Ben Frost – By The Throat

Ben Frost - By The Throat

By The Throat is a menacingly suggestive title. It says to me: the music contained within this package; bedecked with pictures of wolves illuminated by lonely headlights, is going to wrestle you to the ground, before it’s slavering jaws lock tightly around your neck until you give it the attention it craves. Flatly, it expects me to refuse to pay attetnion to anything else for it’s duration. Thankfully, it’s a title that is less suggestive than it is threateningly indicative. … Continue Reading

Fuck Buttons – Tarot Sport

Fuck Buttons – Tarot Sport

Progression is at once the enemy and the friend of new bands the world over. Don’t progress, and you’re condemned as formulaic and linear, a relative dinosaur compared to others expanding their horizons and aiming for that bright blue yonder. But equally, stray too far from the confines you set yourself on your first LP/demo/EP and you might be accused of betraying your musical ideals and values, or trying to run before you’ve managed to crawl.

It’s with a little trepidation that I approach Tarot Sport therefore: having heard from band and critic alike that this is a new direction for Fuck Buttons, I’m unsure as to whether it’ll be a Great Leap Forward or a disastrous attempt at revolution.  I should relax, really, because I know that Fuck Buttons are one of my favourite acts of the past few years, and that they’d have to deviate pretty far from their norm to disappoint me. … Continue Reading

Beastie Boys – Ill Communication (Remastered)

Beastie Boys – Ill Communication

“Timeless”

Funny word, timeless. The implications are that whatever you’re describing exists outside of time as an eternal fixture. Which if thought through, is pretty much what every book or painting or indeed album or band does as part of it’s existence. I don’t really believe that an album ever ‘ages’; a  musical document of a moment or series of moments can’t age. But the listener does. Shed Seven were always crap, it just took certain people a long time to realise it.  Anyway, I should stop opening reviews with cod-philosophy. Point taken.

That said, when Adam ‘MCA’ Yauch was diagnosed with cancer last month, it finally dawned on me that Beastie Boys were old. Previously, I’d seen them in the same way that many see AC/DC or Iron Maiden – timeless fixtures of hip-hop and 20th century culture. Maybe it was the live shows; energetic, exciting and probably up there with the very best I’ve ever seen, but I’d never thought that MCA, Ad Rock and Mike D would ever seem ‘old’ or in any way mortal. … Continue Reading

Jackie O Motherfucker – London Café Oto

Jackie O Motherfucker

July 10, 2009

I don’t make a habit of drinking at live shows – it’s not a tenet I subscribe to, but I just tend to get irritated when I’m swaying more than the drunk or stoned frontman leaning off the edge of the stage. Plus of course, live venues are notorious for being able to empty your wallet and your savings account with one fell trip barwards for a round. And that’s not mentioning the numerous bladder emptying breaks required, interrupting the flow of the music, or meaning you miss watching the guitarist punch the singer and then stuff him through the bass drum before storming off.

That said, tonight’s a Friday, and my plus one is resolutely emasculating me and plying me with liquor in the confines of the homely and increasingly warm and fuzzy Café Oto. Don’t worry though, the buck stops right there. When she offers me her jacket as I shiver a little; outside staring into Dalston on a summer evening that’s not as warm as might be hoped, I refuse. … Continue Reading

Pagan Wanderer Lu – Fight My Battles For Me

Pagan Wanderer Lu - Fight My Battles For Me

A cursory glance at Pagan Wanderer Lu’s Last.fm page is most revealing, it seems. The comments box is dotted with wayward metal fans who have evidently been waylaid by the presence of ‘Pagan’ in the name. When an Eastern European black metal fan leaves you a comment saying simply “weird”, you’re probably doing something which qualifies as right, under the correct circumstances.

That said, I don’t know if ‘weird’ is the right terminology for Fight My Battles For Me, a ramshackle collection of bedroom lo-fi in the truest sense of the word. It’s not something I’d listen to readily, but something ‘weird’ wouldn’t feature songs you could happily whistle along to whilst you go about your daily doings. Would it?

I think the point we’ve reached is that where it becomes clear that weird, like it’s estranged cousin beauty, is very much in the eye of the beholder. So maybe we’re best settling with odd as a word to describe Andy Regan’s latest stitched together album. ‘The Gentleman’s Game’ juxtaposes angry shouted swear word choruses and the wonderful opening line “Matthew’s bleeding from his mouth”, whilst ‘Good Christian/Bad Christian’ takes a Public Enemy/Dalek style sample of a raging preacher and overlays it with a bent keyboard riff and wry observations about religion. … Continue Reading

!!!, London Electric Ballroom

!!! (chk chk chk)

July 7, 2009

There’s a sad inevitability to it, but the fact is that any fairly normal white man dancing around a stage is going to end up looking a little bit like Bez. It’s not about the maracas, or the slight paunch, or even the dopey grin and the thousand-yard stare. It’s an association with what a white man dancing looks like which has been irrevocably etched onto my retinas. Bez haunts my waking dreams.

So sorry to the frontman of !!!, but when you preen and pout on stage in your wifebeater and waterproof jacket, I’m thinking not of your deliciously funky moves, but instead of a Mancunian gurning with a pair of maracas. … Continue Reading

Andrew WK – I Get Wet

Andrew WK - I Get Wet

Sometimes, I forget what music is supposed to be about. It’s supposed to be about fun. It’s supposed to be about making you feel good, about making damn sure that you feel like the king of your very own hill, even if it’s just a hill of beans.

So let’s be clear from the start that my appreciation of I Get Wet isn’t ironic. Submitting it as a classic album review isn’t my way of sticking it to the man, the floppy haired scenesters or the slack-jawed musicophiles, though if it does so, that’ll be a bonus. My appreciation for the white clad madman Andrew WK is based on one solid, unquestionably objective truth: I Get Wet rocks hard, and it rocks fast.

Put yourself in Andrew WK‘s position: you’re a musical genius by all accounts, a virtuoso on piano, and a multi talented instrumentalist who has lent his hand to Current 93 and Boredoms, amongst others. You’re the son of a well-respected lawyer and author of several acclaimed legal textbooks. And when you sit down to write a solo record, you throw that all away and make something bigger, better, harder and more aggro than any of your biography should permit. Big drums and great slabs of dumb, unrefined guitar are the meat and potatoes of this album, finished off with a those roaring vocals and frenetic synth work.

In some ways, it’s no surprise that Andrew’s current gig is as a motivational speaker. That there’s a bludgeoning nature to his ‘message’ should be obvious, hearing what he does to a pair of speakers with ‘She Is Beautiful’. If the title suggests a whimsical love song about sunset beaches and that special girl, you obviously don’t know your WK. Take a love song, cut it into pieces with a meat cleaver and then smear the bloody remnants all over your face, screaming out “SHE. IS. BEAUTIFUL.” at the very top of your voice. This is love, WK style. Direct, to the point and taking no prisoners. … Continue Reading

Wolf Eyes – Always Wrong

Wolf Eyes

“Out of chaos comes order”.

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Sublime Frequencies, London Tufnell Park Dome

Sublime Frequencies

May 29th 2009

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Times New Viking, London Cable Studios

Times New Viking

May 18th 2009

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