Loud And Quiet 11 – Comanechi

LoudAndQuiet Zero pounds / Volume 03 / Issue 11 / 100 percent criminal

+ Lo vv e r s Sex B e et Captu r e d Trac ks H u d s o n M o h aw k e Ch e ata h s A u R e v o i r Si m o n e C o lo u r s

Now ava i l a ble nat ion w i de

Comanechi L AY I N G D O W N T H E L AW

Our Friends In (South, East & W If you’re reading this from a London pub, club, been here before. Last month, perhaps, when feature was a tooting nobhead’s guide to being –––––––– Or maybe you’re delving into Loud And Quiet a beanbag in Glasgow, a hammock in Bristol or London, y’see, printing more issues than ever cities. Thanks to the help of Forte Distribution, of Camden, south of New Cross and from east –––––––– Apart from that, nothing is changing here, or at Comanechi (page 26) probably represent that (page 18) and Brooklyn’s Captured Tracks label and artists that interest us – and hopefully you –––––––– So, whether this is your first issue or your thirtySoho Square or sat on a pole in Huddersfield,

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The North West)… record shop or café, you may well have our fanfare to welcome Erol Alkan’s cover a celebrity. for the first time, from a stool in Manchester, a bunk bed in Preston. We’ve escaped and making them available in 26 more towns and it’ll now be possible to find Loud And Quiet north to west. www.loudandquiet.com. The uncompromising more than anyone, as do devout DIY-ers Lovvers (page 22). We’ll still be writing about new bands – every month of the year. first, and whether you’re on a bench in we hope you enjoy the following 45 pages.

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C ontents

11 | 09 LOUD AND QUIET ZERO POUNDS / VOLUME 03 / ISSUE 11 / 100 PERCENT CRIMINAL

+ LO V V E R S SEX B E ET CAPTU R E D TRAC KS H U D S O N M O H AW K E C H E ATA H S AU R EVO I R S I M O N E C O LO U R S

NOW AVA I L A BLE NAT ION W I DE

COMANECHI L AY I N G D O W N T H E L AW

Photography by Timothy cochrane

07 .................. . Perfect / Happy / Ending 08 .................. . Crazy / Gun / Party 12 .................. . Salvation / At / Christmas 16 .................. . Crocodiles / Can’t / Swim 20 .................. . Exciting / Strip / Bar 22 .................. . Silence / Nothing / Nadda 26 .................. . I / Love / Stink 29 .................. . Celebrity / Doom / Burgers 30 .................. . Two / Huge / Idiots 36 .................. . Feeling / Well / Goofy 37 .................. . Crass / Jesus / Coffin 38 .................. . Mind / The / Lemon 41 .................. . I’m / A / Dickhead 42 .................. . Michael / Jackson / Horror 46 .................. . Soggy / Jammy / Tits 04

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Contact

info@loudandquiet.com Loud And Quiet 2 Loveridge Mews Kilburn London NW6 2DP Stuart Stubbs Alex Wilshire Art Director Lee Belcher film editor Dean Driscoll Editor

Sub Editor

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advertise@loudandquiet.com Contributors

Anna Dobbie, Ben Parkes, Chris Watkeys, Danny Canter Danielle Goldstien, Dean Driscoll Eleanor Dunk, Elinor Jones Edgar Smith, Elizabeth Dodd Kate Hutchinson, Kate Parkin Kelda Hole, Mandy Drake Matthias Scherer, Nathan Westley Owen Richards, Polly Rappaport Phil Sharp, Reef Younis, Sam Little, Sam Walton, Simon Leak Tim Cochrane,Tom Goodwyn This Month L&Q Loves

Jamie Woolgar, Kate Price, Keong Woo Laura Martin, Nita Keeler The views expressed in Loud And Quiet are those of the respective contributors and do not necessari ly reflect the opini ons of the magazine or its staff.

All rights reserved 2009 © Loud And Quiet.

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Soundtrack of our lives?

When indie flicks go too ‘indie’ Wr i t e r : R e e f yo u n i s

As your archetypal, discerning, 20-something male, any big screen portrayal saccharine enough to remotely teeter on a Disney bluebird happy ending will be met with the kind of caustic scorn and scathing venom Bill Hicks once reserved for George Michael. You could say I’m a bit of a cynic, but it didn’t always used to be like this.

Perhaps it was when I crawled from underneath the 16-24 duvet, blinking wide-eyed into the very real first stage of my mid-20’s malaise, that I took the world at face value. All the films and music that burgeoned hope and invited optimism, gave you those naively buoyant ideals, did just enough to make you believe strangers – typically attractive girls – would curiously take the time to lean in to your headphone dirge and inquisitively strike up conversation…you know, those kooky, quirky, natural beauties that light up the mundane of the everyday: the wallflowers engrossed in the classics, the sunshine girls who cut a swathe of sassy bravura on a busy commuter train - the girls in the movies, basically.

And, just in case they weren’t perfect enough, then came the words to put the white picket gloss on the whole well-adjusted charade - “The Smiths… I love

The Smiths.”

Cue the impossibly cute Zooey Deschanel singing a line to the inevitably smitten Joseph Gordon-Levitt in 500 Days of Summer. Sweet, huh?

And there, in a lyric and a script line, is the encapsulation of the salubrious love affair quaint indie rom com’s are continually enjoying with cooler-than-thou musical references and soundtracks. At a base level it makes perfect sense to have your DVD and music collections intertwine in artistic incest but it’s fast reaching tipping point. From The Shins and Garden State to Juno and the Moldy Peaches, the consensus seems to be romance, and light-hearted comedy couldn’t possibly blossom unless there’s a suitably acceptable cult band playing cupid, cued with a mix tape playlist, and set to ride shotgun for the journey.

Admittedly there is always going to be a strong overlap between the two forms but it’s gone from touching to cringeworthy in a few short releases.

“If they [the film’s characters] were bonding over some shitty band, that would actually make me close the script,” Deschanel admitted to Rolling Stone. Ok, it’s not exactly a damning indictment of her musical taste,

but it does give a worrying indication of what’s fast becoming an offbeat indie hit parade. And if the soundtrack is indeed having an impact on the film’s direction, doesn’t that make it a glorified music video?

Could they not have bonded over Sepultura, then?

Of course films can be a fantastic, subconscious route to new music, but increasingly the music used at this quirky end of the genre seems a crass effort to drop bands and music primarily to boost consumer interest. Take 9 Songs’ brazen approach to shoe-horning in BRMC, Dandy Warhols and The Von Bondies as part of its lowbudget, primal pop culture love story, and you can kind of see where it’s coming from.

The characters meet at a BRMC gig in Brixton and a dirty whirlwind of a relationship ensues. Does it benefit from pandering to music fans?

Commercially, perhaps, but is the film enhanced as a result of the soundtrack? Not especially.

Going old skool, Quadrophenia took the social energy and cultural rivalry of the 60’s and depicted it quite brilliantly with the assistance of a pretty seminal soundtrack. Did the music benefit the film?

Undoubtedly, simply because it was an intrinsic part of the

era’s identity and supported the events being portrayed.

Paradoxically, High Fidelity stands up as a worthy cliché case in point. A film centred around a music obsessive’s unravelling love life, there isn’t a self-congratulatory soundtrack forced down your throat – the Beta Band scene withstanding, of course – and it doesn’t revert to needless, pretentious type. So it ultimately gets its kicks out of heavy muso geek dialogue, but it is a film primarily based in a record store, duh.

Regardless, I love these films and all the musical baggage they come with because they can, and are, still treated right. Hark back to the gloriously sleek aesthetic of Lost in Translation with its elegant scores and understated inclusion of Air’s ‘Alone in Kyoto’ or Steve Buscemi’s dogged perseverance to find the finest jazz and blues in Ghostworld.

So the next time I’m publicly conspicuous on account of the music I’m listening to, and someone casually taps me on the shoulder, trying to talk over the angry crackle of headphone music, here’s hoping some pretty young thing screeches a few lines of At the Drive In’s ‘Enfilade’ at me. Now wouldn’t that be lovely?

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Books

By Lee & Janine Bullman

Bicycle Diaries

By David Byrne (Faber and Faber) Talking Head tales of adventures on two wheels ---------------------

The Big (Re)Issue Three bands and five releases really worth being unleashed once again

Ex-Talking Head David Byrne has been cycling through the East Village in New York since the early eighties. 20 years ago, when he discovered the joy of the folding bike he took his show on the road and was soon pedaling through the parts of London, Berlin, Manila and Buenos Aires that they don’t put in the tourist brochures. In chapters devoted to individual cities, Bicycle Diaries documents the people he met and the music he heard as he cast his singular eye on the corners of the world he found himself in. Byrne’s travelogue is offbeat, shrewd and engaging throughout, and perfect for reading on the bus.

Wr i t e r : S t u a r t s t u bb s

The Beatles’ reissues should have been given a Question Time special – an hour long televised debate between those greeting every remastered Fab Four album with wacky Macca thumbs up and those insistent that ‘Let It Be’ (and all others) should be…well… let be. But, then – BBC’s reactory Beatles Week aside – the whole affair of making ‘Yellow Submarine’ stereo really was almost as pointless as Paul McCartney’s 2003 vanity re-hack, ‘Let It Be… Naked’: an exercise in which Phil Spector’s glutinous production tricks were stripped from the original album for Paul’s true vision to finally be realised.

Why it was suddenly decided that The Beatles in mono are no longer good enough for our ears is anyone’s guess (although admiration is probably more likely a reason than money), but what the whole thing embodied was how little we need reissues… of a certain sort, at least.

This month though, 3 reissues go a long way to singing the worth of the format, not least because they’re more than repackaged versions of perfectly brilliant and readily accessible albums.

The Raincoats’ self-titled debut has been commercially unavailable for the last decade, since its first reissue by Rough Trade was once again nudged out of print. Kurt Cobain gushing about how, “without that copy of

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The Raincoats’ first album, I would have had very few moments of peace”, in the sleeve-notes of ‘Insecticide’, sparked that second wave of interest in the girl punks’ seminal, clattering record, but this time it’s all down the band themselves and their influence over newies like Wetdog and Plug. Released on The Raincoats’ own label, We Three, the album features Cobain’s liner notes, as well as extra track – and the bands debut single – ‘Fairytale In The Supermarket’. It’s all been remastered from the original records too. Most importantly though, ‘The Raincoats’ still sounds as scratchy and charmingly vulnerable as ever.

And their off-kilter cover of The Kinks’ ‘Lola’ (track 7) is something that should ricochet around everyone’s record collection, and now it can.

A second to chance to own the first two albums from New Jersey indie janglers The Feelies is also upon us with the reissue of ‘Crazy Rhythms’ and ‘The Good Earth’. It’s debut ‘Crazy Rhythms’ that really warrants Domino unleashing these college rockers for a second time. It’s the album that influenced REM pre-mandolins and stadium tours, and sounds most like The Velvet Underground would have if Lou Reed hadn’t been such a misery.

Extra goodies include the staple bonus demo here and b-side

there, delivered, in this case, via an oh-so-21st-Century download card, and it’s also the record that the band performed in its entirety at New York’s ATP last month.

Cooking Vinyl have gone not one but effectively 5 better in resuscitating two albums and one EP from The Gun Club, all of which feature bonus live discs.

‘Miami’ (featuring Debbie Harry), ‘The Las Vegas Story’ and EP ‘Death Party’ all boast the psycho-blues innovations of country punk Jeffrey Lee Pierce.

While Kid Congo Powers cofounded the band only to join The Cramps before The Gun Club recorded their debut album, Pierce and his ever-rotating lineups of crunchy rockers went on to fuse rockabilly and punk, indeed as well as Congo’s new employers. Without these records there’d be no White Stripes, and a lot more in post-blues besides.

What’s ultimately sad about reissues, is that they exist at all – that any band’s music can’t remain in print. That’s of course ridiculously idealistic, like Alan Partridge demanding that Bouncing Back avoid pulping just in case 50,000 Bruno Brookeses happen to swing by the Shell garage. As certain labels continue to prove though, while certain reissues coincide with Rock Band editions and little else, others are very much worth our time.

The Last Mad Surge of Youth

By Mark Hodkinson (Pomona Books) A novel for anyone who has ever been in a band --------------------Mark Hodkinson’s novel, from the evertasteful and reliable indie publisher Pomona Books, traces the story of two friends bonded by a mutual obsession.

But on the eve of the post-punk band they have formed achieving real success, Barrett and Carey part ways.

Two decades later and their paths cross once more. An honest, lovingly crafted tale, The Last Mad Surge of Youth examines notions of success and failure, friendship, regret, and selfindulgent rock star excess.

Hodkinson’s attention to detail is spot on, as are his two recognizable lead characters whose story is hindered only by an ending that comes too soon.

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Now THAT’S What I Call…

As our calendars click on to another zero, it’s time to judge ‘The Noughties’ Wr i t e r : S a m Wa lto n

Introduction by Stuar t Stubbs

Since decades began in 1960, every ten years have been neatly surmised by popular music.

History is no longer plotted by government politics and war but by whether our jeans at the time were influenced by Ian Brown’s bell-bottoms or Julian Casablancas’ drainpipes. The 80’s, for example, was Margaret Thatcher’s hellish, yuppie wet dream, but more importantly, it was a brave new world of electronic pop music and new romantics; The Smiths and latecomer to the party, Rave, with its dappy new drug. The 90’s was grunge and Britpop more than it was the Gulf War or the Internet’s coming-of-age; the 70’s prog, glam and punk, and really very little else… except maybe the Raleigh Chopper.

In two months time it’ll be the turn of the noughties: the decade that saw La Roux soundtrack the public death of Jade Goody, 9 years after The Strokes saved us from Oxide and Neutrino and a world of two-bit UK garage pain. One blog is already braving the ultimate countdown of the best 100 tracks this century, and that’s The Decade, found at http:// thedecade.wordpress.com. Every day they chip away at the glut of what’s been in recent years, speaking sense as they go. So we’re playing Jimmy Carr – à la The Best Blah Ever, brought to you by a 5 hour long show on E4 – and if you’re playing catch up here are numbers 100 to 76. The next 50 days worth of tracks will be in our next two issues, and then you’re on your own until the ball drops and you realise that Robbie Williams’ ‘Angel’ has finally lost one of these polls.

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100. Super Furry Animals – Hello Sunshine Combine post-millennial disaffection with a pretty tune and throw in ‘minger’, that most noughties of words, no fewer than four times in a single verse, and you have a curiously charming anti-love song.

99. Beck – Guess I’m Doing Fine From nowhere comes this crisis of confidence. “I’m doing fine?”

Beck guesses, with uncharacteristic self-doubt. An admission song has seldom sounded so humanising.

98. The Strokes – The Modern Age Cool kids knowing they’re cool, and showing us they’re cool while we look on with a combination of respect and envy.

97. Beth Orton – Worms A brilliantly angry little song.

So concise is this ticking-off that it stuns into repeat plays.

96. Deerhoof – Chandelier Searchlight This should be just an academic exercise, but as it lurches forward, each piece of the unravelling puzzle is prettier still to behold.

95. Justin Timberlake – Senorita The real genius of ‘Senorita’ is the Neptunes’ addictive backing – even if JT was switched for St Winifred’s School Choir the track would remain a belter.

94. Beth Gibbons & Rustin Man – Tom the Model All buzzing Hammonds, soft staccato horns and swooping strings, this suddenly made Gibbons’ uniquely icy vocals sound warm and energising.

93. The Rakes – Retreat Few songs articulated the grimmer side of the noughties’ neophilia better than this.

Containing both inertia and nausea, ‘Retreat’ might be nihilistic, but it’s a

brilliantly observed portrait of a certain kind of noughties lifestyle.

92. Belle & Sebastian – Step Into My Office, Baby Belle & Sebastian were always desperate to make clever, sheeny pop singles, but cack-handedness or timidity usually intervened.

However, ‘Step...’ is where the band found the balls and the skills to use grown-up toys.

91. Laura Cantrell – Pile of Woe This never shows off. And that modesty, coupled with a poignant set of lyrics and a gorgeous tune, makes it distinctly loveable.

90. Laika – Badtimes The pleasure is derived here from observing a sort of museum piece. Simply a recitation of a hoax email from 1996, the references that sounded glibly hip in 2000 evoke nostalgia now.

89. Loose Fur – Chinese Apple That something this simple holds its own for nearly eight minutes is disconcerting – the hook is short and unfussy, the instrumentation sparse, and the lyrics cryptic to the point of meaningless, but it would only be half as beautiful if its running time was sliced in two.

88. Bjork – Unison It sort of makes sense to end an album about intense sex, filthy sex, submissive and romantic sex with a song about marriage. It’s intense and dizzying, and, in the context on the ‘Vespertine’ album, pretty sexy too.

87. Lambchop – The Butcher Boy The blistering pace removes any danger of tenderness, rendering the story as cold reportage; and the sudden ending makes for a massively affecting payoff.

86. Supergrass – St Petersburg It wasn’t long before they

returned to big dumb riffs, but for the duration of this period, Supergrass’ new-found poignancy was much admired.

85. Pharrell – Frontin’ ‘Frontin’’ has the potential to be incredibly irritating in the wrong hands – see Jamie Cullum – so Pharrell pulls one big confidence trick here, but when it’s done with this much cool it’s a pleasure to fall for it.

84. Elbow – Grounds for Divorce Never mind the nearly-greatness that Elbow had winked at over the decade, this is the real deal, a monster of a tune.

83. Richard Hawley – Coles Corner A gorgeous record, this plays more like a love song to Sheffield itself than to any individual, and nostalgia for the town’s past is written all over that sleepy, Strangers in the Night shuffle.

82. Godspeed You Black Emperor! – Storm ‘Storm’ is defiantly unconventional, yet the grandeur comes across like an evangelical religious encounter. Indeed, when it quotes Amazing Grace before exploding into heroic excess, the euphoria – the “I believe, brother!” – is huge.

81. Arctic Monkeys – Mardy Bum How Alex Turner took accusations of plagiarism, when it was suggested he’d had “help” writing his band’s lyrics, isn’t known, but the cynicism is at least understandable – surely no teenager can have experienced the years of stale relationship despair that is so brilliantly observed on ‘Mardy Bum’.

80. Goldfrapp – Pilots Like some futuristic sci-fi rereading of Dusty Springfield’s ‘The Look of Love’, this is a sleepy, sensual song, sung with a robotic, feline femininity.

79. The Young Knives – The Decision Full of gusto, disquiet and fidgety twitches, ‘The Decision’ is a weird kind of fanfare for the common man.

78. Queens of the Stone Age – Feel Good Hit of the Summer Nicotine, Valium, Vicodin, marijuana, ecstasy, alcohol and c-c-c-c-c-cocaine: Josh Homme reportedly did this exact cocktail during his millennium eve party, and then celebrated such a Herculean feat of rock’n’roll excess by recording a big, dumb, rock’n’roll song about it all.

77. Iron & Wine and Calexico with Salvador Duran – Hey Lays in the Reins A triumph of unexpected collaboration that feels faintly ridiculous on first listen, but little by little becomes delicious.

76. Art Brut – Formed a Band If ever something was very clever at being very stupid, it’s this, so gleefully dumb as to be virtually unanswerable.

----Comment on the above and follow the countdown at http://thedecade.wordpress.com

se x beet / “If you think about it, we kind of suck” P h o t o g r a p h e r : E l i n o r J o n e s Wr i t e r : p o l ly r a p pa p o r t

On a bleak Tuesday evening, three young men saunter into the yawning studio space of a Hackney warehouse to have their photos taken and submit themselves to a bit of informal interrogation. While they wait for the shoot to begin, the lads pass round the dwindling dregs of what was once a litre of whisky, Luke tipping some into his cup of tea (it’s Luke’s birthday and he’s spent much of it asleep) while Will enjoys the attentions of the resident cat and Tom complains that cats always like Will best.

This is Sex Beet, a boisterously lo-fi garage trio from Leicester, responsible for songs with titles such as ‘I’m In Love With You (So Shut The Fuck Up!)’ and ‘Nice Hair/Nice Titties’. Have a guess at how seriously they take themselves, though the laid back, give-afuck vibe permeating the room may have just as much to do with what used to be in that circulating bottle as it does with their twenty-something prepunk ethics.

Now spread across a large sofa in varying stages of semisupine attitude, the band cast their collective mind back to The Beginning, not an extraordinary leap seeing as they’ve been together for less than a year.

Sex Beet came into being ten months ago when Tom (guitar) and Luke (drums) recruited Will (organ).

“We started it as a sort of jokey thing,” explains Luke. “Me and Tom had been playing in The Lusts but we decided to start Sex Beet and make it a really noisy band then, uh... I dunno what.”

“We got a gig,” states Tom. “Yeah, we got a gig.”

Tom: “So then we got Will. We got him the night before.”

Will had been playing percussion in another Leicesterbased band called Jack and the Knives.

“I didn’t know Will before,” says Luke. “Actually, no, I used to hate him! The first time I encountered Will was…”

“Don’t speak bad of me,” Will

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interrupts. “I can tell what’s coming. I assume this is going to be the truth and if it is, I assume it’s going to be bad.”

Tom has become helpless with giggles. Luke perseveres: “The first time I think I ever met Will was when he flicked a cigarette at my thengirlfriend’s head. Then I think we had a fight… I dunno. But I didn’t know him for about a year after that then Tom says he knows a guy who can play keyboard and Will shows up in London the night before the first gig.”

All three insist that Sex Beet was meant as a joke, just something to do in their spare time. “Then we put that song ‘Nice Hair/Nice Titties’ on MySpace and, uh, we got offered our first tour in France,” Luke chuckles. “We’d had maybe three or four practices,” “It was our third gig,” recalls Tom. “Yeah,” says Luke “our third gig was in Paris and it was the first gig of our French tour.”

The tour offer had come from The Last Rapes of Mr. Teach, a like-minded band, if a bit more tropical and with an air of creepy (and distinctly Frenchkitsch), with whom Sex Beet will be sharing a split Christmas single with this year. The band still seem dazed from the speed and abruptness of it all.

“We drank too much…” mumbles Will.

Correction: The band still seem dazed from all the partying and French booze.

“It was definitely more of a holiday than a tour,” Luke agrees. “We played for about ten minutes a night… I think people hated us.”

At the time, Sex Beet’s tenminute set was, they sheepishly admit, more than a bit crap and they eventually felt compelled to write stuff that people could arguably listen to and would bulk up their stage time to more than fifteen minutes. While there’s no denying that Sex Beet is very much a noisy affair, it’s not a Noise Band, as Tom and Luke had originally envisioned; even that early

Hair/Titties track is shot through with manic surf vibrations and the majority of their output can be filed under ‘Rampaging Garage Scream-Fest’.

Tom’s explanation of how Sex Beet’s current sound came to be: “We just turned the distortion down and added a keyboard and that was it, really.” They’ve even got their songwriting process down to a science: “Basically, we play the easiest thing that comes into our head at the time and turn it into a song,” explains Will. “Just shout some nonsense over the top, just a series of noises.

Then if we think we’re going to have to play them for anyone, we’ll add words – they might not make sense but at least they’re words.” There is a reflective pause. “If you think about it, we kind of suck,” Luke speculates. Then again, all three have a mutual disdain for the concept of trying to write a song. “People who are all like, ‘Ooh, I want to write a song about… Poverty! And, er… Can’t get enough vitamins!’ and stuff.” Okay, so maybe it’s more a mutual disdain for Razorlight.

But we digress…

Sex Beet have been back to France recently and feel that this time round was ten times better. For one thing, they’ve got a few more practices in. Oh, and they’ve actually written some songs – “Songs and practice make a world of difference,” Will states, sagely – and it helps that these guys really like playing for the French folks.

“Everyone in France is a lot more up for it,” says Luke “so it’s a bit depressing coming back.”

“They enjoy live music more,” agrees Tom. (“And they drink more,” Luke adds). “They don’t act like they’re too cool – too cool to move, like people in London are too cool, English people are too cool to act like they enjoy the music.” Case in point: Sex Beet’s first gig back in England was supporting King Khan and the Shrines in Leeds and they say that, at the start of the gig at any rate, the

majority of audience was sitting down. “We felt like we should have stopped playing once in a while and shouted out bingo numbers at them,” laughs Will.

Despite the initially tepid audience, the band were chuffed to be playing with Khan.

“Over the last few months we’ve been playing with a bunch of our favourite bands”, says Luke. “We got invited to play at the Black Lips’ secret show, which was really cool… Every time we play we end up playing with someone we like, bands we listen to all the time or that we’re good friends with.”

Essentially, these guys skipped the whole teething period of playing with random, rubbish bands, just for the sake of exposure, and landed neatly in a position of getting free tickets for a bunch of gigs they would have gone along to anyway.

And now they’re just going with the flow and enjoying the ride.

“We’ve never been pressured to do anything, we’re just literally having fun; putting some records out, touring Europe… We’ve got nothing to complain about,” Luke laughs and the other two join in, the absurdity of their situation seems to still be sinking in.

“We’re just a fun band,” says Luke. “People either love us or hate us.”

“There’s nothing deep and meaningful,” Will agrees.

“Don’t look to our songs for guidance or salvation,” advises Tom. Luke: “There’s no salvation in Sex Beet.”

So what’s next on the agenda?

They’ve got a four-way-split 7” out at the end of October, a gig in Whitechapel Art Gallery (which they predict will be either the best or the worst gig ever), that Christmas single… and they’re all still at uni so there’s that to deal with. But first, best to finish off that whisky and sort out the rest of Luke’s birthday.

There may be no salvation in Sex Beet, but there’s plenty of other stuff going on that sounds like a lot more fun.

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By the age of 15, Ross Birchard was such a proficient turntablist he was a UK DMC finalist. He’s now signed to Warp and has just released the ever-innovative ‘Butter’ P h o t o g r a p h e r : O w e n Ri c h a r d s Wr i t e r : R e e f yo u n i s

Glasgow, Scotland – a place not exactly synonymous with a burgeoning commercial urban scene. But if the noises are to be believed – and good noises at that – then it seems the new breed of DJs, producers and promoters are guiding the city to an electronic beat. Pooling talents with the likes of Rustie and Mr. Copy, as a part of their LuckyMe collective, Hudson Mohawke aka Hud Mo aka DJ Itchy aka Ross Birchard, looks to be the spearhead for Warp’s return to deckside, the year of the prestigious label’s 20th anniversary.

Brought up on his radio DJ father’s eclectic tastes, Birchard got his first set of decks when most kids were worrying about the toiletflushing induction of secondary school. Four years on, and a reserved young Scot called DJ Itchy became a UK DMC finalist at the tender age of 15. Fast forward a couple more years, and a softly spoken, 22 year old Birchard has just released his superb debut album, ‘Butter’, having signed to one of the industry’s premier independent labels. Pressure?

“I did feel that pressure for a long time and that’s what held me up,” he explains. “The only way I can really view it and approach it is just treat Warp as another label really.

Although they have the history behind them, I can’t really let that influence me because I don’t always want to compare myself and match up to previous releases. I try not to think about it but I am aware of it.

“It was quite overwhelming for me to be honest. I didn’t have a back catalogue behind me apart from one or two releases on small labels, so it was a big jump for me and a big shock. It was actually quite some time before I submitted any music because the idea kind of freaked me out. But it’s a great opportunity for me and I’m really thankful.”

More or less based in Glasgow, tours and gigs withstanding, Hudson Mowhawke is

very much the appropriation of the city itself – from the wall graffiti from which Birchard adopted the Hud Mo moniker, to the growing communal sense of party spirit.

“I think it [Glasgow] has been bubbling for a little while. There’s always new music, there are a lot of live acts coming through, and there’s always been good club nights.

It’s always been a home for sort of “decent” music. The Optimo clubnight has been going for 10 years now, and they’ve been playing techno and electro stuff there, commercial R’n’B… and people are used to hearing that sort of thing; people are used to hearing electronic alongside pop music. I suppose there is a little bit of a scene nowadays and it’s just sort of come together. Basically there’s a lot of people in Glasgow who are up for a party. They don’t come to a club to stand around.”

Quizzically, from an interview earlier in the year, Birchard came out and said that he wasn’t here to make “out and out club music”, which is understandable given his technical turntablist history, but marked a bit of a paradox in the DJ’s make up.

“Yeah,” he chuckles, “I did say that but that’s not what the statement meant. I just spent a long time DJing when I was younger, all the jungle and rave stuff, and by that sort of statement, I mean it’s not enough for me to just make music purely for a dance floor; it always has to have another element. It’s important to have another element. I absolutely want to make club music but not music just for dance floor effect.”

And it’s easy to hear this outlook in his production. With an emphasis on melody as opposed to bass, Birchard’s production on ‘Butter’ makes it an album that’s fluid, spatial and playful, with a clear linear and smooth production, and rarely sways from his grounding in hip hop. And it’s this flexibility to explore other avenues that makes

it so daring, not that the man considers himself to be particularly pioneering.

“I don’t think of myself as experimental, I just naturally gravitate towards melody and more song-based music than more sort of club music. As much as I like a lot of it, for my own production, it’s not just a case of being bold and having a load of bass. For a long time, turntablism was my passion and I’d spend all day and all night doing that. It took me so long to learn those skills but the actual main purpose of that scene is to battle with each other and try and be better than the next guy. It’s a niche thing but the thing for me was that I wanted to hold onto those skills and apply them to a wider spectrum. It was quite natural for me [moving into production], I didn’t ever make the switch, but there’s a lot of overlap between the two,” he explains.

In fact, the only time that Birchard uncharacteristically struggles to articulate his thoughts is when discussing where he thinks his music fits.

“I don’t really and I think that’s possibly a problem sometimes because people are not quite sure what to make of the music. I definitely come from a hip hop standpoint, no matter the style of the productions, but when I’ve said that to people, they don’t have an inkling at all that it’s hip hop. There’s some turtablism in there, even though there isn’t a lot of scratches, the sampling and drum production come from

“there’s a lot of people in Glasgow who are up for a party. They don’t come to a club to stand around” Ro s s Birc h ard

that background,” he muses.

Almost a reflexive kick to being labelled a strictly beats producer, Birchard happily admits that he drew on his technical skills as much as production skills to make ‘Butter’ work and, as with many full blown DJ bodies of work, the album has a seamless flow with tracks effortlessly segueing into each other to reproduce a sense of live spontaneity.

“As much as I still really love just making beats, I wanted to take the groundwork of that and see what way I could advance it,” he starts. “It really just came together, basically. It was just me trying to combine different elements and put them all in one piece. In terms of it being kind of fluid, the way its put together, it’s kind of reminiscent of a DJ set which takes me back to my DJ/ turntablist influence. There’s a lot of different styles and a lot of short tracks and I kind of styled it as one of my DJ sets. It was me just not sticking to making beats…”

Like any producer, Birchard’s quest for brilliance remains, unsurprisingly, true to type.

With the personal pressure of submitting his work to Warp, and an organic, if stalled process of creating and recording tracks ensuring ‘Butter’ was churned out at the right time, it seems Birchard, like his music, is evolving.

“It’s definitely not a system.

A lot of it just came from never being happy with the end result.

I always want to push it further and bring new elements that will work on the mix. It’s just an element of attachment and not being able to let stuff go. I’m getting over that a bit more now…it’s been a long time. It even held up this record.”

With the drive, ambition and the premise of producing some big artists in the future, it’s when we directly ask him whether he’s a perfectionist that the response comes quickly and with a little steel.

“Oh, yeah, definitely.”

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03

colours From the English seaside to beef-fueled road trips stateside P h o t o g r a p h e r : f r a n k i e n a z a r d o Wr i t e r : I a n r o e b u c k

It’s fair to say Bournemouth shares little in common with America. A love for homogenous high streets aside, the wide expansive plains of Middle America bare no resemblance to the extremity of the Wessex Way Road. This is probably why Colours are so drawn to the mighty US. Two of the threesome recently road tripped across the massive behemoth of a country and all three of them plan to head back for another taste of the badlands.

“We are all really into the whole trash culture of America,” says Leon. “New York to LA in motels.”

“Yeah with Leon doing the driving,” laughs Jon. It’s Lewis though who captures what they really feel about the country despite missing out before – “The thing about America is the romance of being on the road,” he says.

This passion for sweeping spaces possibly derives from the band’s need for escapism. A love/hate relationship with their hometown led to a recent move to London, a necessary change for Jon. “It’s really surprising that Bournemouth has an arts university and this huge student scene but no decent bands really play there,” he

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ponders.

Now settled in Stoke Newington the band are all about DIY – of the making tapes sort.

Landing through our door with a thump, ‘The Burger Tape’ is a bright orange thing of brilliance. Musically assured but simultaneously brittle and broken, it’s the distilled sound of the road trip, the Mojave desert’s backing band, and it’s striking stuff from a group in its infancy. Bigger than a Big Mac and reminiscent of No Age and Abe Vigoda, this is a band whose noise is routed in the present. Recording and putting out your own material isn’t a fresh approach but rather in abundance right now and thriving. Rather refreshingly, Colours aren’t only positive about this, they actually seem genuinely excited by it. “It’s such a fun process,” grins Leon.

“Me and Jon did it all and got our buddy Jason in to do the artwork – I find it all really satisfying. We don’t want to turn into those guys though who constantly pester people with our tapes and messages.”

So door-stepping the music industry can work, receiving post is always a pleasure and when burgers are involved it’s double the enjoyment. The art

adorning the tape looks to be the sloppiest sandwich this writer’s ever seen and the band mention the golden arches more than a few times over several coffees. “We just eat a lot of burgers cause we drive from Bournemouth to London a lot.

That involves stopping for burgers, it’s essential,” explains Leon, trying not to laugh.

Caffeine, red meat and road trips; it’s a wonder these guys haven’t crossed the Atlantic for good. Leon has already got one leg over the pond; America is his focus for a passion in photography. “I went out to the Colorado desert and lived with a community out there taking photos this March, it was amazing, I travelled around in an RV and everything, you just have to go and do these things.”

Two became three recently when Lewis joined as drummer.

The ex-Help She Cant Swim man, a familiar face about town back in Bournemouth. The three congregated regularly at 60 Million Postcards both in front of and behind the bar. Leon explains there wasn’t really an alternative – it’s where everyone descended.

“We used to hang out in two different groups and kept seeing

Lewis around at Postcards,” he explains. “‘It’s that guy again!’”

“I used to play basketball with someone they knew,” Lewis continues, y’know, American-ly.

Now in London, a lack of small town mentality finds its way into their scope of sound: the sonic brick wall built from scratch now sounds even bigger with someone on sticks and bass.

Their homemade method of production will be familiar too.

Friendly with the Paradise Vendors label set up by Male Bonding, Colours are keen to use a similar model for themselves.

Playing shows with Teen Shiekhs, messaging Cheatahs and supporting San Diego’s Crocodiles have helped them ease into London life.

“There is such a great network of bands down here who support and like what each other do. It just seems now that there is a bigger network than there ever was, even over to America,” says Leon. Lewis has a more frank approach. “It’s people actually giving a fuck about the kind of music we all make,” he says. “They seem to care more.”

And Jon agrees – “We all seem to be taking more initiative, getting our own records pressed and just getting on with it.”

04 c h e atah s Nathan Hewitt re-discovers musical enjoyment with some ‘alone time’ P h o t o g r a p h e r : Phi l Sh a r p Wr i t e r : S t u a r t S t u bb s

Sat in Nathan Ernest Hewitt’s kitchen, it’s impossible to not notice how enviously mature his house is. That makes it sound stuffy, like the dwellings of an aunty-who’s-not-really-an-aunty, with flying ducks and a barometer on the wall. It’s not. It’s perfect: from the idyllic, highwalled garden (not shared) to the vintage furniture and higher townhouse ceilings. If this were Through The Keyhole you’d never get it, save, perhaps, for a laptop playing Dinosaur Jnr and a note tagged to the fridge from admiring Bournemouth band Colours [eyes left]. When sending out their self-released ‘Burger Tape’ cassette, Nathan was on the mailing list due to his 6-month-old moniker, the fuzzy, acoustic, melody-melting Cheatahs.

Years of being in stillongoing-concern Little Death (London’s hardest working, forever-morphing alt. rock quartet™) have seen like-minded musicians gravitate toward Nathan. It’s done him little harm that he’s more affable than Dave Grohl on Christmas Day, but it’s really his sharp ear for a touching, melancholic melody that’s seen Jon from Male Bonding and Nell from Screaming Tea Party already play backing

band at Cheatahs’ only two live shows to date.

“That was kind of the concept behind the name,” smiles Nathan.

“Because, like, I felt like I was cheating on my own band, but with myself, so I thought it’d be funny if Jon plays with me and cheats on his band for a night, and Nell plays with me and she cheats on her band. It’s going to kinda still be like that, like whoever’s around until I find the right people to play with me all the time.”

Friends committing public adultery together, there’s not enough of it about, bar Paul Weller’s staple, heavy-handed reach-around endured by Noel Gallagher twice a year, usually at the Royal Albert Hall. But while Nathan’s pals are queuing up to play away from home, the young Canadian is picking his live shows carefully. “Well, the thing is, I’m not looking to play anywhere,” he explains.

“That’s what I’ve learned – playing anywhere is great but playing in London too much takes the fun out of it. I want to play in the rest of the UK. Playing shows here would be a lot of fun but when you’re just playing to your friends who feel like they’re obliged to come and see you, it’s not fun.”

Besides, a Cheatahs live show still needs to be properly prepared. Aside from deciding how it’ll be “way more rockier”, Nathan has had little time to consider how to present his solo material. It’s only been 6 months since he started doing the dirty on his band, originally, as is the case with most affairs, due to boredom.

For ‘it-meant-nuffin-honest’ fun.

“I just wrote little songs and handed them out to my friends,” he explains “and that was all it was going to be.

Like, ‘hey, here’s a little present of 5 songs.’ So I showed a few people and they were like, ‘cool, show us more.’”

Keen to remain out of the archetypal singer/songwriter mould, Nathan’s love for Elliot Smith can’t help but find its way onto Cheatahs songs. Melancholic to heart wrenching, his tracks fuzz along as if closing your favourite indie flick. Of his cinematic, hazy songs, Nathan says: “It is what it is – really distorted, messy, horrible music.”

Trent Reznor is another influence, less obvious in Cheatahs’ sound, but not in how Nathan puts together his abstract pop.

“When I was younger, he was a

big one for me,” he remembers.

“He’s a real craftsman and that’s what I’d associate… I wouldn’t say I’m a craftsman, but I like the way he incorporates his use of production to come up with various themes.”

Nathan himself doesn’t really do themes. Tracks like nostalgic debut 7” ‘Warrior’ and the Cureesque ‘Some Powers’ (which sounds like a lost demo of ‘Lullaby’) can come from nowhere and be about anything from skateboard tricks to past relationships. Now that Nathan has a solo output, he can do whatever he wants, unchallenged.

“This is the most fun thing I’ve ever done,” he says, not long after opening his front door to us. “It’s made it enjoyable again – some of that had gone. I can do what I want, and I can do it in my house.”

Aah, the house. The basement conversion, which we expected to be a ‘Take Me To Your Dealer’ Alien poster short of a rad, creative types’ communal squat, but definitely isn’t. Because while Nathan Ernest Hewitt is fast becoming the musician that everyone wants to cheat on with, his delicate, acoustic tape music answers why he’s ‘gone solo’ – because he’s bloody good.

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lov ve r s /

While the UK’s lo-fi resurgence fuzzes louder than ever, this lot have been taking on US garage for years already P h o t o g r a p h e r : Phi l Sh a r p Wr i t e r : Da n i e l l e G o l d s t e i n

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D

own on the New Cross Road the sky hangs low, dulled to grey from a multitude of lorries and buses crawling the length of it. Freshers starting uni stalk warily around piles of puke scattered along the pavement while police sirens cease to let up as we settle down with Lovvers to watch from the safety of our fish tank that is the New Cross Inn. It’s been three years since these Nottingham-rooted, lo-fipunk revellers first thrust themselves upon us. Back in 2006 they were brimming with more energy than they could dispel.

Their shows were riotous, they threw themselves around like headless chickens and hammered their instruments harder and faster than their hands could manage. “It’s like you’re a greyhound - you’ve gotta get out of the traps pretty fast when you’re just starting out,” explains guitarist Henry Whithers. “Make a point, make a loud noise, try and do something exciting, get people’s attention and embrace the fact that you’re in a band, which is an exciting thing to do whilst you’re young and virile.” Perched on the edge of the sofa he speaks animatedly, hands gesticulating as his eyes fix onto us from behind his mustard-tinted specs.

Now that Lovvers have been around the track a few times they’re taking more consideration over the laps.

“Our song writing is a little mellower now. We’re appreciating the vibe in music a little more.

You can’t keep doing really simple songs with a big loud riff, so me and Shaun started tossing a few ideas around and eventually they…” He’s cut off by frontman Shaun Hencher who, sitting bulkily in a flannel shirt layered over numerous other shirts, insists that it’s for the best. “If anything it just sounds better and I don’t see why people should view things differently because I’m not running around.”

“At some shows we’re just standing there playing the songs, having a bit of a boogie on stage,” continues Henry “and you look up and everyone in the crowd is properly dancing around and pushing each other and having fun. We’ve felt in the past that we’ve had to batter them into submission until they start dancing. And sometimes you won’t expect it and you’ll look up and someone is dancing – that’s awesome, makes it all worthwhile.”

After releasing a slew of seven inches on Jonson Family, Lovvers signed with Wichita in 2008 and released their second EP, ‘Think’. Direct and straight to the point, it comes in at just under a mind-bracing 13 minutes of surf-punk muscle.

Following this was their summer child LP ‘OCD Go Go Go Girls’, which pummelled shop shelves as of August this year. At just over double the length of

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‘Think’ (one minute, to be precise), apparently it wasn’t quite the ramshackle, shotgun recording as it sounds. “Does that surprise you?” asks Shaun with a slither of a smile.

Slightly abashed we have to admit that yes, it does.

“Despite the fact that to some people it sounds like it was recorded in sheds and bedrooms it was actually recorded in a proper studio with quite a highquality tape machine and a really expensive custom made mixing desk,” Henry puts plainly.

The record took a month to write before the band – also including Stephen Rose on drums and Michael Drake on bass, who were sat in silence until they walked out to abate their nicotine cravings – got together just three times to learn the songs and headed out to Jackpot!

Studios in Portland, Oregon. “I think we recorded for 14 days and mixed for six,” Shaun informs us. “We recorded it with this guy called Pat Kearns (Exploding Hearts, Clorox Girls) who sometimes works in the studio. We’d sent him the songs before because we’d demoed them at home, so we went in and recorded them live.” But why head all the way out to Portland when they could have recorded here? “Because it’s run by this guy called Larry Crane who does this thing called Tape Op Magazine. It’s a really cool bimonthly mag about recording and different techniques.”

“I’ve been reading it for a while,” adds Henry “because I do a bit of DIY recording. It’s a free thing that anyone can subscribe to all over the world and they’ll look at it from the point of view that recording a song on poor quality analogue equipment is just as worthwhile as something done on a big £2,000 computer. I found that quite enticing. I showed the other guys a couple of the magazines and we were going over to America anyway, so...” Henry trails off before Shaun finishes: “That’s why we went there, all the boxes were ticked.”

Observing from the edge of the stage at a Lovvers show you’ll notice the people lost in the music - odd appendages jutting out uncontrollably you’ll notice the ones with nervous eyes trying to avoid said appendages, and although you’ll be hit with the urge to strut awkwardly along to the clean riffs, you won’t find yourself singing. And why not?

Because you simply can’t hear the vocals. Even on the record

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they’re mixed incomprehensibly low. “It was never a conscious decision to mix them low,” justifies Shaun. “It was never an issue we’d even talked about. It was only when we submitted our record to Wichita that it came up in conversation because they didn’t like the vocal mix. I think their argument was that you couldn’t hear the vocals at all. I still don’t take that on board really; you can hear that there are vocals on the album. I take on board that you can’t hear every word pronounced perfectly but I think it works with our sound.

“When we play live, we’ve always been really loud and musically the vocals have always been in the mix but it’s all about trying to create a wall of sound. It doesn’t matter if you hear what I say, you can buy the album and read what I say.”

This record is much more melodic than Lovvers’ previous material, but Henry assures us it’s not an abhorrent pop fusion. “It doesn’t compete for your attention in an obnoxious way like the vocals do on most pop records so that as soon as they come in after the instrumental section you can’t listen to everything together.”

“It’s the type of record that you can’t just listen to once,” intones Shaun “you have to spend a bit of time with it and maybe the vocals don’t hit you on the

first listen, but they’re kind of…what’s the word I’m looking for? Subtle.”

When they’re not recording– whether that be at home, in a shed or studio – Lovvers will not be relaxing, they’ll be on tour. Rarely is their diary left a gap to breathe, and after playing numerous UK dates they’ll head to Europe for a month and then the US will take them up to Christmas. Is there something they’re avoiding at home? “No, sorry ladies but we’re all going steady,” grins Henry, chuffed with his line. “I think being a band from England,” says Shaun more seriously “and trying to make a point is quite hard if you live outside of London. If you’re not from a major city it’s quite hard, and if you look at the rest of the world it’s even harder. So the way you’re going to let people know about your band is by constantly playing.

Instead of practicing, we’re playing gigs.”

A favourite haunt of theirs is The Smell in LA. Situated in the downtown area “it’s like it

was in Docklands. There’s nothing there and there aren’t many people around at night, but it’s all really smart and quite normal,” says Henry. “For me it was a surprise because it’s exactly how it’s portrayed in other places and it lives up to what you expect it to be – a shit load of kids dancing at the front to Mika Miko like they were in their living room.”

As it’s an all-ages venue everyone is welcome. There’s no alcohol so the crowds come purely for the bands and the vibe. You can get chocolate bars and soft drinks and use it as much as a place to hang out as a chance to catch some exciting new talent. It’s the kind of place we could do with around these parts. “There are things in this country which are similar in some aspects,” Henry explains. “Like warehouse gigs that go on around London and engender that atmosphere of inclusion and not feeling like you can’t dance. But they’re not as official and not as many people know about them.”

“If you look at the bigger picture,” mutters Shaun in his hoarse baritone “say, Europe for example, it has loads of cool spaces where gigs take place and they serve alcohol but they do have that community feel that The Smell has. Obviously that’s got a lot of attention because it’s in LA, but in Europe the governments are willing to give money to people to put on shows so they don’t have to worry about making a profit on the bar or charging a shit load of money to get in.

“It’s very rare in England that people could go to the Arts Council to fund a venue unless it was for profit. A lot of people aren’t interested in creating something that isn’t for profit because unless they’re hugely into this thing they’re not getting anything out of it.

I think that’s the problem with a lot of things gig-based in England. That’s why they take

“Make a point, make a loud noise, try and do something exciting and embrace that you’re in a band” G u i tari s t H e nry W h i t h e r s o n s tart in g l ov v e r s

place before club nights in God knows how many cities because the gig is second fiddle to the club that is making money, and if that can change then I think you’d see more places like The Smell.”

But is there room for a place like The Smell to survive in a time when every brick is becoming gentrified? ABC No Rio, a New York social centre established in the eighties and located on the Lower East Side, spent just over a decade fighting the city for their premises after being shut down. “I think The Smell has lost its music license four or five times, but

it keeps coming back. I’m sure it probably will close down at some point, but I don’t think The Smell is a one off, I just think it’s got a lot of attention because of where it is,” states Shaun before Henry adds: “And the bands No Age, Health, Mika Miko and various others have actually produced quite a good level of musical output.” The kind that UK bands of a similar ilk aren’t producing.

“Well, Male Bonding have just signed to Sub Pop, they fit in really well and they’ve been going for a while,” he continues. “I would say there are relatively few bands of that style who’ve managed to get out there and play in America, play in Europe and put records out, but there’s definitely a good amount of low-key bands like Hygiene, Shitty Limits, The Hipshakes, Demons – there’re a lot of good British bands.”

Having wrung Lovvers dry, we don’t want to leave before finding out what they’ll be giving us for Christmas and what they certainly won’t be going back to when – or if – the band is over. For the former they have a couple of seven inches and a Flipper cover on a Domino compilation. “We’ve also got a seven inch called ‘White Flag’.

That’s gonna be out in the next few months,” Henry declares.

“That was a triumph of a recording for us because we use these organ sounds and it’s a bit more groove-orientated, which is a horrible thing to say,” he grins. And as for the latter? “The strip bar job,” deadpans Shaun. “All the girls, after dancing all night, used to drop off their… lingerie shall we say, and it was my job to wash it. It was a pretty grimy.”

Keeping Your Tracks Shut Mike Sniper’s Captured Tracks label has quickly become the Promised Land for lo-fi garage talent and the best bedroom artists around. He must be proud, although we’ll never know because the allusive man they call Blank Dogs is even more reluctant to chat than his head shots suggest Wr i t e r : s t ua r t S t u bb s

“I’ve never been anonymous,” insists Mike Sniper. “I just don’t see the point in blabbing about myself and trying to get photos all over the place.”

Right. So calling your own one-man-band Blank Dogs is not some conscious statement about how identity is irrelevant to art then? Silence. And your band press shots, that all show your face obscured by jumpers and scarves, they’re you ‘not blabbing’ about yourself?

Nothing. Even though those who hate self-congratulatory popstars the most, would surely not deny a musician the right to appear in their own promotional pictures? Nadda.

The nothingness that greets our questioning is not due to Sniper being plain rude, or the fact that he can’t hear us for all the cloth pressing into his ears, but rather because we’re posing them to a lifeless computer screen, having just read an email from the New Yorker. After a chat on the phone failed to happen, email was the only remaining option but we just had to quiz this man who has quickly become the soothsayer of new lo-fi talent.

His answers are short, direct

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and, true to the form of digital interaction, anonymous despite protest. Exactly what we expected, so God knows why we’re so disappointed.

‘Under And Under’, Blank Dogs’ debut album, is no doubt soon to top certain hyperactive Album of The Year polls, and not unjustly. A swathe of muddy vocals and fuzzy, gothy riffs, it’s how Wavves’ disappointing release could have sounded if main man Nathan Williams had obsessed over The Cure instead of Blink 182. But it’s Sniper’s record label that really interests us. Soon to be the home of Leeds’ ghost-surf wonderkid Spectrals (his Phil Spector-ish debut album is being released on the label in early 2010), and already the households of US buzz-types Dum Dum Girls, Woods and Brilliant Colors (all of whom walk the distorted, DIY garage line with excitable aplomb), it’s the first stop for new sounds that’ll go on to fellate the ear canals of Pitchfork Media.

“Myself”, is who Sniper looks most forward to working with next year, while a passing probe into when we can expect another Blank Dogs record gets the

comparatively rambling response of, “I’ve been working on new material for a while, not trying to rush it. I’m trying to get a different sound on there.”

What makes him sign the bands he does? They are, after all, very similar in their aesthetic, influences and scrappy sounds.

“I like them all.”

Hmmm. Interesting. Would you ever sign something a little more electronic? Or pop? A Cheeky Girl? Sorry, the computer can’t talk back!

Here’s a fun one though – If you had to choose between Captured Tracks or Blank Dogs, which would it be?

“No way am I answering that.”

“Not blabbing” clearly does mean remaining anonymous, or allusive at best… to the point of frustration, even. But Captured Tracks remains a new label with a passion and taste that rubs off with every release they put out. It’s admittedly a very specific taste (I think we already knew the answer to ‘would you ever sign something a little more electronic?’) and that Sniper is reluctant to show his hand suggests just how good it is. And, on a couple of points, he does let his hands

In Captivity: Three bands that Sniper lets do the talking for him Th e B itte r s

Toronto duo The Bitters call the racket they make ‘cave pop’, most probably because their trebleheavy sound could well have been recorded in the side of a mountain while bats circle overhead. Guitarist Ben Cook’s day job is shredding about with Fucked Up, while the cracked-yet-sweet vocals of drummer Aerin Fogel are kept busy with her solo, ghostly folk project.

Together, in the form of The Bitters though, they’ve given Captured Tracks their best release yet – the ‘Wooden Glove’ EP, featuring ‘Warrior’, which particularly rattles along to the finest of melodies.

Th e Ge r man Meas les

type wildly to share his views… sort of.

“Is that argument still happening?” he questions of the ‘aren’t all record labels fucked?’ query. “I don’t see it at all. The old paradigm, a warehouse full of CD’s and a large staff, that’s what should go away. The large overhead and all, that’s the fate of these labels. We sell a ton of vinyl, and we do OK with CD’s too, we’re just not dependent on them. Some people will always enjoy the tactile experience of physical music, and I’ve noticed it’s mostly younger people buying it. So, that’s a good sign.”

Largely though, we’re left to imagine how and why Captured Tracks began; what being a faceless bedroom artist-comeBrooklyn-label-boss is really like; how it feels to have your work admired without anyone knowing what lies beneath those bandages.

Being anonymous takes effort, and Mike Sniper was never going to admit that anything he does takes effort. Because nothing he does seems to... except maybe holding a conversation.

Found closer to Sniper’s back garden, The German Measles are a Brooklyn party band for anyone that’s no longer shocked/amused/offended by Black Lips pissing in their own mouths. They sing songs like ‘Wild Weekend’, which sweetly jangles like early Beatles but features the opening line “Come on baby and party with me/Take some drugs and party with me.” Their new ‘Wild’ EP is less reinventing the wheel and more taking it around your mate’s, plying it with spiked punch and trying to put its willy through the hold in the middle. It is, however, a lot of fun and urine free.

Gary War

A majority of War’s recent debut album, ‘New Raytheonport’, sounds like it’s been recorded under a sea of Absinthe, but its eerie weirdness harbours an addictive personality. And it makes sense that War also collaborates with Sniper on side project Roman Soldiers – his budget TASCAM recordings are odd and fuzzy: neither a completely pleasurable easy listen, nor an irritating bind.

Heavily into reverb, War’s ethereal vocals and woozy sounds are how he’s become the most experimental act from the Capture Tracks stable while so many are ‘meat’n’potatoes’ garage rock.

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Au Revoir Simone /

This is the year Au Revoir Simone ‘turned it around’, simply by daring to write a third album P h o t o g r a p h e r : E l i n o r J o n e s Wr i t e r : E d g a r S m i t h

If you’d prefer a less ruthless alternative to 50 Cent’s selfhelp book The 50th Law (and you should, or you’re going straight to hell) you could do worse than to cast an eye over the trajectory of Au Revoir Simone.

Living just up the road from Mr. Cent, they’ve risen steadily to a rather enviable point in their career rather than falling from day two and leaving the ‘infinitely shit’ milestone way back in the distance. By ‘rather enviable point’ we mean they’ve released a third album, a luxury not afforded by many indie bands who seem to disintegrate into side projects, give up or go Hollywood before reaching number three. Being given the time to grow has done the band a whole lot of good as ‘Still Night, Still Light’ is by far and away their best effort so far, something we at Loud and Quiet, and (go us!) David Lynch have been waffling on about since its release this summer. The advice you should take from all this, of course, is to continue to patiently do what you do best, constantly improve and one day you might sell-out the Union Chapel.

The audience later are enraptured in a mood of quiet awe that’s encouraged by the seated-in-pews arrangement and the, well, churchy surroundings.

But it’s taken a while for England to open its arms to this band. Keen tea drinkers, their bubble was promptly burst on their first few pond-crossing experiences.

“I was an Anglophile when I was younger, before I came,” remembers Heather D’Angelo “and then we had a series of many shitty shows here.”

“And, like, always in the worst weather,” adds band-mate Erika Foster.

Heather: “Remember Camden!?”

“Oh Camden!” says Erika.

“This was before we realised that you could have the drum

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beats on a sampler and so we just had them on an iPod.” Not sure where the beat started, the girls attempted to play the second album’s ‘Night Majestic’ twice.

“So, we said, ‘Third times a charm, right?’” recalls Erika “and some guy yelled out ‘No!’” “Oh yeah, then when we were touring with We Are Scientists,” adds Simone number 3, Annie Hart “people were throwing stuff and I thought, ‘Oh, they’re trying to give us presents!’ and then I read on a blog, ‘those idiots thought we were being nice to them, we wanted them off the stage!’

“And we were just getting the worst writers backstage and ten people at each show and we were like, ‘Why the fuck are we here?

Why are we here!?’”

After a slow start they’ve now built up something of a cult following thanks in part to a more assured stage show and promotion from the BBC for their latest album. Emanating a sweet, teddy-bear-in-the-rain sort of melancholia, and avoiding the twee moments that crop up on past outings, their latest is 45 minutes of crystalline synth pop, so lacking in filler that it bewitches from start to finish.

It’s not as though winter has set in on the band but rather that these darker shades were always what they had in mind.

“I think the problem with the first two records,” says Annie “is that we had a vision in our heads for how the songs were going to sound but we were never able to achieve that because we didn’t have the technical knowhow. We finally made the leap this time ‘cause we had a bit more money to hire a producer – Tom Monahan – and it’s a lot closer to what we had imagined in our heads, how the first two albums should’ve sounded.”

“The mood of it is darker,” says Heather “but I think maybe the darks are darker and the

lights are also lighter. There’s more contrast, more of an emotional range. No one died or anything.”

While putting the album together in LA though, Heather came pretty close. “You know in Annie Hall,” she says “Woody Allen, every time he goes to LA, he gets sick? I’m totally like Woody Allen. I can’t get anywhere near LA without feeling faint or just having to leave immediately” “We were at CBS at two in the morning,” remembers Annie “trying to get you Asthma medication, we spent $300 buying fucking inhalers and she was all red and swollen.”

Heather: “I almost died! I was laid out in the back of the car and it was as though I was breathing through a coffee straw, my lungs had gotten to the point of being so, so constricted. Our producer has nine cats and he kept saying that it was the Santa Anna winds and I was like, ‘No, it’s your nine cats!’”

The rest of their time in the city seems to have passed by like some California dream, driving around in the sun and going over to David Lynch’s place, having struck up a friendship with the filmmaker after appearing at the same book launch.

“We’ve been able to hang out with him a bit,” says Annie “and he’s really inspiring. It’s so funny cause we used to watch his movies together in the tour van.

I remember one time we watched the entire Twin Peaks series on Heather’s iPod. It was back before the screens were big so it was just this tiny two-by-two inch screen. Now we’ll go over to his house and he’ll order us egg-salad sandwiches and talk to us about the history of LA. It feels more like going to visit a family member who we only get to see once a year rather than this crazy, demented filmmaker, you

know?”

Attention then turns to the forthcoming show and the pretty impressive surroundings.

“This place is so beautiful,” says Erika. “We’ve certainly played our fair share of dive-y places and some of those shows have been really awesome, but we keep finding ourselves in these really grand buildings.”

It’s a move by their booking agent that’s paid off – the church even has a piano and so some keyboard parts are transferred ad hoc (unlike most electronic acts, their parts are un-sequenced, relying instead on good, old fashioned technical proficiency). At one point both Erika and Annie sit together on a flight case to hammer away at the ivories like something from a radically updated Jane Austen period drama. Much is made of this disarming, ‘girly’ aspect of the band and there are a number of very smitten faces in the crowd. It’s an issue the trio refreshingly refuse to make an issue out of.

“I’m a huge feminist,” says Annie. “I even majored in women’s studies but we’re not doing this for the girl power side of things. I feel like, at this stage, by walking rather than talking, being a role model in that way, you’re doing more for women and for the music scene in general. I would kinda like to be included in the cannon of female musicians in history but that’s maybe a little ambitious.”

“Delia Derbyshire is one of my heroes,” says Heather “as are The Roches, and I think if it weren’t for the Liz Fairs and PJ Harveys of the world and Bjork, if we didn’t have the women that came before us I think it would be really difficult to do what we’re doing now. We might be forgotten but it would be pretty nice if when we’re all dead someone said ‘Oh there was a little band, Au Revoir Simone.’”

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Crime

Y PLA s

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Comanechi have

written the most playful and exciting punk album of 2009. It’s taken four years but ‘Crime of Love’ has been worth the wait Photographer : timothy cochr ane Writer : s tuart s tubb s

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“Its not safe to play in the road, y’know?” mews a grumpy neighbour as she darts back into an east London pub.

Comanechi scuttle to the curb once more, allowing a white van to pass without flattening them. And then it’s back to lying on tarmac and playing with the traffic ... ...Because our nosey onlooker is unaware of so many things where Akiko [drums & vocals] and Simon [guitar] are concerned.

From her midday gin binge, she has no clue that this is a band 4 years in the making; that their survival skills reach far beyond fending off a Smart car or two; that their longawaited debut album is far more violent and less safe than any hurtling metal contraption.

“It’s not safe to play with Comanechi,” is what she should really be warning.

As she bounds into our Dalston meeting place, Akiko – Keex to her friends – is everything and nothing like I expect. Past photo shoots of Comanechi have her sexing the camera, pursed-lipped, like a give-a-fuck i-D model: the kind of girl who would probably smoke during sex and not talk to you after. In print, much like Alice Glass, she

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is cool past the point of awe, and into the realms of intimidation. In the flesh, she’s even more striking. Five feet of Cassette Playa fashion, a cross between Karen O and MIA, Akiko is a definite star. But she’s also far more approachable than her 2D self suggests.

For one, she giggles, a lot. On introduction, she thanks us for playing new song ‘Rabbit Hole’ on our podcast before either of our arms are extended. Later we’re invited to her house for tea and sweets, and for the rest of our time together she happily throws her slight frame into any request our photo shoot asks of her, however “unsafe”.

Simon resembles a young Thurston Moore, and equally plays his guitar like the Sonic Youth main brain.When he’s not crunching out a sound beyond his one distorted instrument he contrasts Akiko’s

excitable giggles with calm silence. He considers every question put to him before giving an answer and kindly offers to help distribute future issues of Loud And Quiet.

In many ways – tall and tiny, patient and extroverted – Simon and Akiko are polar opposites, and yet they’ve managed to make one hell of a focussed, visceral grunge album.

‘Crime of Love’ – 12 tracks high by an offal-less 25 minutes wide – is only more fun than it is direct. A short, swift burr of distorted guitars and female J-Pop vocals recorded through shitty microphones, it’s a thrash metal audio diary extremely personal to the band.Too personal, even, for Akiko to describe in detail.

In her nearby home, over a cup of tea and under a giant house cat named GG (after the mad, stink-loving noise punk GG

Allin, no less), Akiko is suddenly borderline shy. “The lyrics are all to do with love life – love to boys and girls, love to parties. I don’t want to go into personal stuff but… I dunno… I don’t know how to describe it,” she says in an unfamiliar hushed voice. “If you read the lyrics – buy the CD, it’ll come with lyrics – you’ll know.”

Yes, as that less-than-subtle segue from unwanted counselling session to album plug demands, do buy the CD, and do pay attention to Akiko’s viciously yelped lyrics.

That way lays tales of lust, hatred, sex, anger and loss. Pretty much the subjects that festoon every great rock’n’roll record since the invention of recorded sound then, but coming from a Japanese born (and predominantly speaking) singer, Akiko’s shrieks in her second language are equally as

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important to her as the racket her drum kit makes.

“The whole album is autobiographical,” she says, lighting another cigarette as soon as the previous one burns out “because it’s true, it’s honesty and pure emotion that comes from your actual experiences. Before, my English wasn’t so good, so our earlier songs have really simple, repetitive lyrics, but I started to get more into the importance of the lyrics. I always knew the importance but I got more skilled. My English is still simple but I can give more of a message. I’ve started to spend more time on it, reading other peoples’ lyrics. It really reaches to my heart.

And people like Comanechi because of the lyrics as well as the music.”

Time has been good to this duo. Since they first met at a mutual friend’s BBQ, exciting each other over a shared love (and they do mean love) for all things sausage and tongs (Akiko’s parents owned a BBQ restaurant back home in Japan), Akiko’s

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English has been able to steadily improve for our lyrical enjoyment, but time has also allowed for the band to perfect playing their instruments. Simon had played guitar in school but given up on leaving.Then, two weeks before meeting Akiko, he’d been told that his current employers were going under and so, as a treat to himself, spent his last paycheque on buying a new guitar.Talk of marinades over, the pair arranged to meet up to make noise together.That was 4 years ago, and was followed soon after by the band’s debut single, the White Heat released ‘Rude’: a relentless punk track based around a heavy, chugging ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’-esque riff.

It was a confident and abrasive start that pointed to how good Comanechi could be if they could successfully carve some melodies into their thrashy tracks.

“Originally we thought we’d have 20 of those singles as an album,” says Simon “but however great those songs are you can’t listen to more than four or five of them in a

row – having no variance was just too much.

That’s what we learnt through demoing so much – to have some longer more psychedelic tracks.We realised we had to move on and grow into a band you could actually listen to.”

While ‘Crime of Love’’s hardcore ferocity will still rip a new spindle hole in any other record it comes into contact with, its pop melodies are key to its greatness. 20 ‘Rude’’s would have been fun, right up until Track 5 had you destroying your speakers with your bedroom window and the pavement below. Now, Simon continually cuts out over-driven shapes of noise, like Nick Zinner, while Akiko yells something your postman could whistle, if only he’d go to fucking work. It’s tall and tiny/patient and extroverted working in perfect unison. So yes, time really has been good to Comanechi, but 4 years? Isn’t that the average time it takes for a band to form, conquer SXSW, sponsor E4, fall short on expected album sales by

50,000, split up and start working in a second hand shop?

“It’s taken this long because this album is completely DIY,” reasons Simon. “It’s basically us making a record with our friends…”

“Merok actually offered us this album a year ago,” interjects Akiko “but it took a long time to finish mixing and adding more vocals and sounds.This guys called Jimmy Robertson – he’s our friend and he also did the Klaxons album, Mystery Jets, he also did The Big Pink, Late of The Pier, Long Blondes – he’s really good but he was always booked up with bands on big record labels with lots of money to pay him so we were always doing two days, three days month.

Then we’d have to stop, and while we were recording like that we had more new songs that we wanted to put on the album.”

Simon: “I think, with us, that worked quite well, because putting us in a studio for a week with a producer wouldn’t have…”

“The whole album is autobiographical, because it’s true, it’s honesty and pure emotion”

Simon pauses for thought. “…to develop it this way, it’s given us the album that we love and can move on with it.”

S

imon and Akiko are planning on ‘moving on’ as soon as we leave them alone.

I ask them what they’re doing for the rest of the day and matter-of-factly they respond with, “We’re going to write our new album.”

‘Crime of Love’ isn’t even released until December and already they’re eyeballing their second record. Presumably, we’ll not have to wait a further four years to hear it.

Predicting how it might sound though, is a little trickier – Comanechi’s influences reach far and wide, from similar guitar and drum setups (in particular touring partners Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Gossip) to psychedelic doom metallers Electric Wizard, whom Simon and Akiko became so obsessed with, it nearly

split them up.

“We both developed this really intense obsession with them,” remembers Simon.

“For six months all we could write was Electric Wizard songs.”

“We lost lots of fans,” adds Akiko.

Simon: “We even tracked down the guy that recorded their album ‘Dopethrone’ and went to his studio in the New Forest and recorded these songs with him. It was insane - the level of obsession that we briefly went through, it almost destroyed us.”

“Yeah but it was really good,” insists Akiko. “We’d done ‘Rude’ and ‘Naked’, two singles on White Heat, which were really quite poppy and there were these indie kids into it, and then all of a sudden we got into Electric Wizard, which is like really heavy, and decided to make music like that.”

Simon: “So we were in the New Forest with this guy and it’s completely insane with his kids running around and animals everywhere, a studio in a shed. And we were just asking him about Electric Wizard, like two super fans…”

“Oh my God!” interrupts Akiko, suddenly remember something “that house is in the middle of nowhere! To go to a shitty corner shop it’s a 15-minute drive. And they do everything by themselves.They don’t have electricity and they didn’t cook for us or anything so we had to eat tins of soup. It was like I’m A Celebrity Get Me Outta Here.

There was no heating and we were sleeping on the floor in a concrete shell, I was so miserable. Simon likes walking and mountains; I’m a city girl. I like having friends around the corner, a drink around the corner.That killed me, I was so depressed.We were like, ‘fuck it’, let’s make some more poppy songs.”

Two days.That’s how long the pair survived in The New Forest. It’s hardly The Beatles’ year in India but Comanechi had successfully managed to exorcise a majority of their doom metal demons. A few spectres did hang around mind, enabling the band to write ‘My Pussy’. A sludgy lament about how Akiko’s childhood pet was stolen and never returned, it’s something of ‘Crime of Love’’s epic retreat, clocking in at a massive 3 minutes 48 seconds. Everything else on the record is always sub-3-minutes, and often shy of 2. Not ‘My Pussy’ though.That slowly crunches on and on (well, kinda) as Akiko assaults a symbol and speaks of her first lesson in lost love, aged 5. Also in amongst the tearaway pop tracks like ‘Close Enough To Kiss’, ‘I Wish’ and ‘Rabbit Hole’ is the even more tearaway ‘Why?’, which is 45 seconds long and sounds like the beginning of Test-Icicles’ ‘What’s Your Damage?’, and two songs that particularly boast the band’s often unsung versatility.

‘On’n’On’ is a cross between ‘My Tornado’ by The Raveonettes and downtempo Blood Red Shoes. And while that doesn’t sound all that impressive, it somehow is. It steadily prowls as Akiko’s vocal are allowed to sing and not scream. She sounds almost angelic as she gently coos to doubletracked “oooohs” and “aaahhhs”. It’s road movie music for America’s west coast rather than the gridlocked Dalston High Street that Akiko lives off.The psychedelic and sinister ‘Mesmerising Fingers’ is even better. It’s quite possibly the best track ‘Crime of Love’ has to offer. Proof once more that that Electric Wizard obsession wasn’t completely fruitless, Akiko’s voice is distorted once more but not as much as Simon’s guitar, which fuzzes a huge doomy riff. “I’m licking his fingers/I’m looking for his fingers,” Akiko aggressively spits, before complimenting the “mesmerising fingers” of her more than competent lover. Perhaps it’s no surprise then that it’s Comanechi at their most sexy, patient and hypnotic. .

“H

elp yourself to those,” says Akiko, pointing at a bowl of suspicious looking sweets on her coffee table. No, ‘suspicious’ is the wrong word, ‘unfamiliar’ is more accurate, in the way that crisp packets look in Benidorm, or biscuits do in Italy.

France is where these sweets are from. Paris to be exact; collected by Akiko when recently in the city of love to record a TV show with The Big Pink.

Longstanding friends – and Comanechi’s label boss in The BP’s Milo Cordell: the man behind Merok Records – Akiko is practically a fully-fledged member of the shoe-gazing band now. And when she’s not drumming for them (which she usually is, due to their continual climb from buzzing blog fodder to credible princes of Radio 1’s playlist) she’s screaming and collapsing as she fronts hardcore noise gang Pre and, occasionally, performing under her solo guise, Sperm Javelin.That’s four bands that Akiko is involved in, perhaps alluding to why just as many years have passed with no sign of a Comanechi album, and definitely leading me to ask how they manage to keep this, their main concern, going.

“At the moment it’s like having two other bands,” reasons the singer. “Pre just released an album and we toured that over America, and Jon’s in Male Bonding who’ve just signed to Sub Pop so they’re writing their album and Pre’s on a bit of a break. My other band, Sperm Javelin, I made that one up. I just do whatever, it’s just me, and I don’t even have any songs, I just turn up and

improvise. I play guitar and scream, and have a different drummer each time.”

“I don’t think we’re the kind of band that would work if you put us in a tour bus for 11 months of the year together,” adds Simon.

“It’s actually better,” furthers Akiko. “If I had just one band I’d get so obsessed. It’s better that I have lots of projects.”

Of course, Akiko’s distractions being what they are and not a wet indie band, a dirge acoustic indulgence and Glasvegas, depending on your view, does her 2D image that’s now a distant memory either little or a lot of harm. She’s unquestionably cool, even more so once you meet her, and Simon is no dorky Hot Chip spare part (did I draw attention to the fact that he looks like Thurston Moore already?). But are Comanechi aware of all this?

“Why do you think that?” asks a puzzled-sounding Akiko, ultimately answering the question in the flash. “I don’t know,” she ponders. “I can’t really say. People might think that I always try to hang out in the scene but I don’t do that. Like, last night Loverman had their album launch and Adam the bassist plays bass in The Big Pink when Leo is in LA. He was like, ‘Hey Keex, you coming down,’ and I was like, ‘No.’” Akiko giggles the loudest giggle of the day.

“Sometimes I’m just tired of seeing so many people at the same time and I knew so many friends that were going to be there. It’s not because I don’t want to see them – I want to see them – but sometimes I get a bit claustrophobic because I’m always out doing gigs. I’d rather stay home and write new songs sometimes.”

Like this afternoon, once we leave and Simon and Akiko begin writing their second album. Before we do leave though, I have one last question for Comanechi; a band that have been so patient and dedicated to making music together that they’ve already existed for a lifetime compared to most bands gearing up to release their debut album. Over the past 4 years, from barbequed burgers and doom rock addiction to touring with Yeah Yeah Yeahs and touring for other bands, what is the most important lesson that Simon and Akiko have learnt?

“Just keep doing it,” smiles Akiko. “Don’t give up until you’ve done what you want to do.”

Simon: “You get people in bands, putting nights on, releasing records and sharing ideas, and that’s art.Then some bands get signed and are taken out of that and they lose it. Just because you’re not given an advance and loads of money doesn’t mean that you should stop. Make your art and see if people like it.”

Trust me, this art you will like. www.loudandquiet.com

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Julian Casablancas Phrazes For The Young (Rough Trade)

By Stuart Stubbs. In stores Nov 2

06/10

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You know how when you first heard The Strokes’ ‘12:51’ you thought it was too short?

Well, it turns out it wasn’t.The proof is here on Julian Casablancas’ debut solo album, in the form of 8 seemingly endless tracks.The Strokes’ first comeback single left us hankering for more; so lean there was no time to get bored of that playful keyboard-sounding guitar riff; ‘Phrazes for The Young’ is the band’s creative figurehead cross-breeding the ever drawn-out genre of country and western with 80s electronics, and there’s plenty of time to get fidgety throughout.

So much a gang, it’s easy to forget that The Strokes are very much Julian’s band, or at least it was until one by one his band mates indulged their plainly dull side projects. Nickel Eye, Little Joy, Albert Hammond Jnr’s solo work; they all finally convinced us that the best looking one – the instrument-less one – really is the brains of

the whole operation. But ‘Phrazes of the Young’ could easily knock our confidence in that theory once again, due to tracks like the opening ‘Out of The Blue’. A country railroad song that speaks, Johnny Cash-like, of “going to hell in my leather jacket”, it bounds along relentlessly. Julian purrs his ever-sexy drawl, but it’s too little to pull focus from how the track’s rigid, single dimension makes it seem far longer than its naturally yawnsome length of 4 and a half minutes.

Even more likely to be found chewing hay and dressed in plaid is ‘Ludlow St.’ with its banjo (!) solo. It clops further, this time over the 5minute mark, and while its waltzing sway is merry enough, you can’t help but think that it’s more suited to Bright Eyes’ cutting room floor.

‘4 Chords of The Apocalypse’ begins a twirly waltz also, and veers a little too close to Ozzy and Kelly Osbourne’s Christmas weepy ‘Changes’ for forgiveness, until, that is, it erupts into the kind of classic soul song that has X Factor contestants dropping to their knees, à la Danni Minouge at boot camp. Casablancas

releases his inner Lionel Richie and proves once again that behind the mumbles is a throaty voice as big as it is cool.

What we’re really after though, is ‘11th Dimension’, which sounds like it could slip into New Order’s ‘Regret’ at any moment. Because when JC isn’t playing cowboy he’s picking up from where ‘First Impressions of Earth’ left off, toying with synthesizers and winding melodies.

This is what he should have been concentrating on, and is no doubt how the urgent processed drums of ‘River of Breaklights’ were conceived, as well as ‘Left & Right in the Dark’, which is almost Balearic in its verse and brilliantly camp in its pop chorus.

Nothing is bad here per se – and everything is far more interesting than Albert Hammond Jnr’s solo stabs at greatness – it’s just that nothing is instantly excitable either. Even ‘Juicebox’ had that I-need-to-hear-that-again factor.

Like The Beatles,The Strokes have always seemed brilliant together and a far less impressive competent when alone. Ultimately, they still do.

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Lark

Sufjan Stevens

Tubelord

The Slits

Wojtek Godzisz

Shop

The BQE

Our First American Friends

Trapped Animal

Wojtek Godzisz

(Care In The Community) ByPolly Rappaport. In stores now

(Asthmatic Kitty)

By Nathan Westley. In stores Oct 19

(Hassle)

By Matthias Scherer. In stores now

(Sweet Nothing)

By Janine Bullman. In stores now

(Tiger Trap)

By Chris Watkeys. In stores now

Boasting such distinctive and musically significant influences is a brave and risky career move - the word ‘derivative’ skulks in the corner, shaking its head, scoffing, “Try something original, mate”.

That’s where ‘Shop’ comes in. It’s shamelessly transparent about its inspirations: ‘Hatbox’ employs The Fall’s jerky beats, repetition and strangely cryptic lyrics, wiry guitars and the manic, psychobluesy vocal stylings of the Cramps run rife. And in darker moments, such as ‘Dirt Track’, distant, lonely guitar twangs, glowing cymbals and patient, heavy cello sighs cast the unmistakable shadow of the Dirty Three. But Lark have blurred the edges, mixing things up for further ventures into alt-folk, jazzy punk, even back-handed Gypsy wonk on ‘You Know Not’. Far from being messy, ‘Shop’ is sharp and clever – possibly derivative, definitely superb.

For many, Sufjan’s previous album, ‘Illinois’, will go down as a modern day classic, yet he also serves as a bastion of the modern day undercurrent of artists who never quite get the attention many would say they deserve. ‘BQE’ is not an album that is going to break from this mould, rather it is one that will seal his place at the table of left-field indie-cultdom. It has seen him depart from previous plans of releasing an album named after and influenced by each state and temporarily turn towards issuing a mixed medium artistic exploration of the Brooklyn – Queens expressway.This soundtrack takes on a classical theme, structured in movements and coated in a vast array of dynamics.

Vocal-less, it relies on an orchestra to provide the intricately played soundbed that, by its culmination, will leave the majority pining for a more traditional outpouring.

When Michael Azerrad googled himself last year, he might not have been expecting to find that some relatively unknown indie outfit from London’s south-western suburbia were singing a chorus of “I’ll kill today/I’ll kill you, Azerrad” to ever- growing crowds.

Although ‘I Am Azerrad’ is included on Tubelord’s debut album, the rest of the record is thankfully short of death threats, and instead offers punchy jabs and deft hooks in abundance.The Kingston trio are the poppiest among the post-punk-math-class of ’09 (Pennines, Blakfish et al), but that doesn’t mean that they endorse beats in 4/4 or obvious, spotlight-grabbing choruses.The vocals might have been put on a pedestal among the overall mix, but the band’s trademark stop/ start-breakdowns and misleading crescendos prevents this record from being polished or predictable.

While most bands reform merely to preach to the converted and give the back catalogue a moneyspinning airing,The Slits have refused to take the path of least resistance. No more than you’d expect from a band who not only embodied the punk ethic, but helped to define it. ‘Trapped Animal’ is the band’s first studio album since 1981’s ‘Return of the Giant Slits’, an album where depth-charge dub and punky thrash sit side by side with plucked violins and wild west harmonica.

Of the fifteen tracks on this equally genre-bending record (made by founding mouthpiece Ari Up, fellow original Slit Tessa Pollitt and three new recruits that include Hollie Cook, daughter of Sex Pistols drummer Paul), the charged ‘Reject’, the hypnotic ‘Be It’, and the sweet skank of ‘Crybaby’ are highlights. Still the coolest girls on the block.

Ex Symposium main man Wojtek Godzisz takes a half-fare trip on the folk wagon with his eponymous debut album, a journey that promises a glittering destination but goes down too many dead ends on the way.This is largely straightforward punk-pop, as listened to through a folk filter; liberal use of organs and sweeping violin parts lend an epic grandeur to songs like ‘Rosetta Nebula’ (which has initially has something of Coldplay’s ‘Lost’ about it), but elsewhere echoes of his old band’s raucousness reverberate heavily – ‘Ace of Pentacles’ is a hard hit of heavy punk. Meanwhile, ‘Beltane’ is pure English folk played by a rock band, but the trouble is that the likes of Archie Bronson Outfit do exactly that with a hell of a lot more adrenaline and invention.

Not for want of trying, ‘Wojtek Godzisz’ is more Idlewild than Arcade Fire, sadly.

Cold Cave Love Comes Close (Matador)

By Edgar Smith. In stores Nov 2

07/10

The idea that Cold Cave could be the kind of modern-thinking pop messiah that the Passion Pits, Big Pinks and XXs of this world have so far failed to be has inspired many a blogger to sweat-off the characters of their keyboards in frenzied cyber-hype.

There’s nothing particularly modern or messianic about ‘Love Comes Close’ (the title track in particular sounds rather too close to New Order’s ‘Run’ for comfort), but the sound of hardcore hombre Wesley Eisold moving into new turf lends its crunchy digital pop an off-kilter charm. Get passed the slightly outof-tune Peter Murphy-ish vocals, their tone lilting reliably between depressed and suicidal, and there’s plenty to love.The repetitive and quickly tired Kraftwerk-esque ‘The Laurels of Erotomania’ may indicate how dated Cold Cave can sound but tracks like ‘The Trees Grew Emotions and Died’ and the excellent ‘Heaven Was Full’ are crying out for earthshaking remixes. www.loudandquiet.com

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Gyratory System

Spiral Stairs

Bird Names

Daniel Johnston

Gentle Friendly

The Sound Board Breathes

The Real Feel

Sings The Browns

Is And Always Was

Ride Slow

(Angular)

By Ian Roebuck. In stores Oct 26

(Domino)

By Reef Younis. In stores Oct 19

(Upset The Rhythm)

By Polly Rappaport. In stores now

(Feraltone)

By Sam Walton. In stores now

(Upset The Rhythm)

By Stuart Stubbs. In stores Nov 2

Exhilaration isn’t a word you’d associate with museums or trumpets but that’s what you get here…to some extent. It’s the brains of Dr. Blick and it sounds like his grey matter unwinding in a gloriously demented display.

Apparently inspired by a mechanical instrument museum in Brentford, it feels like being lectured by a peculiar professor, albeit one you’d take to dinner.

Formed from the ashes of One More Grain, GS is a more personal affair; in fact Blick’s father Robin plays a range of instruments throughout.Their recording technique has been labelled a ‘process’ and unfortunately it feels that way listening along, but it’s not all hard labour.The album comes alive on the floor. File alongside ‘Pip Paine’ era Metronomy, A Certain Ratio or Animal Collective and get moving cause it’s all part of the process.

Talk of Pavement’s isolated return has coincided remarkably well with co-founder Scott Kannberg’s, aka Spiral Stairs’, proper full-length debut. And while this offering probably won’t debunk any longharboured hopes of a full reformation, ‘The Real Feel’ is more than just a stop gap before any potential main event. It’s an album that’s far removed from Pavement’s ramshackle world and showcases Kannberg’s diversity.

Opener ‘True Love’ stomps and rocks with clarity and purpose whereas ‘Call the Ceasefire’, a languid slow burner of a track, could melancholically wail out across the prairies. Surprisingly, from the Californian, there’s a lazy, pervading porch feel with ‘Subiaco Shuffle’ getting Kannberg mean and wistful, barking and prowling over a plucked bluegrass beat. It’s not Pavement, but what did you expect?

Bird Names’ previous offerings are best described as aural chaos; an exasperating, cluttered barrage of vocal and instrumental output.

What the band have achieved on this record, however, is a degree of organised chaos, losing none of their delirious, abstract mentality but delivering something clearer and brighter, the sonic colours more defined and every phrase drenched in tingling bliss. ‘Nature’s Over’ sets the tone of the album with bouncing aluminium guitars and sublimely quirky harmonies, playing hide-and-seek with woozy telephone receiver vocal noodling.

What follows is a succession of musical collages comprised of gloriously off-kilter melodies, hazy, Pretty Things-like vibes, galloping rhythms and cascades of tumbling vocals. Each track is swimming in complimentary contradictions and it’s a heady listen that’s exhilarating rather than exhausting.

Undoubtedly, one of the things that makes Daniel Johnston so compelling is the fact that he’s not all there. His well-documented mental health problems – ongoing bipolar disorder, in and out of mental hospitals – render his feral squawk more genuine than your average pained rockstar and consequently far more affecting.

When he retreats to nursery rhymes or mimics the lolloping piano of the Sesame Street theme (as on ‘Without You’), the naivety feels poignant rather than forced.

But the context of Johnston’s past makes an album as confessional as this an occasionally uncomfortable listen – when he sings, “I’m just a psycho trying to write a song”, that’s no bluff. However, there are plenty of opportunities to overcome the voyeuristic discomfort, at which point the LP becomes a rather joyful blast of goofy west coast 60’s pop.

What with Gentle Friendly being a duo with a penchant for fuzzy vocal, woozy synths and looping bedroom trickery, they’re perhaps destined to forever be compared to fellow noise twosomes like Fuck Buttons and No Age. But ‘Ride Slow’ – an album that sees the Londoners stash more ethereal melodies than ever within their experimental, organ pop songs – celebrates the band’s own distinctive take on analogue tape music. ‘Rip Static’, for example, sounds like The Buggles being played down a walkie-talkie and ‘Lovers Rock’ is far more emotive than anything coming from LA’s Smell scene, which was first to embrace these two. A few 90 second interludes aside – which, fair enough, do scream Fuck Buttons – ‘Ride Slow’’s carefully planned whirls and drums largely prove that Gentle Friendly are like no one but themselves.

Misson Of Burma The Sound The Speed The Light (Matador US) ByTom Pinnock. In stores now

09/10

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Since returning from their near-twenty-year hiatus, these cult Boston avant-punks have set about proving the impossible – that a reunion can actually deliver the creative goods.This, their fourth full-length release, sees the original power trio, plus tape manipulator, producer and Shellac bassist Bob Weston, take a slight detour back to the darkly psychedelic days of their debut, ‘Vs.’. Opener ‘1,2,3, Partyy!’ bursts straight out of the traps, but from then on the mood is low-key and cerebral, echoing the moody likes of ‘Vs.’’s ‘Dead Pool’. Soon, though, striking moments come from the experimental soup: the woozy organ dominating the martial psych stew of ‘SSL 83’; the melancholy chords on Clint Conley’s ‘Feed’ and Roger Miller’s maniac soloing that punctures ‘Come Undone’ like stray bullets. Burma haven’t made it easy for their audience, but the labyrinthine art-punk depths of ‘The Sound...’ make it well worth it. It’s almost embarrassing this treasure of riches hasn’t been made by a new band.

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Lightning Bolt

Singapore Sling

The Fresh & Onlys

The Raveonettes

Earthy Records

Perversity, Desperation and Death (Genepool)

Grey-Eyed Girls

In And Out of Control

By Sam Little. In stores now

(Woodsist/Revolver)

By Danny Canter. In stores now

(Fierce Panda)

By Stuart Stubbs. In stores now

David Cronenberg’s Wife

Icelandic noir quartet Singapore Sling are not just an open book, but rather a splayed Velvet Underground annual with bonus Mary Chain stickers and “I heart reverb” doodles welcoming every page turn.This, their fourth album, is called ‘Perversity, Desperation and Death’, complete with guns on its sleeve.Yes, there’s some proud sporting of influences on sleeves going on here – this band like their music retro and as black as their leather jackets. As the opening ‘I Believe’ proves, that’s no bad thing. Sounding more than a little like The Cramps’ ‘Human Fly’, it shuffles along in PVC pants that you’ll want to follow.

‘Demoniac’ is even naughtier, in a viagra-stiff Lou Reed kinda way.

The band then settle into a stride marked ‘competent, early Primal Scream’ nicely enough, but as this record plods on you’ll ask where all the perversity went.

The gay capital of the world and Mecca for ageing hippies, San Francisco, in 2009, is better known as a city coughing up some of the worst named garage bands around (hello Nodzzz,Thee Oh Sees, Trainwreck Riders). It’s also a town where said bands write some quite brilliant slacker/surf/60s pop, and you can lump The Fresh And Onlys in that camp on both accounts. ‘Grey-Eyed Girls’ begins prowling to an up-tempo Jim Morrison purr (‘Black Coffin’) thus pitching The Fresh and Onlys above their peers.While others whinge like Black Lips, this 5piece gallop on sounding their best when vocals are kept low and bellowing.The disappointment comes, then, when singers switch to someone far less Johnny Cash (‘What’s His Shadow...’ particularly). If they embrace their mumbling Iggy side, this band could be far superior to their name.

In a carbon copy career trajectory of BRMC,The Raveonettes are no longer considered the cool, young Wayfarer-donning things they once were. It’s been that way since their debut mini album – the blink-n-you’ll-miss-it, brilliantly fast ‘Whip It On’. But like Black Rebel, these Danes obsessed with the US continue to shame out faddy minds with music that surpasses their initial aesthetic buzz.The duo’s poppiest LP yet, there remains dark lyrics between those trademark surf riffs and nods to The Beach Boys. Rape, lost love and suicide - it’s all there in the boy/girl breathy vocals, while tambourines bash on and songs like ‘Boys Who Rape (Should Be Destroyed)’ sound far cheerier than they should. Still heavily sponging from The Jesus and Mary Chain and Spector girl groups, certainly, but if this were The Big Pink we’d all be offering reach arounds.

(Load)

By Mathias Scherer. In stores now The title of Lightning Bolt’s fifth album won’t fool anyone.These two sonic terrorists are known for their fit-inducing, explosive and exhilaratingly relentless noise-core slabs, not for grounded, agreeable or listenable pop-rock, and ‘Earthly Delights’ cements that reputation further. ‘The Sublime Freak’ will have speakers oozing sweat and listeners trying hard not to break out into a tribal dance possibly requiring a bloody sacrifice, and the closing 12-minute, bass riff orgy/torture jam ‘Transmissionary’ is a climax of the heart attack variety.This album is neither an earthly nor an especially delightful experience, and there will be only a handful of occasions (most of them will involve bodily fluids that aren’t always yours) where this will be the appropriate soundtrack to your life, but put it on at the right time and everything will fall into place.

Hypnagogues (Blang)

By Sam Walton. In stores Nov 9 ‘Hypnagogues’ is frequently reminiscent of some fairly terrible albums – the cheap, tinny sound of pre-fame Pulp, the crass Gothicism of the first Horrors LP, the frankly horrendous musicianship of various unlistenable Pogues and Fall records. But, despite itself, ‘Hypnagoges’ has a curiously charming quality that repays repeat listens – it takes its shambling demeanour and makes a virtue of it, and Tom Maynes reedy, nasal voice becomes strangely affecting by the time ‘Desperate Little Man’ arrives two thirds of the way in, and the final four songs are excellent little vignettes. It’s is far from a brilliant album, but at its peaks, as on the sardonic, nihilistic opener ‘Sweden’ and the blistering, hissing ‘Body To Sleep With’, the world created by David Cronenberg’s Wife is deliciously dark and compelling, full of tension and spook, bile and bite.

Echo & The Bunnymen The Fountain (Ocean Rain)

By Edgar Smith. In stores Nov 2

05/10

At this year’s Camden Crawl,The Bunnymen arguably gave the most assured and fist-pumpingly awesome performance of the weekend. Like the ‘Ocean Rain’ tour that preceded it, it seemed to set the scousers on a lofty pop pedestal that they definitely deserve.While they’ve never again scaled the heights of ‘Ocean Rain’ or ‘Crocodiles’, they have continued to put out admirable music with the odd stunner cropping up now and again. Making soaring lead single ‘Think I need it Too’ the first track here was a mistake, as from there it’s all downhill, bar the comic high point of ‘Shroud of Turin’ . Songs like the title track and ‘Life of 1000 crimes’ aren’t bad in themselves, but the surrounding widescreen indie rock seems sadly tailored for duel-carriageways, artistically belittled by clichés, (over)produced by John McLaughlin (Busted, Five).The mood of slight, major-key euphoria refuses to go away and its ballads come across like Richard Hawley rebuilt by out-of-work former XFM DJ’s. www.loudandquiet.com

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Live

Running This Town

Jay-z

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Wembley Stadium, London 18.09.2009

By Stuart Stubbs Photography by Jason Ferguson

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Two summers ago, Muse sold out Wembley twice over.Those shows, apparently, were a Bono-in-a-giant-lemon short of being the most spectacular events since a beard in the east said, “Give us the fish and bread; I’ll see if I can divvy it up.”There were lasers and satellites, starship scenery, Matt Bellamy’s crow’s hair and massive floating orbs of light. And still the princes of glam prog have been outdone by just one man.

Okay, so it’s not as if the most successful rapper alive is any ‘one man’, and sure, Jay-Z isn’t alone tonight, but still, to see Jigga spit verse in front of a 50 foot high Nirvana destroying their equipment is to witness grandeur on a level not intended for our country’s national football stadium.

Truth be told, recent studio effort ‘The Blueprint 3’ is more of an ‘American Gangster 2’ than the third part of an unplanned trilogy spawned by the New Yorker’s 2001 recordcome-milestone – there are some deadly killers on there, but some lardy fillers also. Little does

this matter in a live setting, as on a stage still warm from Sarah Harding’s booze breath that continually bellowed “C’mon Wemb-err-ley!” through a Girls Aloud support stint, Jay-Z skims the cream off the top of his latest recording and serves it with a bombastic greatest hits set.

To start, ‘DOA (Death Of Auto-Tune)’ not only proves to be the third best track on ‘The Blueprint 3’ – all noir brass squeals, tipsy electric guitars and smarter than ever rhymes – but also the extent of Jay-Z’s un-shakeable confidence.

In front of him are 80,000 fans who’ve come to hear very indie songs about colours and clocks (yep, this is a Coldplay gig), and he’s started with a track that even his band have only known for a week. Already though, estate agents are pistolwhippers; boxed-wine quaffers are Cristalsippers… or drinking straight from the little spout, at least. Diamonds are in the sky from people who might not know why their arms are extended that way. It’s bassy and very loud.

‘99 Problems’ is predictably a big ‘I-know-

this-one’ moment, but not as much as the then number one single ‘Run This Town’ (the new album’s second best track), which almost does more harm than good as its sing-a-long Rhianna sample reminds more than a few that they’ve come here tonight to shout in time to ‘Yellow’, and not this rapper fella. Both tracks are thrown out reasonably early, but Jigga, his tighter-than-Chris-Martin’s-curls band and old hand Memphis Bleak have plenty of tricks to win back favour.There’s that Nirvana back drop, the Jackson 5 sample of ‘Izzo (H.O.V.A.)’, ‘Encore’ (with Linkin Park rock-but-not-toorock shreds), an acapella version of Hove’s guest verse from Kanye’s ‘Diamonds of Sierra Leone’ and ‘The Blueprints 3’’s centre piece and best track, ‘Empire State of Mind’, with Bridget Kelly providing Alicia Keys’ Radio 2, homely soul chorus.

An amazing rapper, Jay-Z is proudly an even better businessman. It’s why the mum next to me thinks, “he’s very good, isn’t he?”

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Reeperbahn festivAL Hamburg, Germany 24-26.09.2009

By Chris Beanland Photography by Stefan Malzkorn ▼

Hamburg is Germany’s gateway to the world - which means that this party town has always been the place that buttoned-up Calvinist Germans come to let their hair down and soak up foreign culture, the port of Hanseatic City’s reaching out into the surrounding river water with its giant fingers of land.The Reeperbahn became synonymous with sin not just because sailors wanted to indulge in the pleasures of the flesh, but because external influence and boozy decadence were tolerated, and from the 1960s onwards, Hamburg developed the liveliest music scene in northern Europe.

That’s what the Reeperbahn Festival celebrates.

If you needed further proof that

Hamburgers love their music, we try to watch local electro lads Deichkind, but only get as far as the door. Fans fight with a dozen city police to try and get in. “It’s radical left wing here!” a laughing local tells me before sticking two fingers up at the cops. So we head next door to watch some so-so scuzzpop from Times New Viking instead, in the Kaiser Keller - the venue where The Beatles launched their career in 1961.

Synths haven’t quite reached these parts yet: Biffy Clyro and Dinosaur Jr receive a rapturous reception from the crowds but we’re more impressed by Future of The Left and a new discovery from Antwerp,The Hickey Underworld, who dissect the sonic corpse of Jawbox with aplomb. And while media froth sensations Girls leave us underwhelmed, we’re blown away by great Danes Who Made Who, rounding off a juvenile set in a monstrous former prison with a cover of Benny Benassi’s ‘Satisfaction’.

Germany’s gateway to the world is our gateway to the best ‘urban festival’ around.

neon indian Barfly, Camden, London 29.09.2009

By Lisa Wright ▼

After last summer’s onslaught of psychedelia-tinged electro-pop you’d be forgiven for throwing anything resembling a sampler onto a massive bonfire, disowning the perpetrators entirely and setting up shop with nowt but an acoustic guitar for company. It’s not that any of it was bad per se – hell some of the best bands of ’08 were headband-toting masters of the synth – but there was just so much of it. A year down the line however, with our eardrums suitably refreshed, comes Neon Indian (a.k.a.Texan born Alan Palomo) - a man equipped with the kind of swoonsome tracks that’ll make your hips shake and your heart break all at once.The likes of the twinklingly nonchalant ‘Deadbeat Summer’ are akin to what ‘Oracular Spectacular the second’ really should be if MGMT keep the new-found pretensions at bay, whilst the Aztec Camera meets Why? jaunt of ‘Terminally Chill’ is the best Christmas number one that’ll never be. And though the oppressively dingy setting of the Barfly sits slightly incongruously with Palomo wistful synth-pop stylings, it won’t be long before the small crowd of acolytes gathered here tonight swells in parallel to our oh-so-converted hearts. If there’s any justice, next year will be an Indian summer.

Factory Floor White Heat, Soho, London 06.10.2009

By Edgar Smith ▼

Whether you feel that this Soho indie night is a trendier-than-thou exercise in moveable cool that jumps on board the latest trends with blithe abandon or a London Shite-friendly indie romp doesn’t really matter because they’ve nailed a bands-then-DJs formula that’s made them a long-time going-out bastion in an area that’s otherwise so seedy it’s growing depraved little shoots.While the faders on the decks later are down too low to drown out the endless media yakyakyak, they’ve booked bands that are interesting, fashionable and

down-right smashing. Best of all and second on, Factory Floor.

Starting with the pulsating analogue monster that is ‘Lying’, they play a set that demonstrates how far above the canopy of London bands they’ve made their nest this year.The trio have an uncanny way with electronic, tribally repetitive dance rhythms and a human-looking drummer that sounds like he was developed

by N.A.S.A, but they refuse to indulge the crowd with the comfortable rise and fall of conventional structures. Instead they aim for a heady, experimental mix of extended guitar techniques, no wave slash’n’burn and dreamy, Liquid Liquid-ish vocals.When they spoke to this magazine earlier in the year they stressed a multimedia outlook but it sounds from this like they’ve chosen to focus on the music. Good move.

esben & The Witch The Lecturn, Brighton 26.09.2009

By Nathan Westley ▼

Sprawled out on stage while psychedelic flavoured lighting swirls around the room, Esben and The Witch performance tonight has a lot in common with high end consumer art: to some they will first appear overtly pretentious and elitist but as time passes the worth in what they do soon starts to appear and make sense.They are a trio that are not fascinated by the idea of replicating the sound of the present or the past but are instead fully focused on carving their own niche by taking the 3 minute pop structure, rolling it up and tossing it into the nearest waste disposal.

They have hit on a dark sensual cinematic fusion that blends the hi-tech with the traditional, which owes a small debt to both Massive Attack and Portishead, but instead of re-hashing they have deconstructed, tearing away the excesses and remoulding the spine into a slightly leaner, more ethereal sonic melee, before attaching a strong icy voice that is ghostly and haunting. Esben and the Witch may still be very much in their infancy but tonight they deliver a flow of music that would have the Mercury judging panel salivating, their pulses racing and gushing plaudits out one after another.

www.loudandquiet.com

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Live ▼

Bat For lashes /Yeasayer Roundhouse, Camden, London 06.10.2009

By Stuart Stubbs ▼

Times New Viking. Pic: OWEN RICHARDS

Japanese Voyeurs. Pic: MIKE BURNELL

Johnny Flynn. Pic: DANIELLE GOLDSTEIN

Yeasayer are not your average band.

Faced with a brief half hour support slot, and a tried and tested backlog of howling, harmonious wonders, you may expect them to play it safe and simply offer up highlights from their 2007 debut.

Instead, the Brooklyn four-piece (or five-piece rather with an extra percussion hand) blasts us with a stream of brand new material that more than successfully develop their world music rhythms into heavier, dance tracks.Twenty minutes in – and the other side of 5 newies that throb somewhere near TVOTR doing Cut Copy, and in doing so pitch the Brooklynites alongside Animal Collective in terms of superior musicianship – ‘Sunrise’ and ‘Wait for the Summer’ arrive in glorious, familar celebration.Then, slinking onstage amidst a wave of guttural protestations of love is the everbeautiful Bat for Lashes. Natasha Khan’s hauntingly beautiful voice is tailored to the space of the Roundhouse; piercing, ritualistic and supported by the formidable drumming of the exceptional Sarah Jones.Tracks like opener ‘Horse & I’, ‘Bat’s Mouth’ and ‘Pearl’s Dream’ live up to all expectations, but it’s the hidden gems like ‘Sleep Alone’ and ‘Glass’ that are given a new, mesmerising dimension when heard live, effortlessly exhaled by Khan from within her black leotard and under her copper cap. Only the Radio 1friendly ‘Daniel’ slightly disappoints. Far from weak, it’s simply surrounded by more poignant songs that seem more so due to the hit single’s eagerness to ramp up the trancey synth riff and get people moving.That’s what La Roux’s for. Bat For Lashes is far, far above cheap gimmicks like dancing.

Loverman Hoxton Bar & Kitchen, London 28.09.2009

By Jacob Sheppard ▼

In between tonight’s band’s, projected behind the equipment

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on stage, crudely made horror videos paint the bleak walls.

Fitting, as London’s Loverman seem to want to have death following their every move.

Playing on the night of the band’s mini album, ‘Human Nature’, drenched in apt, bloody-curdling red light, front man Gabriel Bruce – open white shirt with a 50’s greaser hairdo to boot - seduces the audience members with a sound that mixes the intense live show of The Bad Seeds with the punk characteristics of the Misfits.

Opening with the sinister ‘Crypt Tonight’ and leaving no time for a quick drink between songs, the band power through tonight’s show, which has a coming-of-age feel to it. Parents, friends, firsttime-listeners and the ever-present label man all populate the room.

Only playing what could have been a maximum of 30 minutes (it is a mini album, after all), these guys deliver a show with blood (quite literally as lead guitarist Jon Jackson’s once white guitar ends up a tint of red) and an abundance of sweat. But don’t be fooled by the deep monotone sound of Bruce’s voice - the yawning comparisons with Cave must be wearing thin as this band is more Bad Brains than Bad Seeds.

Johnny Flynn & the Sussex Wit The Union Chapel, London 26.09.2009

By Danielle Goldstein ▼

Foreboding pillars, dim lighting, hundreds of eyes fixed forward and a rhythmic stomping echo amid vaulted ceilings – anyone would think we’ve stumbled on a Masonic ritual, but this is the scale of reaction that South Africanborn, 26-year-old Johnny Flynn creates with his simple, no-fuss folk. Heading the stage with his merry men on drums (David), keys (James), bass (Adam) and cello (Joe), Flynn comes across as more of a woodsman than a performer, with his scruffy plaid shirt and burly shoulders. However, his concoction of Bessie Smith blues, Bob Dylan folk and Chaucer inspired content attest that he knows what he’s doing. Juggling the mandolin, violin, guitar and banjo, he gets the barn dance

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going with singles ‘The Box’ and ‘Leftovers’. But his new material packs a bigger punch, clearly written with the band in mind.

‘Lost & Found’ carries a Johnny Cash-worthy walking bass line while ‘Howl’ has the Sussex Wit cushioning our bucolic balladeer with strings a plenty. Due to the church curfew, Flynn’s set is cut short and instead of ending on his characteristic track ‘Tickle Me Pink’ he leaves us with hearts racing after the rolling snare and marching band tempo of ‘Eyeless in Holloway’. No longer stamping with appreciation, but stropping like a two-year-old that the show is over.

Times New Viking Cargo, Shoreditch, London 23.09.2009

By Matthias Scherer ▼

No pain, no gain. It’s an old one, but that could be the slogan Times New Viking keep in mind when recording their albums in that crude, eye-wateringly lo-fi style that could make a seasoned roadie for Melt Banana wince. People who braved the wall of fuzz on albums like 2008’s ‘Rip It Off ’ however, were rewarded with perfectly likeable pop songs of almost Moldy-Peaches-like tweeness. It is that latter, rather hidden side of Ohio’s noisy hipsters that presents itself to London’s Cargo, with bouncy, simplistic garage pop in the vein of Beat Happening and a budget version of early Guided By Voices.

Keyboard player/vocalist Beth Murphy, wearing in a skin-tight (and thus somewhat distracting) American Apparel top, is bopping along to drummer Adam Elliott’s rumbling patterns and sings over, around and past his breathless yelps in an endearing fashion. It is axeman Jared Phillips however, who steals the show. Looking like a session guitarist from an 80’s gothpop-band in his tucked-in shirt, he fires drony chords, and agricultural but practically gut-punching riffs out of his left-handed, Eric Clapton white Fender Stratocater.

The band’s designated hit ‘(My Head)’ briefly sparks a circle pit more resembling a campfire singalong, but that’s just fine with everyone involved: No bleeding ears tonight.

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Fiery Furnaces Audio, Brighton 09.10.2009

By Nathan Westley ▼

Time can deal a bitter hand – one minute a band can be the day’s bright new thing and the next they are confined to being yesterdays never-quite-made-it failures. It’s a situation that New York-residing, thrift shop adoring, sister/brother combo The Fiery Furnaces can relate too, having had their fair share of rollercoaster-like ups and downs.Yet despite this trouble they have ultimately carved out an almost die hard, cult following for their understated classically American, melodious and occasionally folk inspired ear candy.Tonight in a heaving Audio and with the help of a tight rhythm section, they lead us along a path of a career spanning, quirky, ear friendly, left-field-inhabiting pop songs that heat up a weather worn audience. It’s with the type of melody-heavy, nursery rhyme like manner of songs such as ‘Single Again’ where this band exceed. A slightly more danceable number then the majority of the set, tonight’s rendition sees singer Eleanor break out into an almost funky jig before trying to entice the audience to do similar. Shortly she leaves, safe in the knowledge that there is no need for the flames to be extinguished quite yet.

King Khan & The Shrines Cargo, Shoreditch, London 29.10.2009

By Polly Rappaport ▼

More gigs should open with a cacophonous, brazen blast of fanfare for the frontman; it extinguishes the arsey chitchat back by the bar and is the perfect way of announcing, “Yeah, I’m a dickhead – and I’m gonna knock your socks off.” King Khan strides to the front of the stage, decked out in a white disco suit and extravagant feather headdress, strutting and lurching through a sweltering succession of freaked out soul funk tracks and garage filth. Overtly chauvinistic, ‘I Wanna Be A Girl’ he dedicates to all the rockabillies in the audience as a deranged surf beat comes crashing

in over wah-wah guitar licks.This is countered by ‘Shivers Down My Spine’, a slice of retro-blues-noir, garnished with B-movie mwa-haha’s and trembling organ wails.The brass section blazes through the charming ‘Took My Lady To Dinner’ – “My baby’s fat, she’s ugly but I love her” – then there’s that ‘psychedelic, neurotic gospel song’ about Khan crawling up inside his lady and sloshing back out again like a sack of wet watermelons. For his imperial encore the King returns in a gold cape, high-fiving his loyal subjects and initiating a ten-minute, deafening, relentless soul jam.This dickhead gives a good gig.

Japanese Voyeurs Audio, Brighton 09.10.2009

By Nathan Westley ▼

Watching Japanese Voyeurs is a bit like being hooked up to a defibrillator and receiving a succession of highly charged shocks. A cliche perhaps, but true enough as it’s an electrifying eyeopening experience that by the end will leave you frazzled, your hair on end and your peepers looking at everything that follows a little bit differently.Though at first glance they may look like any other band, it’s when the music starts that it becomes apparent that they occupy a place far removed from what their looks suggest.This is no light weight trendy post punk-adoring indie; instead Japanese Voyeurs are the antithesis of everything it stands for and represents.They are of a heavier disposition and their set is a hardhitting, ear-splintering, fiercely played, hair-swirling, angsted-up sonic assault composed of sludgy riffs that have been shrink wrapped in scuzzy distortion, riotous drums and strikingly whiny couldn’tgive-a-fuck vocals that sound like they have been ripped straight out of Seattle circa 1994. Singer Romily throws a hissy through ‘X Ray Ted’, stamping her feet on the edge of complete meltdown and doing that trying-to-speakthrough-tears-and-a-snotting-face paddy we all had nailed at the age of 5. It works though, especially when she starts to roar, “I know you wanna be an animal!” Factor in an undercurrent that is flooded

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with keyboard harmonies with a knack for writing a wrenching chorus and Japanese Voyeurs have much more to offer then just being mere grunge revivalists, no matter who tries to tell them otherwise.

This City/Xcert Camden Barfly, London 06.10.2009

By Martin Cordiner ▼

The formula of emo now being so well known, it’s easy to take against This City at first listen, if that’s not your thing.This though, would be a dis-service, for the bunch from Brighton are doing a bit more with the shouty frontman, guitar jangle verse and all round energetic thump than your average copycats.They’ve taken the passion and ear for a tune and combined it with a busy-ness reminiscent of a calmer At The Drive-In and a joie de vivre that extends to a snippet from Top Gun mid-song.This is emo with balls, and it’s exciting in its liveliness. Xcerts present a more straightforward post-rock noise – an Aberdonian three-piece with a fondness for pummelling power, but it’s urgent rather than mindless.

They’re clearly loving every minute of it too; even cast-wearing bass player Jordan Smith and his somewhat restricted plucking fingers. Both groups are absorbing in their commitment and their joy and it’s refreshing to see two bands breathing life into their respective rock models and doing it well. And all in the heart of indie town of Camden, too.

Fryars The Lexington, Islington, London 03.06.2009

By Matthias Scherer ▼

“There’s someone here reviewing this. I don’t know who they are, but I hope they put this in: Quality is more important than quantity,” says Ben Garrett a.k.a. frYars, glancing across the almost empty floor punctuated by the odd audience member.We’re happy to oblige, because even though a mid-set headcount reveals a total attendance of 21, the level of enjoyment and entertainment offered by the young man never

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falls below ‘pretty damn high’. frYars’ basic premise – a minimalist, but irresistible take on 80’s clichés (theatrical vocals, more synth dabs than ear plugs can repel) is not particularly groundbreaking, but the off-piste, darkish tinge of his electro pop means that it lends itself to introspective listening in one’s bedroom as well as a little shuffle on a disco-lit floor (which two audience members bravely have a go at). As well as the bite and the sense of humour which is missing in Esser’s and La Roux’ respective material (plus the fact that he looks like Mica Levi’s younger, though equally geeky brother), Garrett’s affability and knack for nailing hooks of swineflu-esque catchiness - see ‘Lakehouse’ and “smash hit” ‘Olive Eyes’ for proof - are the qualities that tonight make any lack of quantity negligible.

Obits The Freebutt, Brighton 04.06.2009

By Nathan Westley ▼

Considering erstwhile singer and guitarist Rick Froberg was once of Drive Like Jehu and Hot Snakes, it would be easy to assume that the coming together of a new project would live up to previous rawkous efforts.Yet Obits seems to herald a new era for the frontman and is a more relaxed affair – one where the brakes have been applied, the ship steadied and is now not so prone to flying off the handle.

Lacklustre in its vitality, tonight sees these four aging men rattle out a solid trustworthy performance that is be-rift of over performance, pretension or studied coolness.This is not a band going for it, ready to grab by the throat and pound into submission; instead it sees four casually dressed older men give an audience an education of past times, simpler times, by taking a string of the Modern Lovers proto-punk DNA and tying it around the centre of traditional American flavoured head-bobbing, thigh shaking, stripped down rock ‘n’ roll that is susceptible to occasionally flirt with the odd blues tinged guitar break and rolling drum patterns.

Inoffensive and affable, Obits are a return to basics and sometimes a scratch up of that is no bad thing.

J Tillman The Garage, Islington, London 07.10.2009

By Martin Cordiner ▼

Joshua ‘J, the drummer from Fleet Foxes’Tillman probably wouldn’t like me. If tonight’s refrain in banter and song form is anything to go by, I’m in for it should he find me out. “Critics.... hypocrites...”, he spits mid-song, but he’s not the first and any man who puts such quotes as, “a navelgazing bore” on his MySpace page is clearly not without a sense of humour. Joined by a band he begins a slow, sub-walking pace, and the earthy, groovy atmosphere is pleasant if samey. But gradually the texture of the sound gets thicker, the songs are extended to include epic wig-outs (complete with gong) and the rootsy slide guitar suddenly becomes a soulsearching cry to the heavens. An hour and a half set becomes a continuous soundtrack, with the stately and beautiful ‘Vessels’ one of only a couple of solo numbers.

He’s mostly too busy bashing the crap out of a guitar or tambourine to glance at his bellybutton. A bone-dry sense of humour and a gradually beguiling presence, he’s J Tillman and he don’t care.This is good news for the rest of us.

Pheromoans The Lexington, Islington, London 05.10.2009

By Sam Little ▼

Tonight, Pheromoans’ clattering, stop-start-forget-start-again, Fallinspired punk is completely shambolic, reasonably charming and wholly terrible. It all begins – as do all of their short DIY rambles – with the band sharing bemused but grinning glares, followed by sudden, primitive drum raps, which are actually bloody good fun, even if they are very sloppy.

The band’s singer then lets out his best Mark E Smith blurts while surfy guitar riffs are twanged and the bass follows suit. At one point, amongst the songs that need to be re-started because the band haven’t learnt them yet though, they sound like Electricity In Our Homes covering ‘Money (That’s What I Want)’ , suggesting that aren’t all complete amateurish horseplay.

www.loudandquiet.com

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film

By DEAN DRISCOLL

Untitled Awful Film Titles Column

Heath Ledger in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Cinema Preview For what would at first glance seem like a reasonably cheery set of films on release this month, current movies are oddly connected by death, whether it’s last performances from Heath Ledger and Michael Jackson before their tragic prescription drug-related deaths (The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, October 16th; This Is It, October 30th); horror-comedies focusing on people who just won’t stay dead (Zombieland, out now; Jennifer’s Body, November 6th); goats being killed by ESP (Men Who Stare At Goats, November 6th); and CG family films inspired by the great unknown, with globe-trotting widowers (Up, out now & previewed last issue), post-apocalyptic raggy dolls (9, October 30th) and assorted yuletide ghost visitations (A Christmas Carol, November 6th). Hell, even the characters in Wes Anderson’s stop-motion animated Roald Dahl adaptation, Fantastic Mr Fox (October 23rd) look like stuffed animals.

Some might say there’s an element of ghoulishness to the current output of movies, which is certainly something that’s been levelled at Gilliam’s Parnassus and Jacko’s This Is It by some, such as The Guardian’s Xan Brooks.These critics seem to be suggesting that Gilliam abandon a multi-million dollar, years-in -themaking project halfway through once his leading man died – but why should he? Would writing off Ledger’s last performance be any more respectful of his passing?

Such a tragedy would stop most directors in their tracks, though Gilliam has faced many obstacles in his directorial career and knows better than most how to

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overcome them (the almost-making-of Lost In La Mancha - which charts the disasters that befell his unfinished Johnny Depp-starring The Man Who Killed Don Quixote - is testament to that). Instead he cast a trio of top actors - Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell - in Ledger’s role during the movie’s fantasy sequences, and was able to complete the movie in a way that made sense and paid tribute to Ledger’s enormous talent.

As for This Is It, surely people will be watching that for a glimpse of what may have been one of the decade’s most important musical events, and a real desire to see one of the most talented performers in history back on form for one last time, rather than just to gawp at the man’s last days – as with Ledger, it wouldn’t be any more respectful of Jackson to lock away the hard work he was putting into his final live performances.

Taking their demented logic to its natural extreme, we shouldn’t watch any movie that even infers the prospect of death, lest it be ‘ghoulish’.Which - as this month’s cinema highlights illustrate - would mean there’d only be fluffy rom-coms left to watch.

This month’s cinema highlights: Out now: Zombieland, Up October 16th: Couples Retreat,The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus October 23rd: Fantastic Mr Fox October 30th: 9,This Is It November 6th: Jennifer’s Body, A Christmas Carol, Men Who Stare At Goats

One of the movies that sadly missed the cut for this month’s highlights was the new Jennifer Aniston and Aaron Eckhart romance Love Happens.What happens in the film and whether it’s any good I can’t tell you, as I simply just don’t care enough to find out.The problem isn’t that Jennifer Aniston’s in it - she’s always been a fine comic actress who sadly seems to find it impossible to get cast in a halfdecent film (Office Space aside of course). And I’m a fan of Aaron Eckhart, particularly after seeing Thank You For Smoking. It’s that title.Whether it’s meaningless is beside the point - Reservoir Dogs doesn’t actually mean anything either, it just sounds cool. Love Happens does not. As an advert for a bland chick-flick, it’s perfect. It’s as if the producers of these movies have a bunch of typical chick-flick words on a set of dice and pick the first combination they roll: Aniston’s film credits include Picture Perfect and She’s The One both equally as ‘nothingy’.

Horror movies are no better in fact they wear their interchangability as a badge of honour.The worst examples of those came from that post-Se7en habit of inserting numbers for no good reason: Thr3e anyone? But forget Aniston, she’s got nothing on Freddie Prince Jr.The preposterously jawed former ‘next big thing’ followed up the reprehensibly monikered She’s All That (ugh!) with the immortal classic Down To You. Presumably ‘Pile Of Shit’ didn’t test well with the focus groups.

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party wolf Photo Casebook“Strictly The XXX Factor”

So tell me, Rod, are you an X Factor man or a Strictly Come Dancing kinda guy?

horoscopes Libra

Well, you know me mate, being the lead singer of The Faces for so long, I’m all about the singing. And X Factor’s got the best tits

Dear Libra, I love you man. I think you must love me too because I’m your man. Even though you’re not as popular as you were you’re still the man. I think we should rent a cottage on the Isle of Man. See, I’m talking in rhyme, Libra, because it’s how you help slow people remember things. And, truth be told, you’re not as quick as you once were. But just because a recent comeback was a soggy squib, remember not to lose yourself. Even if you’ve only got 50 cents, you’re rising moon will cheer you up and those around you. Jupiter, or ‘the big fat one’, as it’s known, brings you luck but only for a limited time. Grasp it while you still have a slim chance to turn 2009 around. So, will the real Libra please stand up... man?

Celebrity twitter See! Famous people are normal, just like us

True, Cowell is packing some chest alright! My girl’s into Strictly though, so I have to watch that.

The men in their tight slacks drive her wild.

She’s even booked us ballroom lessons

NCassidy

OMG, I don’t bloody believe it. In Heat in a bikini AGAIN :P How did they get that?? Off to frame shop. about 20 minutes ago from device

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New dance partner - DON’T ask about 6 hours ago from device

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@DGaffney Yeah you do, I played your sister. On hit TV soap EASTENDERS!!! about 6 hours ago from device

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Thought we’d try our own dance tonight, babe. How does the LAPdance sound?

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Phoarrr!

You jammy git PW!

Rehearing for Strictly 2day, gonna do the dance from Dirty Dancing when she’s picked up above Swayze’s head... wonder where my partner is??? about 7 hours ago from device

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@DGaffney Remember when we were in ‘Enders together babe? LOLZ xxxxxxxxx about 8 hours ago from device