I wish the ape a lot of success.
Stereo Sisterhood / Blog Graveyard:
- After The Sabbath (R.I.P?) ; All Ages ; Another Nickel (R.I.P.) ; Bachelor ; BangtheBore ; Beard (R.I.P.) ; Beyond The Implode (R.I.P.) ; Black Editions ; Black Time ; Blue Moment ; Bull ; Cocaine & Rhinestones ; Dancing ; DCB (R.I.P.) ; Did Not Chart ; Diskant (R.I.P.) ; DIYSFL ; Dreaming (R.I.P.?) ; Dusted in Exile ; Echoes & Dust ; Every GBV LP ; Flux ; Free ; Freq ; F-in' Record Reviews ; Garage Hangover ; Gramophone ; Grant ; Head Heritage ; Heathen Disco/Doug Mosurock ; Jonathan ; KBD ; Kulkarni ; Landline/Jay Babcock ; Lexicon Devil ; Lost Prom (R.I.P.?) ; LPCoverLover ; Midnight Mines ; Musique Machine ; Mutant Sounds (R.I.P.?) ; Nick Thunk :( ; Norman ; Peel ; Perfect Sound Forever ; Quietus ; Science ; Teleport City ; Terminal Escape ; Terrascope ; Tome ; Transistors ; Ubu ; Upset ; Vibes ; WFMU (R.I.P.) ; XRRF (occasionally resurrected). [If you know of any good rock-write still online, pls let me know.]
Other Place. // One Band. // Another Band. // Spooky Sounds. // MIXES. // Thanks for reading.
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
LET’S DANCE!
A round-up of new British bands who are, like, good.
Over the past few months I’ve seen or otherwise come into contact with quite a few genuinely excellent new British bands, and every time I mean to get round to tell you about them and don’t get round to it, which is quite criminal of me, cos this is exactly the kind of inspiring malarky I should be going out of my way to encourage, goddamnit.
I now have enough of a backlog to actually put together a fairly lengthy round-up of various kids and , er, non-kids who are out there kicking up a worthwhile storm. Most will probably be old news to close followers of what we may loosely call the ‘good British bands’ scene - or possibly the ‘underground’ if you wanna get pretentious about it, put on yr shades and look mean (and who doesn’t every now and then?). But I realise there are those of you who’ve got better things to do than spend your evenings in loud, dimly lit caverns, communicating in a kind of incomprehensible cliquey argot and routinely getting deafened by any gang of local losers who’ve got a fuzzbox and don’t know how to use it, all in the vain expectation of occasionally encountering a group like the ones outlined below. So hopefully I can do those of you less than enamoured by small time gig ritual a favour here by pointing you straight at the gravy, so to speak.
They’re in alphabetical order to avoid accusations of favouritism, so if any of these groups are playing anywhere near you in future, you’d be well advised to check them out, or just buy their records or whatever.
PART ONE (A - K):
Big Joan
Thus far, I’ve only had the pleasure of hearing one recording from Big Joan, on the 'Noise Annoys' compilation from Farm Girl Records (also featuring several other band son this list), but boy is it a stormer!
Gutsy, authentically shredded female vox, shrieking no-wave guitar demolition, a rough, bluesy swing and good dose of unmitigated hardcore noise violence... It sounds kinda like Mars eating the Geraldine Fibbers as Roland S. Howard looks on in dismay. And if that means anything to you, I guess you probably already own it. I’m unable to comment on the size of their hands, but I’ll set up with you, Big Joan. http://www.bigjoan.com/
Blood Red Shoes
Now how about this for a kick-ass recipe for a band; take one of those excitable shouty guys who used to front the much missed Cat on Form, and get him letting loose on drums. Add a mean, ice-cool guitar-slinging young lady. He hammers the drums crippled octopus style like a wide-eyed innocent who just saw the face of god in a Lightning Bolt record. She coolly throws out relentless idiot-savant riffage that puts me in mind of nothing so much as, well, Winnebago Deal, if you’re familiar with them. Headbangable! And they both yell through short, spiky call and response vocal routines straight outta Delta 5 or the Au Pairs….. quick, stoppy-starty and straight to the point with loads of that old Cat on Form mania showing through, but also ROCK and FUN and LET’S DANCE.
What can possibly go wrong?
www.catonform.co.uk/bloodredshoes/
Hookers Green No # 1
Hookers Green’s debut album “On How the Illustrious Captain Moon Won the War for Us” stands as a strange and promising bedroom music project, but it’s in a live setting that these five shy kids from Aberdeen really find their feet, and the results, which I’ve been lucky enough to witness twice thus far, are little short of astonishing. Open-minded, ambitious, and slightly crazed, these boys have about the most joyful, instinctive instrumental interplay I’ve seen in years, swinging wildly between a multitude of styles and musical ideas, occasionally touching base with thrashy art-punk spazz-out, Flaming Lips / Spiritualised style cosmic pop or death disco rhythm workouts before diving straight into the deep-end of a kind of staggering, nameless indie kid jazz whose combination of highly energised, off-kilter force, freewheeling improvisational virtuosity and jaw-dropping psychic idea sparkin’ reminds me of nothing so much as prime ‘50s bebop. “Fucking hell..” as audience members have been heard to remark out loud in the silence following the group’s first song. One of the most talented and exciting live bands in the country right now, no fucking question. www.hookersgreen.com
Hunting Lodge
With a sound resembling what might happen if grizzly bears formed a band, Hunting Lodge (residing half in Bristol, half in Southampton) have the air of a frightening force unleashed, their name already spoken in hushed tones. Whilst the similarities are clearly accidental rather than deliberate, the oft-cited Birthday Party comparison is apt, conveying both the chaotic, unhinged violence of the Hunting Lodge experience and the more lithe, perverse structures underlying their aggression. Rather than shock therapy goth throwbacks though, Hunting Lodge remain as unadorned and down to earth as it’s possible to get, their style birthed in the mud and constipated filth of British outsider hardcore, sharing aesthetic territory with the intimidating likes of Penthouse, Bilge Pump and Part Chimp. And in Seth Cooke, they have the most perfect drummer a rock band could ask for, his awe-inspiring battering giving a gleeful joy to proceedings that prevents the band’s catastrophic racket from ever collapsing into nihilistic stupor as the rest of the band stomp across whatever space is available to them, axes raised and eyes closed as if imagining themselves in combat with invisible beasts... Rah! Debut album ‘Energy Czar’ out now; http://www.hunting-lodge.org/
A round-up of new British bands who are, like, good.
Over the past few months I’ve seen or otherwise come into contact with quite a few genuinely excellent new British bands, and every time I mean to get round to tell you about them and don’t get round to it, which is quite criminal of me, cos this is exactly the kind of inspiring malarky I should be going out of my way to encourage, goddamnit.
I now have enough of a backlog to actually put together a fairly lengthy round-up of various kids and , er, non-kids who are out there kicking up a worthwhile storm. Most will probably be old news to close followers of what we may loosely call the ‘good British bands’ scene - or possibly the ‘underground’ if you wanna get pretentious about it, put on yr shades and look mean (and who doesn’t every now and then?). But I realise there are those of you who’ve got better things to do than spend your evenings in loud, dimly lit caverns, communicating in a kind of incomprehensible cliquey argot and routinely getting deafened by any gang of local losers who’ve got a fuzzbox and don’t know how to use it, all in the vain expectation of occasionally encountering a group like the ones outlined below. So hopefully I can do those of you less than enamoured by small time gig ritual a favour here by pointing you straight at the gravy, so to speak.
They’re in alphabetical order to avoid accusations of favouritism, so if any of these groups are playing anywhere near you in future, you’d be well advised to check them out, or just buy their records or whatever.
PART ONE (A - K):
Big Joan
Thus far, I’ve only had the pleasure of hearing one recording from Big Joan, on the 'Noise Annoys' compilation from Farm Girl Records (also featuring several other band son this list), but boy is it a stormer!
Gutsy, authentically shredded female vox, shrieking no-wave guitar demolition, a rough, bluesy swing and good dose of unmitigated hardcore noise violence... It sounds kinda like Mars eating the Geraldine Fibbers as Roland S. Howard looks on in dismay. And if that means anything to you, I guess you probably already own it. I’m unable to comment on the size of their hands, but I’ll set up with you, Big Joan. http://www.bigjoan.com/
Blood Red Shoes
Now how about this for a kick-ass recipe for a band; take one of those excitable shouty guys who used to front the much missed Cat on Form, and get him letting loose on drums. Add a mean, ice-cool guitar-slinging young lady. He hammers the drums crippled octopus style like a wide-eyed innocent who just saw the face of god in a Lightning Bolt record. She coolly throws out relentless idiot-savant riffage that puts me in mind of nothing so much as, well, Winnebago Deal, if you’re familiar with them. Headbangable! And they both yell through short, spiky call and response vocal routines straight outta Delta 5 or the Au Pairs….. quick, stoppy-starty and straight to the point with loads of that old Cat on Form mania showing through, but also ROCK and FUN and LET’S DANCE.
What can possibly go wrong?
www.catonform.co.uk/bloodredshoes/
Hookers Green No # 1
Hookers Green’s debut album “On How the Illustrious Captain Moon Won the War for Us” stands as a strange and promising bedroom music project, but it’s in a live setting that these five shy kids from Aberdeen really find their feet, and the results, which I’ve been lucky enough to witness twice thus far, are little short of astonishing. Open-minded, ambitious, and slightly crazed, these boys have about the most joyful, instinctive instrumental interplay I’ve seen in years, swinging wildly between a multitude of styles and musical ideas, occasionally touching base with thrashy art-punk spazz-out, Flaming Lips / Spiritualised style cosmic pop or death disco rhythm workouts before diving straight into the deep-end of a kind of staggering, nameless indie kid jazz whose combination of highly energised, off-kilter force, freewheeling improvisational virtuosity and jaw-dropping psychic idea sparkin’ reminds me of nothing so much as prime ‘50s bebop. “Fucking hell..” as audience members have been heard to remark out loud in the silence following the group’s first song. One of the most talented and exciting live bands in the country right now, no fucking question. www.hookersgreen.com
Hunting Lodge
With a sound resembling what might happen if grizzly bears formed a band, Hunting Lodge (residing half in Bristol, half in Southampton) have the air of a frightening force unleashed, their name already spoken in hushed tones. Whilst the similarities are clearly accidental rather than deliberate, the oft-cited Birthday Party comparison is apt, conveying both the chaotic, unhinged violence of the Hunting Lodge experience and the more lithe, perverse structures underlying their aggression. Rather than shock therapy goth throwbacks though, Hunting Lodge remain as unadorned and down to earth as it’s possible to get, their style birthed in the mud and constipated filth of British outsider hardcore, sharing aesthetic territory with the intimidating likes of Penthouse, Bilge Pump and Part Chimp. And in Seth Cooke, they have the most perfect drummer a rock band could ask for, his awe-inspiring battering giving a gleeful joy to proceedings that prevents the band’s catastrophic racket from ever collapsing into nihilistic stupor as the rest of the band stomp across whatever space is available to them, axes raised and eyes closed as if imagining themselves in combat with invisible beasts... Rah! Debut album ‘Energy Czar’ out now; http://www.hunting-lodge.org/
Friday, January 27, 2006
I think I've just discovered my favourite band ever.
Sound so far unheard, but behold, FIREBALL.
Yowza.
Proper posts next week, I promise.
Sound so far unheard, but behold, FIREBALL.
Yowza.
Proper posts next week, I promise.
Friday, January 20, 2006
Well it turns out Kalamazoo is in Michigan.
How.. unexciting.
Not that I have anything against Michigan, but I was hoping it would at least be in Mexico or in the middle of the Mojave desert or something.
As you can see, I've had a lot of time on my hands this week.
How.. unexciting.
Not that I have anything against Michigan, but I was hoping it would at least be in Mexico or in the middle of the Mojave desert or something.
As you can see, I've had a lot of time on my hands this week.
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Today I’m gonna masquerade as an MP3 blog, only without the MP3s, in order to tell you about some fairly random tunes you should listen to. I’m sure you can download them or whatever.
The Oblivians – Mary-Lou
Taken from the album ‘The Oblivians play 9 Songs with Mr. Quintron’, on Crypt records from 1997(?), which I bought 2nd hand last week, this has gotta be one of the mightiest slabs of garage mayhem it’s ever been my good fortune to hear. It’s an old song, written by... well I forget who it’s written by, but there are a whole bunch of versions, and without having heard them I’m betting they all get knocked on their ass by this one, which is a text book perfect example of the kind of overdriven rock n’ roll Shangri-la that’s guaranteed to get dignified and well-adjusted young men stomping out into the street like baboons in heat wherever in the world it gets played. Greg Cartwright tears into the vocals like a real Soul Beast and ‘Mr. Quintron’ really gives it some on the organ too, with brutalised valve amps explodin’ all over the shop and a ludicrously enjoyable one-note pound-fest that’ll set the caveman within you ablaze.
If Pete Diaper / Saveloy of Barbelith is reading – this is one for you. File alongside the Mummies, Dirtbombs, Standells, Billy Childish – you know the score.
Best line; “..SHE LEFT ME STRANDED IN KALAMAZOO!!” – where the hell is Kalamazoo anyway? I feel a quick google search coming on.
Comet Gain – Don’t Fall in Love if You Want to Die in Peace
The very definition of an underrated band, Comet Gain have pretty much provided the almost embarrassingly accurate soundtrack to my personal universe and belief system over the past year or so. They’ve got a new album out at the moment which I haven’t picked up yet, so for now I’ll stick to this song from their previous one, ‘Realistes’, which blew my mind and stomped my heart anew on my walk into work this morning. It’s a fairly atypical Comet Gain track, but still encompasses all the reasons I love this band. A clumsily picked out guitar melody, a girl singing with a guy on backing vox, some kinda really dodgy sounding synthesised strings, a song of bold, well-trodden sentiments that in the hands of other musicians would have us cringing and muttering about “emo”...... how oh my lord do these simple things combine into such spell-binding genius?
Comet Gain sing and play here with a mix of guts and beauty and grit and dirt and despair and hope that reminds me of my cherished bootleg of Nico and Lou Reed demoing ‘Chelsea Girls’ in a hotel room, the voices nervous and untrained and just on the verge of shouting, the music tender and brittle and staying just the right side of collapse. Slap me in NHS glasses and call me ‘emo-boy’ if you want, but when Rachel sings “.. look at your sky through Bob Dylan’s eyes..”, my soul just about spills out on the pavement and runs off to find a drink.
So let’s forget the simpering idiots who’ve made “indie” an insult – Comet Gain know what their perfect world sounds like, what’s important to them is what’s important to you and me, and they’re chasing it for all it’s worth. Unlike so many, they fucking mean what they say, and the result is some of the best and most underappreciated music you’ll hear this decade.
The Oblivians – Mary-Lou
Taken from the album ‘The Oblivians play 9 Songs with Mr. Quintron’, on Crypt records from 1997(?), which I bought 2nd hand last week, this has gotta be one of the mightiest slabs of garage mayhem it’s ever been my good fortune to hear. It’s an old song, written by... well I forget who it’s written by, but there are a whole bunch of versions, and without having heard them I’m betting they all get knocked on their ass by this one, which is a text book perfect example of the kind of overdriven rock n’ roll Shangri-la that’s guaranteed to get dignified and well-adjusted young men stomping out into the street like baboons in heat wherever in the world it gets played. Greg Cartwright tears into the vocals like a real Soul Beast and ‘Mr. Quintron’ really gives it some on the organ too, with brutalised valve amps explodin’ all over the shop and a ludicrously enjoyable one-note pound-fest that’ll set the caveman within you ablaze.
If Pete Diaper / Saveloy of Barbelith is reading – this is one for you. File alongside the Mummies, Dirtbombs, Standells, Billy Childish – you know the score.
Best line; “..SHE LEFT ME STRANDED IN KALAMAZOO!!” – where the hell is Kalamazoo anyway? I feel a quick google search coming on.
Comet Gain – Don’t Fall in Love if You Want to Die in Peace
The very definition of an underrated band, Comet Gain have pretty much provided the almost embarrassingly accurate soundtrack to my personal universe and belief system over the past year or so. They’ve got a new album out at the moment which I haven’t picked up yet, so for now I’ll stick to this song from their previous one, ‘Realistes’, which blew my mind and stomped my heart anew on my walk into work this morning. It’s a fairly atypical Comet Gain track, but still encompasses all the reasons I love this band. A clumsily picked out guitar melody, a girl singing with a guy on backing vox, some kinda really dodgy sounding synthesised strings, a song of bold, well-trodden sentiments that in the hands of other musicians would have us cringing and muttering about “emo”...... how oh my lord do these simple things combine into such spell-binding genius?
Comet Gain sing and play here with a mix of guts and beauty and grit and dirt and despair and hope that reminds me of my cherished bootleg of Nico and Lou Reed demoing ‘Chelsea Girls’ in a hotel room, the voices nervous and untrained and just on the verge of shouting, the music tender and brittle and staying just the right side of collapse. Slap me in NHS glasses and call me ‘emo-boy’ if you want, but when Rachel sings “.. look at your sky through Bob Dylan’s eyes..”, my soul just about spills out on the pavement and runs off to find a drink.
So let’s forget the simpering idiots who’ve made “indie” an insult – Comet Gain know what their perfect world sounds like, what’s important to them is what’s important to you and me, and they’re chasing it for all it’s worth. Unlike so many, they fucking mean what they say, and the result is some of the best and most underappreciated music you’ll hear this decade.
Monday, January 16, 2006
QUOTE TIME AGAIN;
“If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practising an art, no matter how well or how badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem for a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”
- more words to live by from Kurt Vonnegut, taken from this extract from his new book, published in the Guardian this weekend.
Good to see him back in action.
“If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practising an art, no matter how well or how badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem for a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”
- more words to live by from Kurt Vonnegut, taken from this extract from his new book, published in the Guardian this weekend.
Good to see him back in action.
Friday, January 13, 2006
There is a house in New Orleans...
Along with early Beach Boys and Beatles hits, and the Eagles ‘Hotel California’, the Animals version of ‘House of the Rising Sun’ is one of the first songs I can remember really getting into when I was growing up.
It could have been the slow and menacing tune – pretty unique on the ‘60s nostalgia pop airwaves – and the bluesy intensity of the performance that initially made my young self sit up and take notice, but probably the main reason is that, then as now, I love a song that tells a good story, or at least has interesting lyrics from which you can build a story, and ‘House of the Rising Sun’ is a prime example.
When I first listened to it, I was too young to understand what the song was about, and the mystery of it had me completely transfixed – what could possibly be going on in this house that was so terrible it drove young men to sin and madness? What strange power drew them to it? Whatever it was, it was clearly so awful that instead of elaborating upon it, the singer decides instead to tell us about what his parents do for a living in a tone of equally passionate dread, suggesting that the evil of The House has forever affected his outlook on everyday life. (Presumably the social status implications of being the son of a tailor and a gambler were also lost on me as a child.) My obvious conclusion – well it must be a haunted house, full of unspeakable ghosts and horrors. The young men must dare each other to go in, and emerge as hopeless wrecks, their lives ruined by the stark, screaming terror they had witnessed within.
Man, that organ solo used to chill me to the very bone!
As you can imagine, realising a few years later that it’s actually just about a brothel or something was a huge disappointment. But it’s still an absolutely astonishing song, a classic of the first water. It’s one of those songs like ‘Hey Joe’ or ‘Louis Louis’ that, although it nominally has a composer and publishing company attached to it, has basically become public domain – it’s sufficiently simple for anybody to pick up on, play and remember, and malleable enough for them to concoct their own personal variations on it, without ever losing sight of it’s essential power. Different emphasis can be put on it to hint at issues of race, gender, poverty or just the good ol’ religious good/evil, salvation/damnation angle, not forgetting the aura of vague, nameless dread that so captured my childhood imagination. And just like with the slightly older canon of folk and roots music, listening to the different versions and copping the bits you like isn’t so much stealing as adapting the material to hand to construct your own ‘perfect’ version.
My perfect version of ‘House of the Rising Sun’ doesn’t actually exist (yet). It would go as follows; firstly, it would have to stick to the pre-Animals version of the lyrics that comes from a female perspective, as heard on Bob Dylan’s version – “..it’s been the ruin of many a poor girl..”, “..my sweetheart was a gambler..” etc. It would be sung by somebody with a really rough, gutsy voice and backed by a really mean and wild Southern/desert roots-rock type ensemble capable of churning up a whole load of brooding, volatile ‘gathering storm’ type racket. See, don’t get me wrong, the Animals version is a real powerful cut and no mistake, but I can’t shake the feeling that it’s just a little bit too FORMAL, and doesn’t quite nail the ragged glory I think the song deserves...
Rather than relying entirely on the well practised aggrepio pattern used by most versions, I wanna hear the guitarist going for it with a bit more feeling, alternating between a few bits of finger-picking and then just thrashing the chords for all they’re worth. There should be a violin in there somewhere too. And I wanna hear the whole band really stepping out and the guitarist really bringing on the fuzz and feedback as the singer howls into “I GOT ONE FOOT ON THE PLATFORM...” – they could even launch into a flailing, fucked up take on the Animals organ solo before collapsing back into the rhythm of the song to let it pound itself out.
It would be so good – can’t you just hear it now? We should round up, say, Carla Bozulich, Nels Cline and the Dirty Three and make it happen.
So anyway, what’s your perfect version?
Along with early Beach Boys and Beatles hits, and the Eagles ‘Hotel California’, the Animals version of ‘House of the Rising Sun’ is one of the first songs I can remember really getting into when I was growing up.
It could have been the slow and menacing tune – pretty unique on the ‘60s nostalgia pop airwaves – and the bluesy intensity of the performance that initially made my young self sit up and take notice, but probably the main reason is that, then as now, I love a song that tells a good story, or at least has interesting lyrics from which you can build a story, and ‘House of the Rising Sun’ is a prime example.
When I first listened to it, I was too young to understand what the song was about, and the mystery of it had me completely transfixed – what could possibly be going on in this house that was so terrible it drove young men to sin and madness? What strange power drew them to it? Whatever it was, it was clearly so awful that instead of elaborating upon it, the singer decides instead to tell us about what his parents do for a living in a tone of equally passionate dread, suggesting that the evil of The House has forever affected his outlook on everyday life. (Presumably the social status implications of being the son of a tailor and a gambler were also lost on me as a child.) My obvious conclusion – well it must be a haunted house, full of unspeakable ghosts and horrors. The young men must dare each other to go in, and emerge as hopeless wrecks, their lives ruined by the stark, screaming terror they had witnessed within.
Man, that organ solo used to chill me to the very bone!
As you can imagine, realising a few years later that it’s actually just about a brothel or something was a huge disappointment. But it’s still an absolutely astonishing song, a classic of the first water. It’s one of those songs like ‘Hey Joe’ or ‘Louis Louis’ that, although it nominally has a composer and publishing company attached to it, has basically become public domain – it’s sufficiently simple for anybody to pick up on, play and remember, and malleable enough for them to concoct their own personal variations on it, without ever losing sight of it’s essential power. Different emphasis can be put on it to hint at issues of race, gender, poverty or just the good ol’ religious good/evil, salvation/damnation angle, not forgetting the aura of vague, nameless dread that so captured my childhood imagination. And just like with the slightly older canon of folk and roots music, listening to the different versions and copping the bits you like isn’t so much stealing as adapting the material to hand to construct your own ‘perfect’ version.
My perfect version of ‘House of the Rising Sun’ doesn’t actually exist (yet). It would go as follows; firstly, it would have to stick to the pre-Animals version of the lyrics that comes from a female perspective, as heard on Bob Dylan’s version – “..it’s been the ruin of many a poor girl..”, “..my sweetheart was a gambler..” etc. It would be sung by somebody with a really rough, gutsy voice and backed by a really mean and wild Southern/desert roots-rock type ensemble capable of churning up a whole load of brooding, volatile ‘gathering storm’ type racket. See, don’t get me wrong, the Animals version is a real powerful cut and no mistake, but I can’t shake the feeling that it’s just a little bit too FORMAL, and doesn’t quite nail the ragged glory I think the song deserves...
Rather than relying entirely on the well practised aggrepio pattern used by most versions, I wanna hear the guitarist going for it with a bit more feeling, alternating between a few bits of finger-picking and then just thrashing the chords for all they’re worth. There should be a violin in there somewhere too. And I wanna hear the whole band really stepping out and the guitarist really bringing on the fuzz and feedback as the singer howls into “I GOT ONE FOOT ON THE PLATFORM...” – they could even launch into a flailing, fucked up take on the Animals organ solo before collapsing back into the rhythm of the song to let it pound itself out.
It would be so good – can’t you just hear it now? We should round up, say, Carla Bozulich, Nels Cline and the Dirty Three and make it happen.
So anyway, what’s your perfect version?
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Here's another gig poster I did this week (Jan 18th; if you're reading this in the Leicester area, you have little excuse for not turning up!).
The headlining band are Blood Red Shoes, who sound great. Their name immediately made me think of the Michael Powell film "The Red Shoes", so in a weird bit of lateral thinking the poster has ended up with a big picture from "Black Narcissus" on it.
I was gonna do some cool stuff with coloured paper etc., but it didn't really come together, and the photocopying hasn't really done the picture justice, and the original ended up a mess of sticky labels & tippex as I attempted to get all the information right - so not a perfect poster, but it stil looks ok;
The flyers look quite cool, if ever so slightly ballsed up by my getting the name of the support band wrong and having to correct it at work before running down to the printers;
From a poster-maker's point of view, I think I'm starting to understand the logic behind bands calling themselves things like "Spoon", rather than, say "The Great Loyalty Oath Crusade".
The headlining band are Blood Red Shoes, who sound great. Their name immediately made me think of the Michael Powell film "The Red Shoes", so in a weird bit of lateral thinking the poster has ended up with a big picture from "Black Narcissus" on it.
I was gonna do some cool stuff with coloured paper etc., but it didn't really come together, and the photocopying hasn't really done the picture justice, and the original ended up a mess of sticky labels & tippex as I attempted to get all the information right - so not a perfect poster, but it stil looks ok;
The flyers look quite cool, if ever so slightly ballsed up by my getting the name of the support band wrong and having to correct it at work before running down to the printers;
From a poster-maker's point of view, I think I'm starting to understand the logic behind bands calling themselves things like "Spoon", rather than, say "The Great Loyalty Oath Crusade".
Monday, January 09, 2006
SOME GOOD FILMS FROM 2005, Part Two;
Undertow by David Gordon Green was another good one that didn’t seem to get the attention in deserved. A studio-financed picture from the director of ‘acclaimed’ indies ‘George Washington’ and ‘All the Real Girls’ (both of which I’ve managed to miss, but would very much like to see). A masterfully shot and directed movie with more than it’s fair share of moments of achingly grand fucking beauty, I thought it was rather let down by it’s over-reliance on a brand of Southern Gothic cliché which didn’t quite ring true, and a certain amount of borrowed material from ‘Night of the Hunter’ which danced merrily across that fine line separating ‘homage’ from ‘rip-off’. In purely visual and technical terms though, it’s pretty stunning, and the opening sequence in particular just kicks ass. Aesthetically, it kinda struck me as being like “Iron & Wine: The Movie” – I realise it’s a strange connection to make, but if you’ve seen this film and are familiar with their music, you’ll know what I mean.
A film that hit British cinemas this year and actually did feature Iron & Wine on the soundtrack was Jonathan Caouette’s utterly incredible Tarnation. If you’re not familiar with the story behind the film, it’s pretty difficult to summarise, but basically ; Caouette has had an extremely weird, traumatic and confusing childhood and family history. He put Tarnation together on his Apple Mac using decades worth of home movies, stock footage and his own teenage homemade films, and the result is less a conventional documentary than an insanely intense act of catharsis and self-definition. Obviously the real-life footage of abuse and mental breakdown makes sections of it quite difficult to sit through, but by the end you’ll be glad you did. Caouette’s background in underground / queer cinema comes across strongly in the film’s editing, with a mind-shredding, almost Kenneth Anger like combination of obsessive montage editing, vision/sound contrasts, pop culture references and insane psychedelic visual effects that help to turn what could have been a grim, misanthropic documentary into some kinda mesmerising, emotionally-draining, sensory overload rollercoaster. One of those films where you leave the cinema knowing you’ve never seen anything like that before and never will again.
As has been frequently acknowledged, 2005 was a pretty landmark year for good music documentaries – trend I obviously approve of. Dig! (Ondi Timoner) predictably takes the crown, as one of the best portraits of life in the crazy world of rock n’ roll ever put on film, fictional or otherwise. Yeah, it’s good as everyone says it is – documentary gold all round.
Pretty close competition comes from The Fearless Freaks, Bradley Beesley’s film about the Flaming Lips, a wild and unlikely story that captures one of those inspiring moments when the freak-flag flying underdogs of My World actually win out against all the odds – what a band and what a film.
Of course I’ve also got to give a shout-out to End of the Century, the Ramones movie (Dir; Jim Fields / Michael Gramaglia). My appreciation of it was probably undermined by the fact that I’d just finished reading Everett True’s Ramones book, which basically tells the same story in greater detail, and as a rabid fan since the age of 15 I scarcely need to be reminded how great the Ramones are/were. And obviously it’s not as good as ‘Rock n Roll High School’, but then what is? It’s still a fuckin’ pleasure and a film that needed to be made.
And I’ll even give a mention to No Direction Home, Scorsese’s Dylan documentary and probably the best thing that wretched hack has lent his name to since the ‘70s (Martin I mean, not Bob, tho could apply to both of ‘em I suppose). It’s great to see a music doc. long and involved enough to actually do it’s subject justice, and it’s certainly gone some way toward increasing my appreciation of the big BD (as I’m sure no one on earth is stupid enough to call him).
I’m looking forward to catching the films about the Minutemen and Daniel Johnson in 2006, and hey, is it true what I hear about somebody making a fictional movie about the Replacements…?!!? Crazy.
What else to mention? Oh yes, nearly forgot Howl’s Moving Castle. Probably not Miyazaki’s best film, possibly due to it being based on an outside story and just moving too fast to really do the narrative justice, but nevertheless, a sub-par Miyazaki picture is still better than just about anything else, and a single frame still contains more joy, love, creativity and spirit than every single thing those foul bastards at Disney have ever birthed upon the world, and don’t you forget it!
Caught David Cronenberg’s new one, A History of Violence, the other week and hmm…. an interesting film with some powerful scenes, but sadly sunk by an unbearable level of cliché. Yeah, I know Cronenberg has always had a certain level of deliberate plasticity going on with his dialogue and characters, but for all the real world relevance it has after those sub-Sopranos gangsters turn up, he may as well be fighting pirates. Some good gut-churning violence though for those of you who get off on such things.
It is to my great shame that I haven’t actually SEEN what was surely one of 2005’s best films, George Romero’s Land of the Dead. Especially embarrassing as I’m a)an avid horror fan and b)always harping on about how Romero’s a genius who doesn’t get the respect he deserves from high-minded film people. I know, I know, I’m sorry, what can I say… I was just really busy on the week it was showing at the cinema, I tried to go down and see it on a Sunday afternoon, but I got the times wrong. I’ll catch it on DVD as soon as I can.
I haven’t seen Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers yet either – that’s sure to be good.
So that’s how things shaped up re: my movie-going in 2005, and you’re probably pretty sick of hearing about it by now, so let’s call it a day. Phew!
Undertow by David Gordon Green was another good one that didn’t seem to get the attention in deserved. A studio-financed picture from the director of ‘acclaimed’ indies ‘George Washington’ and ‘All the Real Girls’ (both of which I’ve managed to miss, but would very much like to see). A masterfully shot and directed movie with more than it’s fair share of moments of achingly grand fucking beauty, I thought it was rather let down by it’s over-reliance on a brand of Southern Gothic cliché which didn’t quite ring true, and a certain amount of borrowed material from ‘Night of the Hunter’ which danced merrily across that fine line separating ‘homage’ from ‘rip-off’. In purely visual and technical terms though, it’s pretty stunning, and the opening sequence in particular just kicks ass. Aesthetically, it kinda struck me as being like “Iron & Wine: The Movie” – I realise it’s a strange connection to make, but if you’ve seen this film and are familiar with their music, you’ll know what I mean.
A film that hit British cinemas this year and actually did feature Iron & Wine on the soundtrack was Jonathan Caouette’s utterly incredible Tarnation. If you’re not familiar with the story behind the film, it’s pretty difficult to summarise, but basically ; Caouette has had an extremely weird, traumatic and confusing childhood and family history. He put Tarnation together on his Apple Mac using decades worth of home movies, stock footage and his own teenage homemade films, and the result is less a conventional documentary than an insanely intense act of catharsis and self-definition. Obviously the real-life footage of abuse and mental breakdown makes sections of it quite difficult to sit through, but by the end you’ll be glad you did. Caouette’s background in underground / queer cinema comes across strongly in the film’s editing, with a mind-shredding, almost Kenneth Anger like combination of obsessive montage editing, vision/sound contrasts, pop culture references and insane psychedelic visual effects that help to turn what could have been a grim, misanthropic documentary into some kinda mesmerising, emotionally-draining, sensory overload rollercoaster. One of those films where you leave the cinema knowing you’ve never seen anything like that before and never will again.
As has been frequently acknowledged, 2005 was a pretty landmark year for good music documentaries – trend I obviously approve of. Dig! (Ondi Timoner) predictably takes the crown, as one of the best portraits of life in the crazy world of rock n’ roll ever put on film, fictional or otherwise. Yeah, it’s good as everyone says it is – documentary gold all round.
Pretty close competition comes from The Fearless Freaks, Bradley Beesley’s film about the Flaming Lips, a wild and unlikely story that captures one of those inspiring moments when the freak-flag flying underdogs of My World actually win out against all the odds – what a band and what a film.
Of course I’ve also got to give a shout-out to End of the Century, the Ramones movie (Dir; Jim Fields / Michael Gramaglia). My appreciation of it was probably undermined by the fact that I’d just finished reading Everett True’s Ramones book, which basically tells the same story in greater detail, and as a rabid fan since the age of 15 I scarcely need to be reminded how great the Ramones are/were. And obviously it’s not as good as ‘Rock n Roll High School’, but then what is? It’s still a fuckin’ pleasure and a film that needed to be made.
And I’ll even give a mention to No Direction Home, Scorsese’s Dylan documentary and probably the best thing that wretched hack has lent his name to since the ‘70s (Martin I mean, not Bob, tho could apply to both of ‘em I suppose). It’s great to see a music doc. long and involved enough to actually do it’s subject justice, and it’s certainly gone some way toward increasing my appreciation of the big BD (as I’m sure no one on earth is stupid enough to call him).
I’m looking forward to catching the films about the Minutemen and Daniel Johnson in 2006, and hey, is it true what I hear about somebody making a fictional movie about the Replacements…?!!? Crazy.
What else to mention? Oh yes, nearly forgot Howl’s Moving Castle. Probably not Miyazaki’s best film, possibly due to it being based on an outside story and just moving too fast to really do the narrative justice, but nevertheless, a sub-par Miyazaki picture is still better than just about anything else, and a single frame still contains more joy, love, creativity and spirit than every single thing those foul bastards at Disney have ever birthed upon the world, and don’t you forget it!
Caught David Cronenberg’s new one, A History of Violence, the other week and hmm…. an interesting film with some powerful scenes, but sadly sunk by an unbearable level of cliché. Yeah, I know Cronenberg has always had a certain level of deliberate plasticity going on with his dialogue and characters, but for all the real world relevance it has after those sub-Sopranos gangsters turn up, he may as well be fighting pirates. Some good gut-churning violence though for those of you who get off on such things.
It is to my great shame that I haven’t actually SEEN what was surely one of 2005’s best films, George Romero’s Land of the Dead. Especially embarrassing as I’m a)an avid horror fan and b)always harping on about how Romero’s a genius who doesn’t get the respect he deserves from high-minded film people. I know, I know, I’m sorry, what can I say… I was just really busy on the week it was showing at the cinema, I tried to go down and see it on a Sunday afternoon, but I got the times wrong. I’ll catch it on DVD as soon as I can.
I haven’t seen Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers yet either – that’s sure to be good.
So that’s how things shaped up re: my movie-going in 2005, and you’re probably pretty sick of hearing about it by now, so let’s call it a day. Phew!
Thursday, January 05, 2006
SOME GOOD FILMS FROM 2005, Part I;
Ideally, I’d like to write about films on this weblog a lot more often than I do, but I still find film comparatively difficult to write about in comparison to music – for one thing, a good feature film is an involved and complex beast which I feel needs a pretty lengthy exploration to really do it justice, and for another thing, ‘film writing’ doesn’t really allow too well for the various shortcuts of comparisons, wise-ass remarks, raw enthusiasm etc. that decades of popular music writing convention has helped us to develop / get away with.
But anyway, enough excuses. I’ve spent this year living within walking distance of an extremely good cinema, and as such have seen tons of films both new and old that are worth mentioning, so I’ll take you through a round-up of some of them that you might have missed;
Surprisingly, one of my favourites was probably Jean-Luc Godard’s new film Notre Musique. I’ve been bringing myself up to speed with the genius of Godard’s ‘60s films recently, but I’m still entirely unfamiliar with what he’s been up to for the past 30 years, so I can’t really say whether this was a return to form or just another addition to an excellent body of work, but either way it struck me as one of the best films of the year. As ever with Godard, it’s so loaded with intellectual reference-points and obtuse cinematic tricks that it makes me feel stupid, but that’s a feeling I’ve grown to quite enjoy from his films, and there are still few other filmmakers around with the guts to really hit the audience with such direct questions and challenges. Notre Musique is as powerful an exploration of the grim realities of the world as it stands in 2005 as ‘Weekend’ was back in 1969 – less epic and confrontational maybe, but don’t write this old dog off yet, he’s still smarter, angrier and more on point than subsequent generations of lazy film school graduates will ever be.
Speaking of which , we come to another one of my favourites from an archetypal lazy film school graduate, Gregg Araki’s Mysterious Skin. I’ve long been a fan of Araki’s much maligned ‘teenage apocalypse’ films (‘Totally Fucked Up’, ‘The Doomed Generation’, ‘Nowhere’), and have been disappointed whenever critics and audiences have missed the point and written them off as puerile slacker trash. Thus it’s a fantastic feeling to see Araki returning with a film that’s ‘developed’ and ‘mature’ enough to gain widespread recognition without compromising either the lost-souls-in-a-plastic-hell beauty of his film-making or his central themes and obsessions (in brief: garish pop-art dystopia; teenage confusion; weird sex; aliens). It’s a real masterpiece of a film that manages to explore the uncomfortable realm of child abuse and resulting trauma without being cringeworthy or difficult to sit through, but whilst remaining fluid, artfully assembled, emotionally honest, reassuringly weird and ethereal, quietly subversive in its approach to sex and many more good things besides. Probably features the best soundtrack of the year too, with Harold Budd and Robin Guthrie reappropriating some classic shoegazy haze.
I also seriously dug Gus Van Sant’s Last Days – yeah, y’know, that Kurt Cobain movie. It sees Van Sant ably following through on the comeback curve he started with Elephant, and to my mind this film is even better. Somehow it manages to combine a lot of the elements that usually piss me off in current indie cinema (endless long shots, gratuitous mumbling, a vague and half-hearted narrative, narcissistic and self-conscious examinations of ‘alienation’) and emerges with a film which kept me utterly transfixed throughout. I wouldn’t blame anyone for thinking otherwise and dismissing it as tedious crap, but something about it struck me as truly original – it’s almost like ambient cinema, drawing you gradually into a headspace where every new crumb of visual information can be slowly contemplated and added to an overall abstract whole of weird beauty and slow-burning emotional engagement. Maybe you see it, maybe you don’t, but whatever – I think it’s a very impressive film.
The Edukators (directed by Hans Weingartner) was a good one too – a German film basically about the troubled relationship between contemporary political radicalism and it’s more idealistic ‘60s/’70s predecessor. Boy, I bet that description really sold it to you! But, no, really, don’t stop reading – it’s an excellently acted and directed and genuinely involving character drama that would be quality stuff even without all the social/political ruminations it also brings to mind. it’s a smart film, it understands human dignity, makes a great, big point on the whole “the personal is political” score and when was the last time in our troubled world you saw ANYTHING this overtly political that managed to end on such an overwhelmingly positive note? The note in question being the opening chord of Leonard Cohen’s terminally over-used “Hallelujah”, here given its best cinematic outing is ages. I can’t really encapsulate this film very well, but go see it – you’ll thank me. Unless you’re some kind of misanthropic right wing weirdo, in which case you’d probably quite enjoy...
Downfall (directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel). Yeah, y’know – that Hitler movie. As well as being startlingly refreshing after 60 odd years of largely quite rubbish, one-sided WWII movies, and the most illustrative cinematic example of the grotesque insanity of the Third Reich I can think of, I also found it was an interestingly constructed film in that it’s basically one long ending. We all learned the beginning and the middle in history class. So within the first few minutes, everybody realises “right, we’re fucked”, and from there on in it’s just a matter of taking bets on when different characters are going to blow their brains out. In places it has an almost abstract apocalyptic vibe going on that was really quite powerful. Sadly it does tend to lapse into historical-TV-drama type cliché at various points, but beyond that you’ve got a uniquely positioned, not to mention catastrophically morbid, motion picture to enjoy.
More on the way later.
Ideally, I’d like to write about films on this weblog a lot more often than I do, but I still find film comparatively difficult to write about in comparison to music – for one thing, a good feature film is an involved and complex beast which I feel needs a pretty lengthy exploration to really do it justice, and for another thing, ‘film writing’ doesn’t really allow too well for the various shortcuts of comparisons, wise-ass remarks, raw enthusiasm etc. that decades of popular music writing convention has helped us to develop / get away with.
But anyway, enough excuses. I’ve spent this year living within walking distance of an extremely good cinema, and as such have seen tons of films both new and old that are worth mentioning, so I’ll take you through a round-up of some of them that you might have missed;
Surprisingly, one of my favourites was probably Jean-Luc Godard’s new film Notre Musique. I’ve been bringing myself up to speed with the genius of Godard’s ‘60s films recently, but I’m still entirely unfamiliar with what he’s been up to for the past 30 years, so I can’t really say whether this was a return to form or just another addition to an excellent body of work, but either way it struck me as one of the best films of the year. As ever with Godard, it’s so loaded with intellectual reference-points and obtuse cinematic tricks that it makes me feel stupid, but that’s a feeling I’ve grown to quite enjoy from his films, and there are still few other filmmakers around with the guts to really hit the audience with such direct questions and challenges. Notre Musique is as powerful an exploration of the grim realities of the world as it stands in 2005 as ‘Weekend’ was back in 1969 – less epic and confrontational maybe, but don’t write this old dog off yet, he’s still smarter, angrier and more on point than subsequent generations of lazy film school graduates will ever be.
Speaking of which , we come to another one of my favourites from an archetypal lazy film school graduate, Gregg Araki’s Mysterious Skin. I’ve long been a fan of Araki’s much maligned ‘teenage apocalypse’ films (‘Totally Fucked Up’, ‘The Doomed Generation’, ‘Nowhere’), and have been disappointed whenever critics and audiences have missed the point and written them off as puerile slacker trash. Thus it’s a fantastic feeling to see Araki returning with a film that’s ‘developed’ and ‘mature’ enough to gain widespread recognition without compromising either the lost-souls-in-a-plastic-hell beauty of his film-making or his central themes and obsessions (in brief: garish pop-art dystopia; teenage confusion; weird sex; aliens). It’s a real masterpiece of a film that manages to explore the uncomfortable realm of child abuse and resulting trauma without being cringeworthy or difficult to sit through, but whilst remaining fluid, artfully assembled, emotionally honest, reassuringly weird and ethereal, quietly subversive in its approach to sex and many more good things besides. Probably features the best soundtrack of the year too, with Harold Budd and Robin Guthrie reappropriating some classic shoegazy haze.
I also seriously dug Gus Van Sant’s Last Days – yeah, y’know, that Kurt Cobain movie. It sees Van Sant ably following through on the comeback curve he started with Elephant, and to my mind this film is even better. Somehow it manages to combine a lot of the elements that usually piss me off in current indie cinema (endless long shots, gratuitous mumbling, a vague and half-hearted narrative, narcissistic and self-conscious examinations of ‘alienation’) and emerges with a film which kept me utterly transfixed throughout. I wouldn’t blame anyone for thinking otherwise and dismissing it as tedious crap, but something about it struck me as truly original – it’s almost like ambient cinema, drawing you gradually into a headspace where every new crumb of visual information can be slowly contemplated and added to an overall abstract whole of weird beauty and slow-burning emotional engagement. Maybe you see it, maybe you don’t, but whatever – I think it’s a very impressive film.
The Edukators (directed by Hans Weingartner) was a good one too – a German film basically about the troubled relationship between contemporary political radicalism and it’s more idealistic ‘60s/’70s predecessor. Boy, I bet that description really sold it to you! But, no, really, don’t stop reading – it’s an excellently acted and directed and genuinely involving character drama that would be quality stuff even without all the social/political ruminations it also brings to mind. it’s a smart film, it understands human dignity, makes a great, big point on the whole “the personal is political” score and when was the last time in our troubled world you saw ANYTHING this overtly political that managed to end on such an overwhelmingly positive note? The note in question being the opening chord of Leonard Cohen’s terminally over-used “Hallelujah”, here given its best cinematic outing is ages. I can’t really encapsulate this film very well, but go see it – you’ll thank me. Unless you’re some kind of misanthropic right wing weirdo, in which case you’d probably quite enjoy...
Downfall (directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel). Yeah, y’know – that Hitler movie. As well as being startlingly refreshing after 60 odd years of largely quite rubbish, one-sided WWII movies, and the most illustrative cinematic example of the grotesque insanity of the Third Reich I can think of, I also found it was an interestingly constructed film in that it’s basically one long ending. We all learned the beginning and the middle in history class. So within the first few minutes, everybody realises “right, we’re fucked”, and from there on in it’s just a matter of taking bets on when different characters are going to blow their brains out. In places it has an almost abstract apocalyptic vibe going on that was really quite powerful. Sadly it does tend to lapse into historical-TV-drama type cliché at various points, but beyond that you’ve got a uniquely positioned, not to mention catastrophically morbid, motion picture to enjoy.
More on the way later.
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
THE STEREO SANCTITY TOP 10 RECORDS OF 2005;
Well, it was inevitable, so here goes.
I should point out that, firstly, this is as ever a list compiled from the relatively small number of new records I’ve actually had a chance to hear. I’ve had a bit more money and general access to stuff than last year, and thus have heard more, but unlike certain journalists and magazines I make no claims toward omniscience. So if you’re wondering why your favourite stuff is missing, in all probability the answer is “seriously dude, it sounds GREAT, but I’m not a rich man and I couldn’t find it cheap anywhere. Could you do me a copy?”. Either that or “Take your Arcade Fire CD and FUCK OFF”.
Secondly, I’ll admit that for those familiar with my musical taste, this is perhaps the most predictable list ever assembled. What can I say? A lot of people whose music I enjoy have come out with new stuff this year, and I’ve enjoyed it. Dull I know, but I am what I am.
It's certainly been a good year for folk and associated weird mutations thereof, but on the other hand I'm somewhat shamed at the lack of rip-roaring teenage punk rock fury on my list. What's up with that, huh?
Well anyway, without further ado;
The Mountain Goats – The Sunset Tree (4AD)
If we’re basically talking fucking great songs that’ll make even the most jaded amongst us sit up and take notice, laugh, cry, whatever… well then nobody on earth beats the Mountain Goats current form.
Herman Dune – Not on Top LP & Jackson Heights EP (Track & Field)
The latest instalments of the Herman Dune saga, and perhaps the best batch of songs these modern day heroes have cooked up yet. Not since the glory days of Leonard Cohen has listening to nomadic, bohemian Jewish guys singing their diaries been so much fun. And thinking about it, this also has zombies and giants and swearwords and singalong choruses and stuff, and is thus a lot more fun.
Oneida – The Wedding (Rough Trade)
I would hereby like to withdraw my initial reticence about this album being more of a grab-bag of ideas than a cohesive whole. Because what a fucking bag of ideas it is! Who else could storm through such an evocative mix of star-gazing pop majesty, crazed acid-punk shred and menacing pagan psychedelia with enough energy and sense of purpose to emerge with one of the best albums of the year? Nobody, that’s who. Discerning heads are gonna be diving into this one for pearls for decades to come.
Dead Meadow – Feathers (Matador)
If you are me, Dead Meadow are incapable of disappointing. This album sees them playing down their trademark Sabbath-on-acid dirge in order to explore slightly more blissed out realms of sweet, intertwining guitar leads and murky cosmic haze, but it’s still head-meltingly good gear, with their bold excursions into catchy, acoustic psych-pop emerging particularly triumphant, and highlighting the song-writing prowess behind the bong-blasting racket.
Helen Love – Bubblegum Killers EP (Sympathy for the Record Industry)
Just when we’d given up hope, four new Helen Love songs crash into our world on shiny pink vinyl and flip our wigs anew with their pristine joy-punk perfection yet again. “Debbie (hearts) Joey” is number one all over heaven.
Six Organs of Admittance – School of the Flower (Drag City)
Expecting to love it from the word go, I was initially a bit underwhelmed by this album – the perfectly realised psyche-folk compositions Ben Chasny presents herein don’t immediately stand out as being particularly weird or cosmic or experimental or loud or complex or whatever else us jaded music junkies may hope for, but that’s not what Chasny’s aiming at – he’s just putting his all into making genuinely beautiful, conventionally harmonic yet mysterious music that only an idiot could fail to get utterly drawn into on a summer evening walk or a long drift off the sleep – basically School of the Flower is a pure fucking pleasure that’s grown on me like fungus.
Birchville Cat Motel – Chi Vampires (Celebrate Psi Phenomena)
The first track on here sounds like a universal god butterfly trapped in an oil lamp. The second track sounds like the extended death rattle of a pre-industrial agrarian paradise being crushed by dark, satanic mills. The final track goes metal with enough majesty and ferocity to make the Sunn 0)))/Earth axis pause for thought and generally feels like a million bats blotting out the sky forever, culminating in what sounds like Bela Lugosi’s granddad broadcasting bloodcurdling revolutionary pronouncements from deep in the Ural mountains. So a good listen all round really.
Low – the Great Destroyer (Rough Trade)
To my mind, this is the best album Low have ever done. The move towards a far more immediate and, um, assertive..? state of mind is a real shot in the arm for the band and, perhaps more to the point, there’s an almost unbroken hit rate here when it comes to stunning songs. Would make my top 10 on the strength of “Death of a Salesman” alone, but add “Just Stand Back”, “California”, “When I Go Deaf”, “Singing Eveeybody’s Song” etc. – well it’s just a great album in the classic sense. They were great live too – I never thought I’d live to see Alan Sparhawk doing Townhend-esque windmills on his geetar!
Edan – Beauty & the Beat (Lexx)
Outkast aside, this is the only new hip-hop album that’s really grabbed my attention since, well, I don’t even remember when. Anyway, it’s great. It sounds kind of like if one of the lesser members of the Wu-Tang Clan had played the Brian Wilson card and disappeared after ‘36 Chambers’ to spend a decade cooking up a totally whacked out psychedelic concept album. But even if you don’t dig the psyche thing, this shit is just so sharp and concise and FUN TO LISTEN TO that it’s modest half an hour blows the 80 minute monuments to macho bluster many other rappers have to offer completely out of the water.
Now there’s a bit of a scuffle going on for 10th place, and I can’t really make up my mind, so let’s call it a draw between;
Jeffrey & Jack Lewis – City & Eastern Songs (Rough Trade)
Featuring ‘Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror’ and some other great songs too!
Alexander Tucker – Old Fog (ATP)
More folk, more paganism, more beastly, bearded business with acoustic guitar tunings in the dead of night... another guy for me to proclaim a genius.
Vashti Bunyan – lookaftering (FatCat)
Not just a dead-cert for comeback of the year, but one of the loveliest bunches of songs too.
And if this Top 10 was a Top 23 or something stupid like that, I would also have loved to include;
Fursaxa – lepidoptera
A Hawk and a Hacksaw – darkness at noon
Boris – akuta no uto
Tunng – mother’s daughter & other songs
Afri Rampo – kore ga mayaku da
Lucky Luke – patrick the survivor
Nagisa Ne Ti – dream sounds
Stephen Malkmus – face the truth
Gang Gang Dance – god’s money
Hot Snakes - audit in progress
Alister Roberts – no earthly man
The Research – I love you but.. (single)
Love as Laughter – laughter’s fifth
Well, it was inevitable, so here goes.
I should point out that, firstly, this is as ever a list compiled from the relatively small number of new records I’ve actually had a chance to hear. I’ve had a bit more money and general access to stuff than last year, and thus have heard more, but unlike certain journalists and magazines I make no claims toward omniscience. So if you’re wondering why your favourite stuff is missing, in all probability the answer is “seriously dude, it sounds GREAT, but I’m not a rich man and I couldn’t find it cheap anywhere. Could you do me a copy?”. Either that or “Take your Arcade Fire CD and FUCK OFF”.
Secondly, I’ll admit that for those familiar with my musical taste, this is perhaps the most predictable list ever assembled. What can I say? A lot of people whose music I enjoy have come out with new stuff this year, and I’ve enjoyed it. Dull I know, but I am what I am.
It's certainly been a good year for folk and associated weird mutations thereof, but on the other hand I'm somewhat shamed at the lack of rip-roaring teenage punk rock fury on my list. What's up with that, huh?
Well anyway, without further ado;
The Mountain Goats – The Sunset Tree (4AD)
If we’re basically talking fucking great songs that’ll make even the most jaded amongst us sit up and take notice, laugh, cry, whatever… well then nobody on earth beats the Mountain Goats current form.
Herman Dune – Not on Top LP & Jackson Heights EP (Track & Field)
The latest instalments of the Herman Dune saga, and perhaps the best batch of songs these modern day heroes have cooked up yet. Not since the glory days of Leonard Cohen has listening to nomadic, bohemian Jewish guys singing their diaries been so much fun. And thinking about it, this also has zombies and giants and swearwords and singalong choruses and stuff, and is thus a lot more fun.
Oneida – The Wedding (Rough Trade)
I would hereby like to withdraw my initial reticence about this album being more of a grab-bag of ideas than a cohesive whole. Because what a fucking bag of ideas it is! Who else could storm through such an evocative mix of star-gazing pop majesty, crazed acid-punk shred and menacing pagan psychedelia with enough energy and sense of purpose to emerge with one of the best albums of the year? Nobody, that’s who. Discerning heads are gonna be diving into this one for pearls for decades to come.
Dead Meadow – Feathers (Matador)
If you are me, Dead Meadow are incapable of disappointing. This album sees them playing down their trademark Sabbath-on-acid dirge in order to explore slightly more blissed out realms of sweet, intertwining guitar leads and murky cosmic haze, but it’s still head-meltingly good gear, with their bold excursions into catchy, acoustic psych-pop emerging particularly triumphant, and highlighting the song-writing prowess behind the bong-blasting racket.
Helen Love – Bubblegum Killers EP (Sympathy for the Record Industry)
Just when we’d given up hope, four new Helen Love songs crash into our world on shiny pink vinyl and flip our wigs anew with their pristine joy-punk perfection yet again. “Debbie (hearts) Joey” is number one all over heaven.
Six Organs of Admittance – School of the Flower (Drag City)
Expecting to love it from the word go, I was initially a bit underwhelmed by this album – the perfectly realised psyche-folk compositions Ben Chasny presents herein don’t immediately stand out as being particularly weird or cosmic or experimental or loud or complex or whatever else us jaded music junkies may hope for, but that’s not what Chasny’s aiming at – he’s just putting his all into making genuinely beautiful, conventionally harmonic yet mysterious music that only an idiot could fail to get utterly drawn into on a summer evening walk or a long drift off the sleep – basically School of the Flower is a pure fucking pleasure that’s grown on me like fungus.
Birchville Cat Motel – Chi Vampires (Celebrate Psi Phenomena)
The first track on here sounds like a universal god butterfly trapped in an oil lamp. The second track sounds like the extended death rattle of a pre-industrial agrarian paradise being crushed by dark, satanic mills. The final track goes metal with enough majesty and ferocity to make the Sunn 0)))/Earth axis pause for thought and generally feels like a million bats blotting out the sky forever, culminating in what sounds like Bela Lugosi’s granddad broadcasting bloodcurdling revolutionary pronouncements from deep in the Ural mountains. So a good listen all round really.
Low – the Great Destroyer (Rough Trade)
To my mind, this is the best album Low have ever done. The move towards a far more immediate and, um, assertive..? state of mind is a real shot in the arm for the band and, perhaps more to the point, there’s an almost unbroken hit rate here when it comes to stunning songs. Would make my top 10 on the strength of “Death of a Salesman” alone, but add “Just Stand Back”, “California”, “When I Go Deaf”, “Singing Eveeybody’s Song” etc. – well it’s just a great album in the classic sense. They were great live too – I never thought I’d live to see Alan Sparhawk doing Townhend-esque windmills on his geetar!
Edan – Beauty & the Beat (Lexx)
Outkast aside, this is the only new hip-hop album that’s really grabbed my attention since, well, I don’t even remember when. Anyway, it’s great. It sounds kind of like if one of the lesser members of the Wu-Tang Clan had played the Brian Wilson card and disappeared after ‘36 Chambers’ to spend a decade cooking up a totally whacked out psychedelic concept album. But even if you don’t dig the psyche thing, this shit is just so sharp and concise and FUN TO LISTEN TO that it’s modest half an hour blows the 80 minute monuments to macho bluster many other rappers have to offer completely out of the water.
Now there’s a bit of a scuffle going on for 10th place, and I can’t really make up my mind, so let’s call it a draw between;
Jeffrey & Jack Lewis – City & Eastern Songs (Rough Trade)
Featuring ‘Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror’ and some other great songs too!
Alexander Tucker – Old Fog (ATP)
More folk, more paganism, more beastly, bearded business with acoustic guitar tunings in the dead of night... another guy for me to proclaim a genius.
Vashti Bunyan – lookaftering (FatCat)
Not just a dead-cert for comeback of the year, but one of the loveliest bunches of songs too.
And if this Top 10 was a Top 23 or something stupid like that, I would also have loved to include;
Fursaxa – lepidoptera
A Hawk and a Hacksaw – darkness at noon
Boris – akuta no uto
Tunng – mother’s daughter & other songs
Afri Rampo – kore ga mayaku da
Lucky Luke – patrick the survivor
Nagisa Ne Ti – dream sounds
Stephen Malkmus – face the truth
Gang Gang Dance – god’s money
Hot Snakes - audit in progress
Alister Roberts – no earthly man
The Research – I love you but.. (single)
Love as Laughter – laughter’s fifth
Archives
- 05/01/2004 - 06/01/2004
- 06/01/2004 - 07/01/2004
- 07/01/2004 - 08/01/2004
- 08/01/2004 - 09/01/2004
- 09/01/2004 - 10/01/2004
- 10/01/2004 - 11/01/2004
- 11/01/2004 - 12/01/2004
- 12/01/2004 - 01/01/2005
- 01/01/2005 - 02/01/2005
- 02/01/2005 - 03/01/2005
- 03/01/2005 - 04/01/2005
- 04/01/2005 - 05/01/2005
- 05/01/2005 - 06/01/2005
- 06/01/2005 - 07/01/2005
- 07/01/2005 - 08/01/2005
- 08/01/2005 - 09/01/2005
- 09/01/2005 - 10/01/2005
- 10/01/2005 - 11/01/2005
- 11/01/2005 - 12/01/2005
- 12/01/2005 - 01/01/2006
- 01/01/2006 - 02/01/2006
- 02/01/2006 - 03/01/2006
- 03/01/2006 - 04/01/2006
- 04/01/2006 - 05/01/2006
- 05/01/2006 - 06/01/2006
- 06/01/2006 - 07/01/2006
- 07/01/2006 - 08/01/2006
- 08/01/2006 - 09/01/2006
- 09/01/2006 - 10/01/2006
- 10/01/2006 - 11/01/2006
- 11/01/2006 - 12/01/2006
- 12/01/2006 - 01/01/2007
- 01/01/2007 - 02/01/2007
- 02/01/2007 - 03/01/2007
- 03/01/2007 - 04/01/2007
- 04/01/2007 - 05/01/2007
- 05/01/2007 - 06/01/2007
- 06/01/2007 - 07/01/2007
- 07/01/2007 - 08/01/2007
- 08/01/2007 - 09/01/2007
- 09/01/2007 - 10/01/2007
- 10/01/2007 - 11/01/2007
- 11/01/2007 - 12/01/2007
- 12/01/2007 - 01/01/2008
- 01/01/2008 - 02/01/2008
- 02/01/2008 - 03/01/2008
- 03/01/2008 - 04/01/2008
- 04/01/2008 - 05/01/2008
- 05/01/2008 - 06/01/2008
- 06/01/2008 - 07/01/2008
- 07/01/2008 - 08/01/2008
- 08/01/2008 - 09/01/2008
- 09/01/2008 - 10/01/2008
- 10/01/2008 - 11/01/2008
- 11/01/2008 - 12/01/2008
- 12/01/2008 - 01/01/2009
- 01/01/2009 - 02/01/2009
- 02/01/2009 - 03/01/2009
- 03/01/2009 - 04/01/2009
- 04/01/2009 - 05/01/2009
- 05/01/2009 - 06/01/2009
- 06/01/2009 - 07/01/2009
- 07/01/2009 - 08/01/2009
- 08/01/2009 - 09/01/2009
- 09/01/2009 - 10/01/2009
- 10/01/2009 - 11/01/2009
- 11/01/2009 - 12/01/2009
- 12/01/2009 - 01/01/2010
- 01/01/2010 - 02/01/2010
- 02/01/2010 - 03/01/2010
- 03/01/2010 - 04/01/2010
- 04/01/2010 - 05/01/2010
- 05/01/2010 - 06/01/2010
- 06/01/2010 - 07/01/2010
- 07/01/2010 - 08/01/2010
- 08/01/2010 - 09/01/2010
- 09/01/2010 - 10/01/2010
- 10/01/2010 - 11/01/2010
- 11/01/2010 - 12/01/2010
- 12/01/2010 - 01/01/2011
- 01/01/2011 - 02/01/2011
- 02/01/2011 - 03/01/2011
- 03/01/2011 - 04/01/2011
- 04/01/2011 - 05/01/2011
- 05/01/2011 - 06/01/2011
- 06/01/2011 - 07/01/2011
- 07/01/2011 - 08/01/2011
- 08/01/2011 - 09/01/2011
- 09/01/2011 - 10/01/2011
- 10/01/2011 - 11/01/2011
- 11/01/2011 - 12/01/2011
- 12/01/2011 - 01/01/2012
- 01/01/2012 - 02/01/2012
- 02/01/2012 - 03/01/2012
- 03/01/2012 - 04/01/2012
- 04/01/2012 - 05/01/2012
- 05/01/2012 - 06/01/2012
- 06/01/2012 - 07/01/2012
- 07/01/2012 - 08/01/2012
- 08/01/2012 - 09/01/2012
- 09/01/2012 - 10/01/2012
- 10/01/2012 - 11/01/2012
- 11/01/2012 - 12/01/2012
- 12/01/2012 - 01/01/2013
- 01/01/2013 - 02/01/2013
- 02/01/2013 - 03/01/2013
- 03/01/2013 - 04/01/2013
- 04/01/2013 - 05/01/2013
- 05/01/2013 - 06/01/2013
- 06/01/2013 - 07/01/2013
- 09/01/2013 - 10/01/2013
- 10/01/2013 - 11/01/2013
- 11/01/2013 - 12/01/2013
- 12/01/2013 - 01/01/2014
- 01/01/2014 - 02/01/2014
- 02/01/2014 - 03/01/2014
- 03/01/2014 - 04/01/2014
- 04/01/2014 - 05/01/2014
- 05/01/2014 - 06/01/2014
- 06/01/2014 - 07/01/2014
- 07/01/2014 - 08/01/2014
- 08/01/2014 - 09/01/2014
- 09/01/2014 - 10/01/2014
- 10/01/2014 - 11/01/2014
- 11/01/2014 - 12/01/2014
- 12/01/2014 - 01/01/2015
- 01/01/2015 - 02/01/2015
- 02/01/2015 - 03/01/2015
- 04/01/2015 - 05/01/2015
- 05/01/2015 - 06/01/2015
- 06/01/2015 - 07/01/2015
- 07/01/2015 - 08/01/2015
- 08/01/2015 - 09/01/2015
- 09/01/2015 - 10/01/2015
- 10/01/2015 - 11/01/2015
- 11/01/2015 - 12/01/2015
- 12/01/2015 - 01/01/2016
- 01/01/2016 - 02/01/2016
- 04/01/2016 - 05/01/2016
- 06/01/2016 - 07/01/2016
- 07/01/2016 - 08/01/2016
- 10/01/2016 - 11/01/2016
- 11/01/2016 - 12/01/2016
- 12/01/2016 - 01/01/2017
- 01/01/2017 - 02/01/2017
- 02/01/2017 - 03/01/2017
- 03/01/2017 - 04/01/2017
- 04/01/2017 - 05/01/2017
- 05/01/2017 - 06/01/2017
- 09/01/2017 - 10/01/2017
- 11/01/2017 - 12/01/2017
- 12/01/2017 - 01/01/2018
- 01/01/2018 - 02/01/2018
- 02/01/2018 - 03/01/2018
- 03/01/2018 - 04/01/2018
- 04/01/2018 - 05/01/2018
- 05/01/2018 - 06/01/2018
- 07/01/2018 - 08/01/2018
- 08/01/2018 - 09/01/2018
- 09/01/2018 - 10/01/2018
- 10/01/2018 - 11/01/2018
- 11/01/2018 - 12/01/2018
- 12/01/2018 - 01/01/2019
- 01/01/2019 - 02/01/2019
- 02/01/2019 - 03/01/2019
- 03/01/2019 - 04/01/2019
- 04/01/2019 - 05/01/2019
- 05/01/2019 - 06/01/2019
- 06/01/2019 - 07/01/2019
- 07/01/2019 - 08/01/2019
- 08/01/2019 - 09/01/2019
- 09/01/2019 - 10/01/2019
- 10/01/2019 - 11/01/2019
- 11/01/2019 - 12/01/2019
- 12/01/2019 - 01/01/2020
- 01/01/2020 - 02/01/2020
- 02/01/2020 - 03/01/2020
- 03/01/2020 - 04/01/2020
- 04/01/2020 - 05/01/2020
- 05/01/2020 - 06/01/2020
- 06/01/2020 - 07/01/2020
- 07/01/2020 - 08/01/2020
- 09/01/2020 - 10/01/2020
- 10/01/2020 - 11/01/2020
- 11/01/2020 - 12/01/2020
- 12/01/2020 - 01/01/2021
- 01/01/2021 - 02/01/2021
- 02/01/2021 - 03/01/2021
- 03/01/2021 - 04/01/2021
- 08/01/2021 - 09/01/2021
- 10/01/2021 - 11/01/2021