The Men - Open Your Heart

Starting this week, and replacing our weekly singles round-up, every week, two times a week, our contributors will voice their opinion on a song. It’s a simple as that! If you want to tell us what you think of the song, feel free to leave a comment below.

Track: ‘Open Your Heart’ by The Men

Rosie: It’s a poor man’s version of The Buzzcocks’s ‘Ever Fallen In Love’ – except that that’s a bit of an insult to The Buzzcocks. Maybe I’m getting older, but it just seems like a wall of noise coming out of the speakers at me. Sloppy drumming, awful singing…not impressed. 4/10

Ilse: The Men are an awesome band if you enjoy the raw sound of the Replacements, Fugazi and Buzzcocks. Fortunately, this description applies to me and this new track makes me realize what an idiot I am, as I could’ve heard them play this superb track live in Amsterdam last week. Instead, I was being humped by drugged up Spaniards at some random techno gig in Barcelona…. 8/10

Anna: Let’s be honest – the emperor has no clothes. The singer can’t sing. Not being able to sing doesn’t always get in the way of it all but this time it certainly does. This is like hearing someone do a loose cover of Ever Fallen In Love in the shower. 2/10

Stuart: Fine Young Cannibals did a fine if not so young cover of Buzzcocks’s ‘Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t've’ and at least had the manners to title it so and presumably pay the punkers their deserved royalties. Seemingly, The Men simply can’t be arsed. Tough love, perhaps? In any case, to present this as original material is criminality of the highest order and demands inclusion as a secret mission in the next Grand Theft Auto video game. The Men simply shouldn’t've bothered. 1/10  

David: Sounds like The Buzzcocks. Urgent pace. American indie rock vocals. Some jangliness. Vague lovelorn lyrics. Strong enough hooks but really has no more of a place in 2012 than Northern Uproar do. Unless I’m getting old. People will still be releasing music like this in 2112 however. Huw Stephens will like it, he’s an indie sycophant. 4/10

Linda: I believe a lot of people were doing exactly this about 40 years ago. Back then, it was something that needed to happen. Now, it feels a bit redundant. It did get stuck in my head though, but that might be related to the drill outside my window sounding remarkably similar. 5/10

Craig: This is the sound of all of those bands who played at shows you attended when you were in high school: four power chords relentlessly repeated under a straining singer.  Verse, chorus, bridge.  The song sounds live enough to invoke memories of the tiny, perhaps tin sided rock venue you frequented as an adolescent, but is as unoriginal as it is nostalgic. 4/10

Paul: Driving and passionate, this is a glorious throwback to late-70s punk which sounds like it’s being played by four outcast teens on crappy gear to an apathetic working men’s club crowd. Not gonna win any prizes for originality though. 6/10

James: Instantly thrown into a Buzzcocks like state of teenage angst (pretty sure I won’t be the only one). Reassuring to know that not everyone is subscribing to the mainstream pop mold but it takes a few listens to appreciate and is a bit too uncanny of their influences. 7/10

Stef: So many outlets touting this, so many outlets going wow wow wow. And I’m left thinking, but isn’t this just any old punk song? Just not sure what the fuss is about to be honest. 3/10

Average grade: 4.4/10

Nimmo And The Gauntlets - Young Light

By Joel Stagg

Nimmo And The Gauntletts have been steadily increasing their profile over the last year or so, as part of the Strummerville foundation’s band roster, mentored by Emmy the Great, and having appeared at Secret Garden Party and the Eden project as well as frequent live appearances in Brighton and London. Now with Young Light, they finally deliver on their promise and emerge with a strikingly confident EP that’s bound to delight fans old and new and strongly situate them as one of the more exciting young guitar bands of the present moment.

They add to the expected tenets of modern indie-pop-ish guitar music with a healthy amount of saxophone and the soulful, duelling vocals of band namesakes Sarah Nimmo and Reva Gauntlett, providing more than enough to help cleanly separate them from some of the more run-of-the-mill contemporary guitar bands (hello, Viva Brother). Whilst the American music scene has provided bands like Warpaint and Vivian Girls recently, it’s hard to remember the last female-led British band that packed this much character, attitude and energy (save maybe Veronica Falls), and for this reason also, Nimmo and the Gauntletts make for a breath of fresh air.

It’s a short and sweet collection of five 3-4 minute pop songs, but the quality of the song-writing remains consistently high throughout. The album kicks off with ‘Dealing Desire’, a spritely, upbeat song of young love, passion and confusion – recurring themes throughout, but themes dealt here with genuine creativity and heartfelt emotion. “When you find your friends, well who are you, who are we?” croons Nimmo, then Gauntlett too, and then the whole band, on the song’s soaring breakdown, and the song envelopes the listener entirely in its moment.

‘Bandol Blues’ pushes the tempo up another gear, as well as exhibiting some of the bands’ best word-smart, linguistically playful lyrics. “And well I tried, to take you downstairs, but I fell down the stairs and you didn’t care” laments Nimmo, injecting some humour into a song of love, fear and death. Centre-piece of the EP ‘Chin Up’ tightly weaves together the most interesting elements of Nimmo and the Gauntletts’ music into an irresistible slice of indie-dance-pop, whatever you might want to call it, that would surely unite many-a-drunken stranger at 2am in a club into an almighty hoedown. ‘Fleur Du Lis’ is another gem, beginning with darker chords, whilst Nimmo and Gauntlett trade verses of romance and uncertainty, centred around the song’s irrepressible refrain of “I don’t want to be your friend, I don’t want to be your lover, I’m trying to pretend that we are okay”.

But Young Light elevates itself one step further with the closing track of the same name. A pulsating slow-burner that builds and builds, the song is the strongest indication of real depth and longevity from the five-piece. The eventual climactic refrain of “Well yeah it’s in my head, it’s in my heart, it’s in my soul” over pounding drums, euphoric backing refrains and sweeping violins from Josh Faull, marks the EP’s most potent and lingering moment, before it’s all bought cascading down with two final hushed lines from Nimmo leading into violins and saxophone, by this point all that remains, closing the collection on a powerful note.

Young Light marks the band out as one of the freshest and most promising new acts in the UK, with some of the catchiest uptempo guitar music of recent times cohabited by a real emotional punch and yearning, and more than enough individuality to contend with the current wave of guitar music for ear and head space. Nimmo and the Gauntletts assuredly stake their claim as a band to watch in 2012 and Young Light is definitely worth getting acquainted with.

Charlotte Gainsbourg - Stage Whisper

By Solange Moffi

Charlotte Gainsbourg, daughter of you know who (if a well-guided and true muso you are, that is), has proved an effortless coolness magnet with the likes Air, Jarvis Cocker, Neil Hannon, Tony Allen and Nigel Godrich all standing in line previously to put their stamp on the self-converted chanteuse’s cap, on 5:55 back in 2006. Three year later, she even enrolled fiddler extraordinaire, Beck, to tailor-produce her next LP, IRM. The pair seems to have enjoyed the experience so much, they brought a sequel to their collaboration with a part-studio/part-live album.

More like a blended EP-cum-Best of, Stage Whisper showcases  Gainsbourg’s improved vocals from the ridiculously  tone-and-tuneless whisper, for that matter, of her early days (see her with-Daddy duet, ‘Lemon Incest’) to the intended whine of ‘Set Yourself on Fire’ or the perfectly enacted sprechgesang  on ‘AF607105’. She even leads the dance on tracks like ‘Heaven Can Wait’, the bass-heavy ‘The Operation’ and the metal-y ‘Tricky Pony ’ – it’s enough to forgive her for giving Dylan’s epic ‘Just Like A Woman’ the nursery rhyme treatment.

As for the new tunes, they confirm her penchant for breakbeat with the opener, ‘Terrible Angels’ (the video of which sees her clone herself into a car park dancing queen), and ‘Paradisco’. Nevertheless, her timbre remains best-suited to toned-down ballads as heard on ‘Anna’, ‘White Telephone’ and the very Melody Nelson-esque ‘Out of Touch’. This said, the top drawer of these newbies has got to be the well thought-through (both lyrically and melodically), synthetically gut-grabbing and dramatic duet with Charlie Fink of Noah and The Whale, ‘Got To Let Go’, which is indeed “a deadly revolver to your head”.

All in all, the album feels like a well-staged whisper. “Encore!”

Errors - Have Some Faith In Magic

By David Lichfield

A stylistic shift is always a welcome move when a band hits the second or third wind of their career, and the already unique ambience magicians Errors may be a man down after the departure of Greg Paterson, but there’s little on the Glasgow trio’s third full-length album Have Some Faith In Magic to suggest that the band haven’t reassembled themselves effortlessly to no detriment to their craft, adding vocals to their lush and layered hook-laden soundscapes and ultimately yet another weapon to their already formidable artillery.

Whilst on the whole continuing to move away from the uptempo, cinematic danceability of debut album It’s Not Something But It Is Like Whatever and building upon the widescreen adventure of 2010’s Come Down With Me, Errors still manage to provide a few instantaneously infectious slices of euphoric synth-led pulsation amongst offerings such as the gripping, head-spinning cinerama of last Spring’s single ‘Magna Encarta’ and recent towering, pulsating download and thrilling album centrepiece ‘Earthscore’. The finest example of this is lead single ‘Pleasure Palaces’, a cacophony of euphoric and atmospheric electro laden with delicious hooks and a nod to the 1980s which in no way compromises on the utter sense of the contemporary and relevant on show.

The sense of drama and intrigue that has always coloured Errors work, from 2006’s How Clean Is You Acid House? EP through classics such as ‘Pump’ and ‘A Rumour In Africa’ is reassuringly intact here, and although comparisons to acts such as Battles and their close associates Mogwai have always been justified, Errors continue to maintain a sense of real identity which means it’s impossible to pin strong, constant comparisons with any other band upon them.

There’s always been a sense of melancholy in the melodic work of Errors, but just when you think a track is going to descend fully into the wistful, they’ll bounce back with a passage of true rhythmic grit and determination as demonstrated finely on ‘The Knock’, with its low-end analogue synths complimented fully by sparse and evocative bleeps and what eventually progresses to a defiant rhythm. Steve Lingstone, who provides vocals and is largely the spokeperson for the group, has described Errors’ current approach to the architecture of their tracks in recent interviews, speaking of avoiding passages that have already been heard in a track in favour of progressive musical journeys, and this approach certainly suits the widescreen ambition of Have Some Faith In Magic.

Although this is the first Errors album to contain real vocals, don’t expect to be quoting any of the lyrics any time soon. Nine of the ten tracks do house vocals, but these are delivered in such a chant-like, echo-laden and indecipherable manner that they are more akin to being another instrument rather that a tool for describing Errors’ world view in words. Yet again, the sense of hypnotic melancholia is expressed perfectly through instrumentation, and the album is none the worse for it.

One other territory that the album ventures into is that of chillwave, with blissfull, mid-paced electronics colouring some of the album’s more laidback tracks such as ‘Blank Media’ and ‘Cloud Chamber’, with acts such as Washed Out and M83 being a number of names that spring to mind upon experiencing them. Similarly, the glistening, stabbing synths of ‘Barton Spring’ are gorgeous and lovely, but these moments are never drippy and the drama is always that of raw emotion.  These vivid swirls of grandiose, heavily-reverberated soundscapes are still unmistakeably the work of Errors however, and its genuinely thrilling to hear a band incorporate such new worlds so seamlessly. With the loss of Paterson, the electronics may be more dominant but the album’s running order allows for more breathing space. Additionally, this makes the higher-BPM moments seem like they have truly earned their place on the schedule and allows for a diverse, confident adventure of a long-player from a band that have truly hit their stride.

Richard Youngs - Amaranthine

By Tom Bolton

If anyone’s channelling England’s dreaming, it’s Richard Youngs with his baffling, absorbing fragments that seem simultaneously alien and a fundamental part of us. The debate about Youngs always seems to get hung up on trying to describe and categorise: “Is this album more ‘avant-garde’ than the last?” or “Is he still experimental, or has he sold out?” This is definitely missing the point. His music is highly original, and seems to exist to defy and destroy categories. Nor do definitions help to understand what you’re hearing. He experiments, for sure, but the significance of his work is in its ability to help the listener value sounds and musical experiences they might otherwise dismiss.

Amaranthine is the latest instalment in a talented and entirely unpredictable career that stretches back over a series of twenty-plus albums, all remarkably different.  He’s so prolific that it’s easy to miss an instalment or three of his oeuvre, by which time he may well have passed through several distinct phases of creation.  His 2010 album, Beyond the Valley of the Ultrahits, was unexpectedly pop and used conventional song structures to great effect.  Last year’s Amplifying Host definitely did not, sounding like deconstructed folk with the individual elements separated out and fixed with a puzzled, fascinated gaze.

Clearly, it’s the sign of a quality album when you need to look the title up in a dictionary. It’s an even better sign when the title is as well chosen as Amaranthine, which turns out to mean ‘unfading’, after a mythical, dark purple-red flower that never fades. Enya seems to have had the idea first, but let’s skip over that. The album in fact does fade, improvisation fuzzing in and out like a flickering consciousness. It consists of four long tracks. The first, ‘Hopeless Warrior’ begins with tribal drumming rattling and clattering, and Youngs’ thin, high voice declaiming in a distorted, rhythmic pattern. A creaking electric guitar swaps registers, layering over the polyrhythms. It’s impossible to tell exactly what words are being sung, but they include the refrain “It’s just a hopeless warrior I am.” The song is plaintive and melancholy, and intensely awkward in a Jandek manner.

The album then segues into ‘State I’m In (California)’ which seems to mix mental with physical states. The vocals become clearer, but the drums become choppier and even more complex, sharing equal status with the singer. The rhythms are fascinating and impenetrable, and Youngs seems to be in a state of confusion himself. He sings “How can I know? / the state I’m in / don’t come easily / California”’ in a repeating, overlapping round with himself.  It’s a stunning track.

‘Everybody Needs a Sword’ contains the repeated phrase “In London I cannot see / everybody needs a sword” over low electronic throbbing and more mind-bending percussion. Youngs sounds urgent, like a street preacher with a message that nobody will understand in the same way. He sings in a mantic reverie that ‘Nobody needs a vision’, but it sounds as though his vision is just more penetrating than everyone else’s.

Finally, ‘The Power Come Out’ is a sort of ecstasy in which Youngs seems to chant “Ommmm…” as he sings revelations such “Power come out / I heard one thousand calls”. A meandering, treble guitar solo floats over the top, and the percussion whirs and chunters. At times it sounds almost blissed out, although the white guitar noise that cuts in halfway through could either be the hum of eternity or something vast and menacing approaching from a long way off. It’s immense and unfathomable, a song struggling with the contradictory nature of being. And, let’s face it, there aren’t many people around at the moment making music with that level of ambition.

It would be a mistake to dismiss Amaranthine as unlistenable, wilfully perverse music, although some undoubtedly will. It’s disconcerting, at times frustrating, but also rich and strange with the power to repay the listener with compound interest. Richard Youngs is a musician worth listening to, and that really means listening actively, with a mind receptive to the unexpected. Amaranthine is fractured and even distraught, but it’s also a deep purple, unfading thing of beauty.

The Bevis Frond - The Leaving Of London

By Kenny McMurtrie

A concept album about the BBC’s relocation of staff to Salford? Or the heralding of an exodus of those disinterested in the Olympics this coming Summer? Whatever the theme of studio album number 22 from Nick Saloman and cohorts the eight year hiatus since the Hit Squad album hasn’t degraded their talents in any way. Indeed Saloman is still hands on enough throughout the process of constructing The Bevis Frond’s works that he’s the album producer and sleeve photographer/designer. Freedoms not to be sniffed at in an increasingly controlled and passively observant society.

As noted above this is a group with plenty of back-catalogue to sift through, but while they now have the thoroughly modern means of a website available via which to do so, the sound of these 18 new tracks is as rooted in the psychedelia of the late Sixties and early Seventies, not to mention more classic rock, as ever before. Not that you should take from that the impression of tie-dyed older blokes getting wistful about the drugs they can no longer safely consume – right from the opening of ‘Johnny Kwango’ there is a clearly annoyed venting of spleen at the state of things in the UK and the wider world.

‘Barely Anthropoid’ bemoans the passivity of many who grumble but won’t even email their MP let alone make more vocal complaints. ‘You’ll Come’, one of the highlights amongst the faster tracks here, gives the likes of Dinosaur Jr (even pre-reformation) a run for their money. As for that matter does ‘Heavy Hand’. The softer pedalled songs are by no means weak however and the emotional depth of the likes of ‘Testament’ or ‘Son Of A Warm Gun’ are likely to strike a chord with many.

Dad-rock this isn’t and given that plenty of household names of a similar or older vintage are plying their trade as mere shadows of their former selves (hell many younger ones are too) it is always refreshing to be reminded that those who have failed in a sense to “make it” have nevertheless kept their heads above water and not deviated from the path they set themselves on and manage to make music worth paying attention to still.

Prinzhorn Dance School - Clay Class

By Nick Cowan

When Brighton come Portsmouth post-punk duo, Prinzhorn Dance School released their self titled debut in 2008, it enthralled some and bewildered most. Confused listeners didn’t know what to make of the sparse bass riffs and poignant pauses, shattered by lyrics chanted or shouted but rarely sung. It led to divisive reviews claiming it to genius or nonsense and sometimes both.

So far, so pretentious but when it worked the band conveyed an awkward gravity that left you unsettled and craving more. Now they’re back with their follow-up album Clay Class, an altogether richer and more layered experience. Not to say that Prinzhorn have completely forsaken their minimalist roots, just that most of the tracks on Clay Class actually feel like songs, a claim that was sometimes hard to make on their first outing.

January 2012 certainly seems like the right time to be listening and Prinzhorn’s wry commentary and the opening track ‘Happy in Bits’ sets the tone nicely – “I’m glad you’re here, building on sand/So glad you came, drawing in wax or black on black” states Tobin Prinz, as drums thud behind. It may not always be an easy ride but at least should be an interesting one. Where on their debut Prinzhorn were happy to leave the listener wanting for a song to emerge out of the crafted nothingness, Clay Class seems far more willing to deliver. Guitars chime in as anticipated and compliment the mixture of speech, chant and shout, exemplified on the excellent ‘Seed Crop Harvest’. This is when Prinzhorn are at their best, painting a disgruntled vision of contemporary Britain. The scope of Clay Class is broader too and Prinzhorn even show off a softer side on the tender but brutal ‘I Want You’.

However, as Clay Class progresses, the formula starts to feel a bit flat. The unrelenting repetitiveness of tracks like ‘The Flora and Fauna of Britain in Bloom’ becomes grating and the exposed lyrics come off trite, “a tin of mixed fruit on a special occasion/Government handout, Britain in bloom”. You’d think it was the blitz.

There are some enjoyable moments on Clay Class and a more conventional approach will surely see Prinzhorn Dance School picking up more fans, particularly in ‘these tough economic times’, as they say. We definitely aren’t as confused this time around and Clay Class is certainly less likely to be called nonsense than its predecessor but it is also seems less likely to be lauded as genius.

Karen Dalton - 1966

By Tom Bolton

In the hyper-documented, post-digital world can there really be any unknown great music?  The back catalogues of the 1960s in particular have been trawled on an industrial scale, and the scrapings from the ocean bottom packaged and re-released to fading acclaim.  In the context of rapidly diminishing returns, the low-key arrival of Karen Dalton’s 1966 is positively seismic.  This is the closest we are likely to get to songs that we’ve never heard before, that deserve to be considered with the best.

Karen Dalton was from one perspective a tragic casualty of her time, and from another one of the greatest blues singers ever recorded.  She was a doyen of the early 60s Greenwich Village folk scene in New York, where Bob Dylan heard her perform and described her as his favourite singer.  But while New York launched Dylan and many others to global fame, Dalton hated the city and the attention.  She left with her estranged husband, Richard Tucker, for remote Colorado where they lived in a cabin so far from any settlement that it had no address and no running water.  Nevertheless, fellow singers Tim Hardin and Fred Neil joined her there for a time, and they played and sang together.

Dalton released only two albums, one of which she was tricked into recording under the impression the tape wasn’t running.  Both vanished, and her official output ended there.  The rest of her life was a disaster: she developed a heroin problem, lost custody of her children, spent time living on the streets of New York and died in complete obscurity in 1993, aged 55.  She was a child of the ’60s in every way: talented beautiful, willowy, with long dark hair from Cherokee roots; feckless, irresponsible and deeply self-destructive.

Since her last release in 1971, two further compilations of demo material have emerged, but the discovery of 1966 significantly increased the amount of material that has survived.  The album is reel-to-reel home recordings, made as she and Tucker rehearsed at the Colorado cabin, and they contain some of the most intense music you could hope to hear.  Most of the tracks include nothing more than Karen’s voice and Richard’s banjo or guitar on a crackling, hissing, single track tape.  Sometimes they duet and there’s a little whistling, but that’s it.  Yet the music is a portal into the past, projecting the listener back into a lost era through the beauty, personality, and poignancy of Karen’s voice.

The first track, ‘Reason to Believe’, leaps out of the speakers and grabs at your throat.  Dalton address an unknown man, brutally exposing both his faithlessness and her self-deception: “Knowing that you lied straightfaced while I cried / still I’ll find a reason to believe.”  The dead-pan emotional honesty is shocking and her singing, with long sweet phrases but a rough blues edge, is impossible to disbelieve.  Her singing is mesmerising, crowd-stopping.  Dalton stands dead still and sings, while everything whirls around her – literally in fact, as Youtube footage demonstrates.

‘Katie Cruel’, a traditional folk song and as much of a signature tune as Karen has a rolling banjo and mysterious story of rejection, apparently for making “the young girls merry”.  Sorrow and exile suit Dalton’s voice down to the ground, and her delivery of the lines “When I first came to town they called me the roving jewel / Now they’ve changed their tune / They call me Katie Cruel” is eerily timeless.

Tracks such as ‘Katie Cruel’ appear on other Dalton records, but stripped of any attempt at production these version shine even more brightly.  Further highlights include ‘Green Rocky Road’, a Fred Neil song, and a traditional number, ‘Cotton Eye Joe’.  Dalton induces a similar state of mind on each track, turning each into a warning of undefinable disaster, trailing betrayal and loss behind them.  But she make deep sadness more beautiful than almost anyone.

Dalton sings the blues like folk, and folk like the blues, stripping traditional styles down to their common themes of love, loss and death.  ‘Misery Blues’ just over a minute long, shows her in complete command on a blues standard, while ‘Mole in the Ground’ is banjo blues, relocating southern music in the mountains of the north. Dalton draws comparisons, frequently made, with Billie Holiday with a version of the bleak self-reliance blues song ‘God Bless the Child’.  It may sounds even more like a field recording than the rest of 1966, but it displays her voice to heartbreaking perfection.

Her friend Lacy Dalton (no relation), interviewed in 2007, said “Karen had true, true greatness that had not been recognised.  I said to her, ‘It’s going to annoy the hell out of you but you’ll probably only get recognised after your death.’”  We’ve waited long enough: it’s time to celebrate a singer who sounds like no other.

Trailer Trash Tracys - Ester

By Paul Stephen Gettings

Much has been made recently of the constant search for novelty in music, and how it traps consumers and artists alike in a cycle that sees yesterday’s next big thing discarded in the chase for fresher, newer sounds. We hear of bands that, after one modish or mediocre debut, are dropped by labels and fans alike before they get to release another, robbing them of their chance to mature as artists and perhaps even pull out a classic later on in their career.

The Horrors are given as the standard cautionary tale for this school of thought; with every album the band that were deemed haircuts with guitars by absolutely everyone around the time of their debut fascinate and astound us with their newly-developed songwriting prowess. “Just imagine” we cry, “If they had been dropped purely on the basis of that terrible first album and that terrible hair then we wouldn’t have the fantastic band we have today”. We all agree on this right? Terrible first album, terrible image, terrible names (Joshua Von Grimm, indeed!). Just one question; have you actually listened to Strange House recently? It’s pretty good. Not only that, but I remember liking it at the time. In fact, I remember a lot of people liking it. Even critics. The way people go on about it makes you think they were panned relentlessly up until that video of ‘Sea within a Sea’ floated its way online, but I seem to remember the reaction to them being fairly positive. It seems that with every new Horrors release people’s perception of the band back in 2007 dims more and more. Faris Badwan even noted it himself in a recent interview, observing that “Someone sent me one of the reviews for Strange House the other day and it was like a weird memory lapse thing where people think that the first album got terrible reviews and it didn’t”.

The accolades that follow their acclaimed seventh release in 2025 will no doubt centre upon their now-illegal first, which was so unimaginably awful that when it was placed on a record player it released an electromagnetic pulse that wiped out all technology in most major urban areas for three months, and that the band’s haircuts and skinny jeans at the time were responsible for the deaths of 98% of the population of Southend-on-Sea who dropped down dead just as soon as they caught sight of Coffin Joe buying a salad in Tesco.

So maybe I’ve ranted on about The Horrors enough. What’s all this got to do with Trailer Trash Tracys and their debut record Ester, which was released this month? Well, just like Strange House, this is a pretty good first record. The band certainly have taken some very fashionable elements for their own here: crisp, Phil Spector rhythms played on stuttering ‘80s drum machines; tingling shoegaze walls of noise and buried, feminine vocals; edgy, unsettling waves of Lynchian electronics. They have a slightly awkward but distinctive name; their band members are evidently young, beautiful and style-conscious. All of these things are sounding eerily familiar to me. I’m gonna make a prediction here; while this is a record that people are going to like (I’ve heard plenty of praise for it already), I have a feeling that people aren’t going to look back at it particularly fondly. Just like Strange House, it’s almost too stylised for its own good.

That’s not to say that this record doesn’t sound great right now. Its psychedelic swells thrill while the songs themselves are gentle and yearning, dripping sugary melody and sickening dissonance in equal measure. The segue between opener “Rolling – Kiss the Universe” and “You Wish You Were Read” are a perfect example of this; a nightmare synth freakout that gives way to sparkling, energetic dreampop. ‘Los Angered’ and ‘Candy Girl’ are both bittersweet highlights with overdriven, chiming surf guitars wrapping around skittering beats and hallway vocals.

If you asked me if this band will ‘do a Horrors’ with album two, I’m not sure I could tell you. They certainly have a great ear for melody and a skill for mixing together unusual sounds into a very cohesive whole. I for one hope they do. This is a great record and it’s worth your time. But it’s going to date badly. People may think it got bad reviews but right here is your proof that it didn’t. Remember.

We Have Band - Ternion

By Rosie Duffield

In 2009 We Have Band played a small, non-descript bar on the Lower East Side of New York; a warm up gig for their forthcoming visit to SXSW. Second on the bill, their brash electro-pop blew the headliners out of the water and gained them new fans across the pond.

Their music was exciting, energetic and really well put together.  The songs they showcased that night went on to become their debut album, WHB, a collection of percussion heavy songs with intricate rhythms and catchy melodies like ‘OH!’ and ‘Divisive’.

Three years and a few more tours later, the band are back with their sophomore album Ternion. First impressions are that this new collection of songs isn’t as bright or attention grabbing as the previous lot. It’s true, to some extent. What’s clear though, is that the band’s sound has evolved into a slightly darker, more mature version of itself.  ‘Tired of Running’ starts with a sinister synth riff, whilst ‘After All’ seems rather stripped back in comparison to other tracks, starting off with a simple drum beat and echoed vocals.

There’s still a strong emphasis on percussion, but the melodies aren’t as memorable as some of their earlier tracks – though there’s more of a focus on vocals this time round. The combination of Darren Bancroft, Dede WP and Thomas WP’s vocals adds an interesting element to the mix; their voices are so different, but work really well together.  Take lead single ‘Where Are Your People’, for example.  Dede’s vocals soften the jagged electro beats and Darren’s monotonous outbursts.

‘Rivers of Blood’ is a good example of the last two points; it starts with a syncopated drumbeat, which is almost enough to think the track is skipping. Halfway through Dede joins in on the vocal, her high pitch a great contrast that adds interest to the music.

And that’s it really: interest. Ternion fails to deliver a collection of truly exciting songs – but that’s not to say the record is a total write-off. There’s enough here to pass as a decent album, but it’s disappointing that it is just that. There are some bands that can’t quite translate their live performances on to a record, and in this case it seems We Have Band might be better off out on the road again – if only to capture that raw energy and excitement.