Indietracks 2010:
Sunday.

Somehow or other, it’s been killing me trying to finish the second half of this Indietracks review, but here it is – torn straight from the metaphorical typewriter, waved under the nose of the non-existent editor, and hitting the virtual presses, no second draft. Hey ho, let’s go…

Photo respectfully stolen from Underexposed.

Sunday I get up early (camping, y’know), and go to look for coffee.

I probably moaned about this to everyone I spoke to at the festival at some point, but get this: there is a specialist coffee stand/van at Indietracks. I know it is one, because it says “COFFEE HUT” or something in big letters on the front. Not to sound too ungrateful, but seeing as how they are apparently making a living selling coffee at outdoor events, I can’t help but offer them some advice. Specifically: d’you think it might be a good idea to open before midday? Who knows, maybe you could sell croissants and shit too? Go nuts guys - the whole ‘breakfast’ concept can make for a rewarding business model when upwards of a thousand people are waking up and wandering around in the middle of the countryside.

Resigned to not getting any proper coffee for a while, I retreat to the top right hand corner of the railway centre, where the door to ‘Johnson’s Buffet’ swings forbodingly. So utterly, wonderfully terrible, Johnson’s Buffet is like the culinary equivalent of a haunted house – a humbling reminder of what the denizens of this country used to do on a hungover Sunday morning, before uppity swines like me and Egon Ronay started going around demanding proper stuff to eat. I ask the teenage girl behind the till what the vegetarian breakfast consists of. She doesn’t know yet, but she’s prepared to cook it for me anyway. God bless her! The thrill of the unknown was worth every penny. While I’m there, a lady brings her mug of instant coffee back to the counter and asks if she can get another spoonful of nescafe in it. Spurred on by such bravery, I do the same. I wonder whether they encounter such insubordination on non-Indietracks weekends?

I’m probably sounding like a bit of an asshole in this post thus far. If I was reading this in the Guardian or wherever, I probably would have thrown it aside in disgust by now. Is it possible to write negative food reviews without sounding like a whining, pompous dick? Maybe Michael Winner’s not such a bad guy after all? (Clarification: no, I’ve checked, and actually I’m fairly certain he is a bad guy – the evidence re: everything he has ever done is pretty overwhelming.)

Well if you do think I’m being an asshole, things are going to get worse before they get better I’m afraid, but at least we’ll be getting all the bad vibes out of the way in one go. After killing time with a nice walk through the orderly forest (I listened to ‘Master of Reality’ and ‘Ramones Leave Home’ for grounding and decompression purposes) and helping out in the merch tent for a bit (I enjoyed it), ‘COFFEE HUT’ has finally emerged from it’s slumber, and I’m stuck deep in the queue when MJ Hibbett & The Validators open up proceedings on the outdoor stage.

Now certain things in the past have maybe forced me to turn a blind eye to how terrible this guy is. For one thing, a lot of people whose opinions I appreciate seem to derive a certain degree of enjoyment from his work. I remember seeing some fliers for one of his gigs years ago in Leicester library that I thought were very charming (each of them was *hand drawn* - not photocopied – with smiling stick people playing instruments etc). I once met the violin player from his band in a pub, and he seemed like a really lovely guy. In short, there is such a Teflon coating of modest, low key friendliness around this Hibbett character that writing bad things about him feels a bit like kicking a three-legged puppy. And no one would want to do a thing like that, right?

But y’know, maybe one day that three-legged puppy might end up with a plate in its head after an unfortunate traffic accident, and it might not be able to breath properly, and it might stagger about drooling and can’t control its bowels anymore. It might start randomly trying to bite people because it no longer knows what the hell is going on, and a time comes when someone has to stand up and say ENOUGH, and the poor beast must be taken to the vets and put to sleep.

So, MJ Hibbett. His constant stream of carefully pre-planned, morbidly unamusing self-deprecating banter; his sappy one joke strumalongs, whose façade of modesty fails to entirely disguise their genesis as smug, self-righteous diatribes; his painful attempts at observational humour, harnessed to standard issue blokey open mic night strummery, somewhat like the desiccated shell of Half Man Half Biscuit, entirely drained of all the wit and artistry and invention and anger that makes them worth listening to. He’s like a Johnson’s Buffet breakfast without the charm – cringeworthy English crap-ness writ large. In short, I wish he’d stop. Just stop, please - stop now and stop forever.

I hope he doesn’t google this up and read it, as I’m sure he’s a nice chap and I wouldn’t want to piss him off or upset him, but sometimes these things just need to be said. He can at least take comfort in the fact that an awful lot of people here seem to greatly appreciate what he does. And that’s fine. Me, I’ve got my coffee by this point, and I’m running, running, to hide in an alcove where the sound won’t leak in and plot with others who share my point of view. I believe burning him at the stake was suggested at one point, but was deemed out of keeping with the spirit of camaraderie upon which this festival is based.

And, fantasies of violent death aside, it is that spirit that I hope to return you to as I write about the rest of this fine day.

Boy, The Specific Heats are an amazing band! I was pretty blown away when I caught them on their visit to the UK last summer, and this time, if anything, I like them even better. They’ve survived a couple of line-up changes since then, and the presence Eric on bass rather undermines my previous assumption that Matt Patalano had deliberately built himself an ultimate rock n’ roll band of pretty ladies to help him bring his songs to the world, but that aside the new recruits fit in seamlessly. The whole deal is still essentially Matt’s baby after all, and he’s on exuberant form at Indietracks, leaping around like a kid at a birthday party, wringing lunatic stuntman solos from his groovy Ventures guitar. Keira Flynn-Carson still gives the impression of being the happiest drummer on the planet, and the band’s high spirits are pretty contagious as they rip through a good dozen of their more upbeat numbers without a bummer to be seen.

Frenziedly pulling influences from all over the shelf marked “the last 50 years of pop-infused rock n’ roll”, the ‘Heats combination of ‘60s pop-sike baroque, breathless Sloan/Weezer-style power-pop, surf-rock dynamics and good-natured Nuggets goofery is an exultant expression of high wire walking musical synthesis, and their new LP “Cursed!” is a veritable belter. And if “Baby I’m An Existentialist” ends up sounding almost exactly like “Down & Out” by Camper Van Beethoven, and “All I Want” is The Modern Lovers’ “Someone I Care About” rewritten via The Seeds’ “Can’t Seem To Make You Mine”… well how can this possibly be anything other than a good thing? Originality is overrated.

The term ‘psychedelic pop’ gets thrown around so often these days it’s almost become offputting, usually just boiling down to the work of bedroom bore with too much gear who once heard an Olivia Tremor Control record. As such, it’s fucking great to hear such a strong, funny, talented band stepping up to the plate and just plain OWNING that once noble descriptor. See ‘em, hear ‘em, however you’re able.

It’s fair to say I think that The Specific Heats go down a storm, attracting one of the most enthusiastic crowds of the festival, but sadly their Indietracks set seems not to have made it onto youtube, a predicament thankfully not shared by The Loves, whom the festival programme informs me I went to see play next, so I’ll give you two videos of them to make up for it.



Ah, The Loves. I thought they were a triumph. I mean, I always think they’re a triumph. A triumph of ease over effort, of the obvious over the abstract.

The Loves are the kind of band who’d probably hire a manager just because it seems like the kind of thing a rock n’ roll band should do, and then said manager would sit around and get drunk, because who needs a ‘manager’ in this day and age? There’s a kind of genius at work in everything they do, I think. An understanding of the way pop greatness walks hand in hand with absurdity; a finely developed sense of Fowleyan tongue in cheek egotism.

All Simon Love wants to do is play old fashioned bubblegum rock n’ roll, to assume the moves appropriate to a purveyor of such, to make people dance and laugh. It’s not a hard concept to grasp, but people seem to have such trouble with it. I just don’t get people sometimes.

I don’t know if half the people who are even IN The Loves these days really appreciate the idea. It’s… it’s playtime, y’know? It’s FUN. It’s big, dainty glam-rock chords, and easy singalongs, and songs that sound quite a lot like other people’s songs. It’s like The Gentrys, y’know, or The Archies, Venus & The Razorblades, The Pooh Sticks. Rock n’ roll as a really great cartoon – but don’t cartoons just make the underlying qualities of things brighter, more obvious?

And this time, The Loves take the stage to the theme from ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’! Simon wears a top hat, theatrical cape, shades and a rather misguided moustache! They have go-go dancers who do specially rehearsed interpretive routines to selected songs! They throw footballs into (more like ‘at’) the crowd (“like a cut price Flaming Lips”)! They play a thundering great version of The Velvets’ “Guess I’m Falling In Love”, amongst other things! Original Loves singer Liz, latterly of The School, comes back for a one time only appearance! They even do this kinda bizarre concept album story-song that involves that Bobby McGee bloke dressed in a white robe playing Jesus, delivering in-jokey pre-scripted dialogue, and I’m not driven to immediately flee the area – that’s how much I like The Loves.



Turned around after they’d finished, ready to exchange some “boy, that was great” type bonhomie, and it looked like the whole festival had temporarily buggered off. I just don’t get people sometimes.

The next thing I remember is seeing The Bettys again, playing an impromptu (kinda) acoustic set in the merch tent – perfect recreations of their hits on just a couple of borrowed guitars and a tambourine, with the tightly packed crowd helping the sound travel further by joining in and clapping along where needed. As with so many moments this weekend, the whole scene is just a uniquely happy and affirmative happenstance, cementing the festival beyond doubt as a triumph of the good & right. And hey, looks like this one made it to Youtube…



Next it’s back outside to where a dedicated cadre of true believers gather before the still largely deserted main stage to bear witness to The Cannanes, over on a rare visit from Australia, quickening the pulse rate of those loyal few who hold the band’s scattered and commercially unheralded discography in such reverence you’d think they pressed their records onto solid gold (or so I’m assuming).

I’ll admit, my Cannanes knowledge is as sparse as the crowd watching them; I have a few tracks by them on comps, which are all excellent, but the main weight of my liking for them currently rests upon the fact that whenever my flatmate Pete is spinning something wondrous-sounding and unidentified in the living room and I ask “what’s this”, the answer is often The Cannanes.

And indeed, The Cannanes – comprised here solely of core members Annabel Bleach and Stephen O’ Neil – sound wondrous. Hard to put into words quite how and why, but their music is of a quite different order to most of the groups I enjoyed at Indietracks. These songs are sparser, rawer, more serious of intent, although never earnest or lacking wit. Just a strummy guitar, a clear, ballsy singing voice, and songs that hurt and fascinate and question and chuckle darkly, like some kinda Richard & Linda Thompson raised on The Velvets and Beat Happening.

Can’t think of much more I can say without wider reference to their discography, but this was a strong, sharp and affecting performance of some brilliant songs, and I’m very glad I saw it.

Some blokes from Sarandon joined them to bulk up the sound for the last few songs, but with no disrespect to those guys, I liked the songs they did as a duo better.



Inevitably, there were some good bands I managed to miss during the course of Sunday. I’m sad I didn’t get to see frat party garage funsters The Millipedes play what was apparently their last ever show (I’ve had a half-finished review of their big box o’ singles sitting on my desktop for months, sorry Trev), and that I failed to catch The Blanche Hudson Weekend (I saw them at a warm up gig earlier the same week though, thought they were excellent).

Other bands I ended up just kinda half-seeing. I was walking back to the campsite for a shower and a bite to eat when Standard Fare came on on the outdoor stage, but no matter, they were mixed so loud I could hear ‘em perfectly most of the way. I may have found myself unable thus far to really connect with their album (“it’s good, but it’s not the one”, as the guy used to say on ‘Catchphrase), but they’re an excellent band, no question, and sound completely in their element on a big festival stage.

My biggest misstep of the day though was missing The Pooh Sticks. How did I manage that? I mean, I love The Pooh Sticks. Their Swansea-based (non)existence, and their album ‘The Great White Wonder’, hold a definite place in my personal mythology. This was “their” first public appearance in, like, nearly twenty years or something. It’s not like I was doing anything, y’know, important while they were playing. I was hanging around in the train-bar, barely feet away from the stage, drinking beer. I was having a nice time, sure, but when I saw happy faces emerge from the hanger, bearing placards reading “E=MC5”, I knew I’d made a terrible mistake. These things happen at festivals, I know, but… I’m sad it worked out this way.

Here’s what I missed;



I could weep.

When The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart close the festival, I’m standing at the top of the slope overlooking the main stage, surveying the scene, sharing some whisky with a couple of friends. Now The Pains aren’t, like, my favourite band in the world or anything, far from it, but it’s going to be difficult writing about how beautiful their set here was. When I got carried away writing about their album last year, vis a vis my last few paragraphs, this was EXACTLY the vision I was seeing in my head.

The sun has set, and the moon is rising. There’s some cloud in the sky, but it’s still a perfect, mild summer’s evening. The air is still over the miles of fields and fences and neatly cultivated clumps of forest that stretch in every direction. It’s the midlands, flat and wide, and empty, and in the middle of it, there’s bright white and blue light (exactly the colours I mentally associate with this band, weirdly enough), there’s a gigantic PA, and…. well it could be any number of bands playing to be honest, any number of variations of noisy rock n’ roll, but this time it’s The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, and that’s just fine. They’re happy to be here, and they’re discovering maybe for the first time, that their band is a flat-out perfect festival headlining act, and they're just fucking killing it, sending blissful, electrifying distortion echoing for miles across the empty English countryside. Not a corporate logo in sight, or a security guard, or any reason to need one – this whole edifice built on DIY culture, enthusiasm and mutual friendship. Opening song: ‘This Love Is Fucking Right’. Halfway through their set I’m almost crying. This is what it’s all about, surely? The reason why we all do this stuff that we do? Standing in the middle of nowhere, hearing that noise hit those empty spaces.

People down by the stage are dancing and hugging, and it’s the festival’s big finale, but me, I’m just dumbstruck.



That’s ya big kiss-off moment of course, but the night is far from over. Down at one of the marquees, Birmingham DJ Attagirl is playing the flat out perfect DJ set for myself and my assorted friends to bond over. Girl-centric cult ‘90s indie? Oh, go on then. There’s still probably someone somewhere waking up screaming at night, having witnessed my reactions to hearing “Nightlife” by Kenickie and “Kandy Pop” by Bis.

At some point after that, we have a running race. There is a great spirit of camaraderie on the last tractor-land-train thing back to the campsite, stragglers leaping onto the runningboard and being pulled on-board. It probably would have been easier to walk, but it’s a lot of fun. Back at camp, conceptually unsavoury London night Crimes Against Pop is holding sway at the disco, so we hang out outside instead, banging steel picnic tables, making our own songs.

For me, the real end of the festival comes sometime between 3 and 4am, when The Sock Puppets and their retinue play a ‘secret gig’ in the tent of a guy with an acoustic guitar who invited everyone back to his tent and promptly fell asleep. They’re belting out their hits at the top of their lungs, and it’s sounding brilliant, when, inevitably, men with torches are banging on the tent, telling us to pack it in.

“Now, now” says the man from the campsite, “you girls have got lovely voices and everything, but it’s pretty late, y’know, and we’ve got a lot of families trying to sleep up in the top field, so if you could just keep it down to a manageable level…” – once again, I am almost moved to tears by the sheer NICENESS of this reaction to our heinous, drunken noise pollution.

Stumbling back toward our own encampment, we see a grumpy looking man sitting awake outside his tent. “Was it you lot singing those songs?”, he asks. Yeah, sorry, we reply. “No, it was good, I really enjoyed it, thanks” he says, and wishes us goodnight.

Goodnight to you too, Indietracks – hands down the best festival I’ve ever attended.

Labels: Betty And The Werewolves, festivals, Indietracks, live reviews, MJ Hibbett, Standard Fare, The Cannanes, The Loves, The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, The Pooh Sticks, The Specific Heats

THE FIFTY BEST RECORDS OF 2009: Part #9

10. Vivian Girls - Everything Goes Wrong (In The Red)

From my review a couple of months back:

“The idea of self-defined, punk-birthed musicians paying tribute to the mechanised emotion of girl group pop is a fascinating one, and it won’t have escaped your notice that it’s become a pretty ubiquitous notion in pop culture over the past few years. Which is no bad thing, obviously – it’s easy and fun to tip a wink to the classics and vamp on some Spector-isms. But what sets the Vivian Girls apart, particularly on this LP, is that they approach this terrain with the spirit of total, deadly seriousness that’s necessary to give such angst-driven material life, recognising the Spector/Morton canon for the bloody heart of darkness it is, and responding in kind with an album that’s dead-eyed, blank-faced, introverted and drained of all the usual affectations and signifiers. It’s got its fingers in its ears, and it’s not listening, especially not to YOU. Tantrum music.

Like the classic NY girl group productions, ‘Everything Goes Wrong’ strikes me as an urban record – a barrier to block out the noise of the city, to create a safe space for internalised melodrama to thrive. This album is the sound of The Shangri-Las out on their own, beaten, rejected and building a wall; a wall the like of which those fucking producers couldn’t even imagine. Not an exotic, enticing wall to trap the listeners inside, but a razor-wire topped prison wall of senseless repetition and tinnitus-inducing distortion, compressed to fuck to keep the hurt inside and keep EVERYONE. ELSE. OUT. Just like some pissed off hardcore kid jamming a tape in his walkman circa 1985.”


Mp3> Can't Get Over You



9. Let's Wrestle - In The Court Of The Wrestling Let's (Stolen)

Opening track: “My friends are in prison / and that’s where I want to be / cos I hate everywhere / They said if you want to help / just kill yourself / but I won’t / I won’t do that”.

On this debut full length, the very real angst and depression that has always lurked at the heart of Let’s Wrestle, barely concealed beneath the scrappy, self-deprecating humour of their terrific series of singles and EPs, finally breaks out and makes itself known. Initially, that may seem an unsavoury development, for the scrappy, self-depreciating stuff was an absolute blast that left us with a handful of absolute classics of DIY pop carnage, whereas there’s certainly no shortage of white guitar bands moaning tiresomely about the sad state of their affairs. But thankfully, Let’s Wrestle’s process of development here is somewhat akin to when The Television Personalities moved beyond singing ‘Part-Time Punks’ and ‘Where’s Bill Grundy Now?’ and presumably surprised everyone still paying attention by knocking out the flat-out best run of masterpiece albums of the 1980s. Ok, so Let’s Wrestle haven’t got that far quite yet, but with Wesley Patrick Gonzalez’ substantial song-writing talent, his ability to put across a loveable, sympathetic loser persona to accompany his tales of woe, and the band’s ragged power trio drive and smirking underdog jollity, they’ve certainly thrown together a fucking brilliant record, one that speaks of the travails of going to the job centre, watching TV, getting dumped, buying a new mattress and, above all, not having a girlfriend, and leaves you feeling that you’ve just spent forty minutes in the company of some wise, witty and noble adventurers, rather than just three suburban misfits with self-esteem issues who like to shoplift lager from Sainsburys and daydream about one day being Dinosaur Jr. Musically, they’re bursting with ideas and ability, but one gets the feeling that, like Dan Treacy or the Swell Maps before them, they’re never going to sound *quite right*, no matter how much they work at it. They’re never going to qualify for whatever race it is guys in rock bands are supposed to be running. Awkwardness hangs over them like a weird cloud, and, to a substantial extent, that’s what makes me love them, what makes me recognise them as MY PEOPLE, pulling out all the negative and pathetic aspects of my own character and parading them around in front of me in the form of goofy, hilarious rock songs that would probably still sound like they were held together with sellotape and twigs if Sony signed ‘em and let ‘em have a year of studio time. And amen to that – I hope they keep doing it forever.

Mp3> It's Not Going To Happen



8. The Cave Weddings - EP (self-released)

So regular readers will have got that I love The Cave Weddings by now. For those who haven’t, here’s some blather to prove it:

“Boy do I love The Cave Weddings! They really are just awesome piled upon awesome. Since these songs have been in my possession, I’ve listened to nothing else. I suppose grumblers and those of an anxious disposition may be apt to claim that bands like The Cave Weddings sound contrived and generic, that they’re just writing catchy pop songs to a formula, reducing lyrical/emotional signposts of unrequited (boo!) vs requited (yay!) love to a near abstract gesture. Well claim away dudes; that’s what Buddy Holly and The Ramones were doing, and when the formula is turning out a 100% hit rate to rival Buddy Holly and The Ramones, criticism is futile. These songs are SO GOOD.

How do they get it so right? Just a gallophing great rhythm guitar, a twangy, catchy lead line, some simple, enthusiastic drumming, a real likable wasn’t-made-for-singing voice straining to hit the right notes, some ba-ba-bas, tried & tested melodies of elephant-killing power…. it ain’t rocket science. But when all the elements are in alignment, when the band sound so damn happy to be here… you can’t beat it.”

If you can accept that rock n’ roll doesn’t always have to be about noise and terror and teenage frustration, but can just be happy and cool, then these five songs are perfect rock n’ roll.

Mp3> Let's Drive



7. The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart - s/t (Fortuna Pop)

I first heard this one in, like, December ’08, but it was officially released in Feb ’09, and I got far too excited about it in May ’09:

“Needless to say, it was during one of my periodic retreats to the Welsh hills that the tables turned, when I downloaded a leak of The Pains album on a whim and stuck in my earphones to go for a nice long walk. BOY, is it an album. Outside the city, far from any music scene backbiting, my above reservations started to seem like the petty, snidey, insular bitching they undoubtedly are. Fuck ‘indie-pop’; what I was listening to as I barrelled down Welsh country lanes was rock n’ roll the way the Velvets rewired it forty years ago: the drummer plays simple stuff real enthusiastic, the organist holds down big, single chords and lets them ring, the bass doubles back on itself in sweet melodic patterns, and the guitars go FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF, covering everything like a happy rainstorm. The recording is huge, with everything amped up, filed down and maximised to digital-age, killer proportions, the chord changes are lovely, the songs are heartfelt and the lyrics are memorable and smart. What’s not to love?

My friend and I spoke briefly to the guy from The Pains at one of their gigs, and he seems like a really sweet, modest sort of fellow. I’m sure his band didn’t MEAN to make a Battle-Album. I think they’re just careful, ambitious, and very good at what they do. But nonetheless, they have made a Battle-Album. In one fell swoop, they manage to out-twee the neo-indiepoppers, to out-Superchunk the neo-indie rockers, and even to out-‘Gaze the neo-shoegazers on the longer tracks, with their motorik rhythmic drive and luxurious layered distortion. Within their designated sphere, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart are kings of the castle. If you’re into any of this kinda stuff, they are henceforth the band to beat.”

Mp3> Come Saturday



6. The Mountain Goats - The Life Of The World To Come (4AD)

Trying to find a concise quote from my review of this album was hard work – it’s a pretty…um… ‘one paragraph following directly into the next one’ type piece full of digressional pontification, although it’s probably one of the better things I’ve written this year. And I know I’m always a dreadful bore on the subject of The Mountain Goats, but I really think this is one of the most beautiful collections of songs released in recent years, regardless of your thoughts on their previous work. It’s also one of, I think, only three introspective, acoustic songwriter type records in this top 50. Maybe I’m cheering up in my old age. Anyway, here are a few bits from the review that kinda get to the heart of the matter:

“The album’s true heart lays somewhere else entirely, in the sparse, ringing piano chords that underscore John’s voice on ‘Genesis 30:3’, one of the simplest and most beautiful devotional songs Darnielle has ever written. When I say ‘devotional’, I’m not sure whether the song expresses devotion to a lover or to a God, but to be honest it scarcely matters. As with several of the best songs on the record, Darnielle intentionally blurs the distinction between earthy and metaphysical faith, and in the process succeeds wonderfully in rising above the knuckleheaded bickering and terminal point-missing that blights 99% of contemporary discourse on religion, instead cutting straight to essential core of belief. In these songs, he speaks of the reality of feeling something within you that stretches beyond yourself, of the overriding sense of faith in the beauty of the world, and of a sense of purpose and an unwavering certainty that can be clung to throughout the very worst of times, whether it manifests itself as devotion to a church, as a gnostic ‘spark of the divine’, or simply as time spent in the arms of your beloved, or with an equally beloved family – for what, after all, is the difference?

[…]

Darnielle’s success here comes in the way he approaches his subject matter not as a dogmatic Xtian, but as the kind of flawed, spiritually bereft post-industrial human that modernist novels always used to warn us about, picking up the lessons of the scriptures for the first time and finding them more relevant to his own being than he ever suspected. As the chaotic, self-doubting protagonist of ‘Romans 10:9’ confirms for us in a rousing chorus adapted straight from the text:

‘If you can believe in your heart
And confess with your lips
Surely you will be
Saved one day’

And if we can put aside our kneejerk secular distaste for such phraseology and take that at face value, is it not a pretty fucking righteous note on which to start the day?”

Mp3> Genesis 30:3

Labels: best of 2009, Let's Wrestle, The Cave Weddings, The Mountain Goats, The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, The Vivian Girls

You're All My Sisters.




The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart – This Love is Fucking Right

I’ve been meaning to write a post reviewing the Pains Of Being Pure At Heart album for AGES. Seems like the kind of thing I should really have an opinion on, what with them being the real from-the-underground-into-the-stratosphere band of the moment, playing within a style & scene I broadly speaking enjoy. But in fact I’ve been meaning to get around writing about them for so long that the essence of what I initially wanted to say about them has changed several times over.

Seeing them play for the first time, I was kinda suspicious – what was with these young, impeccably turned out, slightly-too-perfectly-hewn Brooklyners, with their mighty, streamlined noise-pop sound, with their spare Fender Jaguars, their pedalboards for christ’s sake, ripping their aesthetic wholesale from the kind of faintly desperate, lovelorn racket trademarked by ugly, misfit British kids at the dawn of the ‘80s? What was with this guy’s weedy, reedy singing voice, being bullied by all the other instrument like he’s mimicking the kind of ‘bad’ voice that Dan Treacy and the guy from The Razorcuts used to sing in because those were the only voices they *had*, deliberately adopting it for the purposes of retrospective scene identification?

They were an enjoyable band on stage, no doubt; really loud, with all the right bits in the right places. But I found it odd how they seemed to have immediately assumed deity status amongst the indie-pop cognoscenti before their first album was even on the shelves, with practically every one of their available songs being DJed in turn to rapturous response on every conceivable occasion. The kind of natural GROUNDSWELL that major label pluggers probably do not even dare to dream of these days. And I mean, they’re pretty, and they do all the stuff that’s currently indie-trendy, and they don’t even sound weird, man! Squint your ears a bit in the right/wrong direction and they could even sound a bit like The Smashing Pumpkins, without that whining bald guy getting in the way. These guys could be BIG.

Needless to say, it was during one of my periodic retreats to the Welsh hills that the tables turned, when I downloaded a leak of The Pains album on a whim and stuck in my earphones to go for a nice long walk. BOY, is it an album. Outside the city, far from any music scene backbiting, my above reservations started to seem like the petty, snidey, insular bitching they undoubtedly are. Fuck ‘indie-pop’; what I was listening to as I barrelled down Welsh country lanes was rock n’ roll the way the Velvets rewired it forty years ago: the drummer plays simple stuff real enthusiastic, the organist holds down big, single chords and lets them ring, the bass doubles back on itself in sweet melodic patterns, and the guitars go FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF, covering everything like a happy rainstorm. The recording is huge, with everything amped up, filed down and maximised to digital-age, killer proportions, the chord changes are lovely, the songs are heartfelt and the lyrics are memorable and smart. What’s not to love?

My friend and I spoke briefly to the guy from The Pains at one of their gigs, and he seems like a really sweet, modest sort of fellow. I’m sure his band didn’t MEAN to make a Battle-Album. I think they’re just careful, ambitious, and very good at what they do. But nonetheless, they have made a Battle-Album. In one fell swoop, they manage to out-twee the neo-indiepoppers, to out-Superchunk the neo-indie rockers, and even to out-‘Gaze the neo-shoegazers on the longer tracks, with their motorik rhythmic drive and luxurious layered distortion. Within their designated sphere, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart are kings of the castle. If you’re into any of this kinda stuff, they are henceforth the band to beat.

Ok, so they’re good. We are PRO- them. That’s terrific, but so what? Lots of people are *good*, but I didn’t think this album really had it in it to properly move me or anything, with all my strange, unguessable musical moodswings. So, phase # 3 was instigated by “This Love Is Fucking Right”.

Jesus christ. I could carry on about this band and their place in the current scheme of things until I’m blue in the face, but this here? THIS is a fucking song.

This is their ‘September Gurls’. I’m not saying it’s that good (nothing is), but…

Like ‘September Gurls’, you’d be hard pressed to catch more than more than a few fragments of the lyrics on a first listen, and they perhaps don’t seem to add up to anything terribly coherent, but you’d be a fucking moron if you didn’t instantly grasp the totality of what this song’s, y’know, ABOUT. Hint: it’s not about incest. It’s all in the way half-heard phrases, ghosts of what was originally on the lyric sheet, combine with the power of the music to torpedo into whatever the hell place your emotional impulses come from, to make new shapes, like fireworks and stuff, to get the point across.

Also like ‘September Gurls’, this song has a perfectly positioned lead guitar overdub that just cleaves the sky in two, saying more in ten seconds than ten minutes of huffy-puffy folky storytelling could.

And like ‘September Gurls’, this song is a gateway drug, a key to the rest of the album, leading you to reassess the merits of ‘Young Adult Friction’, of ‘Come Saturday’ and ‘Stay Alive’ (and today I think the Vaselines-y 'Hey Paul' is by far my favourite), subsequently finding them all just as powerfully realised as the key-song, pieces of a puzzle that threatens to spell out Classic Album, whether you like it or not. Cos after a while, if you listen to it loud enough, the whole of this Pains album will smash your face and rip your heart at least half as thoroughly as the Big Star ones did. I recommend listening to it with the bass up a lot, the treble down a bit.

Most of all though, most importantly, and UNLIKE ‘September Gurls’, (which found it’s initial audience largely among lonely record geeks and ‘70s fanzine scribes), ‘This Love Is Fucking Right’ just makes me think of the dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of people who are going to have this song, and the other Pains songs, and whatever joyous, confusing, bittersweet, frightening, unreal memories they each surgically attach to them, sewn into their recollections of this summer, or last summer, last winter, tomorrow or right now, or at a retro night in 2030, stuck to them forever as they blast from sound systems yet unknown, making life like a movie in the midst of heat haze and sunsets and warmth and streets and fields, fuel to human feeling and hope and folly and momentary love frozen forever.

Man, The Pains of Being Pure At Heart are fucking RIGHT! And so am I, and so are you, and love is always right.

Labels: album reviews, song reviews, The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, WOW BIG STAR COMPARISONS

Monday November 24th
Those Dancing Days play at Goldsmiths Student Union.



Tuesday November 25th
'breakfast in the ruins' posts on the Plan B forum:

"Wow, Those Dancing Days were FANTASTIC last night! One of the best live bands I’ve seen in ages…. If there’s one thing I don’t like about their records (and that’s a big IF) it’s that they’re a tad over-produced, so I’m so, so glad to have seen them totally rocking all those incredible songs live to a half empty hall of about a hundred students (and about eight people over twenty sticking out like sore thumbs) on a freezing Monday midnight. As is obvious from the records, their drummer is INCREDIBLE – she looks about twelve and rocks out like John Bonham doing session work for ’80s Madonna. And the rest of ‘em are no slouches either – not much in the way of show(wo)manship, but that’s fine with me since they’re busy playing the living hell out of their songs and looking like they’re loving every second of it. The intro to every single song, even album tracks and b-sides, got an immediate “yes! I love this song!” reaction from me and/or others in the crowd, and it’s the first gig I’ve been to for ages that had a proper, spontaneous encore. Not to mention dancing on a Monday night. Shrug ‘em off if you like, but in their own way Those Dancing Days are DIY as fuck – no gimmicks or hype bullshit or pandering to genre/gender/age-based preconceptions, just five cool, characterful girls working hard to make the biggest, best, skyscraping, optimistic pop music they can imagine. WOW. Dear Diary, I LOVE THIS BAND SO MUCH, etc.

The gig seemed to be running on East London Time, so I didn't get home on the buses until 2ish and feel like I just done got up and died on the spot this morning, but, wow, it was worth it."

Mp3> Those Dancing Days – I Know Where You Live


Friday November 28th
Shrag and The Loves play at The Buffalo Bar.

(I didn’t get a chance to write anything about this one, but rest assured both bands were really terrific, and I had a great time.)


Monday December 1st
Hotpants Romance play at The Windmill, supported by The Understudies, Horowitz and The Give It Ups.


(Headliners Cars Can Be Blue had to pull out because, appallingly, UK customs wouldn’t let them into the country and kept them detained for 48 hours. Can you believe that..? Fucking hell.)

Tuesday December 2nd
'breakfast in the ruins' posts on the Plan B forum:

"So I had a fantastic time at the gig last night.... attendance was pretty low, I guess what with the headliners having cancelled, the fact it was a freezing Monday etc., but the folks who were there brought a great atmosphere with them (talk about cliquey - I think I knew nearly everyone in the room, by sight if not necessarily by name :D ).

Hotpants Romance were an absolute inspiration! Proof positive that knowing how to play and fretting (no pun intended) about tuning and guitar sounds etc. doesn't matter a DAMN so long as you've got the energy and smarts to get on stage and just *be awesome*.

They're like Swell Maps if they were girls and didn't bother with all the arty stuff, or like early Magik Markers if they were a pop band, or..... actually, no, those are crap comparisons! They're like the Ramones is what they're like! Really, really early, pre-first album Ramones, before they got their shit together and when they used to argue between each song about what they were gonna play next. I guess that all sounds kinda patronising, but...uh... IT'S NOT; in my world at least, this makes for a totally radical band of the highest order. And their songs are amazing too - I mean, obviously they've got their whole trashy pop-punk thing down, but they've also got a really odd, sweet, kinda introspective angle on things, ala The Marine Girls - just killer, real life sentiments expressed in as few words as possible - wow.

I lent the guitarist the only plectrum I own, and she never gave it back, so now I'll have to take a special trip out to a guitar shop to get some more. But no matter - as a hopeless fanboy, I'm honoured to have been of service.

It was great to catch up with Horowitz too – those guys are heroes. So dedicated to what they do. That being: loud guitars, beautiful melodies, geeky references, choruses designed to make me melt. Heartfelt, homemade power-pop. Fantastic, as it always has been and always will be.

Vivian Girls tonight - what a great eight days it's been, musically speaking!"

Mp3> Hotpants Romance – Blow My Fuse
Mp3> Horowitz – I Need A Blanket


Tuesday December 2nd
The Vivian Girls play at The Windmill, supported by The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, Betty & The Werewolves and The Bridport Daggers.



Wednesday December 3rd
'breakfast in the ruins' begins typing the following into the “reply” box on the Plan B Forum, but thinks better of actually posting it:

"Vivian Girls were stunning last night. They were so loud! My ears are wrecked this morning. Every time I move my jaw distant bells start ringing. It was so incredible to stand at the front and let those amazing songs just envelop me completely. And they have *so many* amazing songs - loads of new ones that aren't on the album. They're such an incredible presence on stage too; I was kinda worried that maybe it would be a case of the real life band being crushed by the expectation that all the hype has thrown their way, but they're such a positive, relentless force, such a massive noise, so determined to smash their songs into everyone's heads, it's just... [speechless].

I love their album to death, but now it just sounds like some muffled reflection of their actual reality. Maybe it was just all the noise and excitement, but when they played "Tell The World", I got kinda religious and started thinking, ok, y’know, this actually everything I love and strife for and believe in, *happening right in front of me*. My own personal vision of God, if you will. It was probably the closest I’ve felt to heaven for many months.

Beat THAT for hype.

And they didn’t even play “Where Do You Run To”!

Obviously Betty & The Werewolves were fantastic in support too, and should not be overshadowed; bouncing around to their set was an absolute blast. They’re such a perfectly realized band – every song just an absolute femme-punk gem at hardcore tempo with radical riffs and guitar breaks, frenzied rhythm strumming, sweet harmony vocals.... wow. Also, much respect to the bass/lead vocals werewolf for her carefree pogoing. She’s quite tall, and the stage at The Windmill is pretty small, and a bass guitar is a big thing to swing around in mid-air, so it must take some serious dedication on her part to the noble art of jumping up and down. I mean, I was playing in the same spot the previous evening, and if my feet had left the ground I suspect a catastrophic pile-up of leads, band members and equipment would have been the immediate and ugly result, so that in itself is fairly awe-inspiring.


Anyway, it’s an absolute travesty that circumstances have contrived to make this only the SECOND of the many, many gigs Betty & The Werewolves have been playing this year that I’ve actually been able to witness. I’m definitely gonna have to make a more concerted effort in future. Any Londoners reading, take heed – these guys are the best band in town, and every day that passes on before you go to see them is a day wasted. Thank them in your prayers tonight.

This year’s indie-pop new big things The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart were a late addition to the bill after their support slot with The Wedding Present got cancelled, and they were pretty good too I guess. They’ve definitely got a more powerful sound going on than most other “indie pop next big things” I could mention, but, like many current Amerindie bands, it’s maybe a tad too slick for my tastes. They sound kinda like they’ve started work from a blueprint of *exactly* what they want their band to sound like – in this case, variations on MBV’s “Paint A Rainbow” with arch, Interpol-ish vocals and hypnotic spacerock basslines – then practiced like fuck and tweaked members, equipment, songs etc. until they’ve got it DOWN, then hit the road/studio and waited for the love to roll on in. Admittedly, it’s a great blueprint, so if my brief X+Y=Z above floats your particular boat, well, get on down to the harbour, cos they do it better than anyone, and their set is very enjoyable, but…. y’know. It don’t touch base with my soul. I’m probably just being unduly cynical though really – I ended up having a brief chat to the singer/guitarist afterwards, and he seems a really good guy. I’m sure they’re actually as genuine in their intentions as any other band, and I shouldn't leap to such foolish music journo-ish assumptions.

Opening act The Bridport Daggers were pretty cool too actually, if perhaps a tad out of place on this line-up (and out of place is as good a place to be as any). Chiming, overdriven guitars, twisted Scientists-esque swamp-rock racket, vicious rockabilly rhythms, two guitars and no bass - good stuff.

What a fantastic evening of deafening, joyful music."

Mp3>The Vivian Girls – Tell The World
(I’d post a tune by Betty & The Werewolves, except they’ve only put out that one 7”, and I don't have a digital version.)

….

And I just got myself a ticket to see Mika Miko headline a late-running seven band bill in Stoke Newington next Friday …. I’m psyched to have gotten a chance to finally see them! So that makes what, six amazing female-led punk and/or pop bands in the space of a fortnight…? Will my fragile heart be able to stand it?? – watch this space.

Labels: Betty And The Werewolves, gurls, Horowitz, Hotpants Romance, live reviews, pop, punk, The Bridport Daggers, The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, The Vivian Girls, Those Dancing Days