Grammatics, Leeds Brudenell Social Club

Grammatics

August 20, 2010

About a month back, and seemingly out of the blue to the majority of us, Grammatics announced their intention to split, citing insurmountable financial woes as the primary cause. I have watched their latter days with interest, both as a fan of the band, and also as someone intrigued by the machinations of the music industry. They have fallen back on online resources to repay their debts by selling off band paraphernalia, merchandise and little exclusive treats like access to rehearsal time and gigs in people’s gardens. While it has been disagreeable to see a band having to resort to flogging off parts of their history, it’s also encouraging that these days they would have the means to be able to do this to break even, and it has also allowed them to draw a neat line under their story with a final tour and a farewell EP.

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Salli Lunn – Heresy And Rite

Salli Lunn - Heresy and Rite

I’ve often wondered what compels a band for whom English isn’t their mother tongue to sing in English. Clearly it is an artistic decision which is entirely theirs to make, and there are certainly a host of wonderful bands, including Phoenix, Mew and M83 to name a mere few, who choose to do it, but the motive behind it has never been entirely clear to me. Is it for commercial appeal? Is English particularly easier on the ear than other languages? Do foreign musicians just like to show off how expert their English is? Answers on a postcard (or that little comments box at the bottom) please. … Continue Reading

Perfume Genius – Learning

Perfume Genius - Learning

There are rare occasions when you just know – when you put on a record for the first time, and you are overwhelmed by the vague and indefinable sense of warmth that comes with the knowledge that what you are listening to is, in a word, special. It has nothing to do with epoch, genre, or geographical origin, but stems from an intangible kind of magic that elevates the music above the confines of being merely ‘good’, into something wondrous. Learning by Perfume Genius (aka Seattle native Mike Hadreas) is such an album. … Continue Reading

Foals – Total Life Forever

Foals - Total Life Forever

When Foals first unveiled their debut album Antidotes, it dawned on most of us that they were not a band who were particularly keen to do what was expected of them. Their earliest singles led many to expect a by-numbers Math Rock knockabout of a long player, but, much to the surprise of those who had them pegged as hipster fodder, Antidotes took a more considered approach than that. It combined fleeting bouts of bombast with moments that subtly worked their way under your skin, all of which made for a sharply enriching end result. It also showed that Foals possessed a stubborn determination to do things entirely on their own terms, and this is something that has continued through to second album Total Life Forever. … Continue Reading

Singles of the week! Diamonds in the rough…

Christina Aguilera - Not Myself Tonight

It’s been suggested that the single is a dying artform, and although I’m a firm believer in the format, there are some weeks where it is hard to argue its case. Disappointingly for me, embarking on my maiden run at our Singles of the Week column, this week is one of those weeks. Still, there are one or two diamonds buried in the rough, so onward we go… … Continue Reading

A-Z: An Ash Retrospective

Ash

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

She & Him – Volume Two

She & Him - Volume Two

Much has been made of the unlikeliness of the pairing of Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward. Around the release of She & Him’s debut effort two years ago, references to the improbable juxtaposition between the fantasy object of choice for indie boys the world over and the folk troubadour became pretty tiresome in the end. Thankfully, Volume One became one of those depressingly rare records where the music spoke louder than the backstory which accompanied it, and it was received well on its own merits as a record of charming, sun-kissed pop. … Continue Reading

Rufus Wainwright – All Days Are Nights: Songs For Lulu

All Days Are Nights: Songs For Lulu

As the years have passed, Rufus Wainwright’s creative output has become increasingly ambitious. Having started off with jaunty (if showy) piano pop songs, his recorded work has swelled in scale, reaching its apex with the enormous productions of his last few records. In addition to this, two of his most recent projects have been a painstakingly constructed retelling of Judy Garland’s Judy at Carnegie Hall, and more recently he has staged his first opera Prima Donna, which tells the tale of an aging soprano. Clearly then, it might come as something of a surprise that his sixth album’s twelve songs feature only voice and piano. This less expansive approach was a conscious reaction to the increasingly ostentatious nature of his more recent recordings, and given the ill health of his mother Kate McGarrigle (who died in January) it is a logical step. The outcome of all this is that All Days Are Nights: Songs For Lulu shows Rufus Wainwright at his most vulnerable, and features some of the starkest, most emotionally naked songs he has ever written. … Continue Reading

Wild Beasts, Newcastle Cluny

Wild Beasts

March 19, 2010

You may or may not have noticed it in the last year or so, but we here at Muso’s Guide are quite fond of  Wild Beasts. After a raft of thoroughly deserved acclaim for their second album Two Dancers (including their capturing of the number one spot in our writers’ collective top 50 of 2009, and the Editor’s), the Kendalians’ bandwagon is trundling merrily on with their current tour in support of the single release of ‘We Still Got the Taste Dancin’ On Our Tongues’. Ably supported by the darkly captivating work of  Lone Wolf, and Erland and the Carnival, whose bouncy, mildly pyschedelic pop invokes the untethered sense of adventure shown by the early recordings of The Coral, Wild Beasts are quite clearly in the form of their lives. … Continue Reading

Trouble Books – Gathered Tones

Trouble Books - Gathered Tones

There is undoubtedly something magical about a great lost album. Even when you discount the dirty pleasure of indie snobbery, there is still something warming about a really special piece of music which you share with a small number of similarly enlightened souls. Ohio band Trouble Books’ last effort, The United Colors of Trouble Books was a thing of almost impossible beauty which fell squarely into that category, missed as it was by many. Given the delicate, unhurried nature of their sound, it is perhaps fitting that the acclaim for the band is starting to swell ever so gradually, including a recent spot in The Guardian’s New Band of the Day column, meaning their fanbase is starting very slowly to expand. … Continue Reading