I have to admit that this little 16th birthday celebratory EP Zip It Up from Fierce Panda (home of the soon to be released cd from the wonderful Goldheart Assembly) has rather got me hooked – seven excellent tracks from bands new to me. Not the usual indie bands either, more a sense of rather exciting déjà vu with a twist of today and a side order of youth. There are more than a few smatterings of Smiths and other 80’s type references, not that these aren’t very welcome
The rather brilliant Brilliant Mind have lots of that northern grit, The Heartbreaks got me from the get go what with all the hand claps and sing a long chorus and Sketches manage to combine close harmonies and a bit of welcome punch in an unexpected combo
All tracks are to be heartily recommended though and provide a refreshing snapshot of emerging bands – there’s a collective urgency and purpose that comes from bands finding their feet, pushing for the big break. It’s only a shame that this hard to define set of qualities often gets lost later – ah the appeal of the new, the as-yet –to–be successful, the freshness of music created under adversity ….I wonder of U2 can remember that far back?
I only became aware of Miccoli through IDS who caught them in a show at a shopping centre around Birmingham – he bought their album and had a chat with their father. Undeniably talented and professional they have self-released a first album and are writing their second. With a single Angel and Demons out now and proceeds from this and their current tour of shopping centres around the UK all going to the British Heart Foundation you can’t but wish them well.
We caught up and recorded a podcast with them between tour dates to hear more about them, their music and their reason for supporting BHF.
Well it was a real shame that IDS couldn’t make this gig but work is work and must be attended to and he had to get down and dirty with some cameoid (!). Birmingham Town Hall is a splendid venue, the sounds a bit echo-ey but impressive none the less. The lad and I claimed our place up front before the uniformly gentile and middle class crowd arrived. Could it really be three years since we saw Midlake first at the old Zodiac in Oxford?
The Lad was the one to notice that the huge backdrop version of the album cover looked curiously like a lion or big cat face at this size – surely not an accident, the cover is indeed odd being a mirror reflection of a few of the band dressed up in monkish gowns.
Sarah Jaffe, like Midlake is a citizen of Denton Texas, and was the support for the show. Her band included Robert Gomez who we last saw supporting Midlake in 2007. Jaffe has a good voice and put in a strong of songs.
Midlake themselves came on as a seven piece, including six beards, and promised a big full sound – three guitars, bass, drums, keyboards and flutes and lead vocals with acoustic guitar. They came on stage with no pomp and just got on with it, all looking relaxed and comfortable. Through the set the band played the whole of the current CD Courage of Others, with songs like Children of the Ground, Rulers, Ruling All Things sounding especially strong. The songs without exception sounded more muscular, more direct and the structure of the songs and their melodic complexities clearer. The live set really helped me get more from this album, made more sense somehow. The Courage of Others is not the most immediate of albums, it needs time to reveal itself and the show only helped this process.
Everything was enthusiastically received but the songs from the Tales of Van Occupanther album perhaps understandably got the most rapturous welcomes. Bandits, Young Bride were there as was an epic version of Head Home and an immense Roscoe with a great build up before breaking into the song proper. Branches was used as the encore and so all in all they played just about all of their current oeuvre (given that by their own admission the ‘don’t play’ the first album)
Tim Smiths vocals were in fine form despite his shy and laconic style but the outstanding playing, in my view, went to the lead guitarist who I didn’t know and who isn’t part of the usual band and who put in some fine harder edged guitar work, and also to Mckenzie Smith on drums who displayed great style, sensitivity and musicality throughout.
A hugely enjoyable gig, a band that felt stronger and more confident than three years ago, with an album that only gets better with repeated listens. Lets hope its not three years til they are back again.
This is an exceptionally and sumptuously beautiful album, a worthy successor to the previous album Rooks and the last of the very loose trilogy of Shearwater albums started with Palo Santo.
Built around island issues, the maritime theme is in balance with previous sets in pursuing the theme of nature, environment and so forth but the mawkishness that often besets such efforts. Indeed the island theme isn’t just a tacked on device, these songs resulting from a series of trips to remote islands along with the limited edition ‘dossiers’ produced by Jonathon Meiburg that illustrate and illuminate the journey. The dossier couldn’t be produced by the record label so the band invited fans to sign up for copies and fund the limited run of production ( I await my copy with anticipation!) – a mini and cut down version is included with the CD.
Opening to the strains of the disenfranchised inhabitants of Bikini Atoll singing their national anthem from their adopted home of Kili, the album moves from the lilting and lyrical such as Hidden Lakes, to the harsher and (relatively) abrasive such as Corridors. The whole affair lasts a scant forty minutes but it is a period of unfailing success, a tour de force, woven through with Meiburg’s affecting falsetto vocals.
Such vocals can be tiring and despite his lyrics being hard to decipher (thanks however for the lyric sheet) the vocal results in becoming an additional instrument. The whole set is like a tone poem rather than a collection of songs, each shifting into the other, little in terms of standard song structures and hardly a singalong album. But even without understanding it all on first (or subsequent) listens, the passion and integrity bursts through raising the whole above the usual, the hallmark of a special set of music.
Now here’s a thing! Undeniable Smiths, Motown, Elvis Costello and sundry other influences but this Morecombe bunch of lads have that wonderful fresh, bouncy and shimmering feel of a new band with purpose and confidence.
The indie band thing is getting a bit tired but this stuff cracks along with a swagger. Steve Lamaq of course got there early with his post and link to a download version of Jealous, Don’t You Know that is also available via a very limited Fierce Panda EP along with a few other bands.
Heartbreaks have single, Liam My Dear, released at the start of March pre-order-able from their Myspace site. How refreshing to have a new band with some chutzpah!
I have been a Pat Metheny fan for some time now. I remember distinctly hearing him for the first time, odd though it seems, on an edition of the old BBC programme, Tomorrows World, where he was demonstrating the then new guitar synth, by Roland I think. This must have been around 1983 as I got his next album, First Circle when it came out in 1984, guitar synth featuring heavily.
Whilst my collection of his material is by no means complete there is still a pretty full shelf of Metheny disc, solo, ensemble and group. Most of his music carries the distinctive Metheny qualities, although some like Zero Tolerance for Silence take his ability to explore all musical and crannies too far for me, perhaps one of the only truly unlistenable albums I have.
For me the Metheny music that I return to time and time again tends to be the more introspective, intimate material like the solo One Quiet Night or Beyond the Missouri Sky with Charlie Haden. But irrespective of who he plays with Metheny is ceaselessly inventive and virtuosic. The arrival of Orchestrion had me curious with Pat listed as playing every single instrument from guitars to percussion and marimba to guitarbots – courtesy of the Ochestrion
It is pointless for me to try and explain in detail but the Orchestrion is an up to date version of the player piano idea where the musician has control of all the instruments at his disposal though a complex solenoid arrangement. The embedded video does a much better job than I could hope to do of describing this.
The technological arrangement is amazing, and hats off to all those involved in making it happen and especially Eric Singer who custom built all the orchestrion instruments used here. But what of the music? I guess the most obvious feature is the ability to have several instruments following the same complex runs simultaneously, with the same ‘moves and sways’ – frankly I have no idea how this really works but it clearly does.
The tracks have the unmistakeable Metheny flavour to them, and no bad thing at all. Exquisitely played of course, flowing, rippling, luxuriant tracks but you can’t help but think they sound like a new Pat Metheny Group CD. I am not quite sure what I like it to sound like, but if I didn’t know of the amazing technical stuff I would still be pleased to have this as the latest PMG album. Pat obviously feels that it gives him greater and more personal control, with instruments responding to how he wants them to sound, maybe its a musicians thing.
A welcome addition to the Metheny oeuvre, extra-ordinary musicianship and a technical triumph, I guess I just hoped for something extra, something musically even more outstanding in line with the mind boggling orchestrion itself.
Its been a long time since the Trials of Van Occupanther and its good to have Midlake back. It is said that in intervening time they produced another album but discarded it and started over, The Courage of Others is the result.
Of course there is much to be recognised, the harmonies, the acoustic-ness of it all and the sense that they really must the product of some 19th century Americana/British folk hybrid. As foretold this collection is less optimist-sounding than their last outing which itself wasn’t exactly Beach Boys feel good territory. There is an all pervading melancholia, a sense of wistfulness, loss perhaps or maybe regret, reinforced by the minor chords and the downward key changes and the use of flute throughout. Much of the subject matter revolves around loss of connection with nature, the loss of ways of life and mans ability to make a mess of things. Nor is it an immediate album, a passing listen might not have you rushing to acclaim it.
However it is a strong set and beautifully played, revealing more of itself with repeated listens- Acts of Man and Children of the Grounds, come to the fore. The use of Stephanie Dosen is a welcome addition to some tracks, Ms Dosen is an under-rated talent it seems, first encountered by me as support for Midlake on their last UK tour. The songs perhaps suffer from a certain sameness at least stylistically but there is an unquestionable beauty to the songs and theyreally grow after each listen.
It will be interesting to see how this comes across live, reports of some gigs reflect that perhaps tracks from Van Occupanther are a necessary addition to the set to help with the variety of pace. Perhaps by the time I seem them in Birmingham later this month the benefit of playing this material live for a while will have filtered through.
Obviously no vids yet for the new material, but Roscoe was a class track from the last album…
I think I first heard of Andrew Morgan via a Robin Hilton NPR blog post and an attendant mp3 file. Well something registered and I sent off to Broken Horse Records for the Please Kid, Remember CD. The terrifying geekly looking chap staring back from the cover doesn’t really hint at the sort of music contained within. The breathy vocal could be irritating but isn’t and there is something strangely familiar about the tracks and their sound, almost a cross between Elliott Smith and Badly Drawn Boy there is a peculiarly British sound to it all somehow, something I have just discovered referred to in the biog on the chaps web site. The seventeen tracks contain some very short, slight ones that might have made the whole affair feel fractured and disjointed but in fact the effect is one of joining up, building bridges between songs, the repetitions of all or parts of songs also contributing to the ‘whole-ness’. Victory in Passing, Turn Your Collar to the Wind are fine tracks among a clutch of soothing and satisfying songs
The sublime Teen Dream album from Beach House was again an alert from a blog post, this time from The Line of Best Fit . Although credited to just Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally, with live percussion from Daniel J Franz, there is a deep lushness to the sound. Flavours of grizzly Bear (who they support at Roundhouse gigs later this year) there are also twinges of Fleet Foxiness but all with a slightly more electro overtone. The ‘single’ Norway is of course gorgeous especially with its bendy guitar notes but other tracks like Silver Soul and 10 Mile Stereo ensure the whole affair is delicious stuff
Moving away from the lush corner of the room new Spoon offering, Transference, brings us back to life. Perhaps not a massive step in any direction but a very welcome return from the chaps. Ah those great choppy, jangly guitars and the strange use of sloppy reggae echo, I love his sound. Although doubtless the subject of hours of careful production it still sounds like it could have been knocked out in your front room. Immediate stand out tracks for me are I Saw the Light,
Got Nuffin and Written in Reverse. Grand stuff, as I say maybe not a great leap forward but then again they were already standing somewhere rather good… no UK date announced yet but we live in hope.
Finally the rather splendid Honour Before Glory, not just because of a great band name not the fact that Whiskas is out of the wonderful Forward Russia ( on a ‘break’, yea right!) and the sound fleshed out by a bunch of other chaps. A few dates in Germany has led to a very limited edition three track EP that can be bought via their Bandcamp site and streamed through their regular site. These three tracks are a tantalising glimpse into what may be coming with the trademark sparkling guitar work.
I am always infeasibly pleased to have comments on any of the postings so imagine my childlike joy to have TWO for the Deep Sht post -truly I must have alighted upon something wondrous. The first of course was from the ever-watchful IDS but the second from a person unknown to me – huzzah!
Well apparently the enigmatic 文章 said 灰心是動搖的開端，動搖是失敗的近鄰。- of course I was overwhelmed by the insight fullness of this but had to useGoogle translator to check. App arently ‘Article’ feels that “Discouraged is to destabilize the beginning of a failure of the neighbors shaken.” – how true, how wise…
I would much rather believe that I have inadvertently communed with someone of like interests in a far-off land than say, perhaps, a potentially dodgy young lady web site that thelink might point to.
Unashamedly here because of the track title, first heard of this London based one-piece (although there are clearly three of them on the vid) on a KEXP podcast by DJ Rachel Ratner. The video certainly isn’t of the highest quality and the tracks of course sound better on Myspace. Hector and No No Mr Greenspan can be downloaded from RCRDLBL
The "Music Always Gives Me A Lift" Blog 