Viva Voce
The major downside to being a music lover in the digital age is that it sometimes feels like there aren’t enough listening hours in the day. You can try to cut out mundane trivialities, like work and sleep, but there will still be bands who don’t get the attention they might deserve.
Hockey
You know when hip new bands get used in the soundtrack of US teen televisual waffle; you might for instance have seen Death Cab for Cutie make a fleeting appearance on The OC, or heard Paramore spring up for a few seconds on The Hills when Heidi dumps Spencer for the twentieth time? Well now it appears that a whole genre of generic indie is coming through to fill those ten to twenty seconds where a dash of music is needed to add to the ‘drama’.
A Tale Of Two Cities
Ahead of the forthcoming hype that there will be regarding Mr Ben Hudson’s second album, Straight No Chaser, executively produced by a certain Kanye West, I thought that I would take some time to recall the first Mr Hudson album.
Au Revoir Simone
Having loved the initial single (’Shadows’) from this, Annie, Erika & Heather’s follow-up to 2007’s The Bird Of Music I was eager to see what else was on offer. I’ve not been disappointed either as this is as beguiling a collection of sweetly sung odes as you’re likely to hear anywhere this year.
Esser at The Great Escape
Brighton is a bright and lively seaside town, renowned for its party scene and memorable nights out. But today, Friday, things are not looking so bright. We arrive to find rain bucketing down from the sky and gale force winds sweeping across the sea front. Is this really a great place to escape to? We stuck around to find out…
Jarvis - Further Complications
It’s just not a very conceivable story, is it? This man playing basically the whole 1980s in an unsuccessful band, being on the dole to boot.
Speck Mountain
Chicago-based trio Speck Mountain first came to attention with their 2007 debut Summer Above, and Some Sweet Relief mostly sticks to the same formula they first made their name with. All measured tempos, tasteful minimalism, slow-burning arrangements and narcotic, reverbed vocals, it’s a sound that recalls Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Albatross’ or Mazzy Star; an intriguing mixture of evocative Americana and airy dream-pop.
Dananananaykroyd - Hey Everyone
Dananananaykroyd take themselves about as seriously as their bizarre name suggests they might. Some have taken to referring to their stompy, guitar-led melodic inventions as ‘fight pop’, although it’s hard to imagine fighting to this unless it involved doing so on a bouncy castle dressed as a Pokemon. Hey Everyone! is the Glasgow six-piece’s first studio album and predictably, it’s a little bundle of energy. Big guitars, talkative riffs, acrobatic drums (Dananananaykroyd have two drummers) and excitable breathless vocals, it’s a fairly straightforward formula from the outset – there are no surprises here.
An awful lot of Dananananaykroyd’s buzz seems to have been generated by the live experience they offer, they’re a tight-knit unit, a spectacle of unabashed crowd pleasers. It’s clear that an effort has been made to infuse much of this into the record and for the most part, a pretty convincing job is done. Gang vocals stand in for crowd interaction and a slightly unbalanced ‘live’ feel still clings to the production, despite the obvious gloss.
There’s definite tones of their contemporary British rock predecessors also, the happy-go-lucky vocal chorus of ‘Black Wax’ brings to mind A at their best, while the brash, impetuous guitar slinging is at times reminiscent of a more optimistic Hell is For Heroes or a fresher –smelling Hundred Reasons, Dananananaykroyd re-tread this ground with a distinctly post-modern dose of self-awareness and turn up all the more entertaining, bolder results as a result. … Continue Reading
.jpg "The Maccabees - Wall Of Arms")
The Maccabees - Wall Of Arms
The Maccabees’ debut album Colour It In, released in 2007, featured some sterling tunes but was perhaps a bit too derivative for its own good: drawing on influences like XTC and Gang of Four, the Brighton-based five-piece were late contributors to the then-fading post-punk revival that had been instigated by bands like Franz Ferdinand, The Futureheads, Dogs Die In Hot Cars and Bloc Party. Still, there was plenty of potential evident in their jerky, energetic compositions and singer Orlando Weeks’ trembling vocals had a distinctive charm of their own.
The release of ‘No Kind Words’ a few weeks back indicated a change of direction: the vocals sounded meaner, the guitars more menacing, the atmosphere more charged and tense, while the similarly dark lyrics alluded to infidelity (“Dear friend of mine is testing his body/Tempting disaster/Testing water with another’s daughter”). It seemed that slightly twee ditties about toothpaste kisses were firmly a thing of the past.
Wall Of Arms’ opening track, ‘Love You Better’ doesn’t dispel the notion, but it’s not quite in the same vein as ‘No Kind Words’ (included here) either: it’s an earnest, impassioned, ‘big’ sounding composition; steadily and deliberately paced, its echoing guitars and reverbed vocals build a sense of anticipation as the song swells into a brass-propelled crescendo. It also proves to be more representative of the album as a whole. On paper, that sounds like the kind of thing that’s going to have many people running back to their Animal Collective records: the world certainly doesn’t lack for fervent, well-meaning guitar bands at this point in time, and being subjected to ‘soul-stirring’ music from the likes of Editors, Snow Patrol or Razorlight over the last few years is enough to make Metal Machine Music sound like a merciful alternative. Nevertheless, the Maccabees bring a pleasing lightness of touch to the formula, avoiding the overblown pompousness that sunk An End Has a Start or the insufferable mawkishness that did for Snow Patrol’s last two records.
Many reviewers have already made copious references to Arcade Fire, and it’s not hard to see why: Weeks’ tremulous, impassioned warbling is highly reminiscent of Win Butler’s style, and the wordless choral vocals on songs like ‘Dinosaurs’ and the title track have the stamp of Funeral all over them. It’s probably no coincidence that the album is produced by Markus Dravs, who also worked on Neon Bible: the intro to ‘Young Lions’, indeed, is a dead ringer for that album’s title track.
Musically, however, it’s less complex and ambitious than all the Arcade Fire comparisons might suggest. ‘One Hand Holding’ is driven along by a limber bassline and a guitar riff almost as catchy as the “Why would you kill it before it dies?” chorus, the exuberant ‘Can You Give It’ will probably prove a live favourite with its bouncy rhythm and handclap-friendly outro, while ‘Wall of Arms’ has enough off-kilter charm about it to overcome its painfully obvious influences.
Overall, it’s enjoyable stuff, if hardly in danger of pushing any envelopes. It might be a stretch to call it essential, but we’d be quite happy to hear this blaring out of car windows come the hot summer days.
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