Song Of The Day 09/05/2011: Yuck - Operation

I wrote about Yuck's debut album back in January and gave it a very good review, saying that their blend of various obvious 1980s influences managed to capture a lot of the fire of the original, whilst not feeling completely derivative. The album has grown old more slowly and gracefully than I expected, and now, 4 months later, I still regard it as one of the best releases this year. This song is one of the best songs on the album - it is basically Yuck's take on Teenage Riot. The video is fairly bad quality - I recommend sourcing the album somewhere (legally, of course) to get the full effect.

Song Of The Day 11/03/2011: Oupa - Forget

Yuck's Daniel Blumberg is having a very busy year. Fresh from releasing his main band's excellent debut album last month, he's releasing his first solo album later this year. Stylistically it is a lot mellower, sounding much more like the 'Yu(c)k' version of the band that released an acoustic cassette last year. Indeed, I'm beginning to think of it as a replacement for the 'Yu(c)k' venture - in fact, the EP can now be found on Oupa's SoundCloud. I can't help think that this is a way to release that kind of hauntingly melodic song without being surrounded by the scrutiny and pressure that a new Yuck (or even a Yu(c)k) release would bring. It even has the same kind of artwork as the main band.

The one track revealed to the world so far is 'Forget', an almost ghostly piano-led ballad that is genuinely stunning even on first listen, and it is easily the equal of anything on the aforementioned EP. He's got a couple of London dates lined up (as well as a few over in the US, including a SXSW showcase) and I'm definitely going to try and get to at least one of them.

Forget by oupa

Looking forward to the rest of 2011

I've had a bit of a think about what I'm expecting my albums of the year this year to be. I've already heard a good number of great albums this year (Decemberists, Yuck, Mogwai) and it's shaping up to be a classic. Here, in no particular order, is my list of what I'm expecting my year-end list in December to look like. We'll see how accurate I am.

The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart - Belong
The debut was fantastic, and what I've heard of the new one has got me more excited about an album than I've been since this time last year, when I was building up to my album of 2010, High Violet. We can but hope it'll come to the same result.

Radiohead - ?
A bit obvious maybe, but In Rainbows was so good, and so surprising given that Hail To The Thief was a fairly big let-down. I, like all but about 10 people in the world, have no idea at all what their new album will sound like, but if it is as forward-thinking and genuinely beautiful as their last, it'll be a treat.

Mogwai - Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will
With this album having leaked on New Year's Eve, I have already heard it. It's brilliant, continuing the more accessible vein of the last couple of Mogwai albums but with the atmosphere of their earlier stuff. Expect a fuller review in the next few days.

Cass McCombs - ?
This American songwriter has been releasing classic albums fairly regularly for the last few years, and I think he's the most likely of the current batch of folky guitarists to vastly increase his fanbase with a new album this year, especially if it turns out being one of his more upbeat albums.

The Strokes - ?
They aren't new or exciting, they're no longer as cool as they were in 2001, and they've made a collection of middling solo and side-project albums between them since their last album, which was incredibly disappointing. But I'm always going to love 'Is This It?', it being one of the albums that got the rest of the world (and me) into the early 2000s garage rock scene, and gradually led me to where my music tastes currently are. If the first few bars of the new record have anything like the effect on me as the beginning of 'What Ever Happened?', this is going to be a fun year.

Veronica Falls - ?
I talked a lot about them in my recent post on them. They've only released 5 songs so far, but each one of them (especially the singles) have been truly excellent, and they're really good live too. They have the potential to not just make it into my top 10 of the year, but be a bit of a breakout hit too. We'll see.


Iron & Wine - Kiss Each Other Clean
I reviewed this album earlier today, which means I don't really have any great new insights for this post. But it's bloody good.

Battles - ?
Their last album came out aeons ago, and they must have been working on something new for a while. I'm expecting something slightly more tuneful and less front-loaded than their last effort, but since no-one has really taken up the math-rock gauntlet they laid down with 'Mirrored' 3 years ago I'm expecting them to try and ram their ideas more into the current American rock scene. Math rock is my prediction to be the 'growth' genre this year, in the way that the new wave of shoegaze might come to be seen as the 'thing' of 2010.

Yuck - Yuck
Another album I've already reviewed. You can find my thoughts on it here. A smattering of Sonic Youth and a real variety between the songs make this a proper album - a collection of songs that work either on their own or as an LP. Probably not going to make the upper reaches of the list, but I can see myself listening to it an alarming amount this year.

(wild card) 
A London indiepop album, either the new Shrag/Standard Fare/Allo Darlin' or a debut. Or maybe some kind of acoustic guitarist I haven't heard of before, in the tradition of Bon Iver and Tallest Man On Earth. Who knows. Basically, it looks like it could be a bumper crop.

Album Review: Yuck - Yuck

[Fat Possum, 2011]

Originally sold to the masses as a 'shoegazey Sonic Youth', Yuck have been building up a lot of hype recently. Chosen as one of the BBC's Sound of 2011 bands, and formed by some of the ex-members of Cajun Dance Party, they had a lot of potential to be truly terrible. The Vaccines, their rivals in the BBC poll, seem to be another in the line of terrible 'indie' NME bands of recent years, but Yuck are actually surprisingly good.

They claim to be influenced by Mark Kozelek and various shoegaze bands, but in reality at least half their songs could have been released by late 80s/early 90s Teenage Fanclub, while the rest draw heavily on a variety of sources, all of which I love. 'Georgia' is one of the lead singles from the album, and probably the most poppy this album gets, with echoes of various older American indiepop bands like Black Tambourine. 'Operation' is, essentially, exactly the same as 'Teen Age Riot', apart from lacking a bit of drive in certain sections. None of this is a bad thing in any way for a band still on their debut album, and they show the ability to be original as well, as in 'Rubber', the monolithic, devastating shoegaze ender to both the album and their live sets. Some of the guitar work really is exceptional, with jangle and fuzz both used to great effect.

Some of the slower songs are also worthy of praise. 'Suck', the only song where the Red House Painters influence really is evident, is much closer in spirit to their acoustic side-project, Yu(c)k, which released a really good EP late last year. Everything they've done until this album is downloadable on their website - I advise checking a lot of it out.

They basically just make bloody good 80s revivalist shoegazey rock music, the other side of the coin to the Pains Of Being Pure At Heart's 80s revivalist shoegazey pop music. And I think that was something that was lacking slightly in the music scene until Yuck came along.

Live Review: Teenage Fanclub @ the Electric Ballroom, 08/12/2010

On Wednesday I went along to Camden to see Teenage Fanclub play at the Electric Ballroom, at a show that had apparently been moved from the Forum in Kentish Town due to a lack of ticket sales. This is criminal - such an influential, well-loved band should be playing much bigger stages, and indeed in my opinion should be a mainstay of radio, a status that their far less consistent fellow ex-Glasgow C86 scene progenies Primal Scream have enjoyed during their recent renaissance. 

That said, any band with as many albums as Teenage Fanclub are going to have had lulls during their career. Not having seen them before, I was apprehensive as to how many of the songs I would recognise - since their classic  early-to-mid-1990s run of albums culminating in 1997's Songs From Northern Britain, they have released 4 albums, only the latest of which has gripped me even momentarily. 

Support was provided by Yuck, a band tipped as London's 'next big thing' by quite a few people recently. I had seen them before, supporting the Pains Of Being Pure At Heart at Heaven in August, and hadn't thought much of them. Indeed, I thought that time they were pretty much what I expected from the members of Cajun Dance Party, darlings of the Bernard Butler 'indie' set, trying to 'go Sonic Youth'. Here, however, they were completely different - the superior sound system allowed even the noisiest of their songs to be appreciated, with the song that seemed to be about milkshake (I'm not sure what it's called) a particular highlight, and I definitely now think the hype has at least some basis.

Even when Teenage Fanclub came out on stage, I was still fairly apprehensive - with them clearly having entered middle age, I didn't know whether it would be a gig with enough energy to live up to my expectations. This was dispelled immediately when they fired into Start Again, one of their best songs, with a surprising intensity. The classic songs kept coming, with the setlist pretty much just drawing on the older albums and the better songs from this year's Shadows, with some of the onstage banter being genuinely hilarious, a rarity for such an established band. Baby Lee, the lead single from the new album, held its own next to my personal favourite TF song, Don't Look Back. Despite a few notable absences (especially Neil Jung), I'm not sure they could have put on a show more perfect for their (mostly slightly ageing) audience.

Here's a YouTube video of the opener, Start Again (sorry for the lack of visual quality, the sound isn't too bad though)