The Jesus And Mary Chain seem to have tripled in size and become Welsh, at least the opener ‘Sunset’ would fool you into thinking so on this excellent debut release by White Noise Sound. It’s one relentless, overdriven slab of fuzz from start to finish. Auditory Red Bull. Similarly on ‘Blood’ the band bring to mind The Dandy Warhols when they were anything to shout about (think practically any track from Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia) or even early Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Whatever the comparisons these songs lay waste to all before them.

Between the two and after ‘Blood’ though the story is completely different. There’s absolutely no loss of form or dip in the class of the music on offer, just a complete change of musical path. Now we’re talking perfectly formed 21^st Century psychedelia. In popular terms you probably need to go back as far as the first Verve album (or at least the live performances thereof) to find anything similar, although of course in the underground Spacemen 3, Loop etc. are obvious modern touchstones. We’re talking eight minute tracks and four minute ones that feel like 12. Shutting themselves away from the world for the album’s gestation period has paid massive dividends in the work’s maturity and listenability.

Shoegaze seemed to be one of the influential forms of music making a comeback in 2010 and White Noise Sound masterfully do their bit for the genre on ‘No Place To Hide’ which has a final two minutes worthy of any of the original exponents. Co-produced with a great deal of fellow feeling by Sonic Boom and SFA’s Cian Ciaran the quality evident throughout is going to be very hard to top in the rest of this year and as debut albums go it has surely secured its historical place too.

Final track ‘(In Both) Dreams And Ecstasies’ has a massive sound that will bring tears to the eyes of the most diehard fans of live shows so start buying shares in Kleenex the minute you see a tour announced. And get a ticket for the show too.

Tamaryn - The Waves

Scanning over the PR blurb for Tamaryn’s first release, the words ‘sun-stricken’, ‘dream-pop’ and ‘San Francisco’ hit me round the face with a bluntly unimaginative thud. Here’s what I thought: Best Coast release their California recorded, reverb injected, Pitchfork Best New Music’d summer debut, and labels x, y and z follow swiftly behind with their en vogue doppelgangers. How very cynical of me. Luckily, there’s more to it than all that.

Where the debut mentioned bottles that sunlight-through-palm-trees summer vacation feeling, The Waves is a desert heat haze – heavy, thick and translucent in detail and content (hell, it’s even being released via Mexican Summer). It’s also worth noting that this same factor makes The Waves difficult to asses lyrically – with only the odd word filtering through as comprehensible, there’s much more of an impressionistic suggestion rather than a definitive message.

With everything tying up so nicely into this one overt theme, it’s nice to see on inspection of the track list, that there’s an interesting juxtaposition of song titles that fit with this theme, against those that seem to object to this notion. The title track, for example – though I had originally tied it together with the phrase ‘heat wave’ – seems more to be a cruel temptation to someone suffering in the song’s heat, with Tamaryn snarling “into the waves…” over a menacing bass line.

The Waves does occasionally whisk the listener off to different climates, interspersing a series of seasonal, geographical and periodical studies among those that are unmistakably from its heat-stricken origins. ‘Choirs of Winter’, with it’s quiet sleigh bells ringing perpetually in the background is a faded memory of a snow covered landscape, while ‘Dawning’ feels like an early morning walk under a foliage shade, brimming with hope and confidence. Nearly all however, are characterised by that same sound – a shoegaze guitar blanket, assisted by a lazy, stumbling beat. The other key to this record is its sense of minimalism, repeatedly recycling phrases, letting them evolve slowly over a long period of time.

But despite it’s diversions, The Waves always returns to its starting point. This holds true to the extent that on first listen I actually thought that closing track and past single ‘Mild Confusion’ was a purposely-imposed déjà vu recollection of the opener, stealing ideas and maybe even a bass line. But it’s just another parched and dry song, from the same sun beaten home that we’ve become familiar with.

Being so thick and heavy, the record does at times start to bog the listener down, a problem somewhat alleviated through the album’s brevity – with only nine tracks, the whole thing clocks in at just over 35 minutes. You can’t help but feel, however, that it would benefit from more textural variation, akin to that heard on ‘Haze Interior’, which forgoes the recognisably staggering and hesitant drums, leaving only a lone cymbal to provide a sense of rhythmic drive. It acts as welcome interlude, metallic guitars slicing across your palette in the foreground, whilst in the distance a sleepy, reverb-drenched chord progression wearily reiterates itself.

I’m pretty sure your critical reception of The Waves will be largely down to the way you listen to it: let it sit quietly sit on your shoulder, and it’ll be like treacle slipping through your fingers. Spend too much time concentrating on details amongst the mass of sound, and you run the risk of it becoming a sludgy quicksand. There’s so much to like about The Waves, just be sure not to try too hard in doing so.

Wooden Shjips - Vol. 2

Heaviosity is coming back. Every few years, there’s a revival of blissed-out drone and heavy psyche (think The Warlocks et al. a few years back), although it never really goes away, more just comes in and out of, if not fashion – it’s never really particularly fashionable or unfashionable per se – then prevalence. It’s almost certainly a side-affect of the current shoegaze revivalism, as well as the recent renewed interest in/awareness of Krautrock, and even the ever-increasing popularity of the likes of Fuck Buttons – layers of trippy noise are clearly where it’s at.

Wooden Shjips are one of the acts at the forefront of this renewed space rock scene, and they’re pretty damn good at it. Vol. 2 is a collection of singles, but it hangs together remarkably well, cohesive in terms of over-all feel, as well as sonic characteristics. And feel is quite important to this kind of music. It’s the kind of music that’s summed up by Spacemen 3’s well-worn album-title and thus life-catchphrase, Taking Drugs To Make Music To Take Drugs To. Having said that, while it’s infused with lysergic overtones, you most certainly don’t have to be on drugs to enjoy it.

Opener ‘Loose Lips’ brings to mind The Doors, probably because of the prominent use of organ, the vocal style, and the fact it sounds like we all think the Sixties did (although it’s more likely that for the most part it probably sounded like Engelbert Humperdinck and Tom Jones). The album features two covers Neil Young’s ‘Vampire Blues’ and Serge Gainsbourg’s ‘Contact’. Unsurprisingly (but in the best possible way), neither particularly resemble the originals, the former bringing to mind Suicide and the latter being too much of an extended psyche wig-out to be especially close to Gainsbourg’s Gallic sophistication, although there a certain icy coolness about Wooden Shjips’ version, as well as a very definite hint of NEU!.

If the likes of The Black Angels, White Hills, LOOP, 13th Floor Elevators or any of the other aforementioned acts turn you on, then Vol. 2 definitely will too. All that’s left to do after you’ve let that happen is to tune in and drop out… Drift.. off… into… the… ether…

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.

Strained similes aside, there is actually much to like about what makes up Everything Goes Wrong. The music is absolutely no frills; guitar, bass and drums played to a fairly limited range of melody and style but played with real rock’n'roll carefree abandon. The album has a live feel to it, attempting to capture what I imagine is a fantastic concert spectacle, though this is offset somewhat through the effects laden vocals which are always dreamy, and multi layered.

It’s tough to pick highlights or indeed lowlights as the tracks are so alike and interchangeable. It’s the kind of album where a friend might say to you, “I love ‘The Desert’” and you’ll reply “Which one’s that?” with their subsequent description of the track leading to further confusion. ‘Tension’ and final track ‘Before I Start to Cry’ just about make themselves noticeable as they’re played at a lesser tempo but still, the melody is not diverse enough from other offerings.

If someone were to stick a track from this album onto a mix CD, the recipient would likely be totally intrigued by the Vivian Girls’ old school, indie rock murk and would no doubt be enticed to seek out more of their work. But it’s in this format, the teasing glimpse, that the band’s music works best. In a long player format, it’s just too raucous, too samey and ultimately the initial charm wears off and boredom creeps in.

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.

This slightly unlikely collaboration has created 12 beautifully crafted tracks, each providing a summery-optimism, currently missing from many contemporary artists.

The songs are a little odd but none-the-less graceful in their deliverance, reminding us of lazy summer afternoons turning into delightful sunsets ala café del mar and the more relaxed side of Ibiza living. Full of melodic (and sometimes strange) backbeats and effects, the tracks are eye-opening and genteel.

With a subtle enthusiasm the first track ‘Tokyo Glasgow’ reassures the listener of the undemanding nature of the album. A laid back, soft enthusiasm seeps out of all the songs but perhaps none more so though than on the track ‘Start Slowly So We Sound like a Loch’.

‘Song for A Friend’ is another prime example of the mellow vibes pulsating throughout this collaboration, offering a mix of velvety, melodious words and some acoustically genius talent. ’Vivid Youth’ has an enticingly exciting intro and maintains the indulgent feel present throughout the entire album.

‘Yomigaeru’ is a fun, summer-time song. The lyrics are so addictive I guarantee you’ll be singing along within seconds. ’Hikoki’ is a brief yet charming piece of music with a range of instruments providing an unusual yet delightful track. An enchanting magic is present on the track ‘Mou Mou Rainbow’, it captivates the listener and induces an entrancing sound, most pleasant on the ears.

I can’t tell you which track is my favourite, which is the best offering or indeed which is the weakest. This I cannot do because all 12 tracks provide a story, track one is the beginning, track 12 the end, listen until the end and you’ll understand what I mean. Every single track on this album glides smoothly from one to the next, a transition made possible by the perfect collaboration executed by these sets of artists. Two Sunsets is the perfect title for the album, providing an inkling as to the relaxed content stored within. Ideal for hot sunny afternoons in the park, picnics in the garden and those summer drives we all love to take.

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.

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.

‘Love In Vain’ slows things right down, reminiscent of The Verve circa A Storm In Heaven. It’s the weakest of the early tracks but doesn’t outstay its welcome. ‘At War With The Sun’ turns the volume and distortion back up and nicely pushes the album forward. ‘Velvet’ is a more considered groover but with an air of teenaged romantic disappointment about it and the guitars still get thrashed around to good effect. ‘Golden Pendulum’ is less than arresting song but pleasantly relaxing all the same.

‘Frisk’ ups the angst quotient with its yearning questions on the subject of love. It gets a bit repetitive though. The bassline on ‘Tonight’ is deliciously fat at times, building to a good anthemic ending. Closing proceedings out is ‘Count Backwards From Ten’ which unfortunately never really lives up to the potential it fleetingly displays, a bit like the album in general. Not then a bad debut by anyone’s measurements but certainly not as earth shattering as may have been predicted in some quarters.

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.

Bradford Cox has shown us over the last couple of years with Deerhunter and Atlas Sound, however, that having repetitive vocal melodies doesn’t mean a song can’t be vital and engaging just so long as it’s coupled with rich or beautiful arrangements. Indeed, this is the basket in which Cheatahs put their eggs: the multi-layering of fuzzy electric guitars and distorted acoustic guitars are clearly the ace up the sleeve for this recording. Whilst the first verse and chorus of ‘Warrior’ are already muggy and thick in their guitar textures, a new slew of guitar lines and distorted chords are brought into the mix over the course of the song’s second half which enhance and fatten the aura of the song. ‘Minotaur’ is no different: an even noisier shower of guitars provides the only vaguely engaging aspect of the music. The percussion is pushed right down in the mix, the vocal lines are uninspiring and, to be frank, the guitar work is only noteworthy by comparison.

Cheatahs seem to be attempting to create a soundscape of enveloping hypnosis with their hazy layers of distortion and melodic repetition but fall somewhat flat in this endeavour. Instead, the two songs lazily drift through your ears leaving you with a sense of almost total indifference. Nothing really happens over the course of these two tracks to excite the listener. Nothing really happens over the course of these two tracks full stop.

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.

The glissando-shrouded stick insects hit the Electric Ballroom’s stage at around 9pm, sheathed in the fuzz of the red filter; the crowd are wild for them, and you can tell by the sneer in frontman Faris Badwan’s eyes that he’s thinking, “gosh, look at you all, an amass of subjects flailing exactly like we planned, bobbing up and down precisely how we predicted you would”. They’re so unburdened by this; it’s the ethos spurring them on. Bassist Spider Webb (who played synths on the first album) is decked out in a Hawaiian shirt and high-waisted 80s cocktail waiter trousers, his angular pudding bowl hair cutting a fine silhouette to accompany his inconceivably Human League-esque posturing; Von Grimm on guitars is nigh-on subsumed into his instrument; Badwan is possessed, fixated on the songs, occasionally holding his arms up to the front few rows as if he’s the second coming. This is a band to watch almost as much to listen to.

The sullen darkness of Primary Colours is crystal clear on the stage tonight – the band are super-tight. On ‘New Ice Age’, the convenient bridge between The Horrors’ two albums, Badwan’s Germanic screaming on “THE AGONY!!!” refrain is staggeringly desperate. The sound is like a sonic cavern, turning into itself with the closing of every bar.

That ever-long intro on ‘Sea Within A Sea’ sees my heart thumping out of my skin, waiting for the ecstasy. It’s lyrically sublime too, talk of a “scraping sky” and dreams staying “rooted in the shallows” piling image upon image on top of the already almost overwhelmingly intangible fuzz.  Their outlines are iconoclastic, the strobes adding to the fervour. ‘Who Can Say’ is a romantic rather than romanticised collision of lines and emotions, Badwan reproaching the mic stand entirely unhinged, all eyes on him.

The mess of ‘I Only Think Of You’, the sound and vision of guitar lines being virtually carved out on ‘Do You Remember’, the passionate urgency of ‘Three Decades’ and the softer-edged subversive joie de vivre of ‘Scarlet Fields’ – the set is full of contrasts overlaid by a deep, uninhibited vision of darkness. While Primary Colours sounds ferocious on record, the excitement emitted by the band on the stage is of another world. The pitch-bending so clearly encouraged by producer (and Portishead pioneer) Geoff Barrow brings the sound of ‘The Rip’ even closer to its audience, yet somehow even further away.

The encore comprises songs from Strange House. Sounding altogether more unfinished, less tight, it’s clear to see that this band know exactly what they’re doing at all points – and where next? ‘Sheena Is A Parasite’ oozes the infamous staccato goth like an illicit pleasure, a black-eyed lovechild knowingly awkward in its existence, put out there by the five incarnations of The Horrors in a way they’re continually trying to plan. Quite simply, this show is one of the finest scenes a person could ever expect to bear witness to.

In case you didn’t get it, The Horrors are truly something to be excited about – not just as a deliberately po-faced a route to krautrock, Holger Czukay, Bauhaus, My Bloody Valentine and a whole bunch more, but as way more than adequate ends in themselves. The Horrors are, quite simply, The Horrors; they’ve the balls and brains to tell you exactly how to react, and you’re just a sponge to it all.

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.

If A Place To Bury Strangers were 2008′s darlings of this sound then these guys are most definitely 2009′s, albeit overall their tunes are lighter in tone – the same root nurtures both groups. Like all the best purveyors of the amped up, over-driven garage rock-cum-shoegaze mode the songs are all mighty similar and yet bear listening to again and again. This could be the first album of the year that I play till I’m sick of it if I don’t start rationing myself.

Taking all the above into account it’s therefore a bit difficult to pick out favourite tracks from the disc but after the first half-dozen listens the ones I find myself anticipating the most are ‘Kiss Me’, ‘The End Of Our Days’, ‘Lies About Love’ (their two most Ride-like numbers) and the epic ‘She’s My Heroine’.

If ever there was a good reason to visit Spain just to see a gig then catching this lot in action is probably that reason.