50 songs for the year

Girls – Lust for Life
Arch M – 21st Union
Casiotone for the Painfully Alone – Killers
Shoes & Socks Off – Vice Magazine Has A Lot to Answer For
Animal Collective – Summertime Clothes
Atlas Sound (feat Stereolab) – Quick Canal
Future of the Left – Arming Eritrea
Los Campesinos! – The Sea Is a Good Place To Think of The Future
Matt & Kim – Daylight
Diamond Rings – All Yr Songs

Grammatics – Relentless Fours
Kindness – Gee Up
M. Ward – For Beginners
Washed Out – You’ll See It
Memory Cassette – Last One Awake
Deerhunter – Circulation
No Age – You’re A Target
Wavves – Mickey Mouse
MSTRKRFT – Heartbreaker (ft. John Legend)
Emily Neveu – My Cosmonaut Edit

The Twilight Sad – I Became a Prostitute
Nude Beach – Nude Beach
Lou Barlow – Take Advantage
Jeffrey Lewis & The Junkyard – To Be Objectified
Lightning Bolt – Sound Guardians
Pulled Apart By Horses – E=MC Hammer
Nodzzz – Is She There?
Jason Lytle – Yours to Keep
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Zero
The Xx – Crystalised

HEALTH – Die Slow
KASMs – Male Bonding
Bob Dylan – Must be Santa
Calico Horse – Idiotheque (Radiohead Cover)
Mean Jeans – Steve Don’t Party No More
PENS – High In The Cinema
The Horrors – Sea Within a Sea
The Drums – Let’s Go Surfing
Liars – Scissor
Hot Chip – One Life Stand

A Place to Bury Strangers – It is Nothing
Pre – Dude Fuk
A Sunny Day In Glasgow – Hybrid Moments (Misfits Cover)
Abe Vigoda – Wild Heart
Best Coast – When I’m With You
Japandroids – Young Hearts Spark Fire
Johnny Foreigner – Some Summers
Dinosaur Jr. – Over It
Memory Tapes - Bicycle
Vomit Heat – Everything In Its Wrong Place

Zine

Matt and Kim Daylight Single (for musosguide.com)

Matt & Kim Daylight

However much you care to claim you’re love for obscure Sunn O))) instrumentals or Glenn Branca avant-garde freakouts, deep down, beneath that sheen of indier-than-thou mistrust, everyone loves a good pop song. It just so happens that Matt & Kim specialise in the afformentioned ‘pop’.
One part Beat Happening and one part the Wham! ‘Daylight’ has a hook that could snare even the most bitterly stubborn curmudgeon, topped off with a celestial synth line and stuttering drums, set to a plot of summer fun and perpetual immaturity. Matt Johnson’s call-response vocals to noone inparticular are filled with a sense of happiness and youth that cannot help but create a warm sense of the sheer delight and an overwhelming urge to baptize yourself in ice cream.
In the States Matt & Kim can be found on primetime tv, in commercials and all over the music press and it seems it’s just a matter of time before they find a similar fame this side of the Atlantic. On this evidence it seems the fame would be well deserved.

Wavves - Mickey Mouse

Admit it. You wanted to hate it. You can't.

mp3

A Jingle

Give me some hope in this backwater town,

I’ve staring on upwards from my comedown

The year that was spent can drag out the sweat

Of a penchant for fun and no time for regret.

me oh my

Oh, noose

Tied myself in, tied myself too tight

Looking kind of anxious in your cross-armed stance

Like a bad tempered prom queen at a homecoming dance

And I claim I'm not excited with my life anymore

So I blame this town, this job, these friends, the truth is it's myself

And I'm trying to understand myself and pinpoint who I am

When I finally get it figured out, I've changed the whole damn plan

Oh, noose

Tied myself in, tied myself too tight

Oh, noose

Tied myself in, tied myself too tight

Talking shit about a pretty sunset

Blanketing opinions that I'll probably regret soon

Changed my mind so much I can't even trust it

My mind changed me so much I can't even trust myself

on a lighter note i pissed in a punch bowl at a party and someone drank it.

holler

Leeds, Stag & Dagger

for (www.musosguide.com)

Stag & Dagger Leeds
Friday May 22
Various Venues

It would be easy to dismiss an event sponsored by Vice and Firetrap as cheap throwaway hipster nonsense. It would also be easy to look at the majority of the crowd and expect the same. A Bravery for 2009 perhaps. But then there’s the matter of the most impressive and varied lineups ever to grace the working men’s clubs and University bars of Leeds.

First on the agenda are Abe Vigoda at TJs Woodhouse, branding the audience with their own brand of tropical power-punk. Despite a recent lineup change and near constant technical difficulties the Los Angeles four-piece give a tight and thoroughly agreeable performance, climaxing with a joyous rendition of ‘Skeleton’. Abe Vigoda, unfortunately, have the problem that they are followed on the bill by three of the greatest live acts of today, so many of the nuances and fine distinction of their intricate guitar lines grow hazy in memory.

Crystal Antlers do not suffer from this problem. On record they pass themselves off as a fairly dull and trite affair, but stick the guys on a stage and suddenly a whole new beast is created. The wall of noise sound, intercepted by bongo rhythms and wailing vocals perfectly suit the fairly diminutive surroundings, giving the impression of a primal explosion of noise. Crystal Antlers are complimented perfectly by the visceral delights of White Denim who seem intent on allowing their fans to expel their entire bodily fluids through their foreheads with an unstoppable half hour jam of Workout Holiday favourites and newies, cutting and pasting sections of different songs together to create a patchwork setlist that makes them simply irresistible and sends a jolt of electricity through the packed out crowd. It would be easy to dismiss White Denim as the sum of their parts, southern rock MC5 wannabes perhaps, but their performances certainly are unique.

The Mae Shi step up to the plate next, with the solid groundwork of a band renowned for their chaotic and charismatic live shows. It’s a shame then that something may have been lost somewhere over the Atlantic, because for the majority of their set, try as they mae (sorry) they can’t seem to find the magic today. Perhaps it could be attributed to the loss of a member or to several overzealous superfans jumping into a fairly sparse crowd but the first several songs fall rather flat. Despite these early jitters the band manage to pull out few tricks from their sleeves, covering the crowd in a giant tent and a sit-down singalong pull in the strays from the bar and the added numbers create an atmosphere sorely missing for the first half of the set. The Shi respond in kind, hugging stage invaders and throwing themselves into the throng at every opportunity before launching into a superb rendition of ‘Run to Your Grave’. The pinnacle of the night comes as security pull the plug, the band grab their mics and serenade the audience to cries of ‘Fuck the Police’ goading fans onto the stage for one final dance before they’re on their merry way.

A quick jog over town leads to the Brudenell brings the band with easily the biggest buzz surrounding them, Cursive. Dinosaurs of the alt-rock world their devoted fanbase is out in force to scream every lyric from the bottom of their lungs into the ears of anyone who cares to listen. On record their writhing anthems can create a sense of real emotion and raw feeling but on stage all they cause is numb feet and the urge to squeeze out for a cigarette. A below-par setlist consisting mostly of songs from new album Mama I’m Swollen, falls distinctly flat each song merging into a grey pulp of sound, nothing distinct or particularly impressive. Perhaps it would be unfair to compare the performance with those seen earlier. Cursive certainly would not feel the need to resort to gimmicks or trickery to win over an audience, but the standalone properties of many of the songs on show wasn’t enough to warrant watching a miserable old man ranting at screaming fanboys.

Just an opinion.

God Help The Girl

(for www.musosguide.com)

God Help The Girl
Come Monday Night

In the three years since The Life Persuit it would be totally unfair to say Belle & Sebastian’s fan-base has diminished, as any cardigan-cocooned fop will testify, but perhaps it is fair to say that anticipation of new output from Stuart Murdoch isn’t quite at the giddy peaks it reached around the time of the classy If You’re Feeling Sinister.
Interestingly Murdock’s has chosen to stake a step away from his band of merry Scots with new project God Help The Girl. ‘Come Monday Night’ is set to be pieced into a concept album of sorts, involving grandiose strings and a vague idea of storytelling, sound-tracking a musical film of Murdock’s own creation.
This may all sound like the makings of an insane, Prince-esque vanity project but the track itself is a slice of ‘60s indebted sweet and soulful balladry, swooning over a sunny London day. From the outset the track conjures to mind very prominent reference points of Bryter Later era Nick Drake, with bittersweet vocals that could easily be mistaken for those of Nico. Lyrically, the song is very similar to Murdock’s previous output, revelling in the quirky reference points and clever puns that made Belle and Sebastian so popular to the romantically minded, opting for a simplistic approach to daily monotony.
“Come Monday night/the day of work is done/Tuesday morning looms/the grey of ordinariness”
Rather than a ham fisted attempt at retro-chic this naivety creates a charming and loveable atmosphere.
'Come Monday Night' is hindered by its insistence at aping its relative influences, but still manages to conjure up a slice of enjoyable sweeping pop nostalgia – despite never straying far from safe territory.

Writingzz

We creatures who dream of our own mortality
Who think of our deaths and then turn to our coffee
And scan the news for the hate and atrocity
And speak offhand ‘its oh such a tragedy’

We lie and we steal to feed our own egos
To pathologically turn our lives into shows
We are the characters who will never ever change
Create the same problems again and again

The statements we swear that we live our lives by
Are changed the next day to fit our changing lives
The situation’s not perfect, neither are our thoughts
But we say that we live by some book we have bought

A theory you pay your hard cash for
To make you have purpose, to make you want more
From the hole you have dug, the grain in your hand
To be more assertive, more specific demand

Can you fit your whole thesis in the lines of a song
Or will it just change when your needs move along
For something more fitting, to all your desire
Do you feel support? Do you grimace or smile?

Dinosaur Pile Up

Dinosaur Pile-Up
City Screen Basement

Imagine the worst gig you have ever been to. Chances are it was a shambolic event, maybe a PA broke or the singer stormed off. These are pretty standard grievances which go hand in hand with the clichés and pitfalls of rock ‘n roll, but my main gripe will always remain the middle of the road.
Dinosaur Pile-Up are a fairly interesting new band, dark basslines and crunching guitars mixed with enough shoutalong choruses to peacefully blend mass-appeal and blogger’s delight. Couple this with a tiny, intimate venue and enough hype to pack it to the rafters and it seems the scene is set for a myth inducing event soon to be the parable of the word on the grubby street. But, unfortunately everything runs smoothly. Too smoothly.Following a slew of dire indie-by-the-numbers support bands DPU take to the humid stage surrounded entirely in a pincer movement of hungry punters. Despite their rapidly increasing repertoire of anthemic gems every track seems to slide easily into the next with the minimum of banter or elation, the non-plussed crowd never really entering the spirit. Take nothing away from Dinosaur Pile-Up’s musicianship, every song is played expertly and with a minimum of fuss but by busting out easily their best track (the fantastic ‘Love is a boat & we’re sinking) in the opening ten minutes they crash the nail directly into their own coffin. Even drunken students wandering the stage and thrusting behind band members cannot bring excitement to what is a very disappointing and dull gig.

The Bar Is A Beautiful Place (short story)

“I think I actually, like, fell asleep in the middle.” This clearly gains a positive reaction as someone actually lets out a noise certainly on a par with an elated pig inhaling. I stand up and unsteadily head through the strobe lights towards the bar, wrapping my ankles on a stray jacket and almost nosediving onto the gooey floor.
The bar-woman is stern faced and addresses me with as few syllables as possible. I point fixedly a drink offer for ‘Tuesday Madness’ and she returns after a few minutes with a double whiskey. Her features melt and contort in the uncomfortable heat. Heading back to my seat something completely unfathomable happens and I wake up in gutter around 4am smelling distinctly of urine and cigarettes.

The next night is planned much better and I am sitting alone quite happily in a 50s theme establishment with my head on the sleek surface of the bar humming ‘American Pie’. The staff are clearly well-trained and a different member of staff attends to me every half hour or so to check for vital signs without even the slightest hint of a smile.

Thursday night is the low-point of a week devoid of anything other than low-points. I can’t seem to reach anything beyond the stage of mildly intoxicated and every single one of my friends is an intolerable bore. I get a taxi home alone around 1am and sleep soundly. I dream of floating in a swimming pool in a shining light as the sides slowly deteriorate and dissolve in the chlorine until I lie in an endless ocean staring at the light and rotating slowly akin to a giant microwave.

I am invigorated and hopeful as the doors open and my eyes adjust to the intermittent lights and my nose composes itself from the sting of dry ice. After several drinks I am exposed to everyone’s greatest wit and observations, laughing like a hyena at a story about a friend of a friend who once got his head stuck in a blender and someone’s far cousin who once fell into a grain silo. As the day fades into the Sabbath my body relaxes accordingly on a subconscious level and I happily play out the rest of the night in a soft, comfortable corner sipping cheap wine and meeting those who happen to pass my way with kind words and clever remarks. Recognisable faces are met with dramatic exclamations and wonderfully insightful conversations bordering on the two-minute mark before excuses are made and we part company.

I stand in the shower for close to an hour, head rested on the wall, my fingertips contoured at steep echelons before stumbling into my room and collapsing on the bed. Most of daylight passed without me and I am greeted by a strange feeling of disorientation at the sight of the setting sun. After a few minutes enjoying a level of hush I make my way to the kitchen for a glass of water, dusting the crust from my eyelashes and coughing out the taste of cigarettes.

Break Up The Makedown

Five Bands Went out at Their Peak



1) The Velvet Underground



'Squeeze' was not a VU album. Doug Yule was a tosser.



2) Life Without Buildings



Wonderous twee-indie from Glasgow (where else) with a kraut twist, lasting three excellent years before parting company. Their only studio album, 'Any Other City', is a classy muddled ranting masterpiece, perched somewhere between Camera Obscura and The Vaselines.
Complete with marvellously un-rockstar names such as Sue Tomkins and Chris Evans they were the antithesis of everything loathesome in the depressing Travis led early 2000s British indie scene. They were helped on their path to cult status by the fact that in 'The Leanover' they may well have had the best song ever at their disposal.
Tomkins has since taken her tender stream-of-consciousness style to the Tate with a series of spoken word pieces. Chris Evans floundered after the dissolution of TFI Friday, divorced Billie and blew a wad of money on Richard E Grant's coat from Withnail & I.



3) Neutral Milk Hotel



Could any break-up list ever really be complete without them?
Two albums of innduendo swathed, string laden beauties were enough for Jeff Mangum before he presumably collapsed under the weight of his own genius/insanity and went to live in the woods somewhere, crooning at insects about semen. Tremendous.



4) Death From Above 1979



Exploded out of Canada and onto the pages of every British music rag as a perfect antidote to the identikit floppy brown post-punk revival with 2004's most vital and violent album, 'You're a Woman & I'm A Machine'. Went on to bait the press at every opportunity by calling the British music scene shit and writing songs about menstruation and the joys of rejecting contraception. Hated themselves and everyone else and split up a year later.



5) The Replacements



The epitome of both rock n' roll excess and authenticity. Crafted both fantastic balls-out punk rock and desperate isolated tearjerkers, serving albums as emotional rollercoasters. A band of demented alcoholics who would much rather write songs about erections (Gary's Got A Boner) than sell out arenas.
Rejected the mainstream in the early 80s at a time 99% of American rock was begging for MTV commodification and a slice of R.E.M's major label college-rock cash, baiting the juggernaut with the bile spitting 'Seen Your Video' (from their magnus opus 'Let It Be) and making a beautiful anti-video for biggest hit 'Bastards of Young' by filiming a speaker for 3 and half minutes. Collapsed into a fitting heap in 1991 plagued by death and drug-abuse.



'Seen Your Video, It's only rock n' roll, We don't wanna know, It's only rock n' roll.'

Pulled Apart By Foreskins

Sky Larkin/Pulled Apart By Horses
Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
31st January

The great myth of ‘no great bands come from Yorkshire except those lads what done gone did that scummy man song’ can finally be dispelled. The Long Blondes had the look but failed to write any really great songs. !Forward Russia! had the storming live shows but lacked crossover success. Sunshine Underground had the anthemic choruses but lacked the cult respect to create a fan-base.
Tonight’s bands seem to remedy every ailment that has plagued the North East, Pulled Apart by Horses seem to improve with every show, enduring themselves with a charismatic and chaotic mix of enormous choruses and pompous-rock bluster, climbing both speakers and audience members on a power-chord fuelled bender, peaking with a stonking rendition of ‘I Punched A Lion In The Throat’ in all its RSPCA baiting genius. They certainly have an impressive array of tunes at their disposal, from the slackeriffic ‘Meat Balloon’ to the pneumatic rocker ‘The Crapsons’ which could well be a lost Nirvana b-side from 1992.
Sky Larkin are an entirely different beast, more likely soaring on penny sweets than cider with a sugary set of pop classics in waiting, channelling the talents of ‘The Vaselines’ and ‘Public Image’ into one compact package. Tonight’s show serves as a homecoming after a UK Tour, evident from the camaraderie shown between overwhelmed front-woman Katie Harkin and the packed crowd. As encore ‘Keep Sakes’ slithers through its casio-led Breeders esque charms, both Pulled Apart By Horses and several ecstatic audience members join them for a rapturous climax. If there is any justice in the world, 2009 could well sway from the year of female identikit electro-pop to the year of full blown fun-grunge!

Pulled Apart By Horses - High Five. Swan Dive. Nose Dive.
Pulled Apart By iTunes
Sky Larkin On iTunes

Grammatics (2009)

Grammatics
Self-Titled (2009)

High quality production has many negative connotations within the music community – covering up weak tracks, selling out, major labels, emotionless chart ambition etc. etc, etc. Based on this it seems many bands rely on lo-fi sensibilities to create an idea of authenticity. Sweeping aside this theory are the soaring Leeds/York youngsters Grammatics. Tipped for success for nigh on two years now, the wait for an album seems like an eternity, but the quest for perfection is a time-consuming art and for once solid production only enhances the sheer intricate delights of these twelve tracks of pure epic perfection.
Grammatics are as distant a foray as possible from their former incarnation as mid-2000s Kerrang! also-rans Colour of Fire, ditching the power chords and shoutalong choruses for majestic soaring epics and beautiful heart-wrenching melodies. Although much of the material on the album has previously been released via countless singles and EPs the album is brilliantly cohesive and creates a true atmosphere of its own, switching between despairing hymns and hopeful major key masterpieces extraordinarily.
The true splendour of this album lies in its total lack of any real contempory comparison, a unique and near orchestral delight. A world has been created within sixty minutes closer to Beethoven or Bach than any of the overused indie-rock influences such as My Bloody Valentine or Joy Division.
All twelve tracks are lyrically poetic and imaginative, if a little self-important at times, cramming in detailed psychological insights in a Conor Oberst-esque falsetto. Indeed, the lyrical musings show an impressive knack for exploration matched only in ambition by the music itself. Broken Wing proves to be a particular highlight with a stirring build-up and immense collapsing finale. The art of accumulating to an enormous climax is perfected on Relentless Fours, with its thudding bass drum and repetitive guitar line and quiver inducing, knowingly wistful hook “Everyone loves a breakdown”.
Despite every pretentious pitfall faced by the statement it is certainly very difficult to refrain from labelling this album a real masterpiece.

Get Wavving

2008 wasn't really the greatest year for music. The big guns omitted to put out any really great records and, the indie masses had to reply on decent offerings from middle-weight bands like frightened rabbit and m83 to keep them in their chosen state of mild indifference.

But underneath a sleek hipster visade a few really really great bands slipped under the radar.

For me 2008 was a year of noise pop. No Age sold a few records in the US and got a supporting slot with hyperbole art-poppers Los Campesinos! in the UK and Times New Viking made a few fans on the same lineup. HEALTH couldn't decide if they were a dance-punk or a noise band and ended up as a startling imitation of Liars (in the days they used to write actual songs).

And on the message boards, bearded sweater lovers went (quite rightly) mad for Women and Wavves.

These are two truly excellent bands, Women for their droning slow burning autistic masterpiece of an album and Wavves for putting the fun back in music with angsty beach pop anthems wedged somewhere between JFA and Iggy Pop.

What the next year holds for these bands and how they progress remains to be seen but for now i'm quite happy in a hazy bubble of fuzz and imaginary beaches.

Wavves - So Bored
Women - Black Rice

To The Five Bollocks

5 To Avoid In 2009

January is a month perfect for dull overcast skies, returning shit presents and lists of top tips for the next year. Every music publication imaginable will be outlining their tips for success in the next year – expect to see Ian Curtis wannabes White Lies topping the majority. But as highlighted by the crock of shit that was last year’s NME tips list, featuring the awe-inspiring and ever so groundbreaking Ting Tings and Black Kids it seems more appropriate to outline the bands to hate on early. Stock up the stagnant bottles of piss now ready for festival season.

1 – Twisted Wheel

One sure sign of a terrible piece of lad-rock dross is a band having Oasis as an influence. Sure enough, like their gay-incestuous spiritual fathers the Gallaghers, Twisted Wheel are an incredibly poor Beatles knock-off. They even have the gusto to use the lyric – ‘Lucy in the castle’s gonna blow your mind’. If you’re going to swindle one of the most famous songs ever, at least change the girl’s name in the title you thick Manchester lad-rock dickheads. That said they are so bland and unoriginal they will probably go multi-platinum and headline V Festival.

2 – Esser

Formerly of pretentious indie wank outfit Ladyfuzz, Esser strides tentatively forward. It would be easy to be swayed by the Hoxton Rent-boy chic and claims that ‘pop is not a dirty word’. If you’re Duran Duran this might well be the case but with over produced and under-written sub-Penate tunes, live shows as enigmatic as cot death and a support slot for the Kaiser Chiefs, respect doesn’t seem on the horizon. Expect two top 20 singles and a second album sinking without a trace.

3 – Sergeant

Here’s a refreshing concept - more lad-rock bollocks giving the North a bad name. File next to the Courteeners as tracksuit indie with absolutely no redeeming qualities what-so-ever.

4 – Dan Black

Marketed as a reputable alternative to Sam Sparro, Dan Black creates forgettable disco-pop with cringeworthy rhymes and half-hearted lyrics. The infuriatingly yoof demographic titled ‘HYPNTZ’ is a wonderous piece of irony at just how white Dan Black is. The Jay-Z sampling track delivers an abortion of corny lines with a camp rasp to make Los Campesinos! seem macho. Currently touted for success by the BBC and NME expect this to be the soundtrack to the summer you kill yourself with a mirrorball.

5 – Skint & Demoralised

The absolute abyss. Combining the worst elements of white-boy rap, lad-rock and shit mid 90s brit-pop choruses we have Skint & Demoralised. Every track is so terribly contrived that even with the odd swear thrown in for good measure, the hideous creations that go loosely by the name of songs can make Scouting for Girls look edgy. Desperate to be labelled Northern Soul, but with a voice of a useless crack-head, the tales of a useless crack-head and, well, the look of a useless crack-head S&D is more likely to be labelled a whiney, brainless sack of shit. Avoid like the plague.

Download (if you must)

Sergeant - Tonight
Dan Black - HYPNTZ