Moistboyz - That's What Rock & Roll Can Do
Machismo-addled cock-rock with a capital COCK. True, the ever-so-slightly-ridiculous Moistboyz are the kind of band who will divide rock fans instantly with their lousy name and their self-proclaimed “garbage-rock” moves, but ‘That’s What Rock and Roll Can Do’ is a superior slice of pop-metal that pisses all over genre mainstays like Andrew WK and Kid Rock. Dickie and Micky Moist are long-term Beastie Boys/Ween affiliates who met hitch-hiking back in 1987. By my calculation that makes them far too old to still be lowering the tone with B-sides like ‘Roy’ – a puerile, partially-amusing tribute to its titular sex-offender. In conclusion – Moistboyz aren’t quite as funny as they think they are, but they certainly know their way around a cock-rock smackdown. 7/10

Review by Tom Leins
www.moistboyz.com

We Are Trees - Piece of Plastic / Trace
Slightly sinister swirl-pop from dapper Cardiff mob, We Are Trees. From their Eastern-influenced retro-pop stylings you can certainly see why they’ve already gone down a storm with tastemakers like Zane Lowe. B-Side ‘Trace’ updates things impressively by combining nugget-rock with spaced-out Super Furry pop – to winningly-skewed effect. The band themselves describe themselves as: “nice but sinister – a bit like Paul Daniels”! Endearingly-wonky stuff! 7/10

Review by Tom Leins
www.wearetrees.co.uk

Mach Shau - Necessary Evils EP
Turns out these guys are quite fun. A Five Piece who dabble in punky inde rock that doesn’t stray far from the straight and narrow of what NME liked, ooh 3 years ago, but that said, it doesn’t make you want to switch it off straight away. Hailing from the South of these shores, they do a damn good job at sounding like Maximo Park. Bursts of fuzzy guitar and tubthumping in all the right places drench varied time signatures with a drizzle of style, sure this isn’t heavily polished UK garage rock, this is must try harder and I am sure they will, these guys have ambition to try and breakthrough but they may well have just missed the ship from their Southampton harbour.

Review by James Ainsworth
www.machschau.com

Six Nation State - Fire!
The debut single from Reading’s finest is everything a debut single should be- Passionate, Noisy, Tuneful and over in a couple of minutes. Fans of The Libertines (the band pack a Pete and Carl-esque double vocal attack) should look out for this band, as well as anyone who likes their britrock with a smithering of sea shanty (Like the La’s or The Coral). Some good B-sides too. Ones to watch.

Review by Andrew Moran
www.myspace.com/sixnationstatetheband

ddd - Knives
This single from DDD on White Heat Records is very much like white heat the famous London club night that spawned the label - fun, angular and smart-arse. On the plus side it's energetic - think spazzy out of control drum machines with Test-Icicles guitars over the top and shouty vocals. On the negative side it's nowhere near as good as Lost Penguin, who do this kind of thing a million times better. Fortunately for me it ends after 2 minutes, unlike when I go to White Heat the club night which ends at 3 o clock in the morning with me being sick on the pavement outside.

Review by Andrew Moran
www.myspace.com/onehundredrecords

:( - First Blood EP
Startling Nintendo-core debut from punctuation-fixated Aberdeen Gameboy-punk upstarts :( [AKA Colon Open-bracket]. True to their word they sound like “The Descendents filtered through a Gameboy” … intriguing stuff – I’m sure you’ll agree? And indeed, part of the fun is trying to come up with a suitable name-tag for this burgeoning sub-genre. As console-glitchcore(!) goes, this is moderately entertaining stuff, although only ‘Heartache of Soccer Moms’ is cohesive enough to warrant repeated listens. Their unusual noise has already attracted the attentions of Forward Russia! and Funeral For A Friend (– who have both requested remixes) and Get Cape Wear Cape Fly who invited them out on tour. Whether they’ve got enough left in their bag of tricks to make a

real impact is anyone’s guess. Nevertheless, an interesting curiosity. 6/10

(Note: :( are brought to us by Must Destroy records – the same people who unleashed The Darkness on an unsuspecting public, so maybe this is all one big joke…?)

Review by Tom Leins
www.myspace.com/colonopenbracket

Lost Alone - Unleash the Sands of All Time
Young Derby trio – intent on conquering the stadium rock circuit with their mysteriously bland sub-metallic arena-rock. LostAlone are a little bit Placebo, a little bit Funeral For A Friend. A little bit lost, to be honest. Its one thing to claim that your music is unrestrained by genre, it’s another thing to desperately lack a real identity of your own. The A-side features some nice propulsive punk/funk guitar work, and there’s a hint of early-Manics in the glossy sound of their B-sides, but in truth LostAlone fall well short of the relatively-low benchmarks set by the much-better likes of Kinesis and My Vitriol in previous years.

If you’ll excuse my slightly unpleasant analogy … if their bloated alt.rock corpses washed up in a rock ‘n’ roll reservoir somewhere, then they’d probably lay in the morgue – unclaimed for weeks – such is the lack of “distinguishing features”. Either that or they’ll sink without a trace... 5/10

Review by Tom Leins
www.lostalone.com

Winterkids - Tape It
Sorry, this is horrible, bloody disco beats all over the place for no real reason, stupid inane lyrics about taping a TV program and irritating xylophone plastered over the top of some horrendously recorded tinny guitars… It’s not a bad song, it has a catchy chorus, I’d just like to take the band, rearrange the song, strip it down and rerecord the whole thing to make the hooks audible and less grating.

Review by Chris Chinchilla
www.winterkidsmusic.com

+44 - Lycanthrope
According to their website all you need to know is this: “Plus 44 is a new band consisting of Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker of Blink-182, Shane Gallagher of The Nervous Return and Craig Fairbaugh of The Mercy Killers. The group got its name from the international dialling code to the UK, because it is where Mark and Travis first discussed doing the project.”

So we have established that they are made up of very talented people, some with pedigree and experience a plenty. So why is this insipid, generic and not even slightly interesting modern day MTVlite shiny punk? Alkaline Trio, American Hi-Fi, The Offspring, The Atari’s, all did this kind of thing years ago

and they did it better and still have the staying power today. The dual vocals, riff after riff, subdued vocal scream, technically accomplished drumming and fade out, so camera can zoom out from full band shot performing on aircraft carrier made for MTV video really, erm…sucks.

Review by James Ainsworth
www.plus-44.com

747s - Death of a Star
There always has to be one rotter and this week its 747’s. This is pleasant enough daytime XFM fodder, mid paced in tempo and heavy on the production- but it never really seems to go anywhere, meandering along to the tune of one million office workers who ‘like a bit of anyfing on the radio, really’. I also seem to remember this song being released as a single ages ago, which makes me like it even less. Its seems 747’s have been ‘bigged-up’ by Arctic Monkeys recently and the band’s record label has decided to jump on this. I’m surprised there isn’t a version of ‘I bet you look good on the dance floor’ for the B-side. What else? The press release says they are touring with The Kooks. Great!

Review by Andrew Moran
www.747s.co.uk

Xi - Faceless
Sloganeering debut single from Northern alt.rock types Xi. Their press release takes up the fight admirably with phrases like “Let’s celebrate nothing, poke a bony finger at what we don’t want … text me your war” - which piques the interest, but, musically, this is far too close to being a muddy alt.rock dirge for comfort. The song simply doesn’t manage to reflect the obvious fire in their bellies. I don’t like to say it, but this is all a bit sixth-form. Calling such an anonymous song ‘Faceless’ invites easily avoidable jibes as well. If we are pointing our bony fingers at what we don’t want, I’m going to point mine at Xi. Time to head back to the drawing board, unfortunately. 5/10

Review by Tom Leins
www.48crash.co.uk