20. Vapid – Practically Dead (Nominal / Deranged)

And this year’s award for best band that sounds exactly like Bikini Kill goes to…
But seriously folks, I kid - after a disconcerting opening ten seconds that I hope I’m mishearing, Vancouver’s Vapid have an absolute ripper of a furious, depoliticised post-riot grrl punk rock album on the go here.

“The Vancouver new wave scene is tough and raunchy,” claimed a hilarious local TV announcer back in 1979, and clearly such logic applies no less today, as Vapid’s singer announces “hey cunt-hole bitch I’ve come to even the score” within her debut record’s first minute and the band proceed to kick through a set of sub-two minute cuts including “Die”, “Sex Stains”, “Bruises” and “Hate You”. In spite of all appearances though, Vapid are not hardcore – more just amped up, aggressive pop-punk really, somewhat reminiscent of the Avengers, Zeros, Dils etc, all cut through with a ‘90s guitar sound and hectoring vocal delivery that speaks of some serious quality time spent in the company of Kathleen and the girls/boy, Bratmobile, God Is My Co-Pilot and yadda yadda yadda.

Call me a wuss if you like, but whilst the comedy aggro is all good fun, I think the album really hits its stride when Vapid give in to their pop instincts on the second half, letting “So Far Gone”, “Movin’ On” and particularly “Death of Youth” stand out as some of the flat out best songs I’ve heard this year.

I dunno how long these girls and guys have been in the game, but it’s notable I think that many of the best numbers here seem to betray a certain wistful, ‘best is behind us’ vibe that hits pretty hard in combination with propulsive, pogo-worthy tunes. Here’s hoping it’s an approach they’ll find the energy to expand on in future, moreso than settling scores with cunthole bitches. Although that would be fine too.

But seriously guys, “Death of Youth” is something else – one of my picks of the year, for sure.

Mp3> Death of Youth


19. Dignan Porch – Tendrils (Captured Tracks)

Um, another one that’s gonna be hard to write about here, I fear. ‘Dignan Porch’ is a terrible name for a group, but I was drawn to their record because I like the cover so much. I’ve never managed to catch them live, but they are some people, apparently based in London. “Tendrils” sounds like a bunch of beautiful little song-writing demos, the kind that it’s easy to imagine some shit band in the ‘90s would have felt the need to blow up into airless, overproduced four minute full band arrangements, then gone around earnestly trying to convince everyone that they’ve recorded the best album in the world, as the gentle promise of the original demos fades away unheard.

Thankfully though, Dignan Porch are not a shit band from the ‘90s, so, in the free n’ easy world of 2010, we can relax and enjoy the demos. These are primarily realised through the means of a strummed acoustic guitar, over which somebody else plays terrific Barry Melton/J. Mascis-styled decorative electric lead. A fairly agreeable male vocalist sings simple, quiet songs through some nice, woozy Leslie speaker type effects.

I realise this sounds pretty awful, but don’t bail yet.

All of these songs are short – none of them outstay their welcome. A verse, a chorus or two, and they’re out. How refreshing is that from some guys who evidently play acoustic guitars in public places? Furthermore, all of these songs really strong melodies, frequently crossing the line into teen-movie-soundtrack hooks so relentlessly big and shameless that by the half-way point they start to sound almost manipulative.

Such uninhibited pop/rock bullseyeing, in combination with the woozy, Skip Spence / Elevators campfire psych dilated pupil fecklessness of the whole venture, is a combination that works extremely well for me. Sometimes they sound a bit like the shorter, weirder songs from Bee Thousand-era GBV. Sometimes they sound like Alasatair Galbraith’s group, The Rip. Sometimes they remind me of “Naked If We Want To” off the first Moby Grape album. Sometimes they even sound a little bit like Carl Simmons. Mostly though, they sound a bit like an acoustic(ish) Dinosaur Jr, getting high and trying to sound all witchy.

I dunno what any of these songs are s’posed to be about, and I don’t much care. They sound fantastic, and they have a real nice, human feeling to them, and this is a great record.

I wish I hadn’t started throwing that phrase ‘campfire psych’ around all the time. It sounds stupid I know, but it’s just this category I seem to have developed in my head, and I’m at a loss as to how else to file bands like this one, y’know? Suggestions for a better sub-sub-genre label welcomed at the usual address.

Mp3> As You Were


18. The Mantles – Pink Information EP (Mexican Summer)

From November this year:

“This year’s follow-up EP, ‘Pink Information’ on Mexican Summer, sees The Mantles reversing the natural trajectory taken by a lot of groups, stepping back from the ‘dark, sweeping drama’ approach of their LP in favour of a scrappier, more elemental pop angle, somewhat reminiscent of The Clean’s early material – a pretty encouraging turn of events, I’m sure you’d agree.

Happily, the EP also finds the band’s songwriting hitting a whole new level. I mean, what can I tell you – “Cascades” and “Situations” and just some of the most compulsively listenable songs I’ve heard this year, twisting and chugging, dead-pan and sweet and cool and… well, just perfect, really. Perfect in a way you never realised was ‘perfect’ until you heard it. There's a wildness here that there wasn't quite enough of on the LP; that bit just before the end of "Situations", where he exclaims "in the laboratory, the midnight hour..." before aborting the verse and ploughing straight back in a final chorus just blows my mind.

“Lily Never Married” is even better, sounding like one of those songs about unhappy family members and cloudy days that Ray Davies used to stick in the middle of mid-‘60s Kinks albums like morbid cries for help, catapulted back to our attention via a flawless Velvets groove and unbearably simple/poignant chord progression – a sad, humane song, using a few chords, a rhythm, a handful of repeated lyrics, to carry the quiet sorrow of an ordinary, wasted life into a place of real transcendence. “Now she's old / what can you say? / People just don't do / that anymore...”. Fitting those magic notes and words together, like Ray or Lou Reed used to be able to do every now and again. Five minutes passes in the space of, ooh, two and a half, easy. It’s really, really great.

I don’t like the song “Summer Read” quite so much as I used to, since I clocked the title and realised the opening line isn’t “TREAT ME LIKE A SUBMARINE”, but it’s still pretty good.

After some reflection, I think The Mantles are one of the only American “indie-rock” bands – in the sense of being unaffiliated with the conventions and fandom of garage or pop or punk or noise or psych or whatever else – whose output I really care for at present.”

Mp3> Lily Never Married


17. The Specific Heats – Cursed! (Fun With Absetos / Saganism)

Back in August, I wrote this about seein’ The Specific Heats play live:

“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 here, 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.

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, [so] 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.”

Most of that applies nicely to their long-awaited (in certain quarters) second LP too. This is a really GREAT sounding psyche-pop album, full of delightfully dusty analogue reverbs, slapback echoes, strange drifty mysteries and weird Joe Meek squelches – the sonic equivalent of the paisley that bedecks the cover art. The songs are great and lively, and Matt’s heart-on-sleeve lyrics are funny and goofy and affecting. Anyone out there still looking for ‘that Elephant 6 sound’, but not wishing to suffocate themselves with insufferable beardy boredom: The Specific Heat are waiting.

Mp3> Baby, I’m an Existentialist


16. Wyatt / Atzmon / Stephen - For The Ghosts Within (Domino)


To be honest with you, I’m a small-minded, rock n’ roll-fixated jerk, and as such it is extremely unlikely that I would be found checking out the work of Palestinian saxophonist Gilad Atzmon or composer/string arranger Ros Stephen were it not for the unmistakable presence brought to this collaborative album by Robert Wyatt.

I suppose that one of the things that has most defined Wyatt’s career over the years has been the conflict between musical avant-gardism and old fashioned sentimentality – a conflict which has resolved itself in his best work not through compromise but through a beautiful kind of synthesis – music that strives for universal relevance, basic human connection, through new, open-ended means. And if the chasm between comfort and innovation on “For The Ghosts Within” is at times a little more uncomfortable than it was on Wyatt’s masterful “ComicOpera”, well it is a no less intriguing and enjoyable work for it, and it is certainly nice to hear Wyatt letting his metaphorical hair down, using the collaborative setting to indulge some of his more… well if I say ‘comfortable’, ‘sentimental’ urges, those sound like fairly negative distinctions within the parlance of modern music-scribble, but I certainly don’t mean them at such.

At the risk of making undue generalisations, both Atzmon and Stephen would seem to be quite backward-looking artists, though again, I don’t mean that in a negative sense. The former, as showcased here, sounds like a dedicated disciple of (oxymoron alert) classic-era modern jazz, his highly lyrical playing recalling the weighty tone and incandescent emotion of early ‘60s Miles, or Coltrane on his slower numbers. Stephen’s string arrangements meanwhile, though never corny or overblown, can’t help but recall the rich, sweeping scores of a ‘quality’ 1950s film, zeroing in on, say, the kind of aching theme one might expect to accompany a lady being quietly heartbroken, exiting a Paris café against a beautifully photographed black & white sky.

Appropriate to this inviting old world atmosphere, Wyatt finally grasps the nettle and gives in to his perhaps long-standing desire to full scale Chet Baker, bringing his own characteristically idiosyncratic interpretation to a variety of ‘classic’ tunes. Of course, Wyatt is the kind of man who could sing the phonebook and invest it with a unique pathos (in fact he probably has done at some point in his career), so to hear him apply his himself to such old warhorses as Raskin/Mercer’s “Laura” or Billy Strayhorn’s “Lush Life”, accompanied by Atzmon & Stephen’s cooked-to-perfection backing, is a plainly beautiful experience. Cutting through decades of accumulated schmaltz like the proverbial knife through butter, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find any genuine lover of 20th century song who is not touched by hearing Wyatt’s voice wrapped around these storied words, whilst even his extra-vocal contributions to instrumental standards “Round Midnight” and “In A Sentimental Mood” manage to help raise their original potent spirit above the parapets of dinner-jazz monotony. In an achievement perhaps only equalled in recent history by Joey Ramone himself, Wyatt and co. actually manage to close the album by delivering “What A Wonderful World” straight-faced, and getting away with it… just about.

This being essentially a Wyatt record though, some more challenging, personal content is clearly needed/expected, and indeed the album’s overall highlight is probably “Lullaby For Lena”, a beautiful new song that sees Wyatt singing a set of simple, almost subliminal lyrics composed by his wife Alfie – “I was there for you / long before the day that I was born” . It is heart-stoppingly beautiful, standing alongside the very best moments from Wyatt’s solo albums.

Our man’s unflagging dedication to both experimentalism and political consciousness meanwhile is borne out in both the album’s thematic dedication to displaced peoples the world over, and the lengthy and somewhat confounding title track, which sees its cool, desert supper-club atmospherics and strident guest vocal from Tali Atzmon rudely interrupted when it segues into the next cut, where a volley of weird dixieland flourishes and faux-gramophone atmospherics from Atzmon is cut short by the break-beatin’ arrival of a pair of Palestinian rappers. Whilst the whole suite stands firm as a solid-as-fuck statement of political intent, it sadly must be said that these guys ain’t exactly the Wu-Tang Clan, and that their unexpected presence only really succeeds in standing out like a sore thumb amid this album’s polished musical world. One to chalk up as a ‘noble failure’ perhaps, but it has succeeded on numerous occasions in jerking me out of the wine-sipping late night reverie inspired by the familiar, upholstered surfaces of the rest of the album – and isn’t it exactly this kind of odd clash of moods, style, genre, nationalities, expectations, this search for a wholly borderless, universal new music, that has helped to define Robert Wyatt as one of the most consistently inspired musicians of his generation or any other?

Mp3> Laura

Labels: best of 2010, Dignan Porch, Robert Wyatt, The Mantles, The Specific Heats, Vapid

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

Summer Singles, part # 3

Sic Alps – L. Mansion (Slumberland)

It’s an odd one to get a handle on, this Sic Alps thing. I kinda like them, I think I’m probably gonna go and see them at their London gig. If I see a record by them, I’ll buy it. Their music’s likeable, varied, fuzzy, rocking, vaguely tuneful and kinda interesting, but… I dunno, I mean, I doubt even their most vocal supporters could legitimately claim they were *brilliant* or, y’know, singularly extraordinary. Even in their very best stuff, there’s a certain… haziness, maybe… that makes them the perfect target for any preordained opponent of the new lo-fi hierarchy to jump on and cry WHERE’S THE BEEF?

As I say, I like ‘em, and listening to them makes me feel good, but at the same time they don’t seem like a band who under sane circumstances would necessitate instantly sold out singles or furtive online bidding wars, any more so than any other duo of dudes you might find working out some tunes on Californian beachfront one Friday night. And this particular single, redolent of the kind of pleasantly slapdash meandering that leads responsible adults to start referring to songs as “jams”, will likely prove more flagrantly offensive than ever to those out there who’d demand that the incoming generation should be taking names and blowing minds as a matter of routine.

Not to me though. I kinda like it. The two numbers herein find the Alps at their most melodic and overtly sixties-styled, with acoustic guitar and everything on the A-side, while the B's a bit more of a 'Mellow Yellow' pre-glam stomper. The idea of Sic Alps being hippies has never really clicked with me before (more like NZ-via-Ohio outsider rock warriors, surely?), but this is basically some nice hippie music right here, stripped of all the bullshit that makes hippies and their music so ghastly. It’s a bit like something a couple of the guys from Moby Grape could have banged out after a few beers when their management wasn’t looking. Only it isn’t, at all. There’s something intangible about these songs – and not just the recording or the guitar tone – that defines them as ‘modern’. This is music that couldn’t have happened before ‘punk’ became codified in the late 70s, maybe even before, urgh, ‘indie rock’ became codified in the early ‘90s. But it’s still essentially dumb, happy shit to sit out on the porch with.

A band like Sic Alps also raises some interesting quality vs. quantity issues; granted, there are only two short-ish songs here, but the heart of the underground rock fan is still warmed by the implicit knowledge that a group like Sic Alps will always have LOADS of songs like these kicking around, and by its very nature this knowledge raises the level at which the band can be valued/enjoyed. If you were to record just the songs on this disc and present them to the music world like some sort of achievement, you’d be lucky to raise even the smallest of collective shrugs. Record about a hundred of the things though, of comparable or lesser quality, and a lifelong cult following will surely be yours. It’s a funny old game.

http://www.sicalps.com/listen.html
http://www.slumberlandrecords.com/

The Specific Heats – Back Through Thyme EP (Total Gaylord/Hugpatch)

The Specific Heats were ridiculously, almost unbelievably, good when I saw them play in Nottingham back in July – the sort of band I was worried I might have accidentally dreamed into existence with all my basest impulses. Picture if you will a dancing virtuoso loon of a guitarist leading proceedings with a lovely Mosrite cranked up via a Fuzzrite stompbox, a rack-mounted Fender reverb unit and various other noise-making goodies, whilst three unfeasibly beautiful young ladies provide furious backing on echoed, descending bass-lines, clattering garage-punk drums and swirling, baroque/prog-infused organ respectively, birthing a veritable riot of explosive, expansive psychedelic surf punk pop bliss. Good grief, what a band.

For all their magnificent potential though, it seems that The ‘Heats have had tougher luck than they perhaps deserve translating themselves to record. A second album apparently still lays some time in the distant future, and their merch guy warned me against seeking out their debut (highly unrepresentative of what they do now, I’m informed), leaving just this 33-playing EP as a stop-gap to bring back the happy memories.

And this is scarcely an accurate reflection of the band’s current line-up either it turns out, with production, song-writing and just about all the instrumentation being handled by guitarist/main guy Mat Patalano, with the rest of the live band only represented by Keira Flynn-Carson on drums. As such it’s a far more mannered and restrained affair than the live set, revealing a careful and perfectionist approach to recording, as Mat and Keira lay down a groovy ‘60s-focused sound that leans heavily on Zombies-esque baroque pop, some Stereolab/Monade style retro-futurist grooves, a bit of a surf twang, with a touch of Electric Prunes-ish studio-bound garage-psyche mayhem creeping around the edges. The result is a great listen, no doubt, inevitably recalling the work of Apples in Stereo’s Robert Schneider in both theory and practice, and imbued with the same irresistible positivity and pure love of sound too. All the same though, I can’t wait to hear what’ll happen when the brains and expertise behind this EP apply themselves to capturing the chaos and fury and wild ensemble playing of the group’s live show – I think it's gonna be pretty nifty.

Some killer live tracks / demos currently on their myspace though – check ‘em out!

http://www.myspace.com/thespecificheats
http://www.totalgaylordrecords.com/shop.htm

Top Ten – Girls Understand b/w Don’t Talk About Us (Classic Bar Music)

Classic bar music indeed! Keep me close to a bar for long enough, and I guarantee that before closing time this will be EXACTLY the kind of crap I’d want to hear, so let’s join Erin McDermott (ex-Bobbyteens, Trashwomen) as she and Top Ten bust through some cacophonous hard rock assaults on the world of power-pop, executed with all the nuance and restraint you’d expect. Only about two minutes per side here, but for some reason the pressing on this thing is pretty ppor, with thin sound, missing high end and a rhythm guitar track that sounds like an ape moaning along in time. I know that’s a weird thing to say, but seriously, you should hear it! The A-side has a good title and is pretty pacy, but a somewhat unmemorable tune, the B is a slightly unhinged bludgeoning of the Someloves classic. It’s ok, and kudos to them for covering such a great and relatively little-known tune, but it ain’t exactly too dynamic, y’know? I’m sure you could plot a graph pitting the potential enjoyability of this record against the number of cheap beers downed. Sounds like they’d had a few when they recorded it. I’m sober at the time of writing, so it could sound better.

http://www.myspace.com/topten
Classic Bar Music

Labels: Sic Alps, singles reviews, The Specific Heats, Top Ten