The Very Bottom Of Everything

Jens Lekman - "The Opposite Of Hallelujah"

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie) — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 16:44:00 +0000

So, while Radiohead are off pwning the whole world with their optionally-priced albums and label-less surprise releases, I've been listening to Jens Lekman, Regina Spektor, Jeremy Warmsley and Eugene McGuinness, while also returning to Pulp, and discovering that Pete Doherty does actually still know how to write good songs (look out for a review of "Delivery" tomorrow or the day after). So I figured, even though this is probably old as fuck, and although altogether more important things are going on in the blogosphere, and, you know, although Messrs Yorke and Greenwood are going to be making every other song in the world irrelevant in a week's time, it would be cool if we could all just sit back, chill out, and enjoy some pleasingly old-fashioned, idiosyncratic, string-laced and gleeful indie-pop. Now, I'm not a Jens Lekman fan, as such, having previously heard "Friday Night At The Drive-In Bingo", thought something along the lines of "oh, a cheerful Richard Hawley" and tossed it aside, but you'd be a fool to declare that "The Opposite Of Hallelujah" - originally from the 2004 EP of the same name, and more recently from Night Falls Over Kortedala, a forthcoming collection of recordings from the past three years - isn't one of those annoying songs which comes so close to perfection you really do have trouble understanding it. A little like "Lila", "June On The West Coast", "Poison Oak" and perhaps a few others not by Bright Eyes, although here the genius is more musical - it's in the melody, I suppose - and perhaps a better comparison would be someone like Patrick Wolf? That is, "The Magic Position", a song I've certainly learnt to rely on for it's general, genuine, astonishing exuberance. The string parts are vaguely similar - catchy enough to be used as backing music on some BBC1 rubbish about seaside resorts, yet deep enough to not detract from the lyrics - and though the methods used in the two tracks were obviously fairly different, a similar, perhaps subterranean in a sense, yet certainly very cosy atmosphere (think, if you will, of a green underground paddock containing a family of magical pink fairies) prevails.

"I took my sister down to the ocean..." sings Jens (and if you noted the similarity to Bright Eyes's "tomorrow when I wake up I'm finding my brother and I'm making him take me back down to the water..." from "When The Curious Girl Realises She Is Under Glass", you're pretty much the most wonderful person in the world) "...but the ocean made me feel stupid" , he concedes. Later, his "words of wisdom" have "vanished into thin air", and his "metaphors fallen flat". I imagine the story goes something like this; Jens takes sister down to ocean, prepares to explain meaning of life, crab thwarts metaphors, they cycle back, he laments not having explained to her, then tells himself that "it" is "the opposite of Hallelujah", and that the sister doesn't know what Jens is going through. It's the sort of open-ended narrative that it's difficult to make sense of at times, but which nonetheless produces the odd ingeniously unpretentious couplet ( "We made our way home on the bikes we had borrowed, I still never told you about unstoppable sorrow...") and would make an interestingly arty late-60s short story. As I said, though, the lyrics pale in comparison with the sense of joy with which Jens conducts them; and as his tale of indecisiveness and general woe is augmented by those wonderful strings and his rich baritone, a mystery is born.

[MP3] Jens Lekman - The Opposite Of Hallelujah

Foo Fighters - "The Pretender"

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie) — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 18:02:00 +0000

You'd think, after so long in the industry, Dave Grohl would've gotten tired of his band's brand of straightforward, stadium-pleasing rock and roll. The largely acoustic second disc of 2005's In Your Honor gave rise to the notion, I suppose, and last year's acoustic live opus Skin & Bones (recorded on the IYH tour in LA, and named after an obscure b-side which inexplicably became a staple of their setlists) gave further credence to the idea. Yet, apparently, these two experiments are all we're going to get from the folk-rock incarnation of the Foos for a good while now, especially seeing as new single "The Pretender" - and, imaginably the majority of the recently-released Echoes, Silence Patience & Grace LP - is so annoyingly akin to 1997's really-not-that-good,-people The Colour And The Shape, that you almost expect Grohl to suddenly break into the career-defining chorus of "Everlong" or the ingeniously breakneck riff of "Monkey Wrench" at any minute. But then, that's only really a minor quibble - we should really be thankful just to have Dave, Nate, Chris and Taylor's eternally optimistic pop-metal tunes there for us whenever Bloc Party are seeming too po-faced and Placebo too nymphomaniacal - and, in reality, "The Pretender" is as brilliant as anything on One By One or the better half of In Your Honor (er, There Is Nothing Left To Lose, as well as being simply an awful lot better than any of their other albums, was a fairly mellow surf-rock affair). But the most important factor when talking about this song is that it isn't actually 'just another Foo Fighters song'; unlike perhaps the utterly boneheaded "No Way Back" or "The Last Song", it definitely seems to have some amount of meaning and intelligence behind it. "What if I say I'll never surrender? What if I say I'm not like the others?", Grohl interrogates, before cascading into one of those infamous moments of guitar lickage as Grohl whispers over the top wilfully paranoiac lyrics like "I'm the voice inside your head that you refuse to hear, I'm the face that you have to face, mirrored in your stare", before it all goes loud again. And then quiet again. Hey, he wasn't in Nirvana for nothing. But, as I said, this isn't just dumb chorus-mongering designed for a stadium of robots with Led Zep t-shirts on their chests and lighters high in the air. God knows what it's about - varying sources have suggested Courtney Love, George Bush, his wife, an entirely fictional love interest or an entirely fictional world leader - but at least it doesn't contain the lyrics "Lately I've been living in my head, the rest of me is dead".

Perhaps I'm being a little harsh; after all, there are countless genuine good points about this band that you just won't find from any other. For instance, they're AMAZING live. I saw them in Hyde Park in July '06, they played the greatest setlist imaginable (including absolutely nothing from their inexcusable self-titled debut and an awful lot from ...Nothing Left To Lose), brought out Lemmy, Brian May and Roger Taylor, had those trippy flashing green lasers, and basically put on the sort of show you'd take a martian to if you wanted to demonstrate exactly what a rock and roll show is. Plus, they had Angels & Airwaves supporting, whose recycled RATM riffs and absurd 'I AM THE MESSIAH' moments are always good for a laugh (No, seriously, when exactly is Tom Delonge going to come out and announce that the whole AVA thing was a massive joke and that he, like, so totally fooled us all?). Secondly, their music isn't as one-dimensional as it might appear from the outside - compare, for instance, the ferocious, soaring, HUGE "My Hero" with the utterly gorgeous "Next Year". The two were only one album apart, three years in actual time, yet by the time the latter was recorded, Grohl had mellowed out to the extent that love songs no longer hurt your ears, and could, on the odd occasion, be construed via elaborate metaphors involving space travel, the US Marines, and, if you're really overanalytical, the way the US government used the Space Race to detract attention from the Vietnam War. "The Pretender" doesn't have such overarching subtexts (or perhaps it does, and we just haven't worked them out yet), but what it does have is that disconcerting feeling of being repeatedly hit over the head (possibly with a dictionary, after all, this is the Foos being intelligent) and having brief excerpts from lullabies being whispered into your ears between blows. Nirvana perfected it (Check out the mindblowing posthumous release "You Know You're Right" for the best example), and now Grohl and co are taking it to another level altogether. And long may they continue.

[MP3] Foo Fighters - The Pretender

Gallows - "In The Belly Of A Shark"

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie) — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 18:29:00 +0000

Anyone who's paid attention to the movements of the genre over the past five years will agree with me on this one; punk rock is severely on the decline. Sure, the faux-emo of the past two years has all but died following Fall Out Boy's disappointing follow-up and Panic! At The Disco's charmingly generous lack of one, and we've had a new album from the Dropkick Murphys (if you don't own The Warrior's Code, go jump in front of a bus. Then get up and buy The Warrior's Code, obviously), and I guess Matchbook Romance broke up (surely the greatest service to music they could have accomplished. I don't expect you to have heard "The Greatest Fall Of All Time", but if you have, you'll agree with me), but setting those minor causes for celebration aside for a moment, the scene's in a similarly stagnant place to where it was in maybe 2001, before Brody Dalle took it into the NME and Good Charlotte (still the greatest guilty pleasure ever, however great Cherry Ghost's "People Help The People" is) took it into the charts on both sides of the Atlantic. Understandably, Gallows want to change that. And the British music press want Gallows to change that. And, you know, I want Gallows to change that, so of course I'll take the opportunity to introduce new single "In The Belly Of A Shark" - a definite improvement on "Abandon Ship", although with a similar nautical theme - to the three or so people who are reading this.

Gallows aren't doing anything new, they're not revolutionaries, they're not originals, but they certainly feel like it. Their music is pure Black Flag, infused with the righteous fury of MDC's "I Remember" (Surely the best song of the entire 80's USA hxc scene(s)) and the musical eclecticity of Bad Brains, struggling to survive under the heaviness they seem to have stolen from within the shaven heads of Agnostic Front, yet in a climate where music such as this is scarce (and when it is present it's generally awe-inspiringly shit), their plagiarism matters about as much as their shoe size. "In The Belly Of A Shark" is, in a word, ferocious; the kind of song where you genuinely feel like you're being punched around the face for three minutes, yet afterwards immediately reach for the play button to do it all over again. It's the sort of song where you inadvertently actually develop a sort of shamefaced fear of ever running into these scary, scary men down a dark alley in their native Watford, and the after-effects of it (general contusions and lacerations, broken bones and perhaps the loss of hearing in whichever ear's closer to the speakers) are curiously similar as well. Put simply, if you're the sort of indie-as-fuck fool who genuinely thinks that The Shins shouldn't go and spontaneously combust, like, right now, or the sort of abject twat who'd deny that "Welcome To The Black Parade" was a work of genius, or that The Ramones were the best band ever, you won't like this. If you listen to Snow Patrol, you won't like this, though that goes without saying. And if you think Slipknot is "just noise", you won't like this. But, you know, if you've got a moderately-sized brain nestled somewhere inside your cranium, then I'm sure you'll know that this is GENIUS.

[MP3] Gallows - In The Belly Of A Shark

The Wombats - "Let's Dance To Joy Division"

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie) — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 17:11:00 +0000

This timing is just perfect. So last time round I wrote about the Editors (admittedly an awful long time ago, but I wrote more than 1000 words on them, so it's justified) - surprisingly good mope-rock for the masses, and responsible for more suicides over the past two years as "Fix You", "Yellow" and "Speed Of Sound" put together - and, in a highly amusing twist of fate, later that evening what fell into my hands was nothing less than this month's equivalent to Patrick Wolf's "The Magic Position"; that is, the most life-affirmingly enjoyable 'cheer-the-fuck-up' ever, put into the form of three minutes of brilliantly catchy power-pop by Liverpool's terrifyingly promising Wombats. "An End Has A Start", for all its headache-inducing bass drums (there are lots) and soaring, ethereal guitar lines (there are LOADS), was never exactly going to be the best song to return you to normality from the depths of depression, so obviously fate (apparently a very nice person, who wants you to be as happy as possible. Bit like the Wombats, actually) intervened and wants me to bestow this upon you, just in case I've inadvertently caused a suicide somewhere down the line with my shitty doom-pop and now need to be cleansed for my sins. And surely giving you "Let's Dance To Joy Division" is - alongside simply imploring you to carry out the actual action described in the title - the best way to do this, and add a little more joy into the world? Or maybe that was a little too evangelical/pretentious/confusing/fucking stupid for you.

In the whole-heartedly charitable interest of keeping this post at a reasonable length for once (even if that means I have to forsake my only rational excuse for taking three days to write it), I'm now going to skip the planned (and indeed, three-quarters written (If I understood Wordpress, I think I'd have a subpage dedicated to scraps such as these; small passages removed from posts for length reasons or just because they're shit)) dissection of why exactly I prefer this song to "Backfire At The Disco", "Kill The Director" and even "Moving To New York", and move on to an actual review. (I'm obviously not very good at keeping posts at reasonable lengths, seeing as I've just made it a foot longer explaining - utterly pointlessly - what I've done). "...Joy Division" is subtly different from "...New York" (previously seen by me as the obvious pinnacle of the band's existence, a track which was unlikely to be surpassed until their seventh album at the very earliest) in a number of ways - it's slightly more fast-paced for one, and the verses don't sound so lethargic and resigned; it's also notable for showing a significantly wider emotional range. "Moving" was... how to phrase it? Monochrome - not in terms of musical variety as such, but in terms of feelings; the spectrum of what he was singing about seemed more than a little narrow and drab.

Yet here they seem to have dropped this approach in favour of the wonderful triumph-in-the-face-of-adversary feel they've now gotten hold of someplace. It's not something you'd expect to work - such things obviously don't happen in real life and generally look like shit in films and on TV, but, apparently, when put to use in catchy-as-fuck pop-rock tunes, they have a tendency to find themselves among the most uplifting things ever. If you read this blog with any amount of regularity (which, in all probability, you probably don't), you'll already know this, but I have this theory, which I previously dictated in my "Magic Position" review. Basically, the idea is that songs which are unreasonably happy - like, say, "We're From Barcelona" or anything by the Pipettes - are never going to truly cheer you up. You need some foundation of sadness to which you can relate for it to work, and evidently Wombats frontman Matthew Murphy knows this. And so we get lines like "so let the love tear us apart, I found the cure for a broken heart... let it tear us apart." - even if it meant fuck all he'd gain points for the clever referencing of one of the greatest songs ever, so the fact that it's possibly the most stunningly (un)meaningful non-Bright Eyes moment I've heard in recent times just adds to the spectacle.

[MP3] The Wombats - Let's Dance To Joy Division

Editors - "An End Has A Start"

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie) — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 16:07:00 +0000

Nowadays, what with the success of "Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors" and their current status as the world's new Coldplay (at least until the original Coldplay get off their arses, kill Mark Ronson and reclaim "God Put A Smile Upon Your Face"), it's more difficult than ever to deny the simple truth that Editors really are a very good band. Their songs are as anthemic (why oh why does Blogger insist that that isn't a word? No, you twat, I don't mean 'anaemic'!) as ten trillion U2's (And everyone knows that their only good song in the last ten years was "City Of Blinding Lights", which Editors basically did ten times better on "Smokers" b-side "An Eye For An Eye"), and charismatic frontman (Just kidding! This man has all the exuberance of Thom Yorke upon learning that people actually only pretend to like his band in order to seem cool) Tom Smith has a set of vocal chords that sound like the genetically-enhanced bastard offspring of Michael Stipe and Ian Curtis, except without the tendency for blue face paint, or songs that still have the power to make you shit yourself thirty years on. The only real problem with the band is the lyrics. Which, admittedly, is really quite a big problem, when you think about it. Take a look at the first two verses:

I don’t think that it’s
Going to rain again today,
There's a devil at your side,
But an angel on her way .

Someone hit the light,
Cause there's more here to be seen,
When you caught my eye,
I saw everywhere I'd been.

The ideal format for this would really be on paper, in which I could easily annotate the lyrics by drawing lines and such to show exactly what I'm talking about, but apparently Blogger's painfully twenty-first century posting features don't allow for such things. The fools. Anyway, let's start with the first of the two paragraphs: Essentially, an uninformed amateur weather forecast and a description of a person who's soon to be saved from their evil ways. Yes? (Another more appropriate format would be an actual physical spoken verbal conversation, in which you could perhaps grunt your agreement with my baseless statements). We'll ignore the first two lines - from anyone else, the couplet would be a positive one, although from Tom Smith's omnipresent MMMMMMISSSERRRRRABBBBLLLLLLLEE tone of voice we can safely assume that he's actually a massive fan of shit weather and as such feels that he has yet again had his hopes dashed by the cruel hand of fate - and focus on the third and fourth for second - For a start, what the fuck does this mean? It sounds like a metaphor of some kind - presumably he isn't speaking literally, although I wouldn't put it past him - but what exactly it's a metaphor for, god only knows. Could it be about redemption? Or maybe the opposite? Based on the previous couplet's 'bad as good' aesthetic, could perhaps the devil actually be at the side of the angel, eliminating the existence of the completely characterless 'character' completely? Perhaps I'm talking bollocks.

So, what make you of the second verse? Apologies for the Shakespearean Yoda moment there, I'm just coming up with increasingly desperate attempts to relieve the monotony. My first impression;... What? He essentially implores one of those he is currently with to shed more light on their location, due to his conviction (Apparently his dialogue is as self-confident as his guitar playing) that there's more to be seen. The third and fourth lines are completely unrelated to the first and second (sensing a pattern here by any chance?) and at first glance suggest a certain amount of affection for the 'you' he's referring to. But do they? We've established that, because of their status as miserable bastards, positives can sometimes become negatives in Editors' world of doom, despair and decapitated bunnies, but apparently unbelievable horrors can also come out of things that, in anyone else's song, would be construed as a finely-timed but utterly pointless piece of absurdity. "When you caught my eye, I saw everywhere I'd been"? Perhaps he means the first part literally, and the love of his life actually was responsible for physically catching Mr Smith's eye after it was hacked out by a callous, machete-wielding zombie. Or perhaps (this one's actually likely, in a fucked-up sort of way), he's talking about the pre-death tradition of your life flashing before your eyes? Admittedly, it's an odd way of phrasing it, but this is an odd band.

Musically speaking (and for the record, I'd like to explicitly state that any sentence beginning with those words is going to be hell for me to write), it's pretty much the song of the year - "Reinvent The Wheel" and "505" come close in terms of atmosphere, but neither of them conjure up one so crushingly agonising that you almost feel smothered just from listening to it. The drums pound against your skull incessantly, and the opening guitar sounds to me a little bit like a musical interpretation of a shard of glass - sharp, fairly terrifying, and potentially life-threatening - while Smith's vocals are still akin to how Stipe might sound while simultaneously singing "We Are The Champions" and having a massive nervous breakdown on the studio floor. The best bit - the track's undeniable pinnacle, and something for Coldplay to aspire to if they still want to be relevant by the next album - comes at 2:34. Yes, it's the inevitable 'everything drops out' moment, and it's the most appallingly cliched piece of songwriting ever, but the production and the vocals carry it through with more style than I think anyone could have been expecting. He really does have a fucking good voice, you know.

[MP3] Editors - An End Has A Start

PS: Fuck, I should keep a log of ridiculous computer errors caused by my workings on this site. I just went to count how many words this post contains (just over a thousand, as it happens), and the script froze my Firefox completely and left my computer for dead. Java hates me.

Plain White T's - "Hey There Delilah"

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie) — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 19:01:00 +0000

Oh, come on. This is just unfair, right? I don't do bad American pop-punk anymore, so why exactly is it that I genuinely believe the Plain White T's' "Hey There Delilah" to be truly among the best songs of the year and possibly the best of its genre (that is to say, sensitive semi-acoustic emo-pop) in the last decade? I mean, look at their name. Look at the rest of their back catalogue, specifically the insipid, sub-FOB pop-rock "Take Me Away". Look at their sullen, sepia-tinged promo photos in which they'd rather contemplate their favourite Smiths songs in a generally world-weary fashion than have an ounce of charisma and actually look at the camera (Yes, I know I was called a wanker last time I discussed a band's photos on here, but the above was just asking for it, right? Besides, this isn't about what they actually look like so much as it's about how some Hollywood Records high-up told them to pose in order to catch the attention of weepy MCR fans across the world, and criticising a record label for not giving a shit about the music is always fun). Now, if that overlong bracketed 'please forgive me' segment hasn't made you completely forget what I was talking about (I know it's done just that for me, but my attention span is sufficiently below average for it to have not affected you too.), all of the aforesaid problems (bad image, bad moniker, bad songs) had previously convinced me that even though the re-released "Delilah" had a lovely gatefold cover which was a little bit like a cheap version of The Maccabees' "About Your Dress" (but then, on the other hand, the track wasn't four minutes of wannabe-Kooks art-school pretentious shite, so I guess it equals out), it wasn't the sort of thing I was into. Yeah, I was wrong - it happens to the best of us - and "Delilah" is the sort of song that even my deepest indie sensibilities couldn't prevent me from falling in love with.

I first heard the track seemingly millions of years ago - all I know for sure is that it was on the PureVolume.com, a former regular online haunt for me (and presumably, countless others who steadfastly refused to use MySpace... and were technically too young, although that doesn't sound as impressive), that it was the whole site's most played song ever, or something like that, for a week, and that I liked it quite a lot. Now, I won't use the term 'love'; I rarely 'love' a song on my first listen (although, contrarily, I do actually reckon it did just happen five minutes ago with the new Wombats single), and, annoyingly, I'm not sure I actually listened to it more than once. And so, in the rather epic interval between then and now (around eighteen months by my calculations, although my calculations are rarely correct now that I don't sit next to Richard in maths lessons), my only knowledge of the T's has come from sporadically-received news of imminent releases, and, crucially, a solo acoustic performance of "Delilah" on the BBC's otherwise pitiful Reading and Leeds coverage. Now, any British music fan with access to a television set will know what I mean there: at random intervals during the hours otherwise dedicated to festival live footage and more ugly Radio One people than you can count, they occasionally plucked a young band - or Nick Lowe - to perform a solitary acoustic set in front of a camera in some scenic location (a forest, a platform looking over the Reading site, or a pseudo-New Rave-looking studio). And when T's frontman Tom Higgenson performed "Delilah" there, it was, amusingly, the first time I'd heard the track in a bloody long time. And so, as heroically portentous and literary as it sounds (as well as possibly sounding like I'm talking about cancer) , I realised I couldn't continue ignoring it.

Ooh. Now where to go? My apologies if you haven't enjoyed this particular review, but this is one of the first instances in probably a few weeks when I've had simply loads to say about a particular song, and I thought I could potentially make up for last month's fiasco (Six posts in a month? I'm lucky to have escaped with my life, I suppose) and any other fiascoes that may soon occur if I can belt out a thousand words on a song that you probably don't even like. But I think that's definitely the way this blog works; I either have far too much to say (so much that people apparently lose interest after the first sentence and comment solely on that calling me a wanker (I'll admit it, that comment really pissed me off) or not enough. Today I have far too much. "Hey There Delilah" is beautiful, anyway. And in that you have four words (the 'anyway' is necessary by the way, because this blog would be about twelve words long without unnecessary words and other such contraventions of Orwell's outlined six rules of English prose writing) that could effectively replace this post completely. But it won't, and I shall now proceed to actually dissect the song.

As with a small selection of brilliant songs and several other very good ones, it's nigh-on impossible to put a finger on what makes "Delilah" so good. Actually, no. That's a lie. It's the lyrics. That's a theory of mine (perhaps not a very good one, seeing as I'm sure many people have similar feelings, but just don't have MP3 blogs on which to air them); that whenever you speak of an acoustic song's delivery, you're really talking about the lyrics. That's what acoustic songs are really all about; the lyrics, and the sparse musicianship of the track is simply a way to elevate those lyrics above everything else. Right? The lyrics are the only thing of true importance, the centerpiece, the foundation that everything else is built on. And though Higgenson's aren't up to the standards of Bowie's or Lennon's or Sufjan's or Conor's - there are no references to "the lonely once bandaged" who "lay fully exposed, having undressed their wounds for each other", for instance - they're just nice. And that's another key word here, nice. He's singing to the titular Delilah, sure, but that doesn't matter. Rather than being specifically directed at the one person, he's really just explaining his feelings about that person (for the world to hear, or perhaps not, because no one had a clue who the band were when the track was first released), and as such it isn't a closed book like some of those legendary lyricists' songs - it's not a solitary, ultra-personal cry for help like "Poison Oak", it's a pop song. It's a pop song, and I still can't quite believe how good it is.

[MP3] Plain White T's - Hey There Delilah

(So, there you go. Zokotou.com informs me that that was 1150 words long, which, I believe, makes it the longest post on here which isn't an album review. Which is vaguely amusing. Let's only hope that this isn't as much of a disaster as the Good Charlotte review, which became the most-viewed page on the whole site, and was downloaded so many times that I eventually had to remove the link from the post so I had enough bandwidth to write about some other things sometimes.)

Siobhan Donaghy - "Ghosts"

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie) — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 18:05:00 +0000

Wow. This is one of those songs where you simultaneously wonder how exactly you've got this far into your mp3-blogging life without writing about it, and what on earth, given the opportunity, could possibly be said about it. You know, the "Chicago"s and "Lila"s and "You Are The Generation..."s and "Northern Sky"s; those select few tracks which are so mind-blowingly perfect that words can't express quite how astonishing they are. But, even so, those three songs - though all unique in different ways - at least remain rooted in a fairly basic song structure in some way, shape or form. "Ghosts" doesn't. Obviously. The vocals here are completely backmasked - presumably to let the listener come to their own conclusions regarding the track's subject matter - and as such, only emotion is truly conveyed with nothing much resembling any specific depiction of an emotion or event. As I don't have access to (or indeed, expertise regarding) any complicated audio-editing software, I can't reverse the track and see for certain whether or not Ms Donaghy is actually singing real words or simply gibberish set to the tune; then again, it's entirely possible that learning the real words would cause potentially grievous harm to my estimations of the track and my respect for its absurd, surreal sense of otherworldly brilliance. Because that atmosphere - a curious specimen which manages to radiate both a sense of celebration and melancholy via subtle waves of synths and a solid underlying beat - is really the only important part of the track: much like Sigur Rós's exploits in Vonlenska / Hopelandic, once there are no lyrics to divert your attention, it's easier to comprehend the genuine hidden meanings behind the track. And "Ghosts" perhaps manages it better than the Icelandic post-shoegaze (err?) quartet; the sound is somehow fuller - an ambient synth-pop sound comparable only with Johnny Boy's perfect "You Are The Generation That Bought More Shoes And You Get What You Deserve - and subsequently fairly difficult not to get swallowed up by.

[MP3] Siobhan Donaghy - Ghosts

P.S.: Apologies for the lack of a picture around the top of this post - firstly, my computer was in one of its very, very common periods of unbearable slowness while writing this, and secondly, I don't think, unless the artist involved is particularly attractive, that it matters very much.

Hard-Fi - "Suburban Knights"

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie) — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 19:18:00 +0000

It would be just be wrong if I only wrote positive reviews, right? That's not the way to hone your craft; I have to practice criticism as well as praise. At least, that's how I justify reviews like the one I'm about to compose. Because, though I unfortunately seem to be lapsing into an awful pattern here - namely one in which any band featuring four skinny, vaguely good-looking and confidently heterosexual indie boys playing guitar, bass and drums and singing bad songs (invariably about boredom, sex, or parties) is told that they should go jump off a cliff - bands like Air Traffic and Hard-Fi surely deserve everything they get, especially when their other songs (especially ones called "Never Even Told Me Her Name" and "Living For The Weekend") which are - if not excellent - certainly very good. Which, if you'll excuse the cliche, is one phrase that only a fool could use to describe "Suburban Knights", Hard-Fi's new single. Now, if there's one thing that the Arctic Monkeys have done right in their two years in the spotlight, it's realising that in the world of NME-beloved indie rock, you can't get away with repeating yourself. And while they (albeit quite subtly) stepped up a gear with Favourite Worst Nightmare, Hard-Fi have utterly failed to create anything that doesn't sound exactly like the contents of their debut album Stars Of CCTV. "Suburban Knights" is nice, yes, and certainly headed for countless not-so-indie discos, and it certainly boasts a nice singalong "whhhhoooooooah" moment at the beginning - the sort that even the Kaiser Chiefs, aka the most idiotic band on the planet, realised were actually a bit shit - and those opening vocals are spat in such a way that you can almost forget that Hard-Fi frontman Richard Archer was the man responsible for "Better Do Better", and, I don't know, there are plenty of things to like about this. But, on the other hand, why on earth would you want to listen to this? Klaxons, the best dance-punk band since Head Automatica, released their debut this year, so we're probably not short of catchy synth lines and existence-affirming lyrics about psychedelic drugs, and surely if you want a slice of really, really miserable working class life, you could just pick up a copy of The Enemy's We'll Live And Die In These Towns and have done with it? In short, Hard-Fi ceased to have any purpose around the end of 2005, so why exactly I'm wasting my evening writing about them in September 2007 is anyone's guess.

[MP3] Hard-Fi - Suburban Knights

The Gossip - "Jealous Girls"

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie) — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 12:07:00 +0000

As a rule, any record by anybody who has ever been in Hello! magazine (or, because I don't want to be discriminating, OK! magazine - I'm fairly sure the only thing to separate the two is that is one is suing the other) is going to be the sort of abject claptrap only generally found in books by Dan Brown or albums by The Fratellis. Look at the track record; at one end of the spectrum there's Rod Stewart, Elton John, Brian May and droves of other grizzled geriatrics who nobody's has given a rat's arse about since 1873, while at the other we have Pete Doherty and Amy Winehouse; both capable of producing a fine song (see "Albion", "Rehab") but on the whole more interesting for their various character flaws, drug addictions and stints in The Priory than for their predominantly average music. Gossip frontwoman Beth Ditto - a relatively recent addition to this unintentionally comedic troupe of has-beens and never-will-bes - thankfully never quite fits into either of these stereotypes; her authenticity and radicalism set her apart from the aforementioned jaded pop veterans, and her revolutionary attitude towards the world comes between her and the latter group - with The Gossip, you get the impression that they actually mean something, and their music is just good enough for it not to matter very much what it is.

"Jealous Girls" is the third single to be lifted from the 2006's surprise smash Standing In The Way Of Control - that is, after the explosive title-track which has, in its eighteen-month period of existence, soundtracked the first series of Skins, been released as a single several thousand times, and been remixed by the likes of US electro-punks Le Tigre and Belgian dance pioneers Soulwax, whose Nite Version remix of the track turns it into a veritable modern classic and enhances it for the dancefloor in a way that the album's producer, Fugazi legend Guy Picciotto, aparently could not. But while Ditto - who is, if you were wondering, joined in the band by drummer Hannah Blilie and guitarist Brace Paine (who in turn is confusingly also known as Nathan Howdeshell) - was seemingly at her peak railing against the Bush government's prophibition of gay marriage and howling lines like "SURVIVETHEONLYWAYTHATYOUKNOWOHOHOH!", "Jealous Girls", though perhaps not as righteously enraged as its predecessor, is certainly of equal interest on the musical side of things. The verses are staccato, falling into a rigid post-punk groove aided by the robotic drums and relaxed guitar, while Ditto sounds as dominant as ever in telling us "you're not the enemy, but underneath you don't agree, take comfort that it's over". Her voice is, as usual, exceptional - she remains the only true soul singer to have graced American pop music in the past twenty years, and the subtle outrage of her words only exemplifies the power of the vocals - and, backed with the omnipresent brutal instrumentation of the song's chorus (a triumph of unrelenting cymbals and grinding guitar which lends the song a genuinely menacing atmosphere), comes across as potentially more powerful than any other song released this year. Check it out below, as well as the dazzling live version which appears on the b-side and was recorded in June of last year at London's legendary 100 Club venue.

[MP3] The Gossip - Jealous Girls
[MP3] The Gossip - Jealous Girls (Live At The 100 Club, London)

Manic Street Preachers - "Indian Summer"

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie) — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 18:18:00 +0000

When I originally reviewed the Manic Street Preachers' recent Send Away The Tigers album, I payed surprisingly little attention to the forthcoming single "Indian Summer" - although it would seem I inadvertently predicted its third-single status with astonishing accuracy, I otherwise dismissed it in much the same way as everyone else; that is, an overhyped attempt to reclaim the glories of "A Design For Life" by incorporating a similar rhythm and a similar chorus in which the song's title is repeated, several times (the Manics certainly have a history of this - most notably in the vitriolic "You Love Us", but also in the overtly dumbed-down garage-rock of "Found That Soul" or the still annoyingly lightweight MOR pop-rock toss that was "You Stole The Sun From My Heart" - and have achieved typically mixed results). This ignorance on my part, though not the only example of it during that review (imaginatively titled "Nothing's Finished, It Just Fades Away", in a thinly veiled reference to both "Imperial Bodybags"'s lyrics and the band's vaguely Phoenix-esque career trajectory), was perhaps the most helpful in that it leaves me with much to discuss in this post - firstly, the chorus.

It really is, at the risk of sounding suspiciously like Eric Blair (I'm reading The Road To Wigan Pier right now, shortly followed by a recently purchased compendium of essays, and slowly sinking into the kind of depression only previously created by Bright Eyes's "Poison Oak"), quite dreadful. Possibly even odious. Because if someone or something is bad but aware of it, and shows the right amount of self-deprecation, it can pull it off and be hailed as a classic (The Libertines based their entire career on this clever little trick), but if it's godawful and still convinced of its own majesty, it invariably becomes quite painful to listen to. Unfortunately, "Indian Summer"'s chorus is more than just convinced of its own superiority, it's seemingly sure that it doesn't really need to do anything much to get to that comfortable Number 2 slot on the UK Charts - and as such the lyrics are perfectly ignorable under the Coldplay-alike string flourishes, and the little drum fills between each line (arguably the best thing about the song) go unnoticed and underappreciated under all the omnipresent self-righteousness. Because while the Manics' gift for a chorus which blends catchiness and meaningfulness perfectly is one practically unrivalled to this day (a fact which is surely something to do with the conjunction of Nicky's lyrics and James and Sean's music - they've actually each decided to do what they're best at, and as such the whole is much more than the sum of its parts), this one is just lacking the kind of determination that made the likes of "A Design For Life" pretty much era-defining.

So that's it; I could go on and explain how really the verses are quite nice (nicer, in fact, than the muddy and vaguely dead-sounding verses of the otherwise far, far better "The Second Great Depression"), and how that bit when the drums come in for a second or so at the beginning is even nicer - I could even make the not unreasonable claim that James Dean Bradfield's vocals are surprisingly excellent on here (although perhaps not as passionate as on Tigers closer "Winterlovers") and a variety of other positive comments, but, in truth, that chorus, and the sense of overblown showmanship that accompanies it, overshadow the other three minutes or so of this song. It's quite sad, really.

[MP3] Manic Street Preachers - Indian Summer

Maps - "Sparks In The Snow"

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie) — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 19:06:00 +0000

Yeah, this isn't the new Maps single, but that's only because of the same bizarre virus which only affects musicians called James and makes them relegate their best songs - in the case of Mr Dean Bradfield "Kodachrome Ghosts" and in the case of Mr Chapman "Sparks In The Snow" - to b-side status when in fact they tower mightily over literally every song on their respective albums. And so, though I may well have promised that today I'd write about "You Don't Know Her Name", I decided that describing how after the eighth listen it still leaves me not so much cold as frozen wouldn't be an enjoyable experience, and instead went for a dissection of last year's "Lost My Soul" b-side "Sparks In The Snow". Both the track and the band first came to my attention back in early December '06 thanks to an artist profile from Derek at Good Weather For Airstrikes, and "Sparks..." promptly stole the show on every mixtape or playlist I made until about May, which, appropriately, was roughly the time when Maps chose to release their/his We Can Create debut, preceded by the single release of "It Will Find You".

"It Will Find You" was decent enough - probably as good as "Your Love Alone Is Not Enough", the only other notable single to be released in May 2007 - but compared to "Sparks" it sounded suspiciously like a glorified and slightly more electronicised Postal Service single; that is, it was conspicuously lacking in that beautiful fuzziness that surrounded the earlier track, and originally set James Chapman firmly apart from Ben Gibbard etc in my eyes. Perhaps it was purely down to the lo-fi production values and the way they happened to harmonise perfectly with the deliberate vague beauty of the lyrics, but there's something uniquely powerful in the way a track like this not only captures a mood, but a whole mindset, or possibly even two, with each component in the music - be it the harsh synthetic organ, the relentless programmed beats, or Chapman's beautiful yet under-utilised vocals - representing an emotion swirling around inside a vast and probably hyper-intelligent mind. Maybe (er, certainly) I'm reading too much into this, but, alas, there's precious little else to write about right now, so I thought it only courteous to myself to let what'll almost certainly be my last post for another week or so descend into the kind of organised semi-spiritualistic journalistic chaos which is as much of a guilty pleasure for me as Alison Krauss's "The Lucky One".

[MP3] Maps - Sparks In The Snow

Fionn Regan - "Put A Penny In The Slot"

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie) — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 15:16:00 +0000

Sorry, again, for the absence. Blogger's amusingly misinformed spam blog detection methods latched onto me for a short period (as they did many other similarly innocent bloggers - would anyone else love to know how exactly they calculate these things?), I found myself in the midst of an awe-inspiringly bad write-up of The Enemy's "Had Enough" (one which has, I assure you, now been thoroughly dismembered. Or deleted, at the very least), and was afflicted with whatever the equivalent of creative block is for pretentious wannabe music journalists. And so, by way of apology, please accept Fionn Regan's "Put A Penny In The Slot" - after all, aren't all the best songs a little bit like a birthday present? As utterly awful as that sounds, I think a quick listen to "Put A Penny In The Slot" could just about justify whatever I just said, as - and I'm really digging myself into a big hole here, probably one made out of godawful clichés and perpetual hyperbole - it's just about perfect. No, really. Come back. Please? Easily the best song on his wonderful (and, I feel obliged to note, Mercury-nominated) debut The End Of History. And while that album was positively packed with the kinds of subtle nostalgia, thickly-veiled quips and numerous literary references that populate the majority of the work of all the greatest singer-songwriters, "Put A Penny in The Slot" just gets it spot-on. It's certainly intelligent, but the aforementioned literary allusions - while probably more commonplace than on any other number from his debut - are somehow easier to understand and comprehend in this instance. And as I said before (because two 'aforementioned's slotted into as many lines is just horrific), by the brief period when he's joined by a fairly angelic female voice for four or so lines on the subject of another (possibly equally angelic) woman altogether - one who "will not let you be your lover" and "goes out looking for a taxi" - and it all climaxes on the stunningly simple command to "send out a batallion to find her", it's almost too much to take. Almost.

Sorry about how hurried and consequently how befuddled this post ended up, but it was, I suppose, the best I could do given the circumstances. I should now be able to readjust my brain to a pattern of semi-regular posting, so expect me back in 24 hours so I can bestow upon you the new Maps single. Yeah? Bye then.

[MP3] Fionn Regan - Put A Penny In The Slot

Arctic Monkeys - "Plastic Tramp"

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie) — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 13:16:00 +0000

After my scheduled recent post on the three new Arctic Monkeys b-sides accidentally degenerated into a more conspicuously basic discussion of "Fluorescent Adolescent" itself, I rather put off the idea of continuing to write about said tracks - "The Bakery", "Plastic Tramp" and "Too Much To Ask", respectively - until they either gained some kind of greater recognition, or I managed to run out of anything else to ask about. Thankfully, in the week or so I've been away ('or so' meaning something along the lines of 'and two days spent not wanting to come anywhere near this blog'), both of these have happened; the two most interesting newly-released singles and leaks have come from Hard-Fi and the Foo Fighters, and the Monkeys themselves gave "Plastic Tramp" a considerably higher profile when they chose it to open the encore of their reportedly career-defining Old Trafford mega-gig last week. And, I suppose, rightly so; "Plastic Tramp" is in essence a "Brianstorm" uniquely devoid of the polish James Ford infamously bestows on every single song he produces - that is, a fast-paced, aggressive and possibly slightly insane number in which Alex Turner puts his considerable lyrical talents to good use and spits out a long trail of abuse at someone who may or may not be the elusive titular character.

And despite the many who'll attest to the strength of Turner's lyrics - indeed, upon the release of Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not the number of reviewers touting the man as the voice of a generation was surely in the thousands - as with I suppose most of their Favourite Worst Nightmare-era material, this is all about the delivery. In other words, as much as young Alex may spit out the many faults of his subject (and I bid you my apologies for the repeated use of the word 'spit' - I merely want to emphasise the fact that you really can almost feel his saliva coming into contact with your face by the time this song reaches it's middle eight), his venomous words would never quite work if presented in, for example, the world-weary mellowness of "The Bakery" or the semi-Strokes-ish NYC groove of "Old Yellow Bricks". Those possibly unique and definitely quite disconcerting haunted-house guitar sounds, the absolutely relentless undertone of the bass drum which almost seems to be peering over the shoulder of the bassline at times, the wonderful and completely unexpected moment when everything fucks off but the backing vocals and they belt out a verse alone (in much the same spirit of the end of Bright Eyes' "Make War", just without the Nebraska accents), and the second or so afterwards when the music cascades back in and sounds something like the aural equivalent of a house being demolished.

[MP3] Arctic Monkeys - Plastic Tramp

Manic Street Preachers - "The Long Goodbye"; "Morning Comrades"

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie) — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 18:30:00 +0000

Recently, so much is being said about the apparently rare ability to craft b-sides as good as their respective a-sides that it almost comes as a surprise when a band actually have their priorities right and, after crafting an almost perfect album - one which served as both a return to the mind of the casual fan and a return to the higher echelons of the UK chart - manage to put out five new b-sides that - while by no means bad - are thankfully nowhere near to the ten tracks of Send Away The Tigers in terms of either musical or lyrical expertise. That album has of course just been responsible for the greatest guilt pleasure single of the year - the meaningless, over-earnest, GnR-aping and utterly brilliant "Autumnsong" - and it's come comfortably packaged with "1404", "The Vorticists", "Morning Comrades", "The Long Goodbye" and a cover of McCarthy's "Red Sleeping Beauty".

"The Long Goodbye", the only currently-available SATT-era track to feature vocals from Nicky Wire, is one of the two best of the five new tracks - the other of the two is detailed below - and almost certainly among the best of the disappointingly uncommon Manics songs he lends his vocal talents to. Much like "Wattsville Blues", "Intravenous Agnostic" and "Ballad Of The Bangkok Novotel", it definitely sounds somewhat harder-edged than we've come to expect of the Manics of late, although 'punk rock' would perhaps be an overstatement. "The Long Goodbye" is perhaps most similar to the (admittedly JDB-sung) likes of "The Year Of Purification" - one of the better and certainly more mellow cuts from 2001's cluttered, overlong "Know Your Enemy", which makes similar use of those gloriously vague, sloppy Wire lyrics, packs a decent if not exceptional melody, and is really quite oddly forgotten almost as soon as its three minutes or so are over.

"Morning Comrades" is better. If there was one thing Send Away The Tigers was wholly lacking - and there certainly was, more than one thing in fact - it was a short, sweet, and softly spoken piece of acoustic balladeering, to level out the amount of bombastic power ballads named after seasons and shit like that. Ahem. Of course, 'acoustic' isn't really something this band are that fond of - despite the fact that every non-festival gig of theirs in the past ten years has featured a brief solo interlude, the most recent recorded output of this variety is probably the intro to "Elvis Impersonator: Blackpool Pier", which was released eleven years ago. And so it's not just a pleasant surprise but a genuine moment of anticipation when "Morning Comrades" comes out of my iTunes, and the anticipation isn't wasted. Speculation would have it that this is the only one of the aforesaid five b-sides that wasn't 'rushed' - that is, it was apparently recorded during the album sessions and not hurriedly put out during a momentary break from the band's May/June UK tour. And, although I'd usually take any opportunity to dismiss such a thing, it would seem to have had some effect - "Morning Comrades" is quite simply glorious.

[MP3] Manic Street Preachers - The Long Goodbye
[MP3] Manic Street Preachers - Morning Comrades

ALSO: So I'm sort of going on holiday tomorrow. Sorry about the short notice, I forgot to mention it before. But nevermind. I'll be back in about a week's time, hopefully with some Scott Matthews or something of that sort. Until then... listen to Bright Eyes' "June On The West Coast" and you'll hopefully forget that 75% of Britain is currently under water and actually remember what summer really is. Or something.

Patrick Wolf - "The Magic Position"

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie) — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 17:06:00 +0000

I must say, I really am in such a ridiculously confused and confusingly inebriated state of mind regarding the matters surrounding the upkeep of this site, that you honestly might well just want to go and read some other, better and undoubtedly more articulate MP3 blog altogether at this point, preferably one which won't begin making semi-veiled references to posts that have actually yet to be posted, pontificate endlessly and somewhat obtusely on Harry Potter, and even at one point forget that Patrick Wolf isn't the same person as Sufjan Stevens. These oddities have of course been completely eradicated, exorcised and.. removed from this post, but I don't doubt that their remnants shall live on (at least until I decide that this post is worthy of deletion in accordance with my policies of not keeping illegible and pretentious bollocks) and continue to irritate another generation of misguided fools who want to read about Patrick Wolf. So I suppose, after yet another brief break (one day I'm going to stop getting so bloody worried about these things - it's not like anyone really cares but me anyway, right?), I'm back and still carrying on with my theme of writing about stuff that came out hundreds of years ago because not very much really interesting has been released recently anyway. So hopefully I can stay attached to this place for a little while longer, especially seeing as I've currently got umpteen thousand b-sides from the Monkeys and the Manics to discuss in the next week or so.

Now, I've written about Patrick Wolf a minimum of twice previously, in both cases on the subject of earlier singles from his February 2007 album The Magic Position - that is, the morose, misanthropic and nihilistic likes of "Accident & Emergency" and "Bluebells"- and in both cases my posts have been among the shortest I've ever composed. So hopefully, on this occasion thanks to both my newfound absurd (and wholly unexpected) literary confidence and the comparative upbeat nature of the track in question, I can bring myself to write a little more. Because, as Wolf himself notes at least once in the course of the track's lyrical structure (there I go again with the pretentiousnesse...), he's singing in the major key, and I think the very real sense of melancholy present in the rest of his work just makes his recently discovered joy all the more sincere - that's why, I think, a song like this (that is, one that's undeniably exuberant but nonetheless conceals traces of earlier sadness) is always going to be better than one by the likes of The Boy Least Likely To or I'm From Barcelona, or someone of that sort - simply because those two, for all their good nature, escapism and ukuleles, sound to me like they've never known in their lives anything other than sheer bliss. And although young Patrick isn't actually technically talking of his own miseries in this number - the man who in a move far too enigmatically brilliant to ignore apparently once stated "In the same way I don’t know if my sixth album is going to be a death-metal record or children’s pop, I don’t know whether I’m destined to live my life with a horse, a woman or a man" is in this case talking of the misfortune of another altogether - he gives an insight into happiness that I can only hope you can understand and describe better than me.

[MP3] Patrick Wolf - The Magic Position

Arctic Monkeys - "Fluorescent Adolescent"

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie) — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 12:07:00 +0000

So, I'm back, more than a little confused, due largely to matters relating to Harry Potter, birthdays, summer holidays, Manics videos, and Arctic Monkeys. Now, this post was planned along the lines of my previous multi-b-side oriented ones - that is, I actually intended to write about "Fluorescent Adolescent" as well as "The Bakery", "Plastic Tramp" and "Too Much Too Ask", but such extravagance proved to be my downfall as I could no more complete a post of that magnitude than I could bring myself to listen to The Fratellis' debut album, and, as such, it is, I suppose, now going to come in the form of this one, followed by "Plastic Tramp" tomorrow, and the other two on Sunday (because, like millions of other idiotic obsessives worldwide, I imagine I'll be rather busy on Saturday). After that, I'm sort of planning a dual type thing on the Monkeys' (yes, them again) take on "Diamonds Are Forever", as well as Tom Jones's ill-advised but thoroughly delightful "I Bet You Look Good On The Dance Floor" ("...you're an EXPLOSION!", anyone? The man is a genius.), and at some point in the near future it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect a review of The Dykeenies' "Clean Up Your Eyes". Right, that's that sorted out, now onto "Fluorescent Adolescent".

...And so the Arctic Monkeys, the best Sheffield band in all of history who aren't The Long Blondes, have finally gotten round to releasing what is almost certainly their best song yet. Everything about "Fluorescent Adolescent" is a blatant display of their newfound confidence compounded into three minutes and a second of cheeky indie rock brilliance; in the course of the track they're boasting - not through the lyrics, which are concerned with other matters entirely, but through the blatant pompousity and joy of the music - that they scored a #2 single with their most defiantly uncommercial track yet, that they stole the Mercury Prize from under the altogether more deserving noses of Muse and Hot Chip, that these days they can afford to put out tracks like "What If You Were Right The First Time?" and "Plastic Tramp" as b-sides, and that they pulled of a Glasto performance that made The Killers look like The Bravery by comparison. Really, it's all there if you look hard enough. And all this, from Alex Turner's sneering retelling of the track's heroine "flicking through a little book of sex tips" to his dry, tired and somewhat yearning "where did you go?" just serves to cement the fact that the band are now at their pinnacle - after their overrated Definitely Maybe of a debut, they've released their very own (What's The Story) Morning Glory?, and "Fluorescent Adolescent" is just a more cheerful version of "Wonderwall".

[MP3] Arctic Monkeys - Fluorescent Adolescent

My Chemical Romance - "Teenagers"

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie) — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 17:49:00 +0000

Thanks to the potentially disastrous consequences if I were to not do so, I shall take this opportunity to admit that I am a fan of My Chemical Romance. I own their second and third albums (Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge and The Black Parade respectively) and enjoy both of them, with only the decidedly over-melodramatic "I'm Not Okay (I Promise)" and "The End." and the just generally really poor "Sleep" excepted. And while the indier-than-thou fools (you know, I still get a kick out of that phrase, even though 'indier-than-thou' makes up the whole of the Blogroll to the right of this post, and indeed the whole of the 'Blogs' section of my Firefox bookmarks - I suppose it's just the sort of inverted snobbery that prevents me from considering myself an Arcade Fire fan even though they're pretty much the most important band of the past decade, discounting Radiohead) may want to take offence at my love for the world's only Queen-influenced, Floyd-copying goth-punkers, I prefer to simply continue with my (possibly misinformed) belief that "Welcome To The Black Parade" is the best, most ambitious, most eclectic and most enjoyable single released since November 24th 1991. And while the quality of the band's singles dropped heavily a couple of months ago when they released the generic, drippy and truly wretched "I Don't Love You" (essentially their very own "Boulevard Of Broken Dreams", just with a better video), they've now reconciled this with "Teenagers", already a live favourite and the only number from The Black Parade to come anywhere near the truly transcendentally visceral "Thank You For The Venom".

"Teenagers", oddly, is the only track from TBP not to be directly concerned with the overarching plot of the concept album - that is, it isn't about death and stuff, and isn't from the point of view of the bizarrely inarticulate Patient, the dying narrator of the story - and it's probably a direct consequence of this that it's also the most cheerful of the album's singles thus far; while "WTTBP" had plenty of an underlying message of hope and things like that, "Famous Last Words" and "I Don't Love You" were each about as miserable as Billy Corgan after his budgie died while listening to a Hawthorne Heights / From First To Last split single. And it also marks something of a musical departure - unlike "Welcome...", it's bombastic without being sensitive in the least, and despite the slight similarities with "Famous Last Words", the chorus on show is simply bigger, better, an altogether more hideously unforgiving. Oh, and it basically consists of Gerard Way telling us on no uncertain terms that the age demographic who make up at least 101% of MCR's audience "scare the shit out of him". Which is pretty cool.

[MP3] My Chemical Romance - Teenagers

Klaxons - "It's Not Over Yet" + Assorted Remixes.

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie) — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 17:34:00 +0000

Well, as far as genres invented by the media to pigeonhole vast amounts of otherwise unconnected bands go, New Rave was quite a success. After all, it was responsible for at least five moderately enjoyable singles (three of which came from Klaxons) and several more interesting remixes, and for every bunch of rich London kids with a name taken from Street Fighter playing a pile of godawful faux-grime bollocks there was a truly amazing Brazilian electro-pop sextet or a bunch of hyper-neon-synth-soul-pop warriors (who also happened to contain the coolest Cambridge University graduate since Vladimir Nabokov) ready to forsake fashion in the name of musical innovation and the creation of songs with the potential to be universally adored. And there were also, standing flailing somewhere in the centre, in an MDMA-induced stupor, Klaxons. Everyone's favourite purveyors of polished, synth-ridden pop-rock gems also featuring the talents of the ever-adaptable James Ford (because, let's face it, "Brianstorm" would have been atrocious without this man, and your life would be atrocious without "It's The Beat".), they've just released the forth single from January's Myths Of The Near Future (an album title which in itself clearly states that Klaxons are cooler than every single one of their contemporaries - now when did Hadouken! last name an album after a compendium of J.G. Ballard's short stories?), which comes in the form of their unreasonably great cover of Grace's 1995 dance anthem "Not Over Yet". And, just like every one of their other singles, from the eerily Satanic "Magick" to the truly omnipotent "Gravity's Rainbow", they have succeeded magnificently in their aim of making something that thoroughly transcends the rock/dance borders (which was, I suppose, the whole point in New Rave anyway), and as a matter of course, "Not Over Yet" comes packing a chorus bigger than the Grand Canyon, is more enjoyable than four thousand Boy Least Likely To's on (even more) anti-depressants, and ends up even more infectious than Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy. So in the spirit of commemorating the beginning of what will almost certainly be the band's first period of obscurity (that is, that period between your first album's final single and your second album's first single when literally no one in the world cares about you very much and someone else infinitely more exciting has just emerged and plagiarised your entire aesthetic), you can also check out some of the band's more absurdly good remixes below, featuring takes on "Gravity's Rainbow" from electro gods Soulwax and French zombie Kavinsky, and the legendary Erol Alkan's 'Ekstra Spektral' interpretation of "Golden Skans".

[NOTE: The following MP3's (apart from one, which was apparently too big?) are hosted at Box.net, who I intend to carry on making use of for a while. Their service still doesn't allow direct linking (or rather it does, but only if you give them your hard-earned cash), but hopefully the pages you get sent to when clicking on the below song titles aren't as jumbled or ad-ridden as myDataBus's and won't ask you (twice) to join their service and partake in the neverending wonders of slow uploads and horrible ads for bizarre (and possibly dangerous) programs with names that sound like distributors of early '80s Atari games.]

[MP3] Klaxons - It's Not Over Yet
[MP3] Klaxons - Golden Skans (Erol Alkan's Ekstra Spektral Edit)
[MP3] Klaxons - Gravity's Rainbow (Soulwax Remix)
[MP3] Klaxons - Gravity's Rainbow (Kavinsky Remix)

New File Host Soon + Back TOMORROW.

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie) — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 20:56:00 +0000

So yeah, myDataBus has been hopeless for the best part of all of the time I've been using it, so I've now decided that the time has really come for me to leave it behind. As such, today's post on Klaxons has evidently not appeared yet, but hopefully I'll be able to sort my shit out as soon as possible and get that up tomorrow. If you know of any good (and free) file hoster, then please comment and tell me all about it. Yeah, YOU. Please?

Air Traffic - "Shooting Star"

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie) — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 18:47:00 +0000

Look at them. Fucking LOOK AT THEM. You can learn a lot about a band from taking a peek at their promo photos, and the above shot, currently relaxing in a prominent position on the band's MySpace page, makes Air Traffic look like possibly the music industry's worst invention since it decided to make Keane a household name. LOOK AT THEM. Air Traffic have just released "Shooting Star", the second single from their just-released debut album Fractured Life, and a track previously available in demo form on October 2006's Never Even Told Me Her Name EP, and it's pretty hideous. Not that you couldn't have guessed it from the above picture, but "Shooting Star" is a bland, soulless, and plagiaristic power ballad so pathetically pedestrian it'll almost certainly shoot to the top of the charts and use its ample power of infectiousness to remain in said position for possibly several millennia. Because, as with any godawful MOR plodder, "Shooting Star" isn't actually a bad song. No, really. It's not. It has all the hallmarks of a track that could have been a classic if someone else did it: big, bloated production, emotive, lonesome lyrics (about someone "too good to lose", obviously), PIANO, and a singer blessed with the ability to endlessly rock the Alex Turner 'everyman' style, and later pull a pretty stunning and completely unexpected falsetto out of the bag. Yet, obviously, it doesn't work. Whether it's just that we've heard it all before, or maybe it's disconcerting contrast between this and their more interesting (if more than a little similar to the Jam with a piano attached) earlier work (in particular the truly splendid "Just Abuse Me"), or most likely, the appalling quality of their promo photos, this is really quite atrocious.

[MP3] Air Traffic - Shooting Star

The Long Blondes - "Guilt" (Live in San Francisco, 16/06/07)

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie) — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 11:27:00 +0000

Now, how long has it been since I last wrote about The Long Blondes? Admittedly, my once enormous level of devotion to them has slowly declined since the November '06 release of their slightly disappointing Someone To Drive You Home debut, and especially so after the February re-release of "Giddy Stratospheres", a track which upon its re-recording (with the completely evil Steve Mackey on production duties) seemed to bizarrely lose literally everything that made it good to begin with, but it would seem that the newly rekindled interest in the band following STDYH's long-awaited USA release has also had a profound effect on me personally - and now I'm finding myself pontificating on the excellent live version of "Guilt", a brand new track currently only available from assorted sources on the interweb and recently made available by the wonderful Waves and Wires as a part of the band's 16/06/07 performance at someplace or another in San Francisco. "Guilt" follows in the footsteps of the magnificent 2006 b-side "Five Ways To End It" in that, unlike all of STDYH, it comes positively swathed in synths, to the point of sounding less like Sleater-Kinney (who admittedly they never really sounded like to begin with) and more like New Young Pony Club, and in a chronological sense also seems to echo the career trajectory of the Blondes' spiritual forebears Blondie - at least in the depressingly simplistic sense that TLB seem to be heading to leave behind the majority of their punkier roots in favour of a more firmly electro-pop sound. Sorry about the unintentionally abrupt nature of today's post - it marks the first time in a good while that I've written something oddly short due to a lack of interest in the subject matter rather than a simple lack of time. Either way, come back tomorrow, when I'll have what will hopefully prove to be something of an EPIC, on the subject of the new Air Trafic single.

[MP3] The Long Blondes - Guilt (Live In San Francisco) [[With HUGE thanks to Waves And Wires for providing me with the track in the first place. Go there now.]]

Bright Eyes - "Susan Miller Rag"

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie) — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 16:41:00 +0000

To continue with my newly-reintroduced theme of writing about songs that I can't pretend were released particularly recently, I thought it would be a good idea to write something about Bright Eyes. I am aware of (and am fairly terrified by) the fact that this will be my SEVENTEENTH post containing the work of Conor Oberst in a prominent position (completely true - he should be paying me, right?), but I feel that it's nonetheless not an exercise in futility to turn my thoughts to "Susan Miller Rag", one of the (as of today, prior to the release of the "Hot Knives"/"If The Brakeman Turns My Way" double A-side single) seven b-sides from the Cassadaga era of Bright Eyes' career. Of course, it wasn't released in the conventional manner that you might expect from a b-side - that is, on the b-side of a single - but was instead available on a free 3" CD given to those who pre-ordered the album via Saddle Creek, and as well as being the most innovatively-published of the 2007 b-sides, it might well also be the best. For while "Cartoon Blues" had a reference to "Padraic My Prince", "Smoke Without Fire" had a cameo from M. Ward, "Stray Dog Freedom" had a Springsteenian stadium rock riff so un-Bright Eyes it made me cringe, and "Endless Entertainment" had an unfortunate tendency to make me think that all of Cassadaga was going to sound like I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning, "Susan Miller Rag" has no such obvious redeeming features and instead relies on wonderfully unassuming lyrics, a youthful upbeat atmosphere, and pure folk-rock energy which, with its heavenly knack for overwhelming pop melody, takes you back to the simpler times of 2002's Lifted. It's a basic yet fairly enigmatic little number seemingly about escape, freedom and general happiness, and "Do what you want, when you want, with whoever you want to" is as life-affirming a lyric as any to be found on the real Cassadaga, except "Susan Miller Rag" seems to be making a point to consciously avoid the ever-present unintentional pretension that seems to have dogged Conor and friends' ever move over the past year or so. Unchallenging (unless you want to be challenged), cheerful (unless you're in a bad mood to begin with) and enjoyable (unless you happen to be a miserable bastard), this is the best Bright Eyes have been since the last dischordant notes of I'm Wide Awake's "Road To Joy".

[MP3] Bright Eyes - Susan Miller Rag

Scott Matthews - "Elusive"

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie) — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 21:20:00 +0000

So the other day, while listening to Placebo's "Brick Shithouse" and pontificating on matters relating to the outcome of Doctor Who (because this post was amusingly originally conceived before the series even ended), the idea came to me in a wave of godlike clarity that I really shouldn't be spending so much of my time on here feeling obliged to write about stuff which I don't really care about that much (hello Editors, or, more interestingly, New Young Pony Club), just because it constitutes what could be described as 'new'. I thought that perhaps it would be a better idea for me to stylistically go back to my earlier days ('earlier days' being synonymous with 'December 2006') for a spell, in which I brazenly wrote about just about anything I liked so long as it had been released in the past eighteen months or so. Of course, I don't intend to return to my younger and more vulnerable years (or months) in matters of formatting, writing style or misguided use of bizarre, poorly-made and completely unnecessary white boxes, but I'd nonetheless very much like the opportunity to temporarily turn back the clock in terms of the simple issue of subject matter. And evidently, it's in this spirit that I bring to you today the debut single from Wolverhampton's Scott Matthews, a man who is in my opinion both the single greatest solo artist in the country right now and the writer of what may well constitute the best folk song I've heard since "June On The West Coast" (That is, the good version, which obviously isn't meant to be sung by anyone who can actually sing particularly well, Mr Ward). Firstly, the lyrics:

"She's a gambler spinning wheels,
A poison victim but look of steel.
The coldest heart you've ever felt,
The coldest hands you've ever held.

Taking down, on your way.
A million miles, still no headway.
As I learn to live long,
In a mind I'm proud to roam.

She's elusive and I'm awake,
You're finally real, there's nothing fake.
A mystery now to me and you,
Open my eyes and I'm next to you.
She said my destiny lies in the hands that set me free.

A reckless night, she hears me breathe,
Cursing the sky at this company.
They lost the wisdom deep inside,
When bitterness shows it's side.

If it's true, I am doomed,
What more is there to hold on to?
A strand of her hair is all I own,
A gift to me, this sorry soul.

She's elusive and I'm awake,
You're finally real, there's nothing fake.
A mystery now to me and you,
Open my eyes and I'm next to you.
She said my destiny lies in the hands that set me free.

The sun in sails, and this ain't right.
There's more to her than meets the eye.
She comes and goes at any time,
Back in my head at another time.

She's elusive and I'm awake,
You're finally real, there's nothing fake.
A mystery now to me and you,
Open my eyes and I'm next to you.
She said my destiny lies in the hands that set me free."

... .... Where to start? (This post, as well as looking deceptively simple without the lyrics, would simply not be understandable otherwise). Like a twenty-first century "Hallelujah", except perhaps with the pseudo-Christian musings replaced by even more lovelorn weepings, it's one of those rare songs that's just too good to be confined by the rules that state a song should only make you cry if your situation is comparable to that of the songwriter at the song's time of writing. Because while the situation Mathews outlines is as delightfully vague as any 2005-ish Oberstian rant, he achieves what Oberst himself has only accomplished periodically, and has created something which is simultaneously completely applicable to everything in your life and completely nonsensical in anyone's eyes but his. Yes, all the best music displays this quality - be it Joey Ramone lamenting about not being allowed to go surfing "'cause it's 20 below", and striking sorrow into your heart so deep that you ignore the fact that you've had a deep-seated fear of surfboards since you got your right leg caught in between two of them in Wales when you were 10, or even the aforementioned young Oberst referencing "ABC, NBC, CBS, bullshit", none of which you've ever watched, or would ever particularly want to, all truly brilliant achieve this state either by some unnoticed omnipotent interference, or an amount of talent that probably amounts to even more than the genius who invented Minesweeper.

[MP3] Scott Matthews - Elusive
[MP3] Scott Matthews - Elusive (Zane Lowe Session Version)

Justice - D.A.N.C.E. EP

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie) — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 16:20:00 +0000

Justice are, when you think about it, really quite magnificent. If you can imagine Daft Punk minus all of the silly art-pop pretention and ridiculous penchant for supposed anonymity, you might just have taken your first step on the way to understanding their enigmatic, charismatic and often completely spellbinding music, but even a comparison to the spiritual forefathers of the present-day Paris electro scene doesn't quite do them - er - justice. I imagine I first heard their brand new single "D.A.N.C.E." around two months ago, via some mp3 blog or another (I feel somehow obliged to state that it was 20 Jazz Funk Greats, but in reality it probably wasn't), and after not quite having the heart to listen to their painfully unique electro-noise classic "Waters Of Nazareth" during the winter months, it came as something of a relief that the band were as capable of perfect summer-pop songcraft as the other worthless mortals who don't have the frankly hideously envious ability to make my ears feel as if someone is beating me around the head with a dead skunk containing dangerous amounts of static electricity. And fairly soon after that fateful day (Which, I believe, took place towards the end of May) I completed my first actual post on the subject - which can be found in all its imaginatively-titled glory here - and wrote a depressingly small amount on why it was the best song ever.

Needless to say, it still is (Even after the recent release of "Icky Thump"), and I'm here writing about it yet again, this time in the slightly dubious context of a review of the three other tracks which make up the newly released (and thoroughly beautiful) D.A.N.C.E. EP, which, as well as being more capital letters than my brain can comprehend, consists of "D.A.N.C.E.", its very own radio edit, "B.E.A.T." and "Phantom". "B.E.A.T." first surfaced aeons ago in March of 2007, and in the wake of "D.A.N.C.E." - of which it is simply a vaguely remixed and extended version - made not all too miniscule waves across the mp3 blogosphere and beyond, quite possibly even onto some radio waves in the actual real world. I won't go so far as to form an opinion regarding whether or not its better than the track it was based around - suffice to say that that would be like comparing "Space Oddity" and "Ashes To Ashes", just without the astronauts, the drugs, or David Bowie. "Phantom" is a more straightforward affair in terms of knowing how the hell one writes about it - it appears on the new EP in advance of its appearance on the duo's debut album †, and is aesthetically at least a little bit similar to the crushing "Waters Of Nazareth" - both tracks are epic, completely synthetic and completely lacking in vocals, and both seem completely desperate to shun any trace of 'musicianship' in the conventional sense, opting instead for four minutes and forty-five seconds of sheer, terrifying sound, with the trace of a melody occasionally bursting forth and then perhaps bowing its head in shame at its brief attempt to divert the limelight from the beautiful chaos bursting forth around it.

The three main tracks on the EP (Not including the radio edit, which is... a radio edit) are - put simply - all depressingly fantastic, and prove not only that electronic music has now officially become far more exciting than everyday indie rock, but that Justice and their Ed Banger Records peers are quite possibly the best in the world at providing it with an astonishing regularity.

[MP3] Justice - D.A.N.C.E.
[MP3] Justice - B.E.A.T.
[MP3] Justice - Phantom

Editors - "Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors"

noreply@blogger.com (Frankie) — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 20:47:00 +0000

[As ever, please accept my rabid apologies for my recent absence, but, y'know, it's fucking Glasto and I've watched more TV (specifically BBC2, which I haven't watched otherwise since some time in 2002) in the past four days than quite possibly the rest of the last five years of my life put together. Seriously, I was up until 2am, listening to the soothing tones of Phill Jupitus and Lauren Laverne dictating to me that they were going to show yet another track from Paolo Nutini, and getting quite literally bored out of my mind at the sheer averageness of the Killers' four-hour Saturday night headline set. As such - with as much regard as possible for my science case study on the subject of animal testing - I basically have stripped myself of all possible opportunities to get my arse round to actually posting anything on here over the last few days.]

And, interestingly, while watching Glasto on - I think - Saturday, after Brandon Flowers et al had buggered off, I caught two tracks ("Bullets" and brand new single "Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors") from Editors, who are I suppose otherwise known as everyone's second-favourite Joy Division-copying mope-rockers. Except that, to be honest, Editors are, in my book, a good bit superior to the band who would gladly fill the 'first-favourite' slot - that is, New York City's very own Interpol. Because while their hardened, deep-voiced misery-pop is quite often a good bit more serious than death of AIDS, I like to believe that underneath the 'Coldplay-but-even-slooooowwwweeeerrrrrr' facade, there lies a heart consisting of something like fluffy bunnies, except perhaps in a melancholy shade of blue or some kind of sepia tone or something. I mean, please please please forgive me, but the new single is called "Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors". And as sublime, pretty and meaningful as it is, that's a pretty awful title - and one that makes a nosocomephobe such as myself effectively wet myself.

So, we haven't really established anything here, have we? Basically, Editors are a bunch of miserable bastards, but I love them all the same. Even when they write lyrics like these:

"Say goodbye to everyone
You have ever known.
You are not going to see them
Ever again."

I mean, really. Hardly Richey Edwards, are we? Honestly. Check out "Smokers..." below, but if you get a tad depressed don't blame me.

[MP3] Editors - Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors