Summer Camp

So Summer Camp are not Swedish, but in fact Jeremy Warmsley (interviewed here) and Platform Editor Elizabeth Sankey.

We also now know there’s this single which is really rather good, and painfully few songs on their MySpace that hint at a band who are great in creating the kind of hazy music that you can quite happily get lost amongst this summer. ‘Ghost Train’ is such a song.

As with Summer Camp’s other tracks ‘Ghost Train’ begins with a line from another ’80s movie classic. This time Cameron Crowe’s, Say Anything…. “I’m sorry, it’s just you’re a really nice guy, and we don’t wanna see you get hurt” before the response, “I wanna get hurt!”. While ‘Ghost Train’ isn’t homage to the film, it does share themes of interactions and potentially putting distance between them.

It has that traversing landscapes aura about it. Coupled with overtones of adolescent long distance relationships, struggling to exist via poor connections and cross-country trains amid changing seasons. It’s a sweet and airy chug along with an O Superman-esque “Dear, dear, dear, dear, dear/I, I, I, I, I/You, you, you, you, you” over an awkward, infectious and darling synth line. The vocals are subtle and light yet bloom on the chorus. 

Summer Camp – Ghost Train (viral) from Paddy Power on Vimeo.

Fionn Regan - The Shadow Of An Empire

It’s been almost four years since Fionn Regan released his debut album, The End Of History. Any questions about what he’s been up to in that time are answered with a single listen to its successor: he’s been growing some balls.

The End Of History was generally well received by the music press, but its whimsical, plinkety plunkety folk always felt a bit like a facsimile of a great album rather than the real thing. Regan’s soft, string-backed harmonies created moments of wonder, but the acoustic cleverness began to wear thin after a while.

There’s no chance of laying the same accusation at the door of The Shadow Of An Empire. This is an album that has contrast in spades, largely due to Regan having electrified his output, both literally and metaphorically. ‘Protection Racket’ opens proceedings like a statement of intent, all crashing cymbals and wildly jangling guitars. This song, like much of the album, sounds as though Regan has blended his Irish Wicklow mountains roots with a rich vein of American alt-rock heritage. Ryan Adams would be happy to claim ownership of many of these tracks, not least because Regan seems to have a much more dependable sense for a catchy melody.

The Shadow Of An Empire still shows many of the musical calling cards that were prevalent on The End Of History, but the clearer differences between light and dark make them far more effective. Regan retains his habit of threading lyrics laden with inference across repeated vocal refrains, but throws in changes of pace and a depth of expression that gives every song its own character; its own particular sensibilities.

None reflects this better than ‘Violent Demeanour’, which opens with acoustic picking and Regan’s melancholy, rolling vocal before switching to an on-off, piano-backed chorus. The second verse comes with soft electric guitar backing and the odd crackle of drums before the chorus is repeated with an urgent, shuffling percussion that gives it breath-taking pace. Meanwhile, Regan’s elegantly crafted lyrics hint darkly at social dislocation and trauma: “The institutions with the metal halls / Chain the mentally ill to destitute walls / The wards of state do not illuminate / The margins.”

Another hangover from The End Of History is a tendency to carry trebly chord patterns on a heavier, rhythmical bass line. It’s a trick used to powerful effect on ‘Catacombs’, the verses of which are built around a stepped, dropping lower refrain and a parallel teasing, intermittent acoustic riff that raises its head between lines.

Oddly, closing track ‘The Shadow Of An Empire’, from which the album takes its name, is one of the least engaging, relying on clunking piano chords to carry its classical folk vocal. The song’s musical repetition forces attention on the lyrics, which don’t quite rise to the challenge. While there’s compelling imagery aplenty –“On the sawdust / The circus band / I heard rehearsing on the Strand / By the lovers who understand / Every note must be planned” – it’s difficult to pick out exactly what Regan’s driving at, and the song drifts a little as a consequence.

But these are minor ticks on an album that sounds like a coming of age. Regan’s throatier, grittier style thrives when combined with his old feel for a tune, making The Shadow Of An Empire more listenable than its predecessor, without losing any of its intelligence and depth.

Cate le Bon - Me Oh My

With her vampish bowl-haircut and blackened eyelids, Welsh chanteuse Cate Le Bon could pass as the third member of Telepathe. Only sonically, she’s opted to eschew layers of stroke-of-midnight hypnotics for simple, stark compositions, taking the listener to intimate places and keeping firm hold of those achingly hipster credentials.

And who knew things were getting so morbid over the border these days? Me Oh My, Le Bon’s witching (half) hour, was recorded for mentor and Super Furry Animal Gruff Rhys’ Irony Bored label after she appeared on his Neon Neon side-project album, Stainless Style. But whereas the sleazy electro glide of the track in question, ‘I Lust U’, didn’t allow for the eccentricities of her Nico-imbued vocal or her urge to write about death and darkness, the fact she initially wanted to call this debut ‘Pet Deaths’ speaks volumes about what fascinates her most.

From the first solemn line – “I fought the night and the night fought me” it’s a sometimes spooky sometimes melancholic tension that she weaves. Take the first few gentle, subdued bars of the title track, or the downright unsettling ‘The Terror of the Man’, which uses poignant repetition to claustrophobic effect. The lamenting ‘Burn Until the End’ starts off all sombre vocal and eerie acoustics before augmenting into a crashing wall-of-noise wigout, while ‘Sad Sad Feet’s sleepy backbeat sees the singer “headed for the black” in wistful, regretful mode

Throughout, Le Bon’s vocal manages to walk the line between smudged vulnerability and a clipped kookiness, albeit always treading an individual path. Charm, talent and credibility are three things the girl has in spades, so what’s so frustrating about Me Oh My is its complete lack of memorability and absence of focal points. While the beefy guitar of ‘Hollow Trees Home Hounds’ adds some meat to what’s so far a rather brittle skeleton and ‘Shoeing the Bones’ comes the closest to being an unforgettable song, there remains a complete lack of hooks or choruses. It’s palpable that Le Bon has got the goods, now she just needs to know what to do with them. Sadly though, you’d be forgiven for thinking that after a first listen, her moonlit world is a pleasant yet inanimate experience, and not one you’d desperately need to return to.

New Young Pony Club - The Optimist

I remember seeing New Young Pony Club whilst I was at university a few years ago when they were touring with the NME on the same bill as CSS and the Klaxons.  I was swept up on the nu-rave bandwagon and really liked their original, edgy sound. But then they sort of disappeared.

With only a hazy memory of their previous work (mainly ‘Ice Cream’), I was expecting more of the same; plinky-plonky ’80s electro, nu-rave pop – and their new album The Optimist delivers, but on a larger scale.

First track ‘Lost A Girl’ is, in true NYPC style, quite jerky.  On the first couple of listens, I thought the track had jumped.  It’s something that takes a bit of getting used to, and the erratic theme continues throughout the album, whether it be mid-track, or a more abrupt ending.

‘Stone’ is slower, stripped down compared to the other tracks.  In contrast, ‘We Want To’ is a an upbeat, almost anthemic track, with layered vocals and a brash bassline.  Likewise, ‘Dolls’ is a spunky song full of sparky lyrics such as “We think you’re strange/so you act like a stranger” and “I thought I had a brain/I don’t seem to have one”.

Conversely, ‘Before The Light’ has a haunting tinge to it; it starts with an electro drum beat, soon joined by a bass line (both in double time, a bit like Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’) that drives the song forward, before vocalist Tahita Bulmer’s echoey vocals come in.  Add piano chords and lyrics like “Don’t look at me now/look at my intellect/The things I leave behind/Like footsteps” before the vocal jumps between octaves for the chorus, and before you know it the song has sucked you in.

After a couple of listens to the album, I realised who NYPC reminded me of.  The ’80s beats, keyboards and almost dissonant vocals could be likened to Roxy Music – particularly on the opening track ‘Lost A Girl’.  This, and ‘Before The Light’, are the album’s beacon songs, but overall it’s a pretty strong album.

NYPC have evolved into a more mature version of themselves; the ’80s influences are still evident, but they’ve lost some of that nu-rave ‘in your face’ attitude.  That’s not to say they’ve lost their edge.  In fact, the entire album is quite edgy, and New Young Pony Club’s sound is still fresh enough to stand out amongst a lot of the mundane bands being played at the moment.

Islet - image from thisislet.com (the unofficial fansite)

March 5, 2010

I could prepare for writing this review by trawling endlessly, needlessly for track names, photos, and an overview of what the selected few hacks who’ve written about Islet have to say. I did, in fact, and it turns out that more’s been written about their decision – be it because of a lack of recorded material or otherwise – to shun the internet. They have no MySpace, sure, but the fact is that an image-search reveals their appearance, a look at their Last.fm or Songkick page (subject to gig promoters’ efficiency) tells of their upcoming tour-dates and press, just like this, is still filtering through. They’re proof that hometown-phenomena still happen.

More importantly is just how astonishing a live band this Cardiff quartet (on this showing) are. It’s a rhythmically mesmeric assault bursting with all sorts of variation. They swap instruments relentlessly and each song is gawpingly stirring, leaving the audience amazed. Everything they emit is so fluent, even when they take on their more tribal persona and run around the venue calling out or playing their guitars at members of the crowd.

There’s a frenzy around every sound they plug into, and when unexpected sections fizz out of the same band-members, the same instruments, it’s astounding. Islet’s rock-smart and dramatic unpredictability is confounding, turning their vision into colossal sound. Vocals, or rather sometimes sounds, pepper the music with new dimensions, and the sheer exuberance of the performance is stirring, fascinating.

Drawing on a mind-sweep of similar artists including the likes of Holger Czukay and Steve Reich for their bold and oft minimally-textured mind-blowers, there’s also a lot to be taken from the likes of no-wave royalty Half Japanese and Swans in Islet’s sound. All of this is a giant disservice to their sheer squeal, so take name-drops and references as mere SEO-friends rather than literal buzzwords.

I’ve heard a few people separately squeal something along the lines of “Islet are the sort of band that make we want to make hand-made fanzines”, and I can join that collective now. Their super-human show exists outside of structure, time and expectation.

Screaming Maldini - Kookaburra Sings

Imagine Scouting For Girls built a time machine that took them back to around 1984.  Once there, they stole The Smiths’ youthful spirits and creativity, then returned via 1992, where they had a tutorial in time signatures from Dream Theater and a magic lesson from Paul Daniels.  Are you still with me?  If so, then you have a good idea of what to expect from Screaming Maldini’s ‘Kookaburra Sings’.

In general I have a natural aversion to the words ‘juxtaposition’ and ‘fusion’, but I am struggling to find any better words to describe the sound Screaming Maldini make.  The vocals are most definitely indie but the pristine production, brass and synth give the whole thing a very poppy, ska-like feel. And then you get the prog thing.   The odd time signatures (usually 5 or 7 beats in the bar) and bizarre chromatic circus-esque key changes, along with some rather zingy keyboard sounds, conjur up an image of a band as fascinated by dungeons and dragons as they are by rock n roll.

There is a good deal of proficiency here and it’s to be respected, as is Screaming Maldini’s drive to create something genuinely unique.  The mania of ‘Secret Sounds’ and ‘The Extraordinary’ is arresting, in a good way, and you find yourself tapping your foot (if you can keep time) and getting carried along quite nicely.  ‘The Albatross’ is the token slower, atmospheric tune and is has a haunting female vocal that is rather pleasing. ‘Miniatures’ is the most ‘proggy’ track on the album, but also has some really catchy hooks and a synth-reggae breakdown in the middle where they sing about ships. And then there’s the uplifting ‘I Know That You Know That I Would Wipe The Snowflake From Your Eye’. It’s the longest song title in the world… what’s not to like?

The risk Screaming Maldini run with straddling so many genres is in alienating them all – it’s all a bit weird for commercial mainstream tastes but is not broody or messy enough for the Emo indie fans and yet is probably too indie for the ska subscribers.  I therefore can’t see Screaming Maldini rushing to the top of the charts any time soon.  However I’d definitely buy a ticket to their gig:  if they have half the energy on stage as they put across on ‘Kookaburra Sings’, it’d be a good show.  Now where did I put my pink wizard hat?

Trouble Books - Gathered Tones

There is undoubtedly something magical about a great lost album. Even when you discount the dirty pleasure of indie snobbery, there is still something warming about a really special piece of music which you share with a small number of similarly enlightened souls. Ohio band Trouble Books’ last effort, The United Colors of Trouble Books was a thing of almost impossible beauty which fell squarely into that category, missed as it was by many. Given the delicate, unhurried nature of their sound, it is perhaps fitting that the acclaim for the band is starting to swell ever so gradually, including a recent spot in The Guardian’s New Band of the Day column, meaning their fanbase is starting very slowly to expand.

After The United Colors, Trouble Books had a hand in two more records in the last twelve months, firstly the Endless Pool EP and then offshoot project Talons‘ Songs For Babes. Both were similarly lovely, and served as excellent appetisers for the follow-up to The United Colors, Gathered Tones.

As we might have expected, it is quite simply wonderful. The record has a slightly fuller sound than its predecessor, but it sacrfices none of the delicacy Trouble Books have always exhibited. Gathered Tones feels like the soft trickle of rain against a window, while The United Colors was more like the very first sensation of drizzle in the air. Right from the outset with album opener ‘Ascending Kidney’, it is clear that the band have lost none of their deftness. About a minute and a half into the song, a guitar line comes in, devastatingly delicate, but all the more powerful for it, and this is the most perfect example of Trouble Books’ greatest strength. They can create the strongest of emotions from the most minimal of ingredients. This is a huge part of what makes them such a special band, giving them more substance in five seconds of music than some bands manage in an entire career.

The way the band structure the album has not changed from previous releases, and really, there is no reason on Earth why it should. The songs are still constructed from sleepy ambient textures, embellished with elements of noise, drones, and all manner of miscellaneous background chirruping. This is really why Gathered Tones, like all their other work, will stand up to any number of repeated listens. The ingredients might be sparse, but it’s very possible you will be too spellbound by the sheer elegance of it all to notice every minute detail, so there will undoubtedly be sounds you miss the first, second or seventieth time you listen.

More than anything else, what really elevates Gathered Tones above their previous best work is its evocativeness. Every song creates its own particular mood, one which you might instinctively associate with its subject matter without even noticing it. On ‘Abandoned Monorail Station’ for example, even before a glance at the song title, and before hearing the line “and debris swirls around me”, you might find yourself picturing a desolate, windswept platform haunted by a forlorn solitary figure. It’s a similar story on final song ‘Houseplants’, a wonderfully spacious piece which conjures up images of a sun-bleached room filled with blanched-leafed plant life. The lyrical content, as well as the music also helps to paint these pictures of an idyllic kind of reality, telling tales about subjects as diverse and commonplace as feeding fast food to stray cats, putting the bins out, and the downright inconvenient sense of timing death sometimes has.

With Gathered Tones, Trouble Books have raised their stock even further. Their prolific release rate would suggest that they have an inexhaustible supply of these dreamy little morsels, which is all the more lucky for us. It was difficult to imagine how they could possibly top an album as perfect as The United Colors, so it would be narrow-sighted of us to wonder how they could improve on this record. All we can do is wrap ourselves in its cosy glow and wait as patiently as we can for everything else they have in store for us.

Field Music

March 3, 2010

Field Music are avant-pop doyens. That sure sounds pretentious but it’s shorthand for “Field Music should be selling out the Royal Festival Hall but audiences’ attention-spans just aren’t big enough to let that happen”. They sell out the Scala no sweat, which marks the well-deserved success of their comeback record Field Music (Measure), but tonight – while a great platform for their instrument-swapping skills, astounding musicianship and general loveliness – lacks magic.

It feels taut, with let-go occurring only in bundles between the music, incongruously. This isn’t in a way that the music feels mechanical, tricksy or other such, more that the Scala’s sound techs take around 30 minutes to get the sound right. The imperfections are brightly-lit among the mammothly-varied set, where the striking counterpoint between all-too-serious performance and deadly-funny audience-interaction becomes apparent.

Even after opening with a nervous take of ‘Give It Lose It Take It’, it’s a given that the audience at the Scala are lapping up Field Music’s rebirth of the guitar band. Though after seeing them twice this year without the addition of a piano, the bigger show makes the flaws more visible.  With the added piano, the songs don’t feel as tight as they should. Though saying that, criticism of a set including the stunning pop-epic ‘Share The Words’ has to be tempered, sated and taken relatively.

Endless comical chat between songs is lovely but oddly apologetic; it detracts from the hardy determination in the vocals on ‘Shorter Shorter’. It’s odd then that School of Language track ‘Rockist Pt. 4′, from the School Of Language album, is tonight’s highlight, its contrasts more marked and assured than on much of the show. Sure, that’s due to the clearer-cut stop/start nature of the song in comparison with Field Music’s wilder, even less predictable variation, but there shouldn’t be so many dips.

‘The Rest Is Noise’ is bass-heavy through fault of the sound techs, though its heavy prog passage makes up for the fallings in sound. To contrast with that, the funky riffing and more open, timeless passages of ‘Each Time Is A New Time’ are note-perfect. David Brewis’ falsetto is similarly assured throughout, when employed, and ‘Effortlessly’ sounds just that.

By all standards, this show is fantastic; by Field Music’s own, it falls short.

These Are Powers - Candyman

Having been the bearer of ill tidings – that Liars’ Sisterworld isn’t the spectacular return to form we’ve long hoped for – it’s gratifying to know that there is a sisterworld out there, in which the long-departed rhythm section continue to excite, titillate and horrify. These Are Powers may not fill the Liars-shaped hole, exactly, but they aim to fill other ones you didn’t know you had. (Apologies for any lewdness… the press release has just informed me that the artwork is based on a fetishistic practice known as “sploshing”.)

For newcomers, These Are Powers would be Pat and Bill (on bass and beats) with Anna Barie (vocals), all of them manipulating electronics. 2.5 albums into their career, TAP are on a trajectory from one kind of filth to another; where the first album was a pummelling, post-hardcore, New York hellscape, with dirty production not far off Oneida and early Sonic Youth, the latest EP sees them delighting in slick sounds at once shiny and squelchy, synaesthetically evoking all the colours of a Britney Spears video, but without the tiresome predictability of mainstream pop. Lead track ‘Candyman’ takes a sped-up reggae beat, and sets Anna Barie yelping like Annabella Lwin from Bow Wow Wow. If only, you think, If only the lyrics were about drugs (like the classic Donovan song of the same name). Like licking a hallucinogenic toad, she sounds like she’s getting off on every fluid and excrescence leaking from her sugar-coated man/girl/lover.

Second track, ‘Gutterspaces’, slows it down and lets you savour the clear patterns of the melodica, like Moroccan palace architecture overhead, and then we’re back to the churning sleaze of ‘World Class Peoples’. The remixes are substantial re-workings, FYI, with added jungles of sampled sounds; more conventionally dance, for sure, but they might as well be new tracks. Maybe this is appealing because it takes that NYC-intellectual fascination with the sensuality of world music / Afro-Caribbean music, and instead of appropriating it and whitening it, or authenticating it with “actual native” collaborators (Gorillaz et alia), TAP parody the fetishization itself, to the N-th degree (like Beck on Midnite Vultures; like Prince; like Bow Wow Wow). With or without the inter-racial fantasies and projections of “sensuality”, These Are Powers really do make music you can feel, and that’s their achievement.

The casual gentleman, taking an evening on stroll along London’s Borough High Street, would be forgiven for noting the Roxy and passing on by, suspecting it to be both expensive and designed to appeal to those Londoners, whoever they might be, who don’t like pubs.  In fact this is London’s best-concealed cinema where fine films are exhibited to those who can put up with the drink prices.  On a Tuesday evening in late February the screening room is playing host to a high proportion of men in full beards and faded baseball caps, tell-tale signs of something afoot. The Archie Bronson Outfit are back in town equipped, if the rumours could be believed, with an album even better than the particularly tight and rocking Derdang Derdang.

The Outfit are launching Coconut, with an accompanying selection of videos screened to a packed room, and it’s all seriously impressive stuff.  Derdang Derdang is a much loved record, but restricted by its rockabilly template which walls the music off from variations in tone.  Coconut tackles these shortcomings head-on, taking itself a little less seriously, loosening the grooves and letting in a lot more funk.  Track one, ‘Magnetic Warrior’, kicks in with a guitar groove that harks proudly back to the days of early 90s indie and PJ Harvey’s ‘Dry’.  The video, a cut-out re-animation of A Matter of Life and Death, is a masterpiece of self-deprecating silliness.

In fact, this turns out to be the defining theme as the next track, ‘Shark’s Tooth’, a casually brilliant song surely born of an active interest in exotica and surf guitar, is performed in someone’s garage decorated with tin foil and plastic flowers.  The same garage returns in ‘Wild Strawberries’, but this time the band wears Invisible Man bandages.  ‘Hoola’, for obvious reason, is accompanied by a plastic brain attacking London via some very low production values, while the backing vocals sigh over unsettled guitar and keyboards. ‘Bite It and Believe’ cunningly reduces the production budget still further by using on a rotating image of singer Sam Windett’s magnificent bearded features.  ‘Hunt You Down’ is more gentle than its title would suggest, and its awesome dinosaur-themed video makes good use the concrete creatures of Crystal Palace Park. ‘Chunk’ dives down a world music dead-end, and the audience seem non-plussed by the accompanying video of a man doing ‘comedy’ dancing.  However, this is a minor blemish. The album is essential, a real step forward, and the films are a delight.  Do yourself a favour: get into the Outfit.