25. Vivian Girls – Share The Joy (In The Red)

Poor Vivian Girls – they were in a real ‘damned if you do..’ situation with this one. Momentary hype bubble irreparably broken, I suspect a lot of people had the knives out regardless – to curse ‘em out as no ideas/no talent timewasters if they delivered more of the same, to mock their pretensions if they tried something a bit different, or hey, why not a bit or both? The fact that ‘Share The Joy’ is a pretty good record got lost in the shuffle as the band were being shown the door.

It’s not perfect, it’s got a few duds, but in terms of sound and songwriting I think album # 3 is a real progression for the group, with a handful of tracks that are flat-out brilliant. A significant departure from the Shangri-Las-via-Husker Du hardcore of ‘Everything Goes Wrong’, ‘Share The Joy’ has more of a mid-fi denim desert rock kinda feel to it – less of the distortion and compression, more of the beautifully straight-up, band-in-a-room kinda chiming slow-burn, verging at times into the shallow end of grizzled Crazy Horse sprawl. It works pretty well. The Neil comparison is particularly pertinent on ‘The Other Girls’, an ambitious six and a half minutes of opening track, expanding the band’s default mope to persuasively epic scope, carrying forward the kind of dead-eyed melancholy that’s been at the heart of all their music thus far into a few minutes of instinctive, emotionally resonant soloing – honest, rough-edged, heart-string tugging rock music. Nothing wrong w/ that. Much like the Girls At Dawn album last year, there’s not much to say to try to sell this to some hypothetical tastemaker, but it’s the kind of thing that always works for me, and I think it’s a killer track.

‘Other Girls’ establishes the pattern of downbeat melodicism and cool, clean-toned guitarwork that flows through all of ‘Share the Joy’s best moments – ‘Heard You Say’, ‘Trying To Pretend’ and re-recorded singles cut ‘Lake House’ - all securing the band a comfortable new foothold in the realm of a kinda (god, it’s killing me having to type this) punk-informed Americana, culminating in my personal favourite track here, the full-on wronged woman vengeance ode of ‘Sixteen Ways’. By contrast, the self-conscious girl group pastiches of ‘Take It As It Comes’ and ‘Dance (If You Wanna)’ fall pretty flat, seeming like unhelpful anachronisms within the band’s new musical narrative, but say whatcha like: Vivian Girls have made three records in four years, each of them emotionally and sonically distinct, all of them poignant, exciting and broadly successful. Chances are that’s more than you’ve done.

Sixteen Ways



24. Blood Patrol – Demo Tape (self released)

From last month:

“Listening to these demos – rejoicing in the muffled gut-thump of the practice room > portastudio > cassette > mp3 translation process – makes me want to learn to drive, get my licence, and buy a car. This is solely so that I could drive around aimlessly and give people lifts. And as they sit in the passenger seat, I’ll jam this tape in the stereo. I’ll start drinking fizzy drinks again, so that I can slurp from a big drive-thru cup as I say “yeah man, this is Blood Patrol” and start bashing out blast-beats on the steering wheel.

Hopefully it’ll be a long drive, so that I can cherish their expression of cautious relief in the moment of silence when the tape comes to an end… before I instinctively reach over and put it on again. I reckon I could spin it at least six times during an average slog across London.

Looking around me, I see indie records, psychedelic records, garage-punk records, whatever else. I listen to the sound of Blood Patrol from my computer speakers, and I think, fuck man, I’ve been wasting my life. I could have been listening to stuff that sounds like Blood Patrol. Why would anyone want to listen to music that doesn’t sound like this?

A metal review demands sub-genres, so what ‘THIS’ is is…. well I guess it’s kind of a hardcore/thrash crossover thing, with land speed record H/C drumming (not actually blast-beats, despite what I said earlier), low end Entombed/Bolt Thrower guitar chug, deranged ‘Reign in Blood’ whammy bar carnage and grave-soil gargling BM vocals. Perfection, in other words.

Completely devoid of the pretension and dry technicality that dooms much contemporary metal to the ‘not right now thanks’ pile, this tape is about as far as you can get from the pristine, multi-tracked headache factory of a studio death metal album. But at the same time, it doesn’t retreat back to the mysterioso trashcan-holocaust guff of yr average kvlt BM release either. Basically this just sounds like we always wanted metal so sound, before things got all silly – a functional low fidelity recording of some guys in a room, rocking it out with energy of a teenage punk band and the chops of stadium beserkers. It’s just plain fucking FUN. They’re singing about blood and thunder and destruction and zombie bloodbaths and rampaging through the dark night on galloping stallions and tearing monsters’ throats out, and they’re having the time of their lives. It’s exhilarating! It’s rock music! It’s METAL! It’s BLOOD PATROL. It… well, it rules.”

Unhallowed & Old



23. Kitchen’s Floor – Look Forward To Nothing (Siltbreeze)

“I AM IN A ROOOM!!!”, the main guy in Australia’s Kitchen’s Floor repeatedly screamed at the conclusion of his band’s primitive and unsettling first LP, and if the room in question was the one pictured on the cover of this second effort, I feel his pain. That curtain alone is the stuff of nightmares. Actually, that first record really grew on me between my placing it at, like, #40 or something in a previous year-end list and the emergence of ‘Look Forward To Nothing’ a couple of months back, and I’m pleased to report that it essentially delivers more of the same, chronic rage only exacerbated by the more conventional rock structures and a thicker, louder recording found herein.

Shamelessly sullen and antisocial, Kitchen’s Floor songs are like spiteful teenage tantrums in sonic form, compelling like picking scabs. Stripping garage-born adolescent rock back to its ugliest, most simplistic form, a typical composition sees the band picking out a single chord or a rudimentary riff, hammering it into the ground for seventy or eighty seconds alongside an infuriated, monotone complaint (“I HAVE TO DIE!!!”, “I’M ON MY OWN!!”), and calling it a day. Brilliant. I mean, what more y’dou need? Gets the fucking point across.

Whilst broadly accurate, I fear that such a summation fails to really reflect the fearsome level of craft and catharsis at work in Kitchen’s Floor. As innumerable one-shot garage-trash bands have proved over the years, recording a load of shitty sounding minute long rant songs isn’t difficult. Keeping people coming back to them though, keeping them feeling something whilst you rage and gurn, takes… a certain something extra. Skill and effort for two easy box ticks, sheer FORCE of discontent for another, topped off by… something else, too intangible for me to try to catch it in a word.

In this respect, Kitchen’s Floor bring an attack that reminds me of the earliest Dead C material (back when they still did songs), or the kind of balance that was in play when Nirvana recorded ‘Bleach’. Particularly startling is the way that some of the longer (relatively speaking) songs, through sheer weight of noise and repetition alongside some cannily-picked chord progressions, seem to acquire a more euphoric, positive character that raises them above the mire into clear, blue skies. Great when that happens, isn’t it?

After a decade in which 98% of studio time has been monopolised by boring indie bands with too much equipment aiming for that same ‘shoegaze’ sweetspot and failing, you’ve gotta ask yourself how these depressive backwoods fuck-ups manage to hit the bullseye just in passing and shrug it off so that they can yell some more about kidney infections and bedbugs. By being fucking good, that’s how.

Insects


22. Las Kellies – Kellies (Fire)

Hard to approach a record by a band who are ripping into another band’s trademark style – in this case, that of ESG – quite as relentlessly as Argentina’s Las Kellies are doing here, without one’s comments seeming like criticism. Hopefully though, long-term readers will realise where I stand on this one. Originality is overrated, and furthermore, I find it difficult to conceive of a world in which there are too many bands that sound like ESG. In fact, if there’s ever been a band whose style deserves to become a genre in its own right, ESG is the one. (And if for some reason you’re reading this and are unfamiliar with the works of ESG, well, best get on that right now. One of the best bands EVER, you guys.)

Acknowledging their chief inspiration with a faithful cover of ‘Erase You’ (“flowers from the garbage chute” becomes “flowers from the cornershop”, rather charmingly), Las Kellies have the whole thing down really – the monster bass, sharp-as-fuck drumming, the lack of any distraction from the central presence of the groove. All is present and correct. Perhaps they’re not quite as sparse as their precursors - more prominent guitar, faster tempos here and there maybe – but basically it’s a solid tribute, enlivened with some killer original material and a welcome touch of punk rock abandon.

An unlikely but welcome release by British indie label Fire, this album is the first I’ve heard from Las Kellies, but checking their bandcamp, it seems they’ve been tearing it up in their native land for a few years, and that their full scale ESGification is a relatively recent phenomenon. Their previous full length, 2009’s ‘Kalimera’ boasts a more guitar-heavy post-punk sound - still rhythm-led and still really awesome, it’s perhaps more reminiscent of their ‘70s Brazilian sisters in As Mercenárias. It is this experience and punk-grounding I think that thus gives them the tools they need to strip down the engine and remerge as the best damn ersatz ESG party band going, absolutely kicking ass on instant < 2 minute hits like ‘Hit It Off’ and ‘Bling Bling’, before getting more “moody”, throwing the expected dub elements and creepy noises into the mix on ‘Adwentre’ and the frantic, ‘Chistelle’-like ‘Bife Dos’. Oh, and on a more personal note, hard to beat ‘Scotch Whisky’ as a party tune. One of my favourite musical styles enthusiastically employed in celebration of one of my favourite things.

How much fun is this album? Well, as I write this I’m sitting here alone with a runny dose and hacking cough in an unheated room in the middle of the Welsh countryside, and I’m still dancing. Righteous through and through, I would LOVE to see this band live. I would love to book them to play some all-night party, where they could play as long as they liked. Much oomph on the bass. Much Scotch Whisky. YEAH.

Prince in Blue



21. Grouper – AIA: Alien Observer / Dream Loss (Yellowelectric)

I was a bit late in gaining an appreciation of Liz Harris’s work as Grouper. That whole “Mazzy Star through a fogbank” thing on her ‘breakthrough’ record ‘Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill’ was ok, but it wasn’t really doing a lot for me. Retrospectively discovering her earlier album ‘Way They Crept’ though, I was pretty blown away. Dark, inscrutable, frightening and beautiful, I think it stands out as some kinda masterpiece amid the whole of the past decade’s worth of psyche/drone/ambient product.

Thus I was pleased to find that these two more-or-less self-released albums see Harris dodging the inevitable pull toward song-based forms that afflicts recording artists like her when they attain a certain degree of popularity, instead picking up the more prominent vocals and clearer fidelity from the ‘Dragging..’ era and transporting them to a far more abstract realm, earthy guitar tones entirely excised in favour of eighty minutes-worth of austere, celestial womb-drone – a vast, distant music that seems designed to evoke the idea of an incorporeal spirit dispatching lullabies across the currents of deep space, catching the ear of some doomed astronaut as he floats in limbo, the 2001 star-child looming over the non-existent horizon…

So pretty great, in other words.

Alien observer is the more accessible of the two discs here, its exquisite title track the closest thing AIA has to offer to a ‘hit’, tremolo-damaged keyboard sound deliberately evoking the signifiers of a long-lost space-age, like something that might have transpired had San Francisco’s famed Space Lady developed a knack for fully-realised original compositions and hit the studio with them. Elsewhere, the cosmic drone prevails, often tempered with a disarmingly classicist approach to melody that nags at our memory receptors, particularly on the incredible centrepiece track ‘Vapor Trails’, which opens with a slow series of phrases reminiscent some half-remembered Christmas hymn… you can almost feel the dust between the organist’s fingers in some lonely Midnight Mass, the warmth of the pillow yr heading back to afterwards, even as the song’s unearthly atmospherics pull you straight into deep space. Drawing us down again and again into an isolation tank of deep, retro-futurist comfort, lulling us into submission whilst pulling at the threads of memory that keep our minds together, ‘Alien Observer’ is a sublimely beautiful record, perhaps a perfect exemplar of Eno’s original conception of ambient music.

And if so, that’s a sentiment that could apply doubly so to ‘Dream Loss’, which plunges even further into the abstract, sounding like music trying to retreat as far into the distance as it possibly can without disappearing completely, like intergalactic signals at the very edge of radio contact range. In spite of such intriguingly earth-bound song titles as ‘Dragging the Streets’ and ‘I Saw a Ray’, this is music doing everything in its power to hide itself from view, to sink into the subconscious, to prevent our ears from despoiling its secrets with our half-assed notions of structure and meaning, even at times falling back in desperation on that most obvious sonic veil – the curtain of deteriorating guitar distortion. As ever with work that convincingly trades on the unknowable, Harris is surely aware that only an ever-increasing fascination can result, drawing us back regularly into the deeps of this sound, in search of alien relics, luminous gases and moonrocks, rewards perhaps even more tempting than the sun-bleached bones and tarnished jewels of ‘Way They Crept’.

Alien Observer [from ‘Alien Observer’]


Soul Eraser [from ‘Dream Loss’]

Labels: best of 2011, Blood Patrol, Grouper, Kitchens Floor, Las Kellies, The Vivian Girls

The Other Girls by Vivian Girls.

It bugs me how the dumb Pitchfork reviewer was really nasty about the guitar playing on this track - I think it sounds really nice. Maybe the VGs should call up Neil Young and they can go egg the guy's house or something. Damn muso.

Anyway, don't believe the un-hype; even I was all prepared to be totally unexcited by this new Vivian Girls record, but y'know what? It's a really, really good listen - a far more interesting and enjoyable buncha songs than a lot of people might have anticipated. Give it a chance, before you go writing 'em off as the year-before-last's rudderless hype casualties or whatever.

Labels: The Vivian Girls

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

Vivian Girls – Everything Goes Wrong
(In The Red)

So, ‘difficult second album’ time for the VGs, and, boy, they’ve really taken that ‘difficult second album’ conceit and gone to town with it.

One thing ‘Everything Goes Wrong’ definitely is NOT is the refining/reframing of the band’s pop song-writing sensibilities that would have seemed the natural next step for them, as suggested by all those tantalising pre-album singles cuts that threatened to win over doubters by amping up the three-part harmonies and the just-plain-beautiful melodies.

Another thing that ‘Everything Goes Wrong’ definitely is NOT is the potentially promising move toward a more strung out, ragged glory kinda sound, as trailed by the album artwork, and the profusion of four minute plus songs with names like ‘The Desert’ and 'Out For The Sun'.

Those were my best pre-listening guesses and expectations. But as becomes clear pretty quickly after actually dropping the needle on this one, my best guesses and expectations can fuck off. No outreach to a wider audience is to be found herein, and no pleasant developments for existing fans either. No pop, no style - they strictly roots. The roots in question here are punk, and as such ‘Everything Goes Wrong’ comes on like a total assault.

Well, maybe assault isn’t quite the right word – assault suggests an attack, whereas this album is all about defence, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Point is: I don’t suppose many people were expecting Vivian Girls to bounce back with an LP that’s as bleak and relentless and punishing as any grim-faced hardcore/noise band’s opus. I’m sure nobody asked them to make one. But they made it anyway – take it or leave it.

One more thing that ‘Everything Goes Wrong’ is NOT, contrary to what some reviewers still insist, is lo-fi. This record was made in a studio on a record label advance, and, y’know, I’m sure they had people around who knew where to put the microphones and stuff – fidelity-wise, it’s as loud and clear as you like. The fact it STILL sounds like a chaotic maelstrom of roar and clang, with buried vocals and excessive reverb and accidental open string skree, is simply a reflection of the kind of noise these girls want to make.

That the songs here sound like brooding playground chants, with flat, brutal, monotone choruses that are hammered home again and again like anxious, narcissistic curses and banishment rituals – I have no fun; I can’t get over you; this is the end; you don't even seem to care; don't turn around and miss me when I’m gone - that’s deliberate.

That Ali Koehler just won’t let up on that fucking ride cymbal at all, ever, beating it into your skull until you feel like jumping in front of a train – that’s deliberate too.

And that Cassie’s guitar sounds gigantic and screechy and wrong, dominating the mix like a whole room full of suffocating solid state Fender amps wheezing out their last trebley death rattles as they crawl over each others corpses, looking for a place to die..? – yeah, that’s how she wants it to sound.

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.

Inevitably there are moments where individual songs make an impression – “Can’t Get Over You” might as well have “STAND-OUT TRACK” written next to it in permanent marker and “Before I Start To Cry” plays the bittersweet closing credits tearjerker ok – but song-wise there’s nothing here to rival my beloved “Where Do You Run To” (which, er, it turns out was written by acrimoniously departed drummer Frankie Rose anyway – just as well I wasn’t fool enough to shout for it when I saw ‘em play). This is an album that works more as a total, unified sound thing than as a collection of songs. Like an early Husker Du record, it’s a wall-to-wall whiteout, burying triumph and disappointment alike beneath a uniform, tar-covered roar.

If you find yourself navigating rush hour public transport with your heart torn out at any point in the near future (I’ve not recently, glad to say), this is the album you’ll need. You might not like the sound of it much now, as you hang about at home chopping vegetables or making tea or whatever, and it’s probably freaking out the cat, but trust me: keep it on standby. This is ugly, gut-level pop, exhilarating, broken-hearted punk rock, and when the time comes you can crawl inside it like a cocoon. It won’t make you feel better, but it’ll make you not feel dead, and that’s a start. I like music like that.

Mp3> The End

Buy Links: Norman, In The Red

myspace

Labels: album reviews, The Vivian Girls

SINGLES!
March/April/May ’09, Part # 3:

* * *

Psyched To Die – Sterile Walls EP
(Grave Mistake/Firestarter)

Going by the cover, track titles, band name and lyrics sheet, one could easily mistake this for a generic hardcore release, but it’s actually an unusual and thoroughly enjoyable exercise in pre-h/c American punk rock. Sure, there are fast tempos, gang shouts and some mosh-riff sections, but there’s also loads of warped guitar hero soloing, comprehensible vocals high in the mix, trebley, clean sound and a nervy, over-caffeinated quirky kinda energy, recalling The Weirdos, Pagans and ‘Plastic Surgery Disasters’ era Dead Kennedys.

Songs are blasted out tight as fuck, machine gun style, each one wrapped up in about a minute, like the New Bomb Turks with less fat, and the lyrics offer relentless nowheresville nihilism throughout. Composition & vocal duties seem to be split between different band members, so, uh, at least they must share a common goal I suppose, even if it is total hatred of everything. “Sick and tired of the free-range life / the outside world is a fucking mess” contributes bassist J Nixon on the title track, “pretending to be crazy’s the only way out / and I won’t even have to fake being depressed”. Guitarist Mike Yannich, not to be outdone, gives us ‘Permanent Solution’; “I got a permanent solution / living life is just a waste of time / I gotta find a fucking way out”. Nixon wins outright on the hilarious ‘Onward Armageddon’ though, managing to sing “People think of the apocalypse / and dream up stupid fantasy bullshit / about being in the small percentage of survivors / and piecing society back together”, before concluding “I don’t want to be part of no post-apocalypse / I wanna be one of the people it hits!”

Perhaps my favourite song here though is drummer Brian Yannich’s ‘Five Year Plan’, which perfectly captures the spirit of classic Descendents loserdom. As all the smarter punks knew well, this I-hate-everything-and-I-hate-you shtick can turn to self-parody pretty quickly, and these guys sound frighteningly honest when they bring things down to earth to sing “Couldn’t cut it in college / work for minimum wage / I see old faces from high school / they think that I’m a waste” ; “My friends are all getting married/ buying suburban homes / I just sit here complaining / in my room all alone”. Not exactly the most original sentiment that’s ever been expressed in a punk song, but these things can still cut hard.

I guess it was defiance in the face of this kind of terminal failure and depression that was at the heart of late 70s teenage punk – or at least the raw, Californian variety that informs Psyched To Die – and, 30 years down the line, we can still hear it pretty bluntly put by bands like this, for whom adult life apparently hasn’t brought much in the way of improvement.

http://www.myspace.com/psychedtodie
http://www.myspace.com/firestarterrecords

Total Abuse – Demo 06 (Even Worse)

Whoa. Demo-tape-reissued-on-7” action here in a similar brutalist lo-fi hardcore vein to those Sex Vid records that so thoroughly kicked my ass last year. And if Total Abuse lack the brooding, knife wound negativity of Sex Vid, in fact sounding almost cheery by comparison, well they more than make up for such deficiencies with sheer THUNK, taking their triple-speed Sabbath-weight riffage and flailing skronk bursts straight from The Book of Ginn and somehow imbuing it all with an immediacy and momentum that this music has lacked since their hero was still knocking it out pre-‘Damaged’. Nothing new here, but after nearly three decades of identikit eight song h/c 45s, bands like this can still seem like fresh air in a stale cavern. Go figure.

For my money, the recording here is perfect for a band like this – scuzzy and muffled in a GOOD way, just like the early ‘Flag stuff, only with the levels cranked the way they *should* have been on ‘My War’. The guitars are solid brick wall roar, the drums sound like they’re being torn from the overdriven bass-bins of the terrifying, lunatic-driven car that’s about to mow you down from behind. Musicianship I suspect is tight as a whip (the drummer fucking kicks it), but there’s so much bass fuzz and degraded roar it wouldn’t make much difference either way. Song titles: “Breathing Down My Neck”, “Enraged/Pissed”, “I Can’t Live Like This”. Indeed. Things reach their apex at the end of side # 1, sounding like the noise a brave eight year old might hear whilst pushing his ear against the concrete wall of the utterly terrifying underground rock club that his mum has told him never to go near because the patrons might EAT him. Fascinating, repulsive, violent, wrong and irresistible.

Side # 2 actually lightens up a little, playing to the gallery by slowing down for some headbang/mosh pit worthy groove sections on almost pleasant chord sequences, and demanding yet another ‘Flag comparison with good ol’ Rollins shout-alongs on the choruses of “I Give Up” and “Ain’t Got No One”. That said, Total Abuse’s gallery is probably largely comprised of leering indie tourists such as myself in search of total destruction, so you can’t blame ‘em for wanting to give us the finger and give the h/c faithful what they paid for.

http://www.myspace.com/totalabuse
http://www.myspace.com/evenworserecords

Vivian Girls - Moped Girls b/w Death
(For Us)

Yeah, it’s yet another non-album 7” from Vivian Girls, yet another one they’ll be able to shift by the bucketload until the hype spotlight moves elsewhere. And why not, eh? It must be nice to be able to immediately press your latest creations onto little artefacts like this, knowing you’ve got the interest & appreciation of a sizable audience to make it worth your while. And it’s not like there’s a quality control issue or anything – the tunes are still great! In fact, for all that they may be derided in certain quarters as lazy, self-satisfied so-and-sos, VGs are becoming a pretty consistent and prolific outfit, maintaining an admirable cruising speed as regards the essential band-business of making lots of songs, and making them all good.

Their second album is due out in a couple of months, and word is that, in classic 2nd album tradition, it’s going to be a more nuanced affair, slowing down the frantic punk of their earlier material in favour of more classic rock/pop inspired slow-burners. Seeing as how regular readers probably got pretty sick last year of hearing me harping on about my love for the first album’s stunning “Where Do You Go To?”, this strikes me a potentially welcome development. It’s also a shift in tone that seems to be clearly signalled by this 45, with both sides staying strictly mid-tempo, both featuring hazy, uncertain guitar solos and hinting at a beguiling mixture of self-conscious girl group pop (‘Death’ has a beautiful Shangri-Las spoken opening) and hypnotic desert jangle, executed with the kind of singular, indefinable spirit that made fans of this band fall for them in the first place, and that their detractors will likely be scratching their heads over for all eternity. I mean, yeah, obviously I could tick the same crit boxes as them and acknowledge that the Vivian Girls music is formally unremarkable, technically adequate at best, that they probably haven’t done the legwork to justify global indie-fame… but do you think I care, when their music makes me shiver, changes the weather, throws pictures into my mind, makes things better, the way pop music should?

Sadly, it’s the recording that lets them down to a certain extent here though. Put bluntly, these sound like big songs recorded on the cheap, sounding flat where the the LP roared. The lo-fi approach is cool n’ all, don’t get me wrong, but as the Girls move toward a sound with less flat-out distortion, more harmonies and more subtle, reverbin’ depths, I don’t know if the old ‘one take / one mic’ set up is really serving them best.

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

Wake The President / Je Suis Animal split 7”
(Electric Honey / Lucky Number Nine)

I think I quite like Glaswegians Wake The President. Quite is odd, because they sound a lot like The Smiths, and I hate The Smiths. I guess it’s a bit like how I really liked Camera Obscura’s first album back in the day, despite the fact I (at the time) hated Belle & Sebastian. An example of an unassuming little band taking on the more easily enjoyable elements of the sound in question, without the preciousness or cultural baggage of their precursors perhaps? And crucially in this case, without the distraction of an overbearing vocalist whining on incoherently like a self-important parish priest cursing god for the indignity of having to deal with two blown tyres in the same week. (Hate mail welcomed in the comments box, Moz fans – I loves ya really).

So yes, Wake the President are definitely perched at the more tweedy, un-rocking end of the indie-pop spectrum, so it is to their credit that here they turn in neither a snorefest nor a groanfest, but a really nicely turned out, toe-tapping couple of minutes of this-sort-of-thing, thankyouverymuch. The singer’s delivery is natural and engaging, the rhythm section is all prim and bouncy and the tune is pretty catchy. The guitarist wants to be Johnny Marr so much it hurts, but unlike Johnny Marr, he turns in a wicked little solo towards the end. File under “hard to dislike”.

Je Suis Animal’s side is an altogether more curious prospect, marrying early Sonic Youth ‘building the tension’ guitar lines to an arch, sing-song Laetitia Sadler style female vocal that seems almost entirely disconnected from the band’s backing. Music and vocal proceed to stalk each other as the track develops, the guitars appearing to triumph at around the two minute mark with a dramatic stabbing-you-over-the-dinner-table Blonde Redhead noise-out, before the singer reasserts herself with another run through the song’s cyclical chorus, and we’re out. I say, this doesn’t seem like very ‘indie-poppy’ behaviour at all! Count me officially INTERESTED in whatever Je Suis Animal are up to.

http://www.myspace.com/wakethepresidentband
http://www.myspace.com/jesuisanimal
http://www.myspace.com/luckynumberninerecords
http://www.myspace.com/electrichoneymusic

Labels: Je Suis Animal, Psyched To Die, singles reviews, The Vivian Girls, Total Abuse, Wake The President

THE THIRTY BEST RECORDS OF 2008: Part #6

5. Those Dancing Days - In Our Space Hero Suits (Wichita)


Dear Diary – Ok, I’ve got to admit it – I’ve got a MASSIVE crush on Those Dancing Days. A purely platonic, impersonal musical type crush I mean. I wasn’t really sure what to make of them when they first showed up; I’d see them from afar, played on the radio or, like, mentioned on some weblog, and I couldn’t even decide whether I liked them or not – they’d play a song, and I’d be like, wow, I know on some level that was completely incredible, but somehow… I dunno, I don’t know if I get there they’re coming from. I guess they just run with a different crowd. Like, people who read Artrocker, or Pitchfork, or college students or something. But – don’t ask me why - there was a certain something about them. They stuck in my mind. So I asked the people I knew about them, and some of them said “Yeah, I know them, they’re cool”, and other people were like “no way, you don’t wanna hang out with them, they’re lame!” But by that stage I just couldn’t stop thinking about them, and I had three songs by them that I’d just play over and over, and then their album came out, and it was even better. Every single song was amazing! And then one night I saw them, and and… I couldn’t help myself, I just blurted it all out:

"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 them 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. I LOVE THIS BAND SO MUCH!”

Mp3> I Know Where You Live


4. Vivian Girls - s/t (Mauled By Tigers / In The Red)


I think I’ve probably said more than enough about these girls recently. Y’know, stuff like:

“Subject of a rising tide of hype, listeners in search of the latest outsider skree may be surprised to discover that Brooklyn’s Vivian Girls are initially a dead ringer for, well, The Shop Assistants. The sing-song melodies and echoes of ‘60s girl-group pop, the frantic, stand-up drumming at hardcore tempo, gloriously messy live-to-tape recording and skin-peeling early JAMC distortion – it’s all here, though admittedly with the C86 giddiness kicked out in favour of deadpan NY cool. That’s the formula, and as far as formulas go, you’d better believe it's a good one. But there’s more to the Vivian Girls than that. There’s something that’s hard to define creeping around the edges, something timeless that reveals scene-making hype for the sad joke it is, and that makes this record, this band, very special indeed.

The brittle love chants of “Wild Eyes” and “Tell the World” and corresponding temper tantrums “No” and “I Believe In Nothing” are almost vicious in their simplicity and emotional directness, dragged straight from the brain of any film noir teenage daughter of yesteryear, trying to make sense of a threatening, staccato black & white world. Pure, sinister, feminine rock n’ roll. But the girls wait until the stunning “Where Do You Run To” to really hit their stride, slowing down to a brooding, mid-tempo psychedelia, leaving shivering harmonies and tamed feedback hanging in the air like a frozen moment in some David Lynch directed dancehall of the soul – orange moon sinking on the horizon, sunglasses on stage, and there’s something bad waiting outside, but that’s ok, cos you’ll never have to go there.

Here is the kind of ineffable suburban teenage forever that Spector/Wilson wannabe producers sweat over their LA studio consoles for years to fleetingly recapture, reborn as a ragged punk howl and laid down raw and alive by three girls with little more than a couple of mics and a reverb unit. Such is the joy of life in 2008.”

Play loud.

Mp3> Where Do You Run To


3. The Wave Pictures - Instant Coffee Baby (Moshi Moshi)


The Wave Pictures have been around for a few years now, and they’ve made records in the past, and I’m sure they’ll continue to do great stuff in future. But I’m also confident that when future pop historians look back to tabulate our age, they will deem this one THE Wave Pictures record – the perfect moment that encapsulates the essence of everything that’s great about this band.

I must have seen The Wave Pictures play half a dozen times between mid ’07 and early ’08, and every time they were incredible – wowing the crowd, kicking out the jams, bringing a great, good natured atmosphere. Everything a live band is supposed to do, everything their mentors Herman Dune used to do at the peak of their powers a few years back. You know that feeling when you see a group play, and they’re trying out new-ish songs, and you’re just *floored * by how good they are, thinking “oh man, they’ve GOT to record that one for their album; no wait, this one’s DEFINITELY got to be the single” etc? You don’t? Well either way, it was a bit like that. Then along comes ‘Instant Coffee Baby’, and it’s got a full scorecard of all those songs that blew me away in their live set – ‘Just Like A Drummer’ and ‘that oranges one’ and ‘the one with that great line about the Italian coffee machine’ and so many others – only now they’ve got names, and they’ve been laid down live to tape over a few days in a basement studio, with perfect, clear sound, and with hand-claps, ad-libs, background laughter, guest appearances, rockin’ solos for everybody… all the energy and spontaneity of their live shows! “Tell ‘em about it on the bass guitar!” Fucking perfect!

David Tattersall’s star is blazing bright throughout this album, as a songwriter, guitarist, singer – love him or hate him, he’s definitely stepping up to the plate of the greats as a rock band central presence here, stamping every second of his songs with his personality, making them impossible to ignore. Desperately running down the joy and wreckage of a lifetime’s worth of romantic disasters, small town English upbringing and poverty-stricken touring exploits, he’s by turns arrogant, absurd, hilarious, spiteful, tender, baffling, bereft, naïve, spine-chilling, tender, dumb, hateful, lovable, conceited, heartbroken….. you get the idea, and like it or not, you know you’re gonna be playing these songs twenty, thirty times and enjoying the hell out of them before you get to the bottom of it all. There’s always been something almost militantly unpretentious about The Wave Pictures’ approach to music: three friends, whatever instruments are lying around, a three chord turnaround, a killer rhythm section, a few handfuls of real life-derived lyrics, a great melody on the chorus, a rockin’ solo just for laughs, and an unspoken sneer at anyone who needs more than that to get their point across. And on the strength of this album, it’s hard not to see their point. “And I read your letter / about how you love Sgt. Pepper / but I know one day / I’ll do better!”, David sings on ‘Kiss Me’. Mission accomplished, and then some.

Mp3> Instant Coffee Baby


2. The Mountain Goats - Heretic Pride (4AD)


I threw more than enough words onto the fire regarding this one back in February. But regardless, here are a few more. Listened to with ten months retrospect, Heretic Pride above all seems like a chronicle of mental breakdown, reinterpreted as a masterpiece of imaginative songwriting, in which the turmoil of real life is projected back at the listener through the prism of gothic horror and pulp fiction imagery, to startling effect, as mist-shrouded agents block a desperate flight home, as a band t-shirt glimpsed in a bathroom reveals a desiccated corpse, as knives in an ex-girlfriend’s kitchen gleam like weapons in an inescapable killing ground, as a store clerk’s smile brings on visions of cosmic annihilation…. there but for the grace of god, etc. An extraordinarily powerful record, in every sense.

“I dreamt that I was purged atop
A throne of human skulls
On a cliff above the ocean
Howling wind and shrieking seagulls
And the dream went on forever
One single static frame
Sometimes you’ve got to go where everybody knows your name”

Mp3>How To Embrace A Swamp Creature


1. Silver Jews - Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea (Drag City)


This year, I found myself devouring, internalising and generally clinging on to the Silver Jews back catalogue, much like a post-apocalyptic caveman who’s just discovered the bible. So it was with perfect timing that David Berman released one of his band’s strongest, and certainly their brightest, collections of songs to date, right on schedule to catch me at the height of my devotions. In a brief Q&A with Plan B magazine back in May, Berman said: “Touring gave me a good look at who I’d be speaking to when I wrote again. In the past I only had a blurry face to go on. What I saw was a lot of tender-hearted young people with little in the way of wisdom gained from harsh experience, leaving them vulnerable to the saturation and aftermath”. And indeed, his newfound confidence as a mentor to his listeners is obvious throughout ‘Lookout Mountain Lookout Sea’, as he steps boldly forward from the emotionally shaky foundations of 2005’s ‘comeback’ record ‘Tanglewood Numbers’, combining the gutter-bound wit of old with the infectious wisdom and musical perfectionism of a man born again, ready to share some lessons learned.

As with most truly great albums, this isn’t some epic attempt to paint a sprawling musical picture of the whole of life or something; it’s just thirty five minutes comprising ten carefully selected songs from the pile the band happened to have lying around, no more no less. Ten songs that, without wishing to overlook the band’s oft wondrous arrangements, any bum can recreate with a cracked voice and a handful of fingers; in fact a chord sheet and tabs are helpfully provided in the LP for that very purpose. But nonetheless, ten songs so densely packed with wit, wisdom, and crab-walking suburban profundity that their resonance will (I would like to think) echo long through the minds and hearts of the kind of people who listen to the words in songs and like to seek more songs with better words, long after Drag City has gone kaput in the face of the forthcoming dark age and the ‘Jews have retired to their poverty-stricken critical laurels.

I know I’ve used the words ‘wit’ and ‘wisdom’ twice in scarcely the space of a paragraph, but fuck it, wit and wisdom are what Silver Jews in 2008 are all about. Like every genius out there, Berman recognises that the funniest things and most serious things in life are one and the same, and, above all else, ‘Lookout Mountain..’ is uproariously entertaining. “San Francisco B.C.” has gotta be the most inspired long-form narrative song since the Velvets’ “The Gift” or Dylan’s “..115th Dream”, highlighting the most graceful wrangling of a rhyming dictionary I’ve ever encountered, whilst “Aloysius, Bluegrass Drummer” and “Partybarge”, initially sounding like goofy, confounding joke-songs, reveal delightfully skewed depths on repeat spins. “Suffering Jukebox” could launch a rousing singalong in any hypothetical honkytonk of the soul, its central conceit still flat-out killer after hundreds of listens, whilst closer “We Could Be Looking For The Same Thing” would raise bittersweet tears from the same audience of imagined mountain men moments later – simply a straight-up, beautiful and wholly honest love song – no gimmicks, no jive, no spikes.

‘Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea’ is one of those records, like Leonard Cohen or Richard Thompson used to make, like Jonathan Richman still does make, that is hugely enjoyable, but that teaches listeners something important at the same time, asking nothing in return. Edutainment for the soul. Quite what it’s teaching you exactly, I wouldn’t care to elaborate, that’s up to you to figure out, but let’s just say that if previous Silver Jews records were near-biblical masterpieces of self-pity, this one starts from the same square, but approaches the game with a hell of a lot more get up and go.

(Oh, and best cover art of the DECADE also, I think.)

“Somewhere in a foggy atlas
Lookout mountain, lookout sea
First life takes time, then time takes life
Now the next move’s up to me”

Roll on 2009.

Mp3>Strange Victory, Strange Defeat

Labels: album reviews, best of 2008, Silver Jews, The Mountain Goats, The Vivian Girls, The Wave Pictures, Those Dancing Days

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

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