Sleigh Bells

August 9, 2010

Seeing a gig at The Lexington is always a treat; it’s one of the few bars in London that offers a genuinely strong line-up of American beers and bourbons, combined with a large selection of guns and dead stuff on the walls.

Sighing as we finally enter the upstairs area of The Lexington, full of burger and Brooklyn Lager, Becoming Real are winding up a set primarily involving poking laptops, banging drums and generally making noise. Pleasingly hypnotic is the only description I can accurately use to describe them, sounding a little like Tom Tom Club without any of the groove or hip/lame (depending on your frame of reference) vocals.

The burrito-loving Dalston band Teeth are up next, with a much more energetic performance involving a lot of jumping, solo drumming and shouting. With a rather abrasive and electronic-sound, I’d definitely recommend checking out their awesome new single ‘See Spaces’. Interestingly, almost all of their music was being played from a single laptop, which left three questions hanging in the air: how much is actually being contributed live, whether that actually matters and whether they would consider accidentally dropping the machine into a pool of beer.

And these questions are important for an analysis of Sleigh Bells’ performance – well, at least the first two. Their records powerfully loud, incorporating elements of thrash, metal, R ‘n’ B and sugary chart-pop, and I’d been wondering how the two members were going to recreate the sound. But not to worry, for they do just that; and they do it perfectly, in fact.

The only issue is that it is recreated by judicious use of pre-recorded samples, which aren’t obviously triggered or (visibly) activated by a sequencer. Essentially, it becomes difficult to tell what is live and what’s been pre-recorded, with almost all of the tracks incorporating several intertwining guitar tracks, cut up rhythms and blasts of noise. Whether this matters to you is dependent on how important you hold “purity of experience” to be at live gigs, or whether you’re just going to hear the music and get involved.

There’s a lot of opportunity for that for the latter, and with such a short back catalogue to choose from, they manage to play pretty much all the songs I hoped them to play. My favourites, ‘A/B Machines’ and ‘Infinity Guitars’ comes early in the set, though the dark threat of the pinched-by-M.I.A. ‘Treats’ and laid back Californian sunshine of ‘Rill Rill’ seem the most popular with the enthusiastic crowd.

No-one, however, is as enthusiastic as ex-school teacher (damn it, I was sure I was going to get through the review without mentioning the standard issue hook) Alexis Krauss. Throwing herself into the audience and removing layers of clothing like some sort of slamdance of the seven veils, she is perfectly captivating as the focal point of the performance. So much so, in fact, that she distracts from the whole question of what’s live and what isn’t. Which is what’s important in the end, I guess.

Cold Cave

May 12, 2010

Maybe it’s the slight drunkenness, maybe it’s the moving horse head in the pub before the gig, maybe it’s the hour I spend trying to talk to a Dutch girl in rudimentary German when all I know are requests for snack food and lewd come-ons, maybe it’s the way Cargo seems like a cross between a Mediaeval dungeon and a BBC set for a dystopian science fiction drama, with huge exposed pipes and thick black curtains. Whatever the reason, opening band Factory Floor come close to being the cheapest hallucinogenic experience I’ve ever had bar sleep deprivation and that time I didn’t eat for 5 days.

Listening on record, their music is much easier to trace; Krautrocky bass rhythms, insistent drum loops and vocal processors with the reverb function set firmly to “toilet bowl”. In Cargo however, the circular ‘Atrocity Exhibition’ pounding of Gabriel Gurnsey, the shuddering and swirling synth slurry effortlessly tweaked and beckoned by Dom Butler and the shrieking stabs of violin-bowed guitar from the statuesque (reviewspeak for hot) Nik Void don’t just take centre stage, but obliterate it. The whole experience is somewhere between euphoric and terrifying, much like being drowned in a vat of peanut butter and jam by Ian Rush (my touchstones for euphoria may differ from yours).

Factory Floor own me now.

But on to the headliners, Cold Cave. Formed by legendary hardcore person/hardchorister Wesley Eisold (who has hilariously written several songs for Fall Out Boy, fact fans), grace us with their presence for significantly less than 40 minutes – and in a recession, too!

What we do hear of them, however, is promising. Wesley is doing his best Robert Smith after swallowing a reverb pedal impression over tracks that stick to the same tried and tested formula of:

REALLY LOUD DISTORTED NOISE -> DRUM BEATS -> HUMAN LEAGUE -> ABRUPT ENDING

That isn’t meant to denigrate; I like all of those composite parts and put together they really work, with the distorted squalling giving some much needed muscle and threat to their creations which can occasionally wander into anaemia on record. But there’s not a lot of variance, meaning that even a whistlestop set drags a little.

‘Love Comes Close’ betrays itself as a rip-off of New Order’s ‘Temptation’ but proves popular with the otherwise typically East-as-you-like crowd (I think I heard someone applaud once) – my personal high point is ‘Life Magazine’, where Jennifer Clavin of 4M (my name for Much Missed Mika Miko) takes centre stage for the only time in the whole set. Her heart-seeking missile vocals and the Computerwelt propulsion really lift matters with a perfect serving of fizzy pop.

If Cold Cave have taught us anything, it’s that hardcore, punk and noise (aural pugilist Prurient provides high quality knob-tweaking alongside previously mentioned artists and drummer Guy Licata) can all come together at the dinner table and add up, somehow, to POP. Sure, Factory Floor own me, but if I’m having to pick a wedding band to get people dancing (I’m assuming the wedding isn’t in East London) I’d go with Cold Cave any day. Although Factory Floor might be able to hypnotise someone into marrying me. I’ll have a word.

Frightened Rabbit - The Winter Of Mixed Drinks

There is every reason for Frightened Rabbit to be triumphant. After two critically well received albums they teeter on the edge of the mainstream, while Glasvegas, the band they are likely to be erroneously compared to have proven themselves exactly as good as you would expect of a group hyped by today’s Alan McGee and today’s NME; right up there with date-rape and bowel cancer.

Adding members at such a rate they should be approaching Los Campesinos! in terms of stage-filling ability this time next year, Frightened Rabbit’s sound has been expanding appropriately. Their new LP, The Winter of Mixed Drinks kicks off with ‘Things,’ a thudding behemoth of a song which swells and reaches upward ad infinitum like an ancient stone fist.

And there is an ancient quality to the album – if you liked the ho down atmosphere provided by mandolin and folk dance rhythm on the last record’s only excursion into cheeriness, ‘Old Old Fashioned’, you’ll enjoy a lot of the similarly twinkly, strummy, handclappy textures present here. Case in point: ‘The Loneliness and the Scream’, which is far, far, jollier than the title would suggest.

In fact, the whole album could be summed up in that previous sentence – Leonard Cohen said on his recent tour that despite “studying deeply in the philosophies and religions…cheerfulness kept breaking through”. Well cheerfulness has not only broken through here, it has completely eviscerated the melancholy that the band previously wielded like a hammer to the chest. Indeed, the album seems to be perfectly (and as a man exactly as cynical as I could add, consciously) designed to be hammered out from festival stages. The Winter of Mixed Drinks? More like the summer of pear cider.

Which is, perhaps just to mopey old me, a bit of a problem. It’s like having a friend who got you through your darkest times by always being slightly worse off than you – you’d been dumped, they’d been stabbed by their ex-girlfriend – who is now engaged to the man/woman/manwoman of their dreams. You don’t resent their happiness, but you can’t quite find it in your heart to be completely 100% happy for them either.

It doesn’t help that they drop the ball themselves occasionally, either. ‘Nothing Like You’ should be one of the best pop songs they’ve created, right up there with ‘The Twist’, but the song demonstrates its ill-fittedness for the band by forcing Scott Hutchison to sings in a much higher register than suits him and ends up sounding strangled, in a decidedly not good way. Add in the patently laughable key lyric “She was not the cure for cancer/and all my questions still ask for answers” and you’re left wondering if this really is the same band who used to hold your hand and scream into the void for you.

Still, lead single ‘Swim Until You Can’t See Land’ is, despite copping the central conceit from British Sea Power’s superior ‘Fear of Drowning’, excellent and ‘Living in Colour’ hits all the right anthemic notes without feeling forced.

Overall, this album leaves me wondering whether if Frightened Rabbit have really changed for the worse or whether it’s just a personal preference for misery that leaves me feeling a bit cold and exhausted by the perpetual triumphalism of Winter of Mixed Drinks. My sneaking suspicion is there’s a smidgeon of the latter, but a huge wedge of the former, which is a real shame. Still, I’m happy for them. I really am. But if they want someone to bitch about ex girlfriends and the bad old times with, I’m right here, waiting for my old friends to come back.

A Hawk and a Hacksaw - Délivrance

With their last two records, A Hawk and a Hacksaw provided two different approaches. There was the more-or-less pop approach with added gypsy instruments and melismatic howling of The Way the Wind Blows‘ opener ‘In the River’ and then the full blown Hungarian folk rattlings of the admittedly descriptive but rather awkwardly titled A Hawk and a Hacksaw and the Hun Hangár Ensemble. So what did the best band from Athens, Georgia who are actually from New Mexico do? They did the right and proper thing and combined them.

Délivrance manages to blend the two sides rather effectively, especially on tracks like the dulcimer-led ‘Kertész’, which, from certain chord progressions and the vocal line manages to sound clearly Western yet with a musical accompaniment written to chase pigs around a Romanian hillside to. There is also a variety of material which was possibly lacking from … and the Hun Hangár Ensemble, with the frequent pig-chasing songs broken up by excellent atmospheric pieces like ‘Vasalisa Carries a Flaming Skull Through the Forest’ which manages to live up to, and indeed actually sound like, its brilliant title. Indeed, the restrained nature of ‘Vasalisa‘ is all the more refreshing after a great number of tracks with a “let’s just throw all the gypsy instruments we can at it” approach, and it manages to be the most memorable track on the entire collection.

And that point touches on a few criticisms I would raise of Délivrance. While providing more sonic diversity than their previous diversity, the constant onrush of the songs can sometimes end up blurring individual pieces together into one giant musical gulyás (yes I used the original Hungarian spelling of goulash, what are you gonna do about it? I just like getting accents in), leaving the listener unable to tell their Zibiciu from their Lassú (yes! Another one!). It also perhaps suffers from being so well-connected to its folk traditions that it remains unlikely to appeal to a large section of the general music consuming populace in a way that, say, Beirut do. Whether that’s a bad thing or not is really up to you, unattractive reader (I’m joking, you look very unique), but my personal taste is perhaps too connected to the Western pop traditions that belched me out and left me unable to remain cool in front of girls in clubs if they play songs that I like, and I sometimes end up yearning to hear a more crossover gypsypop work from A Hawk and a Hacksaw.

Still, Délivrance is a very assured work, and easily surpasses anything else in the bands always-bigger-than-I-remember back catalogue in terms of instrumental prowess and sheer enjoyment factor. It seems that A Hawk and a Hacksaw are definitely putting up a good fight to reclaim the coveted “Best Band with a Shakespearian Name” award back from Titus Andronicus. Come on guys, time for a collaboration?

Frightened Rabbit

April 15th 2009

It can be heartbreaking to go to a live gig and see songs that mean the world to you disinterestedly rushed through by the band that originally wrote them. Songwriters get tired of their own songs, they resent people preferring their lovely little three-minute pop ditty to their four hour long song-cycle about the Eastern European public transport system. To see something so dear to you be treated as lightweight, something to be rushed through before playing some tracks from the new album, as an inconvenience, especially by its own creator seems to invalidate our own opinions and leave us distrusting our judgement.

As one of the many people around the world with something of a large emotional investment in Frightened Rabbit, especially their album The Midnight Organ Fight (large is perhaps an understatement – if my emotions were money, I could probably contribute a large part of the G20′s bailout with that investment), I was thinking about this on the way to their live gig at the Scala. I quite liked their recent live album, but it somehow didn’t seem to pull quite the same strings, and it’s now a year since TMOF came out; what if they’re sick of it? What if they spend the whole gig plugging a new record? WHAT IF NOBODY LIKES ME?

Anyway, getting to the gig just on time, after missing the much-lauded support acts We Were Promised Jetpacks and Airship (I blame the Guinness, your honour), we managed to elbow our way into the centre of the floor with moments to spare before Frightened Rabbit took the stage, looking about as unglamorous as it’s possible to be, much more like music fans (and ones who probably knew the lyrics and alternative live lyrics to every b-side – they had obsessive fans’ beards) than the terrified leporids who had managed to worm their way into my consciousness like Russell Brand into a convent school.

It became clear about twenty seconds into the first song ‘I Feel Better’ that my initial worries were going to be unfounded; they played slower, less crystal-clear and more embattled than on their record, with singer Scott Hutchison seeming to ignore the melodies he had sung on the record itself in favour of whatever seemed most appropriate at the time, which generally meant wringing every extra drop of melancholy and resignation out of their already heartbreaking songbook. At times, especially in the most desolate songs it was almost painful to watch. Far from being a performer, it seemed the song was being dragged out of him; in hymn for the cheated-on ‘Good Arms Vs. Bad Arms,’ one could imagine the act was happening right in front of him, and the despair and absence of self-belief in his voice for the line “I might not want you back, but I want to kill him” was not pleasant to hear, at all.

Not that the gig was an utter blub-fest; the songs that were perhaps less intricately threaded with his psyche shone, especially ‘Floating in the Forth,’ which was prefaced with a (comparatively) jolly little anecdote about how he worried his mother by stating he was moving to Fife to write songs for the third album, when it would appear in the context of the song they were about to play that “moving to Fife” was a metaphor for suicide. I guess you had to be there. The band did their best to lift the atmosphere as well, with some incredibly muscular drumming and guitar that sounded like they wanted to slice through the walls of the venue and out into the King’s Cross darkness.

They played all the “proper” songs from TMOF, ‘The Greys’ and ‘Square 9′ from their “shite” first album (his words), so there were a fair amount of highlights to pick from, but the two songs they played for the encore probably topped it. After leaving the stage to huge cheering from what was the biggest crowd that had ever come to see them play (or does he say that to all the audiences, the flirt), Scott came on to play a solo acoustic version of ‘Poke’, and when I say acoustic, I mean acoustic. His guitar wasn’t plugged in, and he didn’t use a microphone, he just leaned forward off the stage and sung out, his voice and guitar carrying easily around the not inconsiderable room. It was one of those moments where everyone falls silent (they had to or they wouldn’t have heard it – clever thinking) and really, really listens. It was stunning.

But it wouldn’t have been a suitable way to end – the rest of the band came on, accompanied by the extra member with thick glasses who was apparently a favourite with the ladies, or at least the girl I was at the gig with (apparently being a speccy mandolin player is in this season) and managed to transform ‘Keep Yourself Warm’ from a desolate lament about loveless casual sex into a life-affirming tower of song that didn’t just fill the Scala, it could have leaked out and filled the Emirates as well. This was the only gig I’ve ever been to where I felt totally drained, not by pogoing around like a tool into thick walls of thug, but just from experiencing it, and if that sounds cheesy just pretend it’s being performed live by Frightened Rabbit; it could move you to tears.

Art Brut - Art Brut vs. Satan

I have long held a fondness for Art Brut – back to when I saw them supporting the man who made being cruelly overlooked an art form, Luke Haines with The Auteurs in November 2004. I’d got to University and London for the first time about two weeks previously, and had no idea where Islington was. I had been unable to drum up any enthusiasm amongst my new peers to go and see the gig; they hadn’t heard of the Auteurs (suffice to say I’m not in contact with them anymore), so I went exclusively with people from my hometown and, knowing me, was probably trying to pretend I knew London like the back of my masturbation implement of choice. We got lost.

By the time we got in, the support act had started and everyone was exchanging slightly bemused looks. The drummer was standing up instead of sitting down like the usual moistly glistening mound of skinslammer most bands relegate to the darkness at the rear of the stage. The guitarists were falling over and pissing themselves (not literally). And the singer- well, the singer wasn’t a singer. He was shouting and pacing up and down, looking like what he was saying were the most important utterances since God warned Adam away from his orgasm-apple tree. It just worked.

We argued before Luke Haines came on – I insisted that ‘Rusted Guns of Milan’ was a touching and intensely accurate masterpiece of the terrors of fledgling sexual experiences. My friends said it was an extended ejaculation joke. I maintain the two aren’t mutually exclusive. Anyway, I was hooked, and followed them through their slightly repetitive but otherwise fantastic debut Bang Bang Rock and Roll, and their slicked-back masterpiece It’s A Bit Complicated ignoring the usual criticisms levelled at them: the music’s just boring straight-ahead rock, he just repeats stupid slogans, there’s no real wit or intelligence there. So I similarly ignored the first negative reports I heard about their latest, Art Brut vs. Satan. Hell, it’s produced by Frank Black and its title presumably refers to Heavenly vs. Satan, one of my favourite albums ever.

And it starts decently enough: ‘Alcoholics Unanimous’, while not vintage Art Brut, is peppy and funny enough to open. The opening tracks continue in this vein, dealing with comic books, getting the bus, fancying a girl you’re too scared to talk to, cheating with someone you don’t even fancy, basically everyday Art Brut staples. The spoken-word (well, more spoken-word than normal) ‘Am I Normal?’ is funny and moving in equal measure and is consequently one of their best songs, while ‘DC Comics and Chocolate Milkshake’ has a great melody along with one of my very favourite dry and astutely-observed Eddie Argos lines: “I’m in love with the girl in my comic shop/She’s a girl that likes comics, she probably gets it a lot.”

But then they get onto music. When they last wrote about music we got ‘Nag Nag Nag Nag,’ possibly one of the best songs of 2006 – this time we get ‘The Replacements’ where Eddie tells us he’s only just discovered the classic Minneapolis punk band. Over and over and over again. Or ‘Twist and Shout’ where he explains he’s had a song stuck in his head. And that’s it. Or even worse, ‘Demons Out!’, where all the self-deprecating joy of ‘Formed a Band’ is replaced by possibly-meant-to-be-ironic-but-doesn’t-come-across-well snobbery (“The record buying public shouldn’t be voting” and “No-one likes the music we write” are the lines that really stick out), and Art Brut turn from the funny guy at the party into the guy who gets you in a corner and yells at you for liking music that isn’t unlistenable Scandinavian post doom metal turgid drone-rock. And the way they dub in some some guitar mistakes and background noise into ‘Slap Dash for No Cash’, a song which extols the virtue of non-glossy music, completely ignoring the fact that the rest of the album is entirely glossy, irritates me to a slightly worrying extent.

This album isn’t awful; take the first five tracks and you’ve got a great EP, but the second side is annoying, pompous and frankly unfunny – criticisms I’ve spent a great deal of time deflecting from Art Brut. Let’s just hope that Eddie Argos focuses on the kitchen-sink subjects in future and doesn’t make a habit of singing about music, because if he carries on he may well turn into the Satan his band are apparently against. It’s time to forget irony, to forget rock and roll and start talking to the kids again.

Grace/Wastelands

The first sound that opens Grace/Wastelands, Peter Doherty‘s first solo effort proper, is the click of plectrum on muted guitar strings and a hushed count-in. So far, so much like the various discs of demos self-released over the years since The Libertines imploded in a blaze of guardsmen’s jackets, fistfights and visions of England both crystal-sharp and pink-gin tinted. But something has changed: ‘Arcady’ is a song Peterphiles have heard countless times before, though it’s previously seemed aimless and unfocused, like it was being written and re-thought during its performance. Here, though, with producer Stephen Street and collaborator Graham Coxon, the songs have been finished, polished and rethought before recording.

This album, then, is the first Peter Doherty solo album – The Libertines and Babyshambles’ four studio records were definitely group efforts, with Doherty’s poetic side complimented and obscured by his erstwhile contributors. So what is the state of Albion? Pretty good, actually, to the shock of a good number of record critics. Grace/Wastelands has been praised for its sonic range, featuring cinematic strings, dub rhythms (including that reverb/delay drenched “distant horn” type noise that always seems to show up on any vaguely dubby sounding track) and even a jazz stomp on the excellent ‘Sweet By And By’.

And Doherty’s songs stand up very well generally; his favourite subject, the contrast of real-life Britain with the pastoral idyll of Albion is the subject of most of the tracks here – when he does stray to portraits of non-English subjects such as biblical stripper and renowned severed-head fan Salomé, it is through a Wildean cipher. But when the seam is so rich, why should we be upset when Doherty decides to stay inside his comfort zone? Especially when it produces songs like ’1939 Returning,’ a beautiful and sorrowful effort that compares the experiences of soldiers and evacuees in the Second World War with what they’re doing now, where “pills aren’t the only blues”.

There are weak points: the only song with a Doherty/Barât credit here, ‘A Little Death Around the Eyes’ has a wonderfully menacing Scott Walker gloss on it, though one can’t quite imagine the patron saint of avant-garde music disguised as pop penning the couplet “Your boyfriend’s name was Dave/I was bold and brave”. It’s no punching a donkey in the streets of Galway, that’s for sure. And Doherty’s voice isn’t quite up to the demands some of the songs place on it, but it is a lot clearer and less incomprehensible than it has been previously, which is A Good Thing unless you can’t stand the sound of it, but one would wonder why you were listening, unless perhaps you were a Sun reporter determined to draw some sort of drug narrative out of it.

Ah yes. Drugs. The lesser cause of Doherty’s problems throughout his life (the greater being the media), and the reason he exists as a character rather than an artist and performer in the minds of most of the braying idiots who trample around being confused and angry. I was determined I would only mention them at the very end of the review, because they don’t need to be mentioned in the same breath as Peter Doherty anymore. With Grace/Wastelands, he has silenced his critics and done what his real function is. Not selling papers, not being the subject of tutted disdain at Daily Mail readers’ dinner and veiled race-hate parties, but making music, and bloody good music at that. Don’t Look Back Into the Sun, eh?

Data Select Party

The opening of Data Select Party‘s EP/mini-album Hanging Out With Humans puts one in mind of the fantastic Dirty Projectors.

Clean, summery guitar burbles lock with a sprightly-moving round-sounded bass and off the beat drums. And I love the Dirty Projectors. Not only because the girls in it are beautiful and the frontman looks like a geography teacher, in fact, it’s mainly because they’re so fantastic and complex and dancey and beautiful and just, well, just wonderful.

The reason I’m gushing about Dirty Projectors in a review about someone else is that I’m a positive, summery guy. I like to walk down the streets scattering daisies and farting rainbows. I give sweets to children I’ve never even met before! Actually, that last one sometimes gets me into trouble, but what I’m trying to affirm is that I like being nice about things. And so the reason I was talking about Dirty Projectors wasn’t really because Data Select Party sound like them, apart from the first twenty-odd seconds of ‘The White Bear,’ no, it’s because I wanted to be nice about something.

Because it ain’t gonna be Data Select Party. I really wanted to like them. I really wanted to hear some great up-and-coming British pop. I’ve been really getting into American indie recently, because the British scene is dying on its ass (see, I’m even talking American!) and I’ve been desperately casting around for a saviour to lift us out of the landfill that is UK guitar music at the moment. To be fair, they have a decent stab at lifting ideas from one of the few interesting British bands around at the moment, but even with their Internet pop culture references (the final song here is called – and strap back your gag reflex a second – ‘The Woot The Hot The Hotness’) and shouty backing vocals, Los Campesinos! they ain’t. Los Campesinos! might talk about blogging, livejournals and ringtones, but their words are smart, eloquent and raise a smile however many times you hear them.

“We’re dressed up to dress down, and turning heads all over town” is by no means an insightful lyric; it sounds like the sort of meaningless shout-a-long swaggery refrain The Fratellis might squirt out. And sprinkling Uniqlo references is all very well, but it doesn’t achieve anything. These are phrases pulled out of conversations, but the effect isn’t one of mystery, excitement, fun or anything except banality. And the vocals stink. I worked with a guy who was a total jock but was really into Emo, and noticing my interest in music he lent me a load of dreadful records in that genre – and that is what I think of when I hear the singing on Hanging Out With Humans. As over-sung as the average X-Factor contestant and with the typical horrible transatlantic accent of people who grew up singing along to Dashboard Confessional, Saves the Day and other best-forgotten skidmarks on musical history.

The guitars are okay, and the music is generally bouncy, if forgettable, but there is absolutely no way I can recommend Data Select Party for anything more than playing loudly to irritate someone upstairs, blaring it out of a window to stop cats mating or listening to it as inspiration to go and start your own band that manage to be poppy and interesting at the same time. Please?

My Sad Captains - Here And Elsewhere

Back in autumn last year, I went to see the War on Drugs, a fantastic combination of squalling feedback, Springsteen-propulsion and sun-baked Americana. They had presumably arrived on these shores feeling like conquerors, with a few of their own dates scattered their big gig supporting the now all-conquering Hold Steady. Well, Tad Kubler’s pancreas put paid to that (you could say it Almost Killed him. Hah!), forcing the fist-pumping Berryman-fanciers to postpone their Britannic excursion, and therefore stranding the War on Drugs on these grey shores without their promised big break and with just a handful of disparate headlining gigs.

And thus was the slightly drizzling mood which gripped Brixton as me and my friend trudged to the Windmill to indulge in the escapism you get from hearing songs written for clear blue skies and rolling American deserts. But we got moved long before we expected to be; after a couple of predictably awful support bands, My Sad Captains took the stage, looking slightly awkward and entirely unmatched to the sub-Oasis pub rock that had gone before or the transcendentalist shimmering thunder that was presumably to follow.

Now, roll with me a second – mainstream British guitar indie music is more or less dead. Pointless post-Libertines idiots like The Kooks, The Pigeon Detectives, The Enemy and others shamble around like retarded mammoths, mining the Kinks/Joy Division/Smiths playbook for whatever discarded crumbs still remain within. It’s clearly time to mine a new seam of influence, or to play it safe – several. Which brings me on to My Sad Captains’ debut album Here and Elsewhere. They sound a good deal like lots of music you’ve heard already, but it’s difficult to put your finger on what exactly. Sure, singer Ed Wallis‘ voice has a resemblance to a certain Mr. Malkmus, but the guitars are softer and less wonky than Pavement’s, while the keyboards and soft female backing vocals make it all sound a little bit twee.

But then I swear title track, ‘Here and Elsewhere’ quotes the opening theme to hit snooker-based gameshow Big Break, and the shuffling percussion and chiming piano in ‘You Talk All Night’ evokes The National’s actual modern classic Boxer. I just don’t know where it’s all coming from! What I do know, however, is that every song is distinctive and barely takes one listen to get stuck in your head. And ‘All Hats No Plans’ is, minus a lame advertising campaign and some intensive radio-play, a top ten hit waiting to happen.

Hopefully this band is going places. They’re playing SXSW in a few weeks, they have this fantastic debut album and keyboardist Cathy Lucas is a potential indie-pop poster girl in the vein of Amelia Fletcher or Isobel Campbell; all baggy jumper and cool/uncool hair. I have no idea what their distribution is going to be like, but in this digital futureground of instant pornography and virtual burglaries, I’m sure you’ll be able to track it down somehow. Just make sure you do get your hands on it for a great slice of vaguely melancholic exquisitely-sculpted guitar pop. And then tell your friends. Come on, it’s time to slay landfill indie for good, and there’s finally a band with the potential mass-appeal, cardigans and most importantly, the melodies to do it. Who’s with me?

Erol Alkan's Dance Area

‘AA 24/7′ is the fourth release from implausibly named danceparty hero Erol Alkan‘s Phantasy Sound label.

Despite sounding like a Norwegian soft drink, he is the centrepiece of the hip London scene, which is probably even more fun that it sounds; especially as it makes anyone trying to write about you sound like their dad. Facing a slightly uncertain clubbing future due to central London’s club scene swiftly being dismantled to allow commuters to get a slightly faster train through our great city, he has begun to focus increasingly on producing the beats instead of pouring them onto the dancefloor like gooey funkbutter.

Before working on last year’s almost but sadly not brilliant Late of the Pier‘s album, his most well known non-remix work was probably The Long Blondes‘ sophomore effort, Couples. Whether that record was ruined by Erøl Ã…lkãn’s over zealous knob-twiddling or by a simple paucity of song ideas remains open for debate, but I would argue he still currently lies somewhere between the great producers (Nigel Godrich/Brian Eno/Steve Albini) and the celebrity ones (Mark Ronson/Bernard Butler/Mick Jones).

And so we come to the beneficiaries of his electronic wizardry: Dance Area are composed of two chaps with the awesome and much less fjord-like monikers of “Dirk Boogie” and “Mollono Van Bass” (weren’t they from The Hives?) and ‘AA 24/7′ is their pumping, humping dancevenue smasher, ready to suck the kids into a mindless orgy of leg-shaking and crotch-wiggling.

Only problem is it isn’t, really. It’s all a bit thin and doesn’t really go anywhere – sounds like something you might throw into a gradual build before something dropping something really big. It might be useful for a DJ, but on its own it feels like the extra bits of lego you got just in case you got hungry and ate some. Sure, it’s got shouty bits you can agree with (“Do it!” and “Always! Anytime! 24/7!”) but it’s really just a bit thin and, well, inconsequential.

My suggestion would be to ignore this and get your hands on the vastly superior Diplo remix, which really kills, primarily by taking very little of the track along with it to the afterlife – replacing most everything with a huge dirty house synth. I reckon that, especially with the closure of The End and the resulting dismantling of easy to get to cool indie/dance discos in central London, Ěŗǿł Āľķăń needs to get with someone with some real good ideas, and real soon.