fire escape talking

Lost soul: Jackie Moore

2011-02-19T09:57:00.003Z

You’re right, Jackie Moore’s not lost – she’s got her own wiki entry; and the million-selling Precious, Precious remains an oldies radio classic – but US copies of her northern dancer, Both Ends Against The Middle, are now changing hands for £25 because of the b-side Clean Up Your Own Yard.

I picked up this single 15 years ago in Hanway Street for 25p – I knew the brilliant a-side from a compilation album, and thought the b-side might just have something going for it. And how: it’s a mini masterclass in Philly soul’s hallmark of balancing the tension between heartache and floorfilling anthem.

You can get Clean Up Your Own Yard and Both Ends on Jackie Moore’s 1973 album, Sweet Charlie Babe, for a whole lot cheaper than the US single of Both Ends is fetching: typically in the UK, it’s a £12-15 album and is worth every penny. To take one song as an example: Jackie covers The Elgins’ Darling Baby and while I wouldn’t want to say it’s better than that Motown classic, it runs it very close.
Clean Up Your Own Yard

Golden Grrrls

2011-02-16T11:31:00.003Z

Golden Grrrls (neat name, ain’t it?) have in Date It made a pop record of fizzing noise set to a rocking riff that will make any fan of Kid Canaveral, Standard Fare and Brilliant Colors drop what they’re doing and secure their debut single right now. It may cause older folk to stroke their chins and smile in wistful remembrance of The Fizzbombs. Pedants may point out that the a-side is Beaches, but that goes down some art rock side turning, so it’s the b-side Date It and their equally great other pop hits (New Popz, The Red Sea) that rule the school. Pre-order it (out late Feb/early March). Date It by Golden Grrrls

Dignan Porch

2011-02-13T13:20:00.001Z

Dignan Porch have a knack for writing pop songs that are short and odd and great (like Guided By Voices) of fucking around with compulsive noise (like Times New Viking) and sounding like they’re playing songs backward while moving forward (like Woods).

Last night they plugged in the songs from their excellent Tendrils album and set off on a course of psychedelic madness and pop magic.

If Dignan Porch raised the roof off the Windmill then headliners Weekend tore noise pop a new arsehole. They rattled the gates of hell, danced with the devil and were fucking phenomenal. You have to see this band. And if you haven’t already bought Sports, then you must and play it LOUD until the police are called.

DIGNAN PORCH // On A Ride from theartof agency on Vimeo.

Eux Autres

2011-02-08T13:25:00.003Z

Broken Bow was the moment when Eux Autres got everything right on an album. Favourite track? There are so many! It could be Queen Turner for its wall of sound or Go Dancing, which is fabulously deep and dirty with a musical nod to The Vaselines’ Rory Rides Me Raw. I love all of the songs on this record. Today, though, You’re Alight – T-Rex play girls in the garage (dear Miss Coppola – take note and put Eux Autres on the soundtrack to your next film) – triumphs because a video’s been made for it ahead of their European tour.

Floyd Lawson: Roof Top Sugar

2011-02-06T15:46:00.001Z

Floyd Lawson – a Motown alumnus who released the Stop The World: We Wanna Get Off album in 1970 – is back in business. Roof Top Sugar is a brand new single which brings the funk and for anyone with love for hammond organ and break beats (this is going to be sampled, no question) this presses all the right buttons.

I Ain’t Going Nowhere on the flip brings the pace down to midtempo and is just as strong. Hopefully, the title is a hint that Floyd Lawson is back for the duration. If there’s an album of material matching this quality, form an orderly queue behind me at the record shop.

La Sera and Dan Michaelson gig

2011-02-01T15:25:00.004Z

La Sera (aka Katy Goodman or Ginger Vivian Girl if you will) hits the UK gig trail this month. Seeing how difficult it was to secure the Never Come Around 7" when it was released yesterday (first three shops I placed my order with had sold out by the time I checked out) the tickets won't stay around too long.

Support at the Lexington gig on 20 February comes from Dan Michaelson ex-Absentee - you remember: Schmotime was the best album of 2006 (according to my rule book, anyhow) - who's going to be playing in the acoustic styling, so the bill is a win-win.

Stone Foundation feat Nolan Porter

2011-01-30T12:10:00.005Z

Soul legend Nolan Porter (yes, I know!) has cut a single, Tracing Paper, with the Stone Foundation. It's everything any fan of Searching For The Young Soul Rebels or Introducing The Style Council could want in 2011.

Between now and getting your copy of the 7", enjoy this film of Nolan Porter and the Stone Foundation on their UK tour last year (*kicks self for not going*).

Ghost Wave

2011-01-25T14:11:00.004Z

If you were wondering where the Dunedin Sound went to, it's currently in Auckland being looked after by Ghost Wave. Hippy is a freewheelin' romp through David Kilgour's melodic maelstrom and Snapper's naggingly insistent pop art with the fx pedal stuck on buzzsaw and a dumbfuck guitar solo that is spot on.

Fans of the Mary Chain will probably take notice; fans of Surf City’s debut who were so underwhelmed by their follow-up that they only played it once (hello!) will clutch Hippy to their heart and also download the Gold demo (which sounds like a rough’n’ready version of The Clean’s In The Dream Life You Need A Rubber Soul) before demanding that at least one of the world’s leading indie labels sign Ghost Wave immediately.

When you do sign them, please make them change their name as Ghost Wave sounds like it's a niche musical genre. Don't change anything else, though. Thanks.

Kings Go Forth

2011-01-21T16:57:00.003Z

“Rock is dead,” they said last week. “Still?” we shrugged and went to see Kings Go Forth light the fuse on their funked-up soul and burn brightly at the Jazz Cafe. The latest round of scaremongering over rock’s health focussed on the charts, a place seldom home to the very best in music and one which gives such a distorted view of music that a child of 10 could be forgiven for thinking that Sex on Fire by Kings Of Leon (118 weeks in the Top 100 and 1m+ sales) was rock’s alpha and omega.

Soul – at least Kings Go Forth’s show-stealing take on it – is alive. You might hear shades of McFadden & Whitehead’s Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now in Don’t Take My Shadow; The O’Jays’ Now That We’ve Found Love in Now We’re Gone; Curtis’s Move On Up in One Day. This is music that thrives on the interest from its diverse, natural capital; Kings Of Leon – a band for Oasis fans who wanted a second-favourite band after Stereophonics split up – and their ilk live cannibalistically on rock’s capital.

When Kings Go Forth covered The Impressions’ Stay Close To Me – Curtis’s first showing of the multi-faceted, driving funk and jubilant soul hybrid that would sustain his 1970s’ high watermark – they played with it, extending its two-minute length, celebrating it and adding to it. This is soul music embracing its inspiration and opening windows to the future; the problem with rock bands is their inherent conservatism, their curatorial sycophancy to their elders.

I was reminded of Joe Bataan’s ingenious cover of Tommy James and the Shondells’ Crystal Blue Persuasion, stifled by the issue of the Shondells’ album track as a single which shot to number 2. Bataan said: “Everyone’s always said that my rendition was better. I don’t want to argue about that, but we had more going on with it.”

The charts have always been mostly dead. As usual, it means that some of the most exciting music is overlooked. Try Kings Go Forth’s debut album from last year, The Outsiders Are Back, and dig out Joe Bataan’s 1970 album Singin’ Some Soul when you have a moment.
Photo credit

The Puddle/Robert Scott split single

2011-01-16T11:00:00.008Z

The first classic of 2011 is here: The Puddle show that 25 years into their career they’re capable of writing a song that sits comfortably with the very best of their exceptional output. George D Henderson’s careworn voice is offset by guest vocalist Sharon Cunningham's sweet melody; Average Sensual Man sits somewhere between the high moutain plains of Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, and the bilious back-room scuffle of Microdisney when Cathal Coughlan sparred with June Miles-Kingston.

Robert Scott and Magic Dirt's Adalita Srsen team up for That’s What I Heard, a beguiling shanty that dips into the rich reservoir of doleful folk-jangle that fans of The Magick Heads will remember fondly.

This record is worth the admission price for either of these songs; to get two great songs, both of which – whether this was planned or not – are bittersweet duets which complement each other just so make this split single even more remarkable.

To all those people who sigh wistfully that NZ music peaked in the 1980s: buy this single and live in the now where the classics are being minted.

Sweater Girls (and drums)

2011-01-14T16:58:00.001Z

There was some minor blogosphere kerfuffle over Sweater Girls recently following a complaint that they featured “some of the worst recorded drums in pop history”. Moaning about the production values in indiepop is like going to a boxing bout and complaining about the blood.

I hadn’t noticed the drums being bad. I still can’t hear the problem now that it’s been mentioned. Even so, I like Pretty When You Smile, the Sweater Girls’ exceptionally fine second single, more now on principle.

Keen students of popular music will recognise, of course, that some of the worst recorded Drums in pop music are doing rather well with a hit album and an NME cover to their name. But that’s another fite altogher and I’m just avin' a giraffe...

Darren Hayman and Elizabeth Morris: I Know I Fucked Up

2011-01-12T14:50:00.004Z

I Know I Fucked Up from Darren Hayman on Vimeo.

It’s too early to declare a winner, but Darren Hayman’s collaboration with Elizabeth Allo Darlin’, I Know I Fucked Up, is going to take some beating when the votes are counted after his project writing, recording and releasing a song every day this January is done.

Fans of rain-soaked miserablism (“You know I love you but you got me so mad/You were the best friend I almost had”), romantic subterfuge (“I tore pages out of your books/I wrote words where I knew you would look”) and, uh, footage of indiepop stars in their socks (29 seconds in) will not be disappointed.

I must conclude, reluctantly, that I Know I Fucked Up is marginally better than the proposal I put forward to Darren: record, with Elizabeth, a cover version of Allo Darlin’s Darren, and retitle it Karen, to go as a companion piece with Hefner’s Lee Remick in tribute to The Go-Betweens’ first single. That would, Darren cautioned, be a little Being John Malkovich.

The Notes: Wishing Well

2011-01-11T16:41:00.003Z

Just as the American onslaught of Shop Assistants copyists is dying down, Southampton’s The Notes have a go at turning girl group pop upside down. Their Wishing Well album is a refreshing take on a familiar template, drawing as deeply from saturnine post-punk (particularly, any number of crepuscular Factory releases that slipped through the floorboards) as it does from the pop-punk canon.

The joke doing the rounds was that Sunday at this year’s London popfest was going to be Youngfuck, Middle-Aged Fuck (14 Iced Bears) and Who Gives A Fuck (tbc). Now The Notes have been added to the line-up, everyone’s going to give a fuck and the bill could more accurately read The Notes plus some other fucking bands.

Lord Echo: Melodies

2011-01-07T11:00:00.000Z

Lord Echo – aka DJ Mike Fabulous from New Zealand – could just as well have called his Melodies album Lord Echo Meets Rockers Down Under. The Rhythm 77 that opens this album signals that crates have been raided for dub and disco dominance; funk flavours, African highlife and Latin rhythms are added to create an intoxicating rush that’ll take you back to Kid Loco’s first records in 96/7.

The biggest hit on the album is a version of Sister Sledge’s Thinking Of You. If this gets a vinyl release it’ll conquer the world.

White Wires II

2010-12-28T12:32:00.002Z

Second-time around The White Wires have cleared up their garage for a brighter, cleaner sound. Just as you could judge the songs by the titles on their debut (Stayed Up Late; Ha Ha Holiday; Your Mother Says You’re Ugly) this fresh batch does what it says on the tin: Let’s Go To The Beach; Summer Girl; Popularity.

There may be references to The Beach Boys (Be True To Your School ('Til You Get Kicked Out)), the Raspberries (Just Wanna Be With You) and Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons (Bye Bye Baby) in some titles; whichever way you look at it, though, this time the White Wires have delivered the pop in equal measure with the power. It might not please the garage rock purists, but everyone else can claim this as a fist-pumpin’ punk pop triumph that trumps their first record.

Dirtnap have a free download of Be True To Your School (’Til You Get Kicked Out).

Molly Wagger

2010-12-22T17:19:00.003Z

Molly Wagger’s debut 12” is in Weekend one part an anthem for the gloomy (see also: Air), and in Molly a crestfallen guitar matched with teasing electronica (see also: New Order). This is the record Arab Strap might have made after The Girls Of Summer. At least, it would've made more sense and improved their discography had that been the case.

La Sera

2010-12-19T10:24:00.003Z

The Vivian Girls' rock family tree entry gets bigger by the month. Katy Goodman has struck out on her own as La Sera. Never Come Around is captivatingly druggy like Mazzy Star, hypnotically psychedelic like Apples In Stereo, and charmingly seductive and twisted in equal measure like Spector's darker moments with The Ronnettes.

All the usual UK stockists are waiting for this 7" to arrive *shakes fist at disruptive weather*

Can't wait that long? Some of your Katy Goodman needs can be met by securing a copy of It'll Come Around (yeah, her title-generating software is limited at the moment), her collaboration with Gregg Foreman of Cat Power. It, too, will make your knees weak and your heart beat a little faster.

Warning: May Contain Indie (2010)

2010-12-09T11:13:00.003Z

Yes, it’s time to go over the year’s releases and compile a CD for my friends who still like music but are either obliged by social services to spend their time and money on fripperies such as their children, or just got lazy.

This compilation isn’t an exact representation of my very favourite tracks of the year; even though it contains many of those, favourites were left out in cases where everyone will most likely have the song already, or where there just wasn't room, or I screwed up because I just didn’t spend that much time thinking about it. Stacks of brilliant new music has been omitted (as well as included, natch), but it's a mix for mates, not an awards ceremony!

1. Hey Girl! – Jo Stance
2. Freudian Slips – Big Troubles
3. All-American - Weekend
4. Twelve Hundred Dollars - Outdoor Miners
5. Up To London - Phil Wilson
6. Fun - Sourpatch
7. Crazy For You - Best Coast
8. Trouble In Mind – Erland and the Carnival
9. Alone At The Pier - Gigi
10. Sky Hi - Smoothie Pie
11. Fingers Crossed - Sweater Girls
12. Somebody Else – The Babies
13. Coffin – For Ex-Lovers Only
14. Getting By - Alex Bleeker and the Freaks
15. On Broadway – Myron and E with the Soul Investigators
16. If You Want The Love Of A Man (Come And Get It) - Eli ‘Paperboy’ Reed
17. Love Doesn’t Just Stop - Standard Fare
18. What You’re Looking For - Omas
19. Go-Betweens - Mazes
20. Crybaby - The Sugar Stems
21. And It’s Over 1 - Moses Campbell
22. Rose Garden - Shad
23. You’re My Yoko – Television Personalities

I stand by all of these songs as being amazing (and remain convinced that there’s no let up in the quality of new music being released each year) with the possible exception of You’re My Yoko, which despite my initial excitement at what I thought was Dan Treacy’s return to form, might actually be a crappy re-write of Don’t Look Back In Anger. I’ll let the listeners decide.

Edwyn Collins live at Blackburn College

2010-12-08T10:31:00.004Z

Edwyn Collins and his band were filmed playing Losing Sleep, Searching For The Truth and In Your Eyes at Blackburn College last month. There's no embedding the video, so don't try to press play on that image; press play on this to view the magic.

File Under: Weirdo-Pop

2010-12-07T10:50:00.004Z

Grab a new Fergus and Geronimo free download, Powerful Lovin, to whet your appetite for January's Unlearn album.

Cut From A Different Fur - Fergus & Geronimo "Powerful Lovin'" from Yours Truly on Vimeo.

National Pastime

2010-12-04T11:41:00.005Z

Having a song called Consolation Prize should be a dead giveaway, but National Pastime aren’t Orange Juice clones. No more are they named after the Stockholm Monsters song. What this Exeter band’s fine third album, Bookmarks, does show is them sharing the influences of chiming guitar pop and charmingly offbeat psychedelia that were the bedrock for 80s indie.

The key tracks – to these ears at least – are Leningrad (the Teardrop Explodes’ Tiny Children meets the Television Personalities’ A Sense Of Belonging) and The Girl With The Long Brown Hair (this could be a lost Orchids song).

Bookmarks is well-crafted English pop – did someone mention XTC? – and even if it stumbles on occasion, there’s enough quietly stated classic songwriting to capture your hearts, especially if you always thought The Cure were far better with all the goth trappings stripped away.

Love Don't Hurt At All

2010-12-02T20:45:00.004Z

In a vintage year for modern soul classics, the number one track from Seductive Souls' Spirit album has been released on 7". The funky soul of Love Don't Hurt At All - masterminded by German producer Rob Hardt and New York singer C Robert Walker - might take you back to the early 80s when the urban scene drew on Philly Soul's pop and 70s funk for rich inspiration, and when the good times of Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards set the scene. If Capital Radio still A-listed songs like this, radio dials would be stuck to 95.8.

Baffin Island

2010-11-24T12:39:00.009Z

Baffin Island - or The Very Most and The Hermit Crabs pooling their resources - have got an ace ep for free download through those generous Eardrums people. Turns out that mixing these two bands brings to mind The Smiths' covering Cilla Black's Work Is A Four-Letter Word. Comparisons to Sinister-era B&S and Camera Obscura will get no arguments from me, and even if that's a road well travelled then Baffin Island bring a certain class to the proceedings to make this venture well worthwhile.
Baffin Island - ePop009 - digital single by EardrumsPop

Turns out that The Very Most have just released a brand spanking new 7" ep, Patricia, so I'll leave off here to do some shopping.

Weekend: Sports

2010-11-20T17:13:00.006Z

Weekend’s debut single All-American is this year’s most astonishing revelation: a hypnotic riff blitzed by noise from all sides, it screams from the dark with the same intensity as MBV in 1988, leans over the edge of the world and dares to jump off.

The album Sports hasn’t got a song quite as good - how could it? - but like Isn’t Anything it assaults the senses with no-wave sullenness, psychedelic insanity, Teutonic tribal rhythms and - look hard, now - some wayward tunes too. It’s some achievement and even if it doesn’t rewrite the rule book, it rips it up with delicious abandon.

God knows what they’ll do next, but they say no to life with such devastating attraction that whatever it is, like Sports, it’ll be hard to resist.

(If You Want The Love Of A Man) Come & Get It

2010-11-15T11:26:00.003Z

Eli Paperboy Reed struck a rich seam of soul gold this year with his third album after plying a more rootsy r&b sound with his first two records. If there were any doubt about the man's credentials, opening the album with a version of Frank Lynch's minor classic Young Girl settled the nerves and the production from hit-maker Mike Elizondo has put Reed on course to become a star.

Like Mayer Hawthorne, Reed is not quite yet the full package but he's getting there fast. The best two songs from Come & Get It - the title track and Just Like Me - have been issued as a 7", using the classic Capitol swirl label so you can file this by your Patrice Holloway, Esquires and Gloria Jones 45s (even if the Brunswick label of Tyrone Davis, Jackie Wilson and Gene Chandler might be closer to this fine single's soul uprising).

Sometimes Always

2010-11-14T10:53:00.003Z

If you wondered where the Shop Assistants revival was headed after Brooklyn and SoCal, look no further than Indonesia where Sometimes Always are making fuzzy guitars snap, crackle and pop for two minutes a time.

You Can All Hide and Old Fashioned Baby, the stand-out tracks from his (it's a one-mand band) debut ep swap the reverb-heavy sound fashionable in the USA these past few years for frazzled feedback, reminding us that the Mary Chain’s collision of Spector pop and white noise was the template for the mid-80s Scottish indiepop buzz.

This is a very strong calling card and is a must for anyone who's over the scenesters but still in love with pop music: download the ep free from Eardrums Pop.

The greatness and perfection of John Mohan

2010-11-09T13:48:00.006Z

Lawrence said in 1982 that the guitar Maurice Deebank used on Crumbling The Antiseptic Beauty “made a sound like pins popping in your head”. John Mohan, who later joined Felt and also authored a similar effect on his contributions to The Servants’ recordings, is the only other guitarist who can make that sound.

Mohan's 1986/7 demos, just issued by Edition 59, are essential to old Felt fans, new Clientele fans and anyone who ever thought ‘what if Deebank’s album Inner Thought Zone had the greatness and perfection we dared dream it would?'.

What we really need after this is for The Servants demos from their very brief reformation in 1998 to be released. They are at least 8,000 times better than the official versions recorded by David Westlake with a much less complementary backing band and later released on the Play Dusty For Me album. They deserve to be heard.

Unfortunately, Westlake doesn’t share my opinion and as a solicitor won’t (allegedly) take kindly to those Servants demos being uploaded. A shame.

The Triumphant Return of Phil Wilson

2010-11-07T10:20:00.006Z

Thanks to everyone who released Phil Wilson’s cover songs in the past two years; they’ve been what My Beauty was supposed to be for Kevin Rowland: encouragement for one of the greats to get back in the studio and, eventually, release new original material. What hasn’t quite worked for Rowland has been a triumph for Wilson.

God Bless Jim Kennedy is spiky pop with lush orchestration. It sounds like how you expect all those second-rate Scandinavian bands who want to be Belle and Sebastian imagine they sound; in places it does in fact sound like Belle and Sebastian might have sounded if after If You’re Feeling Sinister Stuart Murdoch had successfully harnessed his pop gift to the bigger studio budget.

If the world-weariness of comeback single I Own It (“Everything I feel has been felt before…Everything I see has been seen before…But every feeling I feel is real to me I own it”) has an apologetic air, it states more strongly a triumphant reclamation of indiepop by one of its forefathers.

In a year when Dan Treacy has made his best record in 15 years and Edwyn Collins continues to make enjoyable albums, Phil Wilson has bettered both of his contemporaries with God Bless Jim Kennedy: he’s created an album that both reaches back to The June Brides’ glory (Up To London and Small Town could be lost classics from There Are Eight Million Stories) and points to future glories all of Phil Wilson’s own.

And in a year where the bar for classic pop albums has been set high by newcomers The Magic Kids, Phil Wilson has reached for the sky, grabbed a fistful of stars and made the best pop album of 2010.

Myron & E with The Soul Investigators - The Pot Club

2010-11-05T16:52:00.007Z

The Pot Club is a slower and funkier groove from soul music's greatest working band. They may have been playing The Chi-Lites' Stoned Out Of My Mind, The Dramatics' The Devil Is Dope and Laura Nyro's Stoned Soul Picnic the night before they went into the studio. Or they might not. But The Pot Club sounds great played before, after or in-between those songs; just plain great any time you play it.

I Lose/You Win

2010-11-02T13:11:00.003Z

I'd previously dismissed Girls Names as a band with a decent record collection and some hipster contacts, but with I Lose they finally get out of the traps with a great track. Atmospheric like Felt's Cherry Red singles, naggingly intense like Crystal Stilts and punkily melodic like early Verlaines, Girls Names are at last a band to watch.

Brilliant Colors, conversely, started brilliantly but have been a bit hit and miss lately. You Win, though, sees them recapture the pop-punk spirit that made them sound like the only band worth listening to. In a little over 2 minutes they race for the prize of frenzied buzzsaw delight and win.

Tough Love release this split on Nov 23; listen to it all you like first.

The Jack Moves

2010-10-27T16:41:00.009+01:00

Yet another hot new soul find: The Jack Moves may take their name from Straight Outta Compton, but they're straight outta New Jersey and have more in common with contemporaries The Olympians' meditative NYC soul sound than gangsta rap. Their debut 45 A Fool For You would sit comfortably in the early 70s Stax canon (think The Soul Children, Johnnie Taylor and The Mad Lads) but for its smooth pleading and deceptively intricate craft it gives its biggest nod to George Benson.

Protex: Strange Obsessions

2010-10-23T15:58:00.007+01:00

Don’t Ring Me Up, Protex’s 1978 debut single, is so good it was released twice by two great labels: first by Good Vibrations, then by Rough Trade. Even though their name was a tribute to The Clash, this band of Northern Irish schoolboys’ teen traumas soundtracked by reckless riffs and stupidly simple solos make them closer in spirit and execution to Buzzcocks.

A deal with Polydor produced three singles and one shelved album, Strange Obsessions, which has at last been issued. Bubblegum punk spars with powerpop glory (it’s a win-win) for an album that feels as fresh as it was meant to 30 years ago. Did someone say ‘teenage dreams so hard to beat’? If so, they were right.

Lost Soul: Betty Wright

2010-10-20T05:53:00.006+01:00

Yeah, Betty Wright ain't exactly lost, and her back catalogue has been mined by both hip hop DJs and R&B songwriters, but a brilliant 1974 b-side, Value Your Love, has somehow escaped even the attentions of compilation albums.

Secretary on the a-side is a strong enough femme-funk workout, but flip it over and you've got a southern soul band on top form (just listen to that organ and those horns) and Wright at her most urgent and passionate. This single was a decent-enough seller at the time: in the UK you can pick it up for 2 or 3 quid; I bet in the States you could score it for a dollar. That would be a bargain at twice the price.

Fregus & Geronimo album

2010-10-16T01:27:00.004+01:00

"Sparks is a pretty big influence - not just musically, but the way that band operates. It is two guys making weird music with no other agenda than being creative and surprising, and that's what I want this band to be. That band is a great example of a group that makes no compromises for creativity." Andrew Savage

Fergus and Geronimo release their debut album, Unlearn, in January which on the basis of their riotous soul-driven rock’n’roll singles so far is going to set the scene in 2011. The song titles alone promise great riches:
1. Girls With English Accents
2. Wanna Know What I Would Do?
3. Powerful Lovin'
4. Baby Boomer/Could You Deliver
5. Michael Kelly
6. Baby Don't You Cry
7. Where The Walls Are Made Of Grass
8. The World Never Stops
9. Forced Aloha
10. Could You Deliver
11. Unlearn

There’s a new single first, Never Satisfied/Turning Blue, which you can stream.

Willie West & the High Society Bros

2010-10-11T06:27:00.006+01:00

Fans of this pairing's previous outing* The Devil Gives Me Everything Except What I Need will be bowled over by Lesson Of Love, which takes the deep soul flavour of its predecessor and nudges the pace into sweet midtempo territory. The High Society Bros feature members of The Soul Investigators, with whom many of you will be familiar for their part in making three of the best singles of the past 12 months with Myron & E. Lesson Of Love is up there with those modern classics.
Read more about Willie West's rich history
*trans: anyone who's heard it

New Surf City album

2010-10-10T07:31:00.001+01:00

Surf City, the true inheritors of The Clean's 1980s melodic maelstrom, are releasing an album, Kudos, through Fire on November 1. About time, too, seeing as it's been three years since their only other record, their eponymous ep. Gales of feedback, violent beauty and a battery of chaotic psych pop will be all yours.

They're coming to Europe in November so prepare for the sonic onslaught in your face (dates tbc); I would copy the press release here, but seeing as the PR likens them to The Zombies (they sound nothing like The Zombies) presumably because Kudos features a song called Zombies, it would be a waste of all our time.

The Sweet Sounds Of The Sugar Stems

2010-10-03T12:06:00.005+01:00

Starring Betsy and Stephanie ex of The Flips and two blokes, The Sugar Stems are armed to the teeth with simple pop hooks which they dispatch fresh and direct. They've learned their energetic trade from the best that the classics of bubblegum, glam rock, powerpop and girl group can offer.

Their album Sweet Sounds Of could show off their entire range on side one with time to spare, but over the fourteen songs they kick up a riot of colourful fun with such enthusiasm that you may just as well surrender to its basic and very effective charms.

Let's fucking Wrestle again

2010-09-29T11:27:00.003+01:00

Let's Wrestle are back! I am all over their new single Crushing Nerves, which is released on 18 October by Tough Love; it's a split with Young Governor (aka Ben Cook from Fucked Up) who offer Old Hat, improving this record's value-for-money (record company executives: please take note of this lesson).

The record company say:

London three-piece Let’s Wrestle and Young Governor, the solo project of Fucked Up guitarist Ben Cook, first met while touring the US together in 2009. Since Ben hates touring, he barely spoke to Let’s Wrestle, and he assumed they thought he was a huge dick. But Ben soon realised they shared common ground when he saw Let’s Wrestle leave a show drunk with the drummer on the roof of their car. 15 minutes later they were in jail. Since then they’ve bonded over nothing but shared roll ups, something less common in Toronto, where Ben is from.

This may be apocryphal, but it's entertaining (press release writers: please take note of this lesson).

Moses Campbell

2010-09-26T10:48:00.002+01:00

A teenage gang from Los Angeles, Moses Campbell get their kicks from pop music (“we don’t have guns, at least we have our songs” they sing on New Country). Their sloppy but poppy approach comes across like the Magic Kids busking, brings to mind I’m From Barcelona back when they were fun and recalls The Mountain Goats’ rugged passion.

If the title of their debut album, Who Are You? Who Is Anyone?, suggests that Moses Campbell are young enough to be still wrestling with life’s unanswerable questions, then the pathos and clattering instrumentation are pulled off with such joie de vivre to win over even the hardest cynics.

The Puddle - Playboys In The Bush

2010-09-21T14:55:00.008+01:00

The Puddle exist in isolation – not just from their Flying Nun peers in New Zealand, who can be bracketed as either the jangly Dunedin sound or as obtuse art-rock, but through George Henderson’s outsider status. Curious, then, that Playboys In The Bush starts with What I Believe, which has a hint of The Bats’ North By North.

That, though, is the only concession to The Puddle’s homeland bands. There are, of course, suggestions of other bands in their songs: The Smiths (Rainbow Bridge Airlines), The Kinks and T-Rex (English Speaking World), The Velvet Underground and Roxy Music (In Dreams), The Clientele (Sleepy People (Remember Dreams)), and Microdisney (Monogamy). The only common thread to these songs and the album as a whole, though, is that no band other than The Puddle would’ve dared imagine that such a configuration of ideas and ambitions could be organised into a pattern of psychedelic pop.

Playboys In The Bush was recorded five years ago. If it had been a lost album by Julian Cope – another outsider – then its release would have precipitated excited magazine features. Cope will probably feature it as an Unsung album of the month sometime in the next decade.

Craig Phillips of The Cavalcade, whose recent gigs have shown an appreciation of The Puddle’s blistering psych-pop, has made a video for English Speaking World.

Foster The People: Pumped Up Kicks

2010-09-20T12:32:00.001+01:00

Pumped Up Kicks may have been the song of the summer for those who downloaded it months ago; vinyl fetishists can enjoy an Indian summer this week with its 12” release. Calling it 2010’s Young Folks is a fair shout – it’s catchy, it’s got whistling – but its chances as a crossover hit probably lie more in the tradition of Drinking in LA and Scooby Snacks than they do in the indie novelty genre. That and a vague similarity to the strutting bass of Billie Jean won’t do it any harm.

Mark Foster probably grew up listening to the ho-hum-shake-your-bum hip hop of A Tribe Called Quest and Arrested Development. He may even have watched The Virgin Suicides and thought ‘Air’s soundtrack is pretty good, but, hey, one day I’m gonna write a song about abuse and murderous vengeance and totally own those French dudes’. And he did.

Fluffy Lumbers new single

2010-09-17T11:56:00.003+01:00

Squalls of feedback and a deranged pop attack greet Harry Dolland’s, the lead track from Fluffy Lumbers' second ep. This is gloriously messy DIY splendour: my best guess is that if a mixing desk was used in the recording process then either no one knew how to work it or several pints of beer were spilled on it. Gradeschool Fantasy on the flip goes for the disturbingly dark and nervy casio-psychedelic effect that fans of the TVPs’ The Painted Word rightly hold close to their chest.

Big Troubles - Worry

2010-09-15T17:25:00.001+01:00

Pack away your Mazes singles, put the For Ex-Lovers Only record back on the shelves, get over the Unnatural Helpers and imagine what the Pains of Being Pure At Heart would be like with their recording budget decimated: for noise pop there’s only one stop and that’s Big Troubles, whose Worry album hits every sweet spot and features Freudian Slips, possibly the biggest and best single of the year. Fans of Box Elders, Real Estate, and Fergus and Geronimo will not be disappointed.

<a href="http://bigtroubles.bandcamp.com/album/worry">Worry by Big Troubles</a>

Crystal Stilts Shake The Shackles

2010-09-14T13:19:00.006+01:00

Crystal Stilts make a triumphant return with Shake The Shackles: broodingly intense, menacingly claustrophobic and subtly anthemic, there's an outside chance they've been listening to the first House of Love recordings.

Warning: the blues and quite possibly Echo and the Bunnymen may have influenced the b-side, Magnetic Moon.

A new album is due early next year.

Edwyn Collins and The Artisans

2010-09-08T10:59:00.006+01:00

Edwyn Collins is starting a new club, A Night With The Artisans, which launches next Wednesday, 15 September. There's a press release, which is bookended by lines from the Orange Juice song The Artisans:

"At the best all the rest are just also-rans
When compared to the fabulous Artisans...."

West Heath Yard presents A Night With The Artisans, a new monthly club hosted by Edwyn Collins and James Endeacott. The opening night is Wednesday 15th September at The Luminaire in Kilburn and trails an exciting joint venture between these two legends of indie: a record label and lots more besides - all centred around West Heath Yard, the home of Edwyn's world famous studio. Appearing at the first night will be The Kinbeats from Frankfurt via Kilburn and The Onlookers from Canterbury, Kent. As well as DJ sets from Edwyn and James, the night will feature other treats and surprises, the start of things to come. .

"Then I fell in with a bunch of hoods
Who go by the name of The Artisans"

More Outdoor Miners

2010-09-04T10:32:00.005+01:00

Seeing as how Outdoor Miners got everything right on their first ep, they’ve used the same tactics on their second:

• Lead song - a kick-ass riff like Dinosaur Jr when they caught fire (1987-91)

• Second song - more of the same

• Third song – country-psych ballad sounding eerily like it should have been on Pavement’s Crooked Rain (put Friends With Money between Gold Sounds and Range Life and you’d make that album better, no contest)

If Outdoor Miners’ first record was them sticking their flagpole in the international underground’s territory, their second is this Canadian band waving and shouting to get noticed by more people. And you should take notice, really you should.

The Transatlantics: Couldn't Be Him

2010-09-01T13:04:00.003+01:00

The Transatlantics channel the spirit of Willie Mitchell in Couldn’t Be Him for a slice of sweet southern soul that’s steeped in the Hi Records vintage sound. This record wouldn’t be out of place next to the Ann Peebles or Al Green greats of the early 70s and is further confirmation that 2010 is the year for classic soul releases.

The Hit Parade: I Like Bubblegum

2010-08-26T15:20:00.008+01:00

The Hit Parade turn back the hands of time with I Like Bubblegum to revisit pop’s golden age when I Get So Sentimental and My Favourite Girl ruled the airwaves. Cath Carroll’s even been taken out of The Hit Parade’s props cupboard to co-star in this teen-themed romance about lipstick, pop music and first kisses to ensure that they cement their position as London’s number one pop group.

Keen listeners might detect a hint of Suburbia by the Pet Shop Boys in the melody. Younger fans will no doubt validate the idea that the band instructed producer Ian Catt to use the latest recording techniques so I Like Bubblegum could sound how everyone really hoped the Pet Shop Boys’ Xenomania-produced album, Yes, would’ve sounded.

This 7” single is released on 13 September. Expect the walls of discotheques from Newquay to Newcastle to be throbbing to its charms all the way to Christmas.

I’ve got four stickers of the sleeve to give away. If you live in the UK, send me an email with your address and I’ll post you one; if you’re at either the Betsey Trotwood on Friday night or the Hangover Lounge on Sunday, I can hand the sticker over (and if you make doe-eyes at me, I’ll even let you listen to I Like Bubblegum on my ipod).

Five: Struck By Lightning

2010-08-24T13:45:00.000+01:00

Finders Keepers must be kicking themselves they didn’t get the reissue rights to Five’s 1972 funk-folk classic, Struck By Lightning, which hit the shops yesterday. It’s like Christine Harwood and Susan Christie, only better. It’s perhaps closer in spirit and execution to Labi Siffre’s 1971 album, The Singer And The Song, a 24-carat masterpiece that hasn’t ever quite got the widespread admiration and love it merits.

Five - Struck By Lightning from Kindred Spirits on Vimeo.

Vic Godard: Blackpool MP3

2010-08-22T09:58:00.002+01:00

Vic Godard is giving away the title track of his latest ep, Blackpool, a sort of anti-Holiday Hymn about the northern seaside town.

The Blackpool ep consists of four songs Vic wrote with Irvine Welsh for a short-lived musical which ran in 2002. You can buy the ep for £5 plus P&P (£1.25UK;1.50EUR & £1.99ROR). Paypal to thegnu@hotmail.co.uk

A new album of songs evolving over the past 15 years, We Come As Aliens, is out on October 11 and, according to Vic, is influenced by “Latin American (Same Plan), Northern Soul (Best Album), R’n’B (Life in the Distance) and Punk, and then there is Music of a Werewolf”.

Robert Scott free download

2010-08-18T10:16:00.003+01:00

Flying Nun boss Roger Shepherd has described Robert Scott's Daylight from the forthcoming album, Ends Run Together, as "too good not to give away".

Gecko Turner: Truly

2010-08-16T13:19:00.005+01:00

Truly is a stunning Afro-Latin summer funk anthem from Spain’s Gecko Turner. Maybe Gecko was thinking of I Love Music by The O’Jays for the jam, Sexx Laws by Beck for the groove, Love Uprising by The Chi-Lites for the horns and Cut Chemist Suite by Ozomatli for the Latin funk. Put Truly on a playlist with those songs and you have the perfect soundtrack for a pool party.

Robert Scott: Ends Run Together

2010-08-11T11:24:00.006+01:00

Robert Scott has a solo album, Ends Run Together, out next month. If Scott’s previous solo efforts have exercised abstract instrumentalism (The Creeping Unknown) or required some restraint (Tascam Hits) then Ends Run Together seamlessly joins the dots between The Bats’ effortless melodic touch and The Clean’s captivating psychedelia.

This observation has been brought to you after hearing just one of the album’s thirteen songs, Moon Up Stairs, but my sparring partners in New Zealand who’ve heard the album say it’s all that and more. This success is no doubt due in part to the backing of a full band including Alan Starrett, the kiwi scene’s go-to man for orchestral pop, and the return of Look Blue Go Purple’s Lesley Paris (I know!).

Mistletone is releasing the album in Australia on September 4; Flying Nun will be issuing it in New Zealand at an as-yet unspecified later date.

Lost Soul: Joi

2010-08-10T11:56:00.004+01:00

Fresh from producing and playing piano on Dusty’s A Brand New Me album – her greatest lp, surely – Gamble-Huff staffer Ugene Dozier wrote Spring Fever Pt 1 for Joi, released on the small Beverly Hills label in 1971. I don’t know anything else about Joi – although I’d love to hear more, if there is anything – but am certain that even counting his work with Wilson Pickett, The O’Jays, Dusty and a whole load more, Spring Fever ranks at least equal to anything Ugene Dozier was involved in.

One Happy Island

2010-08-08T11:55:00.003+01:00

As their previous eps have suggested, One Happy Island are a good-time band with a love of 60s pop. Their primary references are bubblegum psych, The Kinks (I swear I can hear echoes of Dedicated Follower Of Fashion throughout this album), Syd Barrett’s simplicity and The Lucksmiths’ jangly melancholy.

This debut album is no classic – it has an immediacy that sets out its priority as tonight’s fun at the indiepop disco rather than earning a place in the rock’n’roll hall of fame - but that's the entire point: its cheap and cheerful aesthetic is joyously in keeping with the spirit in which its despatched.

Jo Stance

2010-07-26T13:27:00.003+01:00

Fresh to the import racks this week is Jo Stance's debut 7”, Hey Girl!, a contemporary take on sweet Chicago soul featuring vibraphone for added zest. Along with the Soul Investigators blazing a trail for vintage sounds on modern impulses, this duo are suggesting that Finland might just be some kind of musical mecca for soul fans. An album is ready for release this autumn. Bring it on!

The Flips

2010-07-23T13:16:00.008+01:00

"I could tell as soon as we started working together that this would be a really fun group. Our songs are so catchy, simple, and honest. We have a really great dynamic!"

The Flips' new ep on Hozac, I Just Don't Know Where I Stand, is a glorious thing. It has the shang-a-lang of the Shangri-Las, the sass of Nancy Sinatra, the snot of Pearl Harbor & the Explosions, the power of Holly and the Italians, the beauty and the beat of The Go-Go's, the pop hooks of the Brill Building and the sweet venom of punk.

Have a listen.

They had an added tuffness live. Someone should release all their recordings. They've just split up. I'm already nostalgic.

Hacia Dos Veranos new album available free

2010-07-22T15:49:00.008+01:00

Do you think Felt's singles canon peaks with The World Is As Soft As Lace/Mexican Bandits? Is your favourite West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band song Transparent Day? Did The Clientele hit a high with God Save The Clientele? Is The Notorious Byrd Brothers your most-played Byrds album? Do you find yourself, after all these years, still reaching for The Magical World of the Strands? Yes? Then you'll love the new Hacia Dos Veranos album.

Any fan of Felt/PopEx/The Clientele/Michael Head/The Byrds who has some spare enthusiasm for Arthur Lee's artistry and Astral Weeks' thrilling unpredictability will love this album.

It's available to download for free. Warners signed them on the strength of their 2007 debut but HDV got frustrated by the corporate delays so decided to give away the album. This eponymous successor is grander and richer and more ingenious. And it's free! Ain't life sweet sometimes.

Robert Forster at the Sydney Writers' Festival

2010-07-21T14:09:00.002+01:00

An entertaining interview with Robert Forster has just been posted. He peforms Darlinghurst Nights, When She Sang About Angels and Demon Days during the course of the interview.

Advance warning: it's over 50 minutes long.
Part 1
Part 2

Myron & E with The Soul Investigators - On Broadway

2010-07-20T16:29:00.003+01:00

They shoot, they score: On Broadway makes it a sweet hat trick for Myron & E with the Soul Investigators.

It’s not a cover of The Drifters’ song; you could take a guess that they might have been listening to the Eccentric Soul: The Prix Label compilation for laidback grooves, to Marlena Shaw for rhythmic artistry and to The Jhamels for sensual organ-driven LA soul.

You could also say that with this third triumph, they’ve proved themselves to be true originals who remind you of other great musicians.

Make Robert Forster a Millionaire

2010-07-19T11:31:00.006+01:00

After another great performance at Rough Trade East on Friday, I asked Robert Forster a question:
So you can live a life of luxury on rock'n'roll royalties, what bestselling act should cover which of your songs?
There are two. Elton John should do He Lives My Life from The Friends Of Rachel Worth. Do you know it?
Yes
I’d also like Keith Urban to cover Spring Rain.
I’d like the next teenager who wins Pop Idol or X-Factor to cover Spring Rain as they’d get an appreciation of making the transition from awkward adolescent to slightly less awkward grown up in public through that song.
Can you arrange that? Do you know people?
No, but the most persuasive method would be to launch a Facebook campaign. I’d have to assign one of my young charges to this job. Could I rely on your support in this endeavour?
You have my backing, my permission and my full support. Bon Jovi! I'd like them to do something as well.
Which Forster/GBs song Bon Jovi should cover remains a mystery.

ACTION PLAN
1. My feeling is that getting a reality TV winner to sing Spring Rain would be achieved more easily in Australia than elsewhere.
2. When the next series of Australian Idol starts, the candidate most suitable to sing Spring Rain can be identified.
3. Someone in Australia (can you do this? Australians, please answer this call - don't forget, you will have Robert Forster's full support) launches a Facebook campaign to get that candidate to sing Spring Rain.
4. Spring Rain becomes the anthem of growing up for Australia’s disaffected youth.
5. The winner of Australian Idol sings it. It gets to number one.
6. Spring Rain becomes a standard of the Idol global repertoire.
7. Robert Forster collects $1million in royalties.

I Love Myself And I Always Have

2010-07-14T09:51:00.010+01:00

is the proposed title of Robert Forster’s next album. He played that new song last night at the Jazz Café after performing “15 songs about London” (or perhaps more accurately ’15 songs he wrote in London’). The highlights were a particularly theatrical romp through Spring Rain – Forster has always done camp wonderfully - a story about living in an attic once inhabited by Val Doonican and a cover of The Only Ones’ The Whole Of The Law with Forster mimicking Peter Perrett’s louche drawl perfectly. He then offered his services as a singer if anyone was going to start an Only Ones tribute band.

This was a much more confident performance than Forster’s last London show two years ago. Understandably, as he was then just starting out on the fourth stage of his career; this time around he seemed relaxed as a solo performer.

Next show: Rough Trade East this Friday at 6.30pm. See you there.

Photo credit

Lost Soul: Girl Watching On Broadway

2010-07-09T11:25:00.004+01:00

It’s worth checking out any release on Nashville’s Ref-O-Ree label because the prices are low and there’s a fair chance you’ll uncover something pretty special or, in the case of Girl Watching On Broadway, a stone cold classic.

This punchy funk instrumental from 1969 by the Little Rock Brotherhood is the work of Ref-O-Ree’s in-house arranger Bob Holmes and when the summer days turn hot I reach for it every time. The b-side, Morning After, is slower, more soulful and just as essential. You’ll notice the crackles on my £2 copy; ignore the internet nutjobs and you can source a mint copy for a fiver.
Girl Watching On Broadway

Morning After

Mazes

2010-07-01T13:30:00.004+01:00

Mazes' best their first ep with "Most Day" and "Vampire Jive" – more short songs inspired by Swell Maps’ DIY, Guided By Voices’ simple pop sensibility and Psychedelic Horseshit’s fucked-up fuzz only better. The pair of aces on their next single, Cenetaph/Go-Betweens, are better still. You’ll love this band.

Robert Forster UK dates and book signing

2010-06-29T09:52:00.007+01:00

Robert Forster is playing a few UK dates to promote his excellent book, The 10 Rules of Rock and Roll:
Tue 13 Jazz Cafe London show
Wed 14 Stables Milton Keynes with Richard Hawley
Thu 15 Latitude Festival - Literary Arena 9pm stage
Fri 16 6:30pm Rough Trade shop signing

A special box set edition of the book, limited to 500 copies and signed by Robert, including a signed offset litho art print and a 10" vinyl EP featuring new recordings by Robert of songs originally recorded by four of the artists discussed in the book ('I’ll Spend My Life With You' by The Monkees;
'The Prisoner' by The Saints; 'Just A King In Mirrors' by The Go-Betweens; and 'Walcott' by Vampire Weekend), is available for an eye-watering £75.

This Sunday (July 4), The Go-Between Bridge, spanning the Brisbane River, opens.

Magic Kids album and free MP3

2010-06-28T10:26:00.001+01:00

Roll up your sleeves, loosen your necktie, light the barbecue and drink the punch bowl dry: Magic Kids’ debut album Memphis hits the shops on August 24 and you can gird your loins with a free MP3, Summer, before placing your order.

Omas - What You're Looking For

2010-06-27T10:39:00.003+01:00

When did DJs stop cutting up old funk records to make new sounds this revitalising? It must have been years before The Go! Team – whose work leans towards, but can’t quite match, the skills of Manchester’s Omas – revived the technique for the mainstream. Massive drums, hollering vocals and funky guitars make What You’re Looking For perfect for sunny days and sweaty nights. The b-side, I’m So Dizzy, uses a bit too much James Brown and reminds you that maybe people stopped making these records when they kept going back to the same JB samples; the a-side, though, is an all-killer classic.

Kid Canaveral - Shouting At Wildlife

2010-06-22T12:46:00.005+01:00

Kid Canaveral's album, Shouting At Wildlife, is punky, punchy and poppy. It had me reaching for The Wedding Present’s George Best and The Delgados’ Domestiques in fond reminiscence; anyone who’s fallen for Standard Fare’s superb album this year will be just as taken by these spiky tales of alcohol-fuelled mayhem and heartbroken gloom.

As it’s been three years since their debut single, and 18 months since their most recent 7”, it might have seemed as if Kid Canaveral were running out of steam; this album, though, swats away any such idea and suggests that even if they're not seeing success right now, their time, like Pulp’s did, will come.

Tigercats

2010-06-21T16:43:00.004+01:00

Dear Fire Escape Talking,
After having a look on Fire Escape Talking, and coming to the inevitable conclusion you are an individual of taste and discretion, it occured to me you might enjoy "Konny Huck", the new single from East London indie band Tigercats.

Love to you all, darlings,
Haircut Records

Dear Haircut Records,

I waited a week to “enjoy” Konny Huck, as I didn’t want the blanket media coverage of a song about a telly presenter getting engaged to another telly presenter to cloud my views. Now the dust has settled, it’s occurred to me that it sounds like two not very good songs played simultaneously by a school band.

They’ve let the school down, they’ve let their parents down and, more importantly, they’ve let themselves down. The song Stevie Nicks confirms that they’re not big, clever or funny.

Whitechapel Boys, however, is brilliant. Can they write more songs that draw on Hefner’s urban whine, the Modern Lovers’ dogged romanticism and Daniel Johnston’s mini anthems? Can they?

They’d be one of my favourite bands if that were the case.

Love to you, too, darling,

Fire Escape Talking

EDIT: Haircut Records have asked me to point out that Konny Huck isn't about the telly star's betrothal; it was written some time before the announcement and the timing of the release was coincidental. I am happy to issue this clarification.

Lost Soul: Lisa Stansfield

2010-06-15T12:04:00.006+01:00

Seriously! Lisa's last single for a major, 8-3-1, which was withdrawn in 2001 has been issued as a one-sided 7" by Sonic Wax. It's not hard to find the withdrawn CD single, and the album it's on, Face Up, is easily available, but this vinyl release presses home the point that outside of the UK's modern soul rooms 8-3-1 has been unfairly overlooked.

This live recording of 8-3-1 at Ronnie Scott's is excellent; the single is even better.

Edwyn Collins new album

2010-06-14T09:50:00.001+01:00

Exciting news in this press release:
Edwyn Collins has announced details of the release of his new album, his 7th solo long-player, and a London show in September.

Losing Sleep, will be released through Heavenly Recordings on Monday September 13th 2010. It includes tracks co-written and featuring Johnny Marr, Roddy Frame, Alex Kapranos & Nick McCarthy of Franz Ferdinand, Romeo Stodart of The Magic Numbers, Ryan Jarman of The Cribs and The Drums and is the first album Edwyn’s written and recorded since his serious illness in 2005.

The full track listing of the album is:

1. Losing Sleep
2. What Is My Role? (Co-written with Ryan Jarman)
3. Do It Again (Co-written with Alex Kapranos & Nick McCarthy)
4. Humble
5. Bored
6. In Your Eyes (Co-written with The Drums)
7. I Still Believe In You (Co-written with Ryan Jarman)
8. Come Tomorrow, Come Today (Co-written with Johnny Marr)
9. It Dawns On Me (Co-written with Romeo Stodart)
10. Over The Hill
11. All My Days (Co-written with Roddy Frame)
12. Searching For The Truth

The 12-track album was recorded at Edwyn’s own West Heath Studios between November 2008 and May 2010 and produced by Edwyn and Sebastian Lewsley The pair have worked together since 1993 and more recently stood shoulder to shoulder as Edwyn has regained his studio skills.

It also features Edwyn’s regular cast of band members - Paul Cook, Dave Ruffy, Carwyn Ellis, Sean Read, Barrie Cadogan, Andy Hackett, Luca Santucci and William Collins.

Edwyn has also announced a number of performances over the summer and a headline show at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall. The full list of shows is:

AUGUST
15th Inverness Book Festival (Acoustic show)
SEPTEMBER
10th Larmer Tree Gardens End Of The Road Festival
23rd London Queen Elizabeth Hall

Tickets for the QEH show are priced at £22 & £18 and will be available via www.southbankcentre.co.uk from 9am Thursday June 3rd.
Further headline shows will be announced shortly.

A 7-cd Orange Juice box-set will also released on the same day via Domino. The set includes the 4 original studio albums, which have been unavailable for a number of years.

Lost Soul: Pamela Beatty

2010-06-04T13:28:00.002+01:00

The narcotic rush of love’s first flush is set to a driving northern beat with handclaps from start to finish and dizzying orchestral flourishes in Talking Eyes. Beatty belts out her vocal in an r’n’b holler with exquisite phrasing – if you’re not slayed by the “uh-huh shush” coda to “baby I can’t forget the night we met” then check that you’ve still got a pulse – in a song that's violently beautiful. They just don’t get much better than this.

Sweater Girls

2010-06-02T16:32:00.007+01:00

If Grease 3: The Indiepop Years ever gets made, LA’s Sweater Girls will be first in line to record the soundtrack. Their debut three-track 7” ep combines the catchiness and innocence of malt shop pop with the edginess and sweet darkness of indiepop.

Their lyrical preoccupations – stolen kisses, the traumas of teen romance and parental deceit – break no new ground, but are delivered with such charisma and swagger that they’re completely compelling.

There’s plenty more potential hits on their myspace and it can surely be only a matter of time before schoolkids the world over are emblazoning the legend Sweater Girls - right next to the declaration of love for Best Coast - on their pencil cases.

Felt fanzine fandango

2010-06-01T13:10:00.007+01:00

This Sunday, June 6, Foxtrot Echo Lima Tango, a Felt fanzine brought to you by the combined endeavours of band members, fans, friends and old sparring partners, is launched at the Hangover Lounge. Director Paul Kelly will be there shooting footage for the Lawrence of Belgravia documentary. Former Felt bassist Phil King will be on the decks, while among the great and the good already confirmed as attending is guitar legend (Felt! The Servants! Apple Boutique!) John Mohan.

To whet your appetite, here's an interview with Lawrence from Sounds (no date, but it was about November 89 from what I remember).

And if that wasn't enough - well it is, but I'm spoiling you - here's Supermarket's eponymous single on Ice Rink in 1992 (despite the claim that "Supermarket are two young boys from Denmark", this was Lawrence in full electronic mode).
MP3

Skipper

2010-05-24T11:50:00.004+01:00

Skipper write songs about girls, driving, playing records and the giddy excitement of first dates. They match their emotional tumult to – what else? – hook-laden powerpop chock-a-block with cooing female backing vocals, chugging bass and new wave melodic smarts. Their seven-track 10”, In Italy, is, like Knight School’s Revenger and Sourpatch’s Crushin’ albums earlier this year, the sort of good-time record you’ll have to play non-stop for a week.

There’s a great 7”, too, which features Hangin’ On The Telephone (not a cover, but the title gives you an idea of where they’re coming from); next up there’s an album on Douchemaster, which will see them share a label with spiritual bedfellows Stolen Hearts and Baby Shakes.

Can't See You Anymore mp3

Dear Robert Scott

2010-05-21T11:04:00.004+01:00

In 2009 you toured with The Bats (that was great, thanks); this year you’re touring with The Clean (I saw you this week and it was amazing). In 2011, then, it must be the turn of The Magick Heads to tour. I know I am not alone in this desire.

A mutual friend told me at your ICA gig that you don’t know where Magick Heads singer Jane Sinnott is. She’s playing in Auckland next week, so can’t be that hard to find. I tracked her down without too much difficulty.

A reminder, from the Lazy Ways ep, of The Magick Heads' brilliance: Just Like The Sun

Magic Kids - Superball

2010-05-20T11:18:00.003+01:00

Magic Kids'– or the cast of Degrassi Junior High fronted by Snake – second single hit the shops this week. Superball sees the Magic Kids Orchestra on top form, although the off-key teenage girl choir backing (you know, the imperfect bit that makes a pop song perfect) of Hey Boy is absent. The high drama and emotional tug are still in place, and while the feeling that Magic Kids may have already played their strongest hand with Hey Boy is inescapable, Superball is nonetheless a straight A knockout pop record.

Katapult

2010-05-11T16:08:00.006+01:00

Seeing as how The Clean have been the key influence on indie’s underground for the past few years, it’s ironic that The Wednesday Club have adapted the sleeve of The Clean’s Vehicle album for Katapult, but are apparently free from its sonic influence.

The Wednesday Club take on board a whole range of other things – their interests must surely span folk, electronica, indiepop (come on, Steven’s House wouldn’t exist without The Field Mice’s Emma’s House) and psychedelia at the very least. The scattergun approach is closest in intent to Guided By Voices; in spirit they’re next to The Chemistry Experiment; and my feeling is that they probably wouldn’t mind being The Beta Band, but at this stage they’re too enjoyably ramshackle for that.

There’s plenty of fun here – the “FUCK THE WORLD” refrain to Citalogasm, and the claim on Marks and Lines that “Lily Allen lost her cherry, somewhere in the cemetery”– although at 15 tracks there’s a little self-indulgence at play. No matter – there’s something in here for even the coldest heart, and at least 10 tracks for anyone who likes offbeat US indie made by a band from Leeds who are off their nut.

Alex Bleeker and the Freaks

2010-05-10T13:40:00.007+01:00

Alex Bleeker and the Freaks – or three-quarters of Real Estate swapping instruments and drafting in a different drummer – didn’t depart too far from Real Estate’s template of channelling classic 70s AM radio rock through the indie underground on their eponymous album. Same good shit, different name.

Their brand new three-track 7”, These Days, though, really distinguishes them as something more than a Real Estate side-project. The back-porch Americana of Getting By is a road song that revisits Dylan’s Highway 61 picking up Neil Young’s Emperor of Wyoming along the way.

There’s also some Byrds, Teenage Fanclub and Camper van Beethoven on this raggedy and careworn ep; if they can cut an album of songs this good, then Real Estate are going to have to settle for second place in a lot of people’s affections.

Best Coast live

2010-05-07T12:30:00.007+01:00

Best Coast tore it up this week – how can you fail to love a group that covers both Lesley Gore (That’s The Way Boys Are) and The Ramones (I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend)? A band that captures the bruised romance of girl group pop and the punch of two-minute punk ditties on their own songs?

When the album’s released later this year, the clever money’s on one of the big labels – Sub Pop at the very least – putting it out. In the meantime, last year’s five-song Where The Boys Are tape is being issued on CD by Blackest Rainbow this month.

Some shaky footage of Tuesday’s gig was shot from the fringes of the mosh pit. The cameraman – all 6’ 9” of him – muttered darkly that he'd poured his drink over some young hooligan, before leaving to re-join the circus.

Grant McLennan...

2010-05-06T09:17:00.000+01:00

died four years ago today.

Grant introduces The Go-Betweens

Robert and Grant share a joke

then they play Bye Bye Pride

You're My Yoko

2010-05-05T16:24:00.004+01:00

You’d have to go back to 1995’s I Was A Mod Before You Was A Mod album to find the most recent Television Personalities song that’s as good as You’re My Yoko. Woozy psychedelic keyboards, quietly classic 60s pop guitar and a shivering vocal sound like they’re on the verge of collapse but just about hold it together.

This return to form is further evidence that Dan Treacy is at least the equal to Ray Davies as England’s greatest ever songwriter – you know, if anyone’s compiling a dossier for Dan's inclusion in the Hall Of Fame.

You could play You’re My Yoko after Someone To Share My Life With, If I Could Write Poetry, Stop And Smell The Roses, Magnificent Dreams and If That’s What Love Is, and it would stand as an equal. You might have a nervous breakdown if you played them one after the other, but personal torment is the father of these songs...

Box Elders singles

2010-05-04T13:22:00.006+01:00

The new Box Elders single on Hozac, Tiny Sioux b/w Plenty Of Room At The Bottom, confirms them as the world’s premier exponents of maddeningly catchy and grin-inducing (new genre alert!) bubblegum garage psych.

Yesterday, a mate told me that Box Elders’ debut single isn’t available to download anywhere. Talking to drummer/keyboardist Dave Goldberg (yes, I have many showbiz pals) at their Ryan’s Bar gig in London last year, he said that even he didn’t have a copy. And these four songs were recorded in a cave under his house in 2007.
Hole In My Head

One Foot In Front Of The Other

2012

S+ M Party

And if you want to sing along, here's the lyric insert:

Last Train To Eastleigh!

2010-05-03T12:08:00.003+01:00

An old fashioned fazine dropped into my letter box at the weekend. Last Train To Eastleigh! corners, as is the way of fanzines, a niche market, covering Southampton's indiepop history, as well as reviews of recent releases and gigs.

I enjoyed reading it; if you want to get your hands on the physical object, drop the editor Rich an email and he'll tell you how to get a copy.

The contents will be uploaded eventually, but romantics will surely want the physical format.

First Base

2010-05-02T09:07:00.004+01:00

Reasons to love First Base:
1. The titles on their new ep: She’s Boy Crazy, I’ll Be Your Hangover, You’re A Waste Of My Time, Back To Japan
2. Using two chords forever and ever
3. Cheap Trick bubblegum rock, Stooges monochrome riffs, Ramones dumb lyrics
4. They’re just goofing off and having fun; these pop songs are a happy accident
5. They make it sound so easy (but if it were that easy, then Los Campesinos! would’ve found a way to sound this good).

Reason to hurry: the purple vinyl is all sold out and there’s only 20 left of the black vinyl.

Dolly Mixture re-issues announced

2010-05-01T07:34:00.003+01:00

The Dolly Mixture website went live yesterday. The most important information is:

We will be re-releasing the Demonstration Tapes LP this spring as part of a 3 CD Box set. Also included will be all of the singles, a and b sides, a disc of previously unreleased material, including extra demos and live recordings plus a 32 page booklet.

A double vinyl album re-issue of Demonstration Tapes will also be available at the same time. Both items will be limited edition and available only via this website and a few selected stores.

So go and join the mailing list to keep updated.

World Atlas

2010-04-30T16:01:00.001+01:00

World Atlas have taken Stuart Murdoch’s lament “no one writes them like they used to, so it may as well be me” and decided that seeing as Belle and Sebastian don’t write them like they used to, they’re going to.

They nail it spot on with the swirling strings and floorshaking soul beat of The Winter Stories, but there’s a more than a whiff elsewhere that they’ve simply borrowed Belle and Sebastian’s watch and told them the time.

The title alone of Girl On A Boy’s Bike sounds like it came from a B+S song title generator and despite their myspace claim that they like ye-ye, the only tangible French influence to XOXO is that, like Legal Man, it sounds like the theme tune to Eurotrash.

There’s evidence aplenty on this ep that World Atlas have the talent to give up the pastiche and make their own mark. I desperately hope they do because nearly every band who try to sound like B+S are terrible; this lot, with a little more confidence and a little less deference, could be something special.

Knight School - Revenger

2010-04-27T14:23:00.004+01:00

No expense was spent on the recording of Knight School's second album, Revenger, which is scratchy, fuzzy, lo-fi fun packed full of tunes. Pretty much like last year’s The Poor and Needy Need To Party, only better.

They haven’t travelled far from their core influence of the TVPs' And Don’t The Kids Just Love It – the occasional touch of kindergarten psychedelia hints they may have expanded their listening to include the TVPs' Mummy Your Not Watching Me – but they play with such heart, pizzazz and infectious charm that you can’t help but be swept up in their melodic maelstrom.

Subject matter includes wizards, restraining orders and pizza, one song's called Meathead Hurricane, and lyrics like “Life’s been so hard since I’ve been in limbo/Life’s been so hard since mom was a bimbo” put Knight School right at the forefront of gleeful punk pop with Let’s Wrestle. Or as they quite rightly sing on Hope Everything Falls Into Place Before I Fall Into A Grave: “I say fuck off to those who want me to grow up”.

Smoothie Pie

2010-04-26T16:21:00.001+01:00

G.E.D. Soul Records, the home of super heavy raw southern soul (or Murfreesboro, Tennessee, as it’s also known) say: “You like smooth? You like pie? Then you will love Smoothie Pie". Damn straight. They could equally have said: ‘You like Archie Bell and the Drells? Stevie Wonder? Al Green? Then you’ll love Sky Hi's debut single, Smoothie Pie.’

Turn it over and you’ve got Get Yourself Together, which sees Sky Hi turn up the funk and shows they’re no strangers to the early 70s vintage of Curtis Mayfield, Sly Stone and Marvin Gaye.

Beach Fossils album, video and Youth

2010-04-15T11:26:00.007+01:00

Beach Fossils release their eponymous album on Captured Tracks, May 25. Tracklisting is:
1. Sometimes
2. Youth
3. Vacation
4. Lazy Day
5. Twelve Roses
6. Daydream
7. Golden Age
8. Window View
9. The Horse
10. Wide Awake
11. Gathering

Have a listen to Youth. And the high production quality of the Insound Session makes it well worth a watch.

Rozi Plain + Pictish Trail + David Tattersall gig

2010-04-14T15:59:00.003+01:00

Free. This Sunday. At the Hangover Lounge.

Sunshine/Pretty Girls

2010-04-13T11:26:00.004+01:00

Unnatural Helpers say no to life and yes to the twin addictions of hard liquor and full-strength fags. Propelled by a bank of godless guitars and a cataclysmic riff that was forged in a volcanic eruption, Sunshine/Pretty Girls is an unholy death rattle that sacrifices wholesome pursuits on the altar of narcotic impulses.

Martyrdom, sardonic lyrics spat out, mocking harmonies and a stupidly simple guitar solo all in a shade under two minutes, Sunshine/Pretty Girls is the sound of the summer. If fields all over the world are ringing out with the anthemic “My lungs are killing me but I’m never gonna give it up/My liver useless as can be but I’m never gonna give it up/Because I don’t care about sunshine/pretty girls” this summer then you’ll know the festival bookers have made the right call.

Hardly Art are selling this single. Hats off to The Finest Kiss for writing it up in the first place.

The Babies

2010-04-08T10:09:00.002+01:00

The Babies - Cassie Ramone from Vivian Girls, Kevin Morby From Woods, Justin Sullivan from Bossy and Nathanael Stark from Bent Outta Shape – sound like they wrote both sides of this single in the corridor outside the rehearsal studio and then recorded it in the alleyway during a fag break. Chances are they were playing early Kinks, the New York Dolls and a stack of Pebbles compilations the night before. “Somebody Else” stands shoulder to shoulder with the best of those records.

Something For The Weekend

2010-03-31T10:55:00.003+01:00

This Sunday, April 4, Pam Berry of Black Tambourine will be rockin' the decks gently at the Hangover Lounge in support of her old band's eponymous collection that's just hit the shops courtesy of Slumberland.

Tracks from the album will be played PLUS! there'll be chances to win copies of the album and posters and badges. Turn up and get lucky.

Hangover Lounge

Best Coast tour

2010-03-29T12:29:00.005+01:00

Best Coast are touring the UK. I’m there with bells on and I bet you’ll be too. They’re playing the Camden Crawl and the Great Escape in Brighton as well, but non-festival dates are:

Sun 2nd May 2010
Jericho Tavern - Oxford

Mon 3rd May 2010
The Joiners – Southampton

Tue 4th May 2010
Madame JoJo's - London

Wed 5th May 2010
The Louisiana - Bristol

Thu 6th May 2010
The Bodega Social - Nottingham

Fri 7th May 2010
The Deaf Institute - Manchester

Sat 8th May 2010
Korova - Liverpool

Tue 11th May 2010
The Hare & Hounds - Kings Heath – Birmingham

Wed 12th May 2010
Old Blue Last - London

The Dentists and The Claim

2010-03-24T09:47:00.004Z

A reminder that The Dentists are returning to the stage tomorrow night (Thursday March 25) at Camden Dingwalls with their original line-up for the first time since 1986. Support comes from The Claim so if you're in London or its environs you'd have to be mad to miss this gig (tickets). A couple of archive items to illustrate this post: the press release from The Dentists' 1987 ep, Writhing On The Shagpile, and a press photo of The Claim from 1990 or 1991.

Water Wolves

2010-03-21T10:51:00.003Z

This new Scottish band have just two songs on their myspace and both are beauts. Country swing meets powerpop head on like the Lemonheads circa It’s A Shame About Ray, or Teenage Fanclub at the top of their game. Surely it can be only a matter of time before Captured Tracks open their chequebook to secure a recording deal.

In answer to “about Water Wolves” they’ve posted a picture of a highland cow and you know that they’re referencing James Kirk’s post-Orange Juice band Memphis, whose single, You Supply The Roses, hits the countrified jangle pop sweet spot just so.

Hats off to Brogues who’s booked them to support The Lodger at Mono on April 20. If I were anywhere near Glasgow, I’d be there like a shot.

Camper Van Withered Hand

2010-03-20T09:55:00.004Z

Dan Willson says: "A video of a beautiful King Creosote/Adem/Pictish Trail cover of No Cigarettes that leaves me pretty much speechless." Recorded in BBC Scotland's campervan. Astonishing stuff.

Anyone who's seen Dan live will need no encouragement to attend at least one of these shows:
20/03/10 : EDINBURGH Limbo @ The Voodoo Rooms
25/03/10 : SHEFFIELD The Red House
26/03/10 : NOTTINGHAM Lee Rosy's
01/04/10 : LONDON Slaughtered Lamb (w/ King Creosote)
05/04/10 : DORDRECHT Bibelot (w/ Benni Hemm Hemm)
06/04/10 : GHENT Cafe Video (w/ Benni Hemm Hemm)
07/04/10 : LUXEMBOURG D:qliq (w/ Benni Hemm Hemm)
08-10/04/10 : ROTTERDAM Motel Mozaique Festival
11/04/10 : THUN Cafe Mokka (w/ Benni Hemm Hemm)
12/04/10 : FELDKIRCH Sonderbar (w/ Benni Hemm Hemm)
13/04/10 : GRAZ Scherbe (w/ Benni Hemm Hemm)
14/04/10 : VIENNA Chelsea (w/ Benni Hemm Hemm)
16/04/10 : ERLANGEN E-werk (w/ Benni Hemm Hemm)
17/04/10 : BERLIN Glashaus (w/ Benni Hemm Hemm)
18/04/10 : HAMBURG Hafenklang (w/ Benni Hemm Hemm)
19/04/10 : COLOGNE Kulturbunker (w/ Benni Hemm Hemm)
06/05/10 : LONDON Union Chapel (w/ Woodpigeon)

Lost Soul: Barbara Mason

2010-03-16T16:49:00.005Z

Ain’t Got Nobody was tucked away on a b-side in 1968 and is still waiting to be dusted down and reissued – amazing when you consider the lush Philly Soul orchestration, midtempo swing and fingersnappin’ groove. If Motown had released this, there wouldn’t be an oldies station in the world that didn’t have it on its playlist.

Daydream

2010-03-11T16:14:00.002Z

Beach Fossils’ debut single, Daydream, sounds like an outtake from New Order’s Power, Corruption & Lies, stripped of disco accoutrements and made to stare moodily out of the window. Disaffected romantics need look no further for solace.

Warning: the b-side, Desert Sand, contains goth influence, but seeing as their myspace is fleshed out with songs that will have everyone (ok, me) cheering “it’s like the great lost Factory Records album only played by Real Estate!” their forthcoming album is going to be a must-buy.