It’s quite a thrill to listen to a piano in this sort of musical context, and – in my experience – rare to do so; some of Tori Amos’s more heavy material comes to mind, as does a percentage of Trent Reznor’s output, but that’s about it for easy comparisons, and even they don’t really reflect the angular yet fluid intensity of Amen. The drums and vocals sound are deployed much like you’d expect a modern post-hardcore outfit to use them (complex rhythmic changes and driving drum patterns locked to the bottom end, plus psychodrama confessionals and slasher-movie rants that would make Alec Empire jealous), but the wide range of frequencies usually eaten up by swathes of distorted or effected bass and guitar is instead populated with quasi-classical arpeggios and rolling, chiming staccato basslines. End result: an unusual amount of reverberating sonic space for the vocals to wander around in, much like some escapee inmate from a mental health facility wandering a well-manicured park in central Paris. The texture’s unfamiliarity is its primary appeal.

The instrumentation may be novel, but the songs? Not so much – the strangled angst and confusion of the lyrics and the complex architecture of the tunes are pretty much dipped straight out of the My Chemical Zeitgeist playbook. If you’re tired of histrionic twenty-somethings shrieking on about their ongoing disillusionment with modern life, Amen isn’t going to cure you of it, and if you didn’t think it was possible to rework the old standard “In The Pines (Where Did You Sleep Last Night?)” (here simply named “My Girl”) in a more wrist-slashingly overwrought manner than the late Kurt Cobain once managed to achieve, be prepared to be set thoroughly straight.

That said, there are some more experimental pieces on Amen (like the audio portrait of a mental breakdown in a thunderstorm that is “I Am An Island”, or the temporal fragmentations of “Kill Me Twice”), and My Own Private Alaska have a refreshing sound thanks to their unconventional instrument choices. It’s fun to hope that a minor wave of piano-driven hardcore bands might emerge in their wake; maybe one of them will really smash the mould. But as vanguards of a new sound go, well… you can colour me moderately impressed.

I keep meaning to write a nice long page that explains all the most common errors in PR press material and publicity efforts as focussed on review blogs like this one, but I never seem to find myself with the spare week or so that I’d need to get it comprehensive… so for now, this will have to serve as a small start.

Q1: What sort of music content do you write? (eg news, reviews, interviews, comment)

We write reviews (live or recorded), plus occasional interviews with artists of a sufficient profile to make it worthwhile. We don’t run news items because our traffic is predominantly based on search engine referrals… and there are dozens of other sites who’ll just copy and paste your press release into their output if that’s all you want. There’s no point in competing with the big music news portals because they have the staff, contacts and facilities to trump us every time; however, most of their reviews are thin, poor or uncritical, and we believe there’s a market for more serious critique. Hence, that’s our focus.

When time allows, we’re looking at getting back into commentary and opinion pieces, but as TDP is a volunteer site that has never made one red cent, it has to play second fiddle to work that pays the rent. Selah.

Q2: How do you prefer to receive music? (eg promo CD, MP3 attachment, link to stream)

CDs are ideal because they’re easier to send to reviewers, but downloads are a close second – watermarks are fine, because we’re not pirates. Streaming portals and albums released on MySpace, however, will be almost universally ignored – believe it or not, most music reviewers would like to spend less time at a computer, not more – and as such, if your new release can’t be listened to on some sort of portable device, it’s probably not going to get reviewed at all, because of the sheer volume of stuff that comes in. Except in cases where said artist has a high profile and big kudos to start with, convenience always trumps piracy paranoia from labels who’ve failed to realise that obscurity is a bigger enemy to their clients than filesharing.

Q3: Will a press release or cover note ever make you more likely to listen to and/or write about an artist or release, and if so what sorts of things attract your attention?

Press releases actually tend to work against a release rather than for it – the rule of thumb is that the more hyperbolic the PR is, the worse the music will be, and it’s extraordinarily rare to see that rule broken. Also, grandiose claims or comparisons (“the best band since The Rolling Stones!!!1OMFG”), vague inferments (“have worked alongside some of the biggest names in the business”, but no mention of who those “big” names are) and spurious subgenre taxonomy (using a lot of delay pedals doesn’t make them a shoegaze band, folks, no matter how much of a buzzphrase it may be) all tend to wind up a reviewer who’s been doing it for a while. Give us the raw facts, and let us come to our own opinions – that’s our job, after all.

Also, don’t include lengthy biographies for bands that no one has heard of. If this is a hot new talent, tell us who they’ve supported recently, quote some live reviews, and have a few lines saying where they’re from. If they’re a genuinely interesting proposition, we’ll seek out more info; if they’re yet another emo-pop clone band of mediocre talent and less originality, waffling on about how the band met when drummer Robbie and guitarist Skylar were in detention for carving their initials into a school desk is just going to give us more ammunition with which to mock the shit out of them (and believe me, we’ve ragged publicly on poor press material in our reviews before, and we’ll do it again – if we see it, we figure it’s as fair game for commentary as the music it accompanies). New bands have to let their music do the talking; if they get big, sure, start dragging out the human interest angles, but as a bunch of unknown kids, no one gives a shit.

Q4: If you write news stories, what makes an artist, release or event newsworthy – ie what information can a PR provide you that makes you more likely to write a news report?

Not much, frankly – see answer to question 1. However, I can tell you what isn’t newsworthy – the fact that your client artist has a new MySpace layout. Yawnarama city; no one cares beyond the band’s existing fanbase, and by definition, they probably already know about it… because the band themselves have probably blogged about the delays in its arrival for the past three months already.

Q5: Are you led by other music journalists? Are quotes from other media or links to other websites covering artists appreciated?

We’re not ‘led’ by other writers (because if we can’t make up our own minds about what we’re sent, then there’s no point in working for free, AMIRITE?) but yes, quotes are greatly appreciated, because (assumedly) they’re coming from a source with less of a vested interest in your client than yourselves. One line of positive blurb from another review venue of reasonable repute and integrity will work harder than a whole page of hyperbolic best-thing-since-sliced-bread bullshit from your in-house copywriter. SRSLY.

You know where you are right from the outset, as Shake The Faith opens with stadium reverb on the drums, Slash-esque riffs and flourishes… and of course the slightly-nasal semi-Stateside vocal style. You’ve got sleazy road-house rawk’n'roll with gang choruses and mildly sexist lyrics about predatory women, generous bartenders, and all the frontman swagger and excess of the eighties with (one assumes, charitably) slightly less awful hair. While comparing Shake The Faith to G’n'R’s Appetite… is a bit of a long stretch (ah, sweet press release hyperbole!), it’s worth remembering that cock-rock as a retro genre is surprisingly difficult to do well, and Falling Red are doing a decent job of it here – and that comes from someone who never really got the whole hair-metal thing the first time round.

Oh sure, the tropes are all well-worn, faded and patched at the knees with old bandannas (not to mention older than most regular gig-goers), but it’s a post-modern musical landscape we’re dealing with here. When there are no new ideas left, you either mash up your genres or focus on one in particular in order to produce a homage or pastiche (or occasionally both); Falling Red are taking the route of faithful homage and they make no bones about doing so. The lack of shoulder-chips serves them well, as does the lack of irony, and while I don’t much care for this stuff myself, there’s plenty of folk who do. If Falling Red can find their own voice among the cast-offs and clichés, they’ll have an audience waiting for them… and given that they’ve been supporting Gun of late, they’re already looking for it in the right place.

De Grinpipol is apparently a phonetic spelling of the Italian phrase that means “the green people”; whether this is some knowingly overt stoner reference or not isn’t made clear, but I’d be surprised if that’s not at least a part of the gag. In addition to the fuzzy guitar tones, there’s a slightly manic and silly tongue-in-cheek vibe to the proceedings that strikes me as the hallmark of a band who take their music very seriously, but not their status as musicians. This is a good thing.

Musically, it’s a blend of contemporary sounds and ideas configured into pleasing and catchy pop songs. We’re talking Strokes-like off-beat hi-hats and disco stomps from the drumkit, QOTSA guitar grooves rejigged into major keys via the back pages of the Rivers Cuomo songbook and the hipster indie scene, fuzzy pentatonic solos with a side-serving of sleaze, and deceptively simple and sparse songs played with a nonchalant and understated expertise… it’s not about virtuoso moves and fiddly bits, but about playing the right note at just the right moment. De Grinpipol’s overwhelming character is that of their singer, however, who sounds like a cross between Josh Homme and the guy from Arcade Fire on lots of anti-depressants, and puts a lot of oh-so-kooky-kamp spoof’n'roll character into his performance.

These guys haven’t done anything new, but that’s the beauty of it – De Grinpipol play high-quality (yet charmingly disposable) garage guitar pop’n'roll with a quirkily modern flavour, and that’s more than enough for me. No further analysis required. Go listen to ‘em.

I can think of no band that has survived from the sixties and seventies that have consistently produced work of worth and value. The Rolling Stones are the prime example: everything turned to crap in 1973 and they’ve never recovered. Perhaps only Neil Young has produced work forty years on that is every bit as good as his early material. For punk bands this is even more obvious: The Damned tour the nostalgia circuit when they need to earn a crust, The Sex Pistols reformed for filthy lucre and couldn’t be bothered trying making new music, and bands like Buzzcocks tour to an ever-diminishing audience with recorded material that has long lost grip on its own youth.

Mind you, it’s fair to say that The Stranglers were never a true punk band. Inheritors of the Dr Feelgood sound, they were closer to a pub rock-Doors than anything else. I doubt a true punk band would have put saxophone on the earliest single here, “(Get A) Grip (On Yourself)”, or gone on to cover Bacharach and David’s “Walk On By”. And the sheer brass neck of releasing “Waltzinblack” as a single still shows a startling desire for confrontation with their own audience.

Famed for their bass/organ-heavy sound at the outset (a great combination for live work in clubs) the likes of “Peaches”, “No More Heroes” and “Nice ‘N’ Sleazy”, The Stranglers nevertheless were weighed down by their plodding pub rock ‘n’ roll antecedents: just listen to “Go Buddy Go” if you don’t believe me.

By the time the eighties had arrived The Stranglers had ditched the strippers-in-cages live gigs for concept albums (The Gospel According To The Meninblack), synthesizers and Euro-pop tunes. “Golden Brown” (the worlds most melodic ode to heroin) started the ball rolling, but as it was succeeded by the French-language “La Folie”, the smooth “Strange Little Girl” and the pleasant “European Female” it was obvious that songs were taking precedence over sound or attitude.

Then The Stranglers got even more commercial – and rich – with the sing-a-long blandness of “Skin Deep”, “No Mercy”, “Always The Sun” and their ilk it was obvious the band were coasting to a gentle halt. Chucking out live albums and Kinks covers reinforced the feeling before Hugh Cornwell finally jumped ship for singer-songwriter waters.

It wasn’t a moment too soon. The early Paul Roberts songs on this compilation don’t even sound like The Stranglers: his colourless vocals (like a London-born Trent Reznor) highlight colourless songs. “Heaven Or Hell”, “Sugar Bullets”, “In Heaven She Walks” and “Golden Boy” are sad middle age music for dinner parties. “Time To Die”, at least, has a perverse spoken word lyric that spends its entire time referencing Blade Runner. “Lies and Deception” is a supper club confection of breathtaking banality that should have spelt the end for a lesser band, and it’s only in the home stretch on the second CD that The Stranglers remind everyone of why they were so brilliant in the first place: “Coup De Grace” is the first sign that Jean-Jacques Burnel has remembered where the distort switch is on his bass amp, its rehearsal room lo-fi energy buoyed by that patented organ sound so beloved of true fans. Following that up with the title track of “Norfolk Coast” (another great thudding slab of rock), the marvellous late three-minute hit “Big Thing Coming” and the choice cuts from their last album (Suite XVI) show a tremendous late flowering of a band long thought dead, or at least moribund.

The two new songs are one good (single “Retro Rockets” sounds exactly like seventies-vintage Stranglers with better production and a truly interesting lyric/singing style) and one poor (“I Don’t See The World Like You Do”), but the overall impression is that The Stranglers are getting back on track.

In a long line of Stranglers best-ofs this one, at least, has a breadth and depth that is unusual, contains good new material and comes as two discs to really give a great overview. Unfortunately, it only really needs a single disc. The Stranglers are a great singles band, but chucking them all onto Decades Apart just highlights the variable quality of the later work. Worth buying, perhaps, but getting the first four albums may make you feel better… although if you like the poor pop stylings of the eighties, that advice can be safely reversed.