Beach House - Teen Dream
For the intrigued/lazy amongst you we’ve decided to condense a month’s worth of blabber into an easy to digest Spotify playlist. Included are tracks from reviewed albums by Laura Viers, Beach House and Delphic as well as some January singles (OK and some late December ones) from These New Puritans, Late of The Pier, Plan B, I Was A King and The Strange Boys. … Continue Reading
Mike Doughty
February 2nd 2010
“I want to be on you”. Ron Burgundy’s “immortal words” are those chosen by Mike Doughty to sell himself to the British public.
Doughty, formerly of alt-rock band Soul Coughing, is pretty popular in the States, but relatively unknown here. My question referred to selling himself to us in the style of a dating ad. His witty answer, I come to realise, is standard.
The American singer-songwriter is a fairly open book, regularly tweeting (find him @mikedoughtyyeah) and blogging on his website, where he comments honestly on his day to day activities and thoughts on the happenings in the world; two recent tweets include “Lousy night. Crowd couldn’t have cared less” and “Salinger gone – perhaps we’ll at last hear his Rock Opera”. Is it important for him to keep in touch with fans? “I think it ends up being important, but the reason I do it is just my general obsession with killing time online” he says. “I think my crowd feels pretty close to me because of the access I give to myself, but I don’t think it’s necessarily vital to being a musician these days”.
This openness has extended to a book about his previous life as a drug addict, which he’s in the process of writing. Mike claims “writing prose is a lot more time consuming than song writing” and that “linear thinking” is not his strength. He’s currently struggling to write about his time with Soul Coughing, describing it as “pretty shitty”.
… Continue Reading
Arctic Monkeys
I’m not really too bothered about who he’s fucking, or where he lives, or even what he gets up to outside music. He can become an actor if he wants, start painting….. whatever. I’m concerned about Alex Turner, ‘the indie icon’, about this ‘genius’ tag that has prematurely been bestowed upon his slender frame. … Continue Reading
The Wilderness Of Manitoba
We’re into January now which means, for some, more nights in to discover new music. Thankfully, we’re on hand (as ever) to guide you in the right direction – this time towards a breathtaking discovery in Canadian slowcore band, The Wilderness Of Manitoba. Their music is stripped back to a skeleton of stark and slowly-moving opuses, emotion bleeding through the grazes.
We took the band to one side and asked them a few questions which will familiarise you with the background as you fall in love with the music over at the MySpace. … Continue Reading
Dimbleby and Capper
Don’t be fooled by the ampersand, for Dimbleby & Capper are just one. 22-year-old Laura Bettinson – who miraculously remains unsigned – produces witty, refreshing and sultry dark electronic pop. She certainly has a lot in common with artists like Goldfrapp and The Knife, but adds a more playful reality to the electro-pop tunes. Tipped by Radio1’s Huw Stephens, she featured on the ‘BBC Introducing’ stage backed by an entourage of masked musicians at this years Glastonbury. Laura will no doubt be riding the crest of 2010’s torrent of Microkorg toting electro-pop artists. To hear Dimbleby & Capper is to understand why. One visit to her MySpace page will have you humming to yourself for weeks. … Continue Reading
Bowie's Lodger
By 1977, the collaboration between David Bowie and Brian Eno was running out of steam, which is fair enough when the last two years had each produced a genuine masterpiece of ambition and invention. Their final work together, Lodger, a more blurred musical vision than either of the previous two, is seen to represent the duo veering away from each others musical trajectories. After it, Bowie would lunge again at the mainstream, at first cautiously with Scary Monsters, and then without abandon with Let’s Dance. Eno, on the other hand, was busy hitching his wagon to David Byrne’s jerky star, making albums every bit as experimental and impressive as Low and Heroes.
Lodger is indeed noticeably distinct from the duo’s previous efforts. The first track hints at it – an epic ballad, ‘Fantastic Voyage’, is driven entirely by a piano and Bowie’s beautiful vocal, crooning a lyric which has a clear narrative of Cold War-era paranoia (it even contains a clear threat, that Bowie would ‘never sing anything nice again’ if bombs were dropped. The Cold War ended a mere ten years after this song – coincidence?). Its coherence and traditionalism would not have got anywhere near the preceding albums. Nor would the three chart-friendly singles, ‘DJ’, ‘Boys Keep Swinging’, and ‘Look Back in Anger’, all placed next to each other in the centre of the album for ease of picking. And following these, there are simply more songs – no more long ambient tracks of harsh, isolated piano stabs. There are in fact no instrumentals on this album, and without Adrian Belew’s coruscating guitar continually turning songs on their head with layers of noise, it would be Bowie’s most accessible album for some years.
Top top tips
The Quality Streets have long since been polished off and our NYE hangovers have just about gone. Yup, it’s time to look ahead at the bands and fads that could be coming our way in the world of music in 2010.
Mitchell Stirling: The Glo-Fi genre
It’s a movement that started to really move into people’s perceptions in early autumn this year but a good, hot summer and a few of these acts putting out full albums could see it build on what’s gone already. There’s also the tantalising prospect of a European response from the likes of Air France who come from a chillier, but similar, place. In a sense, the main players are taking the ’80s revivalism that is shown in acts like Cut Copy, Ladyhawke, La Roux etc but eschewing the high concept glossy finish. There is also a thread running through this scene in that a lot of the material is DIY cassette copies with homemade artwork and small runs. There’s also a sense, with the lo-fi quality of the music that there’s a sense of the not-to-recent, half-remembered August nights on the beach evoked in the dreamy lullabies. It’s also a scene that is unravelling in front of us right now. Best of all, though, it amuses me that Memory Tapes’s ‘Pink Stones’ has a passing resemblance to the outro of Henry’s Cat.
Influential Australian guitarist and songwriter Rowland S. Howard has lost his battle with liver cancer, dying at the age of 50 in the Austin Hospital, Melbourne.
Perhaps most famous as a member of The Birthday Party, Howard was involved in numerous musical projects, from his tenure with The Boys Next Door through to a latent solo career. His guitar playing was often at the forefront and an inspiration to many. … Continue Reading
Allow a few of our writers to give you their albums of the decade...
Idlewild - 100 Broken Windows
Idlewild’s 100 Broken Windows – by Paul Brown
As tricky a question as it is, I’d say the album which has meant the most to me this decade is 100 Broken Windows by Idlewild. The album was one of my first forays away from the Oasis, Travis, Stereophonics triumvirate which clogged the early-noughties hit parade, and opened up a gateway away from chart indie.
My love for this record isn’t just fuelled by nostalgia though. Even nine years later, no other British Indie band has matched it for energy, impact and sheer listenability.
It’s easy to understand why this is regarded by so many as a seminal album. . Roddy’s lyrics might straddle the line between intelligence and nonsense, (“…and Gertrude Stein said that’s enough!”) but that doesn’t matter at all, because 100 Broken Windows is powered along by incendiary (and bloody catchy) guitar riffs, and resonates with a glorious and barely contained rage. … Continue Reading
With a name as difficult to search for as 2009’s Girls, and the fact that we’re entirely unsure who exactly they/he/she is/are, perhaps-Swedish-and-now-living-in-London x-piece Summer Camp have done an incredible job of getting me to play their songs on repeat for days on end at the tail of 2009. That the photo on the left is one of a select few on their MySpace and seems to embody the notion of girls at a Swedish ’70s/’80s crossover summer camp so darn well is just part of the fun. … Continue Reading
Norway's electro pop quintet CASIOKIDS play Camden’s Barfly on February 25, and we're giving away a pair of tickets.
After the release of a few stellar singles in 2009, 2010 is looking exciting for this lot. Their bouncy percussive basement music, eerie melody and distorted bass are the product of inspiration from such diverse sources as Paul Simon's 'Graceland', Ivor Cutler, King Tubby, Bob Hund, Cornelius And Fela Kuti.
To win tickets, just answer the following question:
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