One Last Batch of Singles Before the Year-End, Part # 3


Dean McPhee – Brown Bear 12” (Hood Faire)

Yorkshire-based Guitarist Dean McPhee impressed on his side of a split single I wrote up earlier this year, and here he makes good that promise with an absolutely splendid 12” on the newly established Hood Faire label. “Sky Burial”, the first of three tracks here, is a beautifully lyrical, unashamedly melodic bit of electric guitaring, sounding not unlike something that might have come about if old Hank Marvin himself had taken Eric Burden’s lead and gone flat-out weird in the late sixties, got into some finger-picking and sat stoned atop a Monument Valley outcrop at midnight, cradling his Stratocaster and waiting for the true spirit of the Apache to take him. “Stoney Ground” is a rather thornier affair, but still meticulous in its construction, spinning slowly into the void without a note out of place.

It is of course the fate of any solo guitarist to be erroneously compared to John Fahey at some point, and as such let’s get it out of the way by remarking that Mr McPhee’s stuff reminds me quite a lot of Fahey’s late period electric album “Hitomi”, particularly in the way in which he utilises delay and echo, taking the time to work the effects into his compositions rather than just whacking them on and hoping for the best, with moments of slowed tempo and dramatic pauses allowing the shimmering decay to live a rich life of its own beneath the next batch of notes. This aspect of things particularly comes to the fore on the B side “Brown Bear”, where compositional playing surrenders to ambient drift, as McPhee hits up his final notes with some extra long sustain and begins coaxing startling cello-like textures from his axe, to beautiful Windy & Carl-like effect – bloody lovely.

It’s also worth mentioning how much the *sound* of this record contributes to its overall appeal – that McPhee knows how to get that dead-on perfect Valve amp tone to make the geeks happy goes without saying, but the recording here is pin-drop perfect too, and pressed onto heavyweight vinyl at 45rpm it sounds absolutely gorgeous on my cheap-ass speakers – warm, fuzzy, enveloping and vast – perfect Sunday night comfort music for guitar-fanciers everywhere. Nothing groundbreaking I guess, but a record that deserves to be treasured and soaked in over the years purely on its own aesthetic merits, regardless of external trends, just like some old geezer rejoicing in his Strings For Pleasure collection and not seeing any damn reason why he shouldn’t.

http://www.myspace.com/deanmcphee
http://www.hoodfaire.co.uk/

Not Cool – Wonderful Beasts (Sleep All Day)

Either living up to their name all too well, or entirely failing to, depending on which way you look at it, Not Cool display a full set of the elements that young folk in indie bands in this country have been kicking around as default for a decade now. Post-punk / faux-disco informed rhythms marshalled by a “hey guys, I’ve been TAKING LESSONS” style drummer? Stabbing, trebley guitars that occasionally lurch into jerky post-core/post-good twiddle for a few bars? Vocals by a yelping oik having an anxiety attack? Why, step right this way sir.

Given the potential for loathsomeness in these raw ingredients, it is to Not Cool’s considerable credit that they manage to overcome the negatives and emerge with a record that’s pretty compelling. “Wonderful Beasts” on the A side kicks off with a riff-heavy section that’s meaty enough to suggest that they at least inhabit the same universe as heavyweight champs like Bilge Pump and Lords, even if they’re evidently not in the same league, as is clearly shown when the chorus speeds up into something that sounds like what I’d imagine the Arctic Monkeys probably sound like. All crescendo all the time = yawn, y’know? “The Bell Curve” meanwhile shows intriguing hints of (GROAN) originality, consisting as it does of a series of short, melodic phrases that cycle around each other so repetitiously it almost turns into some piece of Rhys Chatham-esque guitar-clang minimalism. It’s kinda awesome actually, if you can ignore the singer’s mewling.

Firing things up with a bit of whiplash energy that makes me feel all withered and prematurely old, Not Cool seem to be transcending their inbuilt limitations pretty well, making interestingly constructed songs that occasionally come on like a watered down Converge playing through practice amps. Their core sound is one I could easily live without (particularly the vocals and the dullards-do-disco syncopations), but if you can get over that then this is a very creditable debut in the sphere of, oh, I dunno, ‘modern British rock music’ or some such nonsense.

http://www.myspace.com/notcoolisaband
http://sleepalldayrecords.bigcartel.com/

Skipper – Cold Pizza N' Pop EP (Chocolate Covered Records)

Oh man, I am SO all over this EP, I’m surprised it hasn’t sought a restraining order yet. Sugar-rush garage punk-pop is Skipper’s deal, and just like, say, some beach party/horror movie where a caveman crashes a slumber party and Vincent Price does the boogaloo, you may roll your eyes and tut, but it’s going to take at least a few more centuries of cultural dislocation before you can convince ME this isn’t perfect entertainment.

Breaking it down, Skipper have a tough girl-rock rhythmic backbone and female “ba ba”s and “ooh ooh”s straight out of The Rondelles or The Breeders, huge, rollicking power-pop hits ala The Nerves/Paul Collins, raucous garage-punk energy, bubblegum melodicism, leery Johnny Thunders guitar thrills and a great central focus from their “I’m a loser baby and I don’t care, although, actually, now I come to think of it, I’m fucking DISTRAUGHT” frontman. Oh, what a truly fantastic bunch of stuff to cram into one band. “Sitting on my couch / playing my guitar / I’m so laaaazy” – YEAH!

Skipper are straight outta Minnesota, on the same label that brought us The Rantouls, and you should be aware that none of the tracks they’ve got up on their myspace really hint at the pure brilliance of this EP. It is to music criticism what takeaway pizza and ice cream is to gastronomy – a flat-out winner that renders the discipline pointless, in other words. “We just want to play sloppy rock and roll”, they say on their myspace, “and even if you think we're terrible at least we try.” Try? Aww, dudes, listen – you just made some of the BEST MUSIC EVER. Put your feet up for a bit. Then make some more, if that’s ok.

http://www.myspace.com/skipperband
http://www.chocolatecoveredrecords.com/pages/home

Spectrals – Leave Me Be b/w Suit Yourself (Captured Tracks)

Hmm. Spectrals! Mmm. Love the name, love the cover art, love the concept. The music…? Spectrals is one guy from Leeds. This is his first effort, probably picking up a lot of hip exposure straight off the bat thanks to Captured Tracks.

He starts off with “Be My Baby” drums – hell, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! He continues with a distant wash of slinky, ultra-reverbed, haunted guitar pop. The twangy guitar hooks and general swing of things is super-sweet, but the flat, faintly obnoxious vocals and too-cool-for-school posturing both speak of the Crystal Stilts, and that’s the kind of speech that leads to glowering stares and itchy trigger fingers on this weblog. Swings and roundabouts, I guess. There’s a lovely, handcrafted bunch of Joe Meekish bedroom jangle/shimmer to be found here though (dig the weird bass boom and ‘50s style guitar break on ‘Suit Yourself’), and enough good elements to command a fair few listens, but songwriting is strictly of the Strokes patented “will-this-do?” variety, and as such I don’t think I’m entirely sold at the moment. It’s growing on me ever so slowly though… give it time, I think this guy is going good places – see the promising numbers on the myspace for further evidence.

http://www.myspace.com/spectralspectral
http://www.myspace.com/capturedtracks

Woog Riots / Schwervon! Split 7” (Industry Decoy)

Occasional Peel favourites back in the day, Germany’s Woog Riots were an absolute hoot when I saw them live last month – a husband & wife duo executing cute guitar/keyboard/laptop electro-pop that could have been excruciating in the wrong hands, but was rendered holler-worthy by their boundless enthusiasm, good humour and endlessly catchy tunes. Several of their songs, and much of their between song banter, centred around their admiration for The Fall, an idea that I found quite odd, and one that made me fervently hope that these happy strangers in our dark and desperate land never meet their idols – the thought of Mark E. reducing them to piles of ash with one withering glare is too horrible to contemplate. But then, who knows -maybe hearty, no nonsense Europeans unafflicted by anglophone gloom are precisely the audience MES has in mind for his music? Maybe if I were to join them at a family picnic to breath in the fresh Bavarian air and get down to “Bingo Masters Breakout”, the whole scary mess would finally begin to make sense..?

Anyway, no matter. “People Working With Computers”, The Woog Riots track included here, isn’t about The Fall, and doesn’t sound even remotely like The Fall. It’s about people, working with computers, and it sounds exactly like you’d expect it to sound. “Some like dancing, some do not” it goes, “some have children, some do not / some are women, some are men”, then it goes “click click! click click!”, and everyone has a little dance. Fucking awesome! Seriously, you’ll get no bullshit from Woog Riots – just straight up great songs about stuff in the modern world, and how good it all is. Beat that, Mark!

And with their killer tunes and spousal cheer, Woog Riots make for a perfect team up with New York’s Schwervon! I may not have trumpeted the fact quite as often as I maybe should have done on this weblog, but let it be said here and now that I fucking love Schwervon! – every time I’ve seen them play over the years has been a certified good time, and every record I’ve got by them is great. Simple as that. They may have fallen off my radar a bit in the past year or two (I think I’ve missed at least one tour/album), but clearly they’ve still got the moves, as their song here, “Balloon”, is an absolute joy and one of their best distillations of perfect, hooky, hard-rocking guitar-pop to date. As ever, it’s so so brilliant to hear a band who are able to take such deceptively prosaic influences (Pixies, Yo La Tengo, Weezer etc.) and… y’know, actually be as good as them at it, rather than sucking by default. “Balloon” barely scrapes two minutes, but makes this disc worth its weight in gold.

And that weight is considerable by 7” standards, as this record is one of the first from new German label Industry Decay, who include a handy printed manifesto detailing their intention to produce a series of split singles manufactured to the very highest standards of pressing/packaging and to distribute them independently for reasonable rates, flying in the face of dull economic realities as they go. Perhaps not the most original scheme in the annals of DIY culture, but it’s a noble cause and this record is great, so why not drop ‘em a few quid at the address below.

http://www.myspace.com/woogriots
http://www.myspace.com/schwervon
http://www.myspace.com/decoyindustry

Labels: Dean McPhee, Not Cool, Schwervon, singles reviews, Skipper, Spectrals, Woog Riots