7"

Great band - awful album

2008-10-26T09:50:00.000-07:00

A few years ago I read a review of Foo Fighters "In Your Honor", the album that was subtitled "One loud. One not so loud", but I would subtitle "Americans Can't Spell". The reviewer wrote of this epic double album just two phrases: One good. One not so good.

How is it that so many great bands can make shockingly bad albums. When paying bills happens because you sell albums, it's only normal that mediocre albums should occur, especially for that "difficult second album", for example Rage Against the Machine's "Evil Empire". However, some bands seem intent on making really really bad albums. What was up with Red Hot Chili Peppers' One Hot Minute, Green Day's Warning or U2's Zooropa. What were Garbage thinking when they made Beautiful Garbage?

The reason I'm writing this article is that last night I watched the amazing Bloc Party on Jools Holland. I know, I know, they're trying to do something different with this album, but really? This? Flux was something different. This is something awful.

dan le sac VS Scroobius Pip

2008-10-14T12:12:00.000-07:00

Guess who I'm going to see tomorrow night?

Summer sucks.

2008-09-10T02:49:00.000-07:00

I shouldn't think that the title needs justifying, considering last time I saw the large ball of fire in the sky I was abroad. Summer however also breeds other sucky offspring. For a start there's the full blown manflu I have at the moment, liquidising my brain and making my face feel like it's been attacked by a cheese grater. This, however, isn't a health-related blog, but rather a music blog.

Summer sucks for audiophiles due to a total lack of new and exciting music. Every innovative band is dragging it's drunken drummer round all the summer festivals, either to hear other bands that aren't releasing new music, or to play the same tunes they were playing in April, the last time I wrote on this blog.

The last release I was genuinely excited about was Does It Offend You, Yeah?'s "You have no idea what you're getting yourself into". Ah, me! bring on the rain.

Bleep, bleep, bleep!!

2008-04-27T06:33:00.000-07:00

Oh, what a geek I am!

Hands up anyone who played Sonic the Hedgehog, Mario Bros, Zelda or Street Fighter for hours on end when they were a kid... Surely it can't just be me, but maybe I am the only one that while at work, find myself humming the theme tune to "Link's Awakening", or "The Electic Egg Zone".

So a little while ago I got into bands that usually only 14-year-olds listen to, like Hadouken!, Crystal Castles, and :( (aka Colonopenbracket). These bands really are, in my opinion, the new punk, and while not exactly clever or intelligent music, they are setting out to discover some new territories. Alot of these bands are armed only with broken 80's keyboards, circuit-bent drum machines, and Gameboys. It's through these bands that I've recently got into Chiptune - the most geeky genre ever.

The thought behind Chiptune is to take an old Commodore 64, an Atari, or a Gameboy, and compose music played exclusively with the bleeps and noise generated by the sound chips on board these machines. Don't get me wrong, a lot of these artists just make generic Eurocheese tunes, that would be very at home on a Nintendo game cartridge, but many others are making beautiful music. Check out Pixelh8, and Bitshifter, for a real taste of what Chiptune is capable of.

So I've dug out my Gameboy, bought a tracker for the thing, and am hooked. You can hear my attempts on The Last Living Soul's Myspace page.

Sex, Drugs, and Bleep'n'roll!

You better believe it

2008-03-10T12:12:00.000-07:00

"You're just another girl looking for love, looking for love" Sammy sings to me when I enter their Myspazz. Only I'm not, I'm a mid-twenties-goatee-wearing-music-loving-bloke looking for cool tunes.

Ok Tokyo are 3 boys that make incredibly fun and catchy pop. It's big, but it's definitely not clever. The self-declared Lords of Adventure Rock are currently touring with Mumm-ra, and release (or unleash) their first single "You Better Believe It" on the 31st of this very month. You can order it from Rough Trade.

Goodies in the mail

2008-03-03T13:02:00.000-08:00

Today I received goodies in mail. The brilliant We Are Scientists' new single "After Hours" fell through my letterbox this morning, unleashing it's catchy chorus and cribs-esque guitar riff.

A rather special addition to my collection.

Death Cab!

2008-02-25T14:25:00.000-08:00

Death Cab! Death Cab! Death Cab! Death Cab! Death Cab! Death Cab! Death Cab! Death Cab! Death Cab! Death Cab! Death Cab! Death Cab! Death Cab! Death Cab! Death Cab! Death Cab! Death Cab! Death Cab! Death Cab! Death Cab! Death Cab! Death Cab! Death Cab!Death Cab! Death Cab! Death Cab! Death Cab! Death Cab!

Do you like my new song? It's in celebration of the fact that a brilliantly talented band are releasing what I'm sure will be a hugely fantastic album.

Sideprojects

2008-02-24T14:19:00.000-08:00

So my first post was, essentially, a side-project post. Truth be told, although there are many new bands doing exciting things out there, the people that have the means to record these ideas so that they don't sound wind-tunnelesque are people that already have the contacts and equipment - for example from their main, well-known band.

Pin Me Down are a collaboration between Bloc Party's Russell Lissack and New York based songstress Milena Mepris. You can usually catch Russell peering at his guitar from under the seemingly Loreal-sponsored fringe that covers most of his face like cousin It's indie twin. His staccato guitar hooks are still present alongside the electronic dance beats and pop tunes, and blend well with Kylie, ehem, I mean Milena's vocals. Together, the pair of them make some very acceptable party tunes that I'm sure will be on the stereo at my barbecues this summer.

Foxboro Hot Tubs are a very different side-project. Rumoured to consist, basically, of all three members of the present Green Day line-up, it could be described as the pop-punk trio doing the twist. They may be retro to the max, however the same squeaky-clean sound that has dominated the band's recordings since Warning prevails. Billie Joe has disguised his vocals slightly on a few songs such as Mother Mary, but are pretty recognisable on the brilliant Stop Drop and Roll. I hope they do some gigs as the new outfit so I can put on shiny shoes, and get retro.

Foy Vance and Thom Stone

2008-02-20T10:36:00.000-08:00

“Sorry, where?”

This is the response I got from, well, everybody when telling them I was going to see a gig at MilkwoodJam. Possibly the nicest gig venue in Swansea is completely unknown, largely due to a total lack of publicity for the place. Unless your day to day life takes you past the venue’s ground floor entrance wedged between clothes shops and a casino, there are very few other ways you would hear about gigs there. MilkwoodJam can boast, however, of being really quite a nice place, and hence word-of-mouth is spreading. I was dragged along to check out the venue a couple of months ago by a friend to see a rather sub-standard band that had come all the way to Swansea from 1992, and may have been related in some way to the Corrs. The music was… interesting, but the venue is pretty neat. So it was pretty easy for Steve to convince me to go along to see Foy Vance supported by Thom Stone last night. The gig was an exercise in how the traditional soulful-voice/acoustic-guitar and little else can be carried out in very different ways.

A figure stumbled out from back stage and stood by the bar. Pete leaned over to me. “What do you reckon he’s one of the acts?” Beneath a huge mop of hair that made him look like a rejected member of the Kooks and in a tank-top that could have been passed down through generations of the Stone family, Thom was ordering a drink. Maybe it was his shuffling feet, or maybe it was his playful but nervous grin that stopped him looking like the kind of painful scenester that bounces along on the front row of whichever gig NME is promoting that week.
Pretty soon Thom was on stage with his guitar. Simple chords, simple song structures, simple melodies, and whole heaps of honesty, talent, and soul. Each song was punctuated with a quick bob of a bow, a thank you, and a few seconds of him rearranging his hair into the same wind-tunnel-resident look. Admittedly when he started playing, my instant reaction was “Oh, no, not another one”, but after a few minutes of bluesy, folky, heartfelt and above all British talent, I was hooked. If Matt Costa was English, he’d be Thom Stone.

Next up was Foy Vance, who’s tunes you have probably heard during down tempo moments of every TV Drama on at the moment. The Irishman emerged with his guitar, and introduced himself before breaking into his first song. His voice was that of a large gospel singer trapped in a small Irishman’s body; deliciously raspy and absolutely huge. He alternated songs with just him and a guitar, with songs where he would record loops live of his guitar, beat boxing, backing vocals and keyboard, and then proceed to sing the main vocals over the wonderful cacophony he had just singlehandedly created. The first time he did this, it was surprising original, the second time it gimmicky, and before long he was getting out a violin bow to use on his acoustic, and plugging his custom Telecaster into an amp the size (and shape) of a grapefruit. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with this kind of showmanship, and what he did was very clever, but the songs, and especially his voice are strong enough to be breathtaking without all the toys. I would have preferred to have seen him with a full band, keeping the music raw. But on a small-ish UK tour a drummer and bass player would have tripled the costs. My full respect goes out to any acoustic act that takes a laptop on stage with them, and uses it without becoming cheesey at any time, and amongst the electronics and over-rehearsed pedal-stomping, Foy’s voice and songs where what rang out to his audience. How he created his sound became unimportant in comparison to what he was creating.

Check out their myspaces here and here, and see if you can catch the rest of the tour.

First Post.

2008-02-17T04:19:00.000-08:00

For my first post I thought it most fit to introduce you to my most recent purchase. No, I haven't bought The New Sins, only their 7" - "It doesn't work like that".

Those of you who know Lou Hayter (left) from her synthpop, keyboard playing in New Young Pony Club needn't grab your glowsticks and alchopops; we're talking more Ninjatune/Postal Service than Klaxons/Hadouken.

The New Sins manage to sound fresh and relevant, while still maintaining the comfort of sounds you've heard before - probably a few decades ago. Make sure you check out the video directed by Cathal O'Brien and Rumia Bloch.