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

Young, Free, With Singles, Part # 2.



Manic Cough – Eggs & Chips (Purr)

Oh man, how could I possibly not love this? Sounding like the early Slits if they’d discovered a little bit of ‘60s basement funk instead of the reggae, Manic Cough dispatch the a-side here in about eighty seconds, letting us know their penchant for “eggs and chips and weetabix” early in the morning. “Fuck the euro, fuck the euro!” they inexplicably yell in the middle. The rather convoluted song-writing credits on the back name four different people, only one of whom is in the band, as contributing lyricists, making me think they perhaps gave a credit to everyone present at the breakfast meet-up where the song had its genesis, and threw in a passing euro-sceptic waiter for good measure. What larks! B-side ‘Get Some’ is even shorter and even better, a girl-punk twist party classic with massive bass-line, gang vocals and really well-developed melody, like Kenickie hitting the beach in a cadillac or something. I’ve never bought a record on Purr that’s been anything less than a bona fide winner, and this is no exception. MORE PLEASE!

http://www.myspace.com/maniccoughh
http://www.purr.org.uk

Dean McPhee / Chapters – split 7” (World In Winter)

Here’s an unexpected treat I found on my doorstep this week – seven inches of low-key psychedelic beauty from the appropriately named World in Winter label. I heard on the radio this morning that the temperature’s going to hit -7 in the Uk’s city centres tonight, and the radiator in my room’s not working too good, so this whole package suits the circumstances quite well, I feel. On side one, loop-happy guitarist Dean Mcphee gently entwines some deeply comforting, sorta-melodic Sitar-tinged guitar lines over a steady interstellar bass pulse, cocooned within a mist of dense analogue echo, tape delay and tremolo, recalling both Sandy Bull’s electronic excursions on his Valentines Day ’69 record, and Tom Carter’s more laidback work on recent Charalambides albums, but with an odd, inexplicably British flavour about it, a potentially perfect soundtrack to some hauntastic Sunday afternoon visit to some icy hilltop ruins. On the flip, Derbyshire trio Chapters continue in a broadly similar vein, looped phrases merging into crystalline echo-fog, a thick, enveloping sound and Eno-like attention to detail preventing it from ever sinking into sub-ambient drudgery or post-rock nowheresville. Like feeling reality return as you sit in the car and wait for the heater to kick in? A pretty great record anyway, bringing back happy memories of freezing & dreaming in my lonely garret to the sounds of Flying Saucer Attack’s ‘Mirror’ and the darker reaches of the Ochre records back catalogue…. so if that particular, indefinable strand of British soundscaping has ever been your cup of warm, warm tea, I’d deem this one well worth tracking down.

http://www.myspace.com/worldinwinte
http:// www.myspace.com/deanmcphee
http:// www.myspace.com/chapterswiw

Projekt A-Ko / Horowitz split 7” (Filthy Little Angels)

Projekt A-Ko, you’ll recall, are the band formed by three quarters of my teenage idols Urusei Yatsura after UY called it a day back in about 2001-ish. They’ve always kept a pretty low profile though, and to be honest I had no idea they were still in operation, so to find ‘em popping up on this split with popscene heroes Horowitz is a glorious and unexpected surprise. And I’m pleased to report that despite the apparent years of silence, they’re pretty much picking up right where they left off too, as their first tune here, ironically entitled ‘Nothing Works Twice’, kicks straight into a fuzzed up Slanted-era Pavement riff, working downbeat verses hinting at some kinda dystopian sci-fi scenario into a huge, rollicking pop chorus complete with all the ‘ba ba ba’s you could ask for. It’s all here; those sneery, transatlantic vocals that have apparently worked their way so thoroughly into my DNA over the years that I sing like that automatically, and plenty of that rampant, string-breaking guitar scuzz too. It’s a fucking winner, and reassures me I was no fool back when I was obsessively taping every repeat play of UY songs off Steve Lamacq when I should have been doing my homework. Their other song here, ‘Goodbye Sunlight’, is a touch more subdued, starting off with acoustic strumming, even more ‘ba ba ba’s, and some lovely female backing vox… presumably the work of previously silent bass player Elaine? It’s another good song anyway – great to have these guys back.

Horowitz’ two songs on the other side are entitled ‘Hug Target’ and ‘Sweetness I Could Die In Your Arms’, and your kneejerk reaction to those titles will likely mirror your reaction to the music. Predictably, I love it. As with all Horowitz stuff, it’s about the most perfectly realised homemade guitar pop imaginable, rejecting sadsack indie cliché in favour of compressed doses wideeyed, swooning, naïve love-joy, graced with the kind of melodies the skinny tie power-pop contingent would kill for. Like the sound of a geeky schoolboy gazing in wonder at the departing back of the girl who just kissed him for so long that he accidentally gets hit by a bus and floats off to a heaven where Dan Treacy joined Big Star and Boyracer rule supreme.

So, in conclusion, both sides of this record make my tummy feel funny and bring a tear to my eye, and you should get a copy! It’s limited to 200 though, and mine is number 186, so assuming Filthy Little Angels opened the box the right way around, you might have to get a move on.

http://www.myspace.com/projektako
http:// www.myspace.com/horowitzband
http://filthylittleangels.blogspot.com/

Used Kids 7” (Salinas Records)

Tons of good vibes exploding out of the debut(?) single from these funloving punkers, apparently based in Brooklyn, although they celebrate the Midwest in song and their label is based in Ferndale, MI. Anyway, the score is some distinctly un-Brooklynlike good, old fashioned six pack on the lawn pre-hardcore rock n’ roll, and that’s certainly no bad thing. Musically, things manage to be sorta simultaneously sloppy and tight, but happily rockin’ either way (think Replacements). A-side ‘Midwest Midsummer’ is an absolute BLAST anyway, a mighty, widescreen feel-good beast of Springsteen proportions on a Ramones budget, and near five minutes of it too, complete chorus repeats, ‘na na na na na, na na’s, solos and exhortations – I mean more than one - to “sing it!” and to “keep on rocking!”. Wowza! High fives all round! Fantastic stuff! The b-sides aren’t quite as good, and reveal the band’s primary weakness; namely, the vocals. Although the three fellas in the band take lead on one song each (“..and Kate screamed”), only the guy who sings the A side really seems to have a strong enough voice to get the point across, which is a shame cos the other songs are still pretty good, and have some great lyrics (as printed on the back); “Cupid’s landlord would keep your deposit / you would get the horns if you did this to Odin / it’s true you don’t need a licence to drive in Wisconsin / but you still gotta pay if you cause a wreck”…? Just tighten up the recording and playing a bit, tweak the vocals, and I’m with you guys.

Just checked the Used Kids myspace, on which they describe what they’re going for musically as follows:

“Like when it's midnight and you're at a dance party with your friends, maybe some enemies, and someone's been hijacking the stereo and playing shitty ironic indie dance music all night. Maybe you've just cracked open a can of Schlitz, or passed around a fifth of Evan Williams, but whatever you're doing, you're ready to really cut loose, and suddenly the Exploding Hearts are on the sound system and you're running around the place, knocking over chairs and preaching Gospel-style to all the clueless hipsters how you're a Pretender at the Game of Love. And as you rampage and thrash around the place, you feel once more what it was like when you heard the Ramones for the first time and there was a nuclear detonation in your brain. Or maybe the songs of the Used Kids recall for you how it felt that time when you and your roommate were driving straight from Seattle to Minneapolis, the tape deck broken, and as you searched at dawn through the toxic waste on the FM dial in the badlands of Montana, you heard the riff from Tom Petty's "Running Down A Dream" and you punched the ceiling of your car as you both sang along with every word.”

*blinks *
*reconsiders *

The Used Kids can be my friends forever. I’m sorry about the stuff I said about the vocals. I was wrong, and everyone should buy this record and give these guys money and/or beer. SING IT!

http://www.myspace.com/usedkidsny
http:// www.myspace.com/salinasrecords

POST-SCRIPT: The temperature didn't actually hit anything like -7 on the night I wrote that Dean McPhee/Chapters review, I think a young weatherman on Radio 4 just got overexcited. So I didn't freeze to death in the end, which was nice.

Labels: Chapters, Dean McPhee, Horowitz, Manic Cough, Projekt Ako, singles reviews, Used Kids