Reviews
Talk
Taxis - Liverless
This lot
come recommended by both the types of sources on whose say so I would
happily remortgage my house and the kind of rags I normally wouldn't look
twice at, albeit by the more reliable sources in those magazines. As such,
I can't help but feel a little cheated by the visionless, tune-free, ten-a-penny
garage rock Talk Taxis actually churn out. Maybe they've got a tune somewhere
in their set that'll light up the charts and we'll all love but a) this
isn't it and b) if it's there, I'm pretty sure it's cold and alone.
The
Whip - Divebomb
The Whip
are a duplicitous beast, seemingly either tied inextricably to the past
(as shown on High Voltage compilations) or, as here and with Trash (both
also available on Kitsuné compilations), a more contemporary, sleaze-oriented
affair. In neither respect do they lead the pack but certainly in this
mode they are a much more noteworthy prospect. Here to seal the deal,
however, you also get a standardly superb Crystal Castles remix, bringing
The Whip's production just that few more feet into the future (rather
than chasing just behind the present as the band themselves usually do).
Her
Name Is Calla - Condor & River
A two track
single clocking in at just under twenty minutes, with only one and a half
of those put aside for the second, outro track. Condor And River the song,
then, is a siamese song, two distinct parts not quite split in the middle.
It sways and chimes into life before a rush of energy and purpose send
the instrumental, post rock half of the track daggering in a fury towards
a nigh silent apogee, after which it comes crashing back down in the form
of a vocal-lead, ethereal song, similar to previous efforts but more direct,
louder. A touch of subtlety has been left back from previous standout
Hideous Box but it remains nonetheless a fascinating tapestry to explore
in the run up to the band's debut album.
Blood
Red Shoes, It's Getting Boring By The Sea
While the band's barbed-grunge ethic remains in evidence on this track
and the trademarks of the Blood Red Sound are still here - the enchantingly
provincial dual vocal, the stripped back twin instrument attack - It's
Getting Boring is a mellower, poppier track. Which makes Blood Red Shoes
one of only a handful of bands who seem to improve on every release despite
getting increasingly mainstream. At this trajectory, by the last track
on their album they'll be writing timelessly perfect pop that even your
mother could enjoy. Although I wouldn't put money on it. B-side Box Of
Secrets is sludgey lo-fi drainchord as you like.
Uffie
- First Love / Brand New Car
Uffie and Mr Oizo has in the
past proved a pairing from heaven. Her awkward, geeky rapping, his awkward,
skewed production finding each other on another plane and inviting us
to visit. While I personally think she's a talent vacuum, the production
of her Ed Banger cohorts invariably makes up manifold for any shortfalls
in her delivery and lyrics. Not so on First Love, though. As an instrumental
it would be okay, with her awful, awful, primary school poem competition
rap over the top it's just impossible to listen without cringing. B-side
Brand New Car is a lot more paletable but neither of these can touch the
genius that were the girl's previous releases.
You know this screaming, unpleasant, utterly irresistible Klaxons cover of the Grace classic. One of the few covers that, by itself, pretty much warrants Myths Of The Near Future its nigh-inevitable Mercury Prize. More noteworthy, then, are the other covers hidden across this release. The first, a bizarre, ill-advisedly faithful cover of My Love, semi-acoustically performed for Radio 1 isn't their most successful. The second, on the 7", a fantastic version of Frankie Valli's The Night, whose eerie, mushroom-munching overtones fit perfectly the harmonics and otherworldly ethos of the trio. Overall a curio of a package to pick up but with at least one format definitely worth investing in.
The
Bird & The Bee - Again & Again
I'd heard
of snippet of The Bird And The Bee when the album was offered up for review.
I wasn't impressed so I didn't bother to put my hand up. What a fool am
I because, upon actually sitting down with this one song promo I'm not
only converted but hungry for more. For sixteen seconds this is barely
there indie acoustica before, on cue, the tempo ups, a pop melody of bubonic
infectiousness is roused and suddenly it's like ever line is a chorus,
every day is weekend and every month is the middle of summer. A waifish
siren of a song, it breezes into your life, whisps past your ears and
carries you on its currents wherever it wants you to.
Polytechnic
- Won't You Come Around
Part of
me wants to like Polytechnic just for coming from the High Voltage breeding
pool, which I've always had respect for. Unfortunately, they've never
quite hit any of the right veins to grab my attention and this is one
of their least effective stabs yet. That Manc lilt is applied to a watery
indie strum-a-thon which warbles and hums without real definition or passion,
before a Brit-pop throwback of a breakdown confirms that the track just
isn't going to do anything of real interest at all.
New
Young Pony Club - Ice Cream
There are
some bands that you don't actually like the music of but like the songs
of. I can't imagine really being bowled over by a New Young Pony Club
album and yet if they released every song off it individually I'd probably
write a review like this for each one. There is something that doesn't
quite work on paper about the band, they're a bit too slow to be catchy,
a bit too sparse to be engaging, a little wobbly to get your teeth into
and yet, here, on this song, each of these elements comes together to
be more than the sum of its parts and lo, a laconic anthem is born. Still
reckon it'd be better faster.
LR
Rockets - Prank Caller
They certainly
sound like a Grace act, they've got that tension and accelleration, wirey
guitars, idiosyncratic vocals and a structure built around a catchy chorus.
So why do they feel like the joker of the pack? There's a point where
not taking yourself seriously begins to detract from what you're doing
and there is something cartoon and caperish about the art wave romp chucked
about by this London set. It's fun and direct but when history paints
this decade, this year, even this month, you can't imagine Prank Caller
making it into the picture.
Look
See Proof - Casualty
There is
a fair amount going on in the otherwise simple indie pop affair from Hertfordshire
quartet. Production nuances drag at the basics, pulling and pressing at
things below the surface, bleeping and bubbling while in the foreground
a pretty homely song jangles its way from the speakers. It's not revolutionary
but in the face of some of their peers its nice to see Look See making
that additional effort. B-side Between Here & There is even more straightforward
but harder to shake from your psyche. Perhaps somewhere between the two
sides of the band, if they toned down some of their glaring influences,
we'd be in for quite a treat.
Battle
- The Longest Time
Wow. My
journey with Battle continues. Having finally, finally devised a system
with which to differenciate them from the other high profile band with
a similar name (the one with the 's' is the better one), the British Battle
up the ante again. They always hint at music like that of The Longest
Time, twisting, introspective, cathartic, but never manage to deliver
them within the context of an attractive song. The cohesion and timing
of these ideas was always the problem. Here they get closer still to putting
everything they have in their arsenal within a more universal framework.
It's not quite there but it's damn close.
LCD
Soundsystem - All My Friends
To review
this song with a sort of critical populism I would tell you that it is
LCD Soundsystem at their most affecting. Soul-searching and maudlin, the
hammered piano keys form a soil into which analogue electronics can lay
root and grow with a gradual, natural grace, the song giving all its pieces
the space to create a wonderfully ornate biosphere of mid-eighties melancholica,
redefined for the MMS generation. As it happens, while all this may be
true, I don't like the song. I get it, I just don't like it. It sounds
too much like Joy Division to me, the cover b-sides (by John Cale and
Franz Ferdinand) are too faithful to be worth hearing and the cover of
No Love Lost by Mr LCD himself simply serves to hammer home my disquiet.
All my friends love it, though.
Feist
- My Moon, My Man
I have
a feeling I should be more into Feist than I am and therefore I should
have heard this version of the song first. As it happens, I heard the
Boys Noize remix first (mentioned elsewhere on the site) and as such this
version was never quite going to match up. However, putting the gritty
electro backbone of the edit out of my mind, the melody here remains prestine
and hard to escape, in your mind and in your heart. The glowing embers
of Feist's hushed tones light up the wonderfully plodding bassline and
quiet synth eruptions of the chorus. All in all a marvel to behold and
a worthwhile version to have if your evening requires a softer version
of the admittedly superior remix.
MIT
- Good Book
Bizarrely,
the version of this song we were given has an aditional minute of silence
at the end. Presumably to stop us destroying the profits of the German
duo by uploading it (despite the fact the song was free on an Artrocker
cover CD some months ago). It plays into the hands of this review, however,
by giving me a nice way to mention the fact that the problem with the
song in general, silence or not, is that it doesn't warrant four minutes.
It's a blast of dirty electro punk, thick, plasticky basslines and scorched
synths stabbing in all direction. It works best as such. Anything more
than two minutes is labouring the point. Funnily, as if to complete this
review for me, MIT include Auf An Aus as the b-side, similarly riotous
but a much more fitting 56 seconds long.
These
New Puritans - YYY
At least
I think that's what it's called. If these reviews are shown in the order
I send them through then the one above is Good Book by MIT. At four minutes
that was too long - imagine my confusion when YYYY weighed in at twelve.
It's not post rock, it's just a three minute sleaze-pop track carried
on in a audience-baiting kraut fashion for ever. It's good, though,
somehow it doesn't massively overstay its welcome. It just also doesn't
really warrant its length, it doesn't do anything particularly new during
its extended stay and almost becomes a little awkward, with nobody really
knowing what to do with their arms by about the third minute. Still, it's
alright.
ddd
- Trojan Horse
The second
single from one man agit-punk battering ram ddd and it's more of than
twitchy angular riot wave we enjoyed so much from his first single. Remember
the story of the Princess and the Pea? Lots of matresses, one pea, a bad
night's sleep? Well, it's like that, except with one matress and a hundreds
of javelins that jut up at your through it constantly for two minutes.
A jagged, roughly shunted cocktail of tourettes and ADHD. On the flip,
Wall To Wall isn't as dirgy as previous b-side Jealousy but still shows
the sensitive side of ddd as being caked in black tar, dragged unconscious
through a deserted wasteland and full of bitter spite. In fact, we almost
prefer it.
The
Strange Death of Liberal England - Oh Solitude
There was
a time they were our own personal ones to watch. What exactly changed
in the hearts and minds of The Strange Death and saw them leave behind
the soft, subtle waning of post rock inflected prior effects and take
up arms in this way I've know idea. Like a friend's friend that irks you
because she's too loud for how funny, interesting and attractive she is,
The Strange Death's sound have foresaken subtlety in favour of a bizarre
bombast that does them no favours and leaves me feeling a little out in
the cold with no desire to find a way back in.
The
Go! Team - Grip Like a Vice
Unlike
some I don't write reviews as though I live in a bubble outside the rest
of society, proclaiming judgements on music from a position of purity.
Nope. I read NME just like everyone else so when I listened to Grip Like
A Vice I did so expecting a departure from their previous fuzzy, Miami
Vice-hued 80's TV theme tune hip hop. Grip Like A Vice doesn't really
offer that. It would've been a stand-out on Thunder! Lightning! Stike!
but not an anomolie. No, for that you need to track down 7" b-side
Bullets In The Heather - where The Go! Team finally meet the squeeling
feedback, gritty bass and taunt noise I've always dreamed of. Grip Like
A Vice is good, definitely, Bullets In The Heather is fantastic.
Fujiya
& Miyagi - Uh
One of
the best bands to ever walk the earth, my bias towards Fujiya & Miyagi
is no secret. They didn't half sneak this single onto the shelves, though.
It's more of the same from the Brighton trio, mind, so they had nothing
to be ashamed of. Acid jazz funk, purposeful kraut strut, post punk scratch,
leftfield breaks, esoteric lyrics, fractured and hushed vocals, nu wave
synths; if society collapsed tomorrow and the music of Fujiya was all
survived, you could probably retro-engineer a pretty healthy stab at twentieth
century culture from their skeletons. Roll on album three.
M.I.A.
- Boyz
And the
crowd says, boys they're, comin' in, boys they're, comin' in.
Everyone welcome back the last queen of incedinary leftfield street science,
Mathangi Arulpragasam. Having teamed up with the bald baron of Baile,
Switch, they drop the bomb of Boyz on us, sounding every bit as good as
that collaboration sounds on paper. Bombastic baile beats, brass stabs,
switched vocals, MIA's throng-baiting chant, all in all the battering-ram
bastard progeny of Brazillian funk, dancehall, ragga, hip hop, punk, electroclash
and any other music that's even been used where polemic's failed, to captured
a party in the vice-like grip of the disenfranchised. An essential return,
better than ever.
Simian
Mobile Disco - I Believe
Originally
on a Kitsuné album of about a year ago this is the first single
to be released since the boys' debut album Attack Decay Sustain Release
hit the shelves a while ago. Featuring the vocals of former Simian bandmate
Simon Lord, it's the slowest burner on an album of tracks designed to
grow inside you. Once in bloom, though, it's delicate petals and unmistakable
scent make it one of the most beautiful things on the album. This single
package doesn't boast much else - the Switch remix being a littled disappointing
- but it's definitely worth hunting out b-side System, the type of epic
acid workout the band make sound so meteoric in their live shows.
Operator
Please - Just a Song About Ping Pong
I don't
know where the lead singer of The Noisettes is from but I'm pretty sure
it's not Australia. Which makes the uncanny similarity between her voice
and that of Operator Please's lead teen all the more uncanny. That frantic
squarking is the main overlap, mind, as the rest of this track is taken
up with the type of garage rock that's colourfun, bouncy and fun but doesn't
seem to feel the need to go any further than that. Certainly not bad,
there's something about it that just seems a little too gawky to force
your reaction. There is a Kissy Sell Out remix, though, and we
all know what that means.
The
Teenagers - Homecoming
The real
question behind The Teenagers isn't whether or not they're Next Big Thing
material (that's out of our control now) but whether or not they got there
by being good or by fucking their American cousin in her cunt because
she had nine tits. Luckily, once you get past the foul mouth of Homecoming
itself you're still treated to a the type of amniotic disco unborn babies
probably get when their mothers still go clubbing. Furthermore, the sheer
fact that other tracks We Are The Teenagers and Fuck Nicole boast this
subdued gaillic afterparty fuzz without the need for quite such vulgarity
is testiment to their potential longevity.
Neat
People - Carry You Upward
Anyone
remember Phillipa Future? Yeah, probably not. As proponents of harmless
brit-pop throwback indie, Neat People are one of the less well known despite
sounding just as much the well produced finished-product as many of their
peers. There's something to their strummed, almost folky influences that
make them a breed slightly apart from the the crowd which should work
in their favour. They've yet to translate this to a tune with real teeth
but there are few bands this sickeningly sweet that I tolerate as easily
as I do Neat People, which is no small praise from a miserable sod like
me.
Foals
- Mathletics
In a world
where quality is key, Foals stride above their peers with the shorefooted
confidence of a band yet to put so much as a foot wrong. My biggest criticism
for Foals is that on my copy of this 7" the b-side sounds a little
warbled. Certainly, there's nothing I can say to criticism the intricate
agitated math indie pop of mathletics, where guitars dart inbetween each
other with flickering deftness and yet still manage to knit a tune you
can hum, sing along with and dance to, all at the same time. Worlds apart,
deservant of all the accolades and coverstorys we can only hope are bestowed
on them.
