almost sounds like a shoot-out. but suddenly, in "this is what we do to sell out(s)" the beatz are strictly minimalist - that warp/skam thing, almost - before, again, the vocals and guitars pull everything together without ever losing that nervy, tense feel as the breaks edge around the mix. "lines low to frozen ground" is another fantastic number, again strongly in the vein of past pastoral mini-epics like "as the evening changed the day", a pivotal hood moment in which so many of their melodies were distilled. and to close, "you're worth the whole world" in which the fantastic vocal interplay of the singer and the narrator strikes the mood. a fine closer.

as i think other reviews of "cold house" have noted, the most extraordinary thing about this album is that while describing it makes it seem almost avant-garde, listening to it, it just sounds controlled and natural, avoiding the usual traps of cross-genre pollination whereby you kind of wish the band had stuck to what they're good at. because what hood are good at is generic, organic development, and studio album no. 5 (i don't think we can even start to count the various eps, etc) is another step closer to greatness. in the past, the more conventional guitar-driven songs like "i've forgotten how to live" and "her innocent stock of words" were amongst my favourite hood songs - now, i'm learning to prefer their bolder, darker textures."

There had then followed a clumsy attempt to compare and contrast Hood with Radiohead - my heart was in the right place, but the prose wasn't. The point that still stands though is that Hood should have been more feted.

When they were picked up though - with interest from the BBC setting up a gig at Hackney Ocean on 17 January 2001 - we were, of course, horrified, curse us. Ain't no pleasing us, then (more on that theme later).

"we still don't regard hood as post-rock: we are faintly bemused that the esteemed radio 3 can select them to headline a left-field evening at the ocean, thus securing an audience of painfully earnest and trendy fashion-conscious types with bright new designer labels and laboriously-gelled "scruffy" hair who would have been equally at home in the dispiritingly trendy bar beside hackney central which on our arrival in e8 we found to our horror had usurped the rough charm of the former lord amhurst pub.

because hood, in our eyes, are a fine indie guitar band, albeit one with incredible range and versatility. to lump them in with the space-rock types who have helped cram the proverbial emperor's wardrobe to saturation with new clothes is so unfair - who else in that scene can have produced songs as feral and fearless as hood classics like "the field is cut" or the exploratory "dimensions t.b.a." ?

when we saw hood the first time, it was at the bristol louisiana, wedged on a bill between a visceral third eye foundation and the rather more dulcet movietone. in the tiny upstairs room, hood had stumbled through a 25 minute set of tuning up, exchanging instruments and occasionally embarking on unrecognisable song structures before everything just fell apart. tonight, apart from still looking so young, and a few exchanges of instrument between personnel, hood were displaying their new found maturity, calmly despatching selections from their new album "cold house", which we may just have mentioned before. although the five songs, starting with the album's first track "they removed all trace that anything had ever happened here" represented all too short an opportunity to bathe in the luxurious melange of indie (yes, say it loud and proud) guitar and vocals, throbbing dub-influenced sequencer and bass, and, in the flesh, frenetic and immaculate live drumming.

we also see (and hear and feel) the bulbous "it's been a long time since i was last here", from the "home is where it hurts" ep: a huge booming bass sound seemingly coming from nowhere as richard adams stands motionless to the left of the stage, before his own electric bass is called into service to bolster the instrumental mist; and "lines low to frozen ground", another soundtrack to early morning dew and low-lying fog over desolate moors. it's pop as thomas hardy.

however, our highlights tonight were "you show no emotion at all" (the repetitive sequencer motif gently and deliberately diluted by hood's trademark guitar picking) - when chris adams sings, almost in a whisper, "i heard the phone ring / so late at night / i thought someone had died... but your voice was filled with love" it is impossibly heartrending. they also finish with a brilliant version of "you're worth the whole world", also the last song on "cold house": again, it is the vocal which seems to make proceedings complete: although the words are still hard to divine, the singer's voice is edged with fragile emotion.

we will continue to regard hood with no little respect and as of meriting immense importance in the scheme of things. their current f(l)avour (of the month) with journalists notwithstanding. we still think they're wonderful, and there's nothing they can do to change that."

My Hood (1)

2009-01-30T06:01:00.000-08:00

A bit of a statement of the obvious that Hood are one of my favourite bands in everdom, but because their output has been sporadic of late one suspects that hasn't been adequately reflected over in the other place. Indeed, there's only really this post from 2005, which plays up the Wetherby roots of both Hood and the mighty fine Boyracer (to whom tributes in the other place are rather less rare). But at least that post ties in nicely with 555's recent - recommended! - "Wetherbeat scene" compilation and booklet, which documents exactly how both bands grew from a fecund Wetherby (High School!) "scene"... the photo of Wetherby Town Hall above echoes one of the pics from that terrific package.

Anyway. When I reviewed "Rustic Houses, Forlorn Valleys", on Domino, back in the 20th century, it was a relatively short piece, compared to some that were to come:

"After the most wilfully disparate back catalogue yet (fiendishly) devised, Hood have been anchored to a contract and are now settling down. Hence the follow-up to the twentysomething-track lo-fi “Silent ‘88” and the Wedding Present-style taster 45 “Useless” is the six track ambient soundscape “Rustic Houses”.

The bad news is that the big bad label boss appears to have put a stop to their shambling popsongs and junglist experiments. The good news is that Hood have had to focus; they have moved piano and clarinet to the fore, calmed everything down and let their intrigue with, er, the cycle of days and seasons, take centre stage. “S.E. Rain Patterns” opens proceedings, a ten minute excerpt from the weather cycle in which different melodic strains slowly appear before dispersing again, leaving the fields strewn bare once more. “The Light Reveals The Place” builds on a more conventional bass-led structure, culminating in feedback echoing like the wind around the mix, recalling “The Field Is Cut”’s devastating denouement on the last album.

Lastly, “Diesel Pioneers”. A quarter of an hour of your time. Disembodied segments from Third Eye Foundation’s remix of “Eyes” are gradually layered with guitars and percussion until – for the first and only time – erupting into a chaotic, volcanic, sonic plateau. “I don’t know where the hours go…” screams the singer, “…why can’t you leave me alone” and the intensity, the rush, is almost Joy Division circa “The Only Mistake”. Then, as before, the anger and panic peter out, the wall of guitars subsiding back to an intermittent synthesiser pulse.

This band are good, you know. I’ve been saying it for years and it is a truth ye shall yet know. Promise."

This may sound a little excitable, but I still remember early days in London, living in a West Kensington bedsit, and that "The Field Is Cut" and other tracks from "Silent '88" were never off my personal stereo, soundtracking those trepidation-filled journeys to work, even before the blossoming of Hood with "Forlorn Valleys..." and "Cycle of Days and Seasons".

So when "Home Is Where It Hurts" came out, I was *back* on the case, for real. By now, the website had dispensed with capital letters entirely, of course.

"i have been raving about hood for some time now... the latest instalment of their ascent to being the best band in the world is, as ever, carefully and almost imperceptibly gradual.

the title track is their most accessible effort yet, a gentle bass pulse caressing the trademark hood guitar sound, the usual trebly single notes slightly muted by the production and some breathy, urgent vocal intonation.

on track 2, which i think is called "the fact that you failed", there are no vocals but just a network of guitar sounds, pulled along to make them their most joy division-ish yet, and ending in shrieks of feedback which could have been transported in from moods like "the light reveals the place" (from "rustic houses...") or even the early, stuttering but wonderful "sirens" single.

the rest of the single (at 26 minutes effectively a mini-album) registers more as a collection of ideas, as hood in their usual way experiment, this time with patterns of dub inamongst the rustic soundscapes of recent albums and the kind of whey-faced vocals that hovered above the pastoral shapes of "as evening changed the day". don't take your ears off hood for a moment, kids."

I didn't, as I fear you will discover with the next coupla posts. Believe me, these were succinct compared to those.

Wickford's Most Wanted

2008-10-15T05:55:00.000-07:00

Grinder "Wickford's So Boring ?" (Wax Trax, 7" EP)

Possibly what the word "curio" was invented for, this. It's a record that I bought for 10p from the boot of a car whilst attending the seismic global event that was Basildon's Anti-Poll Tax Festival in day, an event that featured Runrig, The Man From Delmonte, the very entertaining Automatic Slim and a spectacularly low attendance. But it was worth going just for managing to acquire this record: I could never have predicted how a single ten pence coin could have given me something quite so memorable.

The 3-track EP is a release on Wax Records of Long Riding, Basildon Essex and I'm ashamed to say it is the only Wax Records release I own (indeed, the only one I'm aware of: the cat no. being WAX 2, which means at most we have only half the Wax story here). I'm guessing that it came out in '78-'79. The cover pictures, in cheapo black and white, feature the 5 band members seemingly sitting around a rubbish dump (although perhaps it's just a very untidy allotment) with one of them sportingly dressed up as the subject of the first track, "Spiderman", beside an abandoned car wreck. The sleeve tells us who these chaps are: Terry-Ball, Si-Kic, Stu-Pid, Holy-Grail and, best of all, Dav-id. Stu wears a Rocky Horror Picture Show t-shirt; Dav has a bobble hat and scarf; the back sleeve shows that Terry, away from his spider garb, sports a flat cap and shades. Sounds great already, no ? (As for what that errant question mark in the EP title signifies, I've never been sure: my best guess remains that they just got overexcited with the Letraset, and "Wickford's So Boring" really remains a statement of fact rather than a rhetorical question).

"Spiderman", the tune on the A-side, is an instant classic, a jovial punk / pub-rock hybrid mocking Spiderman for being, basically, a rubbish superhero. Basically, he's got acne, he's a wimp, and he can't pull birds: "Spiderman thinks he's cool... [dramatic pause]... He ain't" [rollicking scratchy guitar]. There are also some random "2, 3, 4"s that recall Jilted John - again, not a bad reference point to where Grinder seem to be coming from. It seems odd, and incredibly unfair, from this distance that "Jilted John" or the Sham could go top ten, and yet Grinder probably sold about ten. And did we mention that the record is pressed delightfully yet rather unnecessarily on Spidey-red vinyl ?

Flip the disc over and there are two more remarkable numbers. First is "Furry Dice", a bang-on accurate summation of their home county, the music surprisingly jangly, the chords actually tuneful a la the Cockney Rejects' "It's Over", and there's a fantastic outro where the keyboards go all excitable and Terry-Ball gets consumed by the thought of his character's beloved danglers ("And they're only two pound / Plus 50p postage and packing / And I love 'em"). It features backing vocals from "Heather Leather, Jack-Et and Kay-Ottik", natch. And then comes a change of pace with "Other People", a spooky pseudo-slowie which, in its ultimate conclusion - "I hate other people" - delivers a common enough punky sentiment, just with endearing left-field charm.

FWIW, what experience I had of Wickford confirmed that it was, indeed, a tremendously tedious place, although no more so than Billericay, its dreary near-neighbour and partner under Basildon Council's alleged yoke. What Wickford always did have in its favour (apart, of course, from Grinder's patronage) was, rather bizarrely, an excellent record shop, Adrians, which rivalled much even of what the big smoke had to offer (essential vinyl purchases made from there included such gems as 1000 Violins' "If I Were A Bullet", and 14 Iced Bears "Precision").

So. Just one record cements Grinder as one of the best Essex bands ever, right up there with the Windmills, Catapult, er... oh, and Scalplock and Flyblown. "Wickford's So Boring" is stupid, mad and brilliant: exactly the kind of record that should reminds us of the greatness which independent labels can achieve. And while we're too young to have been around then, we have it on good authority that yes, John Peel did play it. Once.

Postscript: Proving that the internet can on occasion be a lifesaver, a couple of very helpful websites fill in the blanks: punk77 reveals that Grinder were formed that very year and had, somewhat disappointingly, real names: "Terry Luckett (vocals & daft costumes); Simon Mills (bass); Graham Filby (drums); Dave Smith (guitar) and Stewart Clark, on guitar. Reasonably popular on the local (Basildon, Essex) punk circuit, renowned for almost every song having a costume for Terry to dress up in...". The page also reveals, perhaps inevitably, that when "Terry left the band in 1982... we began to write more serious 'tunes'." Oh dear. Looking at Terry on the sleeve, a man who over time has become one of our true punk heroes, we feared that would have always been the outcome.

Meanwhile, Southendpunk confirms that Grinder were indeed from Wickford, "starting life as 'The Bin Liners'. Their first gig was December 14th, 1977 at Billericay school... Grinder soon gained a reputation for playing a fusion of punk rock and theatre, with Terry Luckett dressed in a different costume for almost every song... Perhaps a highlight for the band was wining the Roots Hall Battle Of The Bands competition in 1980, beating Alison "Alf" Moyets band into 2nd place... They seemed to almost be resident at Basildon's Van Gogh pub for a few years, and in fact were invited to play at the venues last ever gig. That night Grinder supported heavy metal act Samson, who unfortunately managed to empty the building!"

Hard to beat that, but finally we found a great description of the EP from Ugly Things: "Genius. It is obvious to me that Wickford wasn't boring at all as long as you hung out with the bold gents of Grinder. The songs range from primitive clunky riff-rock to DIY jangle of the highest order." A description which frankly puts it more perfectly, and far more succinctly than we were able to.

Kalibrate Me Utterly

2008-08-30T10:07:00.000-07:00

We all know that mixtapes are pretty hit and miss. There's a tendency to cram in as much as possible, shoehorning in a formulaic panoply of styles in the hope that something might stick, either with the punter or any passing A&R man - so you get, typiquement, a club banger, a lurve song, something conscious, something old-skool, some sex rhymes, a life story cut, and *far too many* collaborations. So the story of UKHH releases has been one of the listener having to fairly carefully mine a 75-minute mush in order to extract enough nuggets of inspiration to justify the purchase. Given that we only get three score years and ten, life is simply too short. But a good couple of years after S.Kalibre's "High Kalibre Mixtape" first appeared, we find we're still returning to it. And that seems good enough reason in itself to give it the retrospective treatment we haven't yet afforded to anything else of the genre...

We first heard the Kent rhymester, we think, with his guest verse on "Envy", from Dap-C's "Character Building" album in '04. What struck us first, even amidst the novelty of a homespun Newcastle rapper's full-length, was simply how distinctive Kalibre's own accent was - south-east of england roughneck, no attempt to put on either Americanisms nor standard London patois - and at the time, that was even rarer than it is now. But there was also something refreshingly no-nonsense about the rhymes themselves, his contribution starting with a crisp "for fuck's sake...". And though he's popped up in quite a few places since - notably with his bars stealing the show on Dap-C's "The Boy Who Cried Wolf", in a trademark verse where Kalibre combines the usual brusque, don't-mess Medway straight-talking with due reverence for the higher messages of KRS One - there has not really been enough of him around. That's one of the reasons the High Kalibre mixtape was so welcome.

The mixtape is hosted by Blade, which is a pretty good sign. Blade is one of the homestyle rappers who managed to combine integrity with longevity in the game: when he made it, however fleetingly, onto Top Of The Pops, that meant far more to us than other alleged UK breakthroughs, like a tame Dizzee sell-out getting to number one. We always think of Blade in the video for "Ya Don't See The Signs", pushing the flash car and the dancing girls out of the way and sticking a metaphorical middle finger up at the major label madness all around (a afflicting, as it would turn out, his and Mark B's deal with Virgin). Returning to S.Kalibre, for what it's worth, you can see that he does the middle finger thing literally on the tape's cover: we thought for a second it might be reconstruction of the infamous photo of Johnny Cash doing the same thing. While it might not be original or endearing, it's a hint that like the man in black, he's not going to be indulging any fools gladly.

With Kalibre curt to a fault, and with beats anchored by the other half of Hard Livin', producer Mike S, this tape sustains interest over some 27 tracks. Opener "Medway Story" brings the gritty horror of the Medway towns to life: an acknowledgement there's always been much more to them than Dickensian tourist whimsy and Rochester Castle, very little of it pleasant. "S.K.A.L.I.B.R.E", is a belter, again immeasurably helped rather than hindered by the lack of sampled hooks or backing vocals as the MC simply glides across the rhythm to introduce himself. On "Real Rap" Kalibre, assisted by Genesis Elijah, has a crystal clear take on modern day rap's foothold on impressionable UK youth: "You probably only been rapping since you saw 8 mile / I bet 50's your favourite MC". "Ride On You Idiots" is another one for the haters: again, short, sweet, confident, convincing.

Although the guest spots tend to be pretty well chosen (only on the overlong "UK Army", which features a cast of frankly too many, does the collabo thing really get out of hand), the downside is that however competent, few of the tonsils-for-hire are as welcome as S.Kalibre's own less-than-dulcet tones, which are after all what we've paid for. The guest spots that get closest to matching him are from Stateside rappers Syndrome, Q-Unique and Sabotawj on "3 Faces of Death" and "Westside Connection", while Manage's contribution to "Freedom" sets off Kalibre's nicely.

Another mark of quality is that the tape doesn't fall off at the close: indeed, it picks up seriously renewed momentum with the penultimate tune "Words From The Kalibre", a two minute tour de force of straight rhyming style ("not even the Churchill dog gonna nod to your shit") before concluding with an equally strong outro, in which S.Kalibre turns the typical mixtape on its head by finishing (rather than starting) with an autobiographical song, a potted history of Hard Livin' that charts the ups and downs of his musical outings thus far.

Yeah, there are probably 3 or 4 tracks here we can live without. But given how mad impatient we usually are, you can take that as leaving one hell of a hit-rate. So a heartfelt big up to S.Kalibre, for proving that the well-rounded mixtape was not just an impossible dream.

"21 singles"

2008-05-26T10:18:00.000-07:00

this is one what we wrote in 2002. sam from tasty was once kind enough to give it special mention, and as sam from tasty is a don, that made us very proud.

"well well well. as we exclusively dreamt about 18 months ago (wonder what freud would have made of that), the mary chain have a singles compilation out, which basically means they have released in cd format one of my favourite compilation tapes of all time, lovingly put together from a myriad of different formats of these tunes i grew up with. and though, as would be expected, the chronological approach means that the very pick of the crop are the first clutch of incendiary screamers, the record works really well in charting a natural evolution which never quite succumbed to temporary trends, even if ultimately they authored something rather more derivative than the initial blaze of feedback glory might ever have suggested.

it would be morally wrong to do anything other than start with the raging, rampaging early stuff. "upside down" even now induces toe tapping, head spinning joy every time a new bleat of feedback darts into the mix. if you've ever read the fantastic cavanagh tome on creation (which sparkles in part not least due to its depiction of the j&mc) you will have read the story of its recording, deep beneath waterloo station, with william reid sneaking back in to the studio to add layer upon layer of noise. listening to the record you can feel the trains charging overhead, the bass reverberating around the tiny studio, the playful anarchy of every fader being slammed up to ten and every remaining guitar track being filled with the type of wicked, wonderful white noise that best sums up the rollercoaster emotions of every true relationship. it's why, even though we are no longer the teenagers who first marvelled at their racket, the mary chain remain one of the greatest authors of love songs ever.

no sooner does "upside down" taper away than its place is taken by "never understand" - and from the moment the snare crashes in to harness the opening guitar SCREEEEOW it is just soul-affirmingly luminescent. put to one side the fact that every set of exams i ever did culminated in me going back to my bedroom, garret room, studio, bedsit or wherever to put this song on at maximum volume, feeling the stress dissipating as the neighbours swore. this was a song that ought to have gone top 5, where the melodies are hardly hidden, but which found like love's young dream that the public are fickle and had decided that stock aitken and waterman songs didn't give you instant migraine when you listened to them on your headphones, so somehow our own conviction that temporary illness was a small price to pay for such genius was a minority view. in other words, chart position: negligible. even by the time of "you trip me up" (track 3), we were beginning to realise that our na�ve fantasy of all bands sounding like the mary chain, and noisepop inevitably gatecrashing the charts and displacing the pap, was beginning to look misplaced. not that any of us cared, not least the mary chain themselves - at the third attempt they had, at last, written the perfect love song, hung on such an obvious, but so apposite metaphor, with jim reid imploring "i'd like to trip you up" - when luther or alexander would have settled for "i want to make you fall in love with me" but that just wouldn't have fitted so well with the seven shades of noise that surrounded his declaration - and the ultimate use of the greatest mary chain trick - the "additional tranche of feedback" which always came in at the moment that the listener's heart TRULY needed wrenching, and tended to pin me to the spot.

as you'll have guessed, we could probably wax lyrical-ish about the whole cd, but we hope the above gives you an idea of what the mary chain meant - no, mean - to us, and this includes not only their early peel sessions but also the whole of "psychocandy", which fleshed out the twin themes of romance and unadulterated clamour. we do mean it when we say that every one's a winner. we can pick personal highlights that punctuated certain stages of growing up - "april skies" which struck a blow for us laughed-at, messed-up kids in school by reaching the top 10, however much people decried it as "sell out" when perhaps it was just evolution; first hearing the delicious "sometimes, always" on the radio in northern ireland, in the car, and that warmth in knowing that even though hope sandoval's sultry vocal was a novel departure, the whole song still oozed mary-chainness (as well as the solace of hearing jim's voice come in to accompany her);... then at college, "reverence" - comedically banned by the bbc, with its only vaguely-dancey stylings meaning that uniquely amongst tunes from 1992 it hasn't dated - that went into the top 10 the same week the wedding present went into the top 20; "cracking up", the fabulous and wrongly-overlooked comeback on creation which soundtracked our own halycon summer of 1998, watching the world cup and wasting warm afternoons on clapham common... there are no bad tracks on here, just a journey from feedback ballads through almost-chart mellow to true americana to nineties pop noise, with the odd near-acoustic deviation.

some might say that they should have split up in 1987, left their legend for the future to rediscover, gone out in a haze of glory; but more than most bands, they retained the capacity to inspire, even when there were signs they were treading water they always seemed to re-emerge with top notch tunes and a new twist. we remember listening to "i love rock and roll" (and they did), the last song here and contrarian companion to tune 19, "i hate rock and roll" (and they did) - dumbfoundedly staring at each other as the horns came in, until one of the crew broke the silence by saying "i'm going to let them have that". they really could do anything."

sarah christmas party 1993

2008-03-02T02:34:00.000-08:00

i also found this in the boxes. as ever, this is verbatim and unimproved - please bear in mind that i was 20 at the time and the "beat poet" (whose generally negative comments are italicised) was 18...

"HEAVENLY + copious support

at the Thekla in Bristol, 22/12/93

The proceedings for this Sarah Records extravaganza were opened by the messy haze of arcane raucous post-glam punk popsters Action Painting! whose eminently unoriginal brand of spiky thrash tunes-by-numbers was nevertheless both entertaining and exhilarating; six songs, including the whirlwind singles "Classical Music" and current yob anthem "Mustard Gas".

Sort of begged the question, why ? If you're going to be rubbish, then why not just quit ?

Next up, Secret Shine. Any band who boast 5 guitarists have to be reckoned with, and a sterling set opening with their crossover indie hit "Loveblind" proved that they're still full of potential despite the occasional monochromatics of the last LP.

You had an idea of what you wanted from Secret Shine, and they fulfilled it, really. Best of the rest, after Heavenly.

Wetherby three-piece Boyracer are already veterans of the live scene, and they warmed the cockles of their ever-faithful Yorkshire posse by a no-frills, exuberant set full of the staccato punch of guitar and pained shouting that has come to epitomise their records. "Doorframe" was followed by competent renderings of "Black Fantastic Splitting", "David Byrne", "Cog" and, most extraordinarily, Even As We Speak's "One Step Forward". Boyracer still aren't as good as they think they are, but I can't really fault their enthusiasm.

Fairly rubbish. There's not much more to be said - you get a good impression from those two words.

Fourth band on, back from their Japanese tour, were Blueboy, who broke out from their normal understated pop timbre to brush off a few cobwebs and give us a brighter, brasher sound. "Meet Johnny Rave" was followed by an off-kilter "Candy Bracelet" and then a bunch of newies, including one ("Self-Portrait" ?) which was redolent of every manic pop thrill you could imagine. I've seen better from them, though.

Fair to middling... None of their songs stuck in my mind.

Second support came from the Orchids, who all took the stage wearing their coats and treated us to an almost exclusively original set of songs that start slowly but manage to weave their way into your affections so much that you can't help applauding at the end. They always manage to sound commercial without ever being obvious, which in these times is a sadly rare gift. On this evidence, no doubt the 'difficult' third album will be polished and a real grower. The middle aged bassist however dispelled their self-created "hard men of Glasgow" image by liberally sipping fruit juice between songs.

Quite impressed with the coats. Rather musical, in fact. I don't think anyone could say 'no'. A bit quieter than the other bands.

The bill, then, was topped by Heavenly, who I've seen somewhere between 6 and 10 times now, and who've never disappointed. "PUNK Girl" and "Atta Girl" were wheeled out alongside an especially barnstorming "Our Love Is Heavenly", the irresistible (if so muted on vinyl) "Sort of Mine", and their most successful attempt yet at the wordy joke duet "C Is The Heavenly Option", with Thekla soundman Dick doing a particularly impressive cameo in the Calvin Johnson role. Then it got a bit weird - well, it was Christmas after all. A medley of Cole Porter, the Smurfs and Lenny Kravitz was followed by drummer Matthew dressing as a vicar and massacring some sixties-type tune with a vigour worthy of his tacky heroes the Cramps. And that wes our lot.

It was fairly clear that everyone had come along to see Heavenly. I thought they were quite impressive, really."

sadly, most people now associate the thekla with a rather different heavenly. but not me... *sigh*.

a 'goodbye brighter' piece

2008-02-27T13:04:00.000-08:00

found this, to my great surprise, in the boxes from the move - dates from early 1994, i guess. note no editing out of all the embarrassing bits, including the wrong words, the wrong adjectives, the cringeworthy opening, and attributing entirely the wrong song title to one of my favourite songs. i was quite intrigued to find that a number of these memories were just as vivid when writing brighter reissue reviews many yrs later...

"I was talking to Tim Chippington (Orlando, Waccamole, Timbertoes, namedrop, namedrop) about Brighter's last EP, 1992's piquant "Disney"; we were lamenting the fact how it sounded like an epitaph. The closing tracks were "Never Ever" (chorus: "Goodbye, goodbye...") and the gorgeous "End", in which the melodies scuttle obliquely behind Keris Howard's evocative singing: "Maybe this could be the end..."

Brighter were hardly the longest lived or highest profile band, but every little thing they did was... well, magical. Consisting of a series of drum machines, plus Keris (words and guitars), Alison (guitar and Eric Cantona T-shirt) and Alex (bass and boyish features), they emerged from Sussex with "Around The World In Eighty Days", a lush, slow, deeply dreamy EP compared in the press to the Mary Chain and the Cocteaus, but probably baring closer comparison at the time to the gentler moods of labelmates the Field Mice or St. Christopher.

But with Brighter, there was such a sense of personal politics, of justified world weariness... a thread running through thier early torch song "Tinsel Heart", with its evocation of, "this stinking little country", the beautiful "Christmas", still my favourite ever song, and the overpowering "Poppy day", which mourned the passing over of purity ("she used to have a soul. but you get a good price for those"). And all the time the band were musically maturing.

"Noah's Ark" was "Around The World" part two, a similarly flawless guitar-strewn exercise in soft whispers and melancholy. Not until 1991's "Laurel" did the music start to breathe, freed by slight arrangements, an almost total absence of percussion, and touches of keyboard on "Frostbite" and "Summer Becomes Winter". The lyrics remained simplistic metaphors on both love and life, and this set up the brilliant final EP. Opening with "Killjoy", a typically bitter, winding guitar-picking anthem, it peaked with "Hope Springs Eternal", which will forever to me ring with the disappointment of the last election. "Has our fight just gone ?" - another song about giving in.

I saw them first in May 1991, supporting the Orchids and the Hit Parade at the Islington Powerhaus. They were awesome, in an unassuming, self-absorbed kind of way: even a version of Depeche Mode's "I Just Can't Get Enough" seemed to fit perfectly into their gossamer-gentle scheme of things. It was, pathetically and frighteningly, like love at first sight. Subsequent gigs in Oxford and Bristol demonstrated an alarming inability to break out from their on-stage insularity, but my correspondents from the South East assured me that they tore the house down in a bizarre appearance in front of the assorted hooded tops at Writtle Agricultural College.

They played their last ever show at the Bull and Gate, Kentish Town, in front of an encouraging and appreciative hardcore audience. They broke free at last from the confines of shyness to the tune of a fine, swashbuckling set and two encores. They may not be missed by the music press, but that's why those of us who've thrilled to and been lulled by them have to put the record straight."

i listened to brighter again this morning. now, at least as much as in 1994, they are still of the utmost importance. what is so pleasing, in 2008, is not being remotely alone in this.

discovering sarah (part one)

2008-01-31T11:58:00.000-08:00

i can't pretend to have been there at the start of sarah. i had a friend who was lending me lots of fanzines, and i even sent off for some myself, so i was kind of aware of the label and the names of the bands and had read interviews with some of them and there were glimpses on compilation tapes, too: but i hadn't bought the sha-la-las or the kvatches at the time, just read them secondhand, in a spot we had on the edge of the school field, just around the corner from the playground.

i even remember borrowing "the shadow factory" lp when it came out, but i only taped (i.e. really rated) three tunes off it at the time: "fabulous friend", "i'm in love with a girl who doesn't know i exist" and "sure to see". and although the latter, in particular, hit me like a sledgehammer, it wasn't until i borrowed the lp again a few months later that i started to really understand - perhaps struck by that phrase on the sleeve, "full of wrong notes and wrong chords but crammed with right everything else's" - and bought my own copy soon after.

as far as the singles were concerned, meanwhile, sarah 7"s (and that was all the sarah product there was for a while) circulated at school: they were lent, loaned and loved or loathed just as much as wedding present records, as metallica records, as anything else that did the rounds back then. the 1st sarah 45 that really struck me was the second sea urchins' single: and while "please rain fall", the one that all the fanzines were mad for, seemed ok, it was "solace" (the one that wasn't on "shadow factory") that kind of blew me away. still does, especially when i dig out my original tape of it, where the vinyl crackles brilliantly as the song begins, flickering it into life.

yet sarah only became a proper obsession from 1989, and i recall the crucial moment perfectly because it was john peel playing "sensitive". he introduced it by reading from a note that clare & matt had given him which suggested in their usual understated way that it was one of the best records ever. i listened, and i wasn't initially sure it was - yet something in that last two minutes, the instrumental section that bobby wratten later admitted he loved so much, suddenly made me sit upright and stare at my radio, and think "i must buy that record". and so the next opportunity i had, i was up to london on the train and grabbed it at rough trade in covent garden.

this, along with playing the record incessantly, was the start of an avalanche, and apart from the single-number sarah singles (including, sadly, "solace") it was still possible in those days to catch up on other bits of the back catalogue without too much trouble. "emma's house" was bought in rhythm records in camden: many others required only a visit to basildon "our price". and we must remember, however much we now see matinee or cloudberry as "the new sarah", that amongst the many differences between sarah and other is a crucial, consumerist one - availability. for while many preferred to send off postal orders to clare and matt, who would usually send the records out from 'the garden flat' with little handwritten notes full of "...um..."s, it was usually the case that you really could go, not only to any local independent record store worth its salt, but to quite a few chain stores in unfashionable towns, and buy sarah 7"s.

which, of course, would not have mattered save for the one other thing that is really important. go back to the sleevenotes of "shadow factory" again, and what should be a template for any label:

"POLITICS, not as some distant unreal end... no sanctimonious 'socialist' pose hawked popstarry-eyed with a thatcherist gleam when it comes to THE SELL, but something that's basic and pure..."

and, as such, from then on there are a million sarah memories, many of which yes, we have bored you with before. but hey, i'm on a nostalgia tip, and with no more brighter records to review there's no other theatre for such reminiscence anymore, so here's a starter 10:

* sitting at the ostrich pub in bristol's waterside before a sarah summer party at the thekla and commenting in passing that i had bought ivy's "avenge" on cd single (which included the two tunes from their initial 7" "wish you were") and receiving out of the blue an absolute broadside from a girl i'd never met before shrieking "you can't do that!" and going genuinely apoplectic that i hadn't bought the two 7"s instead. i never found out her name, but i think i love her;

* not having a ticket to get in to said party, but being shepherded in anyway by a kindly bouncer who spotted as i loitered with intent at the quayside that i was wearing a bristol rovers t-shirt: if i'd just been wearing my regulation horizontal-striped shirt, or the famous sarah cherries, i'd never have got in;

* the bloke at revolver records in bristol who always "tsk"'d at me when i bought sarah records and suggested i broaden my mind. he often cited gallon drunk, in particular, in this regard;

* harvey williams going up to keris howard at the bull and gate circa 1992: "how are you, keris ? inside, i mean ?" - don't know why, just tickled us;

* there were frequently sarah gigs at bristol's fleece and firkin but my abiding high and low are probably (1) going up to amelia fletcher after a typically amazing heavenly show - the first time i'd ever plucked up the courage to say a timid "hello" to a pop star; and (2) the sweetest ache playing once when, for whatever reason, the crowd had decided not to clap or cheer between songs, so when they got to the end of each one, there was just a kind of awkward silence that we were all too shy to break. still makes me cringe slightly even now;

* surfing on a friend's back (you probably had to be there) at an even as we speak gig in oxford, while the meadows brothers (the sugargliders had just supported) did the same right next to us;

* sarah band people on tv: not so much the well-documented stardom of cathy rogers, more that we swear we can remember the guitarist out of action painting! helping out shampoo on top of the pops, and amelia assisting huggy bear on that amazing "the word" appearance;

* being so keen to get to the islington powerhaus in time to see brighter open up that me and my mate - zoooming straight from school - arrived before the place even opened and clare had to shoo us politely away as we unwittingly wandered in the "stage door";

* john peel reading out forthcoming gigs and inadvertently describing gentle despite as "genital desperate" (which at the time would not have been a surprising name for a band feted by j.p);

* tramway live at the thekla - britpop attitude and swagger before it got trendy.

and these memories may not seem all that, but the point is, if we all have 1,000,000 of our own (and i fear many more of mine will follow), when you add them all together that's a highbury fieldsful of ace memories.

*group hug*.

shalawambe, amayenge, the four brothers and the bhundu boys - zimbabwean and zambian bands of the old school

2008-01-04T23:36:00.000-08:00

"I saw the Bhundu Boys at Glastonbury and they solved the world's problems. They knew the answers and they related them to us. It was that simple. They collected us together, muddy and exhausted and we danced. I had nowhere to sleep and nowhere to go; I was tired and alone and downright fucking lonely. But for the time the Bhundus played nothing mattered."

- Clare, from SARAH 4

if you are a fan of the greatness of c86 the record - and let's face it, anyone still passing thru this moribund fanzine probably is - these are the kind of songs you should be super-interested in, you know, if you don't have them already. when you consider that all these guys, despite differences in styles, somehow mix the guitar sound of mighty mighty with the trebly jangle you might expect from the chesterf!elds and the kind of roving, random basslines and complex percussion manouvres that turned up on ron johnson records or the mbira-style guitars that decorate some of the shrubs' tunes, for example, it is really not that great a leap. it's only the vocal style, and of course the language barrier, that might seem truly unfamiliar.

and of course all four of these bands, just as much as mccarthy and the shrubs to name but two, were responsible for reasonably ace peel sessions (including versions of "rugare" and "rudo chete"). listen to the early bhundu boys stuff, before they became world music posterboys, and it's like hearing those tentative yet beautiful early mccarthy intros - the first b.b. 7" has all the nervous, muted but electrifying glory of "red sleeping beauty". or check out the "falling and laughing" style strumming or the joyful "felicity"-style whistles of all bands. best of all, because it's getting so hard to find this stuff, it makes it all the more rewarding when you find any (ooh, on a similar theme, the first wolfhounds comp - parading fab tunes like "cruelty" and "stars on the tarmac" - is now on i-tunes, if like us you never managed to track it in yr local secondhand shop).

also, how fab is this, but shalawambe's day job was actually being farmers. can you imagine farmers from the uk being in a band making such a fabulous noise ? no, of course not - a band of farmers from this country would sound like hard-fi. so come on - do you need any more encouragement than the fact that any band with a "sha-la" in their name are gonna make you smile ? go for it, and believe us we are serious (when are we ever not): there is so much more where these came from.

best places to start:
the bhundu boys: "the shed sessions" (2xCD of early singles and recordings)
four brothers: "the hits of the four brothers volume 2"
shalawambe have a couple of tracks on the "zambiance!" compilation
amayenge feature both on "zambiance!" and also "zambush volume 1: zambian hits of the 80s". the songs are better than the puns!

as you can tell, we're struggling to track down shalawambe and amayenge stuff in particular, so any suggestions always welcome...

2007-08-26T12:19:00.000-07:00

"thrilled skinny are the best band ever"

that phrase, this man once told us at a sarah gig in oxford, would be a great name for a fanzine. given that t.s were, loosely speaking, where indie-pop met discharge, we would go further and suggest that it would also be a not-too controversial statement of FACT.

when we were first alerted to shambling pop-drama "so happy to be alive" by the john peel show late one midweek evening it was one of those moments - like hearing "sensitive" or even "kik off" - where we just had to jump on the first train to the smoke that weekend and scour every 7" rack until we found it. in fact, "so happy" was one of their poppier numbers: as evidenced by the sadly underproduced blur that was their 22 track lp debut "they said they wouldn't but we did", their real raison d'etre was insanely fast, punky numbers with decidedly non-leafy and usually gloriously disjointed lyrics. they were also very big on household appliances and references to the everyday and the mundane - "another song about carpets and floorboards" was one title, in an indie scene that was indubitably fab but not always renowned for its self-deprecating humour, that epitomised their approach.

there is a good bit on their blog on how they mercilessly stickered parts of london - we can confirm that as wide-eyed teenagers venturing from the home counties to londres in the late 80s, we spotted those same stickers at seemingly every central tube station and genuinely concluded that t.s. were either (1) very popular amongst the capital's cognoscenti or at least (2) had the benefit of an astutely managed proto-guerrilla marketing campaign from some kind of indie street team. on both counts we were, of course, spectacularly incorrect.

some other fond t.s. memories include seeing them support the wedding present ("good evening, we're the stylistics and this is "i can't give you anything but my love"), picking up one of their absurdist lo-fi own-label comps with brilliantly funny sleeve notes (one of the best £1s we've ever spent), and arriving at university and chatting with a fellow fresher to find she had actually played violin on simon goalpost's extraordinarily wonderful solo 7" "off shopping trolley". very rarely have i been so impressed. also, we still proudly possess a postcard on which simon goalpost had scrawled a quick hello after we'd sent off for their later "teenage dream" 7"...

anyway, what brings our usual cock-eyed reverie to mind is that it is now possible to download four tunes from back in the (hey)day via their mysp. listen to the chugga proto-hardcore bassline on "psp" and at the same time marvel at the chaos this sort of thing caused when their tunes were cunningly sandwiched between the driscolls and strawberry story on pretty much any compilation tape you might care to mention. more good stuff here.

in dub with these times in spite of these times all time thrilled skinny top ten: 1. so happy to be alive 2. it's a good doss 3. let there be shelving 4. biscuits in the tin 5. common ground 6. teenage dream 7. love rut 8. media music part two 9. insecurity 10. quicker than the blinking eye

2007-08-17T11:56:00.000-07:00

the wedding present. 1996.

this is the only other thing i found in that notepad - having obviously been inspired to prose by possibly the band i've seen the, um fourth most number of times (and who are still slowly accruing). it's not exactly incisive critique, but it's mine. all sorts of other interesting memories are enmeshed around this gig, but all that you are going to know is that i drank at least twice as much alcohol that night as i could even begin to dream of managing at a show nowadays.

wedding present / cable
top of o'reilly's, nottingham 27/2/96.

First off, Cable. They opened with "the colder climate", a brave move given how it descends into several minutes of wilful contemplative quiet strumming, but one of their best songs. The set was full of quiet / loud tricks and forays into appropriately taut, wiry instrumental bits before they go all semi-grunge again. Actually not bad, better than on record & worth keeping an eye on.

Within seconds of the wedding present started, I knew it was up to all expectation & the near 7-year wait. "Sucker" seemed over before it had started, but there were so many songs & all so good. new (female) bass player too providing the odd backing vocal. The whole of "Mini" was rightly aired, even Mercury with its brilliant slow burn lyric & clanging guitars, "Dare" was launched ferociously into, the 2 Island singles were wheeled out just to show how the new stuff's better. Top of it all, "My Favourite Dress", about 13th song in. I mean... fantastic. Finished with "flying saucer" & left me speechless.

notts at night photo by mark thornton

2007-08-16T11:53:00.000-07:00

heavenly. 1996.

the text below is verbatim what i wrote in my notepad when i got home from this gig in nottingham in 1996. you can tell it's verbatim not least because the support band, bis, were entirely new to me then (i do remember amelia saying sthg along the lines of "i can't believe we're being supported by our favourite band") and for some reason i thought they were irish not scotch (and yes, they were on top of the pops within the year). you may also detect a downer already on my part re that particular city, which was basically because when i left my house to go to this gig, i had to dive down a side street to avoid a couple of kids that had marched me to a cashpoint and threatened to kill me two weeks earlier. er, anyway, heavenly were always an astonishingly good live band, and with the exception of napalm death and the fall, possibly still the band i've seen the most times. and it's a gig that matters to me because it was a pick-me-up, and in those pre-internet days it was pure fluke i ever knew about it - i'd literally been on a bus on alfreton road when i'd spotted a poster in the window of a shop with what looked like heavenly's logo, and on closer inspection later in the week, it turned out that it was, indeed, a plug for this:

Heavenly / bis / sugar & lust
Narrowboat, Nottingham 19/1/96

The bands appeared in ascending order of merit, but descending order of self-importance.

S&L are local kids, they started well then tailed off into general TFC-pastiche. An ill advised stab at Happy Days was the low spot.

Bis took the stage, 3 young-ish, fashionable looking irishpeople (they are Heavenly's favourite band). They were flawless, but very hard to pin down - imagine a Riot Grrrl band, except who can play their instruments, especially guitars, with a degree of Big Flame-ish panache, who can service shouted slogans with staccato rhythms, who've been listening to Pulp and the undertones. If you remember late 80s Dutch japester rhythmeisters Buy off the Bar (yes I do, just about) you'll like Bis. I certainly wouldn't rule out buying the single.

Now Heavenly never get stale & they're always slightly better than I was expecting. I suppose having released absolutely nil during 1995, what with helping out Nick Heyward etc & trying to find a new record label, it would have been greedy of me to expect just the back catalogue, but having been blitzed by an opening "modestic" several times more vital than the LP version, I was a tad disappointed that the next 7 songs were newies, though the absolutely brilliant one with the tambourine that sounded a bit like Tramway's 1991 Thekla christmas treat is indeed the new single and already the best song of 1996. Also it was good to hear a lyric about Nick Hornby. Anyway, the set rounded off with "Me & my madness" and in the atmospheric, Jericho Tavern-meets-Camden falcon-esque upstairs room, the smile on my face just stubbornly refused to subside.

And then came the encore. "Atta girl", & I dissolved into a dizzy smiling mess as galaxies collided and comets flew into black holes & Nottingham was all lit up & attractive and welcoming just for a few minutes.

the "new single", of course, was "trophy girlfriend". no idea why i thought bis sounded anything like pulp, though.

2006-12-04T03:34:00.000-08:00

good day. these pages are intended for the old stuff, some respite from all that "new" music and other new things we oft go on about in the other place. while most items we wrote between the dawn of time and er, 2004 have long since been lost, a few extracts may reappear here at irregular intervals, to sate our own nostalgia really but also because we need somewhere to put the fragments of past reviews that we have left, before the computer explodes under sheer weight of music.