EP Review: V/A - More Soul Than Wigan Casino

[Fortuna Pop!, 2004]

This is an EP of a few indiepop bands covering Northern Soul, released back in the pre-POBPAH days, when Fortuna Pop! was an even smaller label than it is now. I heard about it from a really old interview in which Sean Price, Fortuna Pop's 'El Presidente', did a run-through of the label's 10 most significant releases, and I had to track it down. Sean says that there was a fair amount of angst during the recording, especially between Kicker and Comet Gain. Don't quite understand this, as half of Kicker was actually in Comet Gain....

The bands all make a decent fist of it, with Kicker the highlight, doing a brilliant stomping, bass-led version of The Inticers' 'Since You Left' that genuinely sounds like it could have been the original - the singer's voice fits the song perfectly. You can find an mp3 of it here. The other songs are all great though, although I'm still not completely convinced by Airport Girl, Sean's own band. Bar a couple of great singles, they always seem to fall a bit flat to me, and their cover of Lipstick Traces (On A Cigarette) by the O'Jays is the weakest song here, with very little of the feel of the original song, but still sounds like a pretty good 80-s style indiepop tune.  The Butterflies of Love, possibly Fortuna Pop!'s biggest band at the time, turn in a pretty good heartfelt version of 'Two Lovers' by Mary Wells, and Comet Gain's version of Dena Barnes' 'If You Ever Walk Out On My Life' is really ace, with chiming trebly guitars and a great chorus.

I don't know the originals of most of these songs, but am definitely going to look into Northern Soul a bit more. If anyone has any recommendations, please leave them as a comment - I don't seem to get many comments apart from people under pseudonyms pointing out factual 'errors', and I know a fair few of you are reading this, so take the plunge!

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: The Decemberists - The King Is Dead

[Capitol, 2011]

I didn't really like the Decemberists' last album. Having written a few top quality albums of americana-y English-leaning indie folk, they suddenly took a misguided turn for prog. They'd always been pretty theatrical, but 2009's 'The Hazards Of Love' took it to a new level. Now they've abandoned that path, thankfully, going back towards their roots and making an album with Peter Buck of REM fame that is fairly clearly heavily influenced by the college rock progenitors. I'm not sure whether the album's title is meant to be an overt Smiths reference or not, but this is definitely the most 80s-sounding album in the band's ouevre. The sprawling epics are gone, replaced by shorter, tauter tracks. The best song on the album, 'Calamity Song', sounds pretty much exactly like an amalgamation of the first 5 tracks of 'Reckoning'. This is in no way a bad thing though, and indeed makes for one of the best songs of 2011 I've heard so far. 'Rox In The Box' is also a really good song, while being a fairly unadventurous sing-a-long folk ballad. These songs set the pattern for the whole record. Everything here is fairly obvious, but some of the melodies and instrumentations are absolutely gorgeous.

The descriptive, intellectual (and to be honest, pretentious) lyrics that previously defined the band's output are mostly gone, with only the odd relapse ('And the Panamanian child stands at the Dowager Empress' side' - what?). Indeed, much of what made the band unique in the current American scene has been abandoned. It is definitely a lot less artistic than their early albums, and could really have been made by any one of a number of bands. I never thought I'd say that about a Decemberists album. They've made what is a really good, enjoyable rock record, but lost something along the way.

Album Review: Iron & Wine - Kiss Each Other Clean

[4AD, 2011]

It's been a very long time since 'The Shepherd's Dog', Sam Beam's excellent 2007 album that was his springboard to the forefront of what was then a fairly new & growing american folk revival. Since then, artists like Bon Iver have taken his baton on and carved out their own styles in the niche. It isn't that surprising that Beam has tried something new with his new album, following Sufjan Stevens's retreating figure into the vague realms of electronic music, and that is apparent from the opening of the first track. 'Walking Far From Home' is utilizes almost Beach Boys-y harmonies, backing them with a mixture of synth, fuzz and choirs. The result is an excellent song different from anything he's done before, but still obviously him. The synths take an even more obvious front seat in 'Monkeys Uptown', a song that, to be honest, isn't that inspiring.


That said, it isn't totally different from before. There are still the biblical references and the odd piano ballad and fingerpicked Deep South folk tune. 'Half Moon', probably my favourite song on the album, could have appeared on any of Beam's previous albums. A lilting doo-wop backing vocalist joins him, making an almost calypso-y beat. The swanny whistles and flutes pointlessly warbling could be seen as a mistake, as could the fact that this song, like a few others on the album, outstays its welcome by at least a minute.The songwriting more than makes up for this, however, with this album featuring what is definitely Beam's strongest set of songs to date. There isn't as standout a track as 'Flightless Bird, American Mouth' here, but the songs work really well as an album, feeling relaxing and lilting while having a dark undercurrent. I can see myself getting to know this album better over the next few months, and it definitely has the potential to be one of the better records of 2011, working its way gradually into your brain over repeated listens.

Beam's new marimba-and-synth direction is definitely an interesting one. The album is really good in patches, but I'm not quite qure yet whether it has the quality to really grab your interest for the full length. It'll be interesting to see whether he continues further down this way with his next album, or whether he discards it as quickly as he did the African influences of 'The Shepherd's Dog'. Either way, I really hope he's quicker with his next album than he was with this one.

Album Review: Tennis - Cape Dory

[Fat Possum, 2011]

Written as a concept album documenting an 8-month sailing holiday around the East Coast of America, Cape Dory is very much an album of the moment. It's yet another surf-pop album with female vocals and a heavy layer of warm fuzz. More than a few bands have tried exactly this formula recently, foremost among them probably being the Dum Dum Girls and Best Coast, two albums I genuinely like a lot. This isn't a particularly challenging listen (or even, I'm betting, a particularly challenging write), but I definitely have a soft spot for this kind of stuff. Unfortunately, Tennis just don't really find it.

Some of the more laid-back melodies, like 'Bimini Bay', really are nice, and the album would be really good for a relaxing day at the beach, say. Singer Alaina Moore has a really pleasant voice, but one that it is hard to really follow the lyrics of in any meaningful way - it's more of a calming wash than it is giving anything approaching a definitive statement. Some of the songs on their own are pretty good, 'Marathon' being the obvious choice as a lead single and 'Baltimore' also being a standout track, but they just get washed away when they're part of the album as a whole. Cue bad 'beach pop' sandcastle metaphor.

This record acts as very nice background music. Its very twee (thats the adjective, not the musical style - with a small 't' rather than a capital, I suppose) and extremely inoffensive, but doesn't really manage to impose itself at all. At less than half an hour long, it's very easy listening - and might actually be approaching that much-maligned genre rather than those words just being a description. And no review can be complete without mentioning that truly terrible artwork. I have literally no idea how anyone could have thought that was a good idea - irony doesn't make absolutely everything OK.

Live Review: (Not) The Track & Field Winter Sprinter, Part 2 - 05/01/2011

Veronica Falls started off the second day of the Winter Sprinter. The crowd was noticeably different to most London indiepop gigs - there are a lot of checked shirts and hipstery glasses - which waas a sign of their growing audience and buzz. I did a post on them yesterday, which outlines my thoughts on the band, and here they played an excellent set, with all the songs I knew and a couple of high-quality covers. Found Love In The Graveyard was the highlight, and this is a band to whom the 'big things are expected' cliche is readily applicable.

The Loft were up next. They've aged less badly than some of the first-wave indiepop bands (Mighty Mighty in particular looked about 90 when I saw them last summer), bar a slight resemblance between the drummer and Geriatrix from the Asterix books. Not knowing much apart form their biggest song, 'How Does The Rain?', I was pleasantly surprised. It's always good to see bands like this from a historical point of view, but quite often (see the aforementioned Mighty Mighty and the Orchids, for example) they really aren't that great live. The Loft seemed like they hadn't changed at all, despite having a 20+ year hiatus. I suppose that means they aren't as tired of it all as some bands that have kept goig right through.

Comet Gain, with their endearingly shambolic frontman David Feck on hilarious form, had all the ingredients for a terrible gig - sound problems, tuning problems, getting to the stage very late and then overrunning, not playing my favourite song of theirs (You Can Hide Your Love Forever) - but played a brilliant set, interspersed with hilarious 'banter' between songs. The band were obviously drunk, and indeed admitted as much halfway through the set, saying that Sean from Fortuna Pop! had been trying to give them tiny beers but that they'd managed to get drunk anyway. The crowd really loved them as well, which always helps. A few diehard fans were requesting a few fan favourites, the most frequently-heard of which (Movies) was played at the end of the set, despite requiring a couple of restarts and a brief working-out of how to play it. They've gone up in my estimations massively as a band after this gig.

The third and last segment of this gig review is coming soon - hopefully in less time than it took this one to appear!

Bootleg Review: The Lost Jukebox

I came across this massive labour of love at the excellent blog Saved From The Trashcan, which has so far posted up over 120 volumes out of 240. That is a hell of a lot of CDs. I haven't even scratched the surface really, but can heartily recommend everything I've heard. Basically a compilation of 60s garage pop and rock, the same kind of thing that is on 'Nuggets!', it just goes much deeper than a mainstream compilation ever could. None of the songs got anywhere near the US top 40, with very few even getting anywhere near the top 100, and none of the bands have gone on to what could be classed as 'fame' these days, although some stayed around for a while, some even having hit singles (such as the Association, the very first artist featured, who were the lead-off band at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967). The quality isn't amazing, as all the songs have been ripped from old 7"s, but is definitely listenable. There are a lot of Beatles and Stones copyists (obviously - this is the 60s) but some of these songs are just ridiculously fun, ranging from early 60s pop (such as So Glad by the Good Time Singers) to more psychedelic stuff. I've put a few more mp3s of the highlights from the first couple of volumes at the end of the post.

There seems to be so much of this kind of thing around from the 60s. I don't know where the story started that DIY music didn't exist before the Buzzcocks, to be honest - John Fahey was one of the first artists to self-release a record, way back in 1959, and there were loads of small record labels around during the hippy days of the late 60s releasing stuff like this to a small audience. The records sound just as professionally recorded as many by the bigger names in the industry. Admittedly there don't seem to have been any truly major albums released by what would be termed 'indie' labels these days, but I think this is probably They just seem to have all got swallowed up in the dark days of the early 70s, with even bands from the DIY scene of pub rock releasing records on subsidiaries of major labels. Of course, the internet now means that anyone at all can make music, but I'm not sure the situation wasn't pretty much always thus.

The Good Time Singers - So Glad
The Rumbles Ltd. - California My Way
Steve Clayton - Girls Are Imitating Twiggy
Stephan & Janis - I Understand
The American Breed - When I'm With You

Enjoy!