Vivian Girls – Everything Goes Wrong

Vivian Girls

This album is a lot like a pizza (bear with me here). As a whole, it’s a deliciously enticing prospect but the problem with pizza is that every slice is pretty much the same as the one before and after your sixth, you either get bored or start to feel sick from the carb and salt overload. A typical Vivian Girls serving is topped with generous helpings of echo and reverb, all played at a piping hot 100 miles per hour, great in small portions but sickly as a whole.

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Pastels/Tenniscoats – Two Sunsets

Pastels/Tenniscoats

This September be prepared to be lulled into the dreamy creation that is the collaboration between The Pastels and The Tenniscoats. Two Sunsets is the brand new and exciting release from the two bands and includes an outstanding array of 12 songs. You may remember The Pastels as the Scottish pop legends that were the cult band of the eighties. The Tenniscoats, who you might be less familiar with, are a Japanese duo who recorded this collection in Glasgow whilst completing their UK tour.

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Phantom – Great Pretender

Phantom - Great Pretender

Rather an unfortunate choice of title for this debut from the gothabilly trio I reckon but the song itself is pretty good – sultry chanteuse vocals and suitably twangy guitar from Elsie Martins, solid bassing from her brother (or husband, not clear) Jonny and eerie organ from third wheel Lyndsay Evans.

B-side ‘Voodoo Romantic’ is a bit grander in scale and more gothy than rockabilly but once more gives a clear idea of where the band a re headed and what their strengths are. In no way are they the new Cramps but there’s a niche for them given the current spotlight on all things burlesque and loosely related.

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The Big Pink – A Brief History Of Love

The Big Pink - A Brief History Of Love

For a duo, The Big Pink manage to make quite a racket at times on their 11-track debut. But for all the noisy bits, there are sure some wonderfully sweet poppy moments alongside to even things up.

Approaching this from the a position of total ignorance, ‘Crystal Visions’ grabs my interest immediately; the delicate opening motif gives way to fuzz obtained wholesale from the JAMC. The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Interpol and recent arrivals Crocodiles all come to mind in this song and throughout the album. At no point do they ever sound like The Band, so their choice of name is an enduring mystery to me.
‘Too Young To Love’ is a swirly psychedelic melange of driving guitars and mesmeric vocals over a heavily pounding drumline – a good tune to get lost inside when clubbing I’d wager. And then there’s ‘Dominos’, a dancey number with an anthemic chorus that Ian Brown’d be proud of. … Continue Reading

Cheatahs – Warrior/Minotaur

Cheatahs - Warrior/Minotaur

This double-header opens with a split second or two of faint hiss and crackle alerting us to the fact that we are almost certainly hearing a recording made in a band member’s bedroom or garage. Cheatahs, however, appear to be purposefully cultivating the low production value of the recording in an effort to create an atmosphere of distorted texture more akin to the hazy drone of bands like Women rather than the face melting abrasive lo-fi rock of someone like Wavves . Unfortunately, however, Cheatahs lack the charm or engagement of any of their shoegaze or lo-fi contemporaries.

The first of the two tracks, ‘Warrior’, is a simple verse-chorus-verse-chorus number with only two melodic phrases. “Like a waaarrrrior/Like a warrrriorrrr/Like a warrrrriorrrrruhhh” drones the insufferable chorus in a totally unengaged delivery. ‘Minotaur’, the other track on offer here, even abandons the idea of a B section and chooses to run one solitary melodic phrase into the ground over the course of a couple of minutes. This single melodic phrase does not, in case you’re interested, contain a hook. … Continue Reading

The Horrors, London Electric Ballroom

The Horrors' Faris Badwan

June 5, 2009

Mass hysteria has surrounded The Horrors’ Primary Colours, an astonishing second album to succeed the hype and frenzy that the Southend five-piece found themselves swathed in first time around. While Strange House is portrayed by those late to the party as little more than a cod-goth side project by a group of Mighty Boosh cameoists (and I can hardly defend it implicitly – truth be told I’d only heard ‘Sheena Is A Parasite’, ‘Jack The Ripper’ and ‘She Is The New Thing’ until about one month ago), the reality provides that it was one of the most snarling, striking and inventive albums to have cut the grade over the past few years. Not so much aping psychobilly, The Cramps and The Birthday Party, The Horrors challenged our expectations and eardrums with a sound of their own.

Two years on, and just like the rest of the music press, I have been labelling Primary Colours with extortionate levels of hyperbole. This path was carved out neatly until I purchased the latest issue of Plan B (RIP), wherein the first negative review I had come across existed; the critic focused on The Horrors’ try-hard ethos, in a way their dictatorial stance. The way they’d put their influences through a sieve and a magnifying glass, and then dumbed them down into some sort of step-by-step guide. I’m paraphrasing, but that was the gist. A small halt in the love affair, I thought, until I re-listened, once again, and accepted that yes, The Horrors are trying hard but why shouldn’t they? Yes, The Horrors issue a diktat on your reactions to their kraut disco arpeggios, but isn’t that great? And yes, The Horrors’ influences are right there for all to see, but damn straight, they seem to know their music and what the hell’s wrong with that?

It induced a further question on whether it’s better to jump on or off of the bandwagon – that their sound draws on influences not recently hyped in reinvented form potentially justifies the brouhaha surrounding Primary Colours. If you jump on, you’re either of your time or adhering to convention; if you jump off, you’re ‘making a statement’. The reason why The Horrors have suddenly gone big-scale is because they have introduced a bandwagon all of their own, refining it as their catalogue expands. … Continue Reading

The Lions Constellation – Flashing Light

The Lions Constellation

Spanish JAMC/Pixies enthusiasts The Lions Constellation could just have become my favourite sub-genre of the Summer with the arrival of this album. The Barcelona quartet, who feature RJ Sinclair of Tokyo Sex Destruction, sing in flawless English and here release eleven great tunes in the same sonic vein as their obvious influences.

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The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, London Lexington

The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart

May 15, 2009

‘Young Adult Friction’ is, I think, favourite song of the year thus far; in fact, The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart have made the album my dreams are made of. The sorts of things that get me excited (not finitely) include C86 bands (namely The Pastels), Sarah Records, The Cure, Slowdive, cardigans, dual vocals, aesthetic darkness, music to simultaneously dance and think to…

Yes, I realise this is hyperbole, but that’s the way it is. Thus seeing the Brooklynites at their first London gig is a risk indeed – will it turn out that they are in fact just a sum of their parts? Should I just go back home and listen to Souvlaki or pretend that everything in the world is exactly this perfect clash between sugary-sweet and twisted deliberation? Will Kip Berman and Peggy Wang be so cool and aloof that they fail to induce any sort of reaction?

Hold fort, it’s fine. In fact, it’s fucking brilliant (expletive necessary). I feel like I’ve gone back to a state of nature (minus Nietzsche’s wanky overinterpretations) – being born in 1986, I feel a strange connection with the likes of McCarthy, Heavenly, The Field Mice and Talulah Gosh. This is equally wanky as Nietzsche, I do realise, probably to the extent of someone saying “I’m in love with a feeling”. But hell, I can’t help myself. … Continue Reading

The Legends – Over And Over

The Legends - Over And Over

Let us get one thing out of the way from the off; The Legends is a terrible name for a band. It conjures up images of landfill Britpop revivalists, paunchy 35-year-old blokes down your local, playing Stone Roses covers convinced they are the reincarnation of Saint Gallagher.

But it seems the band’s mainstay Johan Angergård is a very busy chap indeed, serving time in two other bands and having founded Labrador Records, home of many of Sweden’s leading pop luminaries, so perhaps we can forgive him this one. Perhaps he just didn’t have enough time to pick a good name for his band (which is really just Angergård’s own project, in spite of his lurid claims of having eight others in the band). Fortunately for our Johan, his musical talents are far more on the button than his ability to pick out an appropriate moniker.

Having left us in 2006 with Facts and Figures, a highly enjoyable record of dreamy pop laced through with electro touches, he’s back with Over and Over, a very different animal indeed. … Continue Reading

Neil Halstead and Lach hit the road

Slowdive - Souvlaki

News just in: the main man in the shoegaze world and one of the pioneers of anti-folk are going on tour together! That’s Neil Halstead and Lach, for those who aren’t on top.

The duo (not performing as a duo, FYI) will be hitting the following places on the following dates:

Sun May 17 MANCHESTER RUBY LOUNGE
Wed May 20 BIRMINGHAM ACADEMY
Thu May 21 OXFORD ACADEMY
Sun May 24 YORK DUCHESS
Mon May 25 LIVERPOOL ACADEMY
Tue May 26 NEWCASTLE ACADEMY
Wed May 27 GLASGOW CAPT REST
Thu May 28 LEEDS FAVERSHAM
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