MySpace Hop - May 2011 (Feature)

Echo Lake

http://www.myspace.com/echolakeandthestrangeera

Echo Lake are by far my favourite new band this year. Their Young Silence EP is a proper dream-pop head-fuck; a hazy, cloying cloud of warmth that swamps your brain in the most gorgeous way. It’s disorienting and soothing all at once, with the lush vocals counterbalancing the uneasy ambience that drifts under the surface. I’m expecting a pretty trippy dawdle across MySpace based on my starting point...

Banjo or Freakout

http://www.myspace.com/banjoorfreakout

I’ve struggled with Banjo or Freakout for a few months, I must concede. I think it’s this ‘British Deerhunter’ thing that sets my suspicions a-tingling. The parallels are really obvious though, so it’s hard to escape the nagging feeling that it’s all a little contrived. If you can somehow manage to get past that (and if so, you’re more forgiving than this old curmudgeon), you’re in for some perfectly competent reverb-heavy pop. I’d still rather listen to Bradford Cox though.

Walls

http://www.myspace.com/walls_band

Oooh, now this IS good. This lot proudly publicise 9/10 and 4/5 album reviews aplenty on their page, so I’m moderately embarrassed to have missed this. It’s beautifully considered ponderous techno, ideal for languid summer evenings in the garden. Burnt Sienna is about the pinnacle of the loveliness, but A Wirus Waits is pretty interesting too. The ingredients might be quite minimal here, but there’s still a hell of a lot going on. A lovely find.

Allez-Allez

http://www.myspace.com/allezallez

Man, it took some effort to click off Walls’ page. Dancey London twosome Allez-Allez, to be honest, aren’t quite as enticing a prospect. Their sound is much more souped up than that of Walls, but it’s also far less imaginative, with each dreary beat-heavy cut bleeding into the last. Even their Fever Ray remix sounds exactly bloody like one of their own tracks, with not even Karen Dreijer Andersson’s infrequent ghostly mewlings managing to kick-start the thing.

It’s a Fine Line

http://www.myspace.com/itsafineline

The final stop of a fair less sleepy hop than I had anticipated is at the door of nutso London pair It’s a Fine Line, who should maybe double date with Allez-Allez to discuss how to be interesting. Their rubber-limbed electro-pop is an enjoyably mental diversion from the daily cut-n-thrust, although I’m not sure I’d have the endurance to sit through an entire album of it. Their remixes are a bit more palatable, as they breathe a bit of life into The XX and sex up Au Revoir Simone a treat.

Frightened Rabbit feature

The Frightened Rabbit review and interview ended up being melded into one feature, so this is the end result of the editing:

As the scene of my ‘education’, Northumbria University will always hold a special place in my heart, primarily because of the many sweaty, boozy hours I spent in its Student Union watching bands good, bad, and fucking terrible. However, as I have gradually degenerated from a hip ‘n’ happenin’ snake-hipped teen to a doughy late twenties office drone, so too did Northumbria fall from its pedestal as a regular fixture in Newcastle’s gig scene. Now though, after a major refit which has included reducing the capacity of the upstairs room (and in the process massively improving its atmosphere), it appears that the place is slowly trying to claw its way back into favour, having recently nabbed a couple of gigs which would usually be shoe-ins for one of the Academy venues. If you’ve ever been to the Academy, you’ll agree this is undoubtedly no bad thing.

Frightened Rabbit’s visit to Northumbria comes at the end of a year of great success, where their third record The Winter of Mixed Drinks has very nicely consolidated the massive critical acclaim which was so freely lobbed at its predecessor The Midnight Organ Fight. Singer Scott Hutchinson, speaking to us after the show, definitely feels happy with how 2010 has turned out: ‘I think it’s been great. We’ve always said that as long as we’re moving forward then we’re happy. I never pay too much attention to people saying that it’s going to be your year or whatever, because, well they can say what they like, but I’ve had a fucking fabulous year, I’ve really enjoyed it. The reception to the record has been good, and the more time that people have had with it, the better the reception to the songs has been’.

In keeping with all the good cheer surrounding the band (although Scott will hear nothing of the festive season until we’re into December), they are in wonderfully relaxed and amiable form tonight. The set is a pretty thorough trawl through the last two records, with Be Less Rude the only song from Sing the Greys to make an appearance, something which just illustrates the massive bounds Frightened Rabbit have made as a band since their earliest days. There’s little doubt that The Winter of Mixed Drinks has taken a while to fully worm its way into people’s consciousnesses but now that we’ve had nine months or so to live with the newer songs, they are sitting very comfortably alongside their older counterparts. Indeed, Swim Until You Can’t See Land, and set closer The Loneliness and the Scream are two of the evening’s high points, providing just as much singalong potential as the likes of I Feel Better and The Modern Leper.

As time has gone on, Frightened Rabbit’s recordings have unquestionably grown ever more polished. Clearly, this isn’t always a positive step, and it’s been the death of plenty of bands before them, but in this case, it has felt like a logical, organic growth, taking place as they have gradually accumulated members and grown in both confidence and stature. Scott can’t help but feel that he may have got just a little bit carried away with the extra instrumentation employed on the new record though: ‘It was huge, and I went a bit over the top, I’ll be the first to admit, and it was symptomatic of me feeling that The Midnight Organ Fight wasn’t quite right. I didn’t get to finish it, if you like, and doing The Winter of Mixed Drinks was almost like venting my frustration and getting everything on there, and then going fucking way over the top. I think now is the time to pull it back.’

Indeed, as it turns out, the fleeting instances where the band do strip things right down tonight are probably the greatest moments of a set not lacking in focal points. Scott delivers Poke and Good Arms vs Bad Arms solo, and it’s raw, gut-punching stuff. These songs serve to prove that no matter what strengths Frightened Rabbit develop as a band, ultimately, the thing they will always do best is to articulate the bleakest depths of lovelorn sorrow, and drag you down there with them.

This propensity with miserablism makes the band unlikely fodder for marketing types, yet still they have recently found their music thrust into millions of households thanks to a certain National Lottery advert. In spite of the odd bit of indier-than-thou vitriol, Scott sees no reason for self-reproach: ‘Until very recently, we were label-less, so we were paying for everything. I’m completely unapologetic about all that stuff because I do this so that I don’t have to do anything else and stuff like that goes back to the culture of downloading meaning you don’t make money from selling records. I have to make money somehow, and that’s one of the ways of doing it. A couple of people have been a bit... And I came to understand it, and now, I think I probably would be more wary of doing that in the future. I understand now that that album, and that song, will mean a lot to some people and to hear it in that setting might cheapen it a little bit, but, well, I don’t really care, because it’s going to be on for about two months, and it’ll be forgotten about by Christmas time. I won’t listen to too much stick, because you try working your arse off for four years for very little return financially, and then see if you’re going to give me shit for it! I don’t care. I haven’t actually even seen it. We’ve actually turned a lot of adverts down in the past, and there are a lot of companies I wouldn’t advertise. My thinking is that if somebody hears it and likes it, then it’s one more way of hearing the music.’

After a busy year, the band have one final blowout planned at the Bowlie 2 weekender which is being curated by Belle and Sebastian, and they intend to make the most of it: ‘It’s insane. I first looked at the line-up about two months ago and they added some more bands about a month ago, and it’s fucking even better. I think it’s probably one of the best festival line-ups I’ve seen this year. It’s our last show of the year, and it’s going to be our office party. It’ll feel extremely Christmassy.’

After Bowlie 2, don’t expect too much from Frightened Rabbit for a while, as Scott plans to go to ground to make album 4: ‘We’re going to really spend a long time doing it, I’ve got almost nothing written, so I’m going to have to go and do that at the start of the year, and I want to spend some time at home too.That’s my favourite part of it all. Touring is fine, but recording is why I started the band, so I just want to keep making records.’ There’s no question that Frightened Rabbit deserve their brief respite, and you can’t help but feel total faith that the next album is in safe hands, and it will be very surprising indeed if it doesn’t carry them still deeper into the hearts of the general public.

Feature - The NARC. Issue 55 Mixtape

The first of a new regular feature in NARC., a 10 track Spotify Mixtape

http://open.spotify.com/user/browno2/playlist/1pTxezMllmTs441dO3TOaa

Vessels – An Idle Brain and the Devil’s Workshop (Errors Remix) – A reworking which sees Errors deconstruct the wandering grandeur of the original, and replace it with a far more playful, glitchy aesthetic.

Trouble Books – Houseplants – Trouble Books are one of the USA’s best kept secrets. Here, they infuse the most minimal of musical elements with an abundance of space to create something beautifully fragile and affecting.

Emmy the Great – Canopies and Drapes – An offcut from Emmy’s impressive debut record which later emerged on the extended version. She namechecks The Magnetic Fields, S Club 7 and KD Lang among others on a lovely folk workout.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Higher Than the Stars (Saint-Etienne Remix) – The EP from last year’s biggest word of blog successes was arguably as good as their debut record, and this remix adds a new air of dreaminess to their sunny C86-isms.

Elliott Smith – Son of Sam – While his sparser work is his most lauded, on Figure 8, Elliott showed that a fuller sound didn’t strip his songs of their emotion. Opening song Son of Sam is an undoubted highlight.

Her Name is Calla – Nylon – Her Name is Calla are one of our most interesting, creative bands, and Nylon illustrates their darker side, building slowly and menacingly to a histrionic crescendo.

Everything Everything – Photoshop Handsome – Any band hyped to fuck like Everything Everything will be met with suspicion, but the infectious bounce of Photoshop Handsome illustrates why they are worth (most of) the hyperbole.

Los Campesinos! – The Sea is a Good Place to Think of the Future – 2010 saw Los Campesinos! apparently outgrow their twee pop origins. This is the apex of the new LC’s achievements, at once euphoric, despairing and thoroughly enriching.

Asobi Seksu – Thursday – Taken from 2006’s Citrus, Thursday is the perfect blend of Asobi Seksu’s twin strengths, Yuki Chikudate’s gorgeous vocals, and the sometimes overpowering tumult of guitars.

Sonic Youth – The Diamond Sea – Clocking in at just under 20 minutes, this is Sonic Youth’s most decadent work, but also the most liberated they have ever sounded, as Thurston’s weary vocal gives way to 20 minutes of exquisitely meandering noise.

Ash - A Retrospective

We all have our seminal bands, those who take a major part in forming our tastes in our younger days, and with whom we form such strong bonds that we will follow them unconditionally, football style, whatever kind of form they are in. For me, Ash are one of those bands. Now that they have eschewed the album format altogether for their much discussed A-Z singles project (The first thirteen of which have recently been compiled and released as a single disc), now would seem as good a time as any to run a critical eye over their recorded output and see just why they are such an important band to so many.

When debut mini-album Trailer appeared in 1994, Tim and Mark were still only 17. Much was made of the band’s age, and stories of them needing their headmaster’s permission to go on tour abounded, but the crux of it is that Trailer remains a vital piece in the Ash jigsaw. It bore the clear hallmarks of a young band trying to find their own sound, but even at this embryonic stage it was distinctly recognisable as Ash. The spikier punk songs like ‘Intense Thing’ are the earliest examples of the strength of Tim’s often under-rated guitar work, even if his voice was a little too sweet to convincingly carry off the shouting. Trailer’s best moments, however, were the songs which aligned most closely with the buoyant pop Ash would eventually become feted for. ‘Jack Names the Planets’, ‘Petrol’, and ‘Uncle Pat’ in particular can still stand toe to toe with much of the band’s back catalogue.

The band’s first album proper, 1977, saw them round off some (though thankfully not all) of their rougher edges into the power-pop which most casual observers would associate with them. It was (possibly inadvertently) timed to perfection in the summer of 1996 with ‘Goldfinger’ and ‘Oh Yeah’ in particular rightly being remembered as stone-cold pop classics, perfect distillations of the band’s youthful energy and skill with a memorable hook. It also provided the first indications that Tim was capable of writing more than just a catchy pop song, with ‘Gone the Dream’ and ‘Lost in You’ glistening with a yearning, wide-eyed sense of teenage angst. Unlike many albums from the same era, the record has aged well, partly thanks to the ageless quality of the songs, and partly because of Owen Morris’ meaty production.

Perhaps inevitably after seeing such success at such a young age, after 1977, the band went off the rails a little. Having recruited Charlotte Hatherley to beef up their sound, they produced Nu-Clear Sounds, a massive departure in tone from 1977 which left Joe Public completely baffled. Looking back, its poor critical and commercial reception was an unfair reflection of the quality of the record. The band’s collective psyche may have been completely frazzled, as displayed quite candidly on ‘Low Ebb’ and ‘Burn Out’, but there were moments of brilliant creativity lurking amid the gloom. ‘Projects’ and ‘Death Trip 21’ in particular were gloriously dense blasts of Sonic Youth-esque energy. While the album had little in common with the sugar rush of the previous record, under its blistered surface, the likes of ‘Wild Surf’ and ‘Jesus Says’ still displayed some of the old propensity for a catchy chorus.

After Nu-Clear Sounds, something had to give, and it was very nearly the band’s existence. Burnt out and almost bankrupt, they returned to Northern Ireland to lick their wounds and recorded Free All Angels, an album which would prove to be the most glorious of salvations. The record-buying public latched onto Ash again with the killer one-two of singles which preceded the album, ‘Shining Light’ and ‘Burn Baby Burn’ both gatecrashing the top end of the charts. As strong as it was, Free All Angels didn’t really tell the full story of a time which saw the band hit the richest creative seam of their career. The likes of ‘Walking Barefoot’, ‘Cherry Bomb’ and ‘Pacific Palisades’ were stunning pop songs, while ‘Submission’ and ‘Shark’ were cuddlier versions of the tales of excess explored on Nu-Clear Sounds. However, the five singles the album yielded where backed by a slew of songs which were at least as strong as what eventually made the cut. The likes of ‘Stay in Love Forever’, ‘So the Story Goes’, ‘Nocturne’ and ‘The Sweetness of Death by the Obsidian Knife’ meant Free All Angels could quite conceivably have been a fantastic double album.

In 2004, for the second time in their career, Ash followed up a massively successful album with something with a harder edge. Meltdown saw them ditch the strings and pop hooks which were dotted around Free All Angels in favour of straight-up ballsy rock. The album was a straightforward proposition; big choruses and simple dumb fun. Aside from the power ballad ‘Starcrossed’, which never quite sat right on the album, there was little deviation from the formula. As a consequence, the album was only moderately successful, but like Nu-Clear Sounds it was a better album than its reception suggested. The huge driving riff of ‘Orpheus’ and the Queens of the Stone Age-aping ‘Clones’, were wonderful blasts of visceral power. The glorious, surging ‘Out of the Blue’ and devastatingly concise ‘Renegade Cavalcade’ were similarly effective. Ultimately, Meltdown was an arse-kicking summer rock album; no more, no less.

By the time the band reached Twilight of the Innocents in 2007, there was a sense that the momentum was fading a little, which probably wasn’t helped by the departure of Charlotte, who had been a huge part of the band’s success for almost ten years. The album proved to be a bit of a mixed bag. It was certainly not without its highlights, with ‘I Started a Fire’ oozing the typical Ash energy, and ‘Polaris’ and ‘Twilight of the Innocents’ providing proof that Wheeler’s nous with pathos was as strong as it was in his teenage years, with the latter being imbued with an impressive new sense of grandeur. That said, there wasn’t as much of that intangible spark which ignites the best Ash records. It’s not that Twilight of the Innocents was a bad album; it just ended up being the weakest of an extremely strong bunch, and suffering by comparison.

As we have seen, it turned out to be the last Ash long player as they returned to the singles format which has always been kind to them. The songs released so far from the A-Z collection have provided a few glints of their old lustre, suggesting that being freed from the traditional album cycle of albums has reinvigorated the band somewhat. Still only in their early thirties, there is clearly plenty of life left in Ash yet, whether they return to albums or stick to singles. Whatever happens, there are plenty more than me who owe a serious debt of gratitude to Ash for the innumerable moments of sheer joy they have provided for so many years.

Manic Street Preachers - Flawed, Contradictory and The Most Significant Band of Our Generation (Feature)

"We’ll release one double album that goes to Number One worldwide. One album, then we split. If it doesn't work, we split anyway. Either way, after one album, we're finished"

So claimed James Dean Bradfield in 1992. And at every available opportunity, the band repeated this laudable intention to anyone who would listen. And to a lot of people who wouldn’t. But, 17 years later the Manics are about to release their ninth album. Clearly, the boys from Blackwood were always the contradictory types.

But if they split tomorrow, they wouldn’t just be leaving behind nine bits of round plastic. They would be leaving behind a legacy greater than perhaps any band in the last 25 years. ‘Life-changing’ is a term which is grossly over-used, but it is an incontrovertible fact that the Manics have positively influenced the thoughts, tastes and values of thousands of people.

Erupting onto the music scene at the start of the 1990s, they accurately described themselves as “a mess of eyeliner and spraypaint”. They were a dream come true for the music press. Four rent-a-gobs from a Welsh backwoods (sorry, Blackwood), they looked fantastic, and hated everything from Slowdive to Smash Hits to Glastonbury and everything in between. It was almost irrelevant what they actually sounded like.

As it happened, their debut album Generation Terrorists stood up well. It was everything they promised it would be: Intelligent, caustic, and it saw James Dean Bradfield attempting to ‘out-Slash Slash’ at every possible opportunity. Many of their most iconic moments were on there, including ‘You Love Us’ and ‘Motorcycle Emptiness’. That the album was a touch overproduced and plagued by filler in the form of a pointless cover and a horrific remix of ‘Repeat’ is hardly important, merely misplaced ambition.

Whether they ever really planned to split after the first record or not, alas they inevitably came back with Gold Against the Soul just over a year after releasing their debut. At this point, if the wheels didn’t quite come off, they certainly wobbled a fair bit.

Against all odds, Wales’ most idealistic firebrands fell into the corporate trap. Encouraged to make a radio friendly album of modern rock, they and producer Dave Eringa polished the record to within an inch of its life. The end product was something which would very quickly sound dated. In spite of this, scrape away some of the sheen, and some classic Manic moments reveal themselves. Although their political edge had been blunted, there was a clear sign of evolution in their lyrical themes. The sloganeering polemic was making way for topics such as the neglect of war veterans, corrupt record company types and a macabre look at Tourette‘s-afflicted children. We also saw some of the first indications here that Richey‘s mental state was beginning to fray: “There’s nothing nice in my head / The adult world took it all away”.

To their immense credit, the Manics were intelligent enough to realise they were heading down the wrong path with their foray into radio rock. So, in an effort to recapture their discipline and focus, they covered themselves from head to toe into military paraphernalia and unleashed what will forever be their greatest achievement, The Holy Bible. It was a disturbing, abrasive record, summed up best by the JG Ballard quote at the start of ‘Faster’: “I wanted to rub the human face in its own vomit, and force it to look in the mirror’”. Richey’s increasingly unravelling mental health brought about his densest, most incredible poetry. James rose magnificently to the challenge of setting this to music, half-killing himself at times to fit in lines like “Holding you but I only miss these things when they leave” over his brutal riffage.

Six months after The Holy Bible was released, the world got too much for Richey and, as we all know, he chose to disappear without trace. Whether he jumped in the Severn, or decided to anonymously start his life again elsewhere, we don’t know. Nowadays, I genuinely don’t know what I believe. The idealistic sixteen year old I once was would tell you in no uncertain terms that he is alive, and hiding away from the world that crushed him.

But in spite of his vitriolic tendencies, by all accounts Richey is/was a loving man who cared more about his friends and family than anything else. Could he just disappear into thin air like that, cutting them off without any kind of goodbye? But then suicide is an even more selfish act, as the mental anguish is entirely with the surviving family, and not shared by the one who runs away, so what to think? The horrible fact is that we (and more to the point, his loved ones) won’t know the truth until Richey surfaces, one way or another.

With all this on their minds, it’s astonishing that the remaining three members were able to release their fourth album Everything Must Go just over a year after his last sighting. What is all the more incredible is that the record is not the depressing feast of wallowing the Manics were entitled to make. Instead, it was an uplifting, string-soaked work, replete with lyrical diversity and dignity. Five of the album’s twelve tracks were written in full or part by Richey, but it is Nicky’s efforts which were arguably the most memorable. Songs like ‘A Design For Life’ and the album’s title track showed Nicky stepping out of Richey’s shadow as a writer. He was in turn able to pay tender tributes to his friend and acerbically mock the world’s perception of the working class condition.

Everything Must Go had made the Manics ‘properly’ famous, but their fifth album This is My Truth Tell Me Yours finally garnered them their first ever number one single with ‘If You Tolerate This Your Children Will be Next’. This album was a far more downbeat effort than its predecessors. It was the sound of a band jaded by all they had experienced in the seven years since their first record.

Choosing to follow Everything Must Go with an album so steeped in inertia and a very adult sense of angst was also the clearest indication to date that the Manics were never going to sound like the same band they were with Richey. And rightly so. However maligned this record eventually became, it’s still a strong piece of work, infinitely preferable to a lot of what followed it. One thing Manic Street Preachers have always been is an honest band. True to this, This is My Truth is an album which sees them at their most world-weary.

But what the hell their mood was like when they recorded Know Your Enemy will always escape me. It was described by Nicky Wire at the time as ‘one of the best albums of all time’. It wasn’t. They may have tried their hand at everything including, but not limited, to disco, rock ‘n’ roll, jangly pop and raucous punk, but its eclecticism was to prove its downfall. There were some decent moments on the album, such as ‘Intravenous Agnostic’s arse-kicking guitar and the touching sentiment of ‘Ocean Spray’, but Know Your Enemy will go down in most people’s books as Manic Street Preachers worst album.

However, some people would award that dubious accolade to 2004’s Lifeblood. I would disagree. Like This is My Truth, Lifeblood suffered in the public’s eyes for being a subtler affair, more keyboards than power chords. It was a laid-back, melody-soaked effort, and to me showed that the Manics were freer than ever of the fear of what Richey would think of it. Perhaps it’s down to the fact that this was their seventh record, and meant they had made more albums without Richey than they had with him.

Not that they had forgotten him entirely, they weren’t that crass. Album opener ‘1985’ refers to Nicky’s musical awakening at the feet of Morrissey and Marr, a period in his life of which Richey was very much a part (as well as James and Sean). Final track ‘Cardiff Afterlife’ is another of Nicky’s poignant eulogies to Richey: “Your memory is still mine / No I will not share them”.

Perhaps bruised by the harshly indifferent reaction of the record-buying public to Lifeblood, the band decided to go back to a formula which had brought them previous sucess with their next album Send Away the Tigers. They appeared to take the blue print of Everything Must Go, and mixed stadium-rocking power melodies with meaty power chords and threw in some endless solos for good measure.

It was refreshing to hear the Manics in this kind of setting again, and ‘Indian Summer‘ and ‘The Second Great Depression‘ were up their with their best efforts. However, perhaps for the first time ever, the ugly spectre of self-parody reared its head, particularly on Underdogs with its “This one’s for the freaks” refrain. Far be it from me to accuse the Manics of cynicism, I’ve already said they’re too genuine for that. As James sang on ‘An English Gentleman’ on his solo album, “There are no lies / It’s just the way we feel today”. That said, the album as a whole didn’t quite sit right with me.

So, finding themselves at yet another crossroads, the Manics decided that the time was finally right to blow the dust off Richey’s lyrical legacy, recording Journal For Plague Lovers entirely with words left behind in his notebooks. Words intended to appear on the fourth Manic Street Preachers record finally see the light of day on their ninth, a full fourteen years after Richey’s disappearance. I won’t dwell too much on this record, because I’ve already documented my thoughts in detail here but I will say this: Journal For Plague Lovers is the best Manics album for years. Perhaps even since The Holy Bible. And, in my view it is a fitting place to end the career of one of the most sincere, intelligent, and human bands we’ll ever have.

Forever Replayed - A more fitting retelling of Manic Street Preachers history than Sony’s 2004 cash-in - Spotify Playlist

1 Everything Must Go - Everything Must Go
2 Archives of Pain - The Holy Bible
3 Sepia - Kevin Carter Single
4 Stay Beautiful - Generation Terrorists
5 Motown Junk - Motown Junk Single
6 This is Yesterday - The Holy Bible
7 From Despair to Where - Gold Against the Soul
8 Prologue to History - If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next Single
9 1985 - Lifeblood
10 No Surface All Feeling - Everything Must Go
11 You Love Us - Generation Terrorists
12 Ready For Drowning - This is My Truth Tell Me Yours
13 Faster - The Holy Bible
14 Sleepflower - Gold Against the Soul
15 Indian Summer - Send Away the Tigers
16 Bored Out of My Mind - Motorcycle Emptiness Single
17 The Masses Against the Classes - The Masses Against the Classes Single
18 Yes - The Holy Bible
19 PCP - The Holy Bible
20 A Design For Life - Everything Must Go