In so many words

Follow me to Wordpress...

2010-03-26T22:42:00.006Z

My portfolio will shortly be removed from Blogger - if you are interested in following me, come to Wordpress

Freecycling – The Second-Hand Swap-Shop That’s Kind To The Environment

2010-03-17T09:33:00.006Z

(Little Green Women, March 17, 2010)

Anyone who grew up in the 70s will
doubtless remember the car boot
sale of old – loading up on all that
gaudy household junk so you can
stand by your car in a field until
you’ve made some cash off it – only
to realise you’d bought almost as
much to bring home with you again.
With the advent of Ebay, there are
those who believe selling their used goods online is the way to cash
in car boot-style in the 21st century, but the market has long since
been flooded.
Enter the tenet behind the 2003 American set-up of Freecycle – ‘one
person’s trash can truly be another’s treasure’. The UK network works
under the assurance that it’s ‘changing the world one gift at a time’
and it’s certainly making waves amongst the online community.
So it goes that Freecycle is a grassroots, non-profit movement who
give and get stuff for free – in their own towns. It’s all about reuse
and keeping good stuff out of landfill. Local Freecycle groups are
moderated by a local volunteer, and the array of loot available may
astonish even the most cynical of users.
Local Freecyclers are proud of the service, and feel lucky to have
such a great system in place.
Freecycler Frances Roche can’t speak highly enough of it.
“Over the last three years I have received no end of things, and I
know they would have cost me a lot of money if I had gone out and
bought them,” she says. “Being a single mother, I know I wouldn’t
have been able to buy a lot of the things I have been kindly given.”
Freecycle works in much the same spirit as Ebay, in that trust is
implied in your compliance with the group, and anything from bags
of clothes and old Beanos to teapots and tumbledryers is fair game.

Another Freecycle member Stella told Little Green Women, “I have
recently had the sad job of clearing a relative’s house. It’s a
heartbreaking job because everything in the house has a history
which we may or may not know. However, it’s heartening to know
that what we didn’t need is going to be useful to others. I would
love to know whether the person who collected the wooden
wardrobe doors managed to turn them into a sideboard…!”
A story behind every handover has made for the best of times –
and even some lasting friendships.
Negatives are thin on the ground, although there is a general feeling
that there are those who may be labelled ‘timewasters’ in any transaction.
June says, “My experiences have been varied. I have found homes for
some unwanted items and received some very useful ones. I have had
polite transactions, and some people who never showed up when
collection was arranged.”
Joining Freecycle has doubtless given lots to the many and seems like
a one-stop shop for value, but for Little Green Women, the biggest boon
has to be finding new uses for waste. Sign up today!
How to beat the pack
There are numerous Freecycle updates every day – you can sign up for
those to be emailed directly to you or just log in and peruse what’s available
in your group at your leisure. Keen Freecyclers will probably subscribe
to updates, but the quicker the draw, the less disappointed you will be,
so keep an eye on your inbox!
Edinburgh Freecycle has 5383 members.
Go to www.freecycle.org to find out more

Girlyman - Everything's Easy

2010-03-07T23:40:00.000Z

(Morning Star, March 7, 2010)
Album review
This title's a bit of a misnomer here.

There's no end of heartache, heartbreak and loss in US four-piece Girlyman's fifth release.

Opener Tell Me There's A Reason has more than a little folk country accent to its harmonies.

From there on in the whole record makes a virtue of its innate quaintness.

This is not to knock the music. The silken harmonies are exemplary, with a depth and imagination in the lyrical imagery which cause heart palpitations.

Other stand-out tracks include House Song, a tragically sad diary entry by female vocalist Ty Greenstein while True Enough boasts a soft and sweet vocal intro and a languid line courtesy of male vocalist Nate Borofsky.

Lovely.

Cirkus - Medicine

2010-02-28T23:36:00.000Z

(Morning Star, February 28, 2010)
Album review
There was a distinct slice of the 1990s pop scene that Neneh Cherry owned - her recognisable sultry vocals smouldered their way through her early solo career and memorable collaborations.

So CirKus is lucky indeed to boast her among its ranks, but then it was a concept dreamed up by her husband Burt Ford.

A world of trip-hoppy weirdness, where regular sounds are distorted in their hall-of-mirrors production, CirKus are nothing if not experimental.

On Hardly Breathing, the relentless rhythm punches through the vocal, while on '80s-style Johnny iCon there's La Roux-style pop with a truly luxurious voice.

The high point has to be the title track, a mature and inspired European trip-hop track with warmth and heart, in which the "the sun comes shining through/the sun for me and you."

Definitely the star of the show.

Emily Breeze - The Penny Arcade

2010-02-07T23:34:00.001Z

(Morning Star, February 7, 2010)
Album review
Bristol-based Emily Breeze's PJ Harvey-flavoured vocal ushers in a new age of wonder from the off.

Like a skiffle band stacked to the rafters with double bass and slick percussion, Monday's Right Hook opens the record.

It is barnstorming stuff.

And it has all the pugilistic force of the dreaded start of the working week.

But in this case, Emily being Emily, it only gets better.

And how.

The fighting talk of the opener mellows on Badlands, which is all acoustic guitar and smokey singing which brings to mind Tanita Tikaram.

But through torch song Lost Highway and the title track, Emily brings a depth to the slower tune that bruises and burns the heart.

With courage in her near-growl and an all-round great set of tunes, The Penny Arcade is set for definite success.

A big thumbs up to this one

Bryan Minus - Forage

2010-02-01T23:42:00.000Z

(AU magazine, February 2010)

Album review

Slinking out of the speakers like an Anglophile US teen, 'Never Says A Thing' opens Bryan Minus' debut EP with all of the androgyny of Bowie and the staccato guitar spikes of Talking Heads. The Portland, Oregon lad heading up a four-piece obviously has a well-thumbed 1970s record collection, and wears his best colours on his sleeve here.

The opener has some verve, but on 'Looking', the chutzpah is replaced with sixth form shoegazing. 'I Am A Ghost' speaks of the 'Stray Cat Strut', while 'Confess' seems to lack a musical centre. Forage gets an A minus - excellent Bowie aping, but a tendency to sound a little too much like The Cure.

Ocean Colour Scene - Saturday

2010-01-31T23:31:00.001Z

(Morning Star, January 31, 2010)

Album review
Ocean Colour Scene try their best to disprove Darwinian theory. They have spent decades refusing to evolve from their Dadrock inception, steadfastly swimming against the modernity of the chart tide, and yet here they still stand.

Saturday kicks off like a slice of The Who circa 1968 - stacked with catchy hooks and Simon Fowler's unmistakable bluesy roar - but there's no resonant sound of a fantastic leap ahead from What Once Was.

Opener 100 Floors Of Perception starts: "100 Mile High City falling to the floor," perhaps intended to signify a farewell to the old by demolishing one of OCS's big hits, but there's no ruination of the old guard here.

From the Seahorse-esque Mrs Maylie to the lyrically Kinks-inspired Village Life, OCS are forever flogging the rotten corpse of Dadrock in the hope that they'll live on. Nothing lasts forever, guys.

Icons of Elegance - Dancing is Easy

2010-01-31T23:27:00.003Z

(Morning Star, January 31 2010)

Album review

The third album from this tuneful Finnish familial duo is not entirely original, so neophiles should steer clear. But for the rest of us - those who can appreciate that a good tune doesn't have to reinvent the riff - there's some lovely music on show here that will enrich the winter for your tired old stereo.

The opening title track is melodious guitar-powered pop with a distinct lack of guile. The delightful Sigh, My Heart says more about these two brothers - that they're not afraid of sharing their feelings to a quite unusual degree.

The retro Norwegian Girl and the touching, erm, Touching make this a well-rounded, delicate record. It's not unusual, but it's wonderful all the same.

Chris Bradley - At The Outpost

2010-01-17T19:45:00.002Z

(Morning Star, January 17 2010)

Heavy on the acousto-pop, Chris Bradley's second solo record takes him a further step from work with his bandmates in Aberfeldy.

The maturity in his singing is bewitching from opener The Man I Love, underpinned by folk instrumentals and lyrics which speak of a wider world.

Bradley has clearly built on the elements which succeeded in his 2008 debut Voices, and has carved here the self-aware work of a folky Nick Lowe.

Golden Girl has all the accomplishment and intellect of Carrack-era Squeeze, while the biting Your Close Friend offers an emotional window on betrayal.

Paul Vickers and The Leg - Itchy Grumble

2010-01-17T19:32:00.002Z

(Morning Star, January 17 2010)

If you have time to spare for the inventive and incongruous, welcome Paul Vickers And The Leg.

Throwing out the musical rule book, this is a - whisper it - concept record.

Like 2008's Tropical Favourites, it does make itself unwelcome at times, telling the story of the immortal Itchy Grumble and his travels and travails.

Opener Overture is a series of atonal beeps, giving way to the frankly haywire Vial, which brings to mind Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica.

The descent of Itchy offers a rich lyrical seam of the uneasy, but frankly, it's all a little bit much in parts for a pop record. Proceed with caution.

Sounds of 2010

2010-01-03T22:27:00.002Z

(Morning Star, 3 January 2010)

Kurran and the Wolfnotes

With soothing melodies straight outta San Fran in '67, London-based Kurran and his four-strong band are taking the Crosby, Stills and Nash express to the dizzy heights of hippy songsmithery with their harmony-soaked sound.

Your Four Limbs is all beseeching lyrics and plaintive folky vocals.

Debut single Whatabitch may send the feminists baying, but in truth, the chirpiness of the alt folkers will disarm any heart.

Live, their fragility switches for a raw rocky sound that ignites the stage and is getting folk fans in quite a lather.

Why not join them?

Delphic

Taking the clear chiming notes of New Order and mixing them up with dancey beats, our friends in the north Delphic are flying the Manchester flag with aplomb.

Already off the starting block with last August's single This Momentary, these thoroughly modern musicians are now putting their defining moment Doubt into the hands of the fans, hosting a remix contest online via their website.

As they've also already launched their own iPhone application, when it comes to the future, they're really breaking down the walls - and the beats. Delphic's debut album Acolyte will be released on January 11.

A Christmas Carol, Sherman Cymru Theatre

2009-12-28T21:03:00.010Z

(Morning Star, 28 December 2009)

With the sonorous chimes of Big Ben, director Amy Hodge's A Christmas Carol slinks on to the stage of Sherman Cymru.

Looking the part with a set of frankly oversized machinery, the extraordinarily well-known tale enjoys a low-key introduction with ghostly Jacob Marley - in chains of course - expounding nicely.

More unexpected is Mark Frost's boyish Ebenezer Scrooge, but shaving off a few years from the old chap just adds extra vim to the show.

The Ghost of Christmas Past paints Scrooge's life to date perfectly with highlight song The System Works - "the system that made me," as Scrooge has it.

The arrival of a camp, gaudy and rather bawdy Ghost of Christmas Present is a shock to the senses, but clearly makes the event more pantomime, to the delight of the children in attendance.

Regardless, the quiet epiphany of Scrooge and the requisite festive ending brings it all reassuringly home.

Runs until January 9. Box office: (029) 2064-6900.

Pic: Farrows Creative

Plum (And Me, Will!), Sherman Cymru Theatre

2009-12-21T11:53:00.001Z

(Morning Star, 19 December 2009)

A musical quartet bedecked in stripes and every colour of the rainbow greets the audience of Plum (And me, Will!) - the perfect first step in a show which both enchants and entertains. Louise Osborn, responsible for last year's successful Cinders, has once again created a magical world for young imaginations. The protagonist, Katy Owen's Will, is a boy with a 'tiger temper' - causing him to break his mother Hannah McPake's prized traditional Christmas decorations. With only a night to get the elf, soldier and fairy Plum mended before his father gets back from 'across the sea', Will goes on the adventure of a lifetime, battling pirates and tigers to right his wrongs.

Delightful and exuberant, the children watching were spellbound by the original story and audience interaction, and the themes of family and responsibility for one's actions are well integrated into the tale. A touch of modernity does cloud the timeless production, however, when the reason for Will's father's absence becomes clear.

Plum (And Me, Will!) runs until 2 January 2010. Visit www.shermancymru.co.uk for more information.

Emmy The Great - First Love

2009-12-13T20:14:00.012Z

(Morning Star, Albums of 2009 round up)

Rammed with the sort of DIY production that makes indie fans swoon; Emma Lee Moss’ debut longform record is one of 2009's classics. Pop culture offers many lyrical touchstones, but there's a timelessness to Emmy's greatness, from namechecking Leonard Cohen to 'aah aah aahs' aping 60s girl groups, all shot through with delicious melancholy. The lovely 'MIA' is the high point of both heartfelt wonder and quirk overload, but really, all of Emmy The Great's songs are bewitching stories - we are merely blessed with the ability to listen to her in wonder.

Allo, Darlin’ - The Polaroid Song

2009-12-03T21:35:00.009Z

(Muso's Guide, December 3, 2009)

Single review

There’s a special place in every girl’s heart for twee pop. The Cardigans doing ‘Carnival’, Belle and Sebastian doing, well, any of their songs - it’s enough to make any red-blooded chick wear Hello Kitty slides in their fringe, get a uke and wear their boyfriend’s ratty brown cardigan.

Incidentally, making this sort of music have ‘Allo Darlin’ veer the same way - kooky, uke-y, and, on ‘The Polaroid Song’, very Lenka.

Elizabeth and Bill are from Australia, Mike and Paul are from Kent, but they’ve come together here in the UK to make the sort of fey indie pop that we should all demand more of. ‘The Polaroid Song’ is an upbeat, uptempo pop classic with its feet firmly in the past, telling tales of camera film of old.

The backing vocals add a richness to Elizabeth’s sweet vocal, and the whole thing is the aural equivalent of a hot chocolate packed with marshmallows - sweet, comforting and repeated consumption is never enough.

What would have been, in days of yore, the ‘B-side’ is the seasonally appropriate ‘Would You Please Spend New Year’s Eve With Me?’.

Steeped in some of that lovely ukelele tunefulness, Elizabeth’s breathy voice is both sweet and sultry, as she suggests we “hide in my bedroom and watch cartoons all night”. There’s a special place in every girl’s heart for that, too.

Jesca Hoop - Hunting My Dress

2009-12-01T18:01:00.001Z

(AU magazine, December 2009)
Album review

It would take a brave man to suggest that Californian kook Jesca Hoop is anything other than the next big thing. Having received notable endorsements from Tom Waits - who she used to nanny for - and Guy Garvey, she is on her way to success, whether you like it or not. And you might like it - gentle and feminine, she hits the high notes with aplomb and regularity, before plunging to the long, low ones with surprising skill. So, vocal range, interesting celebrity friends and a lot of moxie - a pretty good package if you throw in insistent radio-friendly hits like 'Whispering Light' and soulful reveries like 'Murder of Birds'. Off the wall and on her way.

Warpaint - Exquisite Corpse

2009-12-01T17:52:00.001Z

(AU, December 2009)
Album review

Despite inexplicably naming their debut - and themselves - for some sort of death metal alter egos, LA female trio Warpaint have started on an excellent footing - an album mixed by RHCP guru John Frusciante and opening for The Slits. This dreamy, hazy excursion smells like teen spirit with My Bloody Valentine's album tucked under its arm. The driving drumbeats push the songs on relentlessly, but instead of sounding harsh and rocky, there's a hypnotic beauty to the music here, a real creation of soundscapes. With song lengths ranging between four and seven minutes, it's clear these chicks love to play, but it's haunting ephemera at its very best. Opener 'Stars' kicks into something rather special, while mournful 'Billie Holiday' (sic) is an acoustic meander through an elusive wonderland of pain and pulchritude. If you met Exquisite Corpse at a party, it would smell of dead roses and chain smoke, and you would be mesmerised.

Mr Hudson- Straight No Chaser

2009-11-22T18:19:00.000Z

(AU magazine, November 2009)

One of the great pop humourists, Mr Ben Hudson is back - sans Library - to offer more amusing takes on musical styles. He has enlisted label boss Kanye West to perfect his satirical swipe on humourless hiphop and makes sport of the tired old clichés that blight the charts. From the Hoff-style Europop of 'White Lies' to the 80s synth pap of 'Knew We Were Trouble' to the vocoder-drenched title track, Mr H is an accomplished mimic - even doing an uncanny monotone Akon on 'There Will Be Tears'. It's an hilarious excursion, and one for which he should be lauded. Unless it's not actually a joke...?

Steven Wilson - Nsrgnts Rmxs

2009-11-22T18:17:00.001Z

(AU magazine, November 2009)

From the frontman of Porcupine Tree comes an album which bears the hallmarks of a vanity release. The mini-album is made up of six songs which are remixes of tracks released earlier this year on the album Insurgentes. Equal parts Massive Attack and Thom Yorke (solo), there is a haunting darkness that slices through the Wilson remixes which makes it worth at least a listen, but it's not one to get under the skin of the casual observer. One of the remixes, 'Abandoner (Danse Macabre mix)' was selected through a competition on Wilson's website. So at least that guy will be buying this record.

Sunny Day Real Estate - Diary

2009-11-22T18:15:00.001Z

(AU magazine, November 2009)

If you have a wonky fringe and tell everyone black is your favourite colour, Sunny Day Real Estate are your patron saints. 'Emo' before everyone knew that's what it's called, this reissue of their critically-acclaimed debut coincides with yet another rematch in their 'will they/won't they' recording history. It's easy to hear Diary and see how various members fitted in so well with the likes of the Foo Fighters. It's American college rock as was, all 'quiet bit/loud bit' and some really rather touching harmonies, especially on 'In Circles' and the mellower 'Shadows'. From the Slint school of 'way back cool', buy it and use the tracks on mix tapes to woo similarly emo members of your preferred gender.

Sunny Day Real Estate - LP2

2009-11-22T18:11:00.002Z

(AU magazine, November 2009)

The Seattle sound of yoof is given a slight maturity check on this, Sunny Day Real Estate's second record. Originally released in 1995, at the time two of the band's members were already playing with the Foo Fighters, and the collaborative efforts show in the tunefulness on unavoidably rocky tracks like 'Theo B'. The tune seems straight outta the Grohl stable, as well as being drenched with the tried - tired? - and tested volume changes favoured by the Pixies. The album was originally given to Sub Pop without a title or artwork, which gives something to its mythology, and the band's impending break-up seems impressed in every note, from the plaintive '5/4' to the inspiring 'Waffle'. Not as complete as debut Diary, it nonetheless boasts a fragility which is even more alluring.

Robbie Williams - Reality Killed The Video Star

2009-11-22T16:37:00.001Z

(Muso's Guide, 22 November 2009)

Album review

Post-Take That, Robbie Williams was a renaissance in motion. Drinking, smoking and actually living after so many years in boyband servitude, his spirit was released and his nascent music career sputtered to life.

Sputtered initally, until the might of ‘Angels’ swept through karaoke bars from Fochabers to Fowey and back.

With the guiding hand of Guy Chambers on the tiller, the good ship RW made a beeline for legendary status, and he got halfway there. But time - and ego, having landed - lay heavy on the writing partnership.

After a few years in the wilderness of LA, Rob is back from following Martians, rehabbing, balancing his chi, or whatever else the gossip rags are saying. He wasn’t putting any thought or effort into the big ‘comeback’, if a listen to Video Killed The Reality Star is anything to go by.

The album kicks off with ‘Morning Sun’, which is itself preceded by the mouth organ part from ‘Thunder Road’. That human touch is forgotten as the track swells into an adenoidal torch song with Elton John at its core, all bombast and insincerity. The incongruity of an ‘I Am The Walrus’- style chant amongst the cloying strings only serves to underline RW’s egomania - there ain’t nothing that he can’t carry off, this legend in his own mind.

Single ‘Bodies’ doesn’t get better with repeated listens, coming from ‘Wild Wild West’ and merging into a Backstreet Boys B-side. The issue of Williams’ lyricism comes to light starkly here. He seems to be bent on making clever-clever puns and pop cultural references, but it is at the cost of any comprehensible meaning- “God gave me the sunshine/Then showed me my lifeline/I was told it was all mine/Then I got laid on a ley line/What a day, what a day”. For a lead single, it’s not much of a leader, but it’s sort of the best we got.

From there it’s onto the Showaddywaddy swagger of ‘You Know Me’ - sappy as Sarah Brown and twice as outdated, ‘Do You Mind’ - like the J. Geils Band without a sense of humour complete with the exhaustively self-aware line “This is a song full of metaphors” and so on.

The low point would have to be ‘Blasphemy’, a track that insists on giving RW a low piano/rich voice singing part that he simply doesn’t have the range or resonance in his voice to carry.

The title of the record was hailed by tabloids et al for its chutzpah, but really it means nothing - just another lame attempt by this pop music has-been to regain some of that old renaissance magic.

Lou Barlow - Goodnight Unknown

2009-10-20T16:17:00.001+01:00

(Muso's Guide October 20, 2009)

Album Review

Lou Barlow may sound like he’s giving lo-fi a crack at a mid-Western open mic night, but make no mistake, friend - he is the granddaddy of them all.

As the brains and heart of behind Dinosaur Jr, Sebadoh and Folk Implosion, Ohio native Barlow was Gen X before Gen Why-O-Y came on the scene, all too cool for school and heavy on the effects pedals. He’s had more collaborative recordings that you’ve had hot dinners, and yet carries the same detached, world-weary WTF air that he sported all the way back when he played bass on Dinosaur in 1985.

Through his work - songwriting and multi-instrumentalism - Barlow has influenced every lo-fi band since the dawn of time, buddying up with members of the unfeasibly legendary Slint and generally being there when ‘there’ was the place to be.

His mucky sonic fingerprints are all over Ben Kweller, Moldy Peaches and so much more modern anti-folk, and the fact that he can make this, his second solo record, so listenable and notable is frankly a testament to the great man’s skill and nonchalant cool.

This is important to know - not because his classic tunes and maturity make him any more pertinent in the musical realm than whichever rowdy teeny teens Zane Lowe is currently crushing, but because it’s a measure of how far we’ve come - like listening to The Beatles’ Tomorrow Never Knows and wondering how 33 years later we’re still having to put up with The Kooks.

So what’s so good? On the opening ‘Sharing’ there’s a great Phantom Planet drum thrust underpinned by Barlow’s resonant melodic baritone. The song has ‘pogo-a-go-go’ all over it, with a catchy refrain and characteristically fuzzy production.

Title track ‘Goodnight Unknown’ is a less strident beast, with the thumping drum keeping a slow pace. The music is shot through with Folk Implosion-style guitar flourishes, and it leads nicely into the ‘Cannonball’-style (Damien Rice, not The Breeders) ‘Too Much Freedom’, a lo-fi lullaby.

Barlow’s archetypal neo-folk may not seem cutting edge now, but he did help spearhead the whole thing back in the day. The moving thing about this album is 14 songs with a spellbinding quality - the slow, soft hymnal of ‘Faith In Your Heartbeat’, the dropbeat slacker cool of ‘Gravitate’ - at 43, Barlow is still rocking them out. And with 75% of these tracks coming in at under three minutes, he’s every MTV-er’s ADHD dream.

With the weight of history behind it, and the gift of incredible talent chiming through every note, Goodnight Unknown is well on its way to classic status - and deservedly so.

Johnny Foreigner - Criminals

2009-10-08T21:20:00.000+01:00

(Muso's Guide, October 8, 2009)

Single review

Where do musical greats come from? The Smiths were straight outta Salford, all working-class woes and Manc miserabilism. Radiohead made the trek into rock’s back pages from Oxford, with the attendant intellect that that entails. But what of Johnny Foreigner?

On paper, the raucous trio are from Birmingham, but to chain them to any earthbound landscape, in the Midlands or otherwise, seems to be missing the point. Johnny Foreigner buck the trend, and everyone’s preconceptions, by sounding just out of this world.

Since the band’s formation from the ashes of several indie also-rans, singer Alexei Berrow has ploughed himself an astonishingly convincing frontman furrow, complete with handsome swagger and devil-may-care attitude.

On ‘Criminals’, they channel Chemikal Underground’s awesome Bis and Fight Like Apes - chaotic guitars over tight, rumbling drums and boy-girl vocals. ‘Your town’s run by criminals’ goes the chorus line, and it’s all you can do not to pogo without remorse.

‘Camp Kelly Calm’ starts off as a tuneful, endearing pop tune, but quickly morphs into the sort of enthusiastic punk pop that JF are renowned for. ‘Wow. Just Wow.’ owes more to Pixie-like thrash and madness than melodious influences, but really Johnny Foreigner’s exuberant pop thrives on joy. The songs here are the sound of yoof and the future of everything, if we’re lucky.

Johnny Foreigner are special and intelligent. Listeners are challenged to remain stationary during one of their top tunes.

Dawn breaks on Twilight: Twilight Sad interview

2009-10-01T16:32:00.003+01:00

(AU magazine, November 2009)

Pic by Nic Shonfeld

The Twlight Sad release second 'more intense' album

"Our brake lights on our trailer aren't working. We've had trouble since we got here with our equipment, bass amps and... nothing seems to be working for us at the moment," a strong Scottish accent heavily sighs. "We're all pretty jet-lagged as well, which isn't helping."
The Twilight Sad are in conquering form a few days into their sixth visit to America. No, really. It's just the logistics of life on the road that seem to be a problem.
AU catch up with James from the band 100 miles from Boise, Idaho.
"We're at a truck stop with a lot of big scary looking guys. I'm hiding at the back." After triumphantly conquering Salt Lake City the night before, James is in buoyant mood, despite technical difficulties which are hampering even their viewing pleasures: "I just bought a Denzel Washington double feature to keep me busy for the van because the TV's not working so we're just going to have to watch DVDs from now on. That was the best selection in the truck stop."
Stuck on a bus in the middle of nowhere then - it's a clumsy metaphor for any band, and an entirely erroneous one for the four piece from Kilsyth, Lanarkshire. On the eve of the release of their second album, Forget The Night Ahead, the music and attitude on display has taken a leap forward from 2007's debut, Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters. "I think that main thing that we didn't want to do was that we didn't want to clean anything up and polish it up and make a nice-sounding album - we wanted to make it that bit more intense and to challenge ourselves and challenge the person that was listening to us. Maybe that will put some people off that were into the nice warm sounds that were on the first record, but that's just not who we were. We wanted to write a sort of dark, noisy, different record to the first one. It's a lot rougher round the edges, but it's maybe even more melodic than the first one, it's just we've all moved on and written better songs." A huge achievement considering they've barely been off the road in those two years, between SXSW appearances, their own tour and supporting Mogwai in America. This time round they've hit the road with labelmates and old friends Frightened Rabbit as well as Brakes. James admits that The Twilight Sad do bear comparisons with the other Scottish band; "The similarities are that we both sing in a Scottish accent, and that the music's pretty honest as well, but there are some big differences in the band as well."
If you haven't heard the album yet, James says it's best summed up "by striking that balance, getting the power of the noise but trying to let the songs break through too." The Twilight Sad aren't resting on their laurels, mind. "We've already started working on our new new record - I think we're going to try some new things and maybe surprise a few people."
James says that they also plan to release a 12" single of "a song that wasn't on the record. It was a song that was strong enough to be on the record but it just didn't fit. We just want to get it out there and it's too good for a B-side, so we think we're going get some other friends to remix the song as well for us."
Staring down the barrel of two more years of life on the road and its attendant mechanical failings, James is pretty upbeat.
"We're just going to play as much as we can, in front of as many people as we can - doing the best that we can in this mad music business that we've got ourselves involved in." There you have it. The Twilight Mad.
FORGET THE NIGHT AHEAD IS OUT ON ON FAT CAT RECORDS.
WWW.THETWILIGHTSAD.CO.UK

Cate Le Bon - Me Oh My

2009-10-01T16:29:00.001+01:00

(AU magazine, November 2009)

Album review

Me Oh My. If this were The Wicker Man's Summerisle, Cardiff's Cate Le Bon would be a flaxen-haired harbinger of doom, weaving mystical confusion and murmuring darkly in forests about dire circumstances. She does almost exactly that on the thoroughly unnerving 'Burn Until The End' and you are Edward Woodward, all bewitched and enthralled. But it's not Summerisle, and Le Bon is better than Britt Ekland at singing (and dancing, one hopes). There's so much great musicianship here, and such great dark lyrics, that picking it all apart is a sin. Just immerse and enjoy this weird Welsh witchery.

8/10

DOWNLOAD: 'HOLLOW TREES HOUSE HOUNDS', 'TERROR OF THE MAN', 'BURN UNTIL THE END'.
FOR FANS OF: GORKY'S ZYGOTIC MYNCI, SUPER FURRY ANIMALS.

Efterklang and the Danish National Chamber Orchestra - Performing Parades

2009-10-01T16:25:00.001+01:00

(AU magazine, November 2009)

Album review

With all the swooning wonder of Sigur Rós and the harmonious vocal attributes of Fleet Foxes, this is the Danish collective's well-received 2007 album Parades performed in full, capably aided by the Danish National Chamber Orchestra. Now hear this - it's unusual, and you might be scared, but the classic musicianship snugly envelopes the ethereal soul of Efterklang like a great blanket of soot. There is bleakness and darkness, as on 'Frida Found A Friend', but also lightness and youth exposed, particularly on 'Mirador'. If the comparisions to the afore-mentioned Icelandic post-rockers bring forth yawns, then how about this - the tragic depths of Arcade Fire with an unwieldy orchestral heft. Every one of the 11 tracks on show here is a rousing epic, spaces filled with ecclesiastical chants and slathered with a Nordic sensibility. The DVD is a nice window into the Efterklang mind, but seeing them in cone-shaped gnome hats with painted cheeks does slightly taint the musical magic. Kirstie McCrum

7/10

DOWNLOAD: 'MIRADOR', 'MIMEO', 'MAISON DE REFLEXION'.
FOR FANS OF: SIGUR RÓS & ARCADE FIRE.

Band of Skulls - Baby Darling Dollface Honey

2009-10-01T16:22:00.002+01:00

(AU magazine, November 2009)

Album review

Southampton trio Band Of Skulls are not without their fame - iTunes and Zane Lowe have hollered their praises far and wide. But don't let that put you off - they're a wee gem for the disenchanted indie rock fan. Flitting from 'Cry Myself Blind'-era Primal Scream on 'Cold Fame' to Kills-style scuzz rock (complete with male/female vocal) on 'Blood' to the almost Turin Brakes 'Honest', they are chameleon and delicious. Schizophrenic and uncompromising, singer Russell Marsden boasts a chart-friendly Radio 2 vocal on some tracks - as on the anthemic 'Fires' - but the addition of some dirty guitars and the suggestive vocal of bassist Emma Richardson as on 'I Know What I Am' swathes their sound in staccato axe cool, modern with a nod to the classic. With all the confidence and swagger of a collection of hoary old American rockers on show, they're never the same band twice. Bliss.

8/10

DOWNLOAD: 'BLOOD', 'FIRES', 'LIGHT OF THE MORNING'.
FOR FANS OF: THE KILLS, THE WHITE STRIPES.

Great Britain: Beautiful Bath

2009-10-01T00:01:00.002+01:00

(Somerfield magazine, October 2009)

"Macmillan is about supporting patients who live with cancer"

2009-10-01T00:01:00.001+01:00

(Somerfield magazine, October 2009)

Nick Cave and Warren Ellis - White Lunar

2009-09-20T11:05:00.000+01:00

Album review

(Morning Star, September 20, 2009)

These former Bad Seeds have come a long way from their gothic roots. It is more a case of mellowing and maturing than selling out which has made them acceptable in the mainstream.

White Lunar includes soundtrack material from the 2005 Cave-penned The Proposition and The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford. The skill is in the evocation of the cinematic moment, and the duo have captured the emotion of their subjects in spades.

The songs from forthcoming literary adaptation The Road are chilling, but the best work seems to come from The Girls Of Phnom Penh.

Subtle and feminine, the electrifying soundscapes of quiet desperation go towards making this whole record a real credit to these former enfants terribles.

Euros Childs - Son Of Euro Child

2009-09-18T11:13:00.000+01:00

(Muso's Guide, September 18, 2009)

Album review

The new solo album from warbling Welsh oddball Euros Childs is probably already in your record collection - it’s been on sale at recent E.C. gigs for a measly £10 and it’s even available free of charge from the official Euros website.

For the unencumbered and, well, the uninitiated, a small digest of its contents may help.

Best known as the voice - and, let’s face it, heart - of 1990s indie wunderkinds Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci, Euros is a multi-instru-mentalist with a nice line in Welsh language tunage.

Son Of Euro Child makes this young chap’s fifth solo record, and is easily the most accessible to date. It’s easy when you hit your 30-something stride, it seems. But for all his newfound maturity, from the opening jolly ‘Shithausen’, it’s clear that E.C. is in his best childlike form, all giddy rhythms and entrancing organ wrapped around deliciously sweet vocals.

There are moments of darkness, such as ‘The Dog’ - all reverberating organ and wistful words - but the mood is predominantly one of musical lightness, through the wonky piano parade of ‘The Fairy Feller’s Masterstroke’ to the blistering pop insta-classic of ‘1000 Pictures Of You’ and beyond.

‘Mother Kitchen’ is none more Gorky’s, with its staccato melody and quirky lyrics: “So buy yourself some dinner/Have a chicken soup/Stick it in the oven/See what it will do/Your mother’s in the kitchen…” It’s like it’s 1996 all over again - and it tastes good.

There is a very real sense of the magical about Euros - he takes the meandering musical mystery tour and places it at the heart of all of his work, revelling in tangential sounds and intangible feelings and making everything seem terribly abstract and free.

But this is a trained musician with a lot of experience making music that people love to listen to, so to dismiss him as a nonsensical Celtic pixie is to do him a tremendous disservice.

The second best thing about Son Of Euro Child is that it’s free to download right now. The first best thing is listening to it.

Great Britain: Wonderful Wales

2009-09-01T22:32:00.000+01:00

(Somerfield magazine, September 2009)

"My son's illness baffled doctors"

2009-09-01T22:29:00.000+01:00

(Somerfield magazine, September 2009)

Dieter Moebius - Kram

2009-09-01T22:01:00.002+01:00

(AU magazine, October 2009)

Thanks to international notoriety with Cluster, Kluster and Harmonia,
Dieter Moebius has contributed to the pervasive view of German music
across the globe with his hand in 'Krautrock'. Got that? Good. Because
there's nothing more 'germanic' than the plinky plonky utterings of a
crazed keyboard maniac, filtered through the pounding red rage of someone
who has devoted precious life minutes to a run-through of this record.
With a 'beep' sound for every occasion, it's clear that Dieter is a madman
or a genius. But truly just a madman. Pass.

INME - Herald Moth

2009-09-01T21:58:00.003+01:00

(AU magazine, October 2009)

As a band whose own press release for this, their fourth album, carefully
states that they have "always divided opinion", it seems safe to surmise
that Brentwood's own INME have a face that barely their record company
could love. Like Simple Minds fronted by P@TD's Brendon Urie, the frequent
frenetic guitar breaks of near-Yngwie Malmsteen proportions make them A
Guitarist's Band. As a general rule, when the music is more fun for the
band playing than the people listening, it's time to bail, but only after
you've heard the hilariously pompous Nova Armada.

Killa Kela - Amplified!

2009-09-01T21:52:00.001+01:00

(AU magazine, October 2009)

Like a male La Roux, Killa Kela at first listen seems to have finally
found the cultural zeitgeist on this, his third studio record. A beatbox
hero with fans in Pharrell Williams and Prince, there's less of his
special skill on show here and more of the sort of sleazy electronic pop
that the youngsters are loving these days. On Amplified! his star ascends
with single Everyday, but the exuberence is short-lived, as the appearance
of Hadouken! on Get A Rise brings to mind Linkin Park in a food processor
with Fischerspooner. Not pretty.

La Coka Nostra - A Brand You Can Trust

2009-09-01T21:50:00.001+01:00

(AU magazine, October 2009)

An American hip hop supergroup may have some listeners foaming at the
mouth, but despite the impressive roll call of La Coka Nostra - including
Everlast and Ill Bill - A Brand You Can Trust is more prosaic than punchy.
With a myriad of cultural - although not always entirely contemporary -
references, there are plenty who might be offended by the lyrical content,
including women, Americans, Saddam Hussein, David Koresh and Phil Spector.
Worth it for Snoop's turn on Bang Bang, but not much else.

"My dad changed before my eyes"

2009-08-01T11:00:00.002+01:00

(Somerfield magazine, August 2009)

Modern Skirts - All Of Us In Our Night

2009-07-03T14:06:00.000+01:00

(Muso's Guide, July 3, 2009)

Album review

Launching a new business is the dream of hundreds of thousands across the globe.

As any fule kno, and as Sirallun would attest, the most important measure of any new business is to isolate a gap in the market and squeeze yourself into that niche. That way, you become that “thing” that so many people thought they couldn’t live without but couldn’t quite verbalise.

Sadly, there is no such stringency around the forming of a band. You can pretty much make any old noise and there’s airplay offered, because that’s what individual “taste” is about. Good news for Modern Skirts.

All Of Us In Our Night is their second studio album and the Athens, Georgia four-piece are awash with confidence and swagger throughout. Opener ‘Chanel’, starts up like Lee Marvin before kicking into a strummy American college rock paean to heroin “chic” featuring the line: “Cover up your tracks with a cardigan”.

The driving drums here hold the whole thing together, but the vocals fall on the wimpy side of rock. ‘Soft Pedals’ is tuneful and inoffensive, but the wistfulness of the meandering vocal starts to grate, all outsider posturing and musical wallpaper.

The high point musically is ‘Astronauts’, a melodic ‘I’m Only Sleeping’-style chugger, all stripped back guitars and vocal, before easing its way into a dainty-played pop suite of choral singing and listless wonderings: “I miss you, hope you stay”, the refrain goes, before the drums pick up a mere 2 minutes 9 seconds in, and a spin around a Beatles-esque musical world is the reward for the faithful.

Throughout All Of Us In Our Night, Modern Skirts are trying their hardest to woo. From the radio-friendly pop of ‘Eveready’ to the veritable lyrical nonsense of ‘Conversational’, this is best face forward, all “this is what you want” temptation.

But, even with the involvement of R.E.M.’s Mike Mills, there is something missing - some soul or heart, something real that Modern Skirts are offering above and beyond the usual. The best you can say about All Of Us In Our Night is the poppiness of tracks like ‘Motorcade’ - style over substance, but singalong enough for commercial FM.

Good news for Modern Skirts. Bad news for fans of good music.

Marc Carroll - Dust Of Rumour

2009-07-01T22:48:00.001+01:00

(AU magazine, August 2009)

With all the swagger of a mid-Nineties Britpop beat combo, Irish singer-songwriter Marc Carroll’s third record is as timely as that intro implies. A gentle jaunt through songs of love, loss, and ‘auld Ireland’, Carroll’s view of life from his current digs in Los Angeles reflect his virtual obscurity here and his apparent acceptance over there, with Messrs B. Dylan and B. Wilson lining up to shake his hand. They know what they like – Dust Of Rumour does a really nice line in inoffensive, tuneful pop, but it’s not reinventing the wheel. Strictly for existing fans.

Nneka - No Longer At Ease

2009-07-01T21:43:00.002+01:00

(AU magazine, August 2009)

Nneka's second record kicks off with the spirit that her 2006 debut promised. Making the most of her African roots, Nneka shows a terrific knack for marrying that with her European experiences, making sure to comments on social issues and pressures facing her native Nigeria. From tracks like 'From Africa 4 U' there is a definite maturity on show, while the chilled-out vibe of 'Streets Lack Love' is tailor-made for summer. Nneka is not alone in the recording of quality African female soulful hiphop, but hearing a work of such intensity in English can't fail to make an impression here.

Real life: "I must treat diabetes with respect"

2009-07-01T16:22:00.002+01:00

(Somerfield magazine, July 2009)

Interview: Jo Pratt

2009-07-01T16:19:00.002+01:00

(Somerfield magazine, July 2009)

Withered Hand - You're Not Alone

2009-06-28T14:10:00.003+01:00

(Morning Star, June 28, 2009)

EP review

In a prime taster of the forthcoming full-length album, Edinburgh troubadour Dan Willson makes a gentle pitch for Scottish artist of 2009.

The CD was recorded with two of Scotland's best-regarded indie labels, with Willson also making the genius decision of involving Kenny Anderson - bard of Fife's East Neuk and one of Fence Record's brightest lights, as King Creosote and producer extraordinaire.

The high point here is Big Ten Four (Paul's Song), but all four tracks have a folky insouciance which the Fence guys and their collaborators seem to do so well.

Mundy - Strawberry Blood

2009-06-24T12:05:00.003+01:00

(Morning Star, June 21, 2009)

Album review

"Big in his native Ireland" is not the most heartening way to describe an artist, but singer-songwriter Mundy seems to have made a splash in his home country and not so much as a ripple in Britain.
His fourth record Strawberry Blood follows up 2004 release Raining Down Arrows, a record which has proven platinum at home, so it's understandable that Strawberry Blood sees Mundy pursuing the same old line of gentle radio-friendly pop falling somewhere between The Thrills and Ronan Keating.
Nice if you like that sort of thing, which Britain apparently doesn't.

Eugene McGuinness - Wendy Wonders

2009-06-18T14:05:00.001+01:00

(Muso's Guide, June 18, 2009)

Single review

Leytonstone’s chief troubadour is back with more wryly observed pith and middle England melancholia than you can shake a stick at.

‘Wendy Wonders’ is the epitome of Eugene McGuinness‘ split musical personality - one the one hand, an injection of punk with a side of snarling teen attitood, but on the other, a class which evades musical stars operating outwith the 1950s.

Vocally, Eugene’s echo-laden thrum owes more than a little to the mellow style of Matt Munro, the laconic beat drifting through like an early evening cabaret.

Opening on a spinning disco ball, the dreary club playing host to Eugene McGuinness and the Lizards in the ‘Wendy Wonders’ video really gives the Phoenix Club a run for its tired, tacky money.

Against a backing of tinsel and disco lights, a grey-t-shirted McGuinness mugs and giggles, all the while singing a maudlin ode to suburban sadness. Parading in the skinniest of jeans, there seems to be a definite risk of permanent physical damage among the onstage players.

Perfectly pitched to soundtrack a Smiths reunion night, there’s plenty of character in McGuinness’ never disappointing voice, and a myriad of funny lyrics make it clear that the apparent simplicity of ‘Wendy Wonders’ is a myth, and that there’s actually plenty going on here.

The lustful heartache of the lyric is a testament to young McGuinness’ sorcery, with lines like, “I’m a hollow man with twelve tin cans of woe” and “Wendy wonders why I’m still so cold/Proceeds to throw my stuff out the window”.

Emotional and intelligent, McGuinness has once again emitted a release which makes nothing of his tender years. Exquisite.

Sister Fa - Sarabah - Tales From The Flipside Of Paradise

2009-06-11T12:18:00.001+01:00

(For The Record, June 9, 2009)

Album review

A truly committed campaigner, Sister Fa aka Fatou Mandiang Diatta has something of an axe to grind.

As Senegal's lauded 'Queen of Hip Hop', she is at the forefront of a serious campaign against FGM, or female genetic mutilation. Her interest in social themes and issues doesn't stop there - Sister Fa has something to say too on arranged marriage, AIDS, the plight of Senegalese soldiers... the list goes on.

But while this may sound a little worthy, please try and put it out of your head and just listen to this, her second solo record.

Opener 'Sister Fa La' is just the sort of cool self-referential record that kills on the rap and hip hop scene, underpinned by a crisp beat which smacks of modernity and the global influence of black music.

Throughout 'Sarabah – Tales From The Flipside Of Paradise', from the multilingual vocals - in Wolof, Manding, Jola and French - to the unique rhythmic make-up of the songs - mixing tribal beats with modern hip hop sounds - Sister Fa truly sounds like nothing else.

The record's high point, title track 'Sarabah' makes a virtue of the multi-lingual vocal and yet manages for all the world to groove like english language hip hop.

From the standpoint of social awareness, Sister Fa easily surpasses many posturing stars, but more than that - her incredible talent shines unwaveringly through her cool music and personal lyrics.

For hailing from the flipside of paradise, Sister Fa never fails to make a virtue of all of her gifts - making for one hell of an affecting record.

Crosby, Stills and Nash - Demos

2009-06-05T11:20:00.002+01:00

(Muso's Guide, June 5, 2009)

Reviews album

“Influential”, “legendary”, “era-defining” - music journalists are all too eager to bandy about phrases of ageless, timeless wonder in reviews without having any actual certainty of how many have been influenced by the act under scrutiny.

So, accept with a pinch of salt but a sizeable degree of certainty that Crosby, Stills and Nash are the real deal.

Those of you who know them (and their sometime band colleague who features here, Neil Young) will be exploding with indignation (”Of course they’re legendary!”) but if you haven’t a baldy who they are, here’re some Cliff’s Notes.

California native David Crosby came from The Byrds, Brit Graham Nash from The Hollies and Stephen Stills from Buffalo Springfield, along with Neil Young a little later.

All accomplished musicians with a nice line in folky, soulful, melodic pop, and all came together at one magical time when the stars aligned and everything seemed right. Otherwise known as 1968. The members were all equally committed to political rabble rousing, and their central conceit is “love thy neighbour”, which might be a bit hippy-dippy Woodstock for some, but which resonates for others even now.

Demos kicks off handsomely, opening with the Nash-composed ‘Marrakesh Express’. Crosby, Stills and Nash are at home in the rich harmonies of this track. The acoustic guitar-led demo is less psychedelic than the eventual single, but this version takes the tuneful essence of the simple song and makes it rich with sweetness and swagger in equal measure.

Because of the individual successes of the band members before the foundation of Crosby, Stills & Nash, many of the demos on display here are solo works which would go on to become solo hits after the release of a couple of CSN records.

Highlight of the record is definitely David Crosby’s anthemic anti-war ‘Almost Cut My Hair’ - more than five minutes of the most soulful, husky-voiced folk that anyone could imagine. The resonance of Crosby’s voice, and the depth of feeling in the counter-culture lyrics like, “I feel like letting my freak flag fly”.

Also worth noting is the Real Radio favourite, 1970’s ‘Love The One You’re With’. Stephen Stills’ complex guitar arrangements shine in this demo version more than the more-recognised studio recording, and its straightforward soulfulness mocks the myriad inferior cover versions which have surfaced since. The song ended up on Stills’ solo debut album and remains his biggest hit.

Neil Young’s trademark falsetto tenor is apparent on ‘Music Is Love’, a three-way collaboration between himself, Crosby and Nash which packs more of a soulful punch than the studio version on Crosby’s 1971 debut solo record.

Collections of demos, rarities and B-sides are usually only for the fans. After all, who but the die-hards can tell the difference in the chord progression of a 1969 hit, or pick out the harmonies which didn’t make the cut.

Crosby, Stills and Nash’s Demos, is, if anything, an introduction to songs written by musical masters. In their purest form, the songs on show here are imaginative, breathtaking and splendid. They speak of a different time, but their ethos was the same then as now, and the whole record ends up leaving just a hint of sadness for this lost time and these lost talents.

Real life: "Our hearing dog works so hard for us"

2009-06-01T16:13:00.001+01:00

(Somerfield magazine, June 2009)

Frightened Rabbit: “I don’t want to sound indulgent”

2009-05-17T11:51:00.000+01:00

(Muso's Guide, May 17, 2009)

Interview

If you’ve swooned at the feet of heartwarming, romantic Caledonian folk over the last year or so, chances are it’s down to honey-tongued Scott Hutchison.

As singer and creative doyen of Frightened Rabbit, the Selkirk native’s broad Scottish burr makes sport of the heartache of youth; from broken hearts to lost loves and all of Cupid’s treachery in between, this young Rabbit’s got a grasp of the emotional and no mistake.

After a year living with the runaway success of 2008’s The Midnight Organ Fight, Scott has been holed up in Fife demoing tracks for the band’s as-yet-untitled follow-up record, which promises to be every bit as magical as fans would expect - but there are hints that the lyrical emphasis may be in for a shift.

It’s no secret that Scott has harvested his own experiences for his astonishingly personal lyrics - but he is the first to admit that he didn’t forsee the sheer audience for his angst.

He explains: “I did expose myself. When I wrote those songs, we didn’t really have much of a fanbase at all, and then all of a sudden your album’s released and all these thoughts that were put down in your bedroom onto a cassette tape are now completely public.”

From the adolescent ankle-sock drama of a bedsit balladeer to featuring on youth-orientated Channel 4 shows - that was some transition.

“Yeah, I don’t think it would have been possible to make it that personal if we had known that it would end up on the soundtrack to Hollyoaks.” He laughs.

But the move to the X-rated Grange Hill signified a sea change indeed for the Scottish quartet, and success is now something of a close personal friend. In fact, after a successful SXSW in 2008, Frightened Rabbit are even making it big stateside. Scott says it’s no surprise that they hit the right note in the U.S.

“They’re quite fond of Scottish things, so we fit into that bracket. It’s also not inaccurate to say that I take a fair amount of influence from Americana - bands like Wilco and people like Ryan Adams have certainly seeped into stuff that I do. There’s a folkiness there that they definitely are in tune with.”

In talking to Scott, it’s important to note that there is very little in the way of hubris. So much so that, in saying “Americans just like us” matter-of-factly, he quickly follows it up with: “I think it has to do with timing and luck and one or two of the right people getting into your music.”

Anyone who has found themselves spellbound by any of FR’s two studio albums will note that this success owes nothing to luck, and everything to the skill of good songwriting.

But Scott is the first to admit that he finds musical inspiration in the strangest of places - for example, when the band covered N-Trance’s 1995 breakbeat hardcore classic ‘Set You Free’.

Scott laughs at the memory: “There’s something stirring inside you - the chords or something really connected with me. I didn’t really mind and I still don’t that it was in this kind of cheesy garish 90s package with all the production values. There’s something about it melodically that sticks with me. I love it, and as long as I covered it from that point of you. I hope people recognise that I was being earnest. We all have a memory of N-Trance and someone else… you know… touching and all that.”

Blimey! To spare Muso’s blushes, we divert onto other, more current, musical influences.

“I’ve been saying my favourite band in the world just now is The Hold Steady. I remember seeing them first at a festival, and it was the natural way it all just came out - they had no pretences, they weren’t styled, they were just playing the music that kind of that was honest to them.”

Up in Fife writing Frightened Rabbit’s new record will owe something to that honesty, Scott reveals - but he’s keen to point out that there will be less heartache in the new material - less of himself laid bare.

“I don’t think it’s a bad thing necessarily, but that album is a kind of one-off for me as far as letting that much of myself into it. I don’t really want to do that again, it’s just going to start sounding indulgent as well!

“This time around it’s less specific, less definitely about one person or even me. I suppose I’m trying to write about notions rather than actual events. I still think a record should tie together under one banner as an album under which all the songs fall. I’d like to make it a bit more outrospective and allow people a bit more freedom with what I’m talking about and allow them to come up with their own perspective on what it is rather than me dictating to them. I think I covered that aspect of life quite comprehensively on the last record. It was nice to get it all out, but this is a much more positive album.”

For those champing at the bit to get their ears round the new material, there’s some great news - Scott isn’t wasting any time!

“I want to get the record done - we’re looking at going to record around the beginning of June. So for like a month or two in the studio and then after that it’s up to the label. I’d love it to come out this year because, like, talking about the Hold Steady, they seem to keep producing material and I like that work ethic and I think, rather than it being, “Oh, there’s another Frightened Rabbit album coming out!”, just put one out there when people are least expecting it.”

And of the new material - are the fans to expect some real balls-out rock numbers - just to ring the changes?

“I can’t do that, I don’t know why. I always feel like it sounds a little bit cheesy! I love that kind of music, at the same time, but I just think I’m kind of frustrated that I’m incapable of doing it and it always does end up leaning towards the darker side of things. Whether I’m feeling sad or not, I find more interest in the shadowy bits of life - I can’t help it.”

In the name of uniquely sweet and wonderful music, here’s hoping that Scott keeps a watch on those shadows for a while longer.

Duke Special - I Never Thought This Day Would Come

2009-05-09T14:55:00.001+01:00

(Muso's Guide, May 9, 2009)

Album review

Despite plugging away at music industry success for the more than a decade, Duke Special brings his own peculiarly gentle pop ever-closer to mainstream success with I Never Thought This Day Would Come, his third long-form studio album.

So it’s an ‘A’ for effort and a ‘C’ for success… Until now.

Hailing from Northern Ireland, the Duke, also known as Peter Wilson, cuts a bizarre figure, with dreadlocks to his shoulders and thick black eyeliner. Certainly not the usual on the streets of his homeland.

I Never Thought This Day Would Come does plough a similar furrow to its predecessor, 2007’s Songs From The Deep Forest - tuneful and soulful, it boasts emotive language of romance and heartbreak, swathed in piano and imbued with a maturity beyond Wilson’s 29 years.

Opener ‘Mocking Bird Wish Me Luck’ is a delightfully smooth ballad on piano, saturated with the loss of a young love. “Right at the start of me/You stole a part of me”, the lyric goes, pleading for luck for the future, drenched with uncertainty and insecurity. As with all of his recorded output, Wilson’s gentle Co. Antrim vowels come over clearly in what amounts to heavily-accented singing, but far from irritating Snow Patrol-style, the result is a gentle lullaby of a vocal.

Single ‘Sweet Kisses’ is an early contender for single of the year, all bombastic rhythms and singalong chorus. The 1970s-style pomp is a radio-friendly touch, but the lyrics don’t waver from that ‘lost love’ angle Wilson does so well: “It was boom boom back when we were friends/Now the boo hoos tell me it’s the end” Wilson cites, in near-nonsense, but it’s pop, and it works. One of the happiest ever songs about heartbreak - behind, perhaps, The Avalanches’ ‘Since I Left You’.

The title track is another balladic number, coming off like a modern-day ‘Que Sera Sera’. “Stuck on a note/An old song I wrote/On a tape I cannot rewind”, goes Wilson’s simple poetry. Some of the tracks here miss the target slightly - ‘Flesh And Blood Dance’ is a music hall-swagger too far - but the lasting memory of singalongability and the very artistry of the words and music on show here reveal Wilson’s true talent for pop.

Success suddenly seems guaranteed.

Booker T. Jones - Potato Hole

2009-05-07T14:41:00.003+01:00

(Muso's Guide, May 7, 2009)

Album review

Legendary musicians are ten a penny these days. Haven’t you heard it’s an ageing population?

Take Booker T. Jones. Best known for fronting instrumental Booker T. and the MGs, they set dance floors alight in 1962 with the Hammond organ-drenched, bass-driven ‘Green Onions’. Almost 50 years later and ‘Green Onions’ is still the essence of cool, all the cooler when you find out that Booker T. Jones penned the hit while he was still in high school.

So a new record from this gent is really something to write home about.

Kicking off with the organ-led ‘Pound It Out’, Potato Hole embraces the modern era in a way which is quite staggering, the song roughly hewn from rock guitar and sweltering hot. Throughout the ten tracks, Jones’ prodigious talent for the keys is instrumentally augmented by Drive By Truckers, an Athens, Georgia band with roots in country and alternative rock.

The influence of the Truckers’ sound shows throughout, with a heaviness to the guitar sound which sits surprisingly well with Jones’ Hammond B3 noodlings. What’s amazing is the new life that someone like Booker T. Jones can breathe into the music he touches. At the ripe old age of 64, he is taking on tracks like ‘Hey Ya’ by Outkast and making them zing afresh, with the Truckers’ help.

There is a certain person who will purchase Potato Hole - probably a die-hard fan, certainly an experimental listener. Sometimes it does have the impact of a pan pipes moods CD, where the melody is pounded out on an organ instead of in vocals, but it’s still a very interesting musical construction, and one which should be supported.

The album highlight has to be ‘Native New Yorker’, exhibiting grouchy guitars plundering through the intro, before a truly meaty rock track strikes up, underpinned all the while by Jones’ skillful keys.

Legends are everywhere - appreciate them while they’re still around.

The Horrors - Primary Colours

2009-05-06T14:39:00.005+01:00

(Muso's Guide, May 6, 2009)

Album review

If The Horrors are to be taken seriously, there must be a new world order.

A hair band of skinny goths, they were drowning in eyeliner and hair dye when they showed up on the doorstep in 2007, but like stray kittens, they played upon the affections of the music world and they were allowed in.

Our reward? Strange House, a record which stretched wall-to-wall with bizarre characters, like Morgan who wanted to kill his family, or the glove festishist who made sport out of fondling handware. And don’t even mention Sheena, a grotesque slut of the imagination.

Suffice it to say, these artschool haircuts were a surprise hit, but had one-hit wonder scrawled all over them - in someone else’s blood, naturally. With all this in mind, it’s best to imagine the Primary Colours is a musical emission of a different band.

Oh, it still has The Horrors’ hallmarks - Faris Badwan’s ghoulish vocal backed with Spider Webb’s relentless keyboards. But somewhere in the Strange House these lipstick Lovecraftians lost their way - and found an altogether new path.

The clue to a new direction came early on, with scout single ‘Sea Within A Sea’. A delicious rumble of gratuitous weirdness, it nonetheless grabbed the synapses by their very roots. With album opener ‘Mirror’s Image’, the five-piece have revisited the great echo sound of the single, making a dancier effort and striking out in the direction of many 1980s bands of repute, in particular Echo and The Bunnymen and Simple Minds.

Without being glib, those references are far from insulting. More inferring that Badwan has mastered a malevolent growl the like of the masterful Ian McCulloch all the while backed with the stadium-friendly instrumentalism of a band far beyond their years. The howl Badwan lets out is underpinned by accomplished keys, and the rhythm gives it all a smooth, slightly unnerving base.

‘Three Decades’ starts out with the darker climes of an instrumental piece, with Webb’s organ sweeping through the landscape like an inclement breeze. Badwan again exhibits a much less stylised vocal than on their first record, and the result of everything is a mammoth musical soundscape peppered with oddity and intrigue.

As on their first recordings, Primary Colours sees The Horrors take the best parts of goth and marry them with a punk rock sensibility. But instead of giving birth to a most uneasy alliance as on Strange House, the delight here is the The Horrors have stretched further and gotten something greater out of themselves.

There’s a talent on show on Primary Colours which needs to be taken very seriously indeed.

The Mission District - Heartbreaker

2009-05-04T15:42:00.001+01:00

(Musos's Guide, May 4, 2009)

Single review

If image is nine tenths of a band, then The Mission District are truly a gift for record executives looking for the freshest faces around.

Five pretty boys with cheekbones that could slice and dice Zac Efron, these Montreal natives put the “eh” into “wahey!”. But enough about them being cute Canadians. To the music - it’s not all style over substance.

This terrific slice of radio-friendly 80s pop exhibits skills as razor-sharp as those cheekbones. Imagine a guitar pop sound which marries the tunefulness of Stephen “Tin Tin” Duffy with the smarts of Nick Lowe, and you’re en route to ‘Heartbreaker’.

Like A-Ha meeting The Killers in an all-ages indie disco, the vocal smacks of teenage repression, all angsty teen concerns and adolescent dramas: “I will break your heart tonight/Cos this is what we do” goes the chorus line, simply perfect for the Gossip Girl soundtrack.

Currently gearing up for a tour with Elliot Minor after a support sting with McFly, it’s pretty clear that The Mission District’s trajectory is straight down Main Street, Tweensville, but it’d be a shame to write them off as a teen dream.

Although tunefully bizarrely reminiscent of Fergie’s ‘Big Girls Don’t Cry’, throughout the singalong pop hit romps like a son of Busted, slick and over-produced, sure, but sweet, summery and insanely catchy.

Blackbud - Blackbud

2009-05-01T21:39:00.000+01:00

(AU magazine, May 2009)
Hailing from the dark centre of rawk - Wiltshire - Blackbud's sophomore release is proof positive that there are bright young things out there, hard at work in the name of good music. Deliciously melodic 'Left Your Arms Empty' opens with a striking male vocal, building to a sweeping finish which speaks of a more mature band. Through rockier 'Love Comes So Easy' to nigh-on prog 'Outside Looking In', Blackbud routinely claim their musical stripes. The record is rife with influence - Led Zeppelin and the Stones on the guitar, Ryan Adams and Jeff Buckley on the vocals - but they do not sacrifice their fresh, youthful exuberance in paying their respects. On the strength of this release, Blackbud are definitely in bloom.

Fishbone - Fishbone Live In Bordeaux

2009-05-01T21:36:00.000+01:00

(AU magazine, May 2009)
Live records are always for the fans, and it would be churlish to suggest that Fishbone Live In Bordeaux is anything other than a reaffirmation of that rule. An LA band with an astonishing history - 30 years, ten albums - Fishbone have a fanbase to make greener musicians salivate, which means this sells itself. Buy it if you like ska, rock, funk, reggae or jazz. Better yet, buy it if you like Fishbone. The DVD is more of the same in visual form.

Prefuse 73- Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian

2009-05-01T21:33:00.000+01:00

(AU magazine, May 2009)

If you know hip-hip and avante-rock, you'll know Guillermo Scott Herren, aka Prefuse 73. A producer and artist, here he has gifted his fifth studio album under that moniker, a 29-track sonic behemoth with nothing like a defining characteristic. There's a lot of info about the recording techniques Herren has utilised here, but beyond the yawnsome tech speak, it's all sounding really interesting. 'Parachute Parador' boasts a delicious drum machine pound, while 'Simple Loop Choir' is awash with vocoder magic, all sweeping sonic mass and confusion. It's true, Prefuse 73 is from a weird world, but it's truly fascinating too.

Real life: "I refuse to let MS rule my life"

2009-05-01T15:23:00.000+01:00

(Somerfield magazine, May 2009)

Billy Boy On Poison - Standing Still

2009-04-20T15:41:00.000+01:00

(Muso's Guide, Apr 20th, 2009)

Single review

The ballad of Billy Boy On Poison is a familiar one.

Some might call it the alternative rock’n'roll dream - five teens got the calling from the God of Rawk and decided that they were one day going to own the stage like Van Halen.

Oh, that’s a tad unfair, actually.

BBOP’s singer and architect Los Angelean Davis cites David Bowie and Robert Plant as chief influences, and the band themselves take their name from Anthony Burgess’ revered literary hoopla A Clockwork Orange, so their credentials are actually not in question. It’s just the execution that is a little less Thin White Duke and a little more, well, David Lee Roth.

A thrusting rock riff draws blood before melting into a meat-and-potatoes rock verse with vocals that sound like they’ve been filtered through a loud hailer. There are various points of musical concern - incongruous guitar breaks and out-of-kilter middle eights - but generally it’s all just a bit try-hard.

It’s not that you can’t rock out young, but these guys - four guys and a girl, to be exact - are referencing too much music from the days before they were born and showing precious little understanding of why those legends became so, well, legendary.

The spectre of rock liggers like Little Barry hovers over Billy Boy On Poison like a decidedly pongy reminder of style-over-substance bands, and the aping of American rock vocalists is quite shameless. Even clocking in at just three minutes, ‘Standing Still’ honestly struggles to hold the attention for that long.

Sarah Whatmore: “I wasn’t allowed to move my eyebrows”

2009-04-15T16:44:00.000+01:00

(Muso's Guide, April 15, 2009)

Interview

Who knows what will happen next in the music business?

It doesn’t look good, with the reality show format that plagues our television schedules with its Cowells and Coles sitting in judgement on musical hopefuls.

For one thing, watching it is pretty soul destroying. There are people who have dreamed of winning, of getting their mythical 15 minutes and making it work for them - and then suffering the ignominy of spilling their disappointed guts to Kate Thornton or Zoe Salmon after their first encounter with “the panel”.

And then there’s the vast amounts of musical bile spilt by these programmes - past participants include, but are not limited to The Cheeky Girls, Hear’Say, Michelle McManus and Steve Brookstein.

So not exactly a breeding ground for musical brilliance.

Except… every so often someone walks in and sings and just… has it. It might be a look, or something in their quavering voice, but even when they’re voted off, you can smell the talent.

Enter Sarah Whatmore.

In many ways, it seems a shame that someone as talented and beautiful as Sarah should have been forced to go begging to Cowell et al for a record deal and a chance at stardom.

A common sense Mancunian, Sarah has grown up knowing that she wanted to make it in showbiz somehow.

“I didn’t start singing until I was about 12. I always wanted to be an actress, and then my mum and dad got me a karaoke machine and I was singing, “It must have been love, but it’s all over now…” every night!”

When her mum packed her off for lessons was when Sarah really got to understand the power of her voice - but she never felt able to use it even then.

“I was classically trained for three years, but I was never allowed to move my shoulders or my eyebrows or be expressive. It was very sort of staged, and I was a little bit like the rebellious child who didn’t want to be taught anything, I went the opposite way because I wanted to be more creative.”

After time spent writing and learning about music in a specialist school in Manchester, Sarah really got into creating her own sound.

“I was about 15 when I started writing music and lyrics - then I went to a performing arts college, the Ben Kingsley Theatre.”

For two years, Sarah honed her skills as a writer and performer and then… She went running for Cowell’s schill? Not yet, darling - not even close.

“I just gigged loads! I had a little Honda Civic, got my PA system in the back, and went to loads of different pubs to play, just to build up my confidence.”

That’s right - she worked her backside off, just like indie bands we know and love.

Sarah was determined to make it, because she believed she was truly great.

And great she was, but she just couldn’t get a witness. When Pop Idol came along, Sarah went because it was “just another audition” - a way to get her music made and heard. And after she appeared on TV rejecting Simon Cowell’s marriage proposal? How did she feel about what came next?

“I don’t mind it, it’s part of my history. While it was nice to be recognised, I didn’t expect anything huge. Then it turned into this franchise like McDonald’s where they bang out a different artist, or a bunch of different artists every year, and it kind of swamps the market. It takes away something special about people, but I think that’s the way the culture is - taking away the magic and seeing what goes on, seeing people that haven’t done so well and have done so well.”

Sarah released two singles off the back of her appearance on the show, even though she wasn’t sure of the direction she was going.

“It’s really hard to get out there, and Pop Idol is a way to get out there, and if you’re talented, you’ll do anything to get out there. The thing that I couldn’t get my head around was the fame - I could have gone down the road of doing all the magazines and being a celebrity, and I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with that, but I just couldn’t connect with it. There was a dissatisfaction within my heart and if I was going to be honest, I wasn’t really being true to myself.”

Sarah freely admits that saying no to the trappings and success was tough - and she knows that people might find it hard to come back to her this time around.

“Some people probably listen to the first singles and expect me to come up with something that is like that. I can do that, that’s not a problem as a writer, but as an artist it’s completely different.”

Sarah’s the first to admit that her new sound is different - but she feels it’s much more “her” - and it shows in the pride she has when she talks about the album Time To Think.

“It’s not a happy album - it’s very optimistic, but lyrically and melodically and musically it’s quite… I love those melancholy songs that make you feel optimistic - like The Carpenters. There are warm vocals - I always thought that less is more in music, and that’s basically how I got to this point. Once people have heard it, I think they’ll understand why I went away and came back.”

To make her mark afresh is Sarah’s goal now, and with a record this open, it’s hard to see how she’ll fail. But she has her own measure of success - and it might surprise doubters to learn that it’s not the Kylie route Sarah wants to follow.

“I was being pushed as a sexy, Kylie-esque artist, which is in some ways great, but it wasn’t really who I was. I felt like I had more to offer as a musician and a singer. People are going to have their own opinion, but there are so many brilliant female vocalists. I love Joan As Police Woman. I am just obsessed with her. I listen to her every day. I absolutely love her - her music - I love ‘Start Of My Heart’. I love people who get up and don’t care about trying to impress, they just do what they do, go into their own little world, shut their eyes and just lose themselves. It’s so passionate.”

And passion is something that Sarah Whatmore has in spades. She is passionate about her music and her future in the business, and is brimming over with excitement about what might happen next.

Franz Ferdinand - No You Girls

2009-04-11T16:42:00.000+01:00

(Muso's Guide, April 11, 2009)

Single review

A handsome bunch of boys making the kind of jagged artpop that fills indie disco floors and makes all the girls swoon, Franz Ferdinand are the H. G. Wells of the British music world. From Alex Kapranos’ effortless style to cheekbones as angular as their riffs, they are a case in point of recycling in music.

After all, artrock was new thirty years ago - but here it is again, skillfully repackaged and as fresh as ever. In fact, like Kapranos himself, Franz’s sound could easily pass for ten years younger. As a perfect example, the singalong pop chorus of ‘No You Girls’ is massively ageless, and radio friendly from the off.

Kapranos’s distinctive Scottish burr takes on a more overt ‘Matinée’-style, drawling a disaffected “Kiss me/Flick your cigarette then kiss me”, smacking of a disaffected youth, before pounding out the flawless chorus, “No you girls never know/How you make a boy feel”.

There’s something special at work in ‘No You Girls’, as there is so often in Franz’s singles - not least because it’s funny and smart, with a nice line in arched eyebrows and barely-concealed lust. As the standout track on Tonight: Franz Ferdinand, it’s a must-download for any fan, but does little to dispel the notion that Franz are visitors from musical history.

Sarah Whatmore - Time To Think

2009-04-01T23:40:00.000+01:00

(Muso's Guide, April 1, 2009)

Album review

As easy as it is to dismiss reality pop stars, the law of average says that for every Rik Waller and One True Voice, there is a Will Young.

That is, someone with a discernible talent who is prepared to wait out the glitz and tack of the shows and grab the real prize - that is, the exposure to be able to follow their talent into a career. It’s tough because there are so few positive examples, but in amongst the Popstars/Pop Idol/X Factor litter of Chico and the Cheeky Girls, there are some fantastic examples of how it just… works.

Scoffing? Think the crystal clear pop magnificence of Girls Aloud - from the very first note of ‘Sound Of The Underground’, they have shown followers how not to be ashamed of reality roots, and with grace, style and not a little pizzazz. From a similar reality melting pot sprang Mancunian Sarah Whatmore, way back in the Pop Idol ether of 2001.

Perhaps best-known at the time for a proposal from Mr Cowell himself, Sarah’s burgeoning pop career didn’t get much further than two singles ‐ ‘When I Lost You’ and ‘Automatic’ - before the album was pulled and she sank without a trace. Eight years later, she’s back to show us what she’s learned - and it’s safe to say that she’s spent the best part of the noughties with her nose firmly stuck in the complete set of Encyclopaedia Reinvention.

Gone are the seedy, Europop rhythms of Sarah’s début single - replaced instead by the sombre, sensitive melodies of a young woman who is comfortable in her own skin. From opener - and lead single - ‘Undefined’, Sarah ploughs a new furrow - a heartfelt piano-led ballad with guitar which complements a rich, mature vocal awash with soulfulness.

‘Smile’ is a natural follower, sweeping in with the scent of the Isley Brothers’ ‘Summer Breeze’ , lazily sexy with California sunshine baked right in, with the lyric, “I’m my own woman, swimming against the stream”. Truer words have seldom been sung. Sarah Whatmore will not be for everyone, of course. There’s nothing here for the rock fan, who likes their riffs ear-bleeding and their vocals raw and screaming - nor for the hard house fan who wants banging beats and nonsensical lyrics.

But for the music fan, who seeks a musician truly enjoying their own skin, Sarah Whatmore is a gift. The minor key melodies of most of the tracks reflect a wonder of heroes like The Carpenters, while the rich, honeyed vocals make the whole album an easy listen with layers of depth to discover.

The Pop Idol days put far behind her, Time To Think shows there’s a lot more to Sarah Whatmore.

Q & A: The Race "We aspire to make music that moves you on the inside."

2009-04-01T22:56:00.000+01:00

(AU magazine, April 2009)
Reading quintet The Race recently released their second album In My Head It Works on classic indie label Shifty Disco, and they’ve used some pretty nifty ideas to spread the word. They’ve physically handed a sampler CD to strangers and asked them to pass it on, as well as selling shares in the record, so that if it does well, the fans profit. Lovely. Vocalist Dan Buchanan chatted to us about these issues, their huge sound and why they feel out of step with what else is going on.

Interview by Kirstie McCrum

You’ve got a nice line in Arcade Fire-style elegiac, as on ‘I Get It Wrong’ and ‘Moorwood’. How much do you think this is a result of what you hear from other contemporary artists and how much has always been in your vision?

I’m sure you get influenced subconsciously by what you hear around you when you’re writing an album. We don’t all necessarily have the same taste in music but we do aspire to make music that moves you on the inside and is full of passion. I guess big swirling music often does that for us. We do have a great respect for bands for bands like Broken Social Scene and the whole Arts and Crafts collective of musicians who just get on and make music and don’t seem as concerned about making money and conquering the world. That’s the kind of band we want to be, although it would be nice to have a little cash to spend on essentials.

On the first record, Be Your Alibi, you seem more idealistic, more hyper, and playing with Supergrass and The View really slotted you into that ‘indie’ bracket. With In My Head It Works, do you feel that you made a conscious step forward?

We were really lucky with the first album that we were given free rein to use Courtyard Management’s studio [Radiohead/Supergrass]. We were over the moon and had 12 days to get it down - they were keen for us just to capture where we were at that time quickly and not to think about it too much. It was fun. As for those gigs, we were just grateful to be playing and didn’t think too much about it. With this new album, we had a lot more time to think about how we wanted the album to sound and chose Dave Eringa specifically as he had such a good track record with bands we like. It feels like a more complete album, where Be Your Alibi was perhaps more of a collection of our best songs since we’d started two years earlier.

The Pass It On experiment for In My Head It Works - how did that come together? And are you happy with the result? Did your label not offer a substantial enough marketing budget?!

My friend Rich made a book and used Pass It On to spread it amongst his friends and their friends. I got the idea off him. It worked beautifully as a CD package and ended up all over the world with some very interesting people. Some of whom have given us good help at various times since. It was nothing to do with the label really, we had just got out of the studio and were desperate for people to hear the results having spent the previous year pretty quiet writing. We were given permission by our label and publishers to do it as long as we placed some timely interruptions in some of the tracks. We thought our little overdubs were really funny. I’m not sure what everyone else thought. We have no idea where they are now and that feels good. In these times of everything being a little up in the air we were grateful that our label Shifty Disco gave us the flexibility to be a little creative. Experiments are fun.

And what about the uptake of stakes in the record - is it bucking the economic trend?

There are still 100 stakes available and the great thing is that people can jump on the bandwagon at any point. We’ve had some pretty nice messages recently along the lines of us being the best investment people have made all year etc. I think at £25 a stake it’s all very sensible and affordable and thought out, so people seem to want to be involved. We had one person buy 60 stakes in one go, that was pretty nuts.

Is the title In My Head It Works a cop out, in case it was a flop? Or do you think that people will hear different things depending on how they listen to the record?

The last couple of years have found me testing and questioning a lot of the stuff I was brought up to believe. I’ve also come to appreciate that everyone is different and for so many different reasons-and its not right for me to impose my beliefs on others. More listening, less talking! The title refers specifically to that and is not some kind of desperate hope that people will like the album. It’s certainly not an apology, although I can understand that is how people could interpret it.

Where do you think you got your musical influences from growing up? Do you think you’re staying true to that?

Good question, there aren’t that many key bands that we can say we all enjoyed when we were younger, we met when we were all attending the same church and probably weren’t so much into hearing new music as we are now. I can remember us all enjoying Radiohead though.

Was working with Dave Eringa beneficial to the chemistry between the band members themselves? Do you feel that he got the best out of you?

Dave Eringa is a very special man both in terms of the production work he does and also his generosity of spirit. The month he spent with us recording and mixing the album was all the more enjoyable for his presence. We felt like we could trust him completely, he had no agenda at all and ended up giving us the fleshed out sound we had hoped for without it all sounding too slick.

What sort of movie do you think that The Race would be best disposed to soundtrack?

A big one, so that we can pay back so many of the kind people who have helped us along the way.

What do you make of the music scene in the UK just now? You’re bucking the prevalent trend for electronica…

I’m not sure that we are all that down with what is going on musically in the UK at the moment so we’re probably not the best people to comment. It was great to see Elbow do so well last year, they are blatantly making music for the right reasons and not just for a bit of hype and an ego trip.

What’s the plan for the future? Do you feel like you have found a niche sound for The Race?

We’re actually just starting to write some new songs hopefully in a different direction. Finding a niche sound gets boring pretty quickly. We’d love to tour this album as far and wide as people want to hear us, we’re hoping to get out to Japan and America this year and of course over to Northern Ireland for the first time too.

IN MY HEAD IT WORKS IS OUT NOW ON SHIFTY DISCO
WWW.THERACEUK.COM

A Plastic Rose - Kids Don't Behave Like This

2009-04-01T22:53:00.000+01:00

(AU magazine, April 2009)

A youthful Sligo-raised, Belfast-based four-piece with a confident command of melody, A Plastic Rose have long since ran their influences up the flag pole, and do them proud on this new release. ‘Kids Don’t Behave Like This’ is a swooning, soaring piece of proto-shoegazing glory, vocal rippling with barely-concealed emotion until the last minute, when he explodes with a Vedder-esque roar, drawing a Biffy-tinged veil over proceedings. ‘Superspeed’ is a more tentative, gentle affair, while ‘Skin’ starts with a sniff of the Snow Patrol about it, before kicking into a radio-friendly rocker. Kids should behave like this more often.

Goldie Lookin' Chain - ASBO4Life

2009-04-01T22:51:00.001+01:00

(AU magazine, April 2009)

Like Marmite for eardrums, the fourth album from the Newport rappers isn’t going to turn the heads of those dubious of their appeal. Of these 14 tracks, none of them is ‘Guns Don’t Kill People, Rappers Do’, but they keep on an even keel. Mirth-inducing on ‘Everybody Is A DJ’ (sample lyric: “Oh, mate, do you know ‘Synth and Strings’ / Oh, mate, have you got ‘Eye Of The Tiger’?”), the dropout stoner schtick wears by the time ‘Nothing Ever Happens’ arrives. The fact remains that GLC are a comedy band and, with four albums under their belts, they’re officially flogging a dead horse.

Grammatics - Grammatics

2009-04-01T22:14:00.002+01:00

(AU magazine, April 2009)

"What if Pulp had QOTSA's rhythm section?" Grammatics reportedly asked themselves during their inception - or so says the press notes for this release. This tale may be an apocryphal one told after the fact, but it's clear that Grammatics have set about concocting a sound made up of other band's parts. Vocally, Owen Brinley channels Panic At The Disco's Brendon Urie like his life depends on it, all histrionics and massive range. Opener 'Shadow Committee' sees Grammatics taking on the overblown pomp of Muse, strings and wall of sound aesthetics in place. 'Inkjet Lakes' owes quite a lot to Bloc Party, but ultimately the mass of influences leaves a listener in confusion over what Grammatics were trying to achieve. Grammatically incorrect.

The Soundcarriers - Harmonium

2009-04-01T22:11:00.002+01:00

(AU magazine, April 2009)

Psychedelic and spaced out, the début record from this free-thinking Nottingham four-piece have every idea going about jazz-influenced chilled out instrumental music with a Stereolab vocal after a fashion. 'Caught by the Sun' speaks of 1972 and the lazy days of summer, while 'Calling Me' is tuneful gentle pop. As the alternative soundtrack to The Wicker Man that is 'Volcano' strikes up, it becomes clear that The Soundcarriers are talented indeed, but this recorded output is a little limp. Perhaps they should think less of reverb-heavy harmony and more of making music with impact.

Various Artists - A Psychedelic Guide To Monsterism Island

2009-04-01T21:52:00.002+01:00

(AU magazine, April 2009)

Album review

Lo

The unusual imaginings of Welsh artist Pete Fowler will be nothing new to fans of his work, but in case you're none the wiser, here it is: illustrator and, most tellingly "creator of monsters", Fowler makes beautifully drawn creatures who inhabit Monsterism Island, a mythical place where the strange is every day. Who wouldn't want to take a look?
This is the second collection of Monsterism Island's hit, and it is awash with quality musicians - the Super Furries' Gruff Rhys and Jeffrey Dammers from The Specials being the most noteworthy - and soundscapes of the bizarre.
From the waves crashing on the shore in 'Rum Cove' to the holiday atmosphere of 'Final Froog' and the gentle electronica of 'Crystal Hermitage', it forms the magical narrative backdrop for a truly interesting and enchanting trip.

Mongrel - Better Than Heavy

2009-04-01T21:49:00.001+01:00

(AU magazine, April 2009)

Album review

Wall of Sound

Supergroups, eh? That's no work at all for PRs - they just sell themselves. Fans of artist #1 meet fans of artist #2 = payday for everyone involved. Well, that is the case, but Mongrel - one part former Arctics, one Babyshambles, two Reverend and The Makers and one Lowkey, from rappers Poisonous Poets - justify their existence on this début.
Politically charged, socially aware and culturally pertinent, the schizophrenia of Mongrel's personnel does impact on the music somewhat, leaving songs with raps and indie guitar choruses loping side by side. A mongrel indeed.

The Mighty Stef - 100 Midnights

2009-04-01T21:45:00.002+01:00

(AU magazine, April 2009)

Album review

The Firstborn Is Dead Recordings

With the sleazy swagger of a crew of sailors, The Mighty Stef, aka Dubliner Stefan Murphy, takes on all comers with this second album.
100 Midnights is drenched with the hopelessness of the drunk and the desperate, the hungover and the hellish.
There are notable guest appearances from two former Pogues - Cait O'Riordan on 'Safe At Home', and Shane himself on 'Waitin' Round To Die'. Vocally in line with a Tom Waits drawl, the grimy rock stylings of this offering mark a leap in musical maturity from debut The Sins Of Saint Catherine.

The Race - In My Head It Works

2009-04-01T21:41:00.003+01:00

(AU magazine, April 2009)

Album review

Shift Disco

There's been a lot of talk about The Race's second album - it's been put together by a stakeholder fund, don't you know. That means that, if it makes money, the fans win. Crafty releasing.
Anyway, it will make it, because it's really very good. From the standard indie guitars of 'Begin', the elegiac nature of the lyrics and the soaring guitars of the del Rio siblings make this a stadium-friendly unit-shifter which owes to many, from Arcade Fire to Simple Minds. If the race is on for successful rock with balls and brains, then it's already been won.

Blooming marvellous

2009-04-01T16:59:00.000+01:00

(Somerfield magazine, April 2009)

Real life: "I had bowel cancer at 32 and beat it"

2009-04-01T16:57:00.001+01:00

(Somerfield magazine, April 2009)

Dieter Schöön - Lablaza

2009-03-31T14:59:00.004+01:00

(Muso's Guide, March 31, 2009)

Album review

From the dirgey opening of ‘Manuel’, Swede Dieter Schöön marries the denseness of Berlin-era Bowie with the artifice of stylish rockers Roxy Music.

‘Manuel’ pays homage to Bryan Ferry’s London artrockers right down to the mangled free jazz saxophone section which splits the track, while the rest of the record dives headlong into a pool of influences included with, but not limited to, Beck, Pavement, Sonic Youth, Can and the afore-mentioned alter-ego of David Jones. If that list make Schöön’s début Lablaza sound largely inaccessible, than you’re right on the money, but that’s not to say it is without merit.

The icily cool Germanic consonants of Schöön complement the industrialised electronic beats of single ‘Mary Jane’, a song incongruously introduced by mariachi trumpets which call to mind Mark Morriss’ ‘I’m Sick’ or Hello Saferide’s ‘High School Stalker’, but what follows is simply more challenging than those other tracks. Ironically for an album which contains the track ‘Warm Hearts’, there is a coldness to the recording that makes it hard to connect with Schöön.

That track is heralded by a Casiotone-style intro and, with a juddering waltz beat, offers a repetitive, vocally-experimental pop song sounding for all the world like a slightly stoned Kraftwerk. The lyric, “Our faces were all just stupid I guess/But with warm hearts”, which becomes so mangled as to end on a slightly disturbing note.

Electronic ‘The Harbour’s Cold’ has a chill through it, with Schöön staring out to the sea in search of something. “Smoke a spliff in the afternoon”, he reveals, which is a clue to the feeling of this complex record, and so seemingly removed from human feeling. A much-needed injection of emotional realism comes in the form of the atmospheric, tragically-theme ‘Soft and Slow’. This Gideon Coe favourite builds to a heart-rending crescendo with the lyric, “Where you been so long?”, prompting the listener to address a world of hurt and unaddressed breakdown.

But as quickly as the tears come, they are banished again, by the ruthlessly efficient ‘I’ll Go There’ and ‘Auf Wiedersehen’. Multi-lingual and multi-talented, nonetheless Schöön’s express intention seems to be to evade categorisation, which gives rise to words like ‘unique’ and ‘indefinable’. The most evocative influence here would be Beck, but even that pop-friendly name falls short of explaining the division between Schöön and accessibility.

Lablaza is certainly intriguing, but the next album will show if it’s really got something brighter to offer - or if it is just a flash in the pan.

The Dykeenies - Are You With Me Now?

2009-03-30T11:15:00.002+01:00

(Muso's Guide, March 30, 2009)

Single review

Having been around for the best part of five years, The Dykeenies are one of those indie bands who make superfans - small, kooky, excitable people with button badges on their chests and the fulfilling the hair colour pre-requisite of at least one unnatural colour per 100,000 strands.

But bands do not make success by scene alone, so what of their mainstream impact? It’s not been massive, granted, but ‘Are You With Me Now?’ could be about to change all that.

Drums start slow and lead into a guitar part that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on the Manic Street Preachers‘ 1993 sophomore record Gold Against The Soul.

The American accented vocal which has infiltrated the even the once-stoic British independent scene is never more prevalent than in the Glaswegian boys’ delivery.

The titular enquiry is howled, heartfelt, over soaring guitars and a recurrent melody, a grandiosity which marks the track out for inclusion on the soundtrack of an episode of Smallville.

More questions follow, “Are you fading in and out?/Where did it all go wrong?” but the Dykeenies never offer an answer, spurred on the insistent beat continuing like a marathon runner.

Ending on a electronic note, this swollen anthem of youth shows that The Dykeenies are clearly ready for the next level of fame.

Are you with me now?

Post War Years: “can’t help but bust a groove”

2009-03-30T11:14:00.001+01:00

(Musos Guide, March 30, 2009)

Interview

Post War Years: A simple vocal underpinned by an insistent piano, for all the world another singer-songwriter with angst on his mind.

But suddenly, a pounding drum beat comes in, and the atmosphere takes on a dance groove. It’s a shock to the system, but ‘Black Morning’ is a perfect example of the shock to the system that Post War Years offer. An ambient band shot through with purest indie, they’re here to save us from musical boredom by charming and disarming by any means necessary.

Living together in a little basement in Dalston “starved of light and oxygen” - that’s how frontman and singer Henry describes the crazy topsy turvy world of Post War Years. “We’ve been in this place for about a year and a half,” he says. “I wouldn’t say it’s healthy for a band to spend quite as much time together as we do.”

Something of the Monkees about the arrangement, no? “Well, we’re not there yet.” Henry laughs. Henry, Tom, Simon and Fred - Leamington lads - met the way bands do - through friends of friends. The university diaspora scattered them, but the will to rock together drew them back in and, post-tertiary education, as Henry puts it, they were all ready to “give it a push”. And pushing they are, with sensational single ‘Whole World On Its Head’ out now. Like their other songs, it’s a curious mix of indie sensibilities and electro atmosphere, ambient ideals and melodious verses.

Is the single a good example of PWY?

“I’d like to think the single is a mid-point between all this stuff we do, because there’s definitely a melancholic side as well as some really sort of brash, exciting, really upbeat, driven stuff. We like to experiment with sounds a lot, so ‘Whole World On Its Head’ has got plenty of different stuff to wrap your ears around. We thought it was a reasonable representation of what we do, which is hard because we’re quite a varied band.”

So varied that it is tough to pigeonhole their exciting, often experimental sound. Does that put people off?

“We certainly don’t want to alienate people - we want people to enjoy it, but we do want to do something different. We get very easily bored, so from song to song it really varies. If we ever realised that we were completely alienating our audience, then we’d probably have to rethink it, but so far, people seem to stick around when we play!”

Stick around in droves, it seems - and audiences are sticking around this week at South By Southwest, where the Leamington boys are setting out their varied stall. “There are loads of bands we know or like playing out there - and also Gomez are playing, and I haven’t seen them for years.”

As well as enjoying what essentially sounds like an elongated work night out with musical colleagues in Austin, the boys are hurtling towards the release of their debut record. How’s that coming along, then?

“It will come out sometime in May, hopefully. We’ve written something stupid, like 30 or 40 songs for this album, and obviously only 11 or 12 make it, so you start to lose perspective. You swing through differfent emotions - one minute I love it, the next I start to question, but I think we’re fairly settled with it - I’m really excited about it.”

What tracks are still setting Henry alight at this stage?

“We’re still working our way through some of the stuff from the album, currently I would say ‘Black Morning’ the first single, which won’t feature on the album, it’s always quite euphoric. Can’t help but bust a groove to that occasionally. When we get onstage you just get into a mode and carry on with that. I wouldn’t say that anything specifically that I favour - hopefully it’s all good!”

What influences are really write large across the Post War Years catalogue, then?

“Before we started recording, we definitely listened to a broad range of stuff, which we still do, but I think we have noticeably stopped listening to music as much. In the past we have been guilty of taking maybe a little too much influence from stuff, and then we became aware of what we were doing. There are a few things that always stick around - we’re big Talking Heads fans and big fans of Bjork, and we do keep up with the London music scene - we’re good friends with a lot of bands from here.”

Personally speaking, Henry’s got a musical hero who may come as a shock to Post War Years fans. “Some people try and make me feel embarrassed for this, but I am a massive Prince fan - I think he’s amazing.”

Post War Years - the surprises just keep on coming…

Art Brut - Alcoholics Unanimous

2009-03-27T10:42:00.005Z

(Muso's Guide, March 27, 2009)

Single review

Sometimes it takes a real event to blow the socks off the music world.

In 2005, Art Brut released their début record Bang, Bang, Rock & Roll and UK music fans knew true happiness thanks to an Anglo-Germanic ethos of rocking and, indeed, rolling. It was a Real Event, holding back no capital letters, and at the centre of the artrock hurricane, the angles, the musical jags and melodious mayhem was Eddie Argos.

An extreme-eyebrowed, self-effacing savant with a nice line in dynamic onstage zaniness, making use of props like vacuum cleaners. His frankly personal lyrics cover everything from DC Comics to impotence, but always with a wry glance and a cock of those eyebrows.

Long-awaited and much fêted thanks to a net leak, the third album Art Brut vs. Satan is continuing in the same vein, and guide single ‘Alcoholics Unanimous’ is a stunner; Argos’ trademark vocal cuts through the jaggedly musical melée with confidence. His style - of more speaking than singing - very much complements the Art Brut sound, and creates in him an off-kilter but utterly convincing frontman.

Here he’s telling the traveller’s tale of the drunken night out that hasn’t gone so well. All the usual ingredients are here - perfectly formed guitars, hewn directly from solid ‘cool’, as well as Argos’ inimitable lyrics: “There’s so many people I might have upset,” he explains. “I apologise to them all with the same group text.”

The video is set up as an Art Brut documentary - with the title Drunk: A Documentary - all serious straight shots of band members looking concerned. Argos stumbles blithely into an ‘Alcoholics Unanimous’ meeting and wreaks having, hollering “Bring me tea! Bring me coffee!” as the other attendees tell him he isn’t hiding his hungover state very well.

In truth, it’s what the music world’s been waiting for, and heralds the forthcoming album as staunchly and proudly as any fan could have hoped.

It’s unanimous.

Real life: "My autistic children are amazing"

2009-03-26T16:43:00.002Z

(Somerfield magazine, March 2009)

Mumford & Sons - The Cave/But My Heart Told My Head

2009-03-26T13:36:00.002Z

(Muso's Guide, March 26, 2009)

Single reviews

Perhaps best-known for being in the top 15 for the BBC’s Sound Of 2009 abomination (eventual winner: Little Boots), Mumford & Sons are second place to no one. And certainly not 15th place.

Singer Marcus Mumford has been known to moonlight on drums for Laura Marling, which should give an indication of the sort of thing on offer. To whit, ‘The Cave’ - a sweetly finger-picked ditty with a delicious taste of gentle acoustopop. Then the vocal - a straightforward, full-vowelled English accent with heart. It’s unexpected in this sort of Americana-tinged folk, but delightfully welcome.

A minute in, a bassline comes in, but the beefier sound does nothing to deplete the loveliness. Percussion and backing vocals go some way to making the sound complete, but the star is that great strong voice - part-Guy Garvey - for sheer bass meat - and part something altogether more refined. The lyric is very personal - “I need freedom now/I need to live my life as it’s meant to be” he asserts, all the while tremendously atmospheric backing underpinned by a skilled banjo.

The Frightened Rabbit-vein of soulful vocal-meets-folk backing is richly ploughed here, but the unique marriage of banjo and that low Mumford voice put ‘The Cave’ on another level. ‘But My Heart Told My Head’ is, if anything, more striking than ‘The Cave’.

A warm, comforting, densely musical intro soon drops off, leaving that signature banjo backing Mumford’s luscious tones, “As the winter winds litter London with lonely hearts” he begins, like an old-school fairy tale.

The vocal here is strained and emotional, but the words keep on giving, thrusting romantic images and standards into the listener’s mind. “Oh, for every kiss your beauty trumped my doubt” Mumford tells it, although this is no happy ending - he follows that with a nod to the song’s theme of heartbreak, the repeated lyric, “And my head told my heart let love grow/And my heart told my head this time now/This time no”.

The decision to surrender oneself to love is too much for Mumford, and the brass building up in the mix is a Christmas carol, a colossal great mix of hope and haunting. By the strength of these songs, Mumford & Sons have something incredibly special. The crushing simplicity of their music stays with the listener long after the record has finished, while the lyrical themes put everyday feelings into poetry.

A surefire family favourite.

The Hot Melts: “We don’t feel the need to live up to The Beatles!”

2009-03-25T14:46:00.001Z

(Musos's Guide, March 25, 2009)

Interview

The Hot Melts are a pretty awesome bunch of guys.

A four piece from Liverpool who meld the very greatest parts of 1950s rock with a severely rock-ready collection of noises. It sounds like - and is - the best part of rock heaven - frontman Will Bayliss is an angel with the devil’s tunes. “I suppose we kind of mix the 1950s and the 1990s, like rock’n'roll and grunge, we try and mix that kind of sound - good old rock’n'roll.”

The Hot Melts’ list of influences is long and distinguished, which makes Will a whirlwind to speak to. “I’m a big fan of Weezer and lots of old rock and roll, people like Chuck Berry and Elvis and people like that.” He could go on, but there’s more to discuss, like The Hot Melts’ much sought-after support slot - with the Eagles of Death Metal.

Kicking off the UK tour on March 28 in Portsmouth, the boys stand to make a lot of new fans - not least the headliners. Or are they already fans - is that how the slot came about? “I suppose we asked them if we could support them and they said yes? I don’t really know what happens with those kinds of things. I just write the songs and play them,” Will demurs.

Regardless, it could be seen as something of a step up compared to their last major support slot - with classical emo boy band Elliott Minor. Were they to the Melts’ liking? “It was really good - they’re lovely lovely guys. We come from different musical backgrounds,” he says, very diplomatically. And what about the screamo fans EM attract? “Most EM fans are quite young, which is great, because I want everyone to be our fans. I’m just interested to find out how other fans take us.”

By Will’s account, there are already Hot Melts superfans, following the boys up and down the country. “There are loads of people we see over and over at gigs. Good on them! Some of them have been to ten gigs! I don’t think I’ve ever seen any band ten times.”

Any ideas who Will would see ten times given the opportunity? He gives the question a lot of thought. “It would have to be over the years, you wouldn’t want to go and see them ten times in the same tour. You’d have to go and see them ten times if they’d done ten albums. I’d like to see Weezer, I’ve never seen Weezer. I’ve never seen them live, but I hear they’re great.”

Will and the boys are about to find out how good the Eagles are live - albeit from a different viewpoint to the usual punter. Just days away from a triple-threat event at the SXSW festival in liberal corner of Texas - Austin - there’s plenty on the boil for the boys.

Their debut album is set to hit the public in the summer, an event which has all the boys excited. recorded last year in Chicago with Mark McLusky, Will says that he still loves all the songs - not least current single, ‘Edith’. A riff-driven slice of raucous rock, it finds Will in great form, channeling ever-howling frontman from Bono to Jason Perry and everyone in between.

Being from the Merseyside does carry with it a certain weighty musical heritage. Does Will think of the spectre of the Beatles at all? “I was a Beatles fan when I| was younger - I suppose Beatles are really a kids’ band - but I don’t know whether it’s a pressure. There are great bands from every city in the world - for any band, there’s always going to be a legendary band from their city. I don’t feel the need to live up to the Beatles! But I’d still like to be the biggest band in the world, that would be nice.”

The Hot Melts do have the world is at their feet…

“I don’t think any band will have the same impact as the Beatles again because I just don’t think things are the same, really. I like what the Beatles are - I like that they are more than just a band, that they made films and were almost cartoon characters.”

Do the Hot Melts haver the capacity to make that sort of leap?

“I like characters in bands and I always have ideas for things, like Hot Melts comics or Hot Melts TV shows, I love that kind of thing. I heard once that Supergrass were offered a Monkees-esque TV show, but turned it down. I would never turn that down, I love the Monkees, I love that kind of thing. I’d love to do a TV show!”

Having ascertained that the Hot Melts are available to film the next sleeper TV hit, it’s important to address the band’s imagery. Bright and striking, the impact of the band’s MySpace page and sleeve art is memorable. Do the band have a hand in their artwork?

“They’re all our ideas. I love that kind of 1950s artwork. I think we’re going to start working on artwork for the album soon.”

One of the Hot Melts’ most unique features is their dedication to the medium of podcasts. Choosing their favourite music, each member takes turns in presenting their fans with a smorgasbord of the influences which have made them the band they are. What is the thinking behind the podcast?

“I feel like there’s a lot of bands who you mention to people and they don’t even know what you’re talking about,” Will explains. “The type of stuff that we play on the podcasts are the sort of thing that influenced us anyway. I’d love to hear the songs of bands that influenced my favourite bands.”

It’s like a musical education…

“So much stuff you hear on the radio, you just don’t know what to make of it, but there are so many great albums. There are even great albums that I don’t know that well. There are legends of music that I still, occasionally, someone will play me something that I’ve never heard before and should have done and it just rocks like it should and it just blows you away.”

Just like the Hot Melts. The Hot Melts’ single ‘Edith’ is out now. Their support slot with Eagles of Death Metal kicks off in Portsmouth on March 28, and tickets are available here.

Belfast city guide

2009-03-25T10:27:00.001Z

(Bookshelf Boyfriend, March 25, 2009)

After many years of seeming off-limits to tourists, Belfast has become a must-see in the British Isles. Packed with terrific bars and friendly people, the Ulster capital is just the place to go if you're in search of some "craic".

Climate

Belfast has a temperate climate, with daily temperatures ranging from a January average of 6 °C (43 °F) to a July daily average of around 18 °C (64 °F). It is known for being pretty damp - the average annual rainfall of 845.8mm (33.3 in) is less than the Scottish Highlands - but more than Dublin in the Republic of Ireland.

Getting there

Belfast is an incredibly well-connected city and many budget airlines serve its airports. You can fly direct into Belfast International Airport or Belfast City Airport from many European locations.

Belfast International Airport is situated approximately 17 miles north west of Belfast City Centre, while George Best Belfast City Airport is about three miles east of the city centre.

 
By sea, regular scheduled ferry services operate between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. From Stranraer, Troon & Cairnryan in Scotland, and Fleetwood & Liverpool in England - bringing both foot passengers, cars and other vehicles into the area through the two ferry ports of Belfast and Larne in Co. Antrim.

Accommodation

You'll find plenty of accommodation in Belfast, from budget to luxury. Staying in and around the city centre is best situated for nights out, but for those with transport or who want to explore, you'll find hotels, hostels and bed & breakfasts from the centre outwards. Boutique hotels for romantic getaways include the always trustworthy Malmaison and the beautiful and ultra-trendy Ten Square.

Visit the official Northern Ireland Tourist Board booking portal at www.discovernorthernireland.com to find somewhere to suit your needs.

Sights and activities

Belfast Cathedral The Cathedral Church of St. Anne is truly breathtaking.

Parliament Buildings, Stormont Home of the Northern Ireland Assembly and an iconic piece of architecture.

Queen's University A stunning redbrick building right in the heart of the student-dominated cultural area called Queen's Quarter.

W5 - Who What When Where Why An interactive discovery centre for education and fun.

Titanic Dock The former maritime centre of the world, Belfast's Harland & Wolff shipbuilders are best known for the Titanic.

Ulster Museum Located in the Botanical Gardens near Queen's University.

Crown Bar Old and visually arresting pub.

Cave Hill A basaltic outcrop which overlooks the city.

City Hall A baroque revival building which faces the city's main shopping thoroughfare, Donegall Place.

St. George's Market Heaven for foodies every Saturday.

Belfast Zoo Home to more than 1200 animals and 140 species.

Shopping

The city centre has plenty to offer - the usual high street fare is available on Donegall Place, right down to the city's first major shopping centre Castle Court. The new and impressive Victoria Square development is located just off Donegall Place through Cornmarket, and boasts many of the more exclusive nationwide retailers, including House of Fraser, All Saints and Urban Outfitters.

Out of the centre, there are any number of independent trendy boutiques and delis on the Lisburn Road.

Food

The John Hewitt pub beside St Anne's Cathedral serves above average food. Eat to a jazz accompaniment on Friday evenings.
Bishop's Chip Shop at Bradbury Place has marble tables, open fires and tasty food!
Clements Coffeehouse on Donegal Place serves great lunch - have the soup and a hot panini. There are several Clements branches in the city.
The famous Crown Liquor Saloon not only serves great drinks - they also have a great value menu of simple but hearty dishes.
The Water Margin is a huge Chinese restaurant on the Ormeau Road, located in a converted church and always crowded at weekends.
Rain City Café Grill on the Malone Road is an upmarket diner with a great atmosphere.
Villa Italia on University Road is always packed and serves great Italian food in a lively and unpretentious atmosphere. Sister restaurant Scalini on Botanic Avenue is every bit as enjoyable.
Belfast's only Michelin-starred restaurant is Restaurant Michael Deane. Perfect for serious foodies and priced accordingly. If you're on a budget, Deane's Brasserie downstairs is a cheaper and quality alternative.
Harbour View Restaurant at Lanyon Quay is quite an experience, where Teppinyaki chefs stir fry your food at your table over flaming grills - a performance not to missed.

Going out

As a capital and as a city which loves to socialise, Belfast is not at all short of nightlife! There are great pubs like the already-mentioned John Hewitt and Crown, as well as the Ormeau Road's Errigle Inn and the trendy Botanic Inn.

Clubbers can track down big names at Shine or Milk, while alt. sorts may prefer gothy Stiff Kitten or the indie Auntie Annie's on Dublin Road.
 
More information

www.discovernorthernireland.com
www.gotobelfast.com
www.belfasttourist.com
www.goireland.com

Shunda K & Kotchy - Le Passion, Yo!

2009-03-24T17:17:00.002Z

(Muso's Guide, March 24, 2009)

EP review

Shunda K & Kotchy - Le Passion, Yo!

Hip hop gets a bit of a bad rap, if you’ll pardon the expression.

Not naturally a residency for romance, its ranks seem to be swollen with testosterone-laden hulks and, at best, fighty, mouthy women whose guy has done them wrong - through virtue of being a ‘scrub‘ or otherwise undesirable.

But what is fun about conventions is when someone comes along and refuses to conform to them.

Shunda K is someone who likes to kick against the curve, and it shows.

As a member of Yo Majesty, along with singer Jwl B, both she and Miss K, aka LaShunda Flowers are openly lesbian and christian, and hailed critically as a breath of fresh air.

This free four-song download teams Shunda K up with Brooklyn-based producer Kotchy, who has previously worked and toured with artists like Tricky, The Walkmen and Joan As Policewoman, to name but a few.

Named ‘Le Passion, Yo!’, the download takes steps through a relationship - from the initial meeting, through the first blushes and out the other side.

Opener ‘First Encounter’ is a steamy one. Tough-talking, real-rapping Shunda K makes a meal of the come on, with “Take me away to your private place” and warning the object of her affection “don’t get your panties in a twist”.

It’s hot to say the least, in and out of Shunda K’s world - “When you look my way/I warm up by ten degrees”, soothing into a cooldown with the repeated refrain “Let’s make it more than a dream”.

On ‘You Are’, the praise of beauty continues. A sort of post-modern ‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…’, the track sees Shunda K rolling words of lust around her tongue, treading a fine line between romantic adoration and out-and-out harrassment.

By ‘We Feelin’ Each Other’, the relationship is more relaxed - “This is only the beginning”, or so we’re told, but with this accelerated relationship’s trajectory, it seems hardly long before there’s nothing left.

The grimy beats and barely contained bitterness of ‘Holla’ is a societal comment for the world in which Shunda K and Kotchy find themselves. “If you’re not a trust fund baby, holla… Our culture must be in a coma/And I’m not a doctor”.

Shunda K is taking the work here in some really interesting directions - the almost radio-friendly hip hop beats of ‘You Are’ makes a real impact, and the laidback raps on ‘First Encounter’ really mark out the impressive talents on show.

Must be le passion…

The Bluetones - Expecting To Fly (Expanded Edition)

2009-03-23T11:48:00.004Z

(Muso's Guide, March 23, 2009)

Album review

There’s a heavy weight bearing down on bands when it comes to naming début albums.

It could make people pick up or turn away - it could make the difference between a lasting career or a brief day basking in the warming sun of musical success.

The Bluetones’ 1996 début was named Expecting To Fly, which spoke more volumes about the band than they could have with their music.

It was a record that tied up their fearful ‘dare to hope’ attitude with a small amount of self-assurance, well-placed in their understanding that they had talent, dammit, and people would see that.

And they did, for a time. Expecting To Fly fired Oasis’ (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? from the number one spot, which was a grand measure of popularity indeed.

Now, 13 years later, The Bluetones are out on the road again and a new revamped version of this Britpop classic has been unleashed. So, is it a must-have for the diehards, a might-have for the newbies? Or essential listening straight outta Hounslow?

From the initial bass rumble, opener ‘Talking To Clarry’ is a leader. giving way to confidently crashing indie guitars, it was clear that The Bluetones were going to be smarter than the average indie band.

And smart they were, nodding to Brit poet Adrian Mitchell and his poem Celia, Celia with the memorable lyric from single ‘Bluetonic’ - “When I am sad and weary/When all my hope has gone/I walk around my house and think of you with nothing on”.

A lovely dark slice of infatuation, it retains its uniquely minor-key misery even now, perhaps thanks to singer Mark Morriss‘ easily-recognisable, uniquely tremulous vocal.

In the old days, ‘Carnt Be Trusted’ was the first track on the second side of the Expecting To Fly cassette.

Now, it still forms a change of pace in the record. A lovely, melodic ode to the pitfalls of relationships, it boasts delicious harmonies that would make Brian Wilson blush, and does the business in under four minutes. That’s proper songwriting.

Closing on ‘Time And Again’, it stays with the band long enough to exhibit a darkly sweet menace that says, “We could never really hurt you - but we might shake our fists a bit”.

The new material which adds to this expanded edition includes a whole other disc of Bluetones paraphernalia like previously unreleased live tracks and BBC archive material.

Aside from the inclusion of the undisputed single of 1995, (’Are You Blue Or Are You Blind?’, in case you’ve forgotten), it doesn’t do a terrible amount of new stuff, more augmenting the glory of the original album release, but that’s worth it just to get Expecting To Fly back on the shelves again.

Ejaculated by a genre which had already sounded its death rattle with the likes of Menswe@r and Heavy Stereo, The Bluetones were unfortunately timed. Were Expecting To Fly released anew in 2009, there is no doubt that its vast landscapes of melodious melancholy would rocket, and Mark Morriss would be smiling his ever-enigmatic smirk across the music channels.

As it is, this LP signifies a fantastically well-presented selection of incredibly intelligent, heartfelt songs for which 1996 should always be remembered - that ‘daring to hope’ frozen in time.

Peter Doherty - Grace/Wastelands

2009-03-22T21:11:00.000Z

(Choon Online, March 22, 2009)

Album review

It must be an accident that the artist formerly known as Pete Doherty has named his album twice. But as he appears to be in the throes of a somewhat pretentious identity crisis, perhaps his duelling duality required it.

As the first Pete(r) Doherty solo effort, it’s not that solo - that’s what occurs to anyone who scans the sleeve notes. Collaborators include Peter ‘Wolfman’ Wolf, Dot Allison, Graham Coxon, members of Babyshambles and even a co-writing credit for his old mucker Carl Barât, intimating maybe that the talents of others are still propping Pete(r) Doherty up.

As far as the music behind the myth, it starts out well enough. Opener ‘Arcady’ is a folk-flavoured, country-tinged road song. “In Arcady, life trips along,” he offers, with a nod and a jaunty tip of his hat. In all honesty, Pete(r) Doherty’s fag-ravaged voice sounds a little too grimy for the clean melodic rhythms on show, but he makes a nice fist of the ditty, and keeps alive the idea that everything he writes is about Carl with lyrics like “Now you know more than your teacher“.

In fact, lyrically speaking Mr. Pete(r) ‘it was all fields round here’ Doherty hasn’t moved on terribly far from his days with the Albion-citing Libertines and Babyshambles. He actually seems to live in an England of Camberwick Green and Hancock’s Half Hour - a fantasy in keeping with his self-styled Byron posturing.

The fixation is first reinforced with the aptly-named ‘Arcady’, but followed so closely by single ‘Last Of The English Roses’, the whole thing starts to whiff of nostalgia porn. By the time it comes to ‘1939 Returning’, you’re begging for him to reference modernism in some shape or form. The noirish co-Barât penned ‘A Little Death Around The Eyes’ has something, but it’s fleeting at best until ‘Broken Love Song’, the album high point.

Fostering the same tragic intimations as Neil Diamond’s ‘Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon’, it is tragic and lovely and right right right - and proof that Pete(r) Doherty does have something. It’s just often buried under the facade of the ‘artist’.

Pete(r) Doherty’s portrayal of himself as the raconteur, the gent, the badinage artist with a twinkle in his eye is sorely lacking, an artless artist. Grace/Wastelands has some skill, but the overriding feeling is of a collection of offcuts and also-rans dumped carelessly on a record-buying public who are here to listen.

Like all efforts of style over substance, it has been found wanting.

Lemar - Weight Of The World

2009-03-18T13:49:00.002Z

(Music Medication, March 17, 2009)

Single review

Smooth and soulful, sexy and stylish - never mind David Sneddon, Lemar was the real star of Fame Academy 2002, and garnered a true music education at the knee of experts in the field.

Oh, sorry... are we not supposed to mention that?

Regardless of how he came to the attention of the great British public, Londoner Lemar is blessed with a pretty striking voice.

This, unbelievably, marks the boy's 12th single. Mature, slick R&B with a heart, his singing is imbued with the sort of lovelorn desperation that he has honed so well throughout hit career. "It feels like the weight of the world/Have the angels turned their back on me?/ Because I still remember how it felt when you loved me," he delivers plaintively, and there's a special heartstring tug that goes with the lyric.

Vocally, Lemar is beyond great. His strong, assured voice is rounded and deep, making soulful singing sound effortless with a really quite expansive range.

Unfortunately, there are errors with the song - not least its tempo, which jars slightly with the emotional content - but the whole enterprise flows much American R&B which is too often so over-stylised that the real feeling is drained from the lyrics with aplomb.

Go to the top of the class, Lemar.

The Days - No Ties

2009-03-18T13:47:00.003Z

(Music Medication, March 17, 2009)

Single review

This music business thing, this obsession that grips and drives so many - when it comes down to it, the intro is the most important part of it all. It's a 15 second window that any band has to persuade listeners.

Pounding drums lead the way into chugging guitar on No Ties from Devon four-piece The Days. It's pretty good - rocking like Heavy Stereo - a spot of rock, a spot of glam.

And the the vocals come in, and it all goes off the boil.

Singer Luke makes a meal of the lyric, which is really just another take on an indie boy's boredom with his life. Vegetating in an office and planning his escape, Luke's world view stretches as far as a night out... and then he thinks about getting away from it all for a holiday.

If this all sounds a little pedestrian, that's because it is. "It's there that I start over/'Cos I can do much better" he asserts of this well-earned rest, before an upbeat guitar break.

A feelgood radio hit for the summer months No Ties clearly is - it's positive and relentless, much like S Club 7's Reach.

But it'd sound like so much more if only they'd stopped at the intro.

Illegitimate Sons Of The King - ISK EP

2009-03-18T13:46:00.003Z

(Music Medication, March 17, 2009)

EP review

A London band who show a staggering devotion to style-over-substance is hardly a headline grabber - meaning that Illegitimate Sons Of The King are firmly page five news.

Make no mistake, the four-piece are a real study in what it takes to get noticed - using E4's 'Voiceover Man' as an announcer, packing their new EP with social comment and punchy rhythm.

There's a real mix of genres, which is ISK's prerogative, but it makes for cluttered and confusing listening.

The plinky plonky almost jazz piano on Go You Let Me is melodious and leads in to a tuneful vocal, "Go tell your mother you've been crying on the phone". The skill on the chorus is apparent in the harmonies, "Go, go, you just want to let me go" singer Danny Wilder hollers, and there's real passion in his voice, a real insight into human feeling.

But from that sublime, it's a speedy tumble to the jagged pseudo-Arctic Monkeys ska-style I'll Do It, all shouted vocals and a narrative on societal problems. Rather problematically, the social comment could be outwitted by Alex Turner, and while the chorus line "I'll Do It" is supposedly anthemic, it blurs into a meaningless shout-fest about getting drunk and peer pressure.

The nadir of the release, though, has to be Running In The Family. An ode to the sort of family that ITV2 devotes whole hours of "stranger than fiction" television to, it is lyrically concerned with the trappings of "modern life". In ISK's view, that is neighbours from hell up to all sorts. They flag up drug dealing and neglected children in an incredibly patronising, nauseating fashion, and all for the sake of a pop song. It is ill-advised, to say the least.

Talented and doubtless deserving, ISK have potential for success if they stick with quality - strong, well-written pop songs. It's up to them to go away and write some.

Dieter Schöön - Lablaza

2009-03-17T22:39:00.002Z

(For The Record, March 17, 2009)

Album review

An explosion into a Beck-style percussion landscape is the inimitable introduction to Swedish psychedelic pioneer Dieter Schöön.

Multi-lingual, multi-instrumental and sincerely multi-talented, the vocal is icily cool, Germanic consonants which call Berlin-era Bowie to mind.

Opener 'Manuel' is a swish Roxy Music-meets-Scissor Sisters electronica affair, but loses its way and runs about a minute too long.

The mariachi trumpets of laidback 'Mary Jane' call to mind Hello Saferide's 'High School Stalker', and with Schöön's trademark Julian Casablancas-style vocal, the references flood in throughout the record.

Although each track is executed with a degree of musical professionalism that evades some, there is a distinct lack of warmth to the sound.

'Warm Hearts', which pays homage to nothing so much as a stoned Kraftwerk, is laden with Schöön's heavily-accented english, but even its classic waltz rhythm and synthesized melody can't bring the much needed human touch.

A much needed injection of emotion comes in the form of the atmospheric, tragically-themed 'Soft And Slow', building to a heart-rending crescendo with the lyric, "Where you been so long?" bringing the listener into a world of hurt, but it's quickly business as usual with the ruthlessly efficient 'I'll Go There' and 'Auf Wiedersehen'.

Schöön shows talent and promise, but there's something lacking in the execution. Perhaps the next record will see Schöön shine.

The Rakes - 1989

2009-03-17T14:41:00.001Z

(For the Record, March 17, 2009)

Close your eyes and imagine Gina Yashere.

Yes, yes, just do it.

You can only see her head, and her lips are flapping away, saying something like, "It was such a happy moment," or something equally profound, about Scott and Charlene's wedding, or the day Samantha Fox's 'Touch Me' went to number three with a bullet.

Well, Yashere was actually the star guest in I Love 1986.

What we want to see is I Love 1989. Which didn't have Yashere present, but did feature Frank Bruno, Judy Finnegan and Leslie Grantham.

Or, oh look, The Rakes. They love 1989. So much that they penned this little ditty about the wonder of the year.

Rocking in a very angular, indie sort of a way, the melodic guitar line seems to bow to Bowie's 'China Girl' and The Vapors' 'Turning Japanese' (neither of which were 1989 singles, so that could be imagined), crystal clear and chiming.

Alan Donohoe's curiously flat voice cuts through the jangle, intoning his memories of 1989; "Punks were hanging out in the park/While someone practised electric guitar" apparently.

Other people remember shell suits and home perms, but The Rakes have retained only the coolest events of the fag-end of the second worst decade since the birth of rock.

Slicing through the rose-tinted recollections, the "lala la la la" chorus smacks of radio-friendly pop brilliance, and the parting shot of "1989... It was 1989" wavers Donohoe tremulously.

I love 1989.

Favours For Sailors - Furious Sons

2009-03-17T14:30:00.001Z

(Muso's Guide, March 17, 2009)

Album reviews

One can only guess at what sort of bonuses Favours For Sailors are offering to seamen.

But when their music is as upbeat and glorious as this, who cares? A mini-album from a maxi-talent, Furious Sons couldn’t help but succeed, containing as it does the best feelgood hit of the non-summer, ‘I Dreamt That I Dreamt That You Loved Me In Your Dreams’.

A gorgeous pop single, it turns out to be a sensationally good pick to trail the wonder of Favours For Sailors, perfectly reflecting as it does the poppy, sunny, essentially Weezer-ness of what it is that Favours For Sailors have to offer. Opener here, ‘Erode My Empire’, is certainly showcasing the good side of tunesmiths like Weezer before they lost it, starting out with a melodious guitar part which cannot be derailed by a hollered “BOOM!”.

An enthusiastic vocal from frontman Jon covers the disappearance of one man’s land thus; “Empires erode from the coastline in/And I’ll be left in a square metre in the middle/Probably in Nottingham”. ‘No Room At The Buffet’ is POWER POP, holding back no capital letters. The sweet harmonies are there again, something like Silver Sun from back in the day, and with a guitar part informed by J Mascis’ classic on Dinosaur Jr’s ‘Feel The Pain’, it is a standout track and no mistake.

All of Favours For Sailors’ songs seem to be over too soon - although the flipside of that is that they leave you wanting more, always an enviable position to be in. ‘The Nihilist Prays’ is just such a song - a nicely complicated musical arrangement with with requisite melodic harmonies.

On ‘Shy Times’, a skittery pop song with dance pretensions, the skill is in the vocal, paying more mind to Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci than anything else and leading to a punchy, interesting chorus. Finishing up on ‘Our Name’, Furious Sons does something quite insane for the first 20 seconds, offering a set of swollen strings for the intro sounds more suited to Kanye West’s latest single release than in this arena of tuneful indie pop.

The pomp gives way to well-judged chart-friendly pop goes some way to explaining the boy’s unusual moniker. Starting off, “I was pushed from the cliff by a jealous man and his hands” and a nice chorus line of “oh ooh oh” which gets the foot tapping, giving way to “Even your lover’s come to save you/When you’re tied to a chair doing favours for sailors”.

So now you know. Ask yourself - what favours would you do for a sailor? With music like this at stake, the answer is; pretty much anything they favour they damn well pleased.

Lilies On Mars - My Liver Hurts

2009-03-17T11:04:00.001Z

(Muso's Guide, March 17, 2009)

Single review

After a tough night out, who can honestly say that their liver doesn't hurt? It's almost the mark of a success.

Lisa Dply Masia and Marina Cristofalo are two lovely young Italian ladies who have seen fit to write a whole song about such an hepatic concern.

OK, so that’s a lie. It’s not about that at all.

Who knows what it’s about - there’s not much of a clue as a subtle, mid-tempo drumbeat ushers in a simple guitar line with a minor twist.

The female vocal arrives with an ethereal beauty and something ghostly to boot. “You make me sick,” it goes, before a girlish lullaby “La la la” takes over.

All the while, the guitar gets brasher and more in control, but by contrast, the vocal is even more like a child’s, “Listen to me/My little friend/You found me/Now let me free”.

The vocal is spooky and unnerving, but not more so than the accompanying video.]

Opening on a shot of the moon, the shot shifts and closes in on what seems to be a ragdoll.

The ragdoll stands and wanders through what looks like a toy scrapyard, pausing to look at a bear with an eye missing and ambling desolately through this place of horror.

The ragdoll stares at the moon, thousands of miles out of reach, and then happens upon a moth. Fluttering and flying, the ragdoll is mesmerised by the creature, and take it upon her hand, befriending it.

Unfortunately, it is shortlived, as the next scene sees ragdoll Red Riding-like with moth wings sewn to her back, and the moth struggling for survival having had its body rent asunder.

The ragdoll ends her tale attempting to take flight with her ill-gotten wings, the giant moon filling the shot and her hopes.
Creepy and unusual as the video is, the song matches it, building to a crescendo as the hideous act takes place.

It truly is a jaundiced view of the world.

BM LINX - Kids On Fire

2009-03-15T19:17:00.003Z

(For The Record, March 15, 2009)

Single review

Another day, another effortlessly cool NYC beat combo. Is there some sort of factory churning them out at such a rate, so exquisitely formed and without flaw?

Well, obviously not, because these BM LINX musicians spring to attention thanks to the efforts of Brit producer Alan Moulder whose breathtaking CV includes work with Depeche Mode, Gary Numan, The Jesus and Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine.

Take that, Yankees.

'Kids On Fire' starts as if with a sonic boom, all fur flying and exclamation. A relentless beat plunges the ear straight into indie dance territory, but this is no old retread - exhilarating to the last.

Vocalist Tony Diodore spits the lyrics with a venom which braces, and the charisma positively leaps from the speakers with each note. It's hard to pick out the actual poetry on show here - why the kids are on fire is actually anybody's guess - but with Diodore's great vocal invoking Dandy Warhols howler Courtney Taylor, the whole thing packs a terrific punch.

The relentless electro beeps give birth to a chugging behemoth of cool, sounding for all the world like a Men, Women and Children-meets-The Rapture love-in - meaty, heavy and not to be messed with.

The second track on the single is more of the same, a grimy underground dance hit with a penchant for synths. Lovely indeed.

Starsailor - All The Plans

2009-03-13T20:57:00.001Z

(Muso's Guide, March 13, 2009)

Album review

If anyone has been holding their breath for the new Starsailor record, here’s some exciting news for your respiratory system.

Four years since the last, James Walsh and his compadres have emerged from their recording cocoon with a long-player which does nothing to break down social barriers but plenty to soothe your ailing record collection, rife with passion and sex and all that dangerous stuff. Starsailor are here to blandify everything!

Sorry, that is needlessly cruel and playground bullyish.

In truth, Walshy’s familiar warble striking up on opener ‘Tell Me It’s Not Over’ is a welcome sound. His voice exudes a mournful quality which makes the fool of expressionless vocalists like Julian Casablancas or Bob Dylan - adding exuberant expression to the simplest of lyrics, and marking Starsailor out from their contemporaries.

‘Boy In Waiting’ starts up like ‘Unchained Melody’ and offers an over-appreciation of sleighbells, but by the time ‘The Thames’ kicks in, there’s a real sniff of rock in the air. A twangy guitar that would make Duane Eddy blush, awash with James’ melancholy, “Is love just a big mistake/Just a risk that we all take/Trying to keep the blues away” - as a track, it is really strong, but there’s unfortunately nothing that makes it a possible single release.

The title track boasts some of the delicious flavour of their 2001 debut Love Is Here, the band’s strongest record, while ‘Hurts Too Much’ is the ‘Alcoholic’ of this outing, jampacked with loss and heartache, explaining, “We all get burned sometimes”.

The joke of this all is that bands like Starsailor and Embrace laid the hefty foundations in emotional rock, which made it possible for young pups like Keane and Snow Patrol to scamper in and appropriate it for themselves, so now the old guard have to fight for their position.

Speaking of which, it would be remiss not to point out that Starsailor have been taking notes at the Keane series of lectures on ‘The Gravity of Piano’, adding portent and knowing to the first bars of ‘Tell Me It’s Not Over’ with pounded ivories.

The woozy, boozy piano of ‘Change My Mind’ is all their own, as is the miserable ‘Stars And Stripes’ - more’s the pity because lyrically it’s a bit of a horror, invoking patriotism gone awry, “Stars and stripes won’t keep you warm at night/Keep those evil empires from your door’”.

By and large, Starsailor - more so than Embrace - display a skill at ‘this sort of thing’, and in Walsh, they have some of the most interesting and creative vocal work around, this year or any year.

But it all seems just a little bit limp, and there’s nothing on display here that will make you a fan if you weren’t already, you can breathe easy on that.

War Child - Heroes

2009-03-11T21:58:00.000Z

(Muso's Guide, March 11, 2009)

Album reviews

Everyone should buy Heroes. This isn’t an end-of-review spoiler, or a statement that affirms the bringing together of musical heavyweights such as Rufus Wainwright and Elbow can only go well. The main reason to buy Heroes is War Child, the charity behind the record.

Wait! Keep reading! The music bit comes soon! But this is important too! You should know that 66% of people who die in conflict are children, and War Child is a 16-year-old attempt to help protect them. No guilt-tripping, honest, but that surely has to be the best reason you’ve heard this year for parting with a tenner.

So, to the music… Heroes pulls no punches from the off, starting out with Beck and a version of Bob Dylan’s ‘Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat’. A mist of fuzz rock guitar and a familiar Hansen vocal suffice to prove that Beck doing Dylan sounds a lot more like Beck than Dylan. Roxy Music may be upset to find that Scissor Sisters have buggered up ‘Do The Strand’ beyond recognition. Shrill and soulless, it is what can only be termed the ‘Comfortably Numb’ effect, and leaves Roxy fans gasping for breath with insult.

Critics’ choice TV On The Radio make a good fist of disturbing Bowie’s old bones with an electronica-heavy version of the titular ‘Heroes’, which owes more to Talking Heads than the Thin White Duke, as per most of their output. On the plus side, Franz Ferdinand taking on the angular might of Blondie’s ‘Call Me’ is a wet dream for anyone who hoped for a world where the perfect artrock splice might occur. Alex Kapranos approaches the whole thing with the air of a man who knows camp becomes him, and it does.

Or there’s Peaches pulling on her Iggy Pop suit for a right rumpus with the unfeasibly filthy ‘Search And Destroy’, smearing her scent on it like a stray cat. The accomplishment of the album is, on balance, fair. It offers a great opportunity to hear some irrefutably interesting music, and that is what being a fan is about. But regardless of what it sounds like, there can be no argument against buying this record at this time. Do it for the kids.

Lady Of The Sunshine - Smoking Gun

2009-03-11T12:07:00.003Z

(Muso's Guide, March 11, 2009)

Album reviews

Fresh from the tender A Book Like This album recorded with his sister Julia, Aussie Angus Stone shows once again that there isn’t a musical style that he cannot turn his hand to.
On opener ‘Silver Revolver’ - rest assured, the predilection for firearms titles ends here - the guitar speaks volumes, while the slightly dispassionate vocal fails to ignite. Presently, a poppier side to the track makes itself known, but the self-flagellating nature of the lyrics - “All I’ve ever been to myself is my own enemy” - makes for a heavy listen.

From there to ‘Home Sweet Home’, Angus morphs casually into a sort of Jack Johnson/Jason Mraz hybrid, and all would seem to be lost - until ‘White Rose Parade’.

Bizarrely, considering the the high points of A Book Like This, Lady Of The Sunshine’s strength lies, not in the gentle guitar strumming which he made his own on the familial hit from the year, but in the sort of bluesy, rocky tracks of which ‘White Rose Parade’ is the jewel.

Rocking in gently - think Bon Jovi circa ‘Midnight In Chelsea’ as opposed to Lemmy - the bluesier side of Angus really builds up, and the whole thing quite pleasantly rollicks along, sort of like Mark Owen singing for the White Stripes.

‘Jack Nimble’ shows Angus contemplating the darker side of life, where the character catches his wife “messing with another man/He got his gun and shot them down”. The mention of the nursery rhyme character invokes Don McLean’s ‘American Pie’, and there’s some pretty heavy guitar distortion which renders the whole thing very dramatic indeed.

The slightly schizophrenic ‘King Black Magic’, brings both sides of the Stone coin together, sort of like Turin Brakes getting down with a jagged antisocial buzz saw of a tune, but even on this one track, it’s clear where Angus’ strength lies.

When Angus does it right, he damn near kicks off a rock revolution; the title track crashes in out of a feedback wilderness, with a yowling vocal that would make Jon Spencer Blues Explosion proud.
But without Julia’s intriguing vocal to lift the acoustic numbers, some of the gentler tracks like ‘Anna’ wind up being little more than gentle little hiccups, momentary diversions, without any real staying power.

Perhaps Lady Of The Sunshine is a mere dalliance for this talented singer songwriter. If we’re lucky, Angus will see the rock direction as more than that, and return to the scene of the Smoking Gun very soon.

Fucked Up - Year Of The Rat

2009-03-10T09:44:00.000Z

(Muso's Guide, March 10, 2009)

Single reviews

A timely release from some very calendar-conscious youngsters, ‘Year Of The Rat’ is here to mark our liberation from the year of the rat, which crashed to its ending on January 25.
Despite being saddled with an altogether offensive and distracting moniker, Fucked Up are more than just needless expletives.

Canadian, but hardcore, so not at all dull, ‘Year Of The Rat’ sees the sextet firstly easing their way atmospherically into an 11-minute guitar and percussion-driven freak out.

As what was known in the old days as an ‘A side’, ‘Year Of The Rat’ is staunchly inaccessible, but tremendously exciting for it, a testosterone-heavy, axe-smothered, drum-engorged epic, with harmonious guitar sounds falling somewhere between Blind Melon and … And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead.

Anyway, that’s all good stuff, but there’s an elephant in the middle of this review which needs to be addressed: Fucked Up vocalist Pink Eyes. Not to imply Pink Eyes is an elephant, although clearly an elephant would have more of a grasp of a tuneful vocal, even an elephant who takes up the mic in a hardcore band.

Suffice it to say, you either enjoy the torturous screaming/shouting/anger noise thing, or you’re over 15 years old.

Although it’s been mooted that lyrically ‘Year Of The Rat’ is primarily concerned with political statements and overthrowing the shackles of modern society’s all-pervasive ills, the vocal is unfortunately so mangled so as to prohibit identification of actual subject matter, save for the end quote of a man referring to how the secretary of state told him once “You’d better be prepared to pull the trigger”.

One would assume more Condoleezza Rice than Hillary Clinton because these young beatniks like going head-to-head with cold-blooded Republicans considerably more than with fluffy-wuffy Democrats, regardless of which side will be guaranteed a soundtrack of the devil’s own music in the blazing hereafter.

Musically adept and criminally rocking, there’s a small part of Fucked Up who should be very proud of what they’ve achieved with ‘Year Of The Rat’. Let’s hope they club together for the other part to get some singing lessons.

BLACK LIPS - 200 MILLION THOUSAND

2009-03-09T16:31:00.001Z

(Choon online, March 9, 2009)

Album review

As far as mythology goes, the Black Lips have one of the greatest rock’n'roll tales of the modern era. A band that was brought together by circumstance, has been plagued by controversy and death, and still managed to produce five excellent studio albums. That’s quite something.

Opening track - rabble-rousing rocker ‘Take My Heart’ - sees the Atlanta, Georgia quartet channelling the best work of Jagger, all guttural vocal yowls and the best sort of rock - tinged with rockabilly rhythms and characterised by twanging guitar.

On the doo-wop dalliance of ‘Drugs’, the band are on tuneful form, with singer Cole Alexander invoking the Ramones’ shambolic vocal style, and sounding for all the world like a gang of hoary old punks instead of the bright-eyed youngsters they are. ‘Starting Over’ , meanwhile, offers shades of Exile On Main Street’s ‘Tumbling Dice’ - all swagger and posturing.

The Black Lips do tend to sound like a band 30 years out of date, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have a sense of humour. On ‘Trapped In A Basement’, they have a wry edge - “I’m trapped in a basement and my food is running out” - but the ghostly female backing vocal and mournful guitar make it a real horror of a tack, imbued with despair.

‘Short Fuse’ has a jagged guitar part that would make any artrocker swoon, from Television to Franz Ferdinand, while ‘I’ll Be With You’ turns into a slower tempo romance record.

The spirit of the 50s and 60s is strong in the Lips, which all goes to make some breathtaking records, with humour and heart, but, wonderfully, the ability to rock. It’s one thing carving out the rock’n'roll myth on a personal basis, but making the music is something else again. Black Lips have been judged first and foremost for their accomplished recorded output, and that’s what could make this band truly legendary.

Still fresh the second time

2009-03-06T16:07:00.000Z

(Muso's Guide, Friday 6 March, 2009)

FROM the very first chiming chords of Men In Prison and folk singer-songwriter Jackie Leven's trademark Scottish burr, the magic of this record cannot be denied - even though it is almost a decade since its original release.

Winter is the first in a series of double albums entitled The Haunted Year from Leven, originally released earlier in his illustrious career but dusted off now to be enjoyed anew.

The delicious eight-track Men In Prison still sounds fresh, recorded live in Bergen Men's Prison in Norway only adding to its depth. The wonder of Leven is profound here, with songs like An Extremely Violent Man pressing all the most emotive buttons.

Munich Blues, from a live performance 2002 in the southern German city, shines throughout, but the particular poignancy of I Saw My Love Walk Into The Clouds proves that Leven's work is blessed with a multilayered genius which only blooms and blossoms with repeated listens.

War Child - Heroes

2009-03-06T12:36:00.002Z

(4ortherecord.com, March 6, 2009)

Album review

Duffy's usually unfeasibly husky voice cracks cracks on Paul McCartney and Wings' 1973 classic, it all becomes clear - this is what War Child is great at.

Yeah, sure, there's all that helping out kids in war zones stuff - good work - but what we hear when the record goes on is the unmistakable sound of musical history being made.

One of the artists of the year covering a song written by one of the most successful British songwriters of all time = priceless.

Duffy isn't the only one to confound and astound here - other modern acts given their chance to shine are Elbow, with a pretty great version of U2's 'Running The Stand Still', TV On The Radio with a unique take on Bowie's 'Heroes' and Beck with his own inimitable stamp on Dylan's 'Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat'.

Oft-maligned The Kooks make a really great fist of The Kink's 'Victoria' - not Ray Davies' boys' greatest moment, but given a really nice treatment from the wonky-voweled Brighton beat combo.

Karen O shows how she is the great lost Ramone on the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' 'Sheena Is A Punk Rocker', offering the perfect balance of 'fuck you' cool and vocal histrionics.

Perhaps the greatest event on the record is Estelle's version of 'Superstition'. Her honey-smooth vocals bring the Stevie Wonder classic bang up to date with the merest hint of cheek, proving how soulful her voice can sound with the right material.

The icing on the cake has to be Peaches doing Iggy on 'Search And Destroy' - although it's tough to see how anyone could make Ignacious sound any dirtier, the Berlin-based bawd makes it her business to rip into it.

If you buy one album this week, wouldn't you prefer it to be packed with quality tracks brought to life by the very cream of the musical crop?

Go on. It's for charity.