Glassyouth
Glassyouth are a five-piece band from Barnsley (Previously known as The Headliners) who are set to bring freshness to the charts with a sound they describe as ‘light-hearted northern grime’. It is collaboration of all 5 members having different tastes; from the 60s, 70s and through to modern alternative and dance.
Anya Marina
Camera Club
There are so many bands coming onto the scene from London these days, and it is nice when we discover new northern bands.
RedTrack
They appeared on Zane Lowe’s Fresh Meat and on Kerrang! Radio. They supported Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly on tour. Soon they’ll be releasing their debut full-length album. This Southend band might be en route to stardom, but faced a nasty detour on the way.
Hockey
As the festival season draws to its inevitable Tierce de Picardie, we’ve been pondering just why we put ourselves through the whole leaky tent/full-of-disinterested-GFNs (good for nothings)/living-in-squalor thing. Latitude, Indietracks and Glastonbury were all noteworthily awesome this year, but the weather was terminal at the former two. That, and the fact that the first was seeped in totally unatmospheric non-joy, more accurately recalled (in terms of y’know, vibe) by a repeated attempt at avoiding stepping on a small child named Magnolia. And then there was the Camden Crawl but hell, don’t start. So why do we love gigs, festivals and general outdoor music stuff? Why do we go to festivals? Hmm? Here’s just a snapshot: … Continue Reading
Sugar & Gold
This California quintet makes a fine mix of musical genius, even though they sometimes appear to hail from a different era…or maybe even a different planet. Known to arrive on stage in kneepads, a hairnet, and a flashy concoction of an outfit, lead singer Philipp Alberto Minnig (aka Pam) always works up a sweat while sliding around the stage and jumping into the crowd. And their music is not scanty on the action, either. In fact, it’s nearly impossible for anyone to stand still when their music is playing. If you like uncontrollable dancing and sing-alongs, then they’re definitely worth checking out.
There Will Be Fireworks
It seems a little trite to talk of a Scottish music renaissance because there has always been an absurdly high number of great bands per head of population; yet this year alone has seen such a rush of great records it’s hard not to think of this as some kind of resurgence: The Phantom Band, My Latest Novel, Frightened Rabbit, We Were Promised Jetpacks, Meursault, The Twilight Sad… Well, into that crowded wedge of bands you can add There Will Be Fireworks who may just have produced the finest record of all of them so far this year. The shocker? At this time, the band remain unsigned.
The facts are these: There Will Be Fireworks are four Glaswegians – old school friends – Adam Ketterer (drums, glockenspiel), David Madden (bass), Gilbran Farrah (guitar, violin, piano) and Nicholas McManus (guitars, vocals, organ). Like WWPJ and The Twilight Sad mentioned above, they make post-rock inflected Big Music – but to these ears they have a greater appreciation of light and shade, a sharper sense of depth and dynamics. They’ve grabbed at a certain strand of post-rock (say Explosions in the Sky and Mogwai) and crushed all that drama into songs – songs that push and thrust at their casings, at times threatening to split apart at the seams.
Their self-titled debut is outsized and sprawling – at times it drifts away on its own sense of ambition. Yet it’s the over-reaching ambition that gives the band their bright allure, their burning core. It also led them to seek out a way to achieve that huge sound. Early recordings had the reach but not the sonic drama. Then the band found a converted 17th-century mill at Stratharven, a giant space of odd angles and high vaulted ceilings. Suddenly they could achieve literal space between their multitude of instruments, and that literal space invaded the recorded sound. There Will Be Fireworks sounds architectural, immense.
You’d think that with all that sonic drama the record might suffer lyrically, but Nicky McManus is a subtle expressive writer. Aside from the opening track and it’s heart-stopping poetic monologue, delivered by Kevin MacNeil, author of The Stornaway Way, the themes are simple but deftly drawn, often mere glimpses into fracturing relationships, or impressionistic vignettes. ‘Midfield Maestro’ has its tape-burning end of relationship blues (“you’re unravelling in my arms”), ‘We Sleep Through The Bombs’ its simple plaintive ache (“I’m going back to the place/where I first saw those shy and tired eyes”); and such is McManuses range that he can shift registers from quite whisper to lacerating roar in the space of a few lines. … Continue Reading
After telling you what our favourite gigs and tracks of the year so far are, it’s now time for our favourite albums. Such a mixed bag…
Grammatics
Grammatics – Grammatics
Tired of the sparse, post-punk inspired music scene of mid 00s Yorkshire, Grammatics formed to bring the depth and scope back to our ears. And with the debut LP Grammatics, they succeeded. Owen Brinley’s mournful, high-registered voice, twisting from plaintive murmur to throat-shredding roar often in the space of the same song, is aided by backing vocal coos, ricocheting drums, bone-crushing fuzz bass, crunchy vintage synths, weeping cello, cavernous, twisting guitars and a thick, crackling layer of radio static. Quite a repertoire. Of course, all of that instrumentation would be useless if the quality of the songs didn’t match up, and this is where Grammatics truly shines; the band’s impressive ear for melody creates barbed hooks that are positively viral, and their mastery of dynamics takes you on one hell of a trip. And although it’s very difficult to figure out what exactly Brinley is going on about, his tales of tragic females and otherworldly landscapes is a transcendental one entirely their own.
Soap and Skin
Soap and Skin – Lovetune For Vacuum
Let’s get it out of the way first, because I’m hoping you will be fed up of hearing this part of the story. Anja Plaschg, 19, grew up on a pig farm in an Austrian village and can “answer and reflect on what Soap and Skin is” (i.e. it’s a method to distance herself from her onstage persona.). The album, is haunting, melancholic and bruised, and dominated by her piano work – it’s augmented by the occasional string, electronic beats (which do seem to click and burr up out of nowhere) and on ‘Extinguish Me’, an accordion. An album it reminded me of is Nico’s Desertshore and there are elements of John Cale and even Antony and The Johnsons to it. There’s a lot billowing around beneath it but it’s not as dark a record as her fragile demeanour suggests; with the clank and click of ‘Turbine Womb’ offsetting the piano, there’s shades of mid-1990s Björk there as well.
Future Of The Left
Future of the Left – Travels With Myself And Another
Curses was a great debut album filled with catchy, memorable slices of witty, riffy rock. What it did lack though, was longevity. A few tracks were maybe too simple and a few song mechanics were repeated across the LP. Travels With Myself And Another takes the best bits of said debut and deftly nudges the quality knob up a couple of levels. Each song feels rich, despite still being immediate, catchy and simple. Andy Falkous’s barbed tongue spits out darkly comic rants on topics such as shoddy music venue chains and the shame of using plastic cutlery. The music is propelled along by Kelson Mathias’s thick, groovesome bass lines, some feeling almost tangible, like kids skipping giant lengths of chewy candy strawberry laces. It’s so very quotable too – picking a single example would feel like I’m cheating the other songs. Falkous and co have really nailed a balance and variety of tones and themes that becomes more impressive as you near the album end realising that the steam is not running out. … Continue Reading
Bob Dickinson
During a brief period of involvement with the New Wave movement back in the late seventies, I indulged in a brief affair with Magazine, sharing a musical bed with Howard Devoto, John McGeoch, Barry Adamson and Martin Jackson. The result of this multiple musical coupling was ‘Motorcade’, to some a “classic”, to others a “what?” and to myself, a “temporary diversion” with long-term effects on my musical creativity and equilibrium (that’s another story). So, let’s cut to the chase and set the scene for the conception of this musical new wave micro-colossus that straddled the Manchester Ship Canal:
This (accidental) affair was the culmination of a series of flings with various left-field contributors involved in the alternative music scene of the time, a promiscuous sequence which began in Sheffield sometime in 1975. It was here that the rarified atmosphere of the University music department was ever so slightly disturbed by my John Cage alter-ego organising a series of experimental music gigs under the banner of the Sheffield Musicians Co-Operative. Coming along as audience members to one of these (a concert of rather early cerebral piano works by Phillip Glass) were two members of Cabaret Voltaire – Chris Watson and Richard Kirk.
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