SoundsXP.com - indie, folk and alt-country reviews

Trimdon Grange Explosion: Trimdon Grange Explosion

Sun, 19 Mar 2017 22:11:23 PST

We last (first) heard of Trimdon Grange Explosion in 2010, when they released a single on Great Pop Supplement, a cover of Judy Henske and Jerry Yester’s ‘Raider’. Of course we knew the band members before that: Alison Cotton, Mark Nicholas, Karl Sabino and Ben Philippson were part of the greatly admired and much-missed The Eighteenth Day of May. But, apart from individual projects, we heard nothing else of TGXP until the debut album landed this year.

And what a record! It plays with tradition but is utterly contemporary and is best described as hyphenated folk; the tags “alt-”, “acid-” and psych-” could all be appended to the “folk” on this record. The centrepiece is ‘The Bonnie Banks Of Fordie’, whose traditional lyrics of death and dishonour are newly arranged by TGXP to 10 minutes of pulsing Velvet Underground rhythms and fields of fuzzy and phase-shifting guitars. Album closer ‘Glass And Sand’ reverses the pattern with lyrics by Ben set to a traditional tune, though one which gently smoulders then explodes into spacey effects.

The songs have a dreamy feel, best likened to the historical reimaginings of Ben Wheatley’s ‘A Field In England’; the space they occupy is outwardly familiar but has a sense of menace and magic too. ‘Poor Wayfaring Stranger’ might be traditional but Alison’s haunting voice and mournful viola, hitched to a primal percussive heartbeat, transports it to a shadowy netherworld of loss and emotion. ‘Twenty-Four Hours’ takes that English folk-format and dissolves it in droning viola and chiming guitars. ‘Weeping And Wailing’ might sound ancient, particularly the way Alison’s sorrowful vocals apply a patina of doom, but it’s actually a more recent composition by former-miner and Sahara explorer Ted Edwards. The guitar-plosive ‘Heading For A Fall’, meanwhile, is like Richard Thompson at his most scathing.

The stand out song, for a number of reasons is ‘Christians’ Silver Hell’. Melodic, jangling 90s-style guitar pop with a charmingly ramshackle feel, it’s a marriage of Big Star and Dinosaur Jr, or the best Teenage Fanclub tune you never heard. It illustrates what works with TGXP: a communion with tradition but a fearless ability to mix up styles so that old forms have a new vitality.

Pulco: Farmyard & Library

Wed, 31 Aug 2016 23:12:26 PST

In the rich tradition of Welsh weirdness (start with Datblygu and the Super Furry Animals and keep heading West via Cate Le Bon and H Hawkline), Ash Cooke creates “collage pop”, cutting and pasting all sorts of ideas together, from pop to far-flung experimentalism, and mixing in found sounds. Ash has pop history in his favour, as the former singer and guitarist in the turn-of-the century Derrero, but he adds heavy layering and twisted concepts, just like the artwork which features on his Bandcamp page. ‘The Universal Solder’ (nice pun!) is a good example: to the backing of a niggly guitar riff and flushing toilet, Ash recites what sounds like a manual for soldering metals in a progressively hysterical voice. ‘Which One’s Woody’ sounds like a stoned conversation, as he recites daytime TV titles. ‘Just Add Water’ is strange and compelling, seemingly a scientific treatise in which the words make sense and the music doesn’t! The vocal to ‘Spinning Tops’ appears to be a looped “uh” or, possibly, a modest belch.

But that’s the avant side; ‘Running Up A Descending Escalator’ and, especially, ‘Sadowitz’ have the hard-pop sound of the Fall, a full-tilt rhythm matched with stream-of-consciousness declamatory vocals: “hey American card magician!” ‘I Like My Own Seat on the Train’ has a Cate Le Bon-like indie quirkiness while ‘Unleash The Hounds’ takes verses constructed from sweet pop moments and slices them up with choruses full of jagged guitar and found sound. Best of all, ‘Towards A Total Art’ sounds like something from the Elephant 6 collective, poppy, catchy yet strange.

There are 18 tracks on Farmyard & Library, 43 minutes in all, and no idea is used more than once. It’s a crazy collation of thoughts and sounds, with a liberal dose of what sounds like chance recordings, possessed by a crazy momentum and an eldritch spirit. It’s weird and yet makes perfect sense: a pop epiphany.

(Farmyard And Library is released on CD by Recordiau Prin but cassette and lathe-cut vinyl is also available from Bristol label Liquid Library.)

Chin of Britain: The Weasel Is At The Bridge

Tue, 30 Aug 2016 23:08:53 PST

The second album by Chin Keeler since his eponymous debut in 2013, this has a puzzling title, a disturbing cover photo and an addictive groove fleshed out by wall-of-sound guitar pop. The man once of Quickspace and Dark Captain, to name but two of his old bands, now combines elements of Beefheart, Can, Moon Duo, My Bloody Valentine and Sly & The Family Stone into a cascade of melodic noise and twisty rhythms that holds you spellbound. Afrobeat, avant garde, funk, post-punk and 90s guitar rock are all represented in the DNA of The Weasel…

On ‘Last Seen Alive’, as befits the drummer he’s been, Chin really gets his groove on, mixing a krautrock metronymic beat with funky basslines and some electronic dance music tricks. ‘Until The Sun Goes Down’ has a propulsive rhythm and grinding guitars but a killer melody too, like the ghost of MBV or early Teenage Fanclub, while the uber-rhythmic ‘DWMT’ piles on the guitars. And by way of contrast, ‘Physiology’ is quiet, fluttering electronica and ‘We Are New Here’ is sinuous psych-pop, while ‘It’s Too Late’ closes the album with an epic post-rock tune, like a psychedelic guitar opera, soaring and growing until it supernovas.

It’s widescreen in its influences, monumental in its sound, impressive for the way that Chin wrote, played and recorded every note. It has a beat like fury, guitars that chime and crash as required, and a classic funky backbone. There might be lots going on but the weird-pop visions summoned by those contrasting sounds make perfect pop sense.

The Chills: Kaleidoscope World

Mon, 15 Aug 2016 15:18:17 PST

Search for “Kaleidoscope World” and you’ll find links to a Filipino rapper and an album of toothless, bland 80s pop by Swing Out Sister but it takes some digging before you find mention of the Chills’ first LP release. It’s a travesty but illustrates the low-key nature and cult hero status of the Chills. Persevere and you’ll discover one of the key New Zealand bands, rooted in post-punk and Syd Barrett-psychedelia married to great off-kilter and dark-tinged pop.

Kaleidoscope World is a collection of singles and compilation tracks, including their tracks from the Dunedin Double EP that lit the fuse for Flying Nun. Originally an 8 track vinyl release (it came out here on Creation Records), it was expanded on CD to 18 tracks and this release follows that track listing, with a bonus 6 outtakes, demos and live songs. The title track sums up the attraction of the Chills, combining Velvet Underground rhythms with Syd Barrett-style sci-fi philosophising. It’s a love song with more than a hint of sadness: artistic, imaginative, colourful, moody and poetic. The record also includes some of the best Chills tracks ever. ‘Pink Frost’ is generally held to be their masterpiece: a haunted post-punk death-tale that’s built from chirruping guitars, bouncy basslines and weightless keyboards. Yet the lovelorn ‘Doledrums’ is its equal, full of chugging rhythms, quirky melodies and a soaring chorus, while ‘Rolling Moon’ has a punk-inspired momentum and the magnificent ‘I Love My Leather Jacket’ is celebratory and anthemic, even though the subject is the death of a close friend.

The other side of the Chills is represented here too, from the nightclub noir of ‘Purple Girl’ to ‘Flamethrower’’s Barrett-like sing-song rhythms and the medieval tones of ‘Dream By Dream’. The extras include a rowdy version of ‘Oncoming Day’, full of punk ferocity, and the punk-poppy ‘Smile From A Dead Dead Face’.

The 24 tracks show the attraction of the Chills’ melodic pop but also capture that sense of otherness (they were, after all, from next door to Antarctica) that restricted them to being critical favourites. But thirty years later, the strength and purity of that original Chills vision still shines strong, the power and influence of these songs (I swear that ‘Hidden Boy’ is Blur, only 20 years early) remaining undiminished. Every half-decent collection should include Kaleidoscope World (not the Swing Out Sister one though).

Thee Oh Sees: Live In San Francisco

Mon, 15 Aug 2016 15:13:35 PST

Live albums are usually the poor relation in a band’s history. By definition, the playing is rawer and the songs less well recorded than the studio versions. They’re often a nice gig souvenir for those who’ve seen the band in action but you wouldn’t play the live version in preference to the record.

That’s a general principle but it’s occasionally upturned by a record that captures the brutal energy and feral attraction of the artist. That was true of the MC5’s Kick Out The Jams and Sonic Youth’s Walls Have Ears and it’s true of Thee Oh Sees’ Live in San Francisco. There’s something raw and unstable in an Oh Sees record, something that follows instinct and embraces experimentalism, that makes this so listenable in its own right.

Recorded at The Chapel over three nights in July 2015, on the tour supporting the release of Mutilator Defeated At Last, the record catches the whole anarchic punk/garage-rock ramalama dynamic of Thee Oh Sees, from the sleazy thrash-power of ‘I Come From The Mountain’ to the turbulent 15 minute hypno-trip of ‘Contraption’, via the dystopic darkness of ‘Web’ and the mosh-inducing hounds-of-hell-possessed ‘Tunnel Time’. The songs are driven by the double-drumming dynamic of Ryan Moutinho and Dan Rincon, which is compelling on the deep heavy psych of ‘Man In A Suitcase’ and impressively consistent on ‘Contraption’. And throughout John Dwyer cranks out killer riffs (‘Tidal Wave’, ‘Web’), gets all Marc Bolan metallic on ‘Toe Cutter Thumb Buster’, or goes right into the red with his screams and scything guitar (‘Sticky Hulks’).

The bonus DVD allows you to check visually what your ears are telling you. While nothing beats seeing them in the flesh (one of my all time favourite gigs was a superheated show at the Luminaire, where condensed sweat flowed down the walls in rivers), the DVD gives you a good idea of the energy and abandon of a live set by Dwyer and band. It’s a defining picture of one of our greatest bands in action – if you want to know who and what Thee Oh Sees are, here’s a great starting point.

MJ Hibbett & The Validators: Still Valid

Mon, 04 Jul 2016 11:59:59 PST

Indiepop. It’s not a career, it’s a community. There’s fun if not fame, gigs if not glory, cult status if not stardom. And that’s the theme of ‘We Did It Anyway’, the closing track on Mark Hibbett’s sixth studio album (tenth album in total) with his Validators. To borrow the title of that cheap 60s EMI Records’ imprint, this is simply “music for pleasure”.

Mark’s a bit of a renaissance man (not quite a Leonardo): songwriter, playwright and aspiring Poet Laureate of Peterborough, who writes and records in a pure DIY way. His reputation, which has been building over the 17 years since his first release, has grown to the point where he now has his own tribute festival, Hibbettfest. In fact, he’s a bit of a cult.

His popularity among those that know him is well earned. He gives good value if you like words but he has a way with melody too. He tells prosaic tales from middle England but he makes the everyday extraordinary. Check how he takes down those Channel 4 clipshows and demystifies the 1980s in ‘The 1980s How It Was’, reminding you that, for all the alternative comedy and New Romantics, we were only 3 minutes from nuclear midnight on the Doomsday Clock.

His targets are picked off clinically but comically. He rails against the stereotypical sexist male monster in ‘That Guy’, who pontificates over culture (“comparing One Direction to Chaucer”), is cautious over curry, and is left “masturbating in a skip”, while he punctures political posturing in ‘Burn It Down And Start Again’, in piss-taking but effective style. Satire’s hard but he makes it look easy, washing down every barbed line with a melodic musical shot.

His versatile Validators provide solid back up. ‘You Make Me Feel (Soft Rock)’ is an exuberant love song, incorporating the only use of “wazzock” in modern pop, which only makes it sound more authentic. ‘20 Things To Do Before You’re 30’ is catchy indiepop and ‘In The North Stand’ is an affecting description of lower division football as a distraction from parental separation, with sighing violin, trumpet blasts and some sweet melodic touches. The same violin soars on the epic ‘Hills And Hollows’, turning the band into an East Midlands Arcade Fire, and transforming hills into mountains in a celebration of everyday Englishness.

And that’s the job of Hibbett. He’s one of us, hymning the simple pleasures but doing so in ways that set you smiling. As long as he does that, he’s a positive force in pop - a national treasure with a regional accent.

Dan Michaelson and the Coastguards: Memory

Mon, 04 Jul 2016 10:47:21 PST

You can’t ignore the evidence: scientists have proven that sad music is much better for our emotional health. So forget statins and 20 minutes of hard walking each day; listening to a half-hour of Dan Michaelson’s take on heartbreak, misread signals and infidelity is the sort of national tonic that could reduce the burden on the NHS.

Dan’s baritone has the shabby grandeur of Serge Gainsbourg and Lee Hazelwood, with a touch of Josh T Pearson’s deflated majesty. He makes every song a short-form novel, word-painting each situation until you shiver at the same agonies in lines like “the cold in your eyes knocks the wind out of me” (‘Tides’). Like his last two releases with the Coastguards, Distance and Blindspot, the songs on Memory are heavy with disappointment, despair and shattered promises. ‘Tides’ is a pleading request to an uninterested ex, where you sense the hurt in every syllable, while ‘Undo’ is an acknowledgement that you can forgive but you can’t always forget.

The songs can be a catalogue of emotional battering but, even when the narrator is paralysed by doubt and rejection, the song’s arrangements rally around to lift the spirits. Tracks begin with Dan’s voice and a splash of piano, and maybe some scuffed drums. At some point Dan’s enhanced band will kick in with a fuller sound, though it’s done with subtlety; it’s particularly pleasing to hear strings and brass swathe these songs in glorious regret, as on the lush ‘No Other Way’. In ‘Missing Piece’, the emotion builds up in hypnotic cycles, with squalls of muted brass and twinkling guitars used in an understated but effective fashion. The title track has a real lightness of touch as Dan pours out heartbreak after heartbreak as the band add lush textures to the song’s simple form. ‘Undo’ is chilly and sinister, ‘No Other Way’ has the same scalpel sharp lyricism as Bill Callahan, while closer ‘Half The Reason’ is stately, sad and emotional.

For all glass-half-empty people, this is the perfect pick-me-up, his best album so far of minimal, downbeat but perfectly crafted emotional pop.

Cosines: Transitions

Sun, 03 Jul 2016 22:49:20 PST

The band claim to be in a period of transition between 2014’s first album indiepop and a new record scheduled for 2017, and this EP starts to define the new direction with a confident experimental tone. It opens, though, with the cool and poised indiepop of ‘Let’s Start It Over’, mixing up Stereolab and New Order to pull some ecstatic dancefloor shapes. ‘Ra’ is far stranger, full of mysterious and exotic krautrock rhythms, while ‘Chaos Theory’ is minimalist synth pop with skronky jazz saxophones and dry, Saint-Etienne-style vocals. ‘Dunbar’ is the protest-song electro/pop stand out, which was written to play at the Buffalo Bar just before it closed down. It’s performed at a ferocious pace and burns with a righteous anger at the property developers who closed the venue: “all you guys with the money should just leave our shit alone”. It sums up the EP: powerfully pulsing rhythms, energetic melodies and a fearless way with pop clearly inspired by predecessors but unafraid to mess with the familiar templates.

Palomica: Petito

Sun, 03 Jul 2016 22:45:32 PST

Nicol Parkinson is Palomica, whose second album is awkward, raw bedroom pop, a little ungainly but rescued by a rare melodic sense. The influences come from everywhere; the Pastels and Jad Fair might be spiritual mentors but ‘Ribbons’ sounds like the Velvet Underground smothered in glitchy noise while the quick-footed, melodic indiepop of ‘Honeydew’ has the word-streams and boy-girl duetting of Belle & Sebastian. That works best for Parkinson’s voice, which has a Stuart Murdoch-style feyness best suited to those lighter tunes. If you have an issue with the voice, the songs are saved by the gorgeous melodic twists, like the ear-worming riff to ‘Water Walks’ and ‘Bellyful’’s nuggets of pop. Parkinson’s more avant side is expressed by ‘You Have The Softest Voice, mixing piano, birdsong and found sounds, while the almost 8-minute ‘Big Black Clouds’ is naïve pop that starts broodingly with fumbling chords and scratchy noise and stretches out into a long rhythmic cycle, full of tape manipulation, found sounds and electronic wailing behind a Kevin Ayers-style guitar/piano riff. It’s an intriguing half-hour: sometimes great, sometimes grating. But as DIY experimental pop that’s as sweetened with melody as it’s warped by ambient electronica, it’s worth hearing.

Simon Love: Tennis Fan EP

Tue, 21 Jun 2016 22:46:23 PST

Simon Love doesn’t look the sort to praise our rain-disrupted, Cliff-defaced game of annual summer disappointment but this unlikely sports fan knows the value of a pun or two and in ‘Tennis Fan’, he deploys every double-entendre to add meaning to this tale of relationship wipeout. More bittersweet than Robinson's barley water, he sounds like early-70s Paul McCartney and piles on the fuzzy guitar melancholy until you’re weeping like Andy Murray coming second again. ‘R U Dynamite’ didn’t make the cut for the LP and, to be fair, it wouldn’t really have fitted but on this EP its primal Peter Gunn riff, horn blasts and sneering vocals sound like the finest glam rock/ Northern Soul hybrid, at least until the weird casiotone middle eight strands you looking stupid in the middle of the dancefloor.

It’s a more soulful Simon having his heart broken (again) on ‘Seasonal Affective Disorder #2’, which is lush orchestral pop arranged by A Little Orchestra’s Andy Hudson, while the Orchestra end the EP accompanying Simon on yet another version of ‘Motherfuckers’. Swathe it in all the strings you like, Tourettes boy, but it’s still the finest expletive-laced indiepop putdown ever. Like his 70s pop-star maverick heroes, Simon confidently sets his imagination free to explore every sleazy back alley of pop, always to euphoric effect.

Math And Physics Club: In This Together

Mon, 13 Jun 2016 11:55:15 PST

Subtitled ‘EPs, B-Sides, Rarities and Unreleased Songs 2005-2015’, this white vinyl LP collects rare and up-till-now unreleased songs produced by this Pacific Northwestern band in the first ten years of their existence. The twist is that the songs are in reverse chronological order so it goes from the sweetly melodic REM-style janglepop-with-sumptuous-harmonies of ‘Coastal California, 1985’ back to the Sarah Records inspired ‘Weekends Away’ from their debut EP (a different kind of jangle). Between those points you hear a indiepop band, inspired by (working backwards) The Lucksmiths, the Smiths, Belle & Sebastian and the Field Mice, with Charles Bert’s voice sounding compellingly Morrissey-esque.

That voice fits the literate and thoughtful lyrics. They might be concerned with the romantic ignorance of youth - “what did we know? We were just sixteen and pretty” (‘Sixteen And Pretty’) – but they’re expressed without any of the tongue-tied inarticulacy of the teenager. The Lucksmiths-like ‘Our Own Ending’ packs an ocean of melancholy within its grooves, swept along by waves of gloriously downbeat violin. And imagine a male analogue of Amelia Fletcher lyrically, producing twisted love songs free of cliché, as on ‘Movie Ending Romance’. Dispelling the gloom though is the joyous indiepoppy ‘It Must Be Summer Somewhere’ with its tremulous guitar and sun-chasing: “Rock Lobster on the radio…those girls in the wild bikinis…”

The band has a geeky name, and the songs can stray into a sort of fey indie Belle & Sebastian stereotype with titles to match (‘Do You Keep A Diary?’) but there’s also something stirring and anthemic in the best of these sweetly melodic, heartfelt and life-affirming songs that keeps you hooked on every word and chord change. It’s pop without cynicism, familiar in its sound but attractive all the same.

Slushy Guts: Honey Is Not For The Mouth Of An Ass

Sat, 28 May 2016 05:56:25 PST

The Tooting equivalent of Ty Segall or Thee Oh Sees, Steve a.k.a. Slushy Guts turns out records at a noble rate, quicker even than he produces his stunning posters. The records become more accomplished the more he releases, but don’t lose their questing experimentalism and playful poetics. The songs still have the same echo of the Silver Jews, the albums maintain the same barely produced sound, and the band still uses the same broken equipment and cheap recorders, but the tracks on ‘Honey…’ have lost their approximation and now hit their avant garde aspirations with greater frequency.

‘Partly, Never Really’ is a triumph of discordance, a wall of bedroom noise through which a guitar struggles to be heard, while a dog haunts the background: ramshackle but in the best way. The spooky minimalism of ‘Barely Standing’ follows a different tempo, hardly played, teetering over the abyss of inertia at times, the essence of slo-core. The 84-second ‘Flags Waving In The Airless Vacuum Of Space’ chooses weird time signatures and sounds like a machine malfunctioning, but in a spirit of organised chaos.

Less abstract by comparison to these others, ‘Tales Of The Unexpected’ is more of a song, sweet-sounding and darkly described (“momentarily, my mother went blind”) but then bursts open in a comedy of misplaced hitchhiking, cowshit and feathers. ‘Tomorrow Will Be Wasted’ embraces a very pretty riff and is gentle but distorted while the awesome ‘Refracted’ is a primo-grade proto-rock’n’roll gem, layered with screeching guitars and gut-churning drums for hypnotic effect.

There are 9 releases on Slushy's Bandcamp page and each has something beautifully askew to commend it but this latest release is a new high, exploring further and with more confidence, still scratchy and raw but with a real directing, defining sound: wonky and wonderful.

Great Lakes: Wild Vision

Sun, 24 Apr 2016 19:10:51 PST

We first encountered Great Lakes as bucolic psychedelicists in Athens, Georgia on their Elephant 6-inspired Great Lakes and Distance Between albums (2000/2002), then heard harder urban tones reflecting life in Brooklyn (Diamond Times, 2006) before they explored the great outdoors on Ways of Escape (2010) and finally they put down roots in the country with Wild Vision. The arc is simple but spectacular, mirroring a journey made by Dylan and the Band, and Van Morrison, who grew tired of the city and gravitated to Woodstock, creating their own Cosmic American Music. Wild Vision describes a similar transformation.

Each stage of the Great Lakes story has high points and Wild Vision is no different but the highlight of the album is its country tone. It’s a natural, pastoral Americana that conjures up the Band, Van Morrison and Bobby Charles, apart from the Fleetwood Mac soft rock of ‘I Stay, You Go’. The tone is set by the lyrics of opener ‘Swim The River’: “let’s breathe the purer air and all the old sadness won’t be there”. It’s an invitation to head back to nature and back to a transcendental 70s rock style, guitars soaring, keyboards humming joyously.

Though this is very much Ben Crum’s vision, he’s ably assisted, particularly by Suzanne Nienaber on vocals. ‘Nature is Always True’ is a psychedelic country song, full of mystic allusion to nature’s map that leads to the beyond. Just like the Band, he’s inspired by nature to see through the veil of ‘reality’ and seek what’s really out there. The mystic Americana is then tapped to its full potential on ‘Wild Again’, which is stormy and intense, full of a howling guitar frenzy in the second half. But for all the natural world, the best song ‘Bird Flying’ is the most personal one, a deep-plunging philosophical love song that is all the more affecting for sounding like it was won after many failures and false starts: “I am of this world but she knows of another”.

In our Spotified world of music on tap, the arc of an artist’s musical history is blurred or even lost. What value does a catalogue have when we have the instant-access gratification of a song or album or song that satisfies today’s appetite? Even David Bowie’s Blackstar seems defined purely in terms of the moment of his death and not his life in music. With Great Lakes, submerging yourself in their history makes the impact of the current record even stronger, locating this natural and impulsive pastoral pop in the same topography that makes The Big Pink and its ilk so timeless. If growing older means gaining insight and vision like this, bring on the aging process!

Big Eyes Family Players Neil McSweeny Greystones

Mon, 04 Apr 2016 22:08:20 PST

Neil McSweeney - way too blue...

A low-key Sunday night folk gig in the (rather well appointed) back room of a local pub is the sort of evening that a recent catch-up with the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis has changed forever. Fortunately tonight everyone seems relatively chipper and to be getting on OK, which makes for a more than decent evening.

First up is Neil McSweeney, who is at least partly responsible for the very excellent Gadabout series of gigs that this is part of. His unironic, thoughtful and slightly melancholic tunes have a deservedly high reputation around Sheffield. His attempts to explain how each came about seem to baffle even him slightly, but no matter - the songs do the work themselves and he has a great voice to lend to them.

Big Eyes Family Players

The Big Eyes Family Players have in the past had a bit more national exposure, linking up with James Yorkston on his surprisingly straightforward Folk Songs album. Based around local artist James Green, the Big Eyes name has seen a fair variety of interesting, usually instrumental projects with an experimental bent. Their latest album, Oh!, marks something of a departure from that template and it’s that they play tonight. For Oh! (which has an especially lovely polytechnic-chic sleeve vinyl fans), they’ve built around vocalist and songwriter Heather Ditch, who has brought a restrained psych-folk feel to the set of songs. And a beautiful set it is too. Like McSweeney there’s an unashamed devotion to the craft of writing a good and meaningful song running through them all, with the band helping to create a relatively simple, haunting feel. It’s not all restrained – there’s the odd more abrasive and loud bit which prompts a completely unnecessary apology (though there’s a temptation to stick a head round the door to check if any of the regulars in the bar are splutrering into their Thornbridge pints).

Despite that, it is a low-key evening and perfectly great for that. It’s also a fundraiser for the Peace in the Park festival, which relies of volunteers and donations – there’s a link below….

Colin Stetson Scala London

Thu, 17 Mar 2016 21:01:29 PST

Colin Stetson

“It sounds like a man shouting into a hoover bag full of saxophones.” I can’t remember where I read that description of a track of Colin Stetson’s To See More Light album, but it had me gambolling down the record shop. And I wasn’t disappointed. On Stetson’s albums there plenty going on around the fabulous droning repeating sax sounds – all manner of things up to and including gospel choruses which makes for more than just an avant garde curiosity.

Live it’s just Stetson and his saxes – one the size of a small adult. So you wonder whether something will be lost. It’s certainly not the same experience as the records, but it’s not lesser in any way. In fact it’s genuinely awesome to experience. And you do experience rather than just hear it.

The first thing to strike you is the size of the sound. The Scala is a venue that regularly shakes to the sound of the trains passing beneath it. When Stetson kicks off, building a noise like being trapped inside a particularly expressive ship’s foghorn, any train passing underneath would’ve been paid back in spades. Like a 1-man Swans you could feel him through your feet, thrumming your sternum and in the air as you breathed in.

The next thing that gets you is the technique. The first piece starts with the foghorn howl, but as with the others builds into multi-faceted mixture of drone, howls, repetitions and rhythms. As he suddenly introduces a new aspect, various members of the crowd jostle and crane their necks to get a view of how he’s doing it. The positioning of the mikes though is less important though than the concentration and feel. At any one time he can effectively be playing five different parts – from driving percussion of fingers drumming on the taps, though some manner of baseline, a background drone and more of a melody line punctuated with squawks – and hold it all together while maintaining an impressive level of physical noise.

But for all that, for once, the technique on display would be enough to be worth watching on its own, it’s not that which has gathered a hollering, appreciative crowd. You can think up all sorts of amusing descriptions for what he’s doing (at one point it’s difficult to suppress the thought that you were listening to a driving dystopian sci-fi soundtrack played by an extremely irate dinosaur) but it's no novelty act. There is an intense off-kilter humanity to the pieces which would have you spellbound no matter how they were achieved. It’ll be a while before what was played will make its way onto a record. When it gets there it will doubtless be rather different, but the memory of its sheer physical presence will still be lingering.

Yorkston Thorne Khan Laura Moody Yellow Arch

Mon, 22 Feb 2016 20:44:17 PST

Yorkston/Thorne/Khan (and Moody)

“You probably thought ‘Oh a lady with a cello, this’ll be nice’ didn’t you?” teases Laura Moody part way through her support set this evening. Not that she’d let any illusions linger for long – declaring Sheffield audiences to be “hardcore” before launching into one of her more off-kilter offerings. Because she gets everything she can out of voice and cello, whacking every part of it, and sometimes herself, to construct songs - much as others would do with a loop pedal and box of effects. Fortunately the songs themselves transcend her quirky approach, much as her voice is strong and clear when she wants it to be – eschewing the sort ‘little witch’ pixiness that can substitute for real difference. Yes there’s some PJ Harvey-demosesque creaking and some pure sound effect vocalising, but it always serves to enhance a strong song, not detract from it. What results might not quite be nice, but it is very lovely and thoroughly entrancing.

Which on the basis of their recent LP is also what I’d been expecting from Yorkston/Thorne/Khan – and they didn’t disappoint. A lot of the record (which is a wonderful thing in itself) plays on the fit between the more studied, repetitively building elements of James Yorkston’s motoric folk and the drones and textures of Suhail Yusuf Khan’s sarangi. On stage, it doesn’t need Yorkston telling us that it’s “like heaven” for them as musicians to appreciate just how comfortable they feel playing with each other. The swap between western and eastern sounds as a lead makes even more sense when the musicians are on stage passing to each other. And the skill and impact of Khan’s voice really shines through live too. During Khan’s more gymnastic vocal efforts on Sufi Song, even bent over his guitar with his cap-brim over his face Yorkston can’t hide the sheer delight he’s feeling at what’s going on to his left.

But it’s not all rhythm and instrumental workouts. A bit of Ivor Cutler is always welcome, and the version of Little Black Buzzer (with Laura Moody helping out) is full of the warmth and joy that Ivor’s bum wasn’t. And there’s just some straightforward mournful beauty too. Not just on Yorkston’s Broken Wave, which breaks the heart every time you hear it – but on Jon Thorne’s Everything Sacred, which gives the record its name and allows him to step forward from supporting the other two to bare his own heart. Side projects can often be interesting, but this is very much the sum of its parts and totally captivating.

Dressy Bessy: Lady Liberty

Wed, 23 Dec 2015 23:51:48 PST

Listening to this gives me shivery memories of early noughties indiepop and Dressy Bessy’s wondrous early albums for Kindercore and Track & Field, not to mention their electric live shows – when they had fresh, vibrant, melody-soused songs, packed with sass and sunshine.

Fast forward to the present and the band still retain the handclappy, bubblegum pop sound but it’s grown a little spikier (like us all). ‘Lady Liberty’ - the first taste of 2016’s forthcoming Kingsized album - is full of catchy, stop-start rhythms that start a dance-urge in your trotters. On the flipside of this blue vinyl treasure is their version of George Harrison’s ‘What Is Life?’ - played in their infectious style but overlaid with splashes of fuzzy guitar, plus piccolo and flute for a touch of bubblegum-folk. The sleeve credits friends including Mike Mills on backing vocals for this song and his former bandmate Peter Buck, who played 12-string guitar on ‘Lady Liberty’. As ever, Tammy’s insistent singing style rouses you onto the dancefloor and shows no respect to the passage of time in revelling in the freedom of pop.

The Leaf Library: Daylight Versions

Wed, 23 Dec 2015 23:47:52 PST

The Leaf Library’s debut is hypnagogic dream pop, immersing you in warm and fuzzy textures, and suffused by a mood of great British melancholy. The music is hazy and impressionistic but conjures the gloomy atmospheres familiar to people who’ve visited the Lake District and Suffolk coast, which particularly inspired this record. You can still hear the Broadcast and Stereolab influence of their early material but this album has a more hauntalogical, hypnotic effect, full of natural themes and observations (water, seasons, phases of the moon) and tipsy with a drowsy beauty.

The opening track ‘Asleep Between Stations’ sets out their stall: rhythmic and droning, inducing a hypnotic state before the bursts of brass recall you. ‘Sailing Day’ is drowsy, narcoticised pop, swathed in electronica and precisely picked guitar, a slow and mournful tune that would lull you to sleep at night. ‘Slow Spring’ is full of dreaming, droning electronica and very atmospheric, while ‘Rings of Saturn’ goes beyond atmosphere, a spacerock Radiophonic Workshop journey of hypnotic repetition and murmuring vocals, as if they’d composed the soundtrack to some NASA film of the outer solar system. ‘Pushing/ Swimming’ is more experimental, full of gently pulsing soft synths and clanking electronica while ‘Summer Moon’ is positively pop, with a rhythmic beat, gorgeous viola, honeyed chorus and lines about “England sleeps as the seas roll in” that remind you of PJ Harvey’s exploration of nationalism.

It’s a wonderful record to sink into, slowly intoxicating you with the moods it evokes. Like the best travel writing, it takes you to the places it describes and paints them in such vivid imagery that your real world dissolves and you’re transported to these fantasy places. It’s perfect accompaniment for those slow winter evenings when it’s too cold to go out but you want to be elsewhere.

Kid Congo & The Pink Monkeybirds: Bruce Juice

Wed, 23 Dec 2015 23:42:11 PST

With a new album being prepared for release in 2016, here are a couple of new non-album tracks released as a tasty sample. Both instrumental, ‘Bruce Juice’ breathes the Latino garage-rock of bands like Thee Midniters as The Kid cranks out an infectious rolling guitar riff that never drops the pace even as, in the background, all sorts of weird guitar and skronky brass sounds gather like hungry vampires. ‘El Cucuy’ is a sort of Hispanic bogeyman and the track that bears its name is a fuzzfest of garage guitar-rock that would perfectly soundtrack some midnight horror film programme. He never fails to tap into the primitive in us all with his voodoo playing, and that makes us impatient for the new record.

Steeple Remove: Position Normal

Wed, 23 Dec 2015 23:39:27 PST

Leading proponents of “froguerock” according to a spoof website, this band from Rouen take inspiration from post-punk, covering Psychic TV’s ‘Unclean’ as a sick, deformed blues and showing the influence of Joy Division and Throbbing Gristle. Three of these songs were used in the first season of Les Revenants, showing that Mogwai didn’t have all the best tunes.

There’s real variety here; 'Invisible Lights' is a desert blues with overloading guitars, aspiring to be a Lynchian soundtrack, while 'Home Run' is a mazy mess of sonic violence, drums beating out a Morse Code warning, while the effects-heavy ‘Sunshine’ is the closest they get to synth-splashed pop. This is all about atmospheres and they create theirs in an impressively cinematic way that doesn’t lack for power and passion.

Kelley Stoltz: 4 New Cuts

Wed, 23 Dec 2015 23:08:55 PST

We’re blessed with Stoltz-songs right now: the albums In Triangle Time and The Scuzzy Inputs of Willie Weird, plus here are four songs that didn’t make it onto In Triangle Time but were too good to pass up. They’re certainly varied, sliding between California in the 60s and Liverpool of the 80s. ‘People’s Park’ is a hymn to a San Francisco park created by Berkeley activists in the 60s, inspired by West Coast pop of that time and full of brutally woozy guitar. ‘Put That In Your Pipe And Smoke It’, a Californian travelogue with a good English put-down for a title, has the loose, easy feel of Southern pop, so sultry it will leave your shirt wringing with sweat. ‘Redirected’ is pure 60s psych-pop with an Elevators-like warble, plus maximum warped guitar for fried brains effect. Finally, ‘Some Things’ reminds you of Kelley’s obsession with the Bunnymen, its burbling synth and vibrant guitar reminding you of pure Will Sergeant.

These songs, marking an especially prolific period reflect his magpie musical mentality, full of the best influences – and part of his best batch yet.

Sunturns: Christmas I and II

Wed, 23 Dec 2015 22:53:07 PST

Sunturns are a group from icy Norway featuring members of Making Marks, Moddi, The Little Hands Of Asphalt, Monzano and Einar Stray Orchestra, who come together seasonally to present their own take on Christmas (as descendents of Vikings, surely they should be celebrating Saturnalia?). Christmas II is the new album being released now, combined in a vinyl double album with Christmas I, from 2011.

Lyrically, they cover everything from shopping malls to the astronomical year, Jesus, death, loss and family fights, with a couple of songs on Christmas II sung in Norwegian (thanks to BBC 4, I can even translate the title of ‘Takk For Alt”). The two albums have different moods though: Christmas I is the more indiepop set, from the jam-like modpop of ‘The Sun Turns’ to the charming, coltish ‘Hallelujah (Christmas Is Here)’ with its Band Aid echoes and the joyfully melodic ‘Summer For Christmas’. It also includes a cover of Swearing At Motorist’s ‘Losing Mine’ and a much darker and intense version of Low’s ‘Just Like Christmas’.

Christmas II is a much gloomier affair (like the day after Boxing Day when those pesky relatives still show no sign of leaving). Opening track ‘Sunni’ is a widescreen affair, layered and complex with lots of piano, while the album ends with their cover of Ramones’ ‘Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want To Fight Tonight)’, which here is just slow piano and regret-wracked voice. There are more piano ballads and the mood is generally melancholy (the message of 'Mount Kenya' is “buy me a ticket and get me out of this continent”). However, the optimistic and upbeat ‘The Axial Tilt’ describes the upturn in spirits once we’ve passed the equinox, while ‘Would You’ is a catchy, almost anthemic, tune telling how two people coming together at Christmas could make sense of life.

Indiepop fans will enjoy the albums and the contrast of the two records - the naïve charm of Christmas I balanced by the more mature reflections of Christmas II – means that all sides of Christmas are represented, though only certain songs have the legs to grace a Christmas compilation.

MIA and TUESDAY - Shake It Up Louder! EP Review

Wed, 16 Dec 2015 12:12:48 PST

Having built a good reputation locally in the past couple of years thanks to live performances and radio sessions, Bristol duo MIA nd TUESDAY released their debut EP digitally earlier this year, with CD copies now available (contact them using the links below for details). The 17 year-old twin sisters have impressed with their acoustic harmony covers of '60s girl groups, and that influence is all over 'Shake It Up Louder!', a hugely impressive powerpop/indie set that has melody in spades.

'Wall Of Sound' is, as expected, a tribute to Phil Spector's stable of musicians, giving lip-service to Ronnie Spector, Darlene Love, Dee Dee from The Crystals and Bobby Sheen from Bob B. Soxx & The Blue Jeans, all put to a chugging riff, neat harmonies and an insanely catchy melody. Melody and the influence of classic C86 and indiepop also play a huge part in this EP, and 'I Can't Hear The Melody' reiterates that, talking of dancing to Northern soul, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. It's got more hooks than a pirate convention and is a perfect piece of DIY powerpop. Stripping things down is the excellent, semi-acoustic 'Supermarket', a cynical look at consumerism with those voices set to a jangly guitar tune that adds some diversity. Not that diversity is particularly needed - these three-minute tracks are contagious enough to withstand numerous repeat plays.

Maybe best of all is 'Transparent Disguise' which takes another bristing riff and some gorgeous girl-group vocals resulting in a truly lovable number. More musical references are included, from 'Bliztkreig Bop' to Levi Stubbs singing 'The Same Old Song' and Weezer singing 'The Sweater Song'. 'Here It Comes Again' wraps up this debut release and is more addictive jangle-pop that brings to mind a punchier version of The Primitives. 'Shake It Up Louder!' proves that age isn't a factor in making great music, because MIA and TUESDAY have given us one of the best sets of indiepop tunes you'll hear this year.

Leaf Library/ Hayman-Kupa Band/ The Drink

Wed, 16 Dec 2015 10:14:37 PST

The Drink

The fact that The Drink are opening for the Leaf Library album launch just shows what a top night this is. The Drink are a band who came to our attention at the tail end of 2014 and should, if there’s any justice in the world, be one of the bands of 2016. And why not? Watching Dearbhla Minogue tonight is seeing your new guitar hero – sometimes she pulls out the most precise and complicated African-accented rhythms, other times you hear the powerful chords of Television. One time it’s the dream delicacy of ‘Microsleep’, next it’s the pounding rhythm of ‘You Won’t Come Back At All’. And Dearbhla has the greatest backing in Dan Fordham and David Stewart, proving that the three-faced triangle is the strongest shape in nature.

We like Darren Hayman, we like Emma Kupa, but why does the Hayman-Kupa Band leave us feeling a bit underwhelmed? They’re both talented songwriters but their qualities seem to cancel out each other –it’s all very comfortable - and they seem to have held back their best tunes for their other outfits. ‘Boy, Look At What You Can’t Have Now’ is the one song that shows what they can really do, a striking pop tune with all sorts of infectious hooks, and – played faster and with real drums – a million times better live than on record.

There are five people in the band, ten people on stage as The Leaf Library call in their friends to help launch their debut album, swathing the audience in a blanket of gorgeous hazy, hauntological dream-pop. Much is delivering in gentle whispers, the atmosphere of delicately picked out soundscapes like ‘Slow Spring’ sufficiently evocative to captivate 200-odd souls in the Lexy, but they change up a gear too (‘rocking out’ would be too violent a euphemism) with the likes of ‘Asleep Between Stations’ and add a few jazz tricks to their electronic pop. It’s hard to recreate on a live stage such introspective, impressionistic works, that more easily dig their way into your subconscious when you’re listening to them in private, but the Leaf Library evoke a wondrous collective experience with skilful ease.

James Yorkston Victoria Park Winterville

Sat, 12 Dec 2015 10:23:21 PST

James Yorkston

It’s been a very long time since I saw a James Yorkston full band set. (He doesn’t tend to drag many cohorts on occasional jaunts to Sheffield.) While the basic excellence of his songs comes through in a smaller gig, it takes a show like this to remind you of the other reasons why he stood out so much in the first place.

In a spiegeltent amongst the fairground lights (and noises…though those weren’t really an issue it seemed they might be – the odd screams drifting in from the rides didn’t distract) of Victoria Park he’d assembled some old compadres (Reuben Taylor, Adem, Seamus Fogarty), a couple of slightly more recent but established musical partners (Jon Thorne, Emma Smith) and a drummer he’d barely met – to play a slightly tipsy and not noticeably festive set of songs.

Yorkston doesn’t do obvious sweeping themes in his songwriting. He draws out joys and sorrows from small things and captures the more ambivalent and complex feelings that mark out real life in a way few manage. The strongly felt emotions are there but hinted at rather than waved around. The real sense of underlying strength, passion and even a wee bit of threat, needs the band to bring it out. This happens best in the numbers that show off the repetitive, building, driving rhythms whose simplicity and force marked him out as much more than another new folky sort (although of course he was there well before they rose to their rather drab prominence). The Lang Toun remains a wonder and giving Midnight Feast the treatment really helps to highlight the steel and menace in Lal Waterson’s songwriting (not that it needs much help). And When The Haar Rolls In stands out even compared to them, marrying the power to the oblique storytelling and almost spoken word complexity of some of his other songs to fabulous effect.

That these high points are matched by the more restrained songs from throughout his career just shows how good he is. Years on, 6:30 Is Just Way Too Early remains almost perfect in its bruised hopefulness and finishing with Broken Wave, a warm and wonderful farewell to a friend means there’s barely a properly dry eye amongst us. It’s fitting that as we drift away the fair is winding down, stalls are being boarded up. There’s a sense of fun that’s been had, of time to dial down and appreciate a bit of quiet and chance to reflect with a glass of something strong and warming. Which is a very Yorkstony sort of Christmas feeling.

Various Artists: A Girl And A Gun

Sun, 06 Dec 2015 21:48:16 PST

“Do you expect me to talk?” “No, Mr Bond, I expect you to dance!” That might be the dialogue between the secret agent and the megalomaniac if 007 had been sent to frustrate the fiendish plans of an indie-label mogul. The 26 Bond movies (24 official, 2 more non-Eon productions), their dialogue and music - from Monty Norman's seminal theme to the individual songs introducing each film - are so ingrained into popular culture that they're ripe for reinterpretation by anyone and in any style. It's a licence to thrill...

Between 27 March and 7 November 2015, WIAIWYA released 34 Bond songs, one each week, and have now released them as a set. The quality and production values of the originals don’t make it easy to cover these songs though and, in one or two cases, it’s impossible to polish a turd (‘All Time High’) while Sam Smith’s ‘Writing On The Wall’ is a particular dirge to have to recreate. So there are lots of straight covers which pass by without troubling your memory cells and then there are playful tunes like Slow Leopard Brotherhood’s Tubeway Army-meets-krautrock ‘The Living Daylights’, Seks Bomba’s modpop treatment of ‘Casino Royale’ (from the “original” 1967 movie) or The Elderly’s ‘Live And Let Die’, as if Paul McCartney had been interpreted by younger versions of himself: the Merseybeat Paul, the Sgt Pepper Paul, and the cod-reggae Paul of ‘Ob-La-Di-Ob-La-Da’ vintage.

Still, on a 40-track album, there are some gems and you’ll come up with your own mixture depending on taste. Highlights include the first release in this series, Jack Hayter’s deconstructed folkatronica ‘Die Another Day’; The Leaf Library’s ‘From Russia With Love’, its electronica haunted by Cold War paranoia; and the icy beauty of The Left Outsides’ ‘Diamonds Are Forever’. The Vatican Cellars offer a slinky bossa nova version of ‘Thunderball’ and Michaelmas don’t attempt to imitate Louis Armstrong or even My Bloody Valentine on ‘We Have All The Time In The World’ and make gentle, tinkling pop, with lots going on underneath, but softly!

‘Tomorrow Never Dies’ is minimal but beautiful folk-pop by Ralegh Long and Friends, while Citizen Helene’s ‘Nobody Does It Better’ is a stripped down piano ballad with just a few vocal touches reminding you of her psych-folk day job. Her other band Papernut Cambridge produce one of the highlights of the album, an ambitious, full sounding, adrenaline-pumping ‘The Man With The Golden Gun’. And there are bonus tracks, including 4 ambient pieces by Spaceship Mark Williamson (who also formally appears as his Cross Oss alter ego on the record) that meld drones and evocative samples.

WIAIWYA call it a “celebration of the music of 007” and celebration is what it is, testimony to the enduring power of Bond and the quality of the music that survives so many interpretations.

Kristoffer Bolander: I Forgive Nothing

Sun, 06 Dec 2015 21:40:23 PST

I Forgive Nothing is the impressive first solo album from sweet-voiced Swede Kristoffer Bollander, although he’s been part of alt-folk band Holmes for the past ten years. It moves between soft and intimate – where it might just be Kristoffer accompanied by acoustic guitar ('The Rings Above') or droning organ (the lovely but strange ‘Duet of Tourettes’) – and the loud and full-band epic. ‘In Vain’ is an example of both, beginning with acoustic guitar and a declaration of despair “when I burn, I want to burn in vain”, before the band kicks in and it swells into something resembling a Mogwai soundtrack. The title track has a majesty centred on the rhythmic pounding drums while ‘Rooted’ is the finest track on the album. It has elements of alt-country (especially the softly moaning pedal steel adding to the aching sense of melancholy) that eventually resolves into spacey guitars endlessly recycling a gorgeous melodic riff, like the best of Wilco. Though it’s long, at 6 and a half minutes, it never outstays its welcome and, live, it must be awesome. Kristoffer’s voice is beguiling, sounding like a less abrasive Neil Young and, on the thoughtful ‘Running Man’, like his fellow Scandinavian, the much-missed St Thomas.

There are lots of people working in the same genre but Kristoffer Bolander’s fine album – getting better with repeated listenings – stands comparison with the Giant Sands and Wilcos of that world. The joy of music is in stumbling on unexpected quality albums like I Forgive Nothing.

Hurricane #1: Find What You Love And Let It Kill You

Sun, 06 Dec 2015 21:32:03 PST

In the press release for this album (their first in 16 years), Alex Lowe appeals to critics to enjoy, not analyse, the album, which was written while Lowe underwent cancer treatment. Its upbeat feel was a deliberate device to escape his unpleasant chemo and radiotherapy treatments so, if you’re in the mood of some simple retro rock picking up where Hurricane #1 left off in the last century, you should be well pleased.

The obvious standout ‘Think of the Sunshine’ is optimistic 1990s-era rock’n’roll, surprising you only at the end when former guitarist Andy Bell turns up to deliver backwards guitar that almost takes the song down a dub pathway. However, that’s the only innovation here, the other songs being Oasis-like epic pop (‘Where To Begin’) or Britpop-ish country-rock, all with the same capacity for lyrical cliché as Noel Gallagher. ‘Leave It All Behind’ (despite the echoes of Ride across the record, not the Ride song) is mainly acoustic guitar but with an epic reach, while ‘Crash’ is a cavalcade of guitars with an infectious riff. For Alex Lowe, the album is defiance in the face of mortality and, musically, it’s defiance in the face of progress, but it’s appealing for nostalgics and romantics seeking the evocation of those simple and direct 1990s pop times.

End of the Road 10th Anniversary Sunday

Mon, 30 Nov 2015 23:32:51 PST

This is literally the day of sun, the first really good weather of the weekend, and there’s a packed bill to get through, with even more clashes to be negotiated than Saturday. We take the opportunity to visit Rockbourne Roman villa (has that view changed much in 1800 years?) en route to Larmer Tree Gardens, where we’re in time for Houndstooth. They’re Middle American but not formulaic Americana, just a cool, energetic rock band playing a breezy wake-up call for us all. Following them we see The Black Tambourines, a young Cornish punk band inspired by the Ramones. They’re fun, enthusiastic but unmemorable so we move on.

Kevin Morby

We’ve seen Kevin Morby before as a member of Woods but this is the first time solo. He appears nervous but gets better once he starts to let go. The Dylan force (and a little Lou Reed)is strong in this one but his rootsy tunes are memorable, especially ‘Harlem River’ and ‘The Dead They Don’t Come Back’. He's impressive but the programme compels us to leave (very reluctantly) in order to catch Hinds, who are simply brilliant. They explain their journey here after a gig in Dublin last night with a defiant “fuck Ryanair!” (getting one of the biggest cheers of the day) before wowing us with their bubblegum punk pop and display of syncopated dancing from everyone but the drummer. They owned the festival after that.

Ultimate Painting

Ultimate Painting provided the perfect Sunday afternoon soundtrack, melding the Velvet Underground’s urban energy with a more laidback 60s West Coast feel. The simple rhythms nudge you into a state of woozy bliss but the blistering anti-austerity blues tale ‘(I’ve Got The) Sanctioned Blues’ is the real standout. Such is the embarrassment of riches that once out of the tent, we’re drawn towards the Delines on the Garden Stage. This band contains possibly the nicest guy in showbusiness, Willy Vlautin (damn fine prose writer too) but collectively they’re a little tame, even though they mix country, southern soul and r’n’b, and Amy Boone has a fine set of pipes. We look in on Happyness and just as quickly look out again because they look alternative but make a sort of Ed Sheeran pop, just a few notches louder. I’d rename them “Misery”…

Alvvays

We manage to catch a few songs by Dawes but it's depressing Californian 70s cocaine-rock and they’re everything bad that the words “LA band” conjure up. We’ve obviously hit the low point of any festival, which is always on a Sunday and clearly it’s sometime between 15:45 and 16:45. Thankfully, we’re back on track with Sonny & The Sunsets, a San Francisco 3-piece from the same scene as Kelly Stoltz and Thee Oh Sees, who play fast, loud and buzzing psychedelic rock. They sound great and have some great banter but, alas, we can’t stay for a full set as Alvvays are calling. These are young Canadians making bouncy bubblegum pop tunes to a crowded field in front of the Woods stage. It's fun and warming indiepop but ‘Marry Me, Archie’ is their crowning glory, the anthemic chorus inviting and receiving the participation of the whole audience.

We go along to hear Giant³ Sand but we hear much more of Howe Gelb’s chat and very little of the Arizona/ Danish band themselves. That’s a disappointment, as what we do hear is as strange and listenable as you’d expect any band from those disparate locations, backing the curious desert-warped compositions of Mr Gelb, to be. There’s no disappointment with

Wand

Wand, though, who are play loud and heavy psych and math-rock with some challenging time signatures and have a particularly impressive free-jazz drummer. There’s some sweet psych-pop to lighten the load but the volume doesn’t decrease and our ears give thanks for our earplugs.

As his almost casual yet brilliant cover of Steely Dan’s ‘Reeling In The Years’ shows, Mac De Marco is clearly a talented guy but he disguises it behind a lot of japery and dope jokes, with a lit cigarette almost constantly stuck to the end of his guitar (when it’s not stuck to his lower lip). He also spends a lot of time making technically perfect but soulless AOR radio pop. Brakes restore our spirits, a band that we’ve seen many times before at EOTR and who are sharing EOTR’s birthday celebration (it’s the 10th anniversary of Give Blood and also the 10th anniversary of members of Brakes appearing here with BSP and ESP). The crowd are in a state of elation throughout the set, featuring the whole of Give Blood and a lot more. ‘All Night Disco Party’ is a crowd pleaser, ‘Cheney’ will never lose its 7 seconds of brilliance, and 'Porcupine or Pineapple' at the end just makes everyone go insane!

Mac De Marco

War On Drugs are a disappointment by comparison, though what we see of the set makes up a little for the amazing sense of ennui brought on by Lost In The Dream. There are enough krautrocking moments and highlights from the first two albums to make seeing WOD worthwhile – though I still have a little sympathy with grumpy ol’ Mark Kozelek’s position on the band, and there’s way too much soloing. And any band whose frontman requires a new guitar for seemingly every song is wandering close to the lands of muso, which are but a day’s ride from the forbidden forest of progressive rock.

Hinds

So that was EOTR 10 – still a manageable size but with a diverse bill that managed to keep us enraptured and out of the beer tent for 97% of our time. They’ve managed to maintain the spirit of 2006 and, if they can combine the small-scale feel and the absence of sponsorship with some cleverly programmed bills, there’ll be a place for them for another decade at least. Happy birthday!

End of the Road 10th Anniversary Saturday

Wed, 25 Nov 2015 21:21:13 PST

End of the Road is clash city this weekend, with a schedule packed with bands you want to see but can manage only part of a set. It will get even tougher on Sunday but, for today, it’s a case of running around to cram in the music, with hardly a refreshment break. We start with shouty Stockholm punk girls Delores Haze, full of riot grrl guitar vim and noisy teen pop. Too much for first thing, we conclude, and head for the Garden Stage and the magnificent Hooton Tennis Club. They’re fast, furious, restless, reckless, lo-fi pop-punks from Liverpool, channelling Pavement and Parquet Courts, serving the perfect noontime call to arms.

The Drink

It’s back inside for The Drink in the Big Top. You can always spot influences but not so with Dearbhla Minogue. She's beholden to no-one in her African accented guitar skills and powerfully short songs which pay no attention to convention. She’s a guitar hero; admittedly not the usual bedraggled male sort on which this title is usually bestowed but one in the rebel riot grrl tradition. She was a star at our Bad Friday BBQ at the Windmill and she’s similarly jaw-droppingly brilliant today.

H Hawkline is a card. A Welshman with a neat line in bible-black humour, he has an off-kilter perspective that’s reflected in his songs – melodic, off-kilter and producing a mild psychedelic buzz. Good to see Stephen Black (Sweet Baboo) on guitar (and on bass later in the evening for Drinks); if you totalled up all the various appearances he’s made over the years for various Welsh artists, he’d probably holds the EOTR performance record.

H Hawkline

We then slip into the Big Top to see Peter Matthew Bauer, usually of the Walkman but this afternoon playing with pretty much a pick-up band. He's clearly marshalled them well for his Springsteen-like rock anthems.

We duck out at some point and head over to see Slow Club. Is this really the shy couple we saw at EOTR all those years ago (or the rockier version we observed at one-off sister festival No Direction Home)? They’re much more confident now, shifting direction towards soul and r’n’b. Both are great singers, but when Rebecca sings a solo number…wow! Even though her guitar is so out of tune it forces her to re-start (as a guitarist, she’s a great drummer), her badinage is so funny it really doesn’t matter.

Slow Club

They’re superb but we know time is against us today so we head back the Big Top for DuBlonde. Big mistake. Beth Jeans Houghton was great before with her Hooves of Destiny but DuBlonde are the nadir of the festival, possibly of all musical experience. They sound like a manufactured LA poodle rock band, dress like extras from some Guns’n’Roses biopic and their cover of Pixies’ ‘Where Is My Mind’ is laughably pompous. The tent, though, is inexplicably crammed for their set so what do I know?

We escape and are able to enjoy the other attractions of the festival (there’s books, film, comedy and some healing gardens, lest we forget), but I head to hear Gabrielle Drake and Cally Callomon speak about their book on Gabrielle’s brother Nick. It’s a wonderful celebration of his life, his sister dispelling myths and she and Cally explaining how they put the book together in its compelling, non-linear way. A couple of sweet-voiced musicians sing some of Nick’s songs, including one translated into Spanish that illustrates the universality of his appeal. Though he died 40 years ago, he’s still alive though the music and the memory of his life, which Gabrielle so brilliantly curates.

Drinks

Back to the music, then, and we restart with Girlpool, a riot grrl inspired LA duo who sing “humorous” (it’s a matter of taste) lo-fi, observational songs in a twee manner. It’s a bit too thin and raw for us, with too much Californian self-indulgence, so we head over to see Drinks. This is Tim Presley and Cate le Bon’s side project but self-indulgence seems to be the theme of this evening as they noodle away on various half-formed tunes and call it psychedelia. It’s painfully shallow and they should go back to their main projects pronto.

Next it’s Ex-Hex, a supergroup of sorts, who play pretty classic rock with punky abandon, sounding like a mix of Ramones and the Go-Gos. Then we’re able to combine a food run with a few songs from Kiran Leonard, a supernaturally talented teenager who combines jazz, prog and math-rock in his fiendishly complicated songs.

The girl in the wheelchair who is propelled by her mates to front and centre of the crowd before

Fat White Family

Fat White Family must be relieved that the security guys notice her and move her to the side of the stage as the Big Top erupts with an energy that I haven’t seen since the Libertines in their heyday, as soon as the band start playing. With their sleazy riffs and a feral frontman who Iggy-struts around the stage, this is a band whose records can’t replicate their live menace. A bit like Happy Mondays, the Family are constantly on the verge of chaotic dissolution but the songs have just enough structure to keep the groove together. The crowd remind me of those early Libertines gigs too, like some cult followers who show their devotion in frantic moshing and crowd surfing.

This is the first UK festival for Sufjan Stevens, who attracts a massive crowd. His set includes moments of sadness and euphoria; he focuses on the Carrie And Lowell album but includes other back catalogue material like ‘Sister’ and ‘The Dress Looks Nice On You’. The mood of loss and hurt that permeates Carrie so beautifully (the fruit of hard-won wisdom) was actually never more finely expressed than on ‘Casimir Pulaski Day' from the Illinois album. It’s not doom and gloom though; Sufjan opens up to the crowd, claiming divine inspiration and even dances later on. He incorporates the Star Wars Theme into ‘Come On! Feel The Illinoise’, and plays an ecstatic 'Chicago', before finishing with ‘Blue Bucket Of Gold’, a 15 minute ambient buzz that seems to have been composed to be heard under the star-bright Dorset sky.

Sufjan Stevens

We end the evening at Sleaford Mods. With the crowd buzzing on a long day’s beer and worse, the front half of the Big Top feels like a football crowd. There’s banter aplenty, Jason Williamson issuing a string of observations/ warnings/ insults to the chanters that is as funny as it is bodily functions-fixated. The Mods are more satisfying live than on record because it’s so obvious this is an act. Jason’s mock outrage at the thought of his daughter with “piss on her face”, his OCD arm movements, the way that Andrew presses enter and then bops along to the backing track with an inane grin and a can of warm lager, all are part of that entertainment. While the songs are fuelled by a righteous anger, especially those from Key Markets, it’s almost a singalong at times with the likes of ‘Tiswas’ and ‘Jolly Fucker’ pleasing the crowd. They elicit cheers for the anti-politics of ‘Face To Faces’ although the song contains much that is thoughful and profound, not that the beery scum at the front would notice!

end of the road 10th anniversary friday

Tue, 24 Nov 2015 12:01:22 PST

End of the Road is 10! We were there when it started as a modest undertaking with big ambitions, we were there when the demand for Fleet Foxes caused them to open the Woods Stage the following year for a bigger audience, and we’re here again (we’ve only missed 2014) when it’s now a well-established medium-sized festival with an impressive roster of acts (Sufjan’s first festival appearance!). Though it has media partners and some stages have partnerships with particularly sympathetic labels (this year it’s Heavenly on Saturday’s Garden Stage), the festival resists corporate sponsorship. So it’s all craft ale in the tents and good food in most directions, including Shepherds’ orgasmic ice-cream (that’s not the actual name but it’s close to the universal effect). And then there’s the music...

Frazey Ford

We strike out on arrival on Friday though. My accomplice hisses “bongo alert” as we catch Fumaça Preta. They give good copy to journalists who like to spout nonsense about the mix of Tropicalia, heavy psych, Hendrix riffs and acid-drenched funk but the band are much less than the sum of their influences, a riot of colour who sound dull and bland. Much better is Frazey Ford, formerly of the Be Good Tanyas, whose voice is a thing of wonder and whose songs are soulful Canadiana. ‘Bird of Paradise’, with feathers made of folk and jazz, shows off her voice, while the set ends with new tracks recorded in Al Green’s studio with his Hi band, on which the master’s expressive soul touches have seemingly rubbed off.

Ought

We catch some of Nadine Shah’s set and enjoy the between song banter and her ‘refugees welcome’ t-shirt but the songs themselves are dark, dense, and unremarkable. There’s a lot of early PJ Harvey and Anna Calvi in the performance but the Harv and Calvinator have already done it and we don’t need copies. Torres is another one who borrows from the Anna Calvi wardrobe. Her set is raw and intense, with much guitar strangling, but it’s too tight and bound-up; it’s only at the end that she starts unwinding and her songs become more layered and nuanced, and therefore more enjoyable. Ought are entertaining, though not always intentionally. Their post-punk is edgy and attractive, with Pulp and Talking Heads clearly major influences, though you can’t help but think that singer Tim Beeler has a case of Salford envy, such is his uncanny Mark E Smith impersonation (this is the only band during whose songs you can shout “I’m totally wired” and it sound like a natural part of the lyrics).

King Khan & BBQ

We also hear a few songs by Pond in a packed Big Top. This is the psych-rock band from Perth, Australia who are mates with Tame Impala and sound like a new Pink Floyd. Their mildly trippy psychedelia floats by in an amiable fashion without causing too much concern but we bail out when they take a seriously prog rock turn and become seriously dull musos.

Weekend highlight #1 comes with The King Khan & BBQ Show. This sees His Majesty and Mark Sultan with their awesome display of filthy minded garage rock. Wearing bondage gear (nipples on show and way too much flesh), they produce loud atavistic rock’n’roll, with so much soulful howling, punk energy and sexual tension they could attach electrodes to their testicles and light up the rest of Dorset. The sheer filth of ‘Tastebuds’ is bad taste genius. We then stumble across Natalie Prass playing the Garden Stage and are mighty pleased that we have. Hers is a soulful confection of the best American music, from Gram Parsons and Ryan Adams to Dolly Parton and Springsteen and she’s an excellent sport too: spotting fancy dress versions of Marty McFly and Doc Brown in the crowd, she persuades the Doc to join her on stage and her band launch into an impromptu version of ‘Johnny B Goode’ that is brilliantly judged and played.

Natalie Prass

Continuing our wanderings, we stop to catch a few songs by Django Django. Though their second album was a disappointment, live they’re a dependable festival choice: upbeat, rhythmic and shouty, they encourage audience dancing but it’s just a little bit comfortable and predictable (no different to previous Django Django shows) so we don’t linger. Much better to head for Fuzz in the Big Top. Ty Segall is drummer (and what a great drummer!) with Charlie Moonheart on guitar and vocals and Roland Cosio (wearing some sort of wizard’s cloak) on bass. They’re fast, fuzzy and direct, except for their long and freeform instrumental at the end, channelling Black Sabbath and Blue Cheer (needing only the Pink Fairies for a high value snooker ball set) but my ears are weeing blood by the end. They’re so comfortable with each other they pause briefly while a girl, who breaks her arm being dropped during crowdsurfing, is helped out of the tent (still grinning widely) and immediately resume mid-song on Ty’s command: “second verse…”

Jane Weaver

Jane Weaver gets upgraded from the intimate Tipi Tent to the Big Top so we get to see and hear her sci-fi Europop. She looks like some alien creature (until she speaks Mancunian and brings things down to earth). There’s krautrock, acid-folk, spacepop and music from those European serials that the BBC used to cheaply import in her mix, and at times she’s reminiscent of Still Corners who played the same tent the same day a couple of EOTRs ago, but on the magnificent ‘Don’t Take My Soul’ she just makes brilliant and catchy oddpop.

Low

We catch a bit of Tame Impala on the Woods stage – nice light show but it’s music made by a bloke in a bedroom for other blokes in other bedrooms (drugs optional, headphones recommended) and drifts by in unexciting fashion apart from the mighty ‘Elephant’ which gets the blood flowing on a cold night. Low, headliners on the Garden Stage, are a much better prospect. It’s a world away from their 2008 appearance where Alan Sparhawk had an onstage meltdown and threw his guitar into (at?) the crowd. This time they’re austere, minimal and none too active onstage but they make an intense sound, focused on new album Ones And Sixes but picking on classics like ‘Especially Me’. Their music has a soulful throbbing: Mimi’s drums are restrained but pumping at the heart of the Low organism, Alan’s guitar is powerfully understated, Steve Garrington is ubiquitous on bass and keyboards, and the glorious commingling of Alan and Mimi’s voices is the cherry on the top – full of real life and real heartache. The night is cold and the Low sound is fragile but somehow warming, a perfect end to the day.

HD Hausmann: Wring The Moisture From The Surf

Wed, 18 Nov 2015 22:57:27 PST

The press release identifies the players only by their initials – LD, RH, AS, JH, SD - but the main mover behind this mystery music is Liam Palmer, also of Grass House. The album explores his more experimental urge but in a very accessible way, which serves the song. Meanwhile, the band name alludes to the initialled influences that inspire the music - AE Housman, e.e. cummings, SE Hinton - as well as Georges-Eugene Haussmann, the architect who renovated Paris.

The album was put together by LP without any of the musicians coming together in the same space, though he makes clear that he won’t be bound by that model in future. What he’s produced musically strikes the perfect balance between soundscapes and structured songs, catchy and compelling on the one hand but with a depth to the compositions that only reveals its quality over several listens. ‘Old Satellites’ mixes electronic drones with dense guitars and sounds a lot like The National. ‘To The Loveliest Ocean’ is a Cave-esque hymnal, dark and intense, with a sprinkling of gorgeous melody to sweeten the groaning existential angst. ‘As The World Lays Down’ is tender and vulnerable for a couple of minutes before breaking out into something powerful yet understated, with vocals akin to Matt Beringer’s. And the record finishes with the epic six minute drone and doom experimentalism of ‘I Am Here And I Am Cold In The Water’ (water being a recurring theme in the song titles).

The album is released in a limited edition of 20 in unique, hand-painted sleeves which emphasises the conceptual playfulness of the project; based on the quality of this debut, HD Hausmann ought to come out of the shadows and make more music.

The Ocean Party: Light Weight

Wed, 18 Nov 2015 22:42:24 PST

An Australian band from Wagga Wagga via Melbourne, The Ocean Party are obviously inspired by ‘80s pop and post-punk but have a winning way with a melody. ‘Black Blood’, the first single from their fifth album, has the same sort of jangly pop feel as Real Estate, with whom they’ve toured, and similar roots. Meanwhile ‘Greedy’ has a more post-punk edge, like a softer New Order, and there’s usually a hypnotic bass riff at the heart of their best songs, as with the simple but catchy title track. There’s something quite infectious about their sound, though the trebly keyboards and shrill sax on ‘Dirty Money’ makes it sound very Duran Duran. ‘Aircon’ adds brass for a soulful extra punch and ‘Real Life’ has a throbbing bass backbone and a short but catchy chorus.

There are six songwriters in The Ocean Party but they have a consistent, well-crafted sound and their facility in lacing these songs with catchy hooks makes The Ocean Party worth immersing yourself in.

AJ Holmes And The Hackney Empire: Just Retribution EP

Wed, 18 Nov 2015 22:38:05 PST

Second single from the East Londoner who brings Africa into Albion. First, ‘Just Retribution’ invites you to dance away relationship troubles with a Congolese rumba. Then ‘Mein Leibster Feind’ is a tender ballad inspired by a Mark Twain quote that has little touches of African guitar and, lastly, ‘CLA’ is a frenzied, fuzzy disco track, like a sleazy Talking Heads. It’s world music that could only be made in a world city like London, and seems a perfect match for the dancefloor of some hipster Hackney hangout.

The Saurs: Magic Shape

Wed, 18 Nov 2015 22:34:13 PST

The Saurs are a band from Barcelona (Sueiro – guitar/vocals, Engui – guitar, backing vocals, Alejandro – drums) whose debut album mixes fast and furious garage-punk and harder rock. There’s huge energy but less sophistication in this record, though the charming hidden Spanish language track following ‘Flashlights’ suggests a touch of Os Mutantes and a definite Spanish feel. On other tracks though, it’s more American-influenced, with echoes of Thee Oh Sees and Black Lips on the fiery garage-rock title track and the twisty ‘Thursday’, while ‘Came To You’ is surf-punk and ‘Flashlight’ combines Nirvana-esque hard rock with melodic touches. The frantic revved up garage-rocker ‘Ain’t No Deal’ is a stand out but, while the energy levels stay in the red throughout, it’s a bit formulaic and you feel your attention levels slipping.

Joel Sarakula: The Imposter

Wed, 18 Nov 2015 21:46:24 PST

Sometimes you can be so musically literate it doesn’t translate to the record. Joel Sarakula is a London-based but Sydney born songwriter who puts together slick sounding music from a swathe of pop and soul influences. There’s the retro-soul ‘When The Summer Ends’, with its skittery guitar and brass echoes of Average White Band and Stevie Wonder, a slinky Fleetwood Mac soundalike on ‘European Skies’, and the tone of Harry Nilsson on the balladic pop of ‘Hypnotised’. It’s accomplished but it lives too much on its influences and ‘Stay (If You Need Me)’ is modern soul so polished to the point of pastiche that it could be a favourite on Jools Holland’s lazy music show. There’s goodness though – ‘They Can’t Catch Me’ is Todd Rundgren mixing rock and a Northern Soul rhythm and the excellent track ‘Northern Soul’ (the best choice of single) isn’t actually of that genre but more like 70s orchestral pop with clever wordplay: “I wanna touch your Northern soul”.

He’s a knowledgeable guy whose second album will impress with its breadth of influences but will always come up a little short on originality and the thrill of discovery.

The Lovely Eggs: Goofin’ Around (In Lancashire)

Sun, 15 Nov 2015 23:02:59 PST

Released on “fried egg” vinyl on their own label, Lancaster’s Lovely Eggs produce 3 minutes of joyously insane pop, described the struggle to find a party in that city. ‘Goofin’ Around (In Lancashire)’ is catchy pop filled with screeching, fuzzed-up guitars and a sludgy psychedelic Stooges moment in the middle, while ‘Ballad Of All Time And That’ is the confessions of badly behaved booze buddies, drenched in wild feedback. It’s debauched, deranged and definitely excellent. And in best Christmas single tradition, they end with a scream of pleasure: “let’s get fucked now!”

The Chills: Silver Bullets

Sun, 08 Nov 2015 22:54:35 PST

It’s been nearly 20 years since their last new album Sunburst and 35 years since they first formed (I say “they” but I mean Martin Phillipps and his revolving posse of bandmates) yet the brand new Chills material sounds as good as anything from their past – the same melodic gifts, the same off-kilter catchiness that defined “Dunedin-pop” for the world. Although the last reference point is 1996's Sunburst, there are echoes of the Chills from 30-something years ago, though much better recorded. 'Warm Waveform’, for example, has the same reverby guitar and swirly keyboards combo, the same floaty feel, plus Phillipps’ Kiwi-accented caress of a voice. Wonderful!

There are some heavy social and ecological themes but they’re delivered in a digestible way. ‘Underwater Wasteland’ is a warning about what we’re doing to the seas while ‘Aurora Corona’ (the Southern Lights) is a prayer for mercy from the earth goddess, set in a whirl of upbeat pop. ‘Pyramid/ When The Poor Can Reach The Moon’ lasts 8 minutes and is a game of two halves: a complex web of geopolitical themes that resolves itself into pretty and optimistic baroque pop. ‘America Says Hello’ sugars its message about the state of the world and running out of time with some glorious bouncy pop moments while ‘Molten Gold’ ends the record in a slightly naïve but ultra-optimistic manner, the singer happy for the gifts he has.

It’s a brilliant return, treating us to new songs when the other new material in the last year or two has been a live reworking of old favourites and fantastic Peel Session versions of classic Chills tunes. Phillipps is on fire, and he even gets away with using a children’s choir on ‘Tomboy’, displaying a pop-sureness that makes every second of Silver Bullets a joy. The legends never lost it.

Normil Hawaiians: Return Of The Ranters

Sun, 08 Nov 2015 22:46:39 PST

You might know the Normil Hawaiians from the 1980 post-punk-funk single ‘The Beat Goes On’ but you won’t know their third album, Return Of The Ranters, recorded in winter 1985, as it was never released at that time. Now issued for the first time, this political punk record is the first stage of Upset The Rhythm’s schedule for releasing all three albums, complete with singles and rarities.

Return Of The Ranters is powered by the mid-80s anger of the disenfranchised, unemployed and written off that has strange echoes of today. Key tracks include ‘The Battle of Stonehenge’, intoned like an ancient folk ballad, which describes the band’s personal experience when their Peace Convoy was broken up by the police. It’s defiant, polemical and an anti-authoritarian rallying call. As is ‘Slums Still Stand’, a critique of Thatcher’s Broken Britain, taking in the miner’s strike, unemployment, youth anger (“the youth, forced into violence to seek out the truth”) and London politicians’ disinterest in Northern cities: “listen, Maggie, you stupid bitch!” ‘Sianne Don’t Work In A Factory’ has the same political messages but is more experimental, with its unsettling atmosphere, created by looped violin and mechanical drum rhythms, giving way to a tender love song. Out of swirling incoherence, ‘Search For Um Gris’ hits a motorik rhythm and becomes hooky and hypnotic, presaging Stereolab in a strange way, while ‘Mouldwarp’s Journey’ is 10 minutes of improvisation, full of wails and drones, whispered vocals, field recordings and spacey effects like post-holocaust electronic interference.

Politically aware, musically adventurous, anarchic and consensus-baiting, it’s surprising that Return Of The Ranters was shelved when the Normil Hawaiians were demonstrating a clear strain of 80s activism. But after 30 years it’s found an outlet and has an unusual resonance with the 2015 version of politics. There are no hit singles but plenty of food for thought in this missing-in-action-but-well-worth-catching experimental post-punk release.

Courtney Barnett: Boxing Day Blues (Revisited)

Mon, 02 Nov 2015 22:59:10 PST

Boxing Day Blues was the comedown final track on the Sometimes I Sit And Think… album. For Jack White’s label (and a Jack White production), Courtney B revisits the idea as an easy rhythmic blues with a woozy, regretful hangover feel. With her trademark wordplay, ‘Boxing Day Blues (Revisited)’ is full of a sense of party over, which, for her, it certainly isn’t. She pairs it with a cover of a cult record by a cult Melbourne band, The Boys Next Door’s ‘Shivers’. She captures perfectly Rowland Howard’s ironic lyrics of adolescent anguish and the black humour in a cover version that works in its own right while sending you back for a shot of the original too.