SINGLES ROUND-UP:
2010 Thus Far, Part # 1.


The Blanche Hudson Weekend –
Letters To Daddy EP (Squirrel)
Rats In The Cellar EP (Oddbox)

You’ve got to love people who stick to their story. When The Manhattan Love Suicides split up last year, Caroline (vox) and Darren (guitar) seem to have scarcely batted an eyelid before ploughing on regardless as The Blanche Hudson Weekend. That The Blanche Hudson Weekend sound exactly like The Manhattan Love Suicides with a slightly less driving rhythm section can scarcely be seen as a surprise, but the continuity is welcome. You know just what you’re getting here; a tumultuous mixture of C86 melodicism, vicious fuzz, exploitation movie imagery and an endless series of pop readymades with the DNA of the J&MC’s ‘Darklands’ sunk deep into their bones. The trash affectations are cute, the noise is great, the tunes are killer - it’s always a good time.

Each 7” features a different portrait of Joan Crawford as the eponymous Ms Hudson in 1962’s “Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?” on the front, but otherwise they’re near-identical, so make sure you don’t buy the same one twice. By way of differentiation, the Squirrel disc is black and the Oddbox one is red. If you’ve only got £3.99 to spare, “Letters To Daddy” is probably my pick, simply because it’s got more fuzz. “Rats..” concentrates more on the quieter numbers, but it is certainly not without its charms, particularly the longer cut “Only Snow”, which brings in some dissonant Cale/Conrad style viola for a low-key drone/jangle blowout. Very banana album, very nice. We’re in safe hands.

http://www.myspace.com/theblanchehudsonweekend
http://www.squirrelrecords.co.uk
http://oddboxrecords.com/

Flight - Feels So Good b/w In The Morning Light (HoZac)

Another welcome pat on the head from Hozac, Flight sounds like the ghosts of some muscular ‘70s rock radio hits with distant hints of Knack/Huey Lewis era new wave, fed through a hazy ketamine vortex of slowed reactions, tape hiss, decay-heavy distortion and underwater wobble.

If you’d told me five years ago that Ariel Pink was gonna be such a massive influence on the sound of the next generation of American bands, well, I just wouldn’ta believed ya. I bet it must speak of something all deep n’ sociological, the increasing prevalence of this whole ‘familiar tunes / dislocated sound’ thing? The way it’s gone from being regarded as some bizarre affectation to sounding completely natural, just in space of a year or two? I think I can see it, somewhere, out of the corner of my eye; instinctively, it all makes sense.

I bet as far as the guys in Flight are concerned, they’re just making cool songs, and recording them the way they think sounds good. And indeed they are. I wish I had the brains to figure these trends out on advance – I could clean up making bets with, I dunno, Byron Coley or someone. Anyway, listening to this Flight record is extremely pleasurable. Whether it will be so in five years time remains to be seen, but I’ll listen to my eerie, prefabricated nostalgia in the here and now and enjoy it, damn you.

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

French Kissing – Oh Suzanne (Sleep All Day)

With one foot in the whole reverbed-out beach-trash aesthetic and the other dancing ‘cross the mildewed shores of ol’ fashioned garage revivalism, London’s questionably monikered French Kissing knock it outta the freakin’ park with the A-side of this debut 7”. An absolutely perfect nugget of catchy garage-pop craftsmanship, mixing a bubblegum early Beach Boys vibe with just a touch of surly Medway Beatles worship, I loved it on first myspace play and pre-ordered the single immediately. Come the third play, I wasn’t so sure, but by the sixth play I’d had to time reflect on how fucking awesome and weird the guitar solo sounds (solo of the year thus far??), and how swell the group’s effortless “I Get Around” groove is. Great song, great sound, great playing. Chug-a-lug!

Flipside “The Lonely Streets of Cairo” is a bit of a bummer by comparison, a rather fragrant novelty item hinging on endless repetition of the old ‘belly dancing theme’ music (y’know; da-da-dow-dow-dow, da-da dow-dow dow-dow-dow etc). It sounds a bit like if the grandchildren of all the guys from The Downliners Sect got together and formed a band inspired by all their granddads’ *worst* songs. Still, only the B side to a cracking A.

Oh, and while I’m needling them, that girl-kissing-dog cover is pretty gross too, and not even an art credit to help shoo away the suspicion that they just grabbed some picture of a girl in an embarrassing-out-of-context pose off flickr and stuck it on the front of their record – tsk, kids today.

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

Hanoi Janes – Across The Sea b/w Skeleton Girl (Captured Tracks)

I picked up this one up momentarily thinking that it might be a solo record by Oneida’s Hanoi Jane, conveniently forgetting that I’d heard no mention of such a thing existing, and that he’s gone by ‘Baby Jane’ for about a decade. But it looks cool, and it has a song called ‘Skeleton Girl’, so I bought it anyway, cos that’s the kinda crazy guy I am.

Turns out The Hanoi Janes are a bunch of German Phil Spector obsessives, doing what modern day Phil Spector obsessives do best and sitting in their basement with the laptop trying to make their indie guitar band sound like him. Well it’s a damn sight better than sounding the way most indie guitar bands sound these days I suppose.

To their credit, ‘Across The Sea’ takes the Spector pastiche thing well beyond the realms of the standoffish, incorporating chiming bells and a ‘do daa do….’ chorus line to rather nice effect. ‘Skeleton Girl’ meanwhile tones it all down a bit, but wins cos it’s a better song – a real good one actually, a veritable stormer even. With so much great, ragged, classically-informed pop-rock kicking around at the moment, it’s hard to anything more to say about it beyond the Spector thing, but it sure is great.

So that’s Hanoi Janes for you I guess. Take it or leave it. I’m gonna take it.

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

The Manhattan Love Suicides – Dandelion Radio Sessions CD (Oddbox)

Lovingly presented by Oddbox in both stereo and mono mixes (instant props for this brilliantly impractical gesture of music geek dedication), these sessions for internet radio station Dandelion are chiefly notable for presenting what I guess are maybe, probably, the Manhattan Love Suicides’ last recordings. They are secondarily notable for establishing the band as maybe, probably, the first to ever cover “I’m Not A Young Man Anymore”, the ‘lost’ Velvet Underground song included on the Gymnasium ’67 bootleg. And if The Manhattans don’t quite manage to nail Sterling Morrison’s sick central guitar riff or match the gloriously fucked Lou/Sterl interplay of the instrumental sections, they do at least capture the churning, circular groove of the piece perfectly, and prove that a little bit of faux-Rallizes feedback goes a long way.

For thoughts on the other five songs here, see my Blanche Hudson Weekend write-up above, but needless to say, they’re all really good. How many songs that sound like ‘Head On’ is it possible to write before those chords collapse in on themselves? Who cares. Just keep ‘em coming. I prefer the mono, but then I would, wouldn’t I? The in-the-red bleed around the edges of the guitar sound on the loud bits is SWEET. I suspect maybe the constant feedback arcs are a bit contrived, but then what do I know about recording cool feedback? (Not half as much as I’d like to know, unfortunately.)

http://www.myspace.com/themls
http://oddboxrecords.com/

Myelin Sheaths – Do The Mental Twist EP (HoZac)

Whammo! That seems like the natural way to begin a review of this one. I don’t know what a ‘myelin sheath’ is, but I bet it’s something horrible. As for as Myelin Sheaths the band are concerned, I know they come from Alberta, Canada, and I know they’re something wonderful. I guess they’re not really doing anything special here, except, y’know, just plain ROCKING, flying the flag for rampaging, female-led punk rock, utterly blasted compression/distortion, good vibes and a gleeful love of fun songs and chaotic noise.

“I Don’t Wanna Have An Operation” is the kind of pure Ramonery that never goes out of style, while “Do The Mental Twist” veers more toward that ‘psychotic garage’ kinda vibe the title would suggest and “Drugstore/Pharmacy” gives us a more sustained burst of gut-busting racket, with an unexpectedly pleasant dose of stand up drumming and repetitive jangle at its core, emerging not unlike an uglier, strung out Shop Assistants.

Myelin Sheaths’ guitars have a certain Sonic Youth quality to them – a thick, dissonant, mid-heavy blurt - and their bass rumbles like a rockslide. Maybe think ‘Eliminator Jr’ or something, stripped of any art world pretensions, reinvented for a beer-sozzled provincial punk scene. With most conventional, album-orientated “indie-rock” in such a moribund state at the moment, it’s always a thrill it is to hear stuff this beserk and fun, happy just to be itself. Any old punkers/grungers still not sold on the new world order of inarticulate kids making no-fi noise-pop on overpriced boutique 7” labels are advised to take a listen to this and try to write me some reasons why it’s not totally great.

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

Labels: Flight, French Kissing, Hanoi Janes, Myelin Sheaths, singles reviews, The Blanche Hudson Weekend, The Manhattan Love Suicides

Young, Free, With Singles, Part # 1.

Yes, more singles. People keep making ‘em, I keep buying ‘em, I play them all over the space of a spare Saturday, and, after a fashion, you have to read about them. That’s the way it works. I bought all of these before Christmas, so let’s assume they’re all ’08, unless it turns out they’re actually from ’07 or ’06 or 1994 or something, as records in the ‘new releases’ racks of our capital’s noble, embattled independent record shops are often apt to be.

Also, seeing how this is becoming an increasingly regular feature, it strikes me that I really should have some snazzy title for these posts. Unfortunately though, Doug Mosurock already resides over ‘Still Single’, and Plan B hold the current lease on ‘Singles Club’, leaving me to make do with the rather clunky ‘Young, Free, With Singles’. So, a contest: if you can come up with a better bit of singles-related wordplay I might use for a title, send it in to the usual address, and the winner gets, uh, I dunno…. some singles. Either that or I could take you out to dinner and attempt to lay the foundations for a meaningful relationship, whichever you’d prefer (go for the singles).

Acid Mothers Temple & The Cosmic Inferno / White Hills – Brainstorm / Be Yourself (Trensmat Records)

This forms one part of a trilogy of tributes to Hawkwind from Ireland's Trensmat records, all expressed within that most un-Hawkwindlike of formats, the split 7”. It does at least play at 33 though, so calm down, you’ve still got time to skin up. As you might well expect from AMT paying tribute to the Hawklords, their take on ‘Brainstorm’ kicks straight into a demented orgy of ring modulated oscillator carnage, stereo-panning wah-wah hyper-shred, senseless, garbled chanting and extensive exploration of that good ol’ ‘falling down a spiralling time tunnel’ sound effect. The inbuilt limitations of the Cosmic Inferno’s trio line-up keeps thing vaguely under control with a steady motorik churn, but largely this is just another identikit blast of the kind of beyond-gratuitous multiple overdubbed cartoon psychedelic splatter Kawabata could knock out in his sleep, and god knows, probably does.

White Hills – a band I’ve always meant to check out but have never quite got around to – are the clear winners here then, slicing up ‘Be Yourself’ into a monstrously heavy bass groove, martial drum riff and some distinct and vicious psyche-overload guitar, the whole trio compressed down to a single, floor-shaking entity, like some mud splattered behemoth beating its morbid way through a swamp of speaker fuzz, until it’s buried by the rise of the obligatory oscillations, fades out, and, brilliantly, re-emerges as the full realisation of Hawkwind’s hypnotic, glam stomp of a two chord chorus/mantra – BE YOURSELF, indeed. Absolute ‘storming the gates of heaven’ material all things considered, and I wish Trensmat could have shelled out to have this one end on the locked groove the song is just crying out for; that would have been beautiful. Anyway, my guess is, if you’ve enjoyed reading this review, you’ll probably enjoy the record, so let’s call it a day and move on to our next item of business…

http://www.trensmat.com/
http://www.acidmothers.com/
http://www.myspace.com/whitehills

The Bridport Dagger – Spanish One / Magpie’s Nest (Death Records)

I saw these guys dealing with the unenviable task of opening up the bill at about 8ish for the soon-to-be-legendary Vivian Girls / Pains Of Being Pure At Heart / Betty & The Werewolves line up before xmas, and thought they made a good enough job of it to take a chance on this proudly self-released single, and… well, it’s pretty good.
Dancing over the borders of a whole mess of potentially troublesome musical territory – rockabilly, swamp-rock, ‘80s indie gloom – the Bridports miraculously get out alive, managing to sidestep any obvious cliché or aesthetic shtick and emerging with a razorsharp guitar/guitar/drums sound that’s intimately familiar yet difficult to really pin down with easy reference points. Dreamy/sinister ‘Wicked Game’ reverb guitar gives way to a frantic staccato boogie on ‘Spanish One’, backing up some understated, early Nick Cave woe-is-me type hollering, and all over in under 2 minutes – a great slice of cinematic urgency. ‘Cinematic’ in music crit terminology is usually taken to mean vast, expansive, landscapes, blah; but this stuff is ‘cinematic’ more like a thirty second jump cut scene where some guy gets stabbed and thrown off a train. ‘Magpie’s Nest’ is just as short, even more train-like, and even better, adding a great, clean-toned rockabilly lead line that could momentarily pass for ‘80s jangle-pop, for a brighter, sharper take on the kind of menacing choogle practiced by The Scientists. Man, it’s great. These Bridport Daggers strike me as some seriously smart cats in fact, clearly blessed with the know-how, ideas and understanding of musical history necessary to take a bunch of their favourite hackneyed comfort-sounds and twist them back into something hard, fast, and somewhat exhilarating. Oh, and some of the singer’s vocal inflections keep reminding me of the early take of ‘Venus In Furs’ with John Cale singing, which is a nice bonus, because I like being reminded of that – all dark n’ odious, but keeping it just the right side of ludicrous. A band worth investigating.

http://www.myspace.com/thebridportdagger

The Corey Orbison – Your Name Is Poison (Everard Records)

Cripes – HEAVY Huggy Bear vibes coming off this one, brainchild of the folks behind Bristol’s Local Kid label/promoter/collective type gang. And that’s Huggy Bear as they actually sounded too, not as revisionist riot grrl/indie-pop historians might like to remember them sounding. “File under No Wave Cissy Hardcore” says the label, and, whilst I’m sure they’ll make a happy addition to my No Wave Cissy Hardcore collection, I fear The Corey Orbison are verging more on “File Under Indescribable” to be honest. It may be thirty years since no wave, since Half Japanese and The Dead C, even a couple of years since Magik Markers brought the idea of improvising non-musicians rocking out to the indie masses, but it’s hard to overstate the extent to which this is STILL a genuinely brave and challenging record for it’s makers to put out. Recorded live-in-studio with hear-a-pin-drop clarity, The Corey Orbison refuse to hide behind scuzz, distortion or mysique, instead bringing the performers’ every strike, lunge, shriek and fumble to us loud and clear with the unassailable confidence of politically motivated free expression.

What results is certainly quite something, recalling nothing so much as Mars’s systematic dehumanisation of rock music on their section of ‘No New York’. Like those tracks, everything that happens on this disc is so utterly *wrong*, it becomes alien and disorientating. The girl’s voice is so high-pitched it doesn’t sound natural at either speed, so pure guesswork leads me to conclude 45. The drums are particularly wrecked also, random tom hits going off rather like a recording of a kid shooting a pellet gun, leaving only the bass to thump out rudimentary time. Guitar moves are pure Arto Lindsey/Teenage Jesus, but less showy and lacking in explicit violence, instead working out a free improv-inspired vocabulary of abstract scrape n’ clang. One side features no less than six songs, all arbitrarily exploding into being and collapsing back into silence in a matter of seconds, before they can be caught in even the swiftest butterfly net, whilst the other side is given over to a single freeform freakout that seems determined to outstay it’s welcome. Why? Because.

To characterise this record as formless however would be grossly misleading. There’s a solid structure behind everything here, with voluminous lyrics reproduced on the insert to back it up, and if the songs have a tendency to begin with a burst of unrepeatable shred, it’s not long before they crystallise into recognisably livid grrl-punk war-chants, directly in the tradition of early Sleater Kinney, God Is My Co-Pilot and yes, Huggy Bear. What we’ve got here is a fiery combo of ideological commitment, rage, refusal, stifled utopianism and a full spectrum frustration so inexpressible it can only be given voice be kicking music’s internal logic squarely in the head. But what we’ve also got here is, perhaps, some kinda huge sense of FUN…? I think I can just see it. As they put it on their myspace: “..our style of music is the short and the sharp and the stop and the start. make a mess. break a heart. stick the rules. punk rock is for the wimps.” This here punk rock wimp is uncertain whether to worship or run away.

http://www.myspace.com/coreyorbison
http://www.everardrecords.com

The Cute Lepers – Terminal Boredom (Damaged Goods)

Well if we take The Corey Orbison’s line on things, this is certainly one for the wimps. Thoroughly enjoyable but kinda generic trash-punk fun; the A-side does a good impression of a late perod Johnny/DeeDee led Ramones cut (think ‘Warthog’), with chunky production to match, great snotty vocals and a good Buzzcocks bounce to it. B-side ‘Any Danger Love’ goes for an authentically air-punching Bomp! Records ’79 power-pop sound – it’s a good little blaster with sweet female backing vox, but it never really breaks through the way it should, as the nonsensical chorus hook gets repeated ad-nauseum in place of any melodic development or hot rockin’. It’s cool, but I think it would work best as a 30 second theme for a crazy, dumbass TV show. Not a bad record by any means – it fact it’s sure to be graded as a pretty good one by people like me who can’t get enough this kinda thing – but given the heavy competition for scraps of awesome-ness in the garage, punk and power-pop sectors, Cute Lepers can’t help but come off as a tad unexceptional on the strength of these two numbers. That said, I’m sure they’d be great fun live, and I sure enjoyed the video for this single on their myspace.

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

The Manhattan Love Suicides – Veronica / 10th Victim (Squirrel)

As much as I like them, The Manhattan Love Suicides' increasingly numerous records are in many ways much of a muchness, and as such, I primarily refer you to my thoughts on their previous single.

That said, I confess I’m not enjoying this one half as much as the ‘Clusterfuck’ EP. The sound is muddy (and not in a good way), and both sides are a tad sluggish and overlong, which is a shame, and detracts from the fact that ‘Veronica’ is easily one of the loveliest songs this band have ever written… if only they’d up the tempo a bit and give it some oomph, rather than subjecting it to their strung out shoegazer thang. ‘10th Victim’ meanwhile hooks up the ‘be my baby’ drum intro with a matching sludge guitar riff – a move so obvious and obviously good it’s a wonder it’s not been done more frequently – and proceeds to plough it into the ground for a few minutes with a nice, droning cyclical vocal. All very Spacemen 3, but stuck as it is somewhere that’s longer than a short song but too short to be a long song, it’s gnarly repetition thing doesn’t really go anywhere (and, more importantly, doesn’t give the impression of going anywhere).

http://www.myspace.com/themls

Labels: Acid Mothers Temple, singles reviews, The Bridport Daggers, The Corey Orbison, The Cute Lepers, The Manhattan Love Suicides, White Hills

MORE BLOODY SINGLES.

This’ll be the last batch for a while I should think. I like buying singles though, so don’t count on it.

Comet Gain – Love Without Lies
(Twee As Fuck / What’s Your Rupture)

So here it is – the first recorded output from Comet Gain since their London love/hate/aaarg magnum opus ‘City Fallen Leaves’ three years ago, in advance of their forthcoming singles/rarities/etc. comp ‘Broken Record Prayers’. A cheaply pressed looking 7 clocking in at under five minutes, it’s an inauspicious return for the best British band of the past decade (© me), but we’ll take whatever we can get.

The A-side here is an urgent, Rachel-voiced punk stomp, not without the potential to stand aside ‘Bored Roar’ off the last record, ragged fuzz and fragments of specific-yet-universal defiance & self-definition spat out like nails. But on this recording at least, things are marred slightly for me by an uncharacteristically lumpen ‘indie-disco’ beat, rhythm section front-loaded in the mix with late-entering guitars and echoed vocal, almost like some way-too-late attempt to jump onboard The Gossip’s hit single, or an unwarranted grab at the aesthetic of the capital’s contemporary indie club culture, as romanticised so wonderfully/disgustingly (delete as desired) in the song’s video.

B-side ‘Books of California’ by contrast exists at the opposite pole of the band’s established musical territory, showcasing a similar West Coast psyche via British jangle-pop vibe to ‘Silverlake to Seven Sisters’ off the last album, as David Feck pays vague and effusive tribute to the works of Richard Brautigan, worn paperback-referencing (gotta love those beautiful old Picador editions) non-sequitors drifting off into the wind over shimmering freezing-sunshine-on-a-hungover-morning backing. Alright.

It’s a great thing to find Comet Gain returning in such rude health anyway; all vital signs looking good. More new songs soon please!

http://www.myspace.com/thecometgain

Fast Lady & Scorpio Scorpio – Love Dictator
(V/VM Test)

It’s been a long time since I’ve checked out anything on V/VM’s label – longstanding home of all that is evil, wrong, disconcerting, occasionally illegal and often sublime in the sphere of underground electronica / record detourning weirdness type stuff.

On the basis of this one though, I fear they might have started taking their terrible-becomes-genius aesthetic into uncharted realms of unfettered ghastliness in the meantime, because whatever the hell this record is supposed to be about, it is truly, truly awful in a way no hidden gag or conceptual barb could serve to redeem.

It’s like some nightmare Chris Morris parody of toxic, Vice reader post-everything stoopid cokehead music; thuggish sampled NWBHM guitar riffs and preset hip-hop beats, guys with shitty fake American accents yelling macho cock-rock pastiche lyrics, presumably trying not to bust out sniggering between each line. And the worst thing is, I don’t even think it’s meant to be a parody. I mean, I think these goons actually think they’re making *great party music* or something. Horrid.

I failed to make it through either side of this before reflexively pulling the needle. Utter shit, and not in the good way you’d tend to expect from V/VM. If anyone wants this thing, let me know roughly what direction you live in and I’ll climb on the roof and throw it.

http://www.brainwashed.com/vvm/

Gloria Cycles – Vegas
(Wendy Bikes)

Now this is a bloody lovely looking piece of vinyl, I’m sure you’ll agree. And ‘Gloria Cycles’ is a great name too! And so, hoping it was a person’s name rather than a band, I took a chance on this one, sound-unheard.

And, Hmm, the intro at least is nice… predictably enough, they’re an indie band of some description, but the opening bars of chiming, mildly psychey guitars and a singer with a Welsh(?) accent are really pleasant – rather like Gorkys trying to be the BJM or something maybe? That’s until that same old indie-disco kick drum thing rears it’s ugly head like a metaphor-mixing death knell, and we’re dragged into a thoroughly uninspired chorus that sound rather like I’d imagine some band wanting to be the Arctic Monkeys might sound like.

Not a bad record by any means, but not a great one either. Here’s wishing them luck in fusing the genuinely groovy aspects of their sound onto something a bit more engaging in future.

http://www.myspace.com/gloriacycles

The Manhattan Love Suicides – Clusterfuck EP
(Squirrel)

It’s a curious phenomenon, the current popularity of prefabricated early Jesus & Mary Chain styled rock n’ roll bands in indie-pop circles, and one which is surely crying out for an article of damning indictment from some journo or other, laying into these essentially ridiculous groups who stomp onstage in leather jackets and mini-skirts to snarl, pout and spit with a carefully feigned disinterest, play twenty minute sets of sloppy, politely-feedbacking noise-pop tunes about drugs and death then storm off in mock disgust…. only to be sighted a few minutes later hanging out in a perfectly personable manner with their fellow concert-goers, all parties having enjoyed a few minutes of vicarious r’n’r chaos, but without the inconvenience of having to deal with an ACTUAL gang of wild-eyed Iggy-wannabes getting in their faces.

I’m not gonna write that article though, cos I think the whole business is actually really good fun, kinda charming and an amusing comment on the essentially inauthentic (yet universally applicable), dress-up nature of rock n’ roll cliché, and The Manhattan Love Suicides in particular are, like their beloved JAMC and Shop Assistants, a fantastically enjoyable bunch of self-aware trash culture avatars. And what’s more, they’re a dedicated and prolific band, and on releases like this one they transcend their inbuilt clichés by making some genuinely fucking great rock n’ roll.

The guitarist’s fuzztone is vicious; absolutely toxic buzzsaw skree. The rhythm section work out some glorious no bullshit DeeDee n’ Tommy thug-motorik pounding to killer effect. The singer cuts in high and clear in angelic, deadpan Debbie Harry style as classic three chord chorus melodies bounce past like rocks through classroom windows.

Bands with the audacity to try to look cool are often given shit for being overtly beholden to underground rock’s past, but when a sensible grasp of history allows bands like the MLSs to craft music containing NO ELEMENT THAT’S NOT BRILLIANT, well…. I’m all for it. Fuck ‘authenticity’, this is genius; it’s great and it’s exciting and I don’t care what the lyrics mean! Stick this shit on the portable dansette the next time yer bombing down to the seaside in the Morris Minor to cause some trouble. (Whatdoyoumean you don’t have an… etc.)

http://www.myspace.com/themls
http://www.squirrelrecords.co.uk

Rolo Tomassi – Digital History / Beatrotter
(Holy Roar)

A one-sided 45 with the grooves on the music side so thin that I momentarily thought I’d paid £5 for a completely blank record, the couple of minutes of sound presented here capture the current exciting/terrifying/frustrating trajectory of great-white-teenage-British-hopes for progressive, heavy music Rolo Tomassi in full effect, leap-frogging the genre expectations of the hardcore and math-spazz scenes they’ve grown from and emerging blinking into the light of the kind of undocumented place that sees them gracing the cover of Plan B as punk-dude fans find themselves trying to stagedive to meandering gothic keyboard passages and interpretative dance.

‘Digital History / Beatrotter’ manages to compress all facets of these aesthetic conflicts into about two and a half minutes, as a loping machine noise intro gives way to twenty utterly invigorating seconds that sound like Man Is The Bastard headbutting Mayhem, followed by a brief Delia Derbyshire nature documentary theme, a soaring melodic metal guitar motif, a blink-and-you’ll miss-it Painkiller jazz freakout, about twelve seconds of flawless synth-pop and…. fuck, I’ve lost track. And now it’s finished.

As fans will know all too well, the sections in which singer Eva cuts her tonsils into pure, bloody black metal gravel and the band lock into ferociously precise whipcord beatdowns are simply astounding. To be honest, whilst I have no time for thuggish concert etiquette, I’ve kinda got to side with aforementioned punk dudes in wanting them to do this more, for longer, and to try to incorporate their more eclectic callings within a more natural framework, rather than tearing up the rulebook and starting again every ten seconds.

Praising ambition and eclecticism in a young band is one thing, and the range of musicality and imagination embedded in every second of Rolo music is awe-inspiring, but sides like this one sound more like an explosion in a record collector’s basement than a cohesive piece of music. It’s too much, man! Proof that intense focus on realisation of one’s craft can, at the same time, create the most fragmentary, unfocused art imaginable. Or maybe I’m just getting old.

http://www.myspace.com/rolotomassi
http://www.holyroarrecords.com

Underground Railroad – Kill Me Now (Or You Never Will)
(One Little Indian)

A French trio enamoured of all things ‘90s and American who’ve relocated to London to make their fortunes in a climate perhaps more receptive to the unquestioned worship of Trux/Youth/Pixies/Chunk, Underground Railroad (perhaps named after The Lollipop Shoppe’s classic psyche track? – I HOPE SO) have made themselves a pretty ubiquitous presence on the – AHEM – ‘live circuit’ in recent years, and, having caught them in several support slots, I can vouch for them presenting a seriously fucking impressive live presence, swinging out an’ reeling it back in as only a band who live together / play together every day really can.

That live energy, sadly, is not really captured by the two studio recordings represented here, their essentially derivative yankophilic nature getting the better of them, rendering Underground Railroad strangely out of time – short on ideas and too late to hook the fading echoes of this particular way of doing things, too early to catch it on the rebound currently being raucously pioneered by the likes of No Age and Blood On The Wall. The songs here lack any real melodic hooks (and if there’s one thing ‘90s indie-rock is all about it’s the HOOKS) or lyrical development, and the nasal, transatlantic whine on the vocals is too fucking much. B-side ‘Breakfast’ starts off with a great, stooped Trux-esque stomp/chant, but unfortunately goes nowhere except a swift fadeout.

Not bad stuff by any means – in fact it’s growing on me after a couple of listens - but oh boy, this takes me way, way back to the far end of my 7” singles box…. not to Live Skull or Babes In Toyland as the band might wish, but to other sterling examples of the ‘we-wanna-be-American’ subgenre…. Anyone remember ‘Kirsten’s Beach’ by The Pecadiloes? Scarfo? Carrie? Tiger..? They were great, and at least they didn’t do the accent. Maybe even ‘Fake Fur’ and ‘Hello Tiger’ by my beloved Urusei Yatsura….? Oh yeah! [review terminated before I drivel off into senseless nostalgia about taping shit off Steve Lamacq circa 1997].

http://www.myspace.com/urailroad
http://www.indian.co.uk

The Vivian Girls – I Can’t Stay b/w Blind Spot
(In The Red)

You’ll recall I wrote about these guys but a few posts ago, so I won’t repeat myself. This is a non-album single put out by In The Red in advance of their rerelease of the album, and, drawing maximum effect from minimal ingredients, it’s equally wonderful.

The A is another triumph for the virtues of moody Shop Assistants-core that would have slotted into place perfectly on the album, sing-song chorus standing grimly resolute against crashing guitar chords, sounding like the distortion is trying to drag the frantic bass n’ drums back to earth before they take off. The B is apparently a cover of a tune by a band called Daisy Chain (me neither), and it’s utterly, utterly beautiful, with a wobbly ‘Be My Baby’ intro opening up into a hypnotic love-chant over near cleantoned guitar, a quietly beguiling psychedelic sound to leave wouldbe shoegazers standing, irresistible like staring at the layers of a pre-Raphaelite painting inches from your face, before a shimmering tambourine signals a faster bit, and the girls kill us dead by slowly fading out on a looped groove and ending the song before the two minute mark, when really we just want it to carry on forever.

This won’t be the last time I’ll be writing about this band, you can be sure of that.

http://www.myspace.com/viviangirlsnyc
http://www.intheredrecords.com/

William – Playground
(Tough Love)

Hailing from the less than glamorous environs of Lewisham, William is, thankfully, not some dreary singer-songwriter bloke, but a rock solid indie rock band possessed of rare guts and fire, fusing impassioned lyrics concerning one-thing-or-another to backing that flies straight across the finish-line before you’ve noticed it, half Dinosaur Jr, half Buzzcocks, with zero watered down post-punk nonsense, zero yobbish chorus yelps and zero self-referential gags. It’s all too easy to shrug off bands like this in favour of more immediately novel/exotic fare, but there’s a very genuine spirit to these guys that I think will take them a long way even if fame and critical rapture are unlikely to be on the agenda. Punk rock, it used to be called I suppose.

This is a 2007 single, and they’ve subsequently had an album out – ouch, sorry for delay in reviewing. Great, unpretentious, furious stuff, If I were them I’d get working on a new name and some new sleeve designs lest everyone mistake them for aforementioned dreary surnameless bloke, but take this as a public service announcement: worth a listen.

http://www.myspace.com/williamtheband
http://www.toughloverecords.com/

Labels: Comet Gain, Gloria Cycles, Rolo Tomassi, singles reviews, The Manhattan Love Suicides, The Vivian Girls, Underground Railroad, VVM, William