THE FORTY-TWO BEST RECORDS OF 2011:
Part # 9


Fucking hell, FINALLY!

5. Bong – Beyond Ancient Space (Ritual Productions)

Yeah, I know – not much of a name is it? “Hey man, what shall we call our stoner doom band?” “How about… Bong!” Much like those indie bands who call themselves things like ‘Amplifier’ and ‘The Drums’, it doesn’t exactly fill one with hope regarding the imaginative breadth of the music within. I might have passed over this one, or else never noticed it at all, had some kind soul not recommended it to me one day. I’m very glad they did recommend it, and I would like to sincerely thanks them for the steer, because ‘Beyond Ancient Space’ is simply some of the best psychedelic music I’ve heard in years.

First track is a bit slow to get going, building up from silence with some ominous, Sunn 0)))-esque ritual incantation. Ho hum. Soon as the first roar of sub-bass hits and the drummer splutters into life though – whoa. All bets are off. Draw the curtains, lights off. Any fucker who dares phone or ring the doorbell in the next hour is gonna have to wait. This is gonna be epic.

Ostensibly still a doom metal album, ‘Beyond Ancient Space’ exists in similar proximity to its parent genre as Alice Coltrane’s ‘Journey In Satchidananda’ does to jazz – using its skeleton merely as a basecamp from which to take off into uncharted realms of pure, blissful, bottomless psychedelia.

You know that bit in ‘Phantasm’, where Mike gets pulled through the Tall Man’s dimensional gateway and sees that column of mindless, hooded dwarves trudging across an endless expanse of red-lit desert by the light of a hazy, dying sun? You don’t? Well let’s pretend you do, and let’s imagine if, instead of a horrifying vision of a life of emotionally-stunted, death-ruled interplanetary drudgery, that had actually been really cool and he’d decided to go with it and join their ranks. That’s kind of what listening to the 25 minutes of ‘Onward To Perdonaris’ is like – a churning maelstrom of distortion, like some eternal death march across burning sands, whilst a forboding Eastern-tuned sitar/tamboura type riff shimmers overhead, heavily-phased open strings chiming like the bell of some phantasmagorical galleon.

Bypassing the assaultive/headache-inducing compression favoured by groups like Electric Wizard, Bong instead concentrate on summoning the more dynamic, analogue-ish widescreen dronescape beloved of Earth and Sleep – potentially muffled at low volumes, but completely overwhelming when cranked at a half-decent system, a form of diffuse obliteration that works particularly well when middle track ‘Across The Timestream’ hoves into view on the desert horizon.

By this stage, the undertow of bass feedback – hard to tell from whose cabinets it originated – has grown so monolithic that it proceeds to swallow the guitarist and bassist altogether, solidifying into a sound that’s less like a three piece rock band, more like a duet between the drummer and the endless roar of herculean thrusters powering some derelict, unmanned freighter through the depths of deep space.

I should say a few words about the drummer actually. Often, the demands of doom metal –especially in as extreme a form as this – can impose substantial limitations and challenges upon humble keepers of the beat, driving them either toward lumpen repetition or distracting experimentalism. Not this guy though – he’s swinging like John Bonham played back at quarter speed, and it’s beautiful. Listen to those cymbals crash!

Believe it or not, I’m pretty picky when it comes to my space-rock transcendence, but Bong win the gold medal. If this don’t send you, you probably didn’t want to go in the first place.

Looking on Youtube, I learn that, hilariously, these songs have ‘radio edits’. This isn’t one of them;





4. The Bats – Free All The Monsters (Flying Nun)

A band who have spent the best part of three decades whittling away at their particular brand of timeless indie-rock to without feeling any particular need to expand their horizons, different eras in The Bats’ back catalogue can best be differentiated by slight tweaking of the overall production aesthetic, from the FX-laden shoegaze of ‘Coachmaster’ to the more rustic, folksy timbres of ‘Daddy’s Highway’, with assorted stops at scenic viewpoints in-between.

‘Free All The Monsters’ then sees them returning to their spiritual home on the rejuvenated Flying Nun label with an album that initially veers somewhat toward the thin, reverb-drenched sound of ‘classic’ ‘80s British indie, sometimes even approaching a fabricated jangle akin to The Smiths or something. Thankfully, this problem can be easily rectified through the immoderate application of volume and EQ, which, as with many albums from the actual ‘80s, allows the true grandeur of the music to take flight.

Pushed to an appropriately ear-hurty level, the tangled sustain of Robert Scott and Kaye Woodward’s guitars assume their proper majesty, as their voices (teamed up more frequently, and more persuasively, than on previous records) wrap themselves elegantly around the slow, wise-owl phrasing of the strongest set of songs the band has written in recent memory or… hell, let’s just take the leap and say, ever.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I thought ‘The Guilty Office’ and ‘At The National Grid’ were plenty good, but almost every number here is a potential ‘greatest hits’ contender. Scott’s writing has retained a singularly high level of quality over the years, but he’s really upped the ante here, investing many of these songs with the kind of fiery, uncertain passion that usually tends to vanish from the work of settled/experienced rock bands as they glide through middle age. Correspondingly, the band seem to have been retooled to match their leader’s renewed vigour, letting rip with a kind of yearning, overdriven sprawl that pushes things a few steps further into the wilderness than was allowed within the contemplative, grown up homesteads of their last few records.

Even the more upbeat songs here – the lightweight jangle of ‘Simpletons’ and the disarmingly jaunty title cut - seem to be pushing back toward a comfort zone of grand, wistful despondence, an atmosphere in which a choice chord or cadence can transform lyrics that fall flat on paper - “And you know, I’ll take you with me / cos tomorrow’s a long, long time..” - into statements that move beyond the mere words into definitive, irreducible reflections on the nature of… something or other. And when the band really go with this mood and let rip on doleful epics like ‘Fingers of Dawn’ and ‘See Right Through Me’ (with it’s nod to Dylan’s implacable ‘I Shall Be Released’), the effect is stunning. You know those moments in songs like this, where they reach a big, Byronic climax at the end of a verse, and you’re like, ‘cue guitar solo!’, and the lead line crashes in just right and you’re like, yes? Well there’s a lot of that going on on the second half of this album.

Perhaps my favourite song is ‘On The Bank’, which blows things out to an almost Crazy Horse-like level of slow-burning grandeur, as Scott relates what appears to be the tale of a hazardous night-time sortie from some sort of seafaring vessel under hostile circumstances. Doubtless it’s all a big woolly emotional metaphor, but as is my want, I prefer to take these things literally. “treading water takes you down / and it’s good to have companions on the ground / though they may be more useful on the bank / to lend a hand.” Sound advice for any nautical disembarkation. Anyway, it’s a total epic, and I bloody love it.

Surely it can’t be just me who thinks that The Bats are better at making this kind of music than just about anyone else on earth? Can it really just be geographical distance and soft-spoken humbleness that’s denied them the chance to compete with the R.E.M.s and Teenage Fanclubs of this world? If you’re unfamiliar with their catalogue and am at all swayed by all my above nonsense, maybe 2012 might be a good year to investigation these propositions.





3. Peaking Lights – 936 (Not Not Fun / Domino)

Peaking Lights ‘Imaginary Falcons’ from 2010 was something real special – the primary achievement up to that point of the selected few (also see Blues Control and, uh… ) who were busy channelling the detritus of the past decade’s psyche/drone/noise hoo-hah into happy, harmonic, human realms. Now everybody with a pulse is doin’ that, and ‘936’ ably delivers on the next step of this music’s evolution so perfectly as to create its own self-sufficient universe, entirely ignorant of such pan-generic crit blather.

In an attempt to latch some space-filling blah onto this self-evidently wonderful music, writers have made much of Peaking Lights debt to dub, and indeed, whilst I’m not much of an expert on such things, stuff like Lee Perry’s sublime production work on ‘Heart of the Congos’ would seem to be as valid a reference point as any to work from here. Like Perry at his best, Idra Dunis and Aaron Coyes seem keen to apply experimental technique and DIY happenstance to the creation of music that is just, well…. irresistibly nice and comforting. As befits its rough production values and avant ancestry, each track here begins in slightly jarring fashion, pricking up our ears with a few seconds of rather harsh sounds and unheimlich rhythmic tics. Every time though, it takes only a few bars for us to fully internalise the song’s logic, for us to relax as we realise just how instinctively pleasing to human ears these sounds are. Peaking Lights is music to hang with. Music to be enveloped by. Music to render you happy and content in any situation. Homemade 21st century, post-everything lullabies.

Late last year, I wrote to a friend that ‘936’ is “..kind of electronic, kind of psychedelic, but with really good songs and beautiful melodies and cool bass lines too – like music cool parents would play to their babies to put them to sleep. I just play it all the time.”

And hopefully that’s about all you need to know really. It’s all I can think of to write, so it’d better be.





2. Milk Music – Beyond Living 12” (Perennial Death)

I shared some of my thoughts on Milk Music here, in August 2011.

I listened to mp3s of their 12” hundreds of times before that, and, now that I’ve finally got a physical copy, I’m gonna listen to it hundreds more.

Drawn on the subject of what my current favourite bands are, I recently found myself saying something of Milk Music along the lines of “they’re kind of a combination of everything that was great about rock music in the late ‘80s / early ‘90s”. I then almost immediately realised that this was a really fucking stupid and misleading thing to say, on any number of levels.

Because seriously, any of those acts that exists to pay professional homage to the Our Band Can Be Your Life ‘glory days’ of heritage indie-rock, playing to the same crowds who go to those abysmal ATP ‘play the album all the way through’ nights, can fuck right off. I mean, I know I’m usually pretty retrogressive in my music taste, but I’d like to think I’ve developed at least some sense of good taste along with it. Go! Leave me! Take me off your PR’s mailing list! You’re about as cool as someone playing aesthetically correct Grateful Dead-style hippie rock in 1982, and you know it. Get outta my face.

Milk Music are not like that. They are not cool because they sound like Dinosaur and The Wipers and Black Flag. They are cool because they are as good as them, at a time when pretty much nobody else is. End of.

“Political angst will never flow / in the dark where the real feelings grow” – like, what the hell does that even mean? I don’t know man, but he sounds like he means it! Remember when angry guys with loud guitars could pull that sorta thing and get away with it? DUCK, Milk Music coming through!

The sticker on the front of this 12” in Rough Trade said something like “as tipped by NME, Pitchfork etc…”, so I guess the moment has passed and they’ll be making concept albums about lightbulb factories by this time next year. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

Rock music in 2011, thy name was Milk Music.





1. Comet Gain – Howl of the Lonely Crowd (Fortuna Pop)

Well it was foregone conclusion really, wasn’t it. Having spent months earlier this year banging away about Comet Gain in preparation for their latest magnum opus, I could scarcely have made anything else No # 1 could I?

With all those unwise words already up in digital print, I guess I probably don’t need to restate the fact that every LP Comet Gain have released since 2000’s ‘Tigertown Pictures’ has had a huge amount to me, each one becoming a veritable cornerstone of my musical being. Over five years in the making (so to speak – I mean, I’m sure many of those years weren’t exactly spent ‘in the making’), and on first impression ‘Howl..’ certainly doesn’t disappoint. If anything, it’s perhaps the most ballsy and immediate record the band has ever made – a loud, lengthy and unapologetic restatement of all the thematic and musical concerns that CG and their fans have held dear through the intervening years.

Opener ‘Clang of the Concrete Swans’ certainly leaves little room for uncertainty, a stream of consciousness, state-of-the-nation-address of a song that thunders along like a 21st century update of one of those epic mid ‘60s Dylan tracks. Only, y’know, better, and more relevant, and with cool sounding guitars, and a beat and stuff. Recklessly veering between the teeth-grinding frustrations of poverty-stricken urban drudgery and curdled cries of adolescent rebellion, it’s an astonishing-bordering-on-ridiculous statement of intent; “oh, be young, be someone / be someone rebel, vicious, dumb”.

This is by far the most professionally produced album CG have ever done (not that it matters), as is exemplified on the track 2 & 3 double-header of potential singles ‘Weekend Dreams’ and ‘An Arcade From The Rain’, wrecking ball pop songs that cement the record’s default palette of monster guitar tone, monster bass tone and domineering New Order style keys.

(Initially ‘Weekend Dreams’ had me a bit non-plussed, because I was used to listening to the earlier version released on a split single with Hello Cuca (reviewed here). Basically, for the album cut they’ve taken a bit that turned up as a coda in the final choruses of the first draft (the whole “I’ve got a cheap desire to be..” thing) and turned almost the entire song into it, losing a lot of good material in the process. Still though, that’s their prerogative, and once I got used to it I love the spirited performance of the new one too.)

And incidentally, if you’re not already a Comet Gain fan but still took an active interest in that bracketed paragraph, chances are you’re the kind of person who probably should be a Comet Gain fan, as David Feck’s bottomless obsession with pop cult ephemera proves as rich a source of material here as it ever has done, his ever-growing gallery of until-recently unsung loser-heroes swelled with new recruits, from proto-beatnik junkie-thief Herbert Huncke to former Fall keyboard player Una Baines, ‘This Sporting Life’ protagonist Frankie Machine, Dixon Steele from Nicholas Ray’s ‘In a Lonely Place’ and the proprietors of Berlin industrial label SPK. Thee ecstatic library indeed.

In what I think might be its third recorded outing, ‘Herbert Huncke’ is finally nailed here, assuming the rattling VU pastiche New York subway sound type proportions it’s always been aiming for, muscular production, spirited ‘woo woos’ and a great noise guitar solo finally overcoming the incongruity of a mild-mannered English guy delivering lines like “you motherfucker / where is my bread”. The SPK track, ‘Working Circle Explosive’, is great too – a flaming clarion call of Baader Meinhof punker discontent, fuelled by sloganeering non-sequitur lyrics and some even more ferocious multi-layered fuzz.

At the heart of the record though, ‘The Ballad of Frankie Machine’ is simply an incredible track, encapsulating everything about this band that has meant so much to me. On this song, this one here, you can see… what exactly? Beyond all the back story and the shambolic live shows and cult following and all other nonsense, simply a band who can achieve something like this, who can play these tangled guitars and make them sound like a shadow falling back across the whole 20th century’s history of betrayals and heartbreaks, who can fuse the personal and the political into a sharp, bloody lump, who after many, many, many listens can still make my stomach twists in knots as Rachel sings “my best suit on, out with the boys tonight / don’t wake me up I might be dead..”.

The disparity between such intensity and the sloppy, melancholy acoustic numbers that have been a big part of CG’s repertoire at least since ‘City Fallen Leaves’ may irk some, but for those of us prepared to go the whole distance, there is beauty to be found even in these rambling, drunk-at-3am half-songs that scarcely any other band in history could get away with, as ‘After Midnight..’ and ‘Some Of Us Don’t Want To Be Saved’ are pulled back across the line by the sheer force of Feck’s need to communicate with us the totality of his whole whatever, the band’s epic, chiming swing driving the compositions forward as they take on the mantle of lovelorn grandeur of David’s beloved Go-Betweens; “It’s the small things that keep us alive / the coded souvenirs, left of the dial”. Stirs the blood, I tell ya. What’s that, wordcount? Another thousand words down the can? Worth every comma.

It’s hard to say how ‘Howl of the Lonely Crowd’ will fit into the pantheon quite yet. It’s taken a long time – years upon years of obsessive listening – for the previous LPs to reveal their true worth as they collide with life experience and coagulate into shiny, strange, twisted, inoperable lumps in my psyche. Maybe I’ll completely forget about this album by February. Maybe I’ll play it at least once a week until the day I die. Either way, for the moment it certainly sounds like a really fucking good album, and that’s a good start on the road to immortality.

Labels: best of 2011, Bong, Comet Gain, Milk Music, Peaking Lights, The Bats

20. Blues Control - Local Flavor (Siltbreeze)

Somehow, I’ve managed to miss all of Blues Control’s previous work, but I’ll certainly be making an effort to catch up, because ‘Local Flavor’ is an admirable piece of work. Like most of the other albums in this run-down that are of the vague psyche/drone/space-rock variety, Blues Control benefit hugely here from taking musical forms that are usually experienced as huge, meandering splurges of sound and crafting them from the bottom up into far more concise, deliberate statements that cram maximum inspiration and effect into a thirty-five minute LP, leaving us wanting more. ‘Local Flavor’ begins precisely as you WOULDN’T expect a record like this to begin, with a crashing kick drum and a monumental stoner-metal guitar riff, pounding itself into the ground until the rock pleasure principle subsides and you start to realise that the track has been overlaid with several layers of crackling piano improvisation that sound like they’ve been pulled off an old 78, underlining the essentially droning, repetitive qualities of the rock thud to extremely pleasing effect… and then the trumpets come in – splendid. Each subsequent track lands us somewhere completely different, but the quality is consistent throughout. It should be noted that the trendy appropriations of world music ‘ambience’ that both the album’s cover art and title may lead you to expect are reassuringly absent from the music. Instead, both of ‘Local Flavor’s longer tracks choose to tip their hat toward the much-rumoured but rarely realised drone-psych / dance-disco crossover; ‘Tangier’ adds a throbbing pulse that sounds like it was sampled from directly outside a nightclub to a beautiful, Steve Reich-esque cut-up of vocal sounds overlaid with house-style synths and percussion overdubs, recalling one of those mammoth Arthur Russell disco jams in the best possible way. ‘On Through the Night’, the album’s longest and darkest track, meanwhile builds itself up from an ambient first half into a frenzy of dense, tar pit funk, with crisp electric organ finding itself subsumed into a slow-building cloud of degraded, primeval skree, ghostly bamboo echos and Carpenter-core electronics. In short, an utterly beguiling world of self-contained sound, building on the ruins of its avant garde and avant pop influences to create a real winner.

Mp3> Good Morning

19. Felix – You Are The One I Pick (Kranky)

Another record that I love, but that is proving hard to write about. So let’s take a deep breath and get on with it: Felix is Lucinda Chua writing and singing and playing piano and cello, and Chris Summerlin pitching in with guitar and arrangements and so forth. The songs here are both abstract and imagistic and deeply personal, each one bleeding seamlessly into the next, and comprised of odd, off-kilter combinations of musical refrains, the logic of which is apparent to Chua alone, generally set to sweet, slow, lurching accompaniment that evokes the feeling of dancing drunk on a freezing, rocky beach at night as surely as any medley from the Dirty Three back catalogue. Chau’s lyrics mix dream logic animal imagery (dragons, ponies, weasels all make an appearance) with vicious glimpses of everyday 21st century minutiae and industrial strength discontent, rapture and uncertainty… and the result is pretty stunning – pure musical poetry, like that girl from Life Without Buildings sitting down alone at the piano and letting it all hang out… but no, that’s a shit comparison, fuck it. You know those albums or books you get sometimes that seem just so idiosyncratic and personal that they’re like a guided tour of the inside of the author’s head at the point of composition, yet rendered with such skill that the result isn’t so much creepy or self-indulgent as it is just plain moving and intoxicating? – this album is a bit like one of those, let’s leave it at that.

Mp3> Waltzing For Weasels

18. Favours For Sailors – Furious Sons (Tough Love)

Like some weird, preppy indie-rock butterfly, Favours For Sailors seemed to crash fully formed into the world toward the end of last year, shone with a very particular kind of brilliance and apparently played their final gig a couple of months back, leaving just these six songs, each of them such a tour de force of perfection within their chosen genre, you wonder why Pavement or Superchunk would even bother reforming when instead they could just hire a hall, play these songs on repeat and hang their heads, admitting there is no more work for them to do on this earth. Ok, maybe I exaggerate… but nonetheless, a couple of these songs are so damn spectacular that their very existence seems arrogant – musical to-do lists with every single item happily crossed out. What was it I said about ‘em way back when? Oh yeah:

‘‘Furious Sons’ is a brief set of songs custom built to remind us that a good band who know how to play their guitar/guitar/bass/drums, who have big, bright, clean production, vaguely literate/ambiguous lyrics and fully developed multi-part songs that venture beyond the four minute mark, can still be SO MUCH FUN when they hit the bullseye and do all that stuff RIGHT for once, with energy and humour and the kind of off-the-cuff musical prowess that makes crappy wouldbe musicians like myself curse their sorry lot in life. “Erode My Empire” makes for a great opening track – I love the way the lead guitar hooks splurge all over the melodica-assisted verse-chug, and it’s hard not to crack a smile at the lyrical conceit; “empires erode / from the coastline in / soon I’ll be stuck in a square metre in the middle / probably in Nottingham”. […]The best song though is track # 4, “I Dreamt That You Loved Me In Your Dreams”. It’s STUNNING. An indie-rock ‘Citizen Kane’ in three minutes fifty-nine seconds. And, like ‘Kane’, it both demands a blow by blow written account and supersedes the need for one in its clarity of its intention and expression. It builds moment of awesomeness upon moment of awesomeness like a big, top heavy layer cake for anyone who’s ever enjoyed lively, smart sad-boy indie rock, until it collapses in on itself at just the right moment – instant classic.”

I’ll stand by that.

Mp3> I Dreamt That You Loved Me In Your Dreams

17. The Bats – The Guilty Office (Hidden Agenda)

It’s no secret that I’ve been all about The Bats ever since I saw them play over the summer, doing a set that drew heavily from this album – perhaps that’s got something to do with why I like it just as much if not more than any of the older stuff I’ve got by them – they’re a band who started off strong in the ‘80s and have subsequently just taken it steadily, slowly maturing to a state of ninja-like mastery in the field of low-key, melodic guitar pop. It’s strange that I’ve always sorta clung to the belief that great rock n’ roll is on some level a desperate, unnatural sound – not just electrified and distorted, but a sound that is pushing against something – the sound of people striving to bring it into being in the face of insurmountable personal/technological/physical/social obstacles. Well, The Bats help chuck that theory out the window by vestige of sounding so completely organic, so inevitable and RIGHT that when Robert Scott and Kaye Woodward’s voices meld together on the chorus of opener ‘Countersign’, it sounds like music that could have risen straight from the earth itself, and it continues to drift over the fields at night and off into the starry sky over the course of these twelve tunes, never hitting a bum note, an awkward lyric, a strumming pattern or rhythm or melody that’s anything less than totally, lazily, wonderfully harmonious, to the extent that it’s difficult to believe they ever pick up their respective instruments and DON’T sound like this – an impression that’s only heightened by the welcome return of Alastair Galbraith’s violin on a few of these songs. I guess they’re too modest to make an issue of it, but while other bands have been busy crashing and burning and getting famous and getting fucked up, The Bats have been busy just quietly being one of the best guitar bands in the world, period.

Mp3> Countersign

16. Dinosaur Jr - Farm (Fat Possum)

It is a truth widely acknowledged that the only good things to have come out of the recent mania for nostalgia-fed band reformations are a reinvigorated Mission of Burma, and the totally unforeseen rebirth of Dinosaur Jr as a creative force. And just when folks were getting ready to write their first comeback off as a fluke, they’re off again, thundering onto the track with a monster-truck of an album that’s probably, like, the second or third best one they’ve ever done, once again amping up their time-honoured classic rock + angst + noise formula to deafening perfection. As they get older, there seems to be more Crazy Horse gnarl than ever in the mix, and ‘Plans’ rips off the intro to ‘Cortez The Killer’ so flagrantly, it’s a wonder Neil Young hasn’t been in touch to do whatever it is he likes to do to copyright violators to teach them the error of their ways (he probably makes them do a really hard crossword or something). Or maybe he let them off, just cos the track’s freakin’ great. It’s funny: Murph’s drumming is as functional as ever and you’d be hard-pressed to pick out Lou’s bass line beneath Mascis’s peanut brittle of multi-layered fuzz on most of these songs, so one is forced to ask: what is it about these three guys playing together that gets J writing songs and playing guitar with a desperate, youthful spirit he’s been missing for nigh on twenty years? Is he just knocking out Dinosaur-type material to order, or does he still feel the adolescent loneliness and frustration of these songs as keenly as his yearning yowls and impassioned, stumble-fingered soloing would tend to suggest? Really though, does it matter, when what results is such an overpowering vision of heroic, big budget modern rock, the way it could and should be, if only all those other festival headlining clowns would cut out all the bullshit, up the intensity and actually mic those giant show-off amp stacks up properly for once? Play loud.

Mp3 > Pieces

Labels: best of 2009, Blues Control, Dinosaur Jr, Favours For Sailors, Felix, The Bats

Summer Singles, part # 2

Mazes – Bowie Knives (Sex is Disgusting)

So it was essentially on the basis of mp3s of the songs from this 7” that I made my initial assessment of Mazes last month. To wit: “Guided By Voices and The Clean are the self-acknowledged chief reference points here, and whilst obviously Mazes aren’t remotely as revelatory as either of those groups, theirs is a straight up blend of roaring, rough-hewn subterranean power-pop that hits all the right buttons. At worst, file under “thoroughly satisfactory”, and at best, songs like "Bethesda" are f-ing superb; strong song-writing, goofy immediacy and a killer sound that recalls GBV’s ‘Propeller’”.

And all that still stands (hey, I don’t change my mind THAT quickly), but now that I’ve got these numbers on an actual disc (great cover art, and a really nice, good sounding pressing too – three cheers for Sex is Disgusting), I like ‘em even better. Mazes are just a really straightforward great band, making great songs that sound great, with (it seems) little in the way of ego, silliness or career ambitions getting in the way – they’re ditching the hassles and just getting down to it. The spirit of Greg’s basement circa 1993 lives on. ‘Bethesda’ really is a hit – the kind of spooky, self-explanatory, unbeatable singalong tune I wish I’d written; “There’s a witch in distance / and she knows what I know”. Sensational. So if like me you’re the sort of fool who’s prepared to regularly shell out £5 for four minutes of neatly packaged music, don’t let this one pass you by - it’s real nice. Limited to 250 apparently. Cor, you’d think they’d at least stretch to 500. Anyway, two thumbs up!

http://www.myspace.com/mazesmazesmazes
http://www.myspace.com/sexisdisgustingrecords

Miniswap – Whistler b/w Human Error (Cloudberry)

Miniswap is the band that the other three members of The Bats turn into when Robert Scott is off on his holidays, or serving time in The Clean, or whatever. So guitarist Kaye Woodward takes the lead vocal, song-writing duty is shared and the result is as gorgeous a pile of perfectly formed chiming kiwi guitar pop as you could hope for.

With Woodward’s softer tones, and some jovial recorder and whistling, things are sufficiently cutie to gain a release on Cloudberry (er… not that there’s anything wrong with that..), but the songs are also more upbeat and energetic than recent Bats material, with ‘Whistler’ in particular barrelling along like a lost Look Blue Go Purple song, carried forth by Woodward’s dense, shimmering rhythm guitar strummage as she seemingly takes on the role Scott plays in The Bats, rather than her usual quietly ferocious lead work. ‘Human Error’ meanwhile is more acoustic, but still catapulted forth by the band as Paul Kean’s muscular bass and the faintly Smiths-y melody take centre stage. A fine listen.

I really like the cover to this one too. Not that I’m some twee foot fetishist or anything, but it’s really pleasant to look upon… the Mazes one also. Heck, I even quite like the Mother of Tears one, and that's just plain ugly. I'm a pushover for covers.

http://www.myspace.com/miniswap
http://www.cloudberryrecords.com/

Mother of Tears – Little Ratty b/w In The Morning (Hozac)

Boy, this is sure not what I expected a band called ‘Mother of Tears’ to sound like. I wonder if they’re named after that notoriously awful Dario Argento movie? Whatever; just like that movie probably will when I get around to it, this hits my pleasure receptors with a dull thud, and life is alright. Well executed if ultimately undistinguished, it’s good natured, masculine ‘Punk Rock’ in a wouldbe sky-scraping, vaguely fist-pounding ‘anthems for barflys’ kinda vein. Close one eye and you could be listening to a demo of ‘Do The Collapse’ era GBV, but close the other and you could just as easily be hearing The Weirdos, or some other hardworking LA outfit on the cusp of that punk-becomes-new wave moment. The singers sounds a little like Gary Floyd of The Dicks in places, although a lot less OTT or distinctive. ‘Little Ratty’ goes on a bit too long, but has a great, dramatic ending with “are you ready to die??” yelled over a one note guitar crescendo. I think this band does drama pretty well actually; ‘In The Morning’ has a far more blatant New Wave thing going on, almost a vampy LA goth kinda vibe if it wasn’t simultaneously so macho – it’s got a real cool ‘80s horror movie theme song type stomp; good times, although it ends before it really gets going. Not bad at all!

It’s crazy isn’t it, how we (or at least I – dunno about you) have these so, so many accutely delineated little categories and cross-referenced tick boxes for each and every possible variation of dudes playing guitars and drums and hollering…?

So, I dunno, fuck it – this is some rock music. It’s a lot better than the majority of other rock music out there, so if you’re thus inclined you might as well give it a spin if you’ve worn out all your Alice Cooper records. But if you’re thinking of ordering some 7”s off ebay from overseas for mucho $$, I’m not sure I’d make it a priority.

http://www.myspace.com/motheroftears
http://www.hozacrecords.com/

Nodzzz – True To Life b/w Good Times Crowd (What’s Your Rupture?)

First new material from Nodzzz since their album, and…. straight in the back of the net! Or ‘home run’, or whatever your preferred crappy sports type expression of effortless success and exhilaration is. Seriously, this band can do no wrong for me at the moment, and these are two more beautiful little songs to add to the pile. The recording here is brighter and cleaner here than on the album, but correspondingly perhaps a little thinner. Who cares though, you can hear it all fine and these guys are definitely a ‘song’ band rather than a ‘sound’ band.

In ‘True To Life’, Nodzzz return to their familial home in the suburbs and sing to everyone about the things they’ve learned at the art school. “If you must make a picture, make it true to life”, they advise sagely. Sounds like a refreshingly down to earth approach to the arts to me – presumably this wasn’t the same art school that gave the world all those Lightning Bolt type dudes, or the subsequent generations of fluorescent bozos who hang around this neck of the woods.

On the other side is ‘Good Times Crowd’, wherein Nodzzz perhaps examine a different aspect of the art school life, communicating the thrills and disappointments experienced by a fragile fellow attempting to adjust to a new-found life of hedonism. It doesn’t sound like it ended well, but it doesn’t sound like it was entirely fruitless either.

Perhaps soon there will be enough Nodzzz songs for us to place them all in order and piece together a concise and comprehensive biography of an earnest young man making his way in the world and experiencing new things. And, rendered by way of the band’s insistent, twangy guitar lines and jaunty ‘nerd bounce’ sound (of which the A side here is another definitive example), it would be hard not to wed this unfolding tale to the mental image of our protagonist happily striding down the street on a sunny day with a mischievous look in his eye, his picaresque troubles overcome and a spring in his step as he marches on toward adulthood. Sort of like The Embarrassment if they’d taken some anger management classes, got a bit more fresh air and really sorted their shit out.

I’m going to see Nodzzz at the end of this month, and I can’t wait! *Claps hands in theatrical excitement*

http://nodzzz.blogspot.com/
http://www.whatsyourrupture.com/

Labels: Mazes, Miniswap, Mother of Tears, Nodzzz, singles reviews, The Bats

SINGLES!
March/April/May ’09, Part # 1:

Look at all the little things I've found to fill my shoeboxes with! In alphabetical order from A to E, part #2 coming soon-ish...


The Bats / Songs split EP
(The Spring Press)

Well, what a coincidence – there I was eulogising The Bats but a couple of posts back, and here’s a brand new 7” from them, split with Australian (I think?) band Songs.

True to their status as a working definition of consistency in pop music, The Bats side is sublime. “Castle Lights” is the slower of the two songs, with violin and an honest-to-god harp helping to intensify the stately ‘great plains’ ambience the band has grown into over the years.“Under The Branches” is a tad jauntier; yet another text-book jangle-pop killer that they could have recorded any time in the past twenty five years really – all constituent parts are present and correct, and a fine time is had by every instrument in this band’s steady hands. Now that they are out and about again, touring and such, I would commend anyone playing in one of the many bands who seem to be going for a ‘classic indie-pop’ kinda sound to listen, listen, listen to The Bats, and hopefully learn something.

Songs stab at the big-time meanwhile begins with a largely instrumental number showcasing a mixture of instinctive, motorik drumming, surfy, post-punk derived guitar & bass and spacey organ-drone that puts me strongly in mind of early Electrelane. Really nice actually, especially when the chanted, phone-number-as-mantra vocal comes in and the music builds up around it – good stuff. Their other song by contrast is a slightly drippy male-voiced reverby acoustic thing. It’s ok, but a tad forgettable. Overall, sounds like a band worth keeping an ear on.

http://www.myspace.com/thebatsnz
http://www.myspace.com/ssongsssongs
http://www.myspace.com/thespringpress

Betty & The Werewolves – David Cassidy
(Damaged Goods)

Ok, so clearly regular readers will already know that I love this single dearly. My main purpose in writing this is to remind you that it exists. Boy, is it ever a good one though! A sweet story of old fashioned pop star obsession, international plane flight, dreams fulfilled etc., staring an archetypal British girl and everybody’s mum’s favourite 70s crooner, all set to gleeful, breakneck-speed girly singalong punk rock. Great to hear a good bit of storytelling creeping into such fast and furious music too; “Los Angeles is a long way from Ryslip, they told me so!” Brilliant!

My friend told me that this song has a line about masturbation, but honest to god, I’ve listened to the lyrics very closely, and I still can’t hear it. It all sounds quite wonderfully innocent to me. Please tell me there’s not some sleazy sub-text running through the whole thing that I’m missing.

But, uh, anyway, I got a special Betty & The Werewolves pencil when I bought my copy of this single off them. Maybe you will too! It’s on sparkly pink vinyl as well. Great! I hope I’m selling it to you here. Something still has to be number # 1 in this era when nobody buys records anymore, so let’s make it Betty & The Werewolves!

http://www.myspace.com/bettyandthewerewolves
http://www.damagedgoods.co.uk/

The Bombettes – What’s Cooking Good Looking? EP
(Ny Vag / Wasted Sounds)

Look out guys, here come The Bombettes! Five more tough gurls straight outta Sweden, a land where I can well imagine school careers advisors counsel kids from a young age on the right choice of tight jeans and Fenders, gently pushing each teenager towards the one precisely designated aspect of Anglo-American rock n’ roll culture that suits him/her best, all in order that they might eventually make a one-off 7” which will inevitably find it’s way into the singles racks at All Ages Records in Camden where, about two years after the recording date, I will glance at the cover for a couple of seconds, think “wow, this looks great”, and proceed to swell the coffers of the Swedish recording industry to the tune of a five pounds, before taking it home and being slightly underwhelmed. At least, I think that’s how it works. I’m not so hot on the finer points of international commerce.

Anyway, true to form, the first time I played the Bombettes record, I was pretty underwhelmed. Unerwhelmed by its ruthless efficiency and it’s manifest lack of charm or ideas. Underwhelmed by its strict adherence to a sound akin to early Blondie after a spell at The Hives’ high-energy garage-pop bootcamp. Underwhelmed by its hectoring, over-enunciated faux-punk vocals and dumb-ass lyrics, and underwhelmed by the extent to which it’s very existence is so evidently surplus to the requirements of anyone who once heard a Sahara Hotnights record.

BUT, then I played it a second time, this time in company after a couple of beers, and things changed. It’s true genius became evident to all. This instant change of heart was clear right from the outset, as opening track ‘The Thief’ kicked in with The Bombettes singing “I stole a look from you / while dancing to The Who! / Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” about twenty times in a row. Wow, what a great song! You can probably guess what the accompanying music sounds like without any help from me, but by this stage I was actually starting to enjoy the way it bludgeons one into submission, a theme which is more overtly discussed on the curiously bracketed ‘I Wanna (Kick your Ass)’. Herein The Bombettes sing “I wanna kick your ass, because you’ve got a nice ass!” about twenty times in a row. “You came along / I wrote this song / now I sing it / all night long!” they add by way of clarification. There aren’t many other words. You’ll be singing it all night long too if you’re not careful.

After that, they turn their attention to the ‘Dating Scene’, observing: “I’m bored /
You’re not good enough / I’m bored / And your record collection is too small / I’m bored I’m bored I’m bored / I’m so fucking bored”.

See what I mean? Genius!

http://www.myspace.com/thebombettes
http://www.myspace.com/nyvagrecords

Cheeky Cheeky & The Nosebleeds – You Let Me Go(Twenty Years of Boredom)

Hmm, what have we here? A silly band name and a cover like a Hefner record that’s gone psychotic…. looks like it’s signed by some people too; the band, presumably. Any bets on what might be found within? Let’s have a listen, shall we!

The answer is: two two minute slabs of perfectly decent, trebley indie-punk; nervous verses and pounding, singalong choruses as the martial rhythm section pound on ahead of the choppy, Strokes-y downstroke guitar licks and groovy, surfy lead riffs; the singer howls distraught in high register with a slight cockney twang. Unhappy lyrics about girls. I quite like it!

Basically these guys sound like the winners in a secondary schools Pete & The Pirates impersonation contest, but c’mon, that’s nothing to be ashamed of! Either side of this could prove a right belter in thirty years time, when ‘00s indie becomes a long lost collector’s cult, and people start compiling it on teenage wasteland-focused ‘Back From The Grave’ type albums, revelling in the sound of these mad kids of yesteryear working out their girl troubles on guitars in a way that all this wimpy, smartarse 2030s music just can’t compete with, goddamnit.

Looks like they’ve renamed themselves “The Cheeks” since this single. I’m not sure if that’s an improvement name-wise, or even worse.

http://www.myspace.com/cheekynosebleeds

Comet Gain – Herbert Hunke / No Spotlite on Sometime
(Germs of Youth)

“Coming in, tuning in on Comet Gain as they sing their favourite song, Herbert Hunke” says a guy who I think must be world’s angriest millionaire Christopher Appelgren, last heard signing off CG’s immortal ‘Ballad of a Mixtape’, “..they ask him for bread, and he doesn’t know what bread is, but you do, you understand..”. Don’t we just. Thus begins a definitively shambolic live-in-studio wouldbe-Velvets jam of a rendition of David Feck’s tribute to beat poet/associate Hunke, the ‘real life criminal’ said to have inspired much of Kerouac and Ginsberg’s drug/outlaw shtick. The song lopes along pretty painfully, lacking the declamatory energy it’s had at recent gigs, but hey, fans of this band have long learned to accept that perfection is scarcely the point. ‘Hunke’ catches Feck at his most audacious/arrogant/vital/obsolescent/sloppy/boorish/ wonderful (delete as applicable), and your enjoyment will largely hinge on whether or not you’re able to stomach a good dose of ‘Sister Ray’ street jive play-acting, as an old-enough-to-know-better British bloke proudly declaims lines like “motherfucker, where is my bread / you’ll get it off my eyes when I’m dead”, and “my name is Herbert Hunke / poet bum, majestic junkie”. As you could probably have guessed, I can stomach it just fine.

Diehard indie-poppers wondering why they’re being subjected to this rubbish though need only flip the disc to be soothed by “No Spotlite on Sometimes”, latest in a long and beautiful line of defiant/despairing Gain-ballads, guitar jangle glowing & fizzing out like cigarettes thrown into the 3AM ocean in slo-mo; sobering sea breeze on your face. Another lament for chances blown, dying romance, fading stars, rendered with a force that can claw these things back from cliché, from fiction back into reality, the way that only this band can (even if that’s the opposite of what they managed to achieve on the A-side). “Some whisky, some old friends, some rock n’ roll disease”; “I loved you, I existed, underneath these eyes”. Heartbreaking. A welcome reminder of why we all need this band in our lives still, and why I’ll fight anyone who suggests otherwise.

This one's limited to about 300 or something I think, and seems to be available solely via Pure Groove. Beautiful sleeve, and insert full of reprocessed photographic pathos, random poetical scrawl and warped declarations etc, as per usual. An artefact worthy of anyone’s time/money.

http://www.myspace.com/thecometgain
http://www.myspace.com/germsofyouth

Cyanide Pills – Break It Up
(Damaged Goods)

A debut single’s worth of red leather & skinny jean clad punky power-pop direct from Leeds Rock City, courtesy of Damaged Goods.

I don’t have much to say about this one, except that it’s totally great!

If you like The Undertones, The Rezillos and The Adverts, you know what you’ll be getting here, and it feels good, like suddenly finding yourself pogoing in comfy slippers in some stale lager-stinking basement.

And if you don’t like The Undertones, the Rezillos and The Adverts, well… clearly I do not care to listen to your dumb-ass opinions! Scram fool, I’ve got jumpin’ and “whoa-oh-oh!”ing to do! TWO THUMBS UP for Cyanide Pills. Going to see these guys play would be a fun evening for sure – I hope I get a chance to do so at some point.

http://www.myspace.com/thecyanidepills
http://www.damagedgoods.co.uk/

Electrocute – On The Beat
(Germs Of Youth)

On the same label as the Comet Gain single, with artwork by David Feck, so I thought I might as well pick it up at the same time. And so, well, uh, bloody hell! It seems this is some kind of superslick, sugar rush electroclash/big beat party song with saucy lyrics about hotpants that sounds like Bis being remixed via Beck’s Midnight Vultures! Not what I was expecting at all! Funnily enough, it features a special appearance by one Jerry Waronker, who I seem to recall was a sideman on the Beck albums…? What the hell is up with this thing? Away with you, Electrocute! Go dance into the record collection of somebody who likes The Go Team! Stop trying to make me be happy and exercise, it’s Sunday night and it’s not fucking going to work!

Against all the odds, b-side “Bad Legs” actually goes down a lot better. It’s, I dunno…. it’s shorter for one thing, and it’s punkier, with gutsier vocals and a better tune – not too bad at all really. Sounds a bit like Brassy, if you remember them. Ho hum.

http://www.myspace.com/electrocute
http://www.myspace.com/germsofyouth

Labels: Betty And The Werewolves, Cheeky Cheeky and the Nosebleeds, Comet Gain, Cyanide Pills, Electrocute, singles reviews, Songs, The Bats, The Bombettes

Bats!

I went to see The Bats at The Windmill last night, and they were bloody terrific.

Apparently it was the first show they’ve played in the UK for fifteen years. It’s funny; I guess there must be hundreds, nay thousands, of similarly middle-aged bands in Europe and America, all working a similar strain of low-key, Velvets-indebted guitar-pop, all with some Mojo reviewer on hand to call them ‘slow-burning’ or ‘smouldering’, all of them boring me to tears. What is it about New Zealand that allows these guys to take the same formula and make it so definitively beautiful, so fresh-faced and innocent you just wouldn’t believe they’ve been doing it for over two decades of record/tour/record etc.?

I guess The Bats are a hard sell, as a band. I can’t imagine ever playing a Bats CD for someone and expecting it to *blow their mind*. There’s nothing there on the surface that you haven’t heard a thousand times before, probably done with more noise and enthusiasm. But to us hopeless snobs, who (pity us) end up sampling indie guitar bands as if they were fine wines, delighting in the subtleties of different strumming patterns, guitar tones, minimal drum beats, understated melodies... well it doesn’t get much better than The Bats. Robert Scott introduced one song as being about “lying on your back on the grass in the winter and looking at stuff in the sky”, but he needn’t have said anything, cos that’s what the music actually sounded like. Masters at work, so to speak.

Here’s what they looked/sounded like quite a few years ago. The male members have less hair circa 2009, but aside from that they haven’t changed much:



I’ll mention that they’re playing at both the ICA and the Victoria, Mile End tonight, just on the off chance that anyone in London reads this before about 8pm this evening and exclaims “Of course! The Bats! That’s my kind of Friday night!” It’s an experience I’d heartily recommend.

I’d be tempted to finish by saying “and to think, some people listen to Crystal Stilts”, but such a gratuitous diss would seem out of keeping with this post’s positive, optimistic tone. Let’s aim higher.

And to think, some people listen to R.E.M. : P

Labels: New Zealand, The Bats, videos