So, who is Jay Reatard? I’ve known his name for some time now, muttered by tastemakers and casually dropped by comment-thread hipsters in the venues where the next big thing is decided upon. The next big thing would appear to be that noisy garage-shoegaze-pop amalgam, and Reatard is usually mentioned as one of its more prolific and impressive proponents.

Prolific is about right. Despite covering only two years, Singles 06-07 has seventeen tracks. Yes, seventeen, all remastered versions of Reatard’s short-run vinyl-only output under his own name. Granted, only one clocks in over the three-minute mark (and even then it’s a close call), but even so - that’s more material than some big-name artists manage to squeeze out in in a similar period.

Maybe we could achieve Jay Reatard of cutting corners? After all, it’d be easy to record seventeen singles in a year if you sacked the guys in quality control, right? Hell, then you could probably record them in an afternoon and spend the rest of the year, I dunno, skiing or something. The casual listener might reach that conclusion quite easily; the recordings collected on Singles 06-07 are rough, scratchy, overloaded, lo-fi. ProTools, this ain’t.

The immediate impression is one of sketchiness - a sense that perhaps Reatard has to avoid production frills so he can work fast enough to get the ideas out of his head rightfuckingnow before he gets bounced to something new by a form of musical ADHD. But take a second listen through, and it becomes apparent that the surface is only half the story, and Jay Reatard’s songs are a lot more crafted than he may want you to think.

It’s a good disguise, though; harsh overfuzzed guitars and cheesy Farfisa organs join rattling (but rock solid) drumming and Reatard’s broken-mic vocals that bring to mind the “yeah-I’m-dumb-so-what” attitude of the early Beastie Boys material. But I find myself reminded of Bowie - not just because of Reatard’s voice itself, but because both musicians share the knack of appearing to be very stupid when they are actually being very clever indeed.

And Reatard’s singles are smart savvy pop, subverting a variety of formulas beneath the garage simplicity and a certain cartoonish abandon. Listen to the sixties radio bubblegum of “Don’t Let Him Come Back”, with everything in its place, with no part too short or too long; hear “All Wasted” out-Ramone the Ramones with a throwaway hook and a chorus about zombies; check out the ‘77 protopunk of “Blood Visions”, or the New Wave clatter of “Let It All Go”, or, or, or…

In isolation, you could imagine each track being a happy accident by an average band who play for the love of the noise. But Jay Reatard is unusually consistent, as Singles 06-07 demonstrates very effectively - not consistent in sound or style, but in his ability to make a song sound throwaway and dumb, but have the thing stick in your head for the rest of the day. In fact, I suspect he puts a lot more work and polish into these tracks than he might want us to believe - but that’s OK. I’m happy to keep quiet if he’s happy to keep making the tunes.

Related articles:

• Jay Reatard to release Singles 06-07 collection (0)
• Album review: Monotonix - Body Language (0)
• Album review: Michael Yonkers with The Blind Shake - Carbohydrates Hydrocarbons (0)

Just in case you needed some further incitement, here’s a wee video of Mark and Jeremy of The Levellers talking about Letters From The Underground, which Mark charmingly describes as “a vomit from Jeremy’s brain” due to the be-dreadlocked bassman having written the majority of the lyrics:

I think tomorrow I’ll ask my boss why it is that my job doesn’t feature the need to fly off to a cottage in Ireland with a bunch of acoustic guitars every now and again… I feel sure that’s something we could all do with doing on a regular basis. Perhaps we could vote The Levellers into power and have them write it into the constitution?

You can listen to more Levellers tunes on MySpace, and poke around their proper website too. Go on, your boss won’t notice… he’s probably asleep in the office. Fight the system!

Related articles:

• Video trailer for Elegies To Lessons Learnt by iLiKETRAiNS (0)
• Video streams for Avenged Sevenfold’s Dear God single (0)
• Video for new Misery Signals track, A Certain Death (0)

I’ll bet that thought raised a smile, didn’t it? So will Total Brutal, though probably not much more than that; rare is the comedy band that makes an album of genuine hilarity, and Austrian Death Machine have not produced ROFLMAO material by any means. The inter-track monologues from Ahhhnold are a bit strained, to say the least, but the bellowed lyrics and song-titles (“Get To The Choppa”, “You Have Just Been Erased”, “Screw You (Benny)”) are good for a few chuckles.

Once we get past the novelty theme, Total Brutal is just a straight-up metal album, overemphasising the stock clich??s which - overused as they may be - are the ones that necks snapping and hair windmilling in mosh-pits the world over. Palm-muted chords and utterly over-the-top fretboard-shredder solos are the order of the day, alongside runaway train rhythm sections and Ahhhnold’s roaring vocals. And when I say those solos - guest appearances from various axe-men of note on the modern metal scene - are over-the-top, you’d better believe it; pinch harmonics, notes so high the neighbourhood dogs howl along in sympathy, and more notes per second than your average Stasi department.

Austrian Death Machine is many things. Firstly it’s a project that puts the lie to the po-faced stereotype of metal as a genre unable to laugh at itself - oh sure, those people exist, but they’re usually(and quite unwittingly) the funniest ones of all. Secondly, for the cultural philosophers among you, Total Brutal can be treated a kind of meta-post-modernist text, mocking and subverting the public image of an actor already notorious for appearing in movies that themselves hinge on post-modernist concepts.

Ahem. Excuse me.

What Austrian Death Machine isn’t is a long-term prospect. With most “high concept” projects of this type, the moment the idea has been described its magic starts to decay, and the core joke of Total Brutal is wearing thin by the time you’re half-way through this album. And that’s with a fresh run at the best puns and gags; a second pass would be nothing short of embarrassing.

But as a one-off Austrian Death Machine are a passable chuckle, as well as being a tongue-in-cheek celebration of thrash metal’s greatest hooks. Whether it’ll be enticing enough to get many folk to shell out hard cash for Total Brutal remains to be seen (and I wouldn’t like to bet on it), but it’s pretty much guaranteed to be one of those albums that gets traded around between every gang of teenage metalheads on the planet. Cold comfort for the guys in the accounts department, perhaps, but still an achievement.

Related articles:

• Come with Austrian Death Machine if you want to live (0)
• Video for "Scream Aim Fire" by Bullet For My Valentine (0)
• Testament signing The Formation Of Damnation in London 17th June (0)

As part of the slightly more enviable side of life as a signed band, Misery Signals got to film a video for “A Certain Death”, the first single from Controller. Directed by David Brodsky (who apparently did some work with one of my favourite bands ever, Helmet), it was filmed in a less than salubrious location, according to vocalist Karl Schubach:

“We filmed our scenes in a burnt down hotel in a abandoned town in upstate NY. It was definitely condemned, I don’t know how they got us in there but it was dark, dirty with gutted wood beams, blackened walls and if you weren’t careful you could fall into the basement that was flooded with some kind of liquid.”

Sounds like some of my former residences, to be honest. But enough chatter - check out the video for “A Certain Death”:

Not bad at all, and mercifully low on metal video clich??s. You can hear more tunes from Misery Signals on the MySpazz, and there’s a website for grown-ups, too.

Related articles:

• Album review: Misery Signals - Controller (0)
• Video streams for Avenged Sevenfold’s Dear God single (0)
• Video for "Scream Aim Fire" by Bullet For My Valentine (0)

But Colour Haze have yet to make an impact West of the English Channel, and that’s kind of a shame; they’ve got solid chops and an interesting sound of their own that draws on the sprawling jams and bassy rumble of the desert rock legends and throws in some retro style from the autumn after the Summer of Love for good measure. Does All sound original? Well, not really, but stoner rock isn’t supposed to sound original; it’s a template-based subgenre, after all. The challenge is to do something that fits the brief and adds a twist at the same time.

All will not disappoint fans of elephantine riffs played near the nut, of loose rhythms rolling and thumping their way around the drum kit, of musical ideas repeated and mutated over long stretches of time. Colour Haze have a yen for exploration, a wanderlust that sees them pack some hooks into a satchel and head for the horizon with them.

But that bag has some other stuff in it, too; some Kashmir scarves and a book of black-light poster art, perhaps, or a Tibetan Book Of The Dead and a box with some funny looking dried mushrooms. All is a journeying album, sure, but it’s an introspective trip, and exploration of inner space whose musical ancestry goes back to the tail end of the sixties. Frontman Stefan Koglek has the most anti-metal vocal style possible: delicate and yearning, mellow and hopeful. It’s a refreshing contrast to hear slack-stringed riffs balanced against unironic hippie vibes, and it lifts Colour Haze above the multitude of clones.

The richness of the sound makes All an all-enveloping experience, too. The standard (if bass-biased) power-trio sound fills the spectrum with the help of Mellotrons and Hammonds (on “Lights” and “All” respectively) or reverse masked percussion and delay-addled meanderings (“Turns”). Colour Haze even go the whole Haight-Ashbury hog and indulge in a guitar/sitar face-off at the beginning of “Stars” - clich??s all, but sounding all the better for their years in the bottom drawers of rock production.

All is unashamedly ambitious, but not in conventional terms; Colour Haze have used their long career beyond the commercial spotlight to set their own goals. The best thing about this album is the unabashed sense of self-indulgence that informs every beat and note. It’s inviting you in, beckoning from a cloud of incense in a room full of low light and soft furnishings… so sit down, turn on, light up, and rock out.

Related articles:

• Ween bring the weird to the UK (2)
• The Brian Jonestown Massacre announce European tour dates (2)
• Queens Of The Stone Age expelled from California rehab centre (1)

After an opening smidgen of didgeridoo, “Before The End” is based on a simple organ theme backed up with the familiar punk-folk guitars pushed way to the back of the mix. The rather lifeless rhythm fits appropriately with the dolorous lyrical content, which consists of unusually ambiguous metaphorical looks at personal relationships. Perhaps it’s because I’m so used to the Levellers‘ direct songwriting style of old, but there’s not much to get my teeth into here; nor does “Before The End” have the sizzle and spark that might mark an earnest bid for the charts, despite the layered chorus and breathy female backing vocals. A damp squib all round.

The vinyl-only B-side “TV Suicides” is much more in line with what you’d expect from a Levellers release; two acoustic guitars and clear strident vocals in the classic protest song mode, decrying the dismal parade of war, lies and bad news that marches across television sets worldwide on a daily basis. Much as in the era the band first rose to prominence, we’re badly in need of artists to step forward like this and shine a light on the elephants in our collective room. Also in common with the mid-nineties, I find myself wondering if - with the best will in the world - The Levellers aren’t just preaching to the choir. I hope not.

Politics aside, though, this isn’t a single I’d go out of my way for. Both “Before The End” and “TV Suicides” are passable tunes, but I’d rather pick them up as album tracks; The Levellers have still got the fire, but it’s burning low on this release.

Related articles:

• The Levellers’ “Burn America Burn” is out this week - there’s a video too (0)
• Single review: The Levellers - “Burn America Burn” (0)
• Interview: Jon Sevink of The Levellers (0)

A lot of bands reappropriate imagery to bolster their sound, but Murder By Death don’t simply dress themselves up in sonic costumes ? they become their characters, creating a sonic style that matches from collar to cuffs, from the sawing strings to the insouciant lyrics. Red Of Tooth And Claw is seemingly written from the point of view of the time-hopping ghosts of vagrant cowboys - or maybe werewolves, or demons dressed as men - wandering the trails of the deep American Southwest, hunting for work or opportunity in the tough times of a parallel Great Depression.

The atmosphere is conjured by rich dark acoustic tones. Murder By Death are principally a strings band ? low-moaning cello and fence-wire guitar ? but the air of antiquity is amplified by the subtle use of rich and moody organ patches, bringing to mind some seedy faded bar in a former frontier town where Red Of Tooth And Claw became the name of a live cabaret of dark anthems for the down, defeated and murderous.

From the defiant malice of album opener ?Comin’ Home? to the closing self-destruction catalogue of ?Spring Break 1899?, frontman Adam Turla is the black heart and broken soul of Red Of Tooth And Claw, his down’n'out dulcet baritone coming across like a Rat Packer gone bad, walking away from Vegas with a used gun and a price on his head. Murder By Death focus closely on moral ambiguities in their songs, on tough decisions made by tough people in tough times, and Turla’s urbane croon makes every word believable.

It’s pretty serious stuff, but there’s a vein of dark humour pulsing beneath the skin of Murder By Death, too. The Southern gothic lament of ?Ball & Chain? oozes the grudging acceptance of the classic bad-partners tales, while the barely-sublimated sexual frustration of ?Fuego!? has a subtle erotic power hiding behind its charming yet suggestive wink-and-grin combination. Red Of Tooth And Claw is brooding and sullen, an anti-hero album of magnificent proportions, both melancholic and devil-may-care at once. It’s a fantastic listen, and highly recommended.

Related articles:

• Video for Ida Maria’s “Stella” single released (0)
• Twin Atlantic announce tour dates with Say Anything (0)
• Time Again announce UK tour dates, release video for “Day Like This” (0)

Imaginatively titled Singles 2001-2005, it does exactly what it says on the tin ? every single Biffy Clyro released during their tenure with Beggars is collected here, and assembled in straight chronological order without the intrusion of any celebrity remixes or other pointless extras. So kudos to Beggars for not falling into the ?OMG exclusive DVD extras boxset!!!? trap - Biffy Clyro’s material doesn’t need that sort of embellishment. That said, whether anyone else’s material really needs it either is a subject for debate.

The question one must ask of a retrospective collection is: ?who is this meant for?? Beggars are canny enough to know there’s little point in them pitching for the die-hard veterans of the Biffy Clyro army, who have probably got the vast majority of these singles already. No ? Singles 2001-2005 is an invitation to the new disciples to investigate the roots of the band that recorded Puzzle. So how will it sound to them?

Put it this way - I don’t think it will come as a huge shock. The interesting thing about the chronological arrangement is that it lets you hear how a band’s sound developed over time, but the secret of Biffy Clyro’s success is that they’ve always sounded like themselves, if that makes any sense. That said, there is a definite progression from album openers “27″ and “Justboy” (which could be mistaken for Idlewild clones if heard in isolation) to the frantic schizoid jabber of ?There’s No Such Thing As A Jaggy Snake? and the anthemic post-hardcore epic of ?Glitter and Trauma?. In an inversion of the usual route to commercial success and acclaim (and a stark contrast to the aforementioned Idlewild, for example) Biffy Clyro have become tougher, more angular and complex - perhaps even more metallic ? as time has passed.

The constant is their ear for melody and hooks. Biffy Clyro songs always have at least one moment of crystalline pop genius somewhere within them ? and often in the place you’d least expect them to appear, or in a form that doesn’t work on paper. When ?Joy.Discovery.Invention? launches into huge chords after its gentle beginnings; the jagged discordant guitar hooks of ?Toys Toys Toys Choke, Toys Toys Toys? (the first appearance on Singles 2001-2005 of the sound that many latecomers probably most associate with the Biffy); the break-neck chords of ?Eradicate The Doubt?; the spine-tingling layered chorus outro of ?My Recovery Injection?… none of this is pop by any conventional yardstick, but they all still seep irresistibly into your consciousness.

Of course, the track listing of Singles 2001-2005 is impossible to criticise by definition; they’re all here, after all. So the question becomes: ?are Biffy Clyro’s early singles worth the time?? If you’re interested in music as a process rather than a product, the answer is definitely ?yes?.

Related articles:

• EP review: Intervurt - Translucent (0)
• Video for “Brain” by Tonight Is Goodbye (0)
• Twin Atlantic announce tour dates with Say Anything (0)

This is Misery Signals‘ second outing with Townsend; he also produced their d?but album Of Malice and the Magnum Heart. Perhaps that familiarity enhanced the coherence of Controller, an album whose heaviness is never in dispute but which also partakes in some truly epic hooks with the hair-raising qualities that make Townsend’s work so unique.

Despite the darkly nihilistic vocals ? which mark the name Misery Signals well chosen ? Controller displays a hidden heart of pop aesthetics. Change the instrumentation and the delivery style, and you’d have a surprisingly accessible album on your hands. ?Parallels? boasts soaring melodies, while ?Coma? and ?Reset? feature delicate and subtle clean arpeggios, doubled up on the latter track with distant glassy chimes. Misery Signals evidently have a thoughtful side to balance their dark fury.

That said, Controller is still very much a metal album; it just does more with its guitars than the standard prescription of chugging chords and screaming solos. Misery Signals have stolen a few moves from the progressive and post-hardcore playbooks and thrown them into the mix, resulting in unmuted open chords and looping half-scale riffs making regular appearances. Other bands should take note ? it’s amazing how much more engaging a heavy album can be when it has some textural variety, and Townsend’s trademark cascading delays really bring the brighter passages to life at the same time as throwing the darker sections deeper into shadow.

It’s also a great relief to step away from the tired lyrical clich?s of hell, demons and violence that are par for the course in the more extreme ends of the genre. In many respects,the lyrics on Controller wouldn’t feel out of place in tracks by one of the more mature post-hardcore outfits; introspective, bleak and much preoccupied with personal relationships, there’s a notable lack of chest-thumping histrionics in Misery Signals‘ material.

Despite a relatively short career, Misery Signals seem to have struck upon a distinctive style of their own; while it’s a great thing to see metal thriving as a genre, the corollary is that there’s a lot of cookie-cutter clones on the market. While the influence of Devin Townsend cannot (and shouldn’t) be separated from Controller’s quality, the greatest producer in the world can’t make a masterpiece out of shoddy songs and poor musicianship. Misery Signals make metalcore for people who are bored of metalcore, and I can only hope that more bands will sit up and take notice of the difference that comes from walking the path less travelled.

Related articles:

• Video for new Misery Signals track, A Certain Death (0)
• Video streams for Avenged Sevenfold’s Dear God single (0)
• Video for "Scream Aim Fire" by Bullet For My Valentine (0)

While billed as a post-hardcore band ? which by this point is almost as bankrupt a catch-all as ?rock? or ?pop? - Lower Definition are pushing hard at the boundaries of their field, and that alone makes them stand out from many of their contemporaries. The Greatest Of All Lost Arts is certainly rooted in the post-hardcore approach, defiant of obvious structures and simple melodies, but at times it leans back towards a purer form of hardcore, or threatens to converge with metalcore and progressive in some as yet unlabelled no-man’s-land.

What unifies Lower Definition’s sound is a pervasive sense of atmospherics, much emphasised by the accomplished movement of the songs from delicate melody and texture to vein-popping bludgeon and back again, the changes introduced so carefully that you hardly notice them happening: a few bars of staccato breakdown or a brace of almost-clean chords, and all of a sudden you’re in a different sonic space entirely.

In this, The Greatest Of All Lost Arts can’t help but remind me of Circa Survive. Very occasionally you’d be forgiven for thinking Lower Definition were cribbing from them directly - ?The Choreographer?, especially, is bursting with understated filigree and detail ? but the similarity is more in the approach than the sound itself. Circa Survive never use the furious beatdowns that Lower Definition deploy so effectively, for instance, but both bands are masters of contrast.

The most typical manifestation of contrast is the standard post-hardcore good cop/bad cop vocal style, but on The Greatest Of All Lost Arts it’s not such a quotidian gesture. Matt Geise’s angsty clean-sung vocals are unusually convincing and low on self-pity (not to mention being vaguely reminiscent of a young Mike Patton in Faith No More’s early years), and are miles more distinctive than his by-the-numbers roaring in the choruses and breakdowns. But as with the instrumentation, the transitions never feel forced or gratuitous ? Lower Definition have successfully integrated a clich? and made it work in their favour.

But The Greatest Of All Lost Arts is really all about the interstitial moments, the spaces in between the familiar where new and marginal things can happen. For example, just as ?His Silent Film? sounds as if it is about to collapse in on itself in a clatter of chaos, it miraculously opens out into a delicate and haunting mid-section of echoing clean guitars and close-mic vocals. Lower Definition hide a hint toward this creative approach in the lyrics to ?The Weatherman?:

?you’re an artist / when you tear things apart… ?

Lower Definition are tearing at the rulebook, but they’re taking it one page at a time rather than trying to eviscerate an entire phone directory at once. And it’s paying off; perhaps The Greatest Of All Lost Arts is standing out from the crowd while keeping your place in it.

Related articles:

• EP review: The Arusha Accord - Nightmares of the Ocean (2)
• Single review: Nephu Huzzband - Nurse! Nurse! (0)
• Live review: Brenda & Munroe Effect - Basement Jaks, 6th July 2008 (0)