Kitten Painting

Indietracks : An Indiepop Compilation (Make Do And Mend)

2009-07-11T17:48:00.004+01:00

Indietracks! It’s nearly upon us again. Peer down the line and you can just make out a curl of steam in the distance, woohoo!

If you’re going to the festival, this album is an excellent way of getting yerself in the mood. If you’re not going, then it’s a fine primer for what’s going on over the hills and far away from the mainstream in the land of INDIEPOP: be it jangly, spangly, fuzzy, buzzy, spikey, swoonsome or any other kind of marvellous that the term can encompass.

Friends kick things off with the suitably titled ‘You’ll Never See That Summertime Again’, a perfect piece of sparkling summertime pop that is sort of The Bodines if they’d been submerged in the soaring wistfulness of The Lotus Eaters’ ‘First Picture Of You’ (a total flashback-to-childhood-summer song).

Eux Autres sidle towards Beat Happening terrirtory with their beaty drums, twanglesome guitars and flat emotion-free = emotion-full indie boy/girl vocals. There are laid-back fuzzy Pavementisms from Downdime (more flashbacks, this time to the Subpop summer of 1990). Wake The President have Scottish vocals, to which I am always rather partial, and rush along on handclaps and old-skool Post-cardy jangles that SNAP! at your desert-boot clad heels. Disasteradio use synths and robot vocoder vocals to come across like Super Furries havin’ a disko with Neu!

The Rocky Nest’s track is called ‘Lenny and Jenny Had One Too Many’ which is very annoying of it. However they make intriguingly odd and fuddled soundz like a lo-fi kitchen-sink T.Rex cranking along. And they feature an ex-Fonda 500 so that’s me sold.

More people-what-used-to-be-in-another-band action from Ray Rumours And The No-Eyed Deers, i.e. Ros what was in Electrelane. Unlike Electrelane, ‘Puddles And Rain’ is very simple, rattley and sparse, but thanks to Ros’ open, girlish voice it has a touching warmth.

Moustache Of Insanity’s (don’t say a word) ‘Living Room Pic-nic’ is like a v.v. cutesie version of Schwervon’s ‘Dinner’ with a bit of Esiotrot for afters. Zipper are indeed zippy, guitars crunching along in a Rosehips sort of way with a not-stopping-for-breath girl vocal. Alaska’s ‘She Was A Rockstar’ is utterly adorable swingin’ pop, a companion pice to ‘Talulah Gosh’ maybe?

What’s this? Why, ‘tis Teenage Fanclub, this year’s righteous headliners. Oh no, it’s ‘Cancion de Viernes’ by Cooper, it just sounds EXACTLY like the Fannies, or maybe EXACTLY like The Fannies being Big Star and The Byrds, lots of lazily jangling guitars and sunkissed harmonies. Num.

Fzzztttt! Bloop! The space-time continuum has gone all hazey! Erk! I can’t tell if it’s then or now, for behold! ‘tis Mighty Mighty with ‘Kiss For The Crowd’! Is that an old track or new ’un? Not sure, I’m not completely au fait with the band’s entire oeuvre you know. Though I did always enjoy, ‘Maisonette’, and ‘Throwaway’, and ‘Built Like A Car’ and ‘Biddy Baxter’ and the picture of Bridget Sea Urchin surfing on an ironing board, and… blimey! what time are they playing?

Imagine Broadcast circa ‘The Noise made By People’ trying to go Ye-ye but then going a bit John Barry instead. You might get ‘Alapati’ by the splendidly/sick-makingly named Marshmallow Kisses. Ver Kisses, as nobody should ever refer to them, are going to include Tim from Hong Kong In The 60s amongst their number when they play at Indietracks, and look here ARE HK60s with their sublime, spider-web in the breeze ‘Disintegration’. If you fancy being soothed for a while by sounds that stroke as gentle as a feather, settle yourself in a pew when HK60s grace the Church stage.

Someone needs to take up the mantle of fine penmanship and top pop ideals left lying around by Belle And Sebastian. Maybe Pocketbooks, or perhaps Butcher Boy, both on fine form here, will get there with their elegantly-crafted pop vignettes.

Ste McCabe’s ‘Public Debate’ is Pete Shelly singing The Ramones' ‘I Wanna Live’ and it brings a welcome buzz of distortion to things. Also, Ste says “My hatred of the Daily Mail is bordering on obsession”. Huzzah! With you there for sure.

Forty-four tracks long, this is a bumper summer special of an album. It’s got music from Sweden, Denmark, Spain, USA, UK, Germany, New Zealand, Japan, Italy, Argentina… and is an excellent way of taking a peek at the soundz going down on the international pop underground. Print out your festival schedule and start asterisking who you're going to see. All aboard!

P.S. This review was written whilst wearing a dress patterned with apple trees, sitting on a sunny beach, occasionally flicking pebbles into the sea. Afterwards I went and ate an ice-cream. True! Facts!

www.indietracks.co.uk
www.makedoandmendrecords.co.uk

Crystal Stilts / The Bats / Comet Gain – 22 May 2009, ICA

2009-06-15T19:58:00.005+01:00

Ian WatsON is DJing. He plays stuff like The Shop Assistants, Pocketbooks, The Smiths, My Bloody Valentine, and, ooh! ‘Psycho’ by The Sonics. Good. I like the ICA despite the alleged dodgy sound. Being in the auditorium is like being a mouse in a black shoe-box. Above us, spread out across a large stage replete with flashy lights and lawks! dry ice, it is The Rolling Stones! no it’s Comet Gain!! It’s kind of eye-goggling seeing them in such ‘professional’ environs. As Rachel says (waving her ‘S&M’ black leather maracas) ‘We are contemporary art’

She’s right. When they’re good Comet Gain are the best, the only pop grupe. Tonight they’re pretty good: Say Yes, Love Without Lies, Why I Try To Look So Bad. They are The Velvet Underground doing ‘What Goes On’ and Love doing ‘Seven And Seven Is’.

Kaye’s tee-shirt has fluffy, flouncy sleeves that look like angel wings. She’s a sublime pop kid. David keeps his jokes to himself, but still cackles openly at the amusements inside his head. He tells us about how Comet Gain went to America and played with Crystal Stilts who had better hair, but Comet Gain had better jokes and were better at drinking. Near the end of an ecstatic pop thrills set, Jon Slade sidles off backstage. He reappears in order to, er, jump offstage and join Helen Shrag in the audience.

The Bats play a short, sweet sunshine set before annoyingly rushing off to play another set in a pub right near our flat, whilst we’re still back in the ICA. The Bats, who I never really listened to in olden times, are fab. Like Mamas and Papas* sliced through with the darkness of good eighties no wave. Darkly shimmering guitars, cosy jangle with an icy bite. And one of their guitarists is a woman - SHOCK!

Crystal Stilts seem a tad lacklustre and complain about the sound all night – unable to hit the right peak of reverb. Frankie is playing boring old sitting down drums, wot a swizz! She does have a teeny tambourine taped to the tom though. With singer Brad not being one for cheery chats with the crowd and guitarist JB skulking by his amp, breaking strings and not really being much of a presence, organist Kyle (also to be seen larking in The Ladybug Transistor) takes over proceedings, both sonically as rockingly mournful notes ripple through the songs, and in communing with the crowd.

Ooh, he’s a card, telling us about playing in Italy where "they didn’t understand a word", and offering his admittedly excellent tee-shirt (a dog saying "Kevin") for sale at the bargainous price of £80. Feck offers the quids. The price rises to £100. Feck heckles ‘Wankers’. Kyle respondes ‘Sexy wankers’ and the whole shebang ends with in a smash hit pop blur.

* Did you see that BBC 4 ‘documentary about The Mamas and Papas? Gah! ‘twas a ridiculous whitewash that probably broke all kinds of torture laws by playing ‘California Dreamin’ over and over and OVER. There was no mention of the crazy, messed up marriages/affairs/kicking out of Michelle Phillips/drug frenzies etc.

The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart / Shrag / Tender Trap, 10 June 2009 - Cargo

2009-06-11T12:42:00.013+01:00

Wake up to find odd little bruises up and down my arms. Hmm, they must be from people’s pokey elbows in last night’s middle-aged mosh-pit. The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart are back!!! Again. Despite tube strikes, Cargo is crammed and there is a determination amongst the regular indie-pop massive to go mentalz and have top fuzzpop fun. So we do. I’m not sure how great a show the Pains play tonight (surely they must be feeling a little jaded by now?) I’m too busy laughing hysterically and jumping up and down in a ridiculous scrum at the front. We may be knocking on (as Marianthi says, the nearer you are to the front, the older the crowd is), but hey, we can still kick it like nutjobs. We chant out the words (tuneful!), do the ‘ooh, ooh, ooh’ bits in ‘Come Saturday’, punch the air to ‘Everything With You’, and those of us with hair shake our barnets in deep appreciation of the glorious buzzing tunes. I especially enjoy ‘The Tenure Itch’ tonight and ‘Young Adult Friction’ is pretty much a religious experience. There’s even a brand spanking new song, ‘Higher Than The Stars’ jangling wistfully, Kip's voice lollopingly lilting. As the set closes with a big, fat, thumpy ‘Gentle Sons’ we all agree a fine time has been had indeed, much to the disdain of the sour faced youth, who prefer not to dance.

Earlier on, Tender Trap play a set chocka with new tunes, sounding slightly ramshackle, but sparky, and surprisingly fearsome thanks to Katrina Dixon's big boomy stand-up drumming that boots it all along (as Amelia says 'stand up drummers are it'). Amelia, shaking a tambourine throughout, is in good voice - clear and bell-like, keeping the tunes in check. She is also wearing an excellent ensemble – a dress with slightly–delic black swirls, turquoise tights and ankle boots, sort of indie-kid grows up, but not too much.

We get two ‘hits’. The lovely see-sawing ‘Oh Katrina’ and ‘Talking Backwards’. Amelia announces the next song is called ‘Suddenly’. My brain goes “Suddenleeeee, life has new meaning etc…argh! shut up!!” Amelia goes, “The title makes everyone think of Lionel Ritchie”. She’s right, it does. How awful! But the song’s good, so we’ll let her off. Oh, I'll just fill in the end of this line, or those last two words look odd. There.

Regular gigster, John M. in his rightful position at the front of the crowd is tonight sporting a Damned tee-shirt which inspires an excellent anecdote from Amelia about going to see The Damned years ago. She had to wear the same clothes to school the next day, which would have been fine, except an old man got onstage and wee-ed on her head! Not to worry though, nothing like that will happen tonight, even though they’re ending the set with their ‘punk rock’ song.

Throughout Tender Trap’s set, Helen of Shrag has been doing happy stampy dances at the front. Now she gets onstage to do more stampy dancing with Shrag, (whilst singing, obvs.) and Amelia does reciprocal dancing from the audience. Drummer Leigh-Ann has a gammy foot, so props herself up with crutches to add singing bits, whilst a stand-in friend drummer, er, drums. Shrag are great, smashing their way through an assortment of new songs and excellently crunchy renditions of ‘Long Term Monster’ and ‘Ghosts Before Breakfast’. They are urgent and exciting and vital and a bit odd. Good work all round.

Over And Over - The Legends (Labrador Records)

2009-06-10T13:25:00.002+01:00

‘Seconds Away’ sounds like The Acid House Kings being played on a badly tuned workshop radio whilst someone embarks on some serious angle-grinding. It is therefore FAB! Candy coated perfect pop embedded in ferocious spitty sparks. This is The Legends, and this isn’t just any old Swedey indie-pop to add to the (rather large) pile, ‘cos The Legends are mostly Johan Angergard. Johan’s other bands include Club 8 and pop, um, legends The Acid House Kings. He knows what he’s doing does Johan, hence this album of prism perfect, crystalline pop. Do you love elegant, can’t-see-the-joins, downy-soft, everso slightly yearning Swedish indie-pop? Yes? Me too. Do you ADORE fearsome fuzz ‘n’ feedback and dark mutterings over stand-up drumbeats? I know, isn’t it great?! This is what The Legends have got for you, an album that basically vacillates between the two. It’s not new. But it is fabulously POP!

Album opener, ‘You Won’ is deliciously doomy 80s-esque gloom pop, the sort that The Editors et al have made so annoying, The Legends manage a lightness of touch that hints at early Talk Talk - dark and urgent. ‘Monday To Saturday’ trips over the Acid House Kings’ dew-sparkling lawns as Club 8 lady Karolina Komstedt duets sweetly with Angergard over echoey finger-clicks. The pain killers and afternoon sunlight furze of ‘Heartbeats’ recalls a more numb, less devastated Radio Dept. (whatever happened to..?) ‘Dancefloor’ goes doolally bubblegum, twisting and shouting over a hissy backbeat. ‘Something Strange Will Happen’ is edgily motorik but just can’t help but ripple into a sunshine smile here and there.

This album takes my faves from the olden days and makes them over, all sparkly and fresh like newly fallen snow. Inevitably ( I was a teenage Chain-head) it’s the feedback laced pitch-perfect Reidisms that I (Douglas) hart the most here, the squealing, shredding, squalling ‘Recife’, the blood-thumping rumble of ‘Over And Over’ being Frankenstein-stitched onto some ‘Psychocandy’ offcuts. ‘Always The Same’ is wonderful - The Cardigans mashed up with The Jesus And Mary Chain. Heart-explodingly good pop covered in a thick lacquer of fuzz, the tune EXACTLY The JAMC’s ‘Inside Me’ complete with rumbly bass. Hurrah! Then, to end…My Bloody Valentine. ‘Touch’ is ‘Nothing Much To Lose’ scrubbed up all lovely for its first day at big school. Bless.

Come Saturday. 16 May 2009

2009-05-27T16:32:00.005+01:00

Wake up to a sunny day of Pains action. A quick bus ride up the road and we’re hangin’ in Rough Trade East, dissecting last night, anticipating today and inspecting ‘Black Medicine Music’ by Stag Hare which has got a strangely compelling sleeve. In a corner, Kip of the Pains is having a er, kip in an armchair. Don’t blame him, it seems to be a pretty punishing schedule the band are following.

Help Stamp Out Loneliness play a support set and their bright ‘n’ breezy tunes sound great on this bright ‘n’ breezy morn. They really are right catchy, the songs tumbling round your brain on spin-cycle. Singer D. looks resplendent in purple satin troosers and a natty velvet bow-tie. Also, I'd forgotten they did that cover of Belinda Carlisle’s ‘Rush Hour’ and am charmed all over again when it appears. You can see light-bulbs going on above peoples’ heads when the chorus kicks in.

We shuffle about and wonder which idiot has left a rucksack apparently containing a laptop lying around on the floor, alongside a copy of Simon Reynold’s ‘Rip It Up’. This is the East End you know – can’t just leave shit lying around and expect it to be there later. Or maybe it’s a bomb? Who knows? Being caring types we tuck the book away safely so it doesn’t get damaged and keep a wary eye on the laptop/bomb. At the end of the Pains set we stand about admiring Peggy’s keyboard case - the neatly stencilled band name set off with a tiny stencilled heart - and watch as she collects the laptop/bomb and book. Oh.

The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart play a short sharp set, looking slightly bleary, but sounding ferocious. The second guitar boots all the tunes up the arse, especially with some wailingly tremendous tremolo arm action on ‘Come Saturday’ - eeoooww, screee! The songs woosh and Pop! and in one of those time-stops moments of sonic ascension I suddenly feel overwhelmed at their fabness and the way the noise is hurtling around us so perfectly and I almost get teary. Luckily, the moment passes when Kip knocks the mic off the stand and has to wrestle it back up whilst continuing to play and sing – quite an impressive feat.

Later…
Ooh, ‘eck it’s sweaty in the Windmill. We’re all squidged in enjoying our second bout of Pains. It’s just like the olden days down the furnace-like Falcon, only without the bass player from The Fury Things fainting off the stage mid-song. The Pains are obviously hard-core – Kip remains resolutely zipped into his jacket, Peggy stays cardie-ed up. They joke about not being allowed to take off their ‘cardigans’. To do so would be contravene indiepop rules.

This is the best set yet; crashing and crunching and swooning in all the right places, the band a perfect pop gang. As an encore we get the mythical b-side of ‘103’ that our pal John has been telling us sounds kind of Orange Juice-y. In fact it sounds REALLY Orange Juice-y, jangling away, much cleaner than the normal fuzztastic Pains tunes (only one guitar here). Alex even gets the bass a bit Postcard-funky. The song’s called ‘Falling Over’. It turns out that the band’s working title for the song was ‘Orange Juice Song’. Indeed.

The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart / The Loves / The Draculas – 15 May 2009, The Lexington

2009-05-26T14:02:00.000+01:00

7.30 at the Lex and lo! already there is a queue of people anxious to get hold of the last remaining tickets on the door. Right at the front is our olde friende Trev. He’s been here since 5pm. This is his first Pains Of Being Pure At Heart gig (not counting today’s Pure Groove instore), but he’s going to three others ‘making up for lost time’. There seem to be plenty of folks making up for lost time tonight, the place is noticeably busier than when last the Pains played. The audience is younger too, the kidz finally cottoning onto the buzz that was getting their elders all excited this time last year. This means there’s no 30-something moshpit tonight. In fact there’s no moshpit at all, the kids being content to nod along happily, maybe for fear of disturbing their st, st, st Studioline hair.

The Draculas include Patrick (rattling good drumbeats) and Roxanne (Peter Pan collar, big red guitar) who used to be in The Royal We and Sexy Kids. They have good fringes and sound tres olde schoole indie-poppe. At first they make me think of Esmerelda’s Kite (yes), jangly, fizzy, cutesy, although this might be because E.K. had a song called ‘Vampire Girl’. Then they play a song that seems to have the guitar riff from The Primitives’ ‘Thru The Flowers’. Which is always nice. I especially enjoy Patrick’s thumperific drumming, complete with tambourine taped to the top of the tom. Old school, you see. They improve as the set progresses, ending with a fuzzy, blurry rumbling kind of song…

Swizz! We were promised Simon Love in a cape. We thought it might herald The Loves’ new prog. direction, but no, the cape's been forgotton and they’re being their groovy old selves, albeit in a mighty rockin’ star spangled manner. And look! bass-player Danielle is back! back!! back!!! a mere month or so after her emotional departure from the band. Welcome back Danielle! There’s no Jenna tonite, so her place is taken by Panther Girl Rowena, who looks splendidly Truffaut mod and does a mean job of singing ‘Can You Feel My Heart Beat’, so much so that the audience demands more from her. There isn’t any more though, instead there’s Simon singing “A song about someone every one of you has met.” Which is, of course, the glam-popilicious ‘Sweet Sister Delia’. We’ve all met Delia ‘cos she’s the door lady tonight, and if anyone deserves their own Loves song, it’s Delia, who is a superstar. The Loves end with a wiggy wig out cover of Os Mutantes' ‘Bat Macumba’, inviting the audience to join in. A bloke with startling hair clambers out of the front row and onto the stage to show off with percussion. Ramshackle!

In an attempt to get down with the old guard, the Twee As Fuck DJ is ransacking a selection of tunes provided by Tom Indie-mp3. We are thus greatly amused by the spinning of ‘The 18.10 To Yeovil Junction’ by Bubblegum Splash! Peggy of the Pains seems to appreciate it too, nodding along and grinning as she takes to the stage.

‘Fsssshhhhzzzzzzssssss’ The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart have added a second guitarist to their mix and it sounds great, adding an extra wash of white noise and trebly fuzz. Yum! This does mean we can’t really hear Peggy’s keyboards, but we can see her smiling and shaking her hair and er, being hugged by a tired and emotional ‘friend’ from Brooklyn who keeps prancing onto the stage; presenting her with a lollipop, fiddling with the keyboards etc. At the end he trips over and nearly sits on Kip’s lovely Fender Jag. He seems like the kind of friend you laugh at indulgently through slightly gritted teeth.

The set is chocka with Pains delights - 'Come Saturday', 'The Tenure Itch', 'Everything With You' - no alarms and no surprises, just simple tunes that whiz through you in a sherbetty way. Good ‘cos that’s what we want to hear. Forthcoming single ‘103’ gets an outing, snapping along sounding pure pop breezy. As ever, my fave is ‘Young Adult Friction’, the melody flipping and swooning through the noise, although Kip appears to substitute the words ‘mouldy page’ for ‘lovely face’. Eww!

A thing I love about the Pains live is the incredibly thumpy drums that power it all along and make it nigh on impossible not to dance or at least stamp your feet happily. Drummer Kurt only plays a simple wee kit (the Fortuna Pop! house kit), but lordy he smacks those beats.

Even though the band could never be accused of exploring new sonic territory, and we’ve heard their sound a gazillion times before, there’s just something about The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart that hits right. This fzzzzzttt energy and ebullience that rises off them and means you can’t not adore them. Peggy cheerily announces that the Lexington is their fave place to play. Kip tells us all this is their first London gig. He means this time around but the kidz all cheer ‘cos he’s made it sound like they’re in on something special. (n.b. why not amuse yrself by checking poorly researched reviews elsewhere that repeat this first ever gig fallacy?)

The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart know the power of brevity. Their songs burst out, make their point, make you thrilled and buzz off. Their sets last year hit about 20 minutes or so. This time round they’ve got a bit more of a grip on the reins, tunes not galloping quite so hard means they clock in 30 minutes of stage time. The crowd’s not having it though and demands not one, but two encores, the set topped off with ‘Teenager In Love’ which is, er, my least favourite Pains song. Oh well.

All this pales into insignificance however when we go downstairs and The Loves offer us slices of Bobby Grindrod’s birthday cake. Behold, it is a GIANT FRENCH FANCY! Now that’s art.

Plan B

2009-05-26T13:23:00.002+01:00

Sob! Plan B, the only music magazine I deign to pay money for, is being sent to the big magazine rack in the sky. June will see its final issue hitting the shelves of selected emporia (including, bizarrely, our corner shop) and it’ll be the last time I feel genuinely excited about a magazine being published (I always got that same wee rush of anticipation when it was time for a new Plan B as I used to get when Smash Hits day came around).

I’ll add the final copy to my collection. I’ve got every issue, they look great all lined up on the shelf, their spines all solemn looking hiding the colour explosion inside. That’s the thing about Plan B, it’s a beautiful object as well as a good read, an exceedingly good argument for producing something in print, rather than online. It feels like a lot of love and care has gone into the creation of each issue. There’s always gorgeous photography - even accompanying the live reviews there are none of those crappy, what’s the point? shots of the singer with a mic obscuring their face, unlike in some magazines. The pages teem with brilliant illustrations; oddball images that halt you in your tracks and make you inspect them for a spell – you know, like decent art should. And isn’t it great that a music magazine should commission so much brand new illustration?

Granted, the articles and reviews sometimes left me wondering what the flip the artists being discussed actually, you know, sounded like, but it was always a dang good read. Always thoughtful and intelligent, the writing was a refuge for well-constructed sentences and lovingly honed prose amongst the maelstrom of poorly conceived fuck-wittering found elsewhere. Even the adverts were interesting: how else would I have discovered the terrifying trembling brilliance of Ben Nash’s ‘The Seventh Goodbye’ if I hadn’t been intrigued by Aurora Borealis Records’ slightly sinister ad?

At least it’s good to see the magazine going out on a high, not having compromised or capitulated, not slinking out on its belly in a horrifying state of degradation (e.g. Melody Maker). Thank you for the good times Plan B.

P.S. Everyone always said Plan B even smelled amazing! I never did understand that bit.

The Lovely Eggs – If You Were Fruit (Cherryade)

2009-05-25T15:40:00.002+01:00

You know when you’re pottering about innocently and you have to sing a ridiculous made-up song because it’s just appeared in your head and it would be uncomfortable not to? This is the joy of The Lovely Eggs, they seem to be singing and songing so freely, grabbing tunes and words and instruments at will as music comes exploding out.

Quite often, actual Lovely Eggs songs come into my head during these pottering moments, especially the song that introduced me to their odd-popping, story-book world, the fab ‘Have You Heard A Digital Accordion?’ heard here on their FIRST! album, a chuggy chug along Velvets / Jonathan Richman pop masterpiece.

And that’s not nearly the half of it. ‘If You Were Fruit’ is a crammed junkshop treasure trove of curious, charming, engaging tunes. These are songs about intriguing things that you want to hear about e.g. the problems involved in cooking for sharks, ‘We’re not at ease if we’re not cooking with cheese’ (‘Mices’). Or the title track which sweetly compares someone to types of fruit, “If you were a coconut then I’d wanna be your husk, I would protect you when you fell in the dust”.

This isn’t novelty pop, or ickily cutesy nonsense, this is exploring pop sounds in an interesting, offbeat manner using pleasing unconventional instrumentation. ‘Luna Café’ involves the excellent employment of a swanee whistle - it’s impossible to be grumpy to the sound of a swanee whistle. Holly sings in a girlish voice with northern vowels. Nice to hear a proper accent – that’s folk music, that.

They play acoustic ukulele stumalongs (‘Oh The Stars’); fuzzy, growly stomp-ups (‘I Like Birds…’); thumpy, noddy droney-drones (the fantastic ‘Big Red Car’ sung with big-hearted top of the voice joy); sweet Syd Barrett cycledelia, (‘Hey There Woodsman!’). ‘Sexual Cowboy’ is a glorious fizz-bomb with a see-sawing ‘Blister In The Sun’ tune; ‘Where’s My Animal’ nicks a bit off ‘I Saw Mummy Kissing Santa Claus’ to gently lullaby by. Shimmery shiverer ‘The Best Moon This Side Of Town’ is a beaty ‘Pale Blue Eyes’ beauty.

Clockwork, tick tock, tippy tap, cuckoo kachoo, sing-song, stick in your head, tinkling, chiming, ringing, rattling, rustling, spoons tinging on teacups. The Lovely Eggs can be an energy burst explosion or delicate and affecting. Sometimes all in the same song.

http://www.myspace.com/thelovelyeggs

…And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead – 23 April 2009, Electric Ballroom

2009-05-23T13:23:00.002+01:00

I’ve been having trouble getting ‘The Century Of Self’, the latest Trail Of Dead album, to stick. After a few attempts to force the overlong noise-pomp into my weary ears, I find it’s not something I need to go back to over and over again. This makes me sad, as time was I lurved Trail Of Dead. They was my faves, but I suppose it’s rare to still be loving a band six albums in. Times change.

The melancholy piano flourish that launched third album ‘Source Tags and Codes’ winds its languorous way from the stage to our heads. I’m clutching the crush barrier rail, feeling like an ambassador for indiepop in my bright green cardie amongst a sea of black. I feel a thrill of anticipation and actual excitement. It turns out that live, Trail Of Dead are still nosebleedingly good fun. The band are now Conrad, Jason, Kevin and three blokes. I don’t know who the blokes are, but they do a pretty good job of smashing out the songs. Exciting pop fact: Conrad is wearing a Pains Of Being Pure At Heart tee-shirt!

The new songs work well live, full of the pomp and fury of an unleashed Trail. ‘Far Pavillions’ is heavy, druggy psych-rock, ‘Isis Unveiled’ is rocket fuelled punk. There’s a clutch of olden songs; ‘Relative Ways’ (“It’s okay / I forgave / your mistakes…”), a ferocious, jolting ‘It Was There That I Saw You’, a rare outing for the sweetly yearning ‘Souce Tags and Codes’. The more recent ‘Will You Smile?’ (well it’s only from three albums back) is greeted like an old friend by the crowd and is bombastically, stompingly, glorious. ‘Caterwaul’ is thoroughly invigorating, and, as ever, it sees Jason going mentalz, throwing himself at the crowd and clambering onto the crush barrier to be adored (squishing me in the process). Having had a faceful of Reese t-shirt, I can confirm that it’s a very sweaty performance.
As the band ambles back for an encore, they japingly improvise their way around a ridiculous, made up on the spot, smoooth r’n’b song, Jason taking up the "Ooh baby" vocals much to our amusement. They're a right laugh, Trail Of Dead, you know. The encore is a three song stretch of old 'uns but good 'uns: ‘How Near How Far’ unfettered and triumphant, good old ‘Mistakes And Regrets’, its swirling, rumbling intro sending little thrills through the audience, and of course traditional set-closer ‘A Perfect Teenhood’. To finish, there's a minor bit of drum-kit destruction, kind of for old times sake (Conrad, surveying the mess, ‘This looks like Jason’s house the first time I visited’).

An unscheduled third encore happens when Jason decides he wants to ‘greet his public’ again. This involves the band lauching into a fast 'n' fiendish ‘Richterscale Madness’ whilst Jason creeps into the crowd to sinisterly intone the ‘kill, kill’ bit. Craning behind me to behold the mayhem emanating from Reese ground zero, my gaze is met by a sea of insanely gleeful faces. This is the Trail of Dead I remember; too clever for their own good and brilliant dumb fun.

A man who had read all the books published today…would be more stupid than a man who had read nothing. Fave Tunes March/April 2009

2009-05-17T18:44:00.008+01:00

With Love From The SC Estate – Garden City Project Dreamily unfurling into Springtime

Corn Rigs and Maypole and Willow’s Song – Wicker Man Soundtrack Been playing this album a lot of late - salutin’ Spring a-comin’ in

Keep Your Head - The See See Swoonily sunny, spanglingly jangly West Coastisms right here in grubby London

Fallin’ - Wooden Shjips The mighty drone of the ‘Shjips gets all echoey–voiced cute ‘n’ wibbly

Big Red Car – The Lovely Eggs Rumble-de- thump drone-pop

Inconvenience - Super Furry Animals Top of the range SFA fuzz-boogie

Torvill and Dean - Help Stamp Out Loneliness A chorus that makes your insides flip

See Where Capella With Her Golden Kids - Caroline Weeks Sounds like it's leaking out of the ancient woodwork of an abandoned cottage deep in the forest

Omni Baron - Alexander Tucker Mesmeric chanty monk spooky loops.

Mountain Song - Super Furry Animals Alvin Stardust-tastic

‘You’ve seen the rap singers’ - Stewart Lee. Comedy as drone rock.

A Classic Education single release party, 9 May 2009 - Jamboree

2009-05-11T18:16:00.009+01:00

A shout out to Jamboree at Cable Street Studios, all cosy and home-made bohemian. Creep through the curtained doorway and into a dimly lampplit old garage space that’s been done up with car boot furniture, handy shelves of books in the corner and v. splendidly crafted ‘future events’ booklets scattered on the bar. I often think that gigs would be improved if I could have a nice sit down, (if there’s no dancing to be had, legs just get achey and seize up) but still be at the front, and that’s exactly what I get here. A comfy chair, a bottle of beer and an entertaining array of bands. And just a short bus ride from home. Aces!

My Sad Captains play a sweet set of their cheery twisty country-psych tinged pop. They sound summery and chirpy, jangly and wibbly. The girl on keyboards seems to have had a head transplant, or maybe it’s a new girlonkeyboards – like on Australian soaps when a regular character comes back played by a completely different actor and nobody passes comment.

Gossamer Albatross are all rather young and rather posh, which of course isn’t a crime, but keeps us amused. Best bit of their set is the singer offering up “Mega props to my Mum” a ha ha ha ha! I cackle with hilarity for the whole of the next song. The songs are quite pleasant sea-shanty, swirlish dramatic thingies with cello and double violin attack, snorting nostrils and flashing eyes, but they sound a bit, um, samey. Still, megaprops to my mum, ah ha ha! Also, the cellist might want to invest in a longer skirt. Or wear some trousers. Just saying.

Jeremy Warmsley, producer of A Classic Education’s new single and thus integral to tonight’s proceedings, plays a brief set of viciously strummed acoustic guitar and tricksy lyrics sung in a gulping, gliding voice. He asks for requests, we get Abba sung as a sob-hearted ballad.

A Classic Education thrilled us at Indietracks and manage the same trick tonight. Their songs sound like stormy nights with racing clouds, lamps shining in windows, dark trees silhouetted on hilltops. They play with an urgency that makes the songs seem like a matter of life and death, the violinist sweeping and swooping, the guitarist singing with hands either side of his mouth like he has to communicate across vast distances, it’s exciting if you let yourself get carried along. They also play a beguiling English language version of ‘Toi’ from the Italian film “Io la Conoscevo Bene” . Its lilting loungeyness fits the surroundings brilliantly. There are plenty more thrilling tunes to be had; fireworks bursts of euphoria on ‘Stay Son’, the fluttering swell of ‘Wartimes’, and the new single ‘Best Regards’ which hurtles along fuelled by frantic guitar, is made ornate by luscious keyboard and violin, then topped off with staccato handclaps - exhilaratingly turbulent pop. We’re sold and get ourselves a copy of the 7 inch on the way out - nice cover too.

Projekt A-ko – Yoyodyne (Milk Pie Records)

2009-05-11T13:21:00.008+01:00

‘A-ko seems to be near invulnerable with superhuman speed and strength.’ (Wikipedia article on anime character Eiko Magami).

Urusei Yatsura – they were so FAB! So let’s all cheer for the existence of Projekt A-ko – three quarters of Urusei who are maintaining the anime theme and still applying themselves to the art of teasing out cheerily discombobulating noise from guitars and things. Shout hip hip! and give a big scrabbly guitar squawk of joy at the arrival of Projekt Ako’s album - only two thousand years in the making but worth the wait.

‘Yoyodyne’ sounds like the electromagnetic field flexing and flipping out there in the cosmos, whipping across the universe to land jittering in your head with a Space Dust pop explosion. It’s robots with cracked hearts. Skullz and flowers. Gleefully tuneful turmoil. A big thrill. Attack, attack, attack!

Listen carefully and you can catch the sound of static, fizzling and squealing, fading in from another galaxy, getting closer…tune in and explode into ‘Hey Palooka!’ take a nosebleed nosedive into thrillingly crunchy fuzzpop. A good start.

‘Nothing Works Twice’ will have you reminiscing about dancing like a goon to ‘Kewpies Like Watermelon’ (and that time Fergus jumped into the crowd after a heckler git). Then it’ll have you dancing like a goon. ‘Supertriste Duxelle’ is a discordant sunshine pop wail, My Bloody Valentine doing bubblegum thrash. ‘Molten Hearts’ runs amok, a rollercoaster hijack, kicking up sparks of feedback, demanding you sing along with a thrill in your heart and mad eyes. ‘Otaku Blue’ very cutely plays around with ‘Union City Blue’, but with more squealing and squalling than Blondie ever managed, and with a mighty thunderousness that wraps rainbows round your heart and squeezes. Hard.

This album is crammed with manic pop spills that make me feel all energetic and effervescent and overexcited. It’s an electricity overload, delicious noise textured like years and years worth of paint built up in multi-hued blistered layers.

And then you come across ‘Yoyodyne (Scintilla II)’, twinkling up at you hidden amongst the mass of electric cables and distortion pedals. It’s all gentle and lilting, with strings and ‘ba da las’. Fergus’ and Elaine’s voices sweet and sincere and leaving you a little bit bereft at the end. It wrong-foots you, but is so very right.

“Here comes Kitten she’s vaguely smitten” – ‘Black Empire’

www.projektako.co.uk/yoyodyne

Je Suis Animal / Betty And The Werewolves / Hong Kong In The 60s – 24 April 2009, The Victoria

2009-05-04T16:57:00.006+01:00

There are cupcakes on the door and Bobby McGees in the audience, which must mean we’re at Twee As Fuck. More importantly though, this gig is happening a short stroll from where we live – it’s genius! Je Suis Animal are in our ‘hood! We can look out the windows and see the familiar scummo streets but they’re sound-tracked by fantastical fairytale sounds.

First off, Hong Kong In The 60s cast soothing spells with a motley selection of keyboards. They offer up elegant swoons and toybox twists and play a smattering of songs from their debut E.P. ‘Willow Pattern Songs’ OUT SOON!! The tunes have delightful titles such as ‘Empty House, Lonely Mouse’, ‘The Organdy Snood’ and ‘Fox’s Wedding’. They swoosh and wash over us and are enchanting and wistful and twinkly and sumptuous.

Betty And The Werewolves are feeling a bit tipsy, thanks to drinking beer that ‘tastes like a cake’. The drummer has just vommed in the lavs, but he soldiers on anyway, battering away at the kit whilst the front of the stage is taken up by three smiling girls doing wee leaps and bounds and crunching out top tunes like the galloping ‘Tu Veux Jouer’ and new single ‘David Cassidy’ (old ‘Look-In’ annuals have got a lot to answer for). The music makes me think of The Rosehips being slightly less hardcore or maybe Bubblegum Splash! with added Girls In The Garage-ness. Fast, ramshackle, gleeful. Betty And The Werewolves seem to be about playing swingoriffic skiffley riffs, speeding through songs, jumping up and down, wearing ginchy frocks, hoooowwwwling like wolves and having a lot of fun. It’s nice to see a band enjoying themselves.

There’s a midnight curfew, so Je Suis Animal are playing against the clock – a slightly battered antique clock-face hanging on the wall above the stage, tocking down the minutes on big old roman numerals. This is appropriately story-bookish as Je Suis Animal sound like twisted nursery rhymes in haunted houses. They are here to launch their new single, ‘The Mystery Of Marie Roget’ – based on an Edgar Allen Poe tale. It’s a catchy wee number – tootling and fluttering around inside my head all day. Je Suis Animal are tuneful buggers in general – listen to the super soaring Lush-ness of ‘Painted In My Face’ or the chiming swallow-diving ‘Sparkle Spit’. Quickly now, because the songs are ricocheting past at a fair old lick. Look, there goes a twinkle-pop curiosity in the form of a cover of Joe Meek’s ‘Hobbies’. In their attempt to cram everything in before we all turn into pumpkins, Je Suis Animal’s set ends up sounding a tad perfunctory tonight. They’re still great, just not as wooshingly epic and cinemascopic as they can be.

Chrome Hoof / Cluster - 21 March 2009, Rich Mix Centre

2009-04-06T17:25:00.000+01:00

Hmm, this isn’t the usual schmindie scene down the Buff bar. We’re at a um, Throwback! loft party. Near Brick Lane’s happenin’ Brick Lane, which means there are people here JUST BECAUSE it’s near Brick Lane. Luckily, the place isn’t just full of mongy disco kidz in eighties clobber, the audience is a mix of clubby types lookin’ to lose their shit to James Holden’s set later on, demented ‘Hoooof!’ shouting fans and faces familiar from Sonic Cathedral and Kosmische clubnights.

The latter are here because ye olde Krautrockers Cluster are playing. The rather groovy Throwback! idea is to have a band of original sonic envelope pushers doing their thing, i.e. Cluster, and then to have a nowtimes band showing off how they may have learnt a thing or too from those oldtimers i.e. Chrome Hoof.

Are Cluster playing now? Oh yes, onstage Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius are absorbed in their sonic scientist work, pressing buttons and stuff, their physical presence obliterated by the backdrop film projected over them. As the bleeps and ticks of sound blend and swoosh, your eye is drawn to the backdrop – a locked down shot of a big stone house on a blustery Spring day. Every now and then the trees swish their branches in the breeze. It’s a soothing view. Twenty minutes of sound ebbs and flows, and then, look! a man has come out of the house and is pottering about!! Oh he’s gone again.

I’m listening carefully, trying to pick my way along the melancholy electronic trail being laid by Cluster, but my concentration keeps being broken by an endless stream of party kids making their way to the front looking for some action. It’s quite entertaining to watch them get there, clock the scene – which consists of two elderly geezers busying themselves behind tables of equipment – and then flounce off again.

Things liven up when Cluster are joined by Chrome Hoof (there’s not really anything that wouldn’t be livened up by Chrome Hoof joining it, is there?) A big gongggg is beaten. Monster riffage and murderous drumbeats slice in and crank everything up several gears. A Cluster/Hoof mashup ensues. It’s the best bit of the set and ends sadly soon.

Green lasers rebound from sequins’ metallic shiver. Silvery alien gimps gyrate. A terrifying ten foot tall silvery ram-monster-god has processed into the crowd and is declaiming about "being addicted to failure" and the like. This isn't the ram-monster of past Chrome Hoof events. This is a futuristic terror, a thing of sleek shiney curves, including limbs that end in, yes, a chrome hooves. Aieee!

The ram-monster, having made its point to the befuddled clubsters, takes its stately leave. The music kicks back in. We go bonkers. It’s the techno you can head-bang to. It’s the heavy metal you can rave to. It’s the jazz-skronk you can boogaloo to. It’s the disco you can art-funk to. It is the nightmare pantomime of Chrome Hoof and the greatest show in town. Move your body to the beat. NOW, WEAKLINGS!

Tame Impala – 11 March 2009, The Lexington

2009-03-30T14:30:00.002+01:00

This is all rather odd. We’re at a gig and there’s nobody here we know. Just lots of Australians. Oh hang on Delia’s doing the door. Hurrah! Seeing her familiar smiling face makes us feel less bewildered.

This is Tame Impala’s second UK gig (I overhear the drummer saying “This is my third day out of Australia” – bless) and it seems to be a sort of record company (Modular Records) showcase – no support bands, no advance tickets, an eager crowd who break all the London gig rules by being excited and enthusiastic, clapping and whooping and generally acting like they’re enjoying the band. Pretty shocking stuff, but the band ARE enjoyable. Tame Impala play prog jazz hippy wiggy wig outs but with TUNES and funkiness. They have a Crybaby wah wah pedal, shaggy hair and teenage prodigy guitar fingers. Their songs conjure flickery sunlight through dappled leaves and super nova sunspots. Dazed and confused psychedelia for metal kids with mellow smiles.

Tame Impala are usually three, but are supplemented live by an extra guitar pixie boy in a far out hippy top. He’s the only one wearing shoes, the rest of the band are in bare feet. As it says on their Myspace they ‘like to play gigs in paddocks and other large areas of grass in the sun’, which is all very well, but this is London in Feb, so respect to Tame Impala’s dedication to the hippy way.

The bass player does some excellent hair swinging and at one point rips into a deeply growly bass riff that’s almost as good as Dungen’s ‘Du E For Fin For Mig’ a track that always makes me laugh out loud so good is its bass crunch. Ah, Dungen. The mention of their name in a Tame Impala review is what initially piqued my interest, and there are some definite Dungen-y moments tonight, the swirling ‘Desire Be Desire Go’ being the most obvious example, as well as the space jazz blissed-outness, the expanding midsong thousand-yard-stare jams, and the flowery reverbing across the cosmos.

We get seven songs from Tame Impala (though they’re all pretty long, what with the wig-outs and the, gulp, drum solos and all – value for money, innit?) including, quite madly, a sunfried, stoned psychfunk version of Blue Boy’s ‘Remember Me’…gan gaga gaga gan gan ga gan etc. The set ends with what seems to be regarded by this audience as Tame Impala’s ‘hit’. ‘Half Full Glass Of Wine’, a hip swinging chunk of riffalong catchiness, swoops all before it into an eight armed multi-coloured embrace of crunchy psych-rock. Num!

London Popfest Alldayer - 28 February 2009, The MacBeth

2009-03-29T17:48:00.014+01:00

London Popfest is a skillz idea – four days of indiepop fun brightening up dull old Feb. So big cheers to Spiral Scratch, Fortuna Pop! And WIAIWYA for putting the whole shebang together.

Fearing we might come over all unnecessary if we overindulge in the pop, we confine ourselves to attending the centrepiece event, The London Popfest Alldayer. We’re in The MacBeth, The Pete Green Corporate Juggernaut have just kicked things off, playing at least two songs that feature the bassline from ‘Never Understand’. We are surrounded by familiar faces with nary a Hoxton twat in sight (that comes much later when we have to negotiate the Sat nite streets of Shoreditch. The buggers are even spilling down Bethnal Green Road now!) There’s a (yum!) record stall and a mix tape CD swap and up on the smoking roof The Loves are trying to recreate a Monty Python photo.

Ahh, The Loves. They’re on tip top form today, maybe because this is bassist Danielle’s (sob!) last gig, going out with a krang! blamm! sprang!! not a whimper. These Loves are goddamn nasty, crunching out a v. rock ‘n’ roll set sprinkled with Simon’s amusingly offensive banter. They start with a two song mash-up: ‘The Sound We Make Is…Little Girl Blues’ and crash through a popart set: ‘Ode To Coca Cola’, ‘Xs and Os’, ‘Bubblegum’. Simon slathers on the geetar, pulling his finest, windmillingest rock moves all over The Loves’ delirious freakbeat psych out mod pop topping it all off with Os Mutantes’ ‘Bat Macumba’. Yeah!

Prior to this we are rocked in a very bubblegum punk way by Town Bike. The key to Town Bike is the ‘High School Musical’ sticker on Janey’s bass and the fact that they have a song that is an ode to Dougie from McFly. They are the essence of pop encapsulated in its simplest form; fast and fun. They even have a song pointing this out, “Three chords, three notes. That’s all we wrote.” At one point drummer Gabby is called upon to perform a drum-roll. She looks most surprised to have carried it off and it makes us feel good to have witnessed it – twice! Town Bike are tumultuous and gleeful and you can either let yourself get swept along in their enthusiasm, or you pretty much have to fuck off.

Action Biker has laptop probs for ages, but eventually gets things going. She stands alone centre stage looking gorgeous in a fab dress, swaying and dancing to her blippy beats, singing sweetly along to the pattering, twinkly, glowing songs. After a while we have to go for a bit of a sit down. It’s tiring work all this Popfesting.

The Smittens aren’t afraid to call their music ‘tweepop’. And Goddamn they’re twee. Twee enough to turn one into Steven Wells, or at least make a shy bald Buddhist reflect and plan a mass murder. Today The Smittens are just three-strong, and incredibly smiley. In fact they’re insanely happy to the point of being sinister. I find their hyper saccharine playgroup pop a little hard to stomach, but there are two boys at the front of the crowd jumping about, hugging each other and singing along soo ecstatically that it would be churlish to begrudge them their pop joy. And slowly, I’m won round, especially when 6 ft 4 Max gets on the mic and sings in a bottom of yer boots voice. There are some intriguing pop gems to be found amongst the candyfloss here, and by the end I’m singing along merrily with The Smittens’ cover of Beat Happening’s ‘Cast A Shadow’.

Help Stamp Out Loneliness provide us with a big pop rush. I’ve only seen the band once before, so I’m surprised to find their songs bounding up to me like long lost friends. Cor, they’re catchy. Big, shiny tunes that recall the best kinds of eighties pop. The kinds of tunes that are ubiquitous and eternal and crucially still cool, like stuff by Blondie or The Pretenders. There’s also a bittersweet yearning to the songs that recalls The Organ and by extension The Smiths. Singer D.C. Lucille radiates fuck you poise and glamour and is wearing an excellent pink mini dress that even the Sounds XP fashion correspondent couldn’t object to. There should be a legion of teenage girls styling themselves on Ms Lucille, in the same way that lots of mini Kate Jacksons erupted in the wake of The Long Blondes. Meanwhile, the rest of the band hammer out the songs with gusto. So much so that the drummer nearly dislodges the fake stone wall (MacBeth – castle, see?) behind him. Sterling work.

Milky Wimpshake generate a crazy popkid moshpit with their songs. A band of boys and girls all babble the lyrics, fluff the words, punch the air and land heavily but happily. It’s sweet and communal and makes The MacBeth feel even more of a tiny indiepop microcosm swirling in an unlovely world.

Comet Gain are a beautiful chandelier in our hearts. At least that’s what David Feck would like us to think. He says as much as his band’s set rapidly crumbles around our ears. And in a way they are, albeit that chandelier on ‘Only Fools and Horses’ that crashes to the floor and breaks into smithereens because Rodney’s holding the blanket to catch it under the wrong one.

The band have brought a wee bloke with an oil slide projector with them who busies himself in a corner dropping ink onto the slides to little effect as the projection is kind of blotted out by the band. It’s the thought that counts though. The first time I saw an oil slide projector in action was when Pink Floyd, I mean Felt played the Doin’ It For The Kids Alldayer, their track ‘Ballad of the Band’ being one of the highlights on the accompanying compilation LP. Spookily, Comet Gain start their set with a rather fab cover of ‘Ballad Of The Band’, “Sometimes I feel like giving in” sings Feck, perhaps ominously.

A few tatty but happy songs later, things is going wrong, but Comet Gain don’t give in. They plough on through a set that rapidly becomes an insane car crash shambles even by their standards. And we can’t look away. In my notebook I have written “Slade’s look of surprise”. I can’t remember what this was referring to now, but really it could have been any one of a host of things, not least his guitar packing in. Meanwhile Rachel in best show-must-go-on style, dances and claps, hauling the crumpled wrecks of songs along in her indie testifying wake. She is a star shining amidst the rubble.

Towards the end, with any hope of playing actual songs with notes in the right order gone, Feck is just going wherever his shellshocked ‘muse’ takes him, wittering out indie savant bollocks, “I can go on singing like this all night… I know lots of records…Godstar, Godstar, uh oh oh oh…And that’s just Psychic TV’. This is clearly poetic licence of a genius kind and certainly a memorable end to an oddball day.

You Leave Me No Choice But To Plot My Revenge – Fave Tunes Jan/Feb 2009

2009-03-02T08:55:00.005Z

Half Full Glass Of Wine – Tame Impala Twangling geetars ‘n’ head banging in the desert heat

Gentle Sons - The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart Cavernous drums, feedback wailing perfectly. Turn it up!

Kicking Around – Superimposers Like sailing gently out to sea, sun glitter dancing on the waves

Summertime Clothes - Animal Collective Sounds squidgy and sweaty like a sweltering summer night

Path Through The Forest – Factory Chocolate Soup humming with electricity

Up Against The Wall – The Young Sinclairs Pretty much everything this band does is swirlingly wonderful, but this is especially dreamy

Jervington Jig – Wyrdstone Soothing, circling Watch With Mother folkiness

Pregnancy Scene - Shrag Poptastic droning undertow gets blitzkrieged with agitated SHOUTING

Young Adult Friction - The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart What if My Bloody Valentine had gone to a nice college instead of living in a Kentish Town squat with broken bannisters? Nice to hear a shout-out to microfiche in a pop song, too

When Tomorrow Hits – Spectrum Excellent fun to sing in an especially doomy voice whilst washing up

Spectrum – 27 February 2009, Sonic Cathedral at The Dome

2009-03-01T18:04:00.006Z

Last summer we were cruelly tantalised by two Spectrum shows which promised to be amazing had equipment problems not cruelly eaten into set time and cut the band off in their prime. Tonight we get our reward. Spectrum are gobsmackingly fabulous. There are no problems, indeed the sound here in The Dome (where one thousand years of indie discos are engrained into the school-hall-tastic fabric of the room) is dashed excellent.

Sonic Boom looks pretty much the same as ever – the same as last year, the same as ten years ago, the same as the Spacemen 3 years – boyish, skeletal. He is the lightning rod at the centre of an electrical storm, calmly conducting the ebb and flow of noise from behind a keyboard and guitar. The songs build and burst into beautiful chaos -all meticulously controlled – no fret-board wankery here, the band drilled in the pureness of repetition driven by relentless drums.

K, D and I form a grand (old) ladies of drone-rock cabal in the corner – like the old ladies who sit in their special corner of a pub – seen it all before, but still game for some hair shaking.

Spectrum’s set is chock full of crowd pleasing ‘hits’ – all sounding MIGHTY. ‘How You Satisfy Me’ is less farfisa jaunty than on record and more borehole to your brain ferocious, ‘Transparent Radiation’ utterly luxuriant. ‘When Tomorrow Hits’ booms doomily, a narco thunderclap. Of course the set ends with ‘Revolution’, drawn out and teasing, before finally kicking into that angry white out of scrubbed guitar strings. And then there's an encore. A twenty minute encore of 'Suicide'. A pummelling, heart-seizing 'Suicide'. Half-way through the song, its machinery set to his satisfaction, Sonic strolls off to collect his 'special guests' MGMT. They seem a bit terrified. One of them (I don't what MGMT's names are do I?) is given a drum mallet which he uses to tickle a cymbal in a hilariously mimsy manner. The other is guided to the keyboard where Sonic, an avuncular sorcerer to a shaggy haired apprentice, shows him how to twiddle knobs, set phasers to stun, etc.

We bask in the fearsome squall eating up the entire room and inveigling our senses. It's heavenly. And Kevin Shields is nearby looking on. Just like the old days, eh? I said JUST LIKE THE OLD DAYS. Yes.

Crystal Stilts – 13 February 2009, Brixton Windmill

2009-03-01T17:41:00.002Z

We all know there are too many ‘Crystal…’ bands at the mo. I especially get Crystal Stilts and Crystal Antlers confused because both involve appendages to the body, albeit at opposite ends. Crystal STILTS are the ones we’re concerned with here. The Mary Chainy, Velvetsy ones. You can put them in a little box tied with a bow (probably fashioned from a scraggy old Ramones tee-shirt) along with The Vivian Girls and The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart. All hail from New York bearing fuzzy, buzzy indie pop gifts. All of them make me go a bit nostalgic for late eighties feedbackery. Crystal Stilts are at the more garagey end of the fuzzpop spectrum and tonight I discover they’re a darn sight more POP! than I was expecting, not to mention irresistibly danceable. Hair swinging, Chelsea boot stamping danceable - the only dance it’s really possible to do in the confined space of a packed Windmill, although a couple of girls nearby do their utmost to really irritate everyone by doing ‘ooh look at me, I’m so free!’ arm wavey dancing.

The star of the show has to be Crystal Stilts’ cute (ex-Vivian Girl) stand up drummer Frankie Rose. She manages to be the most engaging member of the band despite being positioned in the far back corner of the stage, bashing away at a three piece kit providing the crashing backbeat that makes you move. Also she has a tiny dress on. Meanwhile, up front singer Brad seems to be having one long seizure, eyes three quarters closed and rolled back mumbling out the words in a sub-sonic rumble beneath the clattering cacophony of guitars ‘n’ swivelly sixties organ (played by Steph from Shrag).

Live, the ghost train reverb of Crystal Stilts album is less apparent, the Velvet Underground clackety groove bursting forth. To prove the point there’s an encore of ‘Temptation Inside Of Your Heart' which cranks along sweetly, tracing a forty year old trail of sticky footprints from Manhattan to Brooklyn.

Sad Day For Puppets – Marble Gods/Big Waves (Sonic Cathedral)

2009-02-15T11:40:00.003Z

Scandi bands seems to have a knack for creating luxuriant, lovelorn, fairytale twisted pop songs and here are Swedes Sad Day For Puppets with their whooshing guitars and pristine, elfin vocals doing precisely that to endearing effect.

‘Marble Gods’ is the invigorating rush of frosty air through your lungs when you careen along the pavement on a winter night. This is sugar power pop laced with bombastic guitar, an unashamedly vast sound that snicks bits of Dinosaur Jnr at their PoP-est and conjures The Concretes when they were cute.*

The appropriately titled ‘Big Waves’ perfectly surfs the cracked heart feeling that builds before sobs break out. Husky girl-pop vocals intone a tearstained nursery rhyme tune over swelling layers of twinkling, chiming guitars and your head fills with snow-scapes and fur capes, and contemplating bright stars in inky skies. Think of The Raveonettes take on Buddy Holly’s ‘Everyday’. Not so much a wall of sound as a glacier.

*Er, I just read the press release and it mentions these two bands – but I thought of them ALL ON MY OWN, okay? I don’t read press releases until after I’ve written what I think of stuff.

www.soniccathedral.co.uk
www.myspace.com/saddayforpuppets

The Lodger / Je Suis Animal / Esiotrot / Mexican Kids At Home – 6 February 2009, Bardens Boudoir

2009-02-14T12:49:00.007Z

There are no buses and it’s started snowing, but we’re all excited about tonight’s gig so instead of chucking it in and going home to ‘Q.I.’ we decide to cab it up the road to Hackney. En route, we amuse ourselves by telling the cab driver – whose ears are already boggling at the name of the venue – that Barden’s Boudoir is a brothel. It isn’t, it’s an oddly laid out venue (like a squashed 100 Club) that’s ace when it’s not too busy and shite when it’s packed. Tonight it’s ace.

Before Mexican Kids At Home come on we are discussing how we once saw King Creosote years ago, supporting Gorky’s. The main thing we remember about him was he had a wooden box thing that he sat on to do percussion. Spookily, Mexican Kids At Home have one of these wooden box things instead of a drum-kit. Woo! They also have a selection of folky dolky make your own entertainment instruments like a mini accordion, a melodica, violin, banjo and stuff. They play lively, foot stampy, sea shanty, rollicking cheerful tunes for girls and boys. They are hairy and hand-crafted and the singer girl has a dress made of excellent cat fabric.

Esiotrot are fabulous. They feature two guitarist/singers one of whom looks like the speccy bloke out of ‘The Inbetweeeners’ and has an excellent voice, geekily whiney in a splendid way, e.g. Jonathan Richman. The other one sports a beard and does the occasional terrifying yowl to annotate his tunes. They both scrabble furiously on their guitars. There is a girl drummer (hurrah!) in a Blur t-shirt and a bass player being Alex James before he turned into a pudding-esque cheese farmer. They have a mini brass section (trumpet, trombone). The trombonist has excellent tattoos. The trumpet player has a scary jumper. Between them, they add an extra glowing undertow to the songs, taking them from being fab to fabbest. There is much more to Esiotrot than just sweet jangling indiepop. They are messy and curious. The music is excellently oddball, the tunes inescapable. They have a song about listening to Stereolab that’s kind of heart-breaking. There’s another one where they seem to be singing “Donna Tart Summer” which is clearly an excellent melding of Donnas. They interrupt their brilliant song fest to raffle off a hand drawn comic. It fetches £3!!

Je Suis Animal begin with my favourite, ‘Sparkle Spit’, and then build from there. The set starts at the poppier, Shop Assistants meet Lush end of the band’s spectrum before heading towards sublime noise oblivion. Their music is elemental – sometimes sounding like the first green shoots of Spring bursting out, sometimes a blinding swirl of snowflakes, or leaves whipped high in an autumnal whirl.

Clad in a cute blue frock, the singer lady stamps elegantly shod feet across a smorgasbord of guitar pedals sparking out furzy noise. At times it seems that the dissonance kicked up is going to overwhelm everything, but then a tune will spiral in from the chaos and set your spine tingling. The harsh rattle of ‘It’s Love’ unfurls into bright colours like a fist full of confetti. The clockwork chiming of ‘Hotel Electrique’ explodes into an ecstatic nosebleed whoosh, swirling you off your feet in a flurry. Standing in the midst of it all is exhilarating and when the band finish it’s like being spat out of a hurricane.

The Lodger rattle out their toe-tappy, jangle pop songs and bring us back to damp British streets and cups of tea (in a comforting way). Shining out amongst the racing, cheery tunes is the sweetly gliding ‘Free Period’, and the exasperated gasp of ‘Let Her Go’. To end, it’s everyone’s fave, ‘The Good Old Days’ which makes people do happy little jigs to its jangling funk. It's a nice merrily communal close to a top pop night.

Esiotrot / Foxes! split E.P. (Sounds Experience)

2009-01-31T15:22:00.003Z

‘Inspired by sunny days and indie pop’ Esiotrot play itchy and catchy geek pop that’ll clear the clouds from your heart. ‘Tammy is Lez’ (yes) is so jauntily immediate it gets me wonky-grinning and gonky-dancing from the very opening chord. The singy man (Matt?) gargles in his cracked nerd-boy voice (see also Pete Shelley) as the band blam along in a ramshackle, cheery, damn endearing manner, all augmented by parpedelic brass and eager glockenspiel twinkling.

Glockenspiel is even more to the fore on second track ‘Spares’. Sparkly notes skitter in and out of a scribble of skewy brass and its all sweetly heartbreaking, lurching and swaying like a happy child with a gammy leg. Aww.

Foxes! take the lollipops from their mouths, stick them behind their ears and get down with indiepop mini-epic ‘Oh Rosie’. It’s a schizo tune, first racing along on cowpunkish guitar and splish splashy drums, then swooning into softly glowing keyboards before winding up in a sheeny furze of fizzing guitars and girl/boy vocals. Curious pop.

Foxes! sugary voiced singer Kayla Bell opens the casio-beat discopop of ‘It’s Ridiculous Adam’ by listing her failings, including the fact that “I can’t draw horses very well”. We’ll forgive her for this lack of equine artistry though, as the song ripples and shimmies and sounds like cheap sweeties. A bit odd, but tasty.

Four whole tracks available on 7" vinyl and digital thing from Sounds Experience = must have barg! http://www.soundsexperience.co.uk

The Ex- Gurlfriend E.P. - The Loves (Fortuna Pop!)

2009-01-18T14:04:00.005Z

Hurrah! It’s The Loves! Hurrah they are doing a thing where they give away three E.P.s featuring three songs each for FREE. In a rumbling, numerological build-up to the appearance of their third LP ‘THREE’. Three! Free! THREE!! Or something, maybe it's one track per E.P that's free? I dunno. How you’re meant to actually get hold of the things isn’t really adequately explained. Oh well. I’ve got my copy, so up yours. Try looking at this: www.myspace.com/thelovesep
Also, the cover art of this is marvellous, as is the spelling of the word 'gurlfriend'. Cheers.

‘The Ex Gurlfriend’ is ram-a-lam-a slinky, rolling on a bed of wibbling drone with sneery self-taunting vocals. It’s The Loves in raspy, trashy garage mode, yeah!

Then Loves blues mode kicks in good-style for the Nik Cohn-tastic ‘Johnny Angelo Blues’. It’s creepy crawly laced with nasty while-my-guitar-gently-bleeds solo-ing and a bombastic poor old Johnny Angelo ending.

My fave is the last track ‘Around And Around’, propelled on a jerky guitar riff, sounding like one of those marvo cheeky new-wave/mod pop songs you got in the early eighties played by young men with sort of chewed up haircuts and half-mast trousers and goggly eyes. Erm, Buzzcocks, Lambrettas, people on Stiff Records, scuffed knees and amphetamines.

The Ballet / Help Stamp Out Loneliness / Pocketbooks – 9 January 2008, The Luminaire

2009-01-18T13:16:00.005Z

A sold-out How Does It Feel To Be Loved night is our first gig of the year, cram-packed and full of friendly and really quite drunken faces (no new year de-toxes round here). London indiepop’s favourite sons (and daughter) Pocketbooks kick things off with what turns out to be the most enjoyable (for me) set of the night, lighting up the chilly January air with their heart-gladdening pop. Every time I see Pocketbooks, I’m always surprised at how fab they are – you’d think I’d have got used to it by now, but their slip-sliding melodies still catch me unawares whisking me along in their joyful, jangling rush. Happily, a lot of the crowd feels the same, joining in on cue with finger-clicks and handclaps. One regular indie-popper dances gleefully at the front to every song. Surely he should be taken on as Pocketbooks’ very own Bez?

Help Stamp Out Loneliness take to the stage to the sound of the tune that their band is named after – being sung by, er, Nancy Sinatra maybe? Not sure, wasn’t paying much attention. It’s a nice touch, anyways, and my attention soon gets taken up by interestingly named HSOL singer D. Lucille Campbell. She’s an arresting front-woman with catwalk figure, stage presence and cutglass cheekbones. The fashion correspondent from Sounds XP is a little vexed by the singer’s choice of frock. It is certainly very gold and shiny. But Campbell wears it with aplomb. And short dark hair. This looks good as she is flanked by matching long-haired blonde girls playing keyboards. HSOL have a pleasing symmetry if nothing else. Luckily, they do have something else in the shape of catchy, cheer-uppy, get-dancey tunes that shimmy along powered by big hits of Blondie-style sparkly pop. Campbell’s voice is deep and smoky and kind of Nico-esque (though without the fog-horn element that might imply), a timbre which sits oddly with the frisky upbeat songs. In the background two ex-Language Of Flowers johnnies get on with the guitar business as the drummer grins and sings – he’s having a fab time. Good. An odd combo, but in an intriguing stick-in-your-head way.

Last ups are The Ballet, three ‘sissypop’ New Yorkers playing rinky-dink glitchy, strummy pop songs that, despite the charm of singer Greg, slip effortlessly in one of my ears and out of the other as the glitterball spins and most everyone else in the audience has a high old time. Oh dear!

I Don't Want To Have To Break Your Face

2009-01-14T12:16:00.002Z

Mass debates on that old chestnut ‘twee’ seem to be doing the blog rounds again (thanks mainly to Tom’s grumpy old indie kid number here.) It’s a discussion that’s always good for a laugh, so I thought I’d stick my oar in.

As far as I’m concerned ‘twee’ was never a genre, it was a term of abuse. A v. brief rifle through the olde indie cuttings archive brings up a few instances of the word being used by big hairy music press types to CRUSH the kind of music that they don’t understand/ doesn’t speak to them because they are big hairy men (ug,ug). ‘Twee’ was an insult, but then no band seemed to want to own up to being ‘cutie’ or ‘shambling’ either. Surely, all those ‘scenes’ weren’t just a load of old crap made up by journalists? Picking through the cuttings now, it’s all a bit of a mess…

'Thankfully though times have changed. Where once there were wimpo twerps in anoraks ripping off all the Buzzcocks’ girliest traits, now there stand real men.'
[Review of The Soup Dragons from Sounds or somewhere, 1987 or something]

“Submarines was a silly, jokey name that tied us to the twee anoraks mob, which we aren’t…not that we’re the wild men of rock”
[The Submarines foolishly rename themselves Compass Flow, Record Mirror, 1987 ish]

“Sure we get crayon pictures through the post.” Well that’s your own stupid fault, isn’t it? Rip your name off a Buzzcocks song and what do you expect? “The name was chosen for reasons other tthan that. It was harsh image for a so-called wimpy band.”
{Razorcuts interview, Melody Maker,1987]

'Amelia launches into indie politics.
“What do you exect from a Blow Monkeys audience? The sort of people who slag us off and call us cuties are people who maybe like The June Brides, who are really close to liking Talulah Gosh but know enough about us to think they shouldn’t. They might shout at us. Blow Monkeys fans have no idea, nothing to react against…”
“I think they just thought ‘Who are those spastics up there?” decides Chris.'
[Talulah Gosh discuss supporting The Blow Monkeys (bizarrely enough) in Melody Maker 1987]

'At the mention of The Pastels, your whole conception of Stephen changes. Because this man fronts one of the few independent bands capable of extricating themselves from the tiresome and derogatory label, ‘Shambling’. '
[Interview with Stephen Pastel in Melody Maker, 1987]

'All I knew about The Pastels before their recent (and wonderfully over-ambitious) single, ‘Baby You’re Just You’, was that they were apparently a bunch of wimps in tatty v-neck jumpers…Sadly, they then relapse into twee tweaking – the title track is a sorry crock of mush if ever I heard one.'
[Review of The Pastels’ ‘Sittin’ Pretty’]

'They appeared on the abortive C86 operation and suddenly a whole group of bands claimed to have known them personally (anorak, I think, was how they were termed)...
‘Holy Moly’ was written for The Vaselines (Scottish sex god anorak group)'
[Everett True interviews The Pastels, Melody Maker, 1989]

I like what Stevie of Please Rain Fall
says, ‘A lot of people forget that the 80's was a time for taking sides.' True this. I'm sure a lot of it was down to the fact that everything is very black and white when you're young - chart music made us puke, twelve inch singles were the work of the devil - but we were growing up in a time of clear cut Left vs. Right politics, of fervent CND supporting and hardcore feminism and that made us actively despise anything that smacked of the right-wing, capitalist, patriarchal mainstream. This Us against Them mindset was empowering and was what drove the rise of our indieness - if what we did was dismissed as 'twee' then it meant we were being annoying. Good.

Everett True touches on the issue in his Vivian Girls interview in this month’s Plan B magazine:
‘Two decades ago I had to fend off accusations that the music I liked – not boorish, frailties intact, rooted in the Sixties femme pop of The Ramones and The Shaggs, often bordering on the shambolic – was somehow not ‘proper’. It was looked down upon as being amateur (like the word is an insult, like music is a competition). I was ridiculed roundly and often : the music got categorised and derogatorily referred to as twee…why?'

Excitingly, Plan B, those champions of ‘outsider music’ have a page dedicated to discussing the notion of ‘twee’. There are two points which I think are well-made and with which I whole-heartedly concur:

‘Twee’s something you accuse other people of being. If someone’s playing with the elements – delicacy, anti-macho, heightened sweetness, cult-of-naivety – and it hits you emotionally, you process them directly. If they miss, they’re twee.’
- Kieron Gillen

‘Twee can also encompass retro/kitsch; nostalgia; a very British kind of quirkiness. There’s a space on the Venn diagram where the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Oliver Postgate, Ghost Box, Trunk Records type stuff – even Broadcast, Pram etc – intersect with twee – it’s a space where things are nice, but weird ; biscuits and tea and soldering iron and ghosts. I approve of music that subverts, that celebrates the uncelebrated, and that gives credence to those with the quietest voices, celebrations of intelligence and awkwardness and confusion. What I don’t like is the un-awkward, media-friendly, attractive versions of the same.’
- Frances Morgan

So, in conclusion, to call something 'twee' is to insult it. It's not really a good thing, but it does seem to have evolved into a lazy way of describing a certain sound - although what that sound is precisely is kind of mysterious - try Googling 'new twee' (argh! I can hardly bear to type those words, bleugh!) and behold the hotch-potch of bollocks you get.