Eaten by Monsters

Alternative Christmas

2021-12-01T00:00:00Z

December is a time of year when true music fans go into hiding. Everywhere we turn, we're bombarded by Christmas songs. Supermarkets, public transport, the TV, the radio; all overrun with the stuff. And it's all awful. But I'm here to tell you that some Christmas music is not terrible. In fact, it's some of the best music out there.

Since starting this blog in 2008, every year I've been more and more excited when December rolls around. Finally I get to listen to some of my favourite songs! So here it is: my list of the best alt-friendly Christmas music. Twenty four songs that will appeal to those of us who love guitars and synths and crave a bit of "edge" on all the music we listen too.

Broken Records: Toska

2014-03-11T00:00:00Z

Broken Records are back. They’re threatening a new album later in the year, but for those of us too eager to wait until May, they’ve put together a campaign over on Pledge Music. We all know how crowd-funding works by now, don’t we? You choose how much of your hard-earned to give to the band, and when they’ve finished making all their lovely stuff you get some of it; exactly what you get depends on how much you “pledged”.

In amongst the many album-related rewards is a new four-track EP, Toska, which you can get as a download or a 10” vinyl. Broken Records have undergone a few changes since I last encountered them, not least of which is a line-up shift and decision to hide the glockenspiel. Mercifully, however, the resultant sound is still unmistakably Broken Records; bombastic and ambitious, just like they’ve always been.

Beyond that, even having listened to the record repeatedly over the last week or so, that’s about as much as I can tell you about the first three tracks: they sound like they were written and performed by Broken Records – they have that sound about them – but honestly they were all rather forgettable. Pleasant enough stuff, to be sure, but they go in one ear and out the other all to easily.

So if I’ve got this little to say, why write about the EP at all, I hear you ask? Because, dear reader, the last track is a barnstormer. Revival is vintage Broken Records, but not just in sound and texture.

What this last track has that the rest of Toska lacks is the drive and focus that turned me on to the band back when they were self-releasing killer EPs in 2008.

Particularly when they come with their own string players, bands often rely on a generic ‘epic’ sound to paper over the cracks in their songwriting or the gaps in their delivery – a set-and-forget grandiosity that can be summoned at the push of a button and leaves just as quickly. When they're at their best, Broken Records use their tools in far more inventive ways.

Revival is the kind of song that makes me prick my ears up; there’s a momentum and forcefulness here demands your attention. In this track all the elements that Broken Records have at their disposal are working together, building something meaningful, planting a flag. I’m hoping Revival is a statement of intent, a standard bearer for the LP to come.

Update: you can hear Revival and download it for free over at The Short List.

Boo, Forever: Boo, Forever

2014-03-03T00:00:00Z

From their press release I get the impression that Boo, Forever are really proud that they sound like Bon Iver. It's not all that hard to understand, either; the last, eponymous, Bon Iver record was one of the best albums to have been made in the last few years, and there's no shame in having high ambitions. There's no denying, either, that Boo, Forever do a damn good impersonation. In Bones this ‘collective’ of lo-fi folktronicists have written one song, at least, that could well have come straight from the pen (and vocal chords) of Justin Vernon himself.

Sonic doppelgängers aside for a moment, Bones feels out of place on this record. It stands apart. The album feels like it was born of inspiration and experimentation, whereas Bones feels decidedly “written”; a complete work that exists just as much in the craft and arrangement as in the performance. Conversely, the rest of this LP puts me more in mind of the organic sound-sculpture of The Books or the improvisation-led experimentation of Laid-era James than it does Bon Iver, despite the music being absolutely riddled in Iver-isms.

It could be said there's too much imitation on this record. The otherworldly hollering and firework sound effects on The Bloodred, for instance, sounds more like a plagiarism of Creature Fear than a homage. But when this record shines is when it doesn't sound like anyone else. Boo, Forever do a really good Bon Iver impression – so good that I'd still love this record if that's all they did – but they're also much better at sounding like Boo, Forever and I'd encourage them to work on that aspect of their music more.

As a reviewer it seems like a cheap shot to make easy comparisons, and mentioning Bon Iver far more often than the band themselves feels like a bad job done quickly. Even so, there's no getting around it; this record is great, but sits in an obvious and omnipresent shadow. Boo, Forever have a great ear for song construction, and the production on this record is the kind that I pray for as a music fan – this is exactly the kind of music that I like! – but I hope the best is yet to come.

Kim Churchill: Fear The Fire

2014-02-27T00:00:00Z

Living in a ‘surfer’ town has given me a heightened sense of cynicism and disdain when it comes to self-styled wandering troubadours. Far too often these camper-van-living dropouts think that playing acoustic guitar and ukelele makes them an multi-instrumentalist, and knowing a couple of jaunty cadences and a major 7th chord makes them a songwriter. Even the ones with genuine talent (the John Butlers and Xavier Rudds of the world) rarely feel like a ‘complete package’ – the guitar playing will be excellent, but the lyrics will leave a lot to be desired, for instance^[1].

What's worse is that their success invariably pulls a horde of also-rans and wannabes into the spotlight with them. The market place is simply swamped; surfer-singer-songwriter supply far exceeds demand, and there wasn't all that much demand to start with. In short, to make a mark in this genre, to impress, to be taken seriously, an act has to be very, very good indeed. Multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter and surfer Kim Churchill is exactly that good.

The double-a-side 7" single Some Days The Rain May Fall / Fear The Fire came out in late January as a teaser for his upcoming album. You can download Some Days The Rain May Fall for free on his Bandcamp page, and it's a really nice track; subtly produced with a good ear for layering and textures, this is already a cut above most other singer-songwriters. However, it's the second track, Fear The Fire, that's had me constantly resetting the needle on this fine 7".

Fear The Fire swiftly erases any pre-conceptions the listener might have developed after reading Kim Churchill's biog. This music is big, this music is weighty, this music has a scope and ambition that far outstrips any constraints of genre or expectation. I'm a sucker for well-executed dynamic shifts, and on that count Fear The Fire is a masterclass. I defy any of you to listen without breaking out into spontaneous air-drumming; I know I can't. Fear The Fire is fabulous, and I can't wait for Kim Churchill's album.

*cough cough* John Butler *cough cough* ↩︎

Matthew and the Atlas: Pale Sun Rose

2014-02-17T00:00:00Z

In 2009 I played a show where the only people in attendance were either venue staff or musicians actually playing at the event themselves. These kinds of turnouts are sent to test young musicians; a rite-of-passage that separates the wheat from the chaff, the men from the boys, and the true artists from the dilettantes. Myself, I grew tired of the non-existent, hostile, or (even worse!) ambivalent audiences pretty quickly, and have long-since retreated to the sidelines and the more cosy surrounds of an ‘informed observer’. One of the acts that shared the bill with me that night was not so easily defeated.

Matthew And The Atlas (the nom de guerre of songsmith Matt Hegarty) not only gave an excellent performance that night, but was also peddling an EP of fantastic quality. My review of the Scavengers EP has slowly but surely become one of my most-read posts on this site; proof that Matthew and the Atlas has kept going. Without any great fanfare or press attention, winning one fan at a time and building an audience the hard way, the debut Matthew and the Atlas album is finally on the horizon.

It's not often one finds delicate, folksy banjo playing and a rough-cut voice with a honey-glaze coupled with a majestic rock swagger, but from what I've heard of Other Rivers (due out in April) that's just what we're going to get. And to whet your appetite they've released a rather marvelous video for the lead single, Pale Sun Rose, which you can own on MP3 or seven-inch from the 23rd February. I love the pure heft of this track; I know it's early days, but if this isn't one of the 10 best songs of 2014 then we're in for one hell of a year.

Bellowhead: Broadside

2013-11-22T00:00:00Z

There are some bands that should only ever be heard on record, and some that should only be heard live. I'd put The National and Death Cab For Cutie squarely in the first camp; two of my favourite bands, to be sure, but ones that only reach their full potential in the studio. A band I'd previously put in the latter camp is the rowdy folk orchestra/collective Bellowhead.

Bellowhead is made up of 11 fantastic instrumentalists, ranging from folk staples like fiddles, melodeons and bouzouki to more outré selections like a helicon and oboe. Their live shows are rowdy, frenetic and never less than thoroughly entertaining, and if you only take one thing from a Bellowhead concert it's that traditional English folk music is all about dancing. For a beard-scratching pedagogue like myself, this has proved to be a decidedly non-trivial obstacle to enjoying their music in the decidedly sedentary comfort of my own home.

Live, Bellowhead are fantastically skilful; their sound is brash, bold and powerful, but the band are tight enough to ensure every instrument gets a chance to show itself off during the course of a show, and they show a masterful command of dynamics – diving from delicate moment to bombastic frenzy with sure-footedness and confidence. On record, however, they've struggled to meet the high standard their live shows have set. The raw power is lost, the dynamics disappear, and the music sounds flat as a result.

In that light, I'm overjoyed to announce that their latest LP, Broadside, bucks that trend, and does so in fine fashion. I'm well over a year late in coving this record, but I'm taking the opportunity of their autumn tour as an excuse to treat it as a new release. This is an album with breadth and depth to rival the best studio magicians, and while it still lacks the raw gut-punch of their live shows it compensates in other ways. On Broadside we're able to experience the finer details of the band's performance that get crowded out of the live show. The clarity of the recorded sound – so often a downside for Bellowhead albums – has been harnessed to great effect, adding to the music rather than taking away from it.

They've worked with producer John Leckie before, and it sounds like he really earned his fee for Broadside, but the true moments of quality come from the arrangements. When the oboe and bass clarinet come to the fore the music could have been written by Micheal Nyman. When the tuba, helicon, and the rest of the horns start ratcheting up the tension we could be listening to Hans Zimmer's Inception score. Folk song melodies are by their closed nature notoriously hard to break apart, add to, or re-harmonize, yet Bellowhead consistently find new ground and new life in the traditional canon.

Eliza And The Bear: It Gets Cold

2013-11-20T00:00:00Z

It’s a refreshing experience to find a band that continue to live up to their early promise. Eliza and the Bear made a big impression with their Upon The North/The Southern Wild double-a-side at the start of this year, and their latest single, It Gets Cold, is at least as good as their past efforts. In fact, it may even be better. Too often bands who kick things off with an instant-sure-fire-smash-hit debut single fade away into the background in less time than it takes for a post about them to be pushed off the front page of a blog feed.

It Gets Cold is more jaunty than its predecessors, but has the same bombastic swagger that made Eliza and the Bear’s earlier songs stand above the rest of the crowd. This track feels a little more ‘produced’, too; the band had already shown a deftness of touch when it came to dynamics and barnstorming thigh-slapping crescendos, and It Gets Cold is a further step along that road. This record is less tweedy, less acoustic than their last one. The textural elements that mark a studio performance as more than a mere recording of a live show hint at a band that’s beginning to push at its boundaries, to test the extremities of their abilities.

So while I think It Gets Cold is an excellent single in isolation, it’s what it signifies that’s really got me excited. Bands that can capitalise on early promise are few and far between, and need to be treasured. It’s still early days for Eliza and the Bear, but by releasing a second 9+ rated single they’ve already marked themselves out as being considerably far ahead of the pack.

There Will Be Fireworks: Youngblood

2013-11-16T00:00:00Z

I've only listened to it four times (in quick succession) and already I love this track. Youngblood is the new single by There Will Be Fireworks: I know, two songs called Young Blood in as many days feels a little excessive, especially when there are already several good songs with those words in the title^[1]. The video is simply stunning, and actually contains something resembling a narrative and not just a collection of pretty pictures, and sonically – well, just listen to it! I'm smitten. So much so that all I want to do right now is download the single and pre-order the vinyl LP.

So why can't I do either of those things!?!

Bands have to work really hard to build interest in a record, and teasers and previews are part-and-parcel of that process. In many ways There Will Be Fireworks have done exactly what a band whipping up hype could hope to; I want to buy this record, and will do so as soon as I'm able, and I'm telling others how great I think this record is. But to be honest this situation makes me furious. Maybe There Will Be Fireworks are hoping this single will chart, but I don't for a second think it will, so the idea of saving up all the potential single-sales until some meaningless ‘release date’ is just frustrating. They've released the video and I've heard the song, so why the hell can't I buy it yet?

What they have deigned to give us is a pre-order link to a useless piece of plastic. I myself don't own a CD player anymore, but I'm willing to concede that pressing vinyl is a costly and largely un-lucrative step for a band to take. I'd love to have it, but not being able to buy it doesn't make me angry. Not being able to download the single (through iTunes ideally, but any way of paying for and getting the mp3 would be fine) just smacks of stupidity. I'm often quite fickle, I may not love this track so much whenever it is finally released; the window for purchase is very short.

Having a release date for a physical product makes perfect sense, but why oh why do we cling to that idea when it comes to digital ‘releases’? If I can hear it on YouTube I can rip it to mp3, but that's a hassle and I'd much rather give them my money. Youngblood is a fantastic song. The last time I instantly liked a song this much was when Daughter released Human. In that case I was able to buy the single instantly, and pre-ordered the vinyl LP within minutes of having heard the track. God knows why There Will Be Fireworks won't let me do this; my suspicion is that they're idiots.

Young Blood, by The Naked and Famous, Upon This Tidal Wave of Young Blood by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, and last but not least, Young Blood by Bruce Willis. ↩︎

Saint Raymond: Young Blood

2013-11-15T00:00:00Z

It looks like cooler-than-thou singles-label National Anthem have secured themselves another upbeat indie act to add to their small-but-star-studded roster. They’ve already proved themselves to be reliable hipster bellwethers by putting out 7"s by Chvrches and Haim “before they were cool” and even their less commercially successful releases have been remarkably good records (both Atlas Genius’ Trojans and Sir Sly’s Ghost have never strayed too far from my turntable).

Saint Raymond is their new signing, and his single Young Blood is scheduled for release on Jan _5th. A cursory snoop through his Soundcloud page shows Saint Raymond has a good ear for a melody, and _Young Blood is the best of the bunch. There’s a catchy chorus, staccato guitar lines, gang vocals, and the delivery smacks of the middle-English-geezer accent that’s proven to be so popular throughout 2013.

Only time will tell if his rise will be as exponential as that of predecessors Chvrches and Haim, but the fact that he's just signed to Atlantic means that those of us waiting for a proper LP are unlikely to be disappointed. If the fickle finger of fame has any connection at all to quality music then we’ll no doubt be hearing much more about Saint Raymond in 2014.

Emile Bernard: The Way

2013-11-13T00:00:00Z

Dickensian scally Emile Bernard has released a video for his new single, due out in December. I’m pleased to report that the track itself, The Way, is a very impressive three minutes of indie songsmithery. The sound of a slightly distorted bass guitar is one I’ve been enjoying a lot lately, and coupled with the obligatory jangly guitars and assertive drumming it lends The Way an urgency and imperative that lifts the track to a level not often reached by the many indie-wannabes that land in my inbox. I’ve spent more time than I ought to lately mucking about with my Bass Big Muff π, and this blend of bass, guitar, drums and voice is exactly the sound I’ve been striving towards. So in a way I’m frustrated that Emile Bernard has succeeded where I have failed, but it sounds so good that mostly I’m just glad to hear it.

And for any of you thinking “hang on, I thought Émile Bernard was one of the post-impressionists?” one look at his twitter avatar will show you where frontman Paolo came by the inspiration for his band’s nom de geurre.

Ablu: Ablu

2013-11-11T00:00:00Z

If there is one trend that has dominated the music of 2013, it is the concept of space. The success of XX’s 2009 debut – as bold an exercise in reductionism as we’d heard in years – sowed seeds in the tastebuds of plenty of musicians, and this is the year in which that harvest has finally flowered. Daughter, London Grammar, Deptford Goth, Lorde, Foals; all have been competing in a race to the bottom, a competition to make a record with as little in it as humanly possible. Of course this quest is largely futile, as it was arguably won last year by the XX’s second record. However, despite being epically sparse, Coexist was also epically unlistenable, so I give the crown to Es Muss Sein’s track Sail, again from 2012. You could literally not make a good song with fewer ingredients.

So what does that mean for all the upstarts chasing the crown this year? Well, some have produced excellent records (Daughter and Deptford Goth being chief among them) but there’s no escaping the fact that all this introspection and space sounds very much like a trend, and all those who experiment with it can quite justifiably be accused of ‘jumping on the bandwagon’. Viewed in that light, it is especially refreshing to hear records like the one Oxford-based synth-botherer Ablu has just released. Ablu has clearly heard all these sparse, empty, atmospheric records, and clearly likes them too, but thankfully he uses the texture-du-jour as just that; another texture in his pallet, no more, no less.

The sparsity and “atmosphere” (music journo shorthand for reverb) in Ablu’s EP are tempered with an almost jaunty sense of fun. A playful Bhundu Boys-esque rhythmic complexity undercuts much of this record, ensuring it never becomes too po-faced or serious. This also keeps the music’s view firmly on the horizon and not gazing shoewards; another plus-point in Ablu’s favour.

If I had to level one criticism it would be that at times the voice sounds too mannered, too wrought and affected. The vocal has a distinctive quality that serves to draw the listener in deeper, and for most of the twelve minutes of this EP the voice is a great asset, but every so often it does creep dangerously close to the border between artful-artlessness and music-hall pastiche. If Ablu played it straighter I’d be happier, but that’s a small niggle in an otherwise excellent record.

Daughter: Youth

2013-09-02T00:00:00Z

It's only a recent obsession, but lately I've come to love 7" singles. In many ways they're the perfect format: more real-estate for cover art that the fast-disapearing (one hopes) CD yet less unwieldy than a 10" or 12", the aesthetic balance between label and bare vinyl is more pleasing than a larger record, and – most importantly – you're presented with a highly selective few minutes of music that the very process of putting on the record forces you to pay close attention to. A blessed side effect of this high level of editorial discipline is that the b-side is rarely wasted on a useless remix; and often it's the b-side that marks the single as something worth owning.

It's a testament to how much enjoyment I gained from Daughter's recent LP, If You Leave, that I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of their latest single, Youth. If You Leave is by far my favourite album of 2013 so far, and Youth is one of the best tracks on that great album. So why buy the song again? For the b-side, of course! The fact that early stand-out song Home didn't make it onto Daughter's debut LP shows the strength of the catalogue they have to draw from, and the b-side chosen to accompany Youth on this outing drives the point home even more. Smoke, the new track, would fit seamlessly onto If You Leave, both in terms of texture and aesthetic, and tone and lyrics. Crucially, it also holds its own when it comes to overall quality. Put simply, if you liked that you'll love this.

Okkervil River: The Silver Gymnasium

2013-08-31T00:00:00Z

In all honesty, I can't bring myself to call this record ‘bad’, but by the same token neither can I call it ‘good’. Okkervil River have a very distinct and refined ‘sound’; of the five albums of theirs I own (including this, The Silver Gymnasium; their latest effort) there is barely a second amongst them that is not instantly identifiable as Okkervil River. And there's also no escaping the fact that it's a sound and image that aligns seamlessly with what I consider to be ’proper’ music.

The Silver Gymnasium, like the records that preceded it, is a real band making real music with real instruments (a true mark of distinction in my eyes). Okkervil River's music is taught and well-arranged, put together with care, skill and attention to detail, and yet still rough enough around the edges to be credible in this world of over-produced, over-dressed, and overly-melismatic drivel that pervades the airwaves and the populist imagination.

In short, this music is good, and should be celebrated for no other reason than that it is much better than most other music made at the moment. Of course there is a “but” coming: when I listen to Okkervil River I'm not comparing them to other bands. In the bear-market of my affections, they need to beat their past successes. When I listen to The Silver Gymnasium I'm thinking of older songs like For Real (from Black Sheep Boy) and Lost Coastlines, Singer Songwriter and Pop Lie (from The Stand Ins), and against such competition the new stuff doesn't really pass muster. I'd go as far as to say that For Real, in particular, is one of my favourite 100 songs of all-time. So while the songs on The Silver Gymnasium do improve with repeated listens and the record as a whole has few flaws, this in itself is not enough for me to proclaim it as being any better than average.

The Silver Gymnasium will be released in the UK by [PIAS] on the 30th of September.

Fence Records Closes

2013-08-14T00:00:00Z

It was with a cry of despair that I saw the terrible subject line in my inbox this morning: “Farewell To Fence‏”. With so many of my most valued cultural sources stumbling to a halt in this modern age – Word magazine, Google Reader, practically every record shop I've ever been to – it came as little surprise to learn that one of my all-time favourite record labels was set to shut up shop. Living, as I do, at the other end of the country, the Fife-based ‘collective’ that was Fence Records always seemed like a shining hub of magical creativity and invention. It inspired me to set up not one but two independent labels of my own, and more importantly provided me with some of the best music of the last decade.

Mercifully all is not as bad I first feared; the label hasn't gone bust, all the current artists are still making music, it's just that the situation has changed. Since founder Kenny Anderson – better known to EBM readers as King Creosote – left Fence to focus on his own music-making efforts, the label has been run by Johnny Lynch – better know to EBM readers as The Pictish Trail. Johnny has lately been based in the Hebridean island of Eigg, and in his own words:

“All of a sudden there wasn’t much Fife in Fence, or much Fence in Fife.”

So they're having a ‘re-brand’ (as Johnny doesn't want to call it), and the fantastic records will continue to flow (we hope). The new venture has yet to be named, and will apparently be christened at the last-ever Fence Records showcase at the Green Man Festival on Friday. So the news is not as bleak as it at first seemed, but the passing of a musical icon should still be marked with some well-earned solemnity.

The Naked And Famous: Hearts Like Ours

2013-07-26T00:00:00Z

When the world first became aware of The Naked And Famous it was easy to dismiss them as all style and no substance. Their breakthrough single Young Blood was an infectious shot of over-produced indie rock that bypassed any cerebral functions and aimed straight for your hind-brain. The metronomic rhythm section, the distorted primary-colours synth hook, the “oh-yeah-a-yeah-a-yeah-a-yeah”s all hinted at a future career full of advertising synchs and drivetime radio appearances.

Their album, Passive Me, Aggressive You, conformed to expectations in many ways, but it turned out there was more to it than many of us had predicted. For starters, I'm still listening to it fairly regularly even now, a few years later. In my experience bands with the kind of sound The Naked And Famous were peddling often outstay their welcome pretty quickly – after a first flush of excitement, the punchy production that made the music so accessible in the first place becomes too thin, too predictable, too boring to withstand repeated listens. Passive Me, Aggressive You had all those traits in spades, but somehow made them work far beyond the honeymoon period.

This week the band have announced they'll be releasing a new album in the autumn – In Rolling Waves comes out on the 16th September. There's already a track available for download on iTunes – Waltz, which I can only describe as a low key disco ballad (it's a little better than that makes it sound, but not by much) – but the real excitement comes from the next single, Hearts Like Ours. This one is officially released on September 9th, but can be streamed on Soundcloud right now. This one is The Naked And Famous at their best; perhaps not as hooky as Young Blood, but the overall sound is practically identical to that which held my attention so thoroughly since their debut album came out. If the rest of In Rolling Waves is more like Hearts Like Ours and less like Waltz then we could have a very exciting album on our hands.

Spotify for Independent Bands

2013-07-16T00:00:00Z

If you're in any way connected with the music industry it cannot have escaped your attention that Spotify is again in the news. And, yet again, all this media interest has come from an artist backlash; back in 2008 there were claims that Lady Gaga only received £100.76 for a million streams of Poker Face, and in November 2011 Jon Hopkins spoke out on Twitter about getting only £8 for 90,000 plays. This time Nigel Godrich – longtime Radiohead and Thom Yorke producer – has hit out at the streaming platform, but unlike those that came before him, Godrich (with Yorke's support) is not complaining about his specific stream-based earnings, but about the ability of the platform to support new artists. It's all very well for acts like Radiohead with a massively successful back-catalogue to generate streaming revenue, he says, but the pittance Spotify and the like pay per-stream means new bands are getting a rough deal, and an unsustainable one at that.

In protest, all Godrich and Yorke's solo albums, along with the recent record from their collaboration as Atoms for Peace, have been removed from Spotify. In Rainbows is also not on the service, but the rest of the Radiohead canon – owned by EMI – remains available for streaming.

For once, all the media hype is actually justifiable. Yorke and Godrich are grabbing headlines to hopefully spark a reasoned debate, and one that is badly needed. If Spotify et al really are the saviours of the music industry, then new bands must be happy with the system. A world awash with back-catalogue but with no new music would be a terrible thing. And with indie labels increasingly struggling to afford to operate, that world is exactly what Godrich and Yorke are seeing on the horizon.

The History

So why is Spotify seen as such a revolution for the digital music industry? Cast your mind back half a decade to a pre-streaming world, and there was no middle ground for those who couldn't (or wouldn't) buy downloads, but who were already indoctrinated to the always-on, everything-at-your-fingertips mentality of the internet. You wanted to hear a song your mate had just recommended, but didn't want to splash out on a download (79p) or a CD (£15); why wait – potentially in vain – for the track to come on the radio when you could just pop onto your file sharing service of choice and hear the song in seconds (or minutes, if you were still on dial-up)? The legal, label-sanctioned Spotify filled that niche, and ad revenue paid the artists.

The fractions of a penny the artists actually earned per-stream was less than the income from a download, but more that nothing. And thus Spotify could sleep at night, safe in the knowledge that it was doing a good thing.

But not everyone saw it that way. Many - including Hopkins, Gaga and other streaming-refuseniks like Coldplay, The Beatles, and Pink Floyd, saw the streams as lost album sales. Why would someone pay for a download when they could stream the song whenever they liked for zero marginal cost? Seen in that light, the ‘something is better than nothing’ argument held less water. If streaming was hoovering up listeners who would otherwise have bought a download, then the monies paid to artists had better be more substantial.

The Facts: Actual Numbers

So Lady Gaga only received £100.76 for a million plays of Poker Face in 2008, eh? That claim has since been proven to be false (in fact, Spotify paid out £201.53), and the streaming service claims the low payout was because at the time the platform was still in its infancy, but confusion still abounds.

The fact remains that the only way to know how much Spotify pays out is to actually receive a cheque from them, and even then the numbers are tricky to interpret. The first cheque I received from Spotify came in April 2010, and it showed that I was earning different per-play rates based on geographical location and whether or not the listener was a subscriber or ‘freemium’ user. For plays in the UK by non-subscribers (a.k.a. ad-funded royalties) I was getting roughly 0.04p^[1] for each stream, and for plays by UK-based Spotify subscribers I was getting about 0.5p per-stream. My most recent Spotify royalty cheque is from May this year, and while rates have varied a little since 2010 the average pay-out per-stream is still somewhere between half a penny and .04 of a penny. Sadly not enough to retire on.

[It should probably note at this stage that as a self-released artist I see 100% of the income generated by my streams. A band going through a real label will see less than my half-a-penny as that money has to be shared out between the label, band, manager, etc.]

Spotify Pays Better Royalties Than Conventional UK Radio

So it's clear to see I'm getting ripped-off, right? Well, maybe not. At the current rate, it takes over 150 Spotify plays to earn what I get from just one download on iTunes, and the exchange rate looks even worse when you compare the £8 Jon Hopkins made for his 90,000 streams (his label were clearly shafting him, as I'd earn £180 for that many streams) to the £50 he’d get from just one play on Radio 1. The figures are all accurate, but do they actually tell us anything? These kinds of comparisons aren’t really comparing like for like, and as such they’re of little use. If you take into account the number of listeners to Radio 1 and count each of those as a single stream, then the figures look a whole lot more favourable.

According to RAJAR, Radio 1 reached just over ten million people in the quarter ending March 2013. If we take a massive leap and assume that every single one of those ten million people heard every song played on air, then Radio 1 would be paying a per-listener rate of 0.00000005p; much lower than Spotify's per-listener figure of 0.5p. Even assuming a more realistic listening figure (there are a lot of assumptions in that calculation and Radio 1 pay more than most radio stations) it’s still safe to say that Spotify is much the same as (if not a little better than) terrestrial UK radio play, and we shouldn’t get too upset about it.

Adjusting for ‘Breakage’

Of course, just because online streaming pays out royalties that match up favourably to radio doesn't mean we can stop worrying. The argument gets a little more tricky when you consider that people are using Spotify not as a radio service, but as a replacement for actually buying records. This is the argument made by Godrich et al, and it’s one that looks less kindly on Spotify’s model. How many times do people listen to albums on average?

Someone would have to listen to a ten-track album end to end nearly 2000 times to equal the £7.99 one would pay for an album download (again, lots of assumptions here). Not an unreasonable task for my Desert Island Disks, perhaps, but the majority of albums in my collection have only been listened to a handful of times at least, and many have never been listened to end to end.

In the physical world, these records – bought but never played – fall under the category of ‘breakage’, and constitute a not-inconsiderable proportion of the income for old-fashioned labels. What the try-before-you-buy nature of the current market is doing is effectively eliminating this kind of breakage from the system. For years now Spotify have been promising that the royalties will go up as their business grows, but I've seen little evidence of that.

The only way to make money through the system as it stands now is to be a major label, and surprise, surprise, the original Spotify refuseniks (the ones with the super-popular catalogues) have finally overcome their misgivings and are now mostly available to stream. The trick, it seems, is to negotiate yourself some favourable rates with Spotify (something indies and self-releasers like myself could never do) and rack up plenty of streams from your massive archive. New bands can't do this, and unless things change drastically, self-starters – what I see as the life-blood of the industry – will be squeezed out entirely.

Something Needs To Change

I used to think that the move toward streaming as the primary method for consuming music was scary for those who stand to lose a substantial portion of their income (a.k.a. the majors), but ideologically better suited to smaller acts. A world where music is paid for on a per-play basis is a more equitable one, surely? But now the naïve and idealistic idea of a musical meritocracy is threatened by the tiny payouts that can only benefit those who can supply content in bulk. If streaming really is the future of music consumption, then things need to change fast.

Note that this is not four pence, but 0.04 of a single penny ↩︎

The Sea The Sea: Four Demos

2013-07-15T00:00:00Z

The Sea The Sea are an indie five-piece from Oxford who are hoping to be the next great band to hail from the dreaming spires. This EP, called Four Demos, contains – wait for it! – four demos. It might be easy to pour scorn on an uninspired choice of name, but hold your horses for just a second, because their EP title is more savvy that it first appears.

Simply put, The Sea The Sea are presenting us with a set of four very good songs. These tracks are very well written, performed with gusto and conviction, and arranged with a sophistication often lacking in wet-behind-the-ears-bands' debuts. For an indie band in the truest sense of the word, the tracks here are well recorded, too, but (and I'm sure you guessed there was a ‘but’ coming...) they are indisputably demos. The production, while tidy and professional, lacks the sparkle and flair that generally only comes from big budgets, plenty of time, and an experienced ‘pro’ producer. Can we fault them for this? Possibly, because these songs are so good you feel they really need the zip and spring and presence of a big-budget record to do them justice, and anything less leaves the listener feeling short-changed. However, they've told us these are demos from the get-go, in a Ronseal-style does-exactly-what-it-says-on-the-tin fashion. So we're obliged to listen through these recordings to the record we want to hear; and the record that these songs could be from is very good indeed.

Any new band would be rightly proud of these recordings, but The Sea The Sea are clearly capable of taking this set much further. Four Demos sounds like a soon-to-be-massive band shopping their songs around prior to hitting the studio-proper. All they need now is a Paul Epworth or a Peter Katis to add a little polish, and the result will no doubt be magical.

The Young Knives: Oh Happiness

2013-07-08T00:00:00Z

The Young Knives are, one would assume, a successful band. They've had a fair bit of national TV coverage, a few high-profile licensing synchs, and most tellingly, their first two albums were released by major-indie Transgressive. But appearances can be deceptive and despite the veneer of comfortable mid-league success, the Young Knives were not as happy with the arrangement as an outsider might have assumed.

Armed with just a few critically-acclaimed but not-too-highly-charting albums, the band cut their ties with Transgressive to release their third long-player, Ornaments from the Silver Arcade, on their own ‘label’, Gadzook in 2011. Last month band leader Henry Dartnall announced the release of the Young Knives' latest EP, Oh Happiness (and an up-coming LP due in the autumn) in an article for the Huffington Post, in which he outlined the band's reasons for going totally-independent:

“A prime example of money spunked away in the name of Young Knives include the cover shoot for our sophomore record Superabundance which cost £20,000 (something we found out afterwards), you really should be able to make a couple of records for that much money. So we sacked everyone and bought a mixing desk off eBay for £1,000.”

A risky strategy, to be sure, but one that has certainly paid off artistically, at least. Free to experiment, and spurred on by the fast-becoming-ubiquitous Kickstarter backing, the Young Knives have crafted an EP that easily surpasses all their previous work. Oh Happiness is definitely rougher round the edges, production wise, but they were never a particularly slick band, anyway, and what really comes across in this little batch of songs is a band not afraid to take an idea and run with it, and consequences be damned. Great stuff, I'm sure you'll agree.

Listener: Time Is A Machine

2013-06-15T00:00:00Z

It can be tough pinning down exactly why you like a new band, but quite often it can be due to one specific moment. Whether it's the vocal-collapse in the middle-eight of Slipping Husband that makes you re-listen to The National's back-catalogue, or the suspended melody line before the chorus in Wild Youth that proves Daughter are actually deserving of all the hype, the dividing line between not-interested and interested can very often be crossed by the tiniest of musical moments. This, of course, can then lead to a frustrating search for further signs of that first flash of inspiration; scouring the depths of Airborne Toxic Event's output with the vain hope of finding something even half as good as the climax of Sometime Around Midnight for instance, or sitting through interminable hours of Imogen Heap hoping to relive the excitement of hearing Hide and Seek for the first time.

In lesser hands, the defining moment of state-side independent band Listener could have been a single flash of interest buried in an excess of more pedestrian material. The MacGuffin of this band is, in their own words, “talk music” and on first listen it could easily be a middle-eight from an album track of a conventional jagged-indie rock band that want to try something a little 'out there' to break up the monotony of an otherwise staid and predictable record. What's fantastic about Listener, however, is that they have the courage of their convictions. Several albums worth of courage, in fact, and not once in their output does it sound like a gimmick. It's not poetry, and definitely not rap, but something a little harder to define; the lyrics and their forceful delivery are inextricably linked to the music in a manner that leaves the tag ‘spoken word’ somewhat wanting. This is clearly the music they have to make, and whether anyone likes it or not is besides the point.

Mercifully you'd have to be a fool not to like it, as their music is absolutely brilliant. Once the initial shock of the premise wears off (“is it really all like this?!”) the overriding impression is of energy and utter commitment. Their latest LP, Time Is A Machine, comes out here in England on the 22nd (our American cousins can get it a little earlier) and is an album packed full of subtle and sophisticated rock songs. This comes as a bit of a surprise given the raw, untempered nature of the delivery, but a quick dive into their back-catalogue proves that Listener have honed their very specific genre down to a fine art. If more bands had their self-belief and artistic confidence the world would be a better place.

Chvrches: Gun

2013-06-07T00:00:00Z

The past three Chvrches singles were notable for their immediacy; Lies, The Mother We Share, and Recover were all instantly-accessible pop hits. This applies both in terms of medium and construction: instantly available to stream on the ’net – emerging fully formed and universally embraced with the kind of fervour only the very best best hype-bands can manage – and instantly understandable from a musical perspective. There are no secrets of structure here, no complex mystery that has to be coaxed out over many listening sessions. This is pop music, plain and simple.

The question on everybody’s lips when Lies first surfaced was “Is this just a flash in the pan? Do they have an album of songs like this, or are they the next one-hit-wonder?” There is an album on the cards, we’re told, but that won't surface until the autumn. Until then, the Chvrches PR opperation will continue to operate like the slick, well-oiled machine it’s already proven itself to be. Just when the lyrics of a Chvrches single begin to sound overly shallow, just when the textures and beats that initially entranced begin to sound tired and thin, up pops a new release. So it was with The Mother We Share and Recover, and so it is again with the latest single, Gun.

Unlike their previous fait acompli, Gun had been kicking around in the Chvrches live set for a while before its release, and as a result was already slightly familiar by the time the studio version was revealed. This familiarity proved to be a double edged sword, as it meant that Gun never had the showman-like whisking-away-the-curtain reveal that their previous efforts benefited from. Familiarity, as they say, breeds contempt. Conversely, it meant that Gun had the chance to grow like a real record; stripped of the ooh-ahh spectacle, Gun had to earn it's place in our affections.

Make no mistake, Gun is no less hooky and accessible as the rest of Chvrches’ tracks – no radical departure here, no sir! – but it’s reassuring to see that this hyped-to-high-heaven band actually can hold their ground in a more considered arena.

I've no doubt that in a couple of months this, too, will sound a little less glitzy, a little more tepid, but by then the machine will have lumbered onwards and we’ll have another Chvrches single to sate our appetite. My only worry is that when the album finally arrives it will be packed to the gunnels with great pop singles that we’re all already bored with...

Cold War Kids: Dear Miss Lonelyhearts

2013-05-23T00:00:00Z

This record kicks of with classic Cold War Kids swagger; furious piano-bashing and the maniacal air of a band who know what they do best, and are happy to revel in it. But to the discerning ear there are subtle hints that Dear Miss Lonelyhearts is not business-as-usual for the band. For starters, the guitar work here sounds massive. One of CWK’s defining features has always been the angular, caustic nature of the guitar playing, but on this record — and particularly on opener Miracle Mile — the guitar sounds considerably more produced, more considered, more punchy. Where early Cold War Kids records went for the neck, this one aims for the gut.

An obvious explanation for the change in sound is the change in personnel. Veteran axe-man Jonnie Russell has left the band, to be replaced by former Modest Mouse guitarist Dann Gallucci, who also handles the production duties for Dear Miss Lonelyhearts. Aside from the change in guitar treatment, Gallucci may well — in his role as producer — be behind the other shift in sound, too. There’s an undercurrent of pulsing, synthetic, ominous electronica that swirls under many of the tracks; never dominating, but surfacing from time to time like the uneasy ghost of Giorgio Moroder’s younger-self.

As for the songwriting, there’s a previously-unseen euphoric vein being tapped here. Whether or not singer Nathan Willett is actively planning to lead his band into more directly commercial territory, the accessibility of the songs here certainly hints that this might be the case. Mercifully for die-hard Cold War Kids fans, this new-found hummability adds plenty but takes away nothing; there’s been no obvious compromise, and nothing vital has been lost. It’s tempting to think, perhaps, that this may be Cold War Kids at their very best.

Manchester Orchestra: Frightened Rabbit & Grouplove Split 12"

2013-05-21T00:00:00Z

At times I worry this site is become a Frightened Rabbit fan-page, as whenever they release anything it tends to drown out other records. But if this blog is anything at all, it's a reflection of what I'm listening to and what I'm enjoying; to hide my fandom under a bushel would be to defeat the point. I do like Manchester Orchestra – the lynchpin of this two-track 12" – on his own merit, but probably wouldn't have shelled out for this Record Store Day special release had it not had the FR name on the cover.

The format is simple: two songs, both co-written by Manchester Orchestra and another band. Side one, Make It To Me, is a collaboration with Grouplove, an act previously unknown to me, and side two, Architect, is a joint effort with FR. As I've said many times before, Scott Hutchinson's songwriting is remarkably consistent, and his influence is clear on this record. Hutchison and MO frontman Andy Hull's voices blend well together, both tending towards the ‘strained’ end of the performance spectrum, and the duo's writing styles are so similar it's hard to pick out who contributed what.

For Make It To Me, the differing styles of the contributors are easier to identify. Overall it feels more like a normal Manchester Orchestra track than Architect does, but whereas MO and **FR'**s styles are fairly well aligned, the outside influence of Grouplove is clear from the start. If you're familiar with Manchester Orchestra or Frightened Rabbit then the sound of Architect would come as no surprise, but Make It To Me might well induce a raised eyebrow. For starters it's actually rather joyful – a charge that can rarely be raised against MO or FR – and it's jaunty breakdown owes more to the two-step shenanigans of the brostep scene than any of the styles normally featured on these pages. The less said about the ‘spoken word’ section the better, but the bright and effervescent synths definitely add a certain charm and sparkle, and the catchy chorus – if only brief – is as good as anything churned out by the pop-rock craftsmen of the early noughties.

Ian McCulloch: The Killing Moon

2013-05-14T00:00:00Z

In May last year, Ian McCulloch — late of Echo And The Bunnymen — had some fun mucking about with a string quartet at London’s premier venue for ‘mature’ rock musicians, Union Chapel. That concert was evidently recorded for posterity and is now seeing itself released as a live album. To advertise the fact, and to show a little love for independent record shops, McCulloch has put out a nifty little 7" under the Record Store Day banner, containing two songs from that concert.

The b-side is the wearisome Pro Patria Mori; and never a more trite and clunky effort at songwriting will you ever come across. To hear McCulloch’s ageing, gravelly voice strain through the oh-so-sophisticated refrain of “dulce decorum” is to look the sad fate of all over-the-hill-rockers-trying-to-be-relevant straight in the eyes. To hear this and not be sickened requires a stronger constitution than mine.

On the a-side, conversely, things are very different indeed. And not because of any difference in delivery or arrangement, either; the strings are as predictable as ever, and McCulloch hasn’t changed his delivery at all. No, the crucial factor that marks the a-side as ‘worth listening to’ is quite simply the quality of the song. The Killing Moon is an all-time classic, and no matter how much dad-rock you inject into the guitar sound, there’s no way on earth the opening riff can be anything less than one of the most exciting intros ever. Anyone who thinks Arcade Fire just plucked their sound from the ether would do well to go back to the original recording of this track. McCulloch can wear all the cheesy shades he likes, but he’ll always be tied to the redeeming legacy of The Killing Moon.

Four Tet: Rounds

2013-05-13T00:00:00Z

An appreciation of the music made by The Books is a source of much pleasure for me, but an inclination toward their complex conjunction of found-sound and exquisitely crafted acoustics was not something that came naturally; I had to be lead there, slowly and with baby steps. The first record that set me on the path was Tunng’s Comments of the Inner Chorus; intrigued by the ‘folktronica’ tag, their naïve juxtaposition of singer-songwriter tunesmithery and electronic noodling was just enough to make me overcome my innate distrust of any music made primarily with a computer.

Tunng pointed me in the rough direction, but it would take something more nuanced, more abstract, to divorce my tastes from the need to hear a ‘tune’ and for a song to have lyrics and structure and narrative. Further digging into the ‘folktronica’ scene led, inevitably, to Keiran Hebden’s much lauded project, Four Tet. Much like ‘emo’ in the early naughties, ‘folktronica’ was a tag that those to whom it most applied were those most eager to disassociate themselves from it. Nevertheless, no matter who you asked or who you read, the whole acoustic-electronica ‘thing’ led back to Four Tet’s seminal album, Rounds.

This month sees the tenth anniversary of the release of Rounds, and to commemorate the occasion Domino have re-released the album in an impressive double-vinyl set, and in doing so have given me all the reason I need to immerse myself once again in this absolute gem of an LP. Many’s the happy evening I whiled away engrossed in the intricacies and subtleties of Rounds. For a time the concept of a ‘chill out’ record was something every supermarket compilation was trying to cash in on, and where they generally failed to live up to the concept, Rounds does so in spades. To call this music ‘chill out’ perhaps does it a disservice, as it is most definitely music to actively listen to, but there’s no denying that hearing this album is a profoundly relaxing experience.

I found it surprising just how much the act of listening to it on vinyl changed the experience. Generally I've found the process of flipping the disc midway serves to highlight the attention that needs to be shown to the music, but Rounds is not a long record, and spreading it over two discs — effectively introducing three forced pauses into the experience — serves only to break the reverie. This, then, is one of the few records I actually prefer to listen to on CD. Mercifully the record is so good, and such an important stepping stone in my musical development, that I don’t begrudge having bought it twice.

Everything Everything: Duet [RSD 7"]

2013-05-10T00:00:00Z

Yep, you read it right, Everything Everything went ‘all out’ for Record Store Day 2013 by taking the unprecedented step of scribbling on the cover of their latest 7" single, Duet. Okay, joking aside this maybe isn't the most impressive of the ‘special editions’ that were released for RSD this year (or ever), but at least they're making some effort for a good cause.

I've had the latest Everything Everything album, Arc, for a while now, and may well get around to giving it a proper write-up sometime soon, but I'll tell you right now that it's not so good as to give me a burning desire to tell everyone about it as soon as possible (as happened with recent records from Daughter and Deptford Goth). What Arc does have going for it is a set of killer singles, and Duet is definitely one of those.

Packed full of Everything Everything's signature blend of lyrical playfulness and melodic inventiveness, but this time with an orchestral backing with strong echoes of Cloud Bursting-era Kate Bush (or Viva-La-Vida-era Coldplay, if we're being cruel). With the introduction of the band proper, Duet builds to the sort of satisfying climax that is so beloved of those in charge of synching music for BBC documentaries. What makes this single worth owning, however, is the ‘alternate’ b-side version; an edit of the song that uses just the vocals and the string section. Whether this cut of the track is better than the album version, I can't decide, but it's really nice to hear an edit that has the courage to stick with a good idea and not dilute it at all.

Frightened Rabbit: Pedestrian Verse

2013-05-09T00:00:00Z

It's no secret that Frightened Rabbit are something of a house favourite here at EbM, and the EPs that preceded their most recent album have all been well received on these pages. A Frightened Rabbit EP, and State Hospital both appeared to drop hints as to what the next album would bring; a rougher, less anthemic record than Winter of Mixed Drinks, more in the vein of their breakthrough album, Midnight Organ Fight. In some regards, that prediction turned out to be true, but in others it was just plain wrong. Pedestrian Verse, the band's fourth LP, is undeniably more ‘edgy’ than its predecessor, but in many ways is actually more anthemic and slick.

For FR's first outing on major label Atlantic they've most certainly embraced the opportunity. Pedestrian Verse sounds, quite simply, massive. The scope, ambition, and reach on display here shows a band not afraid to strive for real cross-over success. The textures and sonics of the main singles – most notably Woodpile – are decidedly ‘radio friendly’ in their aesthetics. Having left producer Peter Katis behind when they switched labels, production duties on this record were handled by Leo Abrahams, who's polished the FR sound to a level of sheen and shimmer that would have been anathema to anyone getting excited by the band's debut record Sing The Greys. And therein lies the clue to why the EPs were so deceptive; for those the band did most of the production themselves.

As a musical unit, Frightened Rabbit clearly have a solid grasp on what they want their sound to be, and an equally clear idea of how to achieve it. Despite all the major-label spit and polish, Pedestrian Verse still sounds like a FR record; which is to say that at times it's rough and raw and downright vulgar. Songwriter/band-leader Scott Hutchinson has moved on from writing songs of heartbreak, drunkenness and misfortune; his metaphor of choice for this outing is death and murder. So really nothing much has changed lyrically, it's just that the scope has widened.

There are a few moments of lyrical and melodic filler in this record, but even in cases where the song doesn't seem to work, the instrumentation and arrangements are so strong that they carry the weaker moments and even manage, on songs like December's Traditions, to turn what could have been a really bad song into a genuinely uplifting musical moment. The poor sections, however, are very much in the minority here, and even the worst bits of Pedestrian Verse are better than most of the music that's been released this year. No matter how much Frightened Rabbit tinker with their sound, they always manage to come up with something that could well have been tailor-made to appeal exactly to my tastes and fancies.

Prides: Out Of The Blue

2013-05-08T00:00:00Z

When they were writing Out of the Blue there was a lot of debate within Prides as to whether or not it sounded too much like Kids by MGMT. There’s no denying there are definite parallels in tone and structure, but Prides were right to stick to their guns, let comparisons be damned and let the song set its own course.

Lately I’ve been finding this brand of electro-pop to be very easy on the ears indeed. To tell the truth, I’m more than a little confused and troubled by this newfound passion of mine. This music is so far from what I’ve always considered to be ‘proper’ music, and yet I can’t help but find it infectious and addictive.

What does strikes me – even through my love-blind obsession – is that generally these acts are very nearly one-hit-wonders. MGMT have two fantastic songs, but nothing else of merit, and the same can be said of M83 (two blistering singles, and everything else is utter dross). Chvrches have so far released nothing but singles: three good ones so far, but how long can they keep that up for? I’ll bet all the money in my pockets against all the money in your pockets that their album will be choked to death with filler.

Prides, much like those that came before them, make no bones about their ambitions. Signed to a development deal by island records, they changed their name from Midnight Lion, promoted their live guitarist to a full-time band member and songwriter, and began writing in earnest.

Their first outing in their new clothes, Out of the Blue was very much crafted to be a hit from the opening riff to the chorus to the breakdown. Only time will tell if they’re successful or not financially, but on an aesthetic level they’ve triumphed on a massive scale. This record is instantly accessible, and infinitely hook-ridden.

Does that accessibility come at a price? Maybe in a week or two, when a ‘proper’ record would be on the verge of spilling a few more of it’s tightly guarded secrets, this single may sound thin and boring; lacking the depth and complexity that rewards repeat listening in exchange for guaranteed instant listener gratification. What we can be sure of, however, is that no matter how fleeting the pleasure, this record sounds simply marvelous for the time being.

Are Music Festivals Dead?

2013-05-07T00:00:00Z

There’s no denying that the last decade has been a real golden age for the venerable English institution that is the humble music festival. In fact, lately these events have been anything but humble; mega-extravaganzas of music, arts, literature, and any other cultural activity you’d care to throw into the mix. But for the last couple of years there has been trouble brewing, and 2013 looks set to be yet another difficult year for this most summery of pursuits.

Myself, I’ve never been one to get too excited by them, and looked on with wonder and disbelief at the massive growth of the festival sector in the late noughties. The few I’ve been too have been fun, for sure, but it was very clear that music actually has very little to do with the ‘festival’ concept at all. If you want to actually see a band, then go to a proper gig; in most cases the sound will be better, the set itself will be better, and you get to go home to a real bed at the end of the night. I’m happy to camp on a walking holiday, but after a sweaty, booze-fuelled evening? No thanks.

But while music festivals aren’t really for me, I can see why they appeal to a wide range of people. Loads of bands all in one place, sunny weather (if you’re lucky), and a party atmosphere; an ideal day out for many, particularly if you’re usually cooped up in a big city. Others more financially minded than myself also saw the appeal, and the last decade has seen a massive upsurge in medium-to-large festivals the length and breadth of the country. “Whatever your tastes”, went the cry, “there is a festival for you”; no matter how niche or outré those tastes might be.

All too predictably, however, supply soon far outstripped demand. Going to a festival is an expensive business, both in terms of money and time, and running one is even more so. In these times of perceived austerity, splashing out what in most cases is well over a hundred pounds is simply an unjustifiable expense for the majority of households. Actually running a successful festival is a logistical nightmare, and not, it would appear, a very profitable one. Despite the phenomenal demand several cases have recently proved that music festivals are all too easy to cock-up entirely...

The Hop Farm Debacle

Most recently, it was announced this week that Vince Power’s Hop Farm event was being cancelled due to poor ticket sales despite having an impressive lineup of big acts. This is a double blow for Power: last years Hop Farm caused his company Music Festivals PLC to go bankrupt, with alleged debts of £4.8 million (a claim disputed by Power himself), and this year’s event was supposed to be his big return — a phoenix rising from the ashes to prove his naysayers wrong.

Hop Farm is not the only festival in trouble by a long shot. The ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’ umbrella of festivals are being scaled down following the parent company ATP going into liquidation last July after fourteen successful years. The Alan McGee-curated Tokyo Rocks festival has been cancelled owing to ‘management issues’ (although there is talk of it being rescheduled for later in the year). 2012’s biggest festival debacle was Bloc, which was shut down by police midway through its opening day with disturbing reports of massive overcrowding and woeful mismanagement. Bloc was just the most dramatic example, though, and 2012 was a brutal year for a whole slew of festivals. Big Chill, Sonisphere, Rough Beats, Cloud 9, Golden Down, MFEST, Hit Factory Live and the Underage Festival were all cancelled, and Guilfest also went into administration after twenty-one years as one of the mainstays of the festival circuit.

So what next for music festivals in England?

Is this the beginning (or, perhaps, the middle) of the end for these summer blasts? More likely this is just the marketplace readjusting itself. There are just too many festivals at the moment, and they cost far too much to go to. Glastonbury will always be a highly sought after ticket, but the small festivals will have to realise that they cannot continue charging £100 for tickets that would only have cost £40 a decade ago. The boom in appetite for festivals has hyped prices and filled the summer schedule with a glut of events that simply can’t draw enough people in.

The next couple of years will undoubtedly see more festivals go under, and it will be harder than ever to get a new one off the ground, but ultimately we’ll return to a point where there are just enough events to meet demand, and a prices the average punter can afford. As long as people enjoy getting drunk in the sun while watching bands, there’ll always be music festivals.

Keaton Henson: You

2013-05-06T00:00:00Z

Keaton Henson's delicate, if arguably overly mannered, single Sweetheart, What Have You Done? was one of the best tracks I heard at the tail end of last year. Since then he's released a new album, Birthdays, which I've yet to hear, but I have found the time to dig out his back-catalogue, and I've been very impressed with what I found.

At times the fey crippled-by-shyness shtick can wear a bit thin, and I've yet to hear anything he's recorded with being struck by just how whiny he is. Nevertheless, there's an air to his delivery and to the gentle tone of his guitar that's got under my skin big time. So when I returned to the Music Nostalgia record shop for a quick browse I was rather excited to see that not only has Henson released another 7", but that it was a fancy Record Store Day release. I was sure I'd missed out on most of the RSD fun, but without the stern gaze of my better half compelling me to rush I was able to have a proper rummage and found some real treats (more on these to follow).

To make things even more exciting, this single was one of those swanky lazer-etched not-quite-a-picture-disc discs. Engraving on the vinyl does mean we're limited to one side of music only, but that one track is a corker. You is very similar to Sweetheart... in tone, delivery, atmosphere, and lyrical content, but to be honest it's a combination I'm happy to hear more of. If nothing else, this record has pushed Henson's album further up my ‘must listen too soon’ list.

As well as limiting how much music there is on the record, the fancy etching does have a few drawbacks. For starters, it's a real bugger to photograph (do excuse the greasy fingerprints on my pic), and the record itself is so warped I thought I was going to damage my stylus. The only other record I own that has this kind of etching on it is a Maps & Atlases 12", and the larger real estate of that format means the warping isn't too bad. Still, it looks really cool, and with this kind of ‘special’ release that's half the fun.

Savages: Silence Yourself

2013-05-03T00:00:00Z

There are plenty of instances where I've been swept along with everyone else when the hype machine^[1] rolls into town. For instance, everyone loves Chvrches, and I too love Chvrches. There are also a number of occasions where I've vehemently disagreed with popular opinion only to later have a change of heart and concede that, actually, all the fuss was justified. Everyone loved Daughter when I thought little of them, now I've turned full circle and can't get enough of them. The gist of my point is that my tastes are not all that different from the mainstream (and by ‘mainstream’ I mean the oxymoronic alternative mainstream; all that X-factor/pop-charts-nonsense can take a hike).

Where the blogosphere and I differ drastically, however, is on the issue of Savages. The consensus view – even amongst the select cadré of blogs that I read regularly and who's opinion I respect – seems to be that they're the best thing since sliced bread, and in all honesty I think their music is just plain awful. Their debut album Silence Yourself – which comes out on May 6th but can be streamed in full on the band's website already – is a hulking mass of early-eighties new-wave cliché and pastiche. There's no denying it's a strong aesthetic, and when taken as a set of ingredients it can produce wonders in the right hands. Savages, alas, are far from the right hands; their efforts sound clunky and derivative and are far from the sum of their parts.

2013 is proving itself to be a vintage year for indie music, with a plethora of fantastic singles, EPs, and albums released already. Why are so many people raving about Savages when there's a wealth of better music to be getting excited about?! It seems incomprehensible. My advice, then, is to steer well clear of Silence Yourself, and instead pick almost any other release of the past four months – you're guaranteed that whatever you choose will be many times better than this weak effort.

Note the lower case. ↩︎

Virgin of the Birds: Summer Palace

2013-05-02T00:00:00Z

I often wonder how tiny musicians (in terms of fanbase/budget/etc. not actual physical size) existed before the digital revolution. With the advancement of home recording and the inevitable democratization of the means of production, modern music consumers are continually bombarded by records of all qualities; good and bad.

At times I despair of the situation I find myself in, as the signal-to-noise ratio is so skewed by the vast hulking mass of terrible records, but at other times I rejoice, for back in the good ol' days there's simply no way I would have ever heard a record by an unknown artist from, say, Seattle, who makes sparse, lo-fi works of intrigue and confusion. Partly because such an artist could never have secured the capital necessary to be able to spend time in a recording studio, and partly because even if such a record had been made, there's no conceivable way it could have traveled to the depths of provincial England; I'd simply never have had the chance to hear it.

Mercifully we live in the age of the internet, and lo and behold such a record has been made, and I have heard it. The record in question is Summer Palace, the new EP by the figuratively tiny act that trades under the name Virgin of the Birds. The aesthetic at work here certainly harks back to the tape-recorded rebellion of the late-eighties and early-nineties, but Jon Rooney – the architect of this record – could easily have picked up a guitar and written this music at any point in the past 70 years. The simple pop-joy of these songs is timeless and they could well have found fame in any era, but the production values are, well, virtually nonexistent. Be that a deliberate aesthetic choice, or simply and artefact of the production budget, I'm grateful to be living in the age I am, because there's simply no way I would have ever heard Summer Palace if I weren't wired up to the ‘net. God bless the good ship Progress, and all who sail in her!

Snowstar Records: 10 Year Anniversary Compilation

2013-05-01T00:00:00Z

Dutch indie label Snowstar Records are completely new to me, which is surprising as they're celebrating their tenth anniversary this year, and on the evidence of these nine tracks the music they release is very good indeed. I often worry that I'm too Anglocentric, and while I do often feature music from our American cousins, I very rarely explore music from Europe or the wider world. When such music does penetrate my insular listening bubble it generally turns out to be very good.

Snowstar Records have an eclectic selection on offer here; The Secret Love Parade play with synths and mechanical drum sounds, Lost Bear peddle solo-rich pub fare, and with their shuffle and fiddle Town of Saints make a good stab at bluegrass. Ultimately, though, while there's a veritable feast of different kinds of modern rock, it all runs in roughly the same direction. There's also a liberal sprinkling of what ten years ago would have been called ‘emo’, albeit a delicate and subtle take on the aesthetic. Where this collection really shines, however, is in its gentler, more acoustic moments. Kim Janssen's contribution, in particular, is simply stellar.

I'm ashamed I didn't get into this label sooner, but if you're feeling the same way then fear not. All is not lost, as Snowstar Records have kindly made this compilation available as a pay-what-you-like download through Bandcamp (which means that technically you can get it for free, but who's cheeky enough to do that? Not I, for sure). I'll certainly be keeping a keen eye on Snowstar from now on.

Sweet Billy Pilgrim: Crown and Treaty

2013-04-30T00:00:00Z

Aylesbury four-piece Sweet Billy Pilgrim have decided to give away their most recent album for free, and many will be asking why. The album in question, Crown & Treaty, is only just a year old and has received almost universal critical acclaim, and the band themselves appear to have been on an upward trajectory ever since their previous effort – 2009's Twice Born Men – was nominated for a Mercury Music Prize.

Giving your music away completely gratis often smacks of desperation, and the real worry is that not only does it devalue the music of the band in question, but also devalues all music in the eyes of anyone who receives such a gift. Sweet Billy Pilgrim are not a new band, and are certainly not a bad band, and one suspects that even as little as ten years ago it would never have come to this. But what the band are is staunchly independent, and in an impassioned missive to their fanbase band leader Tim Elsenburg outlined the reasoning behind this new strategy.

First and foremost, it's worth noting that this is not just a stab in the dark; for this mega-LP-giveaway the band are in cahoots with major music magazine Mojo. They loved the album when it was released and gave it five stars and ‘instant classic’ status, and now they want to share the love further. In fact, it may very well have been Mojo who first turned me onto SBP in the first place. I first heard their track Stars Spill Out Of Cups on a cover mount from a magazine in 2005. That song was so very very very good that I ran out and bought the album, (the possibly aptly titled) We Just Did What Happened And No One Came. I never loved the LP as much as that one track, however, and soon lost touch with what the band were up to. I noticed when they were Mercury-nominated in 2009, but it wasn't until hearing about this latest giveaway that I actually engaged with any of their music.

So maybe their plan is working: they have a record they're obviously very proud of, but simply can't get enough people to hear it without spending ridiculous amounts of money on promotion. The answer, as they see it, is to get people listening who maybe (like me) wouldn't have paid for the album but may like what they hear enough to buy a ticket to a live show or even consider buying a more expensive vinyl. I'm considering it, but want to live with the record for a little while before making my mind up.

I'm pleased to report that this record is as good as everyone's saying it is. The sound is more accessible than their previous efforts (although still, mercifully, not populist), and it's almost everything that I like at the moment. Forceful without being overtly pushy, thoughtful without being too wishy-washy, acoustic enough to sound like what I think of as ‘real’ music, and electric enough to have some real punch to it. Elsenberg's voice is in similar terrain to that of Neil Hannon's, and the songs themselves have a literary bent that again puts one in the mind of Divine Comedy. I've still not heard anything on Crown & Treaty that's as good as Stars Spill..., but that was one of the very best tracks of 2005 (a good year for music, so quite an achievement), but there's a lot here that I think will grown on me in the next few weeks and months.

Follow the link included in the latest issue of Mojo and they'll send you a link to the album download. In exchange, at least think about pre-ordering the fancy vinyl version of the album and going to their show at the Lexington on the 17th June (tickets here).

Davy Graham: 3/4 AD [Record Store Day Reissue]

2013-04-29T00:00:00Z

Hopefully it won't have escaped your notice that last weekend saw the passing of yet another Record Store Day; the one day of the year when you actually have to queue to get into your local record shop, and the things you find inside cannot be found online at far better prices (or even at all). The dark, culture-forsaken wilderness that is Cornwall has a major shortage of indie record shops, and the only one that took part in this years RSD festivities (generally a veritable feast of special-editions, limited pressings, and exclusive content) is an epic bus ride away from EbM HQ, so it wasn't until this weekend that I was able to drag my weary bones to Music Nostalgia in Truro.

My Thoughts On The Event

The RSD organizers are keen to stress that the titular ‘day’ itself is just a focus for indie record retailers, and that we should be visiting record shops once a week rather than once a year, and it's a creed I try to live by. Music Nostalgia is just a few racks of new and used vinyl at the back of a run-down market, but it always manages to stock at least an album or two to suck my cash off me every time I visit. I leave, piled high with records, with a sense of having committed an act of charity and of having done something positive for my local community, but also with the nagging doubt that I could have saved myself a lot of money (and a tedious journey) if I'd stayed at home and shopped online. Normally this would mean Amazon – generally the cheapest around – but lately a lot of indie record shops have been beefing up their online output, so now most of my spare digi-cash wends its way to the Rough Trade or Banquet websites, which can at least match Amazon for price, and certainly beat the big A on moral standards.

My Thoughts On The Record

By the time I made it to the shop the festival atmosphere of the preceding weekend had long past. Of the many RSD releases I was hoping to find, the only one to have slipped through the grasping fingers of the eager punters that had gotten there before me was the reissue of the 3/4 AD single by folk guitar virtuoso Davy Graham. This 7" gets its name from the b-side, a duet by Graham with fellow guitarist Alexis Korner – of whom I know very little – but the a-side is where the action is. There's a little ditty called Davy's Train Blues, which blasts through some jazz/folk clichés with fire and vigour, but the main event here is, of course, Anji; the song that launched a thousand guitarists. It might not be his best work (for that, I'd recommend his rendition of Cry Me A River) but it's certainly his most famous work, and it's a track that's been covered by (and here I speak with some authority) every folk guitarist that has come since Graham. It's almost as if Anji were a rite of passage for English folk guitarists; folk music's Stairway to Heaven, if you will.

Graham's playing, unlike so many of those who aped him, sounds scratchy and erratic. It's feels like he's making it up as he goes along (which most of the time he was); he's merely a vessel through which the music is being conveyed. The performance of Anji on this single is the definitive version, which much to my surprise I didn't previously own on CD or digitally. As such, I'm grateful to Topic for re-releasing it, and I'm enjoying having it on vinyl. And like all the best vinyl, it sounds 10% better having come from a real record shop.

Rob St.John & the Coven Choir: Charcoal Black & the Bonnie Grey/Shallow Brown

2013-04-26T00:00:00Z

Rob St.John has always been a favourite here at Eaten by Monsters, and new releases of his are eagerly awaited and avidly consumed. It's always been clear, however, that his music is very much an acquired taste. To the unprepared, his ghostlike baritone and the meandering, lilting nature of his records can easily sweep far over their heads.

Thankfully for St.John and those of us who follow his efforts, he is not short of supporters and chief amongst those is Matthew Young from Song, by Toad. A contrary little fucker if ever there was one^[1], it's clear Young would release records like this even if it lost him money. So this new 7" single is just the latest in a string of great records from St.John, although with this one it feels like there was something different in the mix.

What we have in evidence here is record with far more drive that we're used to. And by that I don't mean a new commercial ambition, but a musical push that seems a little sharper. There's a pulsing, brooding, and inexorable momentum to the a-side, Charcoal Black & the Bonnie Grey. This track, an old Lancastrian fieldsong from the archives of Cecil Sharp, has a sinister undertow and a malevolent sense of purpose; a combined effect of the lyrics, the delivery, and the sweeping, swelling, swirling bedding from the instrumentation. What's really great is that all this new ferocity comes not at the expense of St.John's hushed and reverent pastoral stylings, but as an addition to them.

It's also worth noting that both the tracks on this record come from the established English folk tradition; as mentioned above, Charcoal... is one of the many songs collected for posterity by Sharp, and the other track here, Shallow Brown, comes from the archive of Percy Grainger, the other great collector of folk songs of the English working class. Their interpretations by St.John and his accomplices are far from the stuffy finger-in-ear pretensions of Ewan MacColl, but equally far from the Americana-inspired waistcoat-wearing pansies that have sprung up in the wake of the dreaded Mumfords.

This is the English folk tradition alive and well, fresh and dangerous.

The single comes out officially on May Day, but if like me you've pre-ordered it then the 7" should have arrived by now. If Rob St.John's past efforts have been too fey for your tastes, then I doubt the b-side will do much to change your mind, but Charcoal... could well be the introduction that you've been looking for. Listen to it, absorb it, live it, then return to the rest of his music with more finely trained ears and bask in its loveliness.

I tried leaving out the profanity, but it's essential to provide a full flavour of the man. ↩︎

Gondola: We Are The Map

2013-04-25T00:00:00Z

You could easily be forgiven for looking at the last few months' output from this site and concluding that my favourite kind of music is electro-pop, but you'd be very wrong. It just so happens that there's been a lot of music of that ilk that's popped up on my radar of late, and yes I do like it, but my main focus is still very much that which can be best described by the phrase ‘vaguely acoustic indie rock’. Given the overwhelming dominance of the synthetic on these pages of late, it's always with a sigh of relief that I find a great record that's more in line with my real desires. Brooklyn-based five-piece Gondola hit the target slap bang in the bullseye, and I love them for it.

Their debut EP, We Are The Map, is almost the very definition of what I look for in a good 7". There's a definite aesthetic control – which as you've probably guessed by now is of the ‘vaguely acoustic indie rock’ variety – but while the style is consistent there's still enough variation to make these four tracks distinct enough to provide a real push and pull and ebb and flood to the record. The time limitations of seven inches of vinyl can sometimes hamstring a band, leaving the result an awkward snippet of something larger, but Gondola have pitched their effort perfectly.

We Are The Map is a window into what is surely the wider world of the band's music but still works as a standalone piece of art, and right now I can think of very little I'd rather be doing with the next ten minutes than re-listening to this record. Truth be told, it wouldn't surprise me if this little gem is on repeat for a good while longer; it's already eaten an hour of my day, and looks set to dominate the rest of it, too.

Life: See The Light

2013-04-24T00:00:00Z

London band Life are a new four-piece hoping to make a mark with their debut single, See The Light. Taken from an upcoming EP – Elixir, released in June – if See The Light is indicative of the rest of their output we may have stumbled upon something very special here.

There are an awful lot of solo tune-smiths about at the moment, who all seemingly specialize in placing their thin vocal performances over a bedding of ephemeral electronica and sampled rhythms. But for a slightly more nuanced vocal, you might be forgiven for thinking this track is yet another one of those. Mercifully we're proven wrong pretty quickly, and as the band kicks in things really take off. All the sounds are warped and distorted and tweaked to the point where it's hard to hear a traditional ‘band’ at work, but what really lifts this track is the energy and the dynamism that can only come from human players.

The combination of clear vocals, fuzzy bass, and rough-as-sandpaper drums builds a compelling aesthetic, and if the rest of Life's music is in a similar vein to See The Light then this single – released as a free download on May 27th – could well be the start of something very interesting indeed.

Shy Nature: Deadly Sin

2013-04-23T00:00:00Z

These last few years have seen something of a renaissance in the arena of the ‘rock’ single. The format is now seen as legitimate means of artistic expression, and is one that’s particularly effective in the modern age of blogs and social sharing.

It also means that writing a blog such as this requires one to blast through a mass of singles in as short a time as possible. New sounds are given a few seconds to prove themselves, and if they can’t impress in the opening bars then they’re quickly discarded. Many readers won’t be surprised that many tracks aren’t listened to in their entirety, but it would probably shock everyone to discover exactly how many don’t get more than even 10 seconds.

So in this environment of short attention spans and brutal editing it takes something special to even get listened to, let alone written about. Mercifully for me, there are plenty of bands who make music that cuts through the mess of submissions easily.

Shy Nature have just the right kind of sound to cleave through the detritus of a cluttered inbox like knife through a hot cliché. The joyful bounce of their single Deadly Sin ensured it got listened to, and there’s just enough grit and spiky attitude to warrant many more listens after that. The indie rock timbre of the piece has been in vogue now for a good many years but, as Shy Nature easily prove, there’s still scope for invention and – if nothing else – the sheer joy of a job done well.

Daughter: If You Leave

2013-04-22T00:00:00Z

Sometimes I’m amazed at how quickly my previously trenchant opinions can be overturned in an instant. When Daughter made the Blog Sound longlist at the end of last year (for the second time running) I described their track Medicine as being “not too offensive” and went about my business without giving them a second thought.

Skip forward a couple of months and their track Human was made available as iTunes’ ‘Single of the Week’, which I dutifully downloaded almost on autopilot. Before hearing the end of the second verse I’d already pre-ordered the album, If You Leave, and begun writing a gushing review of Human.

If You Leave is not a radically new sound, and nor is it full of invention and originality. If you threw Foals-circa-Spanish Sahara and first-album-XX into a blender with an acoustic guitar or two, the overall tone of If You Leave would most likely be the result. What sets this record head and shoulders above the mere sum of it’s influences is the sheer quality of the work on display.

From the production to the performances to the songwriting to the beautiful gatefold cover art, everything about this LP is masterful. The aesthetic – sparse, haunting, and occasionally bellicose – is not the only thing at work here; where their predecessors bury one or two singles and a whole lot of filler in their sound, Daughter hit the mark with every single song on this record.

The overarching mood is never disturbed, but there’s variation aplenty as the album progresses. What’s most impressive, amid a host of impressive features, is the ability Daughter have to turn on a dime and transform what at first sounded like a simple acoustic number into a life-affirming bombastic showpiece.

In the month or so since the 12” landed on my doormat I’ve listened to at least one song from this album every single day, and more often than not listening to one track leads to yet another listen of the LP in its entirety. Daughter have created a masterpiece with If You Leave, and if there’s a better album released this year I’ll be very surprised indeed.

Oh So Quiet: Oh So Quiet EP

2013-04-19T00:00:00Z

It’s beginning to look like 2013 might be a good year for Kings of Convenience to make a comeback. I doubt they will, as they’ve been off the scene for a long time now, but most of the really good releases so far this year have a shade of the Quiet Is The New Loud philosophy that KOC honed into such a fine art in the middle of the last decade. None have been quite as definitively hushed and muted as KOC, but there’s an unmistakable mood in the air that says this is a year for thoughtful, introspective music.

With a name like Oh So Quiet, this Guildford duo are nailing their colours to the mast from the get-go, but their eponymous EP has more depth and bombast to it than the name suggests. Things start of predictably enough, with caressed nylon-stringed guitar action and breathy, hushed vocals, but it’s not too long before a full band rhythm section makes an appearance and we realize that we’re not just dealing with a pair of bedroom musicians. If Oh So Quiet sound gentle and understated, it’s very much a conscious choice on their part and not a limit that’s been imposed on them by their surroundings. When they want to (for want of a better expression) ‘rock out’ they are fully capable of doing so.

The ease with which this band can switch from subtle acoustics to wailing indie-pop electric guitar lines and then back again is impressive, and lifts this EP above the morass of singer/songwriter types who attempt something similar. In the cadences and delivery of the female voice I’m reminded very much of Emily And The Woods, but where Emily fell down was when extra elements were tacked onto what was very much a solo show. With Oh So Quiet it’s clear that the band that fleshes out this record is as much a vital part of the music as the singer/songwriters at the core of it.

Jonnie Common: Figurehead

2013-04-18T00:00:00Z

There are few artists I'm enamoured of enough to start throwing excessive punctuation around willy-nilly. Chief amongst the marks I try to avoid is the exclamation point. That said, Jonnie Common's latest single is really, really great!

It's not been long since Common's last single, the enigmatically titled JWC008. That one was released with the quirky MacGuffin of a hand-printed glass stamp. Following that, the digital/cassette-tape format for Figurehead feels positively pedestrian. Mercifully, the music is anything but. In many ways Figurehead is in much the same vein of the singles from his last LP Master Of None. The electronic rhythmic elements are as delicately crafted as ever, the bass is languid and fluid, and the lead lines soar without ever being as trite as to be ‘anthemic’.

What's more, this time there's a whole slew of variations culminating in a remix by Found (genre-bending EbM favourites in their own right). I normally have a strict policy on remixes, which is to throw them on the fire as quickly as possible. Such is the cachet of both the JC and Found brands that I was willing to make an exception and give it ago. It does, inevitably fall into some of the traps that make me so despair of remix in general, such as attuning and distorting the lead vocal, and being so repetitive of rhythm as to be soporific. But the addition of the brass was a master stroke, and the end result is something that actually adds to the release; contrasting nicely with the main event, not overpowering it, but at the same time not completely pointless either. All in all, a classic b-side.

All these singles have left me hungry for a Jonnie Common album proper. Whether one is in the pipeline I can't say, but when that record does surface I'm willing to bet good money that it'll be a real treasure.

Stornoway: Tales from Terra Firma

2013-04-17T00:00:00Z

Miserablist is a potent genre within the wider spectrum of ‘indie music’, and it’s a rich seam that bands hailing from the dreaming spires of Oxford have long mined to great effect. Ever seen a Radiohead fan smile? Ever seen Foals crack a joke? Their po-faced brand of ‘serious’ rock for ‘serious’ aficionados has proved to be a winner with music buyers and music critics alike; a not inconsiderable accomplishment, and not one to be scoffed at. Stornoway, by contrast, are determined to drag the tone of Oxford music kicking and screaming into a land where contented cherubs frolic on the banks of the Isis and wittle bunniwunnies cavort wildly amongst the detritus of the Cowley Road.

Oppressively jolly their music may be, but simple it isn’t. Stornoway play with musical texture and dynamics like Foals fans play with their hair (which is to say, incessantly and with great aptitude). More than any other point of reference, their efforts run parallel to the Guillemots in terms of the actual sound of the music. Both bands are playfully experimental and carefree about their aesthetic while never loosing control of the end result. Where they differ is in emotional depth. Guillemots have the tendency to smack you ’round the face with a poignant revelation just as you’re getting into the party mood. Stornoway are more likely to top up your drink and introduce you to one of their friends they think you’ll really get on well with.

Ultimately Stornoway are not a ‘cool’ band. They’re geeky and clever and great company, but they lack the heartless detachment that is perhaps necessary for success in the current music climate. Does that mean that they’re of less worth than their more despondent contemporaries? Maybe so. I can think of scant few cases of ‘great art’ in any field that are so unremittingly upbeat, but by the same token, when faced with a choice between a dour classic and this cheery forty-five minutes I know which I’d choose.

John Grant: Pale Green Ghosts

2013-04-16T00:00:00Z

The title track from John Grant’s last debut solo LP, 2010‘s critical success Queen of Denmark, was a bona fide track-of-the-year and to this day never fails to send thrills down the spine. Grant is a master of understated masculinity, tempered by self-deprecating wit and an attitude so caustic it could cut glass. For that album the core of the songs was very much Grant at a piano singing, and with Midlake as his backing band the end result was much closer to the acoustic indie that dominates these pages than the musical-theater cabaret that this style of out-and-out storytelling songwriting naturally gravitates to.

For his new record, Pale Green Ghosts, the backing band has been replaced by a more electronic sensibility. This time Grant’s channeling the essence of Cabaret Voltaire, and the title track pulses with synthetic bass lines and harsh horn stabs that paint a very different picture from what a listener familiar with QOD might be expecting. The opener is maybe an extreme example, and elsewhere there’s the familiar rhythm section in the same vein as the last record, but it serves as a good statement of intent. Throughout this LP the synths and electronica seep in to most aspects of the music, and the overall effect is a marked one. For all the differences, however, the songs remain the same. These little vignettes, these mini-operas are delivered with the same dry humour and cynical baritone that has become Grant’s calling card.

Sadly, despite the fantastic sage-green double vinyl and stunning gatefold sleeve, this record is not the tour-de-force I was hoping for. The problems are all issues that first raised their ugly heads on the last record, and the main one is that the words totally dominate the songs. This is not a record for casual listening; stop following the lyrics intently and the whole thing falls apart.

That’s not to say that the aesthetic is unpleasant – the music on QOD was exactly what one has come to expect from Midlake (a.k.a. very good) and the new style is equally engaging – the real trouble, it seems, lies with the structuring of the songs. The monotonous plod of the radio-friendly Greatest Motherfucker typifies this perfectly; quoting lyrics out of context has never been what this site’s about, but rest assured this is a haunting, one-part-wit to two-parts-acerbic-disgust little ditty that has an equal chance of splitting your sides or breaking your heart. Take away the words and it all falls apart.

Despite all the pleasant musical touches, the soaring lifts, the drama, the dynamics, the obvious sophistication, this record can be damnably boring. When John Grant is good he’s very very good, but when he’s bad he’s rotten.

Emil Lager: You Will Kill Me

2013-04-15T00:00:00Z

Another track from the depths of my inbox for you today. Emil Lager is a Swede who's wandered all over Europe and finally settled in London. His is a traditional take on the whiteman's blues, with it's spiritual roots firmly planted in route 66 and the American troubadour tradition.

Armed with little more than his guitar, his voice, and a stomping foot he's working on building a name for himself on the live circuit. Whether he'll actually break through the noise and gain some worthy recognition I can't say, as there are seemingly hordes of songwriters all operating in very similar territory, but Lager's efforts are better than most.

His biggest claim to fame so far was being mistaken by many for Johnny Depp when he appeared briefly as Django Reinhardt in the Depp/Scorsese film Hugo. There's no mention of that in the email he sent me, so it might be that he's trying to make it in music on his own terms without any gimmicky attachments (in which case I doubt he'll thank me for bringing it up here).

The trouble is there's nothing really new on offer here. The songs are original, in the sense that they aren't covers, but they're rife with cliché and in many ways aren't providing anything that hasn't been heard many times before.

Even his strongest asset – his distinctive voice – has already been cornered by the tallest man on earth. What Emil Lager does have in his favour is that this style is often done very badly and he does it very well indeed. I think he may need to work on his distinctiveness if he want to carve out a lasting career in music, but he clearly has talent, both on the guitar and with his voice, and it would be a shame to see that wasted.

Spark Alaska: Transatlantic Waves

2013-04-12T00:00:00Z

It could be because the American ‘traditional’ scene is so well curated that youngsters making their own music steer well clear of the established country and folk scenes, whereas here in England ‘folk music’ is such an abstract term that anyone with an acoustic guitar gravitates toward it. Or perhaps there's just something in the air over there.

Whatever the reason, acoustic music made by teenagers in England is generally pretty terrible while our American cousins do a brisk trade in well crafted heartfelt acoustic rock made by teenagers for teenagers.

My tastes are currently almost parochial in their UK-centricity, but not long ago my ears sought only American sounds. Spark Alaska – or Lorenzo Cook as he's known to his friends – is not strictly-speaking a Yank, being as he grew up in Brussels, but listening to his music reminds me of everything my younger self looked for in those cherished Deep Elm imports and Get Up Kids bootlegs.

If Cook were based in England then his experiments with open tunings on the guitar would have led him to sub-Nick Drake pastiche, but as he currently hails from Syracuse in the US of A, his songwriting efforts are much more inline with the likes of Dashboard Confessional and The Early November.

On his latest self-released EP, Transatlantic Waves, we're hearing an artist very much at the beginning of his development as a songwriter, and as the lad's only 19 we can forgive the odd misstep. What's really striking, however, is that he already has a touch of songwriting genius about him. The lynchpin of this 3-song EP is Cleveland is for Leaving: as well crafted and engaging a song as one could hope to hear. The aesthetic is perfectly judged, the performance is youthful, yes, but assured and confident, and the lyrics are remarkably mature and engaging. Cook will only improve as he gets older, but Cleveland is for Leaving would still be a remarkable achievement for a writer with ten years' more worldly-wisdom and experience.

And that song isn't just a flash in the pan, either. Explore his Soundcloud page and you'll find Scar So Easily, a rougher, less assured effort, but still one with the finesse and deftness of touch that belies a real talent. Spark Alaska may only be just starting out, but given time I'm certain this will be an artist of merit and importance.

Deptford Goth: Life After Defo

2013-04-11T00:00:00Z

2013 is already shaping up to be a great year for music, with a plethora of both great albums and great singles having been released already. Even with the overall quality of releases being so high, Deptford Goth's single Union was a genuine highlight and left me more excited about the prospect of getting my hands on the full LP than any other release of the year so far (with perhaps the exception of the latest Frightened Rabbit record). My sense of giddy anticipation was only heightened by the fact that despite having pre-ordered Life After Defo well in advance, my 12" didn't arrive until a week or so after the release date. Annoying, yes, but it was well worth the wait.

Union is still the stand-out track by a country mile, but of all the recorded music in history I can only think of a couple of albums that have maintained that level of quality for a sustained period, so it's no great disappointment. The rest of the songs, I'm pleased to report, are very good indeed; Guts No Glory and the eponymous album opener Life After Defo are, alongside Union, the definite highlights but overall the standard is high and there's very little filler. Lions breaks the mood somewhat, but mainly because it's different rather than because it's bad per se. Elsewhere on the album Daniel Woolhouse's soft voice blends seamlessly with the rest of the soundscapes he's created, but on Lion his voice is up-front, un-compressed, and raw.

To those new to Deptford Goth, it's worth noting that there's no goth in this music. There is, however, a tinge of what one might call the 'Deptford Sound'; it's almost like James Blake but with actual songs (I like the ideas behind Blake's work, but find his music unlistenable). On first listen this music feels sparse, but there's actually an awful lot going on moment-to-moment. What we're really hearing is a thoughtfulness, a willingness to take it slow and get it right. Throughout Life After Defo there's a muted excitement, a hushed euphoria. The tempo and delivery speak of classic indie misery, but the tone and texture speak of hope and joy and the prospect of something better than what we have.

Mike Tyler: Money Grows On Your Knees

2013-04-10T00:00:00Z

Given that it's about thee-and-a-half thousand miles away, I'm not speaking with any authority when I talk of New York, but this bonkers single from New Yorker Mike Tyler epitomizes what I see as the 'east-coast American sensibility'. There's a long tradition of off-the-wall yanks getting a good reaction here in good ol' Blighty, and I gather Tyler rather enjoyed the reception he got the last time he came to London. The b-side to this single is all about that experience; ever the cynical New Yorker, Corny song is Tyler's way of dealing with how well his UK trip went, apparently. The song is, of course, rather nuts, with a strained delivery that oozes irony from every pore. And the a-side is no less crazy.

On Money Grows on Your Knees, which is taken from the Google-friendly LP Erection, Tyler adopts a more softly-softly approach. Here he's deadpan and pseudo-seductive, his voice lower, his tone more sinister. All the while he's backed by a primary-colours bed of god-awful synth brass and metronimic, dolls-eyes-dead drum loops. The female backing vocals add a little humanity, but there's little else to redeem the aesthetic here: jagged edges are definitely the order of the day. All in all, the sound is deeply unpleasant and strangely captivating.

The 7" version I've got came on fantastically garish green vinyl and the album art was made into a jigsaw, which was rather fun. And that idea pretty much encapsulates this release; definitely not normal, but still rather fun.

Stay On The Bike: Stay On The Bike EP

2013-04-09T00:00:00Z

This eponymous EP from Stay On The Bike isn't released until tomorrow, and until then all I've got to go on are the two tracks that made their way into my inbox; the opening and closing tracks *Left** and Build. A definite degree of luck went into getting this record on my to-blog-about list, as the first few seconds of Left are dominated by the kind of pub-rock guitar lines that instantly scream “skip!” when I'm trawling through my emails. Mercifully the band had sent two songs, so what I skipped onto was the closer Build, and there's nothing at all in that track that would make me want to skip it. In fact, I played it several times in quick succession and then went back and gave *Left* a second chance.

It turns out the cringe-worthy guitar was just a momentary blip in an otherwise sterling pair of songs. The aesthetic at work here is one almost tailor-made to appeal to me. Gentle acoustics nestle in next to subtle percussion that never dominates but is jagged enough to steer well clear of the generic 'acoustic' mush that so often blights records in this vein. There's also some very nice string playing, and the whole thing sits on a discreet bed of swirling electronic trickery that, much like the percussion, never intrudes too far but which is just complex enough to add an extra level of interest and depth. Vocally, the joint efforts of multi-instrumentalist Matt Grajcar and his creative partner Annah Sprague fuse really well together, with shades of the more intellectual side of Americana and a more folksy tradition.

Of the two tracks featured here I prefer Build, but both are excellent (and it's always nice to hear a song in 7/8 time that still has a solid groove). Sadly the exceedingly limited run of hand-printed CD packages have already sold out, but the digital version will be available to buy from tomorrow. If the rest of the record is as good as these two tracks then we could all be in for a real treat.

Daughter: Human

2013-03-17T00:00:00Z

After popping up all over the place over the last year or so (most notably with appearances in the Blog Sound lists for 2011 and 2012) Daughter have finally written a track I can get excited about. Their new single Human kicks off with more purpose and drive than anything else they've released yet. It's retained the light-touch delicate ephemeral vibe that fellow bloggers have been so endeared by, but in the past that hasn't been enough to excite my interest. In this instance, coupled with their new-found energy, I'm beginning to see what others have been seeing.

Human is the current Single of the Week on iTunes, which I guess is quite a coup for Daughter, and ought to bring them a legion of new followers. I'm not ashamed to admit this song has won me over, and I'm now rather keen to hear Daughter's new LP If You Leave.

Eels: Wonderful, Glorious

2013-02-25T00:00:00Z

It's a well established fact that bands need to change and grow to have any hopes of longevity, but change can be a double edged sword. Eels - originally a trio and now the vehicle of “E”, a.k.a. Mark Oliver Everett - have been wonderfully, mystically, inevitably prolific and, in the early days at least, there was no way of knowing what the next record would sound like. By E's own admission this strategy caused a few problems in the early days; tours would be booked on the basis of a hard-rockin' gutsy album, and E would show up with a gentle set-list and a string quartet, then another tour would be booked in seemingly suitable concert-hall venues and E would turn up to those sporting bleached blonde hair and accompanied by a barrage of overdriven guitars.

Venue confusion aside, constant evolution was a gamble that paid off critically, and the early Eels albums are some of the best around; sophisticated, urbane, dark, witty, bleak, and hopeful in equal measure. It's not all been plain sailing lately, however, and the last few records (there really have been loads of Eels albums) have begun to show signs of creative fatigue. From Blinking lights... onward it has sounded like E's been rehashing the same old themes and material. Always entertaining, certainly, but not particularly interesting.

This new record, Wonderful, Glorious, is not a return to the unpredictable early days. What it is, however, is an archetypal Eels album. This is unmistakably Eels and no-one else, and it almost feels like you could have mathematically predicted the sound of this record purely by averaging out the last few albums. Importantly though, the caveat here is that while there's been no sea-change this is still Eels at their very, very, very best. The sounds may have become familiar of late, but you've never heard them put together quite like this before.

I've been waiting for an Eels album to get excited about since I was blown away by Souljacker in 2001, and this is undoubtedly it. Finally the stars have aligned and all the elements that Eels so obviously excel at – songwriting, sonic textures, attitude, arrangement - have come together at the same time. They were there in the background on all the recent records, of course, but never all a the same time. Wonderful, Glorious hits all the buttons, scores all the goals, wins all the votes. A strong early contender for album of the year.

Analogue vs. digital in film and music

2013-02-19T00:00:00Z

Last night I watched Side by Side, Keanu Reeves and Christopher Kenneally's sensitive new documentary on the celluloid/digital split in the movie industry. There were some pretty stellar talking heads in the shape of Christopher Nolan, Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, James Cameron, and a host of others, who all pitched articulately and passionately either for or against the use of digital technology in their filmmaking. But what gave the film a greater depth and legitimacy was the appearance of a good many cinematographers and DPs; their names may be less familiar but their position right at the very coal face of the interaction between analogue and digital (or as I now know to call them, “photochemical” and “video”) lent a more expert air to proceedings.

What struck me was that not once did anyone mention piracy or audience consumption; this was a film about the process of filmmaking, and the focus was on the difference in both aesthetic and workflow between the competing mediums. This is a debate that has long existed in the music industry, but one that has been overshadowed by the looming threat of digital piracy. With the continued ascendance of the mp3 and the recent resurgence of vinyl records, all we seem to talk about is the release format. The analogue/digital debate in the world of music production seems to have been settled long ago, with digital emerging victorious. But is it all as cut and dry at that?

That analogue 'sound'

Another passionate (and equally geeky) celebrity-fronted documentary released recently was Dave Grohl's Sound City; a love letter to the Californian recording studio that gave him and countless others their first foothold in the music industry, but also the story of the studio's analogue mixing desk which Grohl has bought and lovingly restored. Here, again, the focus is on the analogue/digital divide in the production process, and again there's plenty of a-list talking heads from both sides of the glass; Tom Petty, Trent Reznor, Frank Black, Butch Vig, Rick Rubin, the list goes on.

Interestingly, in this film the debate is all one-sided. Only Trent Reznor, flushed with his newfound soundtrack credibility, is willing to say anything in favour of digital music production. “Tape has heart” reads their mantra; records made back-in-the-day just sounded 'better'. When all spheres of music are taken into account, this is not the majority view. Sound City has gathered a motley crew of refuseniks hankering after a mythical golden age, a Belle Époque where musicians 'really cared' and records were 'crafted' rather than mechanically assembled.

Stick to your guns; a.k.a. "don't tinker"

This is all bollocks, of course. Tape certainly has it's own aesthetic, but with care and attention this can be reproduced digitally. What tape really represents is a way of working; a spontaneity and an inability to change much once the music has been captured. What it represents is discipline. Artists back then were just as lazy and self-obsessed as they are today, but they had to work within the boundaries of the technology. Piece by piece, digital is taking those boundaries away and the only thing that can make great art is talent.

There's no denying that Livin' La Vida Loca is infinitely worse than Physical Graffiti, in exactly the same way as Attack of the Clones is infinitely worse than The Dark Knight, but the reason isn't that the better ones were analogue and the crap ones were digital. It's because Ricky Martin is no Led Zeppelin, just as George Lucas is no Christopher Nolan. The things that makes a great record are the same things that make a great film; vision and hard work.

Joanna Gruesome: Do You Really Wanna Know Why Yr Still In Love With Me?

2013-02-13T00:00:00Z

There's a very distinct pleasure I get from seeing music release in what I think is ‘the right way’. HBTM Records (Happy Birthday To Me) tick all the right boxes with their origin story; they began a singles club almost by accident, then moved organically into albums, slowly building up a strong stable of artists.

It's a pretty safe bet that I'll be covering more bands from this label in the near future, but at the moment my attention is being held by this scuzzy 7" from the fantastically-named Joanna Gruesome.

I'm often found waxing lyrical about the joys of crisp production and the attention to detail that marks out great recordings from the rest of the pack, but every so often I seek solace in something a little more rough and ready; a little more heartfelt, even. Do You Really Wanna Know Why Yr Still In Love With Me? and Lemonade Girl, the two tracks that make up this delightfully home-made single, deliver all of that and more. Both tracks on this single are well crafted pop gems dressed up in lo-fi attitude, and both leave you sightly bruised and hungry for more. And if I'm honest, there's not much more you can ask from a single.

Haiku Salut: Los Elefantes

2013-02-11T00:00:00Z

Pitched in the under-explored middle-ground between Mogwai and Yann Tiersen, Haiku Salut are a trio of Darbishire lasses with a mesmerizing sonic palate and a distinct francophile sensibility. And if the menu on their homepage is anything to go by they've got a good eye for a bad pun, too, which makes me like them even more.

There's an album in the works, called Ttricolore and out in March, but as a tantalizing foretaste they're giving away their track Los Elefantes as a free download.

Eliza And The Bear: The Southern Wild / Upon The North

2013-02-09T00:00:00Z

Today's aural treat marks a return to more organic sound. Eliza And The Bear's music doesn't have the synthetic elements that have dominated the pages of this blog lately, and it proves that you don't need a drum machine and a Micro Korg to be upbeat and energetic. While synth pads and 808 snare hits have been dominating my playlists of late, this is the kind of music that I really hanker for.

There's acoustic guitars and trebly, uncompressed kick stomps aplenty on this release, and the band's aesthetic borders on the tweed-y (and yes, I think at least one of them may have a beard), but there's none of the faux-folk pretensions that mire so many of Eliza And The Bear's contemporaries.

There's an obvious ambition at work here - you don't write songs with this much scope for anthemic barnstorming and then hide yourself away in your bedroom - but the crucial element is that, beneath all the bravado and rousing harmonies, both The Southern Wild and Upon The North are fantastic songs, pure and simple.

Dash: Home

2013-02-07T00:00:00Z

So you like all the indie electro-pop I've been posting lately? Well that's lucky, because all the evidence suggests we're living in a golden age of breezy, cheerful, synth/guitar goodness. The latest taster comes courtesy of Dash, a young five-piece from North Carolina. Well, I've no proof that they are young, but their music exudes a certain youthful energy that's immensely endearing.

Dash seem to be a band in their nascent stages. Their web presence is rather sparse, but hints at more things on the horizon. Until they emerge all we've got to go on is a couple of singles, of which Home is the most recent. The track bombs along with a furious energy, and while it definitely sounds like a band still finding it's feet, the song more than holds its own against the more seasoned faces in the genre. In fact, there's a polish and self-assured urgency to Dash's music that, if anything, sets them above their competition.

Atlas Genius: Trojans

2013-02-05T00:00:00Z

National Anthem are clearly a project to keep a weather-eye on. Flushed with their end-of-year successes with Haim and Chvrches, the boutique singles label have now secured the release of an EP by Aussie duo Atlas Genius.

The song Trojans itself has gained quite a bit of traction state-side, and the band will be releasing their debut long-player at the end of the month. A couple of days before that, however, you can get the UK release of the track on it's own EP from the National Anthem website.

If ridiculously expensive limited-edition vinyl releases are your thing (and they certainly are mine) then the NA page is definitely one to add to your bookmarks, but you need to be quick - the Haim and Chvrches records are all sold-out, and I imagine the Atlas Genius record may go the same way in double quick time. This is indie electro-pop at its very best; a little slice of summer to stave off the hail and sleet.

These Are Them?: Real People Enjoy Life

2013-01-31T00:00:00Z

There's a fine line between being artfully artless^[1] and actually incompetent. The closer you get to the divide, the riskier your enterprise becomes, but sometimes - just sometimes - it's worth all the danger because the returns can be phenomenal. When I say ‘artless’ here, what I'm trying to express is that sense of effortless naïveté that defines many of my favourite performers; the sense that the musicians involved have never even seen their instruments before, let alone played them, but that they instinctively know how to make them work, how to get the sound they want from them. It's what made acts like Bauhaus and Dylan sound so natural. Hell, it's what made Frank so special.

To start a band and be unique is hard. How many acts in the charts can you honestly call new? To pick up your instruments knowing that millions before you have done the same and that you have to find something different, something new, something good, takes a rare kind of courage. ‘New’ in pop music is a subjective term, of course. If we really wanted new we'd turn to the avant garde classicists, and the abortive twentieth century exertions of Boulez, Schoenberg, et al can testify that ‘new’ is tantamount to ‘unlistenable’. new in the world of pop is taking existing elements - drums, bass, guitars, a singer - and putting them together in a way that displaces the inherent familiarity.

It is in this spirit that I present These Are Them, and their EP Real People Enjoy Life. This music is new, this music is effortless, this music is important.

I really did try to find a better phrase to express this idea, but this was honestly the best I could come up with. ↩︎

Jonnie Common: JWC008

2013-01-20T00:00:00Z

There's nothing Jonnie Common has made that I don't like. There's something about his folksy lo-fi charm married with his exquisite electronic noodling that just hits all the right spots for me. His Master of None LP was as close to perfect as albums get, and this new release is yet another strong addition to his canon.

What really piqued my interest, however, was the gimmicky way this 19 minute EP is presented. JWC008 comes as a screenprinted glass badge. I'm always wrestling with ways to combine the physical and digital sides of music. The fact that mp3s are just so convenient is unavoidable, but there's something about holding a record in your hands that just feels, well, better. And it doesn't have to be an actual record, either; I find myself buying tapes that I know I'll never actually play because they come with a download, but simply having the physical artefact means I instantly have a stronger connection with the music.

JC obviously knows this, and also knows that as long as you can touch it, the medium itself is largely irrelevant (finally, a decent counter to Marshall McLuhan). His solution is certainly elegant, as you can clearly see if you watch his charming promotional video, but I'm still not sure if this kind of trinket is a long-term answer to the question. Either way I think my badge is a lovely thing to own, and although the whole thing would fall on its head if the music wasn't any good, it's Jonnie Common, so of course the music is fantastic.

You can pick up a badge for yourself on the website for Keny Drew, who helped JC with this project, for the princely sum of £7, and you can even choose your own colour. Go buy one!

Who will win the Brit Awards?

2013-01-11T00:00:00Z

In short, I think Alt-J will sweep the board, pipping bookies-favourite Emeli Sandé to the coveted Best Album gong. That said, Jessie Ware might beat them to Best Breakthrough. The Mumford's latest LP Babel bored me to tears, but I'd never bet against them in a live setting, and while I'm loath to overlook The Boss, I think Gotye might beat both him and Jack White for International Male.

We'll find out if I'm anywhere near the mark when the winners are announced on the 20th February's ceremony at the O2, hosted by James Corden and featuring live performances by Muse, Robbie Williams, Emeli Sandé, Mumford & Sons, Ben Howard and One Direction (oh, the unbridled joy!). It's usually a train-wreck of broadcast, so well worth watching just for the sheer schadenfreude of it all.

Best British Group

My guess = Alt-J. Other nominees = Mumford and Sons, The xx, Muse, One Direction

Best British Album

My guess = Alt-J. Other nominees = Emeli Sandé, Plan B, Paloma Faith, Mumford & Sons

Best British Female (solo)

My guess = Paloma Faith. Other nominees = Amy Winehouse, Bat For Lashes, Jessie Ware, Emeli Sandé

Best British Male (solo)

My guess = Ben Howard. Other nominees = Calvin Harris, Plan B, Richard Hawley, Olly Murs

British Breakthrough

My guess = Alt-J. Other nominees = Jake Bugg, Jessie Ware, Ben Howard, Rita Ora

Best British Live Act

My guess = Mumford and Sons. Other nominees = Coldplay, Muse, The Vaccines, The Rolling Stones

Best International Group

My guess = The Black Keys. Other nominees = The Script, Alabama Shakes, Fun., The Killers

Best International Male (solo)

My guess = Gotye. Other nominees = Jack White, Michael Bubl_é, Frank Ocean, Bruce Springsteen_

Best International Female (solo)

My guess = Lana Del Ray. Other nominees = Rihanna, Alicia Keys, Cat Power, Taylor Swift

Best British Single

My guess = Adele for (Skyfall). Other nominees = Alex Clare (Too Close), Emeli Sandé (Next To Me), Coldplay (Princess Of China w/Rihanna), James Arthur (Impossible), Labrinth (Beneath Your Beautiful, w/Emeli Sande), Olly Murs (Troublemaker), Rita Ora (RIP, Hot Right Now), Florence + The Machine (Spectrum), Robbie Williams (Candy), Jessie J (Domino), Rizzle Kicks (Mama Do The Hump), Rudimental (Feel The Love), Stooshe (Black Heart)

British Producer (in association with the MPG Awards)

My guess = Paul Epworth. Other nominees = Damon Albarn, Jake Gosling

Grandbrothers: 12V/3A

2012-12-14T00:00:00Z

Now here's a mysterious release to wrap your ears around. Whether Grandbrothers haven't started their marketing campaign yet or are being elusive and secretive by choice I couldn't tell you. I am told they're looking for a UK promoter, so maybe we'll learn more about them in due course. What we do know is that they hail from Germany and are peddling a bewitching blend of piano and The Books-esque rhythmic playfulness.

Their EP, 12V/3A is available to stream in its entirety on their Bandcamp page, although only the opening track Ezra Was Right can be downloaded. That track on it's own is enough to keep anyone happy for far longer than its not-quite-eight minutes would suggest, but the real stand-out jaw-dropper track is 5gegen1. If you manage to find out anything about this elusive instrumental duo then do let me know, but in the meantime simply take pleasure in their magnificent music.

UPDATE: Further detective work (a.k.a. Googling) has revealed a rather sparse Grandbrothers blog containing several videos showing off the fancy machine that makes their distinct sound possible. While one of them plays the piano regularly, the other uses a series of laptops and home-soldered mechanics to trigger an array of little bolts that hammer down on the innards of the instrument. It's an ingenious mechanism, and knowing how it's done only adds to the wonder of their music.

Jack Robert Hardman: Plymouth

2012-12-07T00:00:00Z

My opinion of Plymouth is pretty grim; visits there are to be endured, rather than enjoyed, and when called upon to make the trip 'up north', I'm always filled with dread when the train crosses the Tamar and approaches Plymouth station. Who knows what I may end up sitting next to... I jest (partly), but Plymouth is the closest my beloved South West has to a gritty urban centre, and all the people there seem northern and scary. Jack Robert Hardman, however, has managed to retain the romantic, evocative air of adventurous potential that the city once commanded. I've always had a soft spot the slightly archaic, majestic nature of our nation's maritime heritage, and Jack's wistful, almost elegiac single, Plymouth, captures everything that excites me about living on the edge of an ocean.

If you need a trite pop-comparison to get into Jack's music, then I'd say he sounds a little like what would happen if the Postal Service had spent far too long listening to the most recent Bon Iver album. There's a lot more going on here than a simple mixing of influences, though, and while the production paints it's own picture (lush and sparse in equal measure) one is stuck most of all by the personality that pervades every inch of this record. There's a thoughtful, subtle intelligence at work behind this music, and while the mood is slow and contemplative it never rambles, and the track feels like it ends too soon (always a good sign, in my book).

Asian She: Asian She

2012-11-30T00:00:00Z

Soundcloud and Bandcamp have, between them, revolutionised the music blogging process. Music blogging itself is a fairly new pursuit, but even as recently as four years ago (when this blog started) actually including the music itself was a tedious process that involved a fair bit of technical savvy: thanks to this blog I've learnt all about web hosting, embedding and all the legal implications contained within the pandora's box of letting people download other peoples music. Soundcloud and Bandcamp have removed all the hassle from the process entirely. Now, with nothing more than a quick copy/paste, anyone can include music on their site. And what's more, it's all above board and legitimate (provided the original SC/BC account is real, of course).

Those two services have had an even bigger impact on the workflow of this site, however. I often complain about the volume of submissions I receive (although I never mean it; being sent other peoples music in exchange for nothing more than the occasional write-up is, and always will be, an utter privilege) and when I had to actually download the submissions before I'd heard them an afternoon trawling through my inbox quickly became a logistical nightmare. Now, with the ubiquity of Soundcloud and Bandcamp, it's so much easier to weed out the wheat from the chaff. It takes a matter of seconds to click a link and get the gist of of band's sound (which is in itself a blessing and a curse, but that's a whole other article's worth of debate) so I can actually listen to a whole lot more of my submissions than I could be bothered to before.

Asian She are an act that would have undoubtedly slipped through the cracks in the old world; the name and the artwork all suggested hip-hop to me, for some reason, and that's and instant 'delete' in my book. In fact, even with the easy streaming link I almost gave up on them; the first 17 seconds sounded very much like something more at home on the Grand Theft Auto soundtrack than on these pages. But then the vocal came in, and my whole perception of the band changed.

Asian She's eponymous EP is, despite first impressions, a sophisticated and nuanced indie-rock record. The dry vocal delivery, the electric guitars, the ear for a good pop tune; all of these are elements guaranteed to push my buttons. It just so happens that these are laid on a bed of textures that are a little off my usual plain of reference. Would I recommend to the band that they change their approach? No way, because although this record is undoubtedly strong enough to hold it's own without any gimmicks (intentional or otherwise), the sense of fooled expectations definitely made the record stand out. This was primarily because I was racked with guilt for having so nearly dismissed such a truly great EP, it's true, but I imagine most other people won't be as stupid as I nearly was. As for the band themselves, they're great, and this EP is great, and everyone should buy it.

The Steelwells: Cool Kids

2012-11-28T00:00:00Z

Here's some lively, cheerful and remarkably assured pop music for your delectation. The Steelwells are a five piece from the states and they tell me this EP was recorded, mixed, and mastered all their own fair hands. I must say I'm impressed at how full a sound they've managed to craft.

As well as having a great aesthetic, the songs themselves are also rather fine, and not only that, but all four songs are of equally great quality. Getting one of these elements up to scratch is an impressive enough feat, but to get both up to such a high level marks The Steelwells out as definite 'ones to watch'.

All the songs fit into much the same space emotionally and sonically, but that's not a complaint. At just four tracks long, Cool Kids is a little gem of pure pop joy that's just long enough to plant it's smiling face right up in yo' grill. They're genrously offering the EP as a free download, so be sure to get yourself a copy and experience the fun firsthand.

Port Isla: Sinking Ship

2012-11-23T00:00:00Z

Here's a new single that quickly rose to the top of my inbox. A four-piece from Norwich, Port Isla peddle a rather pleasing mix of Appalachian-inspired folksy harmonies and persuasive pop sensibility. Their single Sinking Ship has been released as a free download from Soundcloud, and is really rather special.

For the opening few bars I was a little worried that the band was just one guy and a loopstation trying to sound like KT Tunstall, but there is documentary evidence that this is a real band. And besides, once the chorus kicks in any similarities are quickly forgotten; this track has an energy and momentum that is all its own. The basic sound on offer here is one that's very in vogue these days, but Port Isla add enough of their own ideas to keep it fresh and intriguing. At the risk of making trite comparisons, imagine if Robin Pecknold actually liked music, had a decent drummer, and was more interested in rocking out than appearing fey and ethereal. That's Port Isla.

Aside from this single, there's some good stuff to be found on the band's Soundcloud page, and I'd imagine there's plenty more to come. So far they've had some local radio play and performed at a few festivals, but I wouldn't be surprised if Port Isla get much bigger much faster in 2013.

The Faint: Danse Macabre

2012-11-21T00:00:00Z

An eleven year anniversary seems an unusual occasion for an extravagant boxset reissue, but that hasn't stopped the folk at Saddle Creek from doing just that. The Faint's Dance Macabre, their press release tells us, was the seminal record of its age. In the extensive liner-notes for this 2 CD 1 DVD 2 LP package The Faint are heralded as the fountain head of 'modern dance-rock' and are, if we're to believe what we're being told, solely responsible for the success of Franz Ferdinand, The Killers, and Bloc Party. This is, of course, utter nonsense.

What Dance Macabre actually was, however, was a cracking good album. Few records start with the punch and conviction of the openers Agenda Suicide and Glass Danse, and while the gothy "real jobs are for drones, man" sentiments and post-apocalyptic synths sound distinctly teenage a decade on, it still somehow works. Turned up loud through a good amp, the vinyl remaster in this set comes across sounding as fresh as any contemporary 'dance-rock' record can do. I'm sure if they'd recorded it in 2012 there'd be a heavier dubstep vibe, but while the textures themselves may be different, the motivations and attitude are much the same as the majority of sounds coming from your radio today.

As for the added extras in this set, closer inspection reveals that the massive package is not actually as feature-rich as one was led to believe. The DVD holds nothing more interesting than a couple of music videos and back-projections from the band's live shows, and a paltry, self-indulgent collection of archive footage strung together with no apparent thought for narrative or aesthetics, that served little purpose other than to draw attention to some of the great tracks from The Faint's preceding LP Bank Wave Arcade - arguably a rougher, less assured album, but certainly one with better songs. 2005's Spend An Evening With Saddle Creek documentary, while rambling and un-focused, actually had a lot of interview and archive footage from the making of Danse Macabre, and it's a shame the content on this reissue doesn't continue or build on that story. Of the six tracks on the bonus CD and LP, only the cover of Bright Eyes' Falling Out Of Love At This Volume has made it onto my iPod; at best, this disc is a mildly interesting diversion from the main event (unless, of course, you're one of those diseased people who actually enjoys remixes...).

It's good to see that Danse can still hold its own, and if nothing else it's nice to have these songs on high-quality vinyl and be given an excuse to revisit an old favourite that otherwise might not have been listened to for quite some time. However, as is the case with the vast majority of box-set reissues, unless you're the most completist of Faint fans I'd recommend you save your cash and stick with the regular version.

Amanda Palmer: Theatre Is Evil

2012-11-19T00:00:00Z

It's been a very long time since I've covered a full album on these pages, so it seems fitting that I break that streak with a record that's actually been put together like a real album. So many records these days seem to be just a collection of songs that happen to have been written at the same time, with the best ones put at the start to be sure of grabbing the listener's attention as quickly as possible. The worst ones are just a couple of singles strung haphazardly together with bona fide filler. A real album, by contrast, has an ebb and flow, a structure, a cohesive identity.

Theatre Is Evil, the result of Amanda Palmer's infamous Kickstarter campaign, may have it's flaws but it is unequivocally an album-proper. It's not a concept album, and in fact the songs held within are a stylistically disparate bunch, but it is nonetheless a record built to be listened to from end to end. TIE comes in a deluxe 2-disc vinyl package, giving an extra couple of side-flips, but it's the middle break that feels the most accomplished. There's a fittingly climactic end to the first half of this album in the form of A Grand Theft Intermission, and a suitably punchy start to the second half with the strident drumkit opening for Lost.

Aesthetically the tracks yo-yo from rough and live-sounding to smooth and heavily-produced, but throughout the linchpin holding this record together is Ms. Palmer's voice - specifically her sometimes-delicate sometimes-overbearing delivery - and the narrative-rich quality of her songwriting. These two elements are put front-and-centre in the obvious singles Want It Back and The Killing Type, but it's the less immediately accessible tracks like Bottomfeeder and The Bed Song that reward a listener with more patience.

Lyrically Palmer may be adept at setting a scene with subtle and effective gestures, but when it comes to the production values we're into primary colours territory; when this record shows its rough edges they really are rough. A grating melodica-esque synth sound permeates most of the record, and coupled with the punk-by-numbers guitar riffs it alternates between being powerfully raw and intensely irritating. The result is that the album has a real bite to it that many of the overly smooth singer/songwriters of today could learn from, but ultimately Palmer's mannered delivery ends up feeling simply fatiguing. Theatre Is Evil is taught and spiky and entertaining, but just too strident and earnest to be genuinely great, and ironically for an album I'm lauding for being a 'complete work' it's far better taken in small doses.

Frightened Rabbit: State Hospital

2012-11-07T00:00:00Z

The biggest bit of news to drop in casa EbM in last few months was that old favourites Frightened Rabbit would be releasing a new LP in 2013. That was good news because as creators of one of the best albums of the last half-decade, FR LPs are always worth paying attention to, but also because there would inevitably be a host of EPs and singles released to build up anticipation. And as a FR fanboy-completist, I'm willing to gobble all of these up with gusto.

We last had a FR EP back in November '11, and whether any of the tracks from there will be on the new LP we can only speculate. What is known, however, is that the title track from State Hospital will make it on to the final album. Being the first song to emerge from the album's writing session, frontman Scott has said it "set the tone" for the rest of the record. If that's the case then fans of FR's old stuff (which definitely includes me) are in for a treat. But it's not a continuation of the upward trend in production values that we've seen through their last three albums; as I said when the last EP came out, the band's longtime producer Peter Katis (a man with one of the most impressive resumes of recent times) is no longer on the scene and the band are handling production duties themselves. Whatever the reason for this (it may be a 'creative' decision or a side-effect of the band's switch from indie FatCat to major Atlantic) I think ultimately it's a step in the right direction. The songs on this EP carry a rawness and edge that is recognizable from their early work but which had been all but ironed out following 2008's Midnight Organ Fight.

Of the other songs on this release, Boxing Night is the standout, reminiscent of Cheap Gold and It's Christmas So We'll Stop, and is by all accounts an old song given a final polish before being laid to rest. The collaboration with Aiden Moffat (late of Arab Strap), Wedding Gloves, is a leftfield 'weird' one, but what binds all five tracks together is an uncommon quality and a spirit that so many bands with promising beginnings lose as their career progresses. Frightened Rabbit are evidently still going strong, and still ones to watch.

Withered Hand: Inbetweens

2012-11-02T00:00:00Z

Moving on from all the 7"s that have been covered on these pages lately, here's a 10" EP from EbM favourites Withered Hand. While the last WH release - the Heart Heart 7" that came out in Feb. - represented a new direction for Dan Wilson's project, Inbetweens is more representative of Withered Hand's general sound. What I've always loved about WH, and which was perhaps slightly lacking in Heart Heart, is his ability to take the generic setup of acoustic guitar and crackly voice and turn it into something ultimately rather esoteric. Aside from his distinctive voice, there's nothing overtly groundbreaking in the aesthetics of WH's recorded output, but it does serve as a fine canvas to perfectly showcase the quality of the songwriting; to the point where hi. 2009 LP has been slowly creeping to the top of my all-time favourite albums list.

The title track on Inbetweens might not be WH's best work, but it is nevertheless very good indeed, and it's been my experience that WH songs tend to be 'growers', so come back in six months and this track may be a firm favorite. Where this EP gets interesting for me as a WH fan is the b-side, where some old songs are revisited. If you include Meursault's cover, this is the fifth recorded version of Oldsmobile Car (which I know better as Red Candle Bulb) that I've heard, and up until now every version has had some flaw or quirk in it that renders it slightly less than a finished product. That might have been a dodgy drum machine or some ever dodgier backing vocals ("shooby-shooby"?!), but I'm pleased to report that this version gives the song the treatment it has so long deserved.

More controversial, in my eyes, is the final track, (it's a) Wonderful Lie. Originally released as a Christmas song in 2007, the song was so good that Dan changed a verse to make it less season-specific and incorporated it into his live shows. This is a recording of that version complete with fleshed-out instrumentation, and it is very, very good. What makes it sit uneasily with me is that it's not quite as good as the original festive version. I'm willing to accept that this might be because I have a strong emotional attachment to the old version - I've listened to it countless hundreds of times in the fortnightly period in which it's acceptable to listen to Christmas songs - but secretly I'm sure it's because the older version actually is better.

All in all, this 10" has much to recommend it, both to Withered Hand fanboy completists and casual admirers of really great music. Go buy it!

Dan Croll: From Nowhere

2012-10-31T00:00:00Z

Based on the first few bars of organ you'd be forgiven for confusing this track with Metronomy's The Look, but once the guitar slides into the beat it becomes clear that this is a rather fine single all by itself. The title From Nowhere is aptly chosen as Dan Croll, the mastermind behind this sterling piece of work, appears to have sprung up 'from nowhere' fully formed. Armed only with a 7", an infectiously jolly video, and a great eye for visual design, he's beating a strong and steady path toward not inconsiderable success. There is another weapon in his arsenal, of course, and that's a corker of a debut single.

From Nowhere had me hooked as soon as the guitar line kicked in, and didn't let up until it was finished. The spring reverb and jaunty backbeat might mark the track out as a potential summer favourite, but it still doesn't feel out of place now the nights are drawing in.

Aside from this 7", there's not much known about Mr Croll. He's from Liverpool an. popped up on the Communion Records compilation, New Faces, back in April with a track called Marion; it's a nice enough tune, but it's definitely From Nowhere that's his masterpiece. If this song isn't a hit on the scale of Grizzly Bear's Two Weeks then the world is a deeply unfair place: go and buy it straight away.

The 1975: Sex

2012-10-29T00:00:00Z

Another corker of a track from a band I'd never heard of until they landed in my inbox. This is the sort of song I always wanted to be able to write when I was in school. I was never this good, and I'm too old now to get away with this kind of thing, but I can still enjoy the energy and delivery that The 1975 inject into the whirling dervish of a single that is Sex.

The track stands up well enough on its own, but there's something to be gained from watching the video - the singer has given himself the most ridiculous rock-star haircut. Now, I know this doesn't have anything to do with the music, and I'm guessing you don't visit these pages for my Grazia-esque fashion insights, but is pertinent to the music, I assure you. If nothing else, it shows that this guy is committed to being a rock star; to have the nerve to do that to himself proves that the band is front-and-centre in his ambitions. And that's an essential part of this music; utter commitment, manic youthful energy.

Anyway, haircuts aside, this song is fantastic, and an exploration of their soundcloud page won't go unrewarded either. The record is released by Vagrant on the 20th November, and is available for pre-order through iTunes (although there's no sign of any physical release yet, which is a shame).

Monument Valley: Your Cover Blown

2012-10-25T00:00:00Z

This is one of my favourite singles of the year so far: Your Cover Blown.

Simple, evocative, powerful; trading under the nom de guerre Monument Valley, Mancunian Ned Younger certainly knows how to turn a phrase that's sure to draw me in. The sparse guitars and delicate atmospherics set a mood that's at once malevolent yet somehow tender, and the booming, ghostly piano thumps in the chorus - so simple they're hardly there - ground the lyrics so thoroughly that the track instantly feels like something important.

Like all the best pop songs, the lyrics to Your Cover Blown sound both disarmingly specific and impossibly ambiguous all at the same time. In the months since this track was released I've listened to it countless times, and I've still no idea what it's actually about, but every listen paints a picture that stays with me long after the song's finished.

When it comes to the b-side, in contrast, there's no mistaking what it's about. Younger's oblique, occasionally witty lyrical approach manages to breathe fresh life into the classic breakup song trope, and the end result is a track that's almost as bewitching as the a-side. The single came out on Everybody's Stalking back in May, and although I came late to the party and didn't order my copy until mid summer, Your Cover Blown is easily my most-played 7" of 2012 (so far, at least).

John Butler: Ocean

2012-08-07T00:00:00Z

Allow me, if you will, to be a little self indulgent for a while (or more so than usual, at least). I don't often get gooey over guitarists, and my days as a John Butler Trio fan are well behind me (I've grown up in a town built on surfing, so I had to like him at some point), but Ocean - JB's instrumental magnum opus - is so lodged in my psyche that I just had to post about this new studio version. It was the first song I learnt that was built solely for performance on a 12-string - or 11-string, as JB has his set up - and I made sure I knew the Max Sessions version note for note; I must have watched that part of his DVD (which came as part of his Live at St. Gallen box set) more than any other music video.

Having learnt to play it myself, I now know that the tuning is doing most of the work, and he's really just cycling through a couple of simple chord changes, but even knowing all that I still can't help but be entranced by the track. I lost interest in the John Butler Trio after the Grand National album was so overwhelmingly dull, and even Sunrise Over Sea - the only record of his I really liked - lays on the cheese rather heavily. Like most virtuoso guitarists JB can't write lyrics worth a damn, and if you've heard one of his plus-ten-minute slide solos you've heard them all; I'd only recommend you seek out more John Butler Trio stuff if you're into surfing and think Jack Johnson's great, but if you think that, then what on earth are you doing reading this blog?! Ocean, however, will stay with me forever.

There's about a million different versions of this track out there - all of varying quality - and almost every one of them has a slightly different arrangement; he must play this track all the time, so who can blame him for trying to keep things interesting? This new version is one of the better ones, and you download it from his site or through the Soundcloud site, but I recommend you hear it with the visuals for the full effect.

And here's my favourite arrangement from the Max Sessions DVD mentioned above (at six minutes, it's much shorter than most of the other versions). Whichever version you choose, however, it will still be worth your time; I guarantee it.

The Mae Shi: R U Professional

2012-07-29T00:00:00Z

A bit of a blast from the past, this one. I saw the latest Batman film the other day and it was, after all the hype, a film about a man who dresses up as a bat, but nonetheless very good for all that. It also reminded me that I'd not listened to this gem from The Mae Shi in ages. Written, recorded, and released in the twenty-four hours after the audio from Christian Bale's well-publicized wig-out was made available, R U Professional is half piss-take, half tribute. It certainly sounds like it was written in a rush, but maybe that's half the fun of it - and 'fun' is the operative word here. This song's not big, not clever, and in all honesty not particularly good, but it is fun. It could be argued that I spend too much time being very serious about the music I listen to, so it's nice to throw caution to the wind from time to time and simply bask in the unadulterated joy of something really, really silly.

The Mae Shi - R U Professional [audio //www.eatenbymonsters.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/Misc/TheMaeShi_RUProfessional.mp3]

The band seem to have fizzled out since 2009, but this is a sample of what they did when they weren't being meme-friendly satirists:

The Mae Shi - Lamb and the Lion [audio //www.eatenbymonsters.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/Misc/TheMaeShi_LambAndTheLion.mp3]

And, of course, for those of you who haven't heard it (a.k.a. for those of you who didn't have the internet in '09) here's Mr Bale's little tantrum. Be warned, strong language ahead...

Christian Bale - Going Batshitcrazy [audio //www.eatenbymonsters.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/Misc/ChristianBale.mp3]

(and just in case you were inclined to sympathize with Mr Bale in a oh-he's-in-the-creative-zone-making-art kind of way, remember that this was on the set of the most recent Terminator; the one with, you know, all the robots.)

Withered Hand, Delifinger, Barbarossa: F3NC3 R⅓CORDS’ CHART RUSE

2012-07-27T00:00:00Z

Back in February I posted about the Withered Hand record Heart Heart, which was the first release in a three-single subscription series run by Fence Records, called Chart Ruse. Each of the 7" EPs included in the deal come in a fantastically well designed sleeve, with each one subtly altered for each band, and each consists of four tracks, one of which is a remix (shudder) and one of which is a vinyl only cut. The subscription has now run its course, and having already written about the WH record, I figure it's only fair to give the other two bands a place on these illustrious pages as well. The bands in question are Delifinger and Barbarossa, and I should confess that before signing up for this deal I'd never heard of either band before (well, I'd seen Delifinger open for WH and King Creosote at the start of the year, but was decidedly underwhelmed).

The Delifinger record, much like his live performance, was not quite as good as I'd hoped it would be. All the ingredients seemed to suggest an interesting sonic palette and more than a little creativity, but Matthew Lacey - who's project this is - comes across as far too earnest, and the songs themselves are just too slow. That sounds like a dreadfully obtuse bit of criticism, but there just wasn't enough going on to maintain my interest; if the songs had been faster it might have worked, or if they'd had more, well, hooks they might have been able to sustain the slow pace. As a result, this single might appeal to those of a more morose aspect than myself, but as it stands the Escapes EP is a sincere and laudable effort, but not really my cup of tea.

The Barbarossa contribution covers much the same ground in terms of texture and approach, but where Delifinger doesn't quite deliver, Barbarossa (again, it's all the work of one man; this time it's James Mathé) injects enough variety to keep things interesting. In fact, I think the real difference lies in the confidence of the performers; Butterfly Plague feels much more assured, much more decisive, much more confident. The record is, overall, perhaps a little too delicate for me to find myself really loving it, but it's still good enough for me to pop it on the turntable on a fairly regular basis.

All in all, despite my disparaging remarks, this has been a rewarding series, and while I may have been rather dismissive of some of the music, the fact that it's a unified collection of 7"s that sit nicely together on my shelf - and because it came from Fence - means that I'll most likely find myself returning to it before too long. In the meantime, the next Fence series - this time called Buff Tracks - kicks of imminently, so now I'm waiting eagerly for that to arrive.

Barbarossa - Butterfly Plague [audio //www.eatenbymonsters.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/WitheredHand/Barbarossa_ButterflyPlague.mp3]

Delifinger - Escapes [audio //www.eatenbymonsters.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/WitheredHand/Delifinger_Escapes.mp3]

Cosmo Jarvis: Love This

2012-07-26T00:00:00Z

Another great low-budget video for your delectation today. This one's been sitting in my inbox for over a month now, which means I'm coming a little late to the Cosmo Jarvis party. People who got there before I did include Brian Eno and Jarvis Cocker, and while I'm never sure if celebrity endorsements actually help launch an artist, accolades from names like those can't do any harm (although I seem to remember hearing something recently about the 'curse' of an endorsement from Morrissey...). Anyway, late or not, this video for Love This is fantastic and the song's of equal quality. It came out at the start of July, and was quickly followed by a full-length release, Think Bigger.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG-vPi1W_cs&w=560&h=315]

Amanda Palmer: Want It Back

2012-07-23T00:00:00Z

If you ignore the nipples, this is actually rather good. Not being particularly familiar with Ms. Palmer, I assumed she was just, you know, yet another breathy, girly, away-with-the-fairies singer-songwriter. Having heard this, and having made the connection between her name and the fantastic Map Of Tasmania I heard a while back, I wish I'd jumped on the million-dollar-plus Kickstarter campaign bandwagon. The album from that massive influx of funds is called Theatre Is Evil, and will get it's UK release through Cooking Vinyl.

There's great typography in the video, and a great song to go with it. I guess people will call her brave and a feminist and other silly things, but inside I'm still about ten years old and find boobs scary and intimidating...

(If you haven't guessed by now, the video is a little NSFW).

Town Hall: Good Boy

2012-04-05T00:00:00Z

Town Hall, who impressed me recently with their Sticky Notes & Paper Scraps EP, have a new single out in support of their upcoming album. The track is called Good Boy, and will released as a free download on the their Bandcamp page soon, but for now you can get your kicks from the music video they've made for the song (another sterling Mason Jar Music production).

It's great to see a band that can so consistently keep up such high standards - I often find little videos like the one that alerted me to Town Hall's existence, but rarely does my further exploration reveal more stuff of a similar quality, let alone better stuff, as is the case here. The Town Hall album, Roots and Bells, comes out on the 15th of this month, and now I'm even more eager to hear it than I already was.

Emily And The Woods: Eye To Eye

2012-03-28T00:00:00Z

If you ask me, Newton Faulkner suffered at the hands of his producer. Sure, his songs might not be all that great, but he was a powerful live performer with charm and talent aplenty; on record, however, he merely comes across as Mr. Bland from Bland City. I mention Faulkner here to highlight the delicate and mystical alchemy that goes into capturing a great live performer 'on tape' and how such a process can easily miss its mark.

My first exposure to Emily And The Woods - the nom de guerre of singer/songwriter Emily Wood - was the session she did for Location Music TV back in November 2011, and while I've never seen her play live, this 'live' session (along with the many others she's recorded for a whole host of people) shows an adept and assured solo performer.

So what, then, of her recordings? Fleshed out with a full line-up, the songs hold up remarkably well. Perhaps that the extra instrumentation meshes so well with Emily's hushed and delicate vocal stylings is the result of the band being something of a family affair - with a Benjamin Wood on electric guitar and a Patrick Wood handling acoustic guitar, bass and piano along with the production duties.

All in all the Woods' production seems to be something of a self-made affair, with no visible signs of label support or any of the trappings of the industry at large. The only people visibly backing her are OMG Music, a fledgling production company based in Surrey (who, ironically, represent a certain Mr. Faulkner) but despite the apparent lack of resources, her Eye To Eye EP sounds remarkably professional.

If I'm honest, this 'professional' sheen could be as much a curse as a blessing: the traditional word to use in these circumstances is 'slick', and that's not a charge that sits well with the delightfully ramshackle performances that come across in her live videos. That said, the only real flaw that I can detect in the record is the slightly overzealous percussion that's been slapped all over Steal His Heart, which is a shame, as it's my favourite song of hers. But then my opinion of the song was forged watching her solo performance, so maybe I'm just predisposed to prefer a stripped back version.

The EP certainly seems to be going down well in the blogosphere, and it was only after a whole slew of favourable reviews over at Breaking More Waves that I finally got around to buying Eye To Eye (which can be found, along with a few other things, at her Big Cartel shop page). It's been a few months since the EP was launched, but Emily And The Woods are still releasing a steady stream of impressive performances through YouTube, and with the growing groundswell of blog-based support I'll bet it won't be long before they hit the big time. This is one band wagon I'll be proud to say I jumped on as soon as I was able.

Withered Hand: Heart Heart

2012-02-25T00:00:00Z

I finally got round to seeing Withered Hand recently, and when asked by a friend to describe what it was like I must admit I struggled. After wrestling with expressions like 'deliberately lo-fi' and 'artfully artless' - which apply to the early recordings and not the live sound - the only thing I felt comfortable setting in stone was 'game changer'.

As someone who attempts to write my own songs from time to time, every so often I come across tracks that as well as simply liking I actually wish I'd written myself. Hearing these songs can either be an inspiration - causing me to stop the track before it's finished and run off and try to write something of my own - or (and this is more often the case) herald a fit of despair and self-pity - 'I'll never write anything that good' and so on and so forth... Listening to Withered Hand, however, makes me want to unlearn everything I think I know about songwriting and start all over from the beginning again.

I say this, of course, with reference to recording by Withered Hand (the nom de'guerre of singer/songwriter Dan Wilson) that I've had time to get to know fairly intimately: 2009's Good News album, and the smattering of EPs and single mp3s I've been able to get my hands on. This new record, the Heart Heart EP, comes courtesy of the Fence Collective's Chart Ruse subscription scheme (although it can still be bought separately), and will probably take a little while to grow on me. The lead track, Heart Heart, is fast becoming a favourite even though on first listen it struck me as something of a departure from the usual WH sound (although there are distinct parallels with the Religious Songs EP version of New Dawn). The rest of the tracks (not counting the vinyl-only King Creosote remix) are in more familiar territory but have yet to stamp their identity on my ears in the way many of WH's older songs already have.

Whether they do or not, there's no getting round the fact that this EP is - music aside - quite simple a lovely object to own. To those who question the value of music in physical form I recommend feasting your eyes on this exquisitely designed sleeve, with its die-cut hole and beautiful illustrations.

Town Hall: Sticky Notes & Paper Scraps

2012-02-18T00:00:00Z

When a video of a band covering Jimmy Eat World's The Middle landed in my inbox a month or so ago, the first thing that struck me was that it was really, really slick. It purported to be a 'live' session, but the production values for both the sound and the visuals were far above what one normally expects from a hitherto unknown band (Brooklyn-based indie-folk outfit Town Hall may have released their debut, Tour EP, at least a year ago, but I'd certainly never heard of them before). The impressive video - and it's equally impressive collection of microphones and instruments - makes more sense upon learning that the Tour EP made its way into the hands of the prodigiously talented (or at the very least prodigiously dedicated) people at Mason Jar Music.

This self-styled collective of creative types specialize in both video work and sound production, with instrumental arrangement being their speciality. They've teamed up with Town Hall to re-record and re-release their EP, which is now called Sticky Notes & Paper Scraps and boasts the work of a deft and accomplished sonic touch. I'm often disparaging of bands using covers to help break themselves into the mainstream, but perhaps I ought to re-evaluate my stance; in this instance the cover served as an effective gateway drug into a band with a genuinely beautiful aesthetic and some cracking songs to match it.

Admiral Fallow: Boots Met My Face

2011-11-28T00:00:00Z

Having finished my review of the Moth & The Mirror album I realized that I had yet to review what is, in my eyes, a more important record. One of the contributors to the Moth & The Mirror project is Louis Abbot, who's day job is fronting the decidedly excellent Admiral Fallow, who's debut album Boots Met My Face was re-released earlier this year.

Originally recorded way back in 2009 and released in 2010, the record managed to completely pass me by until the re-release on Lo-Five Records this March. What gripped me initially was the sound of this record, which sounds like a silly thing to say when talking about music - of course it's the sound we're concerned with! - so perhaps I would do better to say the texture, the colour, the aesthetic grabbed my attention.

As any regular reader of these pages will attest, while I claim to be of catholic tastes there are most definitely some instrumental combinations that are almost guaranteed to pique my interest. Acoustic guitars backed up by sharp, treble-y drums fall slap bang in the middle of that zone, and there's plenty of that on Boots Met My Face. Add some non-rock instruments (in this instance it's flutes and clarinets) and, lately, a Scots accent into the mix and you're laughing all the way to the bank - regardless of the quality of the songs themselves.

Thankfully the songs on this record live up to the standards of the aesthetic; Abbot has a good turn of phrase on him, as well as an eye for scansion that's proving surprisingly rare of late. It's not a uniformly good record - here and there one stumbles upon a jarring texture or a melody that's a little too repetitive and dirge-like - but despite it's flaws, this feels like 'a record of note'. A complaint I leveled at Abbot's side-project, The Moth & The Mirror, was that their music lacked the little spark of inspiration necessary to make it an important record. As far as mood and texture and aesthetic are concerned there's not much to separate Admiral Fallow from The Moth & The Mirror (except, perhaps, a braver touch when it comes to electric guitars in the latter), but I can see Boots Met My Face being a record that I still listening to occasionally for a good long while to come.

Despite being nearly two years old now, this album sounds fresh and current to my ears, and the news that Admiral Fallow are already hard at work on their follow-up fills me with hope for the musical prospects of 2012.

The Moth & The Mirror: Honestly, This World

2011-11-25T00:00:00Z

If reviews on this site included subheadings then this post's would read 'back-room boys done good?'. A first glance at the credits for this new band suggest that one is looking at a new 'supergroup' in much the same vein as Gary Lightbody's The Reindeer Section, which in its day was a veritable who's-who (or who's-whom, if you prefer) of Scottish musicians. Frightened Rabbit, Arab Strap and Admiral Fallow can all be found in the bloodline of The Moth & The Mirror, but not in the way one would expect. Of the three groups mentioned, the only frontman included this new band is Admiral Fallow's Louis Abbot, and for most of the time he takes a back seat in the line up. Fronting the band is Stacey Sievewright, who played cello for Arab Strap, and the FR connection comes in the form of Gordon Skene, who joined Scott Hutchinson et al in 2009 as an extra guitarist to reenforce the band's live sound.

To be seduced by the lure of the 'supergroup' tag is to set yourself up for disappointment, really, but moreover such a classification misses the point of this band entirely. The point, in fact, is just that: The Moth & The Mirror are a genuine band. I don't have any insights into the motivations behind this projects inception, but from the evidence of the music alone, this record is the work of people who just want to make music together. There's none of the self-aggrandising, name-dropping, fun-to-be-in-but-terrible-to-listen-to sense that one traditionally gets from supergroups (will The Reindeer Section and Them Crooked Vultures please stand up?). Honestly, This World sounds like a bona fide album; a focused, coherent artistic statement with no agenda other than to stand on its own merit.

I can see why the press for this release focusses on the pedigree of the performers, but this 'maguffin' approach to generating interest doesn't do the band any favours. The first points of comparison for anyone hearing them are instantly going to be three of the best Scottish bands of the last decade or so; all hard acts to follow, I'm sure you'll agree. As it stands, predictably, The Moth & The Mirror aren't in the same league as their cousins. This is an assured, competent first record that any band could rightly be proud of, but it lacks the spark of inspiration that so successfully catapulted its ancestors into the giddy heights of genius. Sievewright's voice is strong and in-tune, if a little bland for these ears, and interacts nicely with Abbot's backing vocals. And if you're a fan of the guitar-based aesthetic of FR and AF then you'll find nothing to offend you in the 42 minutes of Honestly, This World. This is, on balance, a good record, and one that will most likely stay in rotation on my stereo for at least a month or so. Its downfall, for me, is that Sievewright isn't interesting enough to hold my attention for a whole album, but that is - I'll be the first to admit - a totally subjective opinion. In truth, I've been more critical of this record than I would have been had it come out-of-the-blue with no celebrity connections; I've given far worse records far better write-ups in the past, but in this instance I can't un-hear the comparisons to better bands. This is a good record with much to recommend it, just don't be lead astray by the cries of 'supergroup'.

The Moth & The Mirror - Fire [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/TheMothAndTheMirror/TheMothAndTheMirror_Fire.mp3]

The Moth & The Mirror - Everyone I Know [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/TheMothAndTheMirror/TheMothAndTheMirror_EveryoneIKnow.mp3]

To stream, or not to stream?

2011-11-24T00:00:00Z

Mercury-nominated Jon Hopkins has caused quite a stir with his exasperated tweet, “Got paid £8 for 90,000 plays. Fuck Spotify.” His outburst came just as anit-Spotify sentiment was reaching a head, and has effectively polarized the music community. With acts like Coldplay, Adele, and Tom Waits refusing to put their new releases on the platform, and with indie distributor ST Holdings' recent decision to pull their catalogue from all streaming services, it seems the Spotify-refuseniks have the upper hand. But are they right to be so disparaging? Does Spotify really “cannibalise the revenues of more traditional digital services”, as ST Holdings claim?

When Spotify first launched it was universally applauded and embraced by the musical community. Online streaming wasn't new, even then, but here, finally, was a service with the momentum and critical mass to genuinely change the listening habits of a nation. Only die-hard music geeks are interested in “possessing” music, went the argument; this was a platform aimed at those who would otherwise download or stream their music illegally. And that has been the rallying cry for all Spotify defenders of late: “the cheques might be small, but it's still better than nothing!”

Lady Gaga: 1m streams = £100?

Stories recounting tales of woefully small royalty pay-outs get an awful lot of coverage in the media. The furore surrounding Hopkins' outburst is much the same as the shock-wave that spread through the industry when it was claimed that Lady Gaga only received £100.76 for a million plays of Poker Face in 2008. That claim has since been proved to be false (in fact, Spotify paid out £201.53), and the streaming service claims the low payout was because at the time the platform was still in its infancy, but confusion still abounds. The fact remains that the only way to know how much Spotify pays out is to actually receive a cheque from them. The band Little Things That Kill released their sales data recently, and that showed in June 2011 they earnt about 0.4 Eurocents per stream; a figure that they suggest is on the rise. And this rise tallies with my own experience. In April 2010 I got roughly 0.04p for each stream, compared with 0.2p this June. If I got Hopkins' listening figures then I'd earn £180 for his ninety thousand plays, but then I am self-released so I get all the label-cut as well.

Like for Like: Spotify vs. Radio Royalties

At the current rate, it takes nearly three hundred Spotify plays to earn what I get from just one download on iTunes, and Jon Hopkins compared his £8 for 90,000 streams to the £50 he'd get from just one play on Radio 1. These figures are all accurate, but do they actually tell us anything? These kinds of comparisons aren't really comparing like for like, and as such they're of little use. If you take into account the number of listeners to Radio 1 and count each of those as a single stream, then the figures look a whole lot more favourable. According to RAJAR, Radio 1 reached just shy of 12 million people in the quarter ending September. Assuming only a tenth of those listeners heard a particular broadcast of Hopkins' track, then according to his £50 figure he'd be making the equivalent of 0.004p per 'stream' and would only have made £3.75 from Spotify if they used the same rate. There are a lot of assumptions in that calculation and Radio 1 pay more than most radio stations, but even so it's safe to say that Spotify is much the same as terrestrial UK radio play, and we shouldn't get too upset about it.

Where the argument gets a little more tricky is when you consider that people might be using Spotify not as a radio service, but as a replacement for actually buying records. This is the argument made by Coldplay et al, and it's one that looks less kindly on Spotify's model. How many times do people listen to albums on average? Someone would have to listen to a ten-track album end to end 500 times to equal the £10 one would pay for an album direct from the band at a gig (again, lots of assumptions here, and the wholesale price of albums to retail outlets is markedly less than £10). Not an unreasonable task for my Desert Island Disks, perhaps, but the majority of albums in my collection have only been listened to a handful of times at least, and many have never been listened to end to end.

Breakage

In the physical world, these records – bought but never played – fall under the category of 'breakage', and constitute a not-inconsiderable proportion of the income for old-fashioned labels. What the try-before-you-buy nature of the current market is doing is effectively eliminating this kind of breakage from the system. The move toward streaming as the primary method for consuming music is rightly scary for those who stand to lose a substantial portion of their income, but it's nevertheless the way the market is heading.

And isn't a world where music is paid for on a per-play basis a more equitable one? Eventually streaming subscription rates and music producers expectations will level out, a compromise will be reached, and bands will get paid for being popular. We may never see the like of super-star multi-million-pound advances again, but the success of what musical stars we do have will be founded on the willingness of people to actually listen to their music. I'm sure the few remaining major labels will find a way to circumvent this naïve and idealistic meritocracy, but it's still a nice dream to have.

Frightened Rabbit: A Frightened Rabbit EP

2011-11-21T00:00:00Z

Scott Hutchinson, frontman of Frightened Rabbit, seems to have developed a taste for duets. The 7" single for The Loneliness and the Scream featured a duet with Craig Finn from The Hold Steady (a quirky cover of Don't Go Breaking My Heart), and there are two new ones on the band's latest release, a 3-track EP called, imaginatively, A Frightened Rabbit EP. Here Scott duets with Tracyanne Campbell - of Camera Obscura fame - and Scottish folk-mainstay Archie Fisher.

Being the over-eager FR fanboy that I am, I pre-ordered the limited edition of the 10" vinyl release which means I get to enjoy the always-impressive artwork as well as having the special joy that comes from actually being able to hold a record in your hands. But for those of you less impressed by the constraining world of atoms, you can get this EP for free (in exchange for nothing more than an email address) over at the FR website.

If you follow the link to the EP's page you'll also find a track-by-track explanation of the record written by Hutchinson himself, and it's always interesting to hear someone talking about their creative process. The downside of this approach (and I say this as an avid, nay obsessive, consumer of 'extra features', DVD commentaries and the like) is that it can demystify the act of creation, and - more importantly - forever affects the way you think about a song. In much the same way that I can't watch Luke Skywalker struggling across the icy wastes of Hoth without thinking about Irvin Kershner and the rest of the crew filming it from within the shelter of a hotel doorway, I now can't hear Scottish Winds, the EP's opener, without thinking about [spoiler alert!] the fact that it was written on a bus. Now whether or not this has any impact at all on ones enjoyment of a piece is something we could debate for hours, but thankfully the songs on this EP are of a high enough quality that it doesn't really matter. That's not to say, however, that they are up to FR's usual high standards.

Of the three songs, Fuck This Place is the only one that I imagine I'll listen to with any regularity. The duet with Campbell is a much more polished effort that the other two; Scottish Winds is nicely acerbic and vulgar but just sounds a little half-cocked to be a real FR classic, and Fisher's vocals on The Work are just a little too arch for these ears. As a treat for fans to keep interest up between albums, this EP serves its purpose admirably, but if you're new to the band I'd strongly recommend that you seek out their earlier work first. Production duties on this record were handled by the band themselves, which is always nice to see provided the band are actually any good at production. FR can get the job done, for sure, but I can't help but feel the lack of Peter Katis' reassuringly steady hand at the tiller. Katis brings out the best in the band and gives their records their distinctive sheen, so I certainly hope his influence will make a return for the band's next full-length; a record which can't come soon enough in my book.

Radical Face: The Bastards Volume One

2011-09-19T00:00:00Z

For some reason I feel that I ought not to like this EP, but (as is so often the case) the deeper I dig, the more immersed in the record I become, and the better I like it. In fact, this EP is astonishingly good; flying in the face of all my premonitions and instinctive reactions.

Running on autopilot, my mind flagged up what felt like a whole list of worries upon first approaching this record, yet when I came to focusing on what these reservations actually were, they proved to be elusive and ephemeral. Receiving, as I do, such a large quantity of rubbish in my inbox every day, I like to think my spidey-sense is pretty well attuned to rubbish music, and as such my first impressions carry a lot of weight. I know (or at least thought I knew) that a band name such as 'Radical Face' would inevitably herald some amateurish pub-rock that I'd regret ever having listened to. The accompanying PR-gumph, while polite and honest and clearly well-intentioned, didn't help much either: this EP, so I'm told, is a prelude to a full-length album that is to be the first in a series of records all built around the concept of a family tree. Not a good sign, I thought to myself: this pub-rocker's pretentious to boot. Who does he think he is, Sufjan Stevens?!

It seems like an odd approach, I'll concede, to begin what is overwhelmingly a positive review with a whole host of reasons why I didn't think I'd like it, but there is method to my madness. This small EP (only three tracks long) contains some simply stellar moments, but it doesn't give it all away right at the start. Conventional wisdom dictates that promo EPs such as this one put their best bits first; grab the listener! Draw them in! Hook them in the first 10 seconds! Radical Face (real name Ben Cooper), however, doesn't do this. Rather he has the courage to kick off with a song that is distinctly back-loaded, a track that holds on to all its aces until the closing moments.

It is so easy, these days, to dismiss a piece of music completely out of hand after having only heard a little part of it, and to dismiss this record is such a manner would be a tragedy. I outline my reasons for expecting to dislike this release, dear reader, so that you might learn from my mistakes. If you, too, feel my initial misgivings, I urge you to ignore them, and if you do so then you will be mightily rewarded.

There's not really anything to dislike about this album - the aesthetic textures, the vocal timbre, the pacing, the charm, all of these elements are excellent - but for me the best aspect of these songs is the way they're constantly surprising me. I took to this record straight away, but I'm well aware that really liking something on first listen is not necessarily a sign that I'll still like it after ten listens, or a hundred, so it was with a skeptical ear that I returned to the music, and it was this process of pseudo-forensic examination that foregrounded the 'surprising' element of this set of songs.

Literally every time I began to feel that I knew what a song was doing - every time I thought I'd 'got' it, so to speak - the song threw up a new element, a new hook, a new texture that re-engaged my fascination. Even now, after a good couple of weeks of regular listening, I have yet to be bored when hearing these songs. Obviously only time will tell if this sensation continues, and I find that very few records stay in heavy rotation after more than a month or so, but these three songs are nevertheless very strong indeed, and I have high hopes for the album that this release precedes.

Mercury nominations 2011

2011-07-19T00:00:00Z

My word, is it that time of year again already? Today the nominations for the Mercury Music Prize album shortlist have been announced (live on facebook! how refreshingly 'now'!). I'm writing this first paragraph in advance of the actual nominations themselves, partly to save time, but also to see if I can guess in advance which bands will be picked. So, my predictions are that amongst the nominees there will be at least one of each of the following categories:

A Token 'Jazzy' Act:

The Mercury's sense of righteous self-esteem rests on the fact that the nominations are a critics' choice, rather than an outright popularity contest like so many other prizes tend to be at the moment: "get a million of your fans to register their emails on our ad-funded website and we'll give you a meaningless title and an afternoon in a recording studio (but of course you'll have to pay for mixing and mastering yourself)". As a result the nominations usually try far too hard to seem 'diverse' and 'open'; with all genres making an appearance. Inevitably this manifests in the shortlist with the inclusion of an 'innovative' jazz band, often announcing their traditional jazz credibility by including 'trio' or 'quartet' in their name, but at the same time being different enough from real jazz to be 'cool':

2010 - Kit Downes Trio
2009 - Led Bib
2008 - Portico Quartet
2007 - Basquiat Strings
2006 - Zoe Rahman
2005 - Polar Bear
2004 - does Robert Wyatt count? I'm not sure. (I have also heard people describe '04 nominee Jos Stone as 'Jazzy', but only by people with no ears...)
2003 - Soweto Kinch
2002 - _Guy Barker _and Joanna MacGregor... and so on and so forth.

(I'll stop there because there wasn't really a jazzy one in 2001, and being the sprightly youngster that I am, I was never really aware of the Mercurys in the nineties.)

A Token 'Folky' Act:

I have a friend who runs a folk night in London who was recently 'fraped' by a mischievous soul who simply wrote 'Mumford and Sons' as his status. Needless to say, the folkie was apoplectic with rage and genre-based fury. So to say that the Mumfords were last year's token 'folk' act is perhaps slightly controversial, but then such is the nature of the Mercury's taste for what many call 'folk'. Myself, I like the Mumfords, but if they have anything to do with a folk tradition it's one rooted firmly on the other side of the Atlantic.

The 2010 nominees had this pseudo-folk in spades, with Laura Marling and Villagers appearing alongside the aforementioned Mumfords, but most past shortlists have had a singer-songwriter/acoustic-style act of one degree or another:

2009 - Sweet Billy Pilgrim and Lisa Hannigan
2008 - Rachel Unthank and the Winterset (now know as The Unthanks) and Laura Marling
2007 - Fionn Regan
2006 - Isobel Cambell and Mark Lanegan
2005 - _Antony and the Johnsons _and Seth Lakeman and KT Tunstal
2004 - again, does Robert Wyatt count?
2003 - Eliza Carthy
2002 - Gemma Hayes, and so on and so forth.

Of these, only Lakeman, Unthank and Carthy could really be called 'proper folk'.

Will either of these categories make an appearance this year? You betcha! The shortlist has now been announced and is as follows:

Adele - 21
Anna Calvi - Anna Calvi
Elbow - Build A Rocket Boys!
Everything Everything - Man Alive
Ghostpoet - Peanut Butter Blues and Melancholy Jam
Gwilym Simcock - Good Days At Schloss Elmau
James Blake - James Blake
Katy B - On A Mission
King Creosote & Jon Hopkins - Diamond Mine
Metronomy - The English Riviera
PJ Harvey - Let England Shake
Tinie Tempah - Disc-Overy

And what of our predicted categories? Quelle surprise, Gwilym Simcock is a rather normal jazz pianist, but wait! What's this!? He's using extended techniques and being all 'experimental'. And for the folky slot? King Creosote sits almost exactly between the faux-folk of Lisa Hannigan _et al _and real-folk of Carthy and Lakeman.

The tone of this post could be taken as being a little mocking, perhaps, but it is particularly interesting to see how 'jazz' as a genre is given far more attention than its popularity would warrant (although with the resurgence in popularity of both faux and real folk over the past decade means that they're pretty much assured a representative in any list of this kind that aspires to be a least a little bit relevant). All in all, however, I'm a big fan of the Mercurys, precisely because (as I mentioned above) its shortlist is selected by a panel of critics rather than a simple popularity contest, and also for the fact that it puts albums front and centre, where they belong.

The big question now is who do I think will be the overall winner? I'd absolutely love to see King Creosote come through, JP Harvey probably 'deserves' to win it, Everything Everything 'ought' to win it, but Tinie Tempah probably will win it. Check back on the 6th of September to see just how wrong I was, and keep your eyes peeled for reviews of all these albums on these pages in the coming weeks.

Festival Fever? I'm sick of it

2011-07-04T00:00:00Z

It's all over, you say? Finally I can rejoin the world again. By this, of course, what I really mean is that it's once more safe to read a magazine, safe to venture onto Twitter and Facebook (in fact, the internet as a whole, really), and finally safe to turn the radio and television back on. Why this unilateral disengagement with all forms of broadcast media, I hear you inquire? Well you clearly went to Glastonbury festival this year, because anyone who didn't simply wouldn't have to ask.

Every year it's the same; for Glastonbury weekend we're inundated – nay, bombarded – with festival features and special reports and 'front line' coverage, the sum total of which can be summed up as “Look at me! I’m having such a good time! And I’m with all these famous people!”. But this kind of behaviour is limited to pundits and 'personalities' no more: the advancing blitzkrieg of social media means that the “see how much fun I'm having” impulse is virtually inescapable. Even a few short years ago it wasn't too hard to ignore: all you had to do was steer clear of Radio One and turn off the telly, but now, thanks to the ubiquity of smartphones and mobile apps, we can all get a running minute-by-minute commentary of the 'exciting events' as they unfold. I'm sure a good many of my friends can't have actually seen any of the acts last weekend for staring at their tiny screens, such was the frequency of their posting.

And I'm not being this grouchy and cantankerous purely out of jealousy. Aside from the irritation of being constantly reminded that I'm 'missing out', I'm not actually missing out at all. Festivals are, in a word, rubbish. But sadly my opinion is not shared by everybody. Most people, my limited anecdotal evidence suggests, absolutely love festivals, and it appears that the festival circuit is one of the few areas of the music industry that’s still in rude health. There’s hundreds of the darned things, covering every genre imaginable, and they’re springing up all over the place – I’d be very surprised if there hasn’t been one this summer within a few miles of where you live. And yet for all the fuss, all the hype, all the enthusiasm, who are we really kidding?

Music festivals have as much to do with music as McDonald’s does to food. Don’t get me wrong, live music is great, but in a field? Through a completely inadequate PA? With ridiculously overpriced food and drink? In the rain? Considerably less great, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Of course, these are things you already know. Every man jack of you could tell me that festivals are all about 'the experience', and there’s the rub; it’s not an experience I have any interest in. I’m not a complete misanthrope – I can boogie on down with the best of them at a proper gig – but my capacity for hanging around in big crowds listening to tinny, indistinct dance music died with my teens. And there’s something about festivals that completely fails to bring out the best in bands, too. The restrictions on the band’s set list being the main culprit for sub-par performances: it’s got to be short (usually 15-20 minutes), so there’s no time to warm up or find a groove. And of course it has to be appropriate to the atmosphere. More so than in any other situation, a band’s set has to fit the mood of the whole event, which invariably means that the songs have to be the 'up beat' ones; this is no time for subtle introspection. And naturally you’ve got to play the hits; the eclecticism of festival line-ups means that only a small proportion of the audience are there to see a specific band, so winning over new fans is the prime priority for any performer, alongside appeasing the indifferent. I hear Mumford & Sons gallantly slotted a few new numbers into their Friday night appearance on the Other stage; they probably had trouble hearing themselves over the cries of “play Little Lion Man again!”

So is there any good news on the horizon? Every year there are more and more reports of festivals having to cancel due to “funding gaps” but alas there are, at least for now, the exception that proves the rule. With the public's seemingly vast current appetite for festivals, and with everyone cashing in left right and centre there's bound to be a few that miss the mark. But from tiny acorns mighty oaks do grow, so I'll keep praying for the end of festival fever, but for now complete disengagement is the only sane option, at least until winter. If anything can be relied upon to put a stop to outdoor revelry it's the British weather.

Toodar & The October Game: Flash Floods & Wildfire

2011-07-01T00:00:00Z

It's a poor reviewer indeed who has too much to drink at a show (particularly in a venue where a simple Jameson's will set you back the better part of a tenner: visitors to Old Street's Favela Chic, you have been warned) but nevertheless I can't be sure if it was overindulgence on my part, or under-rehearsal on the part of the bands involved that resulted in my impression of the track Flash Floods & Wildfire being something of a chaotic mess. At this point I'm inclining toward the former option, as both the bands in question, The October Game, and EbM favourites Toodar were both in fine fettle individually, and the track in question - who's release we were there to celebrate - turns out, on record, to be rather good indeed. In fact, I'd probably go as far as to say it's one of the best new songs I've heard this year thus far (an honour held by Toodar's Ten Paces last year, in fact).

Flash Floods & Wildfire is the lead track from a split-EP by the two bands, which is available now from Scylla records, and is a co-written joint venture for the two bands. It seems the split EP is a much maligned creature, but it's a format I'm particularly fond of. I guess it's because I'm a sucker for an interesting cover, and the A/B comparison provided by most splits is always enough to pique my fascination (check out the Dropkick Murphys/Face to Face split for a fine example of the form at its best). With the introduction of a collaborative track like this one, Toodar and The October Game are upping the ante even further.

Toodar have a new real EP out now too, so I'll save my praise for them until I review that one properly, but I feel I ought to mention The October Game individually at least once. Unlike their name suggests, they're not an emo band from the states, and in fact sound very home grown indeed. While their cover of Toodar's Ten Paces is interesting as a re-imagining of a favourite song, there's something about the TOG-only tracks that doesn't quite sit well with me. They aren't bad songs by any means, but while they were relatively smooth when I saw them live, there's something a little pedestrian - a little dated, even - about their music. They'd probably have been huge five or ten years ago, but I can't help but feel that the public appetite for their very MOR brand of alt. rock has perhaps waned somewhat of late.

Quibbles aside, this is a very assured, very well put together little split EP, with a good original from each band thrown in for good measure alongside the obligatory covers. (Toodar's is the excellent Jack in a Box; a song that previously made an appearance on the band's White Elephant EP last year. There it was eclipsed by the more instantly accessible Ten Paces and Toy, but here it's given a little more room to shine). I'll certainly be talking about Toodar again in the next week or so, but I'm also going to keep an ear to the ground for The October Game, just incase.

Harbors: Attic Sessions

2011-06-30T00:00:00Z

One could be forgiven for thinking, on first being introduced to this little EP, that Harbors hail from good ol' London town. There's a real touch of the aesthetic that's been so ubiquitous here in the last few years; the artless simplicity tinged with just a touch of vocal venom that made the Mystery Jets, Johnny Flynn, et al so popular. The interplay between the drums and acoustic guitars, specifically, gives the impression that the players want us to think they've never picked up an instrument before, when in actuality it's a very controlled, thoroughly thought-out approach.

As it happens, this particular foursome are from farther-flung shores entirely; those of California, in point of fact. One assumes there's probably something to be said for how the 'London sound' of recent times owes it's origin to musicians who spent far too long listening to acts from across the pond (but who were nonetheless still unable to repress their Englishness entirely), but this comparison doesn't tell the full story of this EP.

I imagine Habors would most likely be very surprised by the comparison, in fact, and it really is just on first listen that it comes to mind. They themselves cite acts like Bright Eyes, The National, and Arcade Fire amongst their influences, although I wouldn't say that paints an accurate picture of the band's sound either. There's none of the furious energy that marks out those other band's best work on display here, but rather a more nuanced and, dare I say it, 'laid back' process at work. The songs on this EP pull their punches until they feel they can really do some damage; the jaunty nature of the 'perfect pop' melodic styling and the cheery organ lines belie a darker underbelly. Harbors are certainly not toothless imitators; there's a depth to the lyrics that juxtaposes with the aesthetic very nicely indeed, and that makes this EP one that actually improves with repeat listening.

My only real complaint with this band is their name: someone really should tell them that it's spelt Harbours. But linguistic snobbery aside, there's really very little to take issue with here. I can't see Harbors conquering the world in the immediate future, but given some time to develop and tighten up their sound I wouldn't be surprised if they prove to be quite successful indeed. I, for one, am eager to hear what they'd do with the more meaty canvas of a full-length album.

Harbors - Ghost [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/Harbors/Harbors_Ghost.mp3]

Harbors - Girls Like You [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/Harbors/Harbors_GirlsLikeYou.mp3]

Buy the full EP here.

Bright Eyes: The People's Key

2011-06-22T00:00:00Z

Bright Eyes' career can effectively be summed up as a process of movement and discovery; a movement from low-fi to hi-fi and a gradual discovery of a folk tradition. When discussing the band, the focus is most often on singer-songwriter Conor Oberst - who to many is Bright Eyes - but amidst the every-changing backdrop of bandmates there is one constant feature that has had more of an effect on the band's sound than he seems to get credit for: Mike Mogis.

Mogis was the one who saw potential in Oberst's early four-track recordings and kick-started the sessions that led to the first proper Bright Eyes album, 1998's Letting Off the Happiness. From then on the two worked together, and every album since then shows a steady improvement in terms of recording quality, as they both learned the process together. The upside of this slow improvement was that Oberst's songwriting and Mogis' production developed in tandem; the rough and ready songs of Fevers and Mirrors were treated with a rough and ready production, and by the time the songwriting reached its peak in 2005's dual albums I'm Wide Awake It's Morning and Digital Ash in a Digital Urn, the production values were at the same level.

Aside from the production side of things, Mogis' influence spread to the sound, too. His experiences with an earlier band, Lullabyes for the Working Class, (the first act to achieve any level of real success from the community that eventually morphed into Saddle Creek records) showed that there was an appetite for what he and Oberst thought of at the time as 'exotic' instrumentation. In reality what they had stumbled upon was the rich vein of American traditional music; a seam they mined for the length of their album-recording career. The sporadic, indiscriminate use of mandolins and peddal-steel guitars soon lead to a greater understanding of the source material, and the effect was a steady increase of 'folk' influences on Bright Eyes albums. Again, the artistic zenith of this process was I'm Wide Awake It's Morning, heralded by the appearance of americana doyenne Emmylou Harris on several of the album's tracks, but still the journey continued to the point that 2007's Cassadaga could be fairly described as an out-and-out country record.

The trouble was that for all Cassadaga was Bright Eyes' 'purest' record from the point of view of genre, it was also their worst creatively. Gone was the steady increase of quality; the best that could be said for it was that it was on the same level as their last album, but many people (including this writer) saw it as a shocking downturn. Coupled with the sudden increase in Oberst's side project work (an eponymous solo album, his inclusion as a fourth of the Monsters of Folk project, and his many appearances with his Mystic Valley Band) many thought this was the end of the road for Bright Eyes. Viewed in that context, the announcement that this new album, The People's Key, is to be the last Bright Eyes album comes as no surprise, and one could be forgiven for guessing that Oberst and Mogis wanted to set the record straight one last time.

And thankfully it's done just that. Gone are the overwrought folk and americana flavours, to be replaced by a return to the band's old aesthetic; a eclecticism of genre and a taste for vintage synth sounds prevailed in Oberst's early work, and they make a triumphant reappearance on this new record.

This time, however, the songs are treated with all Oberst and Mogis' hard-earned production chops, which by now are mighty indeed. There's filthy electric guitars here, too (something I thought we'd seen the last of after the cleanliness of Wide Awake) and, dare I say it, a real 'rock' attitude. The songs themselves are perhaps not Oberst's finest work, but while they can't hold a candle to the quality of Wide Awake or even those on Lifted, they more than eclipse Cassadaga in terms of punch and weight. All in all, The People's Key is a welcome return to form for the band, and a suitable last hurrah for a great band that will be sorely missed. We can be sure to hear all those involved in a myriad of future projects, but the Bright Eyes ship has sailed its course and while we'll be sorry it's gone, it's high time it was laid to rest.

Whitehouse: Dumping the Fucking Rubbish

2011-06-14T00:00:00Z

When in the company rock musicians it is often hard to avoid thinking of Rob Reiner's fantastic mockumentary, or 'Rockumentary', This is Spinal Tap. The film so accurately parodied the attitude of all those who think they're rock stars that even now, 26 years later, it's next to impossible to find a band who haven't been guilty of at least a few Tapisms. What I should have realised, of course, is that the satire and parody of Spinal Tap is equally applicable to all walks of musical life.

While listening to an interview with William Bennett I was struck by the similarity to the scene in Tap where the lead guitarist Nigel Tufnel, played exquisitely by Christopher Guest, is being interviewed while playing a piano piece he had written. The interviewer, played by Reiner himself in the guise of director Marty DiBergi, compliments Tufnel on the beauty of the piece, and the guitarist then extols on how it was written as part of a trilogy of works far loftier in scope and ambition than Tap's usual fare, and says how he sees himself compositionally as sitting between Bach and Mozart. "What do you call this piece?" asks DiBergi, and without missing a beat, and perfectly deadpan, Tufnel replies, "This piece is called Lick My Love Pump."

William Bennett is about as far from the image of Nigel Tufnel as it's possible to get. His band, for those of you unfamiliar with his work, is called Whitehouse (I'll provide a link to his label, Susan Lawley, but be warned; their website doesn't go in for anything so vulgar as 'design') and he pedals what can be best described as, for want of a better word, Noise Music. I'm using the word Noise here in the way The Wire^[1] and Paul Hegarty would use it: as an academic concept worthy of scholarly study and much beard scratching. The interview in question was one he did about five years ago with Edinburgh's student radio station Fresh Air (promoting his album of the time, Asceticists) and in it he talks as great length and with great alacrity about the music he makes. He is clearly an intelligent man, and he makes short work of a poor, under-prepared student interviewer; it seems every question she asks misses the point of his work entirely (in his view), and he calmly and politely corrects her with great aplomb.

The part that had me doubled over with laughter (not something you want to be doing too often when your walls are as thin as mine) was about five-and-a-half minutes in, when after a lengthy explanation of his artistic method and expectations from listeners, he calmly, and without any apparent sense of mockery, introduces one of his tracks as, and I quote, Dumping the Fucking Rubbish.

I've included the interview below (with the tracks removed, sadly), so I recommend that you listen to it, and absorb Bennett's calm, rational, charismatic discourse on his art, then listen to the track in question (also included below). Bennett is, to all outside observers, totally serious, yet I can't help but wonder if this softly-spoken man has to fight the urge to burst into howls of laughter every time someone else takes it seriously...

Whitehouse - Fresh Air interview [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/Whitehouse/Whitehouse_Interview.mp3]

Whitehouse - Dumping the Fucking Rubbish [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/Whitehouse/Whitehouse_DumpingTheFuckingRubbish.mp3]

The magazine, not the TV show. ↩︎

How can you assess an album (and why should you bother)? [Part II]

2011-06-13T00:00:00Z

In part one of this post, I outlined the beginnings of a formalist method for assessing the value of a record. By examining the form of a piece of music music, so my argument went, it is possible to divine an aesthetic judgement of the work. And provided you could strip away all extraneous factors that might otherwise bias your judgement (personal biography, class origins, previous listening experience, the variables of conditions of reception, and so on and so forth) you could perfectly expect this judgement to be both aesthetic and universal. That post ended with the admission that this approach only takes us part of the way on our quest to judge a record, and the reason for this shortcoming is that our newfound aesthetic judgement can only tell us about the quality of the work rather than it's value as a whole. That is to say, it can only tell us whether or not the piece in question is well crafted, or, alternatively, well formed.

It's easy to see how this gets us into trouble: Candle in the Wind, Jesus Christ Superstar, the latest James Blunt album, and the collected works of The Dave Matthews Band could all be said to be 'well formed' when in fact they are, as I'm sure you'll agree, (and here I employ some specialist academic language) 'bloody awful'. By the same token the voice of Bob Dylan, the 'lo-fi', the 'art brut', and the entire punk catalogue would be dismissed by a strict formalist as nothing more that amateur tomfoolery, and I'm equally sure we can all agree that they are (to again resort to technical terminology) 'awesome'. The real question here is one of value.

It's all well and good assessing whether something is 'well crafted' or if it displays 'technical finesse', but when we say that we actually like something there's a whole different process going on; we're not making an aesthetic judgement, we're making a value judgement.

Now at this point it seems we're returning to the 'personal' factors I tried so hard to dismiss in the first post, as the assigning of value to a work of music is often cited as the result of individual personal taste. Aesthetic theorist Carl Dahlhaus dismisses this idea of individual taste as “not at all individual but rather a reflex of group norms” and insists that instead of rationality appearing as a secondary factor in a judgement it ought to be the foundation of it. Whilst being keen not to cause offence or seem elitist, he turns to the old topic of 'listener education' that I'm sure has hounded any music fan trying to win an argument in a pub:

“The factual judgements underlying the "group norms" are not equally founded. A listener capable of doing justice to a Beethoven symphony is generally equipped to cope with the musical issues of a pop tune, but the reverse is not true. Arrogance of the initiated must not be defended, but that nobody has the right to blame musical illiterates for being illiterate does not change the fact that illiteracy provides a weak foundation for aesthetic judgements.”

For me personally, this has a ring of truth to it, but the bigger picture is considerably more nuanced. The kind of informed judgement Dahlhaus is championing above is part of but one of the several different approaches to 'value': those that can be identified as 'Functional', 'Aesthetic' and 'Historical'.

Of these three, Functional Value is perhaps the easiest to comprehend. Prior to the latter half of the eighteenth century and the advent of the concert hall, music had various distinct functions in addition to the common one of providing objects for aesthetic contemplation. For this 'functional music', the aim was to be the exemplar of a type; “an exemplar which reaches perfection when it projects the marks of the type clearly and purely” (to quote philosophical-musicologist Peter Kivy). If one sees a piece of music as functional, then it is a relatively easy step to place a value on that music according to how well it fulfils its function. Take, for instance, the example of dance music: it can be enjoyed and appreciated not merely in terms of its formal properties but also for how well adapted it is for the dances it is meant to accompany. And this is not a concept that died out in the eighteenth century – some could say it is alive and well today. While I meant for the example of dance music given above to be in reference only to the dances of the eighteenth century, the statement could well be applied to the dance music found in clubs today. In fact, I'd argue that such music can only be judged in functional terms, as in my eyes it holds no aesthetic value whatsoever. In real terms, however, I would say that objective functional value has been relegated to the domain of music for films and advertisements, which really are the last bastions of purely functional music in the modern age.

So what, then, of Aesthetic Value? The nineteenth century was the “epoch of aesthetics,” where the factors that rendered music 'art' were exactly the opposite of those concerning functional music; individuality and originality. Dahlhaus tells us that aesthetic judgement is “a pronouncement about the participation or non-participation of a musical work in the idea of the beautiful,” but yet again, however, the situation is confused. In this case there are two conflicting approaches to judging the aesthetics – that is to say, the 'beauty' – of a piece of music. On one hand we have the conservative Schenker and his search for an Ursatz, and on the other we have the composer Schumann and the 'dilettante' school of musical reviewers.

Schenker, who I mentioned briefly in part one, saw himself as the guardian against the disintegrating tendencies of the twentieth century and his approach was to interlace formalist theory and analysis with aesthetic judgements, much as our initial formalist approach taught us. In his eyes, works admired as 'masterworks' must contain an Ursatz, (a kind of musical 'through-line') and his application of this theory was sweeping and unilateral; if, as in works by Reger and Stravinsky, no Ursatz was to be found then he was quick to issue an aesthetic verdict. The other approach was one that looked contemptuously on ideas of form and technique - the “mechanics of music” as Schumann called them – and felt they should not be displayed but rather concealed.Writers of the time strived to maintain the appearance of 'dilettantism'; even composers such as Berlioz, Schumann and Hugo Wolf hid their knowledge of music when writing reviews, as if speaking of one's métier were tactless.

We've already seen the flaws with Schenker's approach when it's applied to modern pop music, so what then can we take from the dilettantes? Sadly, very little; divorced from any technical or formalist analyses and rational judgement as they are, we find ourselves returning full-circle to the very ideas of 'personal taste' that we were railing against not five paragraphs previously.

But there is yet one more facet of value that we have yet to look at; Historical Value. Prevalent in the musical criticism of the twentieth century, historical judgement sees a composition as a document of a stage in the development of compositional methods and musical thought and in contrast to the dilettantes of the previous epoch, aesthetic judgement changed into a technological one. If formal value can be said to be found in the concept of the 'appropriate', and aesthetic value in the 'beautiful', then historical value is determined by the concept of the 'attuned' or the 'authentic'. A judgement by historical criteria would be a judgement on how fully a particular work is an expression of “what the hour calls for historically and philosophically,” but to apply these sorts of judgements to modern albums sounds very much like relying on that most amorphous and elusive of concepts in popular music discourse: 'cool' (if, admittedly, couched in somewhat more grandiose language).

So here, at the last, we find ourselves ultimately – and, alas, perhaps inevitably – railing vainly into the gulf that separates the worlds of 'classical' and 'pop' music. In a sphere where the currents of fashion and 'historical appropriateness' run so shallow and fast, how can one justifiably stand still and judge a piece of pop music? If this is the kind of value judgement we are reduced to – defined by social factors far more than by formal ones – then we hardly needed to have bothered with any analysis in the first place. All we seem to have shown is that these social judgements have a rational foundation – or, at the very least least, a manifestation – in the formal characteristics of musical works. It can, I'm sure, be useful to attempt to apply some sort of formalist analysis of modern albums, but only as a single facet in an approach that includes, and indeed is ultimately reliant on, personal biases and (partly-)irrational opinions. In short, when I review albums in the future you can almost certainly expect to hear the same baseless judgements as I've always relied on, but we can rest easy in the knowledge that that is all anyone can hope to offer.

Select bibliography:

Benjamin, W., (1969), The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Illuminations, trans. Zohn, H., New York: Schocken Books.
Dahlhaus, C., (1983), Analysis and Value Judgement, trans. Levarie, S., New York: Pendragon.
Goodman, N., (1976), Languages of Art: An Approach to a theory of Symbols, 2nd ed., New York: Hackett.
Griffiths, D., (2004), OK Computer, London: Continuum International.
Kivy, P., (2002), Introduction to a Philosophy of Music, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Leaf, D., (1990), [CD booklet] Pet Sounds, Los Angeles: Capitol.
Zak, A. J., (2001), The Poetics of Rock: Cutting Tracks, Making Records, Berkeley: University of California Press.

How can you assess an album (and why should you bother)?

2011-06-09T00:00:00Z

In the liner notes for the first release of Pet Sounds on CD in 1990, Brian Wilson is quoted as saying that “you design the experience to be a record rather than just a song; it's the record people listen to.” This statement is guaranteed to hit home with anyone who, like myself, views the album as the ultimate artifact of modern popular music. When Wilson uses the word 'record', we music-aficionados (or 'geeks', if our friends and family are to be believed) instinctively know what he means: we're not talking here about any mere document or recording or archive; a 'record' in musical spheres is a word and a world unto its own.

On these pages I often attempt to pass judgement on records, and find myself again and again resorting to vague, and above all personal reactions to the music. I imagine that many of you will see no problem with this approach, but to me it always feels like cheating. Cheating the process of analysing the work thoroughly, but also cheating you, the reader, out of an assessment of any value. If all my opinions are based on extraneous factors (such as personal biography, class origins, previous listening experience, the variables of conditions of reception, and so on and so forth) then how can my opinion be of use to anybody but myself? It's a pressing concern for someone who foists their opinions on others, I'm sure you'll agree, so now it seems the time has come for me to nail my colours to the mast and explain what it is that I look for in an album (when, of course, I can muster the energy to assess an album properly).

The form of an album

When I describe one record as a masterwork and another as a failure I am basing these judgements on something resembling a formalist reading of the works. The success of an album in social fields – either critical or commercial – should really be of no concern; what the argument ought to hinge on is a 'pure' judgement of taste. This kind of judgement – one free from personal preconceptions and biases – is not the antithesis of an aesthetic judgement, but rather an aesthetic judgement freed of all the vagaries and uncertainty surrounding the issue of personal taste.

Accepting that different individuals can interpret a record in different ways while at the same time accepting that the record itself imposes definite limits on their room to manoeuvre is a useful way of avoiding the two extremes of, on the one hand, an infinite pluralism which allows for as many possible readings as there are readers, each equally legitimate, and on the other, an essentialism which asserts a single 'true' meaning. To find the common ground between these two options one must strip away everything but the form of the work, and in doing so one can then make a judgement both aesthetic and, nevertheless, universal.

The main obstacle for this approach is that no-one is quite sure what should actually be examined. When musicologists talk of a work's form, the general consensus is that all 'traditional' musical features – rhythm, harmony, meter, melody – are fair game for inspection. However, finding a Schenkerian 'Ursatz', for example, (a popular technique designed to discover the 'deeper structure' of long-form motivic works) is patently ridiculous within the modern popular arena; the melodic and harmonic forms of pop songs are almost by definition far too simplistic to allow for an analysis of any depth, and more importantly, to only look at the 'notes' of a work is to miss the point of a modern album entirely.

In a classical-romantic work, almost all the events of note can be divined from the score alone. Certainly one's perception of a piece would be altered if one were to see it performed live, or even to hear it on record, but in essence – provided you have a sound musical knowledge and a familiarity with the repertoire – it is perfectly possible to pass judgement on the technical finesse and craftsmanship of a composition without ever having heard it played. The same can not be said, however, of 'pop' music. For starters, one would struggle to find a complete score for any pop record. You might be able to find a 'lead sheet' notating some degree of formal design (words, melody, chord changes, etc.) but that wouldn't provide anything approaching the full picture.

Historically, due to the limitations of diastematic notation, performances could never be recorded accurately enough to preserve the idiolect of a particular performer or the exact sonic qualities of an acoustic space, but with the wonders of modern recording such preservation is now an essential part of music consumption, and any aspirant analyst of a pop or rock album needs to pay just as much attention to the (seemingly) extra-musical features as to the notes themselves.

The 'track'

A useful approach here is to make the distinction between the 'song', the 'arrangement', and the 'track'; with the song being that which can be contained in a lead sheet, the arrangement being a particular musical setting of the song, and with the track being the recording itself. The song and the arrangement may well retain an ontological independence through lead sheets, scores, and performances, but it is the track that is the ultimate artifact – and ultimate instance – of a pop song.

The key to seeing a modern album as a genuine artistic instance lies in the distinction between what the American philosopher Nelson Goodman called the autographic and the allographic. Autographic refers to works such as paintings, where the work is unique and genuine, whereas allographic refers to works such as books and musical scores, where “all accurate copies are equally genuine instances of the work”, and it is but a small step to extend the concept of the allographic to the musical record as well. An album's identity lies in its actual sound, and while that may change somewhat from one reproduction system to another – like a painting hung in different kinds of light or space – it is essentially a fixed set of relationships.

In these kinds of discussions it's hard not to mention Walter Benjamin, who's 1936 essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction kick-started the debate over the impact of technology on the essence of art forms. He insisted that mechanical reproductions were not genuine works of art in their own right; claiming that the authenticity of an artwork relies on its “presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.” He categorised this unique presence as the work's aura, and argued that it was only the original work itself that could claim to have one.

So to take his point and argue that, owing to the work's allographical qualities, every reproduction of a popular song is a genuine work with its own 'aura' sounds somewhat counterintuitive, but if one accepts that the sounds emanating from a loudspeaker constitute the work's 'presence in time and space' and create an “authentic musical moment”, then the notions of presence, aura, and authenticity must be transferred to the record itself. It is not the presence of a 'unique instance' that provides an album's authenticity, but rather its unique arrangement of elements; “All instances of the work are equally original as far as the audience – from the amateur to the connoisseur – is concerned.”

Trouble?

This approach leaves a would-be analyst (or 'reviewer', if you prefer) with a fairly comprehensive method for judging whether an album is any good or not. However, it's not that easy; the thing to bear in mind is that this judgement is only relevant to a very specific definition of 'good'. What a formal analysis provides is a judgement on the craft and technique on display in the record; it would view the albums of Jeffrey Lewis or the Clash as being considerably worse than the schmaltz of Andrew Lloyd Webber or Elton John. A lot of music fans would say that's a fair reading, to be sure, but even a cursory look through my past reviews will show that I clearly think differently. It's clear there's something missing from this approach; namely the adoption of 'historiographic' considerations in our judgements, as well as a proper assessment of what we mean when we talk about a work's 'value', and rest assured I will attempt to unravel these problems is Part II of this post which can be found here.

[NB: being as this is merely an idle post on a blog, I've tried not to be too academic in style. I've assimilated the thinking of fair few writers and musicologists in this piece, albeit in my own words wherever possible, and a select bibliography will be attached to the final post in this series.]

Arcade Fire ft. David Byrne: Speaking in Tongues

2011-05-26T00:00:00Z

It's nearly been a whole year since Arcade Fire's last LP, The Suburbs, was released, so in celebration of this momentous occasion Merge records are releasing a deluxe edition with a whopping two whole extra tracks. I say this with a certain amount of venom and frustration because, in my mind at least, 'deluxe editions' are an irritating scourge on the musical firmament. These kinds of releases are clearly aimed at fans of the band in question, and that's just the trouble: any real fan has already bought the album, so why should they feel compelled to buy it all over again?

Much like the ubiquitous 'director's cut' in the field of film, almost as soon as a record has found its place in the world we're bombarded with alternate versions, extra tracks and exclusive content. But whereas directors of motion pictures can fall back on auteur theory to defend their actions (their work is their own personal vision which has been stymied and compromised by commercial forces, so it's their duty to release the 'pure' version), quite what record labels hope to achieve by this still eludes me. It appears, at face value, to be a canny attempt to shift more copies of a record that's started to flag sales-wise, but surely the only people who can be expected to shell out for the little extra content that's on offer are the genuine fans. It's these very same fans who bought the original record as soon as they could, and it's these fans who surely ought to be at the heart of the label's sales strategy for any future releases, so why on earth do labels insist on treating them like dirt?

All that these 'deluxe editions' achieve is a growth of ill will toward the bands. A fan with a limited budget who wants to own the whole package will surely wait for the inevitable re-release, and as such will feel marginalised by the label; more casual listeners appear to be getting priority, and can claim ownership of a band's music before the band's die-hard fans. And this practice surely hurts the record's opening sales, too; fans simply won't buy the record's original version or will download a pirated copy just so they can hear the music at the same time as everyone else.

Of course, it doesn't really work like this. Music fans are chumps - I should know, I'm one of them - and these 'deluxe' re-releases clearly work, otherwise labels wouldn't bother with them. And it doesn't do the labels or bands concerned any harm, either. Merge are a well respected little indie with a history of treating their audience with respect, and Arcade Fire fans seem to be nothing if not loyal. So what are they offering us this time? Well, there's an '80 page booklet', the Spike Jonze video, Scenes From The Suburbs (which is the 15min extended cut of the highly excellent video for the lead single, The Suburbs) and an extended version of the track Wasted Hours. _But more importantly that that, there's the two aforementioned 'new' tracks. Predictably, these are off-cuts from the original _Suburbs sessions, and the first of the two, a little ditty called Culture War, sounds exactly like that: it's an okay-ish song, but is by very definition not quite as good as the rest of the album. What's grabbed my attention, however, is the track Speaking in Tongues, which is billed as 'featuring David Byrne'.

Now I can't speak with any authority on the compositional process behind this track - who know's, maybe Byrne wrote the whole thing? - but judging by his participation on the performance itself, it sounds like all they did was poke him with a stick towards the end, because as far as I can hear, his only contribution to proceedings is a few off-mic yelps and wails in after the three minute mark, along with mind-numbing repetition of the final refrain. What had piqued my interest in this release was the promise of another collaboration of the same calibre as Byrne's appearance alongside the Dirty Projectors on the* Dark Was the Night* compilation a couple of years ago.

The track in question, Knotty Pine, was a stirling example of everything a good collaboration could be. Lured into the song by my familiarity with Byrne's work, the track served as an excellent showcase for the Dirty Projector's sound that prompted me to explore their back catalogue with great enthusiasm. And on top of all that, it sounded as if both the band and Byrne had an equal stake in the songs composition (Byrne did the lyrics and the band did the music, I'm told). In the case of Speaking in Tongues, however, the motives are less clear. It could be argued that Arcade Fire now occupy a bigger slot in the collective cultural consciousness than Byrne does, so idea of adding an elder statesman's authority to an up and coming band isn't all that relevant any more, and on artistically it doesn't feel justified either; this is a 'throw track', not worthy of a release in it's own right. If it were a collaboration motivated by artistic desires, then surely they'd be making much more of a fuss over it.

Unfortunately the track itself simply doesn't deliver. It starts off promisingly enough, with the Fire's typical flair for grandiose, post-apocalyptic chord progressions and textures in full force, but it never really moves on from this. By the one minute mark we've pretty much heard all the song has to offer, and it just isn't enough to sustain a listener's attention or interest for a whole song. If not an out-and-out waste of talent, it feels more like talent that hasn't quite reached it's full potential. With a lot more hard work and application they could craft a great song from these bare bones, but as it stands at the moment it should have been left where it belongs; on the cutting room floor.

The Dirty Projectors & David Byrne - Knotty Pine [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/Misc/DirtyProjectors_KnottyPine.mp3]

Arcade Fire - Speaking in Tongues (ft. David Byrne)

[soundcloud url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/15846108"]

Arcade Fire - Culture War

[soundcloud url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/15846356"]

The Vaccines: Ones to Watch for 2011?

2011-01-14T00:00:00Z

I loathe having to include any excess punctuation in my post titles, but for this series I just about have to. Spurred into action by the clarion call that was the BBC's truly depressing Sound of 2011 poll, I feel it is my duty to debunk everyone else's picks for 2011. If the dear old beeb is to be believed, 2011 is going to be an awful year for music. I've already made my views on the BBC's winner, Jessie J, perfectly clear in my last post, so now I'm turning my attention to the four acts that were the runners up:

Claire Maguire

It's not really a surprise to see Claire Maguire on the list, as we've already established the poll's predilection for female solo acts. The problem is (aside from the leopard-print coat; a sure warning sign if ever there was one) Claire sounds awfully "nineties"; I thought we'd seen the last of this kind of music when The Corrs stopped cutting records.

The drum patterns, the cheesy string synth part and the desperately tired guitar sound all add up to make her sound distinctly stale, but it's her voice and lyrical delivery that make this sound so appallingly amateur. There are thousands of singers like this prowling the open-mic nights of rural and suburban England; why has this one been singled out for special attention? Even more disturbingly, why has one of them been picked at all? I've always taken solace in the fact that music like this has never made it beyond local-radio-level success. This really is music aimed at people who don't actually like music; it sounds very slick, and there's nothing dangerous or risky or challenging going on - in a word: boring.

Jamie Woon & James Blake

At least Jamie Woon and James Blake are ploughing their own furrow and experimenting at the far reaches of technology? Sadly that argument falls down when you notice that there's not all that much difference between them.

Neither of them can write a song, from the evidence on hand so far at least, and both spend far too long building up electronic soundscapes and ambiances without actually getting anywhere. Negative space is a crucial factor in music, and one that a songwriter or producer overlooks at their peril, but I can't escape the feeling that these chaps are rather taking the piss a little.

They'd both, I'm sure, prove a notable discussion point on a live bill - as anyone using loop pedals and the like is bound to - but once the initial curiosity has worn off there's really nothing worth hanging onto with either act. Oh, and someone should tell Blake that there's only room in this world for one solely-vocoder-based track, and Imogen Heap has got that corner of the market covered pretty comprehensively.

The Vaccines

Against this morass of iniquity, London-based indie quartet The Vaccines positively shine. They have actual, bona-fide pop songs (Post Break-Up Sex, and If You Wanna) and don't play to a click track (shock! horror!), all coupled with an infectious enthusiasm that makes them feel like the Libertines reborn. But alas, there's the rub: this isn't anything new.

Bands have been making this sort of music since sex was first discovered in the sixties, and if you were to drop The Vaccines into any point in the last decade nobody would have batted an eyelid; The Vaccines are the concept of "indie" as an aesthetic writ large. But maybe that's enough? There are, after all, only twelve notes - and in the world of pop there's only really three chords - so what if they are re-treading old ground? Is that reason enough to begrudge them their success?

I know many people who would say yes, it is - particularly in this instance when the music being made is so derivative - and in my more cold-hearted moments I would be inclined to agree. But perhaps it's the optimism of the new year, perhaps it's the heady promise of spring-just-around-the-corner, or perhaps it's merely just because they're simply the lesser of quite a few evils, but whatever the reason, I'm inclined to give The Vaccines the benefit of the doubt and say that they really are a "one to watch" for the coming year.

Mr B the Gentleman Rhymer: Flattery Not Included

2010-11-24T00:00:00Z

The much maligned "comedy record" would appear to be cutting it's own path through the cultural ether at the moment. Like them or not, there's a lot of them about, and the best of them manage to artfully sidestep the issues of genre and authenticity that often hound more serious acts. The last couple of years, in particular, has throw up some very artful examples that walk the fine line between comedy and real music; we've seen some excellent albums from Flight of the Concords, Duckworth Lewis Method, and Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip, all of which have been ostensibly "funny" and yet at the same time manage to tap into some deeper level of engagement.

The example I'm turning my critical eye on today is quite an old one - Flattery Not Included, by Mr B the Gentleman Rhymer was released all the way back in the blue remembered hills of 2008 - but my reasons for examining it now are twofold: firstly, Mr B will be providing the entertainment for The Chap magazine's annual bash, The Grand Anarcho-Dandyist Ball (a "night of 1000 waistcoats", so I'm told), and secondly, our boys in white stand on the cusp of an historic victory (one hopes) over the Aussies on their home turf in this year's Ashes.

As a result, all things cricket are at the front of my mind, and when it comes to cricketing songs there are only two acts that spring to attention; The Duckworth Lewis Method's 2009 album^[1], and the song Straight Out of Surrey by Mr B. The latter has a rather amusing youtube video, and if that weren't enough, it's a beat-for-beat word-for-word parody of NWA's Straight Outta Compton.

And there's the rub that lifts Flattery Not Included above the bog-standard comedy record. This record is most definitely on the "funny" side of the comedy/music divide, but there's a love and respect for the source material being parodied that is palpable. Mr B clearly knows his Hip-Hop^[2], and that gives his "Chap Hop" a sheen of respectability that allows him to legitimately mock Tim Westwood (on the track called, euphemistically, Timothy) and turn DJ Kool's Let Me Clear My Throat into Let Me Smoke My Pipe. And it's still bloody hilarious. So dig out your best brogues, cravat and blazer, and bask in the chapish wonder of it all.

The Duckworth Lewis Method being the side project of the Divine Comedy's Neil Hannon, and their eponymous album was one of the best LPs released last year. ↩︎
Or so I am reliably informed; I imagine it's already apparent that this is a step away from my more regular milieu... ↩︎

I Sing the Body Eclectic: Wired Radio

2010-11-15T00:00:00Z

Tomorrow I embark on my most daunting critical venture yet: I’m becoming a dee-jay. Tune in to Wired Radio tomorrow night and you’ll find me presenting my very own live-to-air radio show. You may or may not be aware that I present a semi-regular podcast for the super-cool, super-small, super-indie label Bearfaced Records, but they are all recorded and put together before hand; this will be a different kettle of fish entirely. For every minute of speech on a Bearfaced Podcastthere’s usually at least half and hour’s worth of stuff on the cutting room floor, so trying to get my head around the discipline of a live broadcast is going to be challenging, to say the least. Add in the fact that I’ve never even seen the studio I’ll be using before, let alone knowing how the gear works, and you’ve got a sure fire recipe for disaster. Hilarious consequence, as they say, will surely ensue…

So in order to snatch triumph from the jaws of disaster I’m doing my damnedest to make sure my first playlist is absolutely marvellous. The way I see it, if I keep the talking to a minimum and simply play great songs then hopefully the opportunities for it to all go pear-shaped will be few and far between. That’s the plan anyway; as we all know, a plan is just a list of things that don’t happen. So wish me luck, and tune in at 9pm (English time) to hear what could be a glorious victory or an abject disaster. Either way it’ll surely be entertaining…

The show will be called I Sing the Body Eclectic (see what I did there? Clever, eh!) and while I'll most likely post the odd reminder on these pages, I'll provide more info (playlists, comments etc) on a new blog created solely for the purpose, which you can find here.

Johnny Flynn: Been Listening

2010-11-09T00:00:00Z

Back in 2008, A Larum - the début LP from English "nu-folk"^[1] troubadour Johnny Flynn - crept out into the world with hardly a whisper. Move forward a couple of months and A Larum was a solid feature on a whole slew of "Best of 08" lists (my own included) and pretty much everyone I spoke to had good things to say about it. Of course, prior to the record's release Johnny had already become a darling of the blogosphere, but the whole incident still felt like a case of an album becoming successful purely because it was great.

To listen to A Larum was to do so much more than simply enjoy some great music; it was a way of sticking it to "the man", showing the majors that success could be achieved on merit and not simply off the back of huge marketing budgets. It was all the good things about the internet's musical revolution writ large.

Been Listening, Flynn's sophomore effort, has been out since June this year, and has yet to recapture the excitement of it's predecessor. It's received favourable reviews from all the usual suspects, but it hasn't captured the imagination of my musical peer-group the way A Larum managed. In theory this is something off a surprise, as all the ingredients are there for it to be a hit. It has the obligatory Laura Marling collaboration, and following the continued ascent of Mumford & Sons, Noah & the Whale, et al, the success of a new record by Johnny Flynn - who appeared at first to be the doyen of the increasingly incestuous London-centric nu-folk scene - seemed pretty much assured. And Been Listening is not a bad record by almost any measure, so why has it pretty much sunk without trace?

If you want my opinion (and the very act of your reading this page is a tacit acceptance that you do), it's because all he's doing is retreading old ground. It's all well and good to pick a style that works and stick with it, but when you've produced something as accomplished and adept as A Larum, the pressure is certainly on for you to better yourself.

Follow-ups to classic albums are never easy - the expectation is always too high, the assumptions far too grand - and often bands get slated for going off in a completely different direction (just look at MGMT for a case in point). But however great the risk of alienating a fan base may seem, Been Listening serves as a poignant reminder that the alternative - simply trying to cash the same cheque twice - is a far more suicidal option.

Now you'll notice that the review reached a nice ending there; a crescendo of criticisms followed by the pleasing cadence of a pithy phrase, both profound and subtly obvious. It's a rhetorical device I use regularly to end reviews, and one that's not often as poetically pleasing as the example above, believe me; it's something I strive for, and am suitably pleased with myself whenever I can achieve it without it sounding too forced. By rights I should lay down my (metaphorical) pen there and move on to other things, and if I were a kinder man I would. Alas, dear reader, I am not; I feel somehow compelled to pile yet more criticism at the door of poor Johnny.

The fact of the matter is that, whether by design or twist of fate, the success of A Larum (and it's accompanying demos and live performances) set Johnny Flynn up as a figure head of the current "scene". He was our white knight, our champion, our saviour. Flynn's music was the bench mark against which all the other nu-folkies were judged, he set the standard to aspire to. So for him to turn around and present us with a record as stayed and unambitious as Been Listening is quite frankly insulting.

To make a bad album can be excused - most people are just not particularly talented, and therefore a certain amount of dreadful albums are to be expected - but to already have shown yourself to be capable of genius and to then release an album that is merely mediocre; now that is inexcusable.

I'll concede that A Larum was not one-hundred-percent genius, but there were flashes of it in evidence: Flynn has a beguiling flair for the English language, particularly the colloquial and archaic, and the awareness of timbre and texture shown on A Larum was astounding. He's clearly capable of much more than he's giving us with this new record.

But could I be reading too much into Flynn's intentions? Maybe his first record was an astounding collision of chance and coincidence; just a case of Flynn being the right man in the right place at the right time? It's not inconceivable: what little promotional material there was for A Larum suggested that he'd fallen into music by accident - being a touring actor by trade - and the ramshackle, DIY vibe on the record could simple be nothing more than what it appears to be; i.e. a group of talented players with next to no idea how to record themselves properly. But for it to surface at the same time as that "sound" was gaining commercial viability?

Coupled with the fact Jeffrey Lewis and Kimya Dawson were both making real strides forward into the marketplace at the time, and every rom-com/chic-flick going seemed to be cashing in on it, it feels like far too much of a coincidence. The swinging vote in this argument is cast by Flynn himself on Been Listening; by the very nature of his success, his second record should sound better than his first. That's not to say the songs ought to be better, or the artistic vision should be clearer - lord knows they often aren't in second albums - but the the more effable side of things should surely be more accomplished.

But Been Listening still sounds as if it were recorded in an abandoned warehouse with broken-down equipment, which by this stage in his career can be nothing other than a conscious choice. For better or worse, he's aping the sound that brought him so much attention with his first record, and who can blame him? I can, for one.

Disclaimer: please note that, while based on real characters and situations, some of opinions in this post have been exaggerated for dramatic effect. The opinions contained within are in no way representative of the opinions of the author, and are intended purely for the purposes of entertainment.

A ghastly genre label, but one that has unfortunately managed to attach itself irrevocably to the current crop of London-based folksy bands. Every time I type it I can feel myself dying a little inside. ↩︎

Maps & Atlases: Perch Patchwork

2010-11-05T00:00:00Z

Maps & Atlases, a four-piece hailing from Chicago, have managed an unusual feat with their debut full-length, Perch Patchwork. They've built a sound that fits very nicely with all the current trends in what, for want of a better word, I shall call "indie", without ever sounding at all derivative. The accusation of "jumping on the bandwagon" is one that can quickly put paid to any fledgling band's ambitions and credibility, and while it is certainly one that can be leveled at a whole slew of recent bands, it's not a charge that Maps & Atlases need worry about.

Most of the elements of this record sound reminiscent of some band or other, but the end result is a truly distinctive record. In their approach to guitar parts and their a playfulness with the rhythm they put me in mind of the Dirty Projectors, yet the songs are too well crafted and the production's too polished for that comparison to bear any weight. And of course the easy leap for any reviewer will be to compare the vocals to those of Vampire Weekend, but on Perch Patchwork there's a sense of barely controlled chaos and a languid delivery that renders that comparison moot as well.

This album stands out from most of the other new records I've heard lately in another crucial manner; the more I listen to it, the more I hear in it. I often praise the bands that appear on these pages for creating records that stand up to repeat listening, and that could well skew your opinion on the state of new music today.

Everything that appears on this site has been run through the filter of my taste - I presume to act (as do all music bloggers) as an un-elected arbiter of what is worth listening to. I write about records that I like, or find interesting, and every so often something comes along that is so bad that I feel it deserves a public whipping, but there's a veritable morass of records that fall into the muddy middle ground; records neither good enough or bad enough to warrant mentioning. And it's when viewed against this backdrop of average and mediocre records that albums like Perch Patchwork really shine. I can't see it becoming an all time favourite - it's maybe a little too happy-go-lucky for my tastes - but it is very very good indeed.

The Decemberists: Down by the Water

2010-11-04T00:00:00Z

Well here's some news, and no mistake. The Decemberists spent the early part of this year whipping up a new album, and now its release is finally on the horizon. The due date for the LP, to be called The King is Dead, is slated for mid January next year, and the band are doing their best to curry favour with their fans by releasing one track as a free download. You can get your grubby paws on track six - Down by the Water - by signing up to their mailing list on their website (or just download it below, if you're feeling lazy).

First things first, this song is not a cover of either PJ Harvey or The Drums; it's completely new. And, in what is becoming de rigueur for the Decemberists lately, the list of collaborators for this single is rather impressive. BVs are provided courtesy of alt. country doyen Gillian Welch, and there's the unmistakable twang of Peter Buck's twelve string plastered all over this track. So the pedigree for this release is pretty darned mighty, but is it actually any good?

Following the might and majesty of 2006's The Crane Wife, expectations were high for the next Decemberists record. Their last three LPs had all been better than their predecessors, so The Hazarads of Love was an odds-on hit. Sadly that record was ghastly - I'm a huge Decemberists fan, and had lapped up pretty much everything they had released up until that point (I even quite enjoyed the bloated and self-indulgent long-form EP, The Tain) but Hazards... was just a bridge too far. I grew up on a diet of my dad's prog collection, so I'm more amenable than most to concept albums, but that record and I never saw eye to eye, and since then I've contented myself with the Decemberists' excellent back catalogue and cast thoughts of their future escapades from my mind. Despite all that, though, at the first whiff of a new Decemberists album I felt my pulse quicken and the unmistakable feeling of nervous excitement began coursing through my veins.

To be honest, Down by the Water hasn't done anything to heighten my anticipation, but equally it hasn't done anything to diminish it either. It's standard fare for the band; slightly folky country-rock with a distinct americana lilt to it, and Colin Meloy seems to be in fine fettle vocal-wise. It kicks off with some harmonica - which by rights should be the first instrument up against the wall when the revolution comes - and while it's nice to hear some REM guitaring, Buck's contributions could do with being a little lower in the mix. But despite the downsides, Down by the Water still delivers as a song, and you never know; come the new year _The King is Dead _could well surprise us all.

The Decemberists - Down by the Water [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/TheDecemberists/TheDecemberists_DownByTheWater.mp3]

Villagers: Becoming a Jackal

2010-11-03T00:00:00Z

As a rule, I try to avoid making comparisons when reviewing bands. It's all too easy to slip into "they're like x crossed with y" mode, and while it may often be the most direct way of illustrating a band's sound (lord knows there's tonnes of bands out there that do sound exactly half-way between two other acts...) it's not an approach that appeals to my sensibilities as a blogger. I like to think I'm often one to avoid the line-of-best-fit at all costs, and I'll be the first to admit I'm often deliberately contrary at the expense of rationality and legibility... But in this instance I feel a comparison is unavoidable. So I must being by apologising to the act in question for stooping to the obvious comparison right at the start of the review, but there's just no way I can talk about Becoming a Jackal, the Mercury-nominated debut from Villagers, without mentioning Bright Eyes' I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning.

On first listen I didn't think much of Becoming a Jackal at all; I dutifully gave it a couple of spins when it was nominated for the 2010 Mercury, but there wasn't anything on it that jumped out and grabbed me. Now usually at this stage in a review I reveal that some chance encounter re-introduced me to the record and, seeing it in a new light, I gave it a second chance and actually quite liked it. In the spirit of mixing things up, that's not at all the story in this instance. My re-acquaintance with Villagers was a calculated move, and even now I'm not one-hundred-percent sure if I do like this record or not yet. And this is where the Bright Eyes comparisons come to the fore. Bright Eyes are^[1] one of my all time favourite acts, and it was Wide Awake... that acted as my gateway drug into the muddy and mystifying world of the Bright Eyes back-catalogue.

Beyond the obvious parallels - both acts are the work of one central man, both of whom are called Conor - I can't help but be reminded of Wide Awake... whenever I approach Becoming a Jackal. It's not so much the aesthetic but the approach that does this; Irish Conor (linchpin of Villagers) actually has quite an assured, competent voice, and there's not sign of the Alt. Country vibe that defined the sound of Wide Awake..., but there are touches in the production that hint at the same kind of mind at work.

This album feels like it was put together with the same spirit of mischievous auteurism that made Bright Eyes' work so appealing. So after noticing these parallels I am now endeavouring to get to know this record much better. So far, repeated listenings keep throwing up new facets and opening new doors of comprehension. The songs on display here smack of pop perfection - considering this is a debut LP, the strength and maturity of the songwriting is astounding, and the production walks the fine line between professional smoothness and the raw DIY aesthetic; a feat not often managed with such assurance as Villagers manage to pull off.

All in all, a resounding success, then? Well, no. Despite becoming increasingly enamoured with the techniques and abilities on display, I still don't actually like Becoming a Jackal. I admire it, and I think that on balance it is undeniably a good record, but it just doesn't quite connect with me. Maybe I'm waiting for the next Villagers LP, or possibly just the right set of circumstances to actually fall in love with this record, but for the moment I'll keep on playing it, but it's not quite there yet.

or maybe "is"; I'm never sure about the grammar to use when discussing acts that have proper band names and plenty of members but are still in essence the work of one singer-songwriter. ↩︎

Max Richter: Infra

2010-10-27T00:00:00Z

Much as with the last time I reviewed a Max Richter album (2009's re-issue of Memoryhouse), this is a record it's taken me ages to get around to reviewing. In truth, it's the "absorption" part of the review process that has stumped me this time around. Whilst ostensibly having thirteen tracks, Max Richter's latest effort, Infra, is in essence one forty-five minute piece of music. Now, finding time to listen to a record of this nature shouldn't have been too much of a challenge; I almost exclusively listen to albums in their entirety, and I have a strong academic interest in what - for want of a better word - I shall call "classical" music, which commands much more interaction from the listener that the usual fare that graces these pages. So why was absorbing Infra such a laborious process?

Much like Memoryhouse, Infra lies in a muddy hinterland. Richter's compositional style sits well with those who embrace a more overtly cinematic aesthetic, such as the excellent John Murphy^[1] (who earned his epithet as a result of his work for Danny Boyle on both 28 Days Later and Sunshine*), but his work with soundscapes and found sounds - which make up a substantial part of Infra - suggests that Richter is yearning to be thought of as more avant-garde than any mere "film composer". Thus the question of how to approach an album like this remains a tricky one; Infra was initially commissioned to accompany a Royal Ballet piece by Wayne McGregor and artist Julian Opie, but now surfaces, in slightly re-worked form, as a stand-alone album, so how does one actually listen to it? Much of the issues I've had with Richter's earlier works were centred around the fact that they sound like soundtracks; hearing them is isolation left the listener wanting more. The scope was there, but the music felt like it was only a part of a much bigger whole, and to hear just the one element was to miss the point. And with Infra there is certainly the same feeling of this being merely music for the accompaniment of something else.

Many works that were conceived as soundtracks can stand on their own two feet and have artistic merit as pieces in isolation, but those are the ones that feel "complete". Although the themes are simplistic - after all, soundtrack music is designed to fulfill one purpose alone; to invoke a scene-specific emotion and no more - the work of people like John Murphy (an overtly commercial and "wham, bam" approach) and Michael Nyman (widely accepted as a "real" composer, despite working extensively in the soundtrack field) has a depth of timbre that allows it to have an independent life of it's own. Richter's efforts, by comparison, feel more like sketches than finished works. There's a space and atmosphere on Infra that is clearly intended to invoke strong emotional currents, but which on balance feels far too superficial to actually achieve anything. In fact, the more potentially outré and avant-garde elements do little more than break the "fourth wall" and make the listener acutely aware of the composer's ambitions.

Sadly, beyond this superficial "ooh, isn't this experimental" vibe, there's nothing at all innovative here, either. At his best, Richter's chordal work can be majestic and evocative, but most of the time it feels formulaic and overly simple. And not as the result of any kind of academic rigour, either - there's no sign of serialism or extended technique at work here, the tonality is extremely conservative, and although there could be an argument that his approach is that of a minimalist, it's too simple even for that. That may sound facetious, but the melodic simplicity of the minimalists was tempered by a rhythmic and timbral complexity that is depressingly absent from this work. In fact, closer examination reveals that the melodic lines that do rise above the rest of the morass are in fact nothing more that an "homage" to Schubert's dark and moody Winterreise, with Richter directly quoting on several occasions. Richter's one saving grace is that he appears to have the occasional moment of melodic and harmonic inspiration, but now even those moments are cast into suspicion.

In the final summation, it seems the question of how to approach Infra was not the most relevant one. The real question was "should I be listening to it at all?" And, well, the only answer I can come up with for the moment is: maybe. Despite my vitriolic rant against the processes at work here, when listened to purely as an autonomous piece of music Infra does deliver plenty of great moments. The soundscape parts do still sound tacked-on, but when one strips those away what you're left with is ten minutes or so of good ideas. The trouble is that Richter's finesse with a string quintet and synths is most definitely sullied by his own ambitions. The more he attempts to push the envelope, the more his traditional elements look shaky and out of place. I feel terrible for chastising a composer for their ambition, but in this instance there's a clear case to be made for staying within your abilities. Max Richter can produce a moving, compelling and emotionally uplifting tune when he puts his mind to it; if only he'd do it a little bit more.

You may not be familiar with the name, but I'd bet my bottom dollar you know his piece In the House - In a Heartbeat. ↩︎

Toodar: White Elephant

2010-10-22T00:00:00Z

If you've ever had a tune stuck in your head then you're perfectly normal, it would appear. There's plenty of scientific research going on at the moment to unravel the phenomenon of "earworms", as they're being called, and it seems that about 90% of us get one at least once a week. Sadly about 15% of us say their earworms are "disturbing" and up to a third think they're "unpleasant". Check out this link to find out more about the earworm research, as well as this episode of Radio 4's phenomenally excellent program Material World.^[1]

I know first-hand that it can be dreadful when you get a rubbish song (more often than not, just one line) going round and round and round in your head, but every so often I get an earworm that actually improves my day. I've had Ten Paces by Toodar running through my head on-and-off for well over a week now, to the point where I even catch myself humming it when I'm trying to listen to other songs. Thankfully the reason for this obsession is that Ten Paces is by far and away the best song I've heard all year.

Toodar first came to my attention a few weeks ago, when the endearingly quirky home-made video for their track Toy dropped into my inbox and compelled me to investigate their MySpace, and last night I finally got to see them live. They were playing the Camden Barfly in advance of a mini-tour which starts on Monday, and I'm pleased to report that the Toodar live experience is equally as good as their recorded output. To be honest, that took me by surprise.

The production on their recordings is so taut, so refined, so precise, that I was fully expecting the inevitable sloppiness of most live acts to seep into their performance, but somehow they managed, if anything, to be even tighter when playing live. The rhythm section was the slickest I've seen in a long time (by a country mile), the keys and electronic ephemera were handled with a discerning touch and subtlety that one doesn't normally come across in venues such as the Barfly, and the vocals were expertly delivered from a fine set of lungs. What impressed me most, however, was seeing a front man who was quite clearly an adept guitar player, but also one who knew when not to play (a skill most emphatically not displayed by the first act on the bill, I might add).

Of course, all this precision and virtuosity would be for naught if Toodar didn't have the songs to back it up. I've already stated my love of Ten Paces and Toy, and thankfully I can report that the rest of the set was of an equally high standard. If you're stuck in the Big Smoke you can next catch them live in December, but for those of you further afield (though perhaps not too far) be sure to check their myspace for details of next week's tour; you'd be a fool to miss out on a chance to see them.

Toodar - Toy [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/Toodar/Toodar_Toy.mp3]

Toodar - Ten Paces [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/Toodar/Toodar_TenPaces.mp3]

Incidentally, Material World host Quentin Cooper would be top of my "who would you invite to your dream dinner party" list. ↩︎

The National: High Violet

2010-10-20T00:00:00Z

This is another big release of early 2010 that I got very excited about and have taken a good long while to absorb before reviewing. Since being introduced to The National through their 2007 LP, Boxer, I've taken the time to hunt down and get my grubby paws on pretty much everything they've released. In short, I'm now something of a The National fanboy. That said, they are still not beyond reproach; when I say I fell in love with Boxer what I really mean is that, like most people, I fell in love with Fake Empire; easily the standout track not only from that album, but from the whole of The National's catalogue.

Having one or two tracks that dominate the rest of the record is becoming something of a trend with The National. As well as the Boxer/Fake Empire instance, there's Slipping Husband off 2003's Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers, as well as both Abel and Mr. November from 2005's Alligator. That's not to say for an instant that the rest of their songs are bad, it's just that each album has one or two songs that stretch just that little bit further that the others. So it comes as quite a surprise to find that on High Violet no one particular track rears its head above the others; this sounds like one whole musical work.

This is certainly something that The National have been threatening for some time, and it could be said that, hit singles aside, their whole catalogue can be viewed as one gestalt entity. If you put all their Peter Katis produced records (everything from Sad Songs... onward) into a playlist and hit shuffle, only the ear of one familiar with The National's back-catalogue would be able to distinguish between one record and the next. This is a band that would have an absolutely killer "best of" record, but instead have several albums that are merely "very good" (and how many bands can say that?). Consistency is their very essence.

"And how does High Violet fit into their oeuvre?" I hear you cry. In short, very well, thank you. Whilst it doesn't have any of the band-defining hits that The National are wont to write every now and again, it is of a uniformly high quality. Fake Empire is the kind of feat that few manage more than once in their careers; you certainly won't find it's like here, but there are some cracking songs and the production is, as ever, sublime.

We Are Scientists: Barbara

2010-10-14T00:00:00Z

I've taken a lot of flack in the past for liking We Are Scientists. I'm often derided by my close friends when I mention in conversation that I think With Love and Squalor is a great album. It's an opinion I still stand by, but it's increasingly the case that when I talk about it I have to add a whole lot of caveats and explanations - "just their first album", "I only like their early stuff", "I know, I know; the new stuff is dreadful", and so on and so forth. I'm a man who enjoys standing up for overlooked records that haven't gotten all the respect they're due, but I've reached the point with We Are Scientists where it's just become far too much hassle to stand up for them.

I mean, they really haven't done themselves any favours, have they? 2008's Brain Thrust Mastery ~~wasn't actually a bad album as such, but it certainly wasn't a good one either~~ (edit: I've since been won round by Brain Thrust Mastery and like it much more now...). After Hours was a nice single, Impatience had a great video, and Spoken For harkened back to some of the softer moments from their (major label) debut, but nothing on there came even close to setting the world alight. It was clear by this point that I liked the idea of We Are Scientists far more that I liked the actual music; they look really cool, the overall sound gives off an air of thoughtful, studied nonchalance and they give the impression that I'd really like them if we were to meet in the pub.

Now, with this year's new album Barbara on the scene, I've given up entirely. If Brain Thrust Mastery sounded like off-cuts and b-sides from With Love and Squalor, Barbara is even more so. To my ears there has been absolutely no sonic development whatsoever since their debut. BTM added some acoustic guitars and synths to the mix, but the songwriting, both on BTM and now with Barbara, seemed to be coming from exactly the same place as their previous work. I'm all in favour of consistency, and if they'd made two new LPs at the standard of WLaS then they'd most likely be one of my favourite bands by now, but sadly it's looking ever more likely that their first record was a flash in the pan, a one off never to be repeated.

I almost feel bad including mp3s with this post; it's just so bland. It feels half-baked, underdeveloped; only half the tracks on this LP manage to survive past the three minute mark, and most only by a whisker, and rather than feeling like a focused record this album drifts and meanders without much purpose. But, (and this will probably be the last time I can be bother to stick my neck out and say this) go and listen to With Love and Squalor; it's a paragon of indie-pop that's absolutely stuffed with great songs.

Frightened Rabbit: The Winter of Mixed Drinks

2010-10-11T00:00:00Z

Well this review has been a long time coming and no mistake. In the run up to the release of Frightened Rabbit's third LP, The Winter of Mixed Drinks, I got very hot around the collar and posted all sorts of FR related news; any single or free download was lapped up and devoured with all the fervour of the newly-converted. So it may come as quite a surprise that I didn't review it as soon as the promo copy arrived on my doormat. It seems all the excitement meant that by the time the actual record arrived I had exhausted all my FR enthusiasm; I was well and truly spent.

Now we're several months on, and I've had plenty of time to absorb this record - as I mentioned in my Band of Horses review the other day, my sabbatical from the blogosphere has allowed me to give certain albums a little longer to be assimilated. So what's the verdict? Is the most hotly anticipated LP of 2010 worth the wait? Does it deliver? Yes it bloody does.

It was never going to exceed the greatness of The Midnight Organ Fight, but I knew that before diving into this new record; there was always the hope that it might be even better, and to be honest it didn't seem to surpass it's predecessor on first listen, but there's still hope for it yet. The thing about TMOF was that it amazed from the very first listen; it was one of those rare examples of a record that is instantly accessible but yet still has enough depth to hold ones fascination long after the first flushes of attraction have faded. Even now, nearly two years after I first heard it, it remains one of my all-time favourite records. This new effort from Scott Hutchinson and his ever-increasing band of accomplices doesn't have the same "instant attraction" that TMOF had, but now I've been listening to it pretty steadily for several months I can say with some certainty and conviction that they've hit the bulls-eye again.

It's a much more euphoric experience than other FR records have been; much like Kings of Leon did between Aha Shake Heartbreak and Because of the Times, they've obviously adapted their songwriting to better suit the larger venues their recent success has left them playing. My one complaint with Frightened Rabbit's previous work was that at time they drifted towards the ‘anthemic’ territory so beloved of UK rock acts that have been big hits in the states (will Coldplay and Snow Patrol please stand up?), and that is a criticism that could be leveled at The Winter of Mixed Drinks more than any other of their albums.

In the past the songs were kept on the ground by the dirt and grit of the lyrics, but even that tone has changed for this record. The out-and-out grime has been replaced by a subtler sensibility; one where the lyrical currents run a little deeper, where the emotions aren't quite so heart-on-sleeve as before. All this means that this record represents a step forward for the band; they're not simply resting on their laurels, they're pushing forward and exploring new ground.

So maybe The Winter of Mixed Drinks is not quite as immersive or emotionally charged as their last record, but it's easily the best album of 2010 (so far) by a country mile.

The Ascetic Junkies: This Cage Has No Bottom

2010-10-09T00:00:00Z

Considering I'm a relatively stable, happy kind of guy, my musical taste is strangely focused on the maudlin and dreary. Not so much in terms of actual melodies and chords, but certainly when it comes to lyrics I have a distinct appetite for the acerbic and bitter - which is usually accompanied by musical textures in a similar down-beat, dark and moody vein. Invariably, when an acid wit and taste for the gloomy is combined with cheerful, happy-go-lucky music my ears are instinctively pricked and eager. With Portland's The Ascetic Junkies this balance between the joyous and the the spiteful is a tricky one to measure.

At first listen, This Cage Has No Bottom (released on Timber Carnival Records at the end of last month) comes across as merry romp through vaguely Americana-tinged acoustic pasture. This is a style that has a considerable cultural cachet this side of the atlantic, particularly here in London, where every nu-folk [sic] act you can think of is incorporating banjos and tea-chest basses into their sound with reckless abandon. The difference being that over here bands tend to wear their dour natures on their sleeves; to come across as "happy" just wouldn't do at all. The Ascetic Junkies clearly have no such qualms, and to my miserable ears it took a couple of listens to get to the meat of this record. Just under the surface there is a vein of taught aggression, but the join between this and the superficial cheeriness is seamless.

Another delicate balance they've managed to pull off is that of having dual male/female vocalists. Often this kind of approach can leave a band sounding as if they've yet to pick a direction, but yet again the fusion here is seamless. If I'm brutally honest, there's something about Kali Giaritta's vocals that sets my teeth on edge, but this is tempered by Matt Harmon's Colin-Meloy-esque drawl as well as the faultless production. I guess that coming from Portland the Decemberists must cast a long shadow for anyone creating music with this distinctive "Portland sound", but nevertheless they seem to have learned their lessons well; much like the Decemberists at their best, this record walks the tight-rope between being slick enough to actually sound good, whilst maintaining the home-made sound that this style of instrumentation demands.

This really is a record of balancing acts. The dual vocals, the production, the cheery/dour question; the tension between all these elements is expertly managed here. Whether that makes for a good record or not still remains to be seen. The lyrics - particularly the sledge-hammer rhyming schemes - often sound trite and either rushed or over-thought (a balancing act that The Ascetic Junkies haven't pulled off with such aplomb) but when one takes a broader view the record does make for a surprisingly rewarding listen.

The Ascetic Junkies - Why Do Crows? [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/TheAsceticJunkies/TheAsceticJunkies_WhyDoCrows.mp3]

The Ascetic Junkies - Renegade Salesman [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/TheAsceticJunkies/TheAsceticJunkies_RenegadeSalesman.mp3]

Tom Stephens: Division

2010-10-06T00:00:00Z

I like to think of myself as a logical, scientifically-minded man; one not prone to superstition or a belief in anything that even borders on the occult, and certainly one to steer well clear of the "healing power of crystals", lay-lines and all that nonsense. And yet I find myself compelled to confess that I was witness to some mysterious alchemy whilst preparing for this review.

But before we delve further through The Scary Door, there's some background we should cover first: Tom Stephens has appeared twice before on this blog, first in a review of his old band, Tom Stephens and the Retreat's first EP, and then again when the band were kind enough to record a session and interview for the Bearfaced Podcast. So it almost goes without saying that I'm predisposed to look favourably on this, his first proper solo effort*. Or so you'd think...

Truth be told, I was gearing up for writing a non-too-complimentary review of his Division EP. Not because I thought the record was bad per se, but more because of my own personal tastes. For starters, knowing Tom's full-band work as well as I do I had certain expectations for this EP; expectations that left me somewhat blind-sided on my first listen. An all out "classic rock" record this is not, and it's most definitely not simply Tom Stephens and the Retreat minus the Retreat. Given how the band stuff came as an evolution of Tom's early solo stuff, I expected Division to be much in the same vein, just with less guitars and no drums. I took a couple of listens to realise that Tom was approaching this EP as something totally distinct from his work with the Retreat; the goals are different, the style and pace of the songwriting is different, the whole project stands on it's own two feet. At no point does the listener feel that there ought to be a band accompanying these songs. Now if all of this sounds pretty complimentary, that's because it is. I admire the process and the strength of character on display here, but crucially I didn't find myself responding to it on an emotional level. For some reason I just didn't really like it very much. And this is where the alchemy comes in.

I must hold my hands up and confess to a terrible crime: all my first impressions of this record were based on listening to it through the built in speakers on my laptop. I know, I know, mea culpa, how can any of you ever look me in the eye again, and so on and so forth... In my defence I've only just moved into a new flat and have yet to set up the stereo (I take these things very seriously, it's better not to do it at all than do it half-cocked). I do however, have a pair of very tasty (if I say so myself) headphones, and when I listened to Divison on those I was so shocked I nearly spilt my scotch... This record sounds phenomenal through headphones! Normally one expects a bit of difference (boosted bass response, reverb reduction, etc, and even more noticeable when the switch is from the tinny things one gets in laptops these days) but this was a remarkable transformation. The strings on _Family Tree _were a tsunami of lusciousness, and the acoustic guitar around which the rest of the record hangs morphed from a slightly 90's-sounding twang to a much meatier beast (although still not quite as much as I'd have liked).

If there's a moral to this story it's this: sort out your speakers before judging things, and download Tom Stephens' current EP from his Bandcamp page - it's free, and pretty good to boot.

Tom Stephens - Family Tree [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/TomStephens/TomStephens_FamilyTree.mp3]

*Of course, before his days with ...and the Retreat he was a simple singer-songwriter, and he's been featuring his solo efforts on his blog for quite some time now.

The Twilight Sad: The Wrong Car

2010-10-04T00:00:00Z

Now this is a band it's taken me ages to get in to. Given how much post-space I've dedicated to the current crop of Scottish indie bands in the last couple of years, I imagine some of you are surprised I've taken this long to feature The Twilight Sad on this site. The simple fact of the matter was that I just didn't really like them, but slowly, by degrees, I'm being won round.

What started the process was being sent the video to their single The Room; by a quirk of fate I ended up downloading and watching it without having any idea who the band actually were. As it turned out, I quite liked it - it wasn't amazing, or anything, but certainly not as bad as I would have expected a Twilight Sad single to sound. It's strange how ones expectations colour the way one views a band.

In the past I always found them slightly too chaotic; despite my taste for the raucous and filthy, they just seemed too, well, grubby for my gentle sensibilities. But having had a not-unpleasant experience with The Room, I was far more willing to give their latest EP, The Wrong Car, the time necessary to digest it and review it.

On first glance this release looks much more like a single than an EP. It divides nicely into two parts: the first two tracks are off-cuts from the band's latest full-length, Forget the Night Ahead (although "off-cuts" might be a misleading term, as allegedly these tracks simply weren't finished by the time the LP was released), and the second tracks are a couple of remixes by two more Scottish acts - Errors, whom The Twilight Sad are just embarking on a co-headline tour with, and the ever-excellent Mogwai.

Much as with The Room, the first two tracks reaffirm my initial mistake in dismissing The Twilight Sad out of hand without so much as a by-your-leave. Both songs, particularly the title track, are consummate indie-rock; my impression is that this band have picked their niche and intend to fill it as well as they're able. Neither of the tracks set the world alight with their amazingness, but I'll certainly be keeping a semi-eager eye out for future Twilight Sad releases.

Surprisingly enough, it's one of the remixes that has compelled me to write about this record. I already caused some controversy on these pages when I announced that I unilaterally despised all remixes^[1], but I'm a big fan of Mogwai's back catalogue so I find myself oddly conflicted in this instance. In many ways this track does display all the traits of remixes that upset me so; there's the depressingly monotonous programmed drums and the all-we've-really-done-is-slap-on-a-filter-or-two vocal "processing". But then every now and then a moment of clarity emerges from the fug and reminds you that it is Mogwai after all. As much as it pains me to say it, this remix does invoke a certain atmosphere and sense of place - admittedly it's one that's slightly ineffable and therefore doesn't come across too well in print, but it's there nonetheless...

To paraphrase: there are good remixes out there, but ratio of good/bad remixes makes it next to impossible to find the good ones, so now I don't bother listening to any remixes at all. ↩︎

Jim Moray: In Modern History

2010-10-01T00:00:00Z

It's really strange how some acts can have a smash hit of an album, and then promptly drop off the radar completely for the rest of their career. Jim Moray certainly can't be described as a one-hit-wonder, but since the phenomenal success of his debut LP, Sweet England, his releases have become ever more low-key. I've followed his career more closely than most[1^], but it was only a chance find whilst browsing the racks in a local record shop that led me to his last record, 2008's Low Culture, and the same thing has happened with his latest offering, In Modern History. Now I don't claim to be totally immersed in the current UK folk scene, but I am a somewhat obsessive consumer of music journalism and I hadn't heard so much as a whisper about this album.

There's a chance that this obscurity is a deliberate choice by Moray himself; he's always been fiercely independent, and he produces and records by himself. One could be forgiven for thinking that his success at the 2004 Folk Awards[2^] was a spanner in the works for his career plan, but that might be reading too much into things.

If I'm brutally honest, Sweet England is by far and away his best record, but I still can't make up my mind on whether the three albums he's released since then are either criminally overlooked or merely got the coverage they deserved.

In many ways I admire Moray's work more than I actually like it. He is without a doubt a beacon for all that is good and progressive n the folk world today, but there's something about the music itself that just doesn't sit right with me. After some close listening to In Modern History I've come to think it's the mixing that lets him down.

The parts are all beautifully constructed, Moray's arrangements of traditional English folk songs are simply magical, and the quality of the musicianship of display is admirable, but there's just not enough dynamic range to this record. You can almost hear where the listener is supposed to be swept away and where one should be drawn in closer to the speakers, but it never quite gets there. In short, _In Modern History _feels more like an academic exercise than an actual record, which is a crying shame because all the ingredients are there for it to be an astounding document of a true visionary at work.

[1^]: I've bought all his records, seen him live twice, and I've even got a t-shirt.

[2^]: He won Best Album and the "Horizon" (Best Newcomer) award.

The Divine Comedy: Bang Goes the Knighthood

2010-09-30T00:00:00Z

There are many bands whom I love, admire, and obsess over in equal measure but who's albums I very rarely listen to from end to end. The concept of the LP is, for me, the ultimate expression of pop music as an art form, and most of the reviews on these hallowed pages focus on how albums flow and work end-to-end, so in that light my opening statement here might seem a little out of character. To hear individual tracks in isolation is to miss out on the context: you miss the dramatic ebb and flow that long-form music allows; the rise and fall of dynamics, textures, and tension over the course of some twelve or so songs is not something that one gets to appreciate in this world of "shuffle" and iTunes and mp3s. But every cloud, as they say...

One upside of digital music libraries is that they allow the determined album-listener like myself to create the albums that should have been. Acts like Ryan Adams, The National, and Bright Eyes (all of whom I love intensely) seem unable to fill any of their records with 100% good music^[1], but each of their "best of"s would be contenders for the title of Best Collection of Songs Ever. None of those acts has yet to release a "best of", but thanks to the joys of iTunes playlists I can construct them for myself.

The Divine Comedy has always been one of those select group of acts that fall into this category. Quite a few of my all-time-favourite songs have come from the quill of Neil Hannon (especially when he teamed up with arranger Joby Talbot) but there's yet to be an entire album that's kept me happy from start to finish. But that could all change with the latest offering, Bang Goes the Knighthood.

There's been a four year gap since Victory for the Comic Muse, and I couldn't help but feel that made an all-to-tidy bookend to a career that started with the Fanfare for the Comic Muse LP. Coupled with Neil's success with the (stupendously excellent) Duckworth Lewis Method project and I was worried we'd seen the last of The Divine Comedy, but thankfully rumours of their death have been greatly exaggerated.

On first inspection Bang Goes the Knighthood comes across as a classic Divine Comedy record; there are three or four obvious singles tied together with the borderline-comedy ditties that make up most of Hannon's oeuvre. Sometimes these jaunts seem just a little too much like out-right Noel Coward imitation, but when Neil's at his best he writes songs of exquisitely crafted irony that transcend the limits of the "comedy song", and I'm pleased to report that he's most definitely at his best here.

With such a taste for the theatrical (particularly when coupled with the lush orchestration he's proven time and time again that he excels at) one might expect The Divine Comedy to descend into the heinous depths of musical theatre territory (which is pretty much the worst crime one can accuse anyone of) but somehow it never does. I think the saving grace is that no matter how cheesy the set-up there's always Hannon's acerbic wit, self-depreciation and über middle-classiness just around the corner to keep proceedings on an even keel. And the question of class is central to this record; Hannon is the absolute paragon of the English, middle-class gent - not bad going for an Irishman, really. It's probably why I respond so well to his work, I guess; his preoccupations, aspirations and tastes seem to mirror mine quite closely.

The classic Hannon love songs (of which there are a couple on here) can border on the saccharine-sweet at times, but thankfully that never gets too out of hand in this instance. This is a record of astounding versatility - Hannon's lyrics run the full gamut of human emotion over the course of about forty-five minutes – whilst never coming off the rails or losing it's sense of unity – it's a down-and-out "proper album" through and through.

Out of the thirty-or-so studio albums those three acts have made between them, only I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning comes close to being no-holds-barred, no-filler-guaranteed classic album. ↩︎

Band of Horses: Infinite Arms

2010-09-29T00:00:00Z

I read an article recently that said every artist only ever creates a maximum of twelve works in their whole career. It was one of those contentious statements that immediately clicked with my snobbish sense of superiority regarding music; so many bands just end up rehashing the same old themes and ideas over and over again, and how often is it that a band creates a truly exceptional record? If a band's lucky they might manage one perfect album, but most good acts can only realistically hope to include one or two great songs on their records. If you were to play any of your favourite albums and listen with totally unbiased ears - excluding any nostalgic attachment you might have to the record - and examined it in forensic detail, how many of the tracks would you say are truly "great"? A really classic album might produce six or seven, but who can honestly say they know of an LP with absolutely no "filler" in it at all?

And this is where the theory falls apart, because I imagine quite a few people can... And truth be told I'd probably count myself amongst them. To separate the act of listening from the emotional responses that automatically appear is to miss the point entirely. Some tracks may well stand out as obvious "singles" but the great records, the ones that stand up to intense repeat-listening, are about far more than that. When listened to end-to-end they sweep you up and take you on a journey from start to finish; with ups and downs, to be sure, but that's all part of the experience. A great record is one that stands as a compete item; the "total work of art".

With their past two records, Band of Horses have not quite managed to deliver on the promise of their singles. 2006's Everything All the Time, in particular, was dominated by the fantastic track Funeral; a song which has in my mind come to define the band. On the back of this spectacular success (it's a track I listen to an awful lot, even now, four years later) I've always made an effort to listen to their new stuff on the off-chance that there's be a new Funeral hidden in their midst, and with their latest LP, Infinite Arms, I've given them a longer-than-average session on my to-be-absorbed playlist. One of the upshots of my summer-hiatus from the blogosphere was the fact that I could once again devote my listening time to the albums that would have previously, in my pre-blogging days, have been give a few months to wear themselves in*. So, quite a bit after the fact, was the verdict on the new record any different? Well, kind of...

Infinite Arms certainly fits together as a complete album, as opposed to merely a collection of singles and filler. But whereas normally that's an excuse for me to erupt in bubbling praise (you all know how much I like a "proper" album) in this instance the effect is spoiled by the fact that I just don't like it. They've clearly been working on advancing their collective sound (always an admirable feat) while they've maintained a through-flow for all the albums by retaining Phil Ek as producer (again, something that's generally laudable) but sadly the results left me very cold indeed. As far as I'm concerned this record smacks far too much of Americana for me to take it seriously. Fleet Foxes (another Ek project, incidentally) have done the Crosby, Stills and Nash revival to death already, and this record just feels like a pale imitation of a pale imitation of something I never really liked in the first place. It's too smooth, too smarmy, too rich for me to take it seriously (a slickness most evident of the abysmal Compliments). There's a cloying quality to the record that really sticks in the throat most unpleasantly.

I'm told that Band of Horses front-man and leading light Ben Bridwell** has made more of an effort to include the other band members in the creation of this record, and that may be where the trouble lies. This record just sounds like any other American country-rock pub band you could care to mention; a severe let-down of the potential on display in Funeral. Lead single Laredo is downright dreadful, but it's not all a disaster - Dilly, for one, isn't that awful - but for a band of the obvious calibre of Band of Horses to be producing an album where the highlight is merely "not that awful" is a sore disappointment.

Band of Horses - Compliments [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/BandOfHorses/BandOfHorses_Compliments.mp3]

Band of Horses - Dilly [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/BandOfHorses/BandOfHorses_Dilly.mp3]

*Expect slightly belated reviews of the other big releases of early 2010 in the coming weeks, particularly the recent efforts by The National and Frightened Rabbit.

**Most famous, obviously, for his number two slot in the Eaten by Monsters Top Five Beards in Indie Rock list from back in 2008.

Wild Palms: To The Lighthouse/Draw In Light

2010-09-28T00:00:00Z

"Inconsistency is my very essence... ...Mutability is our tragedy, but it is also our hope. The worst of times, like the best, are always passing away. It would seem the sage words of Boethius provide something of a manifesto to Wild Palms' front-man Lou Hill, although perhaps assuming he's au fait with the Consolation of Philosophy might be a bit of a stretch; "Once you think you’ve found your feet, you’re f*cked." was Hill's eloquent expression of the same sentiments...

Nonetheless, mutable is certainly the first adjective that springs to mind when considering the work of Wild Palms. Having only recently changed their name from Ex-Lion Tamers^[1] (a rebirth heralded by a much-lauded cover of Bjork's Human Behaviour), there's talk of a debut album being released in March '11, but by then the sound could well have changed again. Yet despite all the talk of change and evolution, the double-A-side single To The Lighthouse/Draw In Light (to be released on the 1st of November) sounds remarkably stable; a polished, consummate display of musicianship and intelligent production.

For this single, as well as the forthcoming album, the band blew nearly all their recording budget on securing the services of the producer Gareth Jones** - a man with an impressive back-catalogue including Turn on the Bright Lights (easily Interpol's finest effort) and Grizzly Bear's recent hit LP Veckatimest - and it seems to have paid off. Whereas their previous efforts were all hairy balls and crunchy bass lines, the new tracks have an unexpected warmth and subtlety to them. This means that neither To The Lighthouse nor Draw In Light pack the punch of last years single Over Time, but what they lack in immediacy they repay in spades over repeat listenings. These new tracks are all about atmosphere and the delicious tug-and-release of dramatic tension. If the album's anything near as good as these tracks then we'll certainly be hearing much more from Wild Palms in the early months of 2011. Provided they don't go and change direction again, that is...

Wild Palms - To The Lighthouse [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/WildPalms/WildPalms_ToTheLighthouse.mp3]

Wild Palms - Draw In Light [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/WildPalms/WildPalms_DrawInLight.mp3]

It just isn't right to include an mp3 download of a new single, but being as I know how much you guys love your free music, here's their old single (which has already done the rounds a bit), so you can compare the "old" and "new" sounds for yourselves:

Wild Palms - Over Time [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/WildPalms/WildPalms_OverTime.mp3]

**not to be confused with the band's bassist, Gareth Jones.

not to be confused with 17 Seconds Records' X-Lion Tamer, who's existence perhaps triggered the name-change. ↩︎

Labour & Love: Demos

2010-04-27T00:00:00Z

I'm not often one for providing exclusives - indeed, with my current record on posting I can't even claim to be remotely current, let alone cutting-edge - but it seems that on occasion I can actually offer you music before anybody else. One of the joys of being a music blogger is the ratio of Work-Put-In versus Free-Stuff-Received-In-The-Hope-That-I'll-Review-It, and every so often that free stuff takes the form of extremely hot-off-the-press demos. The latest addition to that pile on my desk(top) came from Labour & Love, a band so new they haven't even had a full rehearsal yet. How's that for an exclusive?

This kind of demo - post-songwriting but pre-arranging - is quite often scrappy and rough-as-a-bear's-arse^[1], and Labour & Love's CD is certainly no exception. However, what it lacks in polish and focus it makes up for in spades with the quality of the songs held within. There's an air of maturity and sophistication here that speaks volumes about where this band are headed. In fact I'm in danger of sounding like an effusive fanboy; this set of songs, even in this rough setting, really stand out as something special.

Since receiving this demo I've heard that the band have started rehearsing and are gearing up for a summer season of gigs, armed with a sound that is somewhat akin to "The Replacements doing Johnny Cash covers in the style of The Grateful Dead". I can easily see these guys riding the "Nu-Folk" wave popularised lately by Mumford & Sons and their ilk, but there's quite a bit more to Labour & Love than simple bandwaggoning^[2]. There's a deeper current running here, one that speaks of a richer heritage and wider artistic base than can be claimed by the current crop of folkie scenesters. There's the bite of a vintage Fender that, coupled with a classic American country vibe, gives these songs more menace and presence than even the Mumford's can muster. Quite frankly I can't wait to hear these songs fleshed out with the full band sound that Labour & Love are promising to deliver.

Long story short: It's a risky business, sending out your music before it's completely finished, but it's certainly paid off for Labour & Love. I'll pin my colours to the mast and say without fear of being proven wrong that this is a band guaranteed to cause a stir this summer, and when they get around to fleshing this set of songs out into a proper album it's going to be a real triumph. A genuine diamond in the rough.

Labour & Love - Armchair Philosophy [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/LabourAndLove/LabourAndLove_ArmchairPhilosophy.mp3]

Labour & Love - Love is Art^[3] [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/LabourAndLove/LabourAndLove_LoveIsArt.mp3]

A technical term used a lot by sound engineers. ↩︎
Another technical expression, prevalent in critical theory. Barthes and Adorno could hardly write a sentence without using it... ↩︎
At the band's request, these tracks are stream-only. I'm reliably informed there'll be a proper EP out soon, so keep your ears to the ground. I know I will be. ↩︎

We Were Promised Jetpacks: The Last Place You''ll Look

2010-04-22T00:00:00Z

A strong contender for the Top Ten Albums of 2009 list was These Four Walls, an album by scottish outfit We Were Promised Jetpacks. This band first came to my attention via a FatCat Records sampler CD that came free with some now-long-forgotten music magazine^[1] back in 2008. It was a great compilation featuring, amongst many others, act such as fey folk legend Vashti Bunyan, contemporary classicist Max Richter and EbM favourites Frightened Rabbit; a fine exemplar of the great roster of acts that FatCat have assembled. Hidden in the depths of this compilation was a track by We Were Promised Jetpacks called, according to the sleeve notes, Tiny Little Voices. This scratchy, furious little song later surfaced as Quiet Little Voices on the band's 2009 debut LP, as well as getting a release as a single, and it's quite frankly marvellous. The rest of These Four Walls was also excellent and fast became a regular feature on my stereo.

But this is not a review of that LP.

Released on the 12th of April this year, The Last Place You'll Look is a new limited-run EP by the band. It features two songs from the LP (Short Bursts and This Is My House, This Is My Home), alongside three new tracks. The whole of this EP has a markedly different tone to the album; where the LP was furious and thundering this release is more measured and contemplative. That's not to say for one minute that this EP pulls it's punches - it can slog it out with the best of them - but it's certainly softer than it's big brother, and I'm still undecided as the whether or not this is a good thing...

These Four Walls felt like a spontaneous outpouring of emotion; the sheer momentum of the record was palpable, as if the band were channeling some demonic vision. And it was that forcefulness, that clarity of vision that made the album such a favourite of mine. While this new EP seems more willing to dwell on the softer side of things (it has piano and strings, for heaven's sake) it doesn't sound like the band have added a new dynamic to their sound, it sounds like they've shifted down a gear. It's hard not to compare the album and EP versions of This Is My House..., for instance, and not feel that the EP is just a bit too slow, just a bit too soft. The euphoric highs of the LP are not as evident on this new record.

It's not all bad news, however. This is a very good record, and a thoroughly engrossing twenty minutes of music. Whilst on one hand it's less emphatic and energetic than the album, on the other it's a considerably more mature sounding record. As well as being simply a rewarding listen, the change in textures also bodes well for the band's future efforts; they're clearly not just a one trick pony, and I await their next release with much anticipation.

Long story short: The Last Place You'll Look is an excellent EP, and a must-listen for any fans of We Were Promised Jetpacks. However, it doesn't reach the lofty pinnacles of their album, so if you're new to the band I'd suggest you make this EP the second place you look; hunt down the album first, then view this record as a stirling companion piece.

A team of enslaved researchers working night and day for a week in sub-sweatshop conditions have since revealed it to be from the now sadly defunct Plan B magazine. ↩︎

The Black Atlantic: Reverence for Falling Trees

2010-02-12T00:00:00Z

For a while I was in two minds about whether or not to write a post about this album or not. This doubt had nothing to do with my own opinions of the record, but stemmed from the fact that I found out about it through a music blog myself; Tart, over at Love Shack, Baby has rather taken this band to heart, and it was only through her review that I became aware of Dutch outfit The Black Atlantic. All I know about this band is what I learnt from Tart's post, so surely the logical thing to do would be to link the her review and leave it at that. The only thing I have to offer is my opinion, after all... And there's the rub; that's all this blog's ever contained, despite my dreams of being a "journalist". If I ever provide real information it's only ever as an aside to my thoughts. I imagine a fair share of you, my dear readers, are also followers of Love Shack, Baby, but then I'm also sure that some of you aren't. And this is a great record and it would be a shame if you missed out.

The Black Atlantic released this, their debut album, back in August '09, but they've only just popped up on my radar this week and they've got a good-sized tour scheduled for the coming months so there's every reason to class this release as "current". Reverence for Fallen Trees has been released for free (in exchange for an email address) here, and I'd recommend that you get your paws on it as soon as you can. One of my big fears when the digital music revolution loomed was that we'd see the end of the album as the default format for music delivery. What with iTunes and the proliferance of music blogs such as this one, it seemed that all the emphasis was being placed on individual tracks. Thankfully the idea of listening to - and more importantly making - a set of songs designed to be absorbed in one sitting, end-to-end, is still as popular as ever, and Reverence for Falling Trees is yet another sterling example of that concept.

This record is a solid thirty-five minutes of four musicians playing as a band. I'm a big fan of singer-songwriters and their propensity for bringing in outside players to create a fuller sound, but that process will never sound as complete as proper band. When all the players are working together towards a common goal and on a equal footing something magical happens, and I'd say that is most certainly what's happened on this record. The songs aren't particularly amazing - at best I'd describe them as competent, at worst downright european-sounding - and there's not really anything new to be found here, but there's a definite pleasure to found in hearing a proper band; one that's worth my attention any day of the week.

Long story short: Get your free copy, set aside some time for it, and listen to Reverence for Falling Trees in it's entirety. Despite it's somewhat limited artistic scope this album still makes for a rewarding listen. All The Black Atlantic really do is make music without making any mistakes, but they do that with such style and confidence that in this case that's all that's needed.

The Black Atlantic - Old, Dim Light [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/TheBlackAtlantic/TheBlackAtlantic_OldDimLight.mp3]

The Black Atlantic - Fragile Meadow [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/TheBlackAtlantic/TheBlackAtlantic_FragileMeadow.mp3]

Yet more Frightened Rabbit shenanigans...

2010-02-08T00:00:00Z

Ah, as the release date for A Winter of Mixed Drinks fast approaches (March 1st) we're being treated to yet more Frightened Rabbit goodness. The band have released the album track Fun Stuff for fans to download, and there's now also a competition (gosh, how exciting!).

Fun Stuff first emerged last year when a demo titled Last Tango in Brooklyn started doing the rounds. Other than the change of name, there's not much that's changed in the song - the production on this new version is just a bit slicker, as one would expect from an album cut. As a song, it's what we've come to expect from Hutchison & co. Bitter and acerbic, after the lairy roustabouts that were the previous two singles, Swim Until You Can't See Land and Nothing Like You, it's nice to hear hints of the softer touch that made Midnight Organ Fight such a lasting success.

As for the competition, head over to the band's Muzu channel for the full lowdown (as well as a few FR videos too). Submit a cocktail recipe (see what they did there?) by the 15th Feb. to be in with a chance of winning free FR gig tickets and an after-show drink with the band.

Frightened Rabbit - Fun Stuff [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/FrightenedRabbit/FrightenedRabbit_FunStuff.mp3]

Frightened Rabbit - Be Less Rude (live)* [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/FrightenedRabbit/FrightenedRabbit_BeLessRude_Live.mp3]

*From a Daytrotter session they did back in '08, just to bulk the post up a bit.

Maxwell Panther: Sound is a Place

2010-02-07T00:00:00Z

I often take great pleasure in being contrary; if most of the blogoshere says that 2+2=4 there's half a chance I'll say it's 5. Every so often, however, I find myself agreeing with the throng. The new Maxwell Panther LP Do You Feel Different Yet? has just been released on Song, by Toad Records, and every single review that I've read make. quite a fuss of the production values. Everyone appears to be reveling in the low-fi nature of the recording, so naturally I'd made up my mind not to descend to this oh-so-obvious observation. Alas, one cannot fully discuss the music of Maxwell Panther without touching on the production; it was the elephant in the room for my first attempt at writing this review, not of the Do You Feel Different Yet? LP - because I've not heard all of it - but of the Sound is a Place EP launched through Bandcamp late last year.

First and foremost, the songs are good; I could blather on about the production until the cows come home, but it would all be somewhat pointless if the songs didn't cut the mustard. Often one will come across a record that can be flatteringly described as "scratchy" where the songs are as ropey as the production; it's quite common to find something of worth hidden under the flaws, and see the "potential" in the record, at the very least on a "their next record is going to be great" level. Thankfully with Sound is a Place, the songwriting is a fait accompli; mature and sophisticated, there's no need to look for the "potential" because it's already been realised. And this is a crucial point when discussing a record such as this. It's practically universally agreed that the songwriting is the most important element of a record, and it's certainly a point of view I agree with. A good song can easily eclipse bad technique, but that's not the case with this record - the writing is of such a high standard that the production ethos can only be an artistic choice.

Long Story Short: To listen to Sound is a Place and think that the production is "bad" is to miss the point entirely; the fuzziness, the hiss, it's all intentional. This EP should be absorbed as a complete package, as the production re-enforces the songwriting which in turn re-enforces the production... Sound is a Place can be bought via an "honesty box" system over at the Maxwell Panther Bandcamp page, and the new album _Do You Feel Different Yet? _is out now on Song, by Toad records.

Maxwell Panther - Sound is a Place [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/MaxwellPanther/MaxwellPanther_SoundIsAPlace.mp3]

Broadcast 2000: Broadcast 2000

2010-02-06T00:00:00Z

I often wax lyrical about how most of the albums that still stand up as favourites years down the line weren't the ones that really impressed on their first spin on the hi-fi. Most albums that impress straight away do so because they are, in a nut shell, shallow; that is to say, you hear everything that there is to hear instantly, and every repeat listen only serves to diminish the record's appeal. The albums that stand the test of time are more often than not the ones in which the currents run deeper; repeat listens are required to fully expose the subtlety of the work, and each further listen reveals new, intriguing facets and enhances the experience of the listener. I'm not one to blow my own trumpet (much, at least, and this isn't all that much of an achievement anyway...), but it's fair to say that I listen to a lot of music - and crucially a large percentage of the music I listen to is new music . so I think I am fully qualified to make the following statement:

Albums that blow you away on their first listen and still sound amazing hundreds of listens down the line are exceedingly rare occurrences.

I listen to at the very least five or six new albums every week, and in the last three or for years I can only think of one record that blew me away when I first heard it and still sounds as fresh and impressive today^[1]. I'm certainly not saying that these albums are any better than the ones that you grow to love (to be honest, about 70% of my all-time-favourite albums weren't ones that impressed first time around - I think the act of growing to love a record over time leads to a stronger relationship with said album) but the very fact of their rarity makes them something special, something to be treasured.

Now what, I hear you gasping with bated breath, does this lengthy preamble have to do with Broadcast 2000's first full-length record, Broadcast 2000. Well, quite frankly this album knocked me for six. By the middle of the opening track I was entranced, and sat still and utterly captivated until the record's closing moments. For the reasons I mentioned above I delayed reviewing it for about a week; would this be just another shallow piece of work that says all it has to say on the first listen. After a week of constant listening I can say that shallow it is not. Whether or not I'm still equally enamored of Broadcast 2000 a year down the line only time can tell, but I'm pretty confident that this album's going to be a favourite for a good long while.

As is always the case, accompanying this record through my letterbox was a sheet full of the inevitable PR gumph and hyperbole, but in this case I'm inclined to believe it. It seems that Joe Steer, the wunderkind behind Broadcast 2000, has been doing rather well for himself; his 2008 debut EP Building Blocks must have ended up in the right ears, as this LP was produced by Eliot James (he co-produced the third Kaiser Chiefs album with Mark Ronson, and his credit can be found on tracks by Bloc Party and Kate Nash) and features violin by Tom Hobden from Noah and the Whale (who's album was produced by non other than, you guessed it, Eliot James). In fact, the string arrangements on this record are one of the things that really stand out as being above-and-beyond-the-call-of-duty excellent; subtle, yet choppy and angular enough to be really interesting even though they are buried amongst so many other elements. I'm not often one to make "it-sounds-like-the-music-of-x-fused-with-the-music-of-y" style comparisons, but the glockenspiel and esoteric percussion on this album put me in mind of nu-folk scenster Adem's 2006 LP Love and Other Planets, but while the songs on Love... were sprawling, introspective pieces, the songs on Broadcast 2000 are actually rather energetic and approachable.

Long Story Short: Will Broadcast 2000 live up to my expectations and be the elusive prize of all music obsessives - an album that gives an astoundingly great first impression and continues to deliver years down the line. We'll have to wait and see, but in this instance the chances are far higher than normal. This is an absolute blinder of an album and I strongly urge all of you to grab yourselves a copy when it's released. The LP Broadcast 2000 will arrive on the 22nd of February, courtesy of Groenland Records.

Broadcast 2000 - Rouse Your Bones

Broadcast 2000 - Get Up and Go^[2]

Addendum: at the request of the band these tracks are stream-only, but they have (in an excellent and blog-savvy move) provided a couple of acoustic tracks for download:

Broadcast 2000 - Pep Talk (acoustic)

Broadcast 2000 - Everybody & Me (acoustic)

Frightened Rabbit's Midnight Organ Fight, from 2008, if you're interested. Not necessarily the best album of the last few years, but the only example of this rare beast, the instant and long-term favourite, that I can think of... ↩︎
Yes, it is that song from the e.on advert. ↩︎

Remixes = eurgh!

2010-01-20T00:00:00Z

I know a decent proportion of you will have arrived here from The Hype Machine . Remixes seem quite popular there, so I'll bet a few of you are remix-connoisseurs. I just don't understand it myself.

A good remix can be an enjoyable listening experience. Yet stumbling upon the mythic beast that is a "good remix" is uncommon. It seems to me that 99% of them are just plain rubbish.

In my eyes good remixes build on the foundation of a good track. They create a complimentary companion-piece to the original. Most of the good remixes I'm aware of can stand alone as musical works in their own right. But even with the good ones you're only getting half the picture.

To make a remix is to make a work that is inextricably tied to another; a musical Castor and Pollux. A good remix from a bad song can be interesting as an academic speculation. But without a solid foundation it is as redundant as a bad remix from a good song. This is where remixes differ from cover versions. A good cover version from a bad song can be a wondrous achievement.

The Good Remix

Despite my misgivings, there are exponents of the "good remix". Many of my favourite acts have delivered sterling work in this field. In particular, Four Tet (with Kings of Convenience) and The Postal Service (with Feist). My current favourite is the Miyauchi Yuri remix of If He Breaks Your Heart, by Jeremy Warmsley.

Miyauchi Yuri

Jeremy Warmsley

This remix undeniably butchers the harmonic content of the song by flattening it beyond belief. Here, though, it's defensible as a deliberate artistic choice. The sparse, angular substance of J-Wo's original acoustic version morphs into a lush soundscape. But despite this recrafting, the body of the song remains intact. It's a song with a definite arc and a "message"^[1], and both remain in evidence in the remix. It retains the essence of the original whilst being a wholly new musical experience.

The Bad Remix

Bad remixes are much thicker on the ground than good ones. The choices for a salient example were legion. BbopNRokstedy drew the short straw, as theirs was the most recent remix to land in my inbox. This one is a remix of Phoenix's track 1901, who's parent album is excellent. 2009's Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is a bona fide triumph of a record. Alas we cannot say the same for the remix...

Here the relationship between original and remix is slender indeed. It appears BbopNRokstedy have hardly done any work at all. They've cut a couple of vocal snippets from 1901 and looped them over a godawful dance track. And that seems to be it! They've removed any trace of the original's structure or arc. That this outfit have the gall to call this abomination a "remix" beggars belief.

Conclusion

I realize I sound rather vitriolic at this point, but then that's why I'm writing. This kind of behaviour annoys me. I honestly enjoy listening to a good remix, but finding those good ones is too hard. The only sure-fire way to tell if a remix is going to be any good or not is to actually listen to the thing.

But of course there is a more sensible strategy; one that's guaranteed to work. If there's a 99% chance that a remix is going to terrible, I don't like those odds. The unavoidable conclusion is that it's far better to steer clear of remixes altogether.

I know, I know; I’ll let you make your own minds up on that front… ↩︎

The Actors: Anticipate Heat

2010-01-18T00:00:00Z

Despite my somewhat shoddy updating in the latter part of 2009, this blog sill attracts a surprisingly high number of submissions. Some industry types seem convinced that this is a bad thing ("you might think that free music day-in, day-out would be great, but it's just boring. You try and fight your way through mountains of dreadful demos!" and so and so on, ad nauseam...) but I'm not for one minute implying that this is the case with me, as getting sent free music was the main point in starting this blog in the first place. However, getting through all the music I'm sent can be something of a challenge as there really aren't enough hours in the day to listen to everything. Thankfully it's a challenge I relish, as every so often one comes across a proper gem of a record, or at least the sort of diamond-in-the-rough demo that hints at greater things yet to come. The Anticipate Heat EP by San Franciscan trio The Actors sits pretty much midway between the gem and rough-diamond categories.

These guys peddle the kind of earnest pop-rock that I wouldn't normally post about. The EP's opener, Heat in the Street, is a good song, but one swallow doesn't make a summer, and after the next two tracks I was ready to put The Actors in the "average" box. The record is a competent debut, to be sure, but nothing in the first three songs grabbed my attention at all. Then - ready to put The Actors out of my mind and move onto the next record on my list - I listened to the last track, put the record on repeat and haven't stopped listening to it yet.

Spoken word songs are fickle beasts. very once in a while a great one emerges that grabs the listener and gives them a good shake, but ninety-nine percent of the time they fall flat - I have very little time for overly pretentious songs or bands that take themselves too seriously. You can only get away with that kind of behaviour if your songs are truly works of greatness, and quite frankly they rarely are. Thankfully I get the impression The Actors are fully aware of this danger. A knowing smile and a wink to camera can disguise any manner of ills, but even that approach isn't necessary here. The vocal delivery on An Unremarkable Location (the fourth and final track on this EP) is perfectly pitched^[1] - sincere without being cloying, engaging without descending too far into the theatrical. It's certainly not poetry, but the combination of the dialogue with the music is sympathetic and natural, and above all it doesn't seem forced - which can be the downfall of many of the more "worthy" spoken word efforts.

I get the impression from their promotional material that the two opening tracks are the ones the band are pinning their hopes on. As I said before, Heat in the Street is a good song - a jaunty little number with just enough of a "pop" feel to raise it into a higher category than your average rock band demo - but The Skydiver (track two) simply doesn't do it for me. If you ask me they should be pushing An Unremarkable Location as it is, in fact, quite remarkable.

The Actors - ~~An Unremarkable Location~~**

The Actors - ~~Heat in the Street~~**

** Addendum, Nov 2010: I've removed these tracks at the request of the band. They've apparently changed direction, and they say their early music 'isn't representative of where we're going artistically or melodically". You can keep abreast of further developments at their bandcamp page.

Not in the musical sense, obviously - it is spoken word, after all. ↩︎

Max Richter: Memoryhouse

2010-01-16T00:00:00Z

I don't really know where to put this record. The fact that it was originally released on the BBC's Late Junction label and has now been re-issued on Fat Cat's "instrumental/classical" imprint, 130701, places composer Max Richter's album Memoryhouse in the hinterland that lies between the pop/rock and classical worlds.

I've been sitting on this album for months now and I must say it took me a long while to really get into it; party owing, I suspect, to this very issue of place. I simply couldn't work out how to approach it. If one were to read Memoryhouse as a straight-up contemporary-classical work then it would fall flat on its face - the themes too simplistic, the strokes too broad, the overarching impact far too immediate and straightforward. But then to view this record solely in that light is to miss the point, for this is certainly not a "classical" record.

While not knowing the name Max Richter, most of you will probably be aware of his work on Ali Folman's excellent Waltz With Bashir, and the fact that he is best known for soundtrack work casts quite a shadow over this release. To the best of my knowledge Memoryhouse is intended to stand in isolation, but every time I listen to it I immediately feel like I'm listening to part of something bigger.

If anything, this is a record of incidental scoring that has transcended its limitations. One that, if used on a run-of-the-mill TV documentary, would overshadow its visual counterparts and leave the viewer thinking, "gosh, they really went to town on that soundtrack!". Any mere factual observations in the program would be overshadowed by the majesty of the music (performed on this record by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra). For indeed this is a majestic record; too simple, maybe, when judged on technical and academic criteria, but in terms of pure emotional impact this record packs a punch. Evocative and stirring, Memoryhouse feels like it ought to be accompanying themes of vast importance and epic scope, but heard in isolation it sounds like something's missing.

Meursault: William Henry Miller pt. I & II

2010-01-14T00:00:00Z

It's not often that I dig out the ol' vinyl player. If fact, being the fresh faced youth I am, the world of vinyl is one of which I have only a cursory knowledge. Anytime I want to enjoy my (admittedly meagre) 7" collection I have to drag my dad's old Pioneer PL-112D turntable out of the attic...

But it does appear that the 7" is still alive and well. An old flatmate of mine had quite an impressive collection - all released in the last few years - and most singles seem to get a 7" release alongside the newer formats. These two singles from Song, by Toad Records are available exclusively as vinyl (not counting digitally, which surely doesn't count these days). The band behind this pair of singles is Meursault, already an Eaten by Monsters favourite owing to their fantastic debut LP, Pissing on Bonfires/Kissing With Tongues.

Now I gather that William Henry Miller is something of a live favourite for hardcore Meusault fans, but I must admit that when it was finally released (on last years Nothing Broke EP) I wasn't all that taken with it. To be honest, I wasn't that taken with the whole EP; I enjoyed it, for sure, but having never seen the band live and getting to know them through their album, the change of direction (from dense electronic soundscapes with a furious energy to a slower, more contemplative acoustic sound) wasn't what I was looking for. In the months following it's release Nothing Broke has certainly grown on me, but in my opinion these two new singles mark a welcome return to the more "produced"^[1] sound of Pissing/Kissing. In fact, the b-sides (The Dirt and the Roots and A Few Kind Words respectively) are the same cuts that were used on the album.

And now William Henry Miller Pt. II - a track that sounded decidedly like filler on Nothing Broke - is now the stand out track of both these singles; a feat made doubly impressive when you consider that A Few Kind Words (the Pt. II b-side) was one of my favourite tracks on the album, which was in turn one of my Top 10 Albums of 2008. And Pt. I has undergone a caterpillar/butterfly rebirth as well! The word on the street is that Meursault are on the brink of writing/recording a new album, and if that's true then I really can't wait.

Lazy writing, I know... ↩︎

Frightened Rabbit: Nothing Like You

2010-01-13T00:00:00Z

This time last year the musical calendar was looking pretty darned exciting. With albums on the horizon by EbM favourites Broken Records, Emmy the Great, frYars, Esser and The Decemberists I was expecting great things of 2009. Sure enough, 2009 produced some great records and was an all-round "good year for music", but strangely none of the albums I was so excited about delivered on expectations. All the aforementioned albums were good, but none of them were great, and certainly nowhere near as good as we'd all hoped they would be; hype is truly a terrible thing.

So it is with great trepidation and wariness that I nail my colours to the mast and say that I am really, really looking forward to the upcoming Frightened Rabbit album, The Winter of Mixed Drinks. Of course this will come as no surprise to regular readers who probably have some inkling as to how much I love FR. It seems like this album may be very well timed, as FR did very well in quite a few end-of-decade lists (such as the NME's and The Skinny's) and fans have been kept interested throughout 2009 first by the excellent Quietly Now! (a live version of Midnight Organ Fight) and the pre-Christmas single Swim Until You Can't See Land. This single was our first taste of what to expect from the upcoming album, and very nice it was too. Now we're being further tempted by another single, Nothing Like You.

This one won't be released until the 22nd Feb and normally I'd hold off on a review until closer to the release date, but being as the album proper comes out only a few days later (1st March) I can justify getting this one out a little early (and it also shows how cool I must be to be able to get my paws on the single this far ahead of it's release...*cough*cough*). The b-side, Learned Your Name, is a gentle, sombre affair, trundling along nicely without sparking too much excitement; but then that's all you ought to expect from a b-side. The a-side, however, is a different story.

With all the great (possibly dangerous?) hype the band have been getting lately, and given the success of Swim..., all this single really needs to do is make sure it doesn't disappoint. Regardless, Nothing Like You springs from the blocks like it's got something to prove. It rattles along at a furious pace and does it's job admirably - it's more than equal to the quality of the work on Midnight Organ Fight, while at the same time pointing at yet more to come. To hell with my trepidation, 2010 should be fantastic!

Eagleowl: Sleep the Winter

2009-12-17T00:00:00Z

I first featured scotch "low-fi post punk" outfit eagleowl (note the deliberate lowercase "e") on this blog over a year ago, when I reviewed their debut EP For the Thoughts You Never Had. After the success of For the Thoughts... it could be seen as surprising that over twelve months later all they've released is this new single, Sleep the Winter, but as far as I can tell this fits in perfectly with the band's overarching mission. As with the last EP, Sleep the Winter is all about taking your time, and while this record comes across as a somewhat more lush affair than their last outing the emphasis is still on the space in the music.

And what beautiful space it is. Plenty of bands indulge in seasonally themed releases - and at Christmas more than ever - but they more often than not come across as half-cocked, half-baked ventures. eagleowl have overcome this hurdle magnificently; Sleep the Winter is perfectly tailored for nights in by a roaring fire and the evocative soundscapes they craft instantly transport you to whatever your idea of a winter wonderland might be.

I've included a download of the B-side, Laughter, which is excellent, but I urge you to get hold of a copy so you can hear the title track which is even better.

[audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/Eagleowl/Eagleowl_Laughter.mp3]

eagleowl - Laughter

Mumford and Sons: Little Lion Man

2009-10-02T00:00:00Z

This band has been scooting round the periphery of my musical awareness for quite a while now. With good reviews from all sorts of blogs that I respect I should really have made an effort to get into them sooner. Alas, it actually took a chance encounter at Radio One to alert me to the fact that this band are actually very good. Radio One, of all places! Christ alive, I never thought I'd see the day. Anyway, Mumford and Sons had recorded on of R1's Live Lounge sessions, and the track that hooked me in was Little Lion Man - despite the fact that a substantial part of the chorus had been muted due to excess profanity.

The day after this accidental R1 experience I listened to a session/interview that the band had recorded for The Waiting Room online radio show. Again, it was excellent, and again it was Little Lion Man that stood out. It turns out that I actually already had the band's EP Love Your Ground - featuring Little Lion Man - in my iTunes library, but hadn't taken the time to listen to it. A shocking oversight, I'm sure you'll agree.

The Touques: EP

2009-09-08T00:00:00Z

As I listened to this eponymous EP from US outfit The Touques I am ashamed to say my first thought was that they sounded pretty amateurish. The guitars sounded too loud, there were tuning issues all over the place and the whole thing sounded like one big mess. But then about halfway through the record something happened; I "got" what The Touques were doing.

Quite frankly, this record is just mad enough to work. Since coming to this realisation I've had the EP on repeat constantly and it gets more and more enjoyable with every listen. The guitars aren't too loud, the tuning's deliberately obtuse, and when viewed simply as a sonic entity what at first sounded like mess is actually a very astute creation indeed.

The music of The Touques is perhaps a touch too arch for most listeners, but I get the impression that those who do understand what's going on will absolutely love it.

The Touques - 4 [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/TheTouques/TheTouques_4.mp3]

The Touques - Roy Stampler [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/TheTouques/TheTouques_RoyStampler.mp3]

The Big Pink: A Brief History of Love

2009-09-07T00:00:00Z

The Big Pink's debut LP A Brief History of Love comes out on the 14th, courtesy of the ever-popular 4AD records, but today sees the release of their single Dominos. To be honest, when I first heard the record I wasn't all that impressed. It wasn't bad, but the only thing I remember thinking was that it wasn't really my kind of thing. Somehow, however, Dominos ended up on my mp3 player and I have yet to skip past it. Not the most glowing praise you might be thinking, but hear me out...

My mp3 player is one of those little ones that only hold a gigabyte or so's worth of music. I've yet to see the appeal of having all my music with me all of the time - it leads to lazy listening habits - so I update the playlist on my mp3 player every couple of days and have quite a strict system for choosing what goes on and what comes off. My music listening falls into three categories: if I want to listen to something "properly" I'll play the CD on my decent hi-fi and make time to sit down and give the record the time it deserves. Most of the time, however, my music listening takes a more passive approach; I'll play music in the background whilst "working" using the joys of iTunes, a rather excessive mp3 collection on a hard-drive, and the magical "shuffle" setting. The third method of listening is when the mp3 player comes in. I spend a lot of time on public transport, and traveling with headphones on is a remarkably effective way of focusing the mind. This is what I'd call "academic" listening; every note, every instrument and every technique is analysed in great detail. As such, I reserve space on my mp3 player for new music; records I have yet to properly absorb and assimilate.

A long train journey, a small selection of songs, and a skip button is a great way to sort the wheat from the chaff. When space is at such a premium songs that get skipped more than once are replaced at the first opportunity. So when I say that Dominos has been on there for well over a week now, it's more a measure of it's quality than you might first have thought. The success of Dominos has lead me to give A Brief History of Love a second chance, and while it's still not exactly my kind of thing, it does stand up to repeat listening.

It's an album with a definite "sound"; The Big Pink appear to be paying close attention to their image, and whilst it might be overly studied and affected at least it's focused and concise. In the current pop-music climate who can blame them for dealing in broad strokes? Who has time for subtlety anymore? Niggles aside, this is a sparse, atmospheric record (read: it has lots of reverb) with that kind of deliberately dirty edge to it that always appeals to me. It's nothing you haven't heard before, but is well worth a listen despite everything.

Dark Mean: frankencottage

2009-06-15T00:00:00Z

This short EP (only four tracks long) was a surprising treat. I say surprising, but having heard nothing about Canadian band Dark Mean I was approaching this record with no preconceptions at all. As such, the quality of this EP was only surprising in that I first listened to it whilst trawling through a batch of less-than-average-quality records I'd been sent for review. You'd think that hearing music with no expectations or biases would mean you'd be more susceptible to a records merits, but I often find that I am actually* more* critical than usual. An unknown band has everything to prove and making a good first impression is essential; the slightest hiccup or miss-step in the opening minute or so can throw a bad light on an otherwise first-rate record.

Dark Mean, by contrast, made no such mistakes on their debut EP frankencottage. I made it all the way through the record without even thinking about skipping any of the tracks - a notable feat despite the short length of the EP. It's not reinventing the wheel or pushing any boundaries, but as far as inoffensive Canadian indie-pop goes these guys tick all the boxes. And they do so with enough panache that you can forgive them their dreadful name (one of their band members is called Mark Dean...) and the hyperbole on their myspace ("extending beyond the traditional boundaries of pop music" they certainly aren't...).

In short this is a competent debut. They say it's the first part of a 3-EP cycle, so I look forward to their next effort (due later in the summer) with great interest. If you fancy hearing frankencottage all the way through, they're offering it as a free download if you sign up to their mailing list via their website.

Dark Mean - frankencottage [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/DarkMean/DarkMean_frankencottage.mp3]

Dark Mean - Happy Banjo [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/DarkMean/DarkMean_HappyBanjo.mp3]

Matthew and the Atlas: Scavengers

2009-06-13T00:00:00Z

I caught Matt Hegarty, who trades under the moniker Matthew and the Atlas, live at the Zenith Bar in Islington a week or so ago [note: this was in June 2009]. I was thoroughly impressed with what I saw and managed to wheedle an EP out of the guy, and I'm pleased to report that, much like his performance that night, it's excellent.

I'm not normally a fan of husky, honeyed vocals but in this instance I feel I must make an exception. His delivery is probably best described as "soulful", but that term's been so over-used by music hacks that it merely sounds trite and meaningless here. Suffice it to say there's enough gravel in his voice to impart plenty of bluesy imagery, but with enough genuine personality to prevent it coming across as too mannered. And while all this was very impressive in a solo acoustic performance, the record itself takes things to another level entirely.

Normally the addition of banjo/slide-guitar/etc is merely par-for-the-course for solo singer/songwriters, but in this case they are handled with such subtlety and grace that the end result far exceeds the sum of its parts - a depressingly uncommon occurrence in my experience. The scope of this record is vast, especially as it's merely a self-released EP. I'll cut this review short here, as I'm in danger of disappearing in a whirl of hyperbole and over-enthusiasm. Just have a listen to the tracks; they'll tell you far more than I ever could (surely a prime example of the benefits of MP3 blogging over print-media).

Meursault: Nothing Broke

2009-05-15T00:00:00Z

As regular readers will be well aware, I'm a big fan of Pissing on Bonfires/Kissing With Tongues, the debut album from the Scots roustabouts Meursault. I'm a little late in reviewing this new EP of theirs, Nothing Broke, primarily because I wanted to give myself ample time to absorb it.

The packaging for this EP is superb; a (presumably) cheap cardboard sleeve with a hand painted/drawn design, hand-stamped and hand-numbered. It feels like a lot of thought and a lot of love went into making this EP - it's a real boutique product. There's only 300 of them, too, so if you're a fan I suggest you get your order in before they sell out.

Texturally it's a markedly different beast to the album. The digital elements have all been replaced by a much sparser, acoustic atmosphere. Mainly because, one assumes, the line-up of the band has changed somewhat since the first record was recorded. I gather PoB/KWT was a studio-based venture, where frontman Neil Pennycook played most of the stuff, but since then Meursault have become a band proper (as you can see from their Toad Session).

I certainly like this EP a lot, but I'm not sure I'll ever come to love it. Without the more jagged elements (the programed beeps, drums and sine waves from the album) this record seems to be treading water. The forward momentum that gave PoB/KWT it's sparkle is not as evident here, and quite frankly this is due to the songs. The more introspective feel and tone are evident in the structure of the songs as much as in the instrumentation used. There's plenty of space in this EP - which I would say is ultimately a good thing - but it does rob the music of the drive (and perhaps the passion?) that so attracted me to the album.

In conclusion, this is certainly a very good EP in all senses; it's keeping fan's appetites keen, and makes for a jolly good listen. I would say, however, that it doesn't hold a candle to Meursault's album. This release is more for the fans; if you're new to the band then I'd recommend you explore the album thoroughly first.

N.B. As you can see from the comments section, due to popular demand it would appear they've made some more.

Frightened Rabbit: Quietly Now!

2009-04-26T00:00:00Z

I have to say I bought this record out of guilt. When I first caught on to the FR buzz late last year I did so off the back of a rather sneaky download. I’ve since attempted to atone for this unforgivable sin by purchasing Midnight Organ Fight (I could hardly write such a glowing review of the thing and not have actually bought it for myself) and it appears that sense of guilt has lingered on, resulting in the purchase of Quietly Now! (also referred to in some circles as Liver! Lung! FR!) despite hearing quite a bit of negative press about it (crucially a rather indifferent review over at TheSteinbergPrinciple, who’s already proved himself to be quite the FR devotee).

In short, this is Midnight Organ Fight live, with all the songs played in the same order as the original record. It’s billed as “acoustic” but all that means is there isn’t a full drum kit; there’s still plenty of electric guitar, synth and some brushed drums, so it’s not acoustic in the strictest sense. Despite the really nice cardboard packaging, it was with not inconsiderable trepidation that I approached this record; partly owing to the poor reviews, and partly because I’m not a huge fan of live albums. Well, some are great, but most aren’t – even more so than with regular records.

Thankfully, however, it’s a darned super record. The original album has started to sound a little cheesy to my ears, so it was a relief to hear the songs with some more of the rough edges left in… The long the short and the tall of it is that I simply love the songs. They’ve got a set that I can listen to over and over and over again, which is surprisingly rare with albums these days. I’m not sure they’re even close to being my favourite band, and neither of these albums, studio or live, are anywhere near being “all time favourites” but if you look at my Last FM stats for the past few months the sheer number of plays these two albums have racked up far outstrips everything else.

If you don’t like Frightened Rabbit then a live album certainly isn’t going to convince you otherwise, but if your a fan then I’d strongly recommend checking out Quietly Now!. It seems to have polarized opinion amongst fans, but I for one think it’s great.

Kingsbury: Lie To Me

2009-04-06T00:00:00Z

I'm a big fan of free music, and given that you're reading an mp3 blog I'm guessing you are too. As a fan, free music is pretty darned awesome, but for the creator I'm still not entirely sure what it achieves. Allowing blogs to post a couple of tracks off a current album is certainly a great way to generate some interest in the release (provided, of course, that the music is good enough) but when it comes to giving away an entire catalogue I'm not so sure.

Orlando band Kingsbury have done just that. Along with their new EP Lie To Me, you can download everything they've ever recorded completely gratis from their website. Supposedly the only area of the music "industry" that's making any money at the moment is the live sector, and presumably Kingsbury are hoping the promise of free music will generate new fans who'll pay to see their shows. Not a business plan I'd use myself, and certainly not one that's doing anything at all to help "revalue" recorded music, which is surely what those of us on the "creative" side of things should be endeavoring to achieve.

But business and ethics aside, Lie To Me is, well, okay, I guess... I'd be more enthusiastic, but sadly it left me a little cold. The production is fine, the arrangements are fine, and ultimately there's nothing specifically wrong with it, but the songs just didn't engage me in the slightest. What makes this frustrating (and in the end what makes it worthy of a review) is that they clearly have the potential to be great. All the elements involved could make for a spectacular EP, if only they had some clear and focused ideas. As it is, the songs are too rambling and indulgent. With the "sound" these guys have gone for, which is sparse and atmospheric, they need songs that can tie all the elements together and drive them to a common goal. The songs they have got, however, merely trot along at the same meandering pace as the arrangements, resulting in a record that so very nearly _could _be fantastic, but in reality sounds like a band still searching for the creative spark that will hopefuly drive them forward.

Kingsbury - Back in the Orange Grove [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/Kingsbury/Kingsbury_BackInTheOrangeGrove.mp3]

Kingsbury - Lie To Me [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/Kingsbury/Kingsbury_LieToMe.mp3]

Alex Cornish: Until the Traffic Stops

2009-02-26T00:00:00Z

This is a joint album and live review, as I managed to get see Alex Cornish live at St-Giles-in-the-Fields church (just behind Denmark St, for those of you in the know) within a day of receiving my copy of his album, Until the Traffic Stops.

The venue itself made quite the impression; I wasn't even aware that it hosted music events at all, but it appears that they regularly put on classical recitals there. Being as Alex and his band were being joined by a string quartet for this gig it certainly seemed an apt setting, as the excessive reverb afforded by churches is rather flattering to strings. Add to this the gaudy gilding of the god-fearing in the subdued light of a nicely-dressed stage (complete with desk lamps and fairylights) and a distinctly partisan crowd, and my expectations for the evening were rather high.

The story behind Alex's album is also quite a nice one. Fed up of being a city-bound desk-jockey, he upped-sticks and moved to an Edinburgh bedsit where he recorded the record all on his lonesome. Following a low key release the record generated far more attention than was expected, including plaudits from Radio 2, XFM and 6 Music, and now Alex's found some management and is re-releasing Until the Traffic Stops.

Sadly I have to report that the gig itself didn't quite live up to the hype. To my ears the mix in the venue was somewhat "off"; what with the string quartet and the nature of the songs it should have been an epic anthem-fest, but for some reason the music always seemed to lack the necessary punch, even when all the performers were properly "rocking out". The muddiness of the mix was to be expected from such an echoic venue, and is ultimately a minor quibble, but I just couldn't escape the fact that the music's full potential wasn't being reached. Coupled with the uncomfortable pews on which we all sat I ended up with rather a dim opinion of the gig. In retrospect it did have its moments, though. The highlight of the show for me was when Alex himself took up a violin and displayed an unexpected aptitude for the thing, and once the band had warmed up the final songs of the set were actually rather engaging.

As for the record, the production values are very high considering it's a bedroom job done by Alex's own hand. Here the more anthemic songs are given full reign to fulfil their potential far more effectively than they managed to at the gig. In fact hearing them in this form leaves me hoping to catch Alex again at a more acoustically flattering venue. Ultimately I think the songs, delivery and production are too polished and MOR than regular readers of this site (and I myself) have a taste for, but I can see him going far. The record's already received a fair amount of attention from Radio 2 (which is in my opinion this album's spiritual home), but if they pick it up properly then I can easily imagine Alex Cornish comfortably gracing coffee tables accross the nation.

Alex Cornish - My Word What a Mess [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/AlexCornish/AlexCornish_MyWordWhatAMess.mp3]

Alex Cornish - The King of Hearts [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/AlexCornish/AlexCornish_TheKingOfHearts.mp3]

The Steps: The Steps

2009-02-17T00:00:00Z

I'm really not sure about this one. Upon first listen this eponymous release from Texans The Steps sounded alarmingly "pub rock". You know, the sort of generic, "spiky" indie that characterized the early naughties UK charts.

Having thus summarily dismissed them, a week later I made a conscious effort to give them a second chance; a tactic that has saved me from missing out on some really rather good records lately. And still it failed to impress. Under normal circumstances this would simple mean that the record wouldn't get a review on these pages. As a rule I try to avoid slagging off "unknown" bands (unless they're truly, chronically bad), owing to a certain amount of sympathy for their plight on my part. New bands have enough to worry about without some blogger's half-baked negative review spoiling their Google kudos.

And thus we come to the crux of the matter... The Steps aren't terrible, and I actually quite like a couple of their songs (check out their video for Dagger: see what I mean? It's okay). The problem is that they've got nothing new to offer. Who needs another band who want to sound like The Strokes and The Hives? These guys are a little too late for the party (by about eight years) and are quite frankly just a little too boring. They wear their influences on their sleeves and are sadly less than the sum of their parts.

The Steps - Dagger [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/TheSteps/TheSteps_Dagger.mp3]

The Steps - Cold Floors [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/TheSteps/TheSteps_ColdFloors.mp3]

The Rest: Everyone All At Once

2009-02-12T00:00:00Z

Every now and then an album comes out that is truly unique; completely fresh and totally unlike anything you've ever heard before. Everyone All At Once by Canadian band The Rest is certainly not one of those records. It's full of sounds and textures that have already been made by a plethora of other bands (I shan't be so crass as to list them here: the joy of being an mp3 blog is that you can hear the music for yourselves). What this record is, however, is very, very good indeed.

While Everyone All At Once does sound like any number of different albums, the key point is that they're all albums that I've been enjoying a lot lately. The Rest may be somewhat derivative, but they make their music with style, finesse and an obvious passion. The performances captured on this record are excellent and the production is of a very high standard while still being appropriate for the genre (North American Indie, if I had to pigeonhole it...).

It also appears that this record came about as a result of a Gabriel García Márquez style creative exile which seems to be so in-vogue at the moment (courtesy of Bon Iver's Justin Vernon). Coupled with the quality of the songs themselves this confirms my suspicion that, despite similarities to other records, this is a very "pure" album.

The Rest - Sheep in Wolve's [sic] Clothing [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/TheRest/TheRest_SheepInWolvesClothing.mp3]

The Rest - Walk on Water (Auspicious Beginnings) [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/TheRest/TheRest_WalkOnWater.mp3]

Friska Viljor: Tour De Hearts

2009-02-07T00:00:00Z

When I first hear this record I was immediately struck by the expanse of the sound. Not an epic U2-style expanse, but more a breadth of instrumentation reminiscent of early Arcade Fire and current favourites Broken Records. In short, I was sure there must be at least seven band members. It turns out the band consists of only two guys...

Hailing from Sweden, Friska Viljor were formed when two friends, Daniel and Joakim, both broke up with their girlfriends, got drunk, and wrote some songs. So far, so Bon Iver, but this isn't the kind of record you'd expect to come from two broken-hearted Swedes; it's phenomenally cheerful.

I must come clean and admit that I usually find "cheerful" music to be a little sickly-sweet and lacking in emotional scope, and yes, this LP does occasionally get a little cheesy. Yet thankfully it still manages to retain some bite, and there's certainly some very good songs on display here. On a couple of tracks they dabble with some generic synthesizer action (which sounds hopelessly European) but when they stick to real instruments they make for a highly engaging and satisfying listen.

Found: Snarebrained

2009-01-30T00:00:00Z

A few years ago, in the halcyon days of my youth, I found myself in a mind-numbingly menial summer job that involved excessive exposure to Radio One all day everyday. This was, of course, a black period in my life, but the incessant nagging and appalling playlist repetition did serve one purpose. It was in this manner that I first heard about the SXSW (South by South West) Festival.

Now it appears that SXSW can be the making or breaking of many a new band, and is as such considered "quite a big deal". Alas, SXSW is held in Austin, Texas (allegedly the last bastion of taste, decency and free thinking in that cultural wasteland that is the Deep South) and therefore a bit of a bugger to get to if you're from the UK.

So, in order to raise the funds for their airfare, Scottish indie scenesters Found have released the download-only LP Snarebrained. I know two "charity" posts in as many weeks is a little gauche of me, and this record consists mostly of remixes and collaborations, which is a format that can be rather hit or miss, but it is still rather good despite itself. And it's all for a good cause, as if that made any difference.

You can buy and stream Snarebrained from their website.

Popup: A Time and a Place

2009-01-26T00:00:00Z

This album came out in October and completely passed me by. However A Time and a Place is now getting a US release on Team Love Records this coming April, and was brought to my attention via the Team Love Library. Apparently they're so excited about securing its state-side release that they've put it up for free download for the next month.

I get the impression that the record was a long time coming, as the first singles were released all the way back in '06, but then debuts can always be a labour of love. Popup aren't quite as impressive as some of the other Scottish bands I've been getting excited about lately, but they are still very good. The production is sharp and spacious, but with a tendency to err on the side of "jangly indie" when a little more effort could have made it a little more esoteric. It puts me in mind of a scotch Two Gallants - thought there's a few more layers to this record.

Where they really shine, however, is in the songwriting. Thankfully eschewing traditional boy-girl "oh I miss you so much" drivel in favour of more unusual ideas (see album opener Love Triangle), the lyrics are never less than good and occasionally brilliant. It may sound like faint praise to say they're merely "good", but in the current musical environment it's enough to put them head and shoulders above most of the competition.

Popup - Love Triangle [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/Popup/Popup_LoveTriangle.mp3]

Popup - Lucy, What You Trying to Say? [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/Popup/Popup_Lucy.mp3]

Kid, You'll Move Mountains: Loomings

2009-01-25T00:00:00Z

This record is a curious one. I'd never heard of Kid, You'll Move Mountains before, and thus approached Loomings (their debut) with a completely "fresh" ear. As I've learned from previous experience, first-time-listening with my "journalist" hat on is not really the best way to hear a new band: it encourages rushed, overly critical conclusions and sweeping generalisations. In this case I wasn't "grabbed" by the record on my first listen, but decided to give it a second chance (mainly because the design work is really nice, both on the album cover and their website). In the entire history of music there are only four or five albums that blew me away on the first listen and that I still like now. The vast majority of records that make a great first impression hardly ever stick around for more than a month or so. This is due to a sad fact that's been slowly dawning on me for a while now: in the current musical climate "accessible" is often synonymous with "shallow". It's the dense, seemingly obtuse records that provide the most depth and reward.

Now Loomings is not exactly what I'd call "dense" and I doubt it'll become an all-time favourite, but after a few listens it certainly grew on me. What I'd initially dismissed as amateurish scruffiness now sounds like taught and controlled aggression, which is most certainly a good thing. The production on this record is really interesting. It's slick enough to allow you to play the record in the background, but when you give it your full attention it's got just enough bite and edge to keep you interested. One you've "got" their music, Kid, You'll Move Mountains walk the tightrope between accessibility and depth quite masterfully.

It's a very American record, so if you're addicted to the mockney stylings of the current London crop then I'd recommend you steer well clear of this. But if, like me, you're partial to some rock from across the pond then I recommend you get yourselves a copy of Loomings because it's very nice indeed.

Kid, You'll Move Mountains - Wives Tale [sic] [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/KidYoullMoveMountains/KidYoullMoveMountains_WivesTale.mp3]

Kid, You'll Move Mountains - No Applause [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/KidYoullMoveMountains/KidYoullMoveMountains_NoApplause.mp3]

Anaïs Mitchell: The Brightness

2009-01-25T00:00:00Z

On Wednesday I found myself in the delightful Kilburn venue that is The Luminaire watching Anaïs Mitchell. Anaïs has previously slipped completely under my radar, and it wasn't until this gig was recommended to me by a friend that I did some digging and found a copy of her latest LP, The Brightness. Now to a stranger I would best describe her as "very much like Ani DiFranco", but I know at least one person who'd bite my head off if I was to do that. It's no surprise then to learn that she's signed to Ani's Righteous Babe Records.

There is certainly no better venue for seeing an acoustic singer songwriter than The Luminaire. The PA is superb (and the space seems to have been properly "acoustically treated"), the floors and walls are clean, and the whole place is littered with "Shut Up!: we didn't pay to hear you talk" signs. That, coupled with the fact that the place was rammed with her die-hard fans, seemed to make for quite a special evening, for Anaïs at least. Personally I'm of the opinion that there's nothing more undignified than singing along at a gig, so the crowd was bound to annoy me.

Another factor contributing to my increasingly foul mood was the sheer conceit of the girl. Now don't get me wrong, she seemed all kinds of nervous and was certainly humbled by the presence of so many fans, but she kept banging on about an "opera" that she'd written. The songs are, in a word, excellent, and her finger-picking guitar style is brutal and superbly original. So what am I getting all het up about, I hear you ask? As a said before: the bare faced cheek of it all.

I'm no opera purist, but from the examples she played us I can't say I'm expecting any genuine arias or cantatas. I gather that it's a (sadly less than subtle) take on the sorry, sorry tale of Orpheus but set in a "dystopian, post-apocalyptic depression-era American town". For sure it's somewhat current thematically, but La Muette de Portici it ain't... Many believe that concept albums went the way of the dodo along with the Golden Age of Prog', but happily it's a form of LP still in existence today.

The main difference now is that they're never mentioned explicitly. The themes are more subtle, more obscure; and while an album may tell a story or have a single thematic thread, no one feels the need to shout about it. As I said, her songs are excellent, and slowly picking up on Orpheus/Euridice references throughout a conventional album would probably be quite a rewarding experience. Except it never will be, as she's intent on ramming her intentions down out throats.

In short: The Brightness is a fairly good album, her songs are really good, and she puts on a good show. But please, in the name of all that is right and proper, give her a slap if you hear her talking about her "opera".

Dark Was The Night: a Red Hot compilation

2009-01-24T00:00:00Z

I've already mentioned in passing that 2008 was a really good year for me musically; not only because of all the great new stuff that was released, but also because I discovered loads of fantastic "old" music that I'd not previously been aware of. Foremost amongst these new discoveries was my ever growing obsession with The National. I'd really enjoyed The Boxer LP when it came out in 2007, particularly the 3-on-4 feel of Fake Empire, but last year - at the suggestion of a good friend - I checked out their back catalogue and promptly fell head over heels in love.

Unfortunately I hear they're not releasing a new album until 2010, but I've finally found an excuse to post about them: brothers Aaron and Bryce Dessner, from The National, have produced possibly the greatest compilation album I've ever heard about. It's being released by the ever-popular-on-these-pages label 4AD, it's called Dark Was The Night, and it's in aid of the Red Hot Organization - a charity aiming to raise awareness about AIDS and HIV through popular culture.

The list of contributing artists is quite frankly phenomenal. You can see the full list here, and almost every single act on there is a personal favourite of mine, and from what I've heard so far the songs live up to their pedigree. To give you an idea of what I'm talking about a random sample of the thirty-odd acts throws up Bon Iver, Beirut, Conor Oberst, The Decemberists... I'm tempted to list all of them, in fact, because the list is just SO good.

It's all for charity, so sneaky downloading of it is exceptionally deplorable, but they have released one promotional mp3 from the Dirty Projectors and David Byrne, which I've included below. They have a widget for streaming some of the tracks but I can't seem to get it to work here. To remedy the situation I'm including a stream of another track: a cover of Nick Drake's Cello Song by Jose Gonzalez and The Books. I'm particularly excited about this one as it's the first new track from the fantastic The Books that I've heard in ages.

All things considered, this is the record I'm most looking forward to at the moment. It's released on the 16th of February, and I'd strongly recommend getting it.

The Dirty Projectors and David Byrne - Knotty Pine [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/DarkWasTheNight/DirtyProjectorsAndDavidByrne_KnottyPine.mp3]

Jose Gonzalez and The Books - Cello Song [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/DarkWasTheNight/JoseGonzalezAndTheBooks_CelloSong.mp3]

Strauss & Respighi: BBC Concert Orchestra

2009-01-23T00:00:00Z

Last week I dragged myself all the way to the Watford Colosseum to see a workshop by Charles Hazlewood and the BBC Concert Orchestra. It was called a Homage to Ancient Music and focused on both (Richard) Strauss' Divertimento on themes by Couperin, and Respighi's The Birds; both of which are 20thC works that paid homage to works from the Baroque/Renaissance (and therefore "early").

Recorded by BBC Radio 3 as part of their Discovering Music series, it was always going to be an interesting lecture. Hazlewood is one of the more populist composers/broadcasters on the BBC's payroll, and he's of the firm belief that classical music should be for everyone. Thankfully this doesn't mean that he's at all condescending or patronizing in his approach, but merely results in his lectures being accessible to anyone, no matter what their knowledge level. If you have no musical-theory knowledge at all you'll find this an insightful and engaging look at some unfamiliar pieces, and if you are a theory wiz' there's still enough technical detail to keep you happy as well.

Recorded orchestral music just can't compare to witnessing it in the flesh. The BBC Concert Orchestra (in this instance augmented with a harpsichord to provide "period" example of the source material) are consummate professionals and it was a joy to see them at work. I shan't go into the detail of the workshop here: you'll have to wait for the show's broadcast date (I'll post a reminder when I know the actual date it'll be going out on) which will be on a Sunday afternoon/evening. That way you'll also get to hear my dulcet tones on national radio, as I asked a very astute and intelligent-sounding question at the end.

Frightened Rabbit on Rapal

2009-01-13T00:00:00Z

I'm still deeply enamoured of Frightened Rabbit's LP Midnight Organ Fight, but the production is starting to sound just a little cheesy. Thankfully the songs (and their dirty, dirty lyrics) are good enough to cut through the polish and still pack a pretty hefty punch.

If you fancy seeing FR "live" then I'd recommend having a goosey at the four songs they played on Gaelic music show Rapal. The show's almost exclusively in Gaelic with English subtitles, but it's worth persevering to witness the songs sans high production values. It's not a jaw-droppingly amazing performance, but if you're a fan of the band and (like me) haven't seen them live yet, then it certainly makes for interesting viewing. You can view the show on the iPlayer here, and I guess it'll be available for the next six days or so.

Frightened Rabbit - Modern Leper [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/FrightenedRabbit/FrightenedRabbit_TheModernLeper.mp3]

White Lies: To Lose My Life

2009-01-11T00:00:00Z

As I mentioned in my last post, BBC 6 Music have been making an awful lot of noise about their Sound of 2009 list. White Lies are second on that list (after Little Boots, whom I've already profiled on these hallowed pages...). Now anyone who's been near a radio in the last few weeks will have heard their single To Lose My Life, and if you have any sense at all you'll already hate it. Added to this, the singer seemed to be having a little trouble hitting the notes in the chorus when they preformed it in The Hub.

Not an auspicous start, I'm sure you'll agree; and certainly enough to ensure I dismissed them without much of a thought.

In my more reflective (read: pretentious) moments I like to kick back with some french philosophic literature, a cup of strong home-ground coffee (single origin, no less; none of that "blend" nonsense) and some Esbjörn Svensson Trio on the stereo. The now sadly departed Esbjörn Svensson and his eponymous trio are/were possibly the "coolest" jazz band around. In this case I mean cool in two ways. Firstly, image-wise: they were stick thin, foreign and almost always photographed in black and white. Secondly, and more importantly, music-wise: drums, bass and piano is just about as good as jazz gets in my opinion, and on top of that they had a taste for the experimental and were great believers in the joys of fuzz boxes.

Now imagine my horror when midway through a relaxing evening I'm assaulted by a track that sounds like it's come straight from the Terminator soundtrack. It turns out that White Lies have a track called E. S. T. A traumatising experience, I'm sure you'll agree. Once I recovered from the shock, however, it turned out that the White Lies track wasn't half as bad as I was expecting, inspiring me to give them a second chance.

Ultimately they're actually not too bad a band, and I might have quite liked them a few years ago. But to be frank; do we really need another Joy Division cover band? I think not.

It's always a shame to dismiss a band's entire repertoire with such a sweeping generalisation, but alas, with this type of band it's pretty much inevitable. I was only ever a casual Joy Division listener (I like the hits and watched the films, but couldn't ever fully appreciate a whole album of the stuff) and the truth is that I enjoy the the copycats (Interpol, The Bravery, Placebo, The Editors, et al) far more than the source material. There are hundreds of them, though, and I subconsciously group them all together - guilty by association, if you will. It's a pity, as White Lies have actually got a few good songs; it would be great to hear this band if they'd at least attempted to find a genre of their own and hadn't ended up being so derivative.

White Lies are on Fiction Records, which is a Polydor imprint if I'm not mistaken, and I'm not sure what their views are regarding bloggers giving their tunes away, so you'll have to be content with streamed audio for this post. In recompense, I've included several tracks for your listening pleasure:

The godawful single To Lose My Life, in case you've been living in a hole lately and haven't heard it yet: [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/WhiteLies/WhiteLies_ToLoseMyLife.mp3]

Their song _E. S. T. _[audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/WhiteLies/WhiteLies_EST.mp3]

And their source material, á la Terminator 2: Judgment Day... [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/WhiteLies/TerminatorTheme.mp3]

And finally some decent music to undo the damage of the last 3 tracks: Esbjörn Svensson Trio's Goldwrap. [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/WhiteLies/EST_Goldwrap.mp3]

Little Boots: 6 Music's Sound of 2009

2009-01-09T00:00:00Z

Once more unto the breach, my friends: I've finally emerged from the ravages of the Christmas holiday (relatively unscathed, you'll be pleased to hear) and I'm back at the blog. Hurrah! 2009 should, if all goes to plan, be a really busy year for all things Eaten by Monsters related. The band's EP should be finished by next month (we're mixing at the moment) and there should be load of gigs on the horizon too. I'll try to get back into the habit of updating the EbM Journal, too; so pop over there for up-to-the-minute band news. Blog-wise, things should start hotting up soon as well. There'll be a few more Bearfaced Podcast Sessions, and I'm gonna try harder to get interviews etc to post here. Exclusive content here we come!

But to the matter in hand: BBC 6 Music have finally, after an awful lot of fuss and bluster, announced the winner of their prestigious accolade, The Sound of 2009. It's Little Boots, who I've only come across via Later... but who seems to be causing a bit of a stir, mostly as a result of her nifty little toy the Yamaha Tenori-On.

If I'm honest, I'm not too sure there's much to here beyond the live gimmicks, as all the recorded stuff I've heard seems to be pretty generic and is easily dismissible. I'd definitely recommend checking out her live stuff. As a result of winning the Sound of 2009 she did a BBC session at The Hub, but her best work (so far) is to be found on her youtube account, particularly here and here. The Tenori-On makes for quite a visual show, and the stripped-down versions of her songs are far superior to the band renditions.

I doubt anyone can ever accurately predict the "next big thing", and just because we're at the dawning of a fresh new year doesn't change that. No matter what emerges, I'm certainly looking forward to it. 2008 was in my opinion one of the best years ever for new music (though this seems to be going against the opinions of almost every other music blog I've read lately), and I'm hoping 2009 will be even better.

Little Boots' Stuck on Repeat is the iTunes single of the week at the moment, so check that out (and beware the sneaky remixes of it that many blogs are passing off as the real thing). In the meantime, here's her cover of Hot Chip's Ready for the Floor, made using nowt but her voice and the snazzy Tenori-On:

Little Boots - Ready for the Floor [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/LittleBoots/LittleBoots_ReadyForTheFloor.mp3]

Happy new year.

Layabout: Suburban Legend

2008-12-14T00:00:00Z

I get the impression that this one landed in my inbox as a result of my prattling on about how great Ben Folds used to be. In my experience (which is admittedly limited owing to the fact that I live in England, where Folds-fans are comparatively thin on the ground) a shared enthusiasm for Whatever and Ever, Amen is a surefire way to get a free CD off someone. And in such cases what you invariably end up hearing is almost exactly what you'd expect: MOR piano-rock, with occasionally witty, somewhat acerbic lyrics.

LA based band Layabout are no exception. Perhaps lacking the depth and lyrical range of Folds himself, the Suburban Legend EP certainly delivers on an if-you-like-that-you'll-like-this level, whilst bringing enough new elements to the table to keep things interesting; they're coming at the formula from a somewhat "lounge" angle, if you get my meaning.

If I'm honest, Layabout are a bit too "smooth" for my tastes. I only like Folds when he displays a bit of biting edginess, and given the evidence here I'd say that Layabout haven't found that quite yet.

Layabout - Arms Around the City [audio http://www.layaboutband.com/av/arms_around_the_city_by_layabout.mp3]

You can hear a few more tracks and buy the EP from the Layabout website, but be forewarned: it's fully of clunky Adobe Flash.

Frightened Rabbit: The Midnight Organ Fight

2008-12-09T00:00:00Z

One of the unexpected dilemmas presented by this whole music blogging malarkey is thus: do I just write about ‘new’ music? Or can I write about absolutely anything at all? Ultimately, of course, there's no limit to the nonsense I can spout here, but surely some sort of editorial discipline should be exercised for the sake of readability. So, I propose an ungodly compromise: I'll limit myself to posting about stuff that's new to me.

Accidental discoveries and recommendations form a far greater part of my current listening time than genuinely new stuff - that's just how taste works. Plus it can sometimes take a record a little while to be ‘broken in’. Most of my latest favourite albums have been recommended to me by friends recently, but were actually released ages ago; such as Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers by The National, circa 2003, and Frightened Rabbit's The Midnight Organ Fight which I discovered this morning but was released all the way back in April by FatCat Records.

My late discovery of this album has really annoyed me, because I've only gone and compiled my Top 10 Albums of 2008 early, thus denying this spectacular record its deserved spot. Curses! Don't I feel silly now...

Coincidentally, this latest Frightened Rabbit album has been the topic of some heated debate on the Song, by Toad site (scroll down to the "comments" bit to see what I'm on about). Many are the detractors that claim the record sounds unforgivably like Snow Patrol. Which is almost true. Sure, there's epic-indie-high-register-guitar-pedals aplenty, and the voices are somewhat similar, but this records contains lyrics that Snow Patrol would never dare put on a record. It's a dirty, aggressive and confrontational album, and I love them for it. Poke is my new favourite song by miles.

Get yourselves a copy, if only for the uncommon and well-overdue satisfaction of seeing Bon Iver being knocked for six...

Bon Iver: For Emma, Forever Ago

2008-12-06T00:00:00Z

If you read my Top Ten Albums of 2008 post you'll be aware that Bon Iver's LP For Emma, Forever Ago was my favourite album of this year. You'll also know I declined to offer a full review owing to the fact that the record is on pretty much everyone's end of year lists, and has therefore been just about blogged to death... Being that as a result of that post I've been getting loads of traffic looking for Bon-Iver-related stuff, as a good, upstanding citizen I've decided to give in and actually write something of worth about the record (and now hopefully there'll be slightly fewer disappointed people milling about at chez Eaten by Monsters).

Technically speaking, For Emma has no right to be on so many Best of 08 lists as it was released in 2007 by Jagjaguwar. Thankfully for those of us in the free world (a.k.a. east of the Atlantic and west of the Pacific) it wasn't given a UK release until 4AD squeezed it out this year, so I'm perfectly entitled to claim it as an 08 release.

Upon its release the record received an unprecedented amount of positive press from all over the place. I read most of the monthly and weekly music magazines, and I can't think of a single less-than-four-star review. Coupled with the actual high quality of the music was the romantic (if somewhat apocryphal) tale of Justin Vernon's 100 years of solitude (Bon Iver is Vernon's chosen nom de guerre). The story goes that he holed himself up in a log cabin in the woods for three months, and then preceded to record most of the album all by himself (hence the García Márquez reference) and ate nothing but moose that he'd hunted down himself. I'm not an advocate of full journalistic rigor, and I can't verify how much of this story's actually true, but having read a few interviews with the man himself it appears at least the gist of it is accurate.

To be honest I was surprised at the popularity of For Emma. It's not an easy record to get into, as the conditions have to be just right: owing to the sparse, atmospheric nature of the music you absolutely cannot listen to it in a car, for example, as half the frequency range gets eaten up be engine noise. To be "got" it requires attentive listening in a quiet environment; something I had previously thought to be beyond the casual music fan.

Since the success of the LP, Vernon's gathered a trusted cadre of musicians around him and has been touring non-stop. You can hear the "live" sound at the Bon Iver Daytrotter session and judge for yourself if the transition has worked. For myself, I think the result is a mixed bag: obviously extra musicians can add a lot to a song, but the haunting atmosphere of the CD has been mostly lost in translation (with the exception of Creature Fear, included below).

And now it seems there's another release on the way. I've heard a couple of the tracks, and they sound pretty hot; they're similar enough to For Emma to keep the fans happy, but there seems to be at least a bit of experimentation going on (especialy in the "creative use of auto-tune" department). I'm not 100% sure that they're official promotional pre-releases though, so I won't post them until I'm sure I wouldn't be feeding naughty music piracy. Either way, the Blood Bank EP is due for release soon, and I'm sure we'll all watch young Justin's progress with great interest.

Alela Diane: White as Diamonds

2008-12-05T00:00:00Z

Alela's song The Rifle has been a favorite of the missus' ever since it was an iTunes Single of the Week back in March, and now it seems there's an album on the way, entitled To Be Still. In advance of that, she (or at least her new record label, the inimitable Rough Trade) has released White as Diamonds as a preview.

Sadly it seems she succumbed to the need to slap unnecessary bass and drums all over her sparse, countryish tunes. I guess that's one of the pitfalls of signing to a large label: you get given some actual money to make a recording, and feel that you need to deliver something more "expansive" to warrant the expense...

Thankfully she's done a Daytrotter session sans drums etc, and it sounds much better, and much more in keeping with her style. I've included the Daytrotter version of The Rifle below, along with the promotional copy of White as Diamonds, but to get a true feel for what she's capable of you should definately peruse the Daytrotter tracks. You can get her previous self/tiny-label releases from her wesite, and I'm guessing the new record'll be all over the shops when it gets released...

Alela Diane - White as Diamonds [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/AlelaDiane/AlelaDiane_WhiteAsDiamonds.mp3]

Alela Diane - The Rifle (Daytrotter Session) [audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/AlelaDiane/AlelaDiane_TheRifle_Daytrotter.mp3]

Discovering Music: BBC Radio 3

2008-12-01T00:00:00Z

One of the things I miss about analogue radio is the accidental discoveries I would make whilst cooking with the radio on. Being a child of the digital age - and having long since banished any non-digital devices from my flat - I have pretty much everything I want pretty much whenever I want it. This causes problems, as I'm literally spoilt for choice, but it does have plenty of benefits.

First amongst these bountiful benefits is the marvelous BBC iPlayer. I've always struggled to watch or listen to any program at the same time each week, and now I don't have to bother at all. Hurrah for On Demand!

Now I can finally catch up on back issues of the excellent Discovering Music series that I would occasionally catch on Radio 3. Often presented by the inimitable Charles Hazlewood (whom I suspect shares a stylist with Richard Hammond), the program dissects a piece of classical music, playing crucial extracts and discussing the work, before playing the piece in its entirety.

This week it's Haydn's Symphony No. 100 (the Military) that's under the knife, with the help of the BBC Concert Orchestra, conducted by Hazlewood himself. The 8th of Haydn's 12 London Symphonies, the Military was Haydn's first with a 60 piece orchestra (before coming to London, he'd only had access to 40 piece orchestras). This episode is available from the iPlayer here until Sunday, but being as the series is designed as an educational aid there's also an archive of past episodes here.

Discovering Music is public service broadcasting at its best. Many people umm and err about the benefits of analysing music in this fashion, but I'm of the opinion that increased knowledge increases appreciation. A full understanding of what tricks and techniques Bach uses in his Goldberg Variations, for example, can only add to the sense of awe with which everyone should hold the composer.

Nightjar: The Moth Trap

2008-11-27T00:00:00Z

Yet another bl**dy scotch indie/folk/whatever band! There must be something in the water up there, as this is the latest in what's becoming a long list of great albums to emerge from that neck o' the woods...

Nightjar set themselves apart from the rest of the pack by presenting a much more stripped-back, rootsy sound. You could almost be forgiven for thinking it's of Appalachian origin, such is the strong bluegrass flavour that tints most of the songs.

The Moth Trap has apparently been kicking around for quite a while, but has just recieved an offical release on Song, by Toad Records (you can get your mits on your own copy here). As an interesting aside; it features some guest guitar playing from Kris Drever, who's current band was the subject of my very first CD review for these hallowed pages...

[audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/Nightjar/Nightjar_PoorMansSon.mp3]

Nightjar - Poor Man's Son

Eagleowl: For the Thoughts You Never Had

2008-11-22T00:00:00Z

This is yet another one from north of the border, which seems to be the theme for this week's posts. Eagleowl specialise in that kind of esoteric folkish music that seems to be occupying so much of my time lately, and is yet hard to find a name for. Eagleowl themselves call it "lo-fi post folk", which works about as well as any other term I've heard.

For the Thoughts You Never Had is another record that's all about space and ambiance - the texture of their electric guitar and arco double bass is used particularly effectively. Perhaps more time could have been spent on the violin arrangement and recording: the parts were a little by-the-numbers, and sounded somewhat tinny and scratchy to these ears - but let me stress that that's a minor quibble with what is an otherwise excellent EP.

In keeping with other Fife Kills releases, this is one for absorbing during a quiet night by the fire. Most of the songs are slow burners and they aren't afraid to make the listener work; It's a thinking man's record, if you will (I certainly can't imagine anyone dancing to it. At least not successfully...). This is all thrown delightfully out the window, however, when one reaches the fifth and final track. The superbly/terribly (depending on your mood) titled Mtherfckr _could almost be seen as a pop song, in traditional sense of the word. There's hooks and everything! On the whole I prefer them _sans drum-machine, but I've always been one to appreciate a musical sting in the tail...

[audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/Eagleowl/Eagleowl_Blanket.mp3]

Eagleowl - Blanket

Meursault: Pissing on Bonfires/Kissing With Tongues

2008-11-21T00:00:00Z

I don't know if anyone else feels this, but it seems to me that really good records are few and far between. I don't even mean great records; just good ones. By good, in this context, I mean a record that can stand up to repeat listening and that delivers on all fronts - technical ability of the players, the quality of the songs, the production values, everything. Sure, a new album can impress on first listening, but does it still sound as engaging ten or twenty listens down the line? Sadly, the answer is often no.

It's not all doom and gloom, however, as 2008 (in my "humble" opinion) has had more than its fair share of genuinely good records. I was going to list a few examples of good '08 albums here, but there are actually too many to list. I'm going to have real trouble come the new year when I attempt to compile my Top Ten Albums of 2008...

As a result of this lengthy preamble I can safely assume that many of you will have already guessed where this review is heading. But it's not as clear cut as all that. On my first few listens I was pretty close to dismissing Meursault's album Pissing on Bonfires/Kissing With Tongues as merely "okay". Sure, it's got a great title, but it certainly didn't grab me on my first listen. Thankfully, for some unknown reason I kept playing the record, and now a few days later I can say that (barring a whole slew of awesome albums coming out in the next month and a bit) this album will definitely be on my end of year Top Ten.

Above all else, PoB/KWT "works" as an album. The songs all fit together beautifully and create a superb soundtrack to an evening in with subdued lighting, a good drink and a rubbish book. I'm going to tread carefully here, as I'm in danger of sounding like a real music journalist and using words such as "sublime", "hypnotic" and maybe even "transcendental"... Long story short: this is a great album.

Sparrow & the Workshop: Toad Session 4

2008-11-18T00:00:00Z

Writing a post specifically about another music blog's a bit weird, isn't it? But what the heck; there's good, free music to be had and surely nobody'll complain about me spreading the word.

The Toad Sessions have been a bizarre bunch, so far. The very first one all the way back in March (with the justifiably hyped Broken Records) yielded what has since proved to be my favourite music of 2008 (so far...). I actually prefer the session tracks to the genuine full-band Broken Records recordings; they really let the strings shine, and have a lovely roughly-but-well-mixed vibe.

I get the impression that the idea was that Matthew (a.k.a. Toad) would record all the sessions at his house, but for some reason the first one ended up being done in a real studio, and thus sounded really swish and nice. Those of you who like to read between the lines will already be thinking "so all the others sound rubbish, then?", and in a way it's kind of the truth. The later sessions are obviously more DIY, but then that's half the point: they're informal and personal, which is super. And the music still sounds great, which is really all that matters.

So, Toad Session 4 features Sparrow & the Workshop. I'm not at all familiar with the band, and being as all I know about them I learned from the session itself I shan't even attempt to sound knowledgeable or informed. Needless to say, if you're a fan of the husky indie folk that seems to be _de rigueur _at the moment then you're sure to find something of interest in the interview/session. S&tW add slightly yank lilt to the current Scottish trend, but then their lead singer/songwriter is a yank, which would seem to explain that. The music is remarkably rounded for a three-piece (vox/guitar, bass, drums) and the songs are remarkably mature for someone who's only been writing music for a (comparatively) short while.

[audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/SparrowAndTheWorkshop/SparrowAndTheWorkshop_TheGun_ToadSession.mp3]

Sparrow & the Workshop - The Gun (Toad Session)

In short, get yourselves over to the Song, by Toad site and listen to the session podcast, watch a couple of videos and download all the session tracks. You'll not be disappointed.

Team Love Records: a profile

2008-11-13T00:00:00Z

In my Tilly and the Wall review I briefly mentioned Team Love Records, and how they're a web-savvy label who are all in favour of free music downloads (which I'm assuming you're a fan of too, being as you're here, reading an mp3 blog...). So just to hammer the point home, here's a full-blown profile of the label.

Founded in 2003 by Conor Oberst (from Bright Eyes) and Nate Krenkel (formerly of EMI and Sony, in some sort of A+R capacity), the label grew out of Conor's frustration at not being able to sign all the bands he wanted with Saddle Creek. Conor had a hand in the founding and running of Saddle Creek, but due to the growing size of the label, and the disparate tastes of all the people involved, the smaller, less obviously accessible bands that he liked weren't getting deals. That said, Team Love is still hand-in-hand with the Creekers; they handle all Team Love's U.S. distribution, and the Team Love online shop is on the Saddle Creek website.

The thing that initially set this label apart from others was that they gave all the music away for free on their website. This (obviously) caused trouble when negotiating with other labels for international distribution, so as far as I can tell they now only willingly give away a few tracks from each release. This approach seems to be the norm with small, web-savvy labels at the moment - everyone, bar the majors, is in agreement that promo mp3s generate more interest and ultimately more fans/money down the line for an artist than aggressively hoarding all the act's music does...

In terms of label roster Team Love are definitely more supportive of smaller projects than Saddle Creek, but they do have a few notable exceptions. Tilly and the Wall are their flagship band, and they seem to be doing pretty well despite releasing a poor new album, but as far as I can tell the label's biggest success so far has been Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins (Jenny being the frontwoman of Rilo Kiley) - who made it onto Later... and thus into the hearts and minds of a certain type of English music fan. Willy Mason's first LP Where the Humans Eat was also a Team Love release, but it seems he's an exclusively Virgin act now.

So there you have it; Team Love Records. I'd strongly recommend checking out their website and availing yourself of all the free mp3s you can find there. Chances are you'll find something you like. In the meantime, though, keep yourself occupied with these little trinkets.

A Weather - Oh My Stars

McCarthy Trenching - Cassette Tape Massacre

Rob St John: Like Alchemy

2008-11-13T00:00:00Z

Hurrah - autumn is finally here. The weather's cold and damp, but it's supposed to be; which makes a nice change from the wash-out that was summer '08. And what better way to enjoy being being cozy and warm inside on a blustery day than with a preview of the new Rob St John EP, Like Alchemy. Rob's been making small but pretty persistent waves up in Scotland for a while now, and any regular readers of Song, by Toad or the Daily Growl will already be familiar with his work, but for those new to his music, he specialises in fragile, somewhat pastoral alt./new/whatever folk music, all wrapped up in "boutique" handmade packaging.

This new EP marks a bit of a step forward, as it appears he is now actually a full band. This record was made in one evening - recorded pretty much live - and features harmonium, autoharp, baritone uke, glock, saw (awesome!), cello and double bass, as well as Rob's familiar gentle voice and guitaring. The record comes out on the 8th of December (released by the lovely Fife Kills: records), but is limited to 250 "hand numbered and stamped recycled card copies". It'll be avaliable in various indie record shops up north, and for the rest of us we'll be able to find it at Rough Trade, London, but I'd recommend emailing him to pre-order a copy.

It's only four songs long, so Rob's asked (understandably) that I post only one mp3 from the actual release, but I've managed to get my grubby mitts on a live recording of one of the tracks, so hopefully there's enough here to let you judge the music for yourself (though if you ask me, it's a beautiful record).

[audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/RobStJohn/RobStJohn_PaperShips.mp3]

Rob St John - Paper Ships

[audio //www.bearfacedrecords.com/EbMBlog_mp3s/RobStJohn/RobStJohn_ARedHeron_Live.mp3]

Rob St John - A Red Heron (live)

Tilly and the Wall: O

2008-11-09T00:00:00Z

Released on the super-duper Team Love Records, who are down with all the Web 2.0 kids (ie. they give some stuff away for free and are quite friendly - watch this space for a full label profile in the coming week), and licensed here in the UK to Moshi Moshi (who positively ooze cool), and the follow-up to 2006's stupendous Bottom of Barrels, "O" should have been a dead cert. for everyone's best-of-'08 lists. Sadly, having now heard the thing, I'm not so sure; though it could grow on me.

For those of you unfamiliar with the band, Tilly and the Wall are a 3-girls-2-boys outfit who rode out of the depths of Omaha on the back of Conor Oberst (a big favourite in this house). Their main gimmick is that in place of a drummer they have a tap dancer. Sadly it would appear they haven't the faith in their convictions, as many of the songs on this record feature real drums. Which is, quite frankly, a bit of a let down.

The sleeve to this records has been touted as having a swish die-cut oval that showcases some fan-submitted artwork. This doesn't seem to be in evidence on the copy I have. The cover is pretty dire; monotone and pixelated; reminiscent of a self-release by a rubbish garage-punk band.

That aside, it's not all bad news. O takes a while to get started, but does eventually deliver some fairly good tunes, though it's a bit of a battle getting to them. To my ears (speaking as someone who rates their last album quite highly) this is all a bit too childish and, dare I say it, pop. Nineties pop, to be precise. Beat Control, in particular, is very dated. In fact, I'll go as far as to say this whole record is about ten years too late...

Tilly and the Wall - Dust Me Off

Daytrotter: a profile

2008-11-04T00:00:00Z

I was going to write a post about some great live sessions I've come across lately, but realised that there were far too many good ones to write about retrospectively, and that a great many of those came from the archives of one particular site. So, to save time and to give a little gift to you, my dear readers, I present a profile of the Daytrotter project in its entirety.

The gist of the site is thus: bands touring the states take a couple of hours to record four tracks at the site's studio (Futureappletree Studio 1) that are then posted along with a article or review and some exclusive artwork (the site has several decent illustrators "on staff"). It's a simple idea, and one where the true genius is in the depth and breadth of the bands themselves.

Rather than point out specific sessions from their archives, I'll let you do some of your own recon. work, but to illustrate the quality of the (free) downloads on offer I'll post links to three song chosen by typing "daytrotter" into my iTunes and hitting the shuffle button:

Two Gallants - The Hand That Held Me Down

Bon Iver - Lump Sum

The Spinto Band - Oh Mandy

The Spinto track is a particularly good example of the joys of the Daytrotter sessions as it incorporates a "previously unrecorded" middle eight (read the article to hear the story behind it). I'm sure there'll be plenty more sessions from these guys that I'll be compelled to post about, but for now keep yourselves sated by perusing their archives...

Styrofoam: A Thousand Words

2008-11-04T00:00:00Z

It seems that lately there's an awful lot of singer/songwriter/producers who're finally getting out of their bedrooms and into the real world. By this I mean that they've actually recruited other musicians and started gigging as a band. But is this a good thing? Back-in-the-day, They Might Be Giants lost a great many of their most devoted fans when they changed from being an arty two-piece that used tape loops and quirky gimmicks to being a five-piece band. The music itself didn't suffer (it arguably became better), but they certainly lost some of their cool.

But what about acts that can't realistically recreate the sound of their records on stage? Bon Iver (aka Justin Vernon) made what is in my opinion the best album of 2008 (so far) all on his lonesome, and has been touring pretty much solidly since its release accompanied by a full band. They've been recreating the songs off the record pretty faithfully, but as was to be expected some of the sheen and atmosphere of the record has been lost.

This transfer of songs from record to stage often brings a complete change of sound. The addition of extra musicians - and the human interaction that comes with them - can warp a song so that it becomes utterly unrecognisable, and in some cases changes the feel of the entire project. This metamorphosis can be an exciting thing to witness as a fan. Much in the same way that I enjoy a good cover-version (or "reimagining" if you're Tim Burton) hearing a familiar song in an unfamiliar way can be a thrilling experience.

But what if you're not familiar with the material?

I saw Styrofoam back in July when they were supporting Death Cab for Cutie at the Brixton Academy. I really enjoyed their performance, and thought they made a pretty good trio (guitar/vox, piano/synth/BVs, and drums, all accompanied by laptop-based programing). The sound was sharp, entertaining and well rounded, but more importantly, it was _cool _(albeit in a trashy, europop way...). Being the good music consumer I am, I demonstrated my approval by purchasing an album and an E.P.

Imagine my surprise when I listened to the record and discovered that Arne Van Petegem - whom I had taken to be the band's frontman - was in fact the only official member, and that the band was actually a Play Radio Play style solo project! I was shocked, appalled, and disgusted, and promptly shoved the CDs into my collection to gather dust.

Don't get me wrong; I quite like Play Radio Play, and loved the Postal Service record (alas, it's not one that stands up to repeat listening, but is quite nice every once in a while). So why did I scorn Styrofoam so? I guess it was because the CD wasn't what I was expecting, and my disgust was purely reactionary.

I'm pleased to report that the wonders of "shuffle" have proved me wrong. I've "rediscovered" A Thousand Words, and it's actually pretty super. So I guess the lesson here is... well, sod any lesson or allegorical point; just take every record as you find it.

Styrofoam - [Bright Red Helmet](http://www.mediafire.com/file/tmvwzyycmwj/10 Bright Red Helmet.mp3)

Ben Folds: Way to Normal [fake]

2008-11-03T00:00:00Z

Just a quick update, owing to the fact that I've finally got round to "absorbing" the fake version of the latest Ben Folds album. I posted about the "official" release last week, and included a link to a torrent for the "fake" version of the album that Folds "leaked" on to the 'net to fool his fans. I also predicted that the joke cut would be much better than the official version; and I was right!

Obviously it doesn't stand up as an album in it's own right (it's the cheesiest thing I've heard in ages), but as long as you're aware it's a pastiche when you're listening then it's amazing. It's such a good parody of Folds' style you could be forgiven for having fallen for the scam before it was exposed.

There's nothing here for people who aren't already fans of Folds, but that just comes with the territory. If you are familiar with Folds' repetoire, however, I'd strongly recomend giving this "fake" album a listen. I personally found it a much more rewarding experience than the album proper.

Ben Folds - The Bitch Went Nuts [Fake]

The Glasses: Story Problems

2008-10-31T00:00:00Z

I stumbled upon this album whilst perusing the elbo.ws blog aggregator. It's kind of like the Hype Machine, but not as huge, and a little bit more friendly.

As a result, I know next to nothing about The Glasses, other than what I read about him on his site (he's a solo project, it would appear...)

The music's nice, in a Ben Kweller kinda way, but sounds just a little to unsure of itself for my tastes. I'm sure his next album will be well worth a listen, but the delivery of this one lacks the confidence to engage the listener with his songs. There's some lovely moments, to be sure. Now this is starting to sound like quite a harsh review, and that's not my intention at all. I strongly recommend that you give this a listen, especially if you're fond of the 60's pop that seems to be in-vogue all of a sudden (just listen to the Fleet Foxes album to hear what I'm talking about), but it's just not my cup of tea.

If you're intrigued and want to hear Story Problems, then mosey on down to his site, where he's "doing a Radiohead" and giving it away for free but leaving an honesty box for anyone who want to do the right thing and pay.

The Glasses - Confused Hair

Minotaur Shock: Amateur Dramatics

2008-10-31T00:00:00Z

Okay, I know this came out a while ago, but being as I'm kinda new to this whole blogging business I've a backlog of things to talk about. This album, Amateur Dramatics by Minotaur Shock, links in nicely to the Glasses post from yesterday.

That is, many people have accused Minotaur Shock of having "done a Radiohead", but whereas The Glasses did pretty much the same things as the Oxford proggers, the sale of Amateur Dramatics is almost exactly the opposite: he's put an exact price on each song. Assessing each track by criteria such as "technical difficulty rating", "extra musicians rating" and "fun/replay rating", he's calculated a precise price for the album and individual tracks (all at quite reasonable rates, too).

You can read the full breakdown of his songs at his site, where you can also buy the stuff. I can't say I think the music's amazing (it's pleasant enough for vaguely ambient techno nonsense) and my better half absolutely hates it ("incessant droning", apparently...), but I really like the way the guy writes about his own work. I'll admit, I bought the album on the strength of the idea alone, which most people probably won't be inclined to do, but do I feel compelled to spread the word.

That's because he's doing something that gives back some of the value to music. The Radiohead approach only works if you're already successful; people have been giving music away for free for ages and it's not got many of them very far (anyone who's familiar with Bomb the Music Industry will know what I'm talking about). If the "industry" wants to to actually make any money then this is something they need to do as a matter of great import. The musicians-have-to-pay-rent-too guilt trip will only work for so long, and only affects a minority of (considerate, ethical, and generaly super) people anyway.

Minotaur Shock - My Burr

Ben Folds: Way to Normal

2008-10-19T00:00:00Z

Heavens, Ben's gotten a little sweary with this one! Don't get me wrong, I'm all for expletives, but I can't help but feel Folds' getting a bit old for this s**t.

Anyway, in short, this album's all substance and no style. A lot of people bemoaned the lack of the trade mark Folds humour in his previous album Songs for Silverman, and they'll all be pretty pleased with Way to Normal; there's chuckles aplenty. Sadly the humour comes at a cost: the jokes and ideas come at the expense of scansion and melody. This album's far too wordy and disjointed to stand up as a truly great album; something Folds has already shown he's capable of. This one's just a little too contrived, and a little over-produced too. There's far too much vocal compression on his vocal, and it sucks the life out of the recordings. This is particularly apparent on the otherwise-pretty-good duet with Regina Spektor, You Don't Know Me.

All things considered, the biggest joke about this release isn't even on the record. Folds leaked a copy of the CD onto the net, to be lapped up by fans. It turned out to be the result of a eight-hour session where he and his band mates recorded 6 "fake" songs as a joke at the fans expense. Priceless! You can hear the full story here.

Listening to the legit. CD release, however, I can't shake the feeling I've been given the "joke" record by mistake. While there's nothing particularly exciting about the music on this record (it's all good, just nothing we haven't heard before) it is a truly entertaining listen. I found myself actually chuckling aloud on a couple of occasions.

The word on the street, though, is that the fake album is actually better! I've not listened to it yet myself, but for those of you who are curious here's a link to a ~~torrent for the fake release~~ (and as Folds released it himself, it's a 100% legal download)... I guess that it's got a bit more sparkle and a bit more edge to it, as it's bypassed the "production" prossess that has so mired the official version.

Drever, McCusker, Woomble: Before the Ruin

2008-10-18T00:00:00Z

Well, being as I've repeatedly claimed that this is primarily a music blog I'd better talk about some music...

Choosing what record to post about first was a tough decision (should it be something I think's awesome? or terrible?) and I've finally decided to just write a post about the last CD I bought; Before the Ruin by Kris Drever, John McCusker and Roddy Woomble. Those astute music fans amongst you will probably recognize those names, and this certainly appears to be a folk-super-group.

Woomble's probably the most famous of the group, thanks to the success of his (now seemingly defunct) band Idlewild. I've always been a closet fan of theirs - Roddy's got a great, distinctive voice, but the ham-fisted electric guitar displayed on Warnings/Promises put me right off.

McCusker's played with pretty much any slightly-folky act you can think of, but it probably most renowned for his involvement (musically and otherwise *cough*cough*...) with the occasionally excellent Kate Rusby.

I've not heard of Kris Drever before, but a quick Wikipedia search reveals him to be yet another stalwart of the Northen-England/Scottish folk scene. There are also far too many cameos on this record to mention in full here, but expect to hear drums a la Radiohead's Philip Selway and vocals a la Teenage Fanclub's Norman Blake, to name but a few of the guest appearances...

The album itself is actually pretty good – as you'd expect from such a pedigree – but fails to set the world alight with it's amazingness. The first two tracks particularly stand out, but the momentum slips as the record progresses.

Drever's aged-fisherman style vocal delivery works nicely when layered under the dulcet tones of Woomble, but sounds somewhat contrived and folksy when he takes a turn at lead vocals. His guitaring, on the other hand, is exceptional; competent without being flash, stylistically relevant without being twee. But then again that could be McCusker I'm hearing, as he does step in occasionally on Tenor guitar, but mostly struts his stuff on the fiddle; at times lifting the songs above the morass of singer-songwriter drivel that seems so popular of late, but at others sending the record spiraling toward Radio 2 folk hell... eugh.

In short, Before the Ruin is a fine example of some exceptional musicians doing what they do best, but it does lack the substance and originality that would've made it more than the sum of it's parts.

Pleased to meet you. Hope you guess my name...

2008-10-14T00:00:00Z

Welcome, my friends, welcome to the inaugural post for the Eaten by Monsters blog. I guess I should start with a bit of background info. to set the scene regarding the birth of this exciting venture.

Basically, I'm a sometime musician/student/fainéant who feels he has the right to hoist his opinions on the rest of the world, regardless of whether or not anybody'll actually listen...

My band is called Eaten by Monsters (hence the blog's title) and you can find everything you'd ever want to know about us (and just a little bit more) ~~here~~^[1], which is not only my band's website, but also the website for my entire label. That's right, boys and girls, this cool cat's a high-flying executive in the world's smallest no-budget indie label, Bearfaced Records [RIP].

On my site I have a little journal (a.k.a. an uber pretentious blog) documenting all my musical adventures, and a few friends and I release a semi-regular ~~podcast~~^[2] charting the ups-and-downs of Bearfaced, along with some of the music/news/etc that's caught our attention at any particular time.

But yet I was still left wanting. I craved a more personal and informal forum for airing my views; and lo and behold; I started this blog.

Here I will write reviews of stuff I've come across in my voyages through the cultural ether, as well as rant about various news items that stir up the bile in my belly.

So enjoy!

N.B: I guess this post'd serve quite well in the About page, so I might Ctrl-C it over there too...

2013 update: the "prestigious" eatenbymonsters.com domain now belongs to this very site. The blog has been relatively successful, whereas the band was not. ↩︎
the podcast and the label both died around the same time as my band. ↩︎

About

2008-10-14T00:00:00Z

Many moons ago I used to play in a band called Eaten by Monsters. We worked hard and earned a few reviews. Most were good, some were indifferent and a few were outright nasty. But despite the critical acclaim, we never quite hit the big-time. I have yet to headline the main stage at Glastonbury, and the band is long-dead.

Good names are hard to find, and ones with an available '.com' are rarer still. The idea of a music-review site began as a university project back in 2008. It soon outgrew its position as an academic exercise, earning sole-ownership of the name. The Eaten by Monsters music blog was born.

It never ceases to amaze me that this little blog gets so much attention from new bands. It has always been a privilege to hear the great work that some of you are up to. And being trusted to impart a public opinion is always flattering. If you want your music featured on these pages, check out the submission guidelines.

What gives gave me the right?

My background is music based, first as a player then later as an academic. I studied at Westminster University for my BMus and Goldsmiths College for my MA. I've struggled to get reviews, and then sought therapy (a.k.a. whisky) when I actually got them. I've been on the other side of the transaction.

I think there lies within me the ability to empathize with those that seek my opinion. Of course I may not always act on that empathy. I can at times be rather scathing when pouncing upon flaws in the music of others.

That said, none of that means much. The only thing that gives me any authority to write reviews is simple: I write them. I don't need permission, and for better or worse people read them.

Contact

2008-10-14T00:00:00Z

The sad fact of the matter is that this blog gets sent far more music than I can ever hope to listen to. From my point of view this is fantastic. It means I get to cherry-pick only the best-of-the-best to write about. And a steady stream of emails asking for my opinion is a welcome ego boost. For those who want me to write about their music, it means it's quite hard to stand out from the crowd.

Covering ‘big’ releases can be useful. Those reviews provide a universal point of reference. They also help bed the more obscure reviews in the contemporary musical firmament. But what gets me up in the morning is finding great music that is so new hardly anyone's heard of it. That is what has kept me writing this blog for no money for all these years.

I never intended to be a ‘buzz blog’. It can take weeks or months or years to absorb a record enough to review it well. That said, being one of the first people to give a leg-up to a new young band with oodles of potential is a great feeling.

What all this means is that you should still send me your music. No matter how much of a long-shot it may feel.

Of course the music is the only real deciding factor in whether I write about you or not. Despite this there are still a few things you can do to improve the chances. Getting your foot in the door is not an easy task regardless of the quality of your music.

Eaten by Monsters' draconian and highly arbitrary submission guidelines

1. Use Soundcloud.

Other streaming services are available, but this one is the easiest to use. If there are no other alternatives then I'll host a file myself. But embedding a Soundcloud link is much quicker and looks much better. Bandcamp is a great service. I'll include ‘buy it’ links to a Bandcamp page whenever I have one. But their embeddable player is not the best, and I tend to save myself the hassle and avoid it all together.

2. Send vinyl.

There are precious few new bands that can afford to press their own vinyl. There are even fewer who can afford to give that vinyl away, so this may not apply to many of you. But there is no better way to get to the top of my listening pile than to send me vinyl.

It still won't guarantee you a review. If the music's not interesting I won't write about it, plain and simple. Don't get your hopes up, no matter how much it cost to post me your quadruple-gatefold box-set from the Antarctic. If you want to send me your exquisitely hand-crafted package, you'll need my address. Drop me an email and I'll give it to you.

3. I'm a big believer in 'the album' as a format, so if you can send me a complete work then do so.

Edit: A great many of my reviews of late have been of 7" singles, so you can feel free to ignore guideline #3.

4. Have a thick skin.

It's something I try to avoid doing, but I'm a master of the backhanded compliment. Unless I'm going on a vitriolic rant (which I only do once in a blue moon) I'll only write about a record if there's some kernel of worth within it. What I won't do is skirt around aspects of the music that I don't like. I'll be constructive when I can be, but I'll never say a record's better than I actually think it is. Remember, I'm rating records against every other record ever released. I've had the pleasure of discovering a great many new bands who's music is better than Zeppelin, The Clash, The Specials et al, but the truth is that not much music is that good. There's no shame in not being as good as talented as Jimmy Page. Few of us are. If I've written about you at all it's because I think you're better than 90% of the music that's ever been made. There's a lot of crap out there!

There are PR companies who send generic email updates. Whether I read them or not is a question of trust. If I know the company has a good track record I'll dig deeper, even if I've never heard of the act before. And bands and labels I'm familiar with can get away with an impersonal mass mail out too. Here it's a question of authority - I want to hear their music far more than they need me to hear it.

Where I like to think I can be useful is in getting smaller bands in touch with new audiences. For that kind of band I like to think I'm worth a bit more of their time. I'm not expecting (or wanting) crazy stalking and payola or anything. But knowing my name (Tom) and having a vague idea of the kind of music I write about helps a lot. I'm quite vain, and if you've taken the time to write me a personal email then I'm much more likely to listen to your record.

6. It's pretty easy to tell if a writer's tastes are in line with yours, so read a couple of my reviews.

I like to think that I have eclectic, catholic tastes. I like to think my interests encompass the length and breadth of musical experience. But if you're sending me your latest EDM track that's been dropping phat beats on the club scene then it's going straight in my trash folder. I suppose 'alt. rock' is my milieu of choice, but I try to be open to anything if it's good enough. I'll often feature post-rock, contemporary-classical, jazz, folk. I actively avoid hip-hop, grime, soul, r'n'b.

7. Tell me about yourself, but don't go crazy.

I like to have details of the full band line-up and a brief biog. I also like to have producer, engineer and mixer credits. I have a soft spot in my heart for little indie labels. If you're on one, or represent one, then any info on the label as a whole is also welcome. I always use the record's artwork as the image for a review post. Sending me that's essential, but feel free to throw in some promo pics too, if you like. The key here is concision; give the facts, skip the hyperbole. Wild exclamations about how great a band is just sound like lies, and those emails get deleted. I'll be the judge of whether you're the next Beatles or not. (And for the record, I hate the Beatles).

8. If I'm reviewing an album I usually include two tracks off it to stream and for download.

This is something I've been doing less of lately. The beauty of Soundcloud embeds is that the band themselves can decide whether it's available for download. And as iTunes and other digital services get better and easier, there are fewer and fewer reasons to include ‘illegal downloads’ with a review. Still, the whole point of an mp3 blog such as this one is that people can hear and keep your music.

If you'd rather I didn't include a download then say so straight away. I completely understand bands who want to preserve the value of their songs. I won't think less of you if you don't want to make a download available. Most acts are eager for the added exposure a download brings.

For EPs I generally include two songs to stream but just one to download. For singles I stream the a-side and put up the b-side for download. Again, if you want me to do things differently then just say so in the email. I like to think I'm a pretty accommodating guy.

9. For the love of all that is good in this world…

DON'T SEND ME REMIXES!

I expand on my views of remixes at length here.

None of this guarantees I'll listen to your record. That's just the nature of the music industry at large at the moment. Now, more than ever, it's a buyers market. Just using common sense will get you farther than anything else. At the end of the day I do this because I like hearing new music. If your stuff's good then I'll be glad to hear it.

Do be aware, though, that if your music is bloody awful then I will say so publicly. People's dislikes are just as important as their likes. I think it's important to write about bad music from time to time. I always try not to be nasty. If your stuff is just a bit under-rehearsed or badly-recorded then I won't go out of my way to say bad things. Every band has to start somewhere, and I'm not interested in picking on people just because they're not quite ready yet. But if a record's truly awful and I've taken time out of my day to listen to it, it's a different story. Then I'll need to blow off some steam, and I'm most likely to do that on these pages.

If all this still hasn't put you off, then I salute you! And I look forward to hearing your record.

If you have an issue with any of the mp3s posted here then get in touch. Use the address above and I'll be happy to remove the file. The mp3s I post are a promotional tool to generate interest for new bands. It is not my intention to encourage sneaky file pinching.

Eaten by Monsters: music blog

2008-10-14T00:00:00Z

I ran this music blog from autumn 2008 through until spring 2014. I owe a lot to this blog as it taught me the basic skills I needed to get started in what is now my career: web developmnent. For a long time this site was properly dead (I'd closed down the hosting account that the blog lived on) but here it is, resurrected! These pages are an archive of the ~200 reviews and articles I wrote during that time.

Updated for 2021: 24 Christmas songs that don't suck

Music Reviews

2008-10-14T00:00:00Z

Over the years I've reviewed a lot of records and given them all^[1] marks out of 10.

Well, most of them 🤷‍♂️ ↩︎