Loud And Quiet 18 – Sleigh Bells

Loud And Quiet Zero pounds / Volume 03 / Issue 18 / 50 percent metal

+

Former Ghosts Mi Ami Blue On Blue The Charlatans Holy Fuck Team Ghost Friendship The Jesus Loves Heroin Band Primavera Sound

Sleigh Bells / the school teacher and the punk

Spring Awakening / This month we travelled to east London. Not so clever, unpredictable or out of the ordinary for us, you might think. But in east east London, at City Airport, we boarded flight BA-50METH1N9 to Barcelona for this year’s – and our first – Primavera Sound. To say it was a lot of fun is a bit like saying day three’s headliners, The Pet Shop Boys, were quite camp. / Primavera is a master class in music festivals.

There’s no camping, or wacky hat stalls; just 200 left-of-left bands smeared over three sticky nights by the sea, from Pixies to Fuck Buttons to Yeasayer to Neu! to HEALTH to Pavement and so on. It’s little wonder that audience members smile a lot and mind their por favors and graciases, in varying degrees of convincing Spanish accents. Our full live report can be found on pages 43 and 44.

02

www.loudandquiet.com

On our return, after shooting and interviewing metal-hop duo Sleigh Bells on the beach, we met up with Tim Burgess to reminisce about the continent (he was there too) and twenty years of The Charlatans, a milestone that’s celebrated this month with the re-issue of the band’s ‘Some Friendly’ album. And as for the rest of the bands featured in the month’s issue (that’s Holy Fuck, Former Ghosts, Blue On Blue, Team Ghost, The Jesus Loves Heroin Band, Mi Ami and Friendship), well, they’re probably already being eyed-up for next year’s festival. / Bono might be in bed, but gig-in-a-field season has arrived. / / / > www.loudandquiet.com

03

C o n t e n ts

07 | 10 LOUD AND QUIET ZERO POUNDS / VOLUME 03 / ISSUE 18 / 50 PERCENT METAL

+

FORMER GHOSTS MI AMI BLUE ON BLUE THE CHARLATANS

HOLY FUCK TEAM GHOST FRIENDSHIP THE JESUS LOVES HEROIN BAND PRIMAVERA SOUND

SLEIGH BELLS / THE SCHOOL TEACHER AND THE PUNK

Photography by STUART STUBBS

07 .................. . Don’t / Look / Back 10 .................. . Dumb / Ass / Punks 12 .................. . Sex / Priest / Overdosed 14 .................. . It’s / Like / Jazz 16 .................. . Ringo / Vs / McCartney 17 .................. . Finnish / Shoegaze / Mafia 19 .................. . Mess / Your / Self 20 .................. . Jesus / Loves / Heroin 24 .................. . Survivors / Of / Britpop 31 .................. . Muuuum / Shut / Up! 37 .................. . Boys / Make / Filth 38 .................. . Awesome / Dog / Meat 40 .................. . Noel / Loves / Paul 43 .................. . Boys / Boys / Boys 50 .................. . Let’s / Dance / Bitch 04

www.loudandquiet.com

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

Advertising

advertise@loudandquiet.com Contributors

Bart Pettman, Chris Watkeys, Daniel Dylan-Wray, Danny Canter DK. Goldstien, Dean Driscoll Eleanor Dunk, Elinor Jones Edgar Smith, Frankie Nazardo, Holly Lucas, Janine Bullman, Kate Parkin, Kelda Hole, Gabriel Green, Lisa Wright Mandy Drake, Martin Cordiner Matthias Scherer, Mike Burnell Nathan Westley, Owen Richards Polly Rappaport, Phil Dixon, Phil Sharp Reef Younis, Sam Little, Sian Rowe Sam Walton, Simon Leak,Tim Cochrane Tom Goodwyn,Tom Pinnock This Month L&Q Loves

Andy Fraser, Beba & Pablo, Chris Tipton Lucy Hurst, Richard Onslow 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 2010 © Loud And Quiet.

th e b eg i n n i ng

07 | 10

DON’T! Look Back We’ve gone nostalgia crazy and seminal album playbacks have just hit a new low Wr i t e r : D a n i e l Dy l a n W r ay

A classic album played in its entirety by a band you love; perhaps even your favourite album by them, what a novel and intriguing idea, no? Of course it is, but like all things novel it has a limited shelf life, and based on current events, the expiry date for this now tired format has passed.

Five years ago when ATP devised the ‘Don’t Look Back’ series it was a genuinely exciting prospect; today it sadly serves to highlight the fickleness of a flailing industry and illuminate the opportunists.

Instead of being used sparingly and wisely it has become not just a bandwagon and a cash cow, but has turned into something almost laughable.

Whether you argue that bands divulging into this are doing it for money or for nostalgic reasons, surely both are somewhat detrimental? When Yeah Yeah Yeahs performed ‘Fever To Tell’ in its entirety at ATP back in December, for example, it was a sad but pertinent admission by the band. Here they are, just three albums deep in a

career that hasn’t even stretched a decade and they are already acknowledging that they peaked on their debut record.

And that can hardly aid progression and development when their ideas are so firmly rooted in things they have already accomplished.

For some it’s a fond reminder and a chance to play songs that have remained shelved for some years, and bands surely have every right to take a brief trek down memory lane, which often leads to astounding results.

However, for others their motives appear to border on lunacy. And Peter Hook, I’m looking at you here – you who feels it a wise and fitting testament to mark the 30th anniversary of Ian Curtis’ death by playing Joy Division’s seminal debut album ‘Unknown Pleasures’ in its entirety without any of the remaining band members. If this is what this whole experiment has culminated in then surely it’s time to pull the plug?

‘Unknown Pleasures’ is an album drenched in so many

sparse, delicate and haunting atmospherics that it subsequently owes so much to every member of the band who made it, as well as to producer Martin Hannett. Either Peter Hook is blind sighted, stubbornly ignorant or broke, or perhaps all of the above.

Nostalgia should be short-lived – a brief and fond memory, looking over your shoulder, not drawn out into a financial motive. And we’re to blame too, I guess – unable to resist seeing ‘Doolittle’ or ‘Daydream Nation’ played from front to back, either in denial or simply not bothered by the motive behind such shows.

And although we should abstain and support progression, development and forward thinking in music, not line people’s regressive pockets, it’s not to say the entire notion has been a failure – far, far from it. Some performances have been blistering and done with genuine fondness and good intention. For example, Lou Reed’s reincarnation of ‘Berlin’ served as a wonderful example of the

‘Don’t Look Back’ format, and one that righted a lot of wrongs that surrounded the album lambasted an abomination upon release (see the original Rolling Stone review). Without a second stab with hindsight in tow, Reed would have never been able to perform the record as he’d always intended to but never previously managed.

Some things, though, are just better left in the past. If you weren’t around to hear ‘Raw Power’ live when it came out the chances are it’s a better idea to accept that. It’s a part of rock history, which will disappear itself if we forever recreate it. At our current rate, following Yeah Yeah Yeahs ‘Fever To Tell’ debacle, Arctic Monkeys will soon be performing ‘Whatever I Say I Am…’ on a yearly basis, and then Klaxons will have to do the same with a record that’s three years old.

It all makes the next viable step Justin Beiber’s album played in its entirety before it’s even been released. And not even Beiber himself would want that.

www.loudandquiet.com

07

th e b eg i n n i ng

Books

By Janine & Lee Warren

Twenty One Locks

By Laura Barton (Quercus) A poetic story of daydreaming while in a job you don’t care for ---------------------

It’s Coming Home(base) Pop music: the most annoying, tenuously linked product pushed via the World Cup

Anyone familiar with Laura Barton’s writing, either as a columnist for The Guardian or for her short story writing, will know she has a wonderful way with words. In this her first novel, she tells the tale of Jeannie, a young Lancastrian girl, who spends her days behind the perfume counter of the department store where she works, daydreaming about escaping her small town existence. About to marry her teenager sweetheart when a sophisticated stranger enters to stir things up a little, what life will she choose for herself?

This book is so much more than a story of a small town dreamer, captivating from the very first sentence, charming and witty. Laura Barton is set to be the new voice of our generation.

Wr i t e r : STUART STU B B S

You know what they say about the World Cup? It’s best enjoyed whilst eating a Mars Bar! Of course it is. Boys kicking balls and sickly confectionary have gone hand in hand since…pfft…God knows. May, I think. Yeah, May 2010 sounds about right, when every advertising brain realised that football’s biggest tournament can be used to flog not just hats, scarves and flags, but sausages, washing up liquid and bins.

Curry’s picked up on it first this year, with their less-thansubtle, ‘Why don’t you buy a new TV to watch the World Cup on?’ campaign. Yeah, you’ve gotta have a big screen for the big game. You don’t want to be a massive gaylord, with a normal sized telly, do you? Well? And you should upgrade that green, non-football-y wheelbarrow you’ve got too. Homebase are selling them with England crests on now, because there’s nothing like celebrating the World Cup than weeding the garden. Boys kicking balls and gardening have gone hand in hand since…pfft…

May. While this crude annoyance continues to repeat itself, ensuring that the World Cup remains the impressively allconsuming, omnipresent thing that it is once every four

08

www.loudandquiet.com

years, music’s connection to football seems almost valid by comparison. The truth is that it’s just the oldest whore in the stadium, inspiring everyone from Mars to McDonald’s to go on the game, like a wealthy Madame of a career advisor.

Perhaps once, a long time ago, it could be argued that the beautiful game and popular music were suitable bedfellows.

Nostalgically, that would have been when New Order released ‘Loves Got The World In Motion’ – a song title that to this day is rarely beaten for its sense of optimism and unity – although for others it’ll be Waddle and Hoddle’s ‘Diamond Lights’, or ‘Vindaloo’, perhaps. But even then, the reason the two got on so well was pinned on a rather tedious geezers-like-to-sing angle.

Music is part of football culture, it’s argued, because the terraces wouldn’t be the same without a verse of ‘Three Lions’. Well, they wouldn’t be as dated, I suppose, but sure, there is some weight to that – a silent football ground would be no fun. And bands, like Kasabian who are currently sponsored by Umbro, love football and music, we’re reminded, with little reason to argue against such a point in Kasabian’s case. But so

fucking what? Some bands don’t like football, while some poets love a kick around and all that goes with it. The fact is that most people like football, or the World Cup at least. Some are in crap bands, some are in good ones and some aren’t even in bands at all. And yet the two can never be separated, which has oddly resulted in popular music’s involvement in football being more annoying than a chocolate bar wrapped in a St. George’s cross. James Corden and Dizzee Rascal’s cover of Tears For Fears’ ‘Shout’ certainly is – a song suitably premiered on idiot-fest Britain’s Got Talent, on which the two perpetrators were joined by fifty obese bald blokes jumping around and reminding us all that geezers in fact like shouting, not singing; chants, not pop music.

So maybe, if we stop considering football to be so important that music – the most transcendent form of expression on earth – was created for it, all of these other, unrelated products wouldn’t be telling us that the game can’t possibly be worth a thing if you’re not eating McNuggets at the same time as watching it. But, then, what do I know? My TV is two years old, and my wheelbarrow is green.

Ilustrado

By Miguel Syjuco (Picador) The mystery of the dead teacher fished from NYC’s Hudson River --------------------Miguel Syjuco’s debut novel opens as a New York murder mystery when a Chinese fisherman hooks the body of a writer out of the Hudson River. Also missing is the manuscript of the writer’s final book, a damning expose of Filipino society. When one of the dead writer’s students embarks on a biography of his mentor he uncovers an epic story told by a variety of different sources which he must sift through in order to shed some light on his teacher’s death. Syjuco wears his love of language firmly on his sleeve throughout Ilustrado, and the result is a beautifully crafted, exuberant book from a genuinely original new voice in literary fiction. Good stuff.

|

s i n g les & E Ps

01 Cerebral Ballzy You’re Idle (Article Records) Out June 21

10

They’re not ones for subtleties, New York’s Cerebral Ballzy.

There’s that tasteless, ‘fuck you’ pun of a name, a band logo made up of slime and a busted skateboard, and this debut EP is encased in grip-tape, meaning that it’ll destroy any of your other CDs it comes into contact with. So no, it doesn’t take a big brain to realise that these hardcore punks love skateboarding and destruction, and if they piss you off, that’s just fine by them. And yet, the fast and gruff punk they play manages to be even more direct than any dumb-ass aesthetic that surrounds them. ‘Puke Song’ (it’s about puke) is the throatiest piece of hardcore here, sounding a hell of a lot like Black Flag, even if it does

feature a wily guitar section that flouts the ‘no solos allowed’, bloodstained rule of 80’s DIY that Ballzy clearly care for. They get away with it because singer Honor refuses to stop barking at any point, and because ‘Puke Song’, like all truly great hardcore tracks, does somehow carry a shouty, mad melody. ‘Your Idol’ is even more tuneful as Honor drawls a southern drawl you’d expect from Caleb Followill more than Henry Rollin, or Bad Brain’s H.R., who this lot – for their relentless speed – have also been endlessly compared to. And maybe that’s why Cerebral Ballzy really are the most exciting hardcore band since Fucked Up - because they’ll even piss off the purists if needs be.

02

03

04

05

Crocodiles

Fiction

Crystal Fighters

Sauna Youth

Sleep Forever

Curiosity

In The Summer

(Fat Possum) Out July 5 -----

(Offset Recordings) Out Now -----

Youth

(Zirkulo) Out July 5 -----

(Self Released) Out Now -----

The first single to be taken from Crocodiles’ second album, ‘Sleep Forever’ is the Cali duo unearthing a more spacious, krauty brand of psychedelia than was widely seen on their ‘Summer Of Hate’ debut. It manages to sound like ‘Shakermaker’-era Oasis and Spiritualized at the same time, so sure, there’s a fair sense of anglo-baggy influence here. Recorded in the Californian desert with no small amount of weed prevents it from sounding like a cheap Big Pink knock off though, and pulling off a fuzzy, sex-pest version of ‘Groove Is In The Heart’ on the B-side suggests Crocodiles can make anything sound sultry.

Post punk, these days, is the genre of no wins. We’re either quick to dismiss a band as Joy Division copyists or ‘too pop’ for even that tired slur.

Fiction don’t seem to care about the minefield through which they tread though, which is how ‘Curiosity’ has become the bravest post punk track around, or post post-punk track, if you want to be pernickety. It’s part early Mystery Jets (or at least the eccentric vocals are), part gloomy basslines and sharp artrock guitar riffs. It’s about killing the cat, fessing up and dancing away the guilt; rife with both shame and joyous remorse. It’s a win.

With Klaxons finally standing on the horizon and the day of the Crystals having passed (it’s all about bands with Fuck in their names now), it could easily be that this Basque-region, electronic troupe have missed their real chance to launch a sizable attack on our dancefloors. Crystal Fighters?

Weren’t they beaten to death with the corpse of Chew Lips by every garage band in town?

Fortunately not. Set to a Balearic, skitty beat that’s played too fast, everything is excitably thrown at this single at the same time, making it sound like two CSS tracks played over the top of each other.

Sauna Youth are pretty deep dudes. As philosophical as they are ambitious (they borrowed money off of mates to release this debut EP themselves), they claim that ‘Youth’ is a concept record that tackles “how countries have used their young to defend their societies and cultures against opposing ideologies”, amongst other things. To discover whether they achieve this goal through their lyrics is quite the task because cocking an ear that close to your record player is impossible when all your legs want to do is pounce around the room to the band’s speedy punk. Which make ‘Youth’ a youthful success.

www.loudandquiet.com

Reviews by M. Drake, S. Little

th e b eg i n n i ng

I AM V 5 years of Loud And Quiet magazine

on sale now

The limited 12� album featuring exclusive and rare tracks from HEALTH, Telepathe, Gold Panda, Metronomy, Comanechi,Teeth!!!, Chapter Sweetheart,The Bitters, Christmas Island and Trailer Trash Tracys Available in store at Rough Trade Shops and Puregroove and at www.loudandquietcassettes.bigcartel.com

Te am Ghost “French people are weird!”

Photographer: Leon D i aper Writer: To m Pi n noc k

When most people quit bands on the verge of success, they do a load of drugs from the royalties and then fade into obscurity.

When Nicolas Fromageau left French electro-shoegaze heroes M83 though, he was only set on pursuing one of these.

“After I left in 2004, I was in a few other bands just for fun…and I did drugs!” he laughs, making a syringe motion as we meet in a south London pub’s beer garden. “Since then I’ve been working on Team Ghost.”

Fromageau has succeeded in piecing together a new band featuring himself on just about everything, Christophe Guérin on guitar and various instruments, Felix Delacroix on live drums and Pierre Blanc on live bass – that, together with manager/ producer Jean-Philippe Talaga, could be set to eclipse his M83 bandmate’s work.

Taking a darker, more angular direction, the band’s debut EP, ‘You Never Did Anything Wrong To Me’, released on London’s Sonic Cathedral, is a masterpiece that’s almost the dark, depraved flipside to Anthony Gonzalez’s acclaimed and blissfully airy ‘Saturdays = Youth’.

“Maybe a few songs sound like they’re off M83’s ‘Dead Cities…’ album,” wonders Fromageau “but I wanted to go somewhere else because for the last six years I’ve been listening to many coldwave bands and I wanted to sound like that.”

Ah, coldwave: the European version of the dry, synthesised early ‘80s sound pioneered by bands like Joy Division and Cabaret Voltaire. Mixed with churning shoegaze guitars, Team Ghost have created a gloomy but gleaming vision of style – forgive the French connection – like Air if they listened to more of The Cure and less Serge Gainsbourg. The imagery is

12

www.loudandquiet.com

‘hip’, urban (in the true sense of the word) and bohemian, but also resigned. “All my friends are disillusioned” goes ‘A Glorious Time’, while on ‘Colors In Time’ Nicolas intones, “Last night I lost myself”.

“The title of the EP could be something cool, or very bad,” explains Fromageau. “You can say that when you’re angry, or you can say that when you’re in love. Most of the time the lyrics do not mean anything, most of the time I write the lyrics and I understand them maybe weeks after, ‘Ah, I was talking about that’.”

So what music are you guys influenced by?

“Judas Priest,” says Fromageau, with bandmate Christophe adding, “Twisted Sister, Queen…”

“No,” laughs the frontman – although more of those guilty pleasures later. “Seriously, I’d say Sonic Youth, Slowdive, My Bloody Valentine, maybe the early Cure, Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Can, Ash Ra Tempel. I don’t like the word coldwave, but stuff like Joy Division, Bauhaus, maybe some gothic stuff like Siouxsie And The Banshees, or the first Christian Death LP.” We have to admit we don’t know that band, but Fromageau is happy to describe them to us.

“The songs are about sucking the cock of Jesus Christ, it’s very cool. I like it!”

Film is also a massive influence for Fromageau. ‘You Never Did Anything Wrong To Me’’s two sides are named ‘Nastassja Kinski side’ and ‘Lou Reed side’ for a start.

“Yeah, film is a big influence.

Especially porn! No, no. I really like it when it sounds like the landscapes and you can imagine a place.”

We all know the truth is often said in jest; judging by

his band’s X-rated EP cover, and their downright filthy new Tshirts, Team Ghost have certainly got sex on the brain.

“I’m not sure it’s that shocking,” says Fromageau of the T-shirt that features two women having oral sex. “It’s our ‘Smell The Glove’! I like it, for me it reminds me of ’80s New York punk-rock bands like Sonic Youth. I think it’s funny. Like Richard Kern, he used to work with Sonic Youth, always shocking scenes.”

Fromageau is clearly the architect of the band. All ideas start with him, and he also appears to do much of the recording. It’s not surprising he has time for all this scheming, as he doesn’t seem to have a day job, unlike the other members.

“Felix studies pigeons,” says Christophe. “He takes blood off the pigeons. He counts them.”

“OK, let me talk, guys!” laughs Nicolas.

As well as their producer and manager, who doesn’t tour with the band, we’re missing one member who couldn’t come on tour this time.

“We have a bassist, Pierre, but…he overdosed two years ago!” says Nicolas gleefully.

He’s a teacher,” deadpans Felix “so he can’t come with us every time.”

“We love you Pierre,” Nicolas whispers into my tape recorder.

“We’ll never forget you.”

The group then expand on their love for cheesy classic rock – despite their fashionable sound, they actually really are massive fans of Judas Priest, Queen and Dire Straits. A goodnatured argument even breaks out between Nicolas (who loves Dire Straits and Chris Rea but hates Queen), Christophe (who loves Queen but hates Chris Rea and Dire Straits) and their Sonic

Cathedral label boss Nat (who hates all three). Let’s hope these influences don’t start to filter into their own music…

After ‘You Never Did Anything Wrong To Me’, the band are planning on releasing a seveninch, also on Sonic Cathedral, featuring “two rock songs and two real ambient songs”, before making their debut album proper.

“I’m working on the seveninch right now,” reveals Nicolas. “We have plenty of songs that aren’t finished, plenty of demos. We almost have all the tracks for the album, but I’m gonna take my time.”

The electro and rock glitterati have already taken the band to heart. They recently graced NME’s Radar stage at Brighton’s Great Escape after touring Europe with Crystal Castles due to synth-controller Ethan being a huge fan of early M83.

“We love it in London,” says Nicolas. “In Paris, it’s ok [to play music], but in the rest of France it’s more complicated.

The public is a bit colder when you play sometimes – they go like this [claps slowly].”

“We don’t like each other in France, some kind of jealousy,” adds Christophe. “French people are weird!”

So with an ice-cool and artful sound honed, an acclaimed EP out and a string of rapturous European and UK live shows under their belts, everything’s good in the world of Team Ghost right now. Well, nearly everything.

“We had some fish and chips at The Great Escape,” says Nicolas gravely. “But never, never again. We’re French people, we’re used to good food, so it’s not too good over in the UK.” And right now us Brits would struggle to find a new group of shoegazers to contend with Team Ghost’s sex-pest sonics too.

www.loudandquiet.com

13

m i am i Surely too noisy to be jazz Photographer: PH I L SHARP Writer: POLLY RAPPAPORT

Mi Ami’s Daniel Martin-McCormick is having one of those days.

Roll into London, soundcheck, photo shoot, interview, interview, interview, gig, crowd surf, DJ set at afterparty, haul anchor for Leeds and more of the same. Y’know, just one of those days. The band are coming to the end of a tour in support of their latest album, ‘Steal Your Face’, and now, ensconced in the far corner of a significantly upholstered pub, Daniel mocklounges on the leather sofa, smugly caressing the arms as he leans back and raises an eyebrow. “So, yeah, like… The Album.”

His attitude immediately dissolves in a friendly burst of laughter – there is no egotistical, couch-stroking alter ego to this man, he has the chilled San Francisco thing down to a tee and is laid back and softly spoken. That said, if you saw him three hours later, ripping Barden’s Boudoir a new one, it would be tough to make the connection between that thrashing, shrieking, crowdclimbing creature, and this calm, smiling guy in a Bob Marley t-shirt, politely sipping his Merlot while I fumble around, replacing the batteries in my piece of shit tape recorder.

Sorry about that.

“That’s okay,” he smiles.

So what about this new album of yours?

“It rounds up a bunch of stuff that we were working with,” Daniel says. “We’d put out all these twelve-inches before and… Yeah, to me this feels like the coalescence of all that. So that’s pretty exciting and a little bit scary, thinking about what to do next, ‘cause it’s, like, you don’t want to just stick to it and just do a staler version.”

This is the burden that comes with a killer sophomore album – at the same time as being incredibly relieved to have

14

www.loudandquiet.com

finally got this record out, Mi Ami are aware that they’ve set the bar for what they do next.

No pressure, then… Not that Daniel seems particularly stressed about that. The way he puts it: “I’m curious to see what’s going to happen next.”

And he has absolutely no idea.

There is no plan of next attack and, apparently, there were no such plans for this one.

“We just played all the time last year. We went on tour for about twelve weeks, pretty much straight, and we had part of the record written then,” Daniel says “and when we got back, it was, like… I mean, the way we jam is just very heads down, don’t look at each other, and slowly the music kind of sorts itself out. But the rest of the album came really quick because we’d been playing so much – too much!” He breaks into a grin and starts laughing. “So yeah, it came really fast and…that’s it.”

So no one in the band anticipated what the final product would sound like?

“When you go to record,” Daniel explains “you learn not to expect too much of… not to not expect anything, but to leave it open enough that there’s room to be surprised, to enjoy it and to make something and not think too hard about… I dunno,” he sighs. “’Cause bands can get all uptight about, like, fans, and that’s why the first record is always the best one, because all of a sudden, ten people like their band and it’s all about not alienating them and wanting more than ten people to care but, y’know, I dunno, it’s like this fucking head trip and so…” Deep breath, he was getting a little too caught up in the image of the uptight band with ten fans. “So now we just… we try not to think about it, it’s just too hard.”

It’s far easier to be easygoing, for this band. But what about Daniel’s previous project, back in Washington DC, Black

Eyes? Was the ethos different?

The sound is certainly different.

“Some people say there’s a difference and some people say it sounds exactly the same,” he shrugs. There are strong similarities, without question, but, among other things, Mi Ami’s sound is much more complex than Black Eyes’, and it’s less frantic – no less energetic, but organised chaos as opposed to just… chaos.

“To me, I think there’s a difference,” Daniel says “because with Black Eyes, we got in all this gear, tons of drums, y’know, and we were always arguing because one person was into IDM and one dude was into dub, one dude was into kraut rock, one was into free jazz and it was like… Arrggghhh! Fighting all the time, pissed at each other. When we broke up, everybody went off to do what they wanted to do the whole time and couldn’t do then, and so, to me, this is… that.”

And what, more or less, is ‘that’?

“This band is more about live jamming, or, not jamming, but not butting heads. It’s more of a collective spirit – not trying to sabotage each other’s ideas.”

He says the members of Mi Ami still have radically different tastes in music, but that there is a common feeling of respect and that they are all interested in what the others are into.

“We’re not like, ‘You’re into crap,’” laughs Daniel. That’s fortunate, seeing as he’s got a drummer into Tangerine Dream and Italo Disco and a bassist into heavy abstract dub, while he himself fancies a bit of techno, modern composition and hardcore.

On first spin of ‘Steal Your Face’, it sounds like a mess, not a bad mess, but not a mess that necessarily incorporates any of the above genres either.

Spin again – and possibly again – and the album lurches to the other extreme; a tight knit

fabric of disparate elements that are so contradictory that they fit together almost seamlessly. It takes more listening to mentally unpick the various sounds and influences, should you wish to. Now, how the hell did Mi Ami do that?

“I think when you’re friends with people, if you’re into a bunch of music, you’re not too hung up on trying to make something that sounds like something else,” explains Daniel. “People have talked about it like, ‘Oh, they blend all this shit,’ and it’s like…”

[Daniel adopts the pose of a mad scientist] “…Oooh, we’re stirring a cauldron, like, ‘Mixin it up, guys!’” He says he just doesn’t get people who are just into one genre, who claim to ‘just like rock’. Daniel thinks that’s a bit boring and he likes to make a game of finding music that no one would ever consider liking and finding something in it that’s likeable; something that no one had bothered to look for. Mi Ami is about that openness – they don’t worry about getting to a final point and that frees up loads of possibilities.

“You get into similar grooves, over time,” Daniel admits “but it never comes to ‘let’s do it this way’.” Not that they don’t discuss and finetune the bits of a jam session that go well – the final tracks don’t just happen by chance – but there isn’t a road map at the start of the session with a marked final destination. “The music reveals itself to us,” he says. “Even live, the music is always subtly shifting, not drastically, but it’s not like we’re controlling it too much. A good show for us could be really high energy and aggressive or it could be more subdued, depending on… I dunno, it’s like…” Daniel pauses, then flashes a grin, leaning back into his archetypal sofa-stroker pose, he whispers dramatically, “It’s like jazz…”

www.loudandquiet.com

15

frie n dsh ip More than friends, Willard deWitt and Dan Hills play in drag and are soon to swing Photographer: Bar t Pe t t m an Writer: K ate Par k i n

When you’re young, finding Friendship can be as simple as who you sit next to in Maths. As you get older it evolves into a jumble of work mates, uni mates and those people you drunkenly ramble to at parties whose names you can’t quite recall. Search hard enough and you’ll find the two-man unit Friendship.

Cramming ourselves into a busy Leeds bar we discuss drunken antics at Abbey Road, Ringo versus McCartney and the logistics of playing the drums in a dress.

With the theatrically named Willard deWitt on guitar, bass and loops, and Dan Hills on drums and vocals, the band met for the first time in Dublin when Dan’s old band, Redjetson, supported Bloc Party.

Will fidgets while Dan pauses constantly to fiddle with a ring of a snarling wolf on his right hand, bought from a shop frequented by Nikki Sixx. He smiles: “I was a bit of a metaller when I was younger,” adding “the first band I ever saw that got me excited about rock music was Alice in Chains. They looked so cool; they had long blonde hair rocking out in front of the stage. I thought, I gotta get into rock music!”

“Gotta get long blonde hair,” Will interrupts.

16

www.loudandquiet.com

“Then I got some little crappy guitar for Christmas and that was it,” continues Dan. Will takes his influences from the grungier end of the spectrum, courtesy of Nirvana and “loads of horrible skate punk bands like NOFX and Blink 182.”

Their latest release, ‘Lifeguard’ (a split single with New Zealand band Die! Die! Die!), was mastered at Abbey Road and they made the most of the fanboy experience.

“It was really exciting!” says Will. “We got pretty pissed afterwards, broke into a couple of the studios and ran around.”

“We did all the pictures on the zebra crossing,” says Dan. Will: “The wrong way round!”

You could always Photoshop yourselves onto the original.

“Shotgun John Lennon,” laughs Dan “you can be McCartney.”

“I’d rather be Ringo than Paul McCartney,” moans Will.

“Well, then shotgun Paul McCartney,” decides Dan “he’s definitely got more money!”

Live, Friendship are a chaotic whirl of drums, hair and insanely catchy, melodic hooks, stretching themselves from ‘Graveyard Shift’’s macabre mix of thrashing guitars and frenetic loops to ‘High Horse’’s swooning drone. They rehearse by

night below an abandoned photographic studio.

Currently hard at work, writing their debut album, they also make occasional appearances as party band Peanut Rutter. Dan explains: “I play guitar and sing and Willard takes drum duty so we swap around. It’s shockingly bad, so we rarely come out of the woodwork.”

They are also about to take part in the Great Drag Race raising money for Prostate Cancer. It’s not completely altruistic though... ‘’I’m going to race it,” says Dan “I swear to God. I’m going into the gym.”

Will squirming in the background: “How far is it?”

Dan: “10K, It’s like an hour’s run.”

Will: “An HOUR’S run?! I don’t think I could run for 5 minutes.” Will pauses. “Alright, I’ll do it,” he says. “Only you know what, I’m going to beat him! It’s on!”

“We’re playing a gig that night,” explains Dan “but we have to play in drag. I’ll have to make sure my skirt’s not riding too high, sitting on the drum stool. I’m hoping to wear nice underwear!”

Will: “Yeah crotchless!”

“I’m going the whole hog,” says Dan. “Nice little peephole

bra.”

Currently the pair play and record as a two-piece, with Dan as the main songwriter, though they are considering adding to their lineup soon.

“There’s a lot of limitations for bands that play as a twopiece,” explains Dan. “They’re kind of strapped down to their instruments. Check back in a year, we’ll have something.”

Over the past year, Friendship have sat in support slots for a wide range of bands, from The Futureheads and Future of the Left to Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Youthmovies last ever show.

“Youthmovies were my favourite band for so many years,” says Dan “cos I used to go on tour with them with my previous band. It was the first tour we’d both ever done, so we really connected.”

Will: “The Yeah Yeah Yeahs was our 14th show and was pretty much peeing your shorts time!”

Dan: “They got all the set times wrong. We thought we’d got loads of time and then all of a sudden some guy knocks on the door, and is like, ‘You’re on!’.

We had to literally run onto the stage not knowing what we were doing, quite embarrassing.”

More embarrassing than playing in a dress?

Dan and Will: “Yes!”

blue o n blu e There’s no ‘I’ in ‘band’ Photographer: OWEN R I C HAR Ds Writer: POLLY RAPPAPORT

“Blue on Blue are a band from East London,” starts Samir.

“We are not from East London, I’m from South London,” protests Billy.

“Blue on Blue are a band, full stop,” declares Dee. “No, wait – Blue on Blue are a band, question mark,” she corrects herself.

“Hang on,” Samir says. “Blue on Blue, colon…”

“We are not bringing colons into this Samir,” interrupts Dee “that’s a very personal matter.”

I’m in a dark cupboard in Limehouse, listening to a surreal argument about the scatological connotations of punctuation. Okay, it’s not a cupboard, it’s Blue on Blue’s cosy rehearsal space, tucked away in the workshop labyrinth of Cable Street Studios. The room is pitch black, but for a disco light comprised of multicoloured LED’s that scatter their beams over one wall, on which Billy and Samir lean, negotiating the use of each other’s roll-up materials, Billy from behind his mop of face-concealing fringe, Samir from his comfortable slouch behind the drum kit. Dee perches on a nearby amp, peering patiently through the dark.

Blue on Blue is a band, dot dot dot.

“It started out as a bed-

room project,” says Dee. “Then I thought the music needed to be live.” And so she recruited Billy on guitar. Their original drummer Mark had to call it quits after only a few gigs and so Dee decided to borrow Samir from his other band, Flats, though, at the time, Samir had been playing drums for roughly two weeks. They’ve now been playing together for two months.

“We get along really well, we don’t argue or get drunk and call each other bastards,” says Samir. “Well, we get drunk, but then these two fall asleep so they can’t hear me calling them bastards.”

“What, like when we were in Berlin and you two shared that sofa bed?” Dee asks. “We went to Berlin to record,” she explains “and those two shared a sofa bed and half way through the night, Samir was spooning Billy and I don’t know what else was going on there, I think he just grabbed him.” Well, as they say, ‘When in Berlin…’.

Harmless expressions of masculine affection aside, while in the German capital the band recorded six tracks with “the Finnish Shoegaze Mafia”.

“This guy’s a renowned Scandinavian jazz drummer, and he’s got drum kits from, like 1918 or something,” Dee starts gig-

gling “and Samir’s like, ‘I want the sound to go boom!’” That sounds accurate – compared to his predecessor, Samir is quite a heavy-handed drummer (to use the technical term, ‘smashysmashy’) and his style provides weight and drive to both Dee and Billy’s more ethereal, introspective leanings.

There is a pause for more Rizla/filter bartering, “Do you see how diplomatic we are?” says Billy. “Like a commune.”

“It is a little commune,” muses Dee, remembering her first rehearsal with Billy, which was intended to bring her bedroom demos to life and resulted in him creating a riff, which turned into one of the band’s favourite tracks, ‘Cinnamon Swirl’. While Dee started the project with fifty-odd songs already written in her head, that rehearsal opened her to the idea of sharing the songwriting.

“There’s a freedom in the band,” she says. “Like, if I’ve come up with a bass line for a song, Billy puts whatever guitar part he wants to it, Samir plays his drums… Everyone writes what they play.”

“I’ve written a song and I sing it as well,” states Samir.

“I’ve got a song, Billy’s got four songs.” He looks over at Dee. “You get to write all the

songs, don’t you?”

Dee looks bewildered. “Do I get to write them? I think I just have them…”

Dee started writing her share of the tracks in August, when she was trapped in her room with swine flu. Miserable, feverish and hearing the sounds of life going on outside her window, she says, “I thought I was going to die and I thought I had to leave behind something that really sums up how I feel about stuff. The first song I wrote was called ‘Fallen’, which is a kind of bitter lullaby to someone you still love but it’s just never going to happen. It sums up most of my relationships, really.”

Dee is influenced by many confessional writers, in both music and literature, and tends to focus her writing on how she feels, not her audience. Billy prefers to “write a pop song, then destroy it,” with filthy, psychedelic reverb and feedback while Samir’s take is to “corrupt things as much as possible”. He doesn’t like music that’s too easy to listen to and prefers to throw things off balance.

Blue on Blue is a band of artists, all coming at the same music from different angles, but they’re diplomatic about it, and it works.

www.loudandquiet.com

17

former ghosts The emotive super group that have hardly met each other Photographer: G AB R I EL G REEN Writer: DAN I ELLE GOLDSTEI N

18

www.loudandquiet.com

weet thoughts manifest when you meet Freddy Ruppert, the man behind Former Ghosts, as he perches coyly on the end of a worn, brown leather sofa, his coiffure slicked firmly back, wringing his fingers nervously.

But when you listen to the aching vocals layered upon sad synths of the songs he writes, there rushes a severe melancholy in lieu of that gentleness.

LA born and bred, Ruppert takes sole care of the recording on the West Coast, while his busy band mates – Jamie Stewart of Xiu Xiu and Nika Roza of Zola Jesus – send files over from the East Coast. With those two constantly on the go with their projects, the guys have never been able to get into the same room to record, let alone tour together.

“We had all said, ‘Alright, for the next record we should at least somehow meet up for a couple of days and [work] in the same room’,” Ruppert begins “but it didn’t happen because Jamie’s record came out and he got insanely busy with touring and Nika’s EP came out and she got super busy, so the only stuff that got recorded in the same room was what my friend Jasmine sang on because she lives in LA. Otherwise everything was through the mail again, which seems to work well for us because we don’t get to record a bunch of takes and say, ‘Oh that wasn’t good, let’s do it over’.”

It’s a novel approach to being a band when there are 2,500 miles between members.

“Yeah, definitely,” agrees Rupert. “When they send the files back to me it’s like, ‘Well, this is the one I have so I’ve got to make it work.’ So yeah, it’s weird but I like it because it’s limited.”

The group’s first LP, ‘Fleurs’, is a story of heartbreak and failed relationships but the tracks were never intended for the

album. “It’s weird,” starts the singer “because at the time that most of the songs were written it wasn’t a break-up record. It wasn’t until almost a month before it was gonna come out that the relationship totally fell apart.”

He tells us that the tracks were born of hope that things would resolve themselves more than of resignation, but the pairing of his deadpan Ian Curtis-like singing and Nika’s deeper Patti Smith-esque vocals on top of hostile, industrialsounding synths says otherwise, especially in ‘This is My Last Goodbye’, which was the first track Ruppert sent to Nika to work on, while ‘Hello Again’ mirrors the detachment that comes from the artificial sound of Kraftwerk.

After Ruppert had abandoned making music for his previous solo project, This Song Is A Mess But So Am I, the Former Ghosts tracks became an outlet for him when he and his girlfriend were going through a rough patch. “We would go through periods where we weren’t talking to each other, so I’d record a song and post it on a blog, she would see it and I would take it down. It became our way of communicating when we weren’t communicating. So it’s a weird thing to be made fully public now.”

The record came out late last year on Upset the Rhythm, which seems an odd choice as they’re based in London. “I’ve known Chris [Tipton, head of UTR] a little while,” Ruppert explains “because he’d put out some of my friend’s records (Bar, Lucky Dragons) and I always thought it was a really great label. He was familiar with the old band I did but I’d quit doing that, so when I started this I was like, ‘Hey Chris, I’m working on this stuff do you think you could give it a listen?’ and he was really into it, really supportive and wanted

to put it out. So, although it’s London-based, it’s exactly what I wanted from a record label.

Did that answer your question?” he asks uneasily, worried about going off on tangents. “I get really nervous.”

It’s a quicker turnover than most for second album ‘New Love’, which will be released later this year, because Ruppert doesn’t do things by the book.

For him music is something that has to be hauled from his system while it’s still there, in one fell swoop.

“I can only make something if it’s related to something that’s going on with me. It’s really cheesy to say out loud, but for me it’s a form of expressing certain things.” He says this with an awkward smile that’s slightly slanted, as though cautious of spilling too much.

“I had a lot of stuff to deal with I guess so I was able to put together the next record because there was so much left to sort through, so much left over. Before I’d even told Chris [about the second album] he’d contacted me and said, ‘Freddy, if you’re gonna do a new record we’d love to do it again,’ and I was like, ‘That’d be awesome, how about right now?’”

As the albums come so close together, you can imagine that thematically they’re similar.

Again, ‘New Love’ is based around a relationship, but this time it’s a little darker, even if it sounds more upbeat. “It has a lot to do with jealousy,” Ruppert states. “The first record had a weird romantic hope to it, but this new record…I feel it doesn’t have a sense of romance.

It’s way more depressing, which is weird because people thought ‘Fleurs’ was depressing, so I don’t even know what they’re going to think about this one.”

He ponders his words, letting them sink in before continuing.

“I went through this huge period where I didn’t know how

to deal with being in a relationship and being intimate with someone, so a lot of the record deals with that and jealousy issues with people I attempted to date and also with the person I’d broken up with.

It’s a mess. I don’t know how else to explain it.” A mess maybe, but a good mess. Ruppert has stuck with his trusty computer to piece together the sophomore record, but despite the dark matter it’s come out a tad poppier.

“Yeah, I think it’s really streamlined and really songbased,” he says animatedly. “The first record is poppy but it fits together as a whole, whereas this one seems to me more like song, song, song; a lot of it has pop-song structure.

Recording-wise there’s some guitar stuff on it – the first record didn’t have any guitar stuff – and there’s some live percussion elements that Jamie recorded and sent in, so it’s not all drum machine-based.”

Later this year Ruppert plans to finally get the whole band on tour in England, once the new record is out, and as a treat they’ll not just be flogging Former Ghosts, but XIu Xiu and Zola Jesus too, before Ruppert starts penning tracks for the third album. “I’ll probably start writing it when I get back,” he laughs. “Every time I do music it’s focused on a specific thing in a really obsessive way, so for whatever reason this person who keeps coming in and out of my life has been my muse for the past two years, so I imagine that the third album is the final one or something. Maybe that’ll tie everything up.” He pauses, analysing his previous words. “I don’t know, I don’t know. I don’t like doing music, it’s so weird,” and, a little uncomfortably, he laughs again.

“Does that make any sense at all?”

www.loudandquiet.com

19

the jesus loves heroin band A band with a love/hate relationship with music, the record industry and most of all each other Photographer: BART PETTMAN Writer: KATE PARK I N

Made up of singer Nick Wheeldon, guitarist Joel Robson, bass player Coline Presley, keyboard/ organ player Kieron Wright and drummer Bruce Sargent, The Jesus Loves Heroin Band love and loathe most things. Bruce, Joel and Nick met through school and Sunday football matches and Kieron came on board via Joel’s gig nights in Sheffield.

“And there’s Coline as well,” laughs Nick. “We found her with her knickers round her ankles outside a gig.”

“She said she’d get us a French tour,” reasons Bruce.

“So...”

Borrowing their buttonpushing name from an old Flaming Lips song, ‘Jesus Shootin’ Heroin’, Nick admits, “I tried to rip it off, but I got the name wrong!” It’s also worth noting that the singer, although amply scratchy and vibrating in his vocals, was initially a reluctant frontman. But as the main songwriter he takes on the role of band dictator with some relish.

“We are his slaves,” moans Coline. “He arrives with a song and says, ‘you play that, you play this!’.”

“And then they play it wrong,” says Nick.

Coline: “He’s a tyrant!”

“It started off like that,” admits Nick “but I think everyone’s doing more of their own thing now.”

The band take their influences from Gene Clark, Gram Parsons, Reigning Sound, Calexico, The Felice Brothers, Roy Orbison and ‘odd ‘60s garage stuff’, and have been recording solo and in various guises since 2007. Songs like ‘Death Waltz’ and the grating garage shuffle of ‘To Be Your Man’ mix low-fi aesthetics with big prog tinged hooks.

Coline joined the band at the last minute following the departure of bass player Douglas Davenport as Kieron set up the band’s first gig in February.

Then disaster struck as the bailiffs came calling and Coline got hit by a car. She went to hospital and received stitches for a head injury but went ahead with the gig anyway.

“She had a huge crack in her head,” exclaims Joel. “She bounced her head off the curb.”

“Show her the scar,” says Bruce, nudging Coline in prompt.

“How did I get through the gig?” asks Coline. “I was

20

www.loudandquiet.com

stoned! Plenty of drugs, they worked quite well.”

When not traffic targets, the band have a dizzying array of side projects. Joel records solo and as Miracle Suite with drummer Pete Devine, Kieron has his eponymous Kieron Wright Band, Coline is in French surf rock band ‘Elvis...’ and Bruce drums in The Hipshakes. Nick also plays with Hipshakes singer Andrew Anderson as The Creep Outs, but things have been put on hold since Andrew moved to America to study.

“I hope we can do some Creep Outs one day,” says Nick. “We’ve

got another album to record.

We’ve got all the songs ready, so we need to get together.”

Back in JLHB land, a selfreleased debut album, ‘Slow Fever’, is already out there and there are plans to record a new record (called ‘Destroy Me’) in the next few weeks. The band are also about to embark on a tour of France over the Summer, true to Coline’s promise, it would seem. Mention of it sparks lots of bickering about the schedule and who’s driving.

“I’ve said I’ll buy the triangle and all the things you need to go abroad,” explains Nick. “Bruce is buying the van.

Coline’s going to drive when we get over there.”

“I’m going to drive!” says Bruce.

“Can we fill the interview with stories about Bruce’s driving?” questions Nick before doing so anyway. “There was one time he was driving us to football, it was at night and he realised he hadn’t got his lights on, so instead of putting them on he just stopped in the middle of the road, looking for his lights. What are the other ones…?”

“There was the wrong lane on the roundabout,” offers Bruce.

Nick continues: “He went down the wrong side of the road, with cars coming towards him.”

“You went the French way,” says Coline “so you can drive in France!”

“We don’t actually know how long Coline’s going to be around for,” explains Nick. “We don’t want to put any pressure on her, but we really want her to go!” he jokes.

“Yeah,” she laughs “just leave me there, in the middle of the road after the last gig.”

As we leave the band to their squabbles, an argument about a recent party at Coline’s house strikes up. A beer fight took place; Nick retaliated and poured beer in Coline’s bed.

“It wasn’t that bad!” he insists to an outraged Coline who’s keen to point out it was three cans worth. “What did I ever do to you?!” she asks.

After reviewing photographic evidence and an elaborate cartoon drawing of Nick hanging by a noose we leave them in a wrestling bear hug. It’s a fine line between love and hate and The Jesus Loves Heroin Band trample all over it.

Th e c h a r l Ata n s , 19 9 0

22

www.loudandquiet.com

THE ONLY ONE

i know This year The Charlatans’ debut album, ‘Some Friendly’, celebrates its twentieth anniversary with a special edition reissue.

A cornerstone of baggy Manchester, Tim Burgess remembers its conception and the two decades that have followed as we try to figure out why this Salford band are the chosen survivors of the 90s, Britpop and such a turbulent history Photographer: Phi l Shar p Writer: Stuar t Stu bb s

I’d never met Tim Burgess before and yet he strolls into east-end dive The Griffin, pulls up a chair and starts chatting away like this is a weekly ritual of ours. He’s as friendly as expected, and just as pasty, despite having been a Hollywood resident for the past 9 years, and regardless of a long weekend in Barcelona for Primavera Sound.

“It’s a brilliant festival, isn’t it?” he says. “I DJ’d there last year and it was them that gave us the idea of performing the whole of ‘Some Friendly’ this year.

“It all went a bit mental from the point that they wheeled a birthday cake onstage for me,” he says. “They’d sprinkled ketamine on it, and I’ve not taken drugs for five years.

I just kept saying, ‘ain’t sugar brilliant!?’.”

While Burgess was turning 43 (an unbelievable number for the Benjamin Button of indie – a man who looks

suspiciously younger every time he releases a record), his band was officially exiting its teens.

Twenty years ago The Charlatans released debut album ‘Some Friendly’ when ‘baggy’ was still in its psychedelic infancy.

Back then they formed part of the holy trinity of scally groove pop, along with Happy Mondays and The Stone Roses – a movement these days undermined by the corny ‘Madchester’ tag and today’s lairy geeze-rock of Kasabian. But before the poetic, effeminate aspects of baggy were stripped away by Oasis and gigs in football stadiums, Manchester was a city swaggering to a clever, inventive, ecstasy-scoffing sound as important to the evolution of alternative music as punk, going on to inspire early Britpop and later the punk-funk of The Rapture. And The Charlatans were playing www.loudandquiet.com

23

their part.

“I dunno,” ponders Burgess of the ‘how come baggy’s become so macho?’ question “because the record [‘Some Friendly’] wasn’t like that at all, was it? We were singing about polar bears, y’know? But without giving too much of the game away….”Tim trails off, which he does quite a bit. “Obviously the Roses and the Mondays were going on but they weren’t lairy,” he continues. “The Monday’s weren’t at all – they were cool and they were street, and it was almost like New York or Harlem with the Mondays, but it was never like… I dunno, maybe it just got a bit more lairy with…err…Kasabian,” he laughs “or Oasis.With the Hacienda all the lairiness went out with ecstasy because men started to dance – men from the building site. Like, I worked as a labourer.The music I was listening to at that time was Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Axis: Bold As Love’, which is all ‘Castles Made of Sand’, and ‘Renaissance Fair’ by The Byrds, and psychedelic records like The Nuggets box-set. Baggy had that scally thing and there was definitely a swagger there but it was romantic as well.”

The romance wouldn’t last longer than four years, and with The Mondays lost in a Barbados drug fug and The Roses taking half a decade to release ‘The Second Coming’ and promptly split up, Burgess and his band were left to hold the fort alone. Not that they cared too much.

“The first record was everything I’d ever dreamed of,” smiles the singer. “Being in a band was. Like, I met Iggy Pop, I met Ice-T, I met The Cramps, Sonic Youth – people that were all American really but heroes of mine that I never thought I’d meet, and the thrill of it was just instinct really. It was the enthusiasm of living inside the moment. It was everything. It was perfect when we did Top Of The Pops, and we toured all over the world and got invited to all of these groovy places. And with it all being for the first time, it was like a first sexual experience or something.”

Rather aptly, album closer ‘Sproston Green’ documented just that. A track about Burgess losing his virginity, it’s a strong argument in favour of the 20th Anniversary Edition of ‘Some Friendly’ being released

24

www.loudandquiet.com

this month. This one knows she comes and goes, he eventually chirps after an endless, wiggy intro of guitars and organ. Everything she stole was mi-e-i-e-i-e-ine, he later professes.

Elsewhere on the band’s forgotten beginning (many consider the hit-heavy ‘Tellin’ Stories’ to be the band’s most identifying record, some even mistaking it as the group’s birth), ‘Then’ prowls and grooves like The Charlatans rarely have since and ‘Opportunity’’s sparse vocals more than hint at Burgess’ love for The Doors. It’s a record more patient than it should be, full of expansive instrumental sections, and purposefully misses the band’s top ten single ‘The Only One I Know’ and its b-side ‘Indian Rope’, a track Burgess regarded very highly.

“For me, when we did that song in Strawberry Studios, I did sit down next to Martin and say, ‘how are we going to better this song?’,” he says “and he, quite bravely, just said that we will, and that was really cool because I was thinking this might be as good as it gets.”

T

wo decades on, ‘Indian Rope’ – critically and commercially – clearly wasn’t The Charlatans’ peak. ‘Tellin’ Stories’ is a definite contender, whipped up in the storm of Britpop and thus making the band (along with anyone with a Bealtes-ish haircut) a household name. But it was eleven years after ‘Some Friendly’, with the band’s Third Coming that people started to look at The Charlatans differently.

Inspired by Curtis Mayfield and recorded in Burgess’ new hometown of Los Angeles, ‘Wonderland’ took the baggy mould and continued to shun any surrounding, louty bravado by throwing falsetto vocals over the Hammond organ and bass grooves.

Eleven years into a career, no band was meant to be this keen to try new things, least of all within the voice box of the group.

“I really like ‘Wonderland’ because of what it did and how it changed peoples’

perceptions of us,” says Burgess “and again, we wanted to record on Wonderland Avenue because of The Doors and the mythology of this one street in Los Angeles, and I’d just moved there. It felt like a brand new start…”

Tim pauses. “I hate saying ‘brand new start’ but you can’t really say it any other way.

‘Tellin’ Stories’ was a hard one to make but was obviously pretty successful, so good memories, and the one before that was good as well. I didn’t really like a couple but I don’t really like…” he trails off again. “They are always peoples’ favourites, aren’t they?”

Having survived the imprisonment of original keyboard/organ player Rob Collins in ’92 (for his involvement in an armed robbery), and his sudden death in ’96, Burgess’ move to L.A. was yet another test for The Charlatans existence, and one that the singer says “pushed the band to the edge”. It ended up giving them their most credible and soulful crossover hit to date, followed by the-hit-but-largely-miss ‘Up At The Lake’ and the even less notable ‘Simpatico’. And still the band remained baggy’s and Britpop’s most unlikely survivors.Why? “The thing that keeps us going is that we all like modern music,” explains Burgess.

“It’s cool having a record out, but what about the next one, and the one after that?

That’s kept me going. I don’t really listen to our old records at all.

“My favourite record now is the last one we did – ‘You Cross My Path’. It’s very me in a lot of ways.”

By that comparison,Tim Burgess must be one very generous man, because ‘You Cross My Path’ was The Charlatan’s ‘In Rainbows’, only unlike Radiohead’s experimental pay-what-you-like model, this album was completely free to all.

“I don’t regret it because I don’t live like that,” shrugs Tim “but we wouldn’t do it again because we’ve already done it and it wouldn’t be the same. A friend of mine pointed out that if his band did it, it wouldn’t even have the same effect, because it’s already been done. It’s almost as if as soon as it was done, it was over, and that’s great because I feel like we’ve saved the music industry,” he laughs. “We took one for the rest of fucking

society.

“People who like to level that The Charlatans never do anything first said that we were just copying Radiohead, but that was wrong, and we really upset a lot of people who were high up at major labels, which I got excited about.”

It was also a record based around three chord songs; unusual to all who know that bouncy Charlatans Hammond organ sound, but not to Burgess who declared himself a punk at the age of seven after watching The Vibrators on Top Of The Pops.That particular smiling confession explains a lot about Burgess’ extracurricular activities as a Shoreditch face, Horrors’ club DJ and fledgling producer of new punk and new wave bands.

At Primavera he wore a Factory Floor Tshirt onstage (his favourite band at the moment) and he’s recently produced Electricity In Our Homes’ new single, following on from last year’s work on Hatcham Social’s debut album. Next in line are new singles and EPs for Blue On Blue and Chapter Sweetheart, respectively.

“I love people in bands,” he reasons.

“They’ve got really good stories to tell and I love watching people work stuff out. I think music is as good as it always has been, especially in London.”

To some who are stuffier than others, that’s not true, not of any music, least of all The Charlatans. And to those people, Burgess and the band will always be (rather inaccurately, really) Britpop’s unlikely survivors, in a world where even Oasis have called it a day. But the mystery of how they’ve kept going really is as simple as the fact that they’ve never become old fashioned within themselves. It’s quite the anti-twist in the tale – a ‘the butler did it’ ending, baffling because to many, as The Charlatans swagger on under early 90s haircuts to their slowly evolving organ-laden indie, ‘old fashioned’ seems to be exactly what they are. But ask yourself this, when was the last time you saw experimental minds Damon Albarn and Thom Yorke in The Old Blue Last, checking out a new band? Or DJing at Offset Festival?

Or producing a noisy DIY band without mountains of cash to pay for their limo rides to the studio?

A handful of ropey albums (and it would be wrong to say that they don’t exist) and the damage to baggy’s legacy caused by Oasis and later Kasabian have made us forget how youthful, tuneful and brave, even,The Charlatans can be, and were, on ‘Some Friendly’ especially. Its twentieth anniversary couldn’t have come sooner to remind us of that, and by September The Charlatans will be ready to release their eleventh album, ‘Who We Touch’, because as the band’s singer says, “it’s cool having a record out, but what about the next one?”

“Well, it’s incredible,” he tells me before we end the interview and return to discussing how much we think of Primavera Sound. “I don’t want to say that it’s been a challenge, because of course it has – it has to be. But it’s been a really intense, ongoing thing, and because the last record had three chords running through it we really wanted to stretch this out so I went into this one in an experimental frame of mind, like using a Brian Eno technique of finding my favourite chords, pinning them to a wall and randomly picking them, y’know to create something out of nothing.We were going to be recording it in the autumn, so I wanted to have that idea of a European frosty record.”

And if it’s not suitably ‘experimental’ or ‘frosty’ enough for you, just wait for the next Charlatans record, or the one after that, or the one after that.

holy f uck For a band that took 10 years to fully form, and to this day refuse to practice, Canada’s Holy Fuck could teach other post-rock jammers a fair few tricks Photographer: Ho lly Lucas Writer: r eef you n i s

Holy Fuck are a band that have been tagged, branded and labelled more than most. From perennial, lackadaisical progressive jammers to electronic impostors, their place on the musical map has shifted almost as much as one of their heaving, bugged out tracks.

It’s no secret that their earlier days were characterised by a firm, ‘no-practice’ approach to practice, and that it either bred the no-safety-net, ballsout live show that had the band by the seat of their pants and the audience by the throat, or a shambolic, imploding catastrophe. Either way, Brian Borcherdt’s insistence that the band didn’t want to “have too much fun playing for each other” rang proudly true with every incendiary tour the band played, as much as their time limitations made a lack of rehearsal a necessity.

Unsurprisingly, it became Holy Fuck’s calling card; they just happened to be a band who practiced in front of a few hundred people and now, three albums in, it’s an ethos Brian, and other serial member, Graham Walsh, have no intention of abandoning.

“We sort of happened on the stage and I think it’s the only way we could have done it,” Brian explains as he peruses the shelves of his local supermarket, multi-tasking his shopping trip – via mobile – with trans-Atlantic questioning.

“It’s changed a lot…we’re essentially a real band now. If we’d have done things a little more conventionally, people probably would never have heard of us and we’d just be putting a record out now. I played my first show as Holy Fuck alone, at the start of the decade and it’s never really been a creative project so to speak, more a concept that’s developed into what it is now.”

Development is a vital element to Holy Fuck’s ever evolving state. Ostensibly Brian and Graham’s labour of love, the

26

www.loudandquiet.com

pair typically made up the band’s core line-up with various friends and musicians roped in to fulfil various live dates.

Although the pressures of the early days have slackened, slightly, with Matt McQuaid & Matt Schulz completing a more settled roster, Holy Fuck’s emphasis still lies squarely with the live shows.

“This band takes up all of our time,” Brian states. “It’s one of those things that works live and most of the opportunities we’ve had have arisen through being a really dedicated live band.

“We always treated it as a full band. We always had people coming in and playing with us and the people we were working with were friends we’d known since we were kids. It was an approach that I think worked then but we just needed a more dependable line-up.

“The attitude never shifted, in terms of how we approach doing things, but I think at the beginning we made records that people maybe didn’t understand or recordings that didn’t really translate. Live, it has a lot to do with seeing how we create our music. Our band could not really exist without having a live counterpart to the record.”

A sonic amalgamation of insistent rhythms, battering percussion and swarms of guitar and feedback, Holy Fuck’s speciality lies in its polarity.

Merging the all consuming facets of post-rock with a synapsecracking electronic beat, in the same way Errors offer much more than just a guitar-heavy Mogwai blueprint or how Fuck Buttons’ (more on that later) are intent on sending you to some dark, distant nebula via coruscating static and glitchy melody, Holy Fuck have as much in common with Caribou’s soaring ambition, Battles’ rampancy and Foals’ wired energy. Blurring the divide has arguably always been Holy Fuck’s most potent weapon, allowing them to create music through the unconventional means open to them.

“It doesn’t have to be unconventional but it has to challenge us. We have a lot of fun doing this and I always find it a silly question when people ask, ‘are you guys ever just going to pick up a laptop?’ because we don’t see ourselves in any particular genre. It’d be just as ridiculous if we were a DJ and someone asked ‘when are you going to pick up a guitar?’.

“No one would ask that of anyone else but they ask it of us. I guess we kinda got tagged but we never thought we’re a laptop band or we’re an electronic band. We’re having a blast doing what we’re doing and I don’t see any reason to change. At the same time it might be interesting to produce sounds through a distorted mic, to add a human element, so there’s always things we can do to keep exploring but at no point do I feel we need to make it a departure.”

It’s this ambiguity that’s often used against, or even to dismiss, them. With no foot firmly in any genre, they’re often a band without a home and a neat, advisory label.

“I don’t mind people that want to put something in a genre and I’d probably do it too for an easy description, but what bothers us the most is that we find there’s a lot of laziness where people aren’t even bothered to find out what we’re about and just dismiss us. That sucks.”

It’s a damaging claim typically levelled at nefarious blogsters (probably) irked at having leaked tracks pulled from their site, but the more established press is more than capable of doing its bit to undermine.

“It’s when they make associations with the name Fuck Buttons and Fucked Up and now suddenly we’re a ‘fuck band’,” Brian scoffs “and then some people might compare us to dance music but we don’t want to be played in clubs! It’s a little discouraging when people make the associations. We live in a

day of information but I think a carrier pigeon could carry more sometimes.”

With their third album ‘Latin’ released to warm acclaim, and the current line-up allowing the band to look ahead without the worry of finding last minute replacements, a sense of calm nostalgia seems to have washed over Brian as the band’s progression slowly but surely continues.

“We definitely weren’t one of those bands signed in our teen years. With the kind of music we make and the band name – we’re never going to be in that world.

And that’s cool because we don’t want to be. But, yeah it did get difficult; sometimes we’d go on tour and people would back out

“It’s a little discouraging when people associate us with dance music. We live in a day of information but I think a carrier pigeon could carry more sometimes.”

or we’d have the opportunity to go on the road and play some big shows and then the week before we still didn’t have a drummer.

“Sometimes no one was available and we didn’t want to say no to the opportunity. Those were the crazy years. That’s when we should have had a reality show or a blog or something. Every show was like a flaming hoop jump or stunt we had to pull off. I don’t think anyone in the audience knew how much it took out of us just to make those shows.”

Holy Fuck’s continued existence up to this point is pretty remarkable. For all the tours and the turmoil, the time constraints and death by live show, it’s a set up that should

have destroyed both Brian and Graham as it would have most.

You could admonish their outlook as reckless, accuse them of being brave or brazen but their ambition and dedication stood and still stands long after the storm.

“We’ve always got our hands free to bring things live, and we’re always trying to do things better,” Brian readily admits.

“I think the creative course we started off on; we’re making more sense of it. It’s nice to take a breath, relax and survey how to do it more effectively in the same kind of spirit we’ve always been pursuing.”

And still there’s not a practice room or laptop in sight.

www.loudandquiet.com

27

TREAT

your28

www.loudandquiet.com

-self Words and Pictures by STUART STU B B S

www.loudandquiet.com

29

The tale of an ex-pop-star fourth grade teacher, a hardcore punk from The Sunshine State and their new brand of shreddy, hip-hop pop that got M.I.A.’s attention There’s a story... going around about Sleigh Bells. It’s about how the New York duo met, and it’s a tale so filmic and improbable that it might be a lie.

You may well have heard it already, but that doesn’t make it any less worthy of being told again.

“I was waiting tables in this restaurant in Williamsburg,” begins Derek Miller, politely indulging our want to be told of this encounter firsthand “and Alexis was there, eating with her mum, and I was waiting them. Her mum was really talkative and friendly so she struck up a conversation with me and we ended up talking about what I was doing in New York, which was, at the time, looking for a female vocalist…”

“So my mum was like, ‘oh, my daughter’s a singer’,” picks up Alexis [Krauss] on cue, impersonating a typical mum’s voice. “And I’m like, ‘muuuum, shut up!’, kicking her under the table. So Derek told me a little about what he was doing and it turned out that we lived two blocks away from each other.We exchanged emails and met up in a park between our two apartments.Within a week I was shouting into an internal mic on a laptop, and that was Sleigh Bells!”

Even in this abridged version there’s no denying that real life people aren’t meant to meet like this.This is rom-com land.This is how Hugh Grant stops being a lonely, lovable fop and starts dating a woman far too perfect to be single in the first place.This is a fantasy daydreamed by those girls in any

30

www.loudandquiet.com

given TV advert sound-tracked by ‘Here Come The Girls’!

Derek and Alexis haven’t fallen in love, though – not in that way.They’ve become unquestionably close through their cut’n’shut, riffy, hip-hop electro, but they’re not dating. And while their chance meeting is made borderline eerie by just how synchronised their musical minds are, Alexis was probably the only girl that Derek came across and didn’t ask if they were a singer.

Perhaps he was intending on asking her mum.

“Yeah, I would ask every girl if they were a singer,” he confirms “but they wouldn’t take it seriously – they’d think I was hitting on them, totally.”

“Maybe if we’d met in different circumstances I would have thought that,” says Alexis “but by that time we’d talked for ten minutes every time he’d come over to our table.”

“And I thought you could tell I was sincere as well,” Derek says to Alexis. “I had a method of trying to describe what I was looking for because I was so used to doing it.

You could probably tell that I wasn’t fucking around. I was focussed. It wasn’t like, ‘yeah, you wanna come to my place and look at my four-track?’,” he says adopting a dumb-ass jock voice and laughing.

Alexis emailed Derek that night, and by the end of the summer (2008) she’d decided that she’d not be returning to her day job as a

www.loudandquiet.com

31

fourth grade teacher. “My heart was pretty set on either staying in the classroom or doing something else around education,” she says “so it was a pretty big gamble for me. It was like, ‘oh, okay, I’m not going to go back to my salary and benefits and we’ll see what happens.’”

Derek had moved to Brooklyn from Florida (having already combed California for a suitable female singer), waited tables and been known as ‘the guy with the wannabe-in-my-band? line’, but his unwavering perseverance – helped by a huge chunk of luck and a friendly mum – had finally paid off. Having had a six-year break from making music after the demise of his hardcore band, Poison The Well, he’d found the perfect voice for his new project. And although Sleigh Bells is now shared between two, the duo’s original conception very much happened in the mind and bedroom of Derek Miller.The metal guitar riffs were his, the processed beats and bass and synth parts were; he even had lyrics ready by the time he waited on Alexis’ table.

“I had quite a big break because I didn’t like the material [of Poison The Well] anymore,” explains Derek. “I was bored of it, so I was just trying to find a sound that I thought was interesting and worth doing again.”

But there’s still a hardcore influence there.

“Absolutely,” he agrees. “And I’m getting more comfortable with that as well. ‘Tell ‘Em’ [the band’s new single] is the most, quote/unquote, ‘metal-influenced’ track I’ve written, with the guitars, and that’s one of the newest tracks on the record. For me, when I quit Poison The Well I was so sick of heavy music. I wasn’t doing anything with any kind of intensity for a long time. And

32

www.loudandquiet.com

then over the years I kinda slowly started coming back to it because I was missing it.

And so I think the challenge was to try to make music that had that confrontational quality but without being macho and stupidly violent, which is where the girl in my head came into the picture, because it counteracts the heaviness.”

Back to the fairytale meeting for a minute: it wasn’t just that Alexis was a singer in the sure-we’ve-all-got-a-singer-in-usand-my-Alexis-even-sang-in-a-school-playonce sense of the word. Her raven hair and half-sleeve tattoo may have you believe otherwise (much like neither are hardly typical of a fourth grade teacher) but Alexis is an ex-pop star, and an experienced session singer. She spent part of her teens in RubyBlue, who were a bit like a sugary, teen pop version of Hepburn, making them well worth a search on Youtube.

“The only direct line between that and Sleigh Bells is that I worked with a lot of different people,” she explains. “I’ve worked with a lot of different writers, sang a lot of different styles. It meant that I wasn’t necessarily timid or inexperienced. Like, when we got together it was like, ‘ok, we’re working on this track and it’s another challenge’. It was different, which was what made it so exciting. Obviously I have a pop sensibility because it’s music that I’m very familiar with but in terms of it being plugged straight into Sleigh Bells, no, we developed the sound.”

“Alexis is fearless,” says Derek.

As for debut album ‘Treats’, it’s no shrinking violet either, rather a hell of an argument for such cross-genre-pollination.

Disregarding the gloriously sweet, downbeat pop of ‘Rill Rill’ for a second, if it’s not Derek’s vision fully realised (amply mixing

intense confrontation with playful, nonmacho innocence) there’s probably no pleasing him. Fortunately, it is.

Opener ‘Tell Em’ is the record’s suitably toxic aperitif, all devilish Slayer riffs and electronic detonations. It – like most of the aggressive fun to be had with Sleigh Bells – has Derek shredding to a heavy bass blasts, kept in time by old-school hip-hop snaps.

The low-end of ‘Kids’ could then have Snoop Dog’s ride out-bounce NWA’s without the need of hydraulics, while ‘Infinity Guitars’ fails to behave itself, running into the red and become a very fuzzy, very loud, tribal take on noise-pop.

Occasionally Alexis slow raps angrily, but largely she sings the way a girl who used to be a teen pop band would do, making everything not just palatable and less dumb but wholly unique. It’s hardcore meets hiphop; gnarly electro meets commercial pop.

It’s bassy and heavy, yet tuneful and angelic at the same time. It’s basically the sound of the most melodious metal band you’ve ever heard being produced by N.E.R.D. and fronted by a classic pop star... who’s a tad prone to schizophrenic bouts of rage.

“I was just sick to death with the sound of a rock drum kit,” explains Derek “just the thought of boom, boom, ka. No more snares!” he says. “I can’t hear any fucking snares! So I got really addicted to hip-hop and production and those sounds are so much more exciting. And as a songwriter, before I got into beat production, I was just so jealous that they had all of these sounds at their disposal.Y’know, it could be a clap, it could be a snap, it could be fucking horns – you can sample and do anything you want, and that was very inspiring, as opposed to high-hat, crash, ride, tom. I can’t handle that shit. I love bands, but I couldn’t do any

engaging in that. I also found rhythmically that a lot of hip-hop is heavier, like with the low-end that shakes, it’s a similar quality to when you first hear punk or hardcore.”

In the...

lobby of The Princess Barcelona, flight cases are scattered around and good haircuts chatter away, trying to remember when they last saw one another. It’s a day-long junction for some; a chance to bump into old friends for an extended weekend for others, until Primavera Sound 10 (a vast collection and celebration of indie All Stars) is over and the hotel’s inhabitants scram to their respective shows in any given country on earth.

On his way from the lift to the bar Derek runs into Surfer Blood, who once made up Sleigh Bells Mk I. “They’re my boys,” he says “We were playing together back in Florida. It had certain characteristics of what we’re doing but we all had our own ideas. I’m pretty controlling and I like to do everything and those guys have a tonne of ideas, clearly. So it made sense – we weren’t very serious and I said, ‘I’m going to go to New York’, and they were like, ‘cool, we’re going to do this.’”

Moments before that Derek had been in the lift with tonight’s festival headliners, Pavement. Or Stephen Malkmus, at least. “I nearly said to him, ‘yeah, thanks, we’re the band that have to go up against you tonight!’.”

Despite Primavera’s six stages, Sleigh Bells really are the only band that clash with the festival’s biggest draw. All arenas except for that of Pitchfork’s have the good sense to not take on the San Miguel stage from

Sleigh...

1.15am, which will be graced by Pixies and The Pet Shop Boys over the following nights.Thirty minutes into Pavement’s set of slacker hits though, the size of the crowd in front of Derek and Alexis gives off the impression that no other band is currently playing in the whole town. Certainly no other band as heavily rhythmic as Sleigh Bells are.They sound brutal and distorted, like the earliest demos of ‘Crown On The Ground’ and ‘AB Machines’ promised – all levels pushed into the red to blow the speakers. Derek picks up his Gibson SG (a guitar favoured by proper ROCK bands) and starts it crunching around the ears of those in search of an early morning, girder-shaking party. Alexis arrives like the Tasmanian Devil, spinning across the stage, loose-limbed and thrashing her head.

Again, it’s a story that you might already be familiar with – Sleigh Bells’ live shows have already garnered them a lot of warranted attention, much like French electro thrashers Kap Bambino’s once did. At this year’s Great Escape (“One of my favourite shows we’ve ever played,” says Derek), the duo closed the Brighton festival, sonically rumbling the stage and encouraging an audience invasion that could have levelled the thing – standard practice at a Sleigh Bell’s gig, like Pete Doherty forgetting his words or Iggy Pop his shirt.

At Primavera the audience remains on its side of the crash barrier (not least because it takes quite the leap to make it onto any distant festival stage these days) but most seem to know all of the words, despite ‘Treats’ not being released in Europe for another month.

“If you come and see us live, basically expect two people running around like idiots,” laughs Derek. “It’s just the two of us, we don’t have any production or lights. It’s really just us and we both love dancing and jumping around, so there’s a lot of that. And hopefully the crowd will put their fists in the air.”

For black sheep ‘Rill Rill’ is more openpalms-feeling-the-coastal-breeze than clenched fists punching it. It’s ‘Treats’’ purest slice of FM pop, featuring piano chimes and the toll of romantic bells rather than shrill guitar riffs. Comparatively, it’s the band’s ‘Paper Planes’; a moment of crystalline clarity tucked amongst all of the abrasive madness and urban attitude.

“It kind of sets us up to do whatever,” explains Derek. “Besides really loving the song because I like the vocal on it so much, I really like the idea of having a song like that and then a song like ‘Tell Em’. It’s like we can make a metal record or a pop record. I don’t feel restricted or inhibited in any sort of way, creatively, and that’s so refreshing.

Because you’re usually there with the same four guys, and those are your limitations, your instruments. I feel like we can go anywhere.”

“And we’ve talked about that,” adds Alexis “completely seriously for the next record.There’re loads of sounds we want to explore, from whispering to…”

“We were talking about stamping on tables and Alexis whispering,” interrupts Derek again “so part of it is so fucking loud and there’s also something really subdued.”

How subdued are we talking? Lounge R’n’B, or The xx?

“I’ve been listening to that record a lot recently,” says Derek. “For me they’re the antithesis of what we’re doing, which is awesome, because there’s so much space in that music, and we obviously like to cram a lot of sound into a small a space as possible.”

Bells’ inspired intensity sure is impossible to ignore, but so too is the hype surrounding them at present. Blogs will tell you that they were ‘the best thing at CMJ this year by a country mile’, and it’s quite believable that they were. Still, a duo, from New York, made up of one skilful dude and an unfeasibly charismatic female performer, dabbling in harsh, bedroom-produced electronic pop music? It smacks of fad, and neigh-sayers, afraid of fashion because nothing cool can ever be genuinely good, are bound to pick up a certain stick to beat Sleigh Bells with if they don’t find ‘Treats’ as tasty as expected.

And that stick is shaped like M.I.A..

It was the baile funk-stress who first discovered Sleigh Bells, and promptly signed them to her own N.E.E.T. imprint in the States. And after listening to ten seconds of any given Sleigh Bells track, it’s easy to see why it was MIA, in particular, who was so instantly excited. She’d heard the superaggressive, static-bashing ‘Crown On The Ground’ (the cracked demo of which was too visceral to recreate or improve upon so the band used the original five-dollar recording for the finished album) and ‘AB Machines’, which sounds like a menacing Prodigy/Suicide collaboration. Both tracks are so rude and popping with urban deviance that they could be lost M.I.A. songs.

“She was one of the earliest supporters of ours,” smiles Alexis. “She heard it over an iPhone.”

“Yeah,” nods Derek “she emailed us immediately and came to New York soon after that. It was very exciting because just our friends were listening to the band before that.”

Alexis: “And at that point there was no critical response to us, she didn’t need that. It was purely her own visceral reaction, and you don’t find that very often. Most people wait for the jury.”

Derek ended up working on M.I.A.’s forthcoming, third album, but the favour wasn’t returned, on the band’s wishes.They were well aware of the stick.

“We spoke about that a bit,” says Derek “and it would have been amazing to have her guest and do some verses, but we made a point of not letting anyone in. I wanted to produce the record, we wanted to do it front to back ourselves.That way any of the flaws were our fault but also any of successes were ours, because especially after the fidelity of the demos was so low – which was just due to limitations – I knew that broadening the sound, if there was another producer, everyone would have been like, ‘lucky for them that they worked with ‘insert name here’.

And fuck that! This is ours!”

“And having someone like M.I.A., who is obviously incredible, people automatically assume that everything that’s good about the record is her,” reasons Alexis “because they love her.”

Derek: “And that’s terrible, because it’s never yours, and people will always hold that over your head, and they’ll love it, especially if it succeeds they will love poking you with that. And now they don’t have that weapon, and I couldn’t be more pleased.”

The M.I.A. association has largely been a blessing, from the record deal to the spotlight shone at Sleigh Bells’ spotlight-less live riots and the belligerent electronic music they muster up, but there is a risk that some will start to disregard the substance that comes with the band’s definite style, and their hip celebrity connection.They don’t care, of course, because they’ve heard ‘Treats’.They know it’s the most exciting sounding record around, because they made it, from hip-hop nuts and brash electro bolts, and decorated it with teen pop streamers and thrashy hardcore flags. And it’s not as if you don’t learn a thing or two while being in RubyBlue or Poison The Well.

“This is the main thing, for me,” enlightens Derek. “Just ignore everything!

Ignore the good stuff, ignore the bad stuff, wake up, go to sound-check, play the show, get in the van, go to the next city. And just make sure you enjoy it.”

www.loudandquiet.com

33

re Jul vi 10 ews Al bums 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

Au Revoir Simone Captain Ahab Department of Eagles Effie Briest Fang Island Fol Chen HEALTH Jaill James Yuill Johnny Flynn Karen Elson Kele Mount Kimbie O. Children Omar Souleyman Procedure Club Pulled Apart By Horses School of Seven Bells Shit Browne The Books The Endtables The Morning Benders Thomas Truax Tokyo Police Club Wolf Parade

Live 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13

A Place To Bury Strangers Double Dagger Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster Joanna Newsome Liars Male Bonding Pavement Primavera Sound Quasi Small Black The School Thee Oh Seas Washed Out

-} www.loudandquiet.com

35

Al bums

Omar Souleyman Jazeera Nights (Sublime Frequencies)

By Danny Canter. In stores now

05/10

36

www.loudandquiet.com

Syrian pop star Omar Souleyman has reportedly released over 500 albums on tape cassettes over his fifteen-year career. A lot of those are live albums, but it’s a prolific output nonetheless, even if estimates are off by a few hundred.

‘Jazeera Nights’ is his third western release, compiled once again by Sublime Frequencies – the Washington-based label that deals exclusively in super limited runs of Middle Eastern and South East Asian party music. And having opened our arms first to the western appropriation of African music via Vampire Weekend, and then Fools Gold, to later dip our toes into the pool of Amadou And Miriam, there’s no reason why ‘Jazeera Nights’, in a mock-free, Borat-less 2010, can’t be Souleyman’s first palpable ‘hit’ in the western world.What stands in his way, other than the limits of such a small indie release, is that his

frantic Arabic jams quickly merge into one, rhythmically repetitive annoyance. In short, you can have too much Omar.

Before realising this, though, tracks like ‘Hafer Gabrak Bidi’ (translated: ‘I Will Dig Your Grave With My Hands’) firmly defend Souleyman’s reign as the master of street-level dabke (Syrian folkloric dance music), by stomping to an urban bass beat more funky than anything you’ll hear setting the mood in your local Lebanese restaurant. (Give it a few months and it’ll probably be given the Panjabi MC treatment and set to the Knight Rider theme tune).

The same microtonal keyboards that inspired Rainbow Arabia to tackle Middle Eastern pop excitedly pipe over the top, manically slivering over the following ‘Ala ll Hanash Madgouga’ (‘The Bedouin Tattoo’) and the remaining seven tracks here (although are toned down to fleeting for the slower groove of ‘Labji Wa Bajji II Hajar’ - ‘My Tears Will Make The Stones Cry’) undoubtedly play their part in making Souleyman seem samey to a fault.

A similar note was widely made when Omar’s last CD was compiled, with the counter argument that trance music, to the untrained ear, all sounds the same (much like how old people say that they can’t tell the difference between pop singers anymore). It’s certainly a valid point, but then how will we begin to pick up the subtleties in Turkish, Kurdish and Arabic music if we get three readily-available releases every fifteen years?

Souleyman, then - thanks to ‘Jazeera Nights’ in particular, which brought the singer to Europe for the first time last month to play the Pavement-curated ATP amongst other shows will either be considered a culture-spreading pioneer or a man who, even after fifteen years of making music, charged too soon, only to let whoever follows take the credit after we’ve been suitably buttered up.

And yet, above criticism is ‘Jazeera Nights’’ real-ness. It’s completely untarnished by the west and for that reason – while quickly tedious to many – it is an education in a music culture we have little excuse to know little about.

04/10

08/10

04/10

07/10

08/10

Fang Island

Au Revoir Simone

Wolf Parade

Procedure Club

Fol Chen

Fang Island

Night Light [Remixed]

Expo 86

Doomed Forever

Part II: The New December

(Sargent House)

By Gordon Anderson. In stores July 5

(Moshi Moshi)

By Nathan Westley. In stores July 5

(Sub Pop)

By Sam Walton. In stores July 19

(Slumberland)

By Kate Parkin. In stores June 21

(Asthmatic Kitty)

By Gordon Anderson. In stores now

Few art-school slackers decide to repaint classic arena rock in new colours, but New York’s Fang Island are different.They thank Andrew WK in their sleeve notes.

They have most definitely heard a Fucking Champs record or two.

And they describe themselves accurately as the sound of “everyone high-fiving everyone”.

The band’s anthemic rock will certainly spawn a communal airpunch or two in a live setting, but with endless “woh-wohhh”-ing and tendencies toward pompmetal, the folk and classical influences that peek out get stomped over in a quest for dudepleasing crescendos.The record works best when they straighten things up with the three-guitar, top-down blast of ‘Welcome Wagon’, but it’s too late. As the record ends with the crackling of fireworks, it seems like a suitable reminder to stand well clear.

The Remix album, once viewed as a cheap way of drawing out a few more pounds from the loyal fanbase, has, in recent years, been reborn as an artistic statement where familiar songs are contorted to show them in a different light.

Au Revoir Simone have broken from tradition and have not played safe, instead pulling together a castlist full of unfamiliar names with adventurous minds who do far more than just simply insert a new twist by adding predictable pounding four to the floor drum beats and whipping them up into club happy dance tracks. Instead the original structures have been delicately reworked; the band’s character siphoned out, propped up and given the type of glistening ‘look at me now’-style, high-class pop makeover that Gok Wan would be proud of. An already good album has been improved upon.

Time was when the idea of a Canadian supergroup was confined to indie mockumentaries and rumours about Bryan Adams gigging with Neil Young. But now that Montreal is the coolest place in the world, bands like Wolf Parade – a supergroup only in that it features members of Hot Hot Heat and Sunset Rubdown – exist with barely a snigger of disbelief.

At least, they do until you hear ‘Expo86’, an album of eleven, virtually indistinguishable midpaced chunks of meaty indie rock with added cock-rocking solos and occasional synth flourishes. And an hour of the unrelenting, braying stuff, too. If records were graded purely on workmanship and proficiency, this would be a 10.

However, the modern music fan deserves a bit of originality or variety to their albums, and saddly ‘Expo86’ is little more than an exercise in unremarkability.

Like The Dum Dum Girls minus the S&M stockings and lace, Procedure Club’s dreamy surf rock is perfect lazy summer listening.

‘Vermont’ shines Shangri-Las style girl pop through a Spector-tinged filter, piling on the feedback like a badly tuned radio with voices dripping in saccharine, making Belle and Sebastian look like Cradle Of Filth. ‘Feel Sorry For Me’ pinches the melody from The Stone Roses’ ‘Hardest Thing In The World’ while ‘Slut Fossil’ is far guttsier, cheekily flicking the bird behind your back while making a pass at your sister.

‘Nautical Song’ then loves noise so much it could easily pass for new HEALTH material.With so many bands shuffling onto the shoegaze bandwagon Procedure Club may be doomed to a life in the background, but like true wallflowers, they’re probably too sweet to really mind.

Creating concept LPs about a post-disaster, futuristic state infected by a word-eating virus, sounds, on paper, like it’s on a level of sheer tedium. Luckily, mysterycloaked sextet Fol Chen know how to avoid such pitfalls, following last year’s ‘Part I’ with a fascinating record as adventurous sonically as it is in theme. On ‘In Ruins’, Karin Tatoyan’s vocals dance playfully in the “acid rain” while ‘The Holograms’ brings to mind recent Mew, the detuned funk and dark pop shot through with random digital noise and ghosts-in-the machine eeriness.

Crisp production gives the diverse, often Eastern instrumentation space to breathe, bringing Fol Chen’s fictional world to life with depth and colour. It feels like a world in which to immerse yourself and emerge somehow changed, checking nervously for the microchip under your skin.

HEALTH ::Disco 2 (City Slang)

By Stuart Stubbs. In stores July 5

08/10

By now we really should expect the unexpected from LA noise quartet HEALTH.Their first remix album that turned their abrasive, semi-listenable debut into a record of techno bangers should have seen to that, and the whole commercially-fingering ‘Die Slow’ episode.

The latest curveball in the band’s perpetual goal to sound like no-one else - not even themselves - is this reworking of last year’s ‘Get Color’ LP, featuring such savvy meddlers as Salem, Gold Panda and Javelin.The brief seems to have been to produce an ambient, electronic record with an almost summery disposition, and that’s been achieved quiet brilliantly, from Small Black’s woozy reworking of ‘Severin’ to Javelin’s take on ‘In Heat’, which sounds something like Toto’s ‘Africa’. Four artists show everyone else up though, and that’s HEALTH themselves who supply the opening, original track ‘USA Boys’, which judders and snaps like Timberland and can’t help to question why this band don’t just make a dance record from scratch. www.loudandquiet.com

37

Al bums 07/10

03/10

09/10

06/10

08/10

Pulled Apart By Horses

James Yuill

The Endtables

Tokyo Police Club

Thomas Truax

Movement In A Storm

The Endtables

Champ

Sonic Dreamer

(Moshi Moshi)

By Laura Davies. In stores June 21

(Drag City)

By Polly Rappaport. In stores now

(Memphis Industries)

By Sam Walton. In stores July 19

(SL Records)

By Tom Goodwyn. In stores now

S/T (Transgressive)

By Daniel Dylan-Wray. In stores now

It’s too obvious to compare James Yuill’s smooth operation to a folkier Hot Chip, so I won’t. Apart from the opening tracks, that is, that do have Alexis Taylor’s laidback dance magic weaved throughout. But by ‘First in Line’, the vibe is more Ibiza chill-out than South London dive. ‘Foreign Shore’ takes a twist into Elliot Smith terrain, all soft and gooey, singing ‘something in the way the wind blows’. And this is where it remains.The one-man band from London creates subtle, addictive beats with beautiful mellow vocals in the vein of the Postal Service and Sufjan Stevens. ‘Wild Goose at Heart’ is an epic, guitar-plucking instrumental, proving there’s more to this man than his laptop and each listen unveils another reason to love this second record from a man far more complex than easy Hot Chip comparisons, or anything so simple.

Did you know there was a revolutionary punk scene in Louisville, Kentucky, circa 1979?

Did you know there was an influential, if totally obscure, band within that (equally obscure) scene who cranked out a four-track vinyl before dissolving? This is a reissue (plus live tracks) likely to have significance for die-hard punk collectors with a penchant for rare Americana. It’s a snapshot of a moment in music, and it encapsulates the frantic, skuzzy guitar sound, wired, tuneless vocals and blurted, sarky choruses authentic to the period, but it’s nothing we haven’t heard, albeit commercially, from the likes of The Ramones or The Stooges. ‘White Glove Test’ is catchy (repetitive, anyway) but apart from that, the banter from the live tracks on this record is almost more interesting than the tunes. And the banter isn’t particularly interesting.

Tokyo Police Club decamped from their native Toronto to Los Angeles specifically to record a summer record, and this, their third longplayer, is the result. And what a glorious blast of sunshine-inflected pop it is. ‘Wait Up (Boots of Danger)’ has as sweet and simple a chorus as you’ll hear all year, ‘Big Difference’ is drenched with the kind of power pop that Weezer wish they still wrote, and ‘Favourite Colour’’s gorgeous drawl makes you wonder why Pavement even bothered reforming. Sure, every sensible synapse in your head will tell you that ‘Champ’ is derivative indiepop with little new to offer, but over the course of its small but perfectly formed duration, it reveals itself as rather brilliant, lifeaffirming songcraft that is catchy, poignant and youthful. And if its merit is purely meteorological, may the sun shine long and bright.

New York’s legendary antifolk scene has given us more delightful musicians than anywhere else in the world in recent years – Regina Spektor, Jeffrey Lewis, most recently Darwin Deez and now former MTV animator Thomas Truax joins them. Sonically, he’s cut from much of the same cloth, in that you hear classic Neil Young and Dylan strongly in the instrumentation, but Truax also has a willingness to experiment and mix in more eclectic influences, bringing to mind Nick Cave at his elegant best, especially on ‘What’s The Matter With My Grey Matter?’. Ironically, given the scene that’s spawned him, it’s lyrically where Truax falls down a little.

There’s nothing too clunky, but there’s also no tangible vulnerability or humour either.

‘Sonic Dreamer’ is a good record, but not one people are going to fall in love with.

Pulled Apart By Horses manage to pull off a difficult task with their debut album, and subsequently a unique result with their music.

They make audaciously heavy rock but it’s laced with an underlying, almost pop sensibility that makes it strangely accessible.This is also done without losing any of its bite – and bite it does. PABH play like a rabid dog, all teeth, snarling and seething, foaming at the mouth with a raging and relentless anger ending with a vicious and deadly gnaw to the face. It’s a multifaceted but ferocious debut, with a refreshing sense of humour thrown in – “Awesome! Radical!

Awesome! Totally Bodacious!” goes ‘Meat Balloon’, from a band that place having fun pretty high up on their priority list.The album spews on you rather than speaks to you, and as a result it’s a damn close achievement to capturing the brutality of their live shows.

Mount Kimbie Crooks & Lovers (Hotflush)

By Reef Younis. In stores July 19

09/10

38

www.loudandquiet.com

Sometimes the planets and pitch-shift just seem to align and we’re blessed with an unendingly brilliant swathe of electronic artists, producers and DJs staggering and sauntering from the shadows of tinkering in dank club basements and the confines of bedroom walls. And in light of some true brilliance this year, Dominic Maker and Kai Campos are no different. Effortlessly ambient, and consistently engaging, ‘Crooks and Lovers’ is an album of gentle, pulsing iridescence dovetailed by flickering rhythms and a respect for making the most of simple sound.

Tracks like the delicate, raindrop drip of ‘Before I Move Off ’, the understated, wasp-ish dubstep of ‘Blind Night Errand’ or the gorgeous, broken vocal simplicity of ‘Carbonated’ should make this another staple for obligatory end of year lists.That they’ve already been christened the latest proponents of a raft of everridiculous sub genres, whatever it’s called, it’s a brilliance of which we’re fast becoming accustomed.

04/10

06/10

06/10

07/10

02/10

The Books

Department of Eagles

Kele

Jaill

Shit Browne

The Way Out

Archive 2003-2006

The Boxer

That’s How We Burn

(Temporary Residence)

By Nathan Westley. In stores July 19

(Bella Union)

By Reef Younis. In stores July 19

(Wichita/Polydor)

By Omarrr. In stores June 21

By Daniel Dylan-Wray. In stores Jul 26

Every Single Penny Will Be Reinvested In The Party

Though this album starts out by sounding like a reinterpretation of an old seventies public information film that was once made by aging weekend hippies, it is not a theme that readily continues as the track counter climbs upwards.The Books seasoned hands have weaved together an album that has much in common with a Sudoku puzzle that at first appears simple, yet somehow becomes more and more complex with every glance.They, like cultural bedfellows DJ Shadow and The Avalanches, have a tendency to rapidly knit several genres together, intertwining skittering funk samples across triphop beats and jazz breaks before applying atmospheric noise and cinematically tinged vocal samples into a combination that defies the laws of simple categorisation.Yet for all of its mind-capturing, genre-bending, ‘The Way Out’ is short of songs to revisit.

As the title suggests, this isn’t an album with the contemporary in mind. A collection of the rag-tag musical meanderings of Daniel Rossen and Fred Nicolaus, it captures the rawer side of Department of Eagles’ earlier, experimental output. It’s an album that sighs and heaves with exertion and exhaustion – as much as it does the fleeting moments of real ethereal beauty – cataloguing the struggle of marathon recording sessions, alien recording equipment and efforts to conquer full string arrangements.There are flashes of the pop sensibility that made ‘In Ear Park’ grandly compelling, and although it’s a fascinating story, complete with previously unreleased tracks, the combination still makes for a largely uninspiring amalgamation of one band’s failed endeavour. A stepping stone, perhaps, but you really are better off taking the two steps forward.

To the more switched-on Bloc Party fan, ‘Flux’ and ‘Mercury’ were cast-iron clues that Kele Okereke’s head was in a different place to his band-mates’. Eight months from confirming their hiatus, ‘The Boxer’ is the itch Mr Complicated has been dying to scratch. In flushes it’s still the same Kele: still cynical, still hypocritical, still a brilliantly moody pop star underneath it all.Yet, physically and musically, his new direction is just as muscular as the biceps he shows off in his new press shots.

‘Tenderoni’ is a Wiley ‘Wearing My Rolex’-sized dose of sweaty compressed deviance; ‘The Lam’, an androgynous, pulsing stab of UK garage. ‘Backenders Other Side’ and ‘Unholy Thought’ then see Okereke pick up the guitar again with a dance twist. Above all, ‘The Boxer’ is Kele having leashfree fun.The kind of fun Gordon Moakes just can’t supply.

Sub Pop’s reign over the soundtrack to the summer continues with their newest release from Jaill, which is another poptinted outing for the legendary Seattle label.The album radiates a youthfulness that borders on naivety, but the outcome is a charming rather than oafish offering.The guitars shift between the surf-tinged jangle reminiscent of Link Wray to more straight up, staple playing.The swing in the guitars themselves (perhaps an accurate embodiment of the album) represents the changes in tempo, the ups and downs and the highs and lows of the record.The peaks make the album feel like it’s inundated with seamless guitarpop gems, in which the playing feels fresh and inventive. However, the lows make it feel like it borders on the banal at times, treading water in muddy territory and covering old ground.

(Sub Pop)

(Asphault Dutchess)

By Chris Watkeys. In stores July 5 Parisians playing baggy? No, that’s not just a random location/genre combo I’ve pulled out of thin air.

Shit Browne are doing it, for real.

I’m reckoning that round about 1990, there were a fair few anglophile French teenagers with Stone Roses posters on their walls, forming bands sounding a lot like these guys.The lazy groove of ‘Artifice’ is like the Happy Mondays at 33rpm, only with a guy singing in a French accent.

‘Sunflowers’, meanwhile, nicks the riff from ‘Sally Cinnamon’, lock, stock and barrel, and ‘Browne and Proud’ is almost a renamed ‘The Only One I Know’. Mani basslines sprinkle this album like Es on Shaun Ryder’s cornflakes. A couple of wibbly electronic tracks break things up a bit, but other than that it’s pretty much straight on through to Madchester.

Uninspired, thinly-produced piffle.

Effie Briest Rhizomes (Blast First Petite)

By Edgar Smith. In stores July 5

07/10

‘Rhizomes’ is the debut LP of sub-lunar art rock sextet Effi Briest, Brooklyn residents and chums of the trendsetting likes of Telepathe and Mirror Mirror.

Refreshingly, peeling away the cool connections and immaculate graphic design reveals a record of real substance that verges occasionally on brilliance.The girls trade in a floating minor-key post punk, slightly stoned and reminiscent of early Banshees – the kind of comparison they might be keen to avoid, considering the vocals’ proximity to Siouxsie’s.The moments in which this likeness feels overbearing happen to coincide with the album’s most conventional, forgettable passages. For the most part though this is all admirable stuff, sounding far-out (‘X’), and beautifully melancholic (‘Long Shadow’). ‘Nights’, in its flailing psychedelia manages to be almost Doors-ish and in ‘Mirror Rim’ the band achieve the kind of nuts-andbolts experimentalism of Wet Dog, washed-over with a seductive, noir-ish sheen. www.loudandquiet.com

39

Al bums 07/10

07/10

06/10

03/10

The Morning Benders

Johnny Flynn

Captain Ahab

Karen Elson

Been Listening

The End of Irony

The Ghost Who Walks

(Trangressive)

By Chris Watkeys. In stores now

(Deathbomb Arc)

By Stuart Stubbs. In stores now

(XL)

By Polly Rappaport. In stores now

Johnny Flynn is a man with a voice that sounds so steeped in English folk history there’s a distinct possibility he actually Morrisdanced his way out of the womb.

For the most part, ‘Been Listening’ is not nu-folk, or anti-folk, or even alt.country, but folk in its purest form, with its allied minor keys, twiddling guitars and understated arrangements. After the brassy opening of ‘Kentucky Pill’, which is like Adem with a bright sheen, ‘Lost And Found’ is stripped back and lovely; a melancholy story set to a beautifully sad backdrop. Laura Marling then joins Flynn for the duet ‘The Water’, and it’s certainly sweet, gentle and pleasant, yet one of the less striking songs on the record. (Flynn excels when the unique timbre of his voice stands alone). Several degrees more accessible than debut ‘A Larum’, this is an album of rich and inventive quality.

Since Mika Miko split and No Age started touring the world, LA’s The Smell scene has been searching for a new, less garage-y sound, and its found it in ravesploitation – a nerdy branch of electroclash that thrives on melodrama and comic books. It’s music that refutes good times are a crime, here from Captain Ahab’s debut title down to its underlying humour (see partspoken social commentary ‘I Don’t Have A Dick’, through which singer Jonathan lays ludicrous, macho claims to driving the fastest car in world and such like).When the silliness runs away from this LA duo, it can seem a bit Blood Hound Gang (‘How 2 Party’), but more often than not ‘The End of Irony’ is equal parts admirably shameless and wholly inventive, like on ‘Acting Hard’, which mixes Gregorian monk chants with hiphop samples and Fuck Buttonsesque, nightmarish vocals.

As unsurprising as a Paul Weller cameo at a Noel Gallgher gig, this record has Jack White written all over it. He participated as both producer and drummer, recruiting well-known musical friends and family to back the stunning vocals of his equally stunning wife.

White’s scuzzy, twisted sense of blues saturates the album, but Elson’s Weimar cabaret leanings and dark, murderous lyrics make a firm, distinctive imprint on his familiar style. By far the strongest is the title track, Elson’s sultry, velvet intonations stalking through eerie organ strains and spine-tingling keys as she unfolds a haunting tale of death in the moonlight. It’s unlikely the album would have seen the light of day if this modelturned-songstress were not married to a rock star, but she has a delicious voice, she can tell a story and if you cast cynicism aside, you will get goose bumps.

O. Children O. Children

Big Echo (Rough Trade)

By Tom Goodwyn. In stores June 28

(Deadly)

By Mandy Drake. In stores July 12

The inspiration and direction of The Morning Benders’ sophomore effort are made clear within the first few seconds of opener ‘Excuses’. First you hear the crackle of a vinyl record player, then a burst of ‘Pet Sounds’-esque orchestration, before finally a wave of surf guitars and a sun kissed chorus. Unashamed in its aping of The Beatles’ and The Beach Boys’ back catalogues, ‘Big Echo’ is a reasonable record to listen to (far more reasonable than the band’s name suggests), but sadly it does nothing new or interesting and just ends up as a collection of pastiches.

It’s actually as if the San Francisco four-piece have been commissioned to write some sound-a-like tracks for a film about Venice Beach in 1964. Every band has its influences, but all are fearful of crossing the line from homage into plagiarism: a line Morning Benders have decided to ignore.

Early last year, O. Children told us “we’re gonna be the guys that take over Nick Cave and dance on his grave.”Then, we applauded the audacity of such claim. Now, the ovation is for a debut album that makes that a possibility. And while the gloomy east Londoners are in the graveyard they may as well jig across the tombs of Joy Division, The Killers, Bauhaus and The Editors. Because, while ‘O. Children’ takes on the credible in post-punk, it’s also a smart pop record clearly in search of mainstream success. Everything is delivered in Tobi O’Kandi’s earthy baritone purr, which gives the whole record a certain vampiric coolness, but ‘Fault Line’ could still feature on Coldplay’s latest; the 80s synths of ‘Halo’ on an early Killers disc. ‘Dead Disco Dancer’, theatrical and icy, was on ‘Unknown Pleasures’, I’m sure.

Nick Cave better watch out.

School of Seven Bells Disconnect From Desire (Full Time Hobby)

By Reef Younis. In stores July 12

08/10

40

www.loudandquiet.com

After the otherworldly brilliance of ‘Alpinisms’, we couldn’t help but expect similarly outlandish genius again. From the clinical purity of Air to M83’s sighing, heaving dynamic, ‘Disconnect From Desire’ is both approachable and acceptable in its mainstream sheen.

Alejandra Deheza’s feather-light vocal caress gives the album a wide-eyed grace, as rich, engulfing melodies soon wrap you like a comforting, paternal hug.While ‘Heart is Strange’ positively smoulders with power and beauty, ‘ILU’’s breathy uplift captures the moment the sun bursts through the clouds, casting a shimmering gaze over postcard picturesque backdrops you’ve seen a hundred times before but still succeed in taking your breath away. From start to finish, the album refuses to settle, morphing, easing and evolving from ethereal opener ‘Babelonia’ to the tickled synth of ‘Camarilla’.

Much more than just a follow up to a fine debut, ‘Disconnect…’ is an album of the most wonderful contrasts.

41

Live

Primavera Sound 10 ▼

Parc del Forum, Barcelona 27-29.05.2010

By Philippa Burt, Paul Griffiths, Sol Hurtado Campos Pics by Stuart Stubbs, Inma Varandela

42

www.loudandquiet.com

In the human world, reaching the age of ten is an unwarranted milestone; a lifetime away from adulthood, lottery ticket purchases and even our teens that we’re so eager to reach.There’s nothing you can do when you’re ten that you couldn’t at nine, and yet turning the big 1 0 is a deal large enough to land you a TV in your bedroom and other more-lavish-than-usual gifts.

For a festival to beat the reaper for a whole decade is a far more impressive feat, especially with gigs-in-a-field on the rise and festival fatalities stratospheric, and yet Primavera Sound has made it look easy by consistently curating the kind of alt. lineups that make Reading & Leeds look like a second rate T4 on The Beach, while hosting their three consecutive allnighters on Barcelona’s shoreline. It’s ATP in a holiday destination you actually want to go to, sprawled across the purpose-built, concrete-mad Parc Forum, which, although brand-spankingnew, looks as though it was previously inhabited by a 1950s world science fair, all ramps to

nowhere in particular and occasional sprouting metal structures.There are six stages in all, five of which are open air, and it all begins (really) with The xx in Ray-Ban’s semi-amphitheatre.

Still as saucy as ever – despite Jeremy Paxman’s hawkish face now springing to mind whenever you hear ‘Intro’ – everything and nothing about the trio has changed with the success of their debut album.The crowd, for one, is ridiculously big, and they’ve also bought a couple of giant ‘X’ shaped light boxes with their mountains of BBC cash to complement their show with suitable, understated class.The dry ice bellows more than ever, tumbling over the front of the stage, and while the band are in trademark black, it certainly seems like a stylist has got their hands on them, armed with racks of designer clothes. And that’s exactly how it should be, because as their ever-spacious, touching performance proves in its similarity to the band’s earliest shows,The xx are a deserved sleeper success story.They’ve always been this good live, and now more people know it, the

word spread with the added bonuses of a few bells and whistles, which really are as subtle and as ‘xx’ as you’d imagine. And as for the one new track that they air, it sounds as frail and as comfortable in silence as anything the band have already recorded, suggesting that Romy and Oliver remain fascinatingly shy and yet eager to bravely share their woes with anyone who’ll listen.

Over on the Vice stage – the festival’s furthest point and only ocean-facing stage – San Diego duo-come-five-piece Crocodiles show little interest in playing anything but new songs.

They chuck out ‘Neon Jesus’ and ‘Summer of Hate’ before arriving at the closing ‘I Wanna Kill’, but with clued-up bodies in front of them they’re keen to brag their new, krauty wares, which have been produced by James Ford and recorded in the Joshua Tree Desert. Safe to say, it sounds more cosmic and psychedelic than ever, with added flashes of Manc baggy thrown in.

New single ‘Sleep Forever’ could have been on ‘Definitely Maybe’, while ‘Hearts Of Love’

▼

shows that a band who bonded over Phil Spector girl groups can never leave the romantic pop chimes of the west coast completely alone. And that’s a good thing – it’s possibly the best track they’ve ever written, and play tonight.

Over the remainder of the festival,Vice’s cove, with its falafel and hotdog stands (a rarity here as all other food stalls are tucked inside Pitchfork’s covered stage and outnumbered by record stands), plays host to a no-brain highlight, a nice surprise, the disappointment of the weekend and a festival-ending, 3am HEALTH performance plagued with sound problems early on and speakers that just aren’t loud enough for the abrasive noisecore we’ve fled from The Pet Shop Boys (who put on the best ‘show’ with some of the worst songs, plus ‘Heart’, which might just be the greatest song of the three days) to hear. (Despite this, HEALTH do play the lesser-heard ‘Glitter Pills’, an unintroduced track of ethereal zombie vocals

and new thumper ‘USA Boys’, making it far from an epic fail).

The Drums are the surprise, who aren’t the stand-still-and-sing types we were expecting. Singer Jonathan Pierce juts around not to his hoppy, surfy rhythm section but to his own nasal-wheezing voice and the band’s Cure-esque arpeggios. It means that he twitches erratically like one of those camp, plastic flowers controlled by sounds, once found on stereo speakers in 1991.This – and an over-excitable guitarist – completes Drums’ package, as the songs are undeniably brilliant pop tracks, providing you don’t ask for more of them than that.

Yeasayer are more than a decent enough pop band playing decent yet simple pop songs. ‘Odd Blood’ has catapulted them to a whole new level that they’re revelling in.

Bringing in their own fluorescent lightblock stage set and slating the Ray-Ban banners either side of the Vice stage, somehow ‘2080’ and ‘Sunrise’ now seem a

little lightweight compared to fresher cuts ‘O.N.E.’ and ‘Madder Red’. Even Ira Wolf Tuton’s unnecessary dig at UK crowds after triumphant closer ‘Ampling Alp’ can’t dismantle their liability.

It’s Panda Bear who spoils our one hundred percent strike rate of interesting, moving, brilliant and plain fun performances, by being none of the above. After a late arrival, caused by attempts to breath life into a malfunctioning laptop, he slopes behind a desk of wires and announces, “Sorry, we’re without visuals tonight.” It’s hard to imagine just how much a projections could make his sonic tinkering half as engulfing as Fuck Buttons’ nightmarish wall of static doese in the early hours of Friday morning, but with nothing but a stationary man to look at we soon slope off ourselves to Les Savvy Fav at the ATP stage, where we begin day two to the motorik thrum of Beak>, only for more of the same pulsing, stretching krautrock from Michael Rother performing Neu! classics the following evening. It’s a masterful trade.

Tim Harrington has been lying in wait to be one of the weekend’s highlights.

Literally. As the rest of the NYC spikerockers set up their kit, pre-set, he’s sat motionless, dressed on stage as the Abominable Snowman. He jumps up and the bowl of people shaped around the ATP stage break into utter pandemonium. Four or five brand new songs are debuted (the follow up to ‘Let’s Stay Friends’ will drop in the autumn) as berserk, reliable tracks like ‘Sweet Descends’ and ‘Patty Lee’ light up the night sky.The band dazzle and baffle courtesy of their usual madcap antics, while Pixies have a similar effect with a performance so perfect that it no doubt needs to be as mechanical as it definitely is.

They toss out the hits frequently and fast; ‘Wave Of Mutilation’ second, ‘Tame’ third, ‘Monkey Gone To Heaven’ fourth and so on.

It’s all superbly executed, and from far enough away from the San Miguel main stage (which undeniably proves to have the best sound of perhaps any other festival) Black Francis’ blood-curdling scream appears to be genuine. Move closer to the man who refuses to speak for the whole set though, and all of those accusations of the band doing it for the money seem as accurate as the rendition of greatest hits we’re hearing is.

And it leaves you with an odd feeling. On one hand, this is Pixies playing what you want to hear, exactly how you want to hear it, but with their clocking-in cards tucked just off stage and dollar (or Euro) signs covered by Black’s sunglasses, rapped around his expressionless face, the sense of disappointment is hard to ignore. How did the most punk band of the festival become even more corporate than the bickering Pavement? Really, they’d be more at home in the only brand-heavy area of the site – the pokey Ray-Ban unplugged tent, where bands like Ganglians play sloppy acoustic sets while being photographed in this year’s Wayfarers.

Why Primavera Sound will make it to those lottery ticket-buying days and far, far beyond, though, is because matters like this, which could have you sulking home early from other festivals, are gripes almost too small to mention.There’s way too much going on that’s really worth seeing to be hung up on one ropey performance (or even ten) and an ex-hero or two making you question how you feel about the way they play too well. It’s every band you currently want to see, by the Mediterranean Sea. How can it not be close to the perfect festival? www.loudandquiet.com

43

Live ▼

Double Dagger Cargo, Shoreditch, London 18.05.2010

By Stuart Stubbs ▼

Male Bonding. Pic: OWEN RICHARDS

Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster. Pic: KELDA HOLE

It takes Nolan Strals half a song to leap from the stage and shout in a face or two, which is something close to a lifetime in Double Dagger’s world. Stripping off his checkered shirt to reveal a Friendship tee so tight he must have buttered himself into it (the London duo are DD’s recent touring partners), he spit-speaks into dead eyes of yet another London crowd afraid of having a good time. Maybe wanking the microphone and simulating anal sex with it will loosen this crowd.

So thinks the baldy singer towards the climax of the super fast ‘Pillow Talk’, but no – if anything the mention of sex has made us more awkwardly British and stoic. So still is tonight’s audience that the happy cheers after each posthardcore rant to Fugazi-esque, fuzzed bass and drums seem wholly surprising, even if all the applause is completely justified.

“This is the sound! Of no one!

Giving a SHIT!” yells Strals to end ‘Sheep In Wolf ’s Clothing’, probably expecting his efforts to be aptly met with silence. Still bodies at London shows are sadly a given (especially in east London at 9pm on a Tuesday) but I hoped that Double Dagger would be the gnarly, aggressively clever band to change all that.That they’re not only highlights how stubborn we really are, because this trio are a hell of a ferocious party band.

Pavement ATP, Butlins, Minehead 14.05.2010

By Daniel Dylan-Wray ▼

Double Dagger. Pic: OWEN RICHARDS

44

www.loudandquiet.com

I’m not even really old enough to feel nostalgic about a Pavement show, but there is a pensive feeling that undoubtedly hangs in the air tonight. After all, this is a festival that sold out before any of the line-up had been announced, which means that every single human being here, is primarily here to see one band only: Pavement. Opening with ‘Box Elder’ and then ‘Grounded’, it becomes apparent, rather quickly, that this is going to be a bit special.

The sloppy and almost goofy charms that riddled so many of Pavement’s records hasn’t vanished one iota – which only adds to the endearing nature of the songs on display.They play the ‘hits’ for sure, however, it isn’t until they finish and you realise how many more songs you want to hear that you truly realise how many ‘hits’ they have.They churn out the tracks they do play at an alarming rate, and everything feels so comfortable, it feels just right. All expectations, cynicisms and analytical thoughts are superseded and eclipsed by the simple, unadulterated joy of hearing the songs live – a primitive bliss that many (me included) thought they would never get the pleasure of witnessing.

Thee Oh seas The Luminaire, Kilburn, London 05.06.2010

By Polly Rappaport ▼

There’s a shitload of people here,” drawls Thee Oh Sees frontman John Dwyer, addressing said people who are crammed, nose-to-armpit, right up to the edge of the stage.

“It’s HOT!”That, Mr Dwyer, is the understatement of the decade. It’s the kind of hot where you can feel the rivulets of sweat streaming down your skin and, under the circumstances, hope to Buddha that the sweat in question is your own.The band launch head-on into a set of fuzz-infused garage, laced with psychedelic guitar riffage, and bristling with clear, focused energy – and they are relentless about it.The gig is a marathon of sweltering, squelching punk tracks, many from recent album ‘Help’, complete with impromptu drawn-out, bluesy endings that drummer Mike Shoun bravely bashes his way through, even as the other Oh Sees are tacking on a few more reverbheavy phrases, just to see if he can make it. “You guys getting tired?” asks the drenched Dwyer, before throttling his guitar through thirteen-minute track ‘Warm Slime’, holding his mic up to the amp and grooving off the delirious shrieks of feedback. Between the heat and the unrestrained intensity on stage, tonight feels like the end of the world – and if it is, what a way to go.

WASHed out Cargo, Shoreditch, London 01.06.2010

By Edgar Smith ▼

Just as I was formulating an argument for why – considering all the difficulties of transferring the recent wave of US solo bedroom-electronicists’ blogbound sounds into the live arena – Ernest “Washed Out” Greene looked and sounded amazing even though it was just him, rocking back and forth over an analogue synth and desk in the corner, he gets joined on stage, three songs in, by support band Small Black. It’s a recurring pattern in the (excuse the throw-up term) Chillwave genre that what sounded great as a free, downloadable WAV file sounds and looks awful (or at least disappointing) once burgeoning public interest demands that they go on tour. It sounds and looks, in fact, like a guy hitting space on an Apple Mac and whining along.

The surprise addition of musicians to break-down the fantastic ‘Belong’ and the rest of the set into individual parts works a treat, lending the show a depth of harmonic feel and a welcome sense of showmanship. Greene’s tracks assemble Philly disco, Balearic, progressive house and hip hop, and he sings into a drum mic, the rest of the band bobbing innocently about like they’re in their living room, playing Kool and the Gang before a night out.

Male Bonding CAMP, Old Street, London 27.05.2010

By Danielle Goldstein ▼

There are balloons tied to every speaker and doorway with smudgy chocolate cake sloping over by the entrance. If that doesn’t scream celebration, then Male Bonding jumping on stage raring to showcase their debut album, ‘Nothing Hurts’, certainly does.

Dressed in their best, which in this case means denim shirt (Robin Christian, drums), tank-tee with woolly hat (John Webb, vox/guitar) and a scruffy blonde bob (Kevin Hendrick, vox/bass), they run through the entire album, in order.

The tracks are a hasty blur through the fuzz of blaring speakers and

▼

ears of drunken listeners, shifting their shoulders erratically from side to side in a zombie-like dance.

Opener ‘Years Not Long’ has a tropical twist with the most upbeat vocals and ‘Franklin’ slows things down a touch, but this Dalston trio are relentless. Just when you think you’ve no more energy to give, this garage-punk band throw out more.

It’s fast, thick-riffed, heavy and an incredibly pleasing and versatile chaos. And the record they launch tonight is just as exciting!

Small black Barden’s Boudoir, Dalston, London 25.05.2010

By Chris Watkeys ▼

More and more, Barden’s Boudoir resembles a dive bar from Brooklyn, transplanted into dirty old Dalston. And tonight the underground venue feels extra hip.

All three of the bands on the bill hail from the cooler than cool New York borough which, just recently, seems to be churning out better than half-decent bands at an alarming rate. Small Black take the stage (armed with both a drum machine and a drummer, which is nice touch) and fill the room with their underwater melodies.Theirs is a layered sound, with faraway, tin-can pop echoes reverberating through the music, bass-led rhythms and flimsy vocals low in the mix, with the whole thing being washed over by echoing keyboards.The sound quality in Barden’s has never been particularly kind to bands though, and it shows tonight as the crowd thins slightly as the set gently flows towards midnight - maybe the Dalston party people aren’t quite so hardcore on a school night.

There’s no knocking the songs though, and while some flee, ‘Bad Lover’ hypnotises those who remain with its repetitive, enclosing feel, and pulsating, airshredding keyboards. It’s a chaos of high-pitched and curiously melodic noise, and it sounds great.

You can imagine songs like the setclosing, melancholic-yet-hopeful ‘Despicable Dogs’ (an instant favourite of Small Black fans since it’s release on the band’s self-titled, debut EP) being played out to a much bigger crowd, in a much bigger venue, and they certainly deserve to be.

▼

A place to bury strangers The Harley, Sheffield 19.05.2010

By Daniel Dylan-Wray ▼

It’s dark, cramped and sweaty as APTBS take to the stage – the stagnant, almost suffocating air hangs endlessly like a misty fog above a river.They not so much start their set as they do ignite it, and they begin as they mean to go on.When listening to this band their influences certainly speak volumes through their work, however, fortunately volume is something they are quite apt at dealing with and subsequently more often than not this results in paying homage to their influences rather than becoming a crass pastiche.Tonight, APTBS are almost vengeful with their force, playing through you instead of to you.The last song is a never ending cacophonic onslaught that feels like the auditory equivalent of being thrown out of a plane and plummeting to your own death.

You begin with a sense of dread and perpetual horror and fear as the unknown grips you, until you fall for so long that you accept your own certain fate and begin to relish in the liberating and cathartic qualities of the free-fall.

Then, before you know it, it’s all over.

Eighties matchbox b-line disaster The Relentless Garage, Islington 03.06.2010

By Danielle Goldstein ▼

Six drug-addled, mad years have passed since Eighties Matchbox released their last album, so it’s unsurprising that they appear a little older and a little plumper tonight, with a little grey streaked through their ‘dos.Tracks from new album ‘Blood And Fire’ take on a more screamo edge compared to their previous, theatrically crooning material, but they still drop in the old hits such as ‘Psychosis Safari’ and ‘Mister Mental’, which the crowd predictably goes mad for, shouting lyrics word for word and clapping on cue when frontman Guy McKnight strikes his palms together - still a Nick Cave-ian

ringmaster when he wants to be.

There’s a similar response during current single ‘Love Turns to Hate’ with its spiralling, high-pitched catchy riff and macho chants, while other tracks like ‘Mission From God’ tramp along with heart-palpitating drums. It’s strokeinducing stuff. For most of the night the lighting is down and the band are lit solely from the front, but it feels right to view the Brighton quintet through a dark haze where the only point of focus is McKnight’s crazy stare and their theatrical Cramps-style eeriness.

Because Eighties Matchbox - the band who disappeared from the planet without a hint of explanation - have always been a mysterious bunch, and remain so.

Liars Shepherd’s Bush Empire 27.05.2010

By Sam Walton ▼

Liars have always been proponents of the idea of more – more bass, more fuzz, more weirdness. And now, tonight, they have more members, something that allows Angus Andrew to strut about the stage with even more shamanistic zeal than usual. And with twice as many stagehands behind him, Andrew really does tread every square inch of the platform, prancing and slapping his forehead with more than a little debt to Nick Cave’s live act. For a while, it’s pretty compelling. However, for all Andrew’s best efforts, it’s a good half hour before the band find their feet, ‘Clear Island’ being the number that ignites the crowd into the movement that the frontman is so desperate for. From then on the performance has its moments, but rarely amazes, although the threesong encore, starring only the original three Liars, is intimate, uninhibited, and hugely gripping.

Unfortunately for them, their headline act is somewhat upstaged, at least in the RAWNOISE stakes, by the support, Factory Floor, who come across like mid-Holocaust My Bloody Valentine pickaxing Fuck Buttons, all turned up to an earbleeding 11. So bloody and confrontational is Factory Floor’s sonic barrage that Liars come across somewhat tepidly afterwards – and, disappointingly for a group like Liars, feeling slightly, well, less.

▼

Joanna newsom Royal Festival Hall, London 12.05.2010

By Ian Roebuck ▼

Despite opulent surroundings, songs that stretch over the tenminute mark and customary lyrics about daddy longlegs, Joanna Newsom’s two-night sell-out of the Royal Festival Hall feels more like a triumphant honky tonk bar room blitz than the hushed musings of an innocent harpist.

Newsom’s loosened up after touring ‘Ys’ with a symphony orchestra, and now there’s a band on board as her well groomed hair comes down with a playful spring.

New album ‘Have One On Me’ sees the 28-year-old flirt with the piano and it’s when she moves from harp to ivory that magic moves the South Bank. Fresh songs like ‘Good Intentions Paving Company’ bounce and roll as the title suggests, while album highlight ‘In California’ drips with melancholy sunshine. Much has been made of a vocal chord operation that’s changed the shrill ‘Milk-Eyed Mender’ into a softer toned ‘Nevada Girl’, which may be true but there’s a certain confidence now emanating from her work and performance that suggests there is now a heightened maturity beneath the surface.The languid beauty of album opener ‘Easy’ lets us glimpse this new found harmony further. An elegant beauty remains but Newsom’s got a twinkle in her eye and the next rounds on her.

Quasi The Freebutt, Brighton 25.05.2010

By Nathan Westley ▼

In business there is an age old adage “success breeds success” – in other words, gain it with one venture and achieving it with another will be easier.With music such notions do not apply and each band ultimately stands or falls on its outpourings. That Quasi have been functioning as a band since 1993 and have won high praise for their recorded releases should prove testament that it can’t all be bad – except tonight they are repeatedly confronted by the touring musicians worst nightmare:

technical problems.The trio are constantly knocked out of their stride by bouts of unexpected feedback, amplification temporarily disappearing and, in one case, an amp blowing up entirely. In those glimpses when things are going semi-right they morph into an indie guitar band of the old mould – one that stomps through a series of the type of unchallenging American slacker rock that was once the mainstay of college radio stations across their homeland.They offer more than a straight re-incarnation of Granddaddy or Pavement, though, in that they seem to have an adventurous side fascinated with discordance and other such avantgarde mainstays.Tonight may not have gone as planned but at least Quasi survive to fight another day.

The school Buffalo Bar, Cardiff, Wales 08.06.2010

By Gordon Anderson ▼

This is The School’s first hometown gig since releasing fine debut album ‘Loveless Unbeliever’, and their Pipettes-meets-Camera Obscura indie-pop seems perfect for the first balmy weekend in June. And as the 8-piece bound straight into what’s surely the second best song called ‘I Want you Back’ ever, it’s the band’s strong rhythmic backbone that provides the base for their cutesy pop classicism and balance for Liz Hunt’s honeyed vocals. All reflection and yearning, it’s the first of several songs to better their recorded versions thanks to the cultured percussive punch sweeping through from the rear.

On record, you also can’t see the two lady violinists grinning inbetween harmonies on the likes of ‘Hoping and Praying’, all ShangriLa’s shimmy before kicking up its heels in a dash for the finish, or witness the enjoyably baffling monkey-based banter after a jaunty, kazoo-enhanced ‘Shoulder’.The already on-side crowd feed back the same warmth, and as swoonsome closer ‘Let It Slip’ drives the point home, all insistent backbeat and her-or-me lyrics, it’s sung like one big-eyed love letter and feels like a group hug. An easy win for the home team tonight, but this is seductive, timeless stuff.

www.loudandquiet.com

45

Cinema review

film

By DEAN DRISCOLL

Bad lieutenant: port of call new orleans

7/10

Jonah Hell and Russell Brand flee P. Diddy in Get Him To The Greek

Cinema Preview Rehab is this month’s watchword at the movies...

-----Since his 1995 debut Kicking & Screaming, Noah Baumbach has emerged as one of US indie cinema’s most interesting new talents, co-writing The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou with Wes Anderson before making a lasting impact as writer-director of The Squid & The Whale.The semi-autobiographical film charting the dysfunction of a disintegrating middle class New York family solidified his reputation as a more cynical, less whimsical sibling to Anderson, with whom he continues to collaborate, including co-writing last year’s The Fantastic Mr Fox. His follow-up to ‘Whale’, the Nicole Kidman-starring Margot At The Wedding, was less enthusiastically received, apparently forgetting to put the fun in white upper middle class family dysfunction. His latest, this month’s Greenberg (out now), is being hailed as a return to form, and perhaps his best movie yet.

Ben Stiller plays the eponymous Roger Greenberg, an embittered New Yorker and former musician approaching middle age with all the trepidation of a man in danger of achieving nothing with his life (fittingly, the soundtrack is by LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy). Moving to LA after recovering from a nervous breakdown to housesit for his wealthier, more successful brother, he enters into a fitful relationship with his sibling’s assistant Florence (indie darling™ Greta Gerwig). In 99% of movies – including Wes Anderson’s - this would be the catalyst for Greenberg to grow up and become a better person, but as anyone who has seen Baumbach’s previous movies can attest, life-affirming resolutions are not really his thing.

46

www.loudandquiet.com

More amiable fare comes from the latest movie from the Judd Apatow stable, with Russell Brand reprising his role as rock star Aldous Snow in Get Him To The Greek (released 25th June), a spin off from the underrated Forgetting Sarah Marshall – generally regarded as a B-league Apatow production, when in fact it’s up among the stable’s best.With little involvement from the original movie’s writer-star Jason Segel, there’s the possibility that Get Him To The Greek could lack in the area Forgetting... was strongest – in the heart department. It is however an excellent showcase for the talents of Russell Brand, whose hilarious breakout performance in the original made America take notice, and helped win over those previously resistant to his comedic gifts. OK, so maybe playing a recovering addict, serial-shagger rock star isn’t a huge stretch for Brand, but it should make for an entertaining evening nonetheless, and ensure Brand gets the chance to take on more diverse roles in future.

It should be interesting to see how Knight & Day (2nd July) does at the box office, with two A-listers currently in need of some movie rehab of their own.

Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz team up for an actioncomedy, with the former suspiciously looking like the younger of the two in the film’s publicity stills. Cruise’s disconcertingly youthful appearance notwithstanding, it’s an important release for both him and Diaz.

Barring his movie-stealing turn as Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder, and Diaz’s recurrent role in the endless Shrek movies and spin-offs, neither has had too much to jump on the sofa and shout about in cinema terms in the past couple of years. Both are in need of a return to proper movie star form, and if Knight & Day can help Cruise restore some of that old charisma, it may just be exactly the rehabilitation he needed.

Starring: Nicolas Cage Eva Mendes Director:Werner Herzog What to make of a pseudo-sequel to Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant?

It’s a conundrum that’s been causing headaches ever since it was first announced – and it’s still mildly perplexing even having seen the movie.There were of course the indignant howls of outrage that normally accompany any announced remake, then the massbefuddlement incited by Werner Herzog being attached as director, with Nicolas Cage as star. As a result there’s been much deconstruction of Herzog’s intentions, and his approach to the material, some of it wholly unnecessary: there are those who are trying to find a place for it amongst the canon of Herzog’s work, though they would seem to be missing the point somewhat.

Herzog has enjoyed a 48-year directorial career – when you’ve been in the game for that long, sometimes you wanna just cut loose and have some fun. His Bad Lieutenant is related to Ferrara’s in name only: everything else – the cast, script, story, setting, themes – is entirely different, to the point where there is pretty much no reason at all for them to share the same name. Under a different name, it’s unlikely that many would have made the connection. So why call it Bad Lieutenant? Because, a contrarian to the last, Herzog just wanted to mess with people’s heads a bit, as he does with the movie.

Attempts to label the movie a masterpiece, and place it alongside the likes of Aguirre and Grizzly Man are misguided – it’s no masterpiece; it’s a bit of lightweight fun, with a director and star clearly enjoying themselves and running wild with the material. So you have Cage at his wild-eyed best, and Herzog making little music videos with iguanas.There’s no exploration of guilt and redemption as in Ferrara’s version – if anything it’s a subversion of Ferrara’s hand-wringing morality.

It’s Herzog’s Oceans 11, or Burn After Reading. Don’t read too much into it; just enjoy the amorality and the lizards, and save the psychoanalysis for another time.

I AM V

5 YEARS OF LOUD AND QUIET The limited 12� available from loudandquiet.com

PICK UP LOUD AND QUIET AT...

55 DSL 10a Newburgh St Soho, W1 60 Million Postcards Exeter Rd Bournemouth BH2 1RU 93 feet east 150 Brick Lane Shoreditch, E1 Action Records 46 Church Street Preston PR1 3DH Alt. Vinyl 61/62 Thornton St Newcastle Upon Tyne NE1 4AW Amersham Arms New Cross Rd New Cross, SE14 Ape 79 Mount Pleasant Rd Tunbridge Wells TN1 1PX Avalanche Glasgow 34 Dundas Street Glasgow G1 2AQ Avalanche Records 63 Cockburn St Edinburgh EH1 1BS Blackcat Records 42 East Street Taunton Somerset TA1 3LS Barden’s Boudoir Stoke Newington Rd Dalston, N16 Bar Music Hall Eastern Road Shoreditch, EC1 Beyond Retro Great Marlborough St Soho, W1 Brixton Windmill 22 Blenheim Gardens Brixton, SW2 5BZ Bull & Gate 389 Kentish Town Rd Kentish Town, NW5 Bungalow & Bears Division St Sheffield, S1 4GF Buffalo Bar 259 Upper St Islington, N1 Cafe Kick Shoreditch High St Shoreditch, E2 Camberwell College Of Arts Peckham Rd Peckham, SE5 Cargo Rivington St Shoreditch, E1 Catch Kingsland Rd Shoreditch, E1

Club 229 Great Portland St Oxford Circus, W11 Coffee Plant Portobello Rd Notting Hill, W11 Crash Records 35 The Headrow Leeds LS1 6PU Diverse Music 10 Charles Street Gwent NP20 1JU Defectors Weld 170 Uxbridge Rd Shepherds Bush, W12 Dreambags/Jaguar Shoes Kingsland Road Shoreditch, E2 Dublin Castle Parkway Camden, NW1 Edgeworld Records First Floor 6 Kensington Gardens Brighton BN1 4AL Episode 26 Chalk Farm Road Camden, NW1 Fred Perry Short Gardens Covent Garden, Wc2H Ghetto 58 Old Street Shoreditch, EC1 Goldsmiths College Lewisham Way New Cross, SE15 Gun Factory Studios 49-51 Leswin Road Stoke Newington, N16 7NX Hoxton Sq Bar & Kitchen Hoxton Square Hoxton, E2 ICMP Dyne Rd Kilburn, NW6 Keston Lodge 131 Upper St Islington, N1 Jam Records 32 High Street Falmouth Cornwall TR11 2NA Jumbo Records 5-6 St Johns Centre Leeds, LS2 Kanes Records 14 Kendrick St Stroud GL5 1AA The Lexington Pentonville Rd Islington, N1

Lock 17 Chalk Farm Road Camden, NW1 Lock Tavern 35 Chalk Farm Rd Camden, NW1 London School Of Economics Houghton St Holborn, WC2A London School Of Fashion Princess St Oxford Circus, W1W Monorail Music 12 Kings Court Glasgow G1 5RB MTV Studios 17-19 Hawley Cresent Camden, NW1 North London Tavern Kilburn High Rd Kilburn, NW6 One Up Records 17 Belmont St Aberdeen AB10 1JR Old Queen’s Head 44 Essex Rd Islington, N1 8LN People Independent Music 14A Chapel St Guildford Surrey GU1 3UL Piccadilly Records 53 Oldham St Manchester M1 1JR Polar Bear 10 York Rd Kings Heath Birmingham B14 7RZ Probe Records 9 Slater St Liverpool L1 4BW Pop Boutique Monmouth St Covent Garden, WC2 Pure Groove 6-7 West Smithfield Farringdon, EC1A Purple Turtle 65 Crowndale Road Camden, NW1 Rapture Entertainment Unit 24 Riverside Centre Evesham Worcestershire WR11 4BG Resident Music 28 Kensington Gdns Brighton, BN1 4AL Revival Reords Berwick St Soho, W1F

Rise Unit 19 Beechwood Shopping Centre Cheltenham GL50 1DQ Rise 70 Queens Rd Clifton, Bristol BS8 1QU Rokit True Vintage Camden High Street Camden, NW1 Rokit True Vintage Brick Lane Shoreditch, E1 Rough Trade East Drays Walk Brick Lane, E1 Rough Trade Shop Talbot Road Notting Hill, W11 Rounder Records 19 Brighton Square Brighton, BN1 1HD Rythm Factory Whitechapel Rd Whitechapel, E1 Sister Ray Berwick St Soho, W1F Size?

Neal St Covent Garden, WC2H Soundclash Records 28 St Benedicts St Norwich NR2 4AQ Spillers Records 36 The Hayes Cardiff CF10 1AJ Star Green Tickets Argyle Street Oxford Circus, W1 Tangled Parrot 15 Bridge St Carmarthen SA31 3JS Tempest Records 83 Bull St Birmingham B4 6AB The Albany Great Portland St London, W1W The Bean Curtain Road Shoreditch, EC2 The Bakewell Bookshop Matlock Street Bakewell Derbyshire DE45 1EE The Cross Kings York Way Kings Cross, WC1 The Enterprise Chalk Farm Rd Chalk Farm, NW1

The Drift Record Shop 91 High Street Totnes, Devon TQ9 5PB The George Tavern 373 Commercial Rd London E1 0LA The Good Ship Kilburn High Rd Kilburn, NW6 The Legion 348 Old Street Shoreditch, EC1 The Luminaire Kilburn High Rd Kilburn, NW6 The Macbeth Hoxton St Hoxton, E2 The Old Queen’s Head 44 Essex Rd Islington, N1 The Social Little Portland Street Oxford Circus, W1 Start The Bus Baldwin St Bristol, BS1 1RU The Premises Studios 201-209 Hackney Rd London, E2 8JL The Relentless Garage Holloway Rd Islington, N1 The Strong Rooms Curtain Rd Shoreditch, E2 The Victoria 110 Grove Road Mile End, E3 The Wilmington Arms Roseberry Ave Islington, EC1R The Worlds End Camden High St Camden, NW1 Tom’s Record Shop 13 Castle Street Hay-on-Wye HR3 5DF Tommy Flynn’s 55 Camden High St London, NW1 ULU Malet St Holborn, WC1E University Of Arts London Davies St Mayfair, W1K Wall Of Sound 42 John William St Huddersfield HD1 1ER Water Rats Grays Inn Rd Kings Cross, WC1X

party wolf

]

Photo Casebook “Party on Robbie: Pt 5”

What the hell is that smell?!

I dunno, Howard, is this really a good idea? If I beat Gary’s arse do you think he’ll let me back in the group?

MEMOIRS

) I’m gonna pound you in the Rude Box, Williams!... And you can stop laughing Donald, or you’ll be out of the group too!

) DON’T CALL ME GAZ!!!

Sorry Gaz

Kerry had been eating worms for forty minutes when Katie came back from her Bush Tucker Trial, scoffing kangaroo balls and what not. Little did the pair of them know that a witchetty grub’s arse would be a gourmet meal to the P Dog. I didn’t mention it - I was too busy singing my new song ‘Insania’ to Neil Ruddock - but not much had been going my way since I released ‘Flava’ in ‘96.Within a year it wouldn’t be kangaroo balls in Katie’s mouth though, if you know what I mean? (I mean it’d be my balls!).The one thing that I’m asked more than ‘can you pop your trousers back on please?’ is ‘why didn’t you and Katie work out?’ It’s a question I deal with by saying, “because she’s fucking Insania!” and then I sing a bit of the song, which reminds the person in question of a pretty great song and makes light of the situation.The truth though, and I’ve never admitted this before, is that Katie always wanted more of everything. “I can’t believe the biggest balls I’ve had in my mouth are a kangaroo’s,” she’d say to mock me.The truth is mine are bigger than a kangaroo’s actually.They’re like two Cadbury’s mini eggs - one brown and one pale blue.

Lonely hearts “It’s not weird, it’s a sexy Facebook”

GoOutWith MyFriend.com James

Area: Children: Diet: Employment:

] Ooh, bitch!

( Let’s, dance big boy!

to be cont.

50

www.loudandquiet.com

“

“

Mat has this to say about James: I was hanging out with my good friends The Maccabees. We were in east London, listening to really new music like Klaxons and The Others, and they said, ‘What’s James like?’ (Because friends ask each other questions like that). “Well,” I said “he’s a larger than life kinda dude. He’s even larger than a Blue Whale!!!” The band cracked up and told me how funny I was, and how it’s a shame that I don’t get as much praise as James. And that made me laugh... and agree. “What else is he like?” they asked me. And I said, “I don’t want to talk about James all night.”

James responded by saying: Another crap joke there, Mat. Well done.

The fact is, I’m the bollocks!

“ “

ding ding

London Love my jokes Praise Duh, I made Gavin & Stacey!

Disclaimer: The representations of the persons herein are purely fictitious.

32, looking for food